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The stage lights flashed on as the music swelled. Flashing on and off, every color of the rainbow, with music that penetrated every part of the stage, as if it was coming directly from the building itself.
Rui knew he was messing up his dancing. He knew he was. It should have been fine, everyone else was fine.
Not again.
His breath hitched in his throat as he tried desperately to keep his body moving to the music and a smile on his face. His head was swimming. He felt everyone’s eyes on him, an awkward pause as he realized he’d missed his cue. The embarrassment was another load piled onto his back.
Tsukasa began his lines the best he could, but even he, future star, self-proclaimed best actor around couldn’t keep the concern out of his voice. As Tsukasa and Nene completed their parts perfectly, Rui faltered even more.
He knew he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t even talk by this point, much less sing. The lights were still so bright. His head hurt. Tsukasa was looking back at him in concern as his second cue approached, and the force of his gaze was like an avalanche.
Rui turned on his heel and fled.
He walked as quickly as he could around the back of the stage, behind the curtains, doing his absolute best to ignore the still-pounding music and his peers’ confused mutterings. Rui had gotten halfway to the backstage equipment storage room before he heard Tsukasa calling his name and running after him. The music had finally stopped. Backstage was quiet, and smelled like familiar plywood and motor oil. The pain had stopped, for the most part, but that left him alone with his shame.
Oh well. This was nice while it lasted. He knew he’d end up alone again eventually. A few times, he’d allowed himself to hope, but naturally it had to come crashing down eventually. It would be worse this time, too, since he’d gotten so attached…
At least his relationship with Nene probably wouldn’t change too much. It would just go back to how it was in junior high, strained and empty, but at least still there. Emu would probably be sad, but still unable to understand him, and forget about him eventually. Tsukasa… He was less certain about Tsukasa. He seemed entirely too concerned with anything that affected Rui’s performance, and whether that was out of genuine care or because he wanted a good director Rui still wasn’t truly sure. He dismissed the voice inside reminding him he did know, that it was somehow both; Tsukasa wanted everyone to be alright and to perform their best together. He didn’t want to perform without Rui. But that was all about to change.
“Rui!” Tsukasa’s voice, his pounding footsteps on the cement floor, the sound of Rui’s shaky, uneven breathing. Tsukasa grabbed Rui by the arm, turning him around, faltering when Rui let out a choked sob and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Rui…” Tsukasa let his friend shake his hand off of his shoulder. Rui looked so… small. He usually took up so much space, performing and gesturing with practiced grace or childlike excitement. But in this moment, Tsukasa would have believed you in an instant if you’d told him all of his friend’s 180 cm could have fit inside your average shoebox.
“Rui… Can you tell me what’s going on? You just left with no warning!” Tsukasa felt a pang of guilt when Rui winced at his tone, his volume. “I want you to be okay but I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong!” Rui still didn’t respond, his eyes squeezed shut in what looked like guilt or pain.
“Will you please just talk to me?” At that, there was finally a response, a strangled sound that’s somewhere between a yelp and a sob as Rui turned away. He was half walking, half running unsteadily away from Tsukasa, arms wrapped around his body, til he reached the storage room and opened the door, slamming it shut on his way in.
Rui really has fucked it up this time, hasn’t he?
He knelt on the floor behind a rack of lights, unable to hold back his tears any longer. He let out an embarrassingly loud and high-pitched cry, letting his head hang and banging the back of his fists on the floor. He pressed his knuckles into the cold cement, the temperature and the pain at least providing something to distract from the pressure in his head and the tightness in his chest. He was still crying, choking on every breath in the dusty air.
There was a banging at the door, muffled yelling. “Rui? Will you please let me in!?”
He was extremely glad he remembered to lock the door. Rui’s cries increased in volume and Tsukasa’s voice broke as he kept banging on the door.
“Rui! Please! I’m sorry if I did anything to upset you earlier!”
Rui was just kneeling on the hard floor, breathing fast and shallow as guilt washed over him in waves. Please just leave, please don’t come in here, I’m sorry. He wished he could just disappear.
After a moment he realized the knocking had stopped. There were two voices outside now, one much quieter than Tsukasa.
