Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One. 

Had she awoken as someone else (simply put, someone who was not Eli Ayase, top model, ballerina, former high school idol who now lived in the Upper East Side), she would have felt relieved. Grateful, even, for her back wouldn’t ache when she twisted to her side to grab her alarm clock. She turned it off, ten minutes earlier. Half lying on her side, she burrowed herself deeper into one of her pillows, shredded memory foam ones, best for a side sleeper like her—Nozomi’s suggestion. With her eyes closed, the stimuli from the waking world rushed to her ears; listening demanded attention. For someone who had spent only under a year singing seriously, Eli had made full use of the experience, though not to the level of the more musically gifted Maki, who possessed absolute pitch and could tell when someone went off of the standard pitch during their vocal practice. She listened to the rustle in the kitchen, a knife hitting a cutting board, an even softer voice speaking on the phone, and then footsteps that stopped close by. Outside, Manhattan’s own tireless orchestra of vehicle horns, dogs barking, and air conditioners working slithered in, dulled only by the walls. Your everyday background rumble, she thought.

Behind her, the bed dipped. The blanket was lifted, and Nozomi slid in to tuck herself against her back. “Ten more minutes?” she murmured, to which Eli mumbled an affirmative. Nozomi nosed the joint between her shoulder and neck, hiding a yawn, and said, “Ten more minutes it is, then.”

For some reasons, those ten minutes were the only things Eli could recall in the somnambulic moment. She couldn’t recall the last time she had thought of a normal morning, of normalcy—one that didn’t involve waking up at five in the morning to run to the airport for a flight to the other side of the globe, didn’t involve putting on a pair of 20 centimeter-high stilettos, didn’t involve being half submerged in Havasu Falls for an hour while Nozomi and Kotori, who sometimes visited New York for her own fashion line, watched from a safe distance along with Eli’s team of publicists. She wondered if Nozomi had ever had similar thoughts. Normal: no constantly texting Eli to remind her to at least eat something, please, no scheduling a Skype session with the rest of the girls only to flaking out on them at the last minute because Eli had an impromptu interview, no making glass after glass of coffee just to keep herself awake night after night to deal with offer after offer, offers that Eli took to keep herself busy because being busy meant she wouldn’t have time to pause and not having time to pause meant she wouldn’t have time to think about normalcy, or herself, or Nozomi.

Seven minutes left. Nozomi’s fingers grazed the underside of Eli’s breasts, feeble enough to not tickle. “What’s my schedule today?” Eli asked.

“Photoshoot for ELLE with Tom. We’d best leave probably at three so that we have enough time to pick up Maki. Then dinner with her, if she’s not too tired.”

“Any interview?”

“You’re clear until Thursday.”

“What about Barcelona?”

“Madrid, you mean. Not until this weekend.” Nozomi paused. “Anything you want to take a raincheck on, Elichi?”

Five minutes. She turned around. Nozomi lift her arm to adjust to the new position. Head tucked under Nozomi’s chin, nose to Nozomi’s jugular notch, Eli remained quiet for a while. She could just answer, I had a dream about Maki, strange as it is. Do you think we should take Maki to August or Boqueria for dinner? I can always get us a table. She could just say, I wonder how Umi and Honoka are doing after all the ruckus in Kanda a few months back. Instead, she took Nozomi’s hand and guided it under her shorts.

“Elichi,” Nozomi called, voice more careful than apprehensive.

“Nozomi,” she returned. They had done it so many times; why not add one more to the counts? “Come on.” She put a pressure on Nozomi’s fingers, tapping once on the knuckle of Nozomi’s middle finger, twice on her index. A stroke. A circular brush. Her hips started moving, and she rolled to lie on top of Nozomi. I like your weight on top of me, Nozomi had once said.

Then Nozomi twisted her hand and grasped her wrist. “You don’t have time for this,” she said.

“Yeah, I do.” She pushed her own fingers into herself and pulled them out as swiftly. Lifting them to Nozomi’s eye level, the glistening wet seemed to back her point. If Nozomi were surprised, she hid it well. “C’mon,” Eli rasped in a poor Manhattan accent.

Sighing, Nozomi took Eli’s slick fingers into her mouth. Eli drew in a sharp breath and swallowed a gasp at the feel of Nozomi’s tongue under and around her fingers. Just as quickly as it began, Nozomi took them out with a pop and smiled. Oh the nerves, Eli thought. She didn’t flinch when Nozomi leaned closer to kiss her on the cheek. “Later, okay? I promise. Your ten minutes are up. C’mon,” Nozomi said in a mock imitation of Eli’s gesture earlier, always the one with better English, better sense of humor, better everything. “I’ve prepared your breakfast. Chop, chop.”

Eli groaned, lied on her back, and said nothing. Nozomi kissed her chin. “You know,” Nozomi began, pausing briefly before continuing, “I’m glad you’re still up for a morning quickie after all these years.” She laughed briefly. Eli wanted to reply, How can I not? She didn’t, and Nozomi rose from the bed. Eli knew if she left her bedroom now, there would be a stack of quinoa pancakes and sliced bananas on the kitchen counter waiting for her. Just another day for her: there was work to be done and checklist boxes to be ticked.

