Chapter Text
The Summer sun shone on Hikaru’s hair. It glowed white, bright like the clouds above. Soft too like cotton. Her hair’s tied in a lopsided ponytail. She hadn’t bothered to fix it, too busy sitting by the river bed, dipping her feet in the water and wriggling her toes.
Yoshiki and Hikaru idled at the river that flowed from Futakasayama, surrounded by rippling water and singing cicadas.
Yoshiki watched Hikaru absentmindedly, turning over a heavy feeling in her heart like the river stone in her hands. She couldn’t seem to get rid of the longing in her eyes. Hikaru has always said she looks either too glum or too dopey. And when Hikaru glanced at Yoshiki, the giddy friend laughed. It was a flighty sound, sharp at the edges with a buzz like the wings of a dragonfly. Yoshiki had never seen a grin as wide or as bright as Hikaru’s.
Hikaru then crouched by the river, the water her mirror. She asked, “Ya think Saitou can still like me with this?” She pressed her pinky into the gap of her teeth, right where her stubborn canine juts.
Yoshiki stirred and held back a sigh. Here she goes again. She threw the stone into water. It splashed and water droplets sprinkled her face, cooling her internal frustration. Hikaru was always prodding her body.
She’ll squeeze her cheeks. “You’d say I have a cute face?”
Turn to the side in a mirror. “Ya think my stomach’s too big?”
Glide her hands down her legs. “They’re thin, right, Yoshiki?”
What was Yoshiki supposed to say? If anything she was concerned. Hikaru was already in several clubs, volleyball, track, cross country…she was fit enough! Yoshiki saw nothing wrong, clubs or no clubs, fit body or not. What even was fit anyway? It’s all just bodies. But now Hikaru’s asking what Saitou would think, not her.
And when Yoshiki would answer, “Yer fine just as is.” Hikaru would say, “You always say that, but what would a guy think?” Yoshiki would frown. A guy? Yoshiki had two eyes. They worked just fine. Except, the whole back and forth was a fight she couldn’t win.
Who cared what they thought anyway? Yoshiki preferred when Hikaru didn’t care about that stuff. Yoshiki replied, “If he doesn’t”—she pictures Saitou’s face, then Hikaru’s, her smile—“he’s down right stupid.” Hikaru perked up and grinned. Then her eyes squinted into half-moon crescents, the look of mischief. Yoshiki knew it well.
Hikaru mused. “Really?” She rested her head on her bent knees like a pillow. “Would you date me if you were a guy then?” Yoshiki’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t say. Though she considered that possibility over in her mind many times, it was more tortuous than it was speculative. She already knew the answer. She always had it. Yoshiki’s lips stayed sealed and Hikaru gasped in feign surprise. “Ya totally would!” She splashed Yoshiki and giggled. “Ew gross!”
The droplets sprayed Yoshiki’s face, her tee beginning to stick to her skin. “Can ya quit that?” Yoshiki grumbled, stood up, and kicked some water into Hikaru’s direction; she shouted and scrambled away.
Hikaru wiped her forehead; her bangs sticking. “Come on. Ya know I’m messin’, don’t need to get all sore.” Her skin is shiny with water.
Yoshiki acquiesced. She could only pocket that simmering feeling before it burned in her hands. That sickly shame. It waned as they returned to the riverbed all soggy from their splashes. Hikaru sat closer to Yoshiki this time, their shoulders brushing.
Yoshiki feels heavy. “This whole town…” She wasn’t sure why she was speaking aloud. She hadn’t meant to. Yoshiki dug her chin between her knees and focused on the flowing river. She knew Hikaru was reading her as she always was. Despite Yoshiki's reticence, Hikaru was able to find the truth on her own, as if dissecting every crease in Yoshiki’s face, or every shift in tone in her voice. Yet she couldn’t discover every truth. Hikaru craned her head with interest. This wasn’t their first conversation.
“Thinkin’ bout’ Tokyo that badly, huh?”
