Chapter 23: The Angel at the Piano
The light of dawn had not yet tinged the sky when Sakura Matou left the Matou mansion. She did so as always: in silence, with quick but contained steps, like a small animal crossing a clearing knowing it is watched by invisible predators. The fresh morning air hit her face, and for an instant— a brief, almost insignificant instant— she felt she could breathe.
'What irony,' She thought as she walked toward the station. 'Leaving one tomb to enter another, and calling this "freedom".'
Homurahara Academy was, for her, a strange concept. A place where young people laughed, studied, fell in love, lived. She also laughed, sometimes. She had learned to imitate a smile, to fake normality. It was just another survival skill. But inside, in the spaces the Crest Worms hadn't completely devoured, she knew it was a farce. A mirage. A necessary lie to keep from going completely mad.
'Or am I already there?'
The question accompanied her the entire way, a constant whisper in the back of her mind. When had she crossed the line between "person who suffers" and "suffering personified"? Was there even a line? Or had it always been this way, from the beginning, since her father handed her over like an object for nothing in return?
The station platform was empty at this hour. Sakura sat on a bench, watching the dead tracks, and let her thoughts flow like dirty water from a sewer.
'Tohsaka Tokiomi. Father.'
The name tasted like bile. She vaguely remembered his image: an elegant man, of distinguished bearing, who looked at her with a mix of duty and distance. He never hugged her the way he hugged Rin. He never smiled at her the way he smiled at Rin. She was the second, the leftover, the one who could be sacrificed on the altar of the lineage.
'Did you not love me at all? Was I so little to you that you could give me away like that, like someone getting rid of old furniture?'
The train arrived, carried her, and she didn't even notice the scenery.
When she arrived at the academy, the sun was beginning to peek out, but the main building still lay in the twilight of dawn. The doors were open— the janitor, faithful to his routine, had already passed through— but there was no one. No students, no teachers, not even the cleaning staff. The silence was absolute, broken only by the distant murmur of traffic and the occasional song of an early bird.
Sakura walked through the empty hallways, her footsteps echoing on the linoleum like heartbeats in a lifeless body. She passed by closed classrooms, mute lockers, bulletin boards with their colorful and absurd posters. Everything seemed part of another world. A world she peered into, but to which she would never belong.
'It starts today,' She thought, and her stomach clenched. 'Today I have to get close to him.'
Shirou Emiya. The name resonated in her mind with a mix of guilt and a darker, dirtier emotion that she immediately tried to suppress. Because deep down, in that black pit where even she didn't want to look, there was a spark of something like relief. A tiny voice whispering:
'I won't be the only one anymore. Finally, someone else is going to suffer.'
The jolt of self-loathing was so violent she had to lean against the wall.
— No,— she whispered, shaking her head.— No. I can't think like that. I don't want to think like that. He's not to blame. He's… he's just a kind boy. He doesn't deserve…
But the voice wouldn't shut up. The voice, fed by years of abuse, of endless nights in the basement, was still there, waiting. Savouring another's misfortune in advance like a forbidden delicacy.
'I deserve to burn in hell,' Sakura thought, and the idea didn't frighten her, but brought a strange peace. 'But I'm already there. What does one more sin matter?'
It was then that she heard it.
A sound.
Distant, faint, but unmistakable in the absolute silence of the empty academy.
Plink…
Sakura stopped. She pricked up her ears.
…plank…
A note. Another. And another, forming a sequence that her mind, atrophied by constant pain, took a few seconds to recognize for what it was.
…plunk.
Music.
Plink, plank, plunk, plink, plank, plunk…
It was a piano. Someone was playing the piano somewhere in the building. And the sound, filtered through the empty hallways, took on an almost spectral quality, as if the ghost of a romantic musician had returned to give a posthumous concert.
Sakura began to walk toward the sound. She didn't consciously decide it. It was as if her feet obeyed a magnet, an invisible force pulling her. The sound grew clearer with each step, more defined, more… warm.
Plink, plank, plunk.
Her steps quickened. She was no longer walking, almost jogging. The echo of her shoes against the floor merged with the piano notes in a kind of involuntary dance.
Plink, plank, plunk.
Something strange was happening. Sakura noticed it suddenly, like noticing that cold water has suddenly become warm. The pain. That constant pain, that background hum that was the Crest Worms moving under her skin, feeding on her prana, her life… was diminishing. It wasn't disappearing, but it was receding, becoming diffuse, like a distant memory rather than a present reality.
'What…?'
