Chapter Text
The first time Haruka performs in front of a real crowd, he's in Tokyo and his fingers are shaking under a thin veneer of sweat. With the microphone foam pressed to his lips, spotlight hanging hot over his head and dragging the life out of him, he takes a deep breath, tells himself it's just a cafe gig, one he got paid just ¥4500 to play for, and that it's just like playing for the cats in the alley back home. With eyelids still stuck together like glue, still nervous by all accounts, he counts to two in a final mic check and lets home flicker in and out in memory. One, two, one, two.
One. Stony steps connect two houses. It is the place where he wrote his first ballad at the age of thirteen. It is a love song, but he doesn't know it yet. It is the only song he's never shown anyone—not even him.
Two. Hands are almost held with sand between their palms, just as the sun is about to set for the day. It is place where he first realized he loved his muse, at the age of sixteen.
One. A single plane ticket rests on Haruka's desk for his eighteenth birthday. His muse explains that songwriters need more inspiration than the usual hometown blues. He says he could only afford one of them.
Two. Haruka accepts it, even though he has a hard time letting go of his hand at the airport.
One. "I'll be right here when you get back."
Two. "I know."
Haruka sighs away from the microphone like he's parting from a kiss, imagines Makoto in the crowd, and dares to open his eyes. He isn't there, and he won't be for the years to come, just because muses aren't always in motion, sometimes they're at home watering plants, or feeding strays, or sitting alone, by the beach, but this is something Haruka doesn't want to think about. This is something he doesn't even think to think about, because he will be on a plane back to Iwatobi tomorrow. He will sing his song, hear the crowd clap politely, and that will be that. He will return to being normal. Normal was always the plan.
Because no matter how much he wants to feel the freedom in his notes, to write songs for the rest of his life without fretting about other things like rent or working hours, he knows he can't have that without a little recognition. He's just not sure he wants to be seen.
"Introducing a newcomer on the stage—Nanase Haruka!"
With a round of clapping, Haruka pinches the pick in his hand, readies his guitar, and begins his song. It's the one he's never sang to anyone, not even Makoto. The first ballad, and the only one he considers constantly unfinished.
One, two, one, two, he plays like a metronome in his head.
Eyes light up in the crowd. Patrons put their glasses down. Haruka's still not happy with the sound of his song.
Haruka tells himself, with shaking fingers strumming, voice wavering at places he can't place, that he'll have to sing this to him when he gets back home. Maybe it's the only way it'll get any better.
♬
Tomorrow is not in the cards. This is something Haruka's come to understand, when he finds himself sitting in an office at a recording studio he's only vaguely heard of, meeting with a recruiter who had come to his first performance.
"I want you to understand something."
"Okay." Haruka looks past his line of sight. There are golden discs mounted on the wall, and various trophies line the wall with neatest and polished precision. This does not put Haruka in any ease whatsoever.
"You see, it's not that you're a powerhouse of a vocalist or anything. If anything, you're a little wispy. Pretty, to the opinion of some."
Haruka squirms in his seat, but he's developed the skill of hardly letting it show.
"But there's something about you, you know." The man, a manager of sorts, waves his hand in the air in some grand gesture before settling it back down with a knock on the desk.
"I don't understand."
"Ah, it's just that you do this thing, where your voice breaks, but it's not in a bad way. It happens right in the precise moment when I think, ah, this kid is too controlled. Too calm. But then you kill it. You kill that control, even if it's just for that one moment in time, because you're feeling whatever's taken you."
Haruka feels oddly embarrassed about this, because he's always considered the breaks his biggest weakness, the only thing keeping him from singing in front of Makoto most times. He swallows hard, looks down at his lap, and shrugs.
"It's just something that happens."
"It's something that distinguishes you from the rest. It's this...natural feeling you give off, without needing technical mastery."
Well, he'll admit to lacking technical mastery, because it's not like Haruka's ever really taken any real music classes. He learned to strum from his grandmother's ukulele, and any chords he's picked up has mostly been by ear. And although he won't avoid it all the time, there's something confining about reading off sheet paper.
"Tell me, Nanase."
Haruka perks up.
"What are you thinking about, when you find that break in your voice?"
