Chapter Text
Was it me?
Or was it you?
Cause and effect.
By nature, these things must take place. Should an action happen, an equal and opposite reaction was absolutely necessary, so should the chain of causality be maintained. Though entropy and chaos perpetually distort the results, there will always be something; as everything has its reason to be.
And yet, if such a thing was true… then why did each day feel disconnected from the rest?
She woke with bleary eyes and checked the date.
August 26th. Thursday.
25 Days Before the Festival
And Hitori’s missing.
Kita supposed that she was missing, too. It wasn’t like she’d given Sasaki a good explanation for where she was going, nor did her own mother know why she’d up and run away – then again, she was an adult, wasn’t she? What did it matter if she was going off on her own? It was hard, perhaps, for Kita to imagine that she was grown. Odd thoughts to be having at first awakening, but as she rubbed her eyes and set her phone aside, Kita’s mind traveled away from herself and towards something else. The daylight burned as she stretched and raised from where she slept – a recliner. Home hadn’t been her calling for days on end. Instead, she’d taken up residence elsewhere, in a building that’d only been unlocked the night before; she’d convinced the owners to let her crash with a hasty lie.
Lying. She felt her lower back crackle and pop as she fully stood up; the sensation pulsing through her and matching the sourness in her mouth with glee. What had she even told them? An argument with her parents? That seemed like it was believable. A pit formed in her stomach, or perhaps it had already been there, when she failed to remember what she’d even said.
So easy. When it came to self-serving behavior, Kita seemed to have no trouble figuring it out. Yet, when it came to other people…
She’d just woken up. She shook her head and tried to put on a smile. Her lips were dry and her throat drier, but she ignored the strain she felt and pushed on. Quickly folding up the small blanket she’d slept under, Kita reoriented herself in the space. Thankfully cleaner than it used to be, the Stray Beat office had proven to be an adequate place to sleep when bereft of any other options to be. The crick in her neck may have disagreed, but she ignored it – ignored it like she ignored the missing calls that popped up on her lock screen.
It was time to face the day. Kita didn’t stop to look herself in the eye in the reflection of the windows she walked by, nor did she pay any attention to how she might’ve smelled, or even if her hoodie was bunched up. That light green hoodie was somewhat of a lifeline. She wasn’t quite sure if she’d’ve felt right in whatever trendy fashion lined her wardrobe back home. That was someone else’s skin; the pop culture vulture that she was had no room in the here and now, for she would’ve torn up that fast fashion in the vice grip of her hands and nails. Ribbons of cheap fabric made for a poor wrapping for the gift that was ‘a girl in panic’. She opened the door to the main space of the label’s office and was surprised to see the lights were already on. None of the label’s usual employees were milling about. She supposed that the doors had just reopened after the lovey-dovey voyage the manager had gone on as a newlywed, but she half-expected Miyako to whip her small but dedicated staff back into shape within seconds of stepping off of that plane.
That woefully populated scene was gladly missing from this Thursday morning. Instead of an assembly of buzzing bees, the only presence Kita had to bear was Miyako Shiba herself, wearing a half-buttoned blazer that did nothing to hide her tan lines. She was fiddling with the coffee machine, her wedding band clinking against the handle of a tan coffee mug that read out ‘#2 Manager’. A gift from Ryo, who stated that ‘Seika makes a mean number one’ when prodded as for why she’d given such a gift.
Miyako strode over to the table and set one of the mugs down. It was probably a sign for Kita to sit down. These nonchalant, stoic types had always been somewhat hard for Kita to read; as much as Ryo was a dumbass, she was a mysterious dumbass, and only Nijika seemed to be able to augur what strange portents that blue-headed fool had to offer. Kita loved how stupid her senpai was. It was her charm point, and at least she owned it. For Kita’s own sake, she’d only been able to recently accept her own idiocy, and it was taking time for her to truly adjust to it. This social butterfly felt her wings beginning to crumble.
She folded her hands atop the table after she took her seat, rubbing her knuckles as she waited in a contemplative silence. Miyako came over after a while.
“So.” A powerful opening line. Kita braced herself for the follow up. Shiba’s eyes remained flatly fixed on her, though Kita couldn’t find herself to match her manager’s gaze. “You girls have been busy.”
A loaded statement. It’s as though Shiba’d planted a pistol between them, fully willing to deal with the consequences of what happened if Kita moved first. What could she even say? ‘Yeah, I lied’? ‘Our band exploded’? ‘Hitori might be dea – she cast her eyes down to her reflection in the black surface of her drink.
It’s not accusatory, the way that Shiba eyed Kita and sighed. There’s no malice in her next statement, what it was was just business. Just standard. “I like your band, always have. Helping you navigate the industry has been my life’s work. But. Is it over? Have you split?”
Kita rubbed the back of her neck and lowered her head. Her voice was quiet and meek as she regarded her downturned expression against the reflection in her coffee, “I don’t know. I-I wasn’t expecting to be the one spoken to about all this, honestly. I’m just the social media manager. I sing, I strum a few chords, and c’est la vie. Ijichi-senpai’s the leader – she’s supposed to have it all figured out.”
“Supposed to.” Shiba split open a package full of green powder and sprinkled it over her mug. “It was your guitarist who told me everything.”
Maybe it wasn’t a gun, but a bomb. Kita frowned and clenched her fists.
“She didn’t say much. Mentioned a fight. Apologized about her behavior. Wished me well on my honeymoon. She’s surprisingly nice when she doesn’t text like an old man.” Shiba clinked a spoon against the rim of her mug, soon dipping it into her drink to stir up the powder. There’s a brief pause where it seemed as if Miyako was contemplating whether or not to say something, but the pause was ultimately only as long as she needed to stir, as after she took a drink, she continued, “It’s unfortunately my place to pry. My entire livelihood lives and dies on the labels I manage. So, Kita? Don’t make me do this.”
It’s a threat. Kita felt her throat close up at that moment. It’s easy to forget that Miyako Shiba was the thin line that Kessoku Band lived and died on. She was their path into record deals. She was their middle man who got them into music festivals and big concerts. Without her there’d be no album sales, no tours, no nothing. Just the same old garage band playing out of Nijika’s sister’s live house as pity. Maybe a few people’d burn their CDs as some pittance paid up to the underground scene. Kita’s not dumb. It took a rare kind of luck to make it big independent of outside help. Even Yoyoko’s indie darling, SIDEROS, had a fair amount of backing from established bands like SICK HACK. Independent, sure, but it wasn’t like they’d come up from nothing. Yoyoko was the type of personality to draw eyes, anyways. As much as Kita was a pretty face, Ryo was a mysterious figure, Nijika was bright and poppy, and Hitori was… Hitori, they were average. They weren’t groundbreaking. Nobody’d give them a second look, not without a good reason. If Hitori only opened up…
But that wasn’t fair, was it? Kita sucked in a trembling breath. She almost couldn’t recognize the person in her reflection, with how her brow had scrunched up, how her eyes almost seemed an unearthly color in the liquid’s surface. “... I’m sorry I lied, hahah… I just didn’t want a fight. Maybe that’s part of my problem.”
Shiba steepled her fingers and watched carefully from across the table. Kita almost wanted to start shouting – it was so unfair how little this seemed to faze her. Just once, Kita wanted to see Shiba taken aback. Just a little bit of surprise, shock, or SOMETHING! That frown just deepened. “We’ve fallen apart. I don’t know what either of my senpais are doing, and…” She sucked in a breath. “I’m the mood maker, aren’t I? Isn’t it my job to keep everyone smiling and happy, so we can put our best foot forward? Here I am. The only person in your office.”
