Archive of Our Own ^beta

Some said that the problem with meeting a hundred expectations was that you would be asked for a thousand more. Tenn disagreed; he would gladly meet the thousand expectations of the underworld that was the Zero musical. He had the skills and the support. The problem was that he had to exceed expectations and that meant leaving his support behind.

On stage, to exceed expectations was to meet them. Tenn poured out his heart and even though he was delivering exactly what he had been asked for and no one in this audience had ever doubted him, he felt the awe rising on all sides: from the seats, from the back, from the wings. His music had always charmed everyone Tenn came across, from hospital kids to executives to forces of nature. To win hearts here too was nothing but the natural progression. Tenn couldn’t let the audience see that he was in hell. He couldn’t wipe his sweat or heave for air. Everyone behind the curtain knew it was an act, but on this side of it, Tenn had to press on like he wasn’t even noticing his charisma soaring to new heights. He couldn’t let everyone see where he was leading them until he’d already brought them safely above the surface again.

The second he slipped backstage breathless, stagehands were prepared to steady him, hands outstretched for him to stumble into. They had water, cooling packs, his next costume. Tenn was expected to collapse.

He couldn’t.

“Thank you,” Tenn said, accepting only a water bottle. He sidestepped an offer to help shed his costume so he could slip on the ice rig for his precious few minutes of cooldown; he didn’t have time to relax.

Backstage was busy. Zero was a complicated production. People from every department bustled silently here and there: props, hair, makeup, lighting. Assistant directors helped bear used backdrops away. During showtime, there was no rank. Every task was crucial, no one was above pitching in.

Despite this, at the sight of Tenn, a conspicuous tunnel opened, a path to his greenroom. Tenn wasn’t unaware of his own importance. Tenn wasn’t unaware of his own limits. Of course he had to be propped up and catered to in every way for every second he wasn’t in front of an audience, in this silent world of the clockwork behind the miracle. A necessity, not a privilege, for all that he was privileged- blessed, really- to be able to witness so tangibly the structure of support all around him.

It was after intermission. The end drew ever closer. Even the audience, with the suspension of disbelief so masterfully maintained, knew it. Everyone knew the end of this story. Everyone knew their time with Zero was limited. Every time Tenn left the stage, tension surged; every time he ran back to them, it subsided into hope that was even worse. Zero hadn’t disappeared yet. Zero was always going to disappear. The dead would stay dead.

If anyone backstage was swept up in the same emotion, they were professional enough not to show it, which Tenn appreciated. Backstage was supposed to be a refuge from attention and spotlights and expectations, a place to make faces until your muscles relaxed and check your lines and not worry about who would see you. Tenn could do whatever he wanted without judgment.

He had no need to check his lines. He wouldn’t mind a chance to sit somewhere cool, staring at a wall until his legs stopped cramping and everything stopped moving and his own lines stopped ringing in his ears. But he would survive overheating and muscle spasms and dizziness.

He set off on a course he’d plotted weeks ago, back when he had the spare brainpower to chart such a thing, that he’d scouted every second he’d been backstage in his earlier breaks, instead of accepting the path with the gratitude it deserved. He stuck as close to the curtain as he could without disturbing it.

For success onstage, Tenn had Gaku and Ryuu. For preserving his stamina and fortitude for the trying duration of the musical, Tenn had the crew. For looking out for his own life, Tenn had no one but himself.

There was a chance Kujou Takamasa, his own father, was trying to kill him. Tenn hadn’t shared his suspicion with Gaku or Ryuu. At most, he’d confided in Anesagi-san that he was worried that Incomplete Ruler would distress Riku. She had believed him without question: it was a distressing song, especially to the psyche of an idol.

This was supposed to be a safe place for Tenn to let his face drop after projecting affect into the strongest spotlights. Instead, he kept his expression light and pleasant as he hurried through the backstage, glancing up at scaffolding and catwalks. He didn’t want to offend anyone by implying they hadn’t done their job right; he didn’t want to alarm anyone by suggesting sabotage. But he couldn’t forget the story of what had happened to Yuki’s first partner after Yuki denied Kujou.

Everything seemed to be secured properly, just like it had all the other times Tenn had passed by. The heavy lights pointed where they were supposed to, clunky black boxes fixed in place, rigid and immovable. There was no sign of weakness. Tenn didn’t know what to look for or if he would notice if anything had changed. Backstage wasn’t his domain; he was no opera ghost to flit from box to basement and haunt everything in between. That was Kujou-san’s role.

The one thing he could think of was on the other side of the back curtain, too large to be suspended above the top of the backdrop where Tenn could glimpse it from backstage like the other lights. It was directly above him when he stood in the center of the stage in front of the audience, which was of course not the time to inspect it. Everywhere his eyes turned was visible. Every glance had to be deliberate. Would Zero have looked?

The massive chandelier had seemed to be in one piece before it was hoisted up. Tenn hadn’t attended it at all times, he didn’t know if anything had happened to it. He didn’t know how to access it to find out, or how easy it was for someone else to access it. He only knew that he spent half the play under its light. The blocking had come from Kujou-san himself.

There was no suspicious problem with his props. Everything was accounted for, nothing had been added or removed. His costumes were likewise untampered with. Nothing would trip or restrict him. He didn’t know who had been the last person to handle them.

He had inspected his current costume before putting it on- it hadn’t been one of the several onstage changes- and been satisfied with its safety. The quality was high enough, as with everything involved with the Zero musical, to have distracted Tenn for a second to appreciate the artistry he got to showcase. The white shoulders lightened the whole outfit, emphasizing the black rectangle wrapping around the torso marked with silvery lines. There was more black than white, but it couldn’t really be summed up as either. Sheer sleeves draped over black gloves. A tall collar stood around his throat, open at the front.

Tenn was out of time. If he was in danger, he would have to deal with it as it happened, whenever and whatever it was.

This would be the last time Tenn was onstage before his last scene. He just had to make it through this scene- because at the very least, in his final scene, Tenn was alone. He stayed center stage, making it a likely time for him to be targeted, and no one else approached him. If the chandelier dropped, there should be little to no collateral damage.

Onstage, he had to put everything he had into Zero- offstage, he had to put everything he had into assuring his own safety-

“Everything he had” wasn’t much. His reserves were dwindling. There was a reason why so many people were poised to help him.

In the back of his mind, Tenn registered that backstage seemed more hectic than usual. A strange energy pervaded. He had thought his behavior would draw more attention, but no one questioned him.

Tenn couldn’t spare the effort of wondering. He was struggling to both identify threats and immerse himself in Zero. They were both of the highest priority, he couldn’t afford to let either slip his focus.

It was possible Kujou-san wasn’t trying to kill him tonight. Tenn wanted to believe that was the case, but he didn’t have the luxury of indulging in the dream. Either way, he understood that he might find nothing. There might not be a concrete answer by the end of the night.

Zero, though… the final scene of the dress rehearsal drew ever closer. Tenn had to showcase what Zero had been thinking when he commissioned Sakura Haruki for a song he would never sing. He had only minutes to solve the riddle no one else, even those who knew the man best, had been able to, and past that, integrate the answer into himself and present it in a performance that graced the audience instead of cursing them and appeased Kujou-san’s long-held mania.

There was no time. Tenn stepped back onto the stage, into the blinding lights for the last time. It was Zero’s last scene before he disappeared. The next time Tenn walked onto this stage it would be in darkness. When the lights came up, he wouldn’t be facing them.

Zero was about to disappear. He wouldn’t announce it. The audience would wonder as they always did if Zero was ever going to come back, and he wouldn’t. When Tenn went back on stage for that cursed epilogue, it would be as a ghost.

Tenn couldn’t say it was easy being Zero, but there was something comfortable in the performance for every scene up to this point. It was almost like when IDOLiSH7’s sub-units would play at mimicking each other’s songs. He felt like if he just turned his head, Zero would be there smiling, saying he would do a TRIGGER song next. Somehow, Zero had become his friend. Portraying him accurately was a matter of personal honor.

Why had Zero disappeared? It wasn’t a unique question. Tenn had two options.

The first was to avoid answering it. He could sing Incomplete Ruler with no interpretation. It would be dismaying and depressing, especially after seeing the rest of Zero’s life. Tenn would have to give nothing less than his best: he wouldn’t be able to soften the blow. Even if nothing happened to him while he stood onstage, vulnerable, it would be a horrible experience with which to repay his fans.

(Even if nothing happened to him while he stood onstage, vulnerable, he would be equally vulnerable anywhere else. If he, as Zero, sang the horrible song, if Kujou-san hadn’t already been considering homicide, this might push him over the edge.)

The second way was to come up with a unique answer. Something that would redeem Incomplete Ruler.

It seemed like an unattainable dream. Tenn was supposed to make dreams come true, not dream them himself.