With blinking eyes, Haruka sees the beach in Iwatobi. He sees his muse waver in the wind, like he's about to be carried off with it, because they are always on the precipice of a certain kind of together, one that screams home and places far, far away all in one instance, and at this, there is speechlessness and all things trembling.
♬
Haruka watches the trouble Makoto has tying his smock together over his back, leans over from his already precarious spot on the work table, and ties it together for him instead. For someone who's worked at the florist's since he was fourteen, Makoto is certainly still on the clumsy side of things, obviously seen from the way he spills the seed packets and lets dirt escape their flower pots, but he genuinely enjoys caring for the plants under his wing—Haruka has no doubt he'll get to open his own shop one day, because he nurtures each and every one like a child he's just adopted and it shows, magnificently, in the way they grow. As he picks up the scissors to shear the extra foliage off bushes, he taps his feet to some song Haruka can’t hear.
“I never told you about Tokyo.” Haruka tells Makoto, out of the blue.
Makoto stops cutting the leaves, looks over his shoulder, and shrugs. “I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would. No need to ask.”
Fiddling with a few of his guitar strings, Haruka produces something on the twinkling side, light and streaming. He pictures sun peeking through a crack in closed curtains, dust floating in and out. He keeps playing, sees Makoto with his apron tied, a flower stem trapped between pinching fingers, and watches his face erupt into something overwhelmingly soft.
The next twang of Haruka’s guitar is off-note and in disarray, like a sudden heart palpitation in musical form.
“Haru?”
“I performed for the first time.” Haruka tells Makoto, taking his hands off the strings. “And they liked me.”
Makoto’s smile turns into something a lot more exuberant, frankly excited. Then Haruka notices the slightest twinge on his face, like he’s the one snapping strings, but he hides it away in an instant and turns in something equally genuine. Dropping his scissors from his one hand and keeping the flower stem enclosed in the other, he stares down at the petals, comes back over to Haruka, and offers it as a gift for him to take.
“Congratulations.” Makoto tells him, voice low and somehow on the pretty side, like a call of something elegantly sad, but wholehearted nonetheless. Haruka takes the flower in his hand, lets his other arm balance his guitar, and offers the smallest smile in reprieve.
When their hands brush together in the exchange, Haruka just wishes he could go on holding Makoto’s forever.
♬
One, two. One, two. One, two. Haruka takes a deep breath, takes one more look at Makoto from over his shoulder, and slings the backpack over his shoulder.
One. “It’s only three months. You’ll make a lot of good music in three months.”
Two. Haruka nods to himself when he remembers Makoto’s words, taking his seat on the plane and watching himself take flight away from home.
Three months. It’s only three months.
♬
BILLBOARD JAPAN
Weekly Review: New Star Edition
“For The Future”
Nanase Haruka
★★★½
For newcomer Nanase Haruka’s first single release, he has bypassed all attempts at crowd-wowing production to opt for a sweet and simple sound. Although new artists in the alternative scene have relied heavily on sunny synths and jazzy compositions, Nanase has burst into his debut with nothing but his guitar and baritone minimalism, blending whimsical, simplistic chords with the rise and falls of his delicate voice. His lyrical stylings, certainly cryptic by all accords, speak of dolphin keychains, stony steps, and the veiled subject of longing, none of which seem connected at all. In short, Nanase Haruka has created an air of both bare-bones simplicity and multilayered mystery, and although he is certainly rough around the edges, it is exciting to see what he’ll put out next.
♬
"Why do you perform, Nanase-san?"
Haruka fiddles with his rolled-up shirtsleeve, takes another sip of his tea, probably the tenth time in a span of five minutes, and tackles the question with a complete non-answer. The reporter, a local star in Haruka's hometown, nervously tucks her hair behind her ear and stares up from her clipboard again. Outside, the rain is pouring for the onset of early summer, making the air inside his house damp and unpleasantly heavy.
"I like music." He finally says, in the usual way he fills the awkward gaps of silence.
The reporter forgets her nerves over interviewing Japan's fastest rising alternative star, aptly and simply nicknamed the natural, and taps her pen firmly, just once, to signal for dissatisfaction.
"Now, you say that to everyone." She sighs. "Why don't you indulge your hometown a little more?"
Haruka shrugs. "There's nothing to say."
