This idea came to me while listening to Beginner.3600sec Story
Knowing that Atsuko was under constant pressure and stress, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her Graduation.
It was her teammate Minami who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her close friend Yuko was there, too, near her. It was she who had been in the agency office when memo of Atsuko Maeda's graduation plans was released. She had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by consulting her manager, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the exciting message.
She did not hear the story as many girls have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her teammate's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, pulled futon. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her spirit.
She could see in the open window before the apartment the tops of buildings that were all glimmering with the new spring life. The delicious breath of laser rain was in the air. In the streets below, people bustled through the busy Akihabara night. Notes of all too familiar melodies which anchored in her consciousness reached her faintly, and Tokyo lights flickered throughout the evening landscape.
The moon that formerly hid, peeked through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the comfort of a pillow, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke a guarded burden blanketed by assertive strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two firm yet slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the lighted stage brimming with energy; the theater that showered her love and admiration through a sea of loyal faces, ever smiling and blushed. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no entity to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind willingness with which people believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a center idol. A kind privilege or a cruel affliction made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved it--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could this pride, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Takamina was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the shallow gap, imploring for admission. "Acchan, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Acchan? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her captain's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped Takamina's waist, and together they lapse the hallway. Yuko stood waiting a few doors down.
She grips the knob, gently opening a door. Blinded by a radiant film, an illuminated burst disrupts her exit, compelling her to behold the trail she had only briefly tracked. With ample chagrin, witness herself collapse. She stood amazed at Takamina's piercing cry; at Yuko's quick motion to screen her from the view of her own body.
When the doctors came they said she had diedーof the joy that kills.
Fin
It's pretty obvious what I did here, if you're offended, whether the plagiarism part or other thing, I ask for forgiveness. But for some reason, this corruption seemed like a beautiful idea.
Topic: [AKB48] 3600sec Story (Read 7079 times)