“Naw, just anywhere but here.”
Hikaru scoffed. “Yer so gloomy.” Yoshiki folded into herself more as Hikaru frowned. Her friend murmured, “I don’t wanna be the bad you see in Kubitachi.”
Yoshiki was startled. “Yer not.” Hikaru was the least bad thing in the town.
Hikaru leaned back on her hands, and she turned to Yoshiki and smiled. Water droplets were speckled on her lashes and her skin was all flushed and radiant. Yoshiki remembered her own breath. She always held it in her lungs. She learned to hide it—all those times when her heart was caught in suspension.
And Hikaru said, as if the solution was simple, “Then you just need to hang more with me til then.” Yoshiki wryly smiled, but Hikaru nudged her shoulder. “Hey, I’m serious! I think we need a girls night, just the two of us.”
It was a memory so hazy it seemed to be watched through fogged glass, but so tangible it could be caught in suspension. Yoshiki can see her stretched out hand in her mind, piercing through that memory as if it were trapped behind film.
“Hikaru,” Yoshiki murmurs. Her mind is foggy. She can almost feel the way her shirt clung to her skin then, wet from the river. Or maybe it’s just the current trace of cold sweat.
Yoshiki curls up in her bed. She lays on her side with her knees to her chest. Her shiny hair splayed out on the bed like a curtain of water. She shuts her eyes and grunts. There’s a half empty blister pack swathed in her sheets. And on her night stand are a generous selection of pill bottles—prescription, over the counter, some for her temperamental stomach, and pain meds that never seemed to eradicate the signals of those firing neurons.
She’s cramping, and she’s cramping badly. Yoshiki tries to focus on the warmth from her heat pad. It does little to soothe her. It’s a tool for physical pain, but not her emotional instability this time of month. Her body is cruel and so is her mind. Her dreams were straight out of the sleep from a fever, unnervingly real and tormentingly accurate.
Unlike when she wasn’t on her period, Yoshiki struggled not to succumb to these memory-dreams. But they were too incessant and during these days she was too sensitive. Her emotions were tied to a loose trigger.
Fwoosh.
Yoshiki flinches as Kaoru barges into her room.
Her little brother is about to declare something. His voice bellows for such a small body. Then he stops in his tracks. “Oh yer still feelin’ bad…” His eyes are round and sheepish.
“What is it?” Yoshiki calls weakly, looking like a ghoul.
“…just wanted somethin’ from the shop.”
“Give me a sec.” Yoshiki rubs the crust from her eyes. Kaoru exits quietly and closes the door gently. She thought it was funny how Kaoru’s treatment of hers changed when she was on her period. Maybe it was conditional. Yoshiki would snap if Kaoru was testing her patience, or he’d get reprimanded by their father.
It wasn’t until Kaoru was old enough to recognize Yoshiki's pain that he felt concern for her.
“What’s wrong with Yoshiki?” Kaoru had asked their father one day.
Their father laughed and patted Kaoru's head. “Nothing’s wrong with your sister. She’s just a little sick.”
“She’ll be okay?”
“She’ll be okay. She’s tough.”
Well that ‘sickness’ occurred every month. Kaoru learned to act accordingly.
Eventually Yoshiki gets up. Her limbs crack as if she’s made of paper mache, breaking from her mold. Then Yoshiki puts on an outfit that holds some semblance to looking coordinated, unlike Hikaru who prudently thought about every piece. Yoshiki takes a deep breath. She couldn’t help but think of her. Yoshiki’s eyes flit towards her nightstand.
Hikaru.
She was a different story. Let’s say her outfits are ‘experimental.’
Yoshiki reaches for her phone. No messages but a lonely notification for a system update. Usually Hikaru would shoot her a text by now.
Weird.
