Archive of Our Own

Rui wakes up to the sight of the famous vocaloid icons Hatsune Miku and the Kagamine twins, along with half a dozen of plushies, peering down at him worriedly.

"Ah! You're awake!" Miku exclaims in her robotic yet expressive voice.

I should stop falling asleep with my phone on autoplay, is his first thought. This surely is a lucid dream that resulted from Rui falling asleep while listening to vocaloid songs. Though the forms of the concerned people above him are just a little bit different from the default. Since when did Hatsune Miku have cat ears? What a strange chimerical thing his mind has created.

Rui closes his eyes.

"Kaito, he closed his eyes again!" Comes the panicked voice of Kagamine Len. "Uuu… none of us know how to give CPR. What should we do?!"

"Maybe we should sing to get him to wake up?" Kagamine Rin chimes with an accompanying sound of hands clapping together once.

"No way! That won't do. Remember the time we tried on Luka and she just fell even deeper in sleep?"

"What should we do? What should we do?"

Rui hears steady footsteps approach where he's laying. Instinctively, he cracks one eye open and finds a puzzled expression forming on a person who resembles the vocaloid called Kaito.

Maybe this is a sign from the heavens for Rui to start sleeping earlier.

"Huh, Rui looks a bit different from what I remember." His voice is robotic like the rest of the vocaloids. "Can you hear us? Rui?"

He's half tempted to just close his eyes again and roll over until the dream ends on its own, but his head and body ache like he's been slammed by a train. And, even if it's his own mind making up these scenarios, Rui doesn't want to be so impolite as to not respond at all when a person calls him out by his name. He cracks his other eye open and the blue of the sky almost feels too painful on eyes that have gotten used to the dark and drab corner of his garage.

Rui tries sitting up but somehow it's like his body is being weighed down by a ton of bricks, and he immediately almost stumbles backwards again.

Three different sets of hands push against his back with a cry of alarm.

"...Thank you."

His throat feels so very raw he's surprised the sound he made came out as a word. He puts on his best smile to express his gratitude but he's only met with electric eyes full of concern. How strange. Rui doesn't remember the last time someone who's not his parents or Nene was this concerned for him. It's a little uncomfortable.

Still he pretends not to notice their concern and instead looks around, only seeing a great expanse of what seems to be a very empty amusement park. The more Rui looks around, the more fantastical things he can see in whatever landscape his convoluted mind has created. An aimlessly blue sky that's always filled with floating balloons and cotton candy clouds. A brightly coloured carousel that's floating in the sky, highlighted by the permanent aurora borealis that acts as a sweet backdrop. There's a huge tent in the distance that's most likely the theatre dome.

Everything is so soft and pastel and vivid that Rui can barely believe that he's dreaming.

Rui turns his head to the vocaloids standing around him and he feels the idea that he's in a dream solidify there.

"Where might I be?" He asks, keeping his words light and airy.

Kagamine Rin and Len blink in unison.

"Don't you remember us?" Len asks. Rin adds almost immediately, "Rui is acting funny. This is the Sekai."

Am I supposed to? He dryly thinks. And. What the hell is a Sekai?

Meiko's eyes flick from Rui's ruffled messy hair to his untidily worn school uniform and it makes him feel a little self conscious.

"Len, Rin, I don't think this is the Rui we know." She finally says out loud before offering a hand. Rui looks at the open palm onceー the lines and creases there look too human to be trueー and places his own there to get gently pulled up. Meiko is surprisingly sturdy. "He's been missing for two days in the real world. This Rui looks like how he used to describe his middle school self."

"Ehh?"

"Middle school?"

"Where's our Rui then?"

Megurine Luka, dressed to the nines of pastel and with curled sheep horns on her, slowly traipses over to where Rui is standing, and looks up at him with droopy, amused eyes. She's slow and methodical but somehow there's a sharpness that Rui definitely doesn't miss.

"Mmhm," her voice sounds like she's about ready to go to sleep. Rui wishes he could do that. "My, what an interesting turn of events. It seems that…"

.

.

.

"... the Rui from the past and the present swapped places?!"

The voice is like the crackle of thunder out of the bright blue. It's so loud Rui thinks any normal person would have the urge to cover their ears to protect themselves. He's far too used to loud noises from the explosions that happen from his devices. Rui simply watches the loudmouthed blond talk with the vocaloids, like a child during a parents-teacher meeting, and keeps glancing at Nene, the only one he recognizes, who's holding hands with a pink haired person even smaller than her.

Their eyes meet and because it's a dream where Rui doesn't have to carry the guilt of being an incompetent friend, he waves at her.

She seems a little startled before she waves back with a tiny smile, her face still marred with worry.

The gesture, no matter how little, makes Rui very happy.

It's the happiest he's felt in years.

He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot and instead tries focusing on the situation in hand.

So, in this dream, Rui had been missing in the world outside of Sekai for two days, which made these people who are apparently his 'friends' worried. And then Rui from middle school, himself, was discovered by the vocaloids when a loud bang came from the amusement park area. The vocaloids put two and two together to come to the conclusion that Rui from two different timelines have swapped places due to a glitch in the Sekai. His friends, notified by the vocaloids of his whereabouts, appeared in a flash of light made of colourful triangular shaped particles that Rui finds very intriguing, and thus the situation now.

All in all, this is possibly the most interesting dream Rui has had in a while.

It's a nice change of pace from the usual dreamless naps and the fits of nightmares he can never remember the details of.

"So this is Rui from his middle school years?" The pink haired one asks out loud. Rui swears he can see sparkles inside those wide doe eyes. "Wow~! I've always wanted to meet you, I'm Ootori Emu!"

He immediately decides he likes her enthusiasm.

"It's very nice to meet you as well," he says with a chuckle. "Ootori."

Her round face scrunches up at that.

"Call me Emu!" She practically demands, cheeks puffing up like a particularly miffed pufferfish. "Friends call each other by their first name."

Friends.

The word tastes almost stale on Rui's tongue. He must be terribly lonely to make up such interesting people who would want to be friends with him. Dreams play upon one's subconscious desires. It would make sense that this radiant, cute girl wants Rui to call her by the first name, like a close friend, since that's what Rui has desired for the longest time. Friends. Company. People who would just stay.

And because dreams are Rui's own subconscious thoughts and desires and visions of the past, he swears he can see the image of a younger Nene overlapping the pink haired girl. Puffed cheeks and furrowed brows, insisting very firmly that she be called by her first name.

"Emu, then." He says out loud softly, unable to help himself from adding 'kun' behind the name.

Emu's face lights up either way.

Myctophum punctatum, Rui assigns immediately.

"Don't act like this is a normal thing!" That same loud voice crackles like thunder and Rui feels almost annoyed at him for ruining the nostalgic air. "How is it even possible for Rui to time travel?! Isn't this too strange!?"

"Tsukasa, we entered this world by playing a mysterious untitled song that appeared in our playlist out of nowhere." Nene doesn't even blink once as she bluntly states.

Rui feels a smile grow on his face unwittingly.

Dream or not, Nene will always remain the same. The one and only constant Rui has had other than his own parents. Her sharp tongue and flat expression have remained untouched by the hands of time. There is some reassurance in seeing a Nene who's just a bit taller than Rui remembers with hair tied up in a hastily made ponytail and the same witty humour. His brain has emulated the feeling of unnoticeable change brought by time a little too well.

So well that his hollow chest aches.

"Well-!" He begins, spluttering.

Nene raises a brow. "Well?"

His shoulders slump down in defeat. "You're right. Everything around us is ridiculous and unbelievable. We literally talk with the Hatsune Miku everyday, what's a little time travel to that?"

"I'm Hatsune Miku!" Miku does a silly little twirl that Emu copies right after.

"We know."

"Even then, isn't it a little too much even for us to see time travel happen in real life?" The loud person tries reasoning in a much lower volume. His golden eyes flicker over to Rui as if to check whether the existence of a 177 something centimetres tall person in school uniform is in fact real and that they're not all mass hallucinating. He reminds Rui of an alert yet perpetually puzzled puppy. Rui can almost visualize a bright red collar with a name tag around his neck.

"What's your name, puh- person I don't know about?" Nice save there.

There's a twinkle in Tsukasa's eyes that was previously not there. Nene shakes her head in despair.

"Hoh! You want to know my name? Like the Pegasus that soars the sky, Tenma, 'Tsukasa' as in to preside over the world! The name is… Tenma Tsukasa; the guy who was born for stardom!"

He strikes a pose at the end.

Rui feels so thrown off guard by the sudden flashy introduction that he ends up applauding in confusion. What a character this Tsukasa person is. He would certainly make a very entertaining figure up on a stage, that Rui has no doubts of. Maybe he was the mix of all the characters that Rui has ever found to be entertaining and silly in books and other concerned media. Somehow cute yet fascinating the way Rui finds deep sea creatures to be.

A Novodinia americana perhaps? Rui wonders to himself.

He drags himself out of the deep sea creature assignment musing before he can drift off and space out. There are people waiting for his response.

"Tenma Tsukasa," Rui doesn't hate the shape of this foreign name in his mouth. Like the sky-soaring Pegasus and the character 'Tsukasa' that means 'to lead'. Just like Emu's name using the character of 'Phoenix'. Mythical creatures. How interesting. "I hope I'm not being too presumptuous by assuming that you would want to be called by your first name as well?"

"Of course not!"

Rui smiles. "Tsukasa, it's very nice to meet you."

"I'd say the same, if not for the fact that you're the younger version of a person I already know well."

A hand comes up like an automatic response to shield the smile forming on his face as Rui lets out an airy chuckle. "No person is the same when swept away by the hands of time, wouldn't you say? To you the Rui standing in front of you is completely different from the one you know."

Tsukasa's brows crease up.

"That is true." He nods. "Very well then! It's an honour to meet you, Kamishiro Rui!"

"Are you two going to waste the entire time just reintroducing yourselves or is the conversation going to move onto the more important part?" Nene butts in.

Rui swivels his head towards her, fondness welling up immediately at the sight of her. "Oh? And what might that be?"

"What are we going to do with you until our Rui returns?"

Our Rui.

The possessive pronoun is a dark smudge on a plain white sheet. Noticeable and almost disconcerting to look at.

He is wanted here, isn't he?

It was obvious from the very moment Rui opened his eyes to a world where he was worried over by popular vocaloid figures and many plushies. And the gentle hands that steadied him, keeping him from toppling over. The wide and eager smile on Emu's face, the gentle yet concerned expression settled over Nene's own and the silly yet aimless conversation that Rui slid into so easily with Tsukasa. The affection feels like it's a physical thing.

Rui has never thought it'd be so suffocating to be loved.

Maybe it's a reminder that he isn't made for such a world where he's showered with such kind of positive attention.

There must be a different kind of desperation that exists solely for people like him who are so starved of affection that they dream of it in the recesses of their minds and yet still find themselves struggling to comprehend it. Capable of wanting but not capable of handling the parts that come with the want. It's almost like Rui has become too comfortable in the idea that just wanting is more than enough.