-.-.-

At work, it was all heat and blinding light as always. A gaffer made a face at her when she kept trying to tuck her side bangs behind her ear. With the side of her face no longer shadowed by her bangs, it meant that the gaffer would have to adjust the lighting. Suck it, she mentally scowled, partly annoyed at him and at herself. Tom, the photographer, whom she’d known since her early days in New York, directed her to tilt her head a little to the right. “Give me a three-fourth. Open your mouth a little. A little bite, please. Yes, like that. Good. Now, hold it.” Everything was a little this, a little that, and still the light and the heat were so much.

“Wanna take a break?” Tom asked. “I’m about to say you seem to need it more than I do, but I really can use a cig now.”

Bless his kind heart, she thought, grinning. “Can I bump you for one?”

Tom scrunched his nose, lips pulling into a glower. “And risk facing Nozomi’s wrath? Nah.”

For the first time that day, she laughed. “Be right back,” she said. She went to her changing room in the studio, still in the modeled dress. Thankfully, it was one of the more comfortable dresses that allowed her to move freely. Locating her bag in the dimly lit changing room, she pulled out her phone. There was an email from Maki. On my way, it read. If she calculated right, in seven hours Maki would arrive at JFK. She and Nozomi would go to pick her up. The three of them would have dinner together, and at the end of the day they would drop off Maki at her hotel. Ever a princess, but an overachieving princess nonetheless, her former junior was. When everyone else shed blood, sweat, and tears in their transition from being teen idols to functioning adults—or, in Umi’s case, all three at the same time when she was organizing a Kanda-based march to protest the latest devouring of the city by its more affluential neighbor Jinbocho and Akihabara, Maki seemed to seamlessly glide through the change of endeavors. One of the top five graduates of her school, a field personnel with the Médecins Sans Frontières in Southeast Asia, and now a Fulbright scholar at NYU. Perhaps she should ask Maki—

She stopped there.

Ask Maki... what, exactly? How it felt to be navigating adulthood with a demanding line of work? How to avoid being spearheaded as an icon in the industry? How to wake up not feeling like you want something when you don’t even know what you want?

She texted Nozomi: Out to get some snacks. Back in 15.

At a nearby Italian café, whose owner had adopted her as his Number One Patron, a group of girls whispered to each other as they saw her lean on the counter to talk to the owner. She’d grown used to that by now; she was no longer the girl who ran to hide herself when her fans spotted her at the airport, fresh from her first American trip, front and center for μ’s’ first single outside Japan. (Now, front and center to represent Japan in the fashion industry—how noble.) One of them approached her, interrupting her talk with the café owner, politely though, and told her she’s a big fan.

“Thank you,” she said—an automatic reply.

The girl pulled out her phone; the wallpaper was her younger self in light blue kimono-inspired costume, hair loose, yellow fan in hand and Times Square in the background. “I’ve always admired you since your first performance here,” the fan said.

“Really? I’m so happy,” she said, but her smile softened. She signed the girl’s phone case as requested. The café owner helped take a picture of her with the group, and she waved at them as she left the café.

Crossing the street, someone called out: “Miss, excuse me. Miss. Miss Eli Ayase.” The hair on her nape stood as she recognized the voice. There was him again: a fan, her stalker, who was given a restraining order half a year ago, him and his nasty stalking and nasty voice. “Eli,” he called again. He’s got his phone out, probably ready to record or snap a picture. “Eli, please wait.”

The last time she had stopped for him, thinking that he was just a regular, harmless fan, Alisa had to swing her bag at the man so that he would let go of Eli’s wrist. He fell to the sidewalk, face bruised, and an hour later she filed a restraining order against him. She’d known that this was New York, where a scuffle was nothing compared to, say, being shot. But still. “Go away,” she growled, walking faster. The studio was ahead. Just two more blocks. Just a little more.

“Eli, please. I’ve got my life back on track. I’m leaving New York tonight. I just want to say goodbye.”

“Alright, goodbye.”

“Will you please look at me when you say that, please? This is the last time.”

The whine in his voice, gurgled in his fat neck, made her sick. She was already half breaking into a run, freshly bought chocolate barks thrown at him with no care. One more block. To hell with the dress line’s probable complaint of damage. She could always pay them. She had worked hard to get to where she was now; damn if she let a complaint about a torn dress or beating a stalker ruin her career. This was what she loved doing. She loved her work. She loved this. She loved this. “Stay away from me,” she half yelled.

“Eli, I love you. Please tell me you love me, too. Please.”

Listen: Manhattan, the shouts from Tom and Nozomi mixed together as a string of get the fuck away from her, you psycho, call the cop, Nozomi, you won’t get away this time, you fucking nuts, other pedestrians’ scandalized murmurs, vehicle horns, dogs barking, air conditioners working, her own heels against the asphalt. Listen: singing voices at the school rooftop, distant but there—first only one, then three, then nine, Umi’s counting, Hanayo’s convincing herself that she could do it, of course she could do it, Nico’s catchphrase, the audience on that fateful last concert, clapping, thunderous clapping, their names being called by adoring fans, their swan song.

