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Akito is sleeping.
Or, at the very least, trying to get some sleep.
But it's not like he can when his sister is singing in the next room.
It's taking everything in him to not just cover his ears with a pillow or play a song that he and Toya once sung to fall asleep. It’s pointless now. He was awake and he knew he wouldn't be falling asleep again anytime soon
Their parents aren't home and there's many advantages to that.
One, Akito could freely walk around the house. Due to his ass of a father taking up most of the place, he doesn't leave his room often. Maybe he can watch the old recording of RAD WEEKEND in his living room TV when Ena is at school or he can cook something for himself for the first time in a while.
Two, nobody will question how late he comes home. He can practice with Vivid BAD SQUAD or alone till the ungodly hours of the night. That fact also has its disadvantages– he doesn't want to pass out in the middle of a park somewhere in Vivid Street.
But of course, there are also disadvantages.
His sister.
She isn't that bad. But the things that go on in the middle of the night when it's just Akito and Ena in the house are concerning. Art supplies being thrown, screaming into pillows that he can't hear from the thin walls separating their rooms. And at some point during the night, Ena just goes completely silent. As if nobody was in her room. But where else would she go? It's not like she goes anywhere but school or shopping— neither of which she can exactly do after midnight. And it's unusual for her room to be completely quiet; she would at least be humming to a song or muttering about her art progress.
Shinonome Akito is both a light and heavy sleeper. He sleeps like a baby when he's worn out.
But Shinonome Akito also wakes up at the slightest of noise. Developed after his partner who would shake and bury his face in Akito's chest. Calming his breathing as Akito traces shapes on his back and tells him that everything will be okay. He would disregard his own needs to make sure his partner is okay and free of nightmares.
Akito was woken by the sound of loud singing from his sister's room.
He’s not going to lie, the song she's singing sounds difficult. He can't quite make out the words but even he can hear the deep breaths she has to take to deliver the next line.
He knows his sister is in a music group, similar to him being in a street group, but he's never really asked about it.
Being unable to close his eyes, he groans and runs his hands through soft, messy orange strands and he walks over to their wall so he can hear better.
“...saa zenkkyou na kanjou rakka papparanooia hidari migi yukue mo guruguru.”
Now then! A terrifying emotional drop, it's all the pa-pa-para paranoia!
No matter if I go left or right, all I do is spin
Huh.
Cool song.
"...Yeah that doesn't sound right. Let's do another take," Ena mutters to herself.
"I think that sounded good already, Enanan. But you can re-do it if you want to." A soft, faint voice comes from her monitor. The gentle voice can barely be heard but Akito's hearing picks it up. She's recording another song for her circle, he guesses .
"Hey! I think it's amazing! Maybe you could use some work on the ‘iya iya iya’ part.”
Akito makes out the voice that came from the other side, Akiyama’s. He’s aware that they and Ena are in the same group. That voice is easy to recognize thanks to the amount of times he’s heard their voice echo through the first year hallways, in malls, or random exclaims from his sister's monitor.
“Alright then. I’ll redo it.”
...
…She’s redone the same line seven times now.
Akito’s eyes are droopy, heavy. Groaning, he pats his bedside table to find his water bottle. He gives up when he can't find it and reluctantly opens his eyes to find his drink.
The cold hardwood floor meet his feet. He kicked his clothes on the floor— he should probably clean those up later— out of the way as he made his way to Ena’s room.
He pounds his fist and bangs on her door with no warning,
“ENA PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP. IT’S THREE IN THE MORNING.”
No response came from the person on the other side of the door.
A couple seconds later, a click of a mouse can be heard followed by several angry stomps before the door opens, revealing a very pissed Ena.
“Holy fuck. What the fuck is your problem?!” She glares at him. Enraged dark brown eyes met with tired olive green.
“Kindly shut up. I'd like to sleep peacefully for the first time in my life.”
“I was on the last fifteen seconds of my line and you ruined my take.”
Akito knows what she means. It’s an actual pain in the ass having someone interrupt your recording. He’s gone through this before multiple times; during his recording of Gekkou, Ame to Petra, and Utsuro wo Aogu.
He wanted her to be quiet, but he didn’t mean to ruin her song. Meaning now she has to re-record the part he just ruined. And even he knows how good that previous take was because he was listening to her.