The lights went down. Tenn left the stage. Just like that, Zero disappeared.

It was his last chance to ensure that nothing would happen to him. He hadn’t sat down since the last time the blocking called for it. On shaky legs, he made his last tour of backstage, looking for something to go wrong. He was lucky he didn’t have to change costumes as he had so often, sometimes even onstage, giving him this additional opportunity. Zero would remain in his elegant jacket and pants, his early stage ensemble that became his default casual clothing as being an idol pervaded more and more of his life. Changing would have signified an awareness of the performance, a willingness to deliver, that couldn’t be attributed to Zero after he disappeared.

All he found was the crew in black hurrying around. Tenn didn’t know where they found their energy. He was lucky that for his last scene all he had to do was stand in place.

All he had to do was breathe. All he had to do was keep breathing.

The audience was realizing Zero was missing. Tenn could hear Gaku and Ryuu speaking on stage. He couldn’t take any solace in their lines. He knew what was coming.

Gaku and Ryuu had been through a similar journey to Tenn in regards to trying to become their characters and understand how to convey the script they’d been given. Most nights, the three of them had sat down together and discussed it, and Tenn knew what they shared with each other barely scratched the surface of the decisions they were making.

Ryuu’s challenge in playing Sakura Haruki was that he was up against the memories held by Rokuya Nagi and Natsume Minami. He had to question what had motivated the mysterious composer, and it was possible those who had known him wouldn’t like the answers Ryuu came up with. Gaku’s challenge in playing Kujou Takamasa was that he was still alive, although he had expressed a lack of interest in providing guidance. Gaku was understandably less invested in Kujou-san’s emotional response to a possible mischaracterization, but Tenn thought he was handling the matter with a certain gravitas nonetheless. They hadn’t spoken of it. Any wariness of displeasing Kujou on Gaku’s part had to be subconscious.

Gaku screamed, signaling what had at one point been the end of the play. Tenn knew it was coming, but the hairs on his arms rose.

Even now, Tenn didn’t know what Gaku meant by the scream that had so bewildered him when he first read the scene. It didn’t matter. He knew Gaku knew what he wanted it to mean and he doubted Kujou-san would find issue with it. Tenn only had to be Zero, and Zero hadn’t witnessed Kujou-san’s breakdown.

Did Zero ever see what he had left behind? Did he ever see the state of the world trying to put itself back together around his void? Did he ever look back?

Zero didn’t look back when singing Incomplete Ruler. He stared into the mirror and never turned to his audience.

This was the answer Tenn had been given. He was still looking for another answer.

Gaku’s scream faded and the lights went down. Tenn’s final cue.

He found his mark in darkness. The black-clad stage crew were moving all around him without touching him. He felt their footsteps, too professional to make any sound, like reverberations of his heartbeat.

Tenn hadn’t practiced this moment a million times. He hadn’t even been given Incomplete Ruler at the beginning of rehearsing for Zero. But it had ran through his mind constantly as he considered the merits of every possible version of the scene. The finite times he’d been able to rehearse on the real stage were engraved into his being.

This wasn’t familiar. There were too many people involved in the transition. He was sure of it.

The lights raised without delay, illuminating no one but Tenn and the mirror before him. The stagehands had disappeared like ghosts. Like Zero.

The opening strains of Incomplete Ruler floated up from the orchestra pit, a repeating pattern that couldn’t break itself out. Tenn had thoroughly investigated the possibility of Kujou staging an attack that either emerged from the pit or pushed him into it, and concluded it was unlikely.

Tenn had never felt pinned down by eyes. He had never felt gazes searing into his body. It was the powerful stage light painting his back with sweat. His shoulders had squared into it, back and down, even before the lights had come up and almost physically braced him. He stared blankly ahead at his full-body reflection.

Tenn breathed.

“The despair brought on by hope; our paradise is under this rubble,” he sang. The piano emphasized the leading tone reaching the tonic, and forever falling back down. “Beyond this self-righteousness.”

The sound was good, his tone was pure and accurate for the acoustics he was performing in. His body knew how to deliver the best.

He had analyzed the lyrics. He knew the definitions. He had no choice but to despair and make sure the whole audience knew it and felt it with him. He had led them into hell with his eyes wide open, not knowing if he could bring them back out. Even now, he still didn’t have a path planned.

There had never been another answer. Tenn had never failed so miserably. If Kujou-san didn’t kill him, Tenn would find out: was he dissatisfied and going to acquire more children to manipulate into his image of Zero? Or had Tenn ended his dream by forcibly tainting Zero this way? Would either option leave him stable enough not to retaliate?

He had wanted to be a dream that never ended. Zero had taught him that wasn’t possible, so Tenn had wanted to be a dream one could awake from smiling and refreshed, to be remembered fondly and eagerly returned to.

He should have known he could be neither.

He continued, “The Expelled King is petrified in this wasteland he can’t return from.”

There was no going back. Tenn would have to live with the consequences of this performance. (If he managed to continue living.) His fans would be confused and betrayed. TRIGGER’s comeback would be put on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

Had Tenn managed to at least protect Riku from this devastation? Had anyone heeded his warning and kept him away?

Tenn didn’t want to admit what this was doing to him. He was only beginning to resign himself to imagining what it would do to his fans. He didn’t want any idol to experience this kind of wretched end, but especially not Riku. Even if nothing happened to Tenn tonight, it would be hard enough to recover from this mindset he was putting himself into, was dragging everyone with empathy into. If Riku was there, he might not be able to drag himself back out.

What would this do to Kujou-san? Was this cementing his hatred of Zero? With no hope in idols left, what would he do to Tenn? If he tried again with raising more children, what would he do to them?

The lights were behind him. Tenn stared ahead into darkness, ignoring the familiar gilded edges of the mirror, golden right angles two inches thick. Usually, around the white edges of his reflection, the shadows of the audience seating were comforting. Tonight, Tenn couldn’t seem to bring the vague shapes of chairs into focus.

“He’s left with the darkening sky-”

He switched his gaze to his own reflection. The shining mask of Zero looked back, moving slightly in time with Tenn’s breath.

Tenn wasn’t wearing a mask.

“-his wavering vision-”

Zero himself stood before Tenn in the mirror, dressed not in the sleek shirt and pants Tenn was wearing but his iconic robes accented in gold. On a horrified whim, Tenn brought up his hand to the glass to see if his reflection did the same.

It did. Tenn’s fingers trembled as they approached, Zero’s closing the distance at the same rate.

“-and his foolishness.”

The coolness of glass against his fingertips never came. Instead, the air against his fingers blossomed with warmth, undeniably from a living body. Tenn froze and the other hand stopped too, the perfect distance away as if he were touching the mirror that wasn’t there.

This was the part where Tenn stopped singing. The instrumentals dropped out with only a brush of piano remaining.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

It made no sense. Riku shouldn’t be here, but Tenn would know that voice anywhere and his mind insisted he was the right answer despite all the other questions his presence raised, despite the fact that Tenn had never heard Riku sing like this before. Musical theater was a unique balance of preserving one’s own voice- there was a reason why it was Tenn that had been cast and not some other unknown find of Kujou-san’s- and giving voice to the character. Zero’s voice was known. Tenn couldn’t fully impersonate Zero’s sound, but neither could he perform as TRIGGER’s Kujou Tenn. Tenn had never sung like this before. Who could possibly match him? The rhetorical question wasn’t supposed to have an answer.

The woman who had been Tenn’s grandmother had used to say, when he and Riku (poorly) took turns speaking into the phone, that they sounded the same. But that was over the phone. When Riku had been well enough to sing, Tenn would practice with him, and they would prepare something to perform for their parents, who would clap and gush over how well their voices went together. But relatives weren’t objective. No matter what the conspiracy theorist fans said, their voices had never sounded similar other than the quality. Never like this.

Those familiar with Riku’s voice would recognize him, but it was far from his signature style. There was no way he could have practiced this. Tenn could admit, as a professional, that on the occasions they’d been in the same unit they still sung together well, although he had been careful to maintain his individuality. Tonight, though, Tenn hadn’t been trying to sound like anyone but his portrayal of Zero. He couldn’t sing as himself, it would be improper to try to impersonate Zero, and he certainly wasn’t trying to sound like Riku. He hadn’t known Riku intended to sing with him, hadn’t adjusted his approach. Yet Riku was matching Tenn’s Zero smoothly.

What was Riku doing there? Why was the mirror frame empty, a doorway instead of a barrier? As Tenn caught his breath, he realized Riku was still mirroring him, mimicking every inhale and exhale of Tenn’s body even as he kept singing. Tenn corrected himself immediately.

(Tenn used to demonstrate breathing patterns for Riku. He told Riku to follow his count and they would just breathe together and Tenn would wonder if this was the only thing he could do for Riku and then Riku would beam at him and proclaim himself all better but he never was. He always went back to the hospital.)