“Rui-kun?” It was Kaito-san. “Everyone is worried about you, but it’s alright if you need to take time to yourself. We’ll be waiting out in the theater when you’re ready, alright?”
He seemed to wait a moment for a response, and when none came Rui heard two sets of footsteps heading away from the door, subdued voices fading into the distance.
As soon as the footsteps were out of earshot, Rui started sobbing again. He banged his fists against the floor a few more times, then rested his head against the wall. His breathing finally began to slow.
Tsukasa had… not reacted well, but maybe, with Kaito-san there…
He sat in the same position for a few more moments, then turned to sit with his back against the wall. He breathed deeply. The dust in the air was… not pleasant, to say the least, but he could deal with that.
They use this storage room a lot, for props and equipment, but there was some stuff back here Rui didn’t even recognize. He guessed he’d been too preoccupied with everything else about the wonderland to explore every inch of the backstage area. Uncharacteristic for him.
Just looking around from where he sat he could see some intriguing streetlight props, along with an old-looking miniature castle and some long coils of wire. Maybe, with that amount, they could even rig up Tsukasa to fly above the audience…!
Tsukasa. Right. He was brought back to the present by a wave of anxiety. He was feeling a bit better now, but that didn’t solve.. any of his other problems. The prospect of talking to Tsukasa and the others again was still far too much. He still wasn’t even sure if he could talk at the moment. He let out a sad, exhausted sigh. He had probably been a bit too extreme in his concerns earlier, but explaining what happened to his friends would still be exhausting, and there is still a chance they’ll no longer want to work with him. He.. really didn’t think he could deal with this today. Not unless he wanted the same thing to just happen again. Feeling filled with even more guilt, he pulled out his phone. He opened up the untitled song file and pressed stop.
Finding himself back by the wonder stage, he sent a text to Nene.
I went home. sorry to trouble you all.
He began the walk back to his house, bearing the weight of his guilt and several robots.
Rui awoke to the sound of his alarm, blinking sleepily in the light streaming through the windows. His stomach hurt.
He picked up his phone from a pile of boxes and turned off the alarm. Two new messages from Nene. Both from last night.
it’s alright, we all just want you to be ok
i let the others know. hope you feel better
That’s.. a bit vague, Rui thought to himself, as the memories of yesterday returned to him. Did Nene just tell them that he went home, or did she tell them.. everything. He should probably clarify that. Checking the time, he had about… 15 minutes before he needed to leave for school.
He stood up from his couch, stretching and hearing his joints pop, wincing at the tension in his muscles from yesterday’s stress. He had fallen asleep in his uniform last night, exhausted, so he didn’t bother to change. Just took his time gathering his things and went inside to get something small to eat, at least. In the brighter light of the kitchen, he noticed his knuckles were turning a few slightly concerning colors from bruises. They didn’t hurt too badly, at least.
He… hadn’t really eaten dinner last night, so he grabbed another piece of toast on the way out the door.
He spotted Nene leaving her house at around the same time, and gave her an awkward wave. She nodded back at him, walking over.
“Hi.”
“Hi…”
They started off for school together in silence for a while, Nene seeming calm but concerned and Rui nearly wringing his hands in nervous apology, wincing every time his anxiety made his sore muscles tense up, until he could no longer handle the one-sided awkwardness.
“So…”
Nene looked up at him, encouraging him to continue.
“Sorry about yesterday. You… said you talked to the others?”
Now Nene looked a bit nervous too. “I just told them you’d gone home, and that you weren’t feeling well. I didn’t know if, you’d want me to…”
Rui let out a sigh of relief. “No, that’s, that’s alright. I can talk to them myself later. Thank you.”
Nene nodded, still looking concerned for her friend.
They walked a few more minutes in silence.
“...Both of them just seemed worried about you.” Nene was looking up at Rui with concern. “They really don’t seem like the kind of people to–”
“I know.” Rui winced at his unintentionally snappy tone. He knew Nene was trying to reassure him, but she had never experienced rejection to the same degree as Rui. He smiled cynically. “You’d be surprised, though.”
Nene looked so sad, like she had no idea what to do to help.
Rui felt guilty. “I.. I’m not giving up, I’m going to talk to Tsukasa at.. some point today, probably. It’s just..” Rui trailed off.