He’s leaving, she told herself. He’s leaving. I want Nozomi. She wanted Nozomi, but of course PR came first. In the end, no police was called because her team insisted that two incidents in less than a year was bad publication; her stalker was merely manhandled by her staff. If a broken nose and a black eye weren’t enough, they’d be more than happy to settle it in the underhanded way, her head publicist said. The photoshoot wrapped up earlier than scheduled. On the ride home, her cell buzzed with another email from Maki: This sounds weird but I’ve just had a dream about μ’s. See you soon.

Her hands were still shaking when she deleted the email.

-.-.-

At the end of the day, she still woke up as Eli Ayase, who left Japan after her sophomore year in college to pursue her modeling career further, who ever since decided to base her activity in New York, the city that never slept because it was home to insomniac dwellers like her, who was called bigger than Rola, bigger than Anna Murashige and Rurika Yokoyama combined, who was on her way to become the second Tao Okamoto. Who had her high school best friend join her team of publicists, acting as her de jure manager and de facto bedmate. Who would always hesitate to touch Nozomi first, because Nozomi had never been able to say no to her, and who would always want to open and then hide and then open herself again for Nozomi because wasn’t that what they were singing back then?

Listen: Nozomi.

Nozomi: the fluttering butterflies in her own stomach, her thighs, her open thighs, her taut neck, her left shoulder marred purple by a bite mark, the bruise on her hip from the earlier incident with Eli’s stalker—it’s nothing, Elichi, so please, it’s nothing, open, don’t hide, don’t hide from me, open, the remnants of Manhattan’s sunset that fell on her eyelashes and dispersed a halo on her head, Elichi, Maki is next door, please, please.

Eli devoured all the underrated normalcy, whole. She wanted and wanted.

Normalcy: one that leads to, revolves around, and centers on only one person.

-.-.-

Chapter Text

Two.

She woke to an arm-length distance from Nozomi on her left side. It was either she had scooted away or Nozomi had kicked her farther to the side. She missed the familiar warmth in her arms, rare as it was—Nozomi was usually the big spoon. She kissed Nozomi’s exposed shoulder then slipped out of bed. Streetlight sneaked in through the curtain, illuminating her path to the kitchen. Years ago, she would have been afraid of the dimness of her apartment, but now it was somewhat comforting.

Maki was at her kitchen counter, nursing a steaming cup of what smelled like freshly brewed tea. She raised her head when she noticed Eli shuffle around the doorway. “I’m helping myself to your tea,” she said.

“Can’t sleep?” Eli asked, and Maki nodded. “Jetlag?”

Maki opened her mouth only to close it without saying anything. She flushed and looked away instead of answering.

Eli immediately realized it: She and Nozomi were probably—definitely—too loud. “I—uh—sorry about that.”

“What’s new here,” Maki mumbled against the rim of her cup.

Eli raised both eyebrows, surprised at Maki’s tactlessness, but said nothing. True, she and Nozomi never really kep their on again, off again relationship a secret from other μ’s members. Also true, they all knew that she and Nozomi dated other people when not dating each other. (For Eli: a fellow model, Tom—briefly, very briefly, a hedge fund manager, a designer assistant. For Nozomi: a budding cinematographer, a Vogue columnist, a chef who worked for Lidia Bastianich, a Ph.D candidate in anthropology at Columbia—her father’s student.) Still, she wasn’t used to being confronted about it, much less by Maki, who was always bolder than anyone to the point that she sometimes ran her mouth and Eli had to do damage control but also who, with Umi, happened to be the puritan in the group. Then again, she sang one of μ’s’ most intrepid songs with them both. What did that say about her, really, she wondered.

In a gesture of truce, Maki asked if she’d like some tea herself. Eli looked at the digital clock on the oven. 2:10. She could use some sleep, too. Maki poured her tea and pushed the cup across the countertop. “You have good tea,” she said.

“It’s Nozomi’s,” Eli replied.

“I see.” Maki nodded and said nothing else.

Suddenly the light was turned on. On the doorway, Nozomi stood with hands folded over her chest, pushing them up even more under her thin nightgown. Eli almost wanted to tell her to, well, put on a cardigan or something, but she noticed that Maki once again averted her eyes. Eli held back a smile. Puritan, she told herself again.

“Did I miss the memo about this wee hours rendezvous?” Nozomi said, circling both Eli and the kitchen counter, draping herself on Maki’s back. “Hm?” As Maki flushed again, Nozomi poked her cheeks. “Hmmm?”

“Nozomi,” Maki hissed, torn between avoiding the press of Nozomi’s chest on her back and Nozomi’s fingers on her cheeks.

“Yes, Makki?”

Then Maki straightened, almost throwing Nozomi off of her, and it was only then that Eli realized how tall she was now. She herself had grown taller, and it seemed that Maki took the same route further. “Whoa, Maki, you’re even taller than Elichi now,” Nozomi said, wasting no time to glomp Maki again. “Interested in being a model like Elichi, gorgeous?”

Maki sighed in defeat. “Why are you always like this, Nozomi.” Not a question; merely a statement. She fidgeted still, trying to break free from Nozomi.

“You know her well,” Eli commented dryly.

“Maki,” Nozomi said, “just shut up for once and let your seniors pamper you.” Then, in a much softer voice, she added, “We miss you.”

