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Soyo gently ran her fingers across the fabric of the small jewelry box that she was holding in her hands, the ring hidden inside still clearly visible in her mind’s eye. She had taken great care in choosing it, after all, which meant that she could still remember practically every detail about it, even with it out of view: the pink tourmaline gemstone, with its sharp edges and bright glitter, set into a smooth, pure silver ring that was quiet and modest in contrast. As perfect as the ring itself was, so was the occasion: in just a little bit, they would be playing their first concert at the Budokan, and proposing to Anon as they basked in the afterglow of that crowning jewel of their achievements together as MyGO was the perfect scenario for making that girl her fiancee. Five years of being in a band together, nearly five years of being in a relationship together… It had all been leading up to that point.
“Hmnh. Soyo. Box. Inside?”
The sound of Raana suddenly speaking up from right behind her almost caused Soyo to drop the box – and its precious cargo held within – but she managed to catch it before it made its way to the waiting room floor and potentially scuffed that perfect ring. Quietly cursing herself for not being cautious enough – she had assumed that Raana would remain with the rest of the band as they had gone off for last minute talks with the Budokan staff – Soyo quickly went into damage control mode; she couldn’t let that capricious, crafty little stray cat ruin her proposal plans.
“Oh, hello there, Raana-chan! I had thought that you were still with the others! May I ask what you’re doing back so soon? Maybe you forgot something?”
Soyo attempted to stealthily hide the box behind her back, giving Raana the best innocent smile that she could muster one; she hoped that all of the practice that she had once had in giving fake smiles would pay off in that moment. Unfortunately, Raana saw right through her albeit well-trained attempt at deception, and instead simply leaned around the bassist to get another look at the box in question.
“Hmnh. Box… Ring? For Anon?”
The jig was up, Soyo supposed… At least with Raana. Thankfully, the band’s stray cat was a simple enough problem for Soyo to try to handle – indeed, it was one that all of the members of MyGO had ample experience in handling. With a coy smile, Soyo began the negotiations.
“Raana-chan. I will pay you three matcha parfaits after the concert if you refrain from telling anybody else about this box. Okay?”
Raana’s eyes went wide at the offer, already obviously willing to be bribed into silence. With the stray cat so easily dealt with, Soyo sighed with relief in the knowledge that Raana’s discovery of the box wouldn’t compromise her perfect proposal plan.
“Hmnh. Five matcha parfaits.”
With so much on the line – and with the rest of the band members potentially walking through the door back into the waiting room any moment – Soyo couldn’t afford to bargain too hard or too long with Raana; instead, she immediately acquiesced to the nearly doubled price with a sigh of resignation, though she still attempted to claim at least some control of the situation back by sweetening the offer a little bit at the end.
“Five matcha parfaits… And a bag of matcha chocolate balls?”
Raana’s grin grew into a wide, Cheshire smile as she claimed victory over Soyo, but the bassist was fine allowing the stray cat to win the battle if it meant that she would end up winning the little personal war that she was waging that night. So long as no other unexpected variables showed up, Soyo would be able to make the exact proposal that she wanted to make once the concert was over.
“Okay, Soyo. Also. Others back soon. Hide ring box?”
With an appreciative nod, Soyo stashed the jewelry box underneath the peculiarly shaped, hollow-bottomed lamp that she had found on one of the counters. From there, it would be easy enough for her to surreptitiously retrieve it while everybody was basking in the afterglow of the concert. With the box so acquired, Soyo would be able to surprise Anon with it before she knew what was happening; Anon would gasp at the sight of the box, then Soyo would open it and reveal the ring, before Anon would get out of her seat and start jumping up and down. She would then run over and ask Tomori to pinch her cheeks so she could see if she was dreaming; Taki would tell Anon to calm down, but she herself would find it hard to contain her excitement at the proposal, while Soyo would roll her eyes at how overdramatic everybody was being. Eventually, Anon would find the mental clarity necessary to say yes to Soyo’s proposal, before giving a deep kiss and a tight embrace to her new fiancee.
With the scene in her head one step closer to becoming a reality, Soyo clapped a hand on Raana’s shoulder, with a determined look on her face.
“Thank you, Raana-chan. I will make sure that the matcha parfaits that I gift you are the most delicious matcha parfaits that you have ever had in your entire life.”
Before Raana could respond to Soyo’s promise, the other three members of MyGO finally returned, the ring having been hidden away just in time. Anon led the way as she usually did, while Taki and Tomori came in a little bit behind, going over some last-minute details about the lighting and the pyrotechnics; Anon herself – unconcerned with such minute details, as per usual – simply ran up to Raana and threw herself around the stray cat.
“Raana-chan! There you are! I thought you had run away right before our big Budokan debut! And here you were just playing with Soyorin, instead! I’m jealous…”
Soyo, for her part, quickly engaged with Taki and Tomori, not wanting to risk getting into a conversation with Anon and leaking any of her plans; after all, if the person that she was going to propose to knew that she was going to propose to her, then there was absolutely no way that it would go off just like how Soyo had imagined it. Unfortunately, Raana’s own skills at diversion and deception left much to be desired, and there was no feasible way for the stray cat herself to get away from Anon.
“Mnh. Playing, Soyo. Yes… Playing.”
In spite of how Anon looked and how Anon acted most of the time, Soyo knew very well that her soon-to-be-fiancee was much sharper than she appeared at first glance, much like the proverbial hawk hiding its talons. It didn’t come as much surprise, then, when Anon gave Raana a doubtful look, before raising an eyebrow and giving a suspicious look over to Soyo. Holding her breath, Soyo did her best to keep her attention focused on Taki and Tomori, and to not look over towards Anon and let her expression betray any of her secrets.
