Chapter Text
Komatsu Nana is fifteen when her father's job relocates him to the northern most part of Japan. She stays behind with her mom and sisters to finish middle school, but on April 1st she has her high school debut in the cold town that is her new home. She'd been planning to go to an all-girl's school with the cutest uniform in her mid-sized hometown, but now she is stuck in an even smaller town with only two high schools and neither of them have cute uniforms and she could see the puffs of her breath at midday, even in April. She gripes about it all morning to her parents before she leaves for her first day.
Later she will remember knowing that her life was going to change forever the moment she walked into her class and saw Osaki Nana glaring at her and the rest of the class from her desk, but really she hadn't noticed, too caught up in her own irritation at the cold.
She doesn't notice this other girl called Nana until their self-introductions and then she notices how beautiful the other girl is – like a model or actress, even with her curt and perfunctory introduction. When she introduces herself, Nana tells the class she's just moved there and she hopes to make friends with everyone and a boy named Nobu offers to show her around town and she accepts with a giggle.
The class decide to call her Little Nana and the other Nana Big Nana, because of their last names. They might as well not have bothered, though, because their whispered scorn whenever they mention Big Nana makes it obvious enough who they mean.
“She's so creepy, never talks to anyone. Thinks she's better than everyone else,” says one of the girls she eats lunch with that first day tell her. The girl had gone to the same middle school as Big Nana. Nana - Little Nana, though, was interested in Big Nana and her sullen, pretty face sitting all by herself. Komatsu Nana might have all of the entitlement of a fifteen year old, but she has always been a kind girl.
(She's always been taken in by pretty faces as well, so there is that too.)
It isn't just Terashima Nobu that comes every morning to Big Nana desk and follow her around, but Little Nana goes and Nobu follows staring at Hachi like a puppy since he'd given her a tour of the best spots in town (there wasn't much).
So Big Nana rebuffs two cheerful smiles every morning instead of one and while Little Nana does not bring Sex Pistol albums nor talks about guitar with single-minded devotion the way Nobu does in that other universe, she has her devotion to talking to Big Nana's every morning with genuine motives.
“Like a dog,” Big Nana laughs one day, “Fine you win, Hachiko.”
She squawks at the nickname, but Hachiko learns to embrace it as the two of them and Nobu begin to hang out. They are her best friends in the whole world, she thinks, though she knows that Nobu like-likes her.
(The first time Nobu asks her out she giggles kindly but declines. He isn't her type and she's already got a boyfriend, but he doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.)
When those three's friendship only just begun, the rumors start to spread that Nana is having sex for money. Nana would not have fought it if Hachiko hadn't begged and whined and pleaded and nettled until Nana relented and claimed her innocence and she isn't expelled and she doesn't drop out.
Nana does receive a suspension when she gets in a fight with three other girls who whisper that Little Nana and her hang around together so much, Hachiko must be doing the same.
When they start their second year of high school, Hachiko is put into a separate classroom from Nana and Nobu. Hachiko pouts and Nana pats her on the head like a dog and starts keeping candy in her jacket pockets to give to her like treats when they see each other between classes just to see Hachiko smile.
Nana's grandmother falls down the stairs and is bedridden for a month before she dies. It was never Nana's fault that Osaki Miyuki died.
Hachiko is with Nana when they stop by Nana's place to change out of their uniforms to meet up with Nobu with karaoke and find Miyuki's body. Hachiko calls her parents who take care of all of the arrangements while Nana stands in shell-shock, Hachiko's hand in hers as she is lead back to the Komatsu's home.
Nobu does not get a call from Nana a month after the fact, but from Hachiko on the phone to tell him that they won't be coming for karaoke. He comes by the Komatsu's place with his guitar and plays and sings songs for them both until they fall asleep hand in hand.
Nana insists she can take care of herself - get her own apartment and drop out of school to make money, but the Komatsu's insist and take over her guardianship. She walks to school with Hachiko every morning and they meet up with Nobu half-way.
That Christmas of her second year, Nobu invites both Nana and Hachiko to see Brute. Nana buys herself a frilly red dress but when Ren comes on stage, her penetrating gaze is not upon him but on Hachiko and the handsy crowd around them as Hachiko laughs into her shoulder.
Ren doesn't notice her during that concert, though Nobu does introduce them afterwords but again she is more concern with Hachiko and making sure she doesn't drink any of the alcohol that the older kids are offering.
That summer after, Ren chases her down as asks her to sing for his band, but she has to wait until she graduates high school first after she does join the Blake Stones with Nobu.