“What do you want from me? Do you want me to grovel? I don’t have it in me, manager. I just want them all to be happy. I’m not much on my own. I’m smiles, I’m good times, but I’m hollow. I pass between fads like a derelict satellite, caught in the orbit of the Earth and the Moon, incapable of finding my own trajectory; I’m doomed to crash at some point. They keep me upright because they give me a goal – a reason to be. I was content with it. Maybe too content, haha! Ahh…” Her body felt like it was charged with lightning. Any moment a thunder crash would boom and the energy’d be freed from her system. Every particle in her system lurched forward as that energy continued to bloom, the sparks cascading across her synapses like some kind of tesla coil. Kita’s voice was strained as it came out, “It’s nothing like I saw online. I guess you can’t value real life based off of sixty second videos, huh?”
Kita allowed a sad smile to creep across her lips. “I was selfish. I think that’s what went wrong.”
“Don’t.” Kita startled and saw Miyako’s penetrating glare. Her manager reached a hand out, and for whatever reason, Kita reflexively took it. Shiba’s hand engulfed Kita’s in a comforting heat. “Don’t even try. I won’t tolerate it.”
“Tell me what happened.” There’s still no accusation in her words. All that there was, and ever would be, was the search for meaning. For truth. Miyako was not Kita’s enemy, and that revelation on its own calmed the riding thunder.
Kita just needed a moment. She took in a long, uneven breath, and finally mustered the courage to look her manager in the eye.
“Okay.”
{ ~ }
Transient.
Humans had a tendency to exist in flux. Their presence was a guarantee, no matter where one went, but it was often a presence felt purely in shadow. We cover our tracks, bury our scars, but we are still known. To remove the stain of humanity was impossible, as humanity imposed itself upon the world in its entirety.
Man was dark matter. A substance known only hypothetically, but so certain in its existence that none could contend it fairly. Could we imagine the form it would take? The matter in which it would act? Certainly. Chaos, as ever, reigned. You could calculate it, estimate it, and it still would exist beyond the confines of expectation. As, expectation was arbitrary. It was a rule constructed by humanity to make sense of something that never desired to be made sense of.
To view Hitori now would be to try and observe an invisible particle. She interacted with the world around her, but she, herself, went unseen. A ghost rule.
She’d left her home without a word, and she’d left the apartment without a word. She’d come to that clinic and exited it in equal measure: silent. Had her voice come again? Perhaps, but it was not her voice. She may have shed words upon the barren, desolate landscape, but they were not life-giving, they were simply wind in the desert. The soul was trapped within; her only endeavor in passage having been functional and pragmatic. No errant stream of spirit could cause the desolation to bloom.
Pragmatic to which end? Her own, perhaps. Hitori escorted herself down the banks of the River Styx and found herself at a crossing, as she navigated without the ferryman’s aid. Without her guiding stars, her trek through Tokyo was aimless.
She must’ve appeared like a vagrant. Then again, wasn’t she one?
Her mind fizzed to the surface through a seam in the black stone walls that smothered that conscious fire. Hitori didn’t know where she was or even how long she’d been walking. What day was it? When had she stirred? Had she slept in a bed, or was this another transient outing? Her fingers flexed against the hot summer air, as she felt a burning beneath her flesh. It seemed only right.
As to why she’d settled into comprehension, free of the trappings of the hypothetical things only measured because of their interactions with the visible; her head slowly followed the motion of a woman in a white hoodie not so far ahead. For what purpose had she come here? Perhaps it was purely happenstance, and yet Hitori doubted that her mind was exactly pure at that moment.
Purity had never been her strong suit. Her daydreams were filled with aggrandizing dreams of lovers and conquest, of a hero who rose up upon a rising star, which gathered the swoons and adoration of beautiful women. Was it so wrong of her to desire to fill whatever hole in her heart existed with the attention of a woman? And yet, standing where she was, she felt nothing from the throngs of women that passed around her. Her eyes settled just on the one, which likely had an inkling that she, too, was being watched. To be drawn from the transient form into something more solid, it was not a particularly ideal experience. People didn’t quite appreciate being pulled away from their own stories.
But Hitori couldn’t help it. Maybe it was her last thrashes and kicks as she tumbled down into a place nobody could save her from, as she made one last fitful effort to be alive in this mortal world. So, she followed gravity, and returned to the orbit of one just like herself.
Teru flinched under the sweltering weight of Hitori’s gaze and soon pivoted on her heel, her bright blue eyes barely visible under the fringe of her white hair. She caught Hitori’s eye and gasped. Her head drawn low, she soon made a small gesture with her eyes; they pointed towards a music store not so far away. ‘Follow me?’ It wasn’t a command, it was more… hopeful.
There’d been a time that Teru Horie, best known as ‘Ame’, would’ve never been caught dead in public at all. And even more recently, a time when she’d’ve passed away knowing that someone was watching her.
The world had moved on.
Hitori had not followed it.
She did, however, follow Ame into the store. There was a whistle as she stepped through the door, as the clerk behind the register called out, “Oi! Go sleep outside! This isn’t a shelter!”
But the clerk’s eyes then refocused as the sliding door closed behind her. The clerk’s jaw dropped upon spotting Ame, and it widened further as he realized just who he was trying to bat out of his door. “Aa-ahh… oh. Uh… I hope we carry what you need, uhhh… Gotoh-san.”
She didn’t look at him. Hitori shuffled over to Ame, who’d already begun to sift through the store’s merchandise. It was largely second hand, by the looks of it, but some things definitely stood out as being new. An odd blend.
Hitori stood there, hands in her pockets, completely silent. She stared at her wobbly reflection in the plastic material of one of the guitars hanging from the wall. That image was more recognizable than what she saw in the reflection of a glass case, which housed a guitar that looked exactly like her own. Right, right. Kessoku Band was famous, wasn’t it? Not a house name, by any means, but it could sell out a venue. There was a version of her that existed beyond herself. It was glamorous, sanded down at the edges – the famed guitarist who marched to an odd rhythm.
And now, as she rounded the side of the glass case, she eyed the blurb they listed next to the replica of her guitar. Her original guitar, or rather: her father’s guitar.
‘Unleash your potential and embrace the heart of rock, like Kessoku Band’s own genius, Bocchi.’
She stared at the card for a long while. A flicker of white hit the corner of her vision, as a familiar presence settled in by her side. The quiet was… peaceful.
For some time, Hitori imagined that the silence was preferable. Ame had been a comfort to her. A person like her, who understood what it was like to feel this way. Kindred souls, a binary system that came to orbit one another for a time. Hitori felt the ghost of the imprint of fingers around her own. With a sigh, she turned her head just enough to face Ame’s reflection in the glass. “...I-it’s…” She struggled to find her words, as each one of them writhed in her shattered mind.
Hitori breathed in, and then she breathed out. Slow does it. She leaned against her cane as the weight of her mind tugged upon her shoulders. “Weird. I-it’s weird. I used to think a lot about our reunion. P-party streamers, banners, lights – It’d be memorable, at least. Everyone would be there. Even your ex-bandmates. They’d be happy to see you again, even after…”
“It’s just nice,” Hitori rubbed at the sleeve of a sweatshirt that she probably borrowed from Sasaki, “To imagine it. People being…” Her words died as something clenched in her head.
Ame tugged at one of the drawstrings in her hoodie. It didn’t lead her to going invisible behind her hood, at least, though the nervous tic was undeniable. Fair is fair. Hitori let her hands fall down to her sides and turned her head to the side, eyes now falling to the ground. Her face felt hot.
