The warehouse looked like it had been abandoned by every ambition but sound.
It stood on the far edge of town, tucked behind a rusted chain-link fence and half-eaten by ivy. The corrugated metal walls echoed with every passing truck, and the broken window above the side door let in just enough light to make the dust visible.
But inside?
Inside, it was alive.
Drumsticks clattered. Cables tangled across the cracked floor. An old couch sagged under the weight of three mismatched amps and a half-eaten box of takoyaki. The smell of sweat, cigarette ash, and energy drink soaked into the air like a second skin.
Elliot stood just inside the door, blinking against the flickering overhead lights, Shou's jacket still slung around his arm like a flag from the night before.
"Welcome to the graveyard of failed ambition," Shou called from behind the drum kit, twirling a stick between his fingers. "Come in, Mr. Graves. We're already mid-chaos."
The rest of the band was scattered — Akira tuning a bass with no strap, Rin adjusting the mic height by standing on a paint can, and Kaito slouched on the couch scrolling through something on his phone with dead eyes.
It was loud. Unstructured. Barely hanging together.
And for the first time in days, Elliot felt like he could breathe.
"I don't play anything," he said, awkwardly stepping over a coil of wire.
"Good," Akira muttered. "We don't either."
Everyone laughed. Even Elliot.
⸻
They started slow.
Just noise, at first. A beat. A drone. Shou hammering on the toms with a rhythm that sounded more like a heartbeat than music.
"Scream into the mic," he said to Elliot. "Not lyrics. Just whatever's in your chest."
"I'm not a singer."
"Good. We've got too many of those in the world already."
Shou handed him the mic — battered, its mesh grille dented like someone had headbutted it during a breakdown — and gave a little nod.
Elliot hesitated.
Then he closed his eyes.
And screamed.
It wasn't melodic. It wasn't clean.
It was raw, cracked, ugly.
But it felt right.
Like clearing out a room in his lungs he hadn't stepped into in years.
The band didn't laugh.
Didn't mock.
They just played louder.
⸻
One song bled into another.
They jammed for hours — looping through half-formed riffs, jabbing at each other with cords and shouted inside jokes. Elliot even tried the synth pad, triggering distorted loops with his fingers like some chaotic god of static.
By the time they finally collapsed in the back corner, sweaty and breathless, the sun was sinking behind the high windows in thin amber streaks.
Shou tossed him a water bottle and said, with a grin:
"That one line you yelled — 'You get to shine, and I get to burn' — that's the hook."
"What?"
"It's real. Painful. Honest. That's what we write. You gave us the title track and didn't even mean to."
Elliot leaned back against a speaker, wiping his arm across his forehead.
"That's just something I shouted at Ami."
"Yeah, well," Akira said, flicking a pick at him. "Sounds like it came from deeper than that."
⸻
Later, they sat outside on the warehouse steps, passing around cans of vending machine coffee and half-crushed cigarettes.
"You know," Kaito said, his voice low, "most people never scream. They keep it in their teeth. Swallow it. Smile through it."
"And then they break," Rin added.
Elliot stared at the gravel, tracing a circle with his shoe.
"I didn't think I was allowed to be angry."
"Of course you're allowed," Shou said. "You're just not allowed to look angry. Different thing."
He pulled out his phone and played back the grainy recording of Elliot's earlier scream, layered with distorted guitar.
It sounded… haunting. Beautiful, in a jagged, broken-glass way.
"We'll call it Shine and Burn," he said. "You can help us record the demo next week."
Elliot looked at the screen. At his voice turned into fire.
At himself — loud, messy, real.
For once, he didn't hate what he saw.
⸻
That night, back home, his phone buzzed.
Mizuki: "So… band life now? 👀"
Elliot: "It's not serious."
Mizuki: "Sometimes the best things aren't."
Elliot: "You should come hear it sometime."
Mizuki: "Only if there's screaming."
Elliot: "There will be."
He stared at the screen for a while. Thought of Ami. Thought of everything he'd shouted, everything she didn't say back.
He still hadn't deleted her contact.
Still didn't know if he could.
⸻
In the last hour of the night, Elliot found himself back on the rooftop of the apartment building, legs dangling over the edge, the wind in his hair.
Shou had joined him, eventually, setting down two cans of coffee and sitting beside him.
"Why do you do it?" Elliot asked. "Music. This. All of it."
Shou didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Because it's the only thing that doesn't lie back."
"What do you mean?"
"Music doesn't smile when it's hurting. It just screams. It doesn't hide. Doesn't pretend. It lets you be loud when the rest of the world wants you quiet."
Elliot nodded slowly. The skyline blinked in the distance. A plane passed overhead like a moving star.
"I thought I was helping people by fading into the background," he said. "But maybe I was just scared of being seen."
Shou lit a cigarette, took a drag, and passed it over.
"Then it's time you set fire to the version of you that kept hiding."
⸻
Elliot didn't know what he'd become next.
But for the first time, he knew who he wasn't.