Chapter Text
Ena Shinonome was, for lack of a better word, honest. To others, and herself. For instance, let’s examine her relationship with her younger brother, Akito Shinonome. On the outside it may appear that she absolutely hates his guts and probably doesn’t want anything to do with him if she can avoid it, but deep down she probably cares about him a little. You know, the bare minimum of affection she can afford him for his status as ‘younger brother’. Familial love is expensive these days!
Scratch that, perhaps that wasn’t the best example.
Perhaps her relationship with her fellow circle member Mafuyu Asahina was a better example. Yes, she may have said some horrible things to Mafuyu (and vice versa) during that episode where she discovered that the world she was living in was not the only one, but nowadays their relationship stabilized enough for Ena to somewhat tolerate the purple haired lyricist on most days! And maybe just a little, she cared about her, and was concerned for her whenever something happened to Mafuyu. Only maybe though, and especially only a little!
Hmm, that wasn’t quite it.
Okay, okay, what about her relationship with the music circle leader, Kanade Yoisaki? Ena was fond of Kanade, and Kanade was always pleasant around her. She’s an honest fan of Ena’s artwork too as evidenced by the fact she was invited into the music circle to be their artist. Not to mention Kanade didn’t have a big mouth like Mizuki or was somewhat obstinate like Mafuyu. Yes, compared to those idiots she shone iridescently! She may have a little bit of a soft spot for the jersey-wearing girl.
Yep, that checks out.
Then, what about Mizuki Akiyama? The animator, MV choreographer, and final member of the music circle. They were…loud. Always quipping and throwing snide remarks towards Ena during the circle meetings; in real life it wasn’t much different. In-fact, the number of times a comment from Mizuki set her off far exceeded the number of times a comment from Mafuyu did. Perhaps… ‘annoying’ was the better term to describe the pink-haired member of 25-ji, Nightcord de.
Yeah, they were annoying!
That being said…
They weren’t just annoying to Ena. She didn’t really know when it started happening, but at some point, she almost started looking forward to their comments during meetings or the various topics they introduced because they had something to say about it. And she always awaited the next time she would be able to see her underclassman with bated breath. She even started considering transferring to the daytime classes to be able to see them more often! But she figured as they didn’t go to school all that often that it wasn’t worth it. Their cute pink hair, pink eyes, cat-like mannerisms, and that annoying obsession with anything ‘cute’ (why aren’t you obsessed with me then?), all became charming to her. Heck, she even started feeling happy whenever she spotted that trademark ribbon so frequently tied in their hair. And not to mention the fact her mind often wandered to thinking about Mizuki whenever nothing interesting was happening around her (as evidenced by her thinking about Mizuki at this very moment), or all the little doodles of Mizuki in her notebooks, sketchbooks, and everything else. Even seeing a cat on the street reminded her of them.
Ena wasn’t born yesterday, though. She damn well knew what all of this meant. She read enough of those young teen magazines with columns about love advice to know the true nature of these feelings, even if all of that was potentially bogus.
Nevertheless, at some point, Ena Shinonome fell in love with Mizuki Akiyama.
She didn’t resist it. When she realized, she was as calm if not calmer than a pond without a single ripple of water.
Perhaps it was fated to be like this.
But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t without its anxieties.
For one, she didn’t really know too much about them. She knew their birthday (August 27th, marked in Ena’s agenda with little hearts. Comparatively, November 12th only had a small scribble on it, which only debatably said, ‘Akito’; scholars are still out on that one.), what school they went to (the same one she went to), their family structure (they had an older sister), their food preferences (anything warm was a no-go), and other random, inconsequential bits of trivia that didn’t really paint a picture of what kind of person Mizuki Akiyama really was beyond the surface. They were…secretive. They were able to talk at length about some silly anime they were watching or some other odd interest of the week, but not a single significant thing about themselves escaped their cute mouth. So ultimately, what did Ena know? And even more importantly, what did Ena not know? She wanted to know everything there was to know about them if they would just…let her. And whatever lies beneath the surface? She wouldn’t judge, as she was down too deep for such trivial sentiments and hasty judgements. It may…sound a bit silly to most people that she fell in love with someone without really knowing them; however she figured feelings were the most irrational thing anyway, so Ena didn’t really care that much.
For two, Mizuki had been acting somewhat strange ever since that horrible horror mystery tour they took them on. It was subtle, so subtle. Kanade or Mafuyu probably didn’t even notice. Ena figured that she probably wouldn’t have noticed either on some other day. Perhaps it was because she started looking at Mizuki so much around that time that she was even able to notice such a small shift in how they acted. Their mannerisms…yes, Ena was used to them by now, but they were hardly transparent, and Ena wasn’t that perceptive. She didn’t know who or what bothered them, and only after numerous attempts was she only somewhat successful at prying away the layers of…something Mizuki hid behind. It was around the start of winter, on that rooftop, that she finally got her suspicions confirmed by Mizuki themselves that there was something. Mizuki didn’t tell her what it was, though. But they said they would, someday. When that someday was exactly, Ena didn’t know. Another thing to throw onto the pile of things she didn’t know about them. But she didn’t really care. She would wait and stay by their side forever if she had to. Until they were ready. Perhaps it was her feelings for them that caused her to say such corny things, and perhaps before that someday came around, these feelings of hers could have long passed on already. A mere memory in the album of her life.