Shame blossomed in her chest like a desert rose. The heat could not kill the vine as it wrapped around her neck and bowed her head, awareness spreading through her upon the green sin. She’d dumped this emotion on Teru’s lap like it was a normal thing to do, as though this wasn’t their first meeting in a long, long time. Had their lives not diverged, perhaps this would have been fine; their lives had, however, diverged. The river flowed ever downstream, and Hitori was a stone. The water rushed by her. Wearing her down, it forced her to watch all those adrift pass her by.
Expecting another to be like her was a delusional dream. Hitori’s shoulders grew tense as she tried to stifle this feeling; she felt the sting of the desert rose burn in her veins, gradually turning her numb, so numb.
Then there was warmth. The ghost of an imprint came to life, as two slender fingers coiled around her own. A small voice urged itself to the forefront, as gentle as chamomile, “I used to look up to you.”
A thorn from the rose wedged itself into her bloodstream. She stilled as she listened, clutching onto the kindness that warmed otherwise acute words. “It’s still somewhat true, even now. My therapist told me that it was good to have someone to admire. But admiration, I think, wasn’t the whole truth; you probably already know that, though… Sorry to dredge up those memories.”
“But…” Teru’s blue eyed gaze was still full of light when it met Hitori’s deadened stare. “I think we spent a lot of time running away from our problems instead of facing them head on.”
Hitori frowned. The river diverted its course at her suggestion. “How did you think we’d meet back up? A bath tub, a love hotel…?”
“...Eh? Huh?” Ame blinked.
Something oozed out from the wound. It was black as it ebbed from Hitori’s mouth. “Maybe it’d be at a show. We’d go back stage, when the lights came off… and then I’d grab your hands and –”
“Hitori?” Her voice cracked. The river’s stream grew thin for a moment as a stone fell into its flow.
The heat now cascaded like a waterfall across the wasteland of her inner world. It rushed to every corner of her being, and Hitori fought against her instinct to white knuckle her grip – she didn’t want to crush Ame’s fingers. She didn’t wish to crush Ame, not like she’d been crushed herself. Hitori spluttered out noises in the place of words. It was hard to hold tight to things with the way she was. But she tried…
Only to fail.
Ame let go of Hitori’s hand, but Hitori felt the tremor in her body before she let go. “...I thought you were strong. The way you’d jump onto stage despite it all; it was empowering – that made me feel like I could do it, too. I-I… was wrong. But… There’s power in fighting for your dreams. Maybe some honor in it, too. I think the lesson I learned from you was that it was fine to fight for your own honor. That’s what served to prove the haters wrong.”
“Though, really, it’s not about them.” Ame had turned away at this point; her hands had folded in front of her legs, and her body now pointed a different direction away from Hitori. Hitori did not dare reach for her hand again. “I appreciate you, you know? Everything you did for me… you’re a wonderful person, and I hope you know that. Whenever I feel lost, even today, I think about those days when you got your band to play Chameleon on stage – that was the same day that I joined that silly little band with your juniors – and how you reached out to me. Through music. But…”
“You changed.” Ame left it in the air, this radiating, buzzing thing. It drew Hitori’s attention – not her eyes.
She shifted her weight and sucked in a breath. “I can’t change.”
“I’ve never changed.”
{ ~ }
Transgress.
“...He-llo? Hey, are you listening?”
Blink. She shook her head free of the noise and found herself looking Yoyoko Ohtsuki dead in the eyes. And yet, she remained almost statuesque , feeling no urge to avert her eyes. To stare down the bull and its horns took either incredible bravery, or a lack thereof. In the void of courage was fear not found, for facing one’s fears took courage: it was death that lie in that infernal abyss, for to lay down and die was to deny the driving motivation for all living beings. It was only great bravery that drove mankind to change and to seek change. It had been her bravery that had once drawn her to Yoyoko, to learn from the tempestuous star of SIDEROS. And now…? Hitori realized she wasn’t in that sweater anymore. The long-sleeved shirt fit her poorly, as it was tight around the chest, but she was in no state to complain; it wasn’t hers, and it wouldn’t be hers for much longer.
The Sun didn’t beat down on her. She glanced around in a mire of confusion, and so she found her gaze greeted by walls and the ceiling implied. A room. Whose room? It did not matter, as for now, she was in air conditioning – a slight comfort.
Yoyoko toyed with one of her twintails, her cherry-cola colored hair practically iridescent in the lights of the fluorescent bulbs above. Her energy was somewhat low, given the cadence of her voice, as the tempered growl she usually bore now came off somewhat rounded, as though the edges had been shaved down. She said, “Whatever. It’s not like either of us have anything better to do.”
“Yoyoko…” There was a semblance of recognition in Hitori’s eyes as she rearranged her memories, as fleeting as they were. “I…”
“I know. What am I thinking, thinking about Ijichi this way? It’s just…” She started to shift uncomfortably where she was seated. Hitori noticed that it was a bed, and they were both sitting on it. Well, she was more draped across it like she was a blanket, whilst Yoyoko lounged in a pile of mean looking plushies. Even the Hi Hi Kitty looked spiky. “I feel like she gets me.”
When did they develop this kind of rapport? Hitori sighed and propped herself up a little bit, trying to better listen to what Yoyoko had to say. The topic wasn’t her favorite, given the circumstances, but at the same time: it was a rueful subject, indeed.
“I’m not a…” Yoyoko’s body tightened up as her brow scrunched. She sighed into her palm as she rubbed her face, nervously taking a look towards the open door. Then crossing her arms, she tried to speak again. “I’m not an easy person to get along with. When I think about the past, there’s a lot of conflict in it – that’s all my fault, too. SIDEROS is only stable now because the current roster’s filled with people crazy enough to tolerate me, and some days, that tolerance is pretty low. I can sense it. I’m not stupid. I’m a lot of things, Gotoh, but stupid isn’t one of them.”
“It’s not that I hate people. It’s not even that I’m not trying to get along with them. There’s something in me that doesn’t understand why people are so hard to get along with. I guess it’s why I’ve always been a leader. You need someone as impossible as me to whip people into shape. No SIDEROS without their trusty Ohtsukin at the head, blustering her way through the world until people give up and let them have their way.” Yoyoko took her beret off and set it aside. She let her head settle against the wall as she then looked up to the ceiling – she’d be stargazing if she could.
A faint memory trickled in through the diseased corners of Hitori’s mind. It came like aloe and soothed some of the open wound that rotted in the daylight, the very same rot that had delivered her to the grave before. Anyone might think to remember the days they’d battled as bands, or the parties and celebrations of their milestones – yet Hitori could only twist and squeeze out a short band of remembrance. It oozed and settled into the grooves left in her flesh by her failed attempt at escape. A rope, perhaps, now tightened around her hands, urging her to face the ground. Who was Yoyoko to her? Yoyoko was… Yoyoko. A hard to describe person, with an even harder to understand method of expressing herself. It never had hit Hitori back then that Yoyoko wasn’t earnestly trying to ‘win’, but trying to win her affections. That hard to get kind of thing tended to develop from an ill formed inner world, but who was Hitori to judge – especially given recent events? Her memory was still scattered, but she saw some of the images clearly. A camera. Wearing the same jacket at the same time. A bottle of cola, and a tube of mentos. Yoyoko wanted to be popular, sure, but she was already popular by the time she’d met Hitori; she wanted something far more in their interactions than clout.
Hitori’s hands ceased gripping the edge of Yoyoko’s bed and let out a long, deflating sigh. “Why do you even try? I’ve been… I’ve been asking myself this a lot. Lately, it just f-feels like everything is hard. Even s-spea… speaking.” She so desperately had grown to hate the return of her stutter. She’d tried so hard to be rid of it, but what happened to her brain was likely not something she could undo.
