Archive of Our Own ^beta

Misa-Misa is the most important person in the world. Near’s boyfriend disagrees, but he accepts the situation as is.

Misa-Misa is the lead dancer and singer of Love:NOTE, which is itself the most important Kpop group in the universe. She has big wide eyes and a high sharp voice and she is five feet tall and her favourite colour is pink and Near knows every single thing about her. If they ever meet in real life — and Near thinks this is a distinct possibility — they will be best friends because Near knows her like no one else. She has supported her forever, through everything, all the scandals, all the times people doubted her. She has defended her against everyone who said she wasn’t talented enough or pretty enough, that she didn’t deserve every single thing she has and more. When Misa-Misa went on live and cried about how she was letting down the rest of her group, Near downloaded the video and now once a week she plays it on her laptop and strokes Misa’s face through the glass and says, don’t worry, don’t ever say that about yourself again because I’m here for you and you’re everything to me.

“Are you getting up?” Mello says, from around the doorway.

She rolls over in their bed, the blankets tangling around her as she does. It’s dark, except for a video of Misa-Misa singing on her phone. It’s from the SM Station sessions and Near loves it because Misa looks radiant in it. It’s a duet and she’s sitting on a stool across from her duet partner, who is looking at her like someone collected every light in the universe and strung her with them. That’s how people should look at her. She’s barely looking at him. She’s in her own world, where she is the one glowing star in the centre of everything. She is wearing a long ivory dress that looks not unlike a wedding dress and Near imagines first walking her down the aisle and then into their bedroom to bed her.

She and Misa-Misa would be very sexually compatible. She doesn’t have any exact proof for this but she knows that it’s true.

“Yeah,” she says, and stays where she is.

She likes the bed. It’s got everything she or anyone else could want. Her phone. Her laptop. Several stuffed animals. A Lego kit, half-finished at the foot of the bed. A sleeve of ginger nuts sealed with an elastic band. Several bottles of water, one of which still has liquid in it. It’s a great place to be. She doesn’t often leave.

“Okay,” says Mello, and disappears. She rolls over and looks back at her phone, where Misa’s voice is rising up and up and up.

There’s another knock at the open door. Near looks up, and Mello’s in the doorway again. “We need to go,” he says. “If we don’t want to be late. It’s essential.”

“Oh,” says Near. “I forgot.”

“Right,” says Mello. “Well. Can you get in the car.”

“Yeah,” says Near.

She look at Mello. Mello looks at her. At last, Mello says, “Do you want me to pick your clothes?” She’s still in her pyjamas; which she’d put on a few days back. She can’t really remember.

“Yeah,” says Near, and rolls to watch as Mello does. She knows he’ll do a good job; he knows her. She’s good at a lot of things but she doesn’t like to take care of herself. It’s hard. She just wants to take care of Misa-Misa. She’s good at that.

She has to look nice for Misa-Misa’s concert tonight.

Mello drives fast and erratically. It’s kind of scary, actually. She says, “You drive like you’re trying to get us killed.”

“I’m not,” says Mello. “I’m not trying to get us killed.”

He’s wearing tight black leather jeans and a suede black vest with an O-ring for a zipper. It’s really hot. He dressed her in a white dress with black combat boots with pale blue ribbon laces, which is very y2k Tumblr, but she does think she looks fantastic — more like his idea of what makes her look nice than her own, but whatever, she doesn’t mind. It’s comfortable, which is vital. She loves being comfortable. If she could go to the concert in pyjamas she would.

She’s happy, kind of. She’s going to see Misa-Misa, anyway, which is basically the same thing.

Outside the trees are thick and dark, an emerald so deep she could sink right inside it. Once, years ago, she’d dove into a pond filed with algae and seaweed that clung to her legs and her arms and her stomach. The seaweed has wrapped around her ankles and trailed long her skin as she slipped away. Its edges were rough and sharp.

