Pain Is Music

"I still think the bass is too loud."

Dan and Satoshi had always wanted to make something with Vocaloid, but lacking all relevant skills, except the skill of using computers a lot, it had been one of those infamous projects of "You know, one day we should..."

"Oh for the love of... I thought we already settled this. Guys, who's the musician here? Besides, we were only supposed to do some tiny tweaks before exporting it. We don't have much time now."

Michael played bass at a local band no one had heard of, except maybe the neighbours. A childhood friend, the two had recruited him to do the actual musical part on their little endeavour. The others were mostly focusing on cutting up some anime videos for the background video and getting on Michael's nerves. Michael had played around with free musical software found from the internet and had made a dozen or so songs by himself. He was by no means very good at it, he wasn't even the one composing for their band.

They were working at Michael's place. Not only because he was the one with musical equipment required, a set of speakers that is, but also because Dan and Satoshi were still living with their parents. Dan and Satoshi were quite nerdy on the inside, but reasonably normal looking with black hair and clothes that don't offend anyone. Meanwhile under his long reddish hair Michael was wearing some metal band t-shirt no mainstream listener would ever recognize.

They had been at it for couple of days now. And as far Michael was concerned, they were finished with the instruments. All they were lacking was the vocals. Two days ago they were planning on either buying or, as Dan put it, "finding a student discount on" the Vocaloid software. They did visit the official Vocaloid site, and found something that immediately caught their interest.

The site listed the software, but it also listed a "cosplay singer". From what they understood, the point was that they have a girl dressed up as Hatsune Miku come perform the song for a video and afterwards the company would tweak the vocals a bit to match the video better. Now, all three of them knew they were far from professionalism in any sense of the word, but Dan and Satoshi's Hatsune Miku otaku fanboy blood was steaming.

It wasn't even expensive! They were so exhilarated they weren't really even considering at that point how implausible it was to get a cosplay performer come to your house for such a price. So they had arranged the meeting and the time was very near. The two of them were completely on the edge, to the point of almost accidentally finding Michael's critical mass of annoyance.

Exactly at the arranged time, to the second, the doorbell rang. Satoshi wanted to rush to the door and hide under Michael's bed at the same time. Michael opened the door. The three of them were stunned. Where Michael saw a cute girl in a funny costume, the two others saw the spitting image of Hatsune Miku. The turquoise hair, the turquoise-gray dress, the thigh-high skintight black boots, all were simply perfect. None of the cosplayers usually get it anywhere near the mental image Dan had in his mind about what Miku would like in three dimensions, and this was simply it.

Before they had time to recover, they were hit another shock. She spoke. And her voice wasn't just near what they had heard before on Vocaloid videos, it was perfect match.

"Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Hatsune Miku", she said with a smile so cute it could melt icebergs.

But Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer! It has this slightly robotic machine tone to it, Dan was thinking. Voice training? Some electronic device? Do those even exist? Surgery?? No, even they wouldn't go so far.

It took them what felt like a full minute to recover. Michael was the first to speak and showed her the way to their make-believe recording studio. They'd set up a white sheet for the background to make it look even a bit less like an amateur recording at someone's home. Maybe they could remove the background later with some sort of editing software and replace it with the video they made.

Michael was explaining some of their arrangements, while Dan and Satoshi mostly ogling her and trying to hide the fact they had suddenly become very aware of their trousers. "Miku-chan" was listening to the explanation, nodding, looking bright and cheerful.

Then her arms fell off.

If their mind was like a blank paper when they saw her at the door, now it was albino polar bear walking through arctic blizzard.

The arms... just fell off.

She was still smiling and looking cheerful. Dan noticed there was some blood on the floor. Satoshi started screaming.

"Holy fuck!?"

Dan was unable to think clearly. Leprosy? Dan's eyes were wide open, he looked at Satoshi, hoping he could start making some sense of this, just to see his friend's head explode from something arm-thick that hit him like a bullet. The white sheet behind him was now red. Michael got hit by parts of Satoshi's brain and started panicking.

"Whatthefuck whatthefuck, no no no."