“I don’t want to just be a memory.” Her hands went flat atop the bedsheets, merely pale wraiths against the monochromatic design. “...I guess I’ve given up on that. It’s crazy to me that I ever really put in the effort. Authenticity, I think, was something I really worried about for a long time. Funny, because I was as fake as fake could be. I-I…”
“I don’t think I know who I am.” She finally managed to say it. That truth that’s been weighing against her ever since she tried to plummet into the abyss. Oblivion had felt like a comfort, and the truth behind that was perhaps something she’d always known; she had just been afraid to face it.
Suicide was all about narrative. Death itself was a wordless thing, that came and reaped and left behind its echo, but suicide? It told a story. A story that few would ever inspect, in truth, as they narrativized the details and hid its true nature. They wanted to make meaning from it. Romanticize it. Indeed, they wanted to do everything but confront it. Confrontation with self-murder did not carry any honor and only bled the ego of those who reached out to the truth.
Her star swirled ‘round and ‘round, its ecliptic forming a streak upon the black mass that swallowed light – that narrow line forming the last shape of the star before it was subsumed by the black hole at the core of space. Hitori didn’t have the energy to raise her head, so low had she been brought by the weight of mass shadow. So she spoke to the earth, her eyes leveled to a skull shaped floor mat, her voice tinged hoarse and husky by the ages, “New experiences used to make me feel so nervous. That never really went away, at least, it didn’t leave me for any good reason. My body just… adapted to feel numb, eventually. I think I k-know… I know why. I know.”
“That nervousness happened because I’m nobody. I’m nothing. There’s no me. ‘Bocchi’ is just whatever ‘Bocchi’ was told that she was.” Hitori then laughed at the mere thought of it. Had she latched onto that demeaning name because it made her feel like she was a real person? A farce, by any means. Lacking a true soul so greatly that an insult itself was more than enough to replace a maskless face. “I shook and shivered and fell to pieces, I tried to change my shape and hide my scattered mind: for what? For nothing. I wanted to be free of this emptiness. Every year of my life, I toiled and I toiled – I wanted to be something! I wanted people to look my way. They never did. It’s because they can’t look at what they can’t see. Even in the vast expanse of space, there’s no true concept of ‘nothingness’. The stellar void is filled with innumerable, beautiful, unfathomable things. The idea of me in Kessoku Band… is it me? The Genius guitarist of Kessoku Band, the one who ‘unlocked her potential’, and knew the ‘heart of rock’. That’s not me. I’m subhuman. I’m lesser than the stuff that you find washed up in the tide in Tokyo bay.”
“I can take on the world.” She said without a hint of irony, as her head still dangled over the edge of the bed. “I can do anything. I can’t be nervous anymore – how could I? I know where I stand. I’m not pretending anymore.”
Whatever fell into the silence did not settle. It was a difficult, jagged shape that easily cut the flesh when touched. Anyone less brave wouldn’t’ve even tried. But Hitori did not even possess the instinct for bravery anymore. The absence of fear was not where bravery was found. The absence of fear, itself, was another spiritual death. Fear motivated. It stoked the fires that gave rise to courage. To not know mortal peril, to not witness one’s own bleeding heart: it was not a path that gave rise to life. Such a thing was what drove fools to do fool things, to leap into places that they had no right being, and it delivered them unto the Reaper’s cart, as he bore them towards their final rest. And so, with eager hands, Hitori grasped at that jagged thing and reignited the funerary dirge. Her voice, shadowed by melancholy, eased into a room otherwise devoid of sound, “You say you’re a difficult person. I agree! I’ve never known what to say or do around you. That rivalry you forced on us… who do you think you are? Do you want to know what I think about you, Yoyoko?”
Yoyoko did not move, but the light in her eyes changed. Hitori was now watching her with a hawkish look, her intentions unclear, as she waited for the so-called ‘Shinjuku Devil’ to give her anything. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead. She opened her mouth and promptly closed it. What could she say that’d make this any different?
Hitori knew what Yoyoko wanted. She wanted this to be over, for their friendship to be affirmed. It’d be easier that way, no? They could both get what they wanted. Hitori gets to be accepted by a superior artist, and Yoyoko gets to know that she’s not awful – she’s likable, right? Right?
When Yoyoko nodded, Hitori felt something violent spasm inside of her. It wasn’t an urge to leap on the girl, nor was it even anything physical at all, but… it was ugly. It was cruel. Absent of courage or fear, other emotions could easily squirm through the rotten mass in her skull and force themselves to the surface. Freed from decorum or pretense, Hitori said, “... I don’t know what you expect to get out of Nijika. She’ll use you up, too.”
Yoyoko bristled, instantly. “Are you done?”
Hitori gave her a hazy look. The hair trigger had already been tested, but it was easily set off with that small motion.
“What crawled into you and died, huh? I liked you a lot more when you were soft, Gotoh. This hard edge you’re trying to wear isn’t you, either. I forced a lot on you, it’s true! But damnit, I wanted to know you. I wanted to see what she saw in you, too! But fuck it, right? Right?! You’re goddamn right!” Yoyoko threw a pillow at Hitori to see if she’d move. The girl just remained motionless. Still, Ohtsuki wasn’t about to be deterred by apathy of all things. “It pisses me off, honestly. You sitting there like none of this matters to you. I know it does. You want to know how I know, huh? It’s because we’re the same, Hitori. The twin oni are sitting on the same couch, right now. Sure, we differ in color and presentation, but deep down: we’re one.”
Hitori almost laughed, but she did get up. She started to walk towards the door, her cane forgotten in the wake of her, as a black cloud began to spread o’er the stardust skies. Each shambling step was a knock at the Reaper’s door. Why now? Why had she even bothered to leave?
She still cared, it seemed. Yoyoko didn’t need to see a reflection in her. There was nothing to be seen, after all.
Go unto shadow,
that which desires a lonesome death.
{ ~ }
“It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“To run away, I mean.”
“I’m thinking…”
25 Days Before the Festival
“Well, I guess I wasn’t thinking before.”
The clink of a mug was the only other sound within the office, as noon light now streamed in from blinds only marginally cracked open. It illuminated the deserted place in a strange soft glow, deepening the shadows, and painting the air with claws made of scattered motes of dust. Miyako’s eyes were even as she folded her hands together, still watching as Kita offered a recounting of the past 19 days.
Kita shook her head and shifted her shoulders, she held her hands tightly in the front pocket of the borrowed hoodie and said, “I guess I messed up on that one, too, huh? I’m not good at this. The complicated stuff gets all tangled in my head, and I can’t just ‘shine on’ through it all… it looks like there’s a limit to that optimism. What should I do? Is it… is it too late? I don’t know. I really don’t.”
As Kita talked, she felt this sense of isolation wash over her, as if she was being trapped in a cage to be watched by a doctor of some sort. The way Stray Beat was illuminated by the sun gave it a washed out look, like it was some kind of early 2000s military shooter. All grey and brown – no color aside from the main characters. And even that was sparse. Kita was all bright, but even she was desaturated by the sheer radiant glow of the Sun outside. Shiba was green, but she was otherwise just dressed in office clothes – no sports jacket, though. The way Miyako watched her just felt so clinical. Maybe this is why Nijika was the only person who ever bothered talking to their manager. It was that, or more than likely, Nijika was the only one of them who had any idea what she was doing.
Why’d she leave Nijika behind? Was it really just for Hitori’s sake? She looked away from Shiba, as her steely eyed expression felt far too heavy to bear.
There’s a sigh. A shuffle as feet scuff against the floor and a seat creaked from a weight relieved. A scrape against the hard wood and a light clink, again, as the mug is lifted and carried away. Kita looked down to see that her mug, too, had been taken. She looked over and saw that Shiba was by the coffee maker, her back turned.
Was this how she was to be treated? Just like some stranger being offered a cup of coffee because it was the polite thing to do?
