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Momo had lost his voice.
He was fine when he spoke, and the doctor had said there was nothing physically wrong with him, but…
Why can’t he sing? What sort of stress is causing him to lose his voice? Yuki thinks, desperately wracking his brains for a solution.
He’s glad Momo’s all right—physically—and…if he’s being honest with himself? He could care less about the fact that Momo can’t sing.
No, what bothers him was the why, the “why” that he didn’t know.
Momo…what happened? What—did I do something? I know I’m a burden but I don’t know if you don’t tell me how I’m a burden, he says, tapping the cool surface under his fingers lightly, staring at it but not really seeing what it is. Do you need a break? Do you…what do you want from me? What can I do for you?
If Yuki is being really honest with himself?
He could care less about their fifth anniversary now, or their fans, or their careers. He just wants Momo to be all right.
If only he would just tell—
Yuki’s fist slams on the surface, and he’s jolted out of his thoughts by the clang of a startled piano.
He blinks away the fog in his eyes as the room full of his musical instruments reappears before him.
That’s right…he had come here to compose—or so he had claimed to Momo.
Reality comes rushing back in a sudden wave, and Yuki shakes his head at himself.
I can’t do that to Momo—I can’t be careless about our anniversary or our fans or our careers, I mean. They’ve become too precious to me…
“…because of Momo,” he mutters aloud petulantly.
But he can’t help the one who showed him how important these things were, the one who was still putting his all for his fans.
Yuki can’t help because he doesn’t know what Momo is feeling—Momo, who is so good at wearing his heart on his sleeve and then expertly sewing identical hearts around it to hide it in plain sight. Yuki doesn’t know and he can’t know, just like he hadn’t known that Ban would leave him.
Had the signs even been there before Ban had left?
Yuki had assumed they would take a break from their music activities while his friend was recovering, that they would jump back in like nothing, that they would just keep singing, that he could keep composing his music while waiting for Ogami Banri to recover.
I was just thinking of myself. He knows that now. But who am I thinking of right now? What am I worried for and who am I worried for?
The piano sounds another discordant yell in response to both of Yuki’s fists slamming down on it.
It’s a cry of frustration and a cry of…
Yuki looks down, staring at the ivory keys, knowing that the look he wears on his face is far from anything that an idol should be wearing.
But that doesn’t matter because he’s got it now.
I don’t know what I’m feeling. I don’t know what Momo is thinking. But I know that whatever melody comes out of me will know—maybe not about Momo, but about me. Maybe this will let Momo know what I’m feeling.
Maybe, like a young man named Sunohara Momose had once written them, it would express Momo’s feelings for him. If Yuki just composes the confusing turmoil and distress inside him into a melody that could express what he was feeling, maybe Momo could take that song and shape it into the words he was so good at to express himself.
In the end, the only thing I know how to do is compose, he realises, stretching his fingers before taking out his recorder and his empty score sheets.
Fine, then. If the piano insists on screaming at him, he would use it to scream.
Yuki…was not doing okay.
Outside, he looked as cool and calm as ever, but Momo knows Yuki better than that. He might fawn over the older man and be easily taken by that unreasonably handsome face, but Momo has also argued with Yuki and seen him at his lowest. So he knows that the rumours going around about the two of them and Banri are a part of it, but he also knows there’s a variable that he’s missing.
There has to be or he wouldn’t have had to complete that shoot a few days back nearly distracted by the barest hint of red rimming Yuki’s eyes after they’d both run into TRIGGER at different times.
Even following their successful performance on the rooftop with IDOLiSH7, there had still been something that’s troubling Yuki.
But what could it be? he thinks, pushing his brain in the same way he would his body when he was still a soccer player.
Alas, the brain is not a muscle, and the effort only makes him slump into his desk, properly defeated by that puzzle of thoughts and emotions.
How is it so easy to read Yuki but still not understand him? It was like reading a book from classical literature—the words he could make out, but the story would continue to remain ever elusive from his comprehension. Unless, that is, someone could dissect the words for him and reframe it into a box that was easier to understand.
It was, after all, how he had managed to bypass his slump after his injury all those years back.
That song Ban-san and Yuki had performed together had unlocked inside him emotions he hadn’t even known were struggling to express themselves. The song had let him know just then who these two people were, and somehow, it had given him the key to unlock his own mind.