Yoshiki sends one instead: ‘Hey’
Then Yoshiki opens her nightstand. Atop all her other items is a bone shard. It’s dense in her hands. She drags her thumb along the dulled pointed end, along the tip of Hikaru’s sternum. Yoshiki’s gaze lingers on the bone. Enough happened that day when Hikaru gave it to her—or ripped it out of her body.
Yoshiki can still recall the shock on Hikaru's face when she stabbed her. The growing stain on her uniform. Her resigned expression as she lifted her shirt to appease Yoshiki. Her grunts of pain as she broke herself—weakened herself. Hikaru stood a step closer to Yoshiki’s level, feeling a little more human, a little more like a teenage girl.
Hikaru’s first cycle since the incident left her a wreck. She was practically moping the whole day in school. She was hunched over her seat in class, she was clutching her stomach, and she wore a constant grimace. Their teachers awkwardly ignored her.
As they walked through the halls Hikaru mumbled, “It never felt this bad before.” From beside Yoshiki, Asako shared a sympathetic glance. “I’m bleedin’ so damn much, and it hurts like hell!” Students around them started to exchange wary glances and pick up their pace. Asako and Yuuki turned their heads away as if pretending they couldn’t hear.
Yoshiki whispered, “Ya might wanna quiet down, I got somethin’.” Hikaru was still audibly groaning and before Yoshiki could offer her some pain medicine Maki stuffed a blister pack and pad in her hands.
“Take these will you?” Hikaru grabbed the stuff and rushed to the bathroom. Maki continued, “Phew, I know it’s a hassle but she doesn’t need to let the whole school know.” Yoshiki shrugged. She knew well what bad cramps were like. They were vicious. Your uterus chews you from the inside out. Sometimes it was hard not to let everyone know. There’s been days where all Yoshiki wanted was to scream so seeing Hikaru so unabashedly human was reassuring.
Maki whispered, “I thought she already had her period?”
“Just got worse I guess. Can ya blame her?”
After that day Yoshiki gave Hikaru a talk. Hikaru had told Yoshiki her periods were never as heavy or as painful; she could last the whole day with a light pad and no medication. Yoshiki felt a twinge of envy. She helped her nonetheless. Yoshiki recommended the strongest over the counter medication and let Hikaru borrow her heat pad.
“Yer really always goin’ through this?” Hikaru exclaimed.
“Yup.”
“No wonder yer always lookin’ so depressed.”
Yoshiki places the bone shard in her pocket, closing the clasp gently. She manages to pull her weight as she treks to Nozomi, still very much in pain. The things she does for Kaoru. Once in the supermarket, Yoshiki makes a bee-line for the condiment section and picks up some spicy wasabi-mustard. She also decides to treat herself, and puts some ice-pops in her basket—the only sweet she’ll tolerate. Before Yoshiki leaves the frozen section, she considers buying ice cream for Hikaru. She knows better than to spend her family’s funds on a friend, but it was Hikaru.
Yoshiki checks her phone. There’s still no messages from her. Yoshiki begins to wonder if their cycles synced. Just in case, during these times a treat was always appropriate, besides Hikaru had an extensive sweet tooth and an affinity for ice cream as a default.
At the register Yoshiki places down super-spicy wasabi, a box of icepops, and a pint of ice cream. “Tsujinaka’s girl! Quite the selection you got here,” the clerk says, only for Yoshiki to recognize the man as the shopkeeper’s overzealous and noisy husband. He’s pretty harmless, but annoying. “Sweet an’ spicy, hm?”
Yoshiki can’t even bother to reply, not that the guy expected one, he’d keep babbling anyway. If medication was the remedy to Yoshiki’s pain, then her pain was the remedy to unwanted conversations. Yoshiki can’t bother to reply, because she can’t bother to focus on the words. She catches enough though.
“...didja’ know split ends ain’t healthy? It stops hair growth…I cut my wife’s hair. She loves it! Lemme give ya a trim sometime, or even a nice chop if ya need it. I’ll even cut those bangs of yers. They’re coverin’ those pretty eyes.”