"Your first album is coming out in two months. I'm sure you have plenty to tease. Heck, I'm not even asking you to tease. I'm just asking why you perform. It's a simple enough question."
"I just...perform."
"Okay. How about this? Let me remember the story—on the night of your first ever performance in Tokyo, you were approached by a fairly large label afterwards, right? They wanted to sign you! To open for Matsuoka Rin, of all people. But you turned them down. Can you explain that?"
"I had a flight to catch that day." Haruka answers simply, but truthfully. Makoto had been waiting back at home. He's currently doing the same at this exact moment, at his own house at the bottom of the stairs, preparing for a surprise birthday party he doesn't think Haruka already knows about.
"You could've been a megastar by now."
Haruka frowns and says, "so?"
"Don't you think you'll want that, at some point?"
"No." Haruka is sure of this. There is nothing to dance around. This is why he ultimately signed with an independent label in the first place, one free from the pomp and circumstance of golden plaques and platinum records, and even with them he's not sure he'll get to stay as unbothered as he is now.
"Okay." The reporter sighs like all the others have and scribbles notes on her clipboard. She taps her pen again when she looks back up at Haruka. "So, I just have a couple of more things I want to ask you." she tells him. Haruka is already itching to leave.
"So, your song, For the Future, is rising up the charts. It's a huge achievement, considering that you've come out of no where. You've heard the names...indie darling, sweet little songbird." She can't help but wrinkle her nose at the last moniker, and Haruka can't blame her. "What is that one about?"
“The future.” Haruka says to her, simply and to avoid any depth.
The reporter frowns. “I mean, can you elaborate on that? Like, your lyrics are usually a little on the cryptic side, and wouldn’t it be fun to give your fans a little insight—”
“I did, at a fan event.” Haruka didn’t even know he had enough fans to hold one of those. “There’s video of it,” he tells her in a half-lie, because he didn’t do any explaining there, either. He just so he doesn’t have to waste his breath in dancing around real answers.
She writes this down and nods. “You sure are private about things.”
“I guess.”
“Okay...moving on. If you’ll indulge me, would you like to talk about your friends? And the making of the song, Relay?”
Haruka blushes a little. "Yes...that’s about them.”
"How nice. Matsuoka Rin is one of them, isn't he? Two hometown heroes. I see you two at events together sometimes. Though he's certain not of the same alternative strain of yours."
Haruka nods. "He says I won't win any major awards that way."
“Aw, why? You’re talented enough.”
“Not popular enough.” Don’t want to be.
"Is that why you perform, then? The prestige of awards season?"
Staring blank-faced, Haruka honestly can't believe she would ask something like this, because he would think that avoiding megastar status would say enough; but because it doesn't, he sighs, deeply, as a response. He just wishes she would let this question die. He just wishes he didn't have to explain.
"One more question," the reporter gulps down, because she can probably feel how unwanted she is here, "about a particular song."
Haruka prepares a pre-loaded answer. Reporters always start with For the Future, and then deviate to the other singles the label's put out on the web. This one is about the oncoming Spring. That one is about my seat by the window in high school. Oh, that one, you ask? Why, it's about a stray talking cat I saw in a dream—
"That first song."
No one ever asks him about the first song.
"What?"
The reporter looks down at her clipboard and reveals a Polaroid photo from behind it. In the faded glossy finish, Haruka recognizes himself on a high-legged stool, guitar stuck close to his chest. He is in the middle of his first set during his first ever live performance, mouth contorted in singing, frowning more than usual. The first song. The unnamed ballad. Haruka is so stunned by the thought of it that he lets the next question fall into static and incoherence.
"What was the question?" Haruka breathes out.
The reporter looks down at her notes again and drops the picture onto the table.
"That first song. You never played it again...and although your other work has been great, too, it's that piece that put you on the map. What happened? Where did that song go?"
Haruka feels the words slip out of his mouth. "No where." No where, because it is the sort of the song he'd never let go. No where, because it is more prized than any award, any consecutive streak at the top of the charts.
All in all, Haruka performs because he wants to. He likes music, he likes the strum of the guitar and the taste of notes against the roof of his mouth. He likes dreaming up songs, lyrics masking his relived memories and repeating visions.
He performs because one day, when his fingers are sore from plucking and his throat is dry from crooning, he might be able to sing that song to him.