“Raana-chan… Soyorin… It couldn’t be… Were you…?”
Soyo felt her breath hitch and her heart pound as she did her best to remind herself that there was absolutely no way that Anon could have known what she was planning; she hadn’t seen the box, Soyo had made sure to not leave any sort of paper trail, and more importantly, she had made sure to-
“Soyorin, were you cheating on me with Raana-chan?! Noooo, not like thiiiis! Raana-chan, how could you?!”
Letting out a deep sigh of relief that she did her best to disguise as a deep sigh of annoyance, Soyo walked over towards Anon and gave her a light bop on the head, eliciting a faux-pained yelp from her girlfriend in response.
“Heeeey, what was that for, Soyorin?!”
Soyo crossed her arms while standing right in front of Anon, putting on a stern expression in order to help hide just how panicked she had been just a moment ago.
“If you have enough time to make stupid jokes like that, Anon-chan, then you have enough time to double check all of your equipment and preparations.”
Grumbling a bit, Anon reluctantly let go of Raana with a sigh, before heading over to where her guitar was resting in its stand; in spite of her obedience to the order, Anon still allowed herself a little bit of rebellion, sticking her tongue out at and teasing her girlfriend.
“Fine, fine, whatever you say, Soyo-sama… Mrnh… You are right, though. This is a really important night, after all. I have to make sure that everything goes totally and completely perfect!”
Soyo found herself a little bit surprised at the serious look on her girlfriend’s face; it wasn’t as if Anon couldn’t prove surprisingly determined from time to time - well, beyond the minor acts of petty stubbornness that always caused the two of them to bicker, anyways - but the expression that Anon wore as she tuned her guitar had more resolve in it than Soyo had ever seen from her girlfriend before. Some part of Soyo was even concerned that her proposal wouldn’t go to plan, if there was something radically different with Anon that night for whatever reason. Thankfully, Taki came in to give Anon a lecture of her own before Soyo could spiral down into that sort of anxiety.
“I’m glad to see that you actually appreciate the gravity of playing at the Budokan, Anon, even if you’ve never appreciated the gravity of any concert that we’ve played before now. It goes without saying that this is the biggest event that we’ve ever done, and I expect that you’ll be playing at peak performance… Much more so than you have been in recent rehearsals.”
Anon, for her part, just rolled her eyes and continued focusing on tending to her guitar, though not without biting back a little bit at the band’s self-designated drill sergeant.
“Yes, yes, whatever you say, Rikki-sama. You know that I don’t need you to reprimand me into playing perfectly, though. I have my own reasons for wanting to get everything just right.”
Soyo was doing her best to act like she wasn’t eavesdropping on Anon’s conversation with Taki, keeping her eyes focused on the task of tuning her own bass guitar even as she kept her ears focused on what her bandmates were talking about – especially on what Anon herself was saying. Soyo hadn’t heard anything about Anon having some sort of particularly special reason for playing there at the Budokan tonight before that point… Which, in all honesty, kind of pissed off Soyo; people keeping secrets from her – especially Anon keeping secrets from her - was something that Nagasaki Soyo was not a fan of, to say the very least, and her impulses overrode her good sense as she made an attempt to figure out whatever Anon’s special reason for playing the concert was.
“Hmnh? And what would those reasons of yours be, Anon-chan? Is your mother going to be watching you tonight, perhaps? We all know how much of a mother’s girl you can be, you know.”
Even if Soyo wasn’t trying to root out Anon’s secret as surreptitiously as possible, it was still a complete and total impossibility for Soyo to ever just come right out and ask anything without layering it beneath sarcasm and cynicism. Anon, for her part, had gotten more than used to it over the past five years, and didn’t seem put off by her girlfriend’s snarkiness; instead, she simply gave a big smile back at Soyo while holding a finger up to her lips.
“It’s a secret! But yes, Momma is going to be watching me tonight – same as your Soyorin’s momma, you know!”
With a huff, Soyo looked away from Anon to continue tending to her bass, doing her best to hide how frustrated she actually was underneath a veneer of faux-exasperation, instead. Soyo hated secrets, and Anon knew that. They had been together for long enough that Anon had to have known just how much Soyo hated secrets. So why, then, was Anon still keeping a secret from her? After all, what if the secret compromised Soyo’s perfect proposal plan? Had Anon ever even bothered trying to consider that? Whatever, it didn’t matter. Soyo had prevented Raana from compromising her plan, and she could keep the sheepheaded girl that she was going to propose to from compromising her plan, as well. Whatever secret Anon was hiding could wait until afterwards.
“MyGO, you’re on in ten!”
One of the Budokan staff suddenly alerted them to their quickly approaching entrance onto the stage, and the energy in the room immediately kicked up about five more notches. There they were, a group of five girls who had formed a clumsy, silly little high school band that almost didn’t survive more than a few months due to all of their clashing personalities – along with Soyo’s machinations to try and get CRYCHIC back together, of course – only for them to slowly come to understand one another and work hard to make all of their dreams come true. That night, there at the Budokan, those five, once-so-naive, once-so-foolish girls were about to play on the biggest stage in Japan, the culmination of all of the blood, sweat, and tears that they had poured into MyGO for half a decade by that point.
“Tomori. Do thing.”
Raana was poking at Tomori’s cheek, who herself was still looking a little dazed from the sudden realization that she’d be singing in front of almost fifteen thousand people before much longer. The stray cat’s poking seemed to shake her out of it, though, and Tomori took a deep breath and nodded while everyone else got together in a huddle. Anon, for her part, was pouting and grumbling as she joined in.
