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Ena couldn't remember when she'd decided that this was an appropriate coping mechanism for her situation. Social media had seemed so appealing and easy, but something in the back of her mind had whispered that it wouldn't release the tension in her body in the same way that a sport would. Forever would she be anxious every time she got a notification; what were people saying about her, what had they thought of her latest selfie? So she had deleted a few apps from her phone and tried to find another path through research. Most of the sports clubs in her area weren't exactly recreational; they were all trying to get their members to the major leagues. And the ones that were recreational didn't interest her.
So here she was, bat hidden in her bag, walking around back alleys trying to find someone who was enough of a jerk to warrant the sort of treatment she'd learned to give over the past few years. It had started with an unlikely friendship with a girl in her class who was considered to be the least trustworthy person in the room and it had continued much further than Ena's parents would have liked. She could throw a good punch now; she could take down a man twice her size and she was damn proud of it. Most of the time she got out of fights unscathed, but the few times she hadn't, it could get difficult.
The boys were ten metres away, walking along the side of a boulevard and talking about stupid things, stupid things that had nothing to do with the crime they had committed. Except it was not a crime in the way that the police would define it. They would do nothing to repair what had been broken; they would not persecute, because they did not think that causing trauma and destroying someone's fragile self-esteem was deserving of punishment.
Ena, though? Ena knew these boys deserved it. There were two of them, both in her year at school, and they were the worst sort of person. They did not care for others if they were perceived to be different, and if she could show them just how much anguish they had caused, she would.
So she snuck up to them, tapped the one on the shoulder, and began to step backwards into the alley. Slowly, slowly, to make sure they knew she wanted to talk, and then she ran with the wind at her back and years of practice guiding her to a place where no one would be able to see what she planned to do. She would not be merciful; that she had already decided. These boys had had enough chances to stop what they were doing, and they had taken none of them. So Ena grabbed the gloves out of her pocket as she ran, slipped them on as if it was as normal as stopping to take a breath, and made sure the boys were still following as she turned another corner.
This was the spot.
"What the hell'd you do that for?" the first one asked, and Ena noted his friend wasn't there yet. "Seriously, we're going to be late for karaoke."
"You do exactly as I say," she said, "or this gets so much worse for you." The threat sounded familiar when it rang in her ears even if the boy across from her seemed to panic upon hearing it. "You know what you did to her."
"It was just a dumb joke, it was-"
"I don't care." Ena took the bat out of her bag and relished for a second the fear in his eyes. "I haven't talked to Mizuki in a week because of you and your friend. Do you know how scared they were?"
The correct answer was Not as scared as I'll be of you when you leave. Ena wasn't expecting him to get it right, though.
He shook his head.
Ena grinned. The bat felt right in her hands after years of practice. She didn't even have to take a practice swing anymore. She knew the kind of power she needed to use to get what she wanted, and she knew how to defend herself if they managed to gather the strength to fight back. So she decided, just as the other boy came around the corner, that this was the moment.
She aimed for his legs; that would bring him down fast enough and hopefully give him splinters. And the knife hidden in her boots would be enough of a deterrent to the other one calling the police and to any attempt at attack.
Ena's aim was true and she had gotten the right amount of power to bring him down. The second boy looked as if he was going to run, so she drew the knife. She would not harm him with it; that was overly cruel. But it worked as an intimidation technique and he stopped in his tracks.
She brought him down with the same strike. Both of them had blood running down their legs now; a physical representation of the pain they had caused. It would not kill them. But it would hurt and that was the point. Thankfully the bat had given them splinters. Pain, pain, it wasn't glorious the way some of the girls Ena was now friends with would say, but it was a means to an end and she would not hesitate to use it in these situations.
Her rage took hold of her for a few seconds and she whacked both of them on the arms as well; she would not do such a thing to their heads no matter how much a part of her wanted to. You had to have a certain amount of morals, she'd learned after the first time she got in a fight and the other girls had been so violent that the street had been painted with blood for three weeks afterward. It had made Ena's stomach churn at the time, and while the crime committed by the man in that case (assault) had been grave and no legal punishment had been given, a part of her had still screamed that it wasn't right to make anyone suffer so no matter how much you hated them. Even if fire ran through your veins whenever you saw them and the thought of seeing them crumpled on the ground brought you peace, you could not act it out because it was wrong.