“Oh” —he looks at her eyes with a genuine look of apology— “I didn’t mean to disturb you-”
“Of course you didn’t!” She sighed exasperatedly, “You could’ve knocked a little quieter, right?”
“‘m sorry.” Akito apologizes. Two words he could count on one hand he's said to his sister. He doesn't really want to but he feels the need to this time.
Ena, stunned, looked at her brother and shook her head. “Nevermind. I’ll quiet down.” She waved her hand and fiddled with the ends of her hair.
She doesn’t back down too easily. But she knows he means it. And it’s getting to her too how loud she has been repeating the same line multiple times now with a sleepy Akito on the other side of her bedroom wall.
“That song sounds hard,” Akito comments. “You’re gonna strain your voice at this rate, y’know.”
Her throat does feel scratchy. She has been non-stop recording songs and covers for Nightcord for the past two days. Maybe he is right but she won’t admit that.
“Why does that matter to you?”
“It doesn’t. I just don’t want you complaining anytime soon that your throat hurts or some shit.” His genuine concern is there, it doesn’t take a fool to know what he really means.
“Fine whatever, you can go back to your room. I was just about done anyway.” Ena places her hand on her doorknob, about to close it before Akito cuts her off,
“Show me the song,” he says flatly.
“What?”
…
“You’re struggling with that part, right? I couldn’t hear it much but knowing that you re-recorded one part around seven times tells me that you’re struggling with it. Show me the song and I’ll give you pointers or something.”
Ena is astounded by Akito’s sudden offer to help; her eyebrows furrowed. It’s not often—no, they have never done this before—He has never given her singing advice. Sure, Ena could solve this problem all by herself with a couple more takes or by listening to how Mafuyu recorded their part first, but they have completely different singing styles.
It didn't take her long before she looked at his eyes again, with a small smile. She's never heard him sing something so hard and breathy before but it couldn't hurt.
“Sure,” a pinch of hesitance obvious in her voice, “come in.” The door reopens.
Ena leads him into her room. He ignores the obvious mess of clothes and papers on the floor. Her desk lamp shining on her chair was the only source of light in the room. On her screen were two windows, Nightcord with four people in the voice chat, and the recording program next to it. Next to her desk is her easel, now transformed into a makeshift recording studio; a piece of paper clipped on the top (which he assumes are the lyrics for the song) with evident scribbles in black ink and her earphones hanging on the side.
Several throw pillows and the plushies Toya had won from the arcade took up half the space, and he pushed one to the side to sit down awkwardly.
Ena grabs her earphones and puts one earbud to her ear, unmutes her mic and speaks to her circle members,
“Guys, I’m gonna be on mute for a while. I have something to do.”
“Why? But either way, it’s okay!” Mizuki's voice comes through the other earbud “I’ll try working on the illustrations you sent me.”
“Well, it’s not like a secret per se.” Ena turns her head to meet Akito who is toying with a dark purple jellyfish plushie that Toya gave to Ena. She shuffles around to unplug her earbuds and grabs Akito by the wrist. He grunts as she pulls him in view of the camera. “I got someone in my room.”
“What the hell was that for?!” he hisses. He glances at her desktop screen, seeing the person with a pink and blue “A” profile picture unmute their mic.
“Otouto-kun?! Is that you?” Lo and behold, Akiyama Mizuki.
Akito groans again, “Yes. What are you doing up this late? Damaging your eyes?” he jokes, Ena laughs.
“Shouldn’t you be asking that to yourself and your sister?” He can picture their smirk in his head.
“She woke me up ‘cause she was singing so loud.”
“Oh! She was recording Bug! Didn’t think you were a light sleeper.”
“I’m not, she was just fucking loud. And Bug? Like the insect?”
“No, asshole” —Ena jumps in and unclips the lyric sheet from her easel and hands it to Akito— “Our song.”
Akito takes a good look at the words. Paranoia… A lot of onomatopoeia yet the lyrics are really nice. There aren’t usually what Akito and Vivid BAD SQUAD deals with, therefore he’s not sure how to help. It takes him a couple minutes to read the lyrics and analyze what it means.
Hasshou "kurushii" wa iyaiyaiya iyaiyaiya
This onset of "pain" is no good, no good, no good...
“Ena,” He calls out, she turns away from her monitor and hums in acknowledgement so he continues, “Can you sing a part of this song? I can’t really grasp how it's supposed to go.”
“Yeah, sure. Amia, give me a minute.” She minimizes the app and opens her music player and opens a file titled Bug YUKI.