“Aww, come on, I wanted to do the thing! Tomorin always gets to do it! Can’t I get to do it just this once?”
Taki rolled her eyes and shook her head before glaring at Anon, even as she placed her own hand on top of Anon’s in preparation for ‘the thing’.
“Maybe once you can write lyrics and sing them all by yourself, without any help, then you might, maybe, possibly get to do it, Anon.”
In turn, Anon proceeded to remove her hand from the pile in the middle, before placing it back on top, covering up Taki’s, with a smug grin on her face and a teasing tone in her voice as she did.
“Wait, are you saying that I can take Tomori’s place if I wrote lyrics?! Rikki, I love you!”
Seemingly doing so just because she thought it might be fun, Raana quickly began doing the same thing as Anon, resulting in the two guitarists competing over whose hand ended up on top of the pile. Taki gave an irritable groan as she followed suit, determined to not let either of them have the top position. As the three of them engaged their little game to see whose hand would be on top for ‘the thing’, Raana gave a feline smile over towards Anon.
“Anon, lyrics. Funny.”
Tomori sheepishly kept her hand at the bottom of the pile, right underneath Soyo’s, while the other members of the band continued engaging in their struggle for supremacy.
“Uhm… Everything about Anon writing lyrics is fine, but we really need to get going. We have less than ten minutes…”
Eventually, Soyo’s patience for the antics playing out in front of her ran dry; pulling out her own hand from the pile, she roughly smacked it down on top of Anon’s hand with a loud noise, slamming it down into Taki and Raana’s.
“Can we please get on with it? We’re going to be late to our entrance if we keep going on like this, and I would really appreciate it if we didn’t ruin our first performance at the Budokan before it has even started. Now then, Tomori-chan, if you would do the honors?”
With Anon and Taki suitably cowed by Soyo’s reprimand – and with Raana unfazed, as usual - Tomori nervously pulled her hand out from the bottom of the pile and placed it on top of everyone else’s. As she looked around at the four other girls who had stuck with her through thick and thin over the last five years of playing together in MyGO, the pre-show anxiety that Tomori always had soon evaporated as everyone gave her looks of reassurance and support. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Tomori took a moment before continuing.
“Okay, everyone, here we go… One, two, three…”
With five arms throwing themselves high into the air all at once, five determined voices cheered out in unison:
“It’s MyGO!!!!!”
Even as everyone else was grabbing their stuff and beginning to head off, Soyo couldn’t help but find herself distracted by Anon. Her heart was nearly beating out of her chest, only half thanks to the fact that she was about to play in the biggest concert of her entire life up to that point, with the other half thanks to the fact that she would soon be proposing to that captivating, infuriating girl. That free-spirited, capricious girl who had crashed headlong into all of their lives like a train coming out of nowhere; that tenacious, pigheaded girl who had helped to pull the three former members of CRYCHIC out of their post-breakup stupors; that gorgeous, ridiculous girl that had – through some miracle or another – caused Nagasaki Soyo to fall madly, madly in love with her; that adorable, outrageous girl who would, without a shadow of a doubt in Soyo’s mind, be her fiancee before the night was over.
“Soyorin, come on, you’re the one who just complained that we were going to be late! I know that I’m the most beautiful girl that you’ve ever seen, but you can’t just stand there staring at me all day long!”
The other three members of MyGO had already hurried off when Soyo wasn’t paying attention, leaving just her and Anon in the waiting room, with the latter giving her girlfriend a self-satisfied look – though one that carried some degree of concern along with it. Shaking herself out of her daze, Soyo gave Anon a sarcastic snort and a derisive roll of the eyes; turning around and grabbing her bass, her eyes glanced over towards the lamp that she had stashed the ring under – still there, of course. Pivoting back towards her girlfriend, she marched up to Anon and began fixing a part of her uniform that did not, in fact, need fixing; Anon not needing any part of her uniform fixed was, in itself, something rather unusual on her part.
“Please. I wasn’t staring at you because you’re beautiful, I was staring at you because your buttons were done up all wrong. Here, let me handle it. I can’t let you get on stage without looking your proper best, after all. It’s an important night, and it needs to go perfectly.”
As she fiddled idly with the buttons in question – Anon seeing right through Soyo’s meager attempt at dodging the accusations about her staring – she noticed a peculiar expression on her girlfriend’s face.
“Anon-chan? What’s wrong? You aren’t having indigestion again like the last time, are you? You should have said something earlier, I could have given you some stomach medicine.”
Anon gently grabbed onto her girlfriend’s hand, allowing Soyo to feel just how badly the guitarist’s own hands were shaking in that moment as she gave off a weak, nervous smile. Pre-concert jitters weren’t completely foreign to Anon, but she seemed more nervous than she ever had before – not exactly a huge surprise, of course, given how important of a concert it was for all of them.
“Ah, sorry, Soyorin, it’s just… It’s a big night, yeah? A bigger night than we’ve ever had before. The biggest night of them all, in a lot of ways. A really, really big night.”
With nobody else to see her do so, Soyo allowed herself to don a gentle expression for the sake of comforting her girlfriend, taking Anon’s hands in her own and softly squeezing down on them.
“Yes, Anon-chan. It is indeed a very big night. But I’m here for you,, for this big night, and for every big night that is yet to come. I promise that I will always, always be here for you, no matter what.”
Soyo meant those words in a way that Anon wasn’t aware of in that moment, of course, but the words themselves still worked to help Anon calm herself, the guitarist’s hands shaking less and the smile on her face growing a bit stronger. Without any warning, though, Anon quickly closed the gap between the two of them, suddenly planting a deep, vigorous kiss onto Soyo’s lips – before running off ahead lest her girlfriend reprimand her for it.