The discussion flies by and Rui manages to catch the most important details of the entire conversation. Rui will be staying over at either Tsukasa, Emu or his own house until the entire situation fixes itself somehow. His parents are away on their bi-annual trip to attend a conference for scientists and researchers. Nene has managed to waive any hint of the fact that anything remarkable has happened to Rui at all by answering to their text messages. He cannot go to school until everything returns back to normal. Rui can still however act as the director of their troupe (their troupe?!) since he still has some knowledge about how things work on the stage.

Oh yes, and the most important part of it all that Rui almost glossed overー he's a part of a freelance theatre troupe called Wonderlands x Showtime, and he's their director.

He's loved and cared for, and he's a director of an aspiring theatre troupe, isn't that crazy?

Even crazier isー

"Wow! Nene, your singing voice is as beautiful as ever!" Emu cheers loudly, her voice echoing through the theatre dome.

Nene turns pink at the compliment but continues singing upon the stage, her body language and hand gestures more free and loose than they ever had been. Her singing voice is powerful yet touching, the way Rui has always known it to be, but with an added extra bout of confidence that is almost too uncharacteristic of Nene. Her fists aren't balled up the way they usually do when singing in front of anyone but Rui. Her hands are instead wide open and fingers splayed apart as if sayingー here I am, world. Look at me for I have nothing to hide, and listen to this song as I sing it.

At the face of such a strong tug of self assurance, Rui finds himself helplessly regarding the lone figure upon the wide stage.

Nene is on the stage again.

She slowly opens her eyes and smiles even wider when their eyes make contact. This is something personal. Pride is an extremely good look on Nene. It feels like she's showing Rui in particular what she can do and how far she has come.

His shoulders, caught stiff by the astounding performance that Nene is putting up on the stage, eases up.

This must be a really good dream where everything I've ever wanted is a reality. He thinks with absolutely certainty.

"That was amazing, Nene! Can we get an encore?" He says out loud instead.

"Encore! Encore!"

The voices of the plushies and the vocaloids and his newly acquired friends chant. The sound is almost like white noise to Rui whose hearing immediately focuses on Nene who bunches up her sidebangs in flustered modesty, muttering a small 'fine'. Her song floods the dome and Rui does his best to burn the sight of this dazzling, more confident Nene into his retinas. If he could, he would crack open his ribcage to store that moment, he would allow her gentle voice to light up even the darkest crevices of his aching, hollow soul, he would sob at the overwhelming feeling of pride, shame and hope.

But when he reaches into himself, all he can find is a fond sceptic who tells him to enjoy the moment but not to raise his hopes high for the inevitably dull reality.

So he sits on one of the audience seat, with plushies over his lap, with a small smile for Nene to glimpse at and with the hopeless desire to make this moment last.

The more time Rui spends with the vocaloids and his three friends, the more certain he grows about the fact that he's dreaming.

They tell him the future version of him is their friend? That Emu and Tsukasa have been his friends for a whole year? Sure, why not?

They tell him about how much they truly cherish Rui as a director? How much they like his stage directions? Of course, why wouldn't they?

In Rui's greatest dream, this must be the life he lives.

It speaks for the kind of person he truly isー to see a dream where he is good. He is loved.

Isn't that a ridiculous thought?

It's only when Rui wakes up the next day in the unfamiliar room he recognises as Tsukasa's guest room that he finally considers the thought that maybe he is in fact not dreaming.

It's not that Rui never once had that thought pop up in his head. As is the nature of an overly logical mind, he considered all possibilities before deciding that he had been dreaming. It was too laughable to even think that he'd actually been transported to a reality in his future where he has friends who love him, where he's a cherished director of a troupe, where Nene has overcome her fear of failure on the stage, and where he has overcome the fear of rejection and sought people out to be friends with.

It's an easier truth to digest when he thinks of the entire situation as a dream.

But that truth gets debunked with every step he takes in the real world.

That truth crumbles just a little when he goes to his garage and finds the robot he recently planned to create to help Nene overcome her stage fright, it cracks like plaster when he finds blueprints that are too advanced for him to achieve with his current skill set, it peels away when he sees the framed photos of his new friends upon his walls and nightstands, and stuck to the large mirror in his actual room inside the house.

If denial were an art form, Rui would be the pioneer of it.

And yet.

There's only so much he can wave off as a dream.

This is not a dream.

Rui woke up in a virtual world that hosted popular vocaloids, in a world where his future self has already been. A life his future has created for himself.

He has too many questions and not enough answers.

He has friends now. That's something Rui still cannot fully accept as the truth.

It goes against every belief that Rui had built around himself and his capability to befriend anyone at all. Someone like him who had a strong sense of self, someone like him who couldn't even be 'normal' enough for any kid his age, someone like him who ran his mouth without thinking when it came to things he loved, someone like him who couldn't empathize with others and their worries when it came to shows, someone like him who couldn't even feel connected to the majority of people unless shows were involved. Rui has driven far too many people off by simply being himself. How could Nene want to be friends with him when he couldn't even help her during her time of need? The idea of a future where he gets to keep both his own sense of self and other people as his friends is absolutely unthinkable.

The only conclusion Rui can come to, unwilling to believe it as he is, is that he's suppressing his own personality to have friends.

He went through his own phone and found himself included in multiple LINE groups, one with Tsukasa and other peopleー Taniyama, Miyake, Hayashiー he can only assume are his… friends. There's one titled 'Let's pass our exams!' but the latest exchange of message in there is from two peopleーShiraishi and Shinonomeー who are bantering with each other the way only very familiar friends can. And Rui is included in their social circle.

There was no way.

He possibly couldn't have this many friends in the future. Not without some huge catch to it.

So, his sense of self in exchange for company.

That must be it, he concludes.

Rui gave into the desire of wanting to have companionship in the future after all. Was it inevitable from the start?

He likes shows so he's happy doing it even with no one else's company but his own.

Was that a lie that was never meant to withstand all those years of yearning for someone, anyone, to truly see him?

Rui feels hollowed out.

For the first few seconds of that epiphany, all he feels is pure disdain and anger at his own future self. The part of Rui that still holds onto his mother's words, those words that made him decide that he'd rather choose being outcasted as himself over being accepted as someone else, it rages and burns with fierce indignation. Loss of any sort makes Rui unreasonably angry. That short bout of anger rarely lasts.

It's bittersweet but Rui can understand.

That part of him that understands is probably the worst part of him. It'd be far easier to throw a tantrum over such a situation, than understanding why he would do this in the future.

And yet he understands. He detests that.

If pretending to be like everyone else grants him the sight of Nene's occasional smile aimed towards him, if it lets him have all sorts of friends, if it saves him the trouble of a lonely fate, Rui can understand why.

Rui himself knows that solely the need for companionship isn't enough to drive him towards pretending to be someone who's less intense. If it were just for himself, he wouldn't bother with that. Nene is in the theatre troupe though. Maybe he's pretending so that he can actually be beside her for once in his pathetic life.

Trying to assign his own cowardice an altruistic cause makes him want to throw up.

Ah, what a predicament he has found himself in.

Even then, Rui doesn't want to trouble these people. They don't tell him anything but it's obvious that they're worried. Rui thinks that Tsukasa and Emu are good people. Nene is a good person. They shouldn't have to be burdened with the weight of a Rui who doesn't even know how to behave like the Rui they know. It already seems stressful enoughー trying to hide him from their families, hide him from his own family, trying to figure out how to bring their Rui back.

There must be something Rui could do to ease their worries.

If he tries hard enough, maybe he'll be able to replicate his future self's image.

There's no subtle way of asking the three about their Rui. It would be suspicious if Rui started acting like what they consider is 'normal' right after he asks them. Even then, conversations with those three are very short and limited because they're unsure of how much they're allowed to reveal to a Rui who has never experienced all the things the future holds for him. It's fair but that doesn't make him feel any less lonely.

The need for companionship was what drove him to these people in the first place. It's not all that weird if Rui tries a second time with a little bit of help, right?

Or so he thinks as he plays Untitled on his phone and suddenly his world turns white.

He can't ask those three but he can definitely rely on the vocaloids from that strange virtual world. Maybe even the talking plushies would do. Rui has been hanging out around Sekai often since he was brought to the future. Much convenient to be kept hidden away in a world only known by the vocaloids that reside in it and the three who discovered Rui in the state he is now. To him Sekai is fascinating in the way that no logic can really explain it away. It's also a lot more comfortable to be in, rather than in a world where he once knew but has changed since then. Something entirely new but comfortable is better than something familiar yet out of place.

Rui is the one who is most out of place in this entire situation.

He roams around the amusement park area for a bit, watching cotton candy pink clouds drift like how real clouds do and all the never ending balloons that adorn the bright sky. Being in this place almost provides Rui a sort of childish and naive hope. Hope for what, he doesn't know but hope nonetheless. Rui honestly doesn't want to hope any longer since all that does is make him even feel worse. What's the point when he's going to be let down in the end?

Still, being here makes Rui feel a sort of content he hasn't felt in several years.

A world born out of Tsukasa's feelings, they'd called it. In a weird absurd way, it makes sense. It makes sense that someone like Tsukasa would have emotions loud and strong enough to create an entire world out of them.

Rui enters the circus dome and finds the vocaloids practising upon the great stage. Kaito is standing aside a good distance to oversee the performance while Meiko grabs onto the mischievous plushies to stop them from running all over the stage. Miku and Rin who seemed to be engrossed in whatever show they were putting on, suddenly notice Rui and break the serious demeanour they put on.

"Oh! It's Rui!" Len says out loud while Miku does a little happy dance. "Welcome to the Sekai~!"

Rin waves her arms. "Hey, hey, did you come to watch us do a show?"

"Something like that." Rui chuckles, tugging on the sleeves of the new platypus print T-shirt Emu bought for him. Suddenly having the attention shift towards him makes him feel somewhat anxious. "Sorry for interrupting the show. You guys can go on."

"Don't ever worry about being an interruption here, Rui." Meiko smiles from where she's seated, and the plushies look at him with curious beady eyes. "Come whenever! We love having you here."

Kaito nods. "We were just rehearsing something old anyway. If you need any sort of help, don't hesitate to ask any of us."

"Oh, I possibly couldn't-"

"Hush now." Luka says, firm but not unkind, standing up from between one of the rows of seats and stretching her body as if she'd been sleeping until this very moment. "You ended up coming all the way from the past. Such a situation must be scary for a young child like you. If we can help in any way, let us do that much."

"Wow~ Luka can actually talk for so long before falling asleep?"

She just giggles before sitting next to Meiko and leaning up against her. "How can I sleep when the Sekai feels so uneasy?"

Rui stays silent for a while before sighing and giving into the need to ask for help. "Could you tell me what I'm like in the future?"

"Rui in the future? You mean the Rui we know?" Len asks.

"Why do you wanna know about him?" Rin adds.

Miku raises her arm as if she's a star student teeming with eagerness to answer the question. "I can tell you! I can tell you!"

