A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 287 Ghost (Part 2)
Why did you choose this song?

Quinn wrote hundreds of piano pieces for Celia.

From Bach to Maxim, from Jay Chou to Taylor Swift, the suppressed outburst of Cao Dong, the ethereal melodies of Joe Hisaishi, Motohiro Fujiwara's understanding of J-pop, and the triumphant Rose, a fusion of modern and classical minimalism.
These pieces cannot fully represent the music of another world.

But it was music that Quinn liked, or music that had some meaning for him.

He had hoped these pieces would help the girl he had met briefly, yet who had left a vivid mark on his life. Even after he was gone, Celia, who did not choose the life of the prophesied child, could still find happiness in her beloved piano.

Even though things didn't go as planned, Quinn still gave the sheet music to Celia.

He spent an entire afternoon at the Ashwell Museum playing the entire score for the girl on that old, worn-out piano.

Celia said she liked modern pop like "Sunny Day." It was catchy but not too difficult; a sunny soul should naturally like sunny songs. Quinn had thought that once she mastered pop, she would be drawn to more complex but rhythmically more individualistic band tracks, or country-style Western pop.
I never expected her to choose this song.

The original song title is certainly not "Cherry Blossoms Fall at a Speed ​​of 5 Centimeters Per Second". If the original English title were translated, it would be "One More Time, One More Chance".

Originally a folk song from the late 20th century, this song perfectly captured the feelings of missed opportunities and melancholy in the film. Director Makoto Shinkai chose it as the theme song for "5 Centimeters Per Second." As the film spread among anime fans worldwide, it became a classic song that even hardcore anime fans had heard.

However, if we set aside the film's narrative and Makoto Shinkai's clear, oil painting-like sky, this is just a song that sounds quiet and melancholic at first, but is also very gentle.

This is a good song.

However, it wasn't good enough to stand out among those hundreds of classic works that topped countless music charts, were played repeatedly in countless people's headphones, and were considered representative of a certain type of music on Earth.

This isn't music for sixteen-year-olds; those in their youth can't yet appreciate separation. It needs to wait, for the years to pass, for people to have enough experience to stop being saddened by the past, and for them to recognize the weight of loss and regret before they can taste the dull pain in the melody of this song, like a bittersweet aftertaste.

Just like the film composed of three short stories, it might seem bland and even boring to a sixteen-year-old audience, far less exciting than films like "Your Name" or "Weathering With You." But when the audience gets older, no longer has the energy to follow anime every week, and their loved ones who used to watch movies with them have drifted away, then when they watch this work again, they might be able to give it a "masterpiece" rating with the same sentiment as the melody.

What was Quinn thinking when he put it into that thick stack of sheet music?

He was also thinking about it. He didn't want to admit what the song meant to him. It had nothing to do with an animated movie or personal preferences. He was never one to attach too much meaning to external things. But whether he admitted it or not, this piece of music evoked emotions in him that other music couldn't.

"Why did you choose this song?" Celia slowly repeated his question.

Her voice was soft and airy as she pleaded, "Mr. Quinn, could you play it once?"

He pressed his thumb into her palm, letting it sink in and then push it out, causing a blush to rise like clouds. Her palms were slightly sweaty, whether from nervousness or practicing the piano, it was hard to tell. Quinn rubbed them, and the soft, warm palms carried the warmth of both of them, making their heartbeats seem exceptionally close.

“I don’t remember you having any particular reaction when you listened to this song.”

Quinn released her hand. He lowered his head, his gaze unfocused.

Celia stood up and made way for him. She laboriously adjusted the piano stool to Quinn's height.

Reaching out, he flipped to the first page of the sheet music and placed it in front of Quinn. After a moment, he smiled sheepishly, "I completely forgot you're the composer; you don't need to look at the sheet music."

"I didn't agree to that."

"Please, Mr. Quinn—"

She went behind Quinn and massaged his shoulders with her warm little hands.

Quinn, head bowed, seemed lost in thought, but finally gave in and placed his fingers on the piano keys. Behind him came a triumphant, silvery laugh.

The keys, with their plastic-like texture, are those of an ordinary piano; high-end pianos are somewhere between glass and porcelain. But this piano is different. The keys feel like ivory, like jade, like that iconic Steinway from Scandinavia.

Exactly the same.

He gazed at the Cavendish family's silver iris emblem on the violin soundboard and pressed his fingers down.

She gently began to sing, looking at him with her small hands on his shoulders, until the clear melody representing human voices began to play, and her eyes, which seemed to have a faint light, stopped moving.

How much more must one lose before the heart can be forgiven?

How much more pain must I endure before I can meet you again?

The original accompaniment for this song was guitar and blues harmonica.

