Chapter Text
Track 03: Impromptu by Toshifumi Hinata
“Let’s leave,” Nobara says one evening when they’ve spent too much time pouring over textbooks that will never be of much use to them. Yuuji barely registers it, his mind having fallen into the dissociative haze available only to students in the late night.
“Let’s leave,” Nobara insists.
Megumi sighs where he’s erasing the answers on his worksheet for the fourth time? Fifth time? What does it matter, it seems as though he will never get them right. “It’s getting late,” he says, as he sweeps the eraser shavings, “We have school tomorrow. Where would we even go?”
“Does it matter?” Nobara whines as she slumps across the table. Yuuji has nothing to say, so he doesn’t say anything, tries his best to tether himself to the conversation. Megumi picks up his eraser again. “Does it matter?” Nobara asks again. She leans over the table to pull Megumi’s sheet right out from underneath him. He sighs again, staring at the wood grain where the paper once was, as though the answers he was looking for could be found there.
Yuuji is tired of floating with nowhere to land. “Let’s do it,” he says around the cotton of his tongue, the dryness of his mouth, after a few seconds of silence, or as close to it as you can get in houses that are unable to settle; creak constantly in their cursed foundation, forever in tune with the droning tick of time. “Let’s leave.”
It’s the almost middle of the night and it should be quiet, but Yuuji can’t hear much, Yuuji can’t hear much of anything so he isn’t sure it is. It should be, but maybe it isn’t. The shape of Megumi’s mouth means he’s speaking again, arguing, maybe, with Nobara — in that way of his that doesn’t really feel like he’s really arguing at all. Yuuji thinks that talking snapped a thread of an already fraying string.
They start in Nobara’s room. Yuuji watches as she pulls things out of her wardrobe: a sweater that was Megumi’s, once; a jacket that was Gojō’s before they’d all chosen it as theirs; a hoodie that Yuuji thinks he was looking for last week, or yesterday. There isn’t much difference. She throws them quickly at the bed where he is perched, and it’s kind of autopilot that prompts him to fold them properly.
Megumi returns with a suitcase that Yuuji thinks is far too large, far too permanent for slipping away on a loud-quiet night. Nobara seems satisfied at the sight of it and Yuuji is too tired to argue. He blinks and a third of it is filled with Nobara’s neatly folded clothes, Nobara’s toiletries, Nobara’s phone charger, and her camera features.
They drag the suitcase down the creaky corridor to Megumi’s room, Yuuji wants to make a joke as he watches Nobara throw open the wardrobe about how a month ago, that feels like a year ago, she couldn’t have possibly done something like this. But then he thinks about where he was a month ago and the thought dies on his tongue. It’s funny. He’s almost laughing.
Megumi comes out of the bathroom with Yuuji’s toothbrush, Megumi asks “Do we have enough toothpaste for this?” while holding the half-empty tube they’ve been forced to share. It’s because they always forget to add it to the shopping list, in the early morning rush.
It’s not meant to be funny but Yuuji wants something else to laugh about instead. Yuuji wants to land just for a minute before they take off. “I’m sure wherever we go, we can buy more toothpaste,” he says. Nobara doesn’t quite laugh, but it’s a close thing, an ungraceful snort as she sifts through the darkness in Megumi’s closet.
“Where are all your nice clothes Megumi?” she whines pulling out another black long-sleeved shirt. Megumi glares at her third of the suitcase, Yuuji’s laughs.
His room is next, quite literally as it’s right next door. He could go alone, but. But. Nobara subsidises the pieces she pulled from Megumi’s closet with things she pulls from Yuuji’s. She throws them over her shoulder and Yuuji catches them and Yuuji still folds them neatly, automatically. Megumi keeps rifling around the bathroom, picking up bottles of soap that smell like somewhere sunny and warm and stress-free, with an ocean maybe, a beach, a dream Yuuji has inherited from someone else. All Yuuji ever inherits are dreams.
The suitcase is full. What started as one pile with Nobara’s charger and Nobara’s camera bits, is now also Yuuji’s switch and the switch port and three of the games they like to play often, it’s Megumi’s speaker and the charger for that, his headphone pieces, a dog toy. There’s a first aid kit squished besides their extra shoes, and a medicine bag atop of that. There are two laptops, but three laptop cases, and only four textbooks even though they take six subjects. There’s an extra hammer and a set of nails, three different types of knives and an unopened package of athletes' tape.
The suitcase is overwhelmingly full, atop the neatly folded clothes, once in perfect thirds.
It’d be wise for them to have their own bags. Nobara barely blinks when Megumi throws his phone into hers, when Yuuji picks a couple of manga, a paperback for Megumi, a magazine for when Nobara got bored of the manga, and shoves them in. They pass by the kitchen and raid what’s left of their snack haul into the empty space. Yuuji can’t recognise any of their flavours but he knows they're good because Megumi picked them.
It only takes one set of keys to lock the door, and so they leave all of theirs on the kitchen counter.
In the genkan they shed the slippers, the standard ones that came with the house, as ancient and haunted as the rest of the building, and pull on their winter coats. It’s not winter yet, but it’s close enough that at night it’s almost impossible to tell.
Nobara clicks her fingers, plain for once, in front of Yuuji’s nose and it takes him four seconds to realise it’s happening at all. She sighs as she runs her hand over his cheek. On a normal day he’d do something, like lick her palm, or bite her. Today he thinks, it’s much too loud an action for the pulsing silence.
Outside the school looks like a lit up ghost town. The golden glow of the lanterns paints the full reds and browns bloody in the wash of moonlight.
There’s a stone two paces from the entryway, that’s far too heavy for a normal person to pick up. Under it there’s a key. Yuuji isn’t a normal person so he lifts it with ease, hands Megumi the key. It shouldn’t be surprising that Megumi doesn’t hesitate, puts it in the door, turns the lock, drops the key back in Yuuji’s palm.
Yuuji slips it back under the stone, wishes there was something as heavy to hold him down.
“The next trains in twenty, do you think we’ll make it?” Nobara asks as they begin to meander away from the building. Behind them, the wheels of the suitcase drags rhythmically against the floor.
“Does it matter?” Megumi asks as they reach the base of the almost mountain in the suburbs of Tokyo.
“No,” Yuuji says, and he has just enough strength for this, “Let’s do it.”