Kaito looks just a tad bit hesitant to say anything. "We don't know what will happen if we give you too much information about the future. The future you are in right now might not exist anymore if you know everything from the start."

Miku's arm lowers and her red cat ears flop in a sad little droop. "Aw. I wanted to brag about our Rui."

What Kaito is saying does make sense. There are so many factors that can change the timeline of an event. A single flap of a butterfly and a hurricane, the most common example. But at the same time, there's a confusing thing about all of this that everyone has failed to consider. A loophole essentially in the weird time warping situation Rui has found himself in.

If this already happened to the other Rui, wouldn't he remember such a thing? There could be a possibility that the future Rui is hiding the fact that he already knows what happens after, and he doesn't really want to test that theory just yet. All he wants to know now is how future Rui behaves.

"Look." Rui starts, the words tasting a little bitter in his mouth. He's a little tired of being shielded like a child every time he gets curious about his future that he had no choice but to be thrown in. It's frustrating to be the only one who doesn't know what's going on at all. "I don't know how much your Rui has revealed of his past, but I guarantee you that I'm not the sort of person people keep around as a friend. Obviously the Rui you know is acting in a way that makes him easier to love. Tsukasa and Emu are going to start getting suspicious if I don't behave like him. And I don't wish to break hard-earned friendships after coming so far into the future, so I ask you againー

"Could you please tell me what I'm like in the future?"

Rui expects answers.

What he doesn't expect to see is multiple vocaloids staring at him with sad, sad eyes.

"Rui…"

"That's not…"

"Oh…"

Kaito exhales once, looking like he bit into a sour lemon. "Have you considered that maybe your friends like you for you? That you haven't changed much since then?"

Yeah, right, is what Rui wants to respond with, acidic and unbelieving. As if. He wants to scoff out loud.

More than anything, he just wants to fall to the ground and demand, like a furious, faithless devotee in an abandoned shrine; Then tell me why did it take so long?

But because Rui gets unreasonable bouts of anger, and because those bouts rarely last, he finds the fire threatening to swallow him from the inside dying down and hardening like charcoal. What's the point of getting so angry at people who just seem to mean well? Rui can hate himself all he likes, that doesn't mean he's allowed to inflict that hate onto someone else.

Unable to stand the pitying looks from the vocaloid, and unable to do anything else really, Rui disappears into the air, leaving only a trail of colourful prismic images behind.

"Rui, wai-"

Leaving his phone behind at Tsukasa's guest room, he runs.

He doesn't stop until he's sprinting through the streets of Shibuya, possibly looking like a deranged man. His legs burn with the exertion and he runs and runs and runs, until he reaches home. Rui enters the garage and slumps down onto a stool, face flat on the table with his arms covering his head. If the world were any kinder, it would allow Rui to disappear once and for evermore into a flurry of triangles, it would allow Rui to curl up tighter and tighter until he's nothing but a small speck carried away by the breeze of time. But the world is silent and indifferent to the struggle of one lone child.

So he remains, pointlessly and hopelessly.

He remains in the darkness of his garage, chest tight and heart still burning silently and steadily. He's unwilling to accept Kaito's words as the truth. He refuses to even consider it a possibility. The idea of 'liking someone for the sake of liking them' is something Rui has long discarded as a possibility for himself. He's allowed to like people for what they are because no matter what humans are fascinating, interesting and fill the parts of Rui that genuinely enjoys the little things about existing with joy. He has loved the world for so long not expecting even a single drop of it to be returned to him. People are people. Rui is Rui. It was fine that Rui was just harder to love than anyone else that no one except his own parents even bothered to.

It was fine that no one wanted to understand Rui.

And suddenly these people from the future want him to accept a reality where he's loved so easily. A reality where every day is like a dream. A reality where Rui is wanted for who he is and not for what he can do.

How is he supposed to believe that?

Rui buries deeper into his arms, surrounded by a world he doesn't even recognize anymore. His eyes closed shut because what was the point of seeing if even his own room taunted him with the idea of an unfamiliar future.

Shaking.

An earthquake? He thinks to himself before realising that the tremors wracking him are from his own body shivering and shaking. It feels like he's watching everything happen as a bystander that cannot intervene. Even in such an emotionally charged situation, Rui has trouble figuring out what he's actually feeling. His throat burns with every inhale of sweet, sweet oxygen.

Not for the first time in his life has Rui wished to hand over his feelings to someone else so that they can sort it out for him.

The exhaustion catches up to Rui, along with the several days of not sleeping well in an unfamiliar place. At least the shape of the desk beneath his head feels somewhat safe. Rui lets his eyelids drop for a single second and then his world turns black.

When he wakes up, his neck aches with the awkward angle at which he slept and his body is sitting, slumped. The safe and familiar sensation of wood beneath his head has all but vanished and it makes anxiety zip through him even through the daze. There's a barely-there weight huddling over his thighs, and he rubs bleary eyes open to see many plushies making themselves comfortable in his lap. The place is blessedly dark, saving him from the trouble of trying to adjust to the light. It takes him a full minute to remember what happened and then realise his current situation.

The circus dome in the Sekai. That's where he is right now.

"He's awake!"

"Rui, you had a good nap?"

"Hey, someone needs to tell the rest!"

He feels a strong sense of deja vu.

Rui smiles ever so pleasantly. "It would be a better nap if I woke up where I fell asleep."

The panda plushie winces, flailing its arms around. "See! I told them that this was a bad idea… Even Nene said that Rui gets unusually cranky when he wakes up!"

"Nene said that-?"

He doesn't even get to fully finish the sentence before there's a loud 'ahem!' that fills the empty hall. It sounds like it's coming from the backstage, and Rui already dreads what's to come.

"Mic test, mic test," Tsukasa's voice comes, amplified even more with the microphone. "Hello! Mic test-"

"Stop mic testing so much. So loud…" Comes a very familiar voice. "It's not like you need a microphone to be heard."

"My star-like voice needs to be heard from every corner of the- ouagh?! Stop wearing those headphones when someone's speaking!"

"Ah! Tsukasa, Nene, Little Piglet told me that Rui woke up already! We shouldn't keep him waiting!" Joins another voice that Rui has come to know as comforting. "Good morning Rui! Sorry that we dragged you all the way to the Sekai while you were sleeping. You seemed to be having a really really good one so none of us wanted to wake you up! Also, if you were awake, you probably wouldn't agree to come here unless you were trapped between me and Nene again, hehe~"

Ah so that explains why he's in the Sekai.

"Yeah, sorry about that Rui." Tsukasa has the decency to sound guilty. "You're surprisingly very light for someone so tall. And you even slept like a baby while we sat you down on the audience seat. It must have been quite a few uncomfortable nights for you to be in such a deep sleep."

"Your apologies would be accepted if I knew exactly why I've been brought here." He says, rubbing his neck and wincing at the ache.

Nene hums. "About that… Kaito and the others told us about what happened here."

His heart stops.

"But y'see Rui, we can't have any version of you feeling obligated to act a certain way towards us all. And we realise that we've kept a lot of things from you. So, to apologise and to explain to you what our Rui is like, we'd like to put on a show for you."

"Rui," Nene sounds achingly like how she used to back then, when she wanted him to see the interesting illustrations in her picture books. "Watch all of us carefully."

And carefully, he does.

The deep red curtain sweeps away to reveal Tsukasa, lit by the yellow of the spotlight. Then starts a show about a selfish leader, a stubborn jester, and a timid songstress. The leader gathers people after people in his troupe to become as famous as humanly possible, having forgotten the true reason why he decided to set out on this wandering journey. The jester finds solace in the somewhat misled determination of the leader. After all, her wish is to protect what was left behind. The songstress tries her best to make her voice reach to her audience but her pitiful cowardice and fright makes her voice a mere whisper in the wind. With such characters, the troupe isn't able to gather much audience.

In comes Kaito playing the role of the greedy alchemist in the heart of the woods, isolated and perfectly accepting of the leader's proposal to join their troupe.

The shows they put on are amazing until they're not.

All of them wound up in their own wants and wishes. Selfish, desperate and determined; human to the very core. All of them so blind in what they themselves desireー the leader; fame, the jester; protection, the songstress; courage, the alchemist; acceptanceー that they forget the main purpose of putting on a show.

For the sake of smiles, wasn't it?

One mistake and it's over.

The troupe breaks apart and all that's left is an angry leader with no fame, a jester who still can't protect what she loves the most, a songstress who loses what little courage she had, and an alchemist who is frankly tired of seeking acceptance from strangers. That lonely alchemist… that one's supposed to represent Rui. The feeling of being understood for what feels like the first time in ages is one Rui will never forget. These people understand.

That couldn't have been possible if Rui truly was feigning parts of his personality.

Who's the foolish one now? Him who struggled so much with the idea of being accepted that he made unsatisfying excuses or the alchemist who decides to leave a position of acceptance because their ideals do not align with the leader?

Rui does not know who the foolish one is, but he does know who the brave one is. And it's not himself. Not the way he is now.

"Aah, that's right. My dream is to become a star." Tsukasa says, "But I want to become a star who makes everyone smile! The audience will smile, and then my friends will… To perform a show like that, that is what being a star means to me!"

Rui is dressed comfortably in warm clothes and yet he feels goosebumps all over his arms. It's the exact same thing Rui felt while watching that show with Nene for the first time. Tsukasa's monologues in this show hold a kind of solidified passion that speaks of experience. An autobiography in the form of a play, only becoming more and more nostalgic and resolute the way core memories are. This show is not just a play, but it's also a core memory, Rui realizes.

"I want you to trust us! This time, we'll perform a show that can make everyone smile! That's why I'll say it one more time…"

Oh.

Tsukasa is staring right at Rui. Even Emu and Nene. Kaito who was playing the role of the alchemist until just now is nowhere to be seen.

A hand is thrusted forward, now unmistakably tilted downwards poised at Rui.

"Won't you please perform shows together with us?" A face of earnest desperation. "Won't you trust us?"

Rui freezes when the spotlight slowly shifts to his seat and the plushies empty his lap. Some of them whisper small words of encouragement as they leave. He stands up on numb legs.

The palm is in front of him. He can see the creases and wrinkles on it too, undoubtedly human and unique to the person who's standing atop the stage, calling for Rui. The silence is wrought with some kind of anticipatory tension. To trust or to not trust, to take the hand extended by Tsukasa or not; that is the question.

Rui breathes out once as an attempt to get rid of the numbness of his body, and speaks.

"You thought this show would change my mind?" His voice comes out even, with the familiar expressionless tone mimicking that of the greedy alchemist.

"Without a doubt." Nene replies this time firmly, "You who loves shows like an idiot would understand us the best like this."

Rui tries, just to test them. "Even if I'm not the Rui you all know?"

"The past or the future, why does it matter?" Emu sounds impassioned. "You might not be the Rui we know now but you're still you! You still love shows and hate vegetables! The parts of you that we, your friends, have come to love will never change!"

"Hey, Rui." Tsukasa says softly, "This show was the first show we ever put on as a group. It was the one that convinced you, well future you, to join us. You asked what kind of person you'll grow up to be. I'll answer; one who's gentle even if only few see it, and kind enough to forgive me the first time I lost sight of myself."