Yoshiki can only muster a measly decline and hurry off, not caring if she was rude. It irked her how people acted as if she were transparent; like they knew her and what she was made of.
They don’t know anything.
Some people needed to know when to stop talking. The whole village had nerve. No matter how withdrawn Yoshiki could be, it wouldn’t shut anyone up. Or stop anybody from looking.
Her phone buzzed. She read the ongoing texts. No need to see who they’re from.
‘Yoshiki’
‘Yoshiki’
‘I’m dying’
‘Help me’
…
To say Yoshiki was worried was an understatement. She tossed the shopping bags into her house, forgetting about the ice cream and ice pops, and biked to Hikaru’s house. She’d only moved so fast a few times in her life. The last time was that winter day where she found Hikaru.
Yoshiki’s hands white-knuckle around the handles of her bike. Her nails dig crescents into her skin. She felt as if she were in those mountains again. When the brisk cold bit her fingers and the clouds weeped on her skin.
Please, please, please.
The dread bubbles up in her throat like bile. She tries terribly hard to tear the image of her corpse away: her broken limbs, the blood, her pallor, frozen face. Yoshiki winces. Her eyes water. A measly hiccup erupts from her lips. How could her mind be so cruel? To remind her of the hollow inside her, to threaten to deepen it again.
The wind doesn’t succeed in cooling down her face. Her hair blows haphazardly, bangs waving in the air. And if she wasn’t spiked with adrenaline she wouldn’t be biting down on her teeth so firmly. Neither would she be biking as easily as she did now, not with those cramps.
Had Hikaru weakened herself to dysfunctionality? What was dying to an entity that lived between life and death? Whatever it was, nothing could happen to Hikaru. Not when Yoshiki was beginning to accept these circumstances—need them. Hikaru made living in this world easier. Yoshiki wouldn’t allow Hikaru to disappear from it.
Yoshiki drops her bike and runs to the Indous’ door.
“It’s Yoshiki!” she calls, not knowing who’s home. It feels weird to stand and catch her breath. Her body is a flask to her uncontrolled energy. Her chest falls and rises as she waits by the door.
It opens.
Any longer and she would have broken in.
“Hikaru?”
Hands pull Yoshiki in by the shirt. Before she has time to react, arms loop around her neck and soft white hair tickles her cheek. Yoshiki gapes at Hikaru. Her friend pulls away with a petulant frown on her face. “Yoshiki,” she whines, “It hurts.”
“Wha…” Yoshiki stares at Hikaru, caught between shock and relief.
The girl is perfectly fine, except being less spry. It actually looks like she’s been sleeping all day. She has a soft halo of frizz, her bangs are plastered on her forehead, and she’s wearing some old tie-dye tee. Hikaru starts yanking on Yoshiki’s sleeves.
Yoshiki exclaims, “Y’are not dying!”
“Feels like it.”
“You don’t know what that feels like.” She hoped Hikaru would never feel it.
Hikaru huffs, dragging Yoshiki deeper into the house by her hand. Hikaru’s grip is like a tether. It was the same with Hikaru—their touch. Or was it?
Her mind begins to wander again.
Hikaru and Hikaru seemed equally touchy. Hikaru wasn’t opposed to physical touch, so she never strayed from it. But Hikaru? It felt like the girl had to have some form of contact all the time, whether it was physical or inserting her company. This didn’t go unnoticed.
Yoshiki looks at their fastened hands, then her forearm, the bruise that envelopes her wrist, a stain of a hand. There was a conversation following the day she first got it. When she acknowledged Hikaru and Hikaru were not one in the same.
Asako had said after class, “That girl’s been crazy about ya. I feel bad for her.” He nodded his head in self-confirmation.
Yuuki even agreed. “It’s like, lately Hikaru’s been real attached to you?”
“Like some punk kid clingin’ to his mommy,” added Asako.
