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The attic doesn’t feel the way it used to.
Each hesitant step An took on the old floorboards made an awful creaking sound and the amount of dust that entered her nose was enough to set off a consistent chain of sneezing. A single string of light leaked through the small window of the attic. It smelt like smoke and it didn’t hold the same warmth that it used to. The attic above An’s home is now just a hollow husk of what it used to be; it was empty except for a few boxes, dust bunnies and in the corner a small vintage television with a cassette player in front of it pushed against the wall.
It was weird being there again, because after Nagi and Taiga “left for America”, her dad suddenly never let her go up to the attic anymore. She never questioned it as a kid. She understood that he was retiring from his music career and that he was setting up the café and things must’ve been really stressful for him. She assumed he must’ve been embarrassed of a messy attic full of old music supplies and random pieces of furniture from their old house. But that was furthest from the case. She realized just now that he didn't want her to enter the attic because then she would’ve found out the truth about RAD WEEKEND years before Vivid BAD SQUAD’s fight with Taiga.
It had only been about two months since the battle, she was still fighting her thoughts and trying to accept the death of her biggest role model. Her parents especially had been trying to give her as much time as she needed to grieve, and the whole thing felt worse because she wasn’t ready to forgive them for keeping the secret from her... she didn’t want to. She knew she needed to move forward and didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about what happened all those years ago.
Though, it was clear that life had other plans for her when she stumbled upon a decently sized cardboard box in the middle of her attic expedition. Written in big black bulky letters on the side of the box was “THE VIVID ARCHIVES”. It was all taped up and protected like a metal safe even though it was really just worn out cardboard. She had never seen anything called ‘The Vivid Archives’ before. Nobody on the street or her father had ever brought it up to her.
The truth of the current matter was that she was instructed by her dad to bring some old boxes up to the attic. ( They were “filled with random things”, that’s what her dad said. Her mom wanted to deep clean the house and was very adamant that they put the junk up into the attic until they figured out what to do with it.)
Her curiosity and her impulsivity quickly got the best of her as she kneeled down in front of the box and started ripping away the tape covering the opening of it. It felt like she was intruding on something she wasn’t supposed to see and that was probably the truth given by the amount of protection around the box and how it was tucked into a corner of the room with a mound of other boxes all around it labled things like X-MAS, DON’T LET YUKA TOUCH, and LOST (MITCH MATCHED SOCKS.
She finally opened the box, anticipation growing in her chest. Inside was—
“…A buncha video tapes?” An deflated. She was not sure just what she was expecting. Confidential files about the history of her family? Maybe even some vinyls she hadn’t heard before?
There was a numerous amount of video tapes stacked upon each other carelessly like whoever put them in here wanted all of them gone and never to be seen again and just by looking at them, they must have been there for a while. She could tell by the dust crawling over each individual tape like ivy.
She picked one up and blew the dust off of it, revealing a label with handwriting that looked vaguely familiar. It was almost like she had seen it before but couldn’t remember who it belonged to. It intrigued her. There must have been a date somewhere but the writing was smudged so it was completely incomprehensible.
An glanced at the old television, and then back at the boxes she brought up here. The tape stayed put in her hand, the dust atop it dancing and tickling her skin wild with eagerness.
Her dad would probably be concerned if she stayed up here for too long… but the cassette player was right there!
Screw it, she thought, and grinned at the tape as if it were a person.
An plopped down in front of the T.V., which was already pluggedinto the cassette player, oddly enough. She pressed the power button and then easily slipped the tape she was holding into it.
It was silent for a good while, An stayed there, sitting on the attic floor staring at the black T.V. screen waiting for something to magically happen. For a moment she assumed she had put the tape in the wrong way, but that was before the screen flashed on, blinding her.
She blinked a few times, adjusting to the bright light that came from the screen as a video started playing.
An stumbled back with her eyes widened. She was not staring at what she was expecting to be confidential information about Vivid Street. No, she was looking at the face of a young girl who had to be at least a year younger than herself. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail by a bright yellow scrunchie, which bobbed around because of how animated she was as she spoke to the camera. She was beaming.
That girl was—
“Hello, Kotaki Nagi here!” The girl in the video greeted, her smile growing bigger by the second. “Uh… I’m probably never gonna do this again, but uh—”
“The hell you doing, Nags?” A deeper, yet still young voice spoke offscreen.
“Look, I figured out how to work this thing, Taiga! You owe me—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll give ya your winnings when we get back home.”
The lighting was dim, but not bright enough for An to have any idea where this was recorded. Though, she was able to hear lots of incoherent chatter and cheers in the background.
