Chapter Text
Mizuki Akiyama. On the outside, one would see her shield. Her protection. Amia. Amia is the one who holds Mizuki together. Amia is the one who keeps the insides, the guts and bones, from spilling out. Amia is Mizuki’s exoskeleton.
Inside, she deals with a heavy burden. One she cannot tell anyone. Only her closest friends, who have seen her take on the burden themselves. They are the only ones who know. Who truly know.
Mizuki is a creative. She creates dresses that are outside the box, clothes that people look at and gawk at. She also creates layouts. She works part-time in music videos, rigging assets and the like. She uses a skeleton, one of skin or one of music, and builds on them. She makes them pop. She makes them look good. She makes them look ethereal.
She has yet to build anything for herself. Because she doesn’t need to. She has Amia, who keeps her together when things get tough.
Amia could also be a creative. In fact, Amia can be whoever the people around her want her to be. But Mizuki, the pilot who is working the mech, has to learn how to be Amia. If someone wants her to paint, Mizuki will have to learn to paint, but Amia will be the one painting.
If someone wanted her to compose a song, Mizuki would learn, but Amia would execute. If someone wanted her to write lyrics, Mizuki would have to write them, but Amia would show them. Amia would sing the lyrics if she was asked.
Being Amia has its own burdens.
She cannot be Mizuki, for one. Mizuki is merely the one who comes out at home from her slumber inside the mech. Amia has to recharge.
She cannot refuse anything, either. Unless it directly puts her at risk, Amia would always decide to do what she was asked. And it tired Mizuki.
One day, in the heat of Shibuya’s summer, Mizuki’s parents gave her an off day. Amia would stay at home, and Mizuki would be able to come out of her shell. Unless, of course, Amia was needed. Then Amia would swoop in, and Mizuki would step back, admiring her from the sidelines.
She didn’t wear anything extravagant that day, just wore something practical and cute, despite Amia screaming for her to go all out.
Just as she was going to leave her house, her father stopped her.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
Mizuki shrugged. She didn’t know, to be honest. She was considering just wandering the streets of Shibuya looking for something to do.
“You’re still a kid. No need to put this pressure on yourself. Go visit that abandoned theme park slash circus or something, rebel.” He chucked, before giving her a small kiss on the cheek and walking away.
Mizuki considered it. Something like that, rebelling by visiting an abandoned circus seemed fun. She heard her father call out one last thing before leaving.
“Don’t worry about curfew. Just come home eventually, okay?”
It was like going to the park was going to take days. She laughed, saying her farewells and leaving, making sure to close the door behind her.
The streets were packed. Mizuki knew the way to that abandoned circus, after seeing it so many times as a child and feeling dismayed at the fact it was never going to reopen, just as it hadn’t done in over 60 years. She shoved her way through people, and eventually put her headphones on, drowning out the sound of the bustling crowd around her.
She sighed solemnly after seeing a store she so desperately wanted to go to, but couldn’t, since none of her few friends wanted to and she refused to go by herself. Hopefully one day, she was going to make new friends that would want to go to these places with her.
New friends that would look past her disgusting truth and stay with her for her.
She grimaced, only just realising she was at the circus gates, and looked around for anything to help her jump the fence. If she was going to rebel, might as well go inside herself, and not hang around it like an idiot.
She found a few boxes stacked on top of each other right next to the fence, and used them to push herself up and jump over the fence.
She landed with a thud, scraping her knees in the process, and used a cloth to pad the small droplets of blood that dripped off of them. She winced, feeling the pain that a simple touch could do, but got herself up and stable without complaint.
She sighed, looked around and started walking.
It didn’t take long for her to find an attraction. Obviously, since she was in an abandoned theme park.
“The Queen of Hearts… may as well.” She mumbled to herself before going through the gates and entering the strange little hut.
It was definitely better than doing nothing.
The hut itself was small on the outside, but definitely larger on the inside. It was like a winding river, with a small boat decked out in cards and gold. The surrounding details made Mizuki shiver.
