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it was a beautiful night.
the air is cool, brushes past her skin is a gentle caress. nana is glad, the clouds of smoke from her cigarette flying away with the wind. she enjoys the view of the bar behind her, kaoruko’s choice of course, lacking nothing from music to elegance.
she can almost hear the bass even outside. everyone was inside. maya and claudine had managed to find time in their busy careers, mahiru with karen and hikari too. futaba and kaoruko were side by side as they’d been ever since they’d met each other. the group was finally back together.
all of them had their own stage and yet they had found time to return to their first one.
nana smiles. all felt too unchanged, as if she was back at seisho. but she wasn’t. it had been years since she stepped foot in japan, years of travelling and years of being in europe that she’d forgotten how her country felt like.
someone walks towards her. she doesn’t move, frozen in place. years later and her body was trying to remember how to act, how to move. if she were younger, she’d smile and turn around. if she were the daiba nana she used to be, she’d jump at the opportunity to move closer to the person behind her.
but she doesn’t. someone steps beside her, unimpressed green eyes staring at her profile.
“smoking is bad for your voice.”
deft fingers grab her cigarette. nana involuntarily smiles, licking her lips as she sees her smoke flickered away from her lips. it fell on the ground until it was nothing but a memory.
“even now, junna-chan still takes care of me.”
junna rolls her eyes with a smile. she’s beautiful, even years later. it seems nana’s memory hadn’t been doing her justice, green eyes shifting behind glasses to look at the street. junna was taller, more elegant and so much unlike the girl nana used to know.
they’d changed, the both of them. nana didn’t know the junna by her side, grasped helplessly at the memory of the girl she used to know.
“it’s no good to damage your voice, director daiba,” says junna, a hint of teasing in her voice. nana chuckles, plays with her lighter. her hands feel too empty now, so close to junna.
back then she’d touch her, with no meaning, a body moving without reason. it felt right back then, moving a purple strand away, grasping junna’s hand in hers. but now-
“truly.” nana sighs, stares at her empty palms and scratches them. “this reunion did us good. i missed everyone.”
junna hums. both of them don’t speak, side by side and staring towards the tall buildings. so many lives that went on, lives that nana would never get to know, to understand. the world was big and she was barely even a piece of dust compared to it.
it helped her calm down. therapy had been helpful these years. being nothing gave her the chance to become anything. didn’t karen teach her that? stage girls would be reborn into someone new with each new stage they stepped upon, with each stage they explored.
nana was only now realizing how freeing that freedom of being everything and nothing felt like.
“how have you been doing?”
“good. i got casted into another stage play.” junna fiddles with her glasses. a nervous tick, a memory that hits nana like a brick. she feels comfort in remembering a detail like this. “it’s a mystery one! first time i’m in one and i’m excited to see where it’ll get me.”
“you will do well. i remember how you used to love reading sherlock holmes when you helped karen-chan.” she doesn’t know why she says that. junna probably think she’s weird for remembering something years ago. nana tries swallow her nerves. “i’m sure it’ll go well, junna-chan.”
junna doesn’t meet her eyes but she does ask nana about her life. they converse quietly, side by side but never too close. nana wonders when this distance was created, when being near junna felt this out of place and yet-
it felt good, comfortable in a nostalgic way. they’d done this countless times before, exist side by side. she’d spend time hearing junna speak just as now, feeling peace and calmness at each word she’d say. junna would usually speak, nana would usually listen. that’s how they were, completing each other with what the other was missing.
they start walking, slowly and their steps take a moment to find the same pace. it was familiar and nana could get drunk on the nostalgia of it all. junna didn’t have to ask her to walk with her, simply taking a step away from the wall of the bar and moving towards the street. nana follows her on instinct, body acting before her mind thinks.
did she use to feel this way back then too? nana smiles. she doesn’t remember. she tries thinking of junna’s favorite food, can’t remember it for the life of her. they’d share strawberry and banana milk, she remembers that. junna hated being cared so much that it suffocated her, she easily remembers that too. nana can’t remember much, no matter how hard she digs her brain.
time had passed. graduation had come and went. she’d seen junna from afar, smiling with the scouts that had noticed her. she was happy, glowing. nana wasn’t by her side then, smiling under a shadow and snapping pictures.
junna was happy. nana was happy to see her happy. she didn’t focus on her loneliness, on how seeing everyone together brought the truth up to her. things would change, they’d grow and perhaps even apart.
nana smiled back then. she smiles now, too. things had changed but here they were again, walking side by side as they’d done countless of times. back at the start even if they were two different people from who they used to be. the comfort she felt beside her still clung to her skin, with each step they'd take.
“you’ve… grown, junna-chan.” junna stares at her, surprised at how she breaks the silence. “remember what we promised back then? with our last song?”
junna blinks. “so even if we’re far apart, it’s alright. i know you’ll do fine the way you are.”