The girl—Nagi—smiled smugly, basking in the victory of what was most likely a won bet against her brother.
The last time An had seen Nagi was when she tried to muster up the courage to look in the old photo album. She wasn’t able to do it without crying even as her mother rubbed circles into her back, whispering reassurances that went through one ear and out the other.
But now, just hearing her voice again when she was so young…
A shiver ran down An’s spine. She contemplated if she should turn the T.V. off completely, but the tape played on and so did her attention towards it.
“What’re you even gonna do with that old thing?” Taiga appeared into the frame, squinting quizzically into the camera. He still wore his hair the same way, but besides that he was unrecognizable. It was a change of pace seeing him without the gray streaks in his hair and his wrinkles. The Taiga in the video seemed… happier. He looked more grounded and content, though there was still fire in his eyes.
“I dunno,” Nagi shrugged contemptibly. “I was thinking maybe I could document this whole experience. Like a video diary, maybe?”
Nagi looked away from the camera as someone started talking to her off screen. “That seems cool.” Someone said, “But you shouldn’t bring it on stage with us, yeah?
Ah, so they were in a livehouse, maybe? An assumed they were waiting for their queue to go onto the stage.
“Of course.” Nagi hummed happily to herself, “I’m excited for this! And a bit nervous… This place is no joke.”
“‘Course it isn't,” Taiga said. “That’s why we’re going to show ‘em all that we’ve got.”
“Yeah!” Nagi and the other voice—who An presumed was her own father back then—cheered.
Nagi and Taiga looked up from the camera because someone else was talking to them. “RADder, right?” A man with a voice that was most likely developed from years of smoking asked. The two of them nodded. “You’re up next.”
Nagi looked back down at the camera, smiled one last time and said, “Alright then, buh bye!”
The T.V. screen went black. The video was over and An was all alone in the attic again.
An couldn’t believe what she just saw. For a minute or two she was looking at Kotaki Nagi again, and she was young and alive. She didn’t know whether to smile, basking in the sentiment, or cry, letting the reminder of loss swallow her whole again.
She gingerly took the tape out of the cassette player one. She did recognize the handwriting on the label. Nagi was the one who wrote that. That video must have been taken in 1992 or something close to that, when RADder had first become a group.
The tape she was holding didn’t feel like a worthless thing anymore. She was holding a memory.
“An?”
“Ah!” An flinched and whipped her head around. How long had he even been in here? “Oh, hi dad.” She felt terrible hiding something from her father (but at the same time she didn’t. He hid Nagi’s death from her, which was way worse!)… but the tape she was holding was hidden for a reason so she put it behind her back in the most inconspicuous way she could manage.
“You didn’t come back downstairs, I wanted to check up on you.” He said, sitting down next to her. She noticed a few more gray strands of hair. Everytime she looked at him lately he seemed to look older.
“I just got…distracted,” She told him, which wasn’t a lie. “Looking at this, um, old T.V. It’s very…vintage!”
Ken laughed, “Vintage would be an understatement.”
An nodded, and shifted in her position on the floor, not knowing what to say.
“You got into the tapes, didn’t you?”
An’s eyes widened and she flushed in embarrassment. “I—no—yes…” She quickly shook her head, “How’d you know?”
“You’re my daughter,” He said. “And I can see one in your hand.”
“Oh…” She took it out from behind her back and handed it to her dad. “I probably shouldn’t have opened the box.”
Ken didn’t respond. He stared at the tape with a look she would have described as expressionless two months ago. She knew better now. That was the same look he always gave her whenever she asked ‘when’s Nagi-san coming back’ when she was a kid, the same look he always had when she was on his mind.
“…Dad..?”
Ken frowned at the tape. “She recorded this the day we debuted at CRAWL GREEN.”
“S-she did?”
He nodded, tracing the scratches and divots of the tape with his finger. His eyebrows stayed furrowed and his eyes remained downcast.
An was unsure of what to do. She had never really seen her dad sad. She wondered if he had ever cried before, or if his easy going attitude was merely a facade; an unruly image that could be broken with just the reminder of his old teammate.
Her father remained silent, staring at the tape.
“You two are still up here?” In came her mother. It felt rare for her to be away from her ungraded tests, but it was welcomed along with the summertime nonetheless.
“Hi, mom.”
Quickly reading the room, Yuka’s grin fell into a sharp frown. She came over and sat in between An and Ken.
“You’re showing her the tapes?” She asked Ken, placing her finger on the label of the tape.
