Work Text:
The drama airing during the most coveted evening prime-time slot had been breaking viewership records of late. The following was a portion of tonight's episode:
A narrow interior bathed in cold cobalt light. Rain falling at a slant outside the window, the camera slowly zooming in. Phainon's back, as he stands by the window. He wipes his hands with a handkerchief. As the camera closes in, a dark stain becomes visible, bleeding outward from the edges of what had once been a white handkerchief.
The camera pans slowly, and the silhouette of a body slumped crookedly beneath a chair catches at the edge of the frame. The focus softens over it, then dissolves.
A subtitle appears: The first spring of the 33,550,336th reincarnation. In place of the rain-soaked interior, golden wheat fields fill the screen. Sunlight breaking apart, and a boy on his knees. In his cupped palms, a small bird breathes its last. Tears fall from the boy's eyes and wet the feathers.
"I'm sorry......"
A dissolve back to the present, not long after. A tidy, orderly room beneath warm yellow light.
"I once believed the world had ended over the death of a single bird. But now...… To be honest, I lost count long ago. When the numbers grow too large, people stop calling it grief."
Full shot. Phainon picks up his coat and walks toward the door. He pauses at the handle and turns back. The camera lingers on his profile, and what fills the screen is an expression of cold, complete composure.
"Great work is made not through talent, but through repetition. That, I know better than anyone."
The door closes.
The screen goes dark. Only the rain remains.
That was where the episode ended. A textbook cliffhanger — the art of cutting right where you most want to keep watching. The ending song — a ballad by a celebrated singer, now in its sixth consecutive week at the top of the music charts — began to play alongside a preview of the next episode, but Stelle couldn't bring herself to focus on any of it. The performance Phainon had just delivered, something between madness and a bone-deep chill, had felt so perfectly fitted to him that it left her skin prickling. She sat with her mouth hanging open, still dazed, as the chat began to scroll.
[she's FLOORED lmaooo]
[her jaw literally dropped]
[raccoon completely gone for him lolll]
As the chat implied, Stelle was a fairly well-known streamer. Her handle was ｢Baseball Bat Raccoon｣. Looking at her face alone — quiet and pretty, a little cold around the edges — you might have guessed model before streamer, but the moment she booted up a game, she had a gift for playing in ways that could only be described as unhinged. (In one open-world RPG, she had forgone the main story entirely to rifle through every trash can in every region.) That particular breed of chaos was, somehow, what had made her popular. She occasionally swapped out game streams for drama and film watch-alongs, and of all those, the ones she watched with the most devotion were the ones featuring the actor Phainon.
Phainon. Born Khaslana. White hair with a beautiful texture, compelling blue eyes, an impression so gentle that his eyebrows alone, drooped even slightly, could make him look like a puppy left out in the rain. A tall frame, excellent proportions. The golden sun tattoo on his neck — the finishing touch. An actor in his twenties who had secured both mainstream appeal and a devoted core fandom. Stelle was an enormous fan of his. Or so it appeared, ｢to the public.｣
Which made sense, given that openly announcing that Phainon and Stelle were a couple was, all things considered, out of the question.
Yes. The two of them were together. The how and how-fast of it all could be set aside for now; the only thing that needed to be understood was this: they were a long-standing, devoted couple. Stelle, who kept a certain distance from most people but was unfailingly warm toward the ones she claimed as her own. Phainon, who gave everything to the person he had fallen for. It went without saying that they kept the relationship private, for the sake of their respective careers. And so whenever Stelle hosted a watch-along, she worked hard to frame her singular focus on Phainon's projects as mere ｢fan enthusiasm｣ — but......
When the performance was this impossibly, chillingly perfect, there was just no hiding the way it made her feel.
Stelle's cheeks had gone hot, and the energy in the chat rose to match. She gave her head a few quick shakes, pulled herself together with visible effort, and clapped her hands twice to reset the mood. She talked through theories about where the next episode might go, broke down the emotional arcs of the characters, and discussed — ostensibly — which awards Phainon might take home at year's end. (Read: confirmed that her boyfriend's career trajectory remained excellent.) By the time all of that was done, the end of her stream slot had arrived. She waved at the camera, cut the connection, and exhaled.
......Her heart was still racing. What was she supposed to do about that.
She stood from her chair to go get a glass of cold water. Living with Phainon, despite the risk of exposure, meant that the apartment felt far too wide and quiet when she was alone in it. It was nearly eleven at night. The lights were off everywhere except the room with her streaming setup, which made the place feel a little eerie. She had spent the last few hours surrounded by the bright, formless noise of a live audience, and now she was alone in the middle of a late-night silence. She missed her boyfriend.
Phainon was probably still at dinner with some industry contacts. The entertainment world wasn't a place where talent alone could carry you very far. You had to keep building relationships, pouring drinks, bowing slightly and saying please take care of me again next time, keeping the network alive. But Phainon was a perfect actor and a perfect boyfriend in equal measure. He would drink just enough not to embarrass himself, and then come home. He would walk in so steadily you'd never guess he'd been drinking at all, and wrap his arms around her from behind. He would press his lips to the nape of her neck, carrying the soft scent of whatever body wash he'd just used......
So she just had to wait. A little longer. Just a little.
Thinking this, Stelle settled onto the sofa. When Phainon was sprawled across it with her, the two of them barely fit; how it could feel this vast right now was beyond her. She tucked herself between the raccoon plushie and the dog plushie — both of them being public figures, merchandise of every conceivable variety existed — and curled into as small a shape as she could manage, which changed nothing. It was nearly eleven at night, and there wasn't a scrap of sunlight in the sky, and the darkened apartment felt like the kind of place where anything could come crawling out of anywhere. She pressed her face into the dog plushie — the one with the little sun mark on its neck — and thought about her boyfriend again.
Apparently, Phainon's character in the drama had been masquerading as an ally of the main cast up until tