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The sky was dark that evening, a beautiful gray-blue that was somehow dim but not dreary. In this beautiful limbo between sunset and night, the sky felt vast and comforting, unseeing of all sins and shame. The sort of sky that made the air feel close to magical, like everything one did meant both nothing. And despite how hopeless that may sound to anyone else, it felt moreso…freeing. Like passion without pressure, unabashed zeal without the obligation of perfection. Nothing to be embarrassed of here. No reason to feel shame for the imagined sin of trying and failing.
Mizuki was on the rooftop with Rui again, just like old times. Just like middle school. She closed her eyes with a soft sigh, leaning against the other’s shoulder. His cardigan was warm against her cheek, comfortable fabric that felt nice against her skin. The wind blew through her long side ponytail like a loving caress, like a reminder of how much the both of them have grown. If she tried, she could almost convince herself it was back in middle school again. Back then, they were alone on this rooftop, alone in their chaotic unpredictable lives that felt both like crushing suffocation and an empty vacuum of a void. A self-destructive supernova and the emptiness of a black hole, condensed inside two lonely teenagers with nothing, with no one but each other.
The rooftop was a form of solace for them. A place where, even for a moment, they could lay down false pretenses. A place where they could strip themselves down to their true selves, down to the horrific raw ugliness underneath their skin, where they could relish in their shared, communal despair. No one, no one that really mattered, no one that really belonged to this world in the way Mizuki and Rui never could, paid attention to this tiny piece of paradise. Why would they? It was just a regular school rooftop, empty save for a few stray wildflowers scattered here and there. Being unloved taught them to be hardy, Mizuki mused, pushing through towards the sunlight despite the concrete all around them. A perfect safe haven for these unwanted weeds, for a pair of empty teenagers like the two of them, nothing more than a mess of unloved scattered remnants filling up the voids inside of their humanoid shells.
It’s been two years since middle school, but it might as well have been a lifetime ago. Whenever Mizuki looked back at those times, it felt like looking through the cloudy glass of a frosted window. Her life, yes, but it all felt so long ago, so…seperate from today. Despite their eccentricities, their abnormalities, all the voids and supernovas that pushed and pulled and fought within their bodies, they found homes for themselves. Places where they were loved and accepted without judgement, places that saw the emptiness and cruelty and horrible raw, animalistic desire that prior this had nowhere to go, and loved them despite. Through Nightcord at 25 for herself, through Wonderlands x Showtime for Rui, through every place either of them have ever thought of as respite, as home, they grew, changed, filling that horrible, empty void with pure, shimmering joy and meaning in lives that once felt like they were worth nothing. And for that, Mizuki would be forever grateful.
And yet despite that, despite these homes and families they found for themselves, this joy they wrested out from the depths of despair with bloody, desperate, clawing fingernails, there was always something so…special about the company of each other. She had Nightcord now, yes, and she loved Enanan, K, and Yuki so much she never thought she would have ever deserved them at all. But still, Rui was so…special. She loved Nightcord, but what she felt for Rui couldn’t be described as just that. He was the first person to see the darkness inside her and match it with his twin void, the first person to deserve, to even care enough to desire, access to her carefully guarded heart. It was broken and raw even then, not good for anything. And yet he made sure to hold it gently, mixing up the pieces of hers, torn and empty, and his, equally shattered, equally hopeless, until they were undeniably intertwined. Damaged souls pressed together to fake a whole one, playing house with pretend “normality”. And even though he wasn’t the only one to love her like this, not anymore, he was her first. Secretly, privately, Mizuki knew she was his too.
It was for those reasons that any sort of time on the rooftop spent with Rui felt so special. For reasons she thought of in clear concrete terms, reasons she thought of in hazy blurry terms, reasons she didn’t even want to remind her mind of at all…time moved differently up here, so high up the people below looked like ants. It was just the two of them up here, above the world of ordinary people. Front row seats to all the condemned and condoned of humanity. Every act of care and cruelty laid bare before their eyes. Every act, every scene of all they’ve been hurt by, healed by, every tragedy and comedy and tragic comedy and comedic tragedy they once played as unwilling actors on their stage — they were all just a show for them now, to view as spectators from the unassailable safety of the audience.
Brings back memories, doesn’t it?
Tonight was mundane, like every other evening, afternoon, like any other time of day they spent sitting here next to each other, cross-legged. Their backs pressed against the concrete of the rusted fence that traced the perimeter of their rooftop haven, the peeling paint undoubtedly flaking off with the contact. Rui’s phone laid on the concrete, cool with the evening air, between them, playing the melody of some song from a game Mizuki used to play with her sister. She mentioned wanting to listen to it again for nostalgia’s sake, and Rui just passed his phone over with YouTube open, cursor already blinking in the search box. His screen protector was well-used, thin cracks spiderwebbing across the glass. The speaker wasn’t of the highest quality, either. The audio crackled a little, a slight, almost unnoticeable delay between one second and the next. Mizuki had asked him about that before, about why he never bothered to get a better phone when she knew he had the money to do so. He simply shrugged, with an offhanded:
“I suppose I never saw this point. It works well enough, does it not?”
As the last notes of the soundtrack rang out, amplified by the emptiness of the air that made every little sound feel sacred, Mizuki leaned forward to make a grab for the phone, intending to contribute another song to their shared playlist. But before her fingers could curl around the clear plastic case, the next song started playing. Right. As long as she had known him, Rui has always had autoplay on by default. So he could have nonstop background noise without having to break concentration from whatever he was doing, he told her, all the way back in middle school. Some things really never changed, huh?