“i truly believe as much, so i’ll take my own step forward,” junna continues. “polestar. you still remember?”
nana nods her head, looks to the ground and around them. she wonders what the others were doing back at the club. she can almost see maya and claudine talking and sipping on their drinks. karen and hikari probably dancing with mahiru. kaoruko by futaba's side.
it was almost as if nothing had changed.
nana lets a smile escape her lips. things weren't the same. she and junna tried to keep contact, conversations that kept going until they were nothing more than a monthly hello. sometimes she’d open her phone on instinct, wondering why she’d open to check her empty LINE. sometimes she’d see a funny joke and make to send before pausing.
nana doesn’t blame her. both tried to keep contact between busy hours and plays but there was only so much two could do against time zones and busy days. nana never hated her for it, never held it against junna. if their bond wasn’t kept as strong as it used to be during the bright starry sky of their little seisho heaven, both of them were at fault in their own ways.
it had been years. junna felt as familiar as she felt new. nana wonders. if nana were to touch her now, would she feel like her old junna? if nana were to tell her those three words, would junna still react the same way?
if nana were to love her like back then, would her love be the right one for the junna standing before her now?
nana takes a step forward, pulls out another cigarette. this time, junna simply stares at her, makes no move to stop her. they pause at the end of the street. behind them is the road to the club, before them a path where they separate.
this is it, nana thinks. she’d been here before. goodbyes were never cut clean. goodbyes never gave you a time and place. goodbyes were long and never understood. goodbyes never tell you to put an alarm for when they happen. leaving someone who was a part of you never happens in one day. nana never had the chance to tell her goodbye. nana never had the chance to tell junna she’s sorry for all the pain she might have caused her.
nana remembers junna’s last smile, the last time they held a proper conversation. nana remembers how their lives caught up with them. nana remembers realizing that she couldn’t open LINE and simply text her, couldn’t text her hi i just passed your house and i remembered how we live in the same town and i pass this street just for a glimpse of you even if this way is the long way to my home and i never see you around here anyway.
things have changed. they have changed. nana sighs, looks to the sky. she’d sometimes wonder if junna was staring at the same sky when she was. if she still enjoyed shakespeare with a cup of tea.
goodbyes used to scare her. goodbyes made her break time and live in a never ending loop until karen forced her out of it. goodbyes held nana a prisoner at her own will. but she wasn’t that nana anymore, a nana that didn’t realize that endings were simply a chance for a new beginning, for a new stage.
“i’m happy we met here, junna.” nana looks at her, smiles. junna is so beautiful, makes her heart ache with a love that has left nana with only its ghost. junna smiles back, small and gentle.
she’s there, as she’d always been until she wasn’t.
nana had missed her. even with junna standing before her, she still missed her. but junna wasn’t hers anymore. she wasn’t her junna-chan anymore. nana didn’t know this junna. nana didn’t know if this junna even felt the same comfort nana felt from her.
they stare at the sky. the moon shines, the stars shine. this is her new stage, one where junna isn’t by her side. but-
“you are you, and because you are, i am strong and i can shine ,” nana sings softly, holds the cigarette between her lips. “ because nobody could replace you .”
but she wouldn’t be on this stage if it weren’t for junna. she wouldn’t know what love was if not for junna. she wouldn’t know what heartbreak was without junna. junna had taught her so much, good and bad, how to find her herself and her shine again.
nana sticks her hands inside her beige pants, her black turtleneck tickling her throat. junna’s own beige coat contrasts against her black one. even without trying they were still matching. the thought made her smile.
here they stood, so far apart, two intimate strangers. nana breathes the smoke in, releases it slowly.
maybe she’d never fully move on. maybe a part of hers, no matter how small, would always love junna. but she didn’t care. she had formed her new stage, she still had her friends, new and old. junna didn’t have to be her partner for her to matter to nana.
nana pauses. it’s a moment too similar to years ago, back when nana had kissed her shoulder and waved her goodbye, smiling and thinking they’d meet again. back then she didn’t know that’d be the last time where they’d stand that close.
she waits for something. nana doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. junna is still staring at her. nana thinks that for the first time, something breaks and heals when she realizes that she waits for nothing, only the ghost of their past love holding her there.
junna has paused too. for what, nana wonders? for nana to be the one to leave first?
it feels as if something falls from her chest, as if standing before junna and not waiting helplessly for junna to hold her hand and choose to be by her side like before was the feeling she had wanted to feel all these years.
back there, the party continues. here, something ends.
nana smiles. it was okay. no matter what happened, she’d made peace with it. she hums under her breath, turns around and leaves towards the empty road. she’d catch up with the others another day, she had already planned to invite whoever was free over at her apartment.
she doesn’t turn to look at junna. years ago, she’d stared at her form until junna couldn’t be seen anymore. now... now her heart feels softer, beats hard but never to make her turn around.
she isn’t orpheus. junna isn’t her eurydice.
but something makes her stop. nana doesn’t turn around, even if there is an echo from a part of her heart that wants her to. she could have ended things now, ended the part of her that still clung to a smiling and hopeful teenage junna. but she was a stage girl. she was a director and a writer. wasn’t nana the perfect person to know that every end was a chance to start anew?
this junna wasn’t her old junna but she could become a junna that nana could know again. she could become a junna that nana didn’t have to text everyday, but still could share her happiness with, could seek for advice in her bad days.
just because nana didn’t know the junna standing before her didn’t mean that she wouldn’t give her heart the chance to get to know her again.
maybe… just maybe… seisho wasn’t their end. maybe this wasn’t a goodbye, but rather a see you later . maybe nana could still get to know this junna. maybe if their paths crossed again, just like now, nana would get to know this new junna, as beautiful and inspiring as she always had been.
but for now nana smiles, smoking as she walks away. it was a beautiful night after all, she had to enjoy it. theirs was a bond written in the stars. nana was more than happy to wait for the time their stars shone next to each other, even if it took years and more awkwardly intimate encounters like this.
she could be patient.
after all, it was junna that taught her to look forward for the future. nana could wait for their paths to cross each other again.