“As the depths of our eyes blended together, the two of us are almost the same color.”

Tenn stared into the eyes of the mask as the piano gently built by adding a layer in a higher register, the fathomless smiling shapes revealing no glitter of living eyes behind them. It was too late for Tenn to change anything. He had sung the entire musical, he couldn’t check himself now to make Riku sound better. But he didn’t need to. Riku’s voice complemented Tenn’s Zero nicely. They didn’t have to be identical.

Tenn could only guess who Riku was supposed to be. What was Zero’s reflection? Was he a friendly companion of a shadow, or a doppelganger to be wary of? Or as Zero’s reflection, was he meant to insinuate that Zero had different selves, public and private personas? (Which one was the real one and which was the image? Which one was Tenn supposed to play?) Such a thing was nothing to be condemned, and was one of the more reasonable answers to Zero’s riddle, but it reminded Tenn uncomfortably of Kujou-san’s subconscious fancy of becoming Zero.

It didn’t matter. Incomplete Ruler had been half a song. Riku had filled in the lapse perfectly. Even if he did nothing else, he had already changed the whole song. He had added a second person to Zero’s lonely world.

The half cadence and percussive rush of building instrumentals led to Tenn rejoining the song in the drop before the accompaniment crashed into the pre-chorus. “Why am I here, why am I here? I wish I were king of that paradise.”

Tenn knew why he was here. He had traded his life for Riku’s. For years, the world had been just as he wanted it. The problem was that Riku had reattached himself to Tenn’s fate. He was standing under the chandelier with Tenn. You’ve done enough, Tenn wanted to say, but it wasn’t in the lyrics. Walk away now. If the crew could just slide a real mirror between them, Riku could back off, out of the chandelier’s range. With his brief addition, the song had turned from a curse to a riddle. Fitting, for Zero. The mystery would haunt but not destroy. They could all still get out safely, except maybe Tenn, depending on what Kujou-san had been thinking, or not thinking. He couldn’t let anyone else take the risk with him, least of all Riku.

“Mocked for my past mistakes, I fall to my knees.”

Tenn didn’t- he wouldn’t be able to get back up again- but he let his black-gloved hand fall away from the “mirror”. Riku likewise dropped his hand in perfect unison.

This was the part where Tenn sang out a long vowel- ah- like a cry while drums entered and added intensity. Even though he was half-expecting it, it was all he could do to maintain air when Riku came in at the same time, adding, “On the night that my knees met the dirt, I realized in the darkness that my arrogant heart painfully resonated so much with yours.”

He had changed the song entirely. Except-

“Incomplete Ruler.”

It was clearly the way the song was always meant to be sung. The orchestration had ascended with a stuttering drumbeat to lead up to Riku dropping the title in just the right place. The version Tenn had been taught had lacked any connection to either the title of the song, or the orchestra’s musicality half the time. With Riku singing where Tenn couldn’t, he no longer had to ignore half of the musical cues. Tenn snagged a deep breath and came back in. “Even if we can’t become one, we can’t stay alone.”

Before, there was no way to take the lyrics but at face value. They had described the impossible situation Zero was in. There was no answer to the riddle but to escape it. Now- Riku had turned it on its head. Even as he sang it, it crystallized in Tenn’s head: he and Riku would never go back to what they once were, but they would never be alone. The only rhythmic texture was from the drums now, not the piano, but the sheer volume was incredible, just as driving as every prior point in the song.

Tenn was grateful to have a short pause to compose himself before his next phrase, a descending two-syllable “whoa”, but in that breath Riku sang the same thing Tenn was about to like a preempting echo. Tenn came in when he was supposed to, following Riku, and again in the empty beat before Tenn repeated the call Riku repeated it first, dropping the notes into the space like they were made for him and taking over the call, turning Tenn’s part- previously a solo- into its response.

This was fully a duet. Incomplete Ruler had been incomplete itself as it was presented to Tenn. Riku was matching him line for line, taking his turn in every breath Tenn wasn’t singing. Tenn was not the one leading this song- he wasn’t sure Incomplete Ruler had a leader. The song itself was leading them to something- if Tenn dared to dream, to the answer to the riddle he had been seeking alone in the dark all this time.

“Even in the darkness that hides the moon, I know a glimmer of hope,” Riku said.

He was singing it to the whole theater, but Tenn took it as a personal promise. He had to come in before Riku was done singing. “What is this light left behind?” he asked. Without the context of Riku’s part, Tenn’s only guess had been Zero’s shooting star burning itself out.

“It’s us,” Riku replied before Tenn could finish, calling it out above the melody, and Tenn’s heart surged.

Yet he had to sober for his next line. “Why do people yearn to be close to each other?” Singing this facing Riku was impossible, but all Tenn could do was lean in, toward Riku, still not touching where the glass would be, the lights heavy on his back. Riku, pliant to the demand of his every motion, leaned forward as well, and finally stopped holding his last note that had been sounding over Tenn’s previous line, a measured withdrawal that fit the lyrics a little too well for Tenn’s comfort. “-we ask, as the sun comes up.”

The instrumentals from the orchestra pit faded. For a second, Tenn almost expected Riku to fade away before his eyes, but Riku just straightened, so Tenn did too.

The piano from the beginning started up again, with the soft spit of the drums. Originally, Tenn was supposed to stand here, motionless, soundless. He had thought it was a sort of contemplation of how Zero couldn’t keep singing forever. Of how even as Zero questioned his distance from others, he did nothing to cross it.

As Tenn had expected- it was terrifying how quickly he had developed these expectations- Riku sang where Tenn had nothing to say, carrying the melody from the first verse instead of walking away and leaving Tenn to salvage the song and take responsibility for Kujou-san’s judgment alone. “Our hearts couldn’t love the same, we found rejection when we tried to connect, ending up in dystopia.”

The lyrics weren’t cheerful, but Tenn’s mind was racing ahead. In a few more measures, Tenn would come in. His lines would answer Riku’s. It wasn’t that all of his lines were depressing and Riku’s fixed them- they both got to sing of darkness and struggles, and answer each other. They were both incomplete on their own.

It didn’t go unappreciated that the lyrics were also personally applicable. Singing with Riku like this definitely poked at the old daydream of singing together for life, painful for how thoroughly it had been killed by Tenn himself.

Tenn almost didn’t notice until his own arms raised: he was now mirroring Riku, tuned in to his every motion. Riku had lifted his hands and tilted his head back. Tenn looked up as well. At first he tried to keep his eyes on Riku to best anticipate his every move and thus continue to be worthy of his reflection, but then he realized something was being projected on the curtain above the empty frame of the mirror. Lyrics. The lyrics Riku was singing.

“Underneath the smooth, pretty skin is solitude,” Riku sang, and the sound grew. It was tentative, but people in the audience were answering Riku’s prompt, using the melody they’d heard from Tenn a minute ago.

Was this the duet? Not Zero and his alter ego, but Zero and his fans?

Of course!

Zero had always sung with his fans. It made perfect sense. Riku was standing before Tenn in Zero’s iconic stage outfit, all flowing white robes and grinning mask and pure presence. It was a brilliant twist that in this moment, he represented Zero’s own fans. That was the role he presented to Tenn-as-Zero.

Tenn had always known what his relationship with his fans was. With Riku, he was less certain, but in this moment, as much as he wished Riku would be satisfied and leave Tenn on stage under the chandelier alone, he understood how their roles worked together. Tenn could give what was demanded of him.

The lyrics changed. “Others get hurt-”

Tenn had known, for as long as he had known that going with Kujou-san to get money for Riku’s medical treatment was an option, that he had to seal away the reason why he had to leave. He couldn’t let Riku blame himself for it. The fans in the audience were probably also thinking of their circumstances that Tenn couldn’t begin to guess; he could only sympathize with them, those nameless individuals Tenn would never meet.

“-we get hurt-”

Tenn wasn’t imagining it: he recognized the voices behind him joining in with Riku. From one corner came the four voices of ZOOL. The two that had only recently started singing ZOOL’s songs were no less brazen for their inexperience. One of them had been Sakura Haruki’s friend and this song would be meaningful to him, but come to think of it, they had all gotten to meet him. He could hear the one from NO_MAD. Their songs had clashed against each other ever since that first Black or White. That must have ended sometime when Tenn wasn’t looking. And there was Isumi Haruka’s voice, rising strong out of the audience, undaunted by the participation. He didn’t sound like he resented Tenn anymore or wanted the role of Zero. Tenn didn’t know if he had forgiven Kujou-san for casting him aside, and Tenn would never condone that, but did he see that it was for the best? Kujou-san’s dream would have crushed him the way the chandelier dangling above Tenn could crush him and Riku at any minute. Like Riku, Tenn wanted to keep it from him if he hadn’t realized. Let him believe the easy story. It would hurt him less that way.