Was that wrong? She may have belonged to the label, but it wasn’t like she’d ever tried to get to know her manager or her employees – they were, somewhat unfairly, listed as ‘nonessential’ in her head. Nijika’s job was to know them. Maybe Ryo’s, maybe even Hitori’s, since they both were the regular songwriters. Kita? Unless the PR team wanted to talk to her about her posting on social media, Kita was completely in her own dimension on these things. She’d even been surprised to hear that Shiba had gotten engaged. Shiba even went and got married and took a trip to Hokkaido with her wife.
She sent a gift. She didn’t remember what it was.
Kita was a stranger in this strange place. She sank somewhat into her seat. The great weight she was hoping to lift was only driving her further down. There was another sigh from across the room as Miyako waited on the water to boil anew. “This is a shitshow, you know?”
Miyako glanced over her shoulder, and Kita had to glumly nod along. There was no better way to put it, truthfully. The label manager rested her hands against the countertop and shook her head. “I won’t sugarcoat it. You’re pretty much done. You’re set to perform in less than a month on one of the biggest stages in Japan, and you’ve all gone and blown it. I’m not invested in the reasons why. I just care that it has happened, and that means that you’re a risk to this business. I’ve got more than me to take care of. There’s a lot riding on your success. I didn’t put everything into your band, but public relations are… basically ninety percent of business. It’s already out. Your guitarist tried to kill herself. Kessoku Band’s gone radio silent after a memorial livestream was interrupted by news that she was alive. So, people gossip.”
“They sure do…” Kita murmured into the front of her hoodie, her chin dipping below its collar.
“Overworked artists. Controversy like that can sink whole brands. We’re not really that big. A hit to our reputation could be the death of us,” The machine beeped, and so Shiba’s voice grew a bit more distant as she turned to tend to it, “If I sound callous, then I apologize. I just need you to understand where I’m coming from. It’s actually killing me to know that a sweetheart like Hitori’s suffering like that. It kills me to watch Kessoku Band’s potential dry up because of an incident out of their control. I don’t like seeing you in my office with tears running down your cheeks. Tears of joy, maybe, but this? None of this is good.”
Shiba’s head drooped and it seemed like she was rubbing her face with the backs of her hands. Maybe she wasn’t unflappable, after all. Her voice was a bit thicker this time. “I was having the best time of my life. I guess you were, too. This is all… hard. Too hard.”
Kita could smell the coffee grounds burning as the machine hummed to life. It wasn’t long until another cheap cup of black coffee cursed the table in front of her. This time, however, Shiba didn’t leave it there for long. The manager tugged it over to her side after a few moments.
Kita smiled at that, at least. Shiba looked no different coming back than as she’d left, aside from the red that now rimmed her eyes. Maybe she was just hearing things, but Kita swore she heard sorrow seep into the undertones of her manager’s tenorous voice as she said, “I want Kessoku Band to survive. I want you to play on that stage. I just can’t, in good faith, leave that spot open for you. I’m going to start looking for substitutes… and Kita? You have to fix this. If you don’t, and you don’t soon, then we’re going to have to talk about the future of your contract with us.”
“Me? Are you sure? I-I…” For the first time in her life, Kita felt speechless. The mood-maker. The one who was known for her high spirits. She was the one who was meant to never change, as if her beat went out of line, then so would the rest of the band’s. As much as her talent in the musical arts was somewhat limited (being a good learner didn’t make her a technical genius), she had discovered that she wasn’t as useless to Kessoku Band as she’d previously imagined herself to be; her capability to manage their social media accounts was clearly a sign of this. Nijika could talk to people, sure, and Ryo could talk about herself all day; only Kita could guide them, and only Kita knew how to get Hitori to get talking. As the pieces settled into Kita’s lap… she recognized that what Miyako was saying was true. Outwardly, Kita must’ve been the only person who could patch this together. Yet, inwardly?
Kita turned away and curled inwardly, her fingers wrapped around each other like snakes coiling in a ball of death. She tried to focus her eyes on anything in the room, but as she shook her head and blinked away the haze from her eyes, as she trailed her pupils across everything with form and function in the room – it all blurred. It all melted into colors, into noise.
How was it that she was the one chosen for this? In what plane of existence had she entered that she was deemed the responsible one, the one who could be leaned upon? She was still running from herself. When she went to Hitori – that offer to flee into the quiet night – she did not bring her anything but an escape plan from the strife that they faced, and so instead of facing that which could be solvable, Kita had chosen to run away and hide from the rising chorus. Yet the voices were piercing, as their sonorous cries stretched into the heavens; their abyssal knell soared easily through the quiet she sought to hide in. And so, Kita felt tears well up at the edge of her eyes. The blurred lines fully smudged as the rain had come.
She tried to wipe the tears away with the sleeves of Sasaki’s hoodie, but more and more fell as she made her futile last stand against her truth – that these emotions were what she needed to feel, but that they were also a sign that she was also broken. She didn’t know why she cried. She didn’t know why the water called to her that night, why she saw death and was pulled away by a stranger. One who could hardly be called an angel, to boot.
Shiba’s hand lingered midair as Kita one-sidedly wept, but she lowered it in time. The gap was not something she was going to close. She folded her hands as she brought that search for succor to its conclusion, instead waiting and watching to see just what Kita’s next move was going to be. Hers was not a comforting role.
“I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. They all made their choices.” She sniffled and dragged her sleeves across her eyes, failing yet still to dry them. All the while, she made her stand, and did what she could to illustrate to her manager that this was a mistake; she’d made the wrong choice in choosing Kita. “I’m just a yes man, heh… Nijika’s the boss. Anything we do is because she decided to do it, you know? Ryo and Hitori, they’re the ones who put anything together; we’ve got music because of them. I just say yes. I go along with it. Do you think I… do you think I…?”
“Manager. Please. Look at me and say to me, genuinely, that you think that I can salvage this. Seriously! I dragged her further into this mess – I’m responsible! I’m guilty! Put me away! I’m a criminal.” Kita held her head in her hands as she grew still. Her voice became quiet as it withdrew. The small, pitiful thing that Ikuyo Kita became uttered these final words, “It’s easier to hide. I’m afraid if I face her now, I’ll be facing her poor parents. I did this.”
Shiba pushed up from the table and walked around the side of it. She leaned over, the long strands of her green hair dangling into Kita’s line of sight as she remained huddled over, and picked up Kita’s now cooling mug of coffee. She strided towards the edge of the room and wordlessly dumped out their cups, and Kita could briefly hear the shuffle of what sounded as though Shiba was pulling a box of cards from her pocket. The slip of paper against cardboard and the click of metal against metal; a cigarette and its lighter, as was made evident by the stink that now persuaded its way into Kita’s nose, stuffed as it was by emotion. She listlessly offered the orange tip of it a languid glance as it was all that illuminated the dark corner that Shiba’d retreated into, and she imagined that she may have once chided her manager for smoking indoors – there may have even been something about how it’d ruin her skin, or how second hand smoke could dampen Kita’s future as Kessoku Band’s vocalist. Yet, with no Kessoku Band and no future in sight, she felt her fingers ever so slightly twitch. Perhaps she’d ask her manager for a cigarette. To relieve stress, that’s what they were used for, no?
The mere thought had her strangle her hair in her hands. What was she thinking? Self-destruction, all because of this? A child, that’s who she was. It was true that she was barely 20 years old, but wasn’t it about time that she’d grown up? Wasn’t it about time that she put this juvenile pattern of behavior behind herself? Why, oh why, did Kita still rage against the inevitable?