This sounds terrible but it wasn’t. Many things are like that. Other things are the opposite. It had made her feel like she was part of the world. In danger of drowning but safe from everything else. Inside of her there is a tight little core that holds all of in place, holds so hard it hurts, and so hard she can’t breathe, and she thinks if she let it go she might drift out into the trees and the green and the deep dark lake and sink down and down and down and everything would be just fine.

She cries, during the show. People do that but she didn’t think she would. What a novelty. Salt on her cheeks.

The lights are so bright and they’re way in the back but she can see Misa on the big screen and she can see her tiny body on the stage, so far down her features are invisible but Near would know her anywhere. At the start of the show she was wearing a pink shirt that shows her belly which is smooth and vulnerable as a cat turning over on the floor and at the end she is wearing a black shirt that’s too big for her on purpose. It’s the one you can buy downstairs for forty-seven pounds so you can look just like her.

Near clutches her lightstick close. It’s flashing along with everyone else’s, resplendent in the dark; it makes her one of them, nothing special, not herself. They’re all here together and they have become one creature in the dark, one glowing thing; this sea of lights is called an ocean and that’s what it feels like, brilliance on the surf in the black of night.

Misa doesn’t speak English. She says hello and I love you and everything else she says in Korean, her second language, and Near listens through the voice of the translator. The voice booms through her speakers overhead. She wishes she could hear Misa directly. She wishes L were here, so he could translate it right — she can tell the translator is speaking imperfectly because Misa-Misa says long long sentences which become short as they fall from the sky.

The translator says, Promise me you’ll always be happy and healthy.

She says, Promise if you feel wrong or scared you’ll think of me.

She says, Misa-Misa is always here for you and I love you so much and Near reaches out for her in the dark — she’s too far but Near’s fingers brush against the hard metal railing and she imagines its the soft flesh of a hand.

I promise, she thinks. I will.

Out in the dark, walking back to the car through the narrow London streets, Mello says, “You know how you love her?”

“Yeah,” says Near.

“And you’d do anything for her?”

Near knows what he’s going to say. “Don’t,” she tells him.

He’s quiet for a bit. London, around them, is not — it’s all wet, rain glistening on the pavement and the stones of the bars they pass. There’s someone shouting at his friends. Wait, he’s saying. There’s laughter in his voice. Don’t forget me. A man is sitting on the stoop of a bar smoking a cigarette; it tip glows hot bright orange in the dark.

At last Mello says it anyway. “I’d do anything for you, too. I love you like you love her.”

“No,” says Near. “You don’t.”

“More, even,” Mello goes on, as if she hadn’t said anything. The air is kind of damp. She wraps her arms around herself. She wishes she’d brought a jacket. His arms are bare but it doesn’t seem to bother him. “Because you’re real and I love you.”

“Shut up,” says Near.

“No,” says Mello. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me and I don’t care if you don’t think you deserve it. It’s the truth so it counts.”

She feels a little sick and bad but she is nothing but analytical and so she tucks this information away. She does believe him. Mello doesn’t lie. He does a lot of things but not that. She wishes it weren’t true. It’s a lot of responsibility, to be loved.

She digs her fingernails into her arms. She’s not trying to hurt herself. It’s just cold.

“Can I touch you?” he says. He reaches an arm towards her. Probably to put it around her shoulders, to pull her close, to keep it warm.

“No.”

He pulls his arm back.

Up ahead she can see their car. Soon they’ll be there and Mello will drive her home and she can get back into bed with her laptop and her phone and her Lego and her box of ginger nuts.

She shifts the lightstick in her hand. It’s heavier than it looks, weighted towards the bulb. She turns it on and its light blazes through the dark, so bright people turn to look; Mello’s head snaps towards her and she presses it into his hands. He takes it as if it were a precious thing. She doesn’t really know what she’s trying to say by this but she thinks he will.

“Okay,” he says, very quietly, and holds it up; she stops and turns to watch him shine in the dark.