“A kiss for good luck, Soyorin! Good luck for the both of us, I mean!”
Momentarily stunned by the sudden kiss, Soyo quickly managed to regain herself, putting on an annoyed expression and chasing after her girlfriend.
“And what were you going to do if you had ruined our stage make-up, Anon-chan?! I keep telling you that you need to think before you do things like that!”
In spite of her protestations, Soyo couldn’t deny that she did, in fact, greatly appreciate the kiss for good luck. She wasn’t exactly the type of girl who tried to rely on luck to make things go her way, of course, but just the fresh feeling of Anon’s lips on her own was enough to help Soyo redouble her determination, both for the concert and for the proposal afterwards.
One way or another, Chihaya Anon would be her fiancee before the night was over.
“Forever, forever, don’t let go of me…”
As Tomori intoned the last few words of ‘Spring Sunlight’, as the last few notes of the band’s instruments reverberated throughout the Budokan, there was a palpable sense across the entire concert hall that the spell that MyGO had cast upon the audience was beginning to break, now that its climax had been achieved. The sound of fifteen thousand souls all cheering and applauding at once was the thing that finally broke the spell in question, as the band’s first concert at the Budokan had gone off completely, totally, and exactly as perfectly as Soyo had known that it would.
For her part, Soyo had become far more comfortable with playing ‘Spring Sunlight’ since that ill-fated concert where Sakiko had first watched them, helped in large part by the former members of CRYCHIC managing to fully reconcile with one another. There had been a joint MyGO/Ave Mujica concert a couple of years ago where CRYCHIC had re-united one last time in order to play a single rendition of ‘Spring Sunlight’, but after that it had become well-accepted that the song ultimately ‘belonged’ to MyGO – having been written by Tomori and composed by Taki, after all – and it had consistently showed up as the finale on their set list for the past few years, much to the excitement of audiences.
After all, CRYCHIC was well and truly over by that point, and everybody who had been a part of it had come to fully understand and accept that fact, as agonizing of a fact as it had been to accept for some of them. Instead, each of them had decided to devote their lives to either MyGO or Ave Mujica, to the people who had joined them to form those bands, and to the fans that had flocked to those bands. Soyo in particular had ended up devoting a better part of her own life to one specific person who had joined them to form MyGO, even if she had never expected that things would have ended up that way when she had first formed MyGO with that girl.
Having devoted her life in such a way was exactly why Soyo knew that something was up as soon as she turned her gaze to look at Anon as the afterglow of the concert began to set in; nearly five years of intimacy with the girl having taught Soyo all of her girlfriend’s idiosyncrasies, all of her little tells and signs. Specifically, Soyo had seen that exact look on Anon’s face many times in the past, and she knew very well that it meant that impetuous girl was about to do something supremely foolish. For a moment, Soyo considered trying to stop Anon from doing whatever it was that she was planning to do – not wanting their perfect concert to be ruined at the last minute by some sort of hare-brained scheme that her girlfriend had cooked up – but she wasn’t sure how to do so without even knowing what Anon had planned, apart from hauling her off stage in front of fifteen thousand fans.
Of course, it didn’t help that Soyo found herself suddenly flashbanged by the big, bright, dumb grin that Anon gave her, something that both struck deep into Soyo’s heart and confirmed her anxieties that her girlfriend was about to do something very, very stupid – hopefully delayed for as long as possible by Tomori closing out the concert with an emcee.
“Thank you so much, everyone! This was, without a doubt, the most amazing, wonderful, incredible concert that MyGO has ever held! So many of you decided to spend your time with us tonight, to share in our music, our songs, and our emotions. If this was any other concert, this is probably the part where I would start crying from just how happy I am that you all came to see us… But, uhm, we actually have just one more song before we leave you!”
What? What? Soyo hadn’t heard anything about there being another song after they closed out with ‘Spring Sunlight’. Why hadn’t anybody told her anything? She was a member of MyGO, wasn’t she? So surely she deserved to know everything about what they had planned for their concerts – especially their first one at the Budokan! What was going on?! What was Tomori doing?! Soyo didn’t exactly feel betrayed by this sudden, unexpected revelation, but… No, she kind of did feel betrayed, actually!
Wait… Had Anon roped Tomori into whatever scheme she had cooked up? Goodness knew how easily Tomori was coerced into helping Anon with whatever harebrained scheme she came up with on any given day. As she watched Tomori move away from the center position, though, Soyo also saw Taki bring her drummer’s chair out to where the singer had been standing, while Raana ran off stage, only to come back a moment later carrying something: an acoustic guitar, that she promptly handed over to Anon, before the latter took a seat on the chair that Taki had brought out, repositioning Tomori’s microphone to sit in front of her mouth.
No, no, no. What was going on? What in all that was good was going on? Had every member of MyGO joined in on Anon’s ludicrous plot, whatever it was? Had she blackmailed them? No, the other three members of the band were all smiling, seemingly cheerful enough. Had they joined Anon’s scheme willingly? Didn’t they understand that they were ruining their perfect Budokan concert? Didn’t they know that they were ruining Soyo’s plans for her perfect proposal?! And all for what! What was Anon even doing?! They knew that Soyo hated secrets! They all knew that Soyo hated secrets! So why? Why?!
“Hello, everyone! It’s me, Chihaya Anon, your favorite member of MyGO!!!!!”
