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When Sakiko calls her, Mutsumi is there; moon and tide, push and pull, beck and call.
The building is one she’s never got to personally visit Sakiko at, the one always lingering at the back of her mind as a specter since the disbandment. She stands outside it, neat and dutiful, akin to a guard or knight - almost - and in some ways, the narrow entrance to the place is as imposing as the barbed gates of a castle. Mutsumi feels a bit closer to a misbehaving dog instead, denied the entrance back by its owner. Locked out and left to the whims of the weather and the hostility of the strays until allowed otherwise. Most run away, eventually, Mutsumi wants to bolt in and demand Sakiko dispel all her worst fears.
She doesn’t do either, of course. Always loyal to a fault, they’d say.
Sakiko comes stumbling out after a few eternities, suitcase in one hand, knuckles completely white - the faintest of bruises on her right cheek. She hates how wholly unsurprised part of her is. “Saki,” she says, one time of many once she’s found her breath. The name she’s always called her since they were kids, maybe the one thing she could call her own outside the guitar.
The other doesn’t acknowledge it, “Let’s get going.”
Mutsumi keeps her eyes trained to the back of Sakiko's head until she gets in; the door clicks resolutely shut.
“What a rotten father! Does he understand at all how I’ve been feeling?”
“Saki.” She tries.
“I’m never going back there. I can't go back.”
“Saki,” She gets out once more. This time, she doesn’t swallow when Sakiko doesn’t respond, she doesn’t make a sound at all, “are you okay with Budokan?”
Sakiko finally looks at her- bangs shadowing her face, something nameless dangerously crystalized in her eyes- it’s not entirely unexpected she reflects in the silence that follows, and yet she flinches anyway. Mutsumi can’t hold the contact for more than a second; the irony isn’t missed on her, when she was trying to grab her attention in the first place.
She ruins everything whenever she opens her mouth. The shame is, at least, familiar.
“Of course it’s going to be okay.” But that’s not what she had asked.
“What do you think I’ve worked so hard for?” She can never get anything right, can she.
Sakiko’s voice is hard, “All I have left is Ave Mujica.”
You have me. She aches to say. You always have.
Where will you go after this? Where will I know to find you, after everything?
But if nothing else, Mutsumi knows she is not what Sakiko needs. Maybe the root of the issue is that she keeps trying. Keeping an umbrella uselessly by her side as the rain pushes down on them, playing in bands she will never find joy in, or right now, a car ride defined by things they do not say.
Cut off the unfulfilled memories and forget all about it.
Mutsumi gazes out the window at the version of herself reflected in the glass. Somewhere behind them, the sun sets, and in the morning, with it, the dolls Oblivionis and Mortis would rise.