m1ssionstatement
4Art: https://twitter.com/nekopandawolf?s=20&t=XoFYJFmC0_A9n4ClHsJFSQ
Unsung. A city of soul. A melting pot of many cultures and walks of life. Home to everyone from artists to salarymen to basically you name it. The gears of this city keep turning, day in, day out, and it seems like the population never goes down.
Coming across a certain high school, Toshokan High, spirits of those that have lost their lives reach out to me faster than I can deny them.
I scramble into an alleyway as soon as I feel their memories bleed into mine.
I lose control of my body. My eyes go completely blank, and then, pink. My mouth forces out the words of the departed. I experience the world from their eyes, moments before they leave it forever.
It's like a lucid dream that I can't move freely in. I become a puppet to the final moments of a total stranger.
My name is Maruyama Yuki, and I'm a ghost with almost no memories of my own.
Doesn't really clear anything up, right? Alright, let's start from the beginning.
I woke up in a coffin deep within the mausoleums of the Unsung Cemetary. Upon leaving the mausoleum, the Gravekeeper, a kindly, yet terrifying woman, tells me vague things about who I was. I made music, I played games, and I wanted something better for myself when I was alive.
...At this point, I don't think anything's changed.
My big struggle here is that I don't really remember who I was. Most ghosts at least remember the reason they're still in the living world, right? But I can't really put my finger on the cause. From the gash on my neck, and the bullet in my chest, and the lack of a working right eye, I know I had to have been murdered, but... like, why?
Who did I piss off in my life? What reason is there to kill me? Was I really such an unlucky person, to have been involved in something that dangerous?
The looks I get from strangers on the street make me think so. There's always this hint of fear whenever I'm in public. Why are they looking at me like that? Do I have something on my shirt? It's the hair, isn't it? No, I get it; living people are generally afraid of ghosts. It's just that it's kinda disheartening, because I'm basically living like I'm alive, but then I'm reminded that I'm... not.
The things I do to kill time, while I wait for my memories to return.
I've been working at a restaurant to make money for what the Gravekeeper calls 'rent'. In my spare time, I'm either playing video games or making music, having officially become a VTuber. Recently I've been making deals with other VTubers; I make music for their streams, they give me a little more rent money. It continued like this for a while... And then I got two core memories back.
One, my mother passed away a little bit before I did. I cried. A lot. That knowledge alone was enough to hurt me deeply, even though I didn't have many memories of her. The emotions, thought processes of that memory... They all came flooding back. The next few days felt kind of familiar, as I lay in my coffin, in the dark, wishing that it wasn't true.
Two, I had a boyfriend. Vincent Cauchemar. I remember this one time we were together, at some bar. I felt... safe in his arms. Like I belonged against his chest. Like my hands were made to hold his. I feel like this was after my mother died. I know she would have been proud of me, for finding true love.
After I had retained these two pieces of my identity, I started picking up the memories of the deceased too. It's been really inconvenient, being in public and suddenly answering those calls. I have to drop everything and go somewhere away from other people, so I don't disturb anyone. I don't imagine it's a pretty sight. The people that I've made friends with, while adjusting to this new life... I know they'd support me, but I don't want to tell them about any of this. I feel like they'd worry too much.
On the other side of that coin, I want to do some searching. Who was I? What was I about? Maybe if look around long enough, I can salvage something of that life... Maybe I can finally reunite with Vincent, and things can go back to normal, just a little bit...
If I can find him, I'll be at peace with whatever happens next...