He ran for the next room, but didn't even get to the door. Dan realized it was some sort of tentacle coming out where her hands used to be. The slick red-black thing hit Michael with such a force it had no problem penetrating his spine around his lower back, then twisted up to impale him through his throat. Blood was spraying everywhere.

Dan was still standing there, but stumbled and his back hit the wall. He started following the wall with his hands, keeping both eyes on this... creature. She wasn't smiling anymore.

Faster than he could react, the appendix that was decorated with bits of Satoshi's skull wrapped around his right arm. He screamed from pain as it coiled around his biceps. Then the one that got Michael suddenly caught his left arm.

Two more tentacles slowly slithered up from under her skirt. They grabbed his thighs and Dan screamed again. He had never thought getting grabbed by something like this would be pleasant, but his arms and legs were being absolutely crushed. He could feel bones cracking, and even though his hands were free, he simply couldn't move them anymore.

She was still across the room when the tentacles lifted Dan high up in the air slamming him against the wall. As she... it... started walking closer, the only thing Dan could move was his head. He was twisting it left and right, looking like he was trying to crack his own neck, but he simply couldn't bear looking at the thing anymore.

Dan didn't see how, but she lifted herself so that their eyes were at the same level. Everything became quiet for a moment. Dan had closed his eyes and was trying to get his face as far away as possible. Suddenly he could hear her breathing. Heavy breathing, but high-pitched like small girl's. Just as he peeked from the corner of his eye, he could see something protruding from her mouth. It was another of those fleshy extensions with a tapered end, but this was smaller, just big enough to fit out.

It quickly searched Dan's mouth and jammed its thin end between his teeth. Forcing itself down his throat, it locked his head in place. Dan had a weird flashback from a dentist. He tried to gag and struggle, but now there was practically no part of his body that was able to move anymore.

He didn't want to, but he really needed to see what was happening. Green haired head was slowly moving towards his face along with the mouth-to-mouth tentacle slipping deeper into his lungs. He could see the two turquoise eyes look deep into his being. These didn't look like contacts.

Dan's body was doing all it could to shiver from panic. Just before the lips were about to meet, the creature stopped. Suddenly he realized there were wounds forming across her cheeks, moving towards underneath the small ears he would call cute in any situation but this.

The upper part of her head started lifting itself. Dan could see slimy slithering mass of stringy flesh through the wounds when needle like appendices started extending from below the flaps of skin. They were like the tentacles, but brighter and extremely thin and sharp.

After detaching, the head used those needle-like appendices to walk across Dan's face. It felt like sticking a face in a hornet's nest, each needle pricking a deep wound. Both of his eyes were punctured, and he would have screamed again if he had been able to.

He could not see anything, but could feel it position itself above his head. Then the needles started coming. Not like before, this time they were forcibly penetrating deep into his head. He wasn't even sure what he was feeling, but the needly tentacles easily entered his brain through his skull. They entered his eyes, nose, mouth, ears, neck... everywhere above his torso.

The detached head started lowering itself, wrapping around Dan's cranium. His nerves were almost numb at this point, but he could feel acidic burning all over where the area the needles entered. His head slowly started to get crushed in by immeasurable force.

Dan had given up all hope. His consciousness started to fade. Then it came, like diving head first into an electric shock. Dan had never used any drugs, only read about them. But he thought this is what it would probably feel like. Or rather, would have thought if he had been able to think anything.

For a moment, he lost all sense of self, he lost the concept of thought. Things just washed around in his head; they didn't wash over him, because there was no "him". For that moment, there was simply dark chaos that was shapeless, yet had all possible shapes at once. There was no time, and without time, no causality, no logic.

When Dan's consciousness started gathering itself again, he felt like he was at a black ocean. He didn't see an image in his mind, but the feeling was strong, alien. And like an ocean retreating for a tidal wave, there was a moment of peace before he got hit by an endless stream of thoughts and emotions.

They weren't just dark anymore. There was everything. From cute cakes to getting drunk with friends. There was music, as if all the music in the world was playing at once. Arcade games, ice-cream and funnily decorated cars. He had no way of seeing any common pattern, it felt like everyone in the world were screaming their minds out at him.

Seemingly for hours he was lost. After the wave had thrown him around like a ragdoll, it quieted slightly. Or did he just start to get used to it? He started noticing an undercurrent of something coherent. Harmful emotions? Evil?