He changed the accompaniment and singer Yamazaki Masayoshi's husky yet gentle vocals to piano. He did not make major changes to the melody and tempo, and restrainedly preserved the atmosphere of the original song. He only added some melodies to certain repeated parts, which were his own interpretations.

Many years ago, one evening after the college entrance examination, in his home where he was all alone, he played this piece. The rhythm, which should have been perfect, was transformed in the second half into the only variation he would ever play in his life.

Quinn recalled the first time he met Mi Yutong.

Just like that day in the bookstore when he saw a female clerk wearing her brother's name tag, he had no idea what the future held. He simply thought it was an ordinary day.

He sat in the first row of the first column at the classroom door, a seat assigned according to his middle school entrance exam scores. It was the morning of September 1st, the first day of high school, and a senior student from the student council came to the classroom door with a roster, followed by a very pretty girl.

They were wearing the same school uniform, but on her, it made her look like a princess in full regalia walking among the common girls. Her long, soft, straight hair was framed by sunlight filtering through the trees and falling on her pert nose, dazzlingly bright. Quinn was standing right next to her at the classroom door; he could see the beautiful light and shadow on her face just by looking up.

However, unlike the other boys in the class, he did not cast an undisguised or overtly ardent gaze at her. He didn't even notice the girl—what a beautiful upperclassman, that was his vague first impression. Quinn didn't think she was a freshman in the same year.

He was calculating how much he could sell the textbooks in his desk for, whether to sell them to a waste paper collector or list them on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace app). As a specially admitted top student, he was exempt from tuition and fees, so the textbooks were a windfall for him, since he could memorize them after reading them once anyway.

Until the girl called his name.

As for Qin, all he could remember was that the voice was very sweet and gentle, the kind of voice a girl would never normally make, like a broadcaster speaking in a high-pitched voice.

In fact, he guessed correctly. The girl was a new member of the student council, working with her senior classmates to notify students who needed to go on stage to receive awards at the opening ceremony.

Unlike other high school student councils that exist in name only, the Sacred Heart High School student council is truly involved in college administration and is even harder to get into than university student councils. After all, the students at this high school are mostly from wealthy families, and the majority of them will apply to prestigious universities abroad in the future, and student council experience is highly valued by foreign universities.

Quinn's impression of this girl was that she joined the student council right after the start of her first year of high school: "Her family is very powerful," and she was from a different world than him.

He stood up and politely raised his hand to indicate that he was the one in question.

The two looked at each other, their gazes carrying a hint of scrutiny, before parting ways abruptly.

Mi Yutong wasn't looking at him because of his face. Quinn had always been a nobody, and his appearance didn't have anything that would attract girls' attention. She was looking at him because he was receiving an award at the opening ceremony—most of the first-year high school students who received awards were athletes, but he wasn't.

Quinn's award came from a very niche and bizarre high school history competition, where a group of old scholars set the questions and asked high school students who were younger than their shoe size. The standard for selecting soldiers in the Qin army was to draw a crossbow with a draw weight of several stones.

This junior high school graduate, who hadn't even enrolled yet, came back in first place under the name of Sacred Heart High School. He could even mark the latitude and longitude of the Upper Cave Man ruins on a map, leaving the second-place finisher in awe.

Of course, just as the girl hadn't left any impression on Quinn, he hadn't left any impression on Mi Yutong either. Her tutors all had at least an Oxford PhD, and intelligence wasn't a rare trait in the young lady's eyes.

He waited alone at the stadium, and the student council members came again just before the opening ceremony began. Mi Yutong led him to his usual seat, and they didn't exchange any other words. Quinn watched her being approached by a sports student with utter boredom—this girl probably had a bad temper, he concluded because Mi Yutong switched back to her original voice when she was being approached, and was so impatient that she didn't even bother to use punctuation.

He noticed by chance that there was a small copper plate pinned to the back of Mi Yutong's school badge.

The small copper plate features a short-haired anime woman wielding a katana, with a line of small Japanese text next to her. In those days, anime merchandise wasn't widely popular, and these small metal plates, called "baji," became the kind of trinkets used to identify people from the world of anime and manga.

Quinn can recognize some Japanese kanji and knows that those characters mean "Kyuji Kensuke". I don't understand, are they Japanese street fashion accessories?
That's actually the name of the katana. The woman wielding the katana is called "Ryougi Shiki," the protagonist of the anime "Kara no Kyoukai," and also Mi Yutong's "push"—her favorite character.

I only found out about these things later.

In order to get closer to Mi Yutong, Quinn memorized the original text of "Kara no Kyoukai".

He was playing the piano, but he felt like he was listening.

My mind is filled with things that don't really mean much.