Through those words, he felt it all—the pain of having lost a dream, the realisation that he couldn’t have it back, and yet the certainty that none of it had been a waste of time. Even during his time as an idol, a career path he would never have imagined walking but never once regretted, Momo had seen that his time as a sportsman hadn’t been a waste. Whether it was giving a foot massage to Yuki in the way only a soccer player who overused his feet on a daily basis could or being able to move around for long periods of the day without once faltering…his time playing sports had never been a waste.
And it was all thanks to Re:vale of back then, because of…
Oh.
Had…had he been giving Yuki too much pressure to rewrite “Mikansei na Bokua” for them to sing? Maybe…
Momo buries his face in his hands.
Noooo, he wails at all the voices inside of him. I promised myself I wouldn’t be a burden to Yuki, but first I couldn’t help him with the rumours going on about him, then I got branded by Tsukomo, and now there’s this. Ahhhhhhhh…
Letting that crisis pass, Momo sighs and lifts his head.
Okay, so how is he going to make this up to Yuki?
I can’t just say, “Hey, Yuki. I changed my mind! I don’t want to sing ‘Mikansei na Bokura’ after all!” He’ll probably ask why and then get mad if I tell him it’s because I don’t want to burden him. So what can I do to get past stubborn Orikasa Yukito…
He suddenly stands, then stretches.
“Well, I’m not going to find my answers doing nothing—clearly,” he tells himself, giving a contemplative nod at a poster of the two of them on his wall. “Let’s go on a run.”
Decision made, he quickly throws on some appropriate clothing—and the always-necessary mask and cap—and exits out of his apartment complex in record time.
He could head towards the centre and busier streets. Yes, there were more people to recognise him there, but Momo thinks he likes the obscurity of the big crowd as well. In a big city like Tokyo, almost no one is looking at someone else.
He jogs by local stores, office buildings, and other establishments he knows well from his time around this area. His footsteps are light and steady, neither too fast—at least, not for him—nor too slow.
The workout gives him just enough energy and focus that, before he knows it, he’s already wandering around the centre that houses all the big screens and live stages.
It was as if his thoughts had drawn him to one of the centres of entertainment.
And, as if mocking him, one of the screens shifts to Re:vale’s advertisement for the Universiade Soccer Tournament—the one they’d sang for just this year during the season it had run. Actually, it’s more an advertisement for the song itself, really, the song that had pressured Momo to wrestle out some lyrics from his unartistic brain for the first time.
“It came out really well, though. The lyrics are like you, kind and reassuring. ”
That was what that flirt had said. Did Yuki even know the effect his words had on him?
Truth be told, Momo hadn’t imagined he’d ever be a lyricist. Being an idol was one thing, but being a creator…to write something with his own two hands? That was something he’d never imagined himself to do, or to do well.
He could spot talent when he saw it—it was how he had managed his soccer team so well, knowing how to play to strengths and cover weaknesses. And though Momo hated to acknowledge his own strengths after all his failures, this cutthroat industry wouldn’t be gentle if he hadn’t gone and done just that. So, though he doesn’t want to admit it, Momo knows he has some skill with words—Riku, ever the reader, had even called him personally to compliment him on those lyrics. His skill with words might not be in lyricism, exactly, but he knew the right things to say and when to say it and how to say it, and he knew what people needed to hear even if he didn’t understand the whole of what they felt.
Stopping at a random point in the street, with Momo’s words for Eiensen Riron clothed in Yuki’s melody dancing ephemerally in the winter air, Momo knew what he had to do. Finally, he understood how to gather the remaining pieces that had broken in Re:vale during their fifth anniversary and this war with Tsukomo.
I don’t understand Yuki as well as I want to, he thought, picking his speed up just a little as he set a course for home. But maybe I can express that in a way that will make him tell me. Through his music, through his words. I don’t care. I just don’t want him to feel bad. If I can’t make my own partner smile, can I even be called an idol?
So Momo would write lyrics—compose a poem, basically—about himself that would hopefully pry Yuki’s feelings open. And maybe, Yuki could weave those words into a song that would invite Momo into that guy’s colourful yet sometimes perplexing mind.
Say what you want to say with those melodies of yours, Yuki, he tells his partner quietly that evening, locked in his room scribbling down the things he didn’t know he wanted to say. And I’ll write down my own with these lyrics.
Maybe then, by weaving together their souls through words and melody, they could combine all the threads left hanging over the years into a clear tapestry.