As the audience giggled at Anon’s stupid little comedy routine, Soyo was doing her best to not perform a repeat of that concert where Sakiko had watched them perform ‘Spring Sunlight’. Whatever Anon was up to, Soyo storming off the stage like a petulant child or entering into a catatonic state would only make things worse. Maybe, just maybe, if she went along with whatever was happening, her proposal could still go through as it was supposed to. It was okay. Things were still fine. They were still perfect, even, her plans still ready to move forward. Soyo was still in charge. She was still in control. Chihaya Anon would still be her fiancee in short order. Nothing would change that.
“I know that this might come as a bit of a surprise, but! I wrote a song recently! And all by myself, too, you know! You better be proud of me, because I didn’t just write the lyrics for the song, but I also composed it! Well, I had a little bit of help from Tomorin-sensei with the lyrics… And I also had a little bit of help from Rikki-sensei with the composition… But other than that, it was all me, I swear! So, uhm… I humbly request that you listen to my song! It’s called… ‘Sound of Love’.”
What? Was she joking? Had she seriously gone and named her first song after herself? Everybody knew that the kanji in Anon’s given name meant ‘sound of love’, and so everybody must have realized how absolutely embarrassing it was for her to title her first song like that. It was just like Anon, honestly, especially given the way that she had kept trying to put herself into the name of the band in some way or another when they were first trying to decide what to call it. What a ridiculously egotistical girl.
At the very least… If all that was happening was that Anon was debuting some sort of stupid song that she had written, then Soyo had much less to be worried about than she had first thought. There was the off-chance that there was some laughable fantasy going on in Anon’s head that debuting her song would be the first step on her way to a solo career, but everybody knew as well as Soyo did that Anon could never make it on her own – that was why she needed Soyo, after all, along with the rest of MyGO. Whatever. She could just let Anon play her silly little song, since they would still end up back in the waiting room afterwards, where she could make her proposal just like she had planned to do so. Nothing had changed. Soyo wouldn’t let it.
The problem was, though, the way that Taki, Tomori, and Raana had suddenly gathered around Soyo, each of them wearing a dopey smile that she assumed they must have contracted from Anon; the other problem was the way that Anon had turned around and looked directly at Soyo before starting to play her song, that same serious look of determination from before back on her face. Soyo was doing her best to not let those things get to her, to continue believing that everything was still going as she wanted them to, but she felt her certainty quickly evaporating.
Then, Chihaya Anon’s guitar began to sing – slightly awkwardly, but with complete and total earnestness – as everyone in attendance found themselves hanging on every strum, every sound, and every word spoken from between the girl’s lips.
Well, they say that every rose has its thorns
But I have never been one for such scorn
What was she even doing? She couldn’t even rhyme properly, for goodness’ sake.
For me, getting pricked by the rose
Is all part of the appeal, I suppose
And she had written a love song about roses? Could she have been any more banal if she had tried to be?
But you aren’t a rose to me, if you’d please
Instead, you’re more like a refreshing breeze
And there she was, using Soyo’s name in the middle of her song, just like how Anon had titled it after herself. So stupid. So, so stupid.
Once upon a time, I felt myself being caught up in a fire so hot
My tiny self being burned up by who I was, and by who I was not
It was ridiculous. It was completely and utterly ridiculous. Why was Chihaya Anon sitting there on stage, singing such a trite love song, when she was supposed to be in the middle of getting proposed to by Soyo? Ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous.
But then you came, and you blew out those raging flames
And you’ve kept me cool ever since, all across these airy days
How could she be doing such a thing? How could Anon be ruining all of Soyo’s plans, again? Hadn’t she done so enough by that point?
So please, please hear this sound of love
And with a gust of wind, send flying the dove
Every time. Every time that Soyo tried to do something, Anon just had to ruin it. Ever since her attempt to get CRYCHIC back together, Anon had always, always undermined everything that Soyo tried to do. Five years. Five entire years of Anon ruining everything that Soyo tried to do, and it was all culminating right then and there, in the destruction of the most precious of all of Soyo’s plans.
Because right now, I have just one question for you to hear
One question that I’d love for you to say ‘yes’ to, as I draw near
Soyo felt her blood running both ice cold and burning hot at the same time as she watched Anon set the acoustic guitar down onto the stage, before the guitarist reached into one of the pockets on her uniform – the one right next to the buttons that Soyo had been pretending to fix back before the show had started – and pulling out a small jewelry box, one that looked quite similar but not exactly identical to the one that Soyo had stashed away back in the waiting room. The crowd went wild as they realized what Anon had pulled out, as Taki, Tomori, and Raana all placed their hands softly onto Soyo’s back, as if in an attempt to encourage her to move forward towards Anon. Unfortunately for them, Soyo had no intention to do anything of the sort.
My refreshing breeze, won’t you stay together, with me?
My refreshing breeze, won’t you marry me?
It was far too much for Soyo to take at that point. She had put far too much effort into planning her perfect proposal, far too much effort into finding the perfect ring to give to Anon, far too much effort into practicing and rehearsing and playing their entire set list perfectly so that she could propose in the aftermath of a perfect concert at a perfect venue with a perfect band in front of a perfect audience on a perfect night – she had put far too much effort into all of those things and more for the sake of her perfect proposal, and all for what?
All for Anon to ruin everything by making an even more perfect proposal, one that no proposal that Soyo could manage to plan would have ever possibly been able to match up to.
Soyo must have finally let her mask slip, given the way that Anon and the others suddenly had deeply concerned expressions on their faces as they looked towards her. The Budokan audience, for their part, was much too far away to notice anything amiss, and only became aware of just how badly things were going once Soyo screamed out loud enough for every microphone on stage to pick it up.
“Anon… You… You… You complete and total idiot!”
