Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Akito got into a fight was first grade. 

He'd been in music class, surrounded by a bunch of other fidgeting kids as they turned some poor song into the kind of train wreck only six year olds could manage. A chunk of them somehow forgot the words even after a month of practice and were just singing whatever, anime theme songs and basic nursery rhymes drifting in and out like a scrambled radio. The kid next to him always skipped the same rest every time, never got back in sync, and fucked up everyone else around them. Most of them went wildly off key once it got too loud to hear the piano.

Back then, he’d liked music the way most kids like anything that doesn't require them to shut up and sit still, but even he was over it by verse two.

The music teacher— Yukina-sensei? Something like that— had let them finish the song anyway, her smile not even twitching as the volume doubled, the whole class jumping on the last, flat note. It still sticks with him how she grinned through every class, how much she didn’t seem to care about the awful noise. She always looked so happy to listen to a bunch of kids sing a little bit better than before, and he could never tell if she was bullshitting or partially deaf. He's still not sure.

As they’d lined up and waited for the next teacher to take them back to their classroom, Yukina-sensei went down the line complimenting each and every one of them. He’d definitely been scowling. Anyone could tell they sucked, but she got around it by saying they improved. “Takahashi-kun, good job remembering the lyrics.” “Aoi-chan, your pitch is getting better.” On and on, down the line, until she got to Akito.

“Your voice is so sweet and pretty!” she said, smiling wide. “You’re nice and loud, too. Great job remembering the words, Shinonome-chan!”

He remembers grabbing fistfuls of the skirt his mom had begged him into that day for his visiting grandparents, something like numbness clouding his head as he stared at its ugly floral pattern. He remembers the boy a few kids down being told he has a “cool” voice, all the feelings he couldn’t figure out tangling into each other until the only thing left was a balled-up scream stuck in the back of his throat. He remembers feeling frozen despite the bright summer sun lighting up the room, heavy like ice had leached into his limbs, frostbitten and numb. He remembers one of the boys behind him tugged on his long hair and teased him about his sweet voice.

He doesn’t remember hitting him, but he remembers not feeling bad about it. 

For just a heartbeat, when everyone in the room stared at him in shock, right before the other kid hit him back, it’d felt like his skirt, his long hair, his voice… none of that mattered. He wasn’t the girl with the pretty little voice; he was whatever this thing inside him was, angry and violent and there to be seen.

He doesn't remember getting punished, either— he had to’ve, there’s no way his mom let him get away with that— but he does remember the attitude change in the school, how he became something else for awhile. A “troubled” girl, yeah, but not just a girl, and it was the only thing that came close to the feelings still constantly clogged in his throat.

He forced his singing voice lower after that. Yukina-sensei sometimes made comments about singing higher. He ignored her.

“I can't wait ‘til my voice drops,” he told Ena at some point later.

Ena, already a damn menace at eight years old, laughed at him. “Girls’ voices don't drop, stupid,” she said.

He definitely remembers getting grounded for pushing his sister, because she hit her elbow off the table and got a huge bruise that she milked for weeks. His mom'd been pissed, but he had no way to explain how this buzzing, numbing fear hadn’t left his head ever since Ena said that, that it was like the weight of the broken world was crushing his chest, something fundamental he always thought was true ripped away from him with a laugh.

“She started it” didn’t cut it.

It took him a long ass time to piece it all together, even longer to get to the point other’s would get it, but he learned real early what it took to get something as simple as his own name, and that nothing in life was ever gotten without a fight.

Akito wakes up with a sudden jerk and a gasp, eyes flying open before he slams them shut with a groan. He shifts, the backs of his eyes flashing as sunlight beams directly onto his face, and he quickly throws an arm over his eyes with another annoyed noise. That’s what he gets for forgetting to check if the stupid blinds’re closed the whole way before he passes out.

Already he can feel the full-body exhaustion from the last week creep in like coffee spilling onto a new pair of pants, his irritation only pushing sleep further and further away. He's trying to hang onto it— he does not want to be awake— but he can feel awareness stubbornly stain his mind, his tired limbs demanding attention as they throb in time with his heartbeat.

He’s gonna kill whoever woke him up. There's no way in hell it’s not too damn early for him to be awake.

“Akito!” A voice is yelling from his headboard above him, tinny and compressed, like a call just barely coming through a phone. “Akito, up here! I heard you! Akito!”

“Len, stop,” he grumbles, blindly swiping towards the noise. His heavy arm bends awkwardly. He feels his charger pop out of the socket as it tangles in his fingers, almost smacking him in the face as falls, his phone following it onto his mattress. It bounces once before slipping down the crack between his bed and headboard, a solid ping as it hits the frame once before clattering to the ground.

“Shit,” he mutters, a little more awake.

“Akito, come on! We need help! I’ve been trying to wake you up forever!” It’s way quieter; his phone must’ve landed face-down. Good, Len can wait a few hours. 

Akito rolls over until he’s against the wall and pulls his blanket over his head, trapping his lingering body heat inside. After the week they’ve had, his worn-out body should at least let him fall asleep again nice and quick. Hopefully his legs won't feel like concrete the next time he opens his eyes.

“Akito-kun, please wake up.” It's a different voice, older, dependable. “It’s important.”

…Sighing, he curls into himself for a few heartbeats, just to savor the warmth, and pushes himself up. Of all the virtual singers, he only trusts one of them to actually know when something can’t wait. 

With a quick flick of his wrist, Akito finally closes the blinds. The brown panels turn a glowing orange in the dim morning sun. He wraps his blanket around his shoulders, careful to hide his unbound chest, and fumbles under the bed for his phone.

“Meiko-san,” he greets, his voice rough from sleep, grating in his raw throat. He clears it, wincing, and tries to quickly swipe the sleep crumbs from his eyes. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to wake you so early,” she says genuinely. She pats down her hair, the blue halo around her not enough to hide how messy it is, and something uneasy chills his chest, chasing away the little warmth left from sleep. “We know you all had a long week and a late night, but we need you over in the Sekai. Toya-kun—”

It would've been less effective for her to physically shake him awake. “What’s wrong with Toya?”

“He’s fine,” Meiko-san says quickly. Her hands raise in a calming motion that only makes his heart pound harder. “He’s here. We just need some help.” She’s trying to be soothing, but it’s more cryptic than anything.

“‘Help?’” Akito echoes, brain slowly sputtering into gear. Toya’s in the Sekai? Why? It’s— he glances at his clock— nine in the morning!? They dropped him off around three! They don’t have practice, so why’s Toya even up? What could’ve happened in six hours? 

Shit, how’s Akito only slept for five?

“It’s nothing bad,” Meiko-san assures him. “There’s a—” She glances off screen, eyes wide and panicked. Distantly, so faint he could be hearing things, there’s something that sounds like a crash.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Akito says.

Meiko-san nods, already turning away. “See you soon.”

And then he’s alone, tired eyes burning and sleep completely wiped from his body.

Damn it.

The next few minutes're like trying to do homework right before the teacher collects it. 

There’s not really much Akito can do. He's got deep bags under his eyes can't get rid of, his clothes’ve somehow wrinkled in the minute between the bathroom and his shelf, and his hair…fuck, his hair. It’s the unique chaos that only happens from a hard sleep and a wet head, fighting the best of his frantic efforts to look halfway decent so it can stick up like some barely designed anime character. If he’d just sucked it up and dried it completely last night after his shower he might've been able to pull off something, but he didn’t, so he can't.

Worst of all, his mom’s already started laundry, so his go-to binders’re out of the picture. It’s not the best idea, but there’s no choice except to squeeze an older, smaller one over his chest.

Akito's not stupid. He knows that even if the oversized binders he wears to perform don’t cause breathing issues, the long hours he's been pulling in them're definitely not great for his body. He was counting on today being mostly a break, but he can take it long enough to deal with whatever's going on. It won't kill him.

Pulling out his old sports bra is not an option. Forget the way it’s like debating whether to stab himself or not— he already looks like shit. There’s no way in hell he's showing up in front of Toya without a binder, too. He’s already been blowing it as a boyfriend, so the absolute last thing he needs is to look like less of one when Toya might be starting to notice…

The thought lingers like a shouted threat on an empty street, but he forcefully shoves it away. He’s gotta help Toya now, not get distracted with his own shit.

In a last-ditch effort to shake off the lingering exhaustion, he tries to toss some cold water on his face, but all it does is make him feel worse, more tired, and wet. 

Awesome.

A minute left, he looks at himself in the full-body mirror in his bedroom, the initial sting of it barely registering anymore, an old injury. A plain, baggy shirt with a dark jacket over top keeps his silhouette straight and masculine. His loose pair of sweatpants’re kinda boring, but they match and won’t rub at the injection site if he decides not to change for his appointment later. His outfit’s good, but the rest of him…

Whatever, it's fine. He did his best. If he’s lucky, Toya won’t really notice how rough he looks, but he’s not holding his breath. Somehow, Toya always zeros in on exactly what Akito doesn't want him to at exactly the wrong time.

He checks his messages one last time, but there’s still no response from An or Kohane. It’s not like he really expected them to answer since they got home later than him, but knowing he could get them just in case would be, y'know, nice.

A sigh, a quick tap, a few blinks to clear the light from his eyes, and he’s in the Sekai.

Akito's not sure what he was expecting, but it isn't silence. The whole Sekai's unnaturally still, like waking up in the small gap of early morning between when the street lights shut off and the birds start singing, the world stuck in some in-between before it falls into the day.

Inside Crase Cafe, Rin and Len’re staring towards the back of the building without a word, not a single drink on their table, the quietest he’s ever seen them. He’d almost think the Sekai was bugging out if he couldn't see Len’s occasional leg bounce or Rin fiddle with her hair bow nervously. Miku leans next to the door inside, silent as a statue, only her finger moving as she taps her elbow in a slow tempo, eyes locked on the same corner.

Meiko-san and Toya are nowhere to be found.

Akito approaches the cafe, glancing up and down the empty street, eyes catching on the new, twisting graffiti disappearing around the side of Crase Cafe. The door sticks as he pulls the handle, and he frowns, pulls a little harder. It rattles.

“It’s locked,” Miku says, her voice muffled through the glass.

“‘Locked?’” Akito echos dumbly. He didn’t know it could do that, but it feels obvious. Of course it can. Why couldn't it?

“Yeah, just in case,” she says, like that explains anything. She jerks her head to the side, not taking her eyes off the corner. “Meiko and Toya are in the back. I’d go around if I were you.”

Akito looks at Rin and Len, both of them suddenly tense in their chairs, and decides Miku’s probably right. He nods his thanks and hurries around the side of the building, an explosion of sound following him.

His footsteps echo dully as he hurries down the alley. The bright colors of the main streets’re duller here, faded and functional, the division sharp like a dingy backstage versus a live house’s floor. The shining shapes that always lurk in the corner of his eyes thin out a bit, and the sun's dimmed by the tall buildings around him. 

The graffiti from before's just barely visible on the walls as he rushes past, only the darker colors that’re the hardest to wash off still stubbornly stained there, faded blacks and deep blues barely more than smears on the brick. The original picture it was part of's impossible to make out now. It's not much different some of the walls on Vivid Street, the ones a few owners always try to keep clean of any graffiti, everything from shaky smiley faces to full on art pieces washed away once a month, only to reappear stubbornly the next week like a weed that keeps pushing up through concrete.

On the ground, a few other splotches of faded blue trail along the alley. It follows him around the corner.

Thanks to Meiko-san, the actual back entrance of Crase Cafe has a little more life to it. Red paint outlines the space in a lopsided twisting pattern, the same color as her usual nail polish. Little potted planters full of green herbs sit on make-shift tables to catch the sunlight sneaking through the buildings. Mismatched tables and chairs’re littered all around, some of them missing arms or legs, and a couple of them are halfway stained a new, darker color.

His eyes catch on old bar chairs pushed far up against the wall near the back door to the cafe, similar enough to the ones he knows’re at the bar inside that it makes his head hurt trying to remember if he’s seen them before. It's not important, but his mind sticks to it like gum on a shoe. Are they new? Did they rotate out and he just never noticed? Off-balance, he forces his eyes off them, searching for the real reason he’s here.

Meiko-san and Toya are sitting together off to the side near one of the sunbeams, their faces hidden as they bend towards each other. His heart skips an embarrassing beat when he notices Toya’s wearing the jacket Akito picked out for him a few weeks ago, the nice, dark green color vibrant in the sun. It’s ridiculous how strong the sudden craving is for Toya to turn around so he can see how the color makes the silver in his eyes pop, and he stuffs it down as he jogs over.

“Hey,” Akito says, then stops. Blinks. "Dude, what the fuck happened?!”

An ice pack hides Toya's hand from view, jarringly white against his skin like seeing a polar bear in the middle of Tokyo. Meiko-san steadily holds it in place for him, barely reacting to Akito's voice, but Toya glances up and—

Damn, he seems almost as exhausted as Akito feels. Toya’d been looking a little better the last few weeks, whatever bit of progress he had with his task letting the bags under his eyes slowly disappear, but the ghost of them’s back, a dark swipe on his pale skin.

Toya smiles, small but tired, and Akito’s heart flinches.

“I’m okay,” he says, gently taking the pack from Meiko-san so he can face Akito. It gives Akito a better view of the hand not being iced, and he stares at the faint red lines criss-crossing over each other like a bad tic-tac-toe board, complete with little dots scattered around them like eraser bits. What's the covered hand look like?!

“Are you? I’ve never even seen you with a hangnail!” Akito sweeps his eyes over him, but the rest of him's still in one piece. A bowl of soapy water sits on a small, slanted table beside them, the rag draped over the lip blotted with faint red patches, and there's the faint smell of alcohol on the breeze. At least he’s been taken care of, but jeez! “How’d this happen?!”

That makes Toya look away from him, eyes drifting off his face. His jaw works as he considers his words. There's a small, embarrassed tilt to his lips that Akito’s started to like recently, but right now it just makes his nerves jitter faster.

Finally, Toya admits, "I got into a fight."

…There's no way he heard that right. “Huh?”

Toya clears his throat and says louder, “I was in a fight, and it didn’t go well.” Anyone else, Akito would’ve thought it was a bad joke, but there’s no tilt to his lips, no teasing gleam in his eye. He’s dead serious.

“Do you even know how to throw a punch?” Akito asks weakly before wanting to slap himself as Toya shakes his head. Of course he doesn’t! Toya wasn’t even allowed to do Sport’s Day as a kid! Hell, Kohane can probably throw a better punch just from hanging out with An. No one on Vivid Street’s ever messed with him too bad, either, so the only fight Toya’s been in before this one's—

Their fight. It's the last time he's seen Toya hurt, too.

Akito goes rigid for a few heartbeats. A chill like getting blasted with AC directly on his neck swipes through his body before he forcibly relaxes himself, ignoring Toya’s eyes flashing in confusion. It’s an old hurt, but it’s already fixed. It’s no different than thinking about Crawl Green or his first battle with Tono or any of the other million failures that dog his steps. He’s beyond it— they’re beyond it— and it melts out of him slowly.

Toya seems to notice he’s settled. His lips curl in a ghost of a smile that makes Akito’s heart thump, off-beat. Akito moves forward and knocks their knees together to get some of the energy out, Toya's body heat chasing away the rest of the cold as it shoots through his body, fingertips tingling. 

Akito taps the ice pack. “So why the hell’re you throwin’ punches?”

"If I approach from the direction of my house, there’s a cat I tend to pass near Vivid Street,” Toya says, the slightest bit of affection underscoring his voice like a steady drumbeat. Akito shifts impatiently but stays silent, knowing Toya’s gotta give him all the info instead of cutting to the chase. “I think people call him Momiji? He moves around between a few areas, but he’s usually on Nakacho Street most mornings. I was hoping to see him before I went to record a few more samples.”

Akito just barely keeps an “Oh?” from slipping out, clamping down on it in his throat because that’s way too much. Just because he's gone with Toya to grab new samples every other time since they started dating doesn't mean Toya’s always gotta ask him to tag along.  He doesn't want him to feel like it should.

…But lack of sleep's got him off balance, and his eyes drift to the unfamiliar sight of Toya's hands. Doubt creeps in like a light frost, and he rubs his arm to warm it away.

It's probably not— he knows it's probably not— but…is it already at this point…?

“I thought about inviting you,” Toya says, off-handed, “but you would've gotten home close to your morning run time. I assume you did it before going to bed rather than running later in the day.” He cocks his head. “Am I wrong?” he asks innocently, lips twitching.

Akito blinks, an embarrassingly gooey flame in his chest overshadowing the uncertainty like a bonfire in the night, briefly protected, thawed. “No, you're not,” he admits, and the proud smile that creeps onto Toya’s face is worth the call out.

Then it wilts, taking that warmth with it, replaced by a slightly worried frown that doesn’t match the size of the hole it puts in Akito. “I’m sorry. You have an appointment today, right? But we woke you up to come help.” His gray eyes turn calculating, the same look he gets when asking about homework. “How long did you sleep?”

Akito waves him off. “’S fine,” he says impatiently, hoping the shade hides his own dark eye bags. “Your hand, man. What happened?”

After a heartbeat, Toya nods, taking the bait, and Akito holds back a sigh of relief. “The cat wasn’t at his usual spot. I thought maybe I missed him, but then I heard the sound of glass breaking.” He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I was worried the cat had gotten into something he shouldn’t have and went to check.

His hand comes up to twist his necklace with nimble fingers. “I found a group of men on a side street. They were laughing and stumbling around, so I figured they were college students walking back from a party and tried to leave before they noticed me. Then I heard a hiss.”

Toya’s eyebrows furrow. His jaw clenches, eyes growing stormy and dark, and his fist tightens around his necklace. Akito’s gotten pretty good at reading Toya, knows his expressions by heart, but this? This is a new one, and it’d be clear as day to anyone looking at him. It’s beyond the anger he’s seen a handful of times; this is rage.

“When I got closer I saw they were throwing things into an alley. I told them to stop, pushed my way in, and then… I’ll do my best, but everything happened very fast after that.” He's got the gall to look apologetic, like it’s his fault things got crazy.

Akito knocks their knees together again. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Just lemme know what you remember.”

Toya closes his eyes, and the heavy mood isn’t enough to keep Akito from admiring the way the bridge of his nose wrinkles as he thinks. “They were saying things to me about hurting their friend when I pushed my way past, trying to pick a fight,” he continues slowly. “I kept telling them we’d talk once they let Momiji out, but Momiji wouldn’t move. He wouldn't let me get close, either.

“They kept crowding in on us," Toya continues. "One of them grabbed my jacket. I tried to shove him off me, and then— I’m not sure now, but it looked like he tried to hit me.” He moves his iced hand, grins at himself sadly. “I couldn’t get him off me, so I tried to hit him… I think.”

“‘Think?’ Did you hit ‘em or not?” Akito reaches for Toya, and his partner lets him gently move his hand so he can lift the ice pack.

It's…not as bad as he thought, actually. His knuckles are a little red, and it's definitely a little swollen, but it looks like the kind of damage that’ll heal fast. It's not bad enough to look like it was a solid hit, and nothing feels out of place around his fingers, either.

“I don’t remember really making a fist, but I wanted to get him away,” Toya admits softly, curling his index finger to catch on Akito's. Akito doesn't quite manage to stop his hand from jerking in surprise, the ice pack almost slipping. “I was worried about hurting either of us since I’m so inexperienced with fights.”

Akito snorts. “Shoulda just went for it. You can hurt yourself way worse with a half-hearted hit.” Gently, he puts the ice pack back on Toya's hand. Toya places his free hand over Akito's, the heat of it almost too much after the chill of the ice, and slides his hand away.

Akito clears his throat. “So what're the scratches from?” They don’t look deep enough, but anger lights his chest. “It's not from glass, right?”

“No. The man stumbled after I hit him, so I scooped up Momiji and ran. He scratched at me, of course.” A sigh. He glances up at Akito, wearing the particular disapproving expression that only ever comes up when Tsukasa-senpai's involved. “I don't blame Momiji. He was already scared and possibly hurt. It makes sense he started clawing at me to get away.”

“Yeah, yeah, no blamin' the cat. I get it.” Akito shakes his head. He’ll do his best, but no promises. Sure, it's an animal, but how can't it tell when someone's trying to help?

Toya's shrugs, lips quirking up, before sliding back into a more serious look, eyes steely. “I could hear the men chasing us, and I panicked. I wasn’t sure if I could outrun them before Momiji wiggled out of my hands, so I waited until I turned a corner and came here.”

It takes Akito's tired brain a few sputtering moments to connect the dots. “You brought it here?!”

“The cat's in the cafe,” Meiko-san says, making them both jump. He completely forgot she was still here! She smiles apologetically as he takes a small step back from Toya, readjusting his jacket. “Miku, Rin, and Len are keeping an eye on it. Judging by the runaround Momiji has been giving them, the cat isn't injured, just scared.”

“That's good.” Toya breathes out, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders with it. “Still, it might be smart to take him to a vet. Shiraishi told me before that there's a few people on Vivid Street that make sure the strays are taken care of and keep them up to date on vaccinations. Asking them seems like the best option, especially since I'm not sure how to take care of him.”

Akito shrugs. “I tried to message her already. Those two definitely got back late, so it’ll be a bit. More importantly,” he cuts a look at Toya's hands, “worry about yourself, dude. Should you go see someone for all that? I’ve never needed to do more than ice my hand, but I’m not sure ‘bout the scratches.”

“The swelling's almost completely gone,” Meiko-san cuts in, level-headed as always. “I made sure there's no pain when he uses his hand, and I disinfected the cuts as well. It wouldn’t hurt to get it checked, but you should be safe if the cat's up to date on shots, Toya-kun.”

Silence. Toya's eyes go a little unfocused as he thinks, looking far beyond them. His free hand fiddles with his necklace, rolling the slim silver in his long fingers, and Akito quickly looks away, back to his face, throat a little dry. The skin around his waist tingles with the ghost of touch, and he swats it out of his mind too fast for it to hold.

Finally, Toya looks at him. “I want to stay here until we figure out what to do with Momiji, whether that's giving him to someone on Vivid Street or taking him to the vet ourselves. After that, I’ll reevaluate the scratches and my hand. As long as nothing gets worse and we can confirm he's gotten vaccinated, I think I’ll avoid the doctor.” He tilts his head slightly, too handsome for six hours of sleep. “Does that sound good?” 

“Your call,” Akito says, shrugging. “I’m just glad you're okay.” He moves to knock their knees again—

…Shit, he messed up. His hand. He shoulda been going for his hand this whole time like any decent boyfriend. It's probably more comforting too, right?

Akito's stomach sinks like he's halfway through a math exam realizing he's used the wrong formula, the distinct taste of fucking up sand in his mouth. He stutters to a stop. His fingers twitch at his side, and Toya's eyes dart towards it like a neon sign, his expression flickering—

There's a muffled crash as the three of them whip their heads towards the back door, and a shout faintly breaks through. “Kaito, don't!”

Meiko-san's a lightning bolt. She's at the back door in an instant, cracking it open just enough for her to slip inside, and another yell leaks through before she slams it behind her. It's Rin's voice, panicked: “The cat—!”

Akito's gut plummets. 

He pivots on his heel and runs back towards the front of the cafe, Toya's steps following him a few heartbeats after. Already he can feel his smaller binder restricting him more than he expects. His lungs fight against the lack of space, his breaths not as deep as they should be, but he pushes past it, flying around the corner. 

He's just in time to watch a blur of color juke around a startled Kaito-san onto the street, Len crashing into him as he dives for it. The two fall, clogging up the door, Rin barely catching herself from stomping directly on her partner with a yelp. Miku and Meiko-san fumble around the collision, bottlenecked, and he hears Toya's quiet, worried gasp behind him as the cat takes off into the Sekai.

Akito doesn't even need to think; he makes his decision immediately.

Toya calls after him as he speeds into a sprint past the door, but Miku's voice drowns it out. “Akito, don’t lose sight of the cat!”

He grits his teeth. Easy for her to say! The damn thing's already taking a turn out of his line of sight!

Akito's tired brain scrambles to remember which street that is like this place doesn't change on a dime, but the image drips from his mind's eye like sludge. Just please let it be long enough for him to see which turn the cat takes next. As long as he's got that, he can deal.

Miraculously, it's one of the longer streets, the pavement stretching ahead of him. Bright graffiti blurs together as he runs past, and generic, empty storefronts are packed tightly together with no alleys in sight, trapping him in a straight line. Perfect!