"I see. Will I be a bad person if I don't accept your apology?"

"Not at all."

"Then, I'm afraid," Rui sighs, "you'll have to add 'predictable' to that list."

Absolutely defeated as he climbs the steps and reaches out to take Tsukasa's hand. It's warm. Emu and Nene grab the other one together. He's pulled up to the stage.

Painful, naive and brave hope setting him alight.

"It's kinda infuriating to think how you were still taller than all of us in middle school." Tsukasa grumbles, after the curtain call.

"I get taller?"

"You do." Nene answers, "By a couple of more centimetres. As of this year, you're six foot tall."

She adds. "You'll be gaining weight too."

Rui smiles.

An intense hope blooming within the cracks of his ribcage.

It's unendurable.

"Even as a middle schooler you used to be an amazing director, huh." Tsukasa notes, later after the show ends and the applause is still ringing out loudly.

Rui feels his face heat up, unused to such sincere compliments on his stage directions. It's dark so no one should be able to see it, and even if they do, Rui can easily wave it off as exertion since his expression remains mostly unchanged. He almost trips on thin air still.

"I'm going to get complacent if you praise me like that."

Nene lets out a laugh at that. "As if someone like you even knows what complacency means. Praises make you work even harder."

"Oh? Is that so? Then, then!" Emu hops, her round red frilly skirt bouncing with her. "The way you used your drones to make snow fall was so cool! They were like shin, shin, shin~"

Never in all thirteen years of his life has Rui ever been prepared for this kind of barrage of earnest praises. He giggles nervously, hoping that the laugh sounds natural enough that they think he's being coy or even better, smug.

Today's show was the first one he directed since coming to this world as the director of Wonderlands x Showtime. Their troupe has a contract with the Ootori Group who own this amusement park so this is one of those few occasions when they perform a show on Wonder Stage. The stage is run-down and old despite the obvious effort to make it as presentable as possible. But it seems that they all have precious memories on this stage, so it was the one they performed on.

This was the place Emu wanted to protect. Rui had realised early, putting two and two together from the autobiographical play.

A well loved place is a well loved place. Rui wishes he could remember at least a single smidgen of what emotions he'd experienced on this stage. All he could come up with was a simple blank page.

Now that he put on a show along with his friends, a single sentence makes a noiseless splash on that blank page.

I am happy.

"Miss Director!" He hears kids call as he gets to the audience seats. A crowd of children surrounds him almost immediately. "We missed seeing your shows! Why's your hair so long all of a sudden?"

"Woah! It's the pretty singing lady from the stage!"

"And the cool one who did those jumps and spins!"

"Wasn't that the guy who jumped high enough to touch the roof when he forgot his underwear in that song?"

"Huh?! Oi! Remember me for something nicer!"

"...He's kinda funny."

Rui can't help but laugh at that. Somehow feeling like something deep in his heart has lit up with a bright luminous light. It's so light-hearted and silly but at the same time he feels so much for all these children who came to watch their shows and remembered them enough to give them names. Rui is bad at feelings, and yet, his hands itch to offer the kids something, anything, to express at least a fraction of the magnitude of fondness he feels.

"You came here every day back then but all the actors except you came yesterday and the yesterday of yesterday!"

Rui plucks the long blue balloon that rolls freely on the ground.

"I was… thinking too hard, I suppose." He says, twisting the balloon into the shape of a bear, and hands it off to the kid who asked.

There are a few spare balloons on the floor so Rui gently asks the children what they want made and they raise their hands gleefully shouting out requests after requests.

The one still clutching onto the bear squints at him. "You also got shorter. Did thinking make you smaller?"

He puts a finger to his lips, loudly whispering. "I'll tell you all a secret. I exchanged some centimetres of my height to get longer hair! You can't tell this to anyone, okay?"

The kids gasp theatrically.

As they return back to their parents with balloons in their hands, Rui knows that they've already started to tell their parents all about the mysterious Miss Director who exchanged height for hair.

A ripple of longing pain traverses through his body.

It feels like they're returning; all the reasons why he came to love this world in the first place.

Rui doesn't want to leave just yet.

‧₊˚✩彡

Rui has been spending a lot of his time in Tsukasa's spare guest room.

He's thankful that the rest of the Tenmas haven't really noticed anything different in him and that they're allowing him to stay for as long as he'd like. The excuse they're using has a piece of truth in it; Rui is lonely all alone in his house since his parents are out so he came to stay with Tsukasa like an extended sleepover. They know that this excuse isn't going to work forever and that Rui is eventually going to feel uncomfortable staying over at someone else's for so long so the next house he's going to hide in is going to be his own until his parents come back.

Rui is still hesitant to use anything Tsukasa owns even though the guy insisted that he feel free to stay comfortably.

He's hesitant about it in their house but in their garage? Rui has made a second home for himself, preferring to stay in the garage most of the time.

It's not that he's not social or anything, but that Rui just requires a little bit of his own space to really focus on what he loves doing. His tendency to forget the physical world exists and that he needs to get his energy back by actually feeding his body is something that concerns the Tenma family a lot. So to tackle that problem, Tsukasa arrives at the garage a bit earlier than meal time and chats with Rui until he notices the time and pulls Rui away from whatever new thing he's coming up with.

Sometimes it's frustrating.

It would be rude to pull out his notebook or his phone and start writing down a rough draft of the invention so that he doesn't lose the image he has in mind while he's sitting on the dinner table with everyone, wouldn't it? Rui only knows this to be true because he did this while staying over at Nene's once when they were still in elementary school. Nene came up to him later to say that her parents thought he lacked proper table manners.

Tsukasa's parents and sister seem like nice people. He honestly doesn't want to come off as a weirdo to them.

It makes him sweat just a bit when Saki asks him why he's wearing a bucket hat inside their house, but then that conversation quickly transforms into Saki's own monologue about the time she'd seen a cute bucket hat on sale while going out with her girlfriends. Mr. Tenma instantly offers her money to buy that hat, but Saki refuses him saying that she wants to experience true 'youth' by working hard to buy it with her own money. Rui likes the calm, chaotic and nice atmosphere the Tenma family has.

…Until the attention turns to him again.

"Well, to be honest, I tried cutting my hair by myself and ended up with an embarrassingly uneven cut so…" Rui trails off.

Saki makes a sympathetic noise. "Ah, I totally get that!"

Mrs. Tenma puts a hand to her face with a small smile. "You don't need to wear a hat to hide that. Though we understand if you want to continue wearing it, there was this one time when Saki's bangs accidentally got cut off and…"

"Mom!" She whines, waving her hands. "You don't need to tell everyone about it!"

Tsukasa and his dad laugh loudly at that. It sounds almost the same. Rui can see how Tsukasa is the way he is now.

Rui doesn't know much about Tsukasa. But one thing he understands almost instantly; Tenma Tsukasa loves his family a lot. Especially his younger sister.

Watching such gentle affection and care be ever present whenever Tsukasa interacts with his sister is something he thinks he'll never get tired of. Rui knows he's bad at showing his own emotions because most of the time he doesn't know how or even what he's feeling. So seeing this kind of obvious and natural familial love melts some part of Rui's heart. Tsukasa is a kind person. He's certain of that now.

There's a silent routine that follows in the Tenma household.

Rui stays at Tsukasa's and makes his appearance only during the morning or the evening when school ends. Tsukasa's parents and his sister are still under the impression that he's going to school like normal, when in reality he spends his day in the Sekai.

So, yeah, life as an accidental time traveller has been surprisingly monotonous.

"...and this mechanism here is to stop the lever from rotating when I set it down like this. The sticker I stuck on here might look cute but it's honestly to cover how dull and plain everything looked. Form follows function is a rule of thumb when making stuff like this."

But it's also funー getting to dive into a virtual world that exists like the eighth wonder of the world, talking with Tsukasa, Emu and Nene, creating all sorts of shows with people willing to carry it out with him, making weird and silly contraptions with no fear of judgement at all, getting to know this person who claims to be Rui's friend and his family; it's a good life. Rui could get used to this. Addicted to this even.

"One time I almost made a little boy cry because of how… unique my drone looked in its initial phase. That's when I realised that there's value to a good design of a good functioning piece of machine. I started studying how people perceived certain images to get a grasp of what my robots should look like. My friend in junior high helped me a lot with th-"

Rui zips his mouth shut when he finally realises what is happening.

Tsukasa is looking at him with a focused expression with a tinge of something he can't decipher just yet, his cheeks smushed by the back of the chair he's sitting on. He's been listening to Rui go on like this for almost an hour. For what? To be polite? Embarrassing. Rui should really be better at reading the room before he starts rambling about things that the majority of people aren't interested in. This is why he isn't good at maintaining friendships.

"My apologies, I didn't mean to say so much." He backtracks, tugging on his sleeve, resisting the urge to cover his face. "I run my mouth a lot when I get the opportunity to."

Tsukasa frowns. "No it's okay, go on. I like hearing you talk. I've said this to future you too."

"I see I've never managed to shed this bad habit then." Rui chuckles, flustered, trying to direct the conversation elsewhere. Tsukasa is too nice, really. "Ah, dinner's about to be done, isn't it? What time is it again?"

"We still have half an hour left."

"Oh."

And isn't that just painfully awkward? Rui runs his fingers through the grooves and bumps of his newest invention that's still resting in his hand, fidgeting with the lever, as if trying to memorise the shape of it. Anything to stop him from falling back into rambling so embarrassingly. Anything to make the atmosphere just a little less unbearable. His brain works at top speed trying to latch onto another topic before the silence can stretch on for too long.

Rui barely knows anything about Tsukasa.

(Tsukasa is loud. He loves his family. He is kind.)

He makes sure to tilt his head towards Tsukasa's direction and try maintaining some level of eye contact in order to not come off as cold and unfriendly. The frown that previously hung on Tsukasa's face tightens into a straight line with the way his lips are pressed together and there's an oddly pained look in his eyes. Rui immediately shifts his eyes elsewhere in panic, opening his mouth to blurt out whatever comes first in his head.

Tsukasa unfortunately beats him to it.

"I haven't told you about the first time I met our Rui, have I?"

Rui shakes his head.

"The first time I ever saw you was when you were putting on a show in Phoenix Wonderland. Emu was there with me too. We thought it was amazing how you used your drones to aid you in your one-man show. Well, until you got chased away by the security guard because you weren't a part of the employed cast members…

"And then, I found out you were in the same school as me. You gave me a lot of trouble just trying to find where you were! Even though you knew I was looking for you. You were up on the rooftop watching me running around like a headless chicken through your drone." Tsukasa huffs, his words taking a soft, fond tone.

That does sound like him.

"When I finally found you, I invited you to our troupe, and the first thing you did was tell me that you'd only join if we accepted another person."

"It was Nene." Rui catches on.

Tsukasa nods. "It was."

