Chapter Text
Prologue
Rui woke up one morning with hair tickling his neck and stuck to his forehead. He looked around his bedroom. His bedroom. Rui had woken up in his bed.
For a moment, his chest felt hollow, recollecting all those other mornings spent in his own room, but he dismissed it soon enough. The dismissal didn’t help the empty feeling. He pushed his hair back, long greasy strands clinging to his fingers, and let out a shaking sigh. He must have had a nightmare, he concluded. His heart threatening to beat out of his chest would certainly be explained by that. He forgot his dreams all the time, nightmares should be no different, he imagined. And maybe he’d forgotten to shower for too many days at a time, it happened often with him in the summers. If he didn’t need to look presentable, he didn’t need to care for his vessel- and he was starting to think like he used to again.
Not good.
Not a good morning at all.
He got up, maybe showering would fix him. It often did. His skin clearing up would leave him with less physical sensations to worry about, and he could go about his day with at least one less thing to bother him. He paused at the mirror.
Rui knew himself to be lanky and disproportionate since he was a boy. With bony wrists that reached lower than his thighs and shoulders not wide enough to support them, a spine that held each rib with loose screws. But he’d grown into it in the recent years, he’d noticed it as well. Shirts no longer sagged from his shoulders, sleeves no longer stopped at his elbows. But he… why did he look like…
Rui ran a hand through his hair once more. Long. Too long. He’d cut it and maintained it ever since he’d started taking his shows more seriously. He looked down at the sink, and a familiar sight startled him. Blood stains littered the smooth white surface, a rusty, sharp piece of metal stood right over the drain. He felt nauseous. He needed to talk to someone. He’d been getting better at that, wasn’t he? Why did it feel so daunting now? He wanted someone beside him. Something was so wrong. He didn’t remember why he was in his bedroom, why his sink was covered in blood, why he felt so awkward in his own body for the first time in years.
Something was so wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. He knew himself enough to know that he didn’t know himself, that he didn’t know how to help himself. He knew that now, and he should use that knowledge to his advantage, right? Then why did it feel so much easier to wallow in this feeling? Why did falling to his knees and crying seem more appealing than it had in years?
He needed help.
He didn’t want help.
He fell to his knees, as predicted. Something in him told him that he was overreacting, that he’d spent years of his life with that cold, hollow feeling within his ribs, that he could spend one more day like that. It was telling him that he needed to get up and get over it. It was telling him that he needed to get up, and at least go to his bed, if he was going to be a useless heap.
He needed so much more than the advice of the singular voice in his head, he knew, but knowing didn’t mean believing.
He needed someone else.
He wanted to go to sleep.
Awkwardly getting himself back up on legs that felt squished down and arms that felt stretched too thin, Rui went back to his room, back to his bed and under the covers. He shut his eyes tight, curling in on himself, trying to ignore that the body holding his limbs together felt foreign.
It wasn’t that going to sleep was easy, it never was, but it was easier than taking in his surroundings. Under his sheets, in the dark, his eyes at least were shielded from his life. It didn’t matter that his hair was overgrown, his eye bags too present, too visible, his scars- wounds- too noticeable, because none were that way under the covers. None were too visible in the dark, in solitude.
Chapter 1
Rui had spent hours trying to get his mind to calm down the previous night, and although it hadn’t worked, he’d still managed to fall asleep somehow. He wanted to berate himself for sleeping with greasy hair, dirtying his pillow and bedsheets, but in an oddly comforting way, he didn’t feel any grosser than the day before. He shook the thought off. He was spiralling, and he was spiralling fast. He almost couldn’t recognise the thoughts he was having, but he knew those were thoughts that could come from him. He knew he’d thought like that in the past, he knew he’d been working to get rid of them, but…
He hadn’t fallen this hard before.
Progress wasn’t linear, he told himself. It was okay to have these downs as well as his ups. That didn’t make the pits any less scary, though.
He forced himself out of bed and into the bathroom. He avoided the sink and went straight to shower. He knew he had to clean up the blood, it must have dried to a crust by now, but he didn’t have the guts to look at it.
It was a few shows back, when his character had to fight with Tsukasa’s, and they’d been allowed to incorporate blood in it. It wasn’t often they got the chance to perform those kinds of shows, the Wonder Stage not allowing for it. Their audience was too young. Washing up had been troubling for Rui, the blood on his hands- not realistic, he knew, but enough for an audience that wouldn’t have as close of a view of his hands as he did- spilling into the sink, mixing with the water… The sight was too familiar. Tsukasa had caught him standing still and asked what was wrong, and Rui hadn’t been able to explain the reason at the time, but it’d been easy enough to say that he was queasy about blood.
