Work Text:
One thing Kanade liked about Sekai, apart from the silence, was how firm the ground was. She realized that was an odd thing to appreciate, or even notice, but it was a key detail to her. She first noticed when she decided to take a nap there one day. Ena and Mizuki usually thought of it as uncomfortable, she knew, but it was a detail she missed when her back stopped wanting to work properly when she wanted to keep working.
When it happened on call, it was usually shown to the others through uncharacteristic silence. Not to say she wasn’t normally silent, but at least when she was working, she still responded to her name being called by the second time. When it was anything other than that, it could take up to six.
It was probably because she’d been working for hours upon hours without break. All the same, the acute soreness she felt at the base of her spine and the pinching kind of pain between her shoulders stopped her in the middle of a phrase of music. Now all she heard in the background was Ena and Mizuki’s latest good-natured argument. Maybe it made her make a small noise then, because a moment later Mafuyu cut into the bickering.
“Kanade.”
Which, again, she didn’t properly hear or respond to until Mizuki and Ena joined in, amplifying Mafuyu’s voice. “Yeah?”
“Your back is hurting again,” Mafuyu said plainly. Nobody ever claimed she wasn’t observant. “You should take a break and stretch.”
“C’mon, Kanade, you gotta tell us,” Ena sighed out like every time. It was one of her affectionate sighs, as opposed to one of her sighs of frustration or anger. All of them could tell the difference with relative ease.
“I know.” Though she never held herself to that, not when she would rather try working through whatever soreness she had.
Which. Didn’t work. She tried several times before, to the point where she bit her lip to ignore the pain so hard she drew blood. It was best to avoid bloodshed if she could help it.
“Why don’t you finish up for the night?” Mizuki suggested, prompting Kanade to look at the time on her screen. It was hardly after two in the morning. Usually she could go for a lot longer than that. “Ena and I can handle the rest of our part tonight, no worries.”
Huge worries, since she’d be stopping her strive to compose just for some measly muscle pain. That then pinched between her shoulders again, making her try to straighten her posture to make it stop. That never worked, anyway. “Fine,” she said, trying to breathe evenly. “I’ll be in Sekai if you need me.”
Nobody questioned it, just gave her a small chorus of goodbyes before she logged off. Three clicks later, she was on the ground (floor?) of Sekai. She hadn’t seen Miku or the others when she arrived, or maybe she missed them in pursuit of the hard surface. They’d all seen her there before, anyway. The only thing that ever really happened was a question here or there and Miku joining her on occasion, relishing in the silence company. Kanade could never fault her for that.
Tonight, she splayed out a bit like a starfish would, her head a little chilled where it had contact with the ground. Something else about SEKAI, she thought while gazing at the endless horizon, was that it was hardly ever uncomfortable. She would never have guessed that the first several times she entered, but it came to prove itself as the truth.
Just a short break, she promised herself. In a way, it was like she could feel the pain flowing out of her, minute after minute. A short break, and she would be set.