Morally. Legally. Murder was indefensible, she thought, no matter who had done it or why they had done it (with some very rare exceptions but that wasn't too important right now) and thus she ought to not commit anything that even approached it in severity.
Ena picked the first boy up and he did not resist. Perhaps he thought he was going to die. She moved him into the shadows, out of sight (out of mind), and his blood got on her skin, in her hair, because she had hit a mildly important vein, not one that would kill but important enough to be bleeding like hell. He said nothing. Out of fear or a twisted kind of respect or a dry throat, she didn't know, and she didn't care either.
The second boy had apparently passed out from shock, and he was also bleeding quite a bit. Ena put him right next to his goddamned friend and walked away. A nearby dumpster served as the hiding place for her bat and soiled gloves; she had worn a second pair underneath and then a third pair under that to avoid DNA testing picking anything up because she could not jeopardize her future in such a way. No one would be able to find evidence linking her to her justice, not even local security cameras as she would have conveniently not appeared in any of the footage. It was almost as if the boys had fought each other and both lost. She took a sun hat out of her bag and put it over her head, then put on a long skirt and coat to hide the stains on her outfit.
The blood was nothing compared to what Mizuki had suffered at their hands.
Ena slipped out of the maze of alleyways and side streets a kilometre away from where the boys had been. She checked her phone for the time. Four-fifteen? It was that late already? She was going to be so late for her first class if she didn't get cleaned up fast enough.
She sent a text to Airi.
can I come over for a bit?
The response was almost immediate.
Again? What did you do this time?
I was catching up with some friends, she wrote. Nothing was truly private.
Whatever you say, Airi responded, and Ena could imagine the sheer amount of sarcasm in her voice that she'd hear if Airi were speaking to her. I'll get the bath ready.
Thanks, Ena sent back. She tucked her phone into her bag once again and headed in the direction of the train station. Every time she saw a police officer, which was admittedly quite rare, she had to calm herself down. Acting overly suspicious would draw attention, and freezing up if questioned would make her look worse in the eyes of the law. She could not go to jail for this. She had hobbies, she had interests, she had a potential career in art; a little coping mechanism shouldn't be the end of the line for her.
Even if said coping mechanism was a little violent and bloody sometimes.
Ena stood in the middle of the metro car, not bothering to hold onto any of the bars or the ceiling. She had gained a better sense of balance through her years as a delinquent masquerading as a perfectly acceptable member of society, and it could be awfully helpful when the trains were crowded; if she ever had the misfortune to require a standing ticket on the Shinkansen, she wouldn't have any cause to complain about it.
No one spoke to her. No one spoke of her. She was just another teenage girl on the metro. Perfectly normal. She definitely hadn't just committed something that was technically a crime.
Ena took a deep breath and stepped out at Airi's stop. She hurried up the escalator and made it out to the street in good time. Airi lived about five minutes away; it was already four-thirty and she would need to be back at the station for five o'clock if she wanted to get to homeroom in time.
The road to Airi's house was small and sort of picturesque. The average neighbourhood street in Tokyo, really. Ena greeted one of Airi's neighbours as she walked up the steps; the old man knew she was over to hang out quite a bit, and Ena was glad he didn't know why she was there so often. Two-thirds of the time, it was to spend time with Airi, and Ena knew that Airi wished that that number was higher, but she had an obligation to the girls she'd learned her trade from and that usually involved a bat and an alibi.
"Seriously," Airi groaned as Ena took off her shoes, "what the hell were you doing?"
Airi's little sister, who was getting a snack out of the fridge, turned around with a smile on her face. "Ena-san's here? Are you in trouble?" She didn't seem too concerned about this.
Airi sighed. "What Ena did is between her and me."
"Okay. You're no fun." She sat down on the floor of the living room. "Mom said I could watch TV."
