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Nijika’s fingers beat against the thin fabric of her skirt in a slow, steady rhythm. The sound of blood pumping in her ears matches the muted thumps. Her chest rises and falls in increments of a measure each—in on the first beat, out on the fourth. A group of three, maybe four students crowds by her desk, someone’s butt uncomfortably close to her arm as they all huddle together in a clump of excited chatter and pressed-together shoulders. Nijika silently wills them to move just a little faster, a vein on her forehead throbbing uncomfortably—and frustratingly enough, also in time with that slow beat of her hands and her breaths and her heart and that dull, gentle pain building right at the back of her eyes.
“I’m telling you,” a voice says, shrill and whiny somewhere right above Nijika’s head. “LOSER is the best Kenshi Yonezu song! Like, okay, I get it, Lemon is way more popular and all but there’s just something about LOSER!”
“LOSER isn’t even the best song on the BOOTLEG album, stupid.” Another voice replies, nasal and heavy with condescension. “You’re really telling me LOSER is the best song in the same album with orion and Uchiage Hanabi?”
“You mean the worse version of Uchiage Hanabi, without DAOKO?” a third, uninterested voice cuts in. Nijika swears she hears him suck in a breath through his teeth past something. Maybe the stick of a lollipop. His teeth clack closed as the other two shoot him unimpressed glares.
“Dude, we get it, you liked Cinderella Step and you’re sad it’s not as popular as, oh, the collab song with one of Japan’s top artists? ” Mr. Pretentious, as Nijika has started calling him in her head, says. “But you have to let it go.”
“I like Peace Sign more?” A fourth voice murmurs from the muffled confines of the group huddle.
“Shut up,” three other voices say at once, and mercifully, it seems this brings the discussion to enough of a close that the four of them no longer feel the need to crowd the side of Nijika’s desk any longer.
‘God,’ four voices echo in the cramped space of Nijika’s head, worsening her already mounting headache, ‘these guys are so lucky I’m here to fix their tastes.’
Nijika sighs.
A thousand different thoughts crowd against the walls of Nijika’s mind. Shrill screeches of excitement from the girl in the back of the classroom talking to her crush, an exasperated groan from the boy sitting across from her as he thinks about how he’ll be late to catch the track and field team practicing to catch a glimpse of his own object of admiration—another boy, Nijika realizes with a jolt, her eyebrows pinching upwards in surprise before flattening back down to hopefully perfect neutral.
Another classmate works hurriedly through the pages of a book, words blending and bleeding into each other as she thinks through them faster than the flick of her eyes across the pages can really keep up with. Another one, one of the choir kids, whispers a scale under his breath and screams it aloud in his head, thankfully in-tune. She’s proud of him—he’s gotten a lot better since she first heard the sound of pained screeching in her head that could only barely pass as his baritone audition at the beginning of the school year.
And finally, she hears the heavy thump of a bass across the classroom. Each note is rich and heavy and delightfully groovy, and Nijika spies the way Ryo thumps her fingers against the strap of her bag sharp and heavy. Faintly, through the cloud of a song only half-remembered, Nijika picks out the sound of popping lips and hoarse coughs and bubbling trill ad-libs.
“Did the Kenshi Yonezu talk get to you, too?” Nijika breathes, standing from her seat with a clatter of her desk and the sharp clack of her shoes against the old tile of the classroom. Crushing girl and boy say goodbye at the entrance of the classroom. “Because I really, really don’t wanna have to deal with hearing Flamingo in my head for the entire train ride to Starry, if you don’t mind.”
Ryo pouts, a subtle thing that is only really a pull of her cheek outwards, lips pursed just the tiniest bit. “It’s a good song. It only came out like a year after BOOTLEG, too, but they didn’t even talk about it.”
Nijika rolls her eyes, a sigh puffing past her lips, “You’re just obsessed with it because of the bassline, you realize that right?” Reading girl snaps her book shut, a paragraph stuck on repeat as she mulls over the words while she despairs over having no time to keep going without giving up cram school time. Idly, she wonders if she can sneak the book under her notebook to keep reading while she fakes doing the work. “I can literally hear you not remembering anything other than the ad-libs and the bass.”