“-everything ends.”

Riku lowered his arms, because it was Tenn’s turn. The drums stopped, the piano’s rhythm simplified. Tenn dropped his eyes from the lyrics as they dispersed. “But when I lost it all,” he answered, “I fell into the void together with my innocent partner in crime.” He locked eyes with Riku through Zero’s mask, confident that Riku was looking back, hoping he understood. The irrepressible piano was already sub-dividing again and again. “That’s right, we were two.”

Tenn had never wanted Riku to know that Tenn had chosen to leave for his sake. He had never wanted him to know that living under Kujou-san had been a daily effort, not a dream come true. Tenn had thrived due to his own will carving out a place for himself, not naturally fortunate circumstances. He’d had a job to do, one he was still doing, possibly finally completing, by singing Incomplete Ruler. Tenn had wanted to bear the burden for Riku. Instead, by not sharing it, they both carried it in full.

The lyrics hadn’t been written about him and Riku. They probably really were about how Zero’s disappearance had shaken everyone connected to it like Tenn had originally feared. But in this moment, Tenn understood something that, although it hurt, was already easing. Now that he and Riku had admitted the hurt, it felt like they could move past it. This was a better feeling to convey than the mindless misery that was the only other option, so Tenn ignored that he and Riku hadn’t actually talked about anything, and told himself Riku understood Incomplete Ruler the same way he was coming to.

In practice, Tenn had lapsed into silence as the verse ended, leaving it unresolved even as the drums returned, playing through the drop. It was a chance for him to just stand and breathe, a much needed catchup. Instead, his arms surged up at the same moment as Riku’s, gesturing at lyrics that once again played across the curtain above them.

As Tenn had guessed, Riku launched into the pre-chorus. “Why am I here? Why am I here? I wish I were king of that paradise.” The first two lines, then, were the same as what Tenn had sung earlier. Again, voices he recognized floated out from the previously silent seats. ZOOL was bold like no other group; Re:vale was bold like no other group. The remainder of IDOLiSH7 was bold like no other group. Tenn had once thought that to recognize meant to acknowledge. He didn’t necessarily think differently now: that he recognized twelve individual voices without looking at them meant he recognized the talent of twelve individuals. The vast auditorium no longer seemed so insurmountably lonely.

Although Tenn had been left out of it entirely, clearly some level of planning had gone into this. Riku wasn’t just improvising. Were the idols in the audience planted? It was a nice touch, the sound coming from multiple directions encouraged the rest of the audience, who might be less musically inclined, to participate without shame restraining them. Now that it had been initiated, it would work just as well if Riku would go and join them. He had wanted to be in the audience, hadn’t he? Tenn would let him now, with his blessing. Anything to get him out from under the chandelier. Tenn didn’t know what was keeping it up.

“I lifted my face to the debris, sin-”

Tenn tried to shuffle a step to the side, as if to shunt Riku out of the frame. Riku swayed right back to center. Tenn went along with it without thinking, maintaining the illusion of the mirror. Back where he started, Tenn bided his time. Maybe preparations backstage weren’t ready to replace the mirror and release Riku. Tenn would try again; but until then, he watched, and he listened.

Riku directly in front of him, refusing to budge. Twelve voices and counting behind Tenn. And to Tenn’s left, Ryuu.

He, as Sakura Haruki receiving Zero’s final commission, was supposed to be frowning down at the score of Incomplete Ruler at the edge of the stage.

“-and guilt-”

To Tenn’s right, Gaku was now singing as well. He was supposed to be looking away from Zero, as far away as possible. No one was supposed to have any closeness or connection to Zero in this song.

“-and the future.”

Neither of them should be looking in Tenn’s direction, meaning they shouldn’t be able to see the words projected above his head. Meaning they had learned this part of the song in advance.

Tenn doubted they had kept it secret from him on purpose. They were together too much. So they had learned the true nature of Incomplete Ruler’s final form only recently. How recently? Had there really not been time to write in Tenn on the plan? The unfamiliar words Gaku and Ryuu sang were polished, but they were professionals. They were TRIGGER. Likewise, Tenn, with no prior warning for how his reflection would come to life, was confident that he was pulling off the ultimate performance.

Like Tenn had the first time, Riku sang a long vowel, ah, above the melody.

“There’s nothing that can make a person a star,” Tenn said. It wasn’t something an idol was supposed to admit, it sent the wrong message about oneself. It was the truth he suspected Zero had burned himself out over trying to keep hidden. “There’s just a sparkle people have. The secret is that you, too, stand on this same horizon: Imperfect Ruler.”

Before, Tenn had viewed these words as a distasteful confession, that Zero was only human. But with Riku in front of him, it was an admission that there was nothing Tenn could do that Riku couldn’t. Beyond it being possible for Riku to match Tenn, Riku was the only chance Tenn had for redeeming the musical and rescuing everyone from where Tenn had brought them, not to mention retaining his own glory. With the fans behind, the emphasis seemed to be on how even though everyone had put Zero on stage alone, he had considered the whole building to be the stage. The only way to attain stardom was to bring everyone together. Zero had been the real deal, but it hadn’t been because he was elevated somewhere unreachable. Zero’s pedestal had been an illusion created by mass agreement, a monument to collective goodwill.

The music changed, an obvious cue that wasn’t for Tenn. Instead of continuing into the full chorus, the chord progressed to a IV, all strong beats and uniform marching, more drums than notes. Riku raised his right hand the way he had earlier when Tenn had brought his left hand up to touch the mirror. Tenn matched him as Riku began, “When I held your left hand with this right hand you slapped away-”

Tenn’s eyes went wide. It was a good thing there really wasn’t a mirror, it was bad enough Riku was seeing his composure slip this much. He knew he was feverish with the heat of the moment, completely entrenched in Zero, vulnerable to anything having to do with how he had left Riku for Kujou-san: the logic didn’t make the lyrics affect him any less.

The bridge wasn’t like the verse or chorus, naturally. The lyrics played over Tenn’s head but Riku didn’t gesture to them. Maybe in future runs, if the audience knew the song already they could join in. For tonight, Riku was the only one who knew how the full song went. Nobody, not even Tenn, had heard it in its entirety before.

“-I was able to know myself.”

Would Riku have ever become IDOLiSH7’s center if Tenn hadn’t been introduced to Yaotome Productions by Kujou-san? Would he have the physical capabilities to even have the option to become an idol if Tenn hadn’t paid for his medical treatment by selling himself?

This was insane. Tenn hadn’t gotten to practice this the way he always practiced every aspect of performance before going on any stage. He had to bare his honest reactions to this audience with only sound and the image of his back. He had to react properly, as Zero. He had to keep singing. He had to mirror Riku down to his breathing in the same moment. He had to guess whatever gestures would come next. He had to deliver a miracle that would save Kujou-san, never knowing if it was too late and everything was about to come crashing down.

He could do it. He would do it. Tenn’s whole life had led up to this moment. For the sake of Kujou-san’s dream, he had trained to understand the progression of Zero’s story, how he had felt at every twist and turn. He had always given his fans everything he had with no filter, because he simply didn’t produce anything he would be ashamed to show them. He had the musical theory, experience, and muscle memory of every other song he’d ever performed guiding him. And despite having spent five years apart from Riku, Tenn could still intimate everything Riku intended. Meeting his expectations before he could even voice them was what Tenn had been born to do. He could, and would, do better than imitation.

Even as Riku sang, Tenn realized how the line would end- where the musical phrase would go, what the last word would be-

“We are rulers of the dawn,” Riku sang, and on “rulers,” Tenn overlapped, meeting Riku in unison for one syllable, then going their separate ways, a descent in counterpoint to Riku. The thrill of pulling it off terrified Tenn. He wasn’t supposed to be improvising. He had to snag a quick breath for his next line but Riku continued vocalizing above him.

Tenn’s lyric, the only full line he got in this bridge before the new pre-chorus, was, “So that I won’t lose myself to the fraud filled with happiness anymore.” After a measure’s pause, he would follow it up with “whispered and disappeared.” The melancholy fragment hadn’t been inspiring on its own.

Riku filled it with, “The wind whispered, ‘Don’t let go of my hand,’ as it disappeared.” The melody overlaid Tenn’s closing phrase perfectly.

As the line faded away under the whisper of another build, Riku’s hand fell from where it had reached for Tenn’s, separated by the pretense of glass, always a reflection’s width away. Tenn’s hand fell slower than Riku’s and Tenn saw Riku pause and adjust his own motion, seamlessly switching back to following Tenn’s lead. Which of them was the mirror image?

It was still bittersweet, and that was okay. Tenn- Zero- not being alone didn’t fix everything. It just meant he wasn’t alone, and that wasn’t enough.