Momiji's paused halfway down, still too close to the fork at the end of the road for comfort. Its fur's obvious on the gray asphalt, a strange orange-yellow that seems to sway between each color as it frantically breathes, perfectly suited to its name. It goes rigid as it snaps its head towards him, frozen in surprise. Black pupils shrink to pinpricks, swallowed by the dark yellow of its eyes as he bears down on it.

For a heartbeat, only a few steps away, Akito can picture himself scoping it up and returning to a smiling Toya.

Then it takes off, outstripping him in a second. Cursing, he doesn’t even consider laying off the gas and follows as it turns left.

The cat's a flash of orange on the next street, its tail just barely visible before it disappears down an alley to the right. Then it's a startled yellow blur on a short street, slowed down just enough by a fallen trash can that he's able to track its movement around another corner. By pure luck turn after turn, Akito's just barely keeping up, but there's no way his luck’ll hold for long. He needs to catch it soon.

Worse, he's fighting another battle. His worn out body is screaming for air that he can’t suck down enough of. His heavy limbs're more like aching weights as they beg for a break. His binder's curled up on the bottom and pressing hard on his lower ribs, and the back of his throat's cold and raw from his gasps, no better than sandpaper. He's flagging, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Akito knows he's losing this cat. He knows, but he won't stop, like finishing a set list in front of an indifferent crowd, determined to go until he can’t. If he could just corner it somehow, but he's never even seen a dead-end in the Sekai…

His stuttering brain catches on a blood-red splash of graffiti on the corner of a boring store sign as he runs past. Didn't Toya mention he looks at signs when he wanders around, said they turn and take him where he wants to go? 

If it was anyone else, Akito would've thought they were screwing with him. This Sekai's always been a maze; more than four turns, and he can't follow the same path back. Either the virtual singers come find him on their own or he's gotta blunt force his way back to the cafe. It's great when he doesn’t want anyone to bother him, but the rest of his teammates always manage to walk around without an issue.

Least Toya's got an explanation. An just shrugged the one time he swallowed his pride to ask her how she manages, told him to look at the stores like they aren’t just empty ass husks.

Desperation painful in his dry mouth, he skims the shop signs as he runs, begging this place to throw him a bone since he's helping Toya, but there's not even a twitch. Sign after sign, street after street, absolutely nothing changes, and he has to give up when he almost misses the cat's next move as he hip checks a trash can.

Akito grits his teeth. Whatever, he's not a stranger to sink or swim.

Turning what feels like his thousandth corner, he scans the area, but a large burst orange paint the same color as the cat slashed across a sign grabs his attention against his will, a brief impression of flames entwining he has to forcibly rip his eyes away from to just barely catch the tail vanishing to the left. His legs tremble as he tries to push them faster, at their limit, but he's ignored those before. He turns left, right, barely catching a glimpse as he turns another corner, and then—

There's nothing. No cat, no movement, no nothing. 

Akito takes a few steps down the long, straight street, whipping his head back and forth, heart loud in his ears, and stumbles to a stop. He leans his back against a wall and pulls on the front of his binder to suck in more air, clothes catching on the rough brick as he takes a full breath.

There's no sound except his harsh breathing. He closes his eyes and tries to smother the sound with his hand, straining for any noise, begging this stupid cat to knock over a trash can or something, but it's no use. Finally, inevitably, his luck runs out, and he falls short.

He has no idea where the cat is. He lost it.

Irritation is hot as an iron, the heat trapped against his skin, pushing at his seams. He kicks backwards at the wall, choking out a rough “Dammit!” from his raw throat. His free hand clenches against his side, shaking as he holds back from hitting it against the wall even as he craves the impact jolting through his body. Can’t even keep his eye on a fucking cat! He can’t even do this much for Toya!

Underneath it, suddenly rising to drown the flames of his anger, is sadness. He tries to hang onto the safety of his frustration, but it drowns his exhausted mind in an instant, left to ride it out as he urgently gasps air into his screaming lungs, falling apart.

All he can picture's Toya's expression when he comes back empty-handed, another failure piled on top of the rest. Toya won't blame him, but’ll this be what finally exposes all the other issues? Is this how he notices?

Is this how Toya realizes how much Akito sucks at all of this?

Akito doesn’t half-ass things. He knows how a boyfriend's supposed to act— texts in the morning, holding hands ‘n stuff— so he does it all. He consciously runs it over and over like he's trying to learn a new song, knowing enough to get that he can't keep doing the same shit as before, that things gotta be different from being partners and being Partners. He's waiting for it to be second nature even as it feels closer to forcing his voice up higher than it should go, straining and unnatural. He keeps forgetting the lyrics, too, no matter how many times he runs the song, just like earlier behind Meiko-san's.

Honestly, the only part of it all that comes naturally's kissing Toya. That's instinctual, an energy even more exhilarating than performing on stage, his whole body an explosion.

It's easy to let his mind blank and only feel the other's hands clenched on the back of his jacket, on the side of his neck, his jaw. It's easy to go go go when time's limited, only focused on trying to fit all of it— the fire, the feeling fluttering in his heart, his absolute awe at being able to do this— into a few stolen minutes. It's easy to trace his thumb over Toya's cheek when he angles his head for a deeper kiss. If that was easy, he used to think, then all he had to do was wait until the rest of it caught up.

And it was all going fine until last week, when two things knocked him flat on his ass back to back. 

The first was his breakthrough with Ken-san. Hell, his hands shake just remembering it. He’d been rung out like a damn rag by the end of that practice, but it felt good to put all of him into his singing, climbing higher than ever before as he whole body trembled with the force of it. He was weightless, shaken free of something that’d been dragging him down without noticing, only aware of it now that he’d had a taste of life without it. 

But he never really noticed when it crept back in the next day, a small leak filling him back up so slowly he didn’t even feel the weight gradually being added. It disappeared again that night when he sang, gone without a trace in their next event as he poured all of himself out to a crowd of faceless, morphing shadows with his teammates beside him. He was dizzy with freedom again, running full speed downhill, and he could only notice how heavy it'd been once it was gone again.

It was rinse and repeat after that, a back and forth, but that made him wonder if there was a way to always keep it off. If he could just figure out how to have that feeling all the time, would that make his fuel better? Couldn't he climb even higher if he was never dragged back down? But how? After a week, he wasn’t any closer to an answer.

The second was when Toya asked, “Can I set the pace today?”

He said it with those big, shining eyes, the same ones he held up a slightly lopsided pepper with, knife shining dangerously in his other hand. The same ones Akito's always been weak as hell for.

So of course Akito said yes.

That day, Toya's house was empty. It was the first time they’d had real alone time together since kicking up their training with Ken-san. Toya's handsome face had that undercurrent of determination that made Akito stop near that street corner years ago, that still steadies him right before a performance.

Watching that bright curiosity shift into something strong and focused and unbreakable, his eyes flashing with a new heat Akito’d only recently figured out was want… it's still like an electric shock up his spine when he remembers, tingling through his whole body. Learning Toya's expressions over the years's always been something he's been proud of, a sign of how much their partnership's grown, but that was something new. That was something Akito brought out of Toya that almost overwhelmed him even as it sparked his own.

And it was good. Honestly, it was better than the other times at first. Without time breathing down his damn neck, it wasn’t just the flash fire of lips and pressure that he always initiated. Instead, it was the feeling of Toya's mouth and warmth gradually melting into his own, Akito keyed into every shift of his partner's body as the pressure of Toya's hand on his jaw slowly trailed downwards. It drifted lightly over his neck, his shoulder, his arm, and back up, tracing him over and over. The feeling of Toya's weight leaning on him was oddly satisfying as he reclined back, and it felt really fucking nice to just feel the carefulness of Toya's hands like he was something important.

It felt like something inside him settled.

But the slowness of it gradually pulled the heat from his body, boiling water slowly starting to cool even as the live wire of his nerves kept every touch a shock. Awareness crept in. All this care, for what? Him to just sit there? Was that how it's supposed to go, just taking everything and giving nothing? Was Toya getting disappointed? Wasn't this kinda lame of him, doing nothing? Should he be pushing Toya back, reversing their positions like this weird nagging inside him insisted? Or would it be worse to completely ignore what Toya asked for after agreeing? 

The fire pooling in his gut, the flash of his live-wire nerves, the sinking feeling of being a loser, the slow pace— they were all threads on a fraying t-shirt jabbing at him. Which one should he listen to?! All of them were so loud, he could barely think.

It meant that, when Toya slipped his fingers just barely under the hem of Akito's shirt, there was no usual heady haze to guide him, no adrenaline rush to take the edge off, and no idea what he was supposed to do.

Like suddenly overextending a muscle he thought healed, Akito was achingly aware of his body, of the slight incline of it as Toya leaned over him a bit, of his muscle twitching under his fingertips. If Toya's hand went a little right, he’d feel the jut in Akito's hip that T and running never completely flattened. A little up, and he’d feel the dip of his waist. And then, of course, his binder was waiting at the top.

“Is this okay?” Toya asked, his breath a soft, hot puff against his lips. The gray of his eyes were bright, his lips red, and Akito's stomach swooped dangerously at the sight.

Akito released his own shuddering breath, a million directions tangled inside him. It wasn’t like he felt bad; there was just a deep, deep part of him that still remembered every fight it took to get here, and this? This gentleness and yielding? This was the opposite.

If he let go and was left with just his body, what else would go with it?

…He shook it off. The want was still simmering even if it flickered confusingly, and wasn't it even lamer to shove Toya away like some bashful girl? He could push through it.

Breathing against Toya's lips, he nodded. It was worth the eager light that lit Toya's face, making it something devastating. The fire in Akito's lower stomach bounced back, but a sour tinge remained at the back of his throat.

Toya's hand slowly flattened along his skin, something like awe on his face as his long fingers just barely brushed his hip bone. The slight chill of it helped Akito unclench the tiniest bit as Toya softly kissed him again. It was short and sweet, almost dazed, and knowing he’d done that to Toya only fanned the flames, started to burn away those doubts.

Then, slowly, Toya's hand started to move, and his brain took off. Should he say something? Did he warn him? About what? “Hey, by the way, I have a binder.” He already knew! Akito’d mentioned it in passing before! Or did he tell him not to touch it? No, that was probably fine— not under it? But that's also super obvious, so he’d just look even lamer, right?

It was just— it was always different, knowing something versus seeing it.

Distantly, Akito registered Toya's hand stopped a few centimeters short of his binder, his forehead against Akito's as he caught his breath. There was barely enough space between them to keep their chests from touching as they panted, and he focused on keeping his breathing even against Toya.

Neither of them moved.

It was impossible to get a good look at Toya's face like this. He heard his fast breathing, took some pride in that, but the stillness was worse. It was the closest he got to reaching out to Toya and going back to how it usually was, the fast energy and frantic kisses between them, but Toya asked to do this. He wasn’t gonna blow it for him just because he couldn't chill.

Abruptly, Toya leaned forward and kissed him, just a peck. His hand slipped off Akito's skin, and the weight of it settled next to him as Toya leaned back.

The lack of warmth made Akito want to grab his hand and put it back, but the release of tension in his body made him more breathless than the kiss, a taunt rope finally snapping. He hadn’t noticed exactly how wound up he was. 

Going by the searching look Toya gave him after they parted, Toya had. 

And that's when it all started going sideways.

Toya's definitely been watching him ever since then. He can't tell if Toya for sure knows something's up or's still trying to figure out if that day was a one off, but the bright, happy look in his eyes sometimes shifts to something more searching, a troubled wrinkle in between his eyes.

Every time, Akito wonders if Toya finally caught on. If he's noticed that Akito fumbles his way through their walks home. If he's noticed that Toya's the only one of them who doesn’t gotta think about grabbin' the other's hand even though he's had his damn tongue in his mouth. If he's noticed Akito has no idea what he's doing and can barely do what he should.

If he's realized Akito's just a shitty boyfriend and that he's completely not made for it at all?

The only thing Akito can be proud of is that it hasn’t messed with the team or their performances. As long as he maintains that, he's still got time. It's not bad enough yet. He can still fix whatever's going wrong inside him and not need to distract anyone else.

Fuck, it's just— he likes Toya a lot. He wants to watch that quiet, content smile appear like the sun over the horizon in quiet moments, relaxing more and more each day. He wants to see his face light up when he tries something new, turning to him with an excited “Akito!” He wants to hear his teasing laugh that he only ever pokes at Akito, the jabs never really stinging. He wants to be there for him like he deserves, right at his side, as a good partner and a good boyfriend.

So why can't he figure this out? The hell's wrong with him?!

…Akito physically shakes his head, slowly unclenches his hands, and stuffs it all back into himself even as it makes him feel like a box barely taped together. Stop it. That shit doesn’t matter right now. Catching this damn cat's something he knows he can do if he stops wallowing for five minutes. If An can find Vivi during a random wedding photo shoot, he can find Momiji; he just has to figure out a game plan.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

Letting his head rest on the brick, Akito sighs, breath finally slowing down. Letting his binder snap back into place, he fidgets over his clothes to roll the bottom back down, but it scrunches up, ready to slowly roll back up. He shoulda sucked it up and grabbed a wet binder. This sucks ass.

At a quick glance, he can't see any turns on this street besides the one he came from. Momiji ran just as much as him. If there's no noise and he couldn't see it, maybe it stopped running and hid. Is there anywhere nearby he could find it? And does he have a way to keep it from running again even if he does?

Above him, he can just barely see the lip of the roof. Wasn't Vivi in a tree? But scaling a building's way different. There's no way Momiji could’ve got up there without him noticing.

Akito’d get a better view if he climbed up, though. He's definitely seen some ladders here and there, but they’ve always felt decorative, like the bowl of fake fruit his mom keeps on the table or the empty storefronts that line the streets. Even if they could take his weight, he’d have to get back down before the cat ran off, so it's a no-go. He'll have to search at ground level.

Akito closes his eyes. Should he wait for someone to catch up to him so they can try and surround the area, keep it from slipping away? He wasn’t running for that long, even if it felt like forever, but he took a lot of turns. Is anyone gonna be able to find him fast enough to matter? He's got his injection appointment in a few hours. He can't afford for it to take forever.

Plus, Miku's frantic voice keeps scraping at him. For some reason, she really wanted him to keep his eye on Momiji, so the virtual singers must not be able to track it down like they can for the rest of them. Sucks, but makes sense. If the cat gets too far away while he waits, it’ll get infinitely harder to grab, which means he can't afford to completely stand still.

He's gotta keep moving.

Opening his eyes, Akito finally takes a real, hard look around him and frowns. For the most part, it's not that different from all the other streets. The asphalt stretches out way, way ahead of him without a turn in sight, too far to make out the end, and a buncha trash cans and dumpsters dot the way like before. What's weird is the large, jagged crack running the whole way down, jigsawing sharply back and forth through the middle of the road.

Actually, looking closer, there's more weird shit. All the buildings are the usual brick, but they look naked without any colors splattered all over them, washed out like they've been in the sun for decades. Signs stick out at random heights, all fighting to be seen, but their characters're gibberish, like someone who only knows what Japanese looks like tried to copy it from memory. Even the awnings look dull, the usual bright color on them completely faded to different, ugly shades of murky brown. The only thing that looks normal's the wall across from him, just a plain, metal door and an old window embedded in the brick.

…Or is there something—?

Akito straightens, shaking it all off. What's it matter? Don’t get distracted. Keep moving.

But first thing's first. He pokes his head around the corner he came from and grabs a trash can lid, the metal weakly shining in the sun. He sets it in the middle of the street— no, he sets it closer to the left since he came from there. As long as he walks in a straight line he can't get too lost, but last thing he needs is to get any more turned around.

Moving quietly, he starts forward down the long road, ears strained for the slightest hint of a noise. His slower speed makes his already singed nerves feel like they'll burst, and he grits his teeth against it. Heart a steady beat in his ears, he darts his eyes between the trash cans, the signs, the dumpsters, the distance, and back again over and over in time with it. Keyed into any movement like this, it's impossible to miss the way the windows he passes reflect his every move, the inside unseeable.

Akito noticed a long time ago most of the windows in the Sekai are never actually see-through. The tint's always just a bit too dark to see inside, or the light always hits them in just the right way to only reflect him, or there's some other convenient crap to block his view inside. It used to creep him out way more, but it's like bitching that the background in an old video game's a jpeg; it's set-dressing. The point is the streets, not the buildings, and you can’t really have streets without buildings.

Still, it's distracting enough that he almost bangs his sneaker right into a trash can lid on the ground. He only barely manages to react fast enough to stumble to the side with a smothered grunt— shit— as he smacks his shoulder off the wall, eyes closing with the impact.

Opening his eyes, Akito tries to get his bearings. The asphalt stretches ahead of him without a turn in sight, too far to make out the end, a bunch of trash cans and dumpsters dotting the way. The same large, jagged crack's still running the whole way down, jigsawing sharply back and forth around the middle. He glances behind him—

…Akito shakes his head and closes his eyes. 

Again, he looks behind him. Then he looks ahead.

It's the same. Exactly the same. The same naked buildings, the same gibberish signs sticking out at the same random heights, and the same ugly brown awnings. The wall across from him's the same normal-ass wall, just a plain, metal door and an old window embedded in the brick. It's just the same road on the same road on the same road the whole way down, like someone copy pasted it over and over and over.

His stomach sinks as he jerks head head back and forth. There really is nothing to tell them apart. He pivots on his heel, the trash can lid on the ground flashing in the light—

Akito's pulse roars in his ears. There is one really important difference; there's a single trash can on the road, and it's the one that's directly next to him.

If there's no lid behind him, this's gotta be the one he set down a few minutes ago. That means he looped around somehow even though he only went straight, which means he should be at the only turn on this street.

But the side road he came from is gone. It's just one street as far as the eye can see.

He jogs backwards, counting the stores as he goes, and stops when he suddenly sees a trash can lid gleaming faintly on the road. Behind him, the road is empty. 

There's still no side road.

Akito runs his hand through his hair, disbelief nosediving hard into anger that sparks to life in an instant, combusting. No one’ll be able find him. He's fucking stuck!

The only way out's his phone, but there's no way he can just leave the Sekai now. But the hell else's he supposed to do if he can't go anywhere?! Walk in circles? There has to be something!

He whips his head around again— maybe if he keeps going backwards?— but freezes, something uncomfortable breaking through the anger, the flames settling in confusion.

Slowly, Akito turns his head to look at that same basic wall, a shiver of unease making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Like a performer finally falling out of sync with their group, something about that same metal door and old window feels off, but what?

It takes a few frantic heartbeats to figure out why, brain scrambling to understand what's out of place before it clicks, a rusted gear finally giving.

Akito can see into the window. 

He glances at the other windows up and down the road, but the sun's mysteriously blocking the inside like always. The shops down the road, too— all of ‘em are too dark to see. It really is only this one.

He moves closer. The window's small, its frame a stiff, sun-bleached metal square with barely there flecks of old, light blue spray paint on its sides. The bottom of it's about nose level, but he can still see that the perspective inside moves with him as he approaches. It looks like there's a whole ass room in there, not some weird picture just faking him out. The building's too generic to guess what's inside, and he can't make out much more than it being white as hell in there. A clinic? Maybe an office?

The metal of the frame sends a cold shock up Akito's arm as he puts his palms on it, his body jerking as he shivers. He quickly pulls his sleeves over his hands before putting them back on the sill, using it to balance himself on his toes for a better look inside.

What immediately hits him is how there's no way this room belongs to this window. The second's how bougie it is.

Big arched windows line the wall on the other side of the glass, stretching beyond what he can see, their long, draped curtains a creamy color that immediately makes him feel like he's looking into another, fancier world than this worn out street. The box trim walls are the type of white that only comes with a fresh coat of paint or an insane amount of cleaning. A couple round tables with spotless flowing tablecloths are precisely set around the light carpet, and he can just barely make out a chandelier poking down from the ceiling.

Akito leans closer to the glass. It's shockingly cold, chilling his cheek as he presses up against it, trying to see more, but it's no use. He can't tell how far it goes in either direction, but it looks big.

Sighing, his breath fogs the glass. All of it's so… staged. Either it's a set or people work really hard to keep it picture perfect, but it's impossible to tell from out here.

A heartbeat. His eyes land on the old metal door to his left.

“Akito-kun!” says a voice behind him, the excited tone bending electronically.

“Wha—?!” Yelping, Akito's hands slip off the window sill, and he lands heavily on his heels, the impact rocking through him. He turns, quickly pulling his sleeves back from his hands, and stares. “Luka-san?!”

Sweeping her long, pink hair out of her face, Luka-san shoots him a lazy peace sign with her free hand, grinning. The shoulder of her jacket carelessly slides down her arm, exposing the light purple quilt inside before she shrugs it back on, and her hair moves with it, exaggerates the motion. The silver accents on her purple skirt flash in the sun; her big earrings sway in the breeze. All of it makes her feel like she's never really standing still even if she doesn't move any closer.

“Heya! Never expected to see any of you the whole way out here!” Her smile widens, digital blue eyes shining with interest. “ What’cha doing, hm~?”

“‘Out here?’” Akito echoes and looks around. It's still the same repeating buildings and streets, still no side road in sight. “You know where we are? Wait, how’d you—?”

“This is the edge of the Sekai!” Luka-san spreads her arms wide like a game show host, her shadow swallowing the crack in the road. “I mean, it was.” She flicks her hair, earring flashing. “It's usually pretty floaty around here, but it's here here since you're here, so I guess it can’t be the ‘edge’ right now. If you aren't here, then it doesn't have to be anything anymore.” She nods sagely as his brain fights to unscramble all of that. “So! What brings you alllll the way out here? ”

Akito shakes his head. Is this why he's stuck? ‘Cause he's near the edge… maybe? Whatever. If she's here, that at least means the others can get to him, but how? Could he leave the same way? “I was chasin’ a cat—”

“One appeared in the Sekai?!” Luka-san says, leaning forward excitedly. Her long hair moves around her with the force of the motion, the shadow of it dancing on the brick like a bird flying overhead. “Are they cute~? Did you guys name them yet? You should let me do it!" 

“It's got a name,” he says quickly, pressure already building in his head. How does he get her back on track? “Momiji. Toya saved it and brought it in, but where did you—?”

“A real cat?" Her excited tone's gone, voice pitching high with worry. "Running around here?”

The whole time he's known her, Luka-san's constantly been on the brink of too relaxed. She moves without any real tension in her body, fast but easy, more like the wind than a person. Even when she sings, there's always a looseness to it that's the opposite of him, his own body sometimes tighter than a spring from how much power he forces through it. As unserious as she can act, he does admire it.

This is the stillest he's ever seen her. Her eyebrows knit together, and she straightens, body a stiff line as her mouth flattens. Even her hair seems to settle down, her shadow unmoving, the silver on her skirt dimmer. Anyone else, he probably wouldn’t’ve thought about it too hard, but Luka-san? It makes his already frayed nerves flare, burning even shorter. 

Akito nods, shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, 's that bad? It can’t fall off the edge or somethin’, right?” It's mostly a joke, but Luka-san's not laughing.

Ice lodges itself in his chest, chills him to the bone. What does falling off the edge of the Sekai even mean? It’ll just kinda float around? 

Or something worse?

“It shouldn’t!” Luka-san says quickly. “We just can't let it get too far from us.” There's a weird undertone in her voice, like a single voice in a backing track is just a hair off pitch. He’d almost say it's a lie, but it kinda breaks his brain to think about, like the lock on the cafe. She's hiding something.

He can see her realize he's noticed before she sighs, slumping. “It was gonna be a surprise!” she whines, surprisingly Rin-like as she pushes her cheeks out. “The Sekai's… well, it's doing something, but I dunno what yet. It's not really showing around Meiko's, but it's suuuuper obvious out here.” She waves toward the door. “I think it's why you and Momiji got so close to the edge. Usually the Sekai could turn you both around before you got here, but it's distracted doing other stuff.”

He nods, pieces finally slotting into place. “So you're worried whatever's goin’ on out here’ll let the cat get where it shouldn’t.”

“Like I said, it should be fine as long as they don’t get too far away from you.” Luka-san gives him a reassuring smile, but his brain catches on the ‘should’ like sticking his finger through a small hole in his jacket pocket. “It’d also be awful if the lil' guy got hurt running around after the trouble Toya-kun went through to rescue it!”