The blond had stood surprised for a moment, but then he’d smiled gently.
“That’s alright,” He’d told him, his voice softer than the clouds. “I’m sure our director can find a way to make a fight look threatening without any bloodshed.” He’d grinned, patting Rui on the shoulder. Rui remembered how light he had felt.
“I’ll figure it out,” He’d promised.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a way of cleaning a bloody sink without looking at blood, unless Rui blindfolded himself, or got someone else to do it.
Someone else… Someone to help…
He got into the shower, ignoring how his sleeves caught on cuts that had scabbed over. He must have relapsed a day or two before, he concluded. That must have been why he couldn’t remember what he was doing that day, why he felt like a walking corpse the following days.
Cleaning himself was a mechanical endeavour. It left room for thinking, so he did.
Rui had the inexplicable urge to talk to Mizuki. They had mostly drifted apart in their highschool days, but he still knew them to be trustable, so it wasn’t all too strange to want to seek help from them in particular, but that wasn’t what Rui had thought of them for. No, Rui had an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. He wanted to be close to Mizuki. The Mizuki, with annoyance always clear on their features, with soft pink hair that Rui longed to touch, softer hands that he longed to hold. Mizuki, with their teasing, mean jabs. Not the Mizuki he knew today. Not his friend with the loud voice and big smile, not his friend who had other friends. He wanted someone who understood how lonely he felt at that moment, and despite how much he hated himself for thinking so, he didn’t quite think Mizuki would understand them today like they did back then.
Mizuki was happier now. He was happier now. They’d never have what they had back then, ever again, and that was a good thing. A friend to share their loneliness with; that was what Rui had been for Mizuki, and it was distant, cold, it was impersonal. When his gaze would linger, they’d laugh at him, and when his hands would twitch where they stood, needing to feel the warmth of someone else, he’d have to keep them by his sides.
They were better now. He shouldn’t long for the days where they understood one another perfectly, because the things they understood weren’t things he should be missing.
And it’d be selfish to want Mizuki to stay in that dark place they’d crafted into a home.
He didn’t want to be selfish.
He was already keeping Wonderlands x Showtime by his side with hands that acted more like claws, he couldn’t do the same to another person. His greed had to know bounds.
He left the shower feeling worse and better at the same time. Wet hair didn’t feel much better than greasy hair, but the knowledge that it would dry and feel better helped him stop thinking about it.
Now that that was done with, he had to figure out how many days he’d potentially lost to this depressive slump, and possibly apologise for texts he hadn’t responded to.
His phone screen helpfully supplied that it was nine in the morning, and the twenty fifth of December, and that he had no new notifications.
… That certainly explained how it was too cold to be summer. But it had to be wrong. It was June, the last time he checked. What sort of nightmare was he in? Rui realised his phone background was different. A photograph of a cloudy sunset. He didn’t remember taking the picture, though it looked too grainy and unprofessional to be taken off of the internet. His phone background was supposed to be a picture of his troupemates. A picture where the three were seated by the monkey bars at a rundown park. The lighting was bad, it was nighttime, but Rui hadn’t minded. The streetlight right behind Emu had obscured her entire face, but Rui could remember her laughter even now as she did all sorts of stunts on the bars. Nene was showing something to Tsukasa on her phone, but the boy was distracted by Emu, and they all had looked as if they were one. Rui was lucky to have them as friends.
Rui needed to talk to his friends.
Though he already knew Tsukasa and Emu were out of the question. If even Mizuki had felt too distant, not understanding enough, there was no way he could open up to his jolly co-stars.
Even then, asking Nene for help scared him for different reasons. Nene, who’d seen him at his worst, who’d put up with all those fake smiles all while knowing she could do nothing, Nene, who had probably spent more time in her life worrying about him rather than herself; was it right to ask her to worry about him once more? He knew his uncertainty was ridiculous. Nene had never, not even teasingly, implied that worrying about him had been a chore. Sure, she’d said a few times that she felt freer to breathe now that she could see him the way he ought to be, but that was only the relief of a friend, seeing her friend bloom after years of being sewn shut. It didn’t mean she resented those past years, did it? Would she even tell him if that was the case?