Tenn didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to take Riku with him.

The previous pre-choruses had begun the same way; this one’s lyrics were different, Zero no longer questioning why he was there. Tenn had practiced singing the lyrics with desperation, accompanied by the same solo piano. It was the only thing that made sense. Even now, with the entire context of the song changed by Riku leading the fans in duet, there was no other answer. Tenn sang the same way he had rehearsed and furthermore, before he could think better of it, reached through the “mirror” to grasp Riku’s hand.

“I was screaming in a hoarse voice.”

Zero had never done such a thing. It wasn’t good for the throat. Tenn also made a point of not straining his vocal cords. He warmed up properly, he sang properly, he accepted roles that required screaming with prejudice.

Even so-

Riku’s hand was warm in his. His fingers were soft and barely had to shift to requit his hold. As if Riku had already been reaching for Tenn, too.

So much for trying to shuffle Riku away. Now that Tenn had broken past the surface and grasped something real- he foolishly wondered if the audience had realized before that his reflection was another person- there was no restoring the glass. It wasn’t like Tenn intended to let go, either.

“Loneliness waited upon us,” Tenn said. There was nowhere to look but at Riku. If his voice was rough, it was as the song required. “The scream that I swallowed started to melt my heart.”

Answer that, Riku.

He did, with drums like an overlapping heartbeat: “So let us stay with you all.”

Wait, the pronouns- Riku had been leading the audience, representing Zero’s fans that he sang with at the end of concerts. Who were the “all” he wanted to stay with? Zero was a solo artist.

The answer to the riddle came to him before the next line. They were singing with Riku, not Tenn, but Gaku and Ryuu were still on stage with Tenn. Kujou Takamasa and Sakura Haruki had been at Zero’s sides for as long as he would have them. Zero had never been alone.

Slowly, Tenn broke away from the script- from Kujou-san’s one instruction- and turned his head.

Gaku had been facing the audience, because that was the correct thing for an actor on stage to do. Sure enough, his head had been turned away, not looking at the lyrics over Tenn’s head. Yet even as Tenn threw away the original blocking degree by degree where Gaku couldn’t see, Gaku turned to look at him as well.

“This destiny is more than I can hold.”

Yes. It had taken all of Zero’s support staff to keep him shining for as long as he had, and they were human. Zero inevitably had to pass on his legacy to the world to be picked up by a new generation.

Tenn held Gaku’s gaze for a long, searing moment. The eye contact was intense after having only Zero’s mask to look into on Riku’s face for so long. Had Kujou-san ever realized how much Zero had needed him?

“We all stand next to each other so that we can rule.”

“Incomplete Ruler” had seemed to have everything to do with incompleteness and nothing to do with ruling, as Tenn had originally heard it. For the first time, he understood that the title wasn’t a curse but an indication of a partner. Instead of a role that could never be fulfilled, it was a promise that you weren’t expected to fulfill it alone.

Tenn slowly looked back at his reflection, and kept going to look the other direction, at Ryuu. Just as Gaku had turned to Tenn right as Tenn had turned to him, magnetized to each other without sight, Ryuu, singing with Riku, looked up from Sakura Haruki’s score just in time to meet Tenn’s eyes.

“The dawn is breaking.”

The dawn belonged to TRIGGER. They knew better than anyone what it was to come through total darkness and burst out triumphant on the other side.

Ryuu’s smoldering eyes were hard to look away from, but Tenn did. This wasn’t about Sakura Haruki. It wasn’t about Kujou Takamasa, for all that everything hinged on whether this performance pushed him over the edge into acceptance or fury. It wasn’t even about Zero. It was, as always, about the fans. Tenn turned back to Riku and squeezed the hand he refused to let go of as Riku concluded the pre-chorus in the bass drop and launched them into the final chorus: “Incomplete Ruler.”

The music surged. “Even if we can’t become one, we can’t stay alone,” Tenn sang. It wasn’t an impossible riddle at all. Riku was still holding his last phrase, embellishing it right until the last moment of Tenn’s.

Riku called immediately, “Whoa!” and Tenn answered it. They repeated the call and response and Riku followed it with, “Even in the darkness that hides the moon.”

Tenn could hear the idols in the audience singing with more vigor. They had an idea of how the chorus went, and they knew enough about music to suspect the song was nearing its conclusion. Tension was building. Everyone was praying for a miracle, for the story to change. For a happy ending after all.

If Zero was standing in Tenn’s place, what would he do?

Maybe Tenn didn’t have to ask. He wanted to be closer to the voices calling for him. He wanted to make them happy and give them everything they asked of him.

At this point, no one knew what to expect. Begging Zero to come back had never worked before. But Tenn was within reach, surrounded by voices he trusted on all sides.

Tenn cocked his head back, just a little, to catch as many of the voices as possible.

It was such a small gesture, but Zero’s fans responded immediately. He could no longer hear the individual voices of idols singing at full volume- from every seat in the theater came the loudest possible voices.

Riku sang, “Even if we can’t become one-”

“Now, the world will change,” Tenn sang in between lines, before Riku could finish his last. Tenn listened for the next line he was singing over with desperate hope. What he was singing wasn’t the melody. It had seemed a cruel farce when Tenn had thought it was the entirety of the song, like he couldn’t be bothered to sing the chorus the orchestra was playing. But it was a gift: the chorus had been given over to the fans, and Zero would honor them by augmenting it.

“I won’t let you be alone,” Riku concluded.

I know.

The whole theater sang with him.

Tenn had to get himself and Riku away from the chandelier.

He took a breath. “Whoa!” he called out, and the whole theater echoed him. Grip on Riku tight, Tenn took half a step backwards, out of his position in front of the mirror, under the massive chandelier. “Whoa!” he sang again, and took another step closer to the voices eager to catch him behind him. Riku walked forward with him, out of the mirror, stepping just high enough to clear the gilt edges. The lights followed them. Tenn was so, so grateful to everyone working on the musical. Clearly planning had gone into this, but no one would have known what Tenn would do. They were following him live.

Riku’s hand was steady in his despite the slick layer of both of their sweat intermingling even through Tenn’s glove, soaked through as it was, not pushing or pulling. If anyone could guess what Tenn would do next, it was Riku.

“In the center of these broken dreams,” Tenn sang, and to his delight, Riku and the entire theater sang it with him. Riku harmonized, the audience didn’t, finally in full unison with Tenn. He couldn’t help stepping back a little sideways, to turn a little further towards the multitude of voices awaiting him.

He had fully broken away from the blocking. This wasn’t what Kujou-san had asked him for. If it had been Kujou-san’s dream to see Zero singing to a mirror, ignoring everyone, well, Tenn was throwing that away. He wasn’t going to stand under the chandelier and wait for it to fall. He had dragged both himself and Riku clear of it step by step. He wouldn’t let Kujou-san have his way anymore. Some dreams needed to be broken.

Tenn sang, “Forever and ever,” which he had thought was about how Zero’s situation would never improve for all eternity, but the despair he’d practiced with was nowhere to be found. Riku had already started another line of the chorus. Riku had changed everything. Riku hadn’t left. Riku was still holding his hand. Tenn was too giddy to expect anything but the most wonderful dream.

Sure enough, Riku and the audience and Gaku and Ryuu and for all Tenn knew, all of backstage, carried the melody of the chorus at the same time. “Let us build up a today where we’re not alone piece by piece.”

The backing track had additional vocals repeating a basic pattern. Riku wasn’t mimicking them, but Tenn anticipated in future runs, some enterprising audience members would try. With a whole theater, not everyone had to sing the same thing. There was a part for everyone.

Tenn turned fully to the audience, unable to keep his back turned any longer as he and Riku held their last notes, savoring the harmony. Like their joined hands were a hinge, Tenn swung around to stand beside Riku and face the fans. It was still a musical, not a concert. There were no penlights bobbing a multi-colored galaxy. The seats were dark, and the stage lights in Tenn’s face were a physical blow.

He met it with a smile. Tenn told himself that they evaporated any moisture in his eyes as it appeared and was grateful.

To the best of Tenn’s knowledge, he knew the rest of the song. He had lines, there were no conspicuous gaps. The tag didn’t follow the chorus so the audience wouldn’t have heard it before, they probably wouldn’t be singing it anymore. Tenn had turned around just in time.

So it was a pleasant surprise when in perfect time and close harmony, Riku joined Tenn in, “We’ve created a fortunate nation again.”

Tenn was no longer in the perfect center of the stage. He shared that with Riku. It was harder to mirror each other this way, without seeing each other; Tenn could only assume they still were. The illusion was probably broken. Side by side, without Tenn’s body obscuring his reflection, it was no longer possible to ignore the different costumes.

