This Is Your Brain On Music

In a music competition show, my rival unexpectedly played the melody I had in my mind before I could. Shocked, I confronted her, asking why she plagiarized me. However, she turned the accusation against me and said, "You said I stole your work, but do you have any proof?" However, I was unable to provide any concrete evidence. Thus, I was labeled as a bully and a plagiarist, ultimately meeting a tragic end. Even in my final moments, I couldn't figure out how she managed to steal something from my mind. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on that same stage. Seeing that my rival was about to play her part, I stopped her and said, "This time, it's my turn to go first."

"Please… stop pushing. I can't move." The concert crowd was packed and restless, bodies pressed tightly together. I found myself too close to the girl in front of me. She wore a short skirt that brushed against me every time the crowd surged. What caught my attention was how close we were: the faint warmth of her body through the thin fabric made my pulse quicken. For a brief moment, I thought I felt her react too, as if she sensed the same strange tension hanging between us.

After I announced my exit from the music industry, the public response was overwhelmingly positive. The only person who voiced his objection was my girlfriend's rumored lover, the up-and-coming songwriter Lucas Zacker. He put on a show of sincerity in front of a crowd of reporters. "It's all a misunderstanding. Matthew is an irreplaceable talent in the music industry. I sincerely hope he returns to the stage." I shut off my phone and turned a blind eye to his public plea. In my past life, one of my songs had been identical to his supposedly original single. As such, netizens accused me of plagiarism, cursing me and wishing death upon my family. Frustrated, I posted the entire creation process online, but it couldn't stand up to the timeline. His new song had been released ten minutes ahead of mine. Just because of the ten-minute difference, netizens sent me photoshopped mourning portraits of myself and even went so far as to come to my house and vandalize it with paint. The relentless cyberbullying went on for years, and it drove me into a deep depression. My parents exhausted their life savings trying to clear my name, only for crazed fans to set our house on fire, causing my parents to burn to death. In the end, when his song won an award, I jumped off a building. But who would have guessed that when I opened my eyes again, I was reborn on the very day the new song was set to release.

Alena Sabine Florence, now an aspiring drummer, was originally inspired by the young prodigy of a guitarist boy when she was a kid. Driven by the desire to play music with him someday, she chose to take on the path of a complex lifestyle and thrived hard to be as good as she could with the drums. She had never stopped hoping to meet the boy again. She thought, that as long as she kept working hard to make a name for herself, they will eventually meet again. So, when an opportunity has risen; a way to challenge her skills came, she joined her friend’s indie band. However, fate seemed to work way more twisted than she expected, because when her greatest wish came true, it didn’t bring her joy as she imagined. The boy she considered an unreachable star, was stuck in a nameless local indie band. Furthermore, his sound doesn’t resonate the joy of making music, or love for music anymore. He just sounded bland, flat, and boring. Just another typical story of a bright, hopeful girl, and the lackluster, musical genius boy. Except, it ain’t typical. Hear thy heart’s rhythm; a search for a melodious love.

For the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time, the system in my mind warned me. [Warning! The lovesick part of your brain is highly active! If you refuse to leave John Miller, you’ll die an hour later!] I looked at my husband. He was scolding me for the sake of his secretary, who was his first love. I once burned down all of my award-winning drawings just because he disliked them. I calmly gave the system in my brain an order. “Since the cause of the malfunction is the lovesick portion of my brain, I hereby grant you the highest authority to remove it. Do the surgery now!” An hour later, John stopped me at the door of the ward. His eyes were bloodshot. “Grace Stone, what are you trying to pull?” I raised my head and watched him coldly and calmly. “Mister, you blocked the light. Based on an analysis, this constitutes an illegal detention. Do you need my help calling the cops?”

Being a mute used to be simple before all the craziness started. I just can't talk and that's who I am. Mum has learned to accept that and I guess so have I. Everything was just fine in my high school in Shanghai. I had finally made it to year twelve and even though I was in China, I was actually being treated as a human being despite my disability. Things were definitely not perfect but I would give anything to go back to that, like it was before. I heard my first voice that year, right at the beginning of year 12. I didn’t really have any real friends, but I was used to it and before the voices started, I was fine with that. But it all changed when I first heard them. The voices inside their heads started then and my life was never the same. They weren't just thinking about school or they girls or guys they were into, no they were thinking about doing things, doing horrible things to each other and I was the only one that knew how messed up they really were.