With her head bowed, the flush on Maki’s cheeks spread to the tips of her ears. Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “Miss you, too.”

For a while, Maki and Nozomi looked more like their high school selves, Maki distant and guarded but easily rattled, Nozomi the guardian who loved poking fun at the rest of the group. Eli wondered if back then Nozomi’s scheming failed or if Honoka failed to convince Maki to join μ’s. Would there be, in a different universe, a μ’s that didn’t have nine members? Would there be μ’s without Maki’s composition, and would Maki open up without Nozomi’s prodding? And what would Eli have become without μ’s? Would she still find the courage to get to where she was now? In front of her now were two of the most influential people of her youth, miles away and years apart from where it all began. Across the counter, Nozomi’s eyes met hers, and she smiled, soft as always.

Some things, Eli thought, just never changed.

-.-.-

The two of them went back to bed at three, Maki some minutes earlier. Eli could still get a few hours of sleep before having to wake up. Her brain was already simulating the scenario for the day: brunch, visiting the two apartments that Maki had an eye on, and dropping Maki at her hotel. (She probably should insist that Maki stayed in her apartment until she found a place that was to her liking, as Nozomi suggested.) No interview until Thursday, she told herself. I have a whole day off tomorrow.

Nozomi scooted to her left side, and Eli turned her head to look at her. In the dark, Nozomi’s eyes didn’t look as bright as they were back in the kitchen. Nozomi grappled around under the blanket in search of Eli’s hand. Eli squeezed once, feeling the familiar warmth and softness of Nozomi’s hand. Nozomi didn’t squeeze back. “It will be alright,” she said.

A rush of heat went to Eli’s head at the words. It was not the first time Nozomi had said it—we’ll be alright, Elichi, we’ll tell others, too, we’ll be alright, and Eli had told herself in some sort of effort to reorient herself that yes, Nozomi was right, that yes, they would be alright, everything would be alright. Easy for you to say, she wanted to spit, but it would have come across more barbed than she intended. So she told herself to do what she had always done: grit your teeth and look away, Eli.

“Elichi.” Nozomi sighed. “We’ve talked about this. I’m not leaving the agency. I will still be your rep.”

But not my manager, Eli added silently in a glum codicil.

“We’ve also promised not to fight about this,” Nozomi said. “This is what I want to do. I need a new challenge.”

Eli was about to retort, But what about what I want, when her scatterbrained contemplation from yesterday resurfaced in her mind. She wanted normal, and for so long normal had meant having Nozomi with her whenever she looked at her side, over her shoulder, anywhere. For so long, Nozomi was that normalcy. For so long, she had ignored the need to draw the line between “Nozomi” and “normal.” For so long, it was an equation she was reluctant to redefine.

Eli turned to lie on her side, raising their joined hands to kiss Nozomi’s knuckles. You’re my best friend, my family, my person, she wanted to say. “Would you reconsider? It’s easier when you’re here.”

“Silly Elichi,” Nozomi teased, but her eyes watered nonetheless. “You’re never going to lose me.”

Eli snorted. “Tell me that again when you have your hand full of younger models.”

“Well,” Nozomi pulled her closer with a hand on her nape. “If they are not clever and cute and partially Russian, I’m not interested.” She leaned in for a brief kiss. “I’ll be married to my job, remember?”

Eli let out a soft chuckle. “That’s something I expect to hear from Maki or Umi, not you.”

This time, it was Nozomi who fitted herself into Eli, head tucked beneath Eli’s chin, arms around Eli’s waist, legs entangled. Eli closed her eyes, kissing Nozomi’s hair, and wishing that she could once again trade adulthood for complacency. Sadly, if there were anything that being a μ’s member taught her, it was that wishing for an impossible dream would not get her anywhere: you either fight for your dream or you watch it wither. Eli learned it the hard way.

-.-.-

It was not until a few weeks later that she told Maki about the arrangement. Well, not even “tell” in the everyday sense of having the intention to sit down and disclose the important information to Maki, calmly, levelheadedly. It just happened. Maki’s new apartment had a bathroom problem, and in a panic rush of having to deal with both the emergency and her mid-term week, Maki called Nozomi, who forwarded her call to Eli, who was currently in Rome, was about to leave for her photoshoot, and straightforwardly told Maki to stay in her apartment for the time being and contact her manager Julia if she needed anything.

It took Maki a full minute to digest the words, which left her half shrieking, “What do you mean your manager Julia?”

Dismissal didn’t come easy when it came to your friend, Eli realized.

-.-.-

Both saw each other at Kopi Kopi three days after that phone call supporting eye bags. “Look at these,” Eli said in a teasing tone, trying to touch Maki’s eye bags. “Studying hard, Dr Nishikino?”

“Careful,” Maki warned dryly, evading Eli’s fingers and ducking under her outstretched hand. “They’re designer.”

Surprised, Eli’s hand paused its course in the air. This was new.

“What?” Maki snapped.

Now, this was familiar, so familiar she couldn’t help grinning. “Picking up some humor skills, I see,” she teased, sliding into the booth across Maki. Some heads turned to their booth when she took off her sunglasses and slid them up her hair. A few strands of loose hair fell on the sides of her face, and when she tucked them behind her ears she heard faint snaps of phone cameras. She rolled her eyes.

