Chapter Text
This is bad, Rui has the presence of mind to think, as he sits down next to Nene on a bench ten feet away from the first ice cream truck they managed to find.
This is bad, he thinks again, because it doesn’t hurt to know where he stands, even if it’s nowhere good at the moment.
Nene makes no move to reach for her phone, which already tells a lot about what kind of conversation this is going to be—that is, the kind that Rui hasn’t had once in his life and would rather never have at all.
As she trains her violet eyes on him, unaware of his inner turmoil, he can’t help wondering what he looks from an outsider’s perspective. He ducks his head instead of meeting her gaze—the candy he put in his ice cream is much less judgy than whatever storm she has going on in her eyes, after all.
“So,” she starts, her tone carefully neutral as she picks at her own ice cream with a too-short plastic spoon. His heart skips a beat at the sound of her voice, and isn’t that uncharacteristic.
“So,” he replies simply. None of them bring their treats to their lips, too busy building separate staring contests with nearby inanimate objects to properly eat.
Rui would say he hasn’t felt a thing a day in his life, which wouldn’t be true, so, in hindsight, he wouldn’t say it, because he’s many things, each worse than the other, but he’s no one to lie to himself, at the very least.
He doesn’t ever remember feeling like this, that’s for sure
He runs a hand through his hair, trying to find words that would appease Nene’s worries. When he needs it the most, however, his sharp tongue fails him, and it only takes one sentence from Nene.
“Can you be honest with me for once, Rui?” she says softly. If Rui didn’t know my better, he would say she’s pleading with him. “Listen, I’m not… I’m not the best person to deal with whatever this is, and I’m sure you know that, but I’m… We’re friends, and I want to work this out with you, yeah?”
—be honest with me for once
We’re friends, and I—
I want to work this out with you, yeah?
He inhales sharply, feeling as if his lungs have been deprived of oxygen for a long, long time. With that, an engine is set into place, and because Rui is everything but a coward, or maybe the most cowardly of all, he thinks—
Yeah. This might work.
“I’m sorry,” he says first, and then his mouth stays shut. Talking’s hard, he finds out, when he’s actually saying something to mean something.
Nene shakes her head, finally having enough of watching her ice cream melt into her fingers and taking tentative licks at it. “I don’t know what secrets you have, or how bad you think they are—Honestly, Rui, I couldn’t care less. I don’t want you to apologize, I just need to know what’s going on with you, so I can be there for you in case something like that happens again.”
That, she emphasizes. He looks down at his knees and knows exactly what kind of angry, red marks he’d find if he were to look under his pants. They don’t hurt, for now.
“It’s… complicated. A lot,” he clears his throat, starting to prod at the ice cream too. Vanilla, his mind supplies, but it tastes like ash on his tongue. “I was born with this—with this, and then… Yeah.”
Nene looks at him as if she’s never heard him say anything dumber in her whole life. She probably hasn’t.
It does sound stupid, in hindsight. A blabbering mess made of the resident genius director of Wonderlands x Showtime.
What a load of bullshit, Rui clenches his fists and knows, for the first time ever, exactly what anger feels like.
“I wasn’t a normal kid,” he tries again. Nene snorts.
“I’d be surprised if you were. You are in Japan’s silliest acting troupe, after all,” she hits that line with scary precision.
“It’s not what you think,” he refutes, shaking his head to himself. “You guys and me, we’re not the same. Not in the same sense that Mizuki isn’t the same as everyone else, or that Tsukasa-kun isn’t, or Emu-kun, or even you, Nene. I was a mistake.”
Nene’s eyes narrow, the familiar set of her shoulders indicating her discomfort with where she thinks this is going. Before she can talk back, he lifts up a hand to shush her and keeps going.
“As a child, I would cry because I was hungry or cold or something or the other, because I didn’t know how else to communicate that, but never because I was sad, or happy, or angry. I never felt—any of these things. I…”
Once he’s started, he can’t stop.
And when he’s done, he waits for the sky to break and for everything to come crashing down on him in waves. He’s always had a bit of a dramatic streak, after all.
What he doesn’t expect, however, is for the world to keep spinning just like it had been before. And Nene…
“But it can’t have been like that,” she argues, finishing the ice cream she had been licking at as he spilled all the clogged up stories about himself with a terrifying amount of unfelt guilt. “You can’t expect me to believe that you didn’t care all along.”
She speaks calmly with a thinly veiled layer of scorn, so factually and on-point that he might’ve been inclined to believe her if he didn’t know any better.
“Nene—”
“I won’t believe it,” she cuts him off, the intense violet of her eyes boring into his golden ones. He knows what this is—studied it thoroughly for hours on end, in hopes of becoming wiser, someone his parents would be proud of, and still…
Rui Kamishiro had never seen Conviction so pure and strong before.