“And the melody for the lyrics,” Ryo interjects, and as if to prove her point a crude approximation of Kenshi Yonezu’s voice starts riffing through the melody for Flamingo in her head. The sound is almost disturbing, a weird mix between the lazy drawl of the famous singer’s voice and Ryo’s gentle deadpan. Nijika shudders.
“Don’t do that,” she murmurs, rubbing her hands across the goosebumps on her forearms. Choir kid cusses like a sailor in his head as he flubs a note under his breath. “I never want to hear your voice mixed with Kenshi Yonezu’s ever again. That was terrifying.”
“I take offense to that,” Ryo replies, looking very much not offended as they step into the dreary half-light of a cloudy afternoon. Ryo takes large, slow steps, smacking her foot down on the pavement in a steady beat. The sound is an anchor, the click of a metronome helping her focus against the onslaught of noise that suddenly fills every corner of her head. “You do remember I’m in charge of the backup vocals in the band, right?”
Nijika groans. Her headache isn’t really getting any better, but it’s also not getting any worse, so she’ll take it. She lets the silence between her and Ryo act as her answer, zeroing in on the sound of Ryo’s scuffed-smooth shoes against old tile, then worn concrete and, eventually, the metal clatter of the station floors and the hollow aluminum ring of the train car. Ryo, in a rare show of consideration, pushes the issue no further, slipping a pair of earbuds in and scrolling through an extensive list of music before hitting play on something.
Another strong bassline starts flitting its way across Ryo’s head as they find seats on the train, Nijika closing her eyes as a generally acceptable rendition of tricot’s Danger! Do Not Mix plays in Ryo’s head, a towering shield of distorted guitar and snappy drums that keeps the bustle of a train car’s worth of thoughts from Nijika. Ryo starts tapping her fingers against the sliver of exposed plastic between their seats, and Nijika does her best to match it with a muted-fabric rendition of the drumline.
“We might become poisonous,” Nijika mutters under her breath, fingers snapping against her skirt to match the end of the song, but after a half-beat pause Ryo’s mind launches into a sharp stroke of instrumentals and rapid-fire lyrics that Nijika does not recognize. “Wha-huh?”
Ryo’s eyes flit down to meet hers. “What’s up?” she asks, taking an earbud out. The noise in her head dies down as she pauses the song on her phone, an undercurrent of worry running through her voice. “You good, Nijika?”
“That-that’s not how Danger! Do Not Mix goes.” Nijika sputters, eyes wide. “It's a minute-and-a-half-long song.”
Ryo’s eyes sparkle with something elated and near childish. Her chest puffs out in a display of seeming superiority that would normally leave Nijika a grumbling and cringing mess, but that’s not the most important matter at hand right now.
“That, my dear Nijika, would be true if you had only ever heard the album version of the song.” Ryo says, voice teetering on some strange parody of those wise monks with wispy beards and bald heads. “The extended live performance of the song is four minutes. And it explains the title of the song.”
Nijika’s eyes, somehow, go even wider. The din in her head, uninvited but unavoidable once the buffer of Ryo’s blessedly loud musical thoughts had been removed, goes completely and utterly silent.
Nijika reaches a hand towards Ryo’s removed earbud, fingers curling in a come-hither motion as she raises an eyebrow in a way she hopes looks more imperious than she feels desperate. “Earbud? Now?” Nijika pleads, and Ryo smirks, holding the back of the gleaming white plastic of her earbud against the corner of her traitorous, pink-glossed lips as they lift into a smirk.
“...Please?” Nijika grinds out, cheeks burning, and Ryo lets out a satisfied hum, placing the earbud in her hand and sliding the buffer on the song back to the minute and a half mark as Nijika scoots closer, the familiar feel of Ryo’s earbud in her ear another greatly appreciated muffler against the assault of salarymen who hate their bosses, bosses who hate their employees, and the static-hiss white noise of every baby-on-board's almost-consciousness.
Nijika loses herself in the familiar feeling of her head on Ryo’s shoulder and the blare of music in her ears, the first verse and chorus of the song repeating. Ryo’s fingers brush against Nijika’s as they beat the frenzied bassline against the seat. Nijika’s hand keeps smacking against the side of Ryo’s leg with every clumsy motion she makes to follow along with the unfamiliar drums as the song switches time signature with a tinny trill of the cymbals and the catchy scratch of a grainy guitar melody. Nijika’s body sways and bobs to the music, pressing into and away from Ryo in rigid time.
