Chapter Text
This was the first lesson Kanade Yoisaki had attended in the whole year. Granted, she had only been at this high school - Miyamasuzaka specifically - for the whopping amount of a day, and it was summer - but she couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed.
She remembered her grandmother's words, as she squirmed in a hospital gown:
“Kanade, dear,” She smiled weakly, “ I can't bear to see you go down the same path as your father-”
“This could have been so much worse” her grandmother went on, “But we can't ignore that you collapsed again-”
But what else did Kanade have to offer anyone except for her gift, as he called it- who cared how she lived as long as she was using it for the one thing it should be used for?
Kanade’s grandmother shook her head, looking mournful, while also simultaneously pushing a teenage girl in front of Kanade.
Brown hair pulled into a low ponytail that had clearly been chewed, slender frame, practical apple-scented clothing - oh. Kanade’s grandmother really had made true on her threat to get a housekeeper. Kanade even knew her name - Honami or something. She had been around for a while, but Kanade had been too lost in her music to remember how often she came. Still, a weird job for a girl her age.
“She's a little younger than you and I hired her to clean up the place a bit a while ago-” Honami shuffled a little as Kanade’s grandmother waxed poetic about the possibility she had saved Kanade’s life (how dare she, Kanade bit back).
“You’ll be going to the same school when you recover enough-”
No.
“Don't look at me like, dear” Kanade's grandmother trilled. “You already have a friend,”
Honami bristled. Kanade couldn't even bring herself to care.
“...and then you'll have a routine where you're out of the house- you'll be thanking me later.”
Kanade sighed, letting whatever was within her dispel. She certainly would not thank anyone.
Her circle on the internet had taken to almost inactivity soon after learning of her collapse, citing her need for ‘recovery’. The only thing she could ever offer anyone was her music, so she supposed that made sense in some aspects, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they had just left her.
Besides, she had the choice between living her usual lifestyle, albeit under her grandmother's roof (who wouldn't allow that), or going to school...
“I'm not throwing you in the deep end, okay?” she recalled, mentally drawing up her grandmother's soft expression, “Miyamasuzaka has a credits based course - that'll cut you some slack…”
She stared at the teacher. He was boring, and she would have much rather worked out the worksheet she'd been given in her own time. At any rate, kanade was itching to go back to her keyboard, and compose, compose, compose.
***
It was also Rui Kamishiro's first day of high school. He, however, had moved to Kamiyama, and was overwhelmed.
People were talking about him - that's why he had moved to begin with, just to make it stop. But it wasn't bad talking (probably), an important distinction, he had told himself. He couldn't do anything about it - their stares wandered across his spine, flooding through any chinks in whatever poor defense he had.
He was a showman, but this was no show.
“What in the hell is so important that you have to talk to me for the first time in over a year for it?” Mizuki barked.
“Aha… It's a bit complicated - First and foremost - I am sorry.”
“What happened to me and you against everything else? You can’t just get me through a year and while you just disappear for another-”
She glared, “and THEN just resurface hoping to pick stuff up like nothing happened-"
“I know-”
“No you don’t!”
Rui visibly deflated, “Just let me explain-”
“What do you want from me anyway? You can leave it right now cos’ you're not getting a bit of it.”
Mizuki stomped off, leaving Rui alone. What a terrific way to start his school life.
Not that the man had many, but he hadn’t talked to the two friends he had had in a long time. It was not rocket science to understand that this was a rather cruel thing to do. Rocket science was easier to explain than people. The roof was now empty, for the one person who had got him through his last year of middle school had simply shook her head and ran off. His fault, that was.
He looked around, hands behind his head against the linked chain fence.
“Truly an outcast amongst outcasts,” he murmured in the heat, before he could stop himself.
***
Hinomori Shizuku clacked her tongue and made sure to stand perfectly erect in the stupid four-inch heels she had been forced to wear. She smoothed her skirt (for it was one of about two things she enjoyed in her work), and smiled for the camera. Anything for the fans. She'd always felt self-conscious doing the whole pouty, glaring, smiling thing she had, but if it made her perfect then so be it.
