Chapter Text
Dance of the River Cranes
Chapter 1: Warp and Weft
"To Tomonami,
Whom I have all but neglected these past few weeks. I missed you greatly. Pray forgive my absence. I could not bear to be without you. It left a grave wound in my soul."
With a tap of the screen Nagi sent a gift to Lord Tomonami that would replenish his lowered relationship meter. Including a little note with your gift was part of the new update Nagi had missed whilst being dragged through the turbulence of the UG. It had only been a couple of weeks since her re-emergence and yet she still felt swept up in a windstorm. University work had been the academic equivalent of the breaking wheel – as it turned out, everyone believed that she had been attending classes like she normally had and now she had 4 assessments breathing down on her with a week to complete them all, plus required and background reading, plus the data analysis, plus… she breathed in and blinked twice. She wasn't going to have a nervous breakdown here on public transport. She exhaled heavily, feeling part of the stress melt away, but it still stuck to her like ice to metal, cold and uncomfortable.
She returned her attention to the phone screen. Lord Tomonami, in all his edgy-yet-dreamy splendour, started back at her, giving a thank you that was aloof but juuuuust thankful enough to let her know he valued her over any of the other people he knew. She exhaled, this time a sigh of contentment. She craned her neck upwards and closed her eyes. In front of her, projected in the pitch blackness of her mind, was His Wretchedness, holding out his arm for her to grab onto. Always there, just out of reach but forever available. That was her wonderful, wretched Lord Tomonami. Would she take his hand? Act bashful and wait for him to make the first move? Or– a flash of blue and Tomonami was gone, instead replaced by Rindo, pinned to the non-existent floor of the mind-void.
He writhed in pain as his hand glowed a stark brilliant white, trying to nail the snarling Noise on top of him with a Trick Card. It responded by digging those beautifully intricate claws it had straight into Rindo's arm, ripping at flesh. Fret scrambled at it with a purple spear, psychically formed, yet acrid smelling and dripping with venom. Even in this short, fleeting memory projected in from of her Nagi could feel her nose wrinkle and shiver from the scent. Its wielder, unfamiliar with the pin that had summoned it, looked high on fear from fighting these encircling beasts.
Nagi knew for a fact he had nearly dropped that spear the first time he summoned it in battle, scared it would burn clean through his hand instead. Being a psychic manifestation it instead just simply dematerialised, leading to him being flung against a lamppost by a penguin Noise barrelling into him. She took possession of the pin after that.
The wolf was sent careening into a wall after an almighty combo-ending thrust from Fret. It dissipated into static and Nagi opened her eyes. That kind of memory, the ones that would interrupt her other thoughts, were so potent she sometimes believed they were real. Especially the nice ones. She didn't particularly want to remember what it felt like to perform a Dive under pressure or be nearly torn in two by a bear or frantically slash away at a meteor barreling down on you or watch someone get erased from existence or– or comfort a friend. Or make everlasting new ones. Or save the city she loved. Those memories, though sending a wave of warmth and strength coursing though her, were the most bitter of all. Because those friends had yet to appear again yet.
She hadn't the time to go looking. And sometimes, in the back of her mind, a question ate away at her: would she want to see them again? Would they want to see her? The questions ate away at her, looping round one another like an ouroboros. She was sure Neku, Beat and their friends had reunited happily by now and would be more than happy to let her into their fold. But that lingering doubt remained. They were happy together, but did she belong in that picture? Did she even have the right to say she did? She tried to swat the question away – it was irrational, she knew it was, but that mounting tension, that pressure mixed with intoxicating excitement and desire to see them again… she exhaled heavily. That was all a pipe dream until she met them and who knew who long that would take.
In the mad scramble out of the UG, they had been transported – or at least she assumed they had all been transported – somewhere in Shibuya. For Nagi, it was waking up in her dorm room and realising that she could finally access EleStra again that really hit home the reality that she was back and, once more, alone. No more city streets bustling with activity. No more Noise fights filled with laboured breathing and grunts of exertion. She remembered flinging open the dormitory curtains to a silent side street down below, its only inhabitants birds intent to sit on telephone lines and preen themselves in silence. Her only witness was the sun in the sky, bathing her with warm, melancholy sunlight.
That same sunlight kissed her skin now. Caught her glasses and cast a light over her lord of darkness, encased as he was in his digital walls. Were the others under this sunlight now? Were Rindo and Shoka reunited and content to simply keep to themselves with Fret? Was Fret keeping well after the game? Was Beat enjoying his time with his sister? Were they thinking of her under this unbearably bittersweet sunshine, caressing her with warmth and draping her in loneliness? She could not know. Better that she did not, she thought. But if only. If only.
She returned her attention to her phone screen and her beloved Tomonami. She had tapped through some dialogue without thinking whilst her mind was away with the fairies. Now, he was asking her for an opinion on something she knew nothing about. She murmured an apology under her breath for not paying attention to his preamble and check the text log.
"[Lord Tomonami waits for you the moment you return to base. He seems anxious, the first time in living memory you can recall him as such]", the game informed her. She immediately felt a flutter of butterflies take root in her stomach. That gift she had given had done it! She was max bond with the event Tomonami she had pulled before the Game began!
"Hello, Usui," Tomonami's sprite was unique, draped in the fashions of a modern day young adult thanks to the 'Another Rift?! ~urban fantasia~' and displaying a distracted face that still carried an element of his trademarked aloofness. Nagi felt herself blushing, Tomonami had so graciously allowed her a look into this crack in his armour, this tiny moment of vulnerability.
