Work Text:
Something tickled at the edge of Taki’s subconscious. Amidst the usual background soundscape of the rumbling air conditioner and punk rock growling out of her headphones and city noise seeping in under her window, there was something unexpected. Something persistent. Something annoying.
Taki ignored it. She had an essay due at midnight and a class at seven in the morning, which meant waking up at six. And she had to finish tweaking MyGO’s latest song before practice that evening. She would manage. She could work on the song during class and print out the new score on the library printer. It was on the way to the practice studio.
Taki rubbed her burning eyes and tried to go back to wrestling facts about the Ottoman Empire into a vaguely coherent comparative analysis, but the unknown annoyance wouldn’t let her. It was back, buzzing out of sync with the beat of the drum thumping in her ears.
Her phone lit up.
Anon Chihaya (3m ago): OPEN UP!!!
The sound, now recognizable as her doorbell, continued ringing. Oops. She took off her headphones and set them on her bed, too tired to bother hanging them properly on their stand. The doorbell kept buzzing as Taki walked the handful of steps to her front door. She cracked it just wide enough to peer out.
Outside was Anon, pouty, and completely unrepentant. Her finger hovered over the doorbell, threatening to ring it again out of spite.
“You’re gonna piss off the neighbors,” said Taki.
“Then answer the door faster next time!” said Anon.
Taki used her body to block the way further into her apartment. She didn’t have people over often — it was unpleasant inviting others into the first space that properly felt like her own.
“Are you here for any particular reason, or did you take the train across the city just to piss me off? Because it’s working,” growled Taki. Maybe she could drive Anon off by acting sufficiently grumpy. Probably not, though. Anon was rarely deterred.
“I came because I care about you! But if you don’t want me here, I can just go home with my nice home cooked meal that I made specifically for you!” Anon pouted even harder, and held out the bag in her hands. The smell of curry drifted over Taki. Her mouth watered at the thought of food. She wasn’t sure when she had last eaten (lunch?), but her stomach clamored for her to accept Anon’s offer. Her pride, on the other hand, demanded she look apathetic.
Pride won. Taki put on her best bored face.
Pride or not, the most efficient route was probably just to let Anon in and get her unannounced visit over with. Taki could accept her presence without accepting the meal.
“Do whatever. I need to keep working. I have an essay due. Don’t touch anything,” said Taki.
“I’m not gonna break any of your precious family heirlooms! Jeez! And why’s it so dark in there?” asked Anon.
Taki stepped back from the doorway and Anon let herself in, flicking on every light as she went and making the place painfully bright. She immediately took over all two square meters of Taki’s galley kitchen which doubled as the entryway. Anon was familiar enough with her setup to know where to find her bowls and cookware, and she began pulling things out of Taki’s cabinets without asking permission.
Taki watched, torn between the need to keep working on her essay and the need to keep Anon from burning down her apartment.
“You’re so picky about having us over,” said Anon without making eye contact. She was still buzzing around the kitchen.
“It’s weird to have people in my bedroom,” said Taki.
The apartment was a single-room deal, and having her entire life on display was revealing. It wasn’t inherently embarrassing, per se, but rather vulnerable. What if she had someone over and they noticed something judgementworthy? What if they inferred something about her from her boring decor or the absence of any hobby gear outside of her MIDI controller or the lack of pads in the bathroom cabinets and said something? Or worse, said nothing and silently judged her? There was nothing to be gained by rolling the dice on that potential disaster. Better to avoid the situation altogether.
Her close friends (the members of MyGO and Umiri and no one else) already knew those things about her, but with them there was a different set of potential unpleasant revelations. On her wall, she had a pinboard of pictures taken together with her friends. One of Anon’s wide angle post-show selfies here, a candid of her smiling at Raana curled up in her lap there, another of the birthday cake they had all baked Tomori together. Only the members of MyGO appeared in the pictures. Her friends knew they were dear to her, but there was always the irrational fear they might judge her for not having anyone else besides them.
“Surely you could split a two bedroom for the same price you pay for this place,” Anon revived the conversation while filling two glasses with water from the tap.
“I don’t want to live with anyone if I don’t have to,” said Taki.
“Not even with Yahata?” Anon smirked in an attempted tease lost on Taki.
“She refuses to live anywhere but Shimo-Kita. And she has the aesthetic taste of a Russian prison architect,” said Taki. She wasn’t exactly an interior designer, but she had some standards. And the commute to her university from Umiri’s part of town would’ve been an hour plus.