♬
In memory, Haruka remembers the plucking of his grandmother's ukulele, twangy, soft, and cautious. The two of them are ten and Makoto is adamant about learning how to play any sort of instrument alongside Haruka, but the truth is he hasn't been very good at any of them, and the ukulele is his last try. As Makoto continues to pick at the simplest chords in childish agony, Haruka sits back on the deck of his house and stares up at the blue sky above them, taking in the disjointed attempt like a flowing symphony.
“You don’t have to keep trying.”
“But I want to!”
“Why?”
“Because I want to play for you someday, Haru-chan. I want to play with you!”
On Haruka's nineteenth birthday, two hours after the end of his interview and one year since hitting the charts, he encounters that same ukulele, delicately placed in his grandmother’s case in a bed of lavender velvet. While Nagisa and Rei celebrate the end of rain by hopping about down the lane and collecting snails of all things, Haruka stays at the bottom of the stairs and admires the way the koa wood still shines in its finished varnish.
“Where did you…?” In all of the moving and renting he’s done in the past year, Haruka has to admit he’s never thought about bringing the ukulele with him; it was a fragile thing, still a fragile thing, given to him in his grandmother’s last days, and he’d never forgive himself if anything were to ever happen to it. Like all of the random assortment of things that’s crossed his mind, he often thinks about the instrument collecting dust, about it sitting somewhere idly, and he’s glad that it isn’t. He’s glad the ukulele is in Makoto’s hands.
“When you first started moving things around, I knew you wouldn’t want it going anywhere.”
Haruka nods along. He’s right. Telepathy strikes even if they haven’t seen other in months.
“But, um, your manager came and insisted on bringing it to you in Tokyo, but I told him no. It's been sitting in my house, and I remember your grandmother saying to polish it once a month." Makoto smiles, tracing a finger along the base of it.
Haruka stares down, too. The ukulele has retained its luster throughout the years, something that Haruka hopes for in the years to come. For the future. He lets his gaze flick upward at the boy he's been in love with for as long as he can remember, grown at eighteen, not much of a child anymore, but still boyish in some respect—like his glowing smile, the ruddy way his hands graze the back of his head, that laugh that proves to be simultaneously hellish and heaven on earth—and watches him stumble with the next thing he wants to say.
“Can I play for you, Haru?” Makoto asks, although he is not a musician by any sorts. He’s studying botany at the local university one town over, which just happens to house one of the best agriculture programs in the country, and he’s settled quite well in doing that, from what he tells Haruka in phone calls.
Still, Makoto takes the ukulele in his hands and strums it with the same clumsiness he had as a child. The chords he's picked are slightly more complex than that first set Haruka taught him nine years ago, and it's clear he's still having trouble with them nonetheless.
"Sorry, Haru." Makoto's hands are shaking. He musters a smile again, but the corners of it are twitchy, because he's nervous. In fact, he's always been nervous to play around Haruka, especially now of all times, but he always tries anyway. As Makoto figures out the chords, his strumming emerges stronger and like a cub's playful roar. He shakes off his remaining jitters and continues to play this way, humming along to the practiced notes and slowly adding in chants of Haruka's name.
Haru, Haru, Haru~
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you," Makoto laughs as he's singing, just slightly out of tune. "Happy birthday, dear Haru-chan..."
Haruka smiles at the gesture—really, really smiles, because it's Makoto—and guides Makoto in the last chords when he struggles, fingers overlapping on the ukulele. He feels the electricity grind his bones into dust and amplify in reverberation up his back. Haruka forgets his defenses, of keeping that milimeter's worth of distance in the closeness they already share, and finds himself in dangerous, dangerous proximity to Makoto. It reminds him of that time on the beach when they were both sixteen, hands almost held but not quite.
One, two, one, two, Haruka sounds out in his head to shake off the jitters, like the moment itself is a performance of a lifetime.
"Happy...birth...day..." Makoto slows down in the awareness of things until he stops strumming altogether. Haruka keeps his hand placed over Makoto's, letting his fingers close around the width of it. Thighs touch with how close they're sitting and the right kind of warmth is exchanged for the muggy likes of a damp post-rain, and faces loom closer and closer until they can hear each other breathe.
One. 'Pull back. You're about to kiss Makoto.'