In Tenn’s peripheral vision, Gaku and Ryuu approached. They reunited with Zero- both Zeroes- in the center of the stage. This hadn’t happened in real life. It made a certain sort of sense to Tenn, though: this musical where they revived Zero was the reunion. This brief moment really was Kujou Takamasa’s sendoff to Zero and Sakura Haruki. This was what Tenn had led everyone into hell for: to wake the ghosts, dance with them, and put them to rest for good.

Tenn didn’t have time to do more than glance briefly between them. Riku dropped from their line to squeeze in an, “Ah, every time…”

Tenn once again asked, “Why do people yearn to be close to each other?” acutely aware of Riku’s hand that didn’t pull away, of Gaku and Ryuu only a step away, of the massive chandelier only steps behind them. If Tenn hadn’t let himself be drawn to the audience, they would all be under it now and at the mercy of whatever Kujou-san had set in motion before the song.

Tenn finished, “-we ask as the sun rises.” Riku sang with him in unison as the instruments cut out entirely. And then it was over.

The audience screamed. They screamed. They screamed. They sobbed, they cheered. Tenn trembled to stay standing, lungs fluttering helplessly against his ribcage. He had no idea what expression he was making. He was elated. He wanted to cry.

Mercifully, the lights went down. At first Tenn didn’t know what to do. He had gone over, countless times, what he would do when something went wrong. If the chandelier dropped, which way he would dive. But it hadn’t happened. Everything was intact. Tenn was still alive.

Riku tugged at his hand, the first time he’d pulled at Tenn. Tenn almost let go, but Riku didn’t let him. He dragged him off the stage.

Backstage was dimly lit, which was still more than Tenn had been able to see a moment ago in the shock of darkness after the bright lights. Everyone was moving. No longer was backstage a silent marvel of engineering: relieved smiles broke out everywhere. Stagehands called out freely to prepare the final stage for the bows.

Tenn could only stagger in bewilderment to where Riku led him. Gaku and Ryuu had already disappeared. They would take their bows right before Tenn did, at the very end.

“Here, here,” Riku said breathlessly. He dropped Tenn’s hand. Tenn hadn’t had the strength to keep clasping it; his fingers fell open in shock at the loss. Then his hands were scrabbling at Tenn’s hips, unfastening and loosening the shirt’s side ties.

“What…?”

“You’ll want Zero’s robes for when you bow,” Riku said. He gestured at himself. They were both wearing replicas of Zero’s famous stage costumes, but the one Riku was wearing, with the mask and long robes, were slightly more iconic. (Tenn wouldn’t wear the mask for the bows, of course.)

“I thought someone was going to bring them out of my greenroom,” Tenn said, muffled as Riku pinched the fabric over his shoulders and lifted the shirt straight up over Tenn’s head. Tenn raised his arms in accommodation. Underneath, his tank top was plastered to his skin. Compared to the durable stagewear, it felt light enough to be see-through. Tenn felt the stirring air currents as if they were on his bare skin.

“That changed,” Riku said unapologetically. “A lot of things did.” Tenn was only just realizing that. It should have been obvious but he was barely keeping up with the conversation, let alone the nuances of what the rest of the world was doing. “Sorry for borrowing them!”

Of course. There wouldn’t be an extra costume lying around, Riku was wearing Tenn’s clothes.

Riku handed Tenn’s shirt off to someone passing by. They took it without complaint or question. Even if they weren’t responsible for the wardrobe, they could get it to someone who was, or at the very least, put it somewhere more suitable than the floor. Like a convenient table as they went off to whatever else they surely had to be doing. Ideally Tenn would have been doing this quick change next to such a convenient table or rack, but like Riku had said, things had changed. The only quiet corner where they weren’t in anyone’s way was no longer so ideally situated. Privacy, of course, had never been an option.

He stepped out of his pants and had them plucked out of his hands immediately. Riku bunched up the robes at his neck without bothering to unfasten the golden chains or belt, lifted them, turned them carefully, and dropped them over Tenn’s head. Tenn flinched a bit at the lingering body heat after he had only just gotten a refreshing draft of backstage air against his torso, cooler than the stagelit atmosphere on the other side of the curtain.

“Wait,” Tenn said belatedly as Riku tugged the folds into place so they fell warm over his bare legs. Under the robes, he had been wearing a tank top and shorts, like Tenn. They looked as drenched with sweat as Tenn felt. “But what are you going to wear?”

Riku stopped, hands lingering around his waist and armpit. “I’m not going back onto stage, Tenn-nii.”

“But- the bows.”

“I’m not in the cast. I was never supposed to appear.”

“But you did,” Tenn said. “You fixed everything- Riku, thank you-”

Someday, Tenn would have to get the full story of how Riku had figured it out, how he had prepared everyone but Tenn to go along with his idea. It had been the same mirror frame Tenn had practiced with, less the mirror that had definitely been there earlier. There was no way they had an additional identical mirror to spare. Had they been so confident in Riku’s plan that they’d removed the backing and smashed the glass? Had Riku done it himself? If Riku had brought seven years of bad luck upon himself, Tenn would give him nine lives of happiness. As much as it took. He would give Riku anything.

Riku resumed fussing at the costume, not waiting for Tenn to find his words. Tenn gave up, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms around Riku wherever he could. Because of how Riku had been reaching around him to straighten the robes, that meant one arm over his shoulders and one around his waist.

“Tenn-nii, no,” Riku complained. “I’m sweaty.” He continued pulling the costume this way and that, but Tenn liked to think it was affectionate. He leaned into Riku without sheepishness, appreciating every accidental graze of knuckles over his body.

“It’s too late for that,” Tenn said. “I am too.”

Riku laughed. “Yeah. It’s kind of gross but this costume was already sweaty from your last scene in it when I put it on.” He patted Tenn on the back and Tenn felt the handprint’s moisture.

“Sorry?” Tenn wasn’t. He couldn’t regret anything, even as coalescing beads of sweat prickled his skin as they dragged down between his back and the clinging tank top.

“And now it’s sweaty from both of us,” Riku said with amused satisfaction. “So you can carry that onto stage when you bow, okay? For both of us.”

The audience was screaming. They hadn’t stopped this whole time. But now the music was playing too. Tenn knew which part of the bows they were at. It was almost his turn.

He dropped his arms but didn’t straighten. “I don’t think I can stand up,” he said.

Riku adjusted the golden shoulder pads, then stepped forward a bit, bumping into Tenn as if about to nudge him upright with his own body. “One more minute,” he said softly.

He still hadn’t taken off the mask.

They stood there, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, Riku taking Tenn’s weight. Their arms dangled. Tenn felt sweat dampening his chest where they touched. The music continued. The audience screamed.

Into Tenn’s ear, Riku said, “It was nice singing with you one last time, Nanase Tenn.”

How was Tenn supposed to breathe?

Riku touched Tenn’s face, carefully at first since it was hooked over his shoulder and he didn’t turn away from supporting Tenn to look. Then, confident of where Tenn’s features lay after brushing his temple, Riku ran a firm finger along his forehead, swiping away sweat. It didn’t even occur to Tenn to be wary of that finger accidentally digging into his eyes. “Get out there!” Riku said, shoving Tenn off with a bracing hand on his shoulder. “Run! Do the dance move!”

Tenn obediently broke into a jog, as if that was something he was capable of. He couldn’t resist looking back. He watched Riku wipe the finger dripping with Tenn’s sweat on his tank top. Since Riku was still wearing Zero’s mask obscuring the top half of his expression, Tenn couldn’t tell if he made a face or not. Facing forward, Tenn couldn’t help but laugh as he burst back out into the lights. (His heart was so full. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry.)

It was typical for cast, especially main characters later in the bows, to do something extra before bowing. Not quite fanservice, but a nod to their character. Tenn did the bit of footwork Riku had probably been referring to. It had been placed early in the musical out of consideration for the accruing exhaustion as the musical progressed, but Tenn barely felt the pound of his feet on the black stage. What had he been planning to do? Tenn couldn’t remember or imagine. Was there some better tribute to pay to Zero? Tenn could only hope he was satisfied. They had disturbed his ghost so Kujou-san could see it put to rest properly and left where it belonged. Tenn had managed to escape the underworld, bringing the living back up to their world; he could only hope he hadn’t left chaos behind, and that Zero, whether he was dead or alive, wasn’t upset.

The audience screamed. Tenn bowed.

He didn’t know how long he was down before he pulled himself back up. He was supposed to count. But that was okay- this was the organic part. None of this was synchronized to the music. The parts of the bows that the entire cast did together, they had a central figure to look to for coordination.

For recognizing the lighting and effects, that was Gaku. Everyone looked to him as he extended an elegant hand up into the darkness, towards the spotlights that blazed down on them, and followed suit. The smaller stagelights swiveled wildly in acknowledgment. The audience screamed.

