English
Mika
Reflecting naught save a pale moon and azure night 1 2
My blackened glass eyes lied dormant in a case of frozen time 3 4 5
’Till touched by fingers tender winding me ‘round and ‘round 6
Casting the magic of clockwork upon my broken soul
Dreariness... this once-dulled world
Was painted in color—aah, this melody
May offer salvation to even my decaying self 7
I merely dance as conducted, as a doll that needs not its own will
This fairy tale woven with golden thread is my one and only reality
All things not within it shall be forsaken
Both the amber stained with admiration and the lapis lazuli stained with despair
The sliver of shadow fell from the waning crescent moon 8
Was sewn back up, thus granting me the veil of a human
The gears of the clock are set into motion, turning ‘round and ‘round
It is the swinging of the tuner's baton that sets the rhythm of my life
Even if... this world were to fall into ruin
I would perish alongside it—aah, but pay that no mind
For it is a painless salvation 9
I merely sing, in desire of this rondo forming a perfect loop
This melody-turned-brilliance played on golden strings is my solitary star 10 11
This soul of mine... even if it were to burn away
The melting glass would still reflect my everlasting love, forevermore
[ 1 ] The lyrics use many antiquated/obscure kanji and kanji for meaning rather than reading, so I tried to convey that by making it feel poetic.
[ 2 ] If you look up the kanji for blue/green (碧い), it represents a hue very close to Mika’s character color.
[ 3 ] It says glass spheres, but I believe they refer to the narrator’s glass doll eyes.
[ 4 ] The box/case it refers to is a type of case for storing letters, which are often decorative, so I think the narrator was kept in something like that.
[ 5 ] 時の函 can also mean time capsule, so a possible interpretation is that the narrator was “frozen in time” before the case was opened up.
[ 6 ] The winding motion can mean both the key of a wind-up doll being turned and the narrator being “wound” around the other’s finger.
[ 7 ] This is explicitly a religious salvation.
[ 8 ] This line is a pun on Mika’s name—kagen no mikadzuki no kaketa kage no hitohira wo. The first kage uses a different kanji, but the second kage and the hira use the same kanji as his name. And the final three are in order, spelling “mika kage hira”.
[ 9 ] The same religious salvation as before.
[ 10 ] 琴糸 are specifically koto strings.
[ 11 ] 絢 (brilliance) is used to describe gorgeous and stunning fabrics, and because of the なる, I translated it as “melody-turned-brilliance” instead of simply “brilliant melody”. The melody is turned into something brilliant because it’s played on golden strings—it’s not brilliant on its own.