Work Text:
Izumi found solace in organizing her day to day life.
Sure, it wasn’t as smile-and-dopamine inducing as a classic plate of homestyle curry, but the beautiful art of curry is something she wanted to share with everyone she came in contact with. Focusing on her own personal planner was a much more intimate activity Izumi rarely shared with anyone else. Consider it her “me time”, as Yukishiro often liked to phrase it.
Izumi grabbed hold of a pair of sleek, black earbuds the Spring Troupe had gifted her a few weeks back for her birthday. Unbeknownst to Izumi at the time, her habit of playing music late into the night as she planned out the show and practice schedules was beginning to affect some of their sleep schedules. Izumi had apologized profusely at the time and insisted to pay them all back, though the actors refused any sort of repayment, reminding her that it was a gift, nothing more.
She was eternally grateful, and now, she easily considered the pair of wireless earbuds to be one of the most useful gifts she has ever received. The director quickly inserted the buds into her ears and lightly tapped the play button. Instantly, the sound of melodic guitar chords and harmonies produced by the backing synthesizer filled her head with tunes of the indie pop-rock of her youth.
Swaying her stiff hips to the beat and bobbing her head, Izumi pulled her hair back and twisted it up into a messy bun. She plucked one of her unassuming pencils from her plain stationary jar and gracefully stuck it through her coil of hair, the magic of having long, thick hair keeping it in place. With her main detractor swept out of view and her neck bare, Izumi quickly got to work.
The director’s room was a bit cramped, a small space tucked in the far corner of the second floor between the stairwell and the musty old storage room. While the dorm had been unadorned when Izumi first arrived at Mankai a few months ago, under her careful eye, the room had transformed into a comfortable little abode, separate from the usual chaos and mess of the Mankai dorms. A few shelves lined the paper-thin walls, each filled with random clutter and memorabilia from her youth. There were various participation medals and certificates accompanied by pictures of child actors, shriveled flowers she had pressed and framed with her mother, and light novels detailing tales of whirlwind romance and fantasy.
Even a framed family photo. The corners are worn and discolored from age and depicted the moment Izumi and her mother first visited Mankai all those years ago.
The director had originally enlisted the help of Itaru and the rest of Spring Troupe to help her move some of those belongings from her childhood home back to the dorms, much to the pleasant surprise of her mother.
Your twenty-something daughter is finally moving out of her home with a young businessman in tow? About time she got out of the house instead of pursuing a pointless dream.
Unfortunately, when Izumi broke the news she was not dating Itaru, and actually reviving the troupe that had taken her father away from the family all those years ago, Mrs. Tachibana was not happy in the slightest. Their conversations had turned bitter and continued as such in the days and weeks following. However, over time, Izumi’s mother could not help but bow her head in resignation.
She knew very well that her daughter caught the same theatrical bug Yukio had all those years ago. Izumi ran with the same bull-headed stubbornness and passion for acting like her father, their eyes shining with the same sparkle on the stage. The same lackluster off the stage.
Unspoken family issues aside, Izumi doesn’t regret moving into the dorms. Being able to step up and breathe new life into the company her father had shown so much love towards in the past, it was the opportunity that finally gave her a chance to prove her knowledge in acting. Sure, Izumi’s acting chops may be less than stellar and she may have been cast as a tree once or twice, but everything she learned as a struggling actress finally came to use as she passed it onto the fresh actors under her care.
Izumi sighed and focused back onto the far wall of her bedroom, which was covered entirely by her whiteboard calendar, corkboard reminders, and a hurricane of multicolored sticky notes. Each of those squares was lined with her neat, tight cursive, reminding her there was yet another place that needed her attention sooner or later.
Whether it be an upcoming birthday, a rescheduled meeting, or an outing she has been invited to, each of those sticky notes signified a reserved block of time, and it was up to her to make sure none of those blocks overlapped in the slightest. Even if it meant refusing an invitation to Citron and Misumi dancing marathons or a night of drinking with Sakyo-san and Winter Troupe.
All these actors relied on her, after all. She couldn’t fail them.
The harmonic phrases of the music murmured in her ear, slowly beginning to swell. Izumi’s hands developed a comfortable rhythm, picking up a note, scanning the dates and times of her calendar, and sticking the note in its appropriate spot without overlap. The director occasionally paused to write additional notes or draw a little star next to a certain concern, but she worked in silence, only the gentle chords of an acoustic guitar keeping her company.
It was here at this moment when Izumi knew she was in control. Her steady, slender fingers slowly organized and sorted through her thoughts, her ideas, and her plans, fixing up the stray sticky notes that plagued her wall. Izumi lived most of her life with everything outside of her control, and she had learned to loathe that feeling of uselessness. That limbo of her existence where she could take any decision and she would still be left in the same place, no sort of change resulting from all the work she had put in beforehand.
Before the reborn Mankai, Izumi thought she was content with her life. Content with the half-assed attempts to pull herself forward. Content with being pulled who-knows-where by her friends and family. Content with continuing to pretend her father didn’t actually make the choice of leaving her…
RIP~
Izumi gasped as the sticky note she tried to take off the far end of the wall tore right in half. She hastily paused her music and removed her earbuds, placing them back down on her desk. She took a seat as she cradled the torn paper, trying to figure out what sort of message the sticky note had previously held. She squinted as she read:
Wednesday Autumn Troupe Rehearsal!
5pm to 8pm
☆ Focus on key slip-ups from the last street act!
The director felt the smallest hint of a smile begin to tug at the corners of her mouth. That’s right, she wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. Izumi peeled a new sticky note from her neat stack that rested on the corner of her desk. Uncapping a felt marker, Izumi began to scratch out the reminder in neat, tight curls.
These past few months have been her second chance, the hand pulling her out of the waves of insignificance. This was no longer a matter of her father or his past dreams. While the rationale behind his choices would forever be a mystery to Izumi, she was here now, with her own hopes and dreams in leading the Mankai Company.
Izumi replaced the cap on the marker and stood up, carefully placing the sticky note on the displayed calendar. Although a few memories of the rundown dorms had been bittersweet upon arrival, the newer memories she has created with all the actors have been some of the happiest of her life. Several of those moments have been captured, either by Kazunari’s ever-present phone or Omi’s careful eye behind the camera. Izumi had taken it upon herself to carefully print and frame these memories, decorating the wall around the door that connected her room with the rest of the dorms.
Izumi has learned from her past mistakes. She won’t let these memories go.
She won’t let this new family down.