That makes Akito sigh. He can just picture how devastated Toya’d be, too, the deep frown and the sad downturn of his eyes… He’d probably even try to hide it if he thought Akito would blame himself, and he can’t add that to Toya's plate.

Time presses down on him likea boulder as he looks around the endless street. “Okay, but how're we supposed to find it? There's nowhere to go!”

“Oh?” Luka-san puts a hand on her chin, thoughtful. Her eyes drift to the side, staring at wall near the trash can lid before going back to him. “Well, the Sekai should react to your feelings waaaay more since you're the only one out this far. Since you're looking for Momiji, it might be trying to help, y’know?”

He holds back a snort. Yeah, it's real helpful sending him in circles. There's nowhere to go! It's all the same except for—

The white room peeks through the glass, pristine.

…Well, it's better than walking in circles.

Akito goes to the door near the window, Luka-san a few steps behind. It's an industrial gray, the kind that's only really meant for employees to see as they dump trash, and its handle's just a solid, horizontal bar of metal. He doesn’t really expect it to give under his hands, but it does, and damn does it feel like he's about to wander into some random shop. Still, he slowly pushes the bar in.

There's no faint click of the latch; the door was already opened. It moves with his light push, and the hinges barely squeak as he swings it open completely.

Any clinging doubts about this change in plans disappears in a flash. That cat easily could've slipped in here, and he wouldn't’ve heard a thing.

The inside of the building might as well be another planet, a clear line between the street and the clean carpet like the world's just decided to stitch itself together at the doorway. The room is even longer than he expected, and both sides end way past where this building should let it. Outside the big windows, bushes and trees too green for fall stand proudly in sunlight way too bright for this early in the morning.

Unless he's been here longer than he thought.

Akito pulls out his phone, letting out a breath when it lights up to show it's before ten. It hasn’t even been an hour since he woke up. Still, he rubs at his eyes as he puts it back in his pocket. Feels like it's been days. 

Experimentally, Akito sticks his hand out and wiggles his fingers in the room. It feels normal. He pokes his head inside to look around the corner where the small window he looked through should be, but there's no sign of it, just more tables and big-ass windows the whole way down.

Seriously, the hell would a cat be doing here?! He can't remember the last time he was somewhere like this. Last time he even wore a suit was—

“It's the weddin’ hall,” he says suddenly, pulling his head out, “from when Toya helped out with that actin’ gig.”

“Is it?!” Luka-san rushes up behind him. “Oh, wow! It's so pretty~!”

He shifts out of the way, trying to think as she shoves her own head inside. Why the wedding hall? He hasn’t been here in awhile. Something's not adding up, but his brain won't grab the thought long enough to do anything with it, exhaustion making it clumsy.

…Could be random? Guess it doesn't really matter when there's nowhere else to go and a time crunch hanging over his head.

“Luka-san,” Akito says finally, “you mind holdin’ the door? I’m gonna drag one of the tables over to keep it open.” Even if it's some fake version, using a trash can off the street feels wrong in a place this nice.

There's still no obvious air change when he walks in completely. The carpet feels like carpet under his feet, and his eyes take a minute to adjust to the light change, no different than going into Crase Cafe. Only Luka-san and the door stick out, both of them like a magazine cutout slapped onto a nice painting.

From this angle, everything really is exactly like he remembers, from the tables to the colors to the big double doors on either side of the hall. It's only the silence that's different since he’d been running the dance routine almost constantly the whole time he was here.

He grabs the closest table, the wood smooth and well-maintained underneath the table cloth. It feels sturdy, but it still moves dangerously under the weight of the door when Luka-san lets go. He drags another one over for good measure, finally satisfied it won’t move, and sighs.

There's no sign of Momiji.

“It's gotta be under a table,” he says to Luka-san, not a single tablecloth twitching as his voice. Can't be that easy. “Let's work our way down. Be ready for it to run.”

The two of them slowly work their way down, the only sound their quick footsteps and the soft shhh of the shifting tablecloths. They're silky on his fingers like he expected, all of them way too damn expensive to be tossed carelessly up over the tables like he's doing, but it's the easiest way to keep track as he goes. It's fine— it's not real, he's not gonna crease the nice cloth— but he stops about two-thirds of the way down, watching the tablecloth bunch as he drops it. 

…Something's not right about it. It reminds him of when Ena used to bug him about her drawings way back when they were kids, asking about proportions ‘n stuff. She got pretty mad when he couldn’t give her anything more than “It looks wrong,” and then he got pissed because he was trying to help. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t figure out the arm was too short or something! He just knew something was off.

The worst was when he did get better at pointing it out; she got even angrier when he figured it out before her. He stopped telling her real fast after that.

Akito moves closer to the table, lifting the cloth back up, rubbing it between his fingers, and— that's what it is! The fabric looks way thicker than it should be for silk, but it feels thin between his fingers. And if he really stares at it, the texture of it looks like it should be way rougher too, but it still feels like silk, even though there's no way it should.

Anxiety gnaws coldly at his throat, tightening it.

…He shoves it back on the tabletop and tries not to think about it. It's not important for what he needs to do. 

The noon sun beams him in the face as he goes to the next table, and he scowls, turning his back to it. Everything in his brain's screaming at him it's later than it is, but he knows it's not even close to ten. He's still got a good amount of time before he needs to be at the clinic, but the longer it takes, the worse his appointment's gonna start chafing him, rubbing him raw. Rescheduling it would be a damn nightmare with how busy they are. He's gotta try and avoid it.

Sighing, he lifts the table cloth in front of him. Worst case, he might be able to get them to squeeze him in later today if he's lucky, but he's not holding his breath with the way the day's been going—

“Shit!” Akito yelps, reflexes kicking in just in time to grab at the orange shape that lunges past him.

The tip of its tail slips right through his hands, an instant too slow, and he barely catches his weight with his hands to keep from falling off of his feet.

“Luka-san,” he gasps, stumbling upright, “the door—!”

But the door they came in's gone. It's just a smooth, blank wall, the two tables they propped against it gone without a trace.

Luka-san sprints past him, not even looking at the wall Akito's gaping at, a flash of pink across his vision. Dammit, get into gear!

He whips around to follow her towards the end of the room, keeping close to the wall in case Momiji tries to get around her. If they can just trap it in a corner, he can wrap it in his jacket, and they can be done with it, and he can help Toya.

Except his eye catches on the doors at the end of the hall. Closer now, he can’t tell if his eyes are playing tricks on him or if one side of it's barely open, just a sliver of a crack that's impossible to see from a distance the perfect size for a cat to slip through.

There's no way in hell, right?

Luka-san hasn’t noticed, squarely focused on Momiji, ready to strike, and he tries to force his legs faster despite the screaming in his chest, tries to get ahead of her to slam the door closed, but it's too late; the cat's already seen it. It dodges her grab at it, takes off with a burst of speed—

And slips through the crack in the door.

Luka-san doesn’t manage to slow down time, almost crashing into the door, turning at the last moment to stumble into the wall, upright but dazed.

Akito, a few steps behind, just barely manages to pull back enough to turn his last few steps to the door into a jog. He fumbles for the knob, ignoring the burning in his lungs— this binder fucking sucks! — and throws the door open, bracing for the full force of the summer sun directly into his eyes as he runs forward.

Instead, he sputters to a stop in the doorway, squinting against fluorescent lights and a harsh, clinical white. 

The room's practically a shoebox compared to the wedding hall. Its ceiling's probably a normal height, but it feels low, ready to cave in on him in a heartbeat, the lights unbearably close. The floor's crowded with clusters of the same uncomfortable gray chairs arranged in tight rows, all facing away from him towards a small, flickering TV embedded onto the white wall. The nurses' station gapes at him, empty.

Crisp pamphlets full of smiling people with peppy titles like "Understanding Mental Health” and “Know Your Discrimination Protections!” lay on the side tables nearby. A few creased, dog-eared magazines from a decade ago are mixed in, faded covers with unfamiliar celebrities peeking between the gaps in the bright new pamphlets.

It doesn’t even take him a heartbeat to recognize it. He's standing in his clinic's waiting room.

But why?!

Luka-san moves beside him, and, as instinctive as a flinch, he pulls the door towards him to hide it from view. There's not even a stutter in her step, easily pushing it open without a second glance and moving further inside. Her head whips back and forth as she searches, still trying to catch her breath from the sprint as she impatiently pushes her wild hair from her face. She drops to her hands and knees to check under the chairs in one smooth motion, pink fanning over the tile.

Hot shame and frustration melt together in his throat, coating his airway like soot, and Akito quickly follows her the rest of the way inside. He stuffs his jacket in the door— it's not gonna actually help but the thought of just letting it close makes his skin crawl— and tries to make up for his slip up by checking the door near the nurses' station, but it's too late. It's wide open, no cat in sight, just a long hallway that splits at the end. Whatever glimpse he could’ve gotten when he first walked in he wasted.

Another stupid mistake.

Sighing, Luka-san stands up, but her eyes widen as she really notices the room, blue shining curiously as her expression shifts to something almost gawking. The silver on her skirt reflects onto the wall as she turns to take another look around, tracing her progress in a quick circle. It's so damn weird seeing her here, full-sized and solid in the empty waiting room. Her eyes settle on him as she finishes, and her eyebrows raise in question.

Akito turns away, grabbing a side table to prop open the door. "We’ll have to split up,” he says before she can talk. The pamphlets and magazines on top of the table scatter on the clean floor like dying leaves as he pushes it in place. “The hall behind the door splits, and I think both those halls go a couple different ways, so we're gonna have to hope we pick the right one.”

He swipes his jacket off the floor, frowning at the harsh smear of red in the doorway, but he's learned his lesson: don't get distracted. There's none on his jacket, so it's not his problem. He pulls it back on.

“The Sekai's pulling from you,” Luka-san says like it's not a big deal, like it doesn't stab him in the gut, body flinching. The fluorescent lights wash her out and make her expression sharper; he's always hated the lack of windows in this room. “Whichever way you usually go's a good bet.”

He hums. It's all he can manage. An uncomfortable buzzing rattles his head, a feeling almost like the cold rush of panic when getting caught, but he's not! It's not some deep, dark secret. He's never actively lied about going to the clinic every few weeks, and it doesn’t matter if Luka-san sees it, either. It's stupid.

It's stupid, but it lingers. 

It's just…it's like if Kohane accidentally burst into his room. He'd’ve probably let her see it if she asked, sure, but he doesn’t want her to wander in. There wasn't any chance to clean up, shit thrown everywhere and no time to pick what she sees.

Whatever. It doesn't matter. It can't matter.

Swallowing it down, Akito points to the hallway near the nurse station. “We’ll take a right at the first turn,” he says, words heavy on his tongue. “I’ve only been that way.”

There's not much to see once they reach his usual hallway, just a clean white floor and boring pale walls. Even the basic blue color of all the doors isn't anything more than a functional way to make them more obvious. There's not a single hair to hint at which one the cat disappeared behind, but all of them're slightly cracked open, nice and inconvenient.

He sighs. They better get started. He goes to the closest one and pushes it open.

But it doesn't move. 

Frowning, he pushes harder. It shimmies barely a centimeter and nothing else. 

He doesn't have time for this! Scowling, Akito puts his shoulder on the door before changing his mind and braces his foot near the doorknob instead. His scuffed shoe on the spotless door makes him pause, close his eyes. There's a big chance this just straight up breaks the wood, but it's the Sekai, not the real clinic. Even if it feels wrong, it's fine.

Breathing in deeply, he counts— one…two…three!— and sharply shoves his foot forward as he exhales. Hinges groan in protest, the impact racing up his leg, but the crack widens enough for him and Luka-san to get through, the wood still in one piece.

“Nice work, Akito-kun~!” Luka-san cheers. “I wanna do the next one!”

Humming absentmindedly in response, he considers the rest of the hall as Luka-san slips inside. There's a little over a dozen rooms. If he starts on the other side and Luka-san stays here, they should be able to pincher the cat between them. Even if it gets passed, they closed door at the start of this hallway to keep it from getting back to the waiting room. No matter what, they’ll have it in the bag.

“I’m gonna start on the other end,” he says, raising his voice to be heard through the door. “You take this room—”

Something clatters on the other side. “Oh, what's— Ah!?” There's more clattering, a loud thump.

Shit, he forgot; it's her first time seeing a doctor's office! Who knows what’ll be in there! He quickly squeezes his upper body through the door.

The blood pressure cuff thing's hanging off its mount, still swaying against the wall as Luka-san pokes its rubbery texture, eyes wide and unhurt. She at least looks guilty when Akito frowns at her, concern pivoting to annoyance in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t stop her from pointing at it and looking at him expectantly. “What's this do?”

“It doesn't look like there's anythin’ dangerous out, but don't touch stuff,” he says, ignoring her sulking when he doesn’t answer. “We got a decent shot to corner it, so let's work fast.”

Luka-san's shoulders slump, her dejection more dramatic thanks to her jacket falling lower on her arms, her exaggerated sigh. She nods, but her eyes catch eagerly on the stethoscope hanging nearby.

Akito sighs. “I’ll tell you 'bout whatever stuff you see later,” he says, and she peps right back up. Her excitement eases some of the sting of her being here, at least, even if it's not contagious. “Also, when you kick the doors open, make sure you kick near the knob. Be careful not to hit it with your foot. The safest way's to…”

Again they work their way down the hall, and, again, it's repetitive as hell. Even kicking open doors isn't enough to break up searching what's basically the same room over and over, the identical furniture arranged with the slightest variation like an overused sample. Every single one's got the same built-in wall desk, the same stiff medical bed, the same basic medical equipment, and the same window overlooking the empty street outside. They've all got the same two chairs, too— one against the wall for the patient and one near the desk for the doctor.

Despite the slog, there's that feeling creeping up his back again every time he enters a new room, the one from the wedding hall. Something's off, and he doesn't know what. It mixes with the buzzing in his head, a background refrain of nails softly dragging down a chalkboard he can't shake that splits off part of his attention.

Akito tries to force himself to concentrate, replaying the brief brush of fur against his fingertips in his mind, but doesn't matter. He can’t help trying to figure out what's off like poking at a loose tooth.

Every time he checks under the furniture his eyes linger, the impossibly silky tablecloth in the back of his mind, but there's not much to mess up. ‘S not like he knows a lot about the medical stuff, but the stethoscopes aren't fuzzy or nothing. The chairs and beds're the usual slightly uncomfortable material, too. It's gotta be something obvious if he's getting that feeling immediately in the doorway, but he can’t put his finger on it, a chorus from a song he only half-remembers.

The constant looks Luka-san keeps shooting him aren't helping, either, another bit of his limited attention taken. He catches glimpses of her expression getting more and more concerned between rooms, but she's not stopping and that's all that matters. He wants to get out of here as soon as he can.

The quiet of it all makes it worse— nah, it's the emptiness that's the problem. The clinic's always crowded, voices bouncing around the halls in low tones and a chaotic drumbeat of movement as nurses and doctors run around. For it to be deserted but squeaky clean… it's like they all just disappeared without a trace right before Momiji slipped in.

If there was something to prove people’d been in here or even the distant sound of the city outside, it wouldn't be so damn eerie. Instead it's just two sets of footsteps broken up by loud kicks and screaming hinges, him and Luka-san the only two living things in an empty world.

At least he's been kicking the doors open wide enough to keep from hitting his chest on it when he slides in. One more thing and he's gonna start climbing the walls.

Akito straightens up from checking under a desk and rubs his eyes. Through the window on the far wall, the bright cityscape sits innocently, the late morning light still at odds with his phone clock. The sun's just high enough to miss beaming directly in his eyes when standing, but, if he sits in one of the chairs, it’ll blind him like he's used to. Makes sense since his appointments're always a little before lunch, but the stark reminder that this's all directly from his head makes it feel like ice chips are stabbing in his already raw brain. 

Fuck, he hates this feeling! It always reminds him of the time in elementary school when a classmate blurted out his dad's That Shinonome, You Know, The Painter. Sure, the annoying comments only lasted for a few weeks, but everyone always knew after that, and it poked at him like a bad rhyme until he graduated, this thing he couldn’t do anything about. 

Squeezing back out into the hallway, he goes to the door across the hall, giving it a good kick before slipping inside. It's the same desk, same bed, same chairs he's had to look under in the last four rooms. He straightens up from checking under a desk. Through the window on the far wall, the bright cityscape sits innocently, the late morning light still at odds with his phone clock. The sun's just high enough to miss beaming directly in his eyes when standing, but, if he sits in one of the chairs, it’ll blind him like usual. It makes sense since—

…Hold on a damn minute.

Akito slides back out, crosses to the other room, and shoves his head inside, shivering as he stares out the window. The sun's in the same position on the opposite side of the building.

There are two suns in the sky. 

Anger safely obliterates the fear before it can sink into him, burning it up as he whips his head back out. This stupid cat better not get away again! They're already in his creepy-ass clinic, so what’d be next? He doesn't wanna go anywhere else!

Honestly, if he had to choose, he’d rather end up back in the weird fragment desert depending on what shows up next; at least he knows how to get through that. Wouldn't even be as bad as the first time as long as he doesn't get memory wiped again. Plus, he’d still have Luka-san if he did. She can't be any worse than the Kagamines.

Akito glances at her, accidentally catching her eye— well, "catching" implies she's not straight up staring at him now. Her lips are in a tight frown like she can barely hold the words back, and it only gets more exaggerated when she realizes he's looking, nakedly prompting him to ask what's wrong.

He's not doing this. He turns to the next room.

Luka-san gasps and stomps her foot. “Akito-kun! Don’t ignore me!” She rushes up to him, boots clacking on the tile. “Are you sick?!”

Akito can't quite hold back his sigh. “No.” 

“But you have to come here a lot for this to show up so detailed!” Her frown shifts, just on the edge of a pout, and she puts her hand on her hip. “Do the others know and I just missed it?”

Another vague dismissal's already on his tongue, but Akito holds it back and lets it dissolve on his tongue. He takes in her furrowed eyebrows, her pout. Her eyes are searching, a bit too keen to be comfortable.

And he wonders, not for the first time, if she already knows about him.

Akito's personally told a handful of people about his transition, and they're the people who have to know: his family, his doctor, some teachers. Toya. It sucks every time, a few mortifying notches above walking up to someone and blurting out his fear of dogs, and he does everything he can to avoid ever having to do it. 

By now he's learned deal with both the people who know and the ones who don’t. They're simple. Straightforward. The mental calculations he has to do aren't any harder than working retail, quickly cataloging the knowledge level in any given room and acting accordingly.

Frankly, it's the people who might know that drive him fucking crazy.

It's the guy who asks about the weird spandex he wears when he helps with the soccer club and frowns at his bullshit answer. It's the classmate who teases him a bit too sharply about changing in the bathroom. It's even Akiyama, eyes just like Luka-san's, a little too knowing. All of them're like going through his shift blind, fumbling his way through conversations he can only guess the dimensions of.

Vivid Street's a special kind of hell. It's a town that saw him pre-T, that saw him angry and squeaky and over-confident and wrecked him like he deserved. They talked about it in whispers as they bitched about him, in jeers about his unstable voice, in complaints about his attitude. Everyone knew, even if most of them were too nice to mention it like Ken-san and An.

But eventually, there were people who didn’t know. New performers. New live houses. EVER. Kohane. People left, came back as new groups, all mixing together until he couldn’t keep it straight. Now no one says it, and it's like waiting for the damn whistle to go off during a losing soccer game, trying to beat the buzzer even as he knows it’ll come.

Sometimes he thinks he can see it in some of the eyes on the street, can sometimes hear it in the odd backhanded compliment, but it's impossible to tell what's real and what's nothing more than a shadow in the corner of his eye. No one knows, and everyone knows, and he can’t do anything about it.

…Occasionally, when he's feeling particularly delusional, he wonders if he's actually got away with it. If his attitude and his layered clothes really do camouflage him completely now. If his voice's deep enough to hide his smooth throat, strong enough to overwrite the memory of a dumbass thirteen year old, and loud enough to make them think he was like any teen boy squeaking his way through puberty.

But it can’t be. He can try to erase that kid all he wants; the town’ll always remember. Graffiti doesn't disappear if you paint over it, just hides and waits for the paint to peel. All he can do is keep climbing higher and higher until they have to acknowledge what he is now, no more room for only that stupid teenager at Crawl Green in their minds, overwriting him until he's a second thought.

Akito considers Luka-san again. Then, dully, like pressing on a fading bruise to see if it still hurts, he wonders what it’d be like to actually ask her if she knows. 

The virtual singers are different from normal people. This Sekai's made of their team's feelings, and all of them are a little too perceptive to be natural, something he just kinda got used to at some point. It's helped them out way too many times for him to care by now, but he's got no way of knowing how deep that sixth sense goes.

Luka-san specifically is driven by instinct, in and out like the breeze, blowing in long enough to be as sharp as a razor before disappearing. He's got his issues with her, but she's helped him more times than he can count with her intuition, including with his task. When he thinks of his gratitude towards Ken-san, she and the rest of the virtual singers aren’t far behind. There's not a lot he wouldn’t tell them if he needed to.

It's just… he's never really liked talking about the past or himself, not even as a kid, not even when it's unrelated to his transition. What's the point? What's done is done, but today, he could do something and keep moving. He won't blow people off if they ask— he's not gonna lie or make excuses— but he's not blabbing in the meantime.

The cold, exposed buzzing that's been going since he walked into the clinic clashes with the steady grateful flame that's thrummed through his body ever since his break through with Ken-san, a hurricane inside him. He blindly reaches for something to ground himself in the chaos, some guiding feeling to break through.

What comes out on top, like a spotlight on a dark stage, is the same thing that made him go to the virtual singers for help with his task. Trust calms everything down, the extremes equalizing into something steady, something manageable.

“'s a routine thing I gotta do,” Akito says haltingly, words caught in his throat. “A— hormone issue. Nothin’ serious.” A heartbeat. “Meiko-san knows I go here, but nothin’ else.”

Luka-san's blue eyes still look right through him, a soft techno-glow to them that's never seemed inhuman. Sometimes she reminds him of Ken-san and his too-pointed comments, but her careful look is more like An when she nods and says, “Got it.” She mimes locking her lips and flicks the imaginary key away. “Don’t worry! I do know how to keep my mouth shut. Just didn't want to be left out~!”

His nod's more like a jerk of his head. “...Thanks,” he says genuinely, his heart beating embarrassingly hard. He clears his throat and turns back to the next door, raising his foot to press next to the knob and end the conversation—

And almost falls over when it moves under his weight, swining open. 

Akito quickly jumps for it, grabbing the knob and slamming it shut before anything can get out, the sound echoing in the bewildered silence.

…Experimentally, he turns the knob and pushes the door. It cracks open soundlessly. He closes it again.

He and Luka-san look at each other, eyes wide. This's the only door that's been normal. Does that mean the cat's…?

Energy zaps through his system like pre-show jitters, but there's no last minute mental run through of the set he can do to distract himself here, no crowd or teammates to feed off of. He settles for taking a deep breath, chest limited against his binder, and nods to Luka-san. She nods back after a heartbeat and moves to the side of the door, low and tense, ready to grab for anything that jumps out if he's too slow. 

He breaths in, quietly taps to three with his fingers…

 Like ripping off a bandage, Akiot quickly jerks the door open, slipping inside and slamming it behind him.

It's the same desk, the same stiff hospital bed, the same chairs, same window. There's no movement. There's no sound except his heart beating in his ears. He refuses to believe it until he goes through the usual checks, runs through them an extra time, but it doesn’t change anything.

The cat's not in here. 

He groans, swiping an agitated hand through his hair, hating the feeling of it sticking up. Was this door just a random fluke? Is it really like this for the hell of it? Other ones’ve been easier to kick open than others, yeah, but none of them were this easy. Still, even after a third sweep he's still alone, and he slams his fist into the bed, the impact shuttering through his arm. Dammit! What's with this place?!

Luka-san's clearly expecting him to have it, impatiently bouncing on her heels, silver accents flashing in the harsh light as she looks at him excitedly. It's another full-body deflation when he shakes his head, the silver accents on her skirt going dim in her shadow, but she rebounds fast, flashing in the light. “Next one,” she says confidently, hand on her hip.

He takes a breath and nods, still simmering but not boiling over. He shuts the door behind him. Next one.