Yuuki elbowed the boy. “You can’t be talkin’ trash like that! You’ve been watchin’ too many gangster flicks.” Asako rubs his arm sheepishly. “Besides,” Yuuki said, “Girls are always all up on each other anyways.”
It was true because close proximity between girls was welcomed. Yoshiki wasn’t opposed to touch, but it was unfamiliar to get so much of it. Hikaru would wrap her arms around Yoshiki’s neck from behind. Between classes Hikaru would interlink their fingers together, occasionally swinging their arms. Sometimes Hikaru would startle Yoshiki with a hug, nuzzling her cheek. Hikaru somehow always managed to wrap around Yoshiki like a winding fox. For Yoshiki, the first of these many moments alarmed her. Yet she never opposed it.
“Ya don’t like it?” asked Hikaru curiously.
“No—not that.” Yoshiki didn't know what to say.
“Ya feel nice to me.” Her gaze trained on hers. “Warm.” Yoshiki didn’t want to ask what she meant by that, still a hint wary of the entity residing in the body.
“Just don’t be touchin’ everybody. Not everyone wants to be touched.”
“Got it.”
Did she?
Yoshiki once caught Hikaru fiddling with Asako’s hair. The boy had longer hair that brushed his neck. Hikaru found this entertaining. As if they were animals, Hikaru prodded at people like they wouldn’t mind. While Asako talked, Hikaru twirled his hair between her fingers.
“Quit that.” Yoshiki swatted Hikaru's hand. “He ain’t some doll.”
Asako laughed. “I don’t mind!” He brushed his fingers through his own curls. “Guess it’s a good thing a girl likes my hair. My ma says it's too long.” Afterwards, Hikaru turned to Yoshiki and gave her a satisfied smirk.
Hikaru doesn’t look very satisfied now. She succeeded in dragging Yoshiki to her room. After she plops herself onto the futon with the mess of blankets. The room itself is a mess. Manga is strewn across the tatami, her bookbag opened with its contents laid about. Yoshiki can’t even see the surface of the desk. Along the other items is a familiar patterned bag and small face mirror. Suddenly, Yoshiki returns to a different year and month, when this room was inhabited by an ordinary girl. And Yoshiki begs her mind to stop the shift, but it encases her like a lulling embrace.
It was one of those days where Yoshiki wanted to disappear and flee the village. That wasn’t an option, but visiting Hikaru was. Yoshiki stumbled upon one of Hikaru’s new hobbies.
“Yoshiki!” Hikaru had called, “Look at this.”
Yoshiki was sitting on the tatami as Hikaru wagged a small patterned bag in her hands. It was a bag Karou helped pick out for Hikaru while they all went to Nozomi together. Yoshiki liked how Hikaru would include her little brother in small errands. She also liked how she didn’t tease him for his interest in pretty decorations and knicknacks. Karou had a good eye, that was true. Hikaru had told her the pouch was for feminine items then, and Yoshiki shrugged it off, but when Hikaru unzipped the bag various makeup items peaked out.
“What’s that all for?” Yoshiki asked, clearly not shrugging it off anymore. She didn’t know whether to be concerned or interested. No one cared too much about appearances in Kubitachi. She didn’t think Hikaru would be the type to get wound up in makeup, even if it was a harmless hobby. Still, Yoshiki wondered if it would fix things for herself.
Hikaru grinned, looking proud. “For me! I’ve been practicin’. Wanna watch?”
And Yoshiki said yes, even if it did make her feel funny. She didn’t think Hikaru needed it. Maybe Hikaru thought so too. But maybe it was something she did for fun. People do this for fun, right? Despite those thoughts, Yoshiki couldn’t help but follow Hikaru’s hands as she gathered her supplies.
“I’ll only put a little on.”
Hikaru was propped on her desk chair, applying her products. Her brows furrowed and lips pressed in concentration. The sight was subtly amusing. Yoshiki never saw that face in front of her homework. Even with her vivid expressions, Yoshiki couldn’t help but find her endearing.
