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The lights dim, the crowd goes silent, the bass starts to hum, and Nakahara Chuuya walks out onto the stage, mic in hand. This is the last song in his album, an unreleased record that was meant to stay secret.
He doesn’t know what compels him to end his tour with this song in particular.
It could have been anything from Upon The Tainted Sorrow.
But his soul said something else.
His knuckles tighten around the mic, white against the gloss of metal, but his eyes stay steady.
“We used to give each other nicknames
Now we can't even be out in the same place
I wasn't gonna stay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?
You used to be my end game
Now you can't even look at me the same way
I know we're not okay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?”
His voice rings, echoing over a crowd he doesn’t care about right now.
The music rises, then drops, leaving everyone unsatiated.
His mind rushes through memories of empty, brown eyes. Of thick hair, and smooth skin. Of sharp, chiselled features. Of bandages, and scars.
Of a man sculpted by heaven itself, a spawn of the devil.
Of Dazai Osamu.
“Don't 'cause a scene
'Cause everyone's here and I don't wanna leave
Like last Halloween
Starting all the drama like we're seventeen”
Chuuya smiles, small and sharp, like glass threatening to cut.
The kind of smile that holds too much weight in its curve.
Like knowing you have to let go of something dear.
Like the bittersweet memory of something that could have been.
“But that was then, this is now
Do you still think about all the things that we said?
I know you love to forget”
Backstage, a man leans against the wall, his forehead pressed to wood, bandages stark against pallid skin.
The scent of sweat and cheap liquor thickens the air, the familiar, old perfume of a stage.
And threaded through it, that ghost of cinnamon and gasoline of the man he’d known before fame sent the two of them spiralling.
Chuuya’s voice slices through him like the edge of a blade wrapped in velvet, and Dazai’s heart stumbles, graceless.
That’s the voice.
The voice he fell in love with.
The voice no one else was ever meant to hear like this.
“We used to give each other nicknames
Now we can't even be out in the same place
I wasn't gonna stay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?
You used to be my end game
Now you can't even look at me the same way
I know we're not okay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?”
Dazai’s fingers tremble once on the mic switch. Then he closes his fist, steady, and prays.
He prays to the gods he doesn’t believe in.
Prays his voice will hide in the harmony long enough.
Long enough to be sure this song is for him.
“Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)
Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)”
Chuuya stills, mic lowering, fingers trembling under the leather of his gloves.
He must have had one too many shots before this show.
He must be tipsy.
Otherwise he’d have to explain the voice he’s hearing
The voice he’d tried so hard to forget.
The voice he’d tried to erase.
But then he freezes.
And his breath breaks against the cool metal of the microphone.
Oh, he is not hallucinating.
The gods must hate him.
Because he knows this voice too well.
“You get to me
Tryna win a war with jealousy
And you still believe
That we can just ignore our history”
“But that was then, this is now
Do you still think about all the things that we said?
I know you love to forget”
Now Dazai’s voice threads through, slipping into the cracks of two unhealed hearts.
It tears down what bandages had kept standing, and burns through the barricades.
And somehow, impossibly, it saves them both.
“We used to give each other nicknames
Now we can't even be out in the same place
I wasn't gonna stay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?
You used to be my end game
Now you can't even look at me the same way
I know we're not okay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?”
Their voices collide like fireworks meeting the sea, like sparks and steam.
Painful and perfect.
Honey poured over gravel.
“Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)
Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)
Right now”
Chuuya sings like he’s begging.
His free hand clenches at his chest, nails digging through fabric, as if he could hold his ribs together.
“Can we, can we just pretend?”
Dazai responds like a man starved.
His shoulders curve forward, body folding as if every word costs him bone.
“Can we, can we just forget?”
The track carries on, echoing their ache.
Starcrossed, undone.
“We used to give each other nicknames
Now we can't even be out in the same place
I wasn't gonna stay
But can we just pretend to be friends right now?”
And then Dazai steps into the light, shoulders loose but hands shaking.
The bandages glow pale under the stage glare as his gaze locks on Chuuya.
Chuuya stares back, chest heaving, and the space between them collapses.
They collide like falling stars.
The audience fades into static.
The consequences will come later.
This is now.
“Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)
Right now
(Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oh)
Right now
(Can we just pretend to be friends right now?)
Right now
(Can we just pretend to be friends right now?)
Right now”
As the dust clears, and the music fades.
Dazai’s voice cracks into the mic,
“Can we, can we just pretend?”
And Chuuya responds, broken, but steady.
“Can we, can we just be friends?”