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Before Kaede met Miu she had a very specific idea about what love was supposed to look like.
A partner in her life who enjoys music the same way she does, maybe through singing, maybe through another form of instrument. She would daydream about a warm weight pressed against her side, a soft melody in her ear as her fingers glide across the keyboard. It was always one of her favorite daydreams.
Meeting Miu didn’t just shatter that fantasy, it was thrown out the window and off a very steep cliff to eventually shatter once it hit the very bottom.
And admittedly, Kaede wouldn’t have it any other way.
Things were hard after the killing game. She felt herself die, after all, and then she woke up in a pod with a medical team crowding around her. Kaede was teetering on the edge of a panic attack as she processed the clashing memories of her life before the game and the memories implanted for the game. The medical team around her just didn’t seem to be taken off guard by her shaky hands or labored breathing, taking vitals and chattering idly to each other as if she isn’t even there.
For someone who is supposedly a celebrity now, she sure wasn’t treated as such.
Now that she’s out of the game she recognizes Rantaro easily as the sole survivor of a previous killing game. She remembers when they announced the news that he would be returning and she shrieked to all her friends, shoving her phone across the cafe table and furiously speaking.
Now that she’s walked in his shoes, seen what the killing game really is, she wonders how the hell she ever went about her life thinking they were okay. Maybe because it’s technically all simulation, maybe because it was just so normalized in the society she grew up in, but until now she never realized the true horrors of it all.
Suffering through the nightmares, the clashing sense of identity, and the phantom pains in her neck she’s never been quite so aware of it all. Especially knowing she can never speak out about it outside the circle of those that have participated in this little world.
She always wondered, before, why so many killing game players ended up truly dead after the fact. Now she knows.
Irregardless, Kaede can’t make peace with the woman she was before the games. She likely will never be able to. Those mannerisms, core values, and even the fantasy with the piano that were fabricated for the games feel more like her than whoever she was before. How can she ever go back to her normal life where she would be expected to gush over the experience and never truly open up to those she left behind?
It’s something to deal with later, she supposes, seeing as she’s not allowed to leave the facility yet. Can’t have her leaving before the game is finished and spoiling things before everything is fully out.
On one hand, she’s glad, she doesn’t want to go back to the life she had before. The giggling with the friends she used to have or even going back home to just a mother and no sign of the twin sister she had such vivid memories of.
She has a hard time finding stuff to do for a while, until she’s made aware of a recreation room that she’s welcome to at any time. As it turns out, Kaede who couldn’t so much as carry a tune before all this can now. She finds out on total accident, bitter humor overtaking her as she sat down at the grand piano tucked in the back of the room, and came to realize she’s actually good. For a while she spends most her days sat at the piano and playing until her fingers are sore and she’s exhausted the extent of her knowledge.
They only implanted so many memories of playing in her mind, but she uses what little was implanted to further her knowledge. She’s far from an ultimate anything, but it helps her keep her mind off things.
Kaede watches as more people die and is there when they wake up, offering a kind hand where she can. She was the closest to everyone, despite her short time, and she knows how jarring it is to come back into existence so suddenly.
She came back coldly, she doesn’t want anyone else to have to come back the same.
The staff doesn’t seem to care when she’s in the room with another member of the staff, but there’s an unspoken rule that she’s not to go in alone. Despite that, more than once she slips in to the pod room unattended and can’t help observing the faces of the people she knows are fighting for their lives in the screen in the room over.
They all look like themselves, if maybe slightly to the left. Charm of their clothes are lost in the white t-shirts and sweatpants, but little details remain. Kaito’s hair isn’t styled the same way as it is in the game at all, Himiko has a small smattering of freckles, and Shuichi even has a small mole beneath his eyebrow. She’s even surprised to find that Gonta is shorter, definitely not short by any means, but definitely not the large figure she remembers him being.
There’s no Kiibo, not the way she knows him, but there’s a rather scrawny boy with ashen hair and a bionic arm just to the left of Miu.
And Miu- well, Miu is a different story.
Her figure is fuller- like many of the girls, as Kaede’s observed-and her hair shorter. It’s a wild mess of strawberry blonde curls, but the mop of hair stops at her shoulders here.
Her lashes are lighter without mascara, shorter as well, and it’s a weird sort of awareness to see Miu’s face slack of anything. She must’ve been wearing make up before getting in the pod, because there’s soft pink flecks of glitter under her brow bone that the staff failed to scrub off.
There’s a weird impulse for Kaede to brush it away with the pad of her thumb that she only manages to resist because she can’t open the pod door.
After that it seems like Kaede’s mind always drifts back to Miu. She watches her closely on the television, quietly rooting for her, and when she’s not doing that she’s in the pod room, hovering at her side.