Hitori maybe was her final memory of those golden days. When she still had a heart, this soulless Ikuyo Kita. The water streamed through pillars of ice, as the dreams of a summer world were frozen solid, as her blood ran cold and her fingers grew numb. The warmth of her tears could scant be felt.
Hell hath frozen over, as the radiant Sun dimmed – Kita’s star crashed to the Earth.
She, in defiance with the sovereign order of the sulfur-laden abyss, cast a grim look of determination towards the flickering lantern light in the shadows of this infernal hall. The cigarette left a white trail as Shiba took 2 long strides into the blinded light of the Sun, and so she stood, her arms folded, with expectation wrote plain upon her features. Kita found her words, this time. “We all could have done something. It’s too late, now. I gave you my apologies, I explained it all to you – is that enough, manager?”
Her judge tipped her horned head and flicked the cigarette from her mouth, twirling it idly between her fingers as she offered Kita a thin frown. Without missing a beat, Miyako said, “No. It isn’t enough. You aren’t done. Not yet, you aren’t. I-”
She sighed and rubbed the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. “Okay. Let me make this point just this one time. This melodrama? I could do without it. You love that girl, don’t you?”
Kita was stunned into silence. She retreated in her seat as her judge approached, each step a cloven stomp.
“Of course you do.” Shiba’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s make a deal, then.”
Sticking the cigarette back into her mouth, Shiba lightly inhaled and soon blew out of a huff of white smoke. The dragon’s eyes never left Kita, and so finally her infernal words arrived, “I want to save your band. We have a good thing together. As clients, I’ve appreciated the drama-free atmosphere, and just how easy you all are to work with. You? I suppose the band’s survival isn’t your highest priority, given just how far away you’re willing to flee from it.”
Another step. The heat was rising. “I didn’t expect love to find me in this career. Then again, I never really expected to chance into being a label manager. That’s life, Kita. It’s a lot of odd starts and stops. I used to peruse advice books because of this; the thought that I could really manage my life and manage my expectations therein – that was tantalizing. I wanted, so badly, to be able to control my own future. I learned along the way that this sort of thing is purely untenable.”
Each footstep rattled Kita’s spirit and pushed her to a treacherous place, as her footing felt so unsteady that she may fall at any moment into the darkest chasms of her soul. She watched as her manager fully bridged the gap, her typically flat and narrow stare now full of a soulful, compelling energy. There were stars glittering in the devil’s eye.
“Have you ever heard of Chaos Theory, Kita?” The manager now loomed above Kita, holding an air of authority that sent a shiver down her spine. Kita offered a slight shake of her head: negative. Shiba made a small sound in surprise. “I figured with all of the space-related allusions in your songs that you’d’ve learned about it at least once from… nevermind. I don’t know it very well, myself, but I’ve come to at least understand this: though the present determines the future, the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. Our actions now do decide what will happen tomorrow, but predicting tomorrow? It’s impossible. You can make a lot of educated guesses, sure, but there’s no saying what can or will happen. You have control, but you have no control. Chaos.”
Shiba, hovering near the table, offered a loose shrug towards the empty air and took in a deep, long-suffering sigh. There was much she left unsaid that needn’t be uttered. And so, with finality, Miyako finished her monologue with a lengthy flourish, “That’s why those self-help books exist in the first place. The authors behind them came to recognize the existence of this deterministic chaos and chose, in lieu of offering actually decent words of wisdom, to try and monetize an impossibility; controlling that chaos was never something you, as an individual, were meant to do. We’re taxed at every level of our lives based on the tenets of chaos. Our careers, our hopes, our aspirations – even our love. It’s all profitable to someone who comprehends that chaos cannot be controlled, only mitigated. I’m sure a lot of what I’m saying here is wrong, and I’m sure you, like anyone else, would like to think of yourself as the captain of your own ship. But listen to me, okay? Do you think by sticking your head in the sand that this’ll all just blow over, and you’ll get to have what you want? Of course you don’t. That’s why you’re here. If you love that girl as much as your tears tell me that you do, then you’re going to get up and get out of here. That’s the cost of caring, Kita. You have to put yourself into these hard situations and act. No tax is too high for the love that we choose to endure. It was easy for me to sacrifice freedom for my wife; it’s time you sacrifice something for the girl you adore.”
Sacrifice. Was there something that she was unwilling to surrender? Kita’s brows knitted together in a weave of red – that didn’t make any sense. How did she have anything to give up? She’d given so much away! Her easy social life, her innumerable friendships – they were just a small measure of the things she’d burned at the pyre of becoming a niche celebrity. What this thing had evolved to be: it was not easy. Perpetually scaling heavensward, the stakes of what had been a ‘silly highschool band’ only seemed to grow taller and more daunting day after day. So what else did she have left to give? Her own talents? Was her life something that Miyako was demanding from her? Would this truly only conclude upon her final breath?
Certainly not, it couldn’t be. But then what, pray tell, was it? She couldn’t imagine it. Kita even imagined that the band itself could have been the sacrifice she’d placed upon the altar of her affection for Hitori Gotoh. After all, hadn’t it been the source of her anguish? Kita didn’t know Hitori’s life before the band, at least she didn’t know it in great detail, but it didn’t seem far-fetched to imagine that while it was somewhat listless, it was at least something she could endure. But the spotlight caused this fragile rose to wither, as the sheer heat caused its petals to burn.
This singular source of pain – shouldn’t its removal be rejoiced? Had that not been a great enough sacrifice? Kita rested her head against the table and said, “I don’t really get it, but… it’s a deal. Haha, and here I was complaining about how life isn’t like what you see online. How many people make deals with the devil in real life?”
“All the time,” came Miyako’s all-too-snappy retort, “My entire industry relies on that.”
Kita raised her head with a glum look on her face. None of it made any sense to her, but had that ever really stopped her before? Maybe it just showed a lack of care on her behalf. Still, she felt something of a responsibility for everything that was happening; Nijika may have blown up at Hitori, but all of them knew that these issues had deep roots. With a grimace, Kita forced herself to stand. Her legs were a bit shaky, for whatever reason, but she managed to stand still and face Miyako. She folded her arms and puffed her chest out just a bit. With a strained air of confidence, Kita mustered the following, “A star is supposed to stand with confidence.”
“And you’re that star?” Shiba prodded, a leafy green eyebrow tilted upwards.
“I used to think so,” Kita admitted with some shame, “Everyone treated me like one, even if I didn’t lift a finger to deserve that level of praise.”
“B–b-but don’t get me wrong, manager! I’m not exactly some kind of lackadaisical slug! The slug-like behavior is reserved for Hitori-chan, and I’d never call her a slouch either. The expectations for me just were always so… low-stakes. People expected me to be the cute, peppy Kita-chan. So, just the typical me. When I joined the band, nothing really changed? Aside from practice, the only new dimension to my life was that I wasn’t just singing in karaoke, but on stage! It was – for lack of a better word – easy. Easier than the others had it, at least.” Kita pressed her palms together flat and pointed her head away from the acrid smoke that spilled up and outwards from Shiba’s cigarette. A wrinkle of her nose got Shiba to finally snub it in an ash tray, ceasing the deeply immoral act of ‘smoking indoors’. Truly despicable stuff, far worse than trying to strongarm a girl into confronting her suicidal lover for the sake of saving a musical act.