“Enanan, if I heard that right,” Mizuki interrupts, “I think you can try showing him how to sing it by doing it by singing over Yuki’s part. Like, overlapping your voice with theirs. You get what I’m trying to say?”
“Kind of. So do I try singing over her recording?”
They hum affirmatively in response.
“Alright then. Akito, give me that.”
He hands her the lyric sheet as she opens the file and plays it. A fast, upbeat blue and black glitch takes over her screen and fast illustrations of seemingly five people slide in. 25ji Nightcord de is typed in a broken text style.
“The MV isn’t done yet but Mizuki and I only finished half way. It looks pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He squints and looks at Ena. “The static is cool, and looks like a computer bug too.”
“Because that’s the theme of the song, dumbass.” she lightly kicks his leg and turns up the volume, “This is the cover of one of our members. This song is actually inspired and written by them.”
maigo maigo mattadanaka saa papapara paranooi"a"
I'm lost, lost, right amidst this
Pa-pa-para paranoia
“That’s cool. So this song is about her struggles right? Being paranoid about something. I got that from the lyrics.”
Akito can sometimes read through people easily. It depends on their nature. He can also get the grasp of a song with just a few words.
“Yeah. I don’t know how much I can tell, but if you listen to the way she sings in her cover you can see how she’s sick of it, sick of everything, and how she’s running out of breath after every other line. That’s why it was also hard for me to sing.” She straightens the paper and looks at Akito. “I’m trying to match her tone, energy, and emotion.”
saa bababagu sa bagubagu kotae taedae iyaiyaiya iyaiyaiya
Now, it's a b-b-bug you see, bug bug
Answer, stop, stop; I hate it, hate it, hate it, I hate it, hate it, hate it!
The singer in the recording changes pitch. Sounding so desperate to get rid of the bug taking over. Akito comes closer and presses on the spacebar, pausing the song before speaking.
“Just sing how you usually do, because whatever the outcome is, you'll just say it’s good.”
“What?”
Akito doesn’t answer. After getting the tune of the song, he mutters the lyrics, matching the person singing from Ena’s monitor. She observes the way he does it, he’s also losing breath from one line.
“Try breathing through your mouth instead of your nose when you sing the higher parts. You might suck in your stomach while doing that so try that. The pressure and impact of your voice is important when singing songs this hard. Especially with the repetitive part at the end you have to keep your composure. You get that?”
Ena tries his advice, slightly surprised when it works.
“Have you ever sung something on this scale?”
“Yeah. Yobanashi Deceive with Toya. It took us a week and a half to get the result we wanted, we were still rookies after all. Heck, we even stayed till 11 PM in the park just to practice the bridge. Without realizing, I sang for five hours straight without a sip of water. I sang most of the parts where you really need to take a huge breath in before continuing. So take that and basically no water and the outcome was me almost passing out in the park.”
She whacked him upside the head. WIthout even realizing, they lapse into normal conversation. Acting like proper siblings for the first time in weeks – thanks to their music. Music that brings them and their feelings together, it brings the unspoken words and sentiments together without having it feel like a forced conversation.
Ena lies on her bed while Akito sits on her desk chair, doodling random designs on Ena’s iPad as she talks about Nightcord. The sun is peeking through her curtains, she tugs on it to block out the light. The words fall easily from her mouth, about her art and mental health. He realizes that they’re the same. Obviously they are – being siblings and all. But the feeling of being seen and feeling untalented running through their heads is something that connects them – even if it was something he wished neither of them felt.
When he glances at the top of the iPad the time 7:00am glares back at him. How did they get from their 3am screaming match to pouring their hearts out to each other at that time? By the time the sun is shining through the curtains he's moved to telling Ena about Vivid BAD SQUAD'S next event, and how he has practice today. He receives a pillow thrown at his head for that, Ena scolding him for staying up late to help her instead of sleeping.
He wishes this would happen more often, hanging out with your sibling in the middle of the night till the sun comes up. Conversations ranging from heavy shit to light gossip.
She wants the same. She didn’t realize how much she missed his life because of their father straining their family. She loves Akito, she wants to be there to make up for lost time. She wants to see him grow.
Their eventual bonding time ends with Ena telling him to cook pancakes, he pulls her out of bed and into the kitchen. Getting flour on their faces and pancake stuffed stomachs in what Akito thinks is the best way to start the weekend.