Chapter Text
The second Ryusei Shidou gets off a full day of cramped traveling, a blast of dry heat hits him like a wall.
He had fallen asleep during the entire flight from Tokyo to Madrid, mostly because he had nagged Aiku and Sendou awake at 5:15 AM, but he didn’t see why he should be the one to suffer for it. He had spent the past fifteen hours crouched uncomfortably in an ergonomically designed airplane chair, had unfortunately eaten nothing, and above all, had gotten absolutely no response from Rin despite the several messages he sent him the night before.
It’s about as un-glamorous as it could be, but none of it seemed bad enough. No, in fact, it genuinely didn’t. Somehow and somewhat, Shidou was apparently still seeing the world in a pink-tinted lens.
“You know, I would’ve thought this moment should be more cinematic and symbolic or whatever,” Sendou mutters, flapping his shirt up and down. “It’s just hot.”
“You’re right,” Shidou says smugly. “I am hot.”
“No you’re not.”
“No, actually. I am, in fact, the reason why we’re here right now.”
“I would like to think, Shidou,” Aiku begins sarcastically, “that the reason why we’re here right now is because of collective talent rather than–”
“Rather than my visuals?”
“You have no visuals.”
But despite everything they say, Shidou knows that he is obviously right. After all, the reason why their Japanese rock band was globally recognized somewhere halfway across the world (...Spain), was because of him and his legendary composition skills. After releasing their wildly unpopular song Añoranza, an indie-event coordinator had reached out to them saying that it had…blown up, and had offered them this exact ten-day promotional tour. And after confirming that it wasn’t some massive scam targeted towards kidnapping young musicians, the tour dates were set. They were here.
So, to summarize, because of Shidou, the three of them were internationally famous. Shidou thinks that the two of them probably must owe him a whole lot.
“--Quit whining,” Aiku says, though he rubs the back of his neck like it’s just as stiff. “We need to figure out transportation first.”
Of course. With the frenzy of getting off the plane and stepping in the country of Spain for the first time, the thought of transportation hadn’t even crossed Shidou’s mind.
“How are we going to get a car though?” Sendou frowns, “Most importantly– who’s going to trust us to operate a vehicle?” He turns towards Shidou, distracted by a message, and shoots him a pointed glare.
As something worth noting, Shidou’s thumbs are already busy flying over his phone screen. Rin’s finally online. Or, he was online a few seconds ago. He had left three messages for Shidou.
Rinrin <3: Tell me when you land.
Rinrin <3: Don’t do anything stupid.
Rinrin <3: No like actually dont do anything stupid
Shidou smirks at the messages, then types back.
After all, it’s not like he came all the way to Spain just for a…music tour. Sure, he loved music, as anybody else who pursued a career in it would. Arguably, more importantly, he came here for Rin’s brother, the Sae Itoshi.
(“I’m going to find him.”
“What?”
Rin’s voice crackles on the phone. It had been three months ago, right after Shidou had gotten that invitation, and obviously the first person Shidou would find was Rin.
“Sae. I’m going to find him. We got invited to play in Madrid for ten days, the whole shebang, and he’s there. Rin, think about it– we’ve been apart for five years and I’m going to be in the same city and–”
“...What?”
“Nonono, just think about it. Your brother’s best friend, an international sensation. And I’m going to find—”
“Shidou.”
“---and if you try to talk me out of this right now, just to let you know I’m going to shut you down the second I hear–”
“I wasn’t going to talk you out of it.” Rin says.
Shidou pauses. It’s either the most or least surprising thing Rin has said.
“That doesn’t mean that you’re not a fucking dumbass who doesn’t know what the hell he’s getting himself into–”
Beep. Shidou hangs up the call.)
Shidou had contacted Rin ever since that day he received the invitation, so Rin was unwillingly well-versed with Shidou’s plan. Rin was Sae’s younger brother, and Shidou’s friend. The three of them had been close ever since they were young, and spent nearly every moment with each other until Sae moved to Spain for a youth-league football team five years ago.
But that was five years ago, and now Shidou was a singer in a band, touring the same city Sae had disappeared into. And so, maybe as a side plot, Shidou had ultimately decided that he would find him.
Ten days, in a city of millions with disastrous odds. But Shidou has always been ridiculously confident in achieving the impossible. So behind the whole facade of a band tour, there was still this inner motivation Shidou had, or whatever there was left. Only if he could find Sae in the first place, that is.
“Who’s that?” Sendou asks, leaning over to take a glance at Shidou’s phone.
“Nobody,” Shidou whips the phone into his pocket.
“Whatever,” Sendou shrugs. He squints out the airport in front of them. “So. What do we actually do now.”