‘After all, no one can be mixed up with me
I am pure black
And swallow any color
I am pure black’
Nijika snaps her fingers, meeting Ryo’s smug gaze. She ignores the way the lyrics sound out twice, once in her ear and another in her head colored in the soft-toned timbre of Ryo’s voice. “That’s why it’s called Danger! Do Not Mix!”
“Yep.”
“And they’ve never released this full version in an album? Only live performances?”
“Yep,” Ryo says again, popping the ‘p’ as the train grinds to a halt at the Shimo-Kitazawa station with a screech of metal and a gentle jolt that almost sends Nijika bowling to the side, were it not for the light press of Ryo’s fingers on the crook of her elbow keeping her grounded. Or, well, seated.
“That’s so mean,” Nijika whines, grabbing her bag from between her feet and standing with a stretch as a fresh wave of passengers starts filtering through the doors of the train car. “Now I have to watch them live at some point.”
“We’ll go together next time they’re around,” Ryo says, sidling behind her and nudging her into the crowd, lanky and long-limbed as she parts a furrow in the crowd for Nijika to squeeze her way through. “I can convince my parents to get us tickets.”
“I don’t know how to feel about mooching ticket money from your very rich parents...” Nijika frowns, staring up at Ryo. Something soft colors the corners of her eyes, sharp topaz to warm amber. “...But. Well. Thank you.”
“Oh? Whatever for?” Ryo asks in that infuriatingly smug tone of voice. Nijika knows it’s not actually that much different from her usual tone, but she knows. She knows Ryo too well, and Ryo knows her too well to think that she can’t see through it.
Nijika thinks of Ryo, thoughts a thick pane of glass against the murky, roiling depths of the crowded school and the bustling train station and the overfull train car. Nijika thinks of Ryo, handing her an earbud and the promise of something new and exciting that smells oddly of rainy skies and a rooftop and old promises.
Nijika thinks of Ryo and finds a whole lot more than she initially expected to be thankful for.
“I’ll let you figure that one out,” Nijika snarks back.
“Bocchi.”
“Ah. Um. Yes, Nijika?”
“I know I’ve gotten... considerably stronger from carrying equipment around since we started doing our street lives. But please get out of the suitcase.”
A low, keening whine squeaks out from the silver hardshell suitcase that Nijika uses as a bass drum for their street performances.
‘I will die,’ rings in Bocchi’s head for what must be the hundredth time today. ‘I will step outside this suitcase and Nijika will be so angry because I haven’t been helping at all that I’ll be kicked from the band or maybe she’ll force me to actually stay in the suitcase while she uses it as a bass drum so I have to suffer the impacts while she plays and I’ll deserve it! I’ll deserve it!’
Nijika holds back a groan.
“Bocchi, I’m not angry at you,” Nijika says, voice low and smooth, feeling like she’s trying to coax a stray cat to a plate of food. “I’m just a little tired, and I don’t think I’d be able to carry the bag with you in it. As long as you just step outside the suitcase and carry your own guitar with you, we can call it even, okay?”
The swirling, angry tempest of Bocchi’s thoughts calms to a gentle, glowing hope. “Really?” she says, already peeking her head out from a corner of the suitcase.
Nijika smiles, “Really.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Bocchi peeks from Nijika’s suitcase, stumbling out and about with all the grace of a baby deer and hobbling towards Kita, who was at least nice enough to pack Bocchi’s guitar back into her bag while she was busy hiding.
‘I wonder if she’d be strong enough to carry me.’
Nijika whips her head around towards Ryo, eyes narrowed and lips curled in a scowl. She zips the suitcase at her feet shut, standing it up on its wheels with a sharp clack of plastic on concrete.
“Don’t even try it.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Ryo answers. Her lips twitch. Her mind is, for once, eerily devoid of all sound.
A part of Nijika resents that Ryo is even capable of hiding from her so easily. Like a lighthouse that has suddenly gone dark against the hazy outline of a foggy shore. It’s unsettling in a way she doesn’t want to think about. She forces the discomfort down and away, plastering annoyance onto her features like a salve, a mask.
“Real funny, missy.”