Nene looked down at the ground. “Yeah.”
After a silent moment, Nene moved a bit closer to Rui, bumping their shoulders together and staying there as they walked. Rui leaned closer to her as a lump grew in his throat. Maybe.. even if the others rejected him, he would still have Nene. Nene linked her arm with Rui’s, and they finished the walk to school in a comfortable, if melancholy silence.
Rui thanked whatever gods were out there that Tsukasa didn’t try to approach him during the first few class periods. He spent the time working on a design he’d been planning for their upcoming show, doing his best to ignore the concern that they wouldn’t even need the design anymore, and getting distracted from both of these things by trying to come up with a way to talk to Tsukasa. His thoughts were cut short by the lunch bell, and immediately after by the door being slammed open. Oh god.
There was Tsukasa, the one occupying his thoughts for the past several hours (and many other hours before that, of course), holding an unnecessarily large bento box and an entire case of what looked like soda, with an expression on his face that wouldn’t be out of place in a Shakespearean tragedy.
“Rui!” Everyone in the room was already looking at Tsukasa, and now they were looking at Rui. Well.
The thing was, Rui could tell that Tsukasa wasn’t even trying to draw attention to himself. He just thought that this would be the best way to apologize for whatever he had done wrong. It made his heart fill with… well, some kind of emotion for the other boy, before he remembered the situation they were in. Right.
“Tsu.. Tsukasa-kun…” Tsukasa rushed over to his desk through the classroom, weaving through the people who had already gotten up to eat lunch and talk about the two weirdos behind their backs. This included the teacher, who had decided she definitely wasn’t paid enough for this.
“Rui! I’m sorry for what happened yesterday!” Tsukasa kneeled down in front of his desk, placing the packages on it like it was an altar.
“Tsukasa-kun–”
“I wasn’t finished! I don’t know what happened, but I think I made it worse and I want to offer my most heartfelt apologies!” He looked up at Rui, his expression now only at the level of a kicked puppy.
“Tsukasa-kun… Can we maybe… go somewhere else to talk?”
Tsukasa nodded vigorously, picking up the lunch and the—Rui had now realized it was Ramune candy, which was. Unbearably sweet of him—and followed Rui all the way to the rooftop. They were standing facing each other now, and Tsukasa still looked miserable.
“Tsukasa-kun… What happened yesterday wasn’t your fault. Well, I mean,” Rui winced. “You did, uh, didn’t really help, but–”
“I’m sorry….”
“I mean, I guess it isn’t like you really knew what to do. Or even what was going on. I guess, I, do owe you an explanation.” Rui’s heart was already beating unhealthily fast, but he put on his best showman’s smile.
“I’m autistic.”
Tsukasa still just looked apologetic. “I.. don’t know a lot about that. Sorry.” At least his initial reaction wasn’t disgust, that’s a start.
“I– well, there’s. Other things as well, but…” Rui took a deep breath. “Yesterday. One part of being autistic is that I get, well. Overwhelmed. Sometimes. By too many lights, or sounds, and things.”
“But you’ve performed with us like that before…”
Rui was still as tense as a bowstring, struggling somewhat to get out every word.
“It’s- not all the time. Sometimes I’m fine. And some things don’t hurt me, especially when I’m the one in control of them. It’s just, well, yesterday, I was already.. A bit upset. I just…” He isn’t sure how to put this delicately, so Tsukasa won’t go around trying to fight everyone in Rui’s class. “I didn’t have the best day at school, and I was tired. I.. probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before, if I’m being honest.” He had been working on plans for robots and effects. He still could only hope those things hadn’t gone to waste. At this point, Tsukasa was awkwardly clutching the food he had brought, looking unsure what to say or do.
“The point is, I just. Had a little too much stress, so I couldn’t handle performing right then, and I tried to anyway, and well. You saw what happened.”
Tsukasa was pouting again. “Yesterday, when I asked you what was wrong, you wouldn’t tell me… That’s why I thought it was my fault.”
Rui felt a sharp spike of guilt. He always ended up hurting people like this. He did his absolute best to push down that feeling, though, since this was a hurt he could actually fix. Hopefully.