“We figure it out as we go,” Shidou says, a philosophy that has served him well so far. Finding a car, and food, and hotel and venues and whatnot, that was fine. He could wing all of that. But he’s not quite sure if the same philosophy will serve him just as well through his search. He knew that Sae was…well, complicated, but after spending practically his entire life with him, Shidou still held some confidence in his capabilities. Five years in another world couldn’t have changed him that much, right?
Apparently noticing how the three of them have been standing in front of the airplane gate for a good ten minutes, Aiku sighs and steers them both further down the terminal, following the overhead signs to the rental counters.
“Let's just see if we can find this stupid dealership first and get this over with.”
The airport rental car place turned out to be a small booth located near the airport infrastructure, squeezed between two oversized panels of glass and labelled unhelpfully with the sign: ALQUILER DE COCHES. Even though none of them could actually read the words in the airport, with the help of modern technology, Google Lens search, and dumb luck, they could figure out the rough idea of where this shop was.
Also, the giant line that snaked through a row of potted plants pretty much gave the whole thing away.
After waiting for maybe half an hour, when the group did eventually get to the front of the line, they were all, undeniably, exhausted. Out of some form of enervated enthusiasm, Shidou seizes the moment by slaming his hands on the counter with much unneeded energy for someone who hadn’t even rehearsed what he was going to say.
“Yo necesito a car. Por favor. (I need a car. Please.)” Shidou declared.
The lady at the counter, a tall posh woman with a slicked-back bun and dark glasses, blinked twice. Her eyebrows shoot upward in confusion.
Aiku pinched the bridge of his nose in disbelief at his horrible pronunciation. Shidou, seeing the look of exasperation on his face, immediately rolls his eyes.
He grabs Aiku by the shoulders and shoves him forward. “Your turn. Go speak fluent Spanish or something.”
Aiku freezes.
He stares at the lady. Unimpressed, the lady stares back at him.
“¿Vas a quedarte ahí parado? (Are you just going to stand there?)” The lady asks.
The silence stretches out in the room. Shidou feels the group of arrivals behind him stare daggers into the back of his neck.
Then, Aiku, out of pure desperation, gets an absolutely genius idea.
____________________________________
“Aquí están todos los documentos que necesitamos. Por favor, revísalos. Gracias. (Here are all of our required documents. Please review. Thanks!)” says the automated voice of Aiku’s translator app.
The lady pushes up her glasses and immediately begins sifting through the documents on the table. After maybe five or six seconds, she pushes the stack of papers back to Aiku with the slight shake of her head.
“No podemos alquilar un coche porque vosotros no tenéis la edad mínima. La edad mínima es veintiún años.” she says. (We can’t offer you a car. The minimum age is twenty-one.)
“...¿Que?” Aiku, after thinking for a few seconds, asks.
Sendou checks the translation app again.
“Wait… veintiún? Twenty-one?” Sendou’s horrified voice cuts through the air, “The minimum age is twenty-one years old?” Sendou repeats, louder this time.
“Sí,”
Sendou and Shidou look over towards Aiku, who was the oldest out of them, at the same time.
“I’m only twenty.”
Oh.
So that was that. After dejectedly shuffling out of the booth, still beyond weary from now not only the plane ride, but also being rejected of a basic vehicle due to their age (turns out they were right: nobody did trust them to drive a car), Sendou turns towards Aiku looking like somebody who had just survived a pandemic.
“So what now?”
Aiku stuffs his phone back into his pocket and shrugs. “We walk.”
“Walk? Everywhere? For the next ten days? In this heat?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Aiku mutters into his hands, “We walk everywhere in Japan anyway. Let's just go find some food, then we’ll go find our hotel before one of us starts melting on the sidewalk.”
____________________________________
After waiting in that hour-long line at the car dealership, the sun had begun to sink beneath the rooftops of Spain. Streetlights begin to flicker on, golden light glares and reflects off of shop windows, and the heat outside had begun to dissipate into the lukewarm, dusty breeze of the evening. Nonetheless, the reality of being car-less in a foreign country is setting in strong.
“Man,” Shidou pants, talking to basically himself at this point “I wonder how Sae survives like this every day in Europe. I bet if he glared at the sun, it would move out of the way just for him.”
“Lucky him,” Sendou frowns, struggling just as much in walking as Shidou was, “Also, who the fuck is Sae?”
“Never mind,” Shidou mutters.