“Look this way please…” the photographer said,
She was an idol. A perfect idol. Something to be morphed to expectation and molded into a god or a sparkling teenage girl.
“Yes that's it-”
She'd recently discovered the line between herself and her persona was harder and harder to spot, because it appeared that one of them had to go. She was messing up for the sake of it, Shizuku supposed, and whenever ‘it’ did surface she could only push it down, for whoever her true self was clearly wasn't good enough if she couldn't be an idol in it.
***
Honami lifted out a hand from underneath the bus stop, to feel the rain. No umbrella. She decided to run, being late for class was the worst case scenario. She didn't want to be alone with her thoughts.
You already have a new friend - The old woman's words kept spinning around her head. Maybe she'd have to quit her job. She couldn't call Yoisaki that- what type of friend let her work half to death? Not once, but twice - and Honami wouldn't be surprised if she'd fainted before, woke up, and logged back onto her pc. She had been spoiled, in childhood, with three girls who still meant the world to her that doted on her every need. That was what friendship was, not the borderline acknowledgement.
It had gotten better though. Kanade did occasionally speak to her - she was shy and weirdly polite, and asked mildly intrusive questions.
“Honami-chan!” Are you alright?”
Honami knew she hadn't seen Hinomori Shizuku in years (her sister was precious to them both), but they'd rekindled somewhat after joining the same committee in school. She was seriously closer to Shizuku than she was to Shiho, but nothing was going to go back to the way it did.
“You alright? I'm going to run to my next job - you know what I'm like - but-”
She broke all semblance of maturity as she spotted a girl with long blonde twin tails.
Oh no.
“Saki-chan! I didn't know you were coming back! Ahh I'm so pleased for you!”
The pair kept hugging each other, with Shizuku gesturing for Honami to join in.
“Yeah! I got the all clear - finally! I know it sounds kinda stupid, but it'd be so cool to actually get that band I said we'd have as kids up and running, you know?”
Of course we should do this again! We'll practice again tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and beyond!
“That's lovely!” Shizuku cried, hugging the pair tighter.
Honami smiled, trying to leave the cave.
“Hmm, on that note-” Saki trilled, beaming, “would you like to be the second official member of the revived leo/need?”
“I-I would love to,” Honami lied, “But, uh,”
She couldn't go through all that again. Not with those girls. Not with the memories of middle school. They wouldn't take her back, not after all that. Everybody had changed too much. It would never be the same.
“I'm already in one.”
***
The music practice room was the closest thing Kanade could muster to a compromise. She could compose here, and make good use of a better quality synthesizer. All the equipment her Dad had once owned was a little outdated, which reflected him perfectly.
She sat down, legs aching, and began.
Kanade wasn't aware whether it was the promise of better equipment, the new scenery, or the fact she just needed an escape in this expensive hellhole, but she did not notice a tall girl opening the door.
“Sensei, I apologise for my tardiness!”
Kanade, although startled, doubted there were any lessons at all in this broom cupboard. She slammed down her laptop screen and decided to speak, as she could guess that the girl needed directions. Which was the best thing to ask of a girl who hadn't even finished her first day.
“No - I-I - sorry?,” her voice was abnormally crackly from weeks of disuse.
"My deepest apologies for bothering you - although - you're in my class!” The girl had professionally styled hair in a thick waterfall down her back. It explained where she had been.
“Huh?”
The girl pointed at some scrap of paper poking out of Kanade's heavy bag.
“O-oh?” This was too much to handle - talking to this girl felt about as difficult as walking into the sun - they were both too bright.
“Hinomori Shizuku, You may refer to me whatever you'd prefer,” she turned to leave, “That piece you were playing? It was really pretty!”
For some reason the girl bounced up near the end of the sentence, and immediately stared at the floor, as if trying to stop herself.
Kanade groaned, and immediately clapped her hands over her mouth, too, for a different reason. That was rude.
