Chapter Text
141 Prawn Cup, second shelf, left side, behind the curry flavor. And Aria grabs two packs.
"Two," she says to nobody, because Sunna is absolutely going to say she isn't hungry. Sunna always says she isn't hungry when she's been writing past midnight. And then she eats the whole thing in about four minutes and stares at the empty cup like it betrayed her. Every time! Every single time! She says I'm not hungry and then the noodles are gone and she's looking at her hands like, where did they go?
So: two cups. Aria has figured this out. One for if Sunna says no, and one for three minutes later.
Nangong texted the group chat twenty minutes ago: someone feed her before she passes out on the keyboard. Three nights this week. Sunna gets like this when a song is close, and this song is very close. Aria can tell because Sunna's started tapping tempo on everything she can reach. Her knee, the edge of the mixing board, Bubblegum's head. The tapping speeds up when she's stuck and slows down when she's onto something. And when it stops, when Sunna's hands go completely still and she leans back, she found it. She found the thing. Aria loves that moment. Sunna's whole face changes.
Nangong's texts after midnight lose the emojis and pick up periods. Hard little dots. Fed yet? instead of the full Nangong production with the skull emoji and the five-line lecture about nutrients. She's awake too and she is never going to admit it.
Aria grabs two strawberry sodas from the fridge in the back. "One for me," she says, putting it in the bag, "and one for Nangong who is definitely asleep."
The night-shift guy at 141 is the same one from last Thursday, the one with headphones who stocks the shelves between customers while the Bangboo are powered down.
"Hey." He looks up. "You're from that group, right? The angels?"
He recognized them!
"That's us!" Aria puts the bag on the counter and gives him the full version. Hip cocked, peace sign up, head tilt, the smile Nangong drilled her on for three whole rehearsals. That one, Nangong kept saying, that's the one that makes people feel like you see them. "Angels of Delusion! I'm Aria!"
"Yeah, I've seen your videos." He's grinning. "My sister showed me. The one with the — the dance where you guys do the wing thing?"
"The wing thing! That's from ReDreaming Angel, that's our biggest one! Your sister has great taste!" Aria is beaming. She's beaming at this guy stocking shelves at 141 at two in the morning who has seen their videos, whose sister showed him, who said the wing thing like he remembered it. "How many times has she watched it? Wait, don't tell me, I want to guess. More than five?"
He laughs. "Probably more than five."
"I knew it! Nangong's choreography in that section is so good, right? The part where we spread out and — okay wait, hold on—"
His phone comes out. She holds the pose. He takes the photo.
"Can you send that to your sister too? Tell her Aria says hi! Tell her we have new stuff coming!" She's composing the group chat text in her head: guys!! the night-shift guy at 141 recognized me!! his SISTER watches our videos!! the delulus are EVERYWHERE
She pays and waves bye to the clerk. "Come to our next show at 404! Bring your sister!"
The charge station outside is the short kind by the vending machines, tucked around the corner where nobody walking past would see. She plugs in at sixty-two percent and leans against the wall while the current runs through. The buzz starts in her wrist joints and travels up through her forearms, this low hum, and it just feels good. The way Sunna says hot tea feels on a cold night, that's what charging is. Aria gets it. Seventy-eight percent in about ninety seconds. The walk to the studio eats almost nothing so seventy-eight is plenty.
She unplugs.
That stretch of Sixth Street where Waterfall Soup is closed but the sign is still going and the whole street smells like broth. She hums Sunna's melody first, the new one, the one Sunna's been chasing for three nights. Then the Coff Cafe jingle. The one Sunna wrote for that yuzu drink with "bloom" in the name, the one with the hook that goes up and up and then drops. Sunna's commission money bought them all hotpot at Simmer and that was great but the jingle got stuck in Aria's vocal processors and it is going to live there forever. Nangong has called it an earworm that should be classified as a biohazard. Aria sang it in the studio for three straight days until Sunna threw a cushion at her head.
"Da-da-da-DAH, da-da, Coff Cafe Bloo~om—"
Okay, it really is stuck in there.