The three of them wander around aimlessly for a little bit (because maybe they’ll figure it out with enough time that passes?), a paper map in one hand, guitar case and backpack in the other. But even after everything they’d been through today, the streets of Madrid are still beautiful in a way that makes everything around them hazy. They pass by kiosks selling bouquets of random souvenirs and glossy photocards of Real Madrid players (Shidou wonders if Sae is among the cards; if so, he wouldn’t hesitate to buy one).
They pass by a long stretch of apartments and tiny balconies with lawn chairs, then rows of food stalls selling tapas that all smell heavenly. Every time they pass a stall that looks tasty (which is pretty much all of them), they stop and buy three. They are technically on a vacation, after all. In ten days, none of this will exist anymore; they’ll have to return to their comparably mundane life back in Japan. Shidou tells himself that he’s simply savoring what he can in the short time being.
And yet despite around an hour of walking around, they basically hadn’t achieved anything except feeling stuffed and being mildly lost.
They tried to ask a few of the locals where the hotel was, but the instructions they gave were rapid and confusing and drowned out by the taxi drivers' honking aggressively in the street. Most of them pointed to the same vague direction, but it didn’t help. At this point, the three could as well give up and sleep on the sidewalk for the night.
Except, as they turn a corner of a building, they hear laughter echoing near an alleyway.
Shidou’s heart stops with the sight in front of him.
A group of elementary school kids are playing soccer. Their sandals slap onto the pavement as their kicks echo sharply off the rickety stone walls. They seem genuinely skilled, passing and dribbling as if it were second nature, playing faster than kids their age usually play, with an effortless rhythm. Shidou stands and stares, his words catching into his throat and, may as well, catching into his limbs as well. Because he can’t move, no matter how hard he tries.
Something unsure and yet so painfully familiar lodges into his heart at the scene in front of him. Everything moves in slow motion.
Until the ball ricochets past them and rolls next to Shidou.
Shidou’s foot immediately finds its way above the ball.
And seeing the sun-faded, scuffed-up ball hits him like a punch in the gut.
____________________________________
Age: 5
Koshigoe Alley, Kamakura, Japan
Tokyo had always been loud and crowded. Cars honking nonstop, flashing streetlights, strangers’ hands brushing past every other second. But Kamakura was still and quiet. Almost in a way, for Shidou, where it felt scary.
The first time he stepped off the train in the small town, he was greeted by his grandmother, who brought him close to her and smelled faintly of tatami mats and rice balls. There he was whisked away from the arms of his mother and father, down the train station steps, past the beaches, and to a place lined with wood-pillared houses and charming narrow streets that smelled like seawater.
It was the last day Shidou had seen either of his parents, and the image he was left with were them standing solemnly at the train gate, glasses reflecting the ocean in front of him, refusing to betray any emotion from their eyes. From then on, it would be just him and his grandmother.
Trudging further into the alleyway, one hand grasping his obaachan’s and the other tugging on his backpack strap, his eyes started to wander. They followed the cracks in the walls of the convenience shops, the cracks in the stone floor, and then, they caught onto something.
And that’s when the ball rolled past him.
It was a scuffed-up soccer ball, looking roughed up and prominent in use after decades of age, with faded ink due to long exposures to the sun. Shidou blinked. He hadn’t touched a ball much before, back in his old school, so even he was surprised when his worn-out leather shoes found their way above the ball stopping it from movement.
In his daze and surprise, he barely noticed a small shuffle coming from deeper inside the alley.
Eventually, Shidou looked up.
Two boys were standing in the middle of the alleyway. The shorter boy hid behind the taller boy’s back as they looked curiously upon Shidou.
The taller boy seemed no less than five years old. He wore one of those thin, sleeveless hand-me-down shirts: a beixin style, dirtied and loose around the edges. His shorts were patched by careful hands and colored fabric in two places, hair a shade of messy, dull pink, with bangs cut choppily hanging over his forehead.
And his eyes: they were striking and teal in all ways that seemed to contrast with the tattered-ness of his shirt and shorts, framed by lashes so long that they looked unreal. The eyes looked like they belonged somewhere rarer, away from a town like this: like the eyes of a precious rock or the bejewelled heart of a stone lion.
The toddler behind him, looking to be around two or three years old, had similar, stunning eyes to his older brother, but it was all different at the same time. There was something about the older boy’s eyes that reflected something similar to maturity, or rather, royalty. The younger boy’s eyes still had a glint to them that reflected childlike wonder, seeping into the rest of his features, which were noticeably softer and rounder and contrasted with his dark hair.
The older boy stared at Shidou with the solemnity of an emperor. Meanwhile, the smaller emperor stared too, but through shyly peeking out from the other’s back.
For a few seconds, nobody talked
Then, the boy with pink hair spoke.
“You’re standing on our ball.” The boy’s voice was small, but it was steady and controlled.