It was like a cursed forest. The trees were almost black, and the fake plush animals were dark, accented with bright, vivid colours that made the place a lot more eerie. Also, the vivid colours glowed in the dark, allowing Mizuki to see the majority of the attraction.
She stepped in the boat, finding a small lantern and turning it on, before she was surrounded by fluorescent lights that truly made the whole forest glow even more.
She whirled around, trying to find the cause, before seeing a girl, about her age, sitting on a floating throne in front of her. She looked psychotic, her yellowish eyes gleaming alongside the UV paint scattered around the two. Her brown hair was tied into two curled twintails, and she wore a giant, puffy dress that scared Mizuki a little bit.
She seemed like the ‘Queen of Hearts’ the attraction was talking about.
The boat started moving, and Mizuki panicked, trying to turn it off, but it kept on going, like this was intentional.
“Shit, GET OUT!” The Queen of Hearts yelled, scaring Mizuki more, but she was plunged into the racing river.
As Mizuki gripped onto the boat, she looked at her side. The Queen of Hearts was there, a shocked expression on her face, and she was trying to scramble around her flying chair to find something Mizuki wasn’t aware of.
Mizuki’s grip only grew tighter on the boat, some old wood giving way and digging into her skin. But despite her earlier confusion and panic, the Queen of Hearts seemed to cackle, and she yelled something that sent a shudder down Mizuki’s back.
“Off with her head!” She laughed, and Mizuki barely had time to duck before a giant axe was flung towards her. She started to hear eerie laughs coming from the forest, and she was really creeped out at this point.
“Sorry! That was made of foam, by the way!” The Queen of Hearts seemed more sympathetic, and Mizuki looked over to see her covering her mouth with two gloved hands.
Something dropped on Mizuki’s lap, scaring her, only to see it was a marionette, her whole figure enveloped in a glass case. She had purple hair tied into a ponytail, with a mask over half her face, and apple markings in her skin. The marionette, not being controlled by anything, looked up at her with a confused expression in her apple-shaped pupils.
Mizuki clapped her hand over her mouth, begging herself not to scream while a bipolar Queen of Hearts was on a flying chair, and there was a living marionette in her lap.
“Who are you?” The marionette asked, before gasping and looking over at the Queen of Hearts with the same shocked expression the brunette had donned just a few seconds ago.
A living and speaking marionette, so to speak.
Mizuki felt the river get faster, so she gripped onto the case of the living (and speaking) marionette, and screamed, letting her fear get the better of her. She closed her eyes, hoping it would wash everything away and this was all a hallucination created by the depths of her mind- actually she hoped it was all real. She was not in the mood to be diagnosed with severe mental issues.
After the river calmed down, and the boat finally stopped, Mizuki sighed, and pried open her eyes. The marionette girl was leaning on the side of the glass jar, heaving exasperated and shaky breaths, while the Queen of Hearts was getting off of the throne, grumbling in annoyance.
“What was that…” The Queen of Hearts sighed, before looking at Mizuki, then the Marionette girl. She offered a hand, letting Mizuki take it and get off the boat and onto a safe dock, still holding the marionette.
“Enanan.” The marionette looked up from Mizuki’s arms to the Queen of hearts.
“Yuki.” The Queen of hearts- no, Enanan, replied, crossing her arms and sighing.
“You’re not a horrible person anymore.” The marionette, more like Yuki, blankly stated, her voice monotone and barely muffled despite being in a literal glass jar.
“Yeah, and you can speak.” Enanan huffed.
“So, she wasn’t able to speak before… and the moving thing?” Mizuki asked, dragging the two strangers’ attention to her.
“I’ve always been sentient. I just haven’t been able to speak until you caught me.” Yuki told her, standing up and brushing her skirt, despite the fact that she was sealed inside a glass jar, and didn’t get dust on her anyways.
“What just happened?” Mizuki asked, gesturing back with one hand to whatever that experience was.
Enanan chuckled a bit, before leading Mizuki out of the attraction.
“Like I know. Maybe someone else here, a friend, knows.”