Fact is that Nene, for all she’d like to preach about communication and honesty, isn’t any better at feelings than Rui is, which is already too low of a bar to set, so they don’t bring it up again.
Things turns back to normal, but, at the same time, they also change.
Nene’s kinder to him, but, sometimes, she’s meaner. She pushes him to the brink and back and badmouths his scripts to his face like it’s nothing, always with that guilty expression she tried so hard so mask.
Rui may be lacking in ways that other people aren’t, but he’s far from stupid.
What he means is that, ever since their conversation at the bench, Nene’s been trying to get a rise out of him by making him angry.
And it’s been working.
Tsukasa and Emu, too, aren’t stupid, and so they take notice of his drawn brows and sharp tones whenever Nene complains about something she normally wouldn’t even bat an eye at.
They notice the arguments.
“Alright, well, if you think it sucks so much, then why don’t you come here and fix the script, hm, Nene?”
And they notice the satisfied smiles Nene hides behind her phone.
They see everything, even if they don’t fully understand it. And, as their leader, Tsukasa did entertain the idea that maybe this new development between the two could be the reason for the otherwise unnamed happenstances in the sekai.
His theory was, however, quickly debunked when it seemed to have the opposite effect instead. The sekai, previously crumbling to dust at a rapid pace while everything seemed okay and orderly with their troupe, had its imminent destruction significantly slowed, which could’ve been due to a lot of reasons, if this wasn’t the only thing in their dynamic that’s changed since the start of the troupe.
The one time he tried to question the two of them about it, Nene simply gave him a vague death stare over the sounds of her rhythm game, meanwhile Rui offered him a tight-lipped smile and said not to worry about it, which was counterproductive, because it only made Tsukasa more worried about it.
So now he has an exponentially smug Nene, an angry Rui he doesn’t know what to do with and a gloomy Emu, of all things.
And Tsukasa Tenma can deal with a lot of things—the dishes, cooking for himself at seven years old, having an ill sister, being a glass child—but he cannot deal with this.
So, he thinks, a smile stretching his lips as he smooths out his clothes for another day of rehearsal, he’ll change the situation to something he can deal with.
“Y’know, just because we left middle school behind, doesn’t mean we can’t still talk about deep shit, or whatever,” Mizuki says, completely out of the blue. The sky’s painted in the golden hues they love so much—the school day will be over soon, and here they are.
Skipping class, just like back then.
Rui eyes them strangely, his hands gripping the railing so tight his knuckles turn white. Mizuki. Mizuki is someone he can trust. They owe each other their lives. Or maybe nothing at all. He feels like he owes them a lot more than just his life, though.
A little honesty might be a good place to start.
“I understand,” he replies, chuckling hollowly. He forces himself to loosen his grip on the railings, frowning at the pain he feels where it’d been digging into his fingers. “In a way, it’s like nothing has changed, yes?”
“In a way, sure,” they reply easily, crossing their arms, and allow their mind to drift back to when they didn’t feel like a person at all, and Rui would frown at nothing and smile at nothing, and it’d make them feel just a tiny bit like they had something in common other than being terribly lonely despite being surrounded by people. Like they were both freaks.
Like that was alright, even for just a moment.
“But, in a way, it’s also changed a lot,” he continues, letting a tired sigh escape his lips. It never had, before, Mizuki notices. Before, Rui wouldn’t stay up night after night writing scripts or building robots, despite how much he claimed to like it.
Before, Rui had no passion.
“I’ve been angry—no, frustrated.”
Mizuki allows themself a moment of surprised silence, be it because of the uncharacteristic honesty, the deliberate display of feelings, or both.
“You, of all people?” they ask, resting their elbows on the railings. They shouldn’t—they’re incredibly rusty and their sweater is new and a personal favorite—, but it seems they’ll have to deal with it.
“Surprisingly, yes. To put it crudely, Nene has been getting on my fucking nerves.”
Wow, Mizuki thinks.
WOW, they think again, eyes wide as cherries.
“What the—What the fu—” they’re cut off by bouts of hearty laughter. They place a hand around their mouth, hoping to muffle the mindless giggles as to not alert any staff of their whereabouts, but it’s little help.
Rui stares at them with a dead expression, but not the kind he makes when he’s not bothering to put on a facade (the one Mizuki’s affectionately labeled as his bitch resting face). Instead, it’s the kind that Enanan makes when she finds one of Mizuki’s jokes particularly unfunny, or the kind that Otouto-kun makes when Mizuki so much as exists next to him. It’s exaggerated, purposeful.
Delighted, they keep laughing, barely managing to gulp in breaths in between fits of giggles, until a voice, deeper and more hesitant than theirs, joins in.
For the first time, Rui and Mizuki laugh together on top of the school roof.
(For the first time, Rui understands what giddiness feels like)
Rui gets significantly bolder after that.