“Used to the attention, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Have to.”

Maki took a sip of whatever cold drink she had in her tall glass. “You’re not happy being approached by your fans?”

The incident last month and half a year ago sent a shiver down her spine, but she knew better than to show it to Maki. She had her own concerns, Eli reasoned. So she just shrugged again.

“And what’s your excuse?” Maki pointed at Eli’s eye bags.

“I couldn’t sleep a wink since leaving Rome.” That was almost 28 hours ago. She’d thought that her omitting the number would escape Maki’s attention, but seeing Maki frown confirmed that she wasn’t successful.

“Have you had sleeping problems?”

No, but I did sleep better when Nozomi was with me, she thought to herself. “Just jetlag,” she lied.

Maki did not look convinced, but she let it go. She pushed a key ring towards her. “Thanks for lending me your apartment,” Maki said. “My landlord fixed my bathroom.” It turned out that the problem was a leaking pipe in the wall, which led to a local flood in her unit and the unit below hers. “I could have stayed at a hotel, but again, thanks.”

“You know what, keep it.” Eli pushed the key back towards Maki. “My place’s a bit far from Kips Bay, I know, but most of the time it’s empty. Alisa or my parents only visit once in a while, and there’s always the den upstairs if they do visit.” When she recognized the beginning of an expression of objection on Maki’s face, Eli reached across and poked her cheek, just like what Nozomi did. “You don’t have to move in or anything, really. Just think of it as some kind of a safehouse you can use to plan your world domination in secret.” She winked in good humor.

“World dom—” Maki stopped herself short, flushing.

“Ooh I know that face.” She leaned over the table, grinning wider. “Naughty Makki.”

“Eli,” Maki hissed.

“Uh-oh. Penny for your thoughts, my dear? Do they have anything to do with someone whose name starts with Ni and ends with Ko?”

Maki called her name again, and Eli could hear a hint of anger underlying her voice. She relented. Maki leaned back and slouched. “Nozomi really rubs off on you, huh.”

Her spine stiffened. If you don’t want to talk about Nico, can we not talk about Nozomi, too? She didn’t say it. Instead, she mirrored Maki’s posture, slouching even lower in what constituted a big no for a model. “Yeah,” she agreed, softly. “She does.”

Maki finished her drink and, seemingly understanding, offered to treat her to dinner. Her shoes touched Eli’s under the table.

-.-.-

Maki never used the key again.

Nozomi came over a few times with boxed dinner and a chocolate assortment from Jacques Torres or Li-Lac. She stayed until late but didn’t stay the night. One time, Eli kissed the corner of her mouth, and only after she closed the door she wondered why Nozomi let her do so. She finished three photoshoots for a series of spring collection, and mid-November found her standing in a loose shirt and old yoga pants on the second floor of her apartment. She had something in the usually untouched den that she’s sure Maki would love. She was in the middle of moving old magazines and books when her phone rang, forcing her to run downstairs to get it. She missed the call, and Kotori left a message for her: Looking forward to rocking Yuki Torii with you!

She reread the ready to be signed new contract Nozomi left on her last visit and double checked to make sure Kotori’s name was indeed on the list, too.

“Still taking care of me, eh,” she said aloud, more to her suddenly cold apartment than to herself.

-.-.-

“So that happened.” Maki nodded to herself, twice, playing with her glass. Eli wondered if Maki were picturing blood, or other swirling, liquid form such as the water from the mythical fountain of youth, instead of Malbec. “Interesting. I haven’t talked to Kotori lately.”

“You haven’t talked to anyone lately,” Eli corrected, though gently.

“I’m... busy.”

“Excuse, excuse.” She snickered. Putting down her own glass on the top of the baby grand, she leaned to nudge Maki on the arm. “Do you like your Thanksgiving present?”

“I do, really. Thank you,” Maki said, finishing her wine in a big gulp. Eli had told her that the previous tenant had left the baby grand there, and Eli very rarely played it herself. “And now I’m thinking of how on earth I can bring this into my apartment.”

She tried to shrug, but the wine—oh yes, blame it on the wine—caused her to lean even farther into Maki. “You have the key. Use it any time you want.”

“Why, Eli,” Maki drawled, taking Eli’s half empty glass in fear of its holder’s sloshing the wine onto the baby grand, “if I didn’t know you better, I would’ve thought you’re really pushing me into moving in.”

She raised her head and looked Maki in the eye. “What if I am?”

Opposites attract, Eli knew, perfectly knew, but similarities sustain. The former applied to Maki and her previous relationships—Nico, a fellow intern, Nico again, a co-worker when she worked for the MSF, a classmate at NYU’s Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology; applied to μ’s, as Honoka aptly stated back then, which Eli agreed with; applied to Tokyo and New York, where each city left her to wonder and ponder whether she was alone in the crowd because she deserved it or because she conditioned herself to be so. The latter, however, was difficult to grasp. In one previous fit of drunkenness, she had spilled almost everything to Maki: why wouldn’t they stay, Maki, why would they leave, why is it that dreams are always bigger than people, bigger than anything, why won’t they stay, why won’t anyone want to sustain us, why can’t we be sustained? Almost everything. Almost everything—except what she wanted.