“Thank you for acknowledging it.”
A beat. The quiet in Ryo’s head rings louder and louder—a static fizz that pops against the inside of Nijika’s skull.
“But could you?”
Nijika sighs, making her way towards the nearby train station to the rolling-rumble sound of old wheels on smooth sidewalk. The world comes back into sharp focus around her, colors popping against her eyes almost painfully. Sunset paints everything in hues of murky amber, and Nijika lets the warmth of the day wash over her along with the torrent of muddled thoughts drifting from the nearby crowd. Most of it is half-remembered repeats of their performance. Some recall bits and pieces of the songs, some recall nothing at all except for the name of the band, some are just passersby wondering what all the commotion is about.
Ryo’s mind, frustratingly enough, is no longer quiet—just empty, save for the droning buzz of a low tone. Nijika expects it to grow into half a song in another week or so, and for Ryo to forget it in another two.
“It’s kinda creepy that you’ve learned how to do that, you know?” Nijika murmurs, huffing a breath out as she waits for Ryo to catch up, the suitcase's worn plastic digging into her palm. “Emptying out your mind, I mean. Or blocking me out. Whichever one it is.”
Ryo’s lips quirk into a smile, voice tinged with mirth, “I think it’s a little hypocritical of you to call me creepy for learning how to not have my mind read, miss mind reader.”
Ah. Nijika can’t really argue against that.
“I... forget, sometimes, how weird I actually am.” Nijika breathes, suddenly sharply aware of the sweeping murmur of a hundred different voices ringing in her head. “You’ve made me too complacent. Now I’m a weirdo like everyone else in the band.”
“You forget that you’re the one who managed to bring the three other weirdos together,” Ryo shoots back, digging a finger into Nijika’s side. The point of impact is like a poison, a burn that radiates from the swell of her ribs to the back of her neck and the flare of her waist. Nijika flushes under the thin fabric of her shirt, the cool air of the train station pressing against the heated skin of Nijika’s exposed forearms, sleeves rolled up to the crook of her elbow. “You’ve always been part of the gang.”
Nijika shoves herself against Ryo, sending her careening a whopping half-a-step to the side before she rights herself once more. “Spare a lady the brutal truths, will you?”
“Fine, fine,” Ryo says through a snort. “It wouldn’t do to ruin the young’uns’ perspectives of you, either.”
“They’re only a year younger, Ryo.”
“Yeah, and look how much we’ve changed in the last year. A whole world of difference.”
Nijika scoffs, “You’re insufferable.”
‘But you love me like that, don’t you?’
Nijika stops.
‘They need to stop giving me these late-night shifts or so help me God—’
‘Hopefully the food hasn’t gone cold—’
‘Is that Kita’s shampoo? It smells so nice—’
‘Yes! Yes! I knew this week’s episode was going to be insane—’
‘Lady, I’m begging you to control your damn child before I—’
‘Kids these days, no respect for public spaces—’
“Nijika?”
A tall man in a fresh-pressed suit bumps against the side of Nijika’s suitcase, sending it jostling against her leg. She gets a sharp gaze sent her way for the trouble, but nothing more.
‘Guild Wars is coming up; I need to farm for another Agonize before then—’
‘Let’s have a go one more time, one more time, with our voices—’
“Nijika!”
‘I wonder if they’re on Spotify—’
‘That yakiniku place should still be—’
‘Goddamnit I knew I shouldn’t have even thought of thinking that—’
“Nijika.”
Nijika blinks.
Ryo’s hands trail the sides of her face, fingers dithering around Nijika’s ears as they nudge a pair of familiar earbuds into place. Music, loud and brash and brass, plays in her head—a wall of noise that is pure jazzy piano and heavy bass and light strings and a blaring trumpet. Nijika’s eyes flit down to Ryo’s phone, now nestled in her lap. ‘undress me’ by Cö Shu Nie. What a promiscuous name for a promiscuous song. Nijika picks out a lyric or two, something about holding you so tight it crushes you. Something about being stained in red and kisses.
A breath riptides through Nijika’s lungs. Her chest tightens under a strange feeling that feels halfway to drowning. “I’m fine,” she wheezes out, bringing a sweaty palm up to cup Ryo’s hand where it rests against her cheek, pressing the contact harder against her skin like an anchor. “I’m good now. I’m okay.”
