Chapter Text
I don’t get jealous often. Rarer to be jealous of myself.
Not truly me, but variations on a song across universes. I spend far too much time sifting through them nowadays and looking for the different endings.
I’ll humor you. It’s rare to find one where he shoots. He is kinder to the city than me when he becomes Composer in those. But most worlds he’s defeated the hydra of Kitaniji and still isn’t strong enough to pull the trigger. In most worlds, he changes my mind and I send him back to life with his friends.
They stumble back into each other’s lives and meet, and I shirk his invitation. Sometimes I accept. I haven’t looked at those long enough to see how that plays out. I don’t want to.
Here’s the point of envy: the universes where I pull away. Where I sit and watch them at Hachiko, wish him well from my perch in the sky, and return to my duties with newfound hope.
I respect him. I let him pull himself into his bright future and I entertain Shibuya’s love for him and I leave it at that.
Or I forget about him. Even better.
I consider those versions of myself stronger than the me I am.
Sakuraba Neku is a fire. One I fully expected to use to raze Shibuya to the ground, but I’ve stopped trying to predict his actions since I put a gun in his hand and he refused to shoot. A second chance for me, of all people? I’d say he was an idiot, but an idiot is the first person to truly change my mind in a while.
Him, of all people. Who else but him?
The boy that ripped through my ward and instead of destroying it his pure will blazed a light for it to thrive again. It takes a lot for a mortal to become a key note in the Music of a domain.
He is the flame and I thought I was better than a moth.
A distracted Composer is not a good Composer. Some days I find myself immersed in the city’s music only to drift to the notes that are undeniably him. It’s hard to shy away from one person when their Imagination has enraptured your domain, his murals and tags stamped across everything that is mine. I wander the streets unseen in a hazy spirit form and I trail his presence without realizing.
He looks up, sometimes. He can’t see me but he shivers and searches all the same. If watching that wasn’t underscored by my own shame, I’d laugh. That’s a new one, too. I feel guilt far, far less than even jealousy.
Not guilt. Embarrassment. I don’t feel guilty. Other than the fact that him trying to see me in my upturned form rings like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. It’s funny.
It wasn’t guilt when I watched him with his friends at Hachiko and almost felt a spark of longing. Smothered it quickly, if I did. I will not be a liability to my ward again.
It wasn’t guilt when he tried to find me at the remains of Wildkat, and then bolder: the Shibuya river and for half a nothing I considered letting him see me. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it? I’m many things but I’m not stupid.
It wasn’t guilt when I started leaving feathers in places where he would see them. The most reckless, brash thing I’ve done yet. I toe the line to see if he remembers me. He doesn’t seem to forget for a moment. He likely thinks that I’m haunting him, or he’s crazy. Both of us know he is, for wanting to see me again.
His Music reaches out. I will not reach back.