They go for the one across the hall. It's not a huge surprised when it moves without any effort, but Luka-san tilts her head as she hums softly, a thoughtful hand touching her chin. There's a slight crease between her eyebrows. Her mouth's slightly downturned, but it quickly smooths out as she moves to get into position again, gone like a soft sigh. He hesitates before directing his attention back; she’d tell him if it mattered.

Again, Akito easily opens the door and quickly slips inside, slamming it behind him. It's the same desk, the same stiff hospital bed, the same chairs, same door, same window. There's no movement. There's no sound except his heartbeat in his ears. He refuses to believe it until he goes through the usual checks, runs through them an extra time, but it doesn’t change—

Abruptly, his eyes land on the second door. 

He closes his eyes. Opens them. 

It's still there.

…That's right! It completely slipped his mind, but the rooms should’ve had two doors the whole time. They all connect to some back hallway the nurses and doctors use that he's never seen, and he can always hear them moving while he waits. 

Akito's stomach drops like a vase. A feeling close to acceptance shatters through his body. The door looks closed from this angle, but something in him already knows it's not even before he moves closer and sees the small crack of space between it and the frame. Swearing, he opens the first door for Luka-san, hurrying her inside.

But he flinches as he looks across the hall, caught like a bug under a microscope, instinctual panic locking his joints. Perfectly framed by the wide open door he definitely shut, the sun stares at him, a looming, slightly bloodshot eye. A red ray of light slashes its way across hallway, growing thinner as it gropes towards him, the tip of it resting just a few meters away from his shoes.

Distantly, Akito realizes if he stood in the middle of the hall, he could see two suns in the sky.

The doors for the other rooms beside it start slowly moving, all of them creaking open in unison, every one just a little too off-tone to be in harmony. They grow louder as doors further down the hall join in, adding on like a microphone feedback loop, building and building as they open wider, more red sunlight leaking into the hall until the white floor is crimson—

He slams the door shut behind him, the noise cutting off.

Irritation floods his system, trying to drown the awful chill racing up his body, the sound of creaking doors still echoing in his mind. It's not much better than trying to dry off with a washrag. The after image of the sun flashes behind his eyelids with each blink.

Keep moving.

Looking at the new door, the sourest version of anticipation he's ever had makes his blood feel like it's freezing in his veins, a tight feeling squeezing his chest, his lungs ice. The shadows, the color, the knob— there's nothing obviously off. It's just a normal door with a few off-color chips of paint, but it feels like staring down a snarling dog, waiting for it to snap at him. There's gotta be something off about it again.

“Can Momiji just wander back through?” he says a little desperately.

Luka-san's not looking at him, staring at it as her eyebrows sink lower and lower, hand back on her chin. “They can,” she says, tone clearly implying it won’t. As deep in thought as she is, she doesn't look scared. She barely looks worried.

…Oh, there's nothing actually wrong with the door. It's just him. It's dread.

Of course it is; there's nothing he wants less than to walk in that door. He's got no idea what it's gonna open up to, what it’ll expose for him. He'd rather take his chances back in the hallway.

But he thinks about Toya's devastated expression if he comes back without the cat, lost at the edge of the Sekai, and doesn’t even need to think that hard about it. He’d go through hell and back to keep that from happening. 

A hot burst of determination's only enough to thaw him into something resigned. He's going through that door. Now it's just how long he wants to bitch and moan about it.

For better or worse, he's never been one to drag his feet.

Impossibly tired, Akito sighs. The door knob feels like every other one in the building, smooth and clean despite its constant use. It doesn’t make him feel any better. “Let's get this over with.”

“Wait, Akito-kun—”

With a sharp jerk, he quickly yanks it open and hurries inside, stuffy and unmoving air oppressive on his skin.

Some of the worst singing Akito's ever heard claws at his eardrums, Luka-san's voice drowned out as his body physically reels from the impact, hands reflexively coming up to protect his ears. It's like walking into a live house stuffed with a million groups warming up at once, different notes and songs and skill levels clashing against each other all wrapped up in the grating squeak of kids' voices. Faintly, underneath it all, a piano's desperately trying to lead the mess into some song, but it only makes everything worse, another car on a kilometer-long collision clogging the air.

He turns to the source of the noise— it's barely music at this point— and meets about two dozen human-shaped shadows lined up against the wall to his left. Their featureless faces are all turned towards him, fidgeting as the music somehow gains another distinct melody. He’d swear they were kids if they weren’t so damn tall! None of them look or sound older than second graders, but they're all about his height.

Actually, it's not just them; the whole room's just a little too big to be right. The ceiling stretches almost as high as the wedding hall's, oversized lights longer than him hanging above, and he can just barely see over the edge of the windows lining the wall. Only a few massive trees are visible through a gap in the curtains, the leaves just barely beginning to shift colors. A taller shadow looms over a huge piano across the room, warped by the angle, but it's definitely more adult looking than the rest as it plays away with its blank face. On the other side of the room, he can see a long, once-familiar hallway through the sliding door's window.

Like taking a soccer ball to the side of the head, he realizes exactly where he is as Luka-san rushes in.

Akito wants out of here. He wants to be literally anywhere else. His body jitters with it, a shot of adrenaline numbing his hands like his voice just cracked during a performance, exposed and ugly, a million eyes on his mistake. He wants out of here right fucking now.

But he's gotta find this cat, because his partner cares about it so damn much and he can't keep letting him down.

The music room's way bigger than he knows it is— he's looking at it through a kid's height, he realizes— but it gives him an easy view of anything the cat would be under, let's him sweep the room easier. Small blessings.

He swats at the curtains hiding the summer sun, blinding himself. It's not there. 

He kneels beside the piano, the sound reverberating in his skull. It's not there.

He opens the classroom's storage closet, rattles the instruments inside to draw it out. It's not there.

He hears a loud, high voice in the song and wants to slam his hands over his ears. It's not here.

All this and it's not even fucking here!

His chest feels like he's been impaled, close to bleeding out. His hands're shaking like he could turn into ice from the inside out. His heart beats in his ears, mixing with the noise that won’t stop, his thoughts mud, choking him, but it's fine. He's dragged himself through worse. He just has to keep moving. If he keeps moving—

There's motion in the corner of his eye. He whips his head around, just barely making out an orange-yellow fur ball on the other side of the door in the school hallway, a path of smeared red paw prints in front of it.

Luka-san's coming towards him. Her mouth's moving, the words impossible to hear, but her concerned expression's obvious enough for him to turn away. He points at the door, rushes towards the exit to get Momiji. To get out.

A ray of sun beams directly into Akito's eyes as he crosses the room. The noise gains another octave. The dread's back, souring his stomach, rancid, and he tries not to think of what's on the other side. He wants it to not be this. Just be something else!

Momiji meets his eyes through the glass, eyes wide and body frozen in shock. The door fights Akito, sticking in the frame, rattling dangerously as he shoves at it and shoves at it, metal handhold biting at his palm until it finally gives way, slamming home. He rushes past, catching its rebound on his shoulder as he steps forward, the cat already turning to run—

He blinks, blinded by clashing neon lights for the terrifying heartbeats it takes for his eyes to adjust, shoulder throbbing in time. Stumbling, he staggers forward a few steps into a ring of shadow people, the colored lights barely visible through their bodies. It's impossible to know, but it feels like they're staring at him.

In the center of the circle with him are three shapes. One of them sings, the sound piercing straight through him like a bullet. Akito grabs his chest with the force of it, and one of the other shadows mirrors him. That voice is Tono's! And the live house behind him… there's no doubt about it. This's the place he first battled Tono and got his ass handed to him, which means this is—!

Akito freezes, eyes locked beyond the ring of spectating shadows. His overloaded brain scrambles to make sense of it even as it refuses to accept what he sees, searching for what he knows should be there and buckling at the lack of it.

Vivid Street's the kinda place that never really goes dark, not completely. Between the bars, the live houses, and the shops, there's always some pinprick of light a couple buildings down leading the way or some performer bathing a corner with cheap stage lights.

A few meters beyond the ring of shadows is the type of darkness he's only ever seen in the woods, the kind when the stars're blocked out completely by trees and his own hand's invisible a few centimeters from his face. It flickers faintly like a candle— no, like a busted screen. The whole of it never lights up at once, different chunks visible just long enough to expose a gray, fuzzy emptiness that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Momiji! Where is it… there's no way it…

There's movement beyond Tono's shadow, and Akito rushes ahead, relief a speed boost. He flies past the shadows’ eyeless looks and away from the song, taking two steps at a time down the stairs of the live house, shouting at Luka-san to follow as she bursts onto the street. He barely stops himself from tripping down the last few steps, grabbing the door just as Momiji disappears inside the crack and throwing himself in after.

Akito bursts into his own bedroom, the walls and shelves unnervingly empty. Late afternoon light leaks through white blinds. Soccer posters are littered on the floor, and he almost trips on a box full of junk, barely missing a trophy that's sticking out of the top, the fake gold color a gross brown in the low light.

A small shadow's picking at the tape still stuck on the wall. The poster in its hand is wrinkled to hell and back, the player's face a mess of creases. There's a sound coming from it, low and muffled, quiet enough he might be hearing things.

The closet door creaks. He rips his eyes from the shadow and runs.

The dingy, off-color lighting of backstage almost makes Akito lose Momiji for a plummeting heartbeat, only its bright, orange fur blazing in the sliver of light leaking from the stage saving his ass. He keeps moving forward, ignoring the burning that's starting in his chest as he dodges around more shadows, lungs constricted.

Black clouds his vision. A shadow steps in front of him as it laughs, and he curses as he steps around it, his hand coming up to brace on its shoulder as he over balances. It goes right through, a shiver trembling up his body as he stumbles, disoriented as the shadow walks away without noticing.

Half a room away, he can barely see Momiji trying to duck through the shadows, slowed down as it darts back and forth. Akito takes a deep breath, pushing aside the instinct screaming at him, and rushes straight into the shadows in his way, eyes locked on the cat to ignore the bodies he flies through. 

Momiji leads him around to the front of the live house. The floor's filled to the brim, and the music hits him full force for the first time, the voice that rings out inexperienced and unsteady with nerves. It's hard not to look, but he doesn't need to. He can picture the shadow that's alone on the stage, angry and small and sticking out like a sore thumb in a place like Crawl Green.

Even now the crowd works against him. The shadows shift just enough for Momiji to keep finding a space to slip through, a few steps ahead. With the kind of anger that's more smoke than fire, he watches it duck through the exit door. 

Akito follows. He doesn’t know what else to do; he has to keep going. He runs through an alley on Vivid Street past a group of shadows fighting. He runs through a classroom, a boy loudly asking about his dad. He runs through the hallway of his house, Ena's crying loud in the silence, the sound following him through the doorway.

He runs through Toya's bedroom, the bed mercifully empty. He runs through Kamiyama Street, a shadow squeaking as it relearns to sing for a lower voice. He runs past a soccer field, the score board a damning 5-1. He runs past Vivid Street, An's loud sobs echoing. He runs, and he runs, and he runs deeper. Room after room blends into each other, each door just another shitty scene in the slideshow, the odd darkness always flickering dangerously a few dozen meters away, waiting.

In front of him, no matter how fast either of them seems to run, Momiji's always just out of reach. Behind him, Luka-san follows.

Akito's legs tremble as he tries to keep them at a steady pace, too scared to chance slowing down. His lungs ache, tearing at his insides for space to get down more air. He's reaching his limits, but he's ignored those before, just like he ignores the scenes flashing at his peripheral. By pure luck he's just barely keeping up, and he refuses for it to be a matter of time until it runs out. He's catching Momiji.

Exhausted, he reaches for another door. Just once, he wants what's on the other side to be somewhere he can pause, somewhere safe or a dead end to finally put an end to this awful chase. He throws it open, braced for more bullshit, steps forward—

And straight into Weekend Garage, quiet and empty and whole.

Chapter Text

Akito stumbles to a stop in the sudden silence, chest heaving, an immediate release of pressure that's more disorienting than relieving.

Then, shaking it off— don’t blow it now; keep moving— he moves quickly out of the doorway and further in, no sign of Momiji making anxiety spike in his gut. There's another door on the far left wall that hides a hallway with the bathroom and back door. It's the only place it can get out.

The door's still closed when he peaks his head around the corner. After a moment of pushing down the weird feeling of trespassing, he tries the knob. 

It's locked. 

Oh thank fuck, it's locked. That means Momiji should still be moving around. If he can just spot it— 

There's a high, pitchy yelp as he turns around, almost smacking right into Luka-san, both of them barely jerking back in time to avoid her headbutting him.

“Akito-kun!” She's out of breath. Her chest's heaving like his, her hair wild, but her eyes are steady as they sweep over him.

Akito's got no idea what he looks like. All he can picture's the brief glimpse he got in the building windows a million years ago: messy hair, eye bags, wrinkled shirt. His binder feels too tight as he takes in what air it’ll let him, and he can feel where it's rolled up from all the running. 

Something like anger's scratching at his skin, the dying heat of a charred piece of wood. Underneath it, slowly creeping into the cracks as his racing brain slows down, is a cold, tight feeling— fear, he suddenly realizes against his will.

Noticing it pokes holes in his anger, like it was just a smoke machine covering the stage, revealing worn paint and dusty footprints as it disappears. There's a lot she saw that’ll never make sense without context, but there's enough for his whole body to frost with it. What's she gonna think of him after a highlight reel of nothing but failure after failure after failure? 

Akito doesn't want pity. He doesn’t want to be defined by those. He doesn’t want to be the poor bastard who wasted four months of his life learning to sing for a higher voice, or who got picked on by Vivid Street, or who got humiliated on stage, or the million other things he's failed at. They're nothing but excuses people’ll use to keep writing him off when he's only pushed further and further ahead. He's not some fuck up!

He looks around the empty restaurant, not a cat in sight.

He's not…

“I’ll do the first sweep!” Luka-san says finally. There's no obvious change in her attitude towards him, just the frantic, jittery energy after a sudden sprint. “You make sure the cat doesn’t slip out this way, ‘kay~?” Her usual cheeriness's underlined with something surprisingly firm, no room for argument.

It makes him want to argue, but the breath he sucks in goes straight to his burning in his lungs with nothing to spare. He nods, and she turns on her heel, hair fanning around her as she heads back towards the front. 

Once she's gone, Akito quickly ducks into the short hallway in front of the door, pulls the front of his binder as far as it’ll go, and gets a few good gulps of air, the grating motion of sore his chest more uncomfortable than usual after everything. He coughs to clear his lungs just in case, muffling it in his elbow, ears straining for any sign of Luka-san. Luckily it feels like a normal case of a tight binder and too much exercise, but he's definitely gonna have to take it easy tonight and tomorrow.

After a few minutes, he pulls it back down and adjusts himself, a wave of discomfort curdling his already sick stomach, and smooths down the edge. It's gonna roll right back up once he moves, but hey, at least it's nice for now.

Heart rate finally going down, Akito pokes his head out to look around, searching for any movement to keep his mind distracted. 

Weekend Garage's more familiar to him than half the rooms in his house. Ask him the color of Ena's bedspread or the number of windows in his parents’ room, and he’d be guessing blind. Ask him how many bar stools're at the counter or the position of the stage lights, and he’d barely need to think. 

If Akito didn’t know better, he’d think this place was a perfect copy. He can see that the floor's the right kind of wood and feel its smooth finish. The bar's got its usual clean cups and twinkling bottles, their labels gibberish from here, and he can see the booths’ dark red cushions with their faint pattern softly lit by the hanging lamps, the smooth blue of the chairs on the far wall. Even the dark stage area's littered with the right amount of standing tables patiently waiting for a performance.

But he's not stupid; something's gotta be off, even if he can't tell from here.

This place isn’t as empty as he first thought, either. A vaguely Ken-san-shaped shadow relaxes behind the counter. It give him a lazy wave when it notices Akito before going back to work. A few tables down, three more suspiciously recognizable shadows sit in one of the booths, faint laughter drifting his way. The occasional familiar word rises above the soft chatter like the sudden clarity of a voice shouted across a field before it disappears in the other garbled words.

One of the shorter shadows throws its arm around the one beside it. The two morph into one being, a shapeless blob that eventually splits back into two heads, though it looks like they're still touching. It takes him a few heartbeats to notice the tallest one keeps shifting, another few to realize it keeps turning to look at him— to check on him, probably.

The smile on Akito's face's probably sappy as hell, but he can’t really help it. Even with its featureless face, he can picture the slight crease that’d be between Toya's eyebrows, the way it’d smooth out when they'd meet eyes and the small smile he’d get. 

There's a spot open for him right next to the tall one like he could slide right in. He can almost feel the weight of Toya's shoulders when he throws his arm around him, the hard line of his body against his side, his long fingers between his own.

But Akito's here for a reason, and he's not letting himself fail here. 

It's gonna be hard for Luka-san to get the cat by herself. Weekend Garage isn’t huge, but it's got a lotta places to hide. If Momiji manages to keep skirting her, they’ll be here for hours, and he’d rather run sprints up and down Vivid Street than be in here for another ten minutes. It's less creepy than everywhere else's been, but that bar's so low it barely counts.

There's also no point pretending he's not running on fumes even as he shifts back and forth, antsy. The exhaustion's starting to leech at his limbs now that he's stopped running. His legs're burning. His chest's still sore even after catching his breath. His brain's fried, and his emotions feel like a rungout rag, cold and limp. He’d do a lot of things just to close his eyes for five minutes tops, but he can’t afford it. If this stupid cat slips past him again, he might actually fucking lose it. 

Akito rubs his burning eyes, the brief darkness dangerous as he sways, forcing them back open. Ugh, he can just picture having to follow it through this door. What's next? That time the dog came after him when he was little? Or maybe when he was seven, bounced his soccer ball off the wall, and broke his nose? Screw it, maybe they can just go to Phoenix Wonderland and watch shadow him drop ice cream on his new shoes last summer.

Isn’t this all supposed to be from his feelings? Why's this place fighting him so damn much?

“Akito-kun~!” Luka-san's voice comes from far away, amplified by the empty space. “I heard Momiji! It's still here!” He can hear her boots as she gets closer. “But I can’t find it!” she says, a slight whine underneath it. 

“Got it,” he says, straightening. Finally, something to do instead of just standing here. “Why don’t we switch—”

She comes around the corner like a whirlwind, a bottle in either hand, the amber of the glass shining in the low light. “Here!” she chirps and pushes one into his hands without waiting for an answer.

“Huh?!” The slight chill of the bottle jolts through his body like a shock, way heavier than he’d thought it be, and he almost fumbles it, his reflexes just fast enough to get his hand around the neck. His wrist protests as his other hand comes up to support it, distorted by the liquid inside. “Luka-san, what's this?”

Leaning against the wall in the hallway across from him, she waves her hand dismissively before sliding to sit on the floor in one graceful move. “For drinking!" She pats the floor. "Come on, sit!”

Annoyance flushes through his body like a flash fire, teeth clenching as it blazes. What's she doing?! “But the cat—”

“It can't go anywhere.” The bottle hisses softly as she easily twists off the top. “We should take a little break, ‘kay? It’ll be good for us.” She says it casually, but there's a challenging edge to her lips. The question's just for show. Again, there's no real room for argument.

This time, though, Akito's gonna. The others are waiting for them. Toya's waiting for him! And standing here makes him want to claw his own skin off, let's the awful feeling from before sink its fingers deeper into his body, his ground-down nerves starting to give as it pins him in place.

The issue is that trying to hurry Luka-san's like trying to herd cats: the more you shove it one way, the more it’ll want to go the other. He’d have more luck trying to catch the wind with his bare hands. If he pushes back, is she gonna dig in her feet? Could he just leave her guarding the door and try to find it himself? She wouldn't desert it—

“Akito-kun,” Luka-san says suddenly, voice serious as a heart attack despite her smile, “trust me.”

…What's he say to that? As carefree as she is, Luka-san's not careless. She knows exactly what Akito's trust's worth. He can still picture her in Crase Cafe, strong voice coaxing him through his block, the spark of realization that caught into an ember, just beginning to blaze before she contained it for him, knowing she was just the flint.

As much as it hurts him to do nothing, he does owe her.

“Fine,” he grits out. “But only for a few minutes.” After a heartbeat, he decides to copy her, though he's pretty sure his slide to the ground's more of a collapse than anything. 

Grinning, she gives him a thumbs up before her eye catches something on the stage area and she leans to get a better look. Any of that seriousness's gone, nothing more than a quick gust of wind.

Agitation still simmering, he opens his own bottle with a quick, savage twist and sniffs. It's citrus for sure, but it's also a little bit fruity… maybe peach? It definitely smells familiar, but something about it makes his stomach queasy. He turns it in his hands, looking for the label, but it's just a blank, white square. Ah, there's the funky shit. Helpful.

He watches Luka-san take a long drink from hers, the color of the liquid inside impossible to make out thanks to the bottle's deep amber glass. There's no way it's alcohol, right? The single sip of beer he's had tasted like garbage— the regulars at Weekend Garage who fooled him got a real kick out of his reaction before Ken-san chewed them out and cut them off for the next month— so wouldn't it suck if this place is all him? Considering half the drink disappears before Luka-san comes up for air, it doesn't seem to be an issue.

Akito takes another sniff of his drink, ignoring the Toya shadow moving in the corner of his eye. He knows he knows what this is, so what the hell is it? Hesitantly, he takes a sip.

…Oh, it's like one of those yuzu mocktails Ken-san makes.

He takes another swig, more for the drink than the taste. His dry throat's suddenly aching now that it got a little bit, craving it even as the smell stings his nose with each sip. It's way more sour than anything Ken-san has on the menu. Actually, it's closer to the test versions he had him try right around when Weekend Garage first opened, back when he was experimenting a lot with the menu.

Man, the first time The KEN-san asked Akito to try one of his drinks, he could barely keep from yelling he was so happy. There were other regulars there, but he’d asked Akito! 'Course, it was because he was young— KEN-san was trying to come up with drinks for the underage customers— but, hey, a win was a win; he was psyched as hell to help.

Then he took a sip. 

Just the reminder makes him grimace. It was already too sour to swallow, but the way this bitter rind ended up all in his teeth, coating his tongue…ugh, it felt awful. And he’d been trying so hard not to show anything on his face, but KEN-san just sighed and slid him some water before promising some food on the house.

Akito turns the bottle over in his hands, watching the liquid slosh. Weekend Garage almost immediately became the most relaxed he ever felt on Vivid Street, like it was the few bars in the middle of a song where he could catch his breath. It was way too easy to talk to KEN-san. Something about him made Akito forget how much he hated talking about himself, even if he was careful not to waste too much of his time.

And Akito kept going back, because it was KEN-san's place, and he kept being a guinea pig, and then at some point he just kinda became Ken-san.

In here, it almost feels like he can understand what the others see when they talk about this town.

Almost.

Akito'll probably never understand An completely. After all, she still loves this town even after everything, and it loves her, too. And Kohane? She's An's partner; he's seen the way the town's opened up to her.

Toya's the closest he'll ever get, but even that's not saying much. His partner got the cold shoulder at first, yeah, but he's always been good enough to get some goodwill. Of course he likes this town. It was always Akito dragging him down. Once he'd gotten good enough to not be dead weight, Toya soared.

But Akito? He was the graffiti that always popped back up now matter how much they tried to scrub him out of existence, getting better and better until they couldn't stand to erase him. That's all he needed anyway: acknowledgement. Why should he be grateful now that he's good enough for them to stop trying to get rid of him? As long as they realize they can't remove him, that they don't want to remove him anymore, he's fine with that.

There's only ever been a few places not like that. Here, Boss's shop, a handful of live houses, the Sekai— even looking at Luka-san now, there's that warm buzz of gratitude that hums in his chest for them. For all the people who knew that graffiti could spiral into something more even if it kept getting wiped out.

But, grateful as he is— as much as he owes Vivid Street— that feeling's probably never going away, like a broken arm that never really healed, the joints never as flexible as before.

“So!” Luka-san says suddenly, the liquid in her bottle sloshing as she gestures at him. “Wanna tell me what's been up lately? Something else's bothering you, right? Not your task?”

Subtle. Of course she'd guess something's going on after all that. “‘S fine.” He shakes his head. “Nothin’ important.”

Luka-san pouts, cheeks poking out as she huffs. “You don’t have to tell me,” she says, but it's so half-hearted she shouldn't’ve bothered. It would've been more believable coming from Len or Rin. “I was helpful before, though, right?” She nudges him on the knee with her bottle when he doesn't respond. “Right~?” she tries again.