His door creaked open, and his mother peered inside. “You’re awake,” She smiled. “Going to school today?”
Rui ignored that it was meant to be summer.
“Yeah,” He said.
His mother looked grateful. On closer inspection, she looked stressed as well.
“Is something wrong?” He asked.
She sighed. “It’s that obvious?” She stepped in. Rui felt another bout of nostalgia at her appearance, but couldn’t place what it was exactly.
“A little,” He answered. “What is it?”
His mother wordlessly patted his hair for a while. “I’m proud of you, you know that right?”
Rui wondered if this was because of the apparent relapse he’d gone through the day prior. How bad did it have to be that his mother knew about it?
“I know,” He said. The air felt like it was stolen from his lungs.
She pulled him close to place a kiss on his forehead.
“Good luck at school,” She looked down at him, pity and love meeting his eyes. He felt cold.
“Thanks.”
She messed with his hair a little more. “Remember to dry it before you leave,” She said, and then she got up to leave.
“Okay,” He muttered.
When was the last time his mother had looked at him that way? When he begged her to let him switch schools, all the while she tried to assure him that he needn’t beg? Or was it when he’d told her, only a week or so after getting a fresh start at Kamiyama high, that he was convinced he’d never find a real friend, some place to belong? Maybe it was the day he’d told her about Tsukasa yelling at Nene, his only friend at the time, how could he have put her in a situation like-
He needed to dry his hair, or else he’d get a headache.
He apparently needed to go to school.
He looked around his room, and a shiver went down his spine when he spotted the burgundy red blazer that hung behind his door. He’d put all of his old school things away, he’d hidden it all, he didn’t even want to look at them anymore, much less hang it somewhere so open.
Unable to find his usual school attire, Rui threw on a normal button down shirt and jeans, and the black cardigan he vaguely remembered burning on accident, and made his way to Kamiyama High School.
Outside was as cold as December would suggest, and he was not dressed appropriately. He brought his palms to cover his face at least, and ignored it to the best of his abilities. He ignored it until he made it to his destination.
Kamiyama High School was… not there. It was a construction site. One with good progress made, but still in construction nonetheless. He felt a shiver run down his spine.
Something’s wrong. I want to go home.
So he should, he decided. He’d go home. His mother had already gone to work, so he’d be able to come up with an excuse besides “school’s nonexistent, mom!” by the time she came home, hopefully.
He needed to talk to Nene. He was scared of bothering her, but he needed to talk to her. There was something wrong. He knocked on the front food of the Kusanagi residence instead of going home.
Nene’s mother was the one who opened the door. “Did you forget somethi-” She begun to speak, before pausing and looking up to meet his eyes. Rui’s entire resolve crumbled at her soft gaze. “Rui,” She acknowledged him.
“Kusanagi-san, I’m sorry for showing up so early in the morning, I-”
“It’s alright, come inside.” She smiled, opening the door wider. “Where’s your mother?”
“She’s at work,” Rui answered. He made no move to go inside. “I was… I wanted to talk to Nene, if she’s home?” He fiddled with his hands.
The woman looked at him questioningly. “She’s gone to school. I’m sure you could catch up with her if you ran,” She giggled. Rui frowned.
“Right, I see,” He mumbled.
Kusanagi-san sighed disappointedly. Rui felt shame biting into his skin.
“You don’t know what school she goes to?”
He wanted to argue, of course I know, we go to the same school now- “No,” He admitted.
“Why don’t you wait until she comes back,” She suggested
“... Alright. I’m sorry again for bothering you.”
“You could never,” She reassured. “Come back after school, I’ll make the two of you some snacks.”
He nodded stiffly. “Have a nice day,” He muttered, taking a few slow steps backwards until the woman shut the door.
Of course Nene was at school, it was december. Nevermind the fact that her school itself wasn’t present, she had to be. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that, right? Rui would have kicked a can had he seen one on the floor, but instead, he went back home.
Unlike their fickle school, his house was still there when he reached the door. Instead of the room he woke up in, Rui went into the garage. If he was going to kill time until Nene came back home, at least he could work on Nenerobo’s battery like he’d promised a while back. At least then he wouldn’t feel so bad for asking her to deal with him in this state. Only when he opened the door, he wasn’t met with the balloons and party decorations that he’d littered his room with. Instead, his mother’s workbench stood tidy against a wall, and her blueprints lay scattered across the floors.
The last time his mother had used his workshop was when it belonged to her. It was two years or so ago.