Maki stopped her with a palm to her chest, which, through the uninhibited haze of the Malbec, burned. “If we do this,” she began, “will you regret it?”

Yes. I don’t know. We’re both singles. And lonely, probably. I don’t know. “No.”

She didn’t remember anything except the fact that in the morning after, she found herself tucked under a blanket on the chaise, the fall of the baby grand already shut, and a note from Maki was laid on the side table. I’m doing everything I can to not hurt you, it read, Maki’s longhand crisp and smooth.

Eli dropped her head back onto the pillow. Aspirin. She needed aspirin.

-.-.-

Chapter Text

Three.

Maki came over more often.

When Eli wasn’t there, she left confectionary in the fridge. When Eli was in town, she chose the dining place but let Eli handle the wine. Sometimes they Skyped with Rin, the only one from the group that Maki remained closest to. (Eli had her own suspicion that this was what had cemented the wall between Maki and Nico. After all, she thought, I’ll be jealous too if someone always knows—and I don’t—whenever Nozomi has migraine at three in the morning.) Sometimes she sat beside Maki when she played the piano. “Be my left hand,” Maki said. In one of her visits, Nozomi found a composition book on top of the baby grand’s fall. “Huh,” Nozomi let out, not in amazement but also not in confusion, as if she had long expected it. Her smile afterward was so tender Eli wanted to shrink into infinite smallness. That, or slug herself. The next day, she and Eli flew to Tokyo for the press release of Yuki Torii’s newest line. If Kotori noticed anything about them, she only said, “Please come home more often, both of you.”

On the flight back to New York, with Nozomi asleep next to her, she checked her email to find one from Maki, who went skiing in Buffalo with her classmates and was tagged on a picture on Facebook. Cute, Eli thought. Maki wrote, Check your mailbox when you get home.

They never spoke of that night.

-.-.-

The Consulate General of Japan in New York had sent her a letter of invitation for a New Year function. The main event was performance of the Sonoda School of Dance. She consulted her schedule with Julia and Nozomi. “I must not miss this,” she said. They both cleared her for a week after New Year. She and Maki Skyped with Rin, who was doing a tourism documentary program in Hokkaido. “I still haven’t met Santa, Maki, but when I do, I’ll tell him you say hi,” Rin said, a dig at Maki’s old belief. Eli watched Maki smile and thought, How tender, how soft.

Nozomi called at Christmas Eve, wishing her a merry Christmas. Eli heard the clamor of people shrieking and laughing and shouting over the boisterous music behind Nozomi. “My lonely baby,” Nozomi teased. Loneliest, Eli wanted to correct her. The staff at the agency had their own party, she knew. She was thinking of inviting Maki for dinner, Russian style, but then remembered that Maki was in Tuxedo for a week with the researchers from NYU’s Institute of Environmental Medicine. She thought of making kutya, but then remembered that her church did not celebrate Christmas until January 7.

-.-.-

She worked and missed Christmas and New Year, deliberately.

-.-.-

January 3 found her and Maki in front of the piano again, going straight from La Maison du Chocolate and morning chill to the comfort and quiet of the den. Alisa still hadn’t woken up, having just landed the night before. The Kousakas had trusted a package of their famous New Year manju to Alisa, and both Eli and Maki had finished half of the box. “You’re going to get fat,” Maki said, mimicking Umi’s drill sergeant voice after eyeing both the chocolate and manju half-empty boxes. In an oversized sweater and with white powder from the manju on her lips, Maki said Eli looked cute, to which she mock-bristled.

“I will still look cute when I’m eighty,” she said.

“Yeah? Says who?” Maki shot back.

Nozomi, she wanted to say. “Me,” she said in the end. Confidence was not arrogance. Maki, and the rest of μ’s knew that, should still remember that.

Then Maki looked at her for a long time, studiously. Eli was reminded of the day when the nine of them gathered in Nozomi’s apartment to write a song—a goddamn love song. It took some night snow and confession to get to writing, but Maki had looked at her and Nozomi that way long before the lyrics was even written.

Maki played Chopin’s Valse Op. 34 No. 2, the saddest waltz, most melancholic. When she finished, Eli’s cheeks were wet.

“I’m also doing everything I can to not hurt anyone,” Eli said.

-.-.-

Alisa took a picture of Maki, Umi, and her when they went to pick up Umi at JFK. She posted it on her Instagram account with a short caption, Reunited. The likes count went crazy, and Umi winced when Alisa kept poking fun at the fact that she didn’t have an Instagram account and she could only tag @doctormaki and @eliayase. The world is missing the most glorious Sonoda, Alisa said.

“Go easy on her, Alisa,” Eli said. In Russian, of course. “She’s so red I’m afraid she’ll combust in any given time.”

“Right, sis. I remember you said you’re the only one who could tease her.” Her sister, her mini me, elbowed her.

“I remember I wasn’t the one who had the biggest crush on her,” she bit back, to which Alisa flustered and sputtered and threatened to spoil her kutya if she even thought of spilling the beans to Umi.

She called Nozomi to ask whether she should wear a kimono or a dress. “You’ll look good in either, Elichi,” Nozomi said. Eli missed her voice, so she asked again, stated again that it was not about which outfit she’d look best in, that it was what Nozomi would think she’d look best in. Nozomi took her time answering, finally replying, “Why don’t you surprise me?”