Two. 'Keep going. You're about to kiss Makoto.'
"To you." Makoto finishes the song just before their lips meet for the first time, in the world's highest caution, a lingering staccato, before abandoning all gingerness. The kiss is soft and welcoming but overdue, like another first song that had to be sung, at some point, and Haruka thinks that he could do this forever. He releases the smallest sigh as Makoto parts from him first, and he tells himself that this is the end of that, because kisses like this are confined to almost-imagined spaces in time, but Haruka lets himself linger after despite it all. Without smiles or words or half-sung songs, Makoto meets Haruka's lips again, barely there like a bird's kiss.
One. Haruka lets Makoto repeat the motions, heart pounding through his ears like it's replaced his frazzled, fuzzy brain. He makes the memory nonetheless, like all their other times of significance. Nineteenth birthday. End of rain. First time.
Two. Haruka kisses him back, but he doesn't press too hard, because it's never been that way for them. He lets their fingers lace in the way they didn't on the beach and rewrites that first song a million times in his head. A million more rise out of no where as the two of them continue, like composed boleros of increasing complexity. The new lyrics write themselves. Haruka feels the urge to sing and scream.
But he doesn't do either.
The kissing continues when the rain comes again, like all the world has found something right.
Haruka thinks he'll have new songs to write tonight.
♬
ROCKIN' ON
Monthly Music Reviews
"Deep Dive"
Nanase Haruka
★★★★½
Nanase Haruka's "Deep Dive" is another peaceful release from the prodigy of lowkey. Hitting the web five days after the singer's nineteenth birthday, listeners were not only stunned by the release but by the sound itself, and we're wondering if he anything to tell us. Lyrically, "Deep Dive" has a much more blatant symbolism than his other songs; the chorus's "the first time in the deep end" obviously refers to something else other than swimming, and we are left curious at his honesty. (Well, honesty by his usually cryptic standards.) However, we can't say it's an unenjoyable track—in fact, it's far from that: wrapped in the looming riff of guitars and accompanying harps, Nanase recreates the haze of a late summer's day that goes too well with his easy baritone drawl. Wrapped altogether, there is still a great air of mystery about him, and for this we'll keep guessing through his music.
♬
Matsuoka Rin pours himself another glass of seltzer and squeezes a lemon wedge into it, clearing his throat for the seventh time in a span of five minutes. It seems that he's still trying to get over the same cold he's had for a week and a half now, but nothing can keep Rin down from his judging duties at Japan's Got Talent, and he's probably even more excited than usual this week because he's getting to perform for the live taping this evening, too. Haruka is going on for the opener, and he should be a lot more nervous, considering the fact that it'll be the first time he'll be performing on national television.
"So, what exactly are you singing tonight?" Rin asks, pulling his alien-patterned flu mask on over his mouth. "Not that awful relay song, right? I can't believe I was the inspiration for that."
Haruka frowns. "You all were."
"Just teasing." Through the creases in the mask paper, Haruka can make out the vague silhouette of a shark-toothed smile. "But really, what are you singing?" He asks next.
Haruka reddens a little. "The new one."
"Oh, god. Deep Dive? The couples in the audience will eat that up, no problem."
"It's not like it's a love song."
"Um, but it totally is." Rin smirks. "Please don't think you can hide that stuff from me when you and Makoto are so obvious about things. First time in the deep end—so what? Did you guys consummate your relationship or something? Because that's what your fan girls are wondering."
"What?" Haruka asks, unaware that Rin kept tabs on his fan girls, of all people.
"They won't shut up about it on your fancafe message boards. Ahhh, who is Nanase's lover? I'm so jealous!"
Haruka's face goes a thousand times redder. Fiddling with the tuners on his guitar, he opts not to say anything more on the matter, but it's not like Rin will give him a chance to keep quiet on matters like this for long.
"Wait...so...?" Rin's eyes widen. "You guys, like, really—"
"We just kissed." Haruka blurts out, just to get the dancing visions of other sordid visions out of his head.
"Okay, so that's a start, I guess. But when? During that birthday party I missed?" Rin asks, but he doesn't need to go any further when Haruka starts fidgeting over his guitar strings.
"Accident."
"Oh, please spare me, Haru."
"Really." Haru combats.