“Hmm… Raana may or may not be homeless, Soyorin isn’t the type to share, and Tomorin lives at home… I suppose you can’t just ask to be adopted, even if Taki Takamatsu has a nice sound to it,” said Anon.
Taki Takamatsu… She had always pictured it as a Tomori Shiina angle, but Taki Takamatsu had a nice rhythm to it — and a lot less baggage. She would have to think on it.
Anon popped a container of rice she’d brought into the microwave. Her apartment filled with the loud hum of the heating element and the mysterious ka-chunk that happened once per revolution of the turntable. Seeing that Anon was distracted with food prep, Taki raised her voice to make herself audible over the noise and said, “I’m gonna keep working. I have an essay due in-” she glanced at the kitchen clock. God, she’d already wasted a quarter of an hour entertaining Anon, “-ninety minutes.”
Taki sat back down at her desk. She would’ve liked to say that years of spending time around Anon had inoculated her to Anon’s presence, and that Anon’s endless chatter melded into the regular background noise of her apartment, but it wasn’t the case. It was impossible to fully focus on her work while someone was in her space. After a few minutes of writing trite sentences on Suleiman the Magnificent that were nearly empty of meaning but also too necessary to delete if she wanted any hope of hitting the word count minimum, she gave up. Instead, somewhat against her will, Taki watched Anon cook.
Anon had managed to restrain her pink mane in a hair tie, which held it back from her face as she ladled the curry into two bowls. Now that the food was hot, the apartment filled with the rich smell. Taki’s tummy let her know its opinion on that topic with a rumble.
As Anon’s spoon traveled between bowl and container, a drop fell on the counter. She retrieved a sponge and wiped it clean with an elegant movement that rotated her whole body. Food plated and counter clean, Anon placed a spoon in each bowl with the victorious flourish of a flag being planted in a newly discovered beach. She announced, “Food’s ready!”
Anon looked over at Taki, noticing her attention for the first time. “Enjoying the show~?”
“What the fuck does that mean?” demanded Taki.
“It means-” Anon’s face froze, then briefly flickered through horror and dismay as she realized the tone she had set. “It! It means nothing! It means your food is done!”
Anon scurried over to Taki and put the bowl down with enough force that it rattled her entire desk. She immediately retreated back to the kitchen doorway where she had the safety of distance between herself and Taki. Anon squeaked, “I just meant that I endured your dreadful tiny foyer kitchen to bring you a romantic meal for two! You’re sooo lucky to have me!”
Taki fought back a reflexive eye roll at Anon’s antics. She had trekked halfway across the city to bring her food. Even unannounced and delivered in the most irritating way possible, a gift was a gift. Appreciation was in order, and a graceful out was the greatest form of appreciation Taki could think to show Anon.
“… thanks. I’ll eat it when I get a chance,” said Taki. Trying to eat while she worked would only further ruin her focus. It was also a bit embarrassing to make obvious to Anon that she always ate at her desk or the kitchen counter; there wasn’t enough space for a proper dinner table.
“Okay!” Anon looked surprised, then very pleased with herself. The pink in her face retreated until it lingered only in its final stronghold: the tips of her ears.
However Anon, being Anon, was unable to take her wins as they came. She immediately resumed pushing her luck. “You’re so busy, Taki! You need any help planning the next show? What if I handle the booking with RiNG?”
“I’m the band manager. Stay off my turf,” growled Taki.
“I know, I know.” Anon spread her hands placatingly, “You wanna be the reliable one. But I’m just trying to help! We gotta keep moving forward full speed ahead, and that means all of us gotta contribute!”
Taki was not placated. In fact, her earlier appreciation was rapidly dissolving into disappointment with herself for entertaining Anon while she had a submission timer ticking down on her essay and a ton of work still to do after she finished.
Maybe she could let Anon handle the booking? It would be an item off her plate. Anon wasn’t in danger of earning the title “responsible”, but she was… emotionally invested in the band. As much of a slacker as she was, and perhaps despite it, Anon did contribute.
In the early days of MyGO, Taki hadn’t recognized the effort Anon put into the band. Even though Taki followed fashion, and intellectually she was aware of the significant number of hours that Anon put into researching, designing, and actually sewing their stage outfits, her first impression of Anon as a slacker was too firmly rooted to be dispelled by mere evidence to the contrary. Taki wasn’t the kind to change with the wind. She valued being consistent. It made her reliable.