She knows the games were using her as a set up for Shuichi to become protagonist, hinting at them being something more, and it’s not as though Kaede is completely repulsed by the idea. Shuichi is lovely, she hopes the remain friends after this, but she’s starting to think that maybe the producers should’ve given her a different love interest for the short time that she was there...
Oh well, there’s no use in thinking about the what if’s, is there?
Except, when Miu leaves the simulation it seems like it’s not exactly a stretch to say there could be something there.
As it turns out, Miu can’t carry a tune to save her life. Her fingers land too heavy on the piano keys and her singing voice is unattractively whiny. She doesn’t want to sit up close to Kaede on the bench, in fact, she doesn’t seem like she doesn’t want to touch anyone much at all.
Kaede should be crushed, really, the woman she has feelings for couldn’t be any further from what she’s been longing for.
Except, she’s not.
Miu also retained knowledge from her “ultimate” and where she can’t carry a tune, she understands a whole new language when it comes to tools. Kaede could sit there all day watching her fiddle with whatever heap of junk the staff provides her with so she doesn’t get into anything else. She snorts when she laughs and god does she laugh a lot. She thrives under quick, soft touches and irritates under long, prolonged ones. She still fiddles with her hair, even though it’s shorter, and her makeup is never quite perfect.
Just like Kaede she seems to hover a line between who she was before and who she became, teetering closer to the games version of herself at times and her old self at others.
Sometimes she’s much quieter than she was in the games and other times she’s the loudest person in the room. She’s still crude, but the boundaries with touch remain the same.
Kaede realizes she loves her the same day they have their first interview after the ending of their game. She’s spent most of the day away from her, crying and fretting all over Shuichi, while Miu similarly helped Kiibo adjust to being back in his very human body.
It’s not until she’s staring in the full length mirror in her room getting dressed with no smart ass commentary that she realizes she misses Miu despite just seeing her earlier that morning. The feeling hits her solidly in the chest and all she can do is heave a sigh, slipping her foot into one sensible heel.
Her heart pounds irregularly in her chest as she smooths down the lacy, floral print pattern of her dress, watching her movements in the mirror. Almost as soon as she lets her hand drop the door flings open and Miu comes clomping into the room in a strappy pair of platform heels that goes well with her slinky, pink dress and white jacket.
She sighs, loud and exaggeratedly, sliding up behind Kaede in the mirror. Her short hair is tucked back with one of Kaede’s own hair clips, painted lips pursed in thought as she stares at the two of them in the mirror.
Much like how she was in the pod, there’s a brush of glitter right below her brow bone, and this time it is as seamless as Kaede turning around and smoothing a thumb gently under her brow bone, eliminating a particularly harsh clump.
“You’re gonna fuck up my makeup.” Miu says, mildly, corner of her lip crooked in amusement.
“You had a clump!” Kaede defends, letting her hand drop from Miu’s face.
Miu snorts in response, hooking her pinky with Kaede’s before stepping back a bit, eyes scanning over her outfit. She looks appraising until she hits the heels and she groans, tilting her head back in exasperation.
“You’re going to an interview on live television, not church.”
“I like my heels.” Kaede pouts, “Plus, you’re taller than me right now.”
Miu flushes, like she’s just now realizing it herself, turning her head to the side and tucking her hair behind her ear in bashfulness.
“O-oh?” She clears her throat, flushing deeper from the crack in her voice, “I’m guessing you like that.”
“Mhm!” Kaede hums, stepping forward to gently press a kiss against Miu’s cheek.
Normally- if that was the sort of thing they did- she wouldn’t have to make any sort of adjustment to do so, but with Miu’s incredibly high platforms and Kaede’s tiny kitten heels, she has no choice but to raise up on the tips of her toes to reach her.
When she lowers herself back down Miu is looking at her with a sort of fondness and awe, like maybe she was just realizing something for the first time. Kaede knows this realization is about her, in whatever capacity, and she knows that if she told Miu how she felt right now she could so easily have her.
Telling her she loves her would be such an easy task if she just let it be.
But not right now.
Kaede grins sweetly and takes off out the door, aware of their dwindling time before their interview. She just needs to figure out how to open up this window of conversation, later, when they have a little less on their plates.
Except, as it turns out, the new window opens with a ferocity the next day. Kaede should’ve realized from her time as a fan of the killing games that fans overanalyze every little thing and flood the internet with those details almost as soon as the first interview is out.
She remembers excitedly sitting up with other fans and overanalyzing the way cast members sat next to each other or spoke about each other. Debating on whether or not feelings carried to outside the games or if there were still hard feelings between certain victims and their killer.
By morning there’s articles and magazines full of analysis of the gloss on Miu’s cheek in the exact same shade as Kaede’s lip gloss and the way the two of them had taken shy little looks at each other when the other hadn’t been looking.
The way things fall in to place after that is just a little clumsy, but the fact it falls in to place at all is what matters to Kaede.
Even if Miu continues to make fun of her “church heels”.