(Suggestion from the author: check out the song Firefly or Hotaru by Fujita Maiko. It’s a japanese song and it’s the song Hinari was singing. Link below.)

By the time the brothers quietly stepped inside the small cottage, Zaki leaned over to Sei and he whispered.

"Sei, I want to be alone with her," he said and Sei immediately nodded. He looked intently at Zaki and he patted his shoulder.

"Zaki... all I want is for you to be happy, remember that," Sei uttered before he walked away and he snuck up behind Davi. He gently took his wife’s hand and he gestured at her to leave.

Hinari already started singing her next song so she didn’t notice that Davi had snuck out of the cottage. She was standing before the screen and she was leaning on the table.

Zaki just stood there gazing at her. The music that she was singing sounded so magical and beautiful. But the prettiest thing was... Hinari’s voice. Zaki had never heard Hinari sing before so he was overwhelmed as he listened to her enchanting voice. He already knew that her voice was always so pleasing to his ears but he didn’t know that her voice when she sang was even more breathtaking. She could even pass as a great singer.

"Shining with light... it steals my gaze..."

"You are just like this firefly..."

Hinari was singing with all her heart. Her heart was aching so badly and somehow, this song perfectly fit everything that she was feeling at the moment that she couldn’t stop her eyes from tearing up. The song was slow and as lonely as her heart felt that she couldn’t help but feel her emotions overflowing.

As she sang, she started reminiscing about the time she first met Zaki and the memories she spent with him. Thinking about him, she felt that he was like a beautiful firefly. He was shining so beautifully like a small light shining her world, but no matter how much she wanted to catch him, she couldn’t. Because just like a firefly, she felt like once she caught him, he might just die in her arms. She didn’t know why but she had been feeling like this since a long time ago, that Zaki was meant to be the firefly she couldn’t hold in her arms. He was meant to be the firefly she could only watch flying away, the firefly she could chase but never catch.

"I can’t hold it... I can’t reach it... that heart of yours..."

"I want to know how you feel..."

When those lyrics came out of Hinari’s mouth through her enchanting voice, Zaki felt his heart throbbing in pain. He felt the sorrow in her voice. He felt the sadness she was trying to convey in her song and worse was that the lyrics were hitting him hard. It was as if she was literally talking to him.

"I can’t reach it... that heart of yours..."

"I can’t tell how you feel..."

Hinari’s grip on the mic in her hand kept tightening. The tears in her eyes started flowing as she kept on singing. Her voice cracked a little but she kept on singing. The song, her heart, her voice, the memories, the man she loved... everything seemed to covered in pain. She felt her heart tearing apart. She had never felt this kind of pain before, in her entire life. She’d been trying all this time to reach Zaki’s heart, for him to let her hold it but it seemed like this was an impossible dream. She didn’t know that a broken heart would hurt this bad and she couldn’t help but pour everything out in this song, hoping that by the end of this song, her heart will finally stop hurting.

"I want to cry when I feel like this..."

"The more I want, the more it hurts..."

Zaki subconsciously clenched the shirt in front of his chest. The song, her voice, was hitting the deepest chamber of his soul. It was like an unstoppable arrow piercing through all his walls, shattering the frozen cloak enveloping his heart and stabbing it again and again.

"Even so, I could never hate you..."

The moment Hinari uttered these words, Zaki closed his eyes and started trembling.

"Even so, I could never hate you...[1]"

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[1]the lyrics are from the song "Firefly/Hotaru" by Fujita Maiko