“I, uh, sorry. ‘Pretty’ just isn't good enough for what I’m making this piece for.”
“Although I'm unable to say I’ve heard of you-”
“Kanade is fine,”
“Kanade-chan, that explains why you're in the credits course!!”
Shizuku immediately straightened her spine, “Ah! My intention was never to insult-”
Kanade liked her and she didn't know why.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll walk you to your class,” Kanade mumbled, “I might as well turn up too-”
***
This was the second apology Rui had prepared for today.
“Nene-” he started, only to be cut off, startled by a memory of almost two years ago.
Hehe. It's nice of you to invite me, but there's no need to pity me. I'm doing okay on my own, and it's for the best anyway.
Before that, their conversations were sporadic and short, and after that they just hadn't spoken, save for the occasional nod in the street. Rui wasn't even sure Nene had been informed that he was going to be attending Kamiyama.
“I thought- that -”
Nene looked confused and unconcerned.
“I know I said I'd be fine on my own from now on, but I think I've proven myself wrong,”
“Okay,”
“I-” He couldn't ask for her back.
That would sound desperate. That would be cruel. Rui was not the only person who must have had a hard time during middle school. He heard Nene had left the theatre troupe she had once been all too happy to join.
“I'm sorry,” he couldn't find the words to say anything more, although selfishly he hoped Nene would embrace him and they'd stop leaving their friendship at a standstill.
“Okay,”
And then Nene walked away. As Rui should have expected.
He left school without speaking a word to anyone, but again people were speaking about him. He typed up a script on the subway. He entered his house, gathered his things, and left to make a show. He finalised his script on the subway.
***
Shizuku didn't want to do her catch-up maths work. She wanted to do normal maths work, not copy out whole methods from a textbook. She wanted to have been able to attend her club more often, as well, but she had to finish this section or she'd have to withdraw from every extracurricular held in school for a while.
“Is that right?” Kanade asked, who had no qualms about missing any of her lessons, which would surely catch up to her eventually.
“I think so,”
Almost an hour later, they left school. The weather felt consistently warm now they were past the rainy season. Idol festival season. They took a shortcut through a shopping mall (probably anyway, Shizuku was just following Kanade, and who knew what she thought?)
There was a bright burst of confetti from behind them.
It had come from a tall man and he had gadgets. Contraptions. Was this an advertisement? Shizuku stared at his clothing - Kamiyama, like Tsukasa, he couldn't be much older. Nobody would hire an odd looking teenager to wander around.
The man began to tell a story. “Once upon a time, there was a young alchemist,”
He spoke softly, yet at a volume that could be heard in the crowd. Although both Shizuku and Kanade missed their chance to leave, neither minded.
“The alchemist could turn anything into gold. He worked, day and night to achieve this, wondering when he would finally make enough to be accepted by someone else”
His robots performed the story not for him but with him. They knew how to fill the limited space they were afforded, and the man addressed everyone, despite having nobody watching.
“One day, he decided that the best way to do this would be to move to another village entirely. Although there were a couple people who opposed his decision, the alchemist couldn't wait to be set free, meet someone else like him, even if he already had one,”
He had garnered two very interested viewers, however.
“Unfortunately, the next village was full of cruel people who could make gold but had no interest at all in sharing it.”
The man walked closer towards them, voice quieter, with more intense eye contact, because they were a part of his story.
“The alchemist had once thought that maybe he could be at home with these people, but it seemed that even those like him were too different,”
The man seemed barely able to speak here, as if he was telling us a secret that could tear him apart.
“When he finally went back, head bowed with shame, he realised that he had not been alone after all.”
He looked up, sealing his gaze in the sky,
“But of course, the alchemist did not know how good he had had it before he left-”
This would have been a solemn, slow end marked by applause if a security guard did not start to chase him for the copious litter of streamers he had left in his wake. His instruments folded up with a snap, and he left as quickly as he had started.
Kanade had an idea.