For recognizing the sound, the leader was Ryuu. The cast’s focus switched to him, on Tenn’s other side. With a flourish, he gestured to the orchestra pit. The conductor must have been watching for it, because the musicians responded in volume. The audience screamed. Tenn wondered how much of Ryuu’s mindset was his own, and how much was still stuck on Sakura Haruki. Ryuu had been the orchestra, for part of the play, playing piano on stage the way Sakura Haruki had.

Everyone looked to Tenn. The audience screamed.

His job was to clasp hands with Gaku and Ryuu, wait for the rest of the line to also join hands, then coordinate the timing of the group bow by raising his hands when he determined they were ready.

Tenn’s hands lifted. Gaku and Ryuu were ready for him. Their open hands brushed his.

Tenn’s hands kept lifting. This wasn’t a concert. He didn’t even have a microphone right now- he wasn’t expected to thank the fans for their support.

Still. Incomplete Ruler hadn’t been a solo.

Tenn outstretched both hands to the audience.

For a moment, the screaming diminished. It was never comfortable to clap for oneself; the expectations of such a scenario were never clear.

Then the orchestra flared up, strong and insistent, and the lights roared around, and cheers came from Tenn’s left and right. He looked up and down the line: everyone was following his lead with both arms and furthermore yelling appreciation.

Tenn beamed. It was as far as he would go. Kujou Tenn didn’t shout; he wasn’t stupid enough to think his unamplified voice could surpass everyone else’s. If he let himself be overcome with emotion, it would all be over. If he broke his own rules, he would be the next one to break. He had to laugh instead of cry; he had to smile instead of scream.

Tenn let his hands swing to his sides. This time, finding Ryuu and Gaku’s hands was easy. He lingered for a second that way to let the rest of the line link up, then another. Zero had questioned why he was here. Tenn knew the answer.

He almost wanted someone to stop him. To say, wasn’t there someone else to thank? What about that other Zero that was with you for that last song? But no one did. Did they think it was a ghost, a collective hallucination of an imaginary friend not to be spoken of, that had already left, or been left behind, unable to cross over into the world of the living?

He raised his hands high above his head, as high as he could. Out of consideration for the occasion, and possibly because they actually respected him, Gaku and Ryuu didn’t stretch as far as they could have, which would have lifted him up. The orchestra resumed something less erratic, and Tenn tried to remember the count.

Bow. Return to upright with hands raised. Bow. Return to upright with hands raised.

The audience was screaming. Tenn allowed a few more bows, with a longer pause in between every time where they all waited, clasped hands high, to see if this would be the end.

Ending wasn’t something Tenn knew how to do. This wasn’t a concert. He had to gauge how much longer they could all stay upright. He didn’t know if Riku was still waiting for him backstage. He didn’t know if Riku had ever been waiting.

Eventually the orchestra sounded a little quieter. The screams never did. Tenn glanced into the lights, and thought he could imagine them dimming ever so slightly. He took that as his cue and released his grip on Gaku and Ryuu.

Freed from one another, the cast waved. The audience screamed back. The curtain came down.

The second the heavy fabric swished across the stage, Tenn sat down hard right where he was.

The cast walked past him. Some of them patted him on the head as they went by, despite his visibly sweaty hair.

Gaku and Ryuu lingered by his sides, looking down at him. “Giants,” Tenn accused half-heartedly, too tired to say anything more clever about how ridiculously tall they were.

“I would join you but in case you were going to get up again sometime tonight, I thought I’d help with that instead,” Ryuu said.

Tenn’s eyes stung. He wanted to tell Gaku and Ryuu to shade him, to shuffle between him and the bright lights, but although he suspected they would humor and spoil him, behind the curtain, they were already shielded from the strongest beams. It was only the normal lighting, evenly spaced along the ceiling, that Tenn had to bear on his own.

Tenn flopped onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. “No one else is here, right?”

He could hear the buzz of the departing audience through one curtain, the chatter of backstage through the other. But their voices shouldn’t carry unless they meant them to.

“It’s just us,” Gaku confirmed.

“Gaku,” Tenn said, “you understand Kujou-san now, right? Do you understand why he took me in?”

They all knew it was for the Zero musical. It went without saying. Gaku said, “Of course.”

Tenn lay there. The others waited. Finally, Tenn said, “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

He explained, painstakingly avoiding any of his own conclusions, the time he had found Kujou-san with Zero’s costume after the attacks against Re:vale. “Does that make sense to you? Is it in line with your vision of who Kujou-san is?”

It was an unfair question- the script Gaku was called to play didn’t go up to this point- but Gaku said, “It makes sense. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

Tenn exhaled. “Okay. Okay. Next question. Keeping in mind that Kujou-san’s feelings about Zero are very complicated and he doesn’t always know what he’s doing- and what we’re doing is way more over the line than what Re:vale did in encroaching on Zero’s territory- do you think Kujou-san would-?”

He couldn’t say it. He slid his arm up off his face. It fell splayed on the floor above his head. He looked up at the chandelier suspended almost above him. (He was a few feet clear of its center. It might have been enough.)

“No,” Gaku said. He was gleaming silver all over, more than usual. He must have been as sweaty as Tenn. “No, Tenn, he wouldn’t. He loves you.”

He hadn’t even thought about it. “That’s you,” Tenn said.

“Yeah, but I’m right,” Gaku said. “He took you in because you’re a fantastic kid and he treasures you.”

Tenn shook his head. On the floor, the motion was more like flopping from side to side like a listless fish. The back of his skull rubbed against the floor. “He wanted me because I could fulfill his dream. Because I’m the best.” Kujou-san had been a living ghost. That was why Tenn had delivered him to the underworld. It remained to be seen whether he had come out at the end alive again, having left behind the man who haunted him, or if he had come back at all.

“That’s quite the opinion you have of yourself,” Ryuu said. “That’s not why I wanted you to move in with me.”

“Yeah, but I’m right,” Tenn mimicked Gaku. “…why did you want me to move in with you?”

“Because you’re a fantastic kid and I treasure you,” Ryuu said easily.

Tenn replaced his arm over his eyes.

“Tenn, we take your safety seriously,” Gaku said. “You know I don’t want you around Kujou. But it’s because he asks too much of you and I don’t think he reciprocates enough. I think he’s going to hurt you. But not physically.”

“He’s never hurt me,” Tenn felt compelled to protest. “He wouldn’t mean it.”

“I don’t care what he means,” Gaku said. Tenn didn’t look to see if Gaku was glaring at him. “If he disappeared on you, you would be hurt.”

Gaku had gotten to know Kujou-san better than anyone else. Tenn didn’t doubt that if it had occurred to Gaku, there was a real chance of Kujou-san doing such a thing.

“Gaku, this might be too soon,” Ryuu said.

“What?”

“Right,” Gaku said. “Tenn, just keep living with us, okay? Forget about Kujou so he can’t hurt you anymore. And about if Kujou’s going to sabotage the musical, he won’t. We did it. You’re free now.”

“…I agree,” Tenn said. At least about the success of Incomplete Ruler, although he did plan to continue living with Ryuu and Gaku. “But what if he already planned something and forgot about it?”

“He hasn’t had time,” Ryuu said. “He’s been micro-managing everyone but you. I’ll talk to the crew. I bet we can account for what he’s been doing every minute for the last month. There are logs of this stuff, you know. And I can ask someone to walk me through all the heavy equipment and moving parts. That kind of stuff gets checked for safety regularly, I’m sure no one will mind moving it up a bit to show me if I say I’m just curious. We won’t miss anything.”

Earlier, Tenn had been barely keeping himself contained. Spiking emotions had threatened to bubble over and overflow. Somehow, without Tenn noticing, all that had drained away. “Please,” he mumbled.

“Come on,” Ryuu said. Tenn peeked up at him; his knees were partly bent, hand outstretched for Tenn to take to heave himself up. “You can’t keep lying under that chandelier forever. You need to get changed so you can greet everyone who came to see you.”

Tenn didn’t point out that he could say the same to Gaku and Ryuu, minus the part about almost-napping in the wrong places. He made himself curl halfway to sitting so he could reach Ryuu, who hauled him up the rest of the way.

They kept Tenn sandwiched close between them as TRIGGER finally left the stage. Tenn didn’t know if they were dutifully hovering because they thought he would collapse or to protect him from the dangers Tenn imagined, or maybe they just liked him or something, but Tenn was grateful. The stage beneath his back had helped leech away the threat of overheating, so the warmth of their bodies wasn’t unbearable.

He only realized when they were already offstage that he was touching the thin skin of their inner elbows, too light to be called a grasp. Gaku and Ryuu hadn’t had the same cooldown advantage, they’d only undone their shirts’ top buttons and rolled up the sleeves; Tenn’s selfish fingers had to be searing right into their veins. Neither of them moved away. Tenn didn’t know if he had dragged them so close or if they had always been there. Their arms bumped against him with every step.