Ryo’s face twists with worry—subtly, of course; a downturn of her lips at the very corners, an eyebrow scrunched just a little lower than usual, a muscle twitching in her jaw, a line of tension running razor-thin across her shoulders. Her eyes are toxic with disbelief and her mind is disconcertingly quiet—the kind of quiet that isn’t a conscious effort but a primal, powerful, terrified thing. It’s the quiet of a child caught with their hand down the cookie jar. It’s tension, raw and thick. Nijika swallows past it like a physical thing. The sway of the train speeding along the tracks shocks her, for a second. When had they even gotten on? How long has Nijika been zoned out for? Her temple throbs. Music, music, focus on the music.
“What happened?” Ryo asks, sitting down next to her, grabbing an earbud for herself from Nijika’s ear. The empty train car yawns ahead of them, feeling entirely too large. The overhead lights shine a sickly white-green. Ryo presses a knuckle to the back of Nijika’s hand, tapping the bridge’s distorted bass against the rough skin of her clenched fist.
‘But you love me like that, don’t you?’
“I just... I thought I heard something. In my head,” Nijika sputters, face aflame. “It sent me for a bit of a loop. And then... everything just. Uh. Started flowing in.”
Ryo raises an eyebrow. Nijika just sighs, leaning her head on Ryo’s shoulder and pointedly ignoring how tense she goes when it happens.
“I can’t turn it off. You already know that. But I can control the scope, a little. I can choose to limit myself to a room of people or just an area around me, and that focus kind of... blurs out the rest of the world.”
Ryo’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline, understanding dawning in her eyes, “But when you let that focus slip, everything is there again.”
Nijika hums, “Yep.”
“That... sucks.”
“Yep.”
“...I’m sorry.”
Nijika closes her eyes, letting the sway of the empty train car rock her back and forth. “What for?” Nijika breathes, the lie clinging like bile behind her teeth. Some vague wave of confusion breaks through the muted walls of Ryo’s mind along with an undercurrent of panicked relief.
“...Nothing. Everything. I’m not sure.”
“So mysterious of you,” Nijika japes, the song in her ear switching to something or other from Ryo’s playlist. It sounds... weird. But it sure does have a noticeable bass at the very beginning. Nijika pegs it as a Sheena Ringo song.
“It’s all part of the allure,” Ryo says, and Nijika can’t help but laugh—both at Ryo, and at the fact that it really is a Sheena Ringo song playing in her ear. The train’s PA system blares, announcing their arrival at the next station, but they’re still another two stations away from their stop. Ryo’s knuckles continue beating a steady, gentle rhythm against the back of Nijika’s hand.
“It helps, you know.”
Ryo’s hand stops. Nijika can’t see it, eyes still closed, but she feels the way Ryo’s head turns to look down at her, the jut of her chin rubbing against the crown of her head.
“The tapping?”
Some vague noise of affirmation rumbles in Nijika’s throat. Slowly, tentatively, she turns her hand palm-to-palm against Ryo’s, lacing their fingers together in a calloused, bony tangle.
“The tapping. The music. The songs in your head. The quiet in it, sometimes. The fact that you know.” Ryo’s thoughts jumble together, a melting pot of distorted vocals and a scratchy guitar and a million different emotions. Nijika smiles, cracking an eye open to meet Ryo’s gaze. “You. You... help. A lot. So, thank you.”
Ryo’s head twitches to the side, eye contact broken in favor of studiously examining the railway map by the car doors. She squeezes their hands together just a tiny bit.
“The pleasure’s all mine.”
“I probably could lift you, by the way. If you were still curious.”
“I knew it.”
Nijika jolts awake to the sounds of a TV and the weight of Ryo’s body solidly collapsed against her side. The living room of Ryo’s recently-moved-into apartment is steeped in a particular kind of shadowy half-light that screams of accidentality. Something about the way the TV is auto-playing through a show three genres removed from what they had started with—Nijika quickly checks her phone—four hours ago. Something about the way the rest of the apartment feels too still, too empty, motion bled dry from the faded wallpaper and scratchy popcorn ceiling. Something about the blanket laying in a crumpled heap at their feet despite the fact that Ryo had been complaining about how cold it was earlier.