Kita was maybe finally catching up to that last part. She earnestly searched Miyako’s even-keeled expression for anything that betrayed an inner guilt or shame, but she couldn’t find a thing. Just a sea of contentment, unerring in its steadiness. That calm had broken before, but as it stood, Kita wasn’t sure if she wanted to see the dam burst anew; there’d been enough pain for one day, and she didn’t suspect that it’d be particularly productive of her to manipulate her manager into tears for a second time. Still, an exasperated sigh escaped her as she said, “I never had much of a message to share to the world. My head was full of beaches and easy romances. Busting open watermelons while blindfolded, ordering trendy drinks at cafes, taking pictures on a pier, going to karaoke – I spun around in the rain with a polkadot umbrella, not giving a second thought to the pitter patter of the water, or how cold it made me feel. I was warmed by that simplicity. But I’ve… I’ve learned that I wasn’t happy. I was warm, I was content, but it didn’t satisfy me. Not really, at least. How could I be satisfied? My life was devoid of meaning. There were smiles and there were good things, but I worked for none of it, and none of it was really – well, it wasn’t me. The real me… I like to think that she doesn’t give up. The real Kita won’t give up in the face of adversity.”
Miyako’s eyes narrowed. She was giving Kita the look of ‘But didn’t you almost give up five minutes ago?’ The visual bounced off of Kita’s head like a volleyball. She recoiled from it and then tried to recover her scattered composure. “They all worked so hard. Is it right for me to keep coasting by? I guess I understand you now, manager.”
“This is my rise to action.”
“I have to be the hero this time.”
And so, the infernal pact had been made, unbeknownst to the taker of the deal. But the dealmaker watched from the corner of her vision, aware fully that she’d tasked this would-be heroine with a duty that few would envy. Miyako Shiba was no fool. Even her love had taken many steps to attain, and her marriage now was the ultimate proof of the challenges that lay in that rose-colored battleground. This was no dance in spring. She curled and uncurled her fingers.
With a few sordid thoughts, this lowly devil pondered, ‘You’re a good person, and so I shouldn’t be worried. But… I don’t like this. But I can’t think of anyone else to do this. Other than…’
Shiba’s eyebrows shot up. She fumbled around for the phone in her pocket, and pulled it to eye level as fast as she could muster. A text message fired off in ease before Kita awoke – could it be…? Another deal, another devil?
Miyako felt a certain dread wondering where her wife had gone. Had she gone in search of a hero, as well?
{ ~ }
Transform
She could not make out any shapes in the water. Only a sky on fire, that which blazed its mark upon the face of the river. It was a quiet place, even as cars passed o’er it, as few civilians ever decided to make the passage these days. From where she sat, her feet dangling over the edge, she hardly could tell where the sky began and the river ended. It all melted together. Burnt sugar that flowed into a caramel sky. The pain was sweet to the tip of her tongue as she sucked away the agony that seeped from an open wound, just as the waters below seeped into the horizon. The iron, the irony – red and brown and pink.
Hitori liked the bridge. She liked the river more. The sea had always frightened her, for it was vast and unconscionable, a place that was truly hostile to human life. Even the stars were less terrible, for at least in the vacuum one could still stand upright. In the ocean? In the depths of the sea? Humanity was not meant to be there.
A river, however, was a conduit. It was the earliest road, and the earliest traveling companion. Mankind yearned for a riverbed, as he knew it brought sustenance – more so, it brought connection. And how many things then were named a river? The stars of the Milky Way? Time itself? The flow was linear and liminal; its direction was set, its purpose oh-so-comprehensive. There was nothing complicated about a forward path. That which was complicated was the conditions of its formation, and that which swam along the current. The gems that sat at the bottom of the riverbed, as well as the bones of the departed, and the refuse cast within it – they were accompanied by the living, both grand in size and so miniscule as to evade sight, as well as things that had never been fashioned for life aquatic. Humans weren’t riparian, but humans still desired the river. Humans weren’t starborn or lords of time, and yet they still desired mastery of them, too.
In the moment, this human was a master of little else other than getting herself hurt. She hadn’t felt the urge for self-harm since her near exsanguination, and yet the pain that clung to her fingertips stung far more than any self-inflicted wound she’d ever faced. She’d scuffed her fingertips against the concrete, all in an effort to cushion her fall as she’d stumbled whilst walking to her current seat. Perhaps she could’ve tumbled into the river and saved herself the trouble… Not yet, not now.
She owed it to the ones who still lived. The living dead had a duty, after all, before they found true peace in destined death.
“I’m sorry.” Hitori started, unsure where this would end, as she regarded the river of fire ‘neath her. “I’ve dragged you into this pit, too.”
In her mind’s eye, she imagined a girl in a pink tracksuit sitting by her side – her big blue eyes full of confusion as she bobbed her head wordlessly to the ragged voice that spoke to her. Hitori held her hands up to the empty air, oddly waggling her hands towards her unreal audience. “On a good day, I just want to disappear. At my worst… And you’re being pulled with me. I sometimes feel – I don’t know how to put it. Out of my own mind? I used to hide behind these vivid daydreams, but I can see you, and I can feel you; it’s like you’re really here, right now. Maybe you are. Maybe I should stop denying that part of myself and acknowledge that I’ve never particularly been in the ‘right mind’. Imaginary friends at my age? The delusions of grandeur and the fantasies…”
“There’s something wrong with me,” She admitted to the phantom at her side. In the absence of a true presence next to her, she could only feel chilled by the wind as it brushed through the void of a person – a scathing reminder of reality. Her shoulders shook as she drew in an unsteady breath: something raked up her soul as she continued on, “Everyone’s always known that.”
She exhaled bitterly and twiddled her thumbs in her lap. “The weird girl. The girl nobody knows. ‘You, over there’. And then… Bocchi.”
“Ryo didn’t mean it, but…” Hitori swallowed thickly. “It hurt, didn’t it?”
“You always wanted to be remembered by a cute nickname, because that’s what girls your age were supposed to do, right? Name each other the damndest, most daft little things – that’s youthful, that’s what friends do for each other. It means something, I think, to be looked at like that. It’s a sign of endearment, I’m pretty sure.” That had her idly scratching her cheek, sheepishly laughing to herself as she felt something contort inside. “Anything felt good when it made me feel real. Not a ghost, like you. But a real, living being that other people could actually see.”
“I could change lives.” Hitori screwed her eyes shut. A grimace fully blossomed upon her face, as the ice that clutched at her brain creaked. It had grown brittle from the heat – from the shame.
She shook her head and felt the cold drain down her spine, a shiver inelegantly forcing her to readjust how she sat. The way the concrete pinched the backs of her legs, coupled with the aches that gripped her knees, all eventually pushed her to sit with her back against a short wall – the only dividing limit between her and the street that crossed the bridge. She idly pondered how many people in their cars had had that thought before. That thought to be some kind of ‘hero’.
Had it ever been her dream to be a hero? That wasn’t clear in the haze of her memories, but she knew that she had been proud to be considered a hero once. She'd been… Nijika’s hero.
Nijika had been right. That’s what hurt the most, Hitori figured, as she felt a dull ache throb through her temples. Another curse left by her failure to reach nonexistence. They’d waited far too long for the savant on the computer screen to actualize into the real her, and if she was to always be a middling performer – then it was true, by every possible definition, that she was replaceable. While she resented the insinuation that Kita belonged in the same boat: it remained to be true that she flew off the handle for nothing. This undermining of her personhood was something that only existed within her own mind. Nijika didn’t need dead weight.
Nobody needed Hitori. A confession of love came from a venomous place, as her fragile mind clung to whatever it could to stick to a sense of what was real. Did she actually love Kita? She even somewhat doubted that someone so wonderful could see anything lovable within herself. Kita, so warm and so bright – she was a sun that rose above a white sand beach, casting it in a radiant balm, with the vapors off of the seaside forming a rainbow out of her love. That was a presence that was desirable. And if any of her friends or other bandmates had been Kita’s true lover, then that’d be okay. Nijika could support her through thick and thin. Ryo, so long as Kita was patient with her, could fill her life with color. Sasaki pushed Kita to greater heights. Yoyoko was adversarial, but her love was deep and vibrant. Ame, Nene, Ere… Even those Osakan girls.