After Umi’s presentation and performance at the Consulate General, which Eli insisted was too brief, Nozomi pulled her aside. She kissed one corner of Eli’s mouth, out of prying eyes. Eli wrapped Nozomi in a loose embrace, resting her head on top of Nozomi’s. Nozomi hummed against her kimono-clad chest, so familiarly intelligible that Eli almost wanted to fill in the words—this strange feeling, this feeling in my chest, falling from the sky, falling a flutter. The memories of the melody drew quiet laughter from them both.

“My angel,” Nozomi said, stroking the hem of Eli’s light blue kimono. “I’ll see you in Tokyo.”

For a moment, between the present and the future promise of Tokyo, she wanted to bask herself in Nozomi.

-.-.-

Alisa’s Instagram craze continued on. μ’s’ old fans were begging for a real reunion, the hashtag #llmusereunion trending on the eastern hemisphere. Umi was the first to reject the idea. She, who looked older after her involvement with the Kanda protest, said, “I have left it behind, all those years and memories.” Eli would like to believe she herself understood. Her team had been receiving a lot of requests for interview; she could endure questions about her ballet years, or even her years of enduring the prejudiced gaze of her classmates, but she wouldn’t answer questions about μ’s. Some fans dug more of her past stuff online and found pictures of her in skimpy shirts and brightly colored tops. She wasn’t ashamed—never, never, not now, not ever. She was just not sure if she wanted to relive those days.

“Stop, stop. Eli, stop.”

She shut her mouth, looking at Maki at the piano.

Sighing, Maki turned around to face her. “There’s no need to use your head voice.” She pressed a random key. “You’re straining, you know.”

Back in her μ’s days, her head voice allowed her to blend more harmoniously with her friends’ voices. It had long since fallen into disuse, and even she herself could hear the grating off-pitched notes. “C’mon, Maki. S’not like we’re having a rehearsal here. Relax,” she said, waving her wine glass, the content sloshing around, close to spilling.

Umi took the glass from her, Eli only resisting minimally. “That’s why Maki said you could just use your normal voice,” she said. Umi still sounded fantastic, Eli thought, although she deliberately went a register lower when joining Maki for the chorus. Always the complementing duo, those two.

“Thank you for interpreting that for me, Umi,” she quipped. “You know I don’t speak Nishikino.”

Umi raised an eyebrow at the rising hostility in Eli’s sarcasm, but decided to humor her. “Why, do you think all those songs wrote themselves? Of course I’m fluent in Nishikino.” She winked at Maki, who again turned to Eli.

“Just sing normally, okay,” Maki said.

“Screw normal,” Eli mumbled.

“Fine. Whatever. Do what you want,” Maki muttered under her breath. “You’re such a prude.”

“Maki,” Umi chided, her disciplinarian mentality rearing its head even after years. Eli admired that about her. Trained since little in the classical arts, Umi had admitted that she valued her training and the result that came out of it. It teaches me discipline and resilience, she had said, unknowingly hitting Eli under the belt, herself having given up the ballet training regiment after facing obstacles, having given up at anything at all easily.

“Yeah, Maki, don’t be such a fucking prude. What do you even know about wants anyway? You always have everything,” Eli taunted, and briefly she could she see Maki’s hackles rise.

“Eli.” Umi didn’t raise the volume of her voice, but the faint disappointment beneath her tone was enough to sober up Eli. Umi looked her in the eye, as if asking, Is everything alright? Did something happen between you two? (Which, when she thought about it later, was way more civil than Nico’s grim, low-voiced threat through a phone call, “I’m going to kill you.” Nico had no intention to pry the details out of her, but Eli heard just fine the underlying She’s my friend, my first, you hurt her and I’ll break you. As expected from Nico, the pragmatist who cared so much. As expected, too, from the world: Everybody took a glance at Maki and decided to be protective of her; everybody took a glance at Eli Ayase and wondered how a mess could be made out of her.)

Eli raised both hands in a gesture of surrender and went to sit beside Maki. She nearly toppled backward when Maki pushed at her shoulder. Looping an arm around Maki’s shoulders, both to steady herself and to placate Maki, she pressed more keys, randomly, drunkenly, giddily. “I’m sorry. Play it again, Maki. I’m sorry,” she whispered in Maki’s ear.

After Maki flat out rejected the reunion idea, Hanayo joined in the refusal. With her teaching schedule and her young family, it was impossible. “And I wouldn’t want my students to see me like that live,” she said. Rin was still occupied with her documentary program, but Maki spoke on her behalf: “No.” Nico, also no, being fully booked with projects until next year. Kotori waited for Honoka, and it didn’t take Honoka long to speak up. “I thought we all have agreed to not rewind the time,” Honoka said, as gently as she could, in their group Skype session—the first time in years. Eli heard the unsaid: We can’t afford to say goodbye once again.

“Why did you say no?”

Umi paused midway in rising from Eli’s couch to put their empty glasses in the kitchen downstairs. She straightened with a sigh, still so poised and all, still like that day at the beach when Eli thought she had seen the living embodiment of the evening sea in summer: the calm, the magnificent. She knew that Umi looked up to her, or at least the old Umi used to, but she admired Umi all the same, if not more, if only because she couldn’t help being mesmerized.