Hikaru finished by turning to Yoshiki over in her chair.
“Whaja’ think?”
Yoshiki blinked. She’d be lying if she said the makeup didn’t enhance Hikaru’s features. Her round cheeks were flushed, and her skin was dewy and radiant as if she just stepped out of a bath. Her eyes were striking, the same color of the sky before a storm.
“Very nice,” Yoshiki managed to say. Pretty. But Hikaru didn’t have to put some cream and powder on for Yoshiki to come to that conclusion. Everything was already there, on that canvas of her face.
“I forgot!” Hikaru rummaged in the bag and swiped a light lipgloss onto her lips. “How about now?” She grinned; her lips gleamed. “You’d say I’m cute, Yoshiki?”
“I…” Yoshiki struggled. Why was she always so upfront? “Yer always cute. Ya don’t need all that to be.”
Hikaru giggled, that playful and mischievous sound as if she was holding a secret; an inside joke reserved for herself. Maybe it was.
“Yoshiki thinks I’m cute,” Hikaru declared. Then she pondered. “Wouldja like some? I can be yer artist. We can match!” She was sitting at the edge of her seat with anticipation, her toothy grin wide.
Hesitantly Yoshiki held the vanity mirror to her face. A hypocrite she felt as she gazed into it. She stared into the same large eyes she shared with her father, the ones that hid behind her bangs. Then she scrutinized those moles, the ones her mother gave her. There was no getting rid of them—she tried, they grew back. She brushed her skin, experimentally covering the moles with her hands. Hikaru didn’t need makeup, but she did. Concealer was it? Maybe she could get the right color and cover–
“Nevermind. Forget I said anythin’."
“What?”
Hikaru took the mirror and patted Yoshiki’s cheek like a chastened child. “Ya don’t need it.” Yoshiki’s face flushed.
Yoshiki can faintly remember the gentle expression on Hikaru’s face as she strode to the shoji. How she turned back and observed Yoshiki.
Hikaru said, “I’ll match with you instead,” and slipped into the dark, leaving Yoshiki to wonder what she said wrong.
In the present, Yoshiki steps from the same corridor Hikaru had walked into all that time ago. It’s like she expects Hikaru to be waiting there for her. To be splayed on the futon, wagging a new volume in her hands with her hair down and all disheveled because she liked to ‘free her scalp.’ To pat the space beside her and rant about her day.
Yoshiki wishes the tricks would just stop, but the pain taunts her and uses Hikaru as its conduit. She joins Hikaru on her futon, hoping the memories will dissipate.
Now is the last moment she wants to be ‘gloomy.’ But her emotions bubble. She feels longing, the gaping loss of missing someone, and never getting them back.
Hikaru, Hikaru, Hikaru, Yoshiki repeats, watching this Hikaru.
Her friend’s hands are clasped over her stomach. Yoshiki could put one and two together.
“Yer period?”
Hikaru nods. Along with the easy bruising, Yoshiki didn’t like how susceptible Hikaru’s body was. If Hikaru really is Nonuki-sama, it was strange to see them debilitated by the ordinary period.
“Ya never should have given me that thing,” Yoshiki mutters. The bone shard feels heavy in her pocket.
Hikaru stirs. “Quit that already, you know I ain’t takin’ it back.”
“Damn.” Yoshiki holds her head. “I didn’t bring anythin’.” In the hurry to get to the Indou’s, Yoshiki came empty handed. “Ya said the heat pad helps right?”
“It don’t matter.” Hikaru wraps herself up in a blanket. “I took stuff already. I just want yer company.”
Yoshiki wonders when she received such merit. She needs Hikaru. But how could Hikaru choose her?
Yoshiki studied Hikaru’s wan face.
This won’t do. Yoshiki sits up. “I can still run and get it. I’ll be right–”
Hikaru grabs her wrist. She looks up with wide eyes that lock Yoshiki into place. “I have a better idea.”