Ryo’s mind is a jumble of a million different contradictions, a nebulous, ill-defined thing that floats and scatters across Nijika's head in a kaleidoscopic haze of sounds and words and the vague impressions of foggy emotions. Nijika has always loved people’s minds the most when they are asleep. Not because they’re quieter than usual, though that certainly helps, but because the subconscious is such a beautiful thing, sometimes. There’s less direction to people’s thoughts, when they’re asleep. There’s a lack of purpose and intention in dreams that’s impossible to find during waking hours, a sort of formlessness to people’s existences that is beautiful to Nijika.
Nijika remembers sitting by her sister’s side, some time after their mother had passed. Nijika remembers Seika falling asleep, slumped against the edge of their frayed and worn couch. Nijika remembers seeing, for the first time, the human in her sister, small and hazy and mired in so many colors of grief and love and fear and hope. She remembers closing her eyes, the image of Seika’s dreams a cloud of smoke beneath her eyelids, and wading her hand through the image of it.
(The next day, Nijika hugs Seika tight and tells her how happy she is that they are sisters. Seika’s thoughts roil and churn in that way that people’s thoughts always do when they’re awake, layering themselves over each other like a spear against the world, or maybe a shield from it.
But somewhere at the edges of it, grief and love and fear and hope.)
Ryo’s nose shoves itself against the crook of Nijika’s neck, snapping her out of her dreary, half-awake musings. The contact sends a shiver down her spine and heat up her neck, breath hitching as she holds back a giggle. Nijika loops an arm around Ryo’s shoulders, carding a hand through her hair and dragging the blunt ends of her nails against her scalp.
“Hey,” Nijika whispers, her voice nearly drowned out by the TV. Ryo groans a little, the fog and glimmer in her head parting beneath the weight of slow wakefulness. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”
“You wake up,” Ryo grumbles.
Nijika snorts, “Okay, be that way. The comfy little pillow you’re currently exploiting will stand up and leave you to fall on the couch.”
“You callin’ yourself my comfy little pillow now? D’aww, adorable.”
Nijika’s free hand comes up tap Ryo gently on the forehead. Her other hand, still buried in the deep blue tangle of Ryo’s hair, pulls against a particularly nasty knot. Ryo hisses.
“Ow, ow, okay, I give.”
“And?”
“And thank you for being the comfiest pillow a girl could ask for.”
“One more.”
“And also for waking me up.”
Nijika hums, dragging Ryo just a little closer. Ryo puffs slow, sleepy breaths from her lips, each one tickling at Nijika’s collarbone through the thin fabric of a horribly oversized shirt that she doesn’t remember actually getting.
“That’ll do for now,” she croons, smoothing a stray patch of hair at the crown of Ryo’s head with a gentle pat. Ryo just hums, the sound rumbling in her chest and against Nijika’s still much-too-ticklish neck.
A hand reaches over Nijika’s legs for a discarded, lukewarm juice box that probably tastes more like acid and bitter apple flavoring than actual juice, at this point. Nijika is beyond wondering how it even got there in the first place—she’s mostly content with letting the last three hours exist in some strange, liminal space between reality and absurdity. The sound of flimsy plastic tearing apart under Ryo’s nails is almost unbearably loud as it echoes across the living room.
Nijika lifts her arms above her head, stretching out the kinks in her back with a groan. “I’m still kinda surprised your parents let you have this place. It’s still another semester before you have to move out for college.”
“I think they got sick of having you guys over to help me with songs,” Ryo murmurs, leaning over Nijika’s legs again, this time to reach for a controller. Her hand lands a foot short from it. Ryo looks up at Nijika, making grabby hands at the remote and flashing wide, teary eyes at her.
‘C’mon. I know this always works on you.’
“It doesn’t always work on me.”
“It does more often than not,” Ryo amends, this time out loud. “Also, that’s not fair. I’m still sleepy. Brain no go empty, too hard.”
“That’s what you get for trying to hide stuff from me in your head,” Nijika replies, nevertheless grabbing the remote and depositing it in Ryo’s hands. “You should know better by now. Also, I have a hard time believing your parents would actually kick you out in any sense of the word.”
“I mean, it has worked. Just not right now.” Ryo leans back onto the couch, pausing the show in favor of scrolling through the menus on her fancy TV. “But I guess you’re right about my parents.”