Soyo didn’t stay long enough to see how Anon or anyone else reacted. As soon as she had unleashed that outburst, she was already storming off stage, going as fast as she possibly could without tripping and falling on her bass guitar. She cursed violently under her breath as she ran away; she cursed at Anon, she cursed at Taki, she cursed at Tomori, she cursed at Ranna, she cursed at their fans, she cursed at the Budokan itself, but most of all, she cursed deeply, deeply at herself, for having ruined everything, just like she always did.
“Soyo, wait! Soyo, please, wait up!”
For her part, Soyo did her best to ignore the girl chasing after her, did her best to ignore that beautiful, sweet, amazing, wonderful girl that she had hoped to make into her fiancee by the night’s end – a hope that had been well and truly dashed by that point, thanks to the tantrum that she had decided to throw. As Soyo pushed past several concerned-looking backstage staff members, she hoped that they would be able to slow down Anon and keep her pursuer from catching up to her; unfortunately, the girl in question was both wily and determined, and wouldn’t allow anything to keep her away from Soyo.
“What’s wrong, Soyo? Please, talk to me! Whatever I did wrong, I’m really, truly sorry, but I need to know what I did wrong in the first place! Please, Soyo!”
There was a small mercy in the fact that the rest of MyGO wasn’t chasing after Soyo alongside Anon; that was a misfortune in its own way, however, since it meant that Soyo would be alone with Anon once the latter inevitably caught up, one of the few situations in which Soyo consistently found herself completely vulnerable and totally defenseless. As Soyo shoved open the door into the waiting room, Anon followed right behind her, closing the door and leaving the two of them alone in what suddenly felt like a suffocatingly small space. Soyo had already taken off her bass guitar, resisting the urge to throw it against the wall or smash it against the floor, instead tossing it onto the nearby couch as she marched over towards the lamp that her own box was stashed away underneath.
“Didn’t you hear me out on the stage?! I said that you’re an idiot, Anon! A complete and total idiot!”
Yanking the box out of its hiding place, Soyo carelessly and unceremoniously threw it at the girl that she was supposed to have proposed to with the ring that lay inside of it; she immediately felt a pang of panic and regret at such an impulsive act, images flashing through her mind of that carefully chosen ring chipping or scratching as a result of her tantrum. Fortunately for her, Anon was an amazing enough of a girl to catch Soyo’s box in her free hand – even if she had to jumble at it a little bit first – which resulted in Anon suddenly holding two jewelry boxes, one in each palm.
“Soyo, what… What is this?”
Anon looked at the box she that had just caught, her eyes slowly drifting between that one and the nearly identical one that she had pulled out on stage a few minutes ago. Realization began to slowly dawn on her face, but not before Soyo continued her outburst.
“What do you think it is, you moron?! It’s a ring! A ring! I was supposed to be the one to propose to you tonight, Anon! I had it all perfectly planned out! We were going to have a perfect concert, we were going to come back into this room, I was going to pull out that perfect ring and surprise you with a perfect proposal, you were obviously going to say yes, and then we would have lived happily ever after, just like the princesses in all of those stupid, ridiculous fairy tales that you’re so obsessed with!”
As Soyo continued to scream at her girlfriend – not that Anon would likely be her girlfriend for much longer, with the way that Soyo was treating her at that moment – Anon herself stood there silently with an anxious, heartbroken, agonized expression on her face, seemingly accepting everything that Soyo said with that frustratingly incredible grace that she sometimes managed to exhibit whenever she wasn’t acting like a complete child.
“But then you just had to go and ruin everything, Anon, just like you always do! You just had to have your stupid little secret with the rest of this stupid little band, and you just had to surprise me with a stupid little love song that you just had to have written and composed and performed just to propose to me at the end of our first, stupid little concert at this stupid little Budokan! And after I had put all of that effort into finding that perfect ring, into planning the perfect proposal, and into playing an absolutely perfect concert, you just had to go and ruin it, Anon! You ruined everything! It’s all ruined, Anon! All of it, because of you!”
Smouldering hot tears were streaming down Soyo’s face by that point, and she clenched her eyes shut tight in some meager attempt to stem the tide. Her hands had balled up into painful fists, fingers pushing roughly up into her palm to the point that she worried that even her well-trimmed nails would somehow end up drawing blood. Anon, meanwhile, slowly crossed the distance between herself and her girlfriend, placing both jewelry boxes down onto a nearby counter before reaching out and trying to gently hold onto one of Soyo’s hands; in response, Soyo flinched away from Anon’s touch, opening her eyes wide in order to give the girl a vicious, incensed glare that caused Anon to take a small step back away from the woman that she loved so much.
“Soyo, I… I didn’t realize what you had planned. I’m sorry, I… Guess I really am an idiot, huh?”
Anon was an idiot, yes, but not for the reason that she thought she was. After all, what did she even have to be sorry for? Anon hadn’t actually done anything wrong, which was something that Soyo understood on a rational level, even if she was utterly infuriated with Anon on an emotional level. If anything, Soyo should have been happy that Anon had put in all of that effort for her, that she had made an entire song mostly all by herself for the sake of proposing to her; it was far, far more than anything that Soyo had done for the sake of her planned proposal, far more than Soyo had even thought to do, which was exactly why it was so maddening. There was nothing that Anon should have been apologizing for, which was exactly why Soyo was so upset. That stupid little girl was so, so amazing, on so, so many levels – far more amazing than Soyo could ever even hope to be, even if given an eternity to try. That was the worst part of it all.
“Just… Just shut up, Anon.”