She ran. Without realizing it, her steps became a sprint. She was no longer a curious student. She was a castaway who had seen a light on the horizon, a drowning girl fighting to reach the surface before her lungs burst. The sound of the piano was her air. Her only chance.
Until she stopped.
Before her, the door to the music club room was slightly ajar. From inside escaped the morning light— a light that, Sakura instantly noticed, was too bright for the time of day— and the music, now clear and sharp.
She pushed the door with trembling hands.
And she saw.
A young man. With his back to her. Seated at the piano with a posture that wasn't that of a student practicing, but of a lover caressing his beloved. His fingers danced over the keys with a delicacy that contrasted with the fierce intensity of his expression, visible even in profile. His shoulders moved with the rhythm of the melody, his whole body vibrating with each note as if the music wasn't something he created, but something he was.
But that wasn't what left Sakura breathless.
It was the light.
The dawn light, which should have been gray and feeble through the clouds, streamed through the window in a perfect beam that fell directly onto the young man, bathing him in a golden radiance that seemed taken from a Renaissance painting. There was no logical explanation. The clouds were still out there, the sun was barely beginning to peek… and yet, there it was, that light, falling on him like a divine spotlight.
And the feathers.
Tiny white feathers floated in the air around him, spinning slowly, descending with an impossible grace, as if a flock of invisible angels were molting their wings above him. There were no fans. No drafts. Just the feathers, appearing from nowhere, dancing to the rhythm of the music.
Sakura felt her legs give way. She grabbed the doorframe, unable to look away.
'What… what is this? A dream?'
The young man parted his lips. Took a breath. And then, his voice rose above the piano, and Sakura Matou's world stopped.
* * * Tears of an Angel -- RyanDan * * *
— "Cover my eyes...
... Cover my ears"
The voice was soft, melancholic, laden with an ancient sadness that seemed to resonate in every fiber of Sakura's being. She didn't understand the words— they were in English, a language she barely mumbled— but she understood the feeling. It was the voice of someone who had known pain. Who had embraced it. Who had transformed it into beauty.
— "Tell me these words are a lie..."
The worms, for an instant, went still. Sakura felt it with an overwhelming clarity. That constant presence, that repugnant caress in her guts… had calmed. As if the music had hypnotized them. As if the young man's voice was a spell of peace in the midst of her private war.
— "It can't be true...
... That I'm losing you"
'Who are you?' Sakura thought, and the question wasn't just curiosity. It was a plea. 'Who are you to make it, for a moment, stop hurting?'
* * *
A memory. Brief, like a flash. She, very small, perhaps four or five years old. Sitting on her mother Aoi's lap, as she sang her a lullaby. Her mother's voice was sweet, warm, and Sakura felt safe. Loved.
The image vanished almost instantly, devoured by the darkness of the years that followed. But for a second, just one second, Sakura remembered what it felt like to be loved.
* * *
— "... The sun cannot fall from the sky"
The young man's voice rose, gaining intensity. The piano notes became more complex, more heart-wrenching. The white feathers continued to fall, covering the ground around him like a blanket of miraculous snow.
— "Can you hear heaven cry?
The tears of an angel,
The tears of an angel. Tears of an angel,
The tears of an angeeel"
Sakura felt something warm on her cheeks. She didn't recognize it at first. It had been so long since she had cried… Tears were a luxury the worms had taken from her, along with so many other things. But there they were, falling silently, as the music enveloped her like an embrace.
* * *
Another memory. Rin. Her sister, her Nee-san, smiling at her from the door of her room. "Look what I found," She would say, showing her a rare flower that had grown in the garden. "It's for you, Sakura. Because you're my favorite flower."
The flower withered. Rin's smile faded. The door closed. And Sakura was left alone, in the dark, wondering what she had done wrong to deserve being forgotten.
'It wasn't her fault,' She repeated to herself, as always. 'It wasn't Nee-san's fault.'
But the pain, there it was. Always.
* * *
— "Stop every clock. Stars are in shock,
The river would run to the sea"
The young man's voice was a balm and a sword at the same time. It healed, but also opened wounds Sakura thought she had closed by not feeling them. Each note was a finger pointing to a part of her soul she had buried alive.
* * *
The basement. The worms. The stench. Zouken's hands on her, inside her, always inside her. The endless nights. The days she wished to die and couldn't. The days she wished to kill and didn't dare. The hatred for her father. The hatred for herself. The hatred for Rin, that hatred that consumed her and that she tried so hard to deny.
All of that was there. All of that was her.
But there was also this. This music. This moment. This pause in the eternal suffering.