His fingers moved naturally, and as the melody gradually rose, his thoughts drifted in the air. The world was quiet, and his soul was as calm as the boy who accompanied the girl to watch 5 Centimeters Per Second.

"All components of the Long March 7 rocket have successfully entered the Wenchang Space Launch Site. With vertical assembly underway, the countdown to the first commissioning of my country's new generation of medium-lift launch vehicles and new generation of space launch sites has begun."

The police station's television was broadcasting the news. He leaned back in his cold chair, watching the rocket launch on screen.

The officer, who had a limp, pushed open the iron door of the interrogation room and handed the materials, which were covered with various stamps, to the policeman who was watching TV with him.

"The leader has signed off. It's determined to be legitimate self-defense, the chain of evidence is sufficient, it doesn't constitute mutual combat, and he won't bear criminal responsibility for the other party's death. He can be released."

The officer flipped through the files, saw several glaring signatures and red stamps, and asked incredulously, "Only half a day has passed, and the higher-ups are releasing him so hastily? What if the prosecutor's office investigates?"

"Investigate what?" A hint of admiration appeared on the stern face of the lame policeman. "He recovered all of Mi Beilin's overseas assets."

"Real estate, savings, gold, stocks, and the most difficult trust to deal with, totaling over three billion US dollars. The task force has already sent liquidation brokers abroad, and all the powers of attorney are legally binding. We should be able to recover everything by the end of the year at the latest."

The police looked at him in disbelief.

The unremarkable boy had bandages wrapped around his thin legs, and half of his face was still swollen and red, as if he had been punched hard.

“I’ll talk to him alone.” The limping officer picked up the remote and turned up the TV volume, the news broadcast drowning out their conversation: “The surveillance computer is lagging a bit, could you please restart it?”

"Captain Liu, this is against the rules."

"Ten minutes will be enough."

Realizing that the other person's promotion was a foregone conclusion, the police officer had no choice but to nod, leave, and close the iron gate.

The lame police officer turned off the TV.

He then asked the man, who was not handcuffed, while sitting in the chair, "Was it intentional?"

The young man shook his head.

"You guys are too slow. He's played basketball since he was a kid, and he's much stronger than me. If we hadn't done that, I would have been the one who died."

The limping police officer frowned and said, "There's a dashcam there that recorded everything. You choked him until he died. That doesn't qualify as self-defense at all."

"Thanks, Uncle Liu." The boy said with a smile, "Luckily, we succeeded, didn't we?"

"..." The police chief sighed. "Don't mention this to the reporters. I've deleted the video, and I'll handle things with the prosecutor's office. Just pretend you don't know anything."

"This is a significant meritorious service, and I will apply to my superiors for special consideration so you can retake the college entrance exam. Don't overthink it; you did nothing wrong, this was legitimate self-defense."

He paused for a moment, then said, "The police station has found you a psychologist. Don't be resistant, just think of it as a chat. Of course, you can talk to me too. Uncle Liu killed someone in Guangxi Province back in the day, so don't have any psychological burdens."

The boy raised his head, his eyes clear and bright.

Where is Mi Yutong?

Officer Liu remained silent for a long time before hesitatingly speaking:
"Xiao Qin, that girl's death wasn't your fault. It was her own fault for not being able to accept it. If she were still alive, her life would be turned upside down. How would she face the past? And how would she face you?"

"How is she?"

"..." Officer Liu shook his head, closing his eyes so the boy wouldn't see the regret in them. "The ambulance notified the funeral home directly. There was no need for resuscitation; you should know what that height was like."

"died?"

"I'll have the psychologist come over now."

"I'm just confirming, Uncle Liu."

The police officer placed a file containing the case details in front of the boy and let him read it himself.

He stared silently at the four small words "confirmed death," as if he were looking at the life of a young girl.

The music ends here.

Quinn closed the piano lid and calmly asked, "Now can you tell me the reason?"

There's really no particular reason.

Celia's hand, which was resting on his shoulder, gently stroked his face, as if trying to soothe something. She said softly, "I don't really feel anything special, but when Mr. Quinn played this song, it felt like I was about to cry."

"Last time, this time."

Quinn finally looked up and saw the girl in the reflection of the piano's gleaming lacquer. His eyes trembled, and he was momentarily dazed.

In a daze, as if his heart had stopped, he saw Mi Yutong.

This is Mi Yutong.

This is not Mi Yutong.

She is dead.

'Confirmed dead.'

The hand that caressed his cheek encircled him, and she hugged Quinn from behind. Bold, yet cautious.

Her ears were as red as a sunset.

"I don't understand what Mr. Quinn is thinking."

She whispered in his ear:

"But Xiaoxi doesn't want to wait. Adults take up a large part of life, so wouldn't it be a waste to give up on someone you liked as a child and wait to meet them later?"

(End of this chapter)