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"Haaah," in the quiet of the private bar, Nino lets out an exasperated sigh, running one hand through her hair as she stares determinedly at the salt and pepper on the pad of her index finger from the rim of her glass, pointedly ignoring the man at her side.
"Nino, don't be like that..." Hikaru hums, pleased from his place perched on the bar stool next to hers as he leans directly into her line of sight. She looks away from his wine flushed face with a scoff and he mockingly pouts at her, like a child.
"You're drunk, Kamiki-san," she says with a huff, flicking her eyes away from his hazy ones. "Weren't you just complaining about all these private parties? My, how hypocritical of you." Her tone is snappy, but with his dark eyes dazed, the longer hair, the flush on his pretty face....
It's hard, not to think of Ai.
"'M not drunk," he mumbles, clearly drunk. He leans back to drink from his wine glass again, before insistently leaning into her space, smiling widely and oh so wrong to her eyes. His smiles are always so practiced and perfect. So mocking, a faint sense of condescension in every quirk of his lips— not just directed at her, but at everyone he meets. Like he knows something they don't, like he's seen something they haven't.
And he has. They both know he has. But that's seperate from this. Nino doesn't know how to handle this smile of his, a loose one, like he doesn't care how she sees him. It irritates her beyond any reason she can name.
"You are," The words snap out again, with more venom before and perhaps Hikaru can sense it, because the man leans back again, not exactly moving out of her space, but tilting backwards, his eyes meeting hers and she—
—looks away.
Whatever is in those eyes, when he's like this, she doesn't want to see it. Between them, earnestness has no place. She lost that right a long time ago and she's not entirely certain that Hikaru ever had it, when it came to her.
Knocking back her drink, Nino loosely plops the empty glass back on the coaster, the burn of alcohol from the mixed drink she's long forgotten the name of distracting her from the situation as a whole.
"Do you like the drink? I thought it suited you," Hikaru murmurs and Nino once again sighs. She can hear the way he laughs, low and amused at her exasperation and she wants to press her fingers against his lips until he stops laughing.
"It's fine," she says, curt and short. "Kamiki-san has good taste in drinks. A skillful choice." His laughter doesn't stop but it does slow, like she struck him.
"It's a skill~" He shoots back, and he leans forward to try and meet her eyes as she tilts her head back further to avoid him. "You would know, if you hadn't left the industry."
Hah. Left. Like there was any choice for a washed up idol like her. She finally meets his gaze with a frosty glare of her own, and nearly lets loose the irritated scream building in her throat with the smirk he sends her way. Hah. That was his goal all along, huh.
He knows all too well, the circumstances that forced her out of the industry.
He caused them after all.
"So what do you think?" Hikaru abruptly changes the subject, voice gentle and questioning. Bringing them back to the original conversation. The decision to kill Yura Katayose.
To kill Ai's light, again.
"You know my answer," She wishes she hadn't finished her drink.
"Yes," he agrees and says nothing else. Hah. What a stupid question to ask. Yet he asks it everytime, even if they haven't exactly done this often.
Nino starts tapping her finger on the table, in a beat neither she nor him will acknowledge, even if they both recognise the song she is tapping out on the table. It's a nervous fidget, one she hasn't entirely grown out of. Hikaru's eyes flick towards the beat, and she doesn't bother stopping.
She hasn't known him to have any tells like this, though perhaps that in itself is a sign of his nervousness. He grows calm and still, just like Ai did. Smiled just like she did, as if he could smooth everything over when she tapped and fidgeted and lashed out.
Ai was trying to love. She doesn't know what Hikaru is trying to do, when he makes the same smile Ai did.
"Do you care for her?" Nino doesn't bother even feeling bad about the question. Not that she can see Hikaru's reaction to it. Her eyes are once again locked firmly on her empty glass.
"Katayose-san? She's alright." Hikaru takes a sip of his half empty wine glass and she knows without seeing that he isn't looking at her.
"You did spend quite a lot of time with her."
"So?" Nino can hear the calm, genial, unbothered smile in his voice. Like it didn't matter to him, any of it.
It makes her want to wrap her hands around the delicate lines of his throat, to see them bruise under her hands, as he chokes on his carefully spoken words. To see him lose his composure, for once, for once, so that she isn't the recepient of all their lies.
But it wouldn't do anything.
Even if she reaches out, slams the glass into his head, bruises his throat, shoots him, tosses him off a mountain— it wouldn't matter. Just like it wouldn't matter with Ai.
She couldn't hurt them. She could barely touch them in a way that would matter. To her and to them. Ai was untouchable. Hikaru was unreachable.
Ai lied all the time but she never lied about wanting to love.
Perhaps if Nino was inclined to, she'd know what Hikaru's gestures are. The way he talks to those with Ai's light but seeks her out. How he gathers their life in his hands, a hand outstretched.
She's like Ai, but not even close enough to be a pale imitation. Hikaru is too much of one, too much of Ai's light suffused into his skin.
She would know that where Ai loved them, Hikaru wanted to be loved. She wanted to be loved. By Ai. By everyone.
If she was so inclined.
But Nino was forever stuck in their shadow.
So she just sighs. Gestures at the bartender again.
"Order me another one, would you?"
A pause.
The air turns— not cold. The air conditioned atmosphere of the bar is nowhere near the freezing absence of Ai's presence. But Nino can recognise when Hikaru truly recedes, stops trying to talk to her.
"Of course," Kamiki-san says. "Fuyuko-san." There's none of that manufactured haze, no looseness in his tone.
When she meets his clear eyes again, they're both smiling.