The words bubble up at her prodding, heavy in the back of his throat where she's knocked them loose like the carbonation spinning in his bottle, fatigue loosening his lips. He fiddles with opening his mouth and letting them free, but the thought makes them stick in his throat, syrupy. This isn’t like asking for help with his task. This is about him, and he's not dumping it on Luka-san.

Sighing, he leans his head back against the wall, stares up at the ceiling. The words sink back down and dissolve in his stomach. There's nothing interesting in the brown, splotchy paint above him, no pattern or faded spots. He can’t even remember if that's what it's supposed to look like. From the corner of his eye, he can see the tall shadow turn to look at him again.

Fuck, he doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

“I just wanna grab Momiji and never think about this place again.” It comes out more bitter than he wants. He winces and takes a breath. “...Sorry.”

Luka-san shakes her head. “No, I know you wanna get back fast.” At least she doesn't look hurt. “Let's just rest a few more minutes then, ’kay?”

Akito nods jerkily. Looking away, he tries to twist the cap back on his drink, fumbles it. A little bit of the drink splashes up onto his hand, fizzing softly as the smell hits him full force. Dammit, is there anything else he's gonna screw up?

The Toya shadow is looking at him again. Akito's fingers twitch, and he feels the ghost of his touch along his stomach. 

A weird scraping sound jerks his attention back to Luka-san. Her almost empty bottle spins slowly around on the wooden floor as she twirls it in a circle with one nimble finger, but a small kink in the floor from who knows what keeps interrupting it. A little bit of the drink inside sloshes from one end to the other, never swaying high enough to escape. 

Her coat slips from her shoulder, exposing the soft, quilted purple inside. Not for the first time, he wonders how much the virtual singers got to choose their new outfits, if they like them if they didn’t. The damask pattern on her shirt always reminds him of Toya, but, in the low light of Weekend Garage, something about the purple of her skirt and jacket inline makes him think of An.

“Y’know,” Luka-san starts, “I don’t think those doors can tell me anything. Feelings are way more complicated than that.” Her eyes linger on his for just a second, a tracking laser pointed at his head, before they ease with a grin. “But even if they could, I’d still be happier if you tell me. It means you trust me!” She stops the bottle with her hand, the sudden freeze finally shooting a few drops out of the lip, and grins at him. “Besides, you’ll feel waaay better if you spit it out, just like before!”

The scent of citrus makes his nose twitch as he shifts, his hand still sticky. Ken-san's words from all those years ago drift to the surface. “If it's not something you can solve alone, you can try talking to people. If you're stuck in a rut, sometimes all you can do is put it into words and spit it out.”

Even now he can feel squirming embarrassment knotting his insides. The idea that opening his mouth's all it'll take for him to be weak and lame, some punk who's way in over his head like they always said he was, makes him wanna wire his jaw shut.

But he asked Ken-san way back then, and it changed his life. Would he ask Luka-san?

He sighs, smiles despite himself. The Sekai really is amazing. With her understanding eyes and open expression, Luka-san feels almost like Ken-san. It's a kind of steadiness he knows can hold his weight for a few minutes before he picks himself back up. And even if she doesn’t know the specifics, even if she said she's ignoring it, that shitshow slideshow of failures they ran through already showed her how lame he can be. What's one more to the pile at this point?

There's that swell of words again, clogging up his throat, a shaken soda can ready to burst, and this time he lets them go.

“...I keep messin’ up bein’ Toya's boyfriend,” he admits slowly, and it's like his ears've finally popped after going up a hill, a sudden rush of air even as Luka-san's eyes widen. “‘S not like I’m half-assing it, either. I’ve been doing all the stuff boyfriends're supposed to do, makin’ sure I'm not treatin’ him the same as before, but it's been… I dunno.”

It flares in his chest, but he swallows the specifics before they leak out. He doesn’t need to elaborate how it takes him forever to decide what to text him now thanks to all the second-guessing, how he doesn’t get the flowers ‘n stuff. He doesn’t need to mention how bad he is at finding time for them to be alone instead of just going to the usual places, how they haven’t even been on a first date yet ‘cause he can’t think of a good one. He doesn’t need to tell her how he's gotta remind himself to hold Toya's hand instead of bumping his shoulder, and he's especially not gonna mention how he's gotta hype himself up to just grab it like some loser, how all of it makes him feel dumb, exposed. 

“‘M not good at it,” is the most Akito can force out. He grabs the front of his shirt, right over the hollow cave his heart carves out as it all eats at him, and tries to knock the rest of the words out. “And I don't get why, but… I can feel how much my heart isn’t in some of it no matter how much I try. Toya doesn't even seem to always like it anymore, and I don't get it! I can't figure out what's wrong!

“And of course he's a fuckin’ natural,” he blurts out, “so I've gotta catch up.” He drags a hand through his hair, feels his bangs stick up. “He doesn’t gotta think about it like me. He just grabs my hand ‘n smiles. He's the one initiatin’ like it's nothin’ and I—”

Akito cuts himself off, a muted kind of horror making his body buzz when he feels his ears heat. Hunching his shoulders, he just hopes the dark doorway hides it. He'd rather die than admit it out loud, but, as much as he likes kissing Toya— at leaning into the moment when he finally takes the plunge and feeling Toya's cool exterior ignite to match him— getting kissed is like the first sip of water after hours of singing, a need he's not aware he has until he feels it wash through his body.

But, somewhere deep inside him, right next to the fire that keeps him clawing and fighting his way forward towards his goal, it feels like that's not how it's supposed to go. It feels like the tenderness Toya gives him isn’t something he should accept.

“I‘m just taking from him,” is all he can say to Luka-san. Pathetic. “I thought I could just figure out what I’m doin’ wrong and it’d go away before he notices, or I could get good enough at it to buy time to think, but it doesn’t even make him happy anymore. I can’t keep making Toya deal with my mistakes.”

Akito scowls down at his bottle. It's not like he's let messing up stop him before— failure after failure he’d just get right back up— but this isn’t mouthing off to some musicians. This isn’t even disrespecting Crawl Green. This is Toya, his partner. He's not even making progress.

Finally, he sighs. “That's it. I know catchin’ Momiji won’t fix anythin’, but I wanna at least do somethin' right for Toya.” He can't afford to let the scale tip even further against him, either. 

…Honestly though, it would’ve been nice if Toya had kept up and chased the cat with him. Maybe he would’ve kept things from getting so off track or been impressed by how good Akito was at keeping up for him. Something besides this endless slog.

A few heartbeats of bewildered silence. The bottle slows to a stop. He takes a long drink to avoid looking at Luka-san, staring at the back of shadow Toya's head.

There's the click of glass on wood as Luka-san slowly spins the bottle again. “Has Toya-kun said anything?”

Akito shakes his head. “I think he noticed somethin's up, though.” It hangs over him like a sword, not knowing if it’ll kill him once it finally falls. He won't make excuses once Toya asks, but if he could just get his act together in time, it won't even have to hit him.

“Then why not beat him to the punch?” she says, head tilted to the side. 

His hand tightens around the neck of his bottle. It's still cold against his skin even after holding it for so long. “He's got enough to deal with. It's my issue. I can handle it.”

Luka-san frowns. The bottle spins around her finger. “But it's about him too, right? Isn’t it better to just say what it is?”

“That's…” He taps his finger against his bottle, the impact swallowed by the drink inside, soundless. The words are murky, but the feeling isn’t. “No."

“Why? It'll feel better if you get it over with.”

Shoulders hunching, he takes another long drink, pushing past the sour taste that makes his tongue tingle, trying to find that hint of peach he could smell before. All that's left's the awful aftertaste. 

Akito looks away, back over the restaurant. If he listens too hard to the voices around him, it unravels in his brain like staring too closely at a shirt pattern. If he went over this place with a fine-toothed comb, there's probably a million other tiny details that're wrong, too, a glitch in his own memory or the result of too many versions of this place in his mind.

But he can see that the lights overhead are right, even if he's not sure about the ceiling. He can see the booth nearby has a hairline rip from that one regular's studded pants snagging on the fabric. He can see the faint stain in the wood near the stage. If he walks over to the bar, he's positive he’ll find an actual label on the bottles he always stares at when he sits there. 

Even if they don’t realize it, even if they don’t want to, there's a million tiny, little things that change someone's image of another person in an instant. He’d know; there were months of his life he spent hammering out the little tells of his childhood, shitty spot the differences he couldn’t not play. Where his hand rests on his hip, the place his voice sits in his throat, the smallest, careless gesture, and suddenly the scale he's judged on is tipped into “girl.” His clothes, his hair, his name… a stranger can override it in a heartbeat if he slips up, a room just a little off. Just like he learned the rules of Vivid Street through fire, he knows the right clothes, the right gestures, and the right emotions to be read— to be understood as a guy.

If he stops striving to do what a boyfriend's supposed to and does what he feels— if he gives into this thing inside of him that lights up under Toya's attention— doesn’t that expose how lame he really is? How he can't manage to do what he's supposed to? Won’t it make him see Akito as not only an unreliable boyfriend, but an unreliable partner, too? 

And as much as he trusts Toya, some part of him can’t let go of this being the final nail in the coffin. Toya can already physically feel all the parts of Akito he can’t change, so will this tip his scale, some final strike that Akito's not the man he says he is?

He can take a lot. He's taken a lot. He can’t take that from Toya.

“The problem goes away once I get my act together,” Akito says finally, drawing his leg to his chest. "Tellin’ him’ll just make it a bigger issue.”

Luka-san hums, eyes locked on his face. The bottle makes a soft noise as she rolls it, the glass clinking over that kink in the floor over and over, a scratched CD skipping endlessly, grating on his exposed nerves.

“Y’know, this Sekai…” she says, trailing off. She taps her earring idly as she lets her bottle clatter to a stop, swinging it against her cheek and into her finger, back and forth, back and forth, hypnotizing like a good bass line.

Huffing out a breath, she tries again. “I like exploring the Sekai, but what's suuuuper fun is looking at the hidden parts! Like the roofs and the alleys.” Her free hand gestures aimlessly. “The edges, too. It's fun to see what falls through where no one thinks about.”

“‘Falls through’?” he echoes, voice rising in question, completely lost at the subject change. “What's that mean?”

Luka-san sighs. “I don’t wanna be too specific! If you know too much it’ll mess with it.” She frowns, no real heat in it, and thinks for a moment. “The flyers far away from Meiko's shift around a lot. Oh, and sometimes CDs appear in or around the cafe! I’ve found keychains ‘n stuff like that around, too.” She pauses for a heartbeat. “Some bigger things show sometimes, but I leave those where they are. They're no fun to poke at for me!”

“Can you tell which one of us they come from?” Akito says, something nervous making his finger tap against his leg. Her earring is still swaying, and it takes him a moment to realize he's tapping out the tempo, a steady drumbeat. 

“Only the obvious ones. Like…” Her nose scrunches as she thinks, lips pursed. “Like how sometimes I find violin and piano sheet music. That's easy!” She smiles. It's smaller and softer than her usual bold grin, private, like she's letting him in on a secret. “But most of the time, I can’t tell at all. Sometimes I find out, sometimes I don’t.”

He sighs as she looks at him expectantly, eyebrows raised as she slowly leans closer with shining eyes. “How?” he says, giving in. 

Luka-san's smile widens, closer to the bold expression he's used to. “From you guys! Like a few weeks ago, there was this album. The cover art was super colorful and looked like some idol group, so I thought, ‘Oh, maybe it's Kohane's~!’”

“It's Toya's, right?” It takes him a beat to realize he's slipped up, like accidentally flashing his cards during old maid. He can picture exactly where he saw the album on his desk, school bag neatly tucked on the chair nearby. He tries not to stiffen, the ghost of Toya's hand drifting across his stomach again, but Luka-san definitely sees something, even if she decides not to push.

“Yep!” she says, popping the ‘p.’ “He mentioned his classmate lent it to him last week.”

It was Akiyama. Toya said it would be rude not to listen to it, but Akito was pretty sure she'd been teasing him. Still, apparently she’d been happy to talk to him about it afterwards, so who knows? 

Luka-san makes a soft noise of frustration as her earring stops its motion, pink hair tangled around it. Almost savagely, he remembers how much he always hated that about his long hair, how it seemed to catch in everything and tangle at the faintest breeze, always too curly. At least he cut it before he got piercings; he winces sympathetically as Luka-san jerks a knot free from the silver.

“Meiko likes finding the bigger things,” she says abruptly, carding her fingers through her hair. “I just found out a little bit ago! I always thought she used whatever showed up nearby, but she's just careful about when she goes exploring.” Her hair snags on her fingers again, and she huffs, letting it slip through her hand. “She used to get soooo embarrassed when I snooped behind the cafe— you’ve seen it, right? The tables and chairs?”

Bodied by another subject change, he nods, off-kilter. Is she messing with him? All that's back there are broken furniture and plants, so why would Meiko-san care? “You sure she wasn’t just annoyed?” he points out, leaning his head against his knees.

Luka-san's smile sharpens, a new, hungry edge to it he's never seen. “Nope, she was definitely embarrassed! She never said why, but I had some ideas~” Something dreamy morphs with the sharpness, soft eyes and sharp smile clashing. It makes him think of Kohane, the mix of feelings he's seen sprint across her face as she looks at An, a hint that An might not be barking up the wrong tree. Does that mean Luka-san's also…?

“I was wrong, y'know,” she says. Her casual tone's heavy, underlined with a low note that reminds him of entering Crase Cafe for the first time, Toya's words ringing in his head on repeat. It's heartbreak. Less heated than his was, aged with time, but enough he's scared to touch it, worried he'll hit a bruise.

“And I think we're wrong about this Sekai, too,” she says, rebounding back to her usual bright tone. “It doesn't seem like it, but I’m sure it was trying to help you since I’m still here. We're supposed to guide you guys, after all! It always let me keep up with you.”

Akito raises an eyebrow, glancing at the bottle on the floor, and sniffs. It still doesn't smell like alcohol…

She waves a finger as his skeptical expression, outfit flashing in the low light. “See! You don't believe me, but it still always leads you to the right door. We'll just never know because it can’t tell us.

"The point is,” she continues, “there's a real big difference between thinking you know something and actually saying it. It's no good leaving people guessing! They can get things wrong.” Her smile dims. “The last thing you want's to miss each other, right?”

Akito takes a sip of his drink, letting the weird flavor wash out his mouth. He hears what she's saying. Just the memory of the wound Toya's words punched into his heart during their fight makes him feel shattered, anger reflexively blazing to cauterize the wound. Without Meiko-san slowing him down back then, he never woulda guessed someone like Toya wasn’t being honest with him, not for awhile. Ken-san called him, but he wouldn’t’ve rushed over like he did without the virtual singers. Mentally, he knows she's giving him good advice.

But there's that deep, ingrown feeling inside him that aches like a cavity and knows that's not how it works; things are fought for, not handed over easily with a few words.

Sighing, he glances away from Luka-san—

And freezes as he meets wide yellow eyes, limbs locking into place. 

Momiji's pupils expand, swallowing the yellow as its body stiffens, fur a dark orange mix in the low light. It's not running yet, but it's going to. At this distance, if he makes a grab for it, he might get it.

Akito braces his hand against the floor, shifting his weight the slightest bit. Luka-san tenses with him, body a hard line, and slowly shifts to block the door. He's gonna need to be fast, but he can do this. He can handle something this simple—

Movement behind the cat involuntary jerks his eyes away, his wrist almost buckling as he barely stops himself over balancing. The shadow Toya's slowly shaking its head as it moves to the edge of the booth, holding one finger up. Last year, Akito wouldn’t get what it was trying to do, but now, even without a face, he can read the stress in the careful movements, the urgency in the tilt of its head. It's got a plan, and it wants Akito to wait.

Slowly, Akito shifts his weight back and motions for Luka-san to stay put. The cat, still tense, relaxes a hair.

With careful movements, the shadow sits on the edge of the booth and lowers its hand, rubbing its fingertips together silently. A weird whispering bounces around Akito's skull like a garbled radio through a wall, and the cat whips its head around to face it.

It takes a step towards the shadow. Then a few more.

And then it's gone in a flash.

The shadow's shoulders slump slightly, and its hand stops moving, immediately smothering Akito's anger before it can really rage. Poor guy's devastated. It faces towards him and tilts its head, an apology. He can picture the shift Toya's expression would've made, the disappointed eyebrows into a furrow, the slight frown into a dissatisfied line.

Fuck, he wishes Toya was actually here. He wants to see his reaction, not just imagine it. He wants to ask Toya about the hand thing the shadow did and watch his eyes light up as he teaches Akito. He wants to work together like the well-oiled machine they are and be done already. Being in Weekend Garage only sharpens it, the image so clear it feels like he could glance over and see him. 

Missing Toya's not new— they hang out enough he starts to get jittery if he doesn’t talk to him after a day or two— but it hollows out his chest now, rung dry from talking to Luka-san. His hand drifts up, towards his heart, remembers Toya doing the same as they walked to Vivid Street after the fragment Sekai.

Akito's palms twitch at the thought of Toya's shattered hands in the weird fragment. They’d felt like gravel, cold and rough and easy to lose, like adjusting his fingers would let the pieces slip right through the cracks. It looked like it hurt, but Toya’d said the forgetting was worse.

As shitty as this's been, at least his body's not falling apart. Guess it's from the Sekai being less busted? He doesn’t have as much impact as Toya had on the fragment.

The empty label on his bottle stares back. The warp in the floorboards's barely visible through the glass. 

Is that really right?

It's like he's been jerked to a stop at the end of a coaster, a sudden stillness in his mind as he reorients himself. Luka-san had said the edge was reacting to him, but the wedding hall was so outta left field he'd thought it was a random reaction, nothing like the super weird world Toya got hit with or the cohesiveness of the desert. The clinic, the classroom, the sprint through a million doors— that was just his shitty luck.

But the cat… if he thinks about it, he was barely keeping up before the wedding hall, yeah, but that was because of all the long roads and trash cans ‘n stuff that kept stalling it. After the classroom, it was somehow slower than that without all the obstacles. No matter how fast he ran he couldn't get closer, but it couldn't get farther ahead, either. Was that “helping?”

And Weekend Garage showed up when he wanted somewhere safe. What're the odds? Considering the classroom, he was already thinking about how bad the other side’d be. That could snowball into the rest, right? Did going deeper give his feelings more impact?

…So he did all that to himself? 

Hot, angry iron burns his insides, but he shakes his head, used to the injury. He's screwed himself over a million times. Maybe it wasn't until Weekend Garage he could actually pick, maybe not. What's important is that he knows he's got some say now. Is this something he can use, like Luka-san said?

The doorknob of the locked door glints as he shifts to look at it, the curve barely catching the light, the color tarnished after years of operation. He wanted somewhere safe, so what if this time, he tries somewhere that can corner it? Then the little bastard’ll follow them in, and they grab it. No more running, no more awful snapshots of his life, and he can go back to the cafe. He can go back to Toya, at least one thing a little better.

But if he fucks this up— if he doesn’t have as much say as he thinks or gets the wrong room— they’ll be right back at the start, chasing it around and around until his body gives out or they lose it for good. In that case, it's useless, right? He should just try and corner it here while Luka-san's guards the door.

But that doesn’t feel right. He knows he can use this. There's gotta be something he's not thinking of, but his brain's mush by now, ideas slipping out of his mind before he can really think them, refusing to hold shape. At this point, he just wants whatever's on the other side of that door to be useful. He has the cat; he just needs a little push. 

“Wish Toya was here,” he mutters. He’d know how to finish this off.

With a sigh he rolls his shoulder, working some of the stiffness out. Maybe he’ll do a loop for the cat and see if walking helps him think—

Knock knock.

Akito freezes, Luka-san squeaking in surprise. Their eyes meet, hers as wide as his feel, bottle slowly spinning to a stop where she knocked it over. 

It's gotta be something else. There's no way. Did the cat knock something over somewhere?

There's a sound like a muffled voice— an actual person's, not the weird muttering of the shadows— and another polite knock, this one unmistakable.

…Well, doors do go both ways.

He stands up, thighs throbbing in protest, and motions for Luka-san to watch his back. His body blocks the little bit of light that was hitting the knob, the metal flatter in the dark, and he reaches forward, hesitating before flipping the lock.

The door doesn’t move. He jiggles the knob impatiently to show it's open, but there's no response. There's no more noise, either.

The person can't’ve just left, right?! Slowly, he twists the knob and pushes the door forward, not wanting to smack whoever's on the other side, and opens it just enough to peek through.

Akito pokes his head out into an alley, a faint breeze chilling the sweat still on his face from his sprint earlier even as warm air washes over him. The street's asphalt is the usual solid gray, whole, unlike to the endless road he was at before. Faint paint stains dot up and down the way, trailing to the wall across from him that's absolutely splattered in orange paint. A bunch of arrows're spray painted on top, layered blues twisting into a crazy ball, the lines of the arrows impossible to untangle. The biggest points to the left, and he follows it with his eyes—

And fucking jumps, cursing as another person jerks back, their own yell echoing his.

It doesn't take more than a heartbeat to recognize him. He could recognize his voice in a choir of thousands. He's almost positive he could recognize him with his eyes closed. The green jacket he's wearing makes his gray eyes pop, and he's got the muted surprise Akito's always thought's kinda cute, mouth slightly open, eyes wide enough to shine even brighter in the light. 

“Akito?” Toya blinks at him. “What—?”

Akito snags his wrist, part of him still shocked he doesn't go right through him, and quickly yanks him inside, ignoring his startled noise.

The door slams as he shoves it closed, fumbling with the stupid lock as he shoves Toya behind him. He even turns the knob and pulls at the door a few times just to make sure it's locked tight. Then he does a few more just to buy some time.

Luka-san's surprised, bright greeting reverberates in his skull. The ache in his legs makes them throb with his heartbeat, and his messy hair hangs limply in his face. He blindly swipes at it and wipes the lingering sweat off his face, forcing his posture up just enough to be cool instead of exhausted as he turns around. 

“Why didn't you come in, Toya-kun?” Luka-san's asking, poking his shoulder experimentally.

Toya shrugs, tolerating her with the patience of a saint as she moves to poking his cheek. “I thought I heard voices when I approached, so I figured knocking would be polite.”

Of course he didn't just try the knob. The rush of affectionate warmth in Akito's chest is sweeter than his drink, some of his exhaustion vanishing as it floods his system. Toya being here settles Akito like finally finding his footing on a slippery hill, a rush of success even if there's no progress.

Toya glances at him and smiles softly, and he can't help his own small grin back. “Akito,” he says, voice that silk-soft tone he always uses for his name, “what's the situation?”

Shrugging, Akito tries to lean against the wall, hitting his shoulder a little too hard on it when it's further away than he thought. He definitely recovers fast enough to keep it from being noticeable, and Toya's smile widens. Nailed it.

“We managed to trap Momiji in here after chasin’ it a bit.” He jerks his head towards the door. “We need to keep an eye out to make sure it doesn't sneak out. It tried to creep past a minute ago and freaked out when it saw me, so it's definitely still here. The shadow—” 

His eyes meet an empty booth. Where the hell…? “There was a shadow sittin’ over there, and it did somethin’ like this?” He rubs his fingertips together, and Toya's eyes widen in recognition. Good. “Cat started goin’ towards it before sprintin’ away. Not sure where it went.” He nods, ignoring Luka-san's slowly rising eyebrows. “That's it.”

After a heartbeat, Toya mirrors him. Gray eyes slowly sweep over him, searching, and it's like a kick nearly missing his shin guards, a shiver up his spine as danger swipes past. Toya knows something might be up. but he's not sure enough to ask yet, or maybe the cat takes priority. Regardless, Akito's scot free for now.

“Thank you for keeping up with him,” Toya finally says. He glances around, the thoughtful crease in his forehead smoothing out. “There are too many places for him to hide in here. If he wandered out from his hiding spot once, our best bet might be to wait for him again rather than searching.”

Akito keeps his face still but groans to himself. So more waiting. Ugh, that conversation with Luka-san made him want to move, too antsy to sit still, but Toya's the expert here. At least this’ll actually catch it. 

They're almost done.

“We could set out some water to draw him out,” Toya continues, surveying the shop. He puts a thoughtful finger on his chin, the swelling from earlier already down. “He may also approach me directly now that I’m here. That is, as long as he's not too angry about my rough handling of him earlier.”

