White Album 2 Omake/Story01/Prologue
Prologue: "Two Years Ago"[edit]
Touma Kazusa hated the sky.
In the spring, she skipped the School of Houjou University entrance ceremony with such darkness clouding her mind that she spurned it with disinterest. She laid on the grounds where she'd be commuting and gazed upon the clear blue skies.
Several days ago, Kazusa's mother had informed her they'd be parting ways.
Youko was the only blood relative of hers, and as she'd keep rambling on and on, she had learned Youko was flying off to Europe to perform.
Ever since she was a child, Youko had only gone to competitions. Never once had she made Kazusa any sort of lunch. Certainly the house was empty when she went off on concert tours. Kazusa knew half of that was actually performing, and the other half was running away on honeymoons.
Even so, she hadn't held any kind of dissatisfaction in this prodigy of a mother.
This was because for half of the year, Youko would be patting her head, talking about her own feats in concerts as they ate at the dining table.
This was because she'd believed her mother had needed her. That she'd loved her from the bottom of her heart.
Until...
"There's no meaning in bringing you with me as you are now."
The moment these merciless words came from her own mother, it was as if the Touma Kazusa that had lived up until now had disappeared, even though she still went by the name of Touma Kazusa.
The new Touma Kazusa was not needed by the world.
Of course this wasn't the reality of it all, but rather something Kazusa had come to believe herself. Considering she was still in the middle of puberty though, it was something quite harsh to take at this kind of time.
Since then, the voices Kazusa heard, their expressions, their emotions...
The color, sounds, smell, taste, feeling of living things and just about everything else had some sort of hidden meaning behind them. To Kazusa, they all meant some sort of ill-will; that they were sneering at her, or that they were watching her. Still, she had learned to ignore it all.
That's why at this very moment, as Kazusa looked up at the sprawling sky, she hated it all.
It was a lot better than hating her mother.
Touma Kazusa hated the teachers.
The day following the school ceremony after school, one of the female teachers in the music department greeted her with a rather simple yet unpleasant smile, as she guided her to the third floor of the outer building.
A brand-new grand piano had been enshrined in the second music room, with the words "Donated by Touma Youko" engraved on its plate. The golden sparkles coming from this engraving reflected in such a way it caused Kazusa to wince.
The female teacher went chattering on about how the music department of the School of Houjou University were expecting so much from her. Kazusa sighed as the teacher promised she'd get the best treatment for all music activities.
So Kazusa immediately got to work.
"I'm going to be practicing now, so leave already," she said.
Though the teacher was angered, Kazusa figured that if she suppressed her rude attitude and remained polite and kind like she always was, the relationship between the two of them would improve from hereon after.
However, the black-spectacled teacher in her mid-thirties rolled her eyes, and soon returned a rather unpleasant smile in a hurry. She recklessly remarked, "Then, once you're done, come to the staff room for the key to lock the door."
Because of that, Kazusa started to develop a negative image of the "adult demeanor", associating it with the teacher supervising her as well as all of the management staff. This transformed into contempt towards them all, in spite of not knowing any of them.
Because it was annoying to differentiate between friends and enemies.
Touma Kazusa hated the students.
After a bit of time had passed since the entrance ceremony, once classes began, she started talking to a male student during practice hours. Going by the name of Matsukawa Takanori, both of them had a history of entering competitions and taking the top ranks. They'd talk about it, and in the spring of the following month when the two were selected for the next competition, they'd again talk about it. Kazusa treated him indifferently, not remembering the first half of what they'd discussed and not finding any meaning in the other half.
Matsukawa never expected her to fire back at him, taking that attitude of hers and forcibly warping it into some sort of ill will, and even tried hard to keep this sort of thing running with her.
At any rate, it was like he didn't see any reason for her to hate herself.
He didn't see any reason to doubt they were ideal partners, subscribing to the theory that "excellence breeds excellence", able to grow together not only in skill with the piano, but as human beings as well. The same also held true for her.
This one-sided turn of events ran on for a while, and then an incident happened.
As the two loitered around in a classroom in the evening...
Though no one had witnessed the events leading up to the incident, Matsukawa was left in a cold sweat, slouching over and writhing in pain. It was as if Kazusa was brushing off an uncomfortable feeling in her feet, tossing the desks and seats all over the place.
Speaking of which, Kazusa was a pianist who never used her fists, so aiming for the nether regions wasn't really a difficult thing to pull off.
At any rate, the chaos in that incident was treated more as something that couldn't be blamed on either of the two, rather than the school being lenient.
However... or rather, to say whose fault it was, Kazusa had ruined her image in the eyes of the classmates in the music department, even though a month hadn't even passed.
That's why Kazusa hated all the students in the classroom.
Besides, she particularly hated Matsukawa's overly large ego, and on top of that, there was no one to talk with her since then.
And then one month later, in the competition in the spring of the following month.
It was no exaggeration to say that, despite not even two months having passed, the school and board chairmen, vice principal and year head all spoke highly of her since her victory.
As always, the homeroom teacher was sucking up to the superiors with an unpleasant smile.
The seniors that survived until the final screening all hung their heads in shame at that competition, clapping mechanically.
And there wasn't a single student in her year... no first year student that came to cheer her on.
In just the span of two months, Kazusa's world had been so jarred, torn apart, and isolated.
Even so, those unpleasant feelings came at her from all directions. While taking her certificate of merit with a blank expression, she silently interrupted their praise, and ran away from that place with her trophy and certificate, ignoring people as they tried to hold her back.
At the time, she didn't gain any delight, achievement, anger, or emptiness; just nothing; a completely flat feeling.
Or so she thought.
Kazusa didn't remember much that night since coming back home and opening the door.
Nor did she remember opening the air package that had arrived, nor the stuffed dog that was inside, nor the card inside that said, "Happy Birthday", nor the fact her victory in the competition came the week after her birthday, nor the round eyes in the stuffed dog right in front of her...
Nor did she remember herself crying out, nor the fact the present from her mother was delayed by a week, nor that she ripped apart the stuffed dog with her nails and threw it everywhere, nor that her vision began to blur, nor that she could no longer hold in the words expressing the horrible feelings overflowing in her heart, nor that she was convinced she had nothing left, nothing at all, really, just about nothing...
The day following Kazusa's victory, her face appeared in the local newspaper covering the story.
Of course, the name "Touma Youko" did show up about five times in the headlines, but Kazusa didn't find such an article like this, nor did she attempt to even look for it.
Touma Kazusa came to hate the piano.
At the time, hating the piano was the same thing as hating the entire world.
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