Right away, Tenn spotted Riku, where he had left him. He was still dressed in a tank top, shorts, and Zero’s mask. “Why are you still wearing that mask?” Tenn blurted out before he could think better of it. Any of it. “Take that off, I don’t need Zero haunting me.”

For a horrible moment, Tenn thought someone was going to ask who he was talking to. He felt Gaku and Ryuu hesitate. Then Riku lifted the mask away, revealing a sheepish, familiar smile on a face Tenn was seeing for the first time that night, and Gaku stepped forward to congratulate him on Incomplete Ruler, and Ryuu was drifting off to talk to some of the crew. Tenn heard him mention Kujou and lights. Somehow, Tenn stayed standing without them.

“Why were you wearing that, anyway?” Tenn asked, interrupting Gaku. “Did you really think you could hide your identity?”

Riku shrugged. “I just didn’t have anywhere to put it, and everyone was so busy, so…”

Incredible. It was a good thing Tenn liked him so much. He had given Tenn a (brief) crisis and almost made him doubt his sanity. “The greenroom’s this way,” he said, leading Riku. With the show over for the night, he would store his costume bag with the others as soon as he’d changed into his street clothes- the greenroom was no longer the best place to which to deliver the mask, if that was all Riku was hanging around waiting for- but Riku didn’t need to know that detail and there was something Tenn wanted to get first.

In the greenroom, someone had laid the costume from Incomplete Ruler over the back of a chair. Tenn admired the sharp lines of it for a second- there was a reason it had been the outfit he wore for SUISAI and the promotional pictures. He was glad he’d gotten to wear it for so significant a song as Incomplete Ruler.

Riku laid down the mask on the long table in front of the long mirror and promptly began examining the room, wandering around it. Tenn let him. He was vaguely aware of Gaku and Ryuu coming in and out in the background. They shared the greenroom.

Tenn bunched up the robes like Riku had earlier so he could duck out from them easily. “Riku,” he called, and Riku returned to his side immediately.

Without mercy, Tenn forced the robes over his head. Riku squawked.

“I didn’t want you to be cold,” Tenn said. He wasn’t entirely lying. Staying still backstage in only a sweat-drenched underlayer wasn’t a good idea for long.

Riku pinched the robes, pulling them away from his neck for an inch of airflow and making a show of displeasure, but didn’t actually attempt to free himself. Tenn took his time pulling the robes out from where they were bunched up to hang properly like Riku had earlier, but with the luxury of not having a cue to meet. No one was expecting them to go on stage. “What’s the point of this?” Riku asked.

“I want to take a picture,” said Tenn.

“Then you’re going to put on that again?” Riku nodded towards the chair with Tenn’s Incomplete Ruler costume.

“That’s right.” Tenn made no move to do so, continuing to focus on smoothing out the planes of the robes where they draped over Riku’s shoulders and cinched above his hips, closing the distance Riku had created by pressing the fabric back against his body, lingering. Without the robes trapping Tenn’s body heat, it poured off him in waves of bliss. His pulse was sensitive where the taut skin of his bared wrist was now exposed to air that was cool only by contrast.

Eventually Tenn could stall no longer and had to wrest on his clothes. They had cooled considerably in the time since Incomplete Ruler. Already, the world had changed. That the contact, soft and temperate as it was, of the collar high around his throat agitated Tenn’s senses a bit indicated he was at the end of his battery for the night. It was time to finish and move on.

They took their picture. “Go get your clothes,” Tenn directed Riku, who veered off obediently. Alone in the greenroom, Tenn undressed for the last time, finally removing even his tank top, and took his time properly folding the costume to put one more minute in front of having to dress in his street clothes, standing before the counter in his underwear.

Riku slipped in with clothes under his arm. Tenn didn’t even know what corner he’d stashed them in when he first inserted himself into the musical and took on Zero’s mantle. Instead of dressing, Tenn reached for the white robes to fold those as well, freeing Riku to get dressed the way Tenn wasn’t. Part of him knew that his street clothes were probably pleasantly cool from being left untouched backstage for hours, but Tenn felt like he’d been this warm forever (despite clearly remembering how much hotter he’d burned before bows) and that any layer would be unbearable (despite having been able to bear every single change he’d managed over the course of the musical). (Maybe he wanted to stay warm. To keep what was buzzing under his skin. To remain in this moment before rejoining the rest of the changed world and changing with it.)

“Well, see you later,” Riku said.

“What? Walk out to the lobby with me.” Tenn shrugged on his shirt with new haste, not feeling how it scraped over his skin.

Riku didn’t turn away to leave while Tenn struggled to balance on one foot to step into his jeans so to make sure he wouldn’t, Tenn steadied himself with a light hand on Riku’s chest. If Riku left, Tenn would fall over.

Riku waited. Tenn switched legs. For as long as he could, Tenn teetered between his last leg and Riku. Then he put his foot down and had no choice but to let his hand fall away from Riku. Riku let him pull away the same way he hadn’t resisted at Tenn clinging to him. Tenn almost wanted to tell him to chase after him. Maybe this time, something would finally be different.

“I’m not going to the lobby,” Riku said.

“Why not?” Trying for levity, Tenn said, “Aren’t you going to congratulate me on Zero?”

Riku lit up. “Good job! Please let me shake your hand.” Amused, Tenn offered him a handshake. Riku grasped it with both hands like the most earnest fan; Tenn relaxed. “It’s an honor. I love all your music. Kujou Tenn is the coolest idol.”

He shouldn’t have relaxed. The smile on Tenn’s face froze. What had happened to Nanase Tenn from earlier?

It wasn’t like he didn’t know. He had been bought like a product and molded into someone else’s image beyond recognition. He had cast away every tie he had. He had made a different name for himself. Underneath it all, he was still right there, thirteen years old and dreaming of growing up to sing with his brother, to stand strong and healthy and happy side by side on the greatest stage.

“Thanks,” Tenn said, trying to smooth things over before Riku noticed. Riku let go and Tenn had to keep going. “Why can’t you do the meet-and-greet in the lobby though?”

“Same reason I didn’t do the bows,” Riku said. “I can’t acknowledge any of it. Do you know how awkward it would be if someone came up to me when this is supposed to be about you guys? I don’t want to be rude.”

“I guess I’ll make up for it then,” Tenn said, intending to repay the compliment. He was gearing up to gush the way Riku had, but Riku shook his head vigorously.

“Don’t! I’ll leave,” he threatened. It was enough to make Tenn clamp his mouth shut for real. Riku immediately softened. “Thanks for what you did during the bows. That was nice.”

“Were you watching from the wings? I should have pointed offstage.”

“Do it when I’m not even there,” Riku dared.

“Watch me.”

“I was always going to.”

Tenn paused. He needed to tell Riku that he was watching him too. That he recognized him as an idol. Riku would have been undaunted by the half-version that was Incomplete Ruler without him. Before he could find the words, Riku continued, “I’ll always be your fan, Tenn-nii.”

Then why does it feel like you’re saying goodbye? Tenn wanted to scream.

Kujou-san wasn’t around. Hopefully someone was keeping an eye on him. Tenn could do nothing but trust that Gaku had read the situation accurately, out of empathy rather than his own feelings for Tenn. He didn’t know whether or not he should hope for Kujou-san having already disappeared.

This time, there was no one else to blame. Tenn and Riku would go their separate ways, and it would be no one’s choice but their own.

Tenn remembered practicing by himself, Even if we can’t become one, we can’t stay alone.

If Tenn and Riku went out into the lobby together where everyone was waiting for Zero, to shake hands and thank people for coming and smile in the face of the cheers and applause and graciously decline giving an encore, at some point even if everyone was smart enough to overlook Riku and resist commenting on his part in the duet, someone- possibly Izumi Iori himself- would approach them and say Nanase-san to get his attention, and both Riku and Tenn would look up in unison.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Riku said.

Tenn put away his costumes quietly. There was hardly anyone left backstage. Riku shadowed him closely enough that Tenn didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder to make sure he was still there.

He lingered by the door that would deliver him into the lobby, one hand resting on the metal push. On the other side, he heard Ryuu laugh.

“They’re waiting for you,” Riku said.

It was implied: I’m not.

Why do people yearn to be close to each other?

It was a long way to sunrise. Riku put his hand on Tenn’s back. Tenn closed his eyes and leaned back into it. After a moment, Riku increased the pressure, and Tenn knew he would give in and let it propel him forward.

All his life, Tenn had played his part so well. He had surpassed every expectation, never looking back at what he had given up. It didn’t matter. None of his efforts had ever had any affect on how this story had to end, the fate of his role: when he went through the door, when he made it out of the underworld, it would be alone.