She switches to sounds she doesn't have a name for, notes that just come out. Vocal modules running through frequencies, or her mood coming out as sound because that's where it goes, everything she feels ends up in her voice, and sometimes it just needs to get out. She hums for eleven minutes and stands right outside the door humming and she's still going when she pushes through the studio door.
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Sunna is exactly where Sunna always is. Console, headphones half on, shoulders up around her ears. Bubblegum is asleep on a pile of cables behind her chair with one paw over his face. The studio is a disaster. Old takeout containers on the shelf above the monitors, sticky notes with chord progressions on every flat surface, Nangong's choreography notes pinned to the corkboard next to the engagement metrics printout next to the photo from their first show at 404 that Aria put up because somebody had to and nobody else was going to. The Wish Jar is on the top shelf where it always is, almost full, paper stars packed in tight. They've been filling it since before they had a stage.
Okay. Quiet entry.
Aria learned this part the hard way. The first time she brought late-night noodles she came in and said Sunna! I brought food! and Sunna jumped so hard she hit the console and accidentally deleted a whole track and cried for twenty minutes while Nangong cleaned broth off the mixing board with compressed air and towels. So: no announcing. Quiet. Noodles go down at the right distance and then Aria sits and waits.
The right distance. Aria is so proud of this. She figured it out over weeks.
Too close and Sunna knocks them reaching for a fader. That happened twice. The second time was worse because it was soup. Too far and Sunna doesn't see them. Aria once put noodles on the far end of the desk and sat on the couch and watched Sunna not notice them for an hour and twelve minutes. An hour and twelve minutes! The noodles were right there! Sunna looked directly at them at the forty-minute mark and then looked back at the console like they were part of the furniture!
She tried directly in front of the monitor. Sunna picked them up and moved them without registering they were food. Behind the headphone stand: invisible. Next to the mouse: Sunna knocked them into her own lap.
The answer is twenty-two centimeters from Sunna's wrist where it rests on the console, near side of the sticky-note cluster, lined up with the edge of her peripheral vision. At that distance Sunna notices within three to eight minutes depending on how deep she is. Aria has tested this so many times. It works. It works every time!
She places the noodles. Twenty-two centimeters. Sits down on the couch.
Sunna is stuck. Aria can hear it in the tapping. The right hand going fast on the edge of the board, irregular, the rhythm that means close but not there, close but not there, come on. Her shoulders are up and her head is forward and she keeps reaching for the keyboard and pulling back.
Four minutes.
Sunna leans back. Rubs her eyes. Drops her hands and sees the noodles.
"Oh." She stares at them. "When did these get here?"
"A while ago!" Aria says from the couch. She's been sitting here for four minutes being very patient and she wants credit for that!
Across the room, Nangong looks up from her phone. She's been on the floor against the wall this whole time with her legs stretched out, doing something on her phone that is definitely going to be described as logistics if anyone asks. She catches Aria's eye and she gives a fist pump. A small one, phone still in the other hand. Mission accomplished.
Sunna picks up the noodle cup. "I'm not even that hungry."
"Okay!" Aria says. She is smiling so hard. She is going to sit right here and watch this happen.
Sunna eats the entire thing in about four minutes. She stares at the empty cup.
"Did I just eat that whole thing?"
"Yep!"
"I wasn't even hungry."
"Sunna, you were so hungry."
"I was — a little hungry. A little!" Sunna puts the cup down and spins her chair around. "Okay, listen. I've been stuck on this part all night but I think — just listen."
She plays it. The track is rough, half-built. The melody through the bridge keeps reaching for something and not getting there. The drums drop out. Just melody and bass and this empty spot, this place where something should be and isn't.
Aria hears it.
She hears it all at once, before she can think about it. The melody comes through and underneath it there's a shape, a place where a voice should go, lower than the melody, holding where the melody moves.
She opens her mouth and hums. Lower than the melody, holding where Sunna's voice would move. She heard the empty spot and the sound came out of her and it fit.
