Work Text:
Eli visits the beach the day after graduation.
It's not the same one the second and first years had brought them to. It's a bayside beach, remarkable only in its smallness. Seaweed stipples across the rocks, and gray water laps dully at the matching gray sand.
It's a warm spring day. Most of Japan is covered in cherry blossoms. Eli feels more like this beach, though, washed-up, washed-out.
It was the right decision, she thinks. We're nothing if we aren't nine.
We're still friends, she thinks.
She stands there for a long time, bare toes clutching at the sand.
--
"Maybe I'll go pro," she says into the phone.
The only response is the sound of air blowing as Nico coaxes her nails dry. "That's what I've been telling everyone!" Nico says finally. "We're the best school idols in Japan, after all."
"What about you?" Eli asks. "Are you going pro?"
"Of course," Nico scoffs. "I've already been scouted by several agencies. I'm just negotiating for the best contract at this point."
"But what about college?"
Nico falls silent for another beat. "My younger siblings," she says. Then her voice brightens. "What could college teach me, anyway? I'm already perfect."
--
It's odd to stand at the barre again instead of on the rooftop. Umi's not calling out the count; Maki isn't the one playing the piano. It's just Eli, alone in a sea of ambitious strangers. She practices her plies and pirouettes, rising up onto the toeshoes she worked so hard to earn in a country far from here.
Her ballet days feel like a lifetime ago. In some ways, they were.
She shares a quick smile with the other students in the changing room before leaving. Her muscles ache the whole train ride home, and she savors it.
--
Eli has never considered herself a natural. She built her skills one hour at a time, through relentless and patient effort. Discipline, discipline; it's all she's ever had.
It carried her through every ballet competition, no matter how well or poorly she had placed at the one before. It pulled her through long nights finishing student council duties before she could begin her own schoolwork. It was the hard-won polish that she brought to every mu's performance.
It's what she brings now, to her first official photoshoot: cultivated smiles and tilts of her head, graceful poses built upon muscle memory.
--
Nozomi cups Eli's cheeks in her warm hands." Congratulations on your debut," she murmurs.
Eli looks away. "I couldn't let everything we'd created go to waste."
Nozomi's answering smile is soft. Her kiss is softer, the merest brush of lips. "I knew you were destined for more," she says. "Don't you remember your Tarot card? You're the Star. Your jug may run empty, but it will always overflow again. You were always strong enough to carry all of us."
Nozomi attends her first performance and she laughs, eyes shining, when Eli drags her onto the stage.
--
"Thank you," she says. She says it to everyone she meets; to her fans, to her agent, to her manager, to every makeup artist; to her teachers, to her family, to her friends.
But in her heart she knows the truth: her success is a gift she gave to herself.