He hadn’t realized it, but the first casualty of everything falling apart for him had been his voice—it hadn’t been a conscious thought, then, but the worse things got for him, the less he’d found himself filling the quiet in his apartment singing along to whatever he was listening to then. His YouTube output had slowed to a crawl, and then come to a complete halt, because it had seemed….unimportant, somehow, in the face of everything falling apart.
He wondered if people still wondered about him. Still listened to his old covers. If there was revenue sitting in that account—though he was nervous to touch it, even though the Negaverse is tracking my YouTube revenue” felt like a unilaterally insane statement.
After he purified, he’d set up a new channel. He’d brought his recording equipment. Gotten himself a setup in his new room. But there kept being a million excuses. He didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to go back on the social media grind, it was just so much effort, it sucked. Nothing felt right to sing. He didn’t want to disturb his eclectic collection of fun alien roommates.
The truth was, it just didn’t feel good anymore.
It felt like something he ought to leave behind, something he needed to give up as part of becoming Elior, instead of Levi.
It seemed silly to think about, now. It wasn’t as if he had to punish himself for choosing to purify, for chasing after what he wanted instead of just…wallowing in misery forever. And it wasn’t as if he’d even made the steps he wanted to take to get better.
Never once in his life had he let fear dictate what he did. It was ridiculous to change that now. And going to watch those silly boy band auditions…
He was too old to try, and honestly wasn’t sure he had it in him to add the grueling schedule of being in a band to his already somewhat packed dance card, between settling into a new relationship, figuring out being a new Senshi, making plans to go to space, so on and so forth. But he’d wanted to. He’d really thought about getting up on the stage and trying out for Star Eclipse, and he’d thought about how much he wanted it.
How much he wanted to sing again.
It had been a little while since then, and he’d had to practice, but he found himself singing around the house more, working out his voice, trying to nail the notes, working on his pronunciation.
And now, he’d sat down in front of his computer, headset on, microphone set up, recording software ready.
He had to come back sometime. And hitting the hot new thing might get him going. But at the same time, he’d listened to the song over and over, and he couldn’t help but feel like there was….something there.
Something that actually mattered to him. That resonated in his chest.
He took a deep breath.
“I was a ghost, I was alone
Eoduwojin apgilsoge…”
[514 words]