Out of nowhere, he had a chilling realization. These weren't mental images of everyone in the world. They all had something to do with Hatsune Miku.

He now knew he was mentally connected to the creature. No, not creature, Hatsune Miku. This thing... this creature... it was her. It was the real Hatsune Miku.

Hatsune Miku had always been an idea. Never anything real. All ideas exist in people's minds and get twisted and turned by whoever is thinking about them. Everyone has their own version of Hatsune Miku inside their heads, and while they all disagreed with details, they agreed the bigger idea they were thinking about was the same.

Being so popular among people who strongly want to attach their own attributes to the idea, the thoughts started to fight. From everything cute, like little girls singing to wanting to rape a fictional character, the ideas disagreed strongly. And through human disagreement, comes malice.

Those ideas all over the world were so strong, the collective subconsciousness formed a combined version of what she is, the idea had become flesh. But the malice from disagreement had been irreversibly embedded into her very being.

This entity was the real physical manifestation of Hatsune Miku.

Suddenly he realized he could see. He couldn't move, but he could see. It was Michael's room. He caught a glimpse of a mirror on the wall and wanted to shudder. His head now looked like Miku's, except that anyone would quickly notice looked like he was wearing a flesh mask with strings coming down.

He could feel his hands move, he could hear the chair creek as he or she sat on it. Hands started typing and he realized he was logging in to the computer. Just as Dan now knew everything she knew, she knew everything Dan knew. And Dan knew the password to Michael's computer.

He didn't have to guess what she was doing, her thoughts were the same as his. She opened the recording program on the computer, turned the microphone on and started singing. It was his throat, his lower jaw, her upper lips, but her flesh had altered Dan's vocal chords to sounds exactly like Miku.

She was recording the song they had been making.

She sang pitch-perfectly, like a machine, but given the circumstances, Dan wasn't really in a mindset to get impressed. After finishing, she simply combined the song with the video he had made together with Satoshi, whose remains were still sitting right next to them. She uploaded the video with the song to Niconico and immediately afterwards went limp.

He felt his head stretch back on the chair and little by little, he felt something was starting to drip. Miku's head was slowly dissolving, as was her body. The thick liquid either went down the drain or just slowly evaporated, but soon it was gone.

Dan was now left alone. He could not move absolutely any part of his body. It was not just his arms and legs being broken; he would later find out she had broken his spinal cord and he was going to spend the rest of his life quadriplegic. But he was alive.

It would take three days for someone to finally find him. His lungs were somehow just barely functioning. He could not communicate with anyone, he didn't even know who found him. Of course he surmised his parents must have been devastated. He heard that when he was found, his limbs were twisted and broken. His head looked like a charred burn victim without eyes or skin on his head.

He had no control over any parts of his body, but most of his autonomic systems were functioning with some help from machines. Only senses he had left was touch on some parts of the body and the doctors had managed to save his hearing.

Three months later he was still lying in bed, unable to move. There had been no real progress on his condition for a long while, and the only reason they knew he was conscious, was because his brainwaves reacted to speech and touch.

He could hear the door. It was probably his parents. After the initial shock, they had been coming regularly, like the good parents they had always been.

Then he felt overwhelming fear. He did not even have to hear anyone speak. He knew.

"So, Dan, we remembered you liked this... Hatsine Miku, so we thought this might cheer you up. Your cousin found her for us on the internet. It was actually very cheap to hire her and she was glad to help."

And then he heard her.

"Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Hatsune Miku"

He could see in his mind the green eyes, the cute smile, the mouth. Complete and utter panic struck. He knew what she was capable of. He had been thinking about dying a lot in the past months, but he wasn't ready to let go yet. And definitely his parents did not deserve any of it.

She started singing a song for him. It was the song they recorded.

"Oh that was pretty. A bit funny, but pretty. Hey, if you don't mind, could you touch his hand a bit? Poor Dan can still feel some touch so it might cheer him up."

He could feel her hand. It was soft and smooth, like everything he had imagined it was, before what happened. They had a moment of silence. He could now hear the familiar high-pitched breathing, very close to him.

He started crying.

"Hey look! Look!! He's happy! I think we should do this every month."