Stress's always subtle on Toya: the slight twitch of his hands, the fiddling of his necklace, the tightening of his lips. Upset is even quieter, something in his eyes that Akito can’t actually pinpoint but knows is there.

“It’ll come to you,” Akito says. No doubt, no hesitation.

After a blink, Toya's face relaxes, and he nods. “Okay,” he says simply, trusting him completely, and it makes Akito burn, his hands itching to reach out.

Luka-san claps, laughing as they jump. “Then you two can go towards the front to catch him! I’ll make sure he doesn’t get passed here!” She gives Akito the most unsubtle wink in history. What, she wants him to hash out his bullshit right here while waiting for this asshole cat to show?

“It's gonna run the second it sees me,” Akito pushes back.

“Have you been meeting his eyes?” Toya says. Of course he has? He nods, and Toya hums. “If you avoid that, or even ignore him if he approaches me, it should be no issue.” A few heartbeats. “You don’t have to—”

“Of course I’ll stick with you.” Akito stands up, ignores Luka-san's thumbs up. “Let's grab a bowl.”

“Leave the door to me!” Her tone's teasing, but her mouth's set, determined. She pumps a fist in the air. “Let's grab this cat and get back to Meiko's!”

Sighing— where the hell’d she pull all that energy from?— Akito thanks her and moves with Toya to the front.

Sliding into a booth, Akito tucks himself as far back into it as he can while Toya hesitates to go behind the bar counter, eyes tight. He mutters what sounds like an apology, clearly uneasy trespassing, before grabbing a bowl.

Akito stares at the wall of bottles as Toya fills the bowl, the soft sound of water the only noise in the empty building. Just like he thought, the couple he always stares at have the right labels. A handful of others're just blank, and the rest of them look like misprints, smeared, unreadable ink nothing more than squiggles.

The water shuts off. Toya lingers right next to the counter, eyes sweeping over the area. He's definitely doing some kinda calculation, eyes darting back and forth between a few places, eyebrows slowly lowering the longer he thinks. Then, with all the gravity of a bomb specialist, he sets the bowl close to the corner of the bar, right in the intersection between the booths and bar seating. Satisfied smile on his face, he approaches Akito's booth.

Toya pauses once he reaches him, hand resting on the bench's back. He glances at the one across from Akito before he quickly slides in next to him. 

The cushion shifts under his weight, evening out with the two of them as Toya shifts to be closer. Their knees lightly knock together, a shot of electricity zapping through him, his leg tingling in the aftermath. Toya's hand splays out between them, the scratches from this morning already looking better, and his fingertips barely brush the top of Akito's, a silent question made easy to ignore. To answer, Akito relaxes hand, letting his own fingers slot between Toya's. 

Shit, the light's probably not dim enough to stop his burning ears from being obvious as hell. He turns his head to look at Toya, bringing up his free hand to rest his chin on and hide his ears, but— y’know, the embarrassment's worth it. It's always worth it for the soft eyes, the content smile, the relaxed posture. The expression isn't as rare as it was when they first partnered up, but it still makes him happy in a stupidly simple way, like seeing leaves change in the fall.

Ugh, his eyes are burning though, begging him to keep them closed when he blinks. The adrenaline's definitely left his system, Toya's low-energy plan finishing off what Luka-san's conversation started. He could try to use his spare arm as a pillow on the table, but it feels wrong to sleep now and let Toya do all the work.

It's probably better for him anyway; his chest's sore enough without sleeping hunched over in this awful binder. Maybe he could lean against the wall and just close his eyes? Have Toya make sure he doesn’t fall asleep?

Akito glances at the other boy, lingering on the graceful line of his neck as Toya looks over the restaurant. He's leaned on him a shit ton over the years. Toya's shoulder under his arm slowly relaxed as their partnership solidified, and he's hooked his chin over his shoulder a few times, too. It's pretty comfortable from all angles. Maybe he could…

There it is again, that cringing feeling spoiling the thought. He tries to push it out of his mind, but the soft scrape of Luka-san's bottle on the floor stops him, her words floating in his mind. He tries to hold the feeling for a little longer, like tolerating a snowball in his bare hands before he chucks it.

Underneath it, somewhere deep in his core, the reason hazy, it just feels like he's not supposed to do something like that.

A yawn surprises him as it forces its way from his mouth, barely managing to stifle it as the thought falls apart, and Toya turns to him, frowning. “I'm sorry for waking you up so early. Your appointment is today, right? Will you be okay?”

“‘S fine.” Akito waves him off, then hesitates. It's been years since he told Toya about his appointments, a quick “by the way” when they were first figuring out their practice schedule. Toya doesn’t know much outside that: not the location, not how long it takes, nothing.

Toya's poker face really was rock solid back then. He'd been silent after they finished planning, just kinda hovering instead of walking off without a word like usual. For a heart-stopping moment, Akito'd thought he was gonna say this partnership wasn’t actually working, that he was way better on his own without Akito dragging him down, that it was a waste of time trying to surpass Rad Weekend, and that’d be it. 

Instead, he awkwardly asked if there were “medical situations he should be on the lookout for,” and Akito was so stunned he almost laughed before noticing Toya's stiffer-than-usual posture. This guy was sticking his neck out to help despite clearly being uncomfortable, and Akito'd never laugh at that.

So, vulnerability for vulnerability, he'd told him it was his testosterone injection.

It wasn’t the self-defensive move coming out as trans was— he told Toya that right when they first partnered up, dead set on being the one to tell him. At that point it was already lucky Toya didn't know. It was probably thanks to his constantly hostile vibe and complete disinterest in talking to other performers, but once that they were working together, it was only a matter of time until the ugly whispers and rumors outed him if someone didn't confront Toya outright.

Plus, better to have him jump ship early if he was gonna have an issue instead of wasting his time.

Akito's still not sure what Toya's expression was on the day he told him. That was way before he figured out how close he had to watch, back when it was like trying to read another language. All he really remembers's noticing the way the corner of his eyes tensed when he was nervous, his first Toya word learned.

Now, reading Toya's face is like reading a magazine. The worried slant of his eyes as he considers Akito, the thoughtful tilt of his head, the minute an idea hits and his mouth twitches, careful words forming. The embarrassment in his slightly red face and the twitch of his fingers're new, but the keen, determined glint of his eyes makes Akito's stomach flip like always.

“You could close your eyes while we wait,” Toya says. His thumb brushes the side of Akito's index finger. “You can use my shoulder, if you want.” He's trying to be casual about it, but there's that spark in his eyes, the excitement he always has when they do something new that Akito's slowly been getting weaker to for years. 

That ugly, hesitant feeling unclenches almost unwillingly from his chest the same way he used to force his body to relax before a performance, like he's prying stiff fingers off one at a time. The embarrassment of it lingers, a stubborn stain screaming at him to not be so lame, don't just jump at it because it was offered, but it vanishes when Toya's excitement starts to fade, a little bit of harmless sadness creeping in that makes the last of that feeling balk. “You don't have to —”

Akito shifts over, lifting Toya's hand between them up and out of the way before leaning back, letting Toya take some of his weight with a huff. There's a little bit of shifting, elbows brushing dangerously close to painful spots since Toya's decided he's not letting go of his hand, but they settle without disaster, Toya a warm, steady rock on his back.

“Tell me when the cat shows. I’m not scarin’ it away ‘cause I didn’t see it comin’, got it?” Akito warns. “And don’t lemme fall asleep completely, either. I’m just shuttin’ my eyes.” 

There's a pressure against his head. “Okay.”

Toya's soft huff ghosts the top of his ear. Akito's whole body tingles with it, every part of him suddenly keyed into every point of contact— where his head rests on his shoulder, where his back meets his chest, where their hips are pressed together, their hands resting on each other, all of it like a train map through his body, racing through his veins.

The restaurant's near silent. Luka-san's soft, slow humming is only barely audible, her bottle's scraping like a metronome when it hits that kink in the floor. It sounds familiar, but his slowing brain can’t place it, can only think of Toya's body heat morphing into his own. 

Above him, Toya hums with it after a few bars, an improvised harmony. They both loop it over and over, over and over…

…over and…

It cuts off, a quiet “Akito, wake up,” above him, distant.

…Sucking down a deep breath, Akito forces his eyes open, jolting the sleep that was just starting to pull him under out of his body like a punch. Toya's quiet above him, but Luka-san keeps singing, switching to something faster that reminds him of birds in the morning, quick and light.

“Sorry,” Akito mutters. He leans up a bit so he's not completely on top of Toya— he's fucking heavy and he knows it— but Toya tugs at his arm with his free hand. Still sleepy, he can’t stop himself from falling back down on top of him.

“It's fine.” Toya's other hand squeezes Akito's, warm after holding it for so long. “We could talk if you want. It may keep you awake.”

Akito's eyes're already closing. “Tell me ‘bout cat stuff.”

Toya laughs quietly. It's a new feeling, the motion of it against Akito's back, his breath skating the top of his head, and he tucks it away safe inside himself. “If you're trying to stay awake, it would probably be better for you to talk as well instead of just listening.”

Sighing, he knocks his foot into Toya's and forces his eyes back open. “Hear from An or Kohane while I was runnin’ around?”

“Yes, I did. Shiraishi is bringing a cat carrier to Meiko-san's, and Azusawa making sure a vet named Uesaka-san is open today. Since you’ve been chasing Momiji around, he's probably not physically hurt, but I would like to make sure.”

“It's… he's definitely fine,” Akito grumbles, sure Toya’d hit him with a disapproving look if he kept using ‘it.’ “Ran for freakin’ ever and barely slowed down. I almost got ‘em a few times, but he always managed to disappear to the next place.” Frustration flares like the embers of a campfire catching the wind, still hot but contained. It's the shit around it that still singes him: the shadows always watching, the flickering darkness the cat could disappear into in an instant, the awful scenery.

“Akito?” Oh, he knows that tone. “Did something happen?”

He shakes his head, feels it move against Toya's shoulder. Why bother telling him? It happened. It's done. “‘S nothing.”

Toya hums. It resonates inside Akito, and his body still reverberates with it as the other boy falls silent. His eyes start drifting closed. He forces them open. 

“You said you ran through a few different places with Momiji,” Toya says suddenly. “Like where?” 

It's a natural followup, genuine curiosity, but he can hear something in the undertone, fingers barely brushing a cut to judge how deep it is, waiting to see if it bleeds. It makes Akito stiffen, and— shit, there's no way Toya didn’t catch his reaction, not when he's laying on him like this. 

“Lotta different places.” He swallows, rips the bandage off. “First one was that wedding hall we helped at last year and then it just went downhill from there.” He shrugs, nerves starting to cut into the drowsiness, an awful combo that makes him feel keyed up. “Ended up in my house once… was on Vivid Street a few times in a few different spots… places like that.”

Another stretch of silence. Toya's not stupid. The real question's how much he’ll push.

“...Was it like the fragment I was in?” A little more pressure in his voice.

That's an easy answer, no blood drawn. “Not really. Yours was kinda like a dream, but it didn't feel any different from walkin’ around the Sekai like normal.” He frowns. “But that thing you mentioned? About stuff bein’ just a little off? I saw that, too. Fabric and colors bein’ wrong ‘n stuff.”

“I didn’t notice any of that until after I left,” Toya says thoughtfully, but it's distracted.

Laying like this isn’t as nice as Akito thought it’d be. He wants to see Toya's face. Are his eyebrows furrowed, or does he have that interested spark in his eye? He squeezes his hand, but there's no response, Toya too lost in thought to notice. Ugh, it's like flying blind!

He sits up, turns to take a look at Toya, but Toya's not looking at him, eyes fixed on the water bowl they left out for the cat. The line between their bodies's still there, legs touching, hands together, but he feels a million kilometers away. It's like reverting back to that first month they were partners, desperately looking for some idea what this guy's deal was and meeting a brick wall.

Part of him's relieved Toya's no probing anymore. The pressure's finally off, his pride protected, but this gap makes him feel like he's falling, tripping on a familiar staircase. He needs to figure out what he messed up, now.

After the fragment, Toya told them everything. He told them about that empty feeling, the way he felt like he was going crazy. Is that what he wants from Akito?

But Akito's little run around wasn’t that bad, so he doesn’t need any support from Toya. It was a carnival of bullshit, and now it's not. The minute they get this cat, it's done. Why bother talking about it?

Luka-san's voice rises in his ears, the song changing into something lower and unfamiliar. What had she said? "You don’t wanna miss each other?" 

…Is he thinking about this all wrong like he did with the Sekai? If the problem's that they feel so far apart, what’ll make it obvious he doesn’t want to feel separate? What shows Toya he's important immediately? He could say something, but that's kinda lame, isn’t it? Unloading all that on him. So something else, something else he can do right now…

Well, he's only doing one thing today.

Ugh, the thought makes his gut swoop like Toya's hand's on his stomach all over again, a craving for intimacy that another part of him immediately pushes back on. Wouldn’t it be another straw on the camel's back, another little strike that tears down the image he fought for a bit more?

But if it's between his pride and Toya, the choice's easy. It has been for awhile.

“Hey, Toya? D’you… wanna come to my appointment with me?” He swallows, embarrassment hot on his heels as Toya turns to him with wide-eyes, but he's not gonna half-ass it. “Ena's been buggin’ me to pick up the new cheesecake from a cafe nearby,” he continues quickly, “and they're also sellin’ an assortment of tea-flavored cookies that're supposed to be less sweet. Heard they're way better fresh. Should be a new batch out around the time I’m usually done so we can grab— what?”

The gray of Toya's wide eyes somehow shine in the low light of the dark booth, a glowing moon on a starless night, but it's nothing compared to the soft smile he gets, the quiet, “Yes.” Toya squeezes his hand, and it's like suddenly catching his balance, the world reorienting and the ground steady again.

…But there's still that searching in his eyes, Akito's issues not completely forgotten—

The sound of water makes both of them tense, Toya whipping his head around as Akito peers around him. Yellow eyes jerk towards him, and he quickly leans back behind Toya, heart pounding.

Luka-san's humming cuts off with a delighted gasp, but she stays where she is, no doubt vibrating in place from the effort. Akito watches Toya's back, waiting for him to move, but he stays still, too.

After a few heartbeats, that sound comes back. Toya still doesn’t move.

The sound stops. Toya stays still.

Then, slow and deliberate, Toya leans down the slightest bit, letting go of Akito's hand to lower his own towards the ground. He makes some soft sound, clearly what the shadow was going for earlier, and it sounds like the cat comes closer.

A flash of an orange tail pokes around Toya, barely visible from Akito's position. It disappears just as quick, then he catches a flash of his face, back and forth, back and forth.

Okay, the cat's rubbing against Toya. He might be purring? Kinda hard to tell even in the silence.

Akito keeps his hands on his legs, making absolutely sure he doesn’t start bouncing them as Momiji keeps rubbing on Toya, his smug little face flashing in and out of view. No matter how long it's taking he can’t blow it this close to the end, and Toya knows best. If he hasn’t grabbed him yet, then they just gotta wait.

Finally, he sees Toya shift forward a little more. There's a soft meow that's more resigned than irritated.

And then he's staring face to face with the little shit as he peers over Toya's shoulder.

Akito tenses— all hell's gonna break loose— but the cat just sniffs at him and sets its head on Toya's shoulder, face flat and unamused. That easy, huh?

Like he's carrying glass, Toya slowly stands. The cat leans up but stays put, and Toya turns to Akito with a happy grin. “I think we’ll be okay until we meet up with Shiraishi. The cafe wasn’t far from that door, so he shouldn’t get impatient before we get there.”

“He’ll stay like that?” Akito asks. Don’t most cats hate being held?

Toya nods. “He's always been very affectionate. The only time he's had an issue was this morning, but that was clearly a unique situation.”

Momiji sure does seem satisfied enough to stay in Toya's arms purring up a storm. And now that the cat's not running around scared outta his mind, he is kinda cute, but he's got a bad case of resting bitch face. His yellow eyes're narrowed as he stares back at Akito blandly, and his closed mouth makes him look like he's frowning. Akito frowns back.

Toya huffs out a laugh.

“What?” Akito asks, his eyes sliding to Toya. Momiji turns to look at him, too.

“It's nothing,” Toya says, but his amused grin's growing, looking back and forth between Akito and the cat.

Akito sighs, any real sting burned away by Toya's genuine joy. Momiji snuggles right back in his arms, tail wrapped loosely around his wrist, the tip flicking lazily every so often. It's unfair how handsome it makes Toya look.

“Can I pet it before we go? Pleeease!”

Akito jumps. The cat jerks too, ears up and alert, but Toya's hand on his head keeps him from bolting. Luka-san at least looks sheepish, but she's still swaying on her tiptoes to get a better look near the door, hair an eager pink wave behind her. 

Momiji's eyeing her, but it's impossible to tell if he's scared, pissed, or just looks like that. He doesn’t move when she gets closer and begrudgingly lets Luka-san touch him as Toya softly tells her how to pet him, so it's probably fine.

Seriously, why did Toya become friends with this one? There's a bunch of cats running around on Vivid Street. Most of them friendlier than this guy! Yeah, he kinda gets it when Momiji looks up at Toya with big, trusting eyes as he tolerates Luka-san's petting, but what about before that? Was it just exposure?

Whatever. Cat successfully pet, they can finally leave. Akito herds them to the door, hell-bent on getting out of here before something else goes wrong as Luka-san coos over Momiji. Apparently the chase is completely forgotten and forgiven between the two of them, but Akito sees the side-eye he's getting; they're not gonna be friends any time soon.

The backdoor to Weekend Garage hasn’t changed, still securely shut. Its knob turns smoothly in his palm. The hinges open soundlessly.

For a blind moment, when he can’t see what's on the other side, Akito's suddenly terrified it’ll be somewhere else.

But bright sunlight hits his face, triangles dancing in the corner of his eye. Familiar brick walls greet him as he steps outside, faint breeze ghosting over his skin. The street's asphalt is the usual solid gray, whole, unlike to the endless road he was at before. Faint paint stains dot up and down the way, trailing to the wall across from him that's absolutely splattered in orange paint. A bunch of arrows're spray painted on top, layered blues twisting into a crazy ball, the paths impossible to follow. The biggest points to the right, but there's no one else waiting to surprise him.

Akito's eyes linger on it as Toya checks the unmoving store signs to lead them back. Wasn’t it…?

No, this is just the regular Sekai now. His tired brain's just looking for weirdness. It was probably pointing right before and he just forgot, sleep muddling his memories.

Still, as Toya leads them to the right, Akito takes one last, long look at it before following after.

Chapter Text

Uesaka-san's a small legend on Vivid Street, which means the amount of crazy bullshit floating around about her is next level. 

Akito's heard it all. She was part of a biker gang, she was part of the government, she worked overseas, she was an assassin— he met one guy who tried to convince his friends she was the Prime Minister's secret sister. Doesn’t matter which crazy job it is, but every story always ends with a cat saving her life, from a black cat omen to a tabby helping her fight off amateur ninjas. His favorite's definitely the one about a cat stopping her from walking into a mafia ambush.

The only thing anyone knows for sure is basically every cat in the area, friendly or hostile, ends up going through her door at one point or another.

Thanks to An, Akito gets to know a little bit more than most people. Apparently, Uesaka-san runs a one-woman shelter. She puts food out for the cats, makes sure they keep up-to-date with shots ‘n stuff, and gets a decent chunk of them adopted. She always wants extra garlic on her food when she pops into Weekend Garage, and sometimes she'll lecture An about stray cats. Jury's still out on whether she was ever in the mafia.

The point is that no one's ever bothered to physically describe this woman to him. The mental image he's got of her is just kinda a scramble in his head, a million puzzle pieces put into a box and shaken, a picture he tries to build out of a mess of hundreds of stories. So when Kohane flags them down and hurries them into a pretty basic building, an angry Momiji spitting in his carrier, Akito's got no earthly idea what he's gonna get.

One look at Uesaka-san, and he understands the rumors.

Her short hair's a dyed brown that's just starting to show her graying roots, clearly self done and a little fried from years of box color. A shit-ton of colorful piercings litter her ears, cheep cartoon cats and plastic blue hoops next to gold studs with what might be real gems, but he can't help staring at the ones in her eyebrow and lower lip. He's never seen someone this old with this many ear piercings, forget facial piercings! Her outfit's right off the street, too. It's a colorful sleeveless hoodie paired with a nice, oversized button down that wouldn’t look out of place on Kohane, but her wrinkled face is right up there with the strictest teachers he's ever known. 

When Uesaka-san's severe dark eyes and flat expression sweep over him, Akito instinctively straightens. She barely gives him another glance when she spots the carrier, holding a hand out to take it from Toya without a word and quickly disappearing behind a door once she has it, Momiji loudly protesting the whole way.

Almost immediately, there's a crash and something that sounds suspiciously like a hiss. 

Toya starts towards the door, but Kohane gently grabs his shoulder, shaking her head. Her pigtails're messier than usual, and her glasses don’t completely hide the tired glaze in her eyes. Still, her voice's clear. “Don’t worry, Aoyagi-kun, it sounds like the carrier just fell. Uesaka-san knows what she's doing.”

It doesn’t completely remove the tension in Toya's jaw, but he does slowly begin to relax as she softly tells a story about the sick-looking cat she and An brought in a few months ago. Akito nods to her gratefully over Toya's shoulder; she smiles back in quiet acknowledgement. He's gotta remember to let her know about the new parfait near the station— her and An could probably split it.

The…lobby?… they're in is pretty empty, nothing more than a short entry way with a few battered folding chairs. One groans when Akito leans any weight on it, and another sways back and forth, legs uneven. Guess he'll lean against the wall.

He watches Toya nod along solemnly to Kohane's pain-staking recounting of events, not even blinking as she goes into an aside about how "brave An-chan was" basically scaling a fence to grab a shaking tabby. There's no hint of that unease Akito sensed between them in the booth.

It wasn't there on the way back to the cafe, either. Didn't show up when An handed them the carrier or at their meetup to jog over to Uesaka-san's, but he's not stupid enough to think it was a trick of the Sekai. He's bought himself some time, but it's a matter of when, not if. He's got a stay of execution, not a pardon.

Still, it's fun to watch the cute ways Toya reacts to Kohane's story in the meantime, his little gasps and nods.

All of them turn as the door opens. Momiji's so impatient to get out he squeezes through when there's barely more than a few centimeters of space, a familiar move that instinctively makes Akito's stomach twinge, and he darts right to Toya and wraps himself around his leg. Big yellow eyes stare up at him pitifully as Uesaka-san shuts the door behind her, wearing the kind of thick ass gloves Akito's only seen bird handlers use on nature documentaries his mother lets play on TV.

“Momiji's fine,” she says casually, handing the empty carrier back to Akito, orange-yellow hairs all around the dark inside. “I’ll keep him in here overnight to be sure, but he’ll probably sleep most of the day once he finds some corner to hide in.” Her pierced eyebrow twitches up as she watches Toya reach down to pet the cat, Kohane reaching out beside him. “Never saw him be so sweet before.”

Kohane quickly pulls her hand back. “Is he unfriendly, Uesaka-san?”

Uesaka-san snorts. “He's the reason I started using gloves around here,” she says, eying the scratches on Toya's hands. “Almost took my finger right off— did take my old wedding ring. Managed to get it back and give him all his shots. He's avoided me like the plague since.” 

“Really?!” Kohane's eyes widen, staring at Momiji, but he's the picture of innocence as Toya scratches the base of his tail, eyes shut in contentment. “But An-chan said you take care of all of the cats.”

“I do, but can't do much more than the minimum with a cat that stubborn.” Uesaka-san shrugs. “Not that I’ll stop trying. All you can do is hope a cat like that decides to let you help, but I’ll crack him someday. Might recruit your friend there if you guys ever give up on Rad Weekend.” She slants a critical eye across their group. “You all haven't given up, right?”

The words take a moment to register, something about the cadence off to Akito. She stressed all.

…They're missing one person. She stayed back to help Meiko-san clean up the shop with a half-assed excuse none of them really bought but no one wanted to argue.

“Yes,” Akito says. “None of us are backing down, no matter what the rumors say.” Kohane and Toya nod next to him, Toya's determination only slightly undercut by the cat begging for his attention. 

Uesaka-san smiles, the laugh-lines around her mouth suddenly unmissable, but it's the relief that Akito's attention catches on. Kohane seems to notice it too if the hard line of her lips is anything to go by.