Shidou lifted his foot off the ball. “Then come and get it.”
The younger brother flinched slightly at the bold statement, but the pink-haired boy didn’t. His eyes swept over the floor, seemingly calculating the distance between the ball and his foot. Then, with one quick, smooth kick, so fast that if Shidou blinked he could’ve missed it entirely, he knocked the ball away from Shidou’s feet and back towards his own.
Shidou stared.
The boy said nothing else. He barely even cared about Shidou’s presence anymore. He turned back to his own ball, stepped three steps back, and began to carefully line up another shot.
Before he could, Shidou dashed forward.
“Again! Kick it again!”
The pink-haired boy tilted his head in confusion. “Why?”
“Because it looked cool!”
The younger boy tugged on his brother’s shirt, face buried in the other boy’s arms. “Nii-chan, who’s that?” his muffled voice rang out.
“I don’t know,” Nii-chan (or whatever his name was) said. Then, to Shidou: “Do you even know how to play?”
Shidou puffed out his chest. It was a habit, one that made him seem better, braver than he actually was. “Of course!” he boasted, clenching his fists. “I bet I can kick harder than you.”
That was a lie. Shidou wasn’t even sure if he could kick a ball at all.
“Really?” the boy asked, eyebrows raised, clearly not believing Shidou’s words for even a second.
“Yeah! Just watch!”
Without even thinking, Shidou unclasped his grandma’s hand, who disappeared off to their house promptly after, and charged like a rabid dog towards the ball. Fueled by vehemence and the urge to prove himself, his small legs thundered on the ground, step after step, pulling his left one back and then-
The ball shot forward.
The kick wasn’t smooth like the boy’s, but it was powerful. And fast. And, as he claimed, hard. The ball bounced off the stone walls of the alleyway so loudly that the smaller boy winced.
The older boy stopped for a second. He looked to be thinking, but soon after, he jumped out of his trance and quickly regained control and guided the ball back underneath himself.
“That was…hard,” he said cautiously, rolling the ball between his feet. “But you didn’t think properly about where it was supposed to go. You did that without thinking.”
“I don’t need to think,” Shidou declared, proud after the so-called compliment the boy gave.
“I can tell.”
The boy didn’t say anything after that. But before Shidou could retaliate again, with something equally as stupid to regain the boy’s attention, the younger brother tugged at his older sibling’s sleeve again. This time, his voice was loud enough for Shidou to properly catch what he was saying.
“Nii-chan, will he play with us?”
The question hung heavily over the three of them.
The two siblings stared: really stared at him this time, as if he were a foreign creature who had trespassed their territory. Shidou felt the eyes on himself, as if he were a peasant, and he was standing trial in front of a pair of judges. He felt the warm wind tickle the tips of his ears. It smelled like sea salt and kettle-brewed hojicha.
It felt like all summer in a second.
Then, almost miraculously, the boy nodded.
“I’m Shidou,” Shidou quickly replied, relief spilling into a wide grin. He silently pumped his fist in the air and acknowledged the other boy by showing off all his teeth, “Ryusei Shidou. What’s yours?”
“I’m Sae,” the boy with the pink hair said curtly. Then, he nods towards the younger boy beside him. “My brother, Rin.”
The little boy behind him finally let go of Sae’s sleeve. His eyes widened at the sight of his new friend.
“She-doo?” he echoed, pointing at Shidou with a small finger.
“Shi-dou,” Shidou answered, nodding fondly.
For the next hour, they kicked the ball back and forth for a bit, Shidou kicking with childlike power and Sae kicking with perfection and precision. Sae had drawn out goals out of chipped pieces of rock, and every time he had the ball, it would always end perfectly in the box. Rin toddled beside them, laughing every time he fell as he affectionately called out “Nii-chan!” and “She-doo”, just as Shidou, equally as loudly, and affectionately, called out “Rin-rin.”
By the time Shidou could hear his grandmother’s voice again, calling him in for yūshoku, dinner, his shirt was soaked in sweat, his knees were skinned and scratched up, and his face was covered in dust and smeared with dirt.
And despite feeling like a foreigner, at the dimly lit table, Shidou feels the same smile spread across his face.
____________________________________
“¿Podemos tener el balón? (Can we have the ball?)” One of the elementary school students asks, their small voice ringing through the silence of the air.
Shidou blinks for a second, watching as the child’s foot reaches out towards the ball. His eyes catch onto the makeshift goal behind them: a boxed-out section of the street marked by assorted stones, and it feels like he’s been transported somewhere from the past where everything was black and white except the color of Sae’s eyes and the light of the sun’s curvature on their cheeks. The thought of it is so far away, but at that moment, it felt so near.