The first second of the song snapped Mizuki out of her thoughts. It was a soft instrumental rendition, a piano cover of a familiar song. Mizuki felt her eyes unconsciously widen with recognition. Despite the lack of vocals, despite the slightly different melody she chalked up to the creator’s style, she could recognize this song anywhere. She could almost hear the metronome in the backing track, a regular beat to keep her rhythm steady as she recorded her part of the song. She sang this song as a duet with Enanan, recorded and posted a few months ago. She turned to the boy beside her, a teasing smirk playing on her lips.
“Rui! Do you recognise this song~?”
Her tone was lighthearted, asking it purely as a sort of half-joke. She expected a truthful “yes” or a teasing, mendacious “no”. But before she could pester him for a pointless answer to her obvious question, he started humming along. Clearly familiar with the melody.
This song was in her playlist of go-to karaoke songs, ones she knew she could pull off effortlessly. It was one of the few songs that were in the sweet spot of being both fun to sing and impressive to listeners. But when Rui started the first verse, she didn’t sing along immediately like she thought she would. Instead, she sat there silently, listening. Mizuki has heard Rui sing hundreds of times before. In middle school, with no one but each other, they used to call all night long. They talked late into the night, pouring their hearts out and admitting dreams, fears, a future they both wanted and dreaded. It was always around two in the morning, sometimes three, when they finally decided to go off to sleep. They alternated nights, taking turns to sing each other to sleep, a slightly muffled voice crackling through the microphone of one into the speaker of the other. And even now, well… Mizuki’s a proper singer now, and Rui does musicals on occasion, no? Hell, they follow each other on Spotify.
(She might never admit it, but she uses his songs for her sleep playlist sometimes. She still misses those late night sleep calls.)
But hearing it here, in person, felt like a different experience. His voice was smooth, familiar, the same voice that accompanied hers through endless karaoke sessions on this exact rooftop long ago, only more polished, better trained. She’s heard him sing before, yes, but never in this style, never in this range. His voice was lower now, clearly more comfortable an octave below the original, and yet despite that his pitch remained faithful to the original, his voice unwavering despite lack of practice. Mizuki smiled to herself, basking in the warmth of his voice. He’s grown a lot since middle school, both as a singer and as a person. She’s really proud of him.
Mizuki let him have the first verse to himself, quietly harmonizing nearer to the end. Her voice grew louder nearer to the middle of the second verse, and as she heard Rui dropping into a lower, softer harmony near the end she took it as her cue to take the melody. She slipped into a sort of dream-like haze, muscle memory gliding her easily through the familiar lyrics, the familiar backing track. She had sung this song countless times before. With Nightcord during group karaoke, with An while walking back together after the school festival. And yet this was the first time singing this song, singing any song with Rui since middle school. God, it’s been that long?
And as the chorus drew nearer, she glanced up to meet his eyes, waiting for an answer to her wordless question. She got her reply a second later, in the form of a tiny, almost imperceptible nod from him. An agreement spoken without words on their secret, personal stage, like a private performance for an audience of no one but themselves.
They stepped into the chorus together, hand in hand, harmonizing and leading and falling and catching. Their voices blended together without clashing, like all of this was planned, rehearsed. They hadn’t had a proper duet in years, not since middle school, but somehow Mizuki felt his voice melt into hers, her voice melt into his, like the parts of each other they exchanged in hushed words so long ago were rejoining, resplitting, the song neither Mizuki’s nor Rui’s but instead something the both of them shared.
As the melody softened after the chorus, she opened her eyes to catch Rui’s gaze. A question that didn’t need words. He offered back his answer, a silent assent that she understood without him having to drop the note. It felt like telepathy, almost, the unexplainable ability to just…know. Rui offered her that glance that said everything without the need for words, before looking away as Mizuki started her agreed-upon solo for the bridge.
And for the first time since they started this impromptu duet, she felt herself become fully aware of her surroundings, like she had finally snapped out of the trance the nostalgia of singing with an old friend put her in. This song talked of a painful love, one that hurts but heals, one that stays before it leaves. A love that hurts to keep but hurts to let go. Mizuki fought to keep her voice steady as she felt her vocal cords shake with the weight of all those sleepless nights spent in middle school, right before graduation, wanting things to stay despite knowing they’d inevitably change. The knowledge that Rui’d leave, that her sister would leave, the knowledge that things would always change. The realization that ignorance is bliss and she wasn’t allowed either.
It hurt. It really hurt. And yes, her and Rui were together now, in the same school, in the same place, dueting the same song that sang of an inevitable end. Rui was a third year already. He would graduate in less than a year’s time. And Mizuki would be all alone again, in an unfriendly school with unfriendly classmates that couldn’t ever come close to whatever Yuki, Enanan, K, Rui offered her.
And yet she knew, in her heart of hearts, that fighting it would do nothing. She wouldn’t spoil her present with her future, she refused to try to cross a bridge she hadn’t even seen yet, refused to scream and cry and run away from a future that would come anyway. What mattered the most right now was the present. The present, under this clear, inky blue sky, spending precious, irreplaceable time with the first person to ever love her for her and not “him” or any of the other false pretences she donned to feel the illusion of love.
Loss shouldn’t be mourned before love is celebrated, she told herself, repeating it over and over until she finally believed it for the first time. With tears in her eyes, she continued to the last chorus, hearing Rui join in. And as the music mellowed, as the end of the song approached, her final notes shook with emotion. The last verse felt like more of a confession than a sung lyric. She knew, she knew he knew, that they both meant every last word.