'Is this what normal people feel?' She wondered. 'Is this peace?'
* * *
— "I won't let you fly. I won't say 'goodbye',
I won't let you slip away from me"
The young man's voice became a plea. A promise. An oath made of notes and air. And Sakura felt, in the deepest part of her being, that those words weren't just for whoever had inspired the song. They were for her. For her, who had spent years sliding toward the abyss. For her, who had forgotten what it was like for someone to hold on to her.
'Would you hold on to me?' She thought, looking at the young man's back. 'If you knew what I am… would you still hold on?'
There was no answer. But the music said yes. The music said it didn't matter how broken she was, they wouldn't let her fall, they wouldn't say goodbye. They wouldn't let her slip away.
— "Can you hear heaven cry?
The tears of an angel"
The chorus burst forth with a force that made the air vibrate. The white feathers swirled around the young man, as if the music itself were summoning them. The golden light intensified, becoming almost blinding.
— "The tears of an angel,
Tears of an angel,
The tears of an angel"
Sakura felt her knees give way. She slid down the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor, hugging herself, as tears fell uncontrollably.
— "So hold on. Be strong"
"Hold on." The words, even if she didn't fully understand them, resonated in the depths of her being. "Hold on. Be strong."
But how could she be strong? How could she hold on? They had taken everything from her. She was nothing. Just an empty shell, a vessel of pain.
But again, the music said yes. That she could. That something would help her hold on. The music. This moment. This promise that, somewhere in the world, there existed something so beautiful it could make her forget, even if only for an instant.
* * *
— "Everyday hope will grow"
"Everyday hope will grow." The idea seemed as remote as a star. What new day could bring hope to her? What dawn, when her life was a perpetual night?
— "I'm here, don't you fear"
But the sun… the sun was there. In front of her. Bathing that unknown young man in his impossible light. The sun, hope, existed. The proof was before her eyes.
— "Little one, don't let gooooo hoo o oo,
Don't let gooooo hoo o oo,
Don't let gooooo hoo o oo"
Sakura closed her eyes. For the first time in years, she stopped fighting. She stopped resisting. She let herself be carried away by the music, by the voice, by the feathers, by the light. And for a moment, just one moment, she was free.
* * *
Shinji. Her adoptive brother. The useless boy, the failure, the one who compensated for his lack of talent with a cruelty he learned from the best. Shinji, with his increasingly daring hands, his increasingly obscene looks, his increasingly explicit words.
"Someday, Sakura. Someday you'll belong to me completely."
Terror. Disgust. Helplessness. The worms profaned her from within, but Shinji wanted to profane her from without. He wanted to take from her the only thing that, miraculously, she had managed to keep intact through the years. And she couldn't stop him. She could never stop anyone.
* * *
— "Cover my eyes...
... Cover my ears,
Tell me these words are a lieee"
Silence.
The last note faded into the air like a bursting bubble. The white feathers, with no music to sustain them, fell slowly to the floor and disappeared, dissolving into nothing. The golden light dimmed, returning to the normal grayness of dawn.
The young man sighed, his shoulders relaxing. Little by little, like someone waking from a deep dream, he turned.
And Sakura saw him.
It was Shirou. Shirou Emiya. Her senpai. The kind boy everyone talked about. The son of the Magus Killer. Zouken's target. The person she was supposed to approach, seduce, spy on, and ultimately destroy.
But now, with his eyes still bright from the emotion of the music, with his white hair disheveled and his plastered arm resting on the keys, he didn't look like a target. He didn't look like a sacrificial victim. He didn't look like anything Zouken had described.
He looked like an angel.
A fallen angel, yes, with his broken arm and simple uniform. But an angel nonetheless. Someone who had brought a piece of heaven to earth, even if only for a few minutes.
Shirou's eyes met Sakura's. She saw surprise in them, then a deep pain— not for himself but for her— and finally: an instantaneous, automatic warmth, as if smiling were his natural state, as if he hoped his bright smile could drive away the darkness plaguing both their hearts.
— You're Sakura, right?— he asked, and his voice, now speaking normally, was just as soft as when he sang.— What are you doing here so early?
Sakura opened her mouth. But no words came out. She couldn't speak. She couldn't think. She could only stare at him, her cheeks still damp, red as a tomato, and her heart beating at a rhythm she didn't recognize. The worms inside her were as still as if they, too, had been listening, marveled.
And at that moment, in the silence after the song, Sakura Matou knew, with an absolute and terrifying certainty, that her life had just changed forever.
The problem was that she didn't know if it was for better… or for worse.