"Not going to stop you," Airi muttered. "Come on. I have some clothes you can borrow." She pulled Ena up the stairs.
"Do you need to know what I was doing?" Ena asked.
Airi gave her a deadpan stare.
"Fine. There were some guys making up shit about Mizuki, and they overheard what the guys were saying to me, and I haven't spoken to them in a week, so I found the guys and gave them what they deserved." Ena took off the hat. "Ew. Any way you can wash this?"
"There's blood in the hat?"
Ena thought that hiding the evidence of her justice was a hell of a lot harder than it needed to be. For one, she now had to wash both her clothing and her body of all the blood (which was mostly in her hair for some reason and on her arms), and she had to make up an excuse for why she hadn't been at Airi's the entire time in case the police saw her as a suspect. The boys wouldn't say a thing; she had made sure of that.
It was just so annoying to have to rush through a shower like this, especially when she had to do a thorough job of cleaning her hair. Thank God she'd kept it short; she didn't know what she would've done if she'd grown it out like Airi had.
In some ways this was purifying. With every second she spent washing the boys' blood out of her hair, her soul was reborn. She became not a girl who was content to spend an afternoon terrorizing someone who had committed a heinous act, but a girl who would accept the meagre sentence given to such a person by the law. Shinonome Ena became her father's daughter, a prodigy who had talent and had done the work and who attended an arts high school instead of a rebel who was insistent that she would do better, that she would surpass her father some day though she did not attend enough school to make it easy for herself.
For every sin she had committed in the name of righteousness, twenty minutes and sometimes an hour was dedicated to cleansing it from her body and soul if not her memory.
Then she turned the shower off to soak in the bathtub for a few minutes and her hands remembered what they had done, her arms remembered how to fight and her legs remembered how to run.
There was no blood on her skin now, no sign of a struggle nor of a crime and she ought to have felt as if it was right.
Instead, as she dressed in her uniform and put Airi's sweater on over top, she felt as if she was sullying her friend's name by simply trusting her with the truth. Airi was her accomplice even if she was only willing to help Ena clean herself up after a bad day, and that could land her in some trouble. Her career as an idol was at risk and yet she hadn't told Ena that this was unacceptable, that she needed to find someone else to deal with her messes.
The cat face on Airi's sweater smiled at her from the mirror, and Ena couldn't return its well wishes.
"I set it to deep clean," Airi said when Ena went to sit in the living room. Her little sister was watching some anime that Mizuki definitely liked while doing schoolwork, and she waved when Ena flopped onto the armchair in the corner. "Don't you have class?" She was holding a plate of leftovers. Ena watched her put it in the microwave and set the timer. "It's five-fifteen."
"Oh, shit." Ena glanced up at the ceiling. "Homeroom starts in ten minutes." She looked back at Airi. "How mad do you think my mom would be if I skipped?"
"You could show up during the dinner break," Airi suggested. The food in the microwave promptly began to make a popping sound. She took it out and sat down at the table. "Did you pack anything before you left? My mom would hate it if I didn't offer, and my dad would love it if you did, because he doesn't really like soba."
"No. I'll have something when I get home."
"At ten?"
Ena shrugged. "I'm up until four. It won't be so bad."
Airi's little sister stared at her. "You get to stay up until four?"
"Yeah, well, Ena doesn't need to be up at five on Wednesdays for swimming," Airi muttered.
"Fine." She went back to her homework.
Ena stood up and sat down next to Airi at the table. "Don't you have practice? We could leave together if you wanted." She took her phone out of the sweater's pocket. "This is mine now. How the hell did you manage to find something cute that has pockets?"
"I didn't. Shizuku did those for me." Airi looked a little embarrassed, but Ena didn't jump on it fast enough.
"Ooh, Shizuku-san did them for you," her sister teased. "Because she's in love with-"
Airi got up, walked towards the couch, and picked up an accent pillow that was lying on the floor. Then she swung it at her sister, who dodged it and picked up another pillow to fight back. "Shizuku and I are just friends."
"Mom always told us not to lie!"