That following Christmas, she doesn't play on a snow covered bank with Ren, but trudges through the snow home with Hachiko.
She and Ren never kiss and never fell in love, but they become friends – close friends and confidantes and when Ren leaves for Tokyo, her only feelings are that of missing her friend and the fire of competition and wanting to perform on as big a stage as he is now.
(When, years later, Ren calls her and sobs as he spirals down a drain from drugs and pressure, Nana gets him out of there. Their relationship is different - supportive and not destructive co-dependence and that makes all of the difference. She does not feel the disappointment that Yasu feels, only knows that her friend needs her. She picks him up in a taxi and takes him home and she helps him through the withdrawals. When Takumi pounds on the door looking for his guitarist, she punches him hard in the face. Her ring cuts his face the way it would have if she'd socked Shoji in the face that one time in that other universe. It leaves a scar and Takumi rages, but doesn't press charges because that'd bring to light Ren's addiction to the media.
Takumi covers the scar with make up for the rest of his life and per Nana's demands, Ren's given the necessary support to keep his sobriety. He stays with Trapnest because despite everything, he still believes in Takumi's dream and Reira's voice.
Nana and Ren stay friends. They understand being abandoned and oversensitive and this time they never get to abandon each other and wallow in guilt.
His ashes are not thrown out to sea on her twenty-first birthday and she never goes to find a place to die in grief.)
Hachiko is with Black Stones from the beginning and they call her their mascot and favorite groupie, but as the band gains local popularity and with Blast's Private Fan Club and Shion and the girl that calls herself Uehara Misato, Hachiko takes on more responsibilities so the band can focus on the music.
(One day, when the band moves to Tokyo, they will consider Hachiko their manager and they won't sign any contract that won't let them keep her.)
When Ren leaves them for Trapnest, Yasu breaks up with Reira and stays behind in their hometown with the rest of the Black Stones.
(Even though it will be Nana that picks Ren up off the floor, it will be Reira that keeps Ren standing. One day, they'll be considered a power couple by the magazines and no one will find scandal in their relationship and they'll only find the two make a pretty picture together and don't they deserve one another?)
Hachiko dreams of a big wedding and wearing both a shiromuku and a western wedding dress and a house with a garden while Nana dreams of a big stage and Hachiko and the band at her side, but she leaves for Tokyo alone on her twentieth birthday because she can't ask them to come with just for her dreams.
She is scared they won't come with and her pride keeps her from the rejection.
She is more afraid of the fact that Hachiko will pack her bags and follow her with a radiant grin without another word. Nana doesn't want to fail her, doesn't want to disappoint her first and best and most important friend.
She doesn't tell Hachiko or Nobu before leaving, just leaves them a letter and tells Hachiko to wait and thanks the Komatsu's for taking care of her, but she does tell Yasu and he comes to see her off. Yasu doesn't tell her not to go or that he'll miss her and his eyes are kind behind his dark sunglasses as he smiles at her as the train takes her away.
Nana watches the snow pile from the window and no one sits beside her during her long ride to Tokyo.
Hachiko doesn't cry over the letter, just waits until the snow melts and the trains are running and packs her stuff and follows.
Yasu texts her Nana's new cellphone number and she smiles before she texts Ren – they've all kept in contact with no hurt feelings or heartbreak to hold them back.
When she gets to Tokyo, Ren is luckily in town to pick her at the station – incognito of course. She leaves her stuff at his place, so Nana won't be able to send her right back home, and then she texts Nana.
I'm in Shibuya, by Hachikō Exit. I'll be waiting.
The forty minutes it takes for Nana to get to Shibuya is the longest Hachiko ever has to wait for Nana.
When she sees her, Nana sighs with a smile and ruffles her hair.
“Come on, then.”
First they have to go back to Ren's place to get her stuff before they finally go home, to Room 707.
Nobu and Yasu follow soon after and later they'll meet a fifteen year old boy and the Black Stones will be complete. Gaia never offers them a contract – there is no Ren and Nana to offer them a scandal, not in that way, but one day a smaller indie label will and Nana will perform on a big stage like she dreams of.
Nobu will ask Hachiko out one last time and this time they've been through so much together and he sees her as so much more than a girl who was sweet and charming and kind, but all that and her faults as well. She'll get her wedding and house with a garden one day, maybe with Nobu.
What matters is that Nana and Hachiko are happy in Room 707. They never buy strawberry glasses, because while Room 707 is as central to their story as they are themselves, the strawberry glasses were only ever a metaphor for sad broken things torn apart, of the girls themselves shattered on the floor.
Nana and Hachiko together are unbreakable, this time around.