"Nene didn't show herself until after the show was hastily concluded to cover up the fact that Nenerobo ran out of battery. The debut show we'd worked so hard to get right had gone all wrong. I was so mad that I ended up blaming Nene for everything. If only she'd been brave from the start, if only she had stepped on the stage herself instead of using a robot as a placeholder, if only she had tried harder to be courageous… Those were my thoughts as I yelled at her."

Rui's eyes immediately narrow, lips pressing together to keep himself from jumping to her defence.

"You don't think like that anymore, right?" Because if he does, he has another thing comingー

Tsukasa doesn't disappoint. "I don't. I was in the wrong." He agrees, looking a little amused. "Your future self tore me a new one for saying all that to her. It's really funny how you're making the same exact expression I remember our Rui made back then."

That's the least Rui could've done for Nene in that sort of situation. He'd reach across dimensions and grab his own future by the collar if he didn't even do that much.

In addition…

"You managed to make me that angry and somehow we're still friends now?" Rui wonders out loud.

Tsukasa laughs. "We almost didn't make up. It's all thanks to Emu and Nene who ambushed you when you were returning back home that we're still friends. They grabbed you from both sides so that you couldn't move while I played Untitled on my phone. You wouldn't listen to me at all otherwise." Warm eyes meet two toned ones. "You're surprisingly stubborn in your beliefs."

That was a jab at his current situation too, wasn't it? Rui looks away.

"It was a rough start and I could tell that you didn't fully trust me for a long time after you joined the troupe. There was no way a simple show could convince you of my character. I may be insensitive and unreasonable at times, but I understood that much. I don't even remember when we went from Kamishiro Rui and Tenma Tsukasa to Weirdo One-Two Finish."

The word 'weirdo' sends an unpleasant frisson down Rui's spine. Even though he should be used to that word by now. Somehow, it makes him despair just a little to know that it still haunts him even during what he thinks is the best part of his life.

"Weirdo One-Two Finish…" Rui repeats.

People find what is beyond their assigned 'normal' weird. Rui realised this far too early. It was because he cherished his own individuality far too much and because he accepted that other people couldn't accept that part of him that Rui found some sort of quiet, bland peace in the life he'd built for himself. The word 'weird' isn't a bad thing. It simply describes that which is outside the assigned 'normal'.

The word 'weird' isn't a bad thing. 'Weird' isn't bad. 'Weird' isn't bad. 'Weird' isn't bad.

Rui has had this sentiment echo through his very bones. Through the marrows, through his thin stretched skin, through his lone heart and his lone brain; he has allowed this sentiment to echo like a wash of truth in the chaos of existing as a human.

When a blank page is provided, you write on it.

Weird isn't bad.

Weird isn't bad.

Weird isn't bad.

You keep writing and writing and writing, endlessly, trying to convince yourself, trying to be the one holder of truth in this nonsensical universe.

You keep writing and writing and writing and it's only when you stop to take breath you realise that the blank page you were provided with has turned into a jumble of black ink because of how many times it's been written over. It's only when you look back that you realise that the more you hold onto a denied truth, the less you are to believe in it.

Rui is looking forward into his future right now, and that future now boldly declares that his truth that has gotten so stained and torn at the seams is in fact the truth.

Wasn't life already complicated enough without all of this?

From which part of his dry heart is he supposed to muster up the courage to believe in anything anymore?

"It's what the school calls the both of us!" Tsukasa replies, blissfully ignorant to the way Rui's entire universe has been just shaken. "At first it was only you but then we became friends and I keep getting wrangled into your experiments. I'm a member of the disciplinary committee, you know?"

Rui snaps his head to look at Tsukasa. "You shouldn't let me drag you into stuff you aren't interested in… I might be insensitive and unreasonable at times too, but I can understand." The sentence starts in a joking lilt, wavering towards the end.

"It's okay." Tsukasa repeats, insistent, pressing, looking into Rui's eyes. "I like being a part of your daily life in whatever way possible. It's true that you are insensitive and unreasonable at times, but it's okay because we both end up having a good laugh about it later." His lips stretch into a bright, radiant smile. "Besides, isn't it better being a weirdo combo with me rather than being alone?"

But.

He wants to interject.

It's gross and humiliating, that even after having his hand put into Tsukasa's warm, warm grasp, that Rui is still hesitating to trust him so much.

Tsukasa pleaded with him for his trust. It shouldn't be so hard to just give in. A huge part of Rui is pliant and willing. It exists as an excited, eager child with star-struck eyes, jumping at the thought of finally having people who were willing to be with him. A smaller part of Rui is still scared. Because that same excited and eager child has been struck with the harsh truth of life far too many times. It doesn't matter how willing he is if it just serves to make him look too desperate for any sort of human connection. People don't like that kind of desperation.

Time and again, Rui finds himself tangled up in what people think.

But here in this small family garage, it's just him and Tsukasa.

Rui is closer to being an eager tall child rather than one who cowers away at the thought of judgement here. Besides, Tsukasa begged him for his trust, didn't he?

If you cherish the things you like, you'll be able to make good friends. Just like how mom and dad met.

Are you the one? The voice of Rui's thought takes the form of his younger self. How many times has he thought this to himself again?

People don't like desperation. Yet Rui desperately hopes for it to be true.

He's so overwhelmed.

"Yeah." It comes out in the end, dumbstruck. Then more properly, clearing his dry throat, "Yeah, it is."

Rui finally feels like he understands just an iota of what his future self has come to feel towards Tenma Tsukasa. He finally feels like there's meaning to the way his blond head pops up in every one of the polaroids Rui has stuck in his room. He finally feels like Tsukasa was onto something when he insisted that it was okay that Rui be himself. This person is one who will accept him, and his future has already made peace with that acceptance.

"Youー"

This is the person whoー

"Saved me from a lonely fate." He blurts out, trying to fit Tsukasa into a neater box of what exactly he is to Rui.

"'Saving' isn't the word I would use." Tsukasa shakes his head. Somehow it feels like this moment has happened before too. Like deja vu of a moment that Rui has never experienced in his life. "I didn't 'save' you. You can't give me the credit for all the choices you made, you will make. A person isn't the product of only one person who enters their life."

That… is true.

That is definitely true. Saving is an intense yet clinically detached word. What his future self holds for Tsukasa seems much warmer. It is deserving of a better word, a better treatment, than a so-called 'salvation'. Rui's life is a product of all the people he has interacted with. It's because he held on stubbornly to the affection his parents and Nene blessed him with during elementary school, it's because he latched onto the sleeve of an exhausted Mizuki up on that rooftop during junior high, it's because Rui as he is now knows that his life doesn't carry any inherent meaning to it, yet he stubbornly ascribes it one to cling onto the hope of the next thing that will make his heart sing.

How could something so vast as a life ever be accredited to the efforts of a single person?

"Not my saviour." Rui speaks, tone light, "then what name should I give you in my mind?"

The corner of his eyes crinkle and Tsukasa offers Rui a smile like the first conception of a star.

"You can start with calling me your friend."

☾₊ ⊹ °.⋆₊ ⊹ ♪

The oddness of his own garage is unsettling.

Rui can recognize all the furniture, the toys, the books, the tools and the placement of everything hasn't changed much at all. It's because everything is so similar that he feels odd when he tugs at the drawer by the desk only to find a bunch of accessories that he previously did not have. It's because everything is the same that Rui feels like he landed wrong when he naturally extends his arm towards where he keeps his pens, only to find a different brand of it, all with their caps chewed of course. It's all so similar but different in little ways that Rui feels a little like he's going crazy the longer he stays.

The house has thankfully not changed much so Rui has been spending more of his time in his dusty childhood bedroom.

It's so quiet.

Rui misses staying over at Tsukasa's just a little bit more.

It was starting to get uncomfortable for him even though the family was very accommodating to Rui and his needs. There's a strange kind of embarrassment in staying over at someone else's for a prolonged period of time, taking up their space and eating their food. It's rude to intrude on other people's time and space for too long, isn't it? Like his parents used to while visiting their relatives, Rui presented the Tenma family with a popular green tea gift box as a 'thank you' for letting him stay for so long. It seemed like the polite thing to do.

He might be bad at social cues at times but he's also tried his hardest to learn from seeing his parents interact with other people. Rui doesn't want to be rude but what's considered 'rude' is so subjective and arbitrary that sometimes it's hard to keep up.

Rui keeps himself busy by reading the new stack of books that have been added, quickly burning through them, yet still quietly noting to himself his future self's preferences. A person's taste in books revealed a lot about them. The Rui of the future was all but a stranger to him. Getting to know him in this way felt like fair play. Though, very honestly, Rui couldn't see much changes in his personality seeing the newer books he'd bought. Just that the amount of books on direction have only increased.

Rui is glad that his future is still pursuing his dreams with renewed vigour. The sky he thought he could never reach at all seems just a little bit closer like this.

(Somewhere in his heart, there's relief. He didn't give up on his dreams after all.)

As he closes his third book, he hears the door click open.

For a moment he fears that his parents came much, much earlier than they'd expected and that they'd decided to surprise him. After all, the only ones who own a key to open the door of this house are his parents and Rui. He ties his hair into a small ponytail in one swift motion and pads out of his own bedroom to see if it's actually them. A soft thud rings out into the empty hallway that leads to the genkan. Someone who's exchanging their outdoor footwear for the slippers lined up in front then, Rui guesses.

That narrows it down to someone familiar enough with his family to feel free to come inside without the need to shout their presence out loud.

Which means this is…

"Nene." Rui greets as she stands by the entrance, a thick book placed down onto the floor. "What brings you here?"

She pockets a familiar key into her cardigan before bending down to pick the book up. Does she own a copy of his key in the future then? What a development. Rui keeps his thoughts to himself, perfectly steady and smiling, even though his heart feels as though it might give out. What reason could he have to give her access to his house? This seems beyond the realm of anything Rui had imagined for the relationship between him and Nene.

"The garage was locked, so I thought you might be inside." Nene answers, and then displays the front cover of the book she's holding up. "You aren't going to find much about yourself, if that's what you're trying to do. I brought something that might help."

It's a photo album.

Ah. Nene really knows him the best no matter the timeline.

It feels as though he's being pried open when she so casually says what Rui has been thinking about. Normally that sort of stuff would make Rui want to hide away and withdraw into his shell even further. But this is Nene. His first friend. The one whose words bolster Rui to do his best to achieve his dreams even now. If she only asked, Rui would willingly tear open his chest and claw his heart out for her to appraise.

If only she'd ask.

"Staying in the garage was getting too stuffy, I need to breathe real air sometimes, don't I?" Rui laughs lightly, "Thank you for thinking about me, Nene."

She only rolls her eyes and mutters something under her breath, before walking past him into the living room.

He follows.

Between the three of his new-found troupemates, Nene is the one Rui feels most comfortable around. She might be real and not a piece of his guilty subconscious mind, which is a little scary to think of, but at least she's familiar. Rui has a base he can stand on, when he interacts with Nene. But pretending that nothing happened between them feels somewhat strange.

That chasm still exists, doesn't it?

Just because they pretend it isn't there doesn't make it go away.