But…
But even so.
She would stay by their side. She had promised them after all, and she wasn’t about to go back on that promise, with or without love.
That’s the best she could do.
And Ena Shinonome was REALLY good at doing her best, even if she was the only one in the world that thought so.
For three, to add to all of that like some messed-up cherry on a cake of worry, there was also that one night on Nightcord. It’s been a bit since then, but Ena would never forget what had escaped from Mizuki’s tongue. She figured that they didn’t intend for her to hear something like that; a mere slip of the tongue when they forgot to mute their microphone. It may not have been intended to reach her, but it had already managed to weigh on Ena’s thoughts whenever she thought about her pink beloved.
“Can I be saved too?”
It stirred her heart whenever she remembered that moment. The tone of voice they used to say that line was so unlike the usual bubbly Mizuki that it caused a numbing pain within Ena. To this day, Ena didn’t know what they meant with that. She didn’t know exactly, but she was able to guess. It wasn’t rocket science. And hanging out with Kanade and Mafuyu for this long already put her on the right path to the correct conclusion; it meant that. Something was weighing down on Mizuki. Whether that was the same something as before, or another something entirely was not something Ena was able to discern. But it didn’t really change how she felt about it, whether it was one thing, two things, or a hundred things, she wanted to wipe it all away from zero to ten, and then to a hundred—that was her conviction. She wanted to save them. The only problem being that she just didn’t know how to go about it. She wasn’t musically gifted like Kanade or as amazing (even though she didn’t want to admit it) as Mafuyu. Nor did she have confidence in her art being able to save them. In the first place, could art even do that? Sure, saying that art could move people would be stating the obvious. But that wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t enough. Her father talked a lot about the things art could do, but he never mentioned its ability to save high-school first-years from their worries. Yep. Art was such a let-down.
So she had to find a different way, her own Ena Shinonome way of saving someone. That was easier said than done. In the first place how do you even save someone? Maybe she had to change her goal a little, make it more concrete. Let’s see, maybe ‘make Mizuki talk about their problems’ was a step in the right direction, but she had already been trying that with the picnic with Airi and Shizuku and only got as far as… someday. Then instead of that, maybe…
Hrm.
Ugh.
“Aaaagh!” she threw the stylus (that just finished doodling another Mizuki) on her bed in frustration.
All this thinking made her head hurt. So what if she wasn’t as smart as Mafuyu? She was WAY cuter, and and and…
Ena sighed.
What even was the point of comparing herself to Mafuyu all of a sudden like that? Sorry, Mafuyu. Really, she had no plan at all to get Mizuki say more than they already had. After all, she said she’d wait. Wait and see how things would turn out; not everything was possible through brute force alone. Meiko said so. It only got her as far as…where she was now. Was it something she said that day, then? She told them that she’d wait forever if she had to, and stick by them…was that not enough? Unless…was Mizuki unconvinced?
Did it not reach them? These passionately seething feelings of hers?
Ena cringed a little as she thought about that. She could have phrased that better.
Still—
A few bonks on her door. The only person who that could be was Akito. Their parents were out of town for a few days for a gallery opening in a different city. Apparently that was more important to them than their own children. Tch. At least he knocked. Another bonk. Agh, stop bonking already.
“What!?” Ena asked, with a bit of agitation in her voice.
“Geh… I heard you scream from downstairs and thought something happened,” Akito’s uninterested voice came through the unopened door. “You seem to be fine though.”
Hmm.
Maybe Akito had a little know-how about this. Singing is all about expressing feelings, right? It wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“Come in.”
“What?”
“I said come in.”
“I don’t think I wanna.”
“Come in already!” Ena lunged up from her chair and opened the door herself, standing face to face with her younger brother. She stood aside as he awkwardly and begrudgingly shuffled past her and awkwardly took a seat at the low table positioned around the center of the room.
“What do you need?” he asked, with an exasperated tone as Ena returned to her desk chair and spun around in order to face him.
Silence.
Ena blankly stared at his face.
Akito was slowly losing patience.
“Oi.”
“I’m just thinking. Did your hair grow longer?”
“Uh, yeah, hair tends to do that.”
“You don’t have to say it that way! Don’t you know what small talk means!?” Ena said, exasperated. Like brother, like sister.
The Shinonome siblings reset before communication broke down.
“So basically, a friend of my friend seems to be worrying about something and my friend wants to help but her friend doesn’t want to say anything,” Ena said, in a roundabout manner. “And I—I mean, my friend, already tried to tell her friend at school that she’d be there for them, but her friend doesn’t seem to be convinced or at least doesn’t want to say anything.”
Akito looked at her dumbfoundedly.
His sister really thought she was slick, huh?
“So, you want to get through to your friend?”
“Not me, my friend wants to!” Ena insisted.