“When I’m..” He struggled to find the right words. “Upset like that, I… can’t really talk sometimes.”
Apparently that did not compute in Tsukasa’s brain. “You always know exactly what to say, though, better than any of us…”
This time it was Rui’s turn to short-circuit for a moment. That’s what Tsukasa thinks of him? The social outcast who talks to flowers and robots?
Pushing aside his surprise at the compliment, Rui tried to find the words for another explanation. “It’s like.. I know what I’d like to say, it just won’t come out. I wasn’t giving you the silent treatment. I–” Rui looked at the ground by his feet, embarrassed. “I wasn’t avoiding you because I was angry, either. I was… Worried that you’d be upset with me.”
“You’re the one who was hurting, though, weren’t you?”
Rui felt like he was going to cry. “Yes.”
There was a long pause.
“Have… other people been mad at you for being upset before?”
Rui nodded, closing his eyes.
“And… was that also part of why they didn’t want to be with you, aside from your dangerous ideas?”
Rui nodded again, feeling tears welling up in his eyes. There was no way he could stop them now. Dammit. How could someone usually so dense be so mortifyingly perceptive?
There was a heavy pause, then Rui heard the sound of boxes being set down, and felt a pair of arms wrap around him. He froze, surprised and unsure of what to do.
Tsukasa was so warm.
He awkwardly wrapped his arms around the other’s shoulders, feeling the first tears begin to fall from his eyes as he leaned down to rest his head on Tsukasa’s shoulder. Tsukasa squeezed him tighter in response, and Rui could’t stop the tears from falling.
He had expected an awkward conversation, ending in poorly veiled disgust or complete lack of understanding. What he hadn’t expected was to be completely picked apart by gentle questioning, all his insecurities laid bare and then literally accepted with open arms. It was unfair. And when Tsukasa moved one hand up to rest on the back of his neck, gently stroking the soft hair there… that was definitely unfair.
Rui was practically leaning his entire weight on Tsukasa at this point, like he had been melted by the warmth of a nearby star. And Tsukasa stayed there, supporting his weight. He seemed to be taking the duty of hugging Rui as seriously as he’d take any role in their plays.
He sighed, feeling the tension leaving his body. He knew he couldn’t just stay like this forever, but if Tsukasa wasn’t going to stop him then he didn’t think he could bring himself to stop on his own. Tsukasa was still stroking the back of Rui’s neck with his other arm wrapped tightly around his back. He didn’t seem to mind the tears staining his soft yellow sweater.
It may sound… a bit pathetic, honestly, but this was… a lot for Rui. He didn’t get a lot of hugs. It’s not a big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be, it’s just that there weren’t that many people he was even on speaking terms with, and neither he or Nene were naturally very physical. He’d only known Emu and Tsukasa for a few months, and it had seemed they’d both been too afraid to touch him or assumed he was uncomfortable with the way he reacted. Not that he wasn’t uncomfortable sometimes, they could both be… a lot, but. It’s not like Rui would ever just ask, but he did need this kind of thing sometimes. More often than he’d like to admit.
Tsukasa shifted slightly and Rui realized he’d stopped crying by this point; he’d just been resting his head on Tsukasa’s shoulder.
“Ah, um, Rui? It’s not that this isn’t nice, and, uh–” Tsukasa cut off suddenly, sounding embarrassed. He continued, even quieter. “It’s not like I don’t want to just keep hugging you, but, well.. Maybe we should eat some lunch? I notice that you don’t usually eat, which is okay, I guess, but I’d like you to have something… That is, if you want. I brought, well. A lot. There’s, uh, some fried pork, french fries, rice, some cheesecake, and uhh, well, some candy… I uh, got that for you…”
Rui let out a quiet chuckle at this, his face still hidden in Tsukasa’s chest. He really had gone a little overboard. It was. Entirely too sweet of him.
“Rui? What? Did I say something?” Rui was still laughing, and Tsukasa sounded extremely flustered. Cute.
Rui leaned back so he could see Tsukasa’s face. He looked perplexed and vaguely frustrated, as Rui had expected. Tsukasa’s expression’s when he was embarrassed were truly a sight to behold. He had closed his mouth when Rui leaned back, cheeks slightly pink.
