If you were with me at Starlight Stage, then you witnessed something I had been holding in my heart for a very long time: the very first performance of my own song, "それでも輝けるの? (I Still Shine)."
I spent months preparing for that single day — practicing this one song again and again, for the moment I could finally sing it in front of you. Of everything I write, this is the song that holds the most of me.
"I Still Shine" lives where two questions meet, two I can never quite stop asking myself. The first: what remains when I can no longer sing? And the second: what does it even mean, for me, to sing at all?
This song is my honest answer. It's about a light that has been wounded and still burns in the dark — 「傷ついた光でも、闇の中 燃えてる」. It's about being told "you'll never reach them," and reaching out anyway. The chorus itself is just a question, asked out loud: 「それでも輝けるの？」— "Can I still shine?" I don't sing it as if I already know the answer. I sing it the way I truly feel it — unsure, but refusing to stop.
And then comes the part that means the most to me: 「脆さが力に変わって、私はきっと光になる」— fragility turning into strength, until I become light itself. That's the whole heart of it. Not being strong from the start, but becoming light precisely because I once felt so breakable.
There's one more line I hold very close: 「叫ぶように歌うよ、永遠じゃなくても」— "I'll sing as if crying out, even if it isn't forever." Maybe I won't sing forever. Maybe none of us shine forever. But if even a shattered fragment of my dream can light your night — 「砕けた夢のかけらでも、君の夜を照らせるなら」— then that, to me, is what remains. That is what it means to sing.
Below is the live premiere of "I Still Shine" from Starlight Stage. Please know it's a live version, sung straight from the stage — I haven't recorded it in the studio yet, but with my producer now by my side, I believe that day isn't far away. When it comes, you'll be the first to know.
Thank you for listening to the most honest song in my heart. However long I get to shine — I want to shine for you.