The Sound of Silence (Voracious)

Crisis stood in the empty room. It would get some good sound protection, as it was usually where the school's music classes took place. He exhaled a little, thinking back to his home. His parents. All gone. He wasn't depressed about it...but now he was free to grow. To do what he needed to. He took up the guitar and hooked it into the amp, strumming a little to make sure everything sounded right.

He adjusted a few cords, and then started playing a bit of a tune. He would be heard by anyone passing by but maybe they wouldn't disturb him.


He closed his eyes, focusing on the emotion of the song. It was by the group 30 Seconds to Mars, but he liked covering songs. It wasn't an exact cover, either. He was using a small amount of his power to give it its own sound, as he did every time he played. It was definitely the piece of work 30 Seconds to Mars wrote, but he owned what he was playing right now.

Kyoshi was walking along on her way to her to the exit to head home after the school day when she heard a beautiful sound coming from one of the music rooms. The girl's curiosity took hold of her and she couldn't help but follow the music to its source. When she looked into the room and saw the boy, she bit her lip, recognizing him as a student in her B-class. She knew she shouldn't interrupt, but she couldn't hear the music clearly from out here and she wanted to be able to listen better.

Slowly and carefully she opened the door, trying not to make a sound. She sat down in the nearest chair and took out a pad of paper and pencil, using the music as inspiration to draw a beautiful landscape picture with a person playing a violin as leaves danced around. The girl had gotten so engrossed in her art that she wouldn't even notice when he stopped playing.

As Crisis sang, he thought back to everything he liked about his homeland. His other family members, the ones that weren't horrible and abusive towards him. The beautiful landscape.

He started playing the guitar a little harder as the song progressed.


He went back to the same notes and rhythm as before, calming his vocals down. He noticed that someone had come to listen. A slight apprehensiveness built in him, but he continued playing. If he couldn't play in front of one girl, what worth was he?


He found himself looking straight at the girl as he continued singing, finding it easier to do without her looking back at him. But he would continue looking at her if she looked up.

After a while, Kyoshi could feel the eyes on her and couldn't resist anymore. The small framed girl looked up at him and blinked, blushing lightly as they locked eye contact for merely a second before she looked back down at her drawing. The girl gulped and turned the page, drawing something else now. The girl drew an acoustic guitar and then added in a psychedelic background for it, trying to match the song, but with his eyes still on her, she was finding it difficult to concentrate.

Finally, she put the pencil down and just listened, her head slowly dropping down to the desk she was sitting at and her hair cascaded over the edge. The brilliant red contrasting starkly with her pale skin. If he played another song, she would be asleep by the end of it.

Eventually they had locked eyes, and e looked at her with curiosity. Was she going to be his first fan or something? He started playing a little harder again, as this part of the song was particularly fast and more emotional.


Immediately as he ended that verse he jumped into the next as the song called for, and the music would tone down after his next few verses but then pick up again until the song ended.


Crisis didn't get to finish the last few verses. He looked down at her again to see that she was...falling asleep. He just stopped, staring at her. How was that even possible? The song was short, and had some soft parts but mostly really hard ones.

He didn't know how, but he was angry either way.

He went over to the open guitar case and placed Nevan in carefully, before slamming it shut and buckling it, and then storming out.

Kyoshi squeaked and fell off the chair when he slammed the guitar case. The girl blinked and looked up at him, watching as he buckled the case furiously. She bit her lip and started to pack up too, not knowing why he was so upset. There wasn't anything she could do though. Not like she could talk to him or anything. However, she did get up and stand in his way with a sweet smile and a thumb's up, trying to convey that he did a good job.

As Crisis was about out the door, he found the girl standing in his way and suddenly came to a stop. He was furious, sure, but he wasn't about to knock the girl over just because she fell asleep. She was holding a thumb up and smiling at him. He blinked, the anger turning to confusion for a bit.

"...what? You liked it?" he asked out of his confusion. After all, if she fell so easily asleep to his song, how could she have liked it?

Kyoshi nodded and smiled a little more, starting to get nervous. She put her hand down and bit her lip, squirming slightly as she didn't know what else to do. The girl had seen the anger on his face turn to confusion and she wanted to clear things up for him. In just a moment of thought, the girl held up a finger signifying for him to wait right there, then dashed back to the desk she was sitting at and picked up the pad of paper and pencil.