Rui took a deep breath and smiled at him, making Tsukasa’s cheeks go even redder. Rui nodded and Tsukasa faltered for a moment. “Huh? Ah! Right, uh, right. The food.” He laughed nervously and seemed to hesitate for a second, then very suddenly reached up and ruffled Rui’s hair, before turning pointedly away, walking stiffly and exaggeratedly over to where he’d set down the food.
Looking down at Tsukasa, his ears were flushed a truly impressive shade of red. Tsukasa looked up from the little picnic he was setting out at the sound of Rui chuckling again. He looked betrayed and dismayed by Rui laughing at him, but it was undercut by the adorable flush on his face.
Rui sat down next to Tsukasa, eyeing the small feast of junk food Tsukasa had brought him. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned his head on Tsukasa’s shoulder, almost nuzzling him like a cat. It was embarrassing, but Rui did not have the energy to be worried about that right now.
He could, however, spare the energy to worry about Tsukasa’s seemingly imminent combustion due to embarrassment. He would rather his best friend not explode on him. He sat up, grabbing a pair of chopsticks and starting in on some fried pork. He tried not to look at Tsukasa to alleviate some of his embarrassment, but that was somewhat difficult when he was practically a bright red beacon by Rui’s side. He hadn’t said anything in a few minutes, just eating a bit of rice and looking at the ground, either too flustered to speak or managing to deduce that Rui either couldn’t or didn’t want to talk right then.
Rui sighed, looking up at the sky. Tsukasa’s reaction had been… a lot better than expected, to say the absolute least. He hadn’t been perfect, he had made a lot of blunders along the way, but he had just kept trying and kept caring in that endearingly stubborn, bumbling way of his, and when he had realized what he was doing wasn’t helping he had listened. Rui realized no one had ever truly done that for him before.
Huh. To think that the self-proclaimed future star, arguably the most self-centered person around, would be the first to truly seem to care about this greedy alchemist’s own feelings. That was certainly a twist. Rui was drawn out of his musings by Tsukasa’s voice.
“Hey, Rui… did I say something that upset you, earlier? I might be getting this completely wrong, but, just, you said that you can’t talk sometimes when you’re upset, and, you haven’t said anything for a little while, so i thought, maybe–”
Rui shook his head, meeting Tsukasa’s eyes with a smile.
“Oh, okay, good…” Tsukasa took a few more bites of food in silence.
“Y’know, it’s really, fine with me, if you can’t talk sometimes, but… I want you to be able to tell us things if you need to… like, maybe, I don’t know…” He knitted his brows, the gears in his head very obviously turning, until he experienced a nearly cartoonish lightbulb moment.
“What if, you could make a robot! One that could help you and talk for you! If you could like, tell it what to say somehow and–Hmm?”
Rui had interrupted Tsukasa by holding up his phone, and he pressed a button on the screen. A robotic-sounding voice played from the speakers.
“Just this works, too.”
Tsukasa deflated slightly, his visions of cool talking robots rendered useless, before he perked up again. “That’s cool! I didn’t know you could do that with a phone!”
Rui nodded.
Tsukasa looked thoughtful. “Wait, did you have that before? Couldn’t you have used it yesterday?”
Rui looked down at his phone, shoulders hunched over slightly. It took a moment for him to type out a message. The several prominent pauses in his typing made Tsukasa nervous.
“I did. I didn’t use it because I was too stressed to think very clearly and also because you all didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t want you to judge me.”
He looked at the ground and picked at the sleeve of his sweater as the robotic voice read out his words. Tsukasa was silent for a moment. He wanted to say that they wouldn’t have judged Rui, but he wasn’t sure if he could say that honestly. He wondered how many other times he had written it off as “just Rui being weird” when his friend was really struggling. He also wondered how many others had done the same, and knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it if he knew the real number.
“I’m really glad that you explained to me, Rui. I… know I may have done things wrong in the past, but… I’d like to help you out when I can from now on!” Tsukasa’s voice had regained his characteristic confidence for the first time that day, though he still sounded a bit uncertain.
Rui sighed fondly, then after a moment spoke, his voice still quiet. “Thank you.”
Tsukasa startled at the sound, then smiled at Rui, nodding his head with one hand over his heart.