As a kid, he was never one to defy. It brought him no joy, just as everything else brought him no joy, and so there was no point.
He was, however, taught that he should take things in stride. Whatever came his way, he was taught that he should twist it into something that he and others around him could benefit from.
It’s no use dwelling on it, then, he tells himself. He spent his entire childhood wondering what it’d be like to feel things as freely and deliberately as everyone else, but he couldn’t. But he can, now.
And once he’s started, he can’t stop.
He wouldn’t call himself impulsive, no. Throughout his much boring and uneventful life, there wasn’t much to be impulsive about—even if there was, he was never driven by emotions, of all things. Even now, he wouldn’t change his answer; the diference is that, should he want to let his emotions take over, he could.
Now, it’s not his fault that watching everyone’s faces blanch whenever an explosions booms across the walls is so damn funny, is it?
If being high feels even half as good as this, he can truly understand why people do it.
“When I thought I’d seen everything…” Nene scowls at him as he closes the door to the principal’s office behind him. “You really weren’t lying when you said you didn’t feel anything before, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t,” he replies easily. Nene hums, her gaze filled with suspicion as she tears her eyes off him to stare at her phone screen.
Suddenly, she frowns again. “Is Tsukasa still in there?”
He smirks widely at that, happily skipping to her side. “Yes, he is. Tsukasa-kun is in deep trouble, all because I keep roping him up into my evil schemes.”
She levels him a deeply characteristic stink eye. He chuckles and expects her to keep that up for at least another 30 seconds until she’s satisfied. Instead, her expression turns thoughtful. “You’re so chipper. How did I never notice?”
“Notice what?” he feigns ignorance.
“It’s like seeing a whole new side of you,” she deadpans, wisely choosing to let his question go over her head. And over it goes—he’s much taller than she is, anyway.
Tsukasa soon stumbles out of the principal’s office, face flushed from embarrassment and anger. He’s been all too willing to let Rui drag him around to set off trouble around the school, though, even if he wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it.
“I’m the class president, Rui! I can’t keep getting in trouble like this!” he whisper-yells as they walk off, much to Nene’s chagrin and Rui’s delight.
“I see, fufu. Well, then,“ he leans in, his lips close to Tsukasa’s ear. “Next time, I’ll make sure Tsukasa-kun isn’t caught, deal?”
He gets the reaction he wanted, and readily drinks in the sight of their leader turning into a malfunctioning tomato. This, he finds, is just one of Tsukasa’s many winning qualities—he is awfully cute.
(Rui isn’t quite used to the way his heart dances within his chest when he’s in Tsukasa’s presence yet. He’s studious, however, and an avid researcher. Conditioning takes time, and he, for once, hopes to have a lot of it.
Yes. Rui Kamishiro knows exactly what joy feels like)
At home, his habits don’t change much.
His parents are always busy, so they hardly interact. When there’s nothing to do, he sits down on the left corner of the couch or on his designated chair and stares at the clock, his mind filled with emptiness. Thinking about nothing, he thinks, is different from not thinking at all. There’s a reason why he doesn’t like being alone, these days.
Luckily, there’s rarely a shortage of business to get up to as the director of an acting troupe as spontaneous and peculiar as his—scripts to revise, props to discuss, robots to fix. As long as he has that, he’s never truly alone.
Feeling, as he’s found out, is easier when there’s so much going on around him that he’s forced to forget about the specifics.
But it was easier to live on autopilot when he didn’t know what it was like otherwise.
It was easier to get up in the morning and accept it as it was; to breathe without question and to think about his future, his relationships, his life and not wonder—what’s the point? What’s any of this for?
He sighs, sits down, and looks at the clock.
He might have a few screws loose, still, and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon. At least they’re still attached, he thinks, chuckling sourly to himself, and then hears banging on the door.
He looks at it for a few moments, narrowing his eyes as the banging grows louder, and then turns his eyes back to the clock. 12:47 AM, it reads. So, maybe the screws are a bit more than loose, because who in the world would be banging at his door at 12:47 in the morning?
When it doesn’t stop, he gets up, resigning himself to dealing with a headache—whether there’s someone behind that door or not, it’s not going to be fun to deal with.
There it is—through the peephole, his troupe stares back at him, because, looking back at it, who else could it have been? Mizuki would probably be getting prepared for her daily discord call and his parents barely even live here.
He shakes his head, his mind briefly going back to the vase he broke and never replaced. His mother didn’t bat an eye.
Bitterly, he opens the door.
“SLEEPWONDERTIME!” Emu is first to screech, encasing him in an unsurprisingly tight hug. She has an enormous amount of strength for her size.
“H-Hello, you…” he tries to reply through the pink blob of hair squeezing the air out of his lungs. Tsukasa beams at him while Nene simply brushes past them to enter the house.