"Honestly, you two are just...infuriating." Rin says, a little more serious. He yanks the flu mask off and lets it dangle on his chin, showing a face that might be as equally red's as Haruka's. Because for all the years they've been friends, Rin has probably waited all this time for the long-awaited union of Haruka and Makoto, and he's probably doing his best to mask the secondhand embarrassment of it all. He laughs with his accompanying jitters and shakes his head, and Haruka can't help but think that this is the same way he looks when he's watching his favorite couple get together on a television drama.
"It was...just a kiss." Haruka asserts.
"Nothing more?" Rin cocks an eyebrow and takes another swig of seltzer water. Outside their dressing room, set managers are calling to get Haruka into makeup before his performance.
Haruka doesn't answer him amidst the noise, but Rin gets it. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
"You guys have been together for as long as you could hold a guitar." Rin tells him. "Remember the days you'd play for him off that ukelele of yours? Because he got scared at night?"
"So?"
Rin smirks. "Babies, betrothed. That kiss was a long time coming. And I'm glad you finally decided to release that fabled first song, too. Makoto's probably listened to Deep Dive a million times by now and—"
"He said he liked it." Haruka feels his face go pink, but just slightly this time. "But that wasn't the song."
Going silent in blinking motions for a second, Rin looks like he's doing everything in his power from completely going off on Haruka.
"You...still haven't shown anyone, then?"
Haruka shakes his head.
"Not me, or Nagisa, or Rei?"
Another shake of the head.
"And not Makoto?"
Haruka feels the jolting sensation in his back freeze him right up. And just as he's about to give his answer, Rin's publicist comes knocking on the door to get him ready for wardrobe. Getting up from his seat, Rin stretches a bit and sighs, because he probably thinks that Haruka won't give him any real sort of answer anyway—
"One day."
"What?" Rin asks, one foot out the door. The obnoxious game show jingle streams from an ongoing recording outside.
"I'm going to sing it for him, one day."
Rin lets his scowl turn into something more light and lets out another deep sigh nonetheless. "Makes no difference to me, because I know. Whether you do it at twenty-three or seventy, it'll happen." He smiles at Haruka before leaving out the door.
Staring at the clock, Haruka thinks he has a five good minutes before having to set up for his performance. He slips his phone out of his pocket, finds Makoto's number on the first slot of his favorites, and dials it with shaking hands.
He picks up after three rings. "Hello?" He answers, in his usual voice, perhaps a little more startled than usual.
"Makoto."
"Haru! I haven't heard from you in a couple of days...everything okay?"
"Yes." Haruka nods, even though Makoto can't see him on the other end. He kind of hopes he does, anyway, if that's not a strange thought to have.
"Good, I was worried. Is there something on your mind?"
"No." Haruka answers him simply, once again. "I just..." He stops himself from finishing. I just wanted to hear your voice. "Felt like calling."
"You're performing soon, right?" Makoto asks. "I have my TV on, ready to go." His laugh is crisp and airy, showing no signs of awkwardness even after their shared kiss. "You're going to do great."
Haruka feels oddly self-conscious about that, but Rin was right before; Makoto has probably heard of all of his digital singles, whether it's at least once or a thousand times over, and there should've been no doubt that he'd be watching at home, too. Haruka figures that this might be the time to play the song, because Makoto will be watching anyway, and it's not like he'll be singing right to him directly, which could take pressure off things. Looking at the equipment list left by one of the stagehands, he realizes he's going to go on, acoustic. Just Haruka and his guitar. He could sing it, if he wanted to. To perform the song he's wanted to perform all this time.
"Haru?"
Haruka takes a deep breath and nods, determined, to himself.
"Will you be...listening, then?" Haruka's voice almost breaks from the strain, but he hopes Makoto doesn't notice it over the phone.
"I will." Makoto answers back. "Of course I will. Ah, unless...you don't want me to?" His voice trails off in something breathy, because even if Haruka did play for him as children, even if he did lull Makoto to sleep and sing to him through thunderstorms, he knows how hard for him it is to do that now, since that day on the beach. Because singing is just another form of finding words, of vocalizing the intimacies Haruka has a hard time conveying in person.
Still, he has to try.
“No, I do.” Haruka tells him. “Please do.”
'Please hear my song.'
'Because it's only meant for you.'