But maybe it's for the best.

Rui would rather he be the only one to feel guilty about that time rather than burden Nene with sharing the discomfort of a past they don't want to talk about.

He's glad that they're still friends, despite everything. He's glad that they made it this far.

Rui and Nene settle onto the plush sofa, sitting side by side with the album laid out onto the table in front of them. She seems to have grown just a bit taller than what she used to be before. Rui notices the level of their shoulders while Nene leans forward to open the album, one page at a time. Her hair seems longer too, even in the high ponytail she's tied it up into. It's rare that Rui sees her tie her hair in this way. It was as if she felt the same way as Rui did about letting hair down and using it like a shield.

He thinks of a dazzling Nene up on the stage, singing her heart out, and his heart squeezes.

Rui is not the only one who changed.

"This is from the time we went to that riverside." Nene says, pointing at a photograph.

He leans down as well to see a photo of Nene posing shyly with both her hands up in a waving motion, a thick trunk of a tree serving as the backdrop. This, he remembers. Nene never did like being photographed when she was aware of the camera's lens being aimed towards her. A lot of the videos and photos that Rui owns of a younger Nene were mostly taken like a candid shot. Their families were close so it was natural that a lot of their childhood memories were captured with the presence of the other.

Nene had shaken her head thrice already when her parents asked her to pose somewhere so that they could take a photo of her. Rui had his taken a few times by his own parents before but he was pushing the corners of his lips with his fingers in haste to finish taking all the pictures already. He wanted to go and explore the riverside. Nene tagged along with him while their parents told them not to wander off too far.

Before they could return, Rui had taken the camera with him and asked Nene to stand by the tree. She'd of course declined furiously once more, embarrassed to be photographed. But Rui had approached this with a plan of his own.

"You'll need to learn how to pose in front of a camera once you become an actress, Nene!" He'd said, holding onto the camera, watching her face go slack in shock. "This can be like a trial for you to overcome."

'Will I really have to?" She'd pouted, grabbing onto the hem of her frock.

Rui nodded sagely. "Of course."

And that was all it took for Nene to tilt her head at the camera and wave both her arms up, still unsure what posing for a camera meant. It was an awkward picture; a young girl red in the face waving both her hands up, with fingers splayed hesitantly and an uncertain smile on her face. Rui loved it so much.

Rui giggles. "And yet you still don't know where to put your hands while posing for a photo." He's seen the few polaroids here and there.

"Oh shut up."

The pages flip and flip and flip, making Rui relive every moment in the past where they were simply two awe-filled children who wanted to chase after their dreams back when life was so, so simple. A photo of Rui with a bug in his hand, Nene tilting her head like a confused puppy, pictures from their elementary school plays, the time when they went to the beach, a series of seashells that Rui and Nene had found together lined up, and them standing in front of the snowman they'd built during winter; their childhood stored in snapshots.

The last picture they have of them together is during graduation from elementary school where Rui's eyes are already starting to take on the tiredness he feels perpetually now, while Nene looks unhappy about the idea of Rui going to a different school.

Then blank.

There's a huge gap of empty transparent covers staring up at both of them until it's impossible to ignore the implication of the absence.

Then suddenly a photo of all of them standing on wonder stage, their arms spread wide in the trademark 'wonderhoy' pose. Then another, posing by the mascot of Phoenix Wonderland. Then another, and another and another. Until the album is full of vibrant colours and bright smiles once again. Until the end of the album where they pose again where they started, on wonder stage, but with new show costumes, and a scrawl over the plastic cover that reads 'onto the next stage!'.

The album shuts with a soft thump.

The sound is impossibly loud in the silence that has permeated in the living room.

Well.

That was it.

All of both their lives summed up into one thick book full of pictures.

Rui wants to laugh and cry at how correct the album is in terms of the sudden and jarring gap in between.

There was no avoiding that part or their lives no matter what, was there?

His helplessness would come and haunt him, even in his future, singling out every mistake he made by never having the guts to reach out to his struggling friend. Rui's sin of willful negligence would come to be the ruin of both of them. What is he supposed to even say in such a situation? Sorry? For a mistake he's deliberately making once again? For not being a good friend during Nene's time of need and only appearing once their lives have become better?

Would the apology even sound sincere if he's committing the same sin yet again, spiralling deeper and deeper down into a territory from where he can never come back?

This has happened already.

Rui cannot change the future.

Once everything goes back to normal, it's not going to matter how much he wishes for change. The future is still going to run in its inevitable course and Kamishiro Rui is still going to be a terrible friend to one Kusanagi Nene. There is a hopeless sort of despair in knowing your own future yet being unable to change it because a power higher than his own exists and it's the one controlling their fates.

Nene's side profile is hidden by her bangs. Her expression is unreadable.

Rui reaches one hand towards her, to get her out of whatever self-loathing monologue she must be going through in her head. Only to be stopped by both of Nene's hands that hold onto him. Her hands are still smaller than his. In the one second it took for Rui to look at his own hand clasped into Nene's, her head lifts up and when Rui looks at her face, the expression she has speaks of terrible guilt. Eyes serious and jaw set.

"Don't." Rui pleads immediately

Nene says it anyway.

"I'm so sorry."

Rui feels his eyes sting. The guilt in him churns the inside of his stomach until he feels like he can taste his own bile on his tongue. It's sickening.

"Why are you apologising?"

"You who have already passed that stage of your life and me who's still stuck there but doesn't do anything, among the two of us aren't I the one in the wrong?" Rui runs his gaze downwards, unable to look her in the eye. "I'm sorry."

Nene laughs but it's choked up. "Wasn't aware you were holding monopoly over the right to feel guilty, asshole." Rui feels like a thread ready to break apart. If Nene is actually crying he's going to will himself out of existence. "It might have passed, but it still happened. You were there and I was there."

It feels all wrong for Nene to blame herself. Her words are right, but Rui can't help but think that all the rightful blame should be placed at him who never approached her at all even after he heard what happened. The blame lies on Rui who let his guilt eat away so badly that he couldn't even make himself go and console a sorrowful friend. The blame lies only on him who let the silence fester until their bond rotted away with no signs of communication from both sides.

And the worst part of it all; this is going to happen again.

There was little to no chance that Rui would remember a single thing from his time here. So until then he would have to bear the burden of the knowledge of all he could do to make things better but then forget it all once he returns back to his original timeline. There was no way to change what was meant to happen other than by making the right choices when it happened the first time.
Hindsight was truly the most useless superpower in the world.

The past won't change.

It can't change.

Rui can't do anything.

A longing ache ripples inside his body and Rui almost wants to give up.

"The past is in the past." Nene murmurs, hands tightening around Rui's own. "What's the point of wallowing in our regrets? We've come so far, Rui."

They really have.

Rui doesn't want to ruin anything for Nene. This little happiness that both of them have found in the form of their troupe; Rui doesn't want to let it go. This is the first time Rui has ever thought of a future where he's so happy that it's terrifying to think of any other universe in which he's not this happy. He wants this future so bad it's unbearable. He wants this to last forever.

In a fit of courage, Rui shifts his position and wraps his arms around Nene, hugging her tightly, not even allowing the pain in his chest to take him away from her.

"I hope you can come to forgive yourself." Rui says, knowing that nothing he'll say will convince her otherwise.

Because whatever they're made of, they are the same, Rui knows Nene's stubborn nature like his own.

No matter what he says, she'll still feel guilty. Just like how he feels his guilt dig deep into his bones.

Nene says nothing and only brings her own arms around him, to gently pat his back. Rui would sob at the tenderness of the action if he could.

"You've made good friends here, Rui." She says instead. "We both have. Let's go into our future with no regrets, together."

Something like shame and sickness poisons Rui's gut at those words.

The feeling of wrongness doesn't leave Rui even as they slowly part from their embrace. The ripple of pain in his chest has long faded, yet he still feels like he's committing the greatest sin to exist in this world.

Nene loves him so much. He is so loved here. The feeling of being loved is so warm and wonderful that it's to the point of being sickening. He's basking beneath the rays of the sun, drinking in all the golden nectar; so much so that he feels like an addict, like a fervent devotee, like a shameless thief. He doesn't want them to go away.

He bites the inside of his cheeks instead, as he replies, more honest than he ever has been in his entire life, "There's nothing I'd wish more for."

𖤓 ⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ

Rui doesn't know what to make of Emu.

She clearly seems to be another one of his treasured friends. If the pictures in his gallery and room don't tell enough, the blueprints pinned onto his wall of inspiration marked with a neon pink 'for Emu' says it all. But like Tsukasa, he has never met her before, or rather, he hasn't met her just yet, so his idea of what she's like and what she thinks of him is a completely blank slate.

In his head, Emu is simply an extremely cute and friendly girl who seems to know Rui to a certain extent.

His penchant of hating vegetables and loving shows, huh.

Those are very basic pieces of information about him but Rui can't help but think that this girl knows more than his classmates with whom he has spent almost three years.

Her name had rang a bell in Rui's mind the moment he'd heard of it. There was no mistaking who 'Ootori' was in this part of Shibuya. Ootori as in the Ootori Group who owned and ran Phoenix Wonderland. Back in the past, Rui had scouted the area of that amusement park to perform where he could easily escape the eyes of guards who prohibited unauthorised shows. He'd hemmed and hawed over the decision while fixing up his drones and making them look all cute so that they could attract the attention of younger visitors. In the end, he'd decided not to do it until he graduated from junior high. Not out of fear of judgement or not having enough time or anything like that; it was just a little overwhelming to think of putting on one-man shows when he couldn't even find the energy to get out of bed in the mornings.

It seemed like it all worked out in the end since Tsukasa said that they'd met because Rui was putting on a show. A little confusing that they only met during the second year of high school but oh well.

Emu was more than happy to show Rui all the hidden spots her Rui had shown her. There were a few that he hadn't discovered just yet.

Because wandasho is a freelance theatre troupe now, the time Emu gets to spend in her beloved amusement park has been greatly reduced. Apparently, they used to work directly under Emu's family's administration as official part-time stage performers before they decided to go into the industry as freelancers. There was history imbued in the stage Rui helped direct the first show on since he came into the future. History that he will never be able to grasp no matter how many times any of the three narrate it to him. Future Rui's emotions and thoughts were his and his alone. The Rui who exists in this world like a mismatched piece of puzzle can never even begin to pretend to be that person.

And that might be okay.

Rui is envious of the life his future has built for himself, but it's okay.

It's in Rui's nature to be covetous. It doesn't matter if it's himself he's coveting from. This is a small fragment of happiness that he never thought he would be lucky enough to receive. Isn't it natural to want to keep it for himself? Isn't it natural that Rui would want to stay in this world just a bit longer?

Emu doesn't say it out loud but Rui can tell that she misses their Rui.

She's trying her best to make sure Rui doesn't feel left out, but can anyone possibly fill in the hollow of a history that has never happened? Rui isn't the only one whose life has been affected because of the weird glitch that plucked him out of the past. There was another one here and his disappearance has displaced all the people who loved him. Rui cannot ignore that for the sake of his own enjoyment or uncertainty.