“You guess?”
“Nijika,” Ryo deadpans, unimpressed.
Nijika leans into Ryo’s side, a grin pulling at her cheeks as she looks up into yellow eyes, near-fluorescent in the glow of the TV screensaver’s slow gradient. “Ryo.”
A beat of silence.
Ryo looks away, resuming her aimless menu wandering. “Disregarding how totally and unequivocally right you are about my parents,” she says, drawing a giggle out of Nijika, “I guess I just... I wanted a place I could really start making my own. A place I could start the rest of my life in.”
Nijika hums, burrowing her head into the hollow of Ryo’s neck. “I can see that. I respect it, even.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a rare occurrence. You’ll hurt my fragile little heart.”
“Oh, hush. Music player’s at the very bottom of the menus, by the way.”
Ryo scrolls to the very bottom of the screen, seeing the familiar icon of a music streaming service on the screen. “Oh, thanks.” Another pause, the room going dark as the screen fades to black while the application loads. “...Wait, how did you—”
“The subconscious mind is a wonderful thing. Your dreams were literally set to a shoegaze soundtrack. I figured you were probably trying to play it outside your own head now.”
“You can see dreams?” Ryo asks, the blood draining ever-so-slightly from her face. Her hand shakes a little as she slots the straw for her juice box into the hole, taking a long, loud sip.
“Only like... vague impressions of them,” Nijika answers. Her hand slides between them, trailing along Ryo’s forearm and under her pulse as she lifts it up against the half-light of the dark TV screen. “The unconscious mind is very different from the conscious mind. It’s more like a weird cloud of a bunch of... everything that makes up the mind, really.”
The music player finally loads, and Ryo goes about logging into her account with her free hand, the other still being held subject to Nijika’s lazy prodding. “How does that relate to dreams, though?”
“Well, I’m no neuroscientist so I can’t exactly explain how dreams and the usual conscious mind is related,” Nijika snorts, the palm of her hand sliding against Ryo’s, “but I think it’s because I’m not exactly reading your mind while you’re dreaming as much as I’m reading the mind of the you in the dream? It probably explains why everything gets so... foggy and abstract.”
Ryo hits play on a song—shoegaze, Nijika notes with some small amount of pride. Musician by Kinokoteikoku. Nijika can’t claim to be the biggest fan of shoegaze music, with all its signature distortion and screech-tone feedback whines, but she had listened to Kinokoteikoku under Ryo’s suggestion and found them a lot more enjoyable than she ever expected, and Musician, a nearly 9-minute beast of a song, is one of her favorites. Nijika, for a moment, likes to imagine that that’s why Ryo picked it.
The two of them sit in silence through the first slow, dreamy minute and a half of the song. The sun has sunk low beyond the horizon at this point, the star-studded black of night shining through the glass sliding door of the balcony at the very back of the living room.
‘You can hide, hide, hide all you want, I still see you
You jut out, I know, you’re out of your mind
But even still, still, still, you’re so pretty
Standing right there, lingering’
A car turns into the street, the glow of too-bright headlights shining and panning across the darkened living room like so much noise from the surround sound system Ryo had set up upon moving in—and one of the only things she has bothered to set up since the move, much to Nijika’s chagrin. She continues fiddling with Ryo’s fingers, dragging a thumb across her knuckles, the shadowy relief of them cast in shadows from the now-retreating headlights and the TV.
“I think I’d like something like this, in the future,” Nijika whispers, her voice another layer of static in the still air of the apartment. “A place like this. A place for me, and for my future. It sounds exciting.”
Ryo’s breath hitches, her hand twitching against Nijika’s. Something soft and vibrant and unimaginably heavy drags itself across the half-cloud dust of Ryo’s head.
The blurry outline of something vaguely concrete flashes across Nijika’s head, ‘You could always—’
Ryo’s lips twist in a grimace, her mind going blindingly dark in a way that even she must realize was painfully obvious. Nijika squeezes Ryo’s hand.
‘One day I’ll lose you
One day you’ll vanish—’
“Ryo?” she whispers, the worry in her voice thick, nearly cloying. “Ryo, what was that?”
‘But even still, still, still, that’s okay—’
A shake runs down the length of Ryo’s arm.