"I'm not lying!" Airi parried a strike from her sister, then threw her pillow at her. "We're not together!"
Her sister was laughing and so was Ena. "Hey, wanna see some proof that Airi likes Shizuku?"
Airi grabbed another pillow and threw it at her sister, who caught it, threw it back, and darted over to the kitchen.
"Ena, I swear, if you show her any of those messages-"
"Ena-san, you have a highlights folder?"
Airi stopped and stared at Ena as if she had committed the worst possible crime of all: revealing to her little sister that she was indeed a bit of a mess when it came to Shizuku, especially when that involved Shizuku in a suit. "You!"
"Ena-san, if I give you my phone number, can you send me these screenshots?"
Airi dove for Ena's phone. "I'm deleting these- Ena."
"What?" Ena grinned.
"These are from right after that commercial- 'she could slap me and I'd thank her-' Ena, why?"
"So I could preserve them," she said.
"This is the most unforgivable thing you've ever done," Airi said. "What the hell?"
"I got a picture!" her little sister cheered. Airi set Ena's phone back down on the table.
"Give me that!"
"No way!"
Ena watched as Airi tried several methods of getting her sister to either give up her phone or delete the picture, including tickling her, throwing pillows at her, and standing on the couch to get the phone out of her hands. She chuckled. It was almost like being at home, except Airi and her sister were actually honest with each other when it counted.
She needed to be a better sister to Akito sometimes.
Airi shut and locked the door behind them. "Don't say anything about Shizuku." She took the stairs two at a time down to the road. Ena followed her and walked alongside her. "So, how are you? I didn't get to ask."
"Okay. I... I'm still pretty pissed about what happened with Mizuki, though."
"I would've just punched the guys there and then." Airi took a water bottle out of her bag and swirled it around. "Except Shizuku wouldn't've let me. She's too nice for her own good. If all the members in her group are assholes, why can't I pull a stupid stunt like that? Or at least yell at them more. They really fucked up her sense of self-esteem. She's not just some airhead with a pretty face, she works harder than all of us except maybe Haruka and she is pretty but-"
Ena looked at her with a grin.
"You already know I like her," Airi groused. "Don't give me that."
"Didn't know idols were allowed to talk that way."
"I'm not on stream, it's fine." She checked the time. "Are you late for second period already or..."
"Nah, dinner hasn't even started yet. I'm fine." Ena elbowed her. "Mizuki did say that Shizuku praises you a lot when they talk about idols together at their sewing thing."
"Shizuku's just that sort of person."
"Tell me more about how she looks when she's modelling again?"
"No."
Class was boring. At least the home economics period had been moved to first so Ena didn't have to spend so much time in the kitchen area learning how to do things she already understood. Thankfully, next week they would be making cheesecakes, and Ena couldn't help but feel excited. Akito wasn't going to get a bite.
She doodled little roses in the margins of her notes during her English class, and in math, she drew Airi and Shizuku kissing just for the fun of it when she was supposed to be working on her functions homework. The boy who sat next to her asked her if she knew anything about the two guys from the day school who swore they'd gotten attacked but who had survived and were now recovering in the hospital, and she said no.
Before she left school, she took a picture of her drawing and sent it to Airi. The annoyed response she got was more than enough validation. (She knew Airi was definitely going to look at the drawing for reasons unrelated to being mad at Ena for having sent it to her. That also helped.) Ena was about to put her phone away when she saw a Nightcord message pop up.
Amia: enanan, what? you don't hear from me for a week and THAT'S what you do?
i missed you too. not that it matters.
Her heart sped up when she read the messages. Mizuki was okay. They hadn't disappeared. They were... they were okay. There was only one good answer to that.
enanan: it matters, amia. for the record, i've been so fucking worried. please don't do that again
can we talk? without those guys around this time. i promise i'll listen to everything you have to say.
Mizuki seemed to struggle to come up with an answer to that. After about five minutes, by which time Ena had already changed her shoes and was heading back to the train station, they managed to reply.
Amia: can we meet in sekai at 22:00?
Ena took a deep breath. Her gambit had paid off.
enanan: of course. see you then.