Hitori was an oil slick that blackened the sands and choked the seas. Labeled an environmental catastrophe, she was going to ruin Kita; she’d already ruined herself.
The cruel thing was that Hitori wanted Kita. Badly.
This wasn’t some fluffy, sweet romance, the type they’d share over crepes and fruity teas; this wasn’t pillow fights and pillow forts, kicking their feet under blankets and giggling softly in a dark room; this wasn’t hand-holding and surreptitious smiles, blushing cheeks and furtive stares – that was all the kind, the warming, the joyful. What this was…
It drooled. There was a biting, carnivorous thing that she’d been trying to choke with her own blood, yet it sustained itself through the thrill of the hunt. Sat upon the ledge as she was, Hitori had to contend with another phantom.
The pink tracksuit goes stock still as something heavy weighs in on Hitori’s other side. A black mass, it sank to the earth free of sanctimony; it was the cancer of her soul.
Greedily, she imagined feeding Kita to it. Indulging the beast, not starving it – that she should finally feast, drink in her fill. What a grim imagination was the one she’d come to possess. How could she fathom such a thing? Then again, as her mind withered and her brain functions further declined, how could she be expected to not unravel so completely? These thoughts were not kind. They were born of an evil seed, one that’d long germinated in the scarred soil of her heart. Nothing was sacred anymore. “I dragged her down. You? I’ve been trying to kill you.”
‘No. I’ve been trying to kill us all.’
Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
Seized him with my beautiful form
That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.
~ Dante Alighieri
Hitori stared up at the sherbet clouds and the burning sky, her eyes then trailing the streaks of autumnal colors that dashed across the firmament. She firmed up her shoulders and settled uneasily into herself. How simple, it’d be, to simply be done with it now. All it would take was the conviction to step over the edge, and then she would no longer be pained by these woes. It would end the questioning, the waiting. So would come the finality of her search for her own soul – there was nothing to be found upon journey’s end.
She never was given the chance to further ponder this, as the phantoms darted away from the corners of her view; there was something real that had come along. Not a policeman, not even a concerned passerby. This was flesh, this was blood, and this was known. Her bangs were still cut bluntly, though her hair was thankfully down for once, even though the plus shaped hair pins that used to pin up her twintails still rested clipped within her hair – the pink streaks would’ve made her blend in with the sky if not for the blackness of the rest of her hair. Lavender eyes, filled with an unknown emotion, cut down at Hitori as a person in an oversized black and pink shirt flirted with approaching her. A baggy sleeve with a bleeding heart emblazoned upon its side fluttered as it was directed Hitori’s way; this was solitude’s end, for now. She didn’t bother with the pretense of filling her voice with faux cuteness, as her voice scratched over the sounds of tires and horns, “There you are, guitarhero.”
At least this was a person she’d expected to be confronted by. It was a toss-up between who’d be first: Shiba, or…
The freelance writer and assistant label manager best known as Poison♡Yami, Aiko Sato, now stood a few paces away, grinding her heels into the sidewalk with a latent energy. Aiko’s gaze was unreadable, but she didn’t waste time by leaving Hitori to guess the subtext, thus speaking with clarity, “This is new for you. Did you finally take my advice to stop crouching in a dark closet all day? It’s not that I don’t respect finding a place that makes you feel comfortable, but it must be Hell on your back. Honestly, I don’t think I can keep up appearances anymore, myself. How am I supposed to infiltrate youth circles with back pain?”
“You’re still doing that?” Hitori mumbled, not putting much energy into this conversation.
Aiko rolled her hand around in the empty space. Some displeasure seeped into her voice as she said, “Did you really think I’d still be doing things like that? I’d like to think I’m no longer that desperate.”
“Anyways… there you are. Shrimp posture by the side of the road on a bridge that’s far from anywhere you’d normally be.” Which begs the question how Yami had found her in the first place, but it wasn’t a subject that the lethargic Hitori felt much interest in broaching. She was being subjected to this conversation. Whatever came of it, it was all Aiko’s to declare. And declare it she did, “Do you remember what I said to you, not so long after we first met? You’d entered the Mikakunin Riot with the hopes to win it big, but your band was new, and it was trash. No unity, purely going off of vibes – you were destined for failure. But you pushed. Those other girls helped, for sure, but it was always your choice that’d make or break the effort. Your talent could drag a thousand hacks over the finish line; you’re just that good. And that’s what I meant, back then. You could go solo. You don’t need to wait for them, or learn how to be good for them. They don’t have what you have.”
“Call me callous,” Sato said with a rather feral grin, “But they’re dragging you down. This wasn’t your fault.”
Hitori sighed. How predictable. It always turned back to this, to… “Guitarhero. That’s all it ever is with you. Don’t worry, I get it. I wish I was as good as she was, too. But she’s fake. I made her up. That version of me sits in front of a camera without any of the real baggage of ‘Bocchi-chan’, and she’s free. She’s like an angel. Kessoku Band has never been as good as her, because she exists in fantasy: there’s no struggle for that hero. Is she even a hero?”
“That’s what pisses me off, Yami-san. You want Guitarhero. I want Guitarhero. Nobody wants Hitori Gotoh. There’s nobody in the world that wants Hitori Gotoh. They even don’t want me. They said it to me, they showed it to me – it’s doomed! I always knew that Kessoku Band would end up destroyed because of my inability to match my own skill level, and it’s always fallen down to the bare fact that I DON’T WANT TO BE ME.” Hitori’s rant babbled on without end, as though the mental breakages that slurred and staggered her speech before had now turned into a ramp for fury to flow. Perhaps this was another sign of the damage: Hitori no longer cared to mask her true emotions, nor did she find it within herself to blunt the signs of rage. She shakily raised up from the ground, her feet kicking against the concrete to push her up the barrier she’d been sitting up against, continuing to rant on, “I’m still trash. You could’ve spent all these years actually putting your time into a band that was good, but instead you waited just like everyone else, for a hero that was never going to come.”
“Do you think I like disappointing everyone around me? Do you think I LIKE ME?” That then had Hitori grasping for the bandages around her wrists. She grit her teeth and tore the bandages free, baring the stitches and scars that lined her freshly maimed wrists, “Look! I tried to free the hero! Look what it got me!’
“Drop dead!” Hitori threw the bandages at a stunned Aiko, and began to storm off in a cloud of fervor.
And Aiko could only watch dumbly as Hitori’s form grew fleeting. She traced the motion of the medical gauze as it flittered in the wind, jerkily moving her head to follow its motion. Like gossamer butterfly wings, the white material floated off to join the detritus that populated the river below. She tugged at the bandage-like choker around her neck, feeling as if it was just a bit too tight around her neck. It choked her a bit too successfully.
Had she made the right choice?
She couldn’t be sure. Things were in motion, but she had to hope that she had put her trust in the right person. The devil was on this bridge, clawing at the souls of all comers, but it would soon depart – thus demanding the question: When will the Hero rise?
What was certain was that this was not the end. And with a shuddering sigh, Aiko knew that she had a lot to explain to her wife when she returned to the office. She only hoped that Shiba, and the rest of them at that, would understand why she made such a risk. This gambit stung of nostalgia, but the sentimentality she might’ve once felt for the move had long since passed, especially given the state of all of those who were involved.
Aiko Sato hoped, she prayed, that the others were with her. They all were in agreement; so must the Inferno be quelled, so that her soul may be rescued.
She only wished to hear that guitar’s vibrato sing upon the stage, just one more time.
Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
took me so strongly with delight in him
That, as you see, it still abandons me not...
~ Dante Alighieri