Welcome to the newest Your Lie in April fanfiction!

My name is MeridianPine, and myself, along with my beta, Kenz, are about to start spinning a tale of what might have happened if Kaori survived her surgery and recovered!

Romance, travel, and performance await! An epic of grand proportions!

No copyright infringement meant! We don't own these characters!

Get ready for the first chapter of Scars in the Mirror!

Chapter One: Prologue

She opened her door, padding in softly. She still didn't have this whole "walking thing" down yet. Kaori Miyazono had thought her days were numbered after the pacemaker was put in. What on earth could be further from the truth? As she stood in front of her mirror, on some day two months after her surgery, she only had one thing on her mind.

She was naked. Steam filled her room from the adjacent shower, billowing in and almost clouding her vision. Her shower had almost calmed her down. Unfortunately for her, as she stood there, transfixed in the worst way on that mirror, the ugly reminder of her surgery stared back at her.

They were three gnarled lines down between and across her breasts. The stitches were still in. Red, angry tissue surrounding the cross-hatching across the lines made them hard to look at. But of course, they were hard to look at. She hated them.

Even though her body was perfect otherwise, and she was a greatly beautiful girl, she had nothing positive to say about her looks anymore.

Because as she traced the lines in the mirror, she was screaming on the inside.

"How can he even look at me anymore?" she said, wringing her hair, still wet to the touch.

He was Arima Kousei, the boy she was in love with. Totally head-over-heels in love with. The boy with the handsome face covered by dorky glasses. Arima Kousei, the best junior pianist in all of Japan. Arima Kousei, the boy who gave her a reason to get up every morning for physical rehab. Arima Kousei, the boy that her parents loved to have over for dinner. And Arima Kousei, her boyfriend, the one that she was about to try and talk to for the first time in a week.

"Let's see," she whispered, picking up her phone, which had been laying on her nightstand, and going through her contacts.

*Buzz*

"Ah!" she cried out, almost dropping her phone onto the grey shag carpet. It was a text from Kousei. "What a coincidence," she thought. She rocked back and forth, toes sinking into her carpet, not knowing what to say to his text.

She didn't know how to tell him she hadn't practiced violin for months.

"He'll be so disappointed," she whimpered, starting to cry. She didn't have the heart to tell him she couldn't hold her arms up to her chest, much less hold her violin, yet. Her tears poured out, the drops falling on the phone's screen.

She had told a second lie, in their second April of knowing each other.

"Yes, I'm ready to play again."

His text? "Come over and practice with me instead of being all by yourself! Stop being so selfish! I want to see you!"

Pov change: Kousei's POV

"I haven't seen her in a week. The least she could do is come over and play with me. She said that she was ready to start playing two weeks ago…" Kousei said to no one in particular, annoyed, to say the least.

He was in his piano room. He was sitting with his back to one of the old music shelves, his phone plugged into the outlet next to the shelf. He had been sitting there for an hour, carefully writing out a text to Kao-chan. But she hadn't even read it yet, and he didn't know what else to expect.

She'd been mostly ignoring him for the two weeks prior, when they had a short conversation on the phone. It had been April 2nd. She had told him that she was so excited because she had finally been able to pick up her violin. She had said that her other arm wasn't steady enough to play anything yet, but was getting there. But ever since then, she'd only text him to say good morning and then chicken out of saying anything for the rest of the day.

If she thought that ignoring him after putting him through all that pain and fear was okay, he'd show her exactly what she meant to him. "She wouldn't ignore me if she was okay," he thought out loud, knowing exactly what to do.

It was thundering outside. He was in deep thought, even as she opened his message on the other side of town. He saw that she'd opened his text. She didn't even start to type. She wasn't answering again.

If she wouldn't come to him, he would go to her! Even though it was raining, he looked at his shoes, and made a decision. A decision that would set the course for the greatest adventure of his life.

He decided to give her what she deserved, and nothing less. "And Kaori," he thought, "Don't you dare think that you're somehow going to get me to leave you alone."

He got on his shoes, walked downstairs, out the door, into the stormy weather, and started running. "I'd better get there quick," he thought to himself, "her parents might think I'm a weirdo if I show up too late."

His foot splashed into a puddle in the road outside her house. The run had taken him thirty minutes, and he stopped in front of the bakery, under the awning, trying to catch his breath. He wondered if she would even let him in. He was bent over in front of the door, about to look up, when it opened.

She was there. Kaori Miyazono, the most beautiful girl in the world he knew. Her hair was damp and straight, a reminder of her illness, since passed. She was simply radiant, her frame backlit by the counter's lights. And even though he couldn't see her face stretched into a smile, he knew that it was.

"Hello, Kousei. Come in." Her voice sounded strained. Moving into the light, he could see that she was smiling. But something far more troubling caught his eye. She had been crying, evident by her puffy eyes.

He was frozen, for a moment. But then, if you'd asked Kaori later, she'd have told you that something in his eyes changed. He didn't know what else to do. He crossed the threshold, and wrapped his arms around her.

Her surprise was palpable in the air, a balm that covered the both of them for an instant, and then disappeared as she hugged him back. Her eyes softened in expression. And at the same time, entirely on accident, they said three words almost entirely in unison.

"I love you," He whispered into her ear, determination in his voice

"I love-" Kaori cut herself off, the words getting caught in her throat as she was buried under the weight of her own emotion.

They said nothing else. There was silence, broken only by the soft words spoken by the rain and the fierce shouts of thunder.

They didn't have even the slightest inkling of what the following years would bring them. They were 15 and 14. Neither had a clue of what love was, aside from what they felt for each other. And neither of them knew the extent of the love story the future was spread out into in front of them, waiting patiently for them to find it.

All they could do was stand in the doorway of the bakery, looking into each other's eyes, afraid and excited for the words that would come next.

Kaori's mouth moved, the scars in the mirror forgotten. For now, at least. Kaori's mouth started to form a word. And that's where the first scene of a grand epic ends.

Author's notes:

Please review if you liked it! This is my first fanfiction that I've actually decided to publish, so please bear with me if it's a little rough or not fully fleshed out…