“I don’t object to it. I just want to know,” Eli clarified, head on Maki’s shoulder. “Had you given it a thought, Honoka wouldn’t be so quick to reject the idea and with that, I think, Kotori, too.” In the end, that’s how people were, she told herself. Kotori looked up to Honoka, Honoka to Umi, Umi to Eli, and Eli—Eli looked down and wondered how the hell she could get down from the pedestal she'd never asked to be put on. You look up to someone, that someone looks up to someone else, and so on and so on; a never-ending circle of respect and hopeless want.

“It is exactly because of that,” Umi answered, walking to stand beside them, hands clasped in front of her. “You know, Eli, when Honoka and I were little, we played a little too far from home. We got separated. I lost her. That’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had. I still can’t forget Honoka’s crying face when I found her, when I found her chanting my name over and over. I’m the sibling she’s always known even before we were born, she’d told me.” A small smile played on Umi’s lips, there but also not there, her eyes distant, seeing but not registering either Maki or Eli. “Honoka has always had my back, and I will always have hers. I shall not halt her, or pull her down, or hold her back.”

“Even if you want it?” Maki said, an arm around Eli’s waist.

“What I want matters less. I know what I need to do,” Umi said, kind and resolute at the same time, no bitterness, no indignation. She rested her elbows on Eli’s shoulders, hands linked loosely on top of Eli’s collarbones. Leaning back to rest her head against Umi’s torso, Eli closed her eyes.

Maki let out a long-suffering sigh. “So long as you don’t come to my hospital with another head wound, I’m okay with that,” she said, reminding Umi of her latest stunt with the Kanda protest.

“Says one who had a fight with her father over a tanked quiz, threw expletives at him, and had to quit the group,” Umi retorted lightly.

“Tha—hey!” Maki glowered, cheeks reddened. Eli was sure none of them would ever forget those long days, the eight of them investigating Dr Nishikino Senior to know his schedule, to know the best time to approach him, kneeling in front of him, begging him, Please let us have Maki. It was a proposal, once and for all, Eli thought, one that was sealed with Umi’s stamp of grace as she defended Maki. I’m an heiress, too. I understand the responsibility, and I gladly bear it, Umi had said back then. It was the first time the nine of them cried together, and at that time it felt so natural.

She turned around to hug Umi long, tightly, as if borrowing her strength for herself. Maki threw her arms around them. I want eight pairs of arms, Eli thought. Those I will gladly bear.

She wondered what Nozomi’s response to the reunion idea would be, but she guessed she had known it all along.

-.-.-

She was scheduled to fly to Tokyo again for the first showcase of her jewelry series. Eli Ayase for Yuki Torii, her newest ad displayed. Nozomi had arrived two days before to prepare for the event. The night before the flight, she went to Maki’s apartment. Upon seeing Maki’s face, reading glasses perched low on her nose and hair tied haphazardly, she pulled Maki into a hug, probably the firmest hug in which she wanted to pour all of her into someone else. “I didn’t say this enough, but I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

Maki didn’t say, Me too. Didn’t say, Aren’t we two troublesome assholes. Didn’t return Eli’s hug as equally firm. She merely put down the lid of her laptop and stayed with Eli until midnight on the couch. “I have a review tomorrow, so I can’t come to the airport with you,” Maki said.

“It’s alright. I’ll see you again soon.”

“I miss Tokyo. And everyone. Will you be alright?”

“I will. I will.”

“I love you.”

-.-.-

Nozomi’s old apartment didn’t change much. The wooden dining chairs were still there, ten years after Eli first sat on them. The dining table still bore a lot of tiny scratches on its surface, of which a few had marked her back when Nozomi made love to her on it. One of the chairs still had cracks on its back, courtesy of a backward tumbling when Nozomi sat on her lap and rode her—Nozomi always looked most debauched that way, which Eli loved. Reflexes had her cushioned their fall, and Nozomi cackled into her naked chest. They spent the rest of the evening gluing the pieces of the backrest. If she opened the cabinet, she would still find, probably, from top to bottom, rice noodles then coffee then tea. From left to right, hojicha then mugicha then chamomile tea. Earlier, she had taken a walk from Yasukuni, passing the row of old Showa-era houses then the Heisei-style Shohei Bridge to the glaring neon signs and billboards of Akiba and finally to Kanda: a time travel in a breath, yet Nozomi’s everyday route to and from Otonokizaka. The old never disappeared here, only transitioned and transformed.

At the Kanda Shrine, she hung an ema, writing on it, I am thankful for everything.

Nozomi opened the door to her apartment exactly ten minutes past seven in the evening. She looked tired, like someone who had gone to war and had fought a great battle. The bravest of us all never forget to be soft, Eli thought, chest swelling with pride. Nozomi dropped her duvet bag on the sofa, standing in the middle her living room, watching Eli, waiting. Eli didn’t move from her place at the dinning table, but she had put the kettle on the stove. The water was only waiting to boil.

Listen: normal.

Listen.

“Welcome home, Nozomi.”

-.-.-