Ken snapped out of his daze the moment Yuka put her hand on the tape with a sharp gasp. Never had An seen her father so fragile.
“I found them myself.” An said. “And I… I watched that one.”
“Here, give me the tape, dear.” Yuka didn’t really wait for Ken to hand it to her, though. What she really did was snatch it out of his hands. She got up and quickly walked over to the box labeled “THE VIVID ARCHIVES” and dragged it over to them.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“I think we should watch some of these as a family. I think—I think it will do us good.”
Was An even ready to look Kotaki Nagi in the eyes again? At first it had caught her so off guard. Looking at someone she’d never see in person ever again. She hated how she couldn’t control how her eyes would get glossy and how her hands would begin to tremble.
There was no use in trying to get her mom to stop—she was an unstoppable beast when she put her mind to things. She dug through the box, the sounds of the tapes shuffling around the box as she reached deep inside to find one echoed through the attic.
“How many even are there?” An asked.
“Oh, probably over a hundred.” Yuka shrugged, “Felt like there was always a camera being shoved in my face.” She opened her mouth to say more, but then quickly closed it. She grabbed an unassuming tape from the box and held it up for An to see. “Hey look, this one was when you were fresh out of the oven!”
“Which is ironic because you can’t cook.” Ken commented.
“Oi, Ken!” Yuka swatted at him.
An giggled a bit, and her mother smiled in accomplishment even though it was at her own expense.
Yuka slipped the tape into the cassette player.
"Hello, Kotaki Nagi here!" She was back, speed walking through a long corridor—except this time she looked significantly older than in the first video (if they were even watching them in chronological order). Her hair was pin straight, which looked strange to An because the Nagi she knew had wavy hair that bounced whenever she walked.
The camera panned to Taiga, who was walking moderately fast alongside her with his hands in his pockets. He had a disgruntled expression on his face but it didn't look out of place considering he always looked that way.
“Taiga, you’re supposed to tell the camera what we’re doing today!” Nagi chided, and the video got a very unflattering close-up of his face.
“We’re at a hospital.” He grumbled.
An frowned, and looked away from the screen. Her mother watched the video intently with the corner of her lips turned up in the slightest way possible—almost as if she was afraid to smile, however her father’s mouth was only a straight line.
The Nagi in the video rolled her eyes, and brought the camera’s focus back to herself. “We’re going to meet the baby!” Her voice had a melodic twang about it, sounding like she wanted to break out into song. “Taiga, you remember the room number, right?”
“Yeah, It’s the one over there. But don’t be shoving a camera into Yuka’s face as soon as we’re in.”
“Oh, come on! I’m not that bad.”
“Yes, you are” Taiga muttered sarcastically, and pushed the door open.
He and Nagi entered the hospital room, and the shot went to Yuka, who was sitting up in a hospital bed. Her hair was askew, the braid slung over her shoulder partially undone. There was one thing An noticed upon watching that video—and it wasn’t the fact that there was no baby in her mother’s arms.
On her bare shoulder was a tattoo of some butterflies. It was clearly professionally done, too.
An’s head snapped away from the TV and towards her mother. “Mom, you have tattoos!?”
Yuka raised her eyebrows. “Huh? Oh yeah, I do. Sometimes I forget they’re there.”
“You have tattoos!? And I never knew!?”
“You sound like your grandmother.” She sighed, “And yes, I do have tattoos.”
“And I didn’t know?”
“Well, for all it’s worth, I don’t dress the same way I used to back then. It’s the price I pay for being a teacher. Wouldn’t want to be caught dead wearing some of that stuff in public by my students.”
“It was that bad?”
“I wouldn’t call it bad,” Ken interjected. The slightest smirk crept onto his face. “In fact I kind of miss i—”
“Hey.” Yuka quickly cut him off before he’d say anything he’d regret later. “Pay attention to the video."
“Ew.” An said in mock disgust.
“Wait—where’s the baby?” Nagi shouted in the film, which was a great way to achnor An’s attention back to it.
“They took her away because she had some mucus in her nose and mouth that they had to remove.” Video Yuka said, frowning. “The doctors said they had to give her some oxygen…or something.”
“She!? So it’s a girl?”
“Mhmm, the cutest little baby girl.”
“—That we still haven't chosen a name for." Video Ken said with a tired look. Those eyebags were scary.
"He's having second thoughts about the name again…I kept telling him to stop mulling over it but… we know how Ken is.”
“Yeah,” Nagi chuckled. “Like, he still has those terrible eye bags.”
“He was up the full 22 hours of labor.”