"Walk with me. There is much to say and so little time to say it in. But you will listen," Nagi made an almost inaudible gurgling noise.
"I have a proposal. And I want you to give me your answer the moment I ask. You understand?"
"[You nod, and the slight awkwardness disappears from Tomonami's face.]"
Nagi felt the tension and butterflies intensify as Tomonami's sprite regained its usual confident look.
"You know… you've made a great deal of bonds with the rest of the boys at base. And that's not a problem. But."
'But? But what? Please, continue Tomonami!' Nagi's brain screamed out, intentionally denying her the satisfaction of tapping the screen to continue the dialogue so she could savour this most intimate of conversations with His Wretchedness.
"We don't need those schmucks. Compared to us as a duo? They're less than zero. Just trash on a heap." Nagi happened to actually like a few of those "trash" characters that Tomonami was insulting, but nodded her head enthusiastically yet subtly anyway.
"So here's the proposition. You abandon those guys, crunch them out of your life, and come and we run this whole operation solo."
"[Tomonami looks at you solemnly, expecting an answer.]"
The log ended there. Nagi's heart beat out of her chest. Her and her lord, just the two of them, together, just like that?! No, no, the quest wouldn't allow for it, would it? Would it unlock a non-canon ending if she answered yes? Lock her out of that hypothetical, or even worse max bond rank, if she answered no? Impact future relationships or events even though this was an event banned character?? Euphoria and anticipation raced through her mind as the three dialogue options appeared again on screen.
"(Anything for you, my Lord.)"
"(My apologies, but…)"
"(Get bent, psycho.)"
Nagi ruled out the bottom immediately, grimacing. Which unfunny writer allowed that one through? Even a hypothetical insult to Tomonami was tacky and tasteless. She mentally stamped this for discussion in the Tomonami fan server later on. She breathed out to release some of the anticipation that had built in her chest. She closed her eyes, trying to mill the remaining two options through in her mind. She would've jumped at the chance to say yes normally, but… there was something stopping her. Likely the idea of abandoning her other comrades to whom her devotion was lesser but not negligible or even insubstantial. She tried to will herself to collect the top option, trying to map out all the possible scenarios in her head, but as the train had neared the Shibuya station stop so too had the incessant murmur of people on their phones neared the peak it could on a journey like this. It was impossible to tune out, shattering her concentration and actively divvying it up.
"Tell Nakajima no alcohol at the business meeting tonight. It never ends well for either party."
"Yes dear, I'm very nearly home now. Yes, I'll get you Justice Burger on the way back. I love you, bye."
"I'm one damn second from falling asleep on this train. No, today was just…"
"What? That's a silly idea. It could work, though. If we just did…"
"And suppose this text I'm supposed to present at the symposium today isn't real? Won't I look like…"
Random Shibuyan chatter distracting herself from the task at hand. Normally she enjoyed the minor eavesdropping she could do on public transport. Not for any nefarious reasons, mind, but merely because it was all oddly enlightening. But Lord Tomonami had demanded an answer. And she was very nearly about to give it to him, until…
"No luck still, Rindude? Look, I can't… no, I mean it, not today. When? Sometime over the weekend. I've gotta go, man, bye. Bye."
Nagi very nearly dropped her phone. Very quickly she had gone from hunched over her screen in deliberation to sitting bolt upright, scanning the carriage for the voice. It didn't take long to see. Entering the carriage was a young man in a (surprisingly) neat blue school uniform with bizarre blue-and-green horizontally striped pants, his bag (less surprisingly) hanging limply and precariously from the edge of his shoulder as he scrambled into the carriage, absorbed in his phone screen.
Nagi's eyes bore deep into him, but his knitted eyebrows suggested a concentration as deep as her own just moments prior. His eyes were sunken and grey and seemed snuffed of the whimsical light that she had often remembered him by and seen in those flashes of memory that had come to her so often now. He looked like death warmed up, a loose, ill-befitting grip barely holding onto the straphanger he clutched. Tomonami seemed so far away now. Had this happened to everyone who had left the UG? When the sunlight pitied them and shone upon his sallow skin, the sunken bags beneath his eyes just seemed to grow deeper. Concern welled within Nagi. She wanted to call out to him, get his attention, but he had just slipped a pair of earphones in and looked content to simply spend the rest of the journey disassociating.
After a minute or two of trying and failing to distract herself with Tomonami, his question more vexing and the answer more distant than ever, she knew she had to do something . Staring deep into her phone screen and, though she silently apologised for this, past Tomonami, she told herself this was her time to slay that ouroboros in her head, to finally answer the questions that had been eating away at her. All she had to do was just go up and say 'hello'. It was easy. She had done it for her more socially awkward friends plenty of times. A good 'hello' was a core of good communication and first impressions.
But this was a lot more loaded. It carried with it a re-opening of wounds that were still sore and, more likely than not, open. It was a crossroads. An overcoming of great pressure. A question. One that she alone could answer. Would she be content to lead life as a university student who had incidentally been involved in a game of life-or-death, or become the victor of a game of life-or-death who so incidentally happened to be a university student? It wasn't just rekindling of friendships that didn't deserve to be so unceremoniously deserve to be frozen like that. It was probably going to alter her future. To decide the people she would grow old knowing and spending time with. Or it would, at the very least, speed up the process by which that happened. And how the hell could she answer a question that loaded, under so much damn pressure? As it turned out, all she needed to do was look up.
"Jeez, Boss," Fret said quietly from above her, "Has anyone told you you look like death?"