Sunna stops the playback. Turns around in her chair.
"Do that again."
"The — the humming?"
"Do it again. From the top of the bridge."
Sunna restarts the track. Aria hums it again, the same shape, the harmony that was right there inside the song. Sunna's eyes go wide.
"Aria. That's the part. That's been — that's what goes under the bridge, that's what I've been trying to find all night—" Sunna's pulling her headphones off and grabbing a pen and she's awake now, really awake, stuck-Sunna is gone and this is composition-mode-Sunna and composition-mode-Sunna is kind of scary and kind of amazing. "Sing it again, slower, I need the notes—"
They go back and forth for the next hour. Sunna hums the melody, Aria sings under it, and they keep restarting the bridge. "What if you go up here instead of holding?" Aria tries it. "No, no, the hold was better. Go back." Sunna scribbles on a sticky note, puts it on the monitor, scribbles another one, sticks it on top of the first one. Her knee is tapping again but it's the slow tapping now. She's onto something. Aria can tell that they’re on the right track!
Nangong appears at the corkboard with a delivery menu and a pen. She's sketching formations on the back. "If the harmony holds through the bridge, center formation opens up. Sunna, stage left at the key change. Aria holds center." Arrow drawn. "Wing spread hits right when the harmony comes down."
"It doesn't come down," Aria says.
"What?"
"The harmony. I think it should stay up. It shouldn't land."
Sunna stops scribbling. Pen in her mouth. She takes the pen out.
"That's — no, the whole bridge is going somewhere, if the harmony doesn't come down with it then it just — it's just hanging there—"
"But that's good! That's what makes it good! If it comes down it's just done, it's over, but if it stays up then the next part has to answer it and that pulls you into the chorus! Listen—" Aria sings both versions, back to back. Landing, then staying up. "Hear the difference? The second one makes you want to keep going. You have to keep going."
Sunna thinks for a moment. Pen goes back in. Pen comes out.
"Sing them again."
Aria sings them again.
Sunna turns back to the console and writes Aria's version into the arrangement. Writes it in without a word. Nangong catches Aria's eye from behind the delivery menu. Eyebrow up. Tiny grin. You won that one.
They keep going. Sunna eats the second noodle pack cold while arguing about whether the bass should drop or stick around. Nangong fills the whole back of the delivery menu and starts on a napkin. Aria sings the harmony over and over, adjusting, and every time she sings it she gets a little closer to the version in her head. She can feel it getting right! Each time through, the shape locks in a little more, and she wants to tell them how good this is going to sound, she wants to say it out loud, but they're working and she doesn't want to break the thing they're all in right now so she just keeps singing.
"You're shimmering again," Nangong says. She doesn't look up from the napkin.
Aria looks down at her hands. Oh! The edges of her fingers are doing the thing, the projection going translucent, little flickers where the image doesn't quite hold. It happens when she gets — it just happens sometimes. She pulls it back together.
"Sorry! I got excited."
"Don't apologize, calibrate." Nangong is still drawing. "Last time you shimmered during a gig, a fan in the third row asked me if it was a special effect."
"What did you tell them?"
"I told them yes." Nangong flips the napkin over. "New chorus formation. Look."
At 4 AM Sunna falls asleep at the console. Mid-sentence. She's arguing about the bass drop and then her head is on her arms and she's out. Bubblegum, who has slept through this entire session on the same pile of cables, opens one eye, looks at Sunna, closes it.
Nangong gets up. Takes her jacket off, drapes it over Sunna's shoulders. She does it slow. She knows how little weight it takes before Sunna stirs, which is basically none, so the jacket goes on like it's made of paper. Aria has seen Nangong do this before. She's very good at it.
Aria turns the lights down. Sunna breathes. The monitors glow with the arrangement file, the new song half-built with a harmony under the bridge that Aria heard at 2 AM, the one that came out of her because it was there and it needed to get out.
She grabs her strawberry soda and drinks it in the dark and thinks about how great that harmony is going to sound with the full arrangement and the choreography and an audience, and she can't wait, she really can't wait.