“Yes, yes, ‘your friend’ wants to get through to their friend,” Akito ‘corrected’ himself. “Tell me, what has ‘your friend’ done already to get through to their friend?”
Silence again.
“I don’t like how you said that.”
“I could walk out of here right now if I wanted to.”
“No, stay put! Hm. Well,” Ena wasn’t sure how to phrase this. “I—I mean, my friend, tried to make her other friends convince the other friend that she was to be trusted. And again, she said to her friend’s face that she’d wait as long as she had to.”
Other friends? Airi? Did his sister have other friends besides her? The members of that music circle or what-not?
“That friend of ‘your friend’ sounds like a real pain-in-the-ass.”
“Yeah…”
“Anyway, what would you do in this situation?” his sister said, with a bit of a hopeful tone. It seemed that she was honestly expecting something good from him. Guess he can’t half-ass this.
Akito thought a little. So basically, one of his older sister’s friends was too dense, and seemingly didn’t seem to realize that Ena meant a lot of the things she said literally. Even Airi was sent-in to make that friend realize… Who hung around his sister enough for her to say such embarrassing things to them, but not enough to know that Ena was serious? Akito went through all of his sister’s known contacts in rapid fire. Thankfully, Ena didn’t have many friends. Akito snorted as he thought about that, granting him an ugly glare from the artist.
There was Airi, who probably was one of the ‘other friends’ in the story, so she’s out.
Then that left someone from her class? No. Impossible. Ena never talked about her classmates.
So, not someone from school, or at least, not from her class. Who remained? Her circle members. There were…three, not including his sister. Akiyama, the one with the ponytail, and the girl that honestly looked like she was ready to fall over any second.
Wait a minute.
“You said ‘your friend’ talked to her friend at school, right?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah.”
That narrows it down.
Then…it had to be Akiyama.
So, there was something going on with Akiyama and his sister tried to reach out. Couldn’t she have said that from the start? They could have been at this stage already from the very beginning… Akito began thinking about what he’d do. Someone dense…
Only one person came to mind with that description.
Toya Aoyagi, his partner and…let’s not get into that. That wasn’t important here. So, what if Toya didn’t believe Akito would be there for him, no matter what? The thought made him think back when BAD DOGS was just formed. The nostalgia was a little sweet, like syrup on a stack of pancakes. The answer is simple. He would tell him straight up in his face and make sure he couldn’t misinterpret or misunderstand. It made Akito a little sick that Ena did that exact thing he just came up with. But that didn’t work for Akiyama? How dense were they…
“Out of curiosity, how much does ‘your friend’ like that friend?” Akito asked.
Ena blushed a little in response.
Disgusting.
“Oh, you know, a normal amount?” Ena’s voice was all over the place in pitch.
This was his sister?
God, so now he had to live with the fact that his sister liked Akiy—
He shook his head. Don’t think about that.
“Uh-huh.”
Akito did not sign up to learn this much about his sister so quickly, but he was already down far too deep. In for a penny, in for a pound. Or was it sunk cost fallacy? He didn’t know. So both Shinonomes were in the exact same boat of ‘liking someone far too dense for their own good’. Ugh, it was too early in the week for this. The longtime underused cylinders in Akito’s brain that were meant for academics were firing at all stops.
“Sooooo? What do I do?” Ena was growing a bit impatient. She didn’t even correct herself this time.
There was one thing in Akito’s mind that stuck out between all the hypothetical courses of action he was simulating in his head. But to call it a way to get through to someone was…inaccurate. It was moreso a straight-up confession. Akito shouldn’t have read that manga Akiyama lent him. It was far too late though, that scenario was stuck in his mind now as the only answer to his sister’s problem. Now the question was, did his sister have the guts?
“There’s one thing ‘your friend’ could do,” Akito started.
The long and exaggerated ‘Haaah?’ from Enanan was probably audible throughout the whole block. And her flushed cheeks were dyed in such a red it almost seemed like she spilled paint onto herself. Despite that, however, what Akito proposed was…not all that bad. It seemed he had some sense after all! But executing it was a different problem. Were her feelings ready?
After having calmed down a little, she said, “You’re helping me.”
“Huh? I thought it was the problem of ‘your friend’?!”
“Oh, uh, mm. Yeah, you’re helping her,” Ena said in the most unconvincing tone. Why even keep up the pretense? “Can’t you do your sister a favor, just this once?” Akito had heard that line countless times.
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
“Well! I…don’t have the contacts to make this happen,” Ena said sorrowfully. “Please, Akito.”
Ena looked her brother in the eye. It was then that Akito realized that his sister was extremely serious about all of this. Just how much did she like Akiyama? Lucky bastard.
“Agh, fine. Fine. You owe me a big one for this, though! Send me when you wanna do this and I’ll see what I can do. No promises,” the younger brother said as he raised his hand to his forehead in annoyance.
“Yay! Thanks Akito! I love you!” Ena said in a sly tone.
“Ugh. Spare me,” he said, as he walked out of the room.
Ena Shinonome was an honest person.