Taki’s opinion finally shifted when Anon called her up in a panic after a particularly late student government meeting and begged her to a) help finish the new costume designs before their show the next day and b) not tell any of the others how close to the deadline she had left it.
They got it done as the sun was coming up. Sleep deprivation was an unremarkable state for Taki, but their friends immediately picked up on the way Anon was nodding off at her mic stand. Somehow she and Anon had managed to improvise a story about a spontaneous late night trip to get freebies from a viral marketing campaign by one of one of Taki’s bands. The story was over-elaborated and could have been trivially disproven with a simple social media search, but Tomori was too trusting to check and Soyo let them get away with it.
Anon would never say aloud (and nor would Taki call her on it), but Anon too had a need to maintain appearances, even with the people closest to her. Taki understood deeply that need to be seen as reliable.
Anon had leaned on her sense of design and her ability to keep her mouth shut; Anon trusted her. Maybe she could trust Anon, too. Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe Taki wasn’t ready for that level of honesty.
“No,” said Taki flatly. “I can make the booking. I’ve got it covered.”
“No?? Ricky~ Don’t tell me you’ve gone and gotten some silly ideas about needing to be needed. Just being your usual scowling self is more than enough to earn your place! Or,” Anon put her hand to her mouth to cover an extremely fake gasp, “Could it be you’re doing it for Tomori’s sake? Working hard every day to demonstrate your love? That’s sooo romantic!”
Taki felt her face flush warm. Stupid, traitorous biology, always exposing her at the worst moments. Anon was already annoying. Anon armed with ammunition — accurate ammunition at that — would be insufferable. She couldn’t let Anon realize what she knew.
Crap. She had waited too long to fire back at Anon. The window to deliver a biting comeback had come and gone; anything she said now would just sound silly. She would have to fall back on ole reliable: the cold shoulder. Taki put her headphones back on and glared pointedly at her computer screen. She put her hands on the keyboard, but her brain wasn’t supplying her with any words to type, which totally ruined her credibility.
“Well? Was that it? Did I get it right~?” Anon crowded into her personal space, circling around the back of her chair like a cat brushing up against her legs. “Is it Tomorin? Does your heart race every time she looks at you? I bet it does! She has those dreamy soft doe eyes~”
“You need to learn to quit while you’re behind,” said Taki. Her voice came out super steady and calm and neither betrayed a single emotion nor gave any hint as to her agreement with Anon’s opinions on Tomori’s adorable features.
Wait. Why did Anon have opinions on Tomori’s adorable features?
Anon buzzed around her for a few minutes longer, verbally poking and prodding, before finally getting bored and giving up. She drifted over to the little half-sized couch at the foot of her bed — the only other furniture in the room — and plopped down to eat the meal she had made earlier. From the faint bursts of music and narration that forced their way in through her headphones, Taki guessed she was watching TikToks. Only Anon would go over to someone else’s house and watch videos without earbuds in. Whatever. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She had work to do.
She couldn’t focus on the stupid essay. She was too steamed. Anon was so annoying! Her needling words and irritating little smirk pissed her off, and then the fact that she had let Anon get under her skin pissed her off a second time. The bowl of curry sat next to her, ignored. Taki resolved to let it go cold, no matter how much her stomach rumbled and tried to get her to take just a tiny bite. Making sure Anon felt her displeasure was more important than her own discomfort.
Taki did manage some progress. Her screen slowly filled with words painfully wrung from her fingers, but each sentence felt like a forced march through mud, and each paragraph a grapple with a demigod. She plowed on.
Out of the corner of her eye, Taki could see Anon tossing glances at her every now and again. She would look over, stare for a few seconds, notice Taki noticing her, and then hurriedly go back to her phone. She was almost as bad as the stray cat. Even though Anon was showing remarkable discipline by managing to hold in the chatter that she was surely bursting with, Taki could still feel her gaze on the back of her head. It was annoying.
Taki slid her headphones off one ear. “Spit it out.”
“Wha- What?” asked Anon. She looked up from her phone, guilty.
“You have something to say. Just say it.”
“I’m literally just chilling!” Anon waved her phone, which was looping a skit with unsettling AI generated actors, as evidence of how chill she was currently being.
“You are not. You keep looking at me. I can see it.”
Anon groaned. “Okay, okay, you got me. Look, it’s nothing huge.” She pulled her legs in towards her chest. “It’s just like, you’ve got this need to constantly be working, and I get it. I’m not going to tell you to slow down. That’s not your style! But least let me stomp on the gas with you.”