There are inside jokes that Rui will never understand. There are half spoken sentences that taper off quietly when Emu realises that Rui doesn't know what she's talking about. There are a myriad of emotions hidden behind that bright smile that Rui cannot possibly understand because he's not the one who's supposed to be in this place.

Even then he feels loved.

It's a baffling feeling.

He's all but an imposter in this world and yet astonishingly he's still loved, just because he's Kamishiro Rui.

He's loved and he doesn't understand.

Respect and admiration he can slowly digest, but this kind of love where there's no other condition than for Rui to just be himself is hard to believe in.

It's incomprehensible for Rui that anyone would know him, understand him, see him, and then decide that yes this is someone they feel is worth living, this is someone who will receive their kindness and affection just because they exist, and that this is someone they willingly choose to be around everyday.

The world is indifferent though.

It neither stops nor slows down. Rui doesn't have the time to stop and think leisurely about being treated like this when kindness flows as naturally as a river does to the sea.

Currently he is in Emu's house.

His parents came back from their trip so Rui packed his bags and went to Emu's immediately so that they don't realise that their child has somehow reverted back to his junior high self. He sent them a text explaining that he'd be staying over at Emu's house for a few days because of certain plans. Rui has always been an independent child so it wouldn't be too suspicious for his parents to receive that kind of text from him.

It feels a little bad to run from home without even greeting his parents who came back from an international trip. Normally Rui would be at home asking them all about what happened, sitting by the sofa in the living room, bouncing his leg in excitement to know everything that transpired. In a way, his parents' stories about their careers were the most interesting thing to happen in Rui's life when he was still in junior high.

It makes Rui feel just that much more guilty about never fully appreciating his parents who have steadfastly continued loving and supporting Rui in that quiet and warm way only family can manage to.

Rui isn't blind to the way the huge dining table in the Ootori residence remains mostly empty with only Emu and her siblings making an appearance.

She has a big sister who works as an elementary school teacher, two big brothers who are mostly busy with the family business and even busier parents who Rui never sees once, be it day or night. The huge mansion doesn't have the soft and cosy aura a real home should. Rui can understand that people can be busy with their own work, he understands that well because his own parents still pursue what they love, and he has no issue with that.

Even then.

Shouldn't a family feel just a little bit more like a family despite the physical absence? He wonders to himself.

His parents aren't home most of the time either and yet their presence is permeated in every nook and cranny of their house. Rui knows he's loved because there are sticky notes taped to the shelf containing his favourite ramune candy telling him to remember to eat something other than just that, there's framed pictures of his mother and father before and after Rui was born, there are well worn soft house slippers aligned neatly by the genkan and at the base of the wall of his parents' bedroom there's shaky hiragana scrawled with coloured markers faded with time.

Emu's house doesn't have anything that could suggest the possibility of a family living here.

Other than the hallway lined with artworks of different less popular artists that Rui recognises and Emu's own room, it feels like he's looking at a textbook definition of a house.

It's strange.

Rui doesn't want to intrude too much on the family matters of someone else though. So he doesn't ask anything.

Emu's room is vibrant enough, at least. Rui can feel the tension in his body slowly disappear when the door opens to reveal a plethora of colours and a space well lived-in. The room has personality. And it smells faintly of candy and vanilla. Rui feels like a character in a shoujo manga who's entering a girl's bedroom for the first time. This is what shoujo mangakas imagine every girl's bedroom looks and feels like.

Rui thinks of his own messy garage-turned-room with a pile of unwashed laundry strewn across the floor, and then Nene's dimly lit, all curtains closed, bedroom which almost always smelled of the spicy chips she bought from the regular convenience store she frequented, mixed with floral air freshener; he almost laughs out loud at the dichotomy. He hasn't been in Nene's bedroom in a long while, but he knows that it couldn't have changed much since then. Nene doesn't like making huge changes in her living space.

"Tada~ And this is my room!" Emu's voice tears him out of his thoughts. She's patting at the small round cushion by the low table before her hand dives into the bowl resting on the table, shuffling around as one piece of candy spills out. "We can stay here together until bedtime. Do you want some candies?"

Rui wants to shake his head as he kneels onto the plush cushion, denying just out of polite courtesy, but he also doesn't want to seem too distant either so he settles on saying, "Sure."

As he sits on his knees, Emu hums from her cross-legged seat, searching for something in the bowl, sticking her tongue out in concentration.

It's cute.

Rui is to sleep in the guest bedroom since Emu's brothers and bodyguard almost had a heart attack at the idea of letting this vaguely masculine presenting person sleep in the same room as their youngest sister. The original plan was just that- Rui sleeping in a separate room- but it was hilarious acting dumb in front of them as to why it would be weird and making it seem as though he was actually going to stay in Emu's room. Emu and her sister caught on quickly and played along. Rui's daily quota of terrorising men has been fulfilled.

He reaches up to his head to take off the plain white bucket hat that Tsukasa lent him, tugging at the rubber band to let his hair down. Future him apparently has shorter but well kept hair. According to the pictures he's seen, the hair length isn't all that different from his own but it's just that the hairstyle is an obvious wolfcut, rather than whatever nest he has up there right now. What he has could probably pass for the ugliest short bob known to mankind.

He breaks the knots in his hair with his fingers and tugs at his side bangs. The overgrowth of hair isn't all that aesthetic but Rui feels ridiculously safer when it's down. Like his own personal curtain to hide from the world.

"Rui, catch!"

"Wh-"

He doesn't have the time to blink before something lands on his face with a loud rattling sound and his nose bridge throbs. The thing drops on his awaiting palm with one more rattle while he rubs at his nose which is surely turning red. He sees Emu's panicked face closing up on him through the crack of his slowly opening eye.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" She immediately apologises as her hands remain in the air in front of her, unsure what to do. Her wide pink eyes even wider with alarm. "Are you hurt?"

Rui does what is obvious in this situation.

He falls over onto the floor dramatically, shielding his face, still clutching onto the vaguely bottle shaped thing in his hand. There's a loud squeak coming from Emu's general direction. Rui groans in a theatrical manner, coughing like he's on his deathbed right now, like he's about to keel over and die any second.

"Your plan was to attack me with a fatal weapon after luring me to your room all along?" He gasps, shaking his head from where he's laying on the ground, eyes closed. "How could you…?!"

He opens one eye to peek at her. Emu's expression has changed now that she's realised what's going on.

"No! It was never my plan, my princess!" She shakes her head, looking absolutely scandalised. It would be good acting if not for the way her mouth is twitching, trying not to smile. "The royal court told me it would help you, I swear!"

Rui coughs weakly, the sound coming out more like a wheeze. "Lies! I have been betrayed by the one closest to me, how could you do this to me!"

"I would never lie, my dear. The royal court must have misled me!"

"It's too late to point fingers at anyone." He lets his breathing slow down, holding the thing close to his chest. "You will bear the sin of hearing the last words of a dying princess; I will never forgive you!"

Emu looms over his body, shielding him from the direct light coming from above. "My princess! Nooo…!" She exclaims, her body curling into itself as her shoulders shake. At first Rui thinks she's actually simulating a crying body language, but then he gets one look at her face and she's turning red with how hard she's holding her laughter. He immediately bursts out laughing.

Emu joins in instantly, wheezing and giggling.

For a moment, the room is filled with their joint laughter at how silly everything is. The impromptu performance seemed like the most natural thing to slip into, and Rui laughs and laughs and laughs. Emu is rolled over next to him, curled up similarly to him, unable to stop laughing. They remain like that until they get it all out of their systems, face hurting and sides aching, and they're both lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling.

"You were killed by the thing you like the most." Emu breathes out.

Rui smiles, exhilarated. "Shouldn't have killed me then, dear prince."

She giggles. "I meant the thing you're holding in your hand, princess."

He finally takes a look at his palm and sees a tiny familiar pale blue bottle staring down at him. The pill shaped candies in the bottle rustle like a taunt and the smile on his face dies down.

"This is…"

"Ramune candy!" She completes, "They're your favourite, aren't they? I was saving this one for when I'd see you again."

She knows his favourite food.

Huh.

It's strange to Rui. The idea that anyone would see something and then think of him. The small bottle of ramune candy is a big gesture of affection to him. Isn't his future a lucky one to be so loved?

"Is that so?" Rui asks, voice soft. "Thank you, Emu."

A shame that this affection isn't one aimed towards him specifically. It's to Kamishiro Rui. As he knows now, there are two and somehow the idea of sharing is terrible to him.

Greedy.

Emu's arm outstretches upwards and Rui catches the movement from the corner of his eyes. He naturally glances towards her, and her eyes are firmly locked onto the ceiling that is full of neon coloured stars. Glow in the dark ones. They're positioned in an almost uniform pattern like they're meant to symbolise something. Maybe some constellations?

"Did you know that he was the one who put those up?" Emu says, still staring at the stars and tracing the path they make. Rui automatically knows who she's talking about. "He told me it's supposed to mimic the night sky of the day and year I was born. The sky and the constellations that can be seen in the northern hemisphere on the 9th of September he'd said…"

And Rui sees it then.

This is something he can never have as he is now. Something that no matter how much he covets will never be his because he hasn't lived the life the Rui of this timeline has. No matter how much he begs or prays, this is the one constant, the one blessing, that only Kamishiro Rui of the future will receive. And that all Rui can do is stare at the glossed over far away look in Emu's eyes, watching her miss the him who is supposed to exist in this world.

She really… likes her Rui.

In a special way that she cannot like the Rui who is laying on the floor, staring at the stars and glancing at her face. The only thing he has for himself is the fondness these three feel for him as the past of a person they truly love. He's loved. It's a victory that tastes more of defeat in the end, but Rui honestly can't blame any of the three for this bittersweet win. Rui is the past of the person who is loved here so much that his hollow chest aches with it, and he can only watch how intensely the love shines through.

Rui ignores the pull he feels in his chest and lets the pain settle.

Emu is smiling, eyes crinkling, as she says, "Hey, I always wished we could meet when we were younger. I would've been your friend and done all those shows you never showed anyone else. All those shows no one stopped to watch, I would be there for you if I could." And Rui begins to understand true helplessness right then and there. He feels like he might crumble from the weight of it.

Helpless to do anything else at all, Rui goes for a smile, feeling his mouth twinge from the ache of earlier.

There is nothing more Rui wishes at that moment more than to have met everyone sooner. It's a hopeless pit that grows in his stomach as he thinks of going back to his place in the universe with all these memories, going back and seeking all of them out, going so that instead of being pulled up to the stage by kind hands, Rui can be the one to do it instead with the gift of his mystical future foresight.

But the world is cruel and indifferent.

Rui knows he's not going to remember a single thing once he returns. That his hopeless struggle for a place to fit in will still continue on and that he'll simply have to let fate sweep him away in its whimsical tides before he can ever meet these wonderful people.

So he smiles instead, keeping quiet of this vast knowledge, swallowing in the kindness offered to him by Emu and letting it burn his insides.