“Twenty two hours!? Holy shit, Yuka, you need to sleep! Ken, too!”
“Not until our baby’s back.” Yuka hummed tiredly.
Nagi took this as a sign to stop recording, she turned the camera back to herself, smiled and wiggled her fingers as a goodbye before the screen went to black.
An was able to see her own reflection on the dark abyss of the T.V.’s screen. She was a mess to the point where she was scared her facial muscles would be stuck in that frowning motion for the rest of her life. She remembered how Nagi would always wiggle her fingers like that in a greeting or a farewell. It was so silly to An, back when she was little. She would always giggle when Nagi would call out her name from across Vivid Street, wiggling her fingers like that at her. She missed it. She missed it so bad.
Her mother sighed, and placed her hand on top of her’s. She turned to Ken, who was staring blankly at the screen. “Ken, do you want to pick out a tape to watch?”
“Are you sure we should even be doing this?” He asked.
“Yes. I wouldn’t have brought that box over if I didn’t think so.”
Ken grunted, and begrudgingly stuck his hand into the box. He pulled out a beat up tape with star stickers all over it. He examined the label and breathed, “2001.”
He took out the old tape from the cassette player and slipped the one he was holding into it.
Nagi was there again, on the screen. It looked like she was in a car, or something. “…Hello, Kotaki Nagi here..!” She groaned tiredly. “I’m recording this so I can stay awake so Taiga doesn’t beat my ass for falling asleep in his car.”
“Taiga, why do you care so much about that anyways?” Ken’s voice said in the video. He wasn’t visible in the video since it was still focused on Nagi.
“‘Cause she’ll drool all over the carseats.” Taiga replied, “I spend too much money on this thing for it to get drenched by Nagi’s drool.”
“Do I really drool that much in my sleep?” Nagi asked.
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I feel like you’re overreacting, then.” She huffed.
“Seriously? When have I ever overreacted?”
Ken laughed, it was his signature thunderous one he did whenever he was genuinely happy that shook whatever room he was in. When was the last time An heard him laugh like that? When was the last time she laughed and meant it? “When I proposed to Yuka. You literally started making gagging sounds while clutching the nearest street lamp.”
“No, but that was valid.” Taiga protested, “You were being all disgusting…”
“You mean, Ken was being romantic?” Nagi snorted.
It was an interesting video tape, that one, because there wasn’t much to go off of besides Nagi’s facial expressions and the tone of voice that Ken and Taiga spoke in. Something about the tape radiated a kind of familiarity the group had. She could tell that they were close just by the way they spoke and bounced off of eachother so easily.
An glanced at her father. He was laser focused on the film, it was like he was analyzing every pixel that was on the screen.
Nagi grinned and Taiga tried to defend himself some more. But if anything, it really did show how he wasn’t level headed at all.
“Oi, Nagi, you’re recording all of this?” Ken asked.
Taiga groaned fondly. “Not that fuckass camera again. You found that under Ma’s bed when we were kids, right?”
“Yeah! It’s been my trusty companion ever since.” Nagi looked directly into the camera as she said that. An could count the amount of teeth in her smile.
“It’s insane how you’ve been making those video diary things ever since you were 15… does it ever get old?”
An tilted her head in interest—but quickly frowned again because that would mean that the last tape she ever recorded was the clip of herself that played at the end of the recording of RAD WEEKEND…
“No! I’ve been spilling my guts out to this baby for practically my whole life—It’s gonna be like a keepsake! So when we’re all old people on rocking chairs we can show it to Ken’s grandkids.” Nagi smiled comfortably, sinking into her carseat, but An only felt her face drooping down as she teared her eyes away from that stupid television. She didn’t want to watch anymore, she didn’t want to… not after the film just gave her the hardest slap in the face possible. Watching the tapes was a mistake, she shouldn’t have stayed up here any longer than she needed to!
Her skin didn’t feel right over her bones. She felt sick, lightheadedness slowly overtaking her body as her head involuntarily drooped down like it were a bobblehead.
Yuka grabbed onto her chin dotingly and lifted her head back up so she had no choice but to face her.
“I don’t wanna watch anymore.” An mumbled weakly as Nagi, Taiga, and the Ken of the past laughed so hard the audio became chunky and kept cutting out. It felt like she was being made fun of for not wanting to face the past, for not wanting the reminder that Nagi was gone and she wouldn’t ever come back.
Nagi’s laughter radiated throughout her mind… At the time the video was recorded, none of them would have known what would have happened. None of them knew they wouldn’t accomplish their dream of becoming the best in the world together. She thought about when she was small… never had she looked at Nagi and thought, someday she won’t be here anymore. The idea of it is dizzying.