“This is the weirdest pep talk you’ve ever given me. Are you back on your ‘I wanna be MyGO’s leader!’ thing?” asked Taki, trying but not quite managing to mimic Anon’s nasally pitch. She pulled her headphones all the way down and spun her chair around so she could face Anon, though. Outwardly she had brushed Anon off, but her gears were turning trying to figure out where the conversation was going.
“Nooo c’mon Taki, treat me seriously for once. I’m trying to be honest with you here. You feel like you gotta sweat for the band or you’re not doing enough. I’m the same way.”
Taki cocked an eyebrow. Anon worked hard, yes, but did she have a need to work hard like Taki did? Working herself to the bone on the pyre of MyGO was how someone as undeserving as Taki could earn her place. No, not earn her place. She would never reach that point. But she could nudge her ledger a bit further towards the black. That, and constant exhaustion helped her ignore the doubting voices that were always trying to seep their way into her mind.
Maybe Anon thought she needed to earn her place like Taki did, but she was wrong. Anon had an internal spark that drew people to her. She had other friends, other hobbies, and other reasons to exist. She had backups. She didn’t need MyGO in the same way as Taki.
“Don’t give me that look! You know I put in the hours!” Anon pouted. “MyGO means a lot to me, and if I can do anything to boost our odds of staying together, even if it’s a ton of work for only a single percent better chance, I wanna go for it! I would never forgive myself if we didn’t make it through a rough patch that we could’ve survived if I worked just a little harder. Like, if that happened, I wouldn’t ever be able to sleep through the night again unless I could say I honestly gave it my all. That’s what not quitting means to me now!”
Taki drew breath to reply before she knew what she wanted to say, but Anon sat up straighter and plowed on. “I know, I know, you’re gonna tell me to stop worrying about you. Fine. But if you’re gonna work yourself to death, I’m gonna die alongside you. We’ll be like a pair of shooting stars burning up together! We can have our version of whatever you and Soyo have going on with your grumpy gals subunit~ We can call ourselves the grindsetter’s alliance or something!”
“Are you trying to invite me to a suicide pact? And do you deliberately only suggest the worst names possible?” asked Taki. There was something, admittedly, slightly appealing about the idea of Anon carving out a special space for the two of them where Taki unambiguously belonged. Slightly. But she would’ve needed Anon’s ego or Raana’s ability to follow her desires to agree to something like that, and she was instead equipped with Taki’s humility and Taki’s self-restraint.
“Hey! That’s all you have to say to my heartfelt declaration? I’m putting it all on the line here!” said Anon.
Taki sighed. She stood up. Her joints creaked in protest, and she had to grit her teeth to avoid letting out a groan. She was twenty, not an eighty year old man. It was undignified to be complaining about her knees. She hobbled over to the couch on the floor where Anon was seated, lowered herself onto the free half of it, and let her head fall against the backrest. Anon propped her head up on one arm on the back of the couch so that they were looking into each other’s eyes.
Anon was trying to be supportive. Maybe she didn’t understand how Taki felt quite as well as she thought she did, but that was partially Taki’s own fault. She hadn’t tried to explain herself.
Most of the time Taki couldn’t explain herself — even to herself. Thinking about how she alone was born intrinsically without value made it more real, so it was better if she could shove the thoughts into the background where they were a bit quieter and more indistinct. They probably still affected her, but it was less acute, like seeing an ad out of the corner of her eye instead of looking it dead on.
Some people were born valuable, while others became valuable through hard work. Taki was the latter. Or she hoped she could be. She didn’t bring skill or charisma or soul or kindness to the group like the other four members did. She didn’t have anything irreplaceable to offer, either musically or as a person. Anyone could work hard. But perhaps if she worked harder than anyone else, she could be MyGO’s best option. Just as Tomori already was the wisest poet who had ever graced the face of the earth, Taki could become the most dedicated drummer and friend out there. All it required was that she work as hard as humanly possible and then some. Hence the eyebags tattooed to her face.
Taki cringed internally. It felt gross laying out her shortcomings so bluntly.
If Anon felt the need to work hard out of love for her friends, so be it. It was different from Taki’s need to work hard to be worth anything at all, but it was a source of drive nevertheless. The shared need was the same, even if it had a different source.