"Smiling suits you the best, Rui. I hope we meet sooner next time."

And Rui understands.

He understands why his future-self did what he did, staring up at the stickers on the ceiling. He suddenly understands it all too well. This is a fraction of what his future would feel in this situation. Yet Rui feels like he's breathless with all the emotions suffocating inside his narrow, narrow ribcage, willing the hollow to expand into a bigger space. If this is a fragment of what Rui would feel in the future, he understands why his future-self would want to capture a piece of the night sky just to gift this person.

His insides burn and burn and burn.

Jealousy or impatience he doesn't know, but it burns.

In the end Rui says nothing because he has nothing to say. He simply stares at the mimicry of a memorable night sky, unfathoming, silent and considering. Emu's words echo in his mind, resonating deeply within the cavities of his body, even as he finds himself lying in the guest bedroom, unable to fall asleep.

The feeling of a quiet sin creeping up on him once again.

Here's a fact; Kamishiro Rui, age thirteen, doesn't belong in a world where he's supposed to be sixteen.

Whatever glitch the Sekai had has messed up so badly that Rui knows that the world needs to reset to bring back equilibrium to the lives of all affected by the time travel. Two weeks is far too long a time to not permanently alter the course of the timeline. There will be a reset only Rui knows will occur, and that's a tragedy in its own right; to have hope in his future only to get that ripped away from him. It's only fair that he is the only one to be burdened by this knowledge. The punishment for the crime of gluttony.

He's not meant to be in this world yet he gorges himself with the affection of these three, he lavishes in the life of being happy for what feels like the longest time, and he lounges in the idea of finding people who will come to love him, unconditionally. He will be loved, that is a guarantee from the world he thought was cruel and indifferent.

"I think a swap will happen again soon." Rui confesses to the three after the end of another successful show. The faces the three make are memorable, Rui hopes that they're embedded into his eyelids and that they're the last thing he sees. His lips quirk up, expectant, "Can we have a sleepover all three of us together before I'm gone?"

"Of course!"

"Sure!"

"A sleepover? Let's have it at mine!"

And that's how Rui ends up in Emu's room once again. This time with Tsukasa and Nene as well. What he feels can't be called anything else but contentment as he lets himself melt over the soft mattress and pillow, while Tsukasa yells at Emu about not dirtying the bed with candy wrappers and sticky hands. He wants to hold onto that feeling, wrapped up so tightly in his chest that it doesn't go anywhere else, so that he doesn't go back to feeling nothing at all. He wants to hold onto it as long as he possibly can.

Emu braids his hair while he looks at Tsukasa's nails through bleary eyes as he paints over them, apologising when the paint gets over his skin. Nene is quietly playing with Tsukasa's natural curls, twisting the golden locks onto his finger and gently tugging on them like a soft massage. This scene is one Rui thinks happens often in this future. It's that kind of comfort where Rui wants to forget all about time travel and all the complicated stuff as he lets himself get lulled into sleep with Emu's gentle hands in his hair.

His life can't get better than this.

"Was my directing different from your Rui's?" He asks, nonchalant.

"A little bit." Nene answers, distracted and doesn't elaborate.

Tsukasa adds, "You're very impressive as you are currently. Rui, that guy, he's really insane to be even better than you are right now."

Rui doesn't take that personally because well, in a way he's the one being praised anyway. Such a thing can only mean that his future keeps improving, there was no way he could be disappointed with such an idea. He smiles slightly.

Because he's returning back to his rightful place soon, the three have been especially lax while answering whatever question Rui has in his mind.

In the end it's not going to matter much since he's going to forget it anyway. Still, it's nice to hear where his future may lead him.

Emu normally has an assigned bedtime for her, enforced by her siblings and the mascot who acts as her bodyguard. Today, it's a bit different because Rui told the three that the swap would be happening soon and that he wants one last sleepover before he returns back. Emu made up an excuse about planning shows that no one in her family bought, but she's been allowed the leeway to have a sleepover anyway. As long as they go to sleep before midnight.

The night stretches long and the warmth of the cuddle pile makes Rui want to melt into a gooey puddle. It's probably almost midnight. If judging by the way Tsukasa keeps nodding off and then waking himself up by blinking furiously. Emu's movements have gotten lethargic as well. So before anyone can fall asleep, Rui tries to get all his questions out and curb his curiosity. He's not going to get another chance like this one ever again.

"I have one last question." Rui says out loud while closing the bottle of the nail polish shut.

Emu makes a curious noise, Tsukasa watches him intently while Nene angles her head towards him silently.

He asks. "Have I ever, even accidentally, gotten any of you hurt?"

"Not really you-" Tsukasa begins to say but then pauses mid-sentence.

"Hm? What's that pause for?"

Nene scratches her cheek. "Well…"

And they finally tell him about what happened during their first Halloween as Wonderland x Showtime.

Rui isn't mad that they kept this from him. He understands that there's things that just don't come up in a casual conversation. There was no way Tsukasa was ever going to tell Rui 'hey remember that time I fell so hard because of your robot that I passed out?'. There are things that they won't tell him and he understands that. After all he has secrets of his own that are far worse than hiding a case of a technical mishap.

It still sounds like his worst nightmare.

All the words of his classmates accusing him of being weird and wanting to bring harm to them by making them do dangerous stunts comes rushing back when he hears how his own zombie robot had dragged Tsukasa and made him fall from a height. About how Emu, Nene and Rui could only watch as Tsukasa dropped with a loud bang, not standing up at all after. He can imagine the fear coursing through his veins at that moment, freezing him right where he stood; that fear quickly turning into sheer horror and self-disgust.

It feels a little like the voices of his classmates win. Rui was bound to hurt someone the way he was. They weren't wrong, were they?

"But!" Tsukasa loudly interjects immediately, snapping Rui out of his daze. "That accident was just that, an accident. You take all sorts of safety measures to make sure we don't get hurt these days. We all make mistakes. There's no way we can avoid failure without stunting our own growth."

Nene and Emu nod their heads in agreement.

"And also it didn't hurt, so you don't need to worry-"

"Stop!" Emu shouts right there. "If our Rui was here, he'd make you take that back so I'll do it for him now. Tsukasa, it's okay to say when it hurts."

"I don't want you to reduce your pain for me even as I am" Rui says, frowning. "My failure to think of you got you hurt. As Emu just said, it's okay to say when it hurts."

"Rui." Nene calls, ever the voice of reason. "You were thinking of Tsukasa, you really were. But sometimes, things don't go the way you want them to go despite all the safety measures you take. And that's okay too. Let's just agree that it was neither of you two's fault that happened and that it might happen again in the future but it comes with living a life and having a body that can get hurt."

"That's the most I've heard you speak," Tsukasa says at first and then continues, "And you're right. I think that there's no point in crucifying ourselves over an accident."

An accident.

Rui doesn't remember the last time someone let him get away with calling something an accident even if no-one ever got hurt.

Nene's words feel weighty with the experience of someone who saw two trains crash into each other. Except the stakes were lower. In here, Rui is allowed to make mistakes because in the end, he was still a human made of flesh and blood like anyone else. He's not an omnipotent being who can see into the future and accurately predict what may or may not happen. Being a child genius didn't come with that sort of added bonus unfortunately. All he can do as yet another human helpless to the whims of fateー or as Rui would like to put itー all the unpredictable variables of life, is keep doing his best to make sure the three of them are safe

"Rui would never harm any of us intentionally." Emu states with total conviction.

And Rui.

Rui doesn't know how to feel about this kind of trust.

(He's undeserving. Undeserving. Undeserving. Undeserving.)

Overwhelming.

His eyes burn a little but he closes them and agrees, "I wouldn't."

Even with the frequent headaches of visions from the past where everything was so dull and drab, Rui wants to stay.

He's selfish.

Just a little while longer.

Long after everyone falls asleep, Rui is still awake.

How can he sleep with so much guilt and shame and self-disgust twisting his insides?

It's terrible that this is the one time Rui doesn't feel the usual tug in his chest. The one who got thrown into the past must be asleep then. Or far too tired to continue urging him to make the swap already.

The absolute worst.

Rui is the absolute worst.

"Hey, if I said I wished I was here forever, that would be bad wouldn't it?" He whispers in his lonesome. "You must miss your dear director."

Their dear director misses them so much.

Every day Rui feels the tug happen like a physical pull in his chest and throat. Like a phantom of his future-self manifesting only to grab him by the collar of his shirt and his neck. Sometimes the tug is softer, but more bitter, more pained, because no matter what Rui is Rui, and he's the only one who would understand why his past would be so reluctant to let go of such warm people. Sometimes the tug feels like sigh; 'let go of them already' it asks, gentle despite everything. Not unkind to a person like him who has kept one from the people he loves the most. Rui is terrible.

Absolutely terrible.

Greediness, Rui thinks, will continue being one thing that will always characterise him well.

This warm, warm place is not meant to be his and yet he clinged on to it like a moth drawn to a flame.

Those two weeks were the happiest time of his life. Rui cannot imagine being more happy than he was then. He's so happy that it's to the point of misery. Why would he ever want to rid himself of a world where he's loved and wanted, only to return back to a place where the person who's leaning up against him doesn't even look him in the eye? Why would he ever want to go back to a world where he doesn't know of Tsukasa and Emu just yet?

He doesn't want to go.

The sin eats him up from within.

The worst part of this quiet tragedy is that with every breath Rui takes, he's reminded of the fact that he'll never remember being this loved ever again. Not until the second year of his high school.

It's bittersweet and ruinous, but Rui needs to let go.

For the swap to happen, there needs to be a level of willingness from both parties. Rui had ignored it all for the sake of breathing another second in a world full of friends and love and wonder. Ignoring it all for the sake of being in a dream where he has everything he wants.

It's because Rui has come to love these three that he needs to let go of this place.

Life needs to move on.

They need their treasured friend back.

Rui isn't meant to be here until another two gruelling years.

So Rui lets go.

He's surrounded from all sides by the sleeping bodies of the three who he will come to adore more than the idea of being loved itself. It feels as though the dark room is lit up by a warm glow, like the end of a firefly. A single firefly desperately flaps its wings at him while he stares, indifferent, from the outside world. In the dim of the room, somehow his eyes begin to glow as if lit from within by the reflection of the golden light of the firefly.

The same eyes that are burning, like the omen for an incoming flood.

Once when Rui was younger, he killed a bunch of fireflies by capturing them inside a glass jar. Even though the lid had holes to breathe through, freedom was something still very dear to a life form that's so fragile their life ends right when it begins. His mother warned him to let go of them soon, but Rui, foolish, naive and wonderstruck, held on greedily to the magnificent glow of the chartreuse fireflies.

He didn't open the jar in time before.

The fireflies died to the greed of one naive child.

But Rui is not naive anymore, nor is he a child.

So Rui simply looks at the sleeping faces of the three one last time before he closes his eyes.

The lid cracks open.

A supernova. Time warps into itself until unrecognisable.

.

.

.

"Hey! You've finally arrived, Tenma. I've been waiting. You have something to say to me, right?"