“Ah-right.”
Finally, his foot lightly taps the side of the ball, sending it rolling back towards the group of kids. The kids’ faces brighten up, and they immediately fall back into their game, turning back to their own alleyway.
Except for one.
He’s the smallest out of the group, maybe five or six, his dark hair sticking up in small, fluffy tufts. He doesn’t follow the ball. Instead, he watches the three foreigners with wide-eyed wonder, the same childlike glint to his eye that Shidou found…familiar?
“¿Necesitáis ayuda? (Do you need help?)” The small voice says.
Aiku sighs.
“Gracias,” he mutters, defeated, and hands his phone over for translation.
The kid holds the phone carefully with both hands, as if it were a priceless artifact. He speaks slowly into the mic, and the automated voice of the translator chimes brightly in response.
“¿Estáis buscando algo? ¿Un hotel? Puedo mostraros. (Are you looking for something? A hotel? I can show you.)”
Sendou’s eyes immediately wash over with much-needed relief. “Yes, sí, sí,” he says, nodding and clasping his hands together gratefully.
The kid laughs and gestures for them to follow.
The group trails behind: three practically grown men tagging along with a five-year-old who knew the streets better than they did. At the end of the block, the kid finally stops and points to an old building with chipped paint and a flickering sign that reads “HOSTAL DE FLORES.”
Shidou squints. “Is that ours?”
Aiku rechecks the reservation email. “Yeah. That’s the one.”
The kid grins wide enough to reveal his chipped tooth as a parting note. As he waves both of his arms happily, something about the teal-ish glint in his eyes reminds Shidou of the someone from his own childhood happiness.
____________________________________
After dragging their luggage up two flights of stairs, each step sounding louder than the last, Aiku finally reaches the faded door marked 303, fumbles with the door lock, and reveals their hotel room.
A bunk bed is shoved against the left wall, with a light yellow quilt with pilled fabric that lies on top of both beds. To the left is a small television set, and a worn-out couch is pressed against the right side of the wall. Behind it is a small desk with a single window, showing just a sliver of the beautiful Spanish skyline: a watercolor of orange and purple that had long faded away into pitch black.
Shidou sets his guitar case at his feet. Sendou immediately drops the two backpacks he was carrying all this time with a thud.
“Home sweet home,” Sendou deadpans.
He kicks the base of the bunk bed lightly. The entire structure shakes. “This thing is not going to hold me up in my sleep.”
Aiku tosses the room key onto the desk carelessly. “Well, we don’t have any other money. So, unless you want to sleep in the street, this is what it is.”
He sets down his bags, too, then slips off his shoes and collapses on the bottom bunk. Sendou does the same, scaling up the bed’s ladder and flopping onto the stiff mattress. Shidou simply lies down on the couch. For a moment, the three of them lie face up in the silence of the cramped room.
Then, Shidou snorts.
Aiku looks over. “What.”
Shidou grins stupidly.
“Guys…we’re in Spain.”
Sendou lets out a soft laugh. “Holy shit…we actually are.”
Shidou collapses again, the smile still lingering on his face. “We’re on tour!”
“It’s not a tour,” Aiku tries to reprimand, but then, because exhaustion does weird things to people, Aiku can’t help but dissolve into laughter midway.
Sendou lies on his stomach and sticks his face over the edge. “Think about it: like two years ago, we were still rehearsing on that stupid rooftop next to the AC unit.”
“And now,” Shidou spreads his arms wide, “We’re international sensations!”
Aiku tries to roll his eyes, but he can’t help the smile that spreads on his face.
“Don’t get the fame into your head just yet. We haven’t even performed yet. We don’t even have a car.”
“Worth it,” Sendou and Shidou say instantaneously, then Shidou bursts into a fit of laughter.
Then Sendou starts laughing too.
Then Aiku starts laughing along with them.
And all three of them are laughing hysterically at the same time, until giggles and sputters fill the small room. It’s not even about something specific. It’s just…everything hit them, all at once. The flight, the blistering heat, the broken Spanish. The fact that they have no car, no plan, and barely a big enough hotel room to stay in…but still…
They’re actually here.
The laughter dies down after a while. Sendou’s breathing slows, and Shidou’s not sure if he’s still awake or not. Despite being tired, Aiku lifts himself to the bathroom to at least clean up before bed.
Meanwhile, Shidou rolls over onto his stomach, grabs his phone, and opens his messages.
Rinrin <3: Did you land yet
Rinrin <3: Shidou
Through the exhilaration, Shidou feels himself smile.
His hands curve around his phone, and he types back a yes.