The first time that Soyo had met Anon, her assessment of the girl was as nothing more than a fickle little fool that she could use to help get CRYCHIC back together, before throwing her to the side without a care or a thought once she was no longer needed. But then, out of nowhere, Anon had exceeded all of Soyo’s expectations, had yanked Soyo up out of the deep, seemingly inescapable hole that she had dug herself down into as a result of her frantic efforts to re-unite CRYCHIC. Anon had said in her song that Soyo was the refreshing breeze that had saved her from being burned up by flames? Then what about Anon, whose sound of love had saved Soyo when she was at her lowest point, and which had saved her countless times since then?
“You’re always just so, so…”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair how extraordinary, bright, and absolutely perfect Chihaya Anon was, not when Nagasaki Soyo herself was such a pathetic, miserable, sad little human being. All that she knew how to do was to lie, to deceive, to manipulate, and whenever all of that fell apart, all that she had left without her lies was to be a complete and utter bitch to everyone around her – especially to those who tried to get close to her. And yet, there was Chihaya Anon, who at first glance appeared to be nothing more than narcissistic, self-centered twit, but who had ended up being the one that unconditionally loved Nagasaki Soyo in spite of all that she was – perhaps even because of all that she was, if that song of hers was to be believed.
“You’re always just so stupidly, ridiculously incredible Anon, all of the time! All of the time! No matter what, you’re always the most amazing person around, you’re always the one person that I find my eyes drawn to, you’re always the one person that keeps me moving through my miserable little life, and you’re always, always just so aggravatingly amazing!”
And so, how was Nagasaki Soyo supposed to compare to the girl that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? How was she supposed to compare to this incorrigible blockhead, who loved so freely and openly, when Soyo only loved under the cover of cynicism and bitterness? How was she supposed to compare to this sparkling, dazzling girl, who always lit up every room that she walked into, when it was only a dark pall that always seemed to follow Soyo around? How was she supposed to compare to this gorgeous, idiotic, amazing, utterly senseless girl who had put in so much effort to create a perfect proposal, when Soyo’s own proposal looked so trite in comparison?
“I hate you, Anon. I hate you so, so much…”
More than anything else, how was she supposed to compare to that girl’s fervent, sincere honesty, when Soyo was never able to say what she truly wanted to say.
“Soyo… I love you.”
That wonderful idiot had wrapped her arms around Soyo’s shoulders, bringing her girlfriend in for a hug in spite of the way that she had been treating Anon up to that point, in spite of the fact that Soyo had just recoiled away from her attempt at holding her hand. How stupid could that girl be? Didn’t she see that Soyo was doing everything in her power to keep her from getting close, that she was doing everything in her power to stop Anon from saving Soyo from herself?
“Get off me, Anon! Don’t touch me! Go away! Leave me alone! Please, just… Leave me alone…”
Soyo threw a few sad, feeble strikes at Anon in an attempt to get her to release her grasp, but the meager, reluctant way that Soyo tried to fight against the unstoppable sincerity of Chihaya Anon would never manage to overcome that outrageous love of hers.
“I love you, Nagasaki Soyo. I love you with all of my heart, no matter what. I’m sorry that I hurt you, and I’m sorry that ruined your proposal.”
There she went, apologizing again, like the egotistical idiot that she was. Anon thought that she had been the one to hurt Soyo? The fool clearly thought far too highly of herself; after all, Soyo had gone and hurt herself entirely on her own, without needing any assistance from anyone else. Anon hadn’t done anything wrong, and she still wasn’t doing even a single thing wrong, but that was yet another reason why Soyo was so upset. If only Anon had done something wrong, then Soyo would at least have had a legitimate reason to be so mad, would at least have had a legitimate reason to reject Anon’s abundant, straightforward professions of love. But no, Anon hadn’t done a single, solitary thing wrong at any point that night. It was all Soyo, in the end; it was all of Soyo’s immaturity, all of Soyo’s self-centeredness, all of Soyo’s vanity, and all of Soyo’s own complete and total idiocy.
“I just… I just wanted to give you the perfect proposal, Anon. I wanted to surprise you, to make you blush, to make you laugh, to make you smile, to make you as happy as I possibly could. But now, I can’t do any of that, and instead I’m just ruining everything, just like I always do; just like I did with CRYCHIC, just like I did with MyGO, and just like I always do with you. You’re one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and here I am, always ruining everything.”
Soyo had given up on trying to fight off Anon’s embrace, and instead allowed her body to go halfway limp in her girlfriend’s arms, while Anon herself slowly stroked at the back of Soyo’s head, fingers digging down gently into her scalp.
“It’s okay, Soyo. It’s okay. I understand. You know, for whatever it’s worth… I am happy. I know that this night hasn’t exactly turned out great, but… Finding out that you wanted to propose to me, on the same night that I wanted to propose to you? I know that you always make fun of me whenever I say this, but we really are on the same wavelength, Soyorin.”
Soyo’s arms meekly lifted themselves up in order to place her hands onto Anon’s arms, gingerly grabbing onto them in a sign of anxious affection, but with a light enough grasp that carried the worry of potentially breaking whatever fragile thing the two of them were building together in that moment.
“That’s stupid, Anon-chan. You’re stupid. Saying that we are on the same wavelength? How could I ever be on the same wavelength as the biggest idiot that I have ever known? And don’t say that you’re not an idiot, either, Anon-chan. You would have to be the biggest idiot in the whole wide world to love somebody like me, to want to marry somebody like me, to want to spend the rest of your life with somebody like me.”
Slowly withdrawing from the tight embrace, Anon kept a hold onto Soyo’s shoulders; her own grasp was soft but still tighter than her girlfriend’s, one meant to offer a guarantee that she wasn’t about to go anywhere, that she wasn’t about to let go. Anon lifted up a delicate hand with calloused fingertips in order to softly wipe away some of Soyo’s tears, giving a small, gentle, sparkling smile as she did so.