Leaning on Anon was out of the question, but perhaps Taki could work alongside her. For the good of the band.
“Fine. Let’s work together to make sure MyGO lasts for the rest of our lives,” said Taki.
“Huge!!! So you’re gonna let me handle booking the next show?” Anon sparkled at her. She blinked twice, and even though there was a good foot between them, the force of Anon’s expectant look made it felt like she was up in her face.
“No. RiNG already knows me”, said Taki. Ugh, but she did have to share some responsibility if she meant what she said about letting Anon work alongside her. Commitment was one of her virtues. “We wanted to branch out to new live houses now that we’re not so Ikebukuro centric, right? What if you scope out some places? We can take the best options back to the others for their input.”
“Okay, leave it to me! I’ll give ‘em the hard sell!” said Anon.
“Please just figure out if their stages are the right size for us and ask them what availability they have,” said Taki. A part of her was already regretting agreeing to this. Another part was relieved to finally be letting someone see into this particular part of her personal torment nexus.
“Yes ma’am! To dying for the cause together!” cheered Anon. She rose halfway out of her seat to give a fist pump.
“Nope. Keep trying,” Taki grinned despite herself.
“To… the grindsetter’s alliance!”
“The name still sucks.”
“I’m taking suggestions~!”
“ You’re taking suggestions?? Isn’t this an ‘us’ thing?” asked Taki.
“I’m also taking responsibility for naming. You have too much on your plate with the grumpy gals subunit! Let me handle it!” Anon gave her a little pat on the head, the same one she used whenever she wanted to brag about her whole two centimeter height advantage over Taki. She knew it pissed Taki off.
“Not only are you trying to name us, you’re also trying to name my section with Soyo. Unbelievable.”
“I’m also part of the rhythm section, so I get a vote!”
“You are not part of the rhythm section.”
“What! I’m literally a rhythm guitarist. It’s in the name!”
“I thought you were lead.”
“Urk- well! I’m both! That’s why guitar is the coolest instrument!”
“Sure. Then MyGO’s next song is going to be a marimba and vocal duet. If you’re so desperate to take rhythm, you and Soyo can have it. I’ll be melody with Tomori.”
They argued back and forth for a while longer, both scoring some good hits, but neither managing to land a decisive blow. Taki felt warm. Her traitorous mouth kept sneaking into a smile. Opening up to her friends and accepting their companionship felt good? Disgusting. She was the stone-cold black wolf of Waseda. She couldn’t be going around having gooey feelings over em*tional vuln*rability.
Anon broke off in the middle of pressing an attack. “Not that I don’t love winning arguments against you, but didn’t you have an essay to do?”
“Shit!” Taki leapt up. Her feet hit the floor hard. She snatched her phone off her desk and checked the time: 12:07am. It was as she feared — the submission deadline had passed. All that blood she’d sweat over it, wasted.
“Watcha gonna do?” Anon asked with the careful air of someone asking “were you close?” when informed of the passing of a friend’s relative.
“I’ll beg the professor to let me turn it in late...” muttered Taki. Ugh. What a pain. She hated groveling, but it seemed like her only option. She couldn’t afford a zero. “… thanks for keeping me company. And the food. You should get going before it gets too late.” She was upset now, and she didn’t want to take it out on Anon.
“Oh gosh, what if I miss the last train and I have no choice but to sleep over! Surely you’re not so hardhearted that you’d kick me out in the rain? It’s dangerous for an attractive young woman to be walking around by herself so late, don’t you think?” Anon cast a telegraphed glance over at her bed. “Good thing your bed is big enough for two~”
“Get out of my apartment,” said Taki. She couldn’t muster the energy to sound irritated.
“Okay~! See you tomorrow!” said Anon. She stuffed her now-empty containers into a bag and gathered her belongings. “I would tell you to get some rest, but I just promised not to, so finish your essay quickly!”
And then, before Taki could think of anything to say in reply, Anon breezed out just as easily as she had entered. The front door clattered shut, and the apartment was quiet once more.
The space felt just a bit lonelier than it had before Anon showed up, but Taki’s heart felt fuller. She and Anon were comrades in arms now.
Eating before bed felt like a waste, but Anon had come all this way to bring her food… Taki turned on the bowl of curry. Food, then essay. She needed energy for her busy day tomorrow. If she was going to sacrifice herself in the name of MyGO like a calf at an altar, she needed to be the best calf possible. After all, an emaciated sacrifice was almost worse than no sacrifice at all.