“Good.” She pulls of her gloves and turns to Toya. “In the meantime, I got questions for you while I look at those scratches. There's only so much I can tell about Momiji from a distance, so you’ll be telling me everything you know about this little shit.”

A low growl chimes in about a minute into her questioning, Akito's stomach an unwelcome addition. Uesaka-san rounds on him, disapproving, and shoos him and Kohane out of her building to get food. They leave a bewildered Toya behind to the questioning after a quick check for his order, all of them quickly settling on a nearby coffee shop.

Outside, after a short, shared glance, both he and Kohane silently agree to avoid Vivid Street. It doesn’t stop them both from staring down the streets as they pass.

Even after 10 am on a Sunday, the edges of Vivid Street're just starting to wake up after a late Saturday night. A few quiet people still dressed for a night out avoid eye contact, eyes firmly on the ground in front of them either from shame or nausea, a neon sign for a crazy time. The shops’ve put out signs bragging about easy meals and hangover cures. This's the closest Vivid Street ever gets to the peace and quiet of an early morning run, and it's a damn blessing after the chaos Akito's been through.

Kohane doesn't speak as she waves to some of the people walking past, content in the quiet like Akito. Thank fuck it's her here and not An. She’d've stopped to talk with everyone.

Well, she would've before…

Actually, he’d deal with it again if it meant An talking to anyone on the street. He gets it, she needs time— and she's been better— but it's like running through those damn rooms again, everything slightly off without her. She's supposed to be there. She's always been there. The street shaped around her, and her not being there's like ripping out an instrument from a song, the whole balance off, empty.

Beside him, Kohane sighs. If the slightly pained scrunch of her forehead's anything to go by, she could be thinking something along the same lines. There's no way to know how much An's told her, how much of it's just being around An the most, but he really doubts it's much of anything considering how closely Kohane's been watching her the last few weeks.

The coffee shop's as full as always, the owner's older regulars unaffected by a Sunday morning. It's not a lot of people, but it's more than the rest of the shops for sure, a little over half of the small shop's tables taken. A little sign with slightly crooked handwriting brags about their limited fall menu additions. The small glass case beneath it's full of orange tinted food.

“I can cover yours,” Akito says, smothering a yawn in his hand, chest twinging a little bit at the lung expansion. He was able to switch to one of his looser binders before sprinting out the door to meet up with Toya on the way to Uesaka-san, but it's still a little damp and his chest's still sore. He hides his grimace as he shifts, adjusting his shirt. “As a thanks for helpin’ out.”

Kohane shakes her head. Man, just last year she’d’ve stuttered out a protest, but now she has a hard, stubborn set to her eyes. “Thank you, Shinonome-kun, but I’m bringing something to An-chan.”

He shrugs. “I owe her one, too.” Toya said it was fine, but he could see Momiji getting antsy the closer they got to Meiko-san's. If he’d started to freak out or got away from Toya before they left… thank fuck An was ready with that carrier.

She bites her lip, eyes flicking over him, the light from above casting a glare over her glasses.

Man, it's weird as hell seeing her with those. Glasses Kohane's a different person in his mind, this mousey, anxious girl that disappeared one day and left his teammate in her place. Of course they're the same— even after she changed her hair, she wasn't magically the Kohane in front of him today— but it's like looking at childhood pictures of himself, this huge gap between then and now that almost makes past him feel like a completely separate person, barely linked together by the thinnest common threads.

Does she think about it, too? She never ties her pigtails low. She always wears the things she bought from Vivid Street right after the change. She doesn’t even bring her glasses to the events they’ve been doing, keeping her contacts in until she gets home, whether that's a good idea or not— like he can say anything after constantly pulling fourteen hours strong with his binder on. Are these things she doesn’t want anymore, or things that she doesn’t want to show anymore? Are they things she has to avoid, too?

“Thank you, Shinonome-kun,” she says at last, voice the same as it's always been.

Blinking away the feeling, he nods. “No problem.” Or maybe he's just projecting his own bullshit on her. That's possible too. 

Damn, he's tired.

Kohane orders her drinks, and Akito makes sure to grab the muffins she was eyeing before putting in his and Toya's order. His own chocolate chip bagel's nice and fresh and good as hell. He already feels like a new man even before he gets a sip of his coffee, the sweet syrup and heat washing over him like warm breeze as they head to Uesaka-san's.

A little bit more of Vivid Street's awake on their way back. This early, the rougher, newer voices dominate the sound leaking out, the more experienced groups still recovering from last night's performances. He used to be able to name a lot of them; now, after weeks of work outside of Vivid Street, none sound familiar. If anything, it sounds quieter. 

It kinda stings more than he thought it would.

“Hey, Shinonome-kun?” Kohane asks suddenly. “Is An-chan… has she said anything to you about her task?”

He shakes his head. “No.” Not yet, anyway. The cogs're definitely turning, and he's got an idea of what Ken-san might’ve had in mind when he gave her the task. It's not like she needs Akito's help, but he's gotta guess she’ll at least talk to him or Miku at some point. There's not a lotta options for advice. “Why? Somethin’ up?”

“Oh, nothing really.” She adjusts her glasses with the edge of her hand. From this side of her, it's way more obvious how lopsided her pigtails are, and she holds her drinks and food close to her body defensively. “Do you think… should I put my contacts in before I head over to Meiko-san's? These frames are from before you and An-chan helped me with my wardrobe, so I’m not sure they really suit my outfit…”

They definitely grabbed Akito's attention, but he's almost positive it wasn’t because they clashed. He gives her a once over. Rose gold frames like hers could definitely cause issues with most street clothes, but An— and him— went towards lighter, “cuter” colors when helping her. There're some outfits it’d work better with than others, but none of them should be obviously awful.

He gets why she asked. With a closet full of peaches and pinks, she's wearing her darker green cardigan. Luckily the frames're on the more muted side of rose gold. They're a nice pop of color without being too much, and he nods. “It looks good.”

“I don’t look strange?”

Ah, got it. “An’ll like it. Hell, she’ll probably be excited about it.” He stops, takes a stab in the dark. “You don’t look any different than usual. Same reliable Kohane as always.”

There it is. Kohane smiles, her arms relaxing at her sides. Some of the pep in her step comes back, and he's suddenly, viscerally aware why An set her contact info to the hamster emoji, head tilted to the side as her cheeks round out with her grin. “Then I think I'll head right over after I get the carrier back. Thank you for your help, Shinonome-kun!”

He grins back, her mood infectious even with his limited energy. “Sure.”

“Is Aoyagi-kun doing better, by the way?” she asks carelessly. “He was a little more relaxed last week, but he seemed stressed again. He's much happier today.”

“Ah… more or less.” Toya thought he was in a good spot with his song last week before Akito threw a wrench into his mood. His partner was pretty happy each time they brushed shoulders on the way to the cafe, but he's not stupid enough to think this single trip's gonna solve everything between them. It'll be fine. Akito just needs time, and their trip to the clinic buys it while still letting Toya know he's important. Toya's sure to get the breakthrough he's been looking for on his task soon and get a good rest while Akito figures it out.

Kohane frowns, clearly wondering. For a heartbeat, he thinks she might say something, too.

But Toya's already waiting for them outside, and she lets Akito off the hook to ask about Uesaka-san's questions. Akito's content to nurse his coffee as the two talk, satisfied when Toya quietly brightens when he sees the scone Akito grabbed for him.

Getting his shot always feels like a waste of time right up until the injection.

The train's about a fifteen minute trip, then another five to the clinic. The waiting room time's always a crapshot, somewhere between instant to ten minutes on a bad day, and then the nurse has to take down all his medical bullshit, which is another few minutes.

After that there's the blood work he has to do to make sure his hormones aren't fucking up his body, so add a few more minutes on there. Next he has to wait for the doctor to come in and touch base with him before he finally gets his dose. If he doesn't stop to grab anything and manages to catch the next train that's about to leave as he steps foot in the station, the whole trip's roughly an hour and some change.

Yeah, it's only once every few weeks. Yeah, it always feels worth it when he sees the empty syringe after the years it took to even get here, but the stuff around it? That's time he could be using to practice, and it pokes at him like a loose thread on a shirt. He dreams of the day they clear him to self-inject at home.

But it doesn’t really feel like that today.

At first Akito just kinda assumes it's Toya. Listening to music on the way's nice, sure, but talking with Toya's always nicer. Plus, walking with Toya somewhere new's always fun. He always manages to point out stuff Akito's eyes glaze over: a small statue tucked near an alley, a slanted street sign, a traditional Japanese sweets store his mom’d probably like. The waiting room's a waiting room, almost a completely new place now that there're people instead of the empty ghost town he was in with Luka-san, but the couple of minutes he has to suffer through feels like nothing with Toya there.

Except waiting in a room for the nurse to do her thing, the feeling doesn't change. He wants to finish to go back to Toya, yeah, but it's like waiting for his last class to finish before lunch instead of a constant, stabbing itch to do something. This isn’t time weighing him down, even though they're in high gear after Taiga-san's beatdown; it's just basic, boring impatience.

Why's it not bothering him? What's changed about himself that he didn’t notice? What's different?

He looks around the room as the nurse prepares his T. It's just like what he and Luka-san searched through but with more detail, a half-finished painting versus seeing the final product. Containers he doesn’t really remember having text are labeled precisely. Posters’ve been put on the walls since he's last been here, sternly informing him to get a flu shot. Footsteps and voices leak through the door. The skyline's the same as always, the sun just barely low enough to blind him in his chair.

It's only as he's walking back to Toya, weaving around familiar doctors and nurses, that he realizes what it is.

This feeling… it's close to the weightless one he gets right before performing now. It's more level than that, a balloon on a string instead of a bird in the sky, but it's better than being grounded completely. 

Right now, this doesn’t feel like a waste of time like usual. It's close the first lungful of air after a long note, the crowd going wild in front of him, breathing in the taste of satisfaction before launching ahead. He's still running full tilt at his goal, but the ground isn't crumbling at his heels anymore. He's done enough that he can afford to jog for an hour; the ground won’t swallow him up in the meantime. He's made progress, and he can— he should take pride in that for a few heartbeats.

He's not complacent— he can never be complacent— but it's okay to take it in now. Ken-san's helped him understand that all of it can be more fuel.

He's unshackled.

Toya waits until they're outside to ask, “Do all shots put you in a good mood, or only this one?” His voice pitches upwards teasingly, a sly smile on his face.

Akito bumps shoulders with him, hand coming up to pat his back. Toya's quiet laugh only makes him feel higher. The street around them's a low hum, and the morning chill's almost completely disappeared, the noon sun bright above them, not a cloud in the sky. Their Sekai's awesome, but nothing beats the actual sun on his face. “Nah, ‘m just in a good mood.”

It's a little clumsy, almost a collision, but Toya bumps his shoulder back.

Warmth tickles his chest. Giddy with it, he throws his arm around Toya's shoulder, pulling him closer for a few heartbeats, letting his lips just slightly brush his cheek. 

The heat from Toya's body chases away the last of the autumn chill, and Toya's hand comes up to brush his where it hangs around his shoulder. It's so unfair how quiet Toya's blush is, a slight flush lightly dusted over his cheeks like chocolate powder over a dessert. Akito only notices the change 'cause of how well he knows Toya's face.

They turn onto a side street, Akito reluctantly letting go to keep them from tripping on each other. The already soft noise of the main street's now barely more than a whisper, like a song just barely audible through a window. Most of the shops only have a few people, all of them closer to his parents' age, but the brighter storefronts keep it from feeling too stuffy. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of people walking by, which means the tea cookies shouldn’t be gone by the time they get there.

Akito jumps when something touches his hand, forcibly keeping it still when he sees Toya react out of the corner of his eye, worried he's scared him away. Toya only hesitates for an extra heartbeat before grabbing his hand. He moves closer, hiding their hands between them, and squeezes.

Ugh, Akito can feel the rush of hot blood to his face, his ears burning. This's why he can’t stand Toya's small blushes when his feel like a neon sign, but it's worth it. It's always worth it when he sees Toya's self-satisfied smile, and it makes him want to grab his face right now, desire kickstarted to life and igniting through him.

But two things stop him.

The first's that he promised cookies, and he's going to deliver. If he makes Toya miss this because he wanted to kiss him too much, he might actually never live it down.

The second's a sudden, tiny weight in his gut, a small ice ball in the middle of the warmth. It reminds him of making a small mistake on stage, the audience clueless, even his teammates missing it in all the lights and noise. But he knows. He put his arm around Toya, and Toya grabbed his hand. He shoulda grabbed his hand first instead of repeating his mistake from earlier.

It's not enough to spoil his mood, but it's a piece of food stuck between his teeth, annoying and sharp. He's pretty sure he sees Toya cut a look at him, too, but getting to the shop keeps anything from digging in its hooks too far. He quickly grabs the door for Toya to try and make up for his mistake and follows him in.

It's decently crowded inside. The building's longer than it looks from the outside, size closer to a small restaurant, but it's setup is all classic cafe. A long, clean counter greets them at the start, and Akito's eyes immediately go to the dessert case, the smell of cookies almost overpowering. He watches a worker slide a new batch into place, even fresher than hoped.

The line's nice and fast. Both of them walk out of there with their cookies and cheesecake, no sweat, and Toya happily hums as he eats a fresh one. It lets Akito reset himself, pick that feeling out of his teeth, and focus. 

If Akito wants to grab Toya's hand, he has until they get to the main street to avoid the crowd. Should he wipe the sweat off his palms? Or'll Toya think it's from holding hands before? No, it's fine! He needs to stop vamping and take the opportunity; he's not a coward. This is the least he needs to do.

Swallowing his nerves, Akito counts the time of Toya's arm swaying, matching his pace. It's as easy as always, like blending their voices, and some of his nerves settle at the reminder of how well they work together. His reach for Toya's hand's as quick and decisive as the way he grabs his neck for a kiss, and he grabs it smoothly. No fumbling, no smushed fingers, no awkward shuffle.

Toya doesn't look at him, but he can see the happy little crease around his eye, his lips quirk up. He moves closer to Akito, his thumb brushing the back of his hand.

Akito almost sighs. He's getting better. 

…Sighs?

Ever since that soccer game years ago when he decided there's no point if he's not dedicated to something fully, Akito's realized there's also something extremely satisfying about giving his all. When he studied for his retest, when he did that arcade contest with Toya, when he did the summer festival, even when he did that wedding— somewhere deep inside him settled with satisfaction.

There's something bitter under the rush of it this time, throat chilled with it like breathing in after taking a mint. This satisfaction's tired, more like worn out relief, and a deep pit is yawning in his stomach. It's like the sun's dimmed, all the exhaustion from this morning starting to settle back into his muscles, weighing him down. This can’t just be the caffeine wearing off.

Toya gets dimmer, too. His eyes are narrowed, the happy crease replaced with a small wrinkle between his eyebrows like he's trying to figure something out. It's an expression Akito's slowly getting familiar with whether he wants to or not.

They're right back where they started this morning.

Like feedback bursting through an amp straight into his body, Akito suddenly understands inviting Toya wasn't the stopgap he assumed. It's barely a bandage, and the adhesive's already starting to come off. That joy Toya had in the fake Weekend Garage was real— the understanding in his eyes was definitely there— but it's not enough. They're walking past each other like Luka-san warned, and he doesn't know why.

He lets go of his hand as they turn on the main street. It feels cold without his body heat, thin frost on cool glass, and he clenches it closed. 

This feeling… what is it? It's deep in his gut, a rock weighing him down, but it feels familiar. It's close to that funny feeling of a room being a little off, frantically trying to remember what the original was like. 

…Stifled. He feels stifled. It's a dog in a cage, hair on end, pacing back and forth at the bars, eyes locked on the horizon.

And it's not a new feeling. It's the same one that leaks back after events. The one he's being trying to figure out how to get rid of permanently. 

He can only recognize it thanks to how light he felt in the clinic, only placing it now that he could tell when it settled back in him. It's not nearly as heavy as before, but it's there. He’d just fooled himself into thinking that being able to shake it off for events meant he wasn’t still dealing with it; he's just in a bigger cage he couldn’t see the bars of yet. 

Trying to force himself to do these things for Toya weighs him down.

Okay, but what the hell's he supposed to do about it? His issue before was not singing from the heart, but that's not what's happening here. He wants to touch Toya. He likes touching Toya. He's thinking about it, yeah, but they're dating; he can’t just not do it.

He always thought it’d be fine if it's a little awkward at first since it’ll become natural after practice, the same way he doesn’t gotta think about singing from his diaphragm anymore, but will it ever be if it makes him feel like this? This suppressed feeling's what he's supposed to get rid of, right? It's what Ken-san helped him shake off, and he got better. Or will it disappear once he gets the hang of it and he's barking up the wrong tree?

Ugh, he can’t afford to just spin his wheels, not when it comes to Toya! He needs to figure something else out now. But what?

…Fuck, it feels like he's right back on that street with Ken-san a few weeks ago, the cafe au lait almost too warm in his hands. All the pieces are here, the answers at his fingertips— Luka-san's even given him advice again— but he can’t find it. Nothing he can think of works, and he scowls up at the train station as they approach.

A sour taste worse than the yuzu mocktail he drank with Luka-san fills his mouth. He doesn't want to separate. He doesn’t wanna leave like this, not when he's so close.

“Akito,” Toya says suddenly beside him, “thank you for inviting me.”

“Ah.” Akito clears his throat, rubs the back of his head as he forces his attention back. “Yeah, 'course.”

There's a loud sound as a train leaves, ringing between them.

“Hey, Toya,” Akito says, then stops. His mouth hangs open for a heartbeat, words caught in his throat. He shouldn’t be taking up Toya's time when he's still got music to write for his task, but…

“Hm?” Toya moves closer to hear him over the noise, and his gray eyes are almost stormy in the train station's shadow. The rest of his expression's hard to make out. He wants to pull him into the light so he can see every detail, tracing it into his memory.

“D’you still want to check out the samples I got at home?” Akito pushes out. He swallows, a little dazed by Toya's eyes, and sways closer, fascinated when pupils get bigger, casting the gray even darker. “I can send ‘em over if you're swamped—”

Even with everything swirling around inside Akito, it settles a bit when Toya's expression smooths into something eager as he quickly agrees. It twitches when Toya brushes his hand as they head inside, a conflict roaring inside him, and he focuses on the simple heat of Toya's body as they wait for the next train to keep himself steady.

Come hell or high water he's gonna figure this out today.

No one's home when Akito gets back.

It's both the best news he's ever gotten and also makes him feel like he's a kid waiting to go on stage for his first event, queasy with nerves. He’d rather no one in his family be anywhere near the house while he tries to figure this out, especially with Toya around, but the implications of being home alone is a persistent tickle in the back of his throat the instant he realizes Ena's not in her room. It's not enough to stop him from rushing Toya to his bedroom anyway— the way this day's going, he's not giving anyone in his family the chance to walk in on them— but he can see the line of tension appear in Toya's body when he tells him, the sudden fire in his eyes he pushes down.

The bed's still a mess from this morning, comforter and blanket half on the floor, and his pjs're a crumpled ball near the closet. He quickly throws his dirty clothes in his hamper but leaves his bed alone, the insinuation a hot mess in his body. Instead he pulls the spare couch cushion out of his closet and tosses it towards the table in the center of his room like usual. Toya sits on it neatly as Akito juggles his open laptop with one hand, sliding it in front of Toya before fumbling with the charger.

“Folder's on the desktop; it's just called ‘Samples.’” There's a faint ping from his laptop as he plugs it in. “I put the ones I always use in ‘Usual.’ Rest of ‘em are just kinda floatin’ in there. I made a folder for you, so just copy ‘em over there and I’ll send it over when you finish.” He grabs his headphones off the hook near his stereo, eyes catching on the little bit of tape residue from posters long gone, and hands them to Toya. “It's fine if you want to listen to ‘em out loud, but I've got these, too.”

Toya smiles. The light from the window catches on his face and casts him in a soft glow that makes Akito stare for a heartbeat, Toya's dark hair turning a richer blue. Their fingers brush as he takes the headphones, too fast to really feel it. “Thank you.”

“Y-yeah.” Akito swallows, heat flashing in his stomach. Fuck, the attraction on top of everything else makes it feel like a million people're trying to get his attention at once. It's a relief when Toya plugs the headphones in and focuses on his laptop, letting Akito take a few heartbeats to handle himself before leaving Toya alone to grab some drinks.

It's weird seeing the kitchen and living room so quiet in broad daylight. He's only ever seen it this still when he gets up to run or stumbles past in the late hours of the morning, completely wiped from an event. The silent clinic from this morning comes to mind, the memory of its emptiness made even colder from the chill of the fridge as he pulls out his cheesecake.

Akito quickly cuts a slice and grabs Toya's usual mug. After a few heartbeats, he fills it with water. There's a good chance anything else would mess with the flavor of the cookies if he decides to eat some. He debates the ice pack in the freezer but leaves it; the swelling on Toya's hand's barely there anymore.

Toya glances up as Akito comes back, nodding gratefully as he accepts the mug before turning back to his work. Akito can see he's already got a handful of samples in the folder and leaves him to it, plopping down across from him. 

The slice of cheesecake looks awesome in the sun. There's a light strawberry drizzle on top, the thick, deep red kind that sticks nicely to the cake without being too messy, and he can see chocolate chips dotting it along the sides, just enough to keep from being overwhelming. His fork slides in clean. The crust doesn't crumble into a mess, thick but not too thick, and he hums when he puts it in his mouth. Fuck, that's good. He's gonna have to hide an extra few pieces in the back of the fridge before Ena swipes the rest.

The slice's gone before he knows it, and he sighs. Pushing his empty plate to the side, he sets his arms on the table and leans his head on them, the slouch relieving some of the pressure from this stupid binder. Hesitantly, he pulls on the front of it for a few heartbeats for some extra relief. He's really gonna need to keep it off tomorrow.

Even slouching, he can still see Toya's face over his laptop. His eyes don’t move towards Akito, locked in on the screen, and the dark blue of his computer's music player reflects in Toya's eyes, the gray becoming almost steely. Bright in the sunlight, the white of Akito's headphones really stand out on the darker side of his hair. The other's side almost invisible by comparison.

Impulsively, he flexes his foot under the table, tapping Toya's knee. Toya reaches down and pokes him, lips twitching, but he still doesn't look away.

Akito lets his head drop completely, hiding his face from the light. He focuses on the dull clicks as Toya uses his trackpad, his almost rhythmic tap-tap every few seconds, knowing his headphones are way too high quality for him to catch any hint of which samples Toya's checking. The sun slowly warms the front his body even as the AC keeps his back frosty, and the looseness of his body feels way too good after such a long ass day. Everything swirling inside him's settled like muck in a pond, all sunk to the bottom, completely unnoticeable if he didn't know it was there. He could ignore it, wait to stumble back in and kick it all up some other, less nice day.

But he made a decision, and he's not gonna back out.

He jumps right in, trying to untangle what he kicks up after letting it rest. The things he should be doing and the way they feel hollowed out when he does them, rotten wood eaten from the inside; the embarrassing craving to touch Toya, a simmering ember always underneath it, ready to flare; the weight like chains wrapped around his body, dragging him down; and the bone-deep voice that whispers with it to keep him in line, lets him know when he's straying too far, too lame. The answer to it all's still sludge, somewhere unreachable him, choking him.

It isn't any different from before the train station. He can't come up with anything else.

Akito's hoodie bunches in his palms as he clenches his hands, fabric worn down and smooth. He can't keep doing nothing. He can't just sit here, but his rung out brain keeps spinning its wheels, stuck in place. There's gotta be something! How does he stop feeling like this? How does he get rid of this weird thing just starting to grow between them before it turns into a tumor?

There's a soft clink beside him as Toya sets his mug down. In the dark like this, hidden in his arms, it reminds Akito of a bottle spinning on a familiar hardwood floor. Luka-san's tight smile floats in his mind, her voice pitched low and secretive, long hair wind swept from running.

…There's a difference between thinking you know and saying it.

Toya can know Akito invited him to the clinic to show him he's important, but Akito didn’t tell him. Toya can know something's up, but Akito hasn't told him. That's where this weird thing starts showing, the bandage falling off. And if he does tell Toya, that takes some of the pressure off figuring out the boyfriend act, right? That could be what he's missing.

Maybe saying it's all he's got left.