“I don’t wanna…” She repeated, trailing off because she had to bite back a sob.
She hated this. Why was it so hard to simply move forward? Why did her stupid emotions have to take control of her at the worst times possible? Nagi said she believed in her. Why couldn’t she just take that and move on with her dream in mind? She hated how disgusting she felt, her sleeves being covered with tears and snot, how she couldn’t speak properly, and how she’d become a sweaty mess—completely out of control. Now she was making a fool of herself on the floor of the goddamn attic.
Her mother reached to wipe the tears that were now streaming down her face, but she quickly wiped them herself in the least elegant manner possible, practically slapping herself in the face.
The T.V. was off now. The only sounds she could hear were her own sniffles and her father’s heavy breathing as he sat still.
Yes, her parents had told her it was good for her to cry—cry for Nagi because they couldn’t. Her mom always reminded her that it was okay for her to cry, but it hurt too much to do that… and once she let it all out it was if the life was sucked out of her and she wouldn’t want to do anything but lay in bed, staring at the ceiling—which wasn’t good if she wanted to move forward. That didn’t bring her and the rest of Vivid BAD SQUAD any closer to surpassing RAD WEEKEND… and fulfilling Nagi’s dream along with it.
“Mom.” She said, biting her bottom lip.
“Mhmm?”
“How were you able to—able to move past all of it when… when Nagi-san…”
Yuka placed her hands on An’s shoulders. An would be lying if she said it wasn’t comforting, the action made her feel grounded, like she wasn’t a wild animal kicking and screaming. “Nagi told us not to cry for her… but I’m not going to lie to you and say that was an easy task.”
“…And it took a while,” Ken added, nodding slowly, almost as if he was unsure. “An, do you want me to be honest?”
“Well, yeah.” An said, taking a deep breath. Honest unlike you’ve been for the past three years.
“Grief never goes away.”
She should have expected him to be brutally honest like that. Rarely did her father ever sugarcoat things. She deflated furthermore (she was surprised it was still possible), her lips quivering. “…So we’re stuck with these stupid feelings forever?”
Yuka shook her head as if on command. The way she acted when they had these conversations about grief always felt so by the book, probably because she was a teacher, but the way the words fell from her mouth was as graceful as raindrops from a cloud. “Right now… thinking of Nagi is going to make you sad… but in due time the memories are going to bring smiles instead of tears, okay, An?”
An looked down at the floor. That was a weird concept for her to grapple with… and maybe the point her mom was making was correct but it sounded so foreign. Would she ever be able to get to that point where she’d laugh instead of cry thinking about her and Nagi’s inside jokes?
She glanced at the tape sitting on the floor with its worn out stickers on the brink of being peeled off. The stars, the yellow smiley faces, the hearts—Nagi put those there to convey a message, An had no doubt about that. “Okay.”
It felt like the world had been turned upside down. And it didn’t help that whenever she would walk through the street she would be reminded of what she and Nagi did next to that one street lamp, what they sang on the street curb. The residents would give her a solemn look, nod their heads, and say, “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what they were apologizing for. Was it ‘sorry for your loss’ or was it ‘sorry that we hid Nagi-san’s death from you for three years’? She had to navigate this new world and cope with the fact that she had been living a lie for three years of her life.
What would her birthday wish be this year? She couldn’t wish for a message from Nagi anymore (She always wished to surpass RAD WEEKEND, alongside it, that was staying… although she knew wishing wouldn’t get her any closer to Vivid BAD SQUAD’s goal). There was so little time to figure it out. It felt like there was so little time for her to figure herself out, but that was the cost of wanting to keep a steady pace, moving forward, no matter how badly she wanted to crumple to her knees and slow down her speed.
Grief is a funny thing, An supposed (she hated how it sounded like an inspirational quote found on the internet). It comes and goes in waves. One moment she’ll be trapped in the deadly torrents of guilt and anger and the next she’ll be standing in a gentle stream. She can’t help it when she hears a certain chord in a song, sees a denim jacket on display, or smells something sweet that reminds her of Nagi’s tight grip on her shoulders when she would remind her that she loved and believed in her.
Though maybe in this moment she was slowing her pace, taking a small detour on her journey to move forward. You can’t keep running forever without losing all your energy, can you? Maybe that could be okay.
The attic didn't feel the way it used to. And it probably never would again.
And maybe that could be okay.
An looked at that tape with the smiley face stickers and she felt hope.
“Hey, mom, could you pass me another tape from the box?”