“… It’s definitely cleaner than last time,” she comments, blinking at the hallway where The Incident, as he labeled it in his mind, happened. She hasn’t come over since.
“It’s big! Definitely proper for a SLEEPWONDERTIME! HAHA!” Tsukasa says enthusiastically. Taking a closer look, they do seem to be carrying sleeping bags under their arms, which is funny, because Rui doesn’t remember inviting anybody over.
“WONDERHOY!!” Emu wisely adds. Ah, yes, what Rui wouldn’t give to take a peek inside her brain. Safely, of course. He’d make it very safe.
“Very wise words, friend.”
“You two are so loud,” Nene flinches, sending a pointed look at Tsukasa and a slightly gentler one at Emu. “Rui’s parents are gonna get a fine if you keep screaming like that.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t be ideal,” Rui smiles, clasping his hands behind his back. “Please, keep doing it.”
Nene dramatically lifts a brow at him, but says nothing. Emu lets the comment go over her head and starts climbing the stairs to Rui’s room with the taller girl in tow, which is by far the least furnished room in the house, considering he barely spends any time there. No, he’d much rather spend his precious time at his garage—it’s where most of his prized belongings are, after all, and it helps him think.
He shakes his head in what he could only identify as fondness. He didn’t account for having his troupe invade his home on this fine evening, but it did save him a lot of mental damage. He wouldn’t say no, either way.
Rui stares at the silhouettes of Emu and Nene at the top of the stairs, the former giggling happily as the latter attempts to shush her. He pauses, frowns, then turns around.
A certain star looks up at him from the very bottom of the stairs. It’s not a long staircase at all, but Rui, midway through climbing up, feels lonely all of a sudden; as if, were he to pursue the blond, he wouldn’t be able to reach him.
The girls’ shuffling dissolves into background noise. Rui tries to reach for one of the sky’s brightest stars.
“Tsukasa-kun?” he calls, squinting against the darkness surrounding them. That’s why his eyesight is so bad, according to Tsukasa himself and, ironically, Mizuki, who spends sleepless nights in front of a computer without so much as a night lamp on. According to them, his eyes don’t work properly because he’s always refusing to turn the lights on.
Tsukasa shifts. Rui can barely see, but he thinks the blond is trying to avoid meeting his eyes on purpose. Then again, what does he know?
“Tsukasa-kun,” he calls, more insistent this time around. “Come, the girls are probably waiting for us.”
“The sekai is rebuilding itself,” the star blurts out, uncharacteristically quiet. The taller frowns, nodding to him as a sign to keep going. “It’s a slow process, according to KAITO, but he says it’ll be back to normal in no time. Did you have anything to do with that?”
Oh, you have no idea. “I didn’t,” he lies. “Maybe it was maintenance.”
“Maintenance?” Tsukasa parrots. Rui chuckles. “But there was no need…”
“Sometimes, to build something better, you need to break everything down and start from scratch. Even if it works.”
The other quiets down once more. Amidst the sound of the cicadas and the soft sound of Emu and Nene fussing around upstairs, they stare at each other’s silhouettes. Or, Rui does.
He’s never sure what Tsukasa really sees when he looks at him.
It goes like this:
“Now that that crisis is averted…”
“Tsukasa-kun,” he interrupts, huffing a laugh through his nose. He doesn’t think he’s ever cut the other off so deliberately before. “You aren’t yourself, you’re going in circles. Get to the point.”
Despite his stern words and the impatience in his stance, it comes out so horribly soft that Rui barely suppresses a flinch. Tsukasa must notice it, as well, since he, too, draws in a deep breath.
“HAHA! Very well, you want me to get to the point, my dear director? I shall grant your wish!”
Tsukasa is loud and perfect, and Rui’s too tired to not do something stupid.
The director bridges the distance between the two of them and captures the star’s lips into a light, chaste kiss.
And no, dear reader, fireworks don’t go off. Time doesn’t slow down and much less does it stop.
But, for just one moment, it’s just them, the sound of the cicadas in the background and a quiet, wordless encore.
They break the kiss, but Rui doesn’t pull away just yet. From here, from this exact angle, the moonlight hits just right and he can see it—wide, starry eyes looking up at him, a gaping mouth and criminally plump lips.
He clears his throat first. “What were you going to say?”
“That,” Tsukasa blinks himself out of his stupor. From the dazed look his eyes get, Rui is forced to wonder if he accidentally achieved his fantasy of kissing the other stupid. “That I really, really like you. Like, really, and—”
Rui smiles something more genuine than any other action he’s ever taken in his life, then leans down to kiss the rest of the blond’s nonsense away.
So this is what its like to be truly happy, hm?
It won’t be perfect, for sure, but he thinks he can be happy like this.
Mhm. The rest will work itself out.