When she got back over to him, she wrote something on a fresh piece of paper. -I fell asleep cuz it was so pretty! I closed my eyes to hear better... Sorry. Please don't be mad.- She handed him the paper with a soft, apologetic smile on her face, blushing lightly. The girl didn't mention everything, but it was close enough to the truth that he would hopefully understand why she fell asleep without her having to get all weird on him.

He blinked a little, and luckily for Kyoshi his confusion didn't subside into rage while she went and fetched her pad and pencil. She wrote down something and handed him the paper. Perplexed, he opened the paper and read what she wrote, before looking back to her smiling face. He ran a hand through his hair.

"...I'm sorry for overreacting like that. I just take my music very seriously, and I want to be able to play in front of people like you. So when you fell asleep, it gave me the wrong impression." The confusion subsided, before he slowly tilted his head. "...wait, why didn't you just tell me?"

Kyoshi smiled gently when he apologized for overreacting, but then went wide eyed when he said that he got the wrong impression when she fell asleep. The girl bit her lip and blushed brightly, completely embarrassed now that she had fallen asleep. She didn't realize that it meant so much to him. The red head signed the words 'I'm sorry', but then sighed, knowing that he probably had no idea what she was doing with her hands.

That was when he asked why she didn't just tell him and she bit her lip even more. The mute girl had to think about how to motion what she wanted to say to him. She pointed to herself. Then she pointed to her throat. Then she shook her head and used her hand like it was talking, like a sock puppet!

Obviously we know that she was trying to say that she couldn't speak, but did Crisis?

Had she not tried signing then he probably wouldn't have become aware that she needed to do so. But since she had tried signing the words to him, and then tried to explaing gesticularly that she couldn't talk, he got the point. "I see...so you can't speak. I don't know any sign language but I'm guessing you wouldn't have learned to use it if you weren't impaired."

He scratched his head a little absentmindedly. He wasn't used to thanking people. In fact, he hated people. But maybe she could be tolerated. "Er...thanks for listening to my music. I mean, it's not mine, it's a song by Thirty Seconds to Mars. But yeah."

Impaired? Is that what she was? Really? Just because she couldn't speak that meant that she was impaired? The girl bit her lip and rubbed her arm, sighing. She thought about it a little more and nodded, that was the way the world saw almost any flaw in a human, impairment. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to be called impaired.

Anyway, that wasn't really something to get hung up on right now. The boy in front of her told her thank you for listening and she smiled gently, nodding. Kyoshi got out her pencil and paper again to write something down. God this takes forever. -I know. I was listening to them while I fell asleep last night, actually. Again, sorry for that. But you really were great!- She smiled up at him and then blinked, holding up a finger and writing again. -I'm Kyoshi. You?-

He blinked. So she usually listened to Thirty Seconds to Mars when she went to sleep. That made him feel a little bad, as now the events that had transpired made a lot more sense. He looked down as she told him that he was great, and then introduced herslef as Kyoshi. "Kyoshi?" he asked, pronouncing it perfectly. He took her pad, and wrote down his name. Crisilkitas. "But you can call me Crisis or Crisil. I don't really care which, as long as you don't tell anyone my actual name. My stage name and legal name here is Crisis Reigns."

When he pronounced her name perfectly on the first try, the girl smiled ecstatically and nodded, as if that was an extremely rare occurrence. His next sentence however was filled with irony. Beautiful, beautiful irony. As if she could say his real name even if she wanted to. It was nice though that he trusted her with such sensitive information within an hour of meeting her. She giggled and made a motion like she was locking her lips and then threw away the key. An obvious saying "my lips are sealed".

Wait. How long had they been talking?? The girl's eyes went wide and she looked around as if in a panic. The only clock in this room was stuck on 11:42 and she had a very very strong feeling that that was wrong. She bit her lip and looked up at him nervously, pointing at her wrist to see if he had a watch or something on to see the time. If she was late again... A shiver ran up her spine just thinking about it.

He blinked, and maybe the very slightest smile formed on his lips when she made the motion of sealing her lips. Honestly that was part of why he had entrusted the information to her in the first place. Then she started panicking and asked him for the time, at least from what he could tell. "It's 4:20," he said after pulling out his phone to check. "Do you need to get somewhere?"