‘I’ll laugh about it like nothing even happened’
‘You could always make this that place,’ Ryo’s head sings, a chorus of old desires and familiar fears and new hopes, the skin of it red and raw like newly-healed flesh as it breaks through a lull in the song. ‘You could stay here. With me.’
Nijika’s breath hitches. Blood rushes in her ears, incessant and unceasing. Her grip on Ryo’s hand tightens, panic briefly clenching at the joints of her fingers before coiling back up her arm. Her lips pull into a smile.
“Ryo,” Nijika murmurs, voice drenched in fondness as she slowly lifts herself from Ryo’s shoulder. Ryo doesn’t respond. “Ryo?”
‘I’m scared, Nijika.’
“I know.”
‘It’s like... it’s one thing to know how I feel in my head, but a totally different thing to actually... say it out loud.’
Nijika lifts herself up, dragging a leg over Ryo’s lap to straddle her. Her hands come up, slowly, to Ryo’s cheeks. The pads of Nijika’s fingers burn against the heated skin as she turns those cat-eye yellow orbs to face her. Nijika tries, more than she ever has before, to block out the roaring waves of Ryo’s thoughts. She drowns them all in static and the wild and wicked sounds of the guitar and keening voice echoing from the sound system.
“I’m tired of always having to read between the lines, Ryo,” Nijika says, a sliver of something fiery and wanting lining her words. “And I know you are, too.”
Ryo’s eyes shine in that particular way that they always do when she’s trying to think something just for Nijika to listen in on, but she just shakes her head, laying her forehead against Ryo’s and closing her eyes. “This kinda hurts,” Nijika murmurs, sweat beading on her temple and rolling down the collar of her shirt, “so I’d really appreciate if we could just. Talk.”
‘...’s not th... easy,’ a garbles mess of thought announces through the static in Nijika’s head.
“Neither is loving you, but I still do it every day.”
‘I think about all kinds of stuff in my crazy head
I’m going senile holding onto all these worries
But even still, still, still, you’d be so pretty
Standing right there, lingering’
Ryo laughs, “That’s not fair.”
“Are you gonna get me back for it?” Nijika jeers quietly, a smile stretching across her lips as she pulls back to meet Ryo’s gaze.
‘I bet, I bet you would—’
Ryo’s hands, shaky and clammy and only barely muted by the thin fabric of her shirt, work their way up Nijika’s sides, trailing feather-light touches against her adoringly—almost reverently—before they settle on the curve of her jaw, dragging her down just a bit.
‘—yeah, I bet you would.’
Silence. A full, arduous, painful, beautiful, excruciating six seconds of absolutely nothing.
And with an explosion of sound, Ryo finally, finally kisses Nijika.
Her lips taste of that crappy, warm apple juice she had decided to drink for some reason, but also a horribly confusing blend of curry and mint. Their lips are chapped and rough from sleep, but the feel of each other pressing closer burns them alive, searing away any last vestiges of drowsiness. Nijika’s fingers curl against Ryo’s cheeks, Ryo’s hands squeeze at the curve of Nijika’s jaw. The music is a din of noise that thrashes them around in its teeth, a push and pull of breath and lips and hands that ends with a keening ring that leaves them feeling raw and kiss-bruised and panting at the end of it all.
“I love you,” Ryo breathes, heady and near-desperate. Her eyes blow wide, like she is somehow surprised the words have made it out of her mouth. “I love you.”
“I know,” Nijika breathes, placing another kiss against the corner of Ryo’s lips. “I know. I love you too.”
Ryo buries her head in the crook of Nijika’s neck, breathing in deep. Her mind is empty, Nijika realizes. Not darkened, or muted, or hidden away, but... quiet. A steady rhythm thumps across the still lake of Ryo’s head, and it takes a moment to realize that Ryo is mapping the time of Nijika’s own heartbeat in her head.
“Stay,” she says, and Nijika’s chest seizes at how good it feels to hear those words out loud. Faintly, she feels how good Ryo feels saying them. “Stay with me. Tonight. Forever. However long you want to.”
Nijika laughs, loud, loud, loud against the walls of a quiet apartment in a quiet night in a blissfully, rarely quiet world. Her head rings, dizzying and exhilarating, with love.
“Of course.”