Fuck, the thought of admitting out loud how pathetic he is makes something deep inside him scream. That weight crushes his chest even worse than running with that damn binder on.

If this was for the team— for their partnership— he’d say it, no questions asked; he learned that lesson a long time ago. But he knows there's still a path where he doesn't say anything and things turn out fine, where he gets his act together and Toya never has to ask. He's supposed to fight, not give up.

Or is he just wussing out? The whole week after Toya's confession, what his mind latched on to like a hook in a song was the stubborn look in Toya's eyes before he started talking, like he could stare down a tsunami and not flinch even as his fear and nerves showed in his fidgeting hands, in his rehearsed words. It still makes Akito's body tense up to think about his own nerves from that day, trying to keep his voice even when he responded, desperate not to blow it even as part of him kept waiting to wake up.

If Toya could do that, even if he said it for the sake of the team, why shouldn't Akito do something similar? How can he deserve to be his partner if he can't keep up?

Sighing, Akito lifts his head, face warm from his arms, and freezes when he meets gray eyes. Toya's frowning at him again. It's so handsome on him it's unfair, a muted look that shows off his raw good-looks, but Akito's always preferred the expressions that're hard to come by, the ones that transform his face. 

Akito blinks, caught, but doesn't look away, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

Toya opens his mouth. He closes it again. 

After a few thumping heartbeats, his eyes go back to the computer, but the dissatisfied look stays on his face.

Part of Akito's relieved— more time to think.

The rest of him burns with impatience. More time to what? Go in circles like Meiko-san and Luka-san, always asking after each other? How much more past each other will they be next time Toya asks? But just opening his mouth and telling him right now…

Deep inside him, he wonders if this isn't just pushing his shit on him?

He clenches his hands into his sleeves. That fucking weight is unbearable now that he knows what it's like to live without it, like wearing a bra after the relief of existing with a binder. He's a dog paced to the edge of its cage, debating whether to bide his time or rush ahead and hope the bars break under his weight.

“...Hey, Toya?”

“Hm?” Toya doesn't look at him, but his hands stop moving, eyes fixed on a spot on his screen. He's listening.

“You know something's up,” Akito forces out, tongue dead weight in his mouth, “right?”

Now Toya looks at him. His eyes widen a bit, but his tensed hands are the real giveaway. “Yes, I thought that might be the case,” he says mildly, moving the headphones off his ears.

So nothing concrete. He doesn't know anything yet.

Something nervous flashes through Akito, the same rush of staring at a cookie jar and wondering if he can sneak one before anyone notices. He doesn't need to do this. He could still play it off. He could keep trying—keep fighting until he's really cornered instead of mercy ruling himself. 

He could, but he won't start making excuses for himself now.

…Except he can't force it out. It jams in his throat, a billion words he can't decide on eating each other, piling up until he could choke on them. It needs to be knocked loose or dug out, but it looks like Toya isn't gonna pry like Luka-san. The other's already nodding, taking Akito's silence as a response and sliding the headphone back into place, turning back to the monitor—

“You could ask,” Akito says, heart in his raw throat, ready to leap out at Toya's command no matter how bloody it would be to claw it out. “I’d tell you.”

For a few heartbeats, he thinks Toya didn’t hear. Then he slides the headphones off completely to hang around his neck.

The full force of his attention makes Akito straighten, braced against the intensity of his eyes. It's impossible to know what he sees when he looks at Akito. His hair's probably still wind-swept at best despite the extra minute he spent in his bathroom trying to salvage it after the Sekai. The coffee is definitely starting to wear off, and he's got no idea how much longer until the full extent of his exhaustion leaks through. There's no way the bags under his eyes're gone. His voice's still clear, though, and he knows Toya won’t miss anything in it.

“Is there…?” Toya shakes his head. “No.” His necklace winks in the sunlight with the movement, the edge of the headphones glinting. He frowns a bit, eyebrows furrowed in frustration, and huffs, agitated. His eyes drift away as he thinks, an unreadable stone.

Waiting sucks. Akito shifts to get some of his energy out, muffling the sound of his fidgeting fingers by drumming on his leg in time with his heart pounding in his chest. It's like the few minutes before his blood's drawn, the lead up to the jab making his heart race in his ears, but the anticipation's always been worse than the actual pinch. Here's to hoping this’ll be the same.

“I know you're good at hiding things from me, Akito,” Toya says at last, words slow and careful as he looks back. “I always wonder how long you've been dealing with things by the time I notice, if I could’ve helped you.” His fingertips tighten on his necklace. “As your partner, I always want to know when you're struggling, but more than that, I think I want you to tell me."

His jaw sets stubbornly, and his eyes blaze like they do under stage lights, knocking Akito breathless even as he braces for the words. “It won’t stop me from asking when I think it's important, but I want to be enough that you think about relying on me first.” After a heartbeat, he nods, satisfied. “I want you to decide to rely on me.”

Then Toya smiles, small and proud and beautiful in the sunlight.

Akito feels like he's been tackled, his head ringing after it hits the ground, disoriented as he scrambles to respond, some words finally knocked loose. “I do rely on you! You're the best partner anyone could ask for! I just—” He stops, the rest still clogged even after that, wedged in place. He pulls himself back, smashes the words and thoughts into smaller pieces and frantically picks them out one by one. “You don't need to deal with it. It's not affectin’ the team or us or nothin’. ‘S just me. I can figure it out.” He swallows. “Okay?”

“…Mm.” Toya nods, but there's something painful about it around his eyes, his unsteady lips. It reminds him of red twilight, of a blunt confession, ringing metal, and the sudden realization Akito's made a mistake trying to play it off as a joke. His necklace shimmers as it sways, and it reminds him of an earring tapped to an unsteady beat, a fake Weekend Garage, and a soft “That means you trust me.”

Toya showed him his heart when he confessed; the least Akito can do is show him his, no matter how lame it makes him look. If this is what breaks the camel's back—

No, he has to show Toya he trusts him, trust that he doesn't have anything to break. He has to believe that his body and his weaknesses won't pile on top of each other to him, and that, just like with his singing, Akito's worthy enough to relax for a few heartbeats and lean on Toya for just a little bit.

Easier said than done. There's no explosion like with Ken-san's practices, no sudden rush of understanding and weightless freedom. This is more like trying to fill a long-dried out river. It's trying to ad lib for the first time on stage and blanking, out of his element the second he's not following practice. The bone deep feeling's not completely gone— it can't be, he doesn't have the luxury to throw it away— but he's made the decision to ignore it, lifted his chains off for a few moments to force himself to breathe. It's a start.

But even without the full weight of it, finding the right words is impossible. They're all either fading into nothing in his tired brain or wrong. A single sentence is torture, like he's desperately trying to communicate with a foreigner in English, but Toya waits patiently just like Akito did for him. 

Eventually, slowly, they form and sit in his mouth, heavy but ready.

That part of him that had to fight all the assholes mouthing off about a “little girl in over her head” on Vivid Street, that had to punch his classmate for the stupid teasing all those years ago, that screams at him to fight like he should, shudders through him like a fish's last desperate thrash on a hook.

The rest of him looks at Toya and opens his mouth.

“I know I'm not… good at this boyfriend thing,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. How the hell’d Toya's confession start so steadily? “I know I keep tensin’ up or just… knockin’ your shoulder instead of grabbin’ your hand while you—” The rest of the words bunch in his throat like a traffic jam. Shit, it's impossible not to feel a little like a loser, but he can't stop here. He won't stop here. “When you're already so amazin’ at it.

“‘S why I didn't invite you on a date yet— well, that ‘n your task,” he continues, wiping his clammy hands on his pants. “It's taking longer than I thought, but I’m gonna get a handle on it.” He stares into Toya's wide eyes, trying to beam the feeling into his skull, hoping the resolve that pulses with his heartbeat's as obvious as his messy hair or the bags under his eyes. “Just give me a little more time to catch up. I’m not gonna keep making you do all the work. I'll figure out how to do it. I'm gonna get it right.”

Toya's face flashes across a handful of emotions almost too fast for Akito to catch. There's a fleeting slant of his eyebrows that twitches into something just on the edge of bewilderment before stalling into something quietly content, eyes glowing happily. Then there's that stubborn look in his eye, the one that always makes Akito think of his confession, and his stomach swoops even as his nerves fray like a poorly tailored jacket.

Slowly, Toya reaches for Akito's hand, and Akito can’t suppress a flinch as his cool palm settles on his skin. Toya smiles, apologetic, but doesn’t move. The warmth of it travels through Akito's body, flushing his whole system out with something that feels like hope.

“Akito, I don't know what you mean by "right," but I like reaching out to hold your hand,” he says, thumb drifting over the back of his hand. “I like being the first one to text in the morning. I like kissing you. I like kneeling over you and feeling you relax under me. I like when you do those things, too, but I like being the one to pull you ahead for once. It's only when I think you're not enjoying yourself that I don’t like it.”

Akito inhales sharply. The heavy feeling gives way, slipping from his awareness like melted ice as he twitches his fingers under Toya's, his words settling deep in his gut as he heats up.

Oh. He was rushing forward by himself again, being stupid and bashing his head against a wall for nothing when a door was a few steps away, waiting to be noticed. He fooled himself into thinking this was like learning how to act on Vivid Street and beyond, a song and dance he had to fit into to be a boyfriend that he just wasn't getting, something always off, a room a little to the left.

This relationship's not independent from their partnership— it's an extension, and it's theirs, the same way no two partnerships are the same on Vivid Street. If Toya doesn't want that stuff, he wouldn’t give it. If it makes Akito feel good to have Toya grab his hand, if he likes throwing an arm around his shoulder, if he kinda likes feeling Toya take care of him no matter how much his slow, careful touch makes him feel insane, then what's the problem? If Toya's already been offering it, or if Toya likes offering it, it's okay to take it sometimes.

He wouldn't want to disappoint his partner.

Akito turns his head to the side to hide his goofy smile in his arm. “Cool,” he says, the words muffled. He rotates his wrist to hold Toya's hand and knows he can still see his burning ears as their fingers slot together.

Few a few heartbeats, everything's quiet.

“...Hey, Akito?”

Akito turns his head, peeking at Toya with one eye. “Mm-hm?”

Of all the things he expects, none of them're Toya's eyebrows knitting together. “You said we haven't been on a date yet, right?” He waits for Akito's nod and frowns. “Then, I think I've misunderstood something. I thought we’ve been going on dates.”

“Huh?!” Akito jerks upright. This is fucking news to him! “When?!”

“We just were on one.” Toya gestures to Akito's empty plate. “We went to a cafe together.”

“That's not— we were hanging out!” He runs his free hand through his hair, something a little hysterical in his throat as a thought hits him. “How many dates do you think we've been on?”

Smiling helplessly, Toya says, “A lo. We usually go on one after an event. You walk me towards my house.”

“What?! That's not—!” Akito rubs his eyes. Okay, so every time they've hung out since they started dating's been a date. Fuck, what does that make their first date?

…They'd made plans to go check out a new clothing store before Toya confessed and kept it. Akito picked up a new pair of patterned pants and convinced Toya to grab that nice new hoodie that really went with his eyes. Then they hit the bookstore for Toya before getting dinner. Was that it?

“So when do you think our first date was? A few days after you confessed?” Akito asks, completely unsurprised when Toya nods.

It's… not bad as first dates go looking back, but he's pretty sure he didn't even hold his hand, let alone kiss him! He was definitely a little more touchy than usual, throwing his arm around his shoulders ‘n stuff, but that was because he still couldn't believe Toya liked him! That he liked when Akito touched him! Akito wasn't just gonna sit on these feelings for the rest of his life like he resigned himself to. He even remembers trying to slow his roll towards the end to keep from embarrassing himself while hanging out.

“I had a lot of fun,” Toya says. There's no patronizing, no rush to reassure him, just his bright smile that makes Akito's heart thump. It's genuine at least, even if mortification claws down his back. How didn't he notice?! “We can still go on a big date, if you want. I guess it would still be considered our first since only I thought we were on dates.”

“‘S fine,” Akito says, mildly surprised when it really is. None of those awful feelings surge back up, still flying high without the updraft.

Maybe they'll stay away. More likely, in a few hours when he's alone, Toya long gone, they’ll weigh him back down. That voice will be back whispering, and he'll have to figure out how to keep the bulk from suffocating him again.

He wants to. He wants to always feel as weightless as that realization with Ken-san, as singing with Luka-san, as working with Boss or hanging with Toya and the others. He wants to climb higher, both for the sake of the team and his boyfriend holding his hand.

For now, if Toya was happy with it, and he's okay with it, then there's no problem. He's free.

…But he's definitely gotta step up his game.

Akito taps his foot on Toya's knee again, and this time let's himself feel satisfied when Toya smiles back, a new muscle to train. “I’m still gonna take you on a real nice one once this all settles down,” he warns. “Gotta show you what I can really do.”

Toya laughs, small and quiet just for Akito, his eyes lighting up teasingly. He squeezes his hand, warm and solid. “Then I'll be looking forward to it.”

The shrill ring of Akito's alarm screeches through the silence of the park, interrupting the last, lingering note of his song. He maintains the note through it, used to way more than that trying to distract him, and fishes his phone out of his pocket. It cuts off abruptly as he swipes it away. 

He stares at the time for a long heartbeat. Solo practice should be over, but it feels like he's just barely gotten started. Even after cool downs, his body thrums with energy, hyped up, ready to keep going. 

To be fair, his voice's been in even better condition since his performance on Vivid Street, and he's still riding the high of Mita coming back on board. Watching the town ignite at his voice alone, the energy jumping from zero to a hundred just from him… he could do a whole other practice right now on that feeling alone.

But Akito made a promise a long time ago not to overdo it, so he dutifully walks away from the park, twisting the cap of his water bottle back and forth to let off a little of the energy. Should he go for another run? But he already ran twice the last few days, so that’d just defeat the purpose of stopping practice. There's a fifty-fifty shot Ena's still got her bad mood from yesterday, so going home's not really high on his list of options.

…Maybe he’ll head over there.

Crase Cafe's almost empty when his eyes clear, Meiko-san outlined by the soft light inside as she works towards the back of the seating area. She straightens up before Akito even heads for the door, turning to check before waving at him with a bright smile, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her long, silver drop earrings sway.

Akito waves back but pauses a few heartbeats before going in. White, English letters that're graffitied onto the wall nearby catch his eye, but he gives up trying to read them pretty fast; they're too stylized.

The same usual jingle rings above him as he pushes the door open. Meiko-san's already moving behind the counter.

“Nice to see you, Akito-kun,” she says. “You just finished up practice, right? Would you like your usual blend?” Glass clinks. “I also have some home made ginger hard candy you can try.”

“Ginger candy?” he asks, sliding onto a stool.

“It's supposed to be good for your throat, and I thought it’d be helpful to have something you all can grab quickly since you're so busy.”

The glass containers Meiko-san sets in front of him are two wildly different colors. One's the light orange color he was expecting, but the other is closer to an oil slick, a crazy mix of colors that abruptly shift into a dark, offsetting brown.

She taps the normal one. “This one is plain ginger. The other one has honey in it.” She smiles, a little apologetic. “Luka and Miku went a little… experimental with the dye, but the taste is good.” 

Akito raises his eyebrows. Meiko-san wouldn't mess with him like that, but hearing Miku made it's a little… but honey does sound good right now. Hedging his bets, he takes one of each. After a few heartbeats, he tosses the oil slick one in his mouth and unscrews the cap of his water to wash it down.

…She's right. Despite the look, it's pretty good. Guess Luka-san and Meiko-san were able to keep Miku in check, or maybe Luka-san somehow managed to even out Miku. He gives her a thumbs up.

Meiko-san nods and pops a normal ginger one in her own mouth before turning her attention to the dishes. “Let me know if you want anything, Akito-kun.”

“Thanks.” Akito leans back against the counter, looking out over the seating area as he lets the candy slowly dissolve. Right away he spots one of the tables he saw in the back a few weeks ago a few meters ahead of him, wood stained an even, slightly dark brown that gleams faintly in the light hanging above it. The new chairs crowding around it're all different styles, even the cushions mismatched, but the wood color's the same.

Shifting his eyes over the rest of the area, he can tell there's been a couple more changes, too. Most of the tables’ve either been moved around or swapped— it's impossible to tell which— so that the ones in the front are darker wood. The light colored art on the walls has been switched out for the oranges and reds that’ve started appearing on the trees on his way to school. The tables near the windows Toya likes to sit at’ve stayed the same lighter wood, keeping the area from being too dark.

Akito brushes his palm over the bar stool next to him, but it feels the same as always; he's not sure he’d even be able to tell if she swapped it.

It really hits him how big the place is for the handful of people running around here, how he just assumed the tables and chairs showed up when the Sekai first appeared, fully furnished. Meiko-san could make do with way less of the tables in here, but it wouldn't look nearly as homey.

The crunch of the candy's satisfying between his teeth, and he thinks about Luka-san in low lights, her usual sing-song voice and her unusually sharp, hungry grin. Meiko-san's still at the dishes, no sign of going back to what she was doing before he popped up.

“Hey, Meiko-san?” She hums softly. “Did you fix up all the tables and chairs in here?”

There's the soft clack of a plate as it's set on the rack. “No, some of them appeared in the Sekai along with me. Occasionally more will appear nearby.” Her tone's even, but there's a weird, soft undercurrent to it he’d almost think was embarrassment. If he didn’t have Luka-san whispering in the back of his mind, he probably wouldn’t’ve noticed it. 

Looking closer, he can see that the arrangement of the tables are a little off, a clear divide between the ones in the back and the others. There's no way he would’ve clocked it if he didn’t stumble in here while she was in the middle of doing it; the new art would’ve been enough for him to write off the rest. She hasn't finished putting out all the new furniture.

Akito keeps his eyes ahead of him. “Secret's safe with me.”

Meiko-san sighs. The water cuts off, a few stray drops softly dripping before it falls silent. “It's okay, Akito-kun. It's not a secret. Keeping it quiet is just an old habit I should break.” Her footsteps get closer, and he hears the clinking of glass, the soft sound of the coffee machine.

“At the start, I was pretty bad at fixing up the tables and chairs I found,” she says, “but the cafe didn't look right without them. I made sure to put them in the places none of you seemed to sit.” She taps her knuckles on the table as the smell of coffee starts to fill the air. “Luka's the only one that managed to ever find one of them, but I'm not convinced it was an accident like she said.”

Luka-san's hungry smile flashes in his mind. Yeah, he'd agree with that.

“I've gotten much better since then. In fact, most of the tables you guys use are the ones I fixed.” There's a smile in her voice. “It's not a problem anymore now that I've gotten better, but I wanted you all to see this place as dependable. How could I do that with shaky chair legs and slanted tabletops? I just never broke the habit after the fact.”

Old habits die hard; he gets that. It's been easier with Toya after that embarrassing talk to just let things go and stop thinking so hard, but the whispers of it still poke at his brain. Sometimes he notices and course corrects. He's pretty sure other times he doesn't. Most of the time he lets himself take what Toya gives and returns what he can, especially as Toya continues working on his task.

He's finally got a good plan for that special date, too.

“D’you need help moving the rest in?” Akito asks, finally looking at her.

Meiko-san shakes her head and slides a small baggie of hard candy and a to-go cup beside him, steam coming out of the plastic lid. “I appreciate it, but I like doing it. You can do me another favor, though. Toya-kun's been in the Sekai for a few hours, but he hasn't stopped by. Can I bother you to run these to him and make sure he doesn't lose track of time? He should be close enough that you won't get turned around, but I can walk with you if you need.”

“Thanks, but…” Akito's eyes catch on the blue swirls of graffiti outside slowly spinning in the breeze. “I think I should be good.”

“I thought that might be the case.” She smiles. It's as dependable as always. “Good luck.”

Outside, the change in graffiti's even more obvious. The words he saw before're almost completely gone, only the shadows of the white outline visible in the shape of a coffee cup they’ve been turned into. The brown liquid sways out of the cup, trailing its way to the right in loops, the background a dizzy swirl of blues that pinwheel into each other.

Akito follows the along the walls and turns, the brown drops slowly turning into a trail of dark blue puddles along the street, a dripping cup overflowing. They get smaller and smaller until he's just following nothing more than a few stray drops of paint dotting up and down the store fronts; some just barely visible on the signs swaying slightly in the breeze. Even those eventually fall away until there's only a few smudged, faded marks on the asphalt. It can't be too easy.

Turning a corner, there's a final, small explosion of color, another small pinwheel of blue that drips down the wall, still fresh. Toya sits a few meters away, hunched over his notebook and staring at the blank wall across from him, eyes unfocused with thought. They slide over to Akito almost sightlessly, only really noticing him after a double take.

“Akito?” Toya closes his notebook, sliding his pencil neatly onto the cover, and rubs his eyes. “Isn't your solo practice soon?”

“It already happened, man. You been workin’ on that since school got out?” The tired crease under his eyes already rats him out, but Toya nods. Figured. “Here, from Meiko-san,” he says, tapping the top of his boyfriend's head with the cup. “Got some ginger hard candy, too. I’d go for the orange ones; the weird colored ones got honey in ‘em, so they're way sweeter.”

He waits for Toya to take the cup before sliding down next to him, the strong smell of coffee slowly taking over the area. Across the street, a shop window reflects the two of them perfectly, the sunlight blocking the inside.

Toya hums happily as he takes a sip. “Thank you, Akito.”

“‘M just the delivery guy.” The notebook flutters in the breeze, flashing Toya's neat handwriting too fast for him to read. “Makin’ progress?”

“Yes, but not as much as I’d like.” The baggy crinkles. Toya holds up a piece of candy to the light, the thin edges bright, but the middle is too thick to see through. “It would probably do me some good to take a break, but I can't help poking at it.” 

Akito nudges him with his elbow. “I know you’ve got this.”

Toya smiles. “Thanks.” He takes a quick sip of coffee before he puts the candy in his mouth. “... It's good.”

Akito stares at Toya's hands on his coffee cup. They healed up good from Momiji, not even a pale, thin line left, and the swelling on his hand was gone in less than three days. That whole morning feels like a lucid dream, chunks of it flashing through his mind with little reminders like creaking doors or empty hallways. He hopes it'll fade eventually.

“How's Momiji?” Akito asks. He fishes out a honey-flavored candy from the bag. “Uesaka-san unleashed him back on the world awhile ago, right?”

Toya hums, the soft sound of crunching candy filling the space. “He's been as friendly as ever when I see him, but apparently he's been lurking around Uesaka-san's more often since then to beg for treats. Apparently, he really likes her salmon-flavored ones. She's been sending me pictures I've been showing to the virtual singers.”

They fall into silence, light and easy. Toya pops another candy in his mouth, and Akito can't help but stare as he works his jaw, following the graceful line of his neck, his shoulders. It was so comfortable in Weekend Garage the way their bodies shared heat between them, the constant pressure of Toya's head on his. Sometimes he wonders what it’d be like to really fall asleep there, if it’d mess up his neck or be the best sleep he’d ever have.

He breaths deeply. His binder moves with him. Maybe someday he could try.

“What are you thinking about?” Toya's voice is soft.

“Nothin’ much.” The denial is instinctual, but he catches it, pushes it back. “Just… putting my head on your shoulder.”

Toya looks satisfied, a brief spark to his eye, and leans his head further to the left, baring his neck wordlessly. 

Akito shifts over and leans back, letting Toya take some of his weight with a huff. There's a little bit of shifting, elbows brushing dangerously close to painful spots, but they settle without disaster, Toya a warm, steady rock on his back.

Impulsively, he turns his head and presses his lips against Toya's jaw, a quick pressure before he turns back, pretending his heart isn’t hammering in his chest. He ignores the voice whispering how lame that was— it was barely a kiss— and stubbornly traces his eyes over the empty shop fronts to calm his pulse down.

There's a pressure against his head. Toya's huff ghosts the top of his ear, and his whole body tingles with it, every part of him suddenly keyed into where his head rests on his shoulder, where his back meets his chest, where their hips are pressed together.

When Toya grabs his hand, Akito's nerves jolt, a small spark of static electricity. He lets Toya thread their fingers together and move their held hands to balance on his knee almost absentmindedly, his other hand opening his notebook. The cool breeze always blowing through the streets washes over them, but it doesn't chill any of the warmth from their hands.

And for a few heartbeats, both of them tethered by the other, Akito lets himself breathe.