“Well, if that’s the case, then I will proudly and gladly accept the title of the biggest idiot in the whole wide world! But, only if it means that you accept just how much I love you in return, Soyorin!”
Against her will, a smile of her own crossed Soyo’s face, the girl finding herself entirely unable to cover up her emotions with the acerbity that she always tried to use. When her big, dumb, goof of a girlfriend said such silly things in such a serious way while wearing such a ridiculously adorable grin on her face, there was no way that Soyo could resist the irresistibly contagious happiness coming off from Anon.
“You really are a complete and total idiot, Anon-chan, just like I said on the stage.”
Though the words themselves may have seemed mean-spirited, Soyo spoke without a hint of her typical sarcasm or bitterness, calling Anon an idiot with the same tone of voice that she might otherwise have told her that she loved her. Pulling herself closer to her girlfriend – who would, perhaps, still be her fiancee by the end of the night – Soyo placed a deep kiss onto Anon’s lips, one that tasted slightly salty thanks to Soyo’s leftover tears. The kiss was tender yet passionate, expressing both the lingering anxiety that the two of them felt, alongside the overwhelming love that refused to let that anxiety hold it down. For a long while, they held onto the kiss and onto each other like that moment would be the last moment in the entire world, only breaking contact once they had both run out of breath. Panting slightly, the two of them stared deeply into one another’s eyes for what felt like forever… Until they eventually broke out into giggles at the same time.
“Then I guess that you must be a complete and total idiot too, Soyorin, for falling in love with one!”
Soyo lifted one of her hands up to Anon’s own cheek, using her thumb to wipe away a bit of moisture that had gathered at the edge of her girlfriend’s eye – she hadn’t even noticed how strong Anon was staying for her while she was throwing that tantrum, how much effort Anon had put in to keep herself from breaking down and screaming and crying, far unlike how Soyo hadn’t even bothered to try and prevent her own outburst in the slightest.
“Yes, I suppose that I am indeed an idiot. Maybe even the biggest idiot in the whole wide world, actually. You don’t mind if I take that crown from you, do you, Anon-chan?”
Even as they teased back and forth between each other, Soyo panicked for a moment as Anon withdrew from their embrace, finding herself wracked with a sudden, irrational fear that the love of her life was about to abandon her, that everything they had said to each other up to that point had all been for nothing. Thankfully, all that Anon did was reach back over to pick up the two ring boxes, one held in each of her hands.
“Uhm, what should we do with these, Soyorin? I think that Rikki and the rest are making sure that the audience doesn’t get up and leave or anything like that for right now, but…”
Soyo’s fingers reached up to delicately trace across the fabric of the ring box that she had brought to the Budokan that night, before moving over to do the same to the box that Anon had brought with her, neither of them aware of the plans that the other one had for proposing to one another at the end of the concert when they had done so. More than just a pair of boxes that held engagement rings inside, though, they were two solid pieces of physical evidence that Soyo and Anon really were on the same wavelength, no matter how much Soyo tried to argue otherwise; more than that, they were two solid pieces of physical evidence that the two of them truly did love each other, just as much as the other did, and just in the same way as the other did – and that Anon had no intentions of abandoning Soyo any time soon.
“Why don’t we go back out onto the stage and have a little do over, Anon-chan?”
Her soon-to-be-fiancee’s eyes widened and dazzled as she processed what Soyo had said, suddenly filled with an energy that Soyo was concerned would soon become overwhelming, given the way that Anon had begun to practically jump in place from excitement.
“Yeah! Yeah, that sounds good! Let’s do exactly that, Soyorin! Let’s go quick, though, before everyone gets too worried! Here, take yours! I mean, uhm… Wait, which one of these did I bring? And which one did you bring? Aah, I’m sorry, Soyorin, I got them mixed up in all of the commotion!”
Soyo couldn’t help but let out even more giggles at Anon’s antics, but it was one absent of the acidic cynicism that usually laced her laughter; instead, it was as honest and sincere as any laugh that Anon herself had ever let out.
“This one is mine, and that one is yours, Anon-chan. Now please, stop messing around. After all, we have some proposing to do, don’t we?”
Just as she had when storming off a short while ago, Soyo began rushing off ahead; that time, though, she made sure to grab on tightly to Anon’s hand, pulling the love of her life alongside her. As the two of them began making their way back to the stage, they continued laughing, at each other, at themselves, and at how silly and ridiculous the whole situation had been. Even as they laughed like that, though, their hands squeezed down firmly onto each other’s, making sure to not let go.
It was a vow, after all. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and until death do them part... Forever, forever, Nagasaki Soyo and Chihaya Anon wouldn't let each other go.
Some time later, Kaname Raana found herself sitting in front of ten matcha parfaits and two bags of matcha chocolate balls, a smug look of feline satisfaction on her face as she surveyed her spoils. She hadn’t been entirely surprised when both Soyo and Anon had bribed her with the exact same amount of matcha to keep basically the same plan hidden from the other, but Raana was more than happy to have played both sides and come out as the true victor of the night of the Budokan concert, at least as far as she was concerned. Proposals and engagements and marriages were all well and good, but had either of them ever spent an entire day eating nothing but matcha? She didn’t think so!
As she began devouring the parfaits that she had been bribed with, Raana idly wondered when Tomori and Taki would finally propose to each other, and exactly how much matcha she would be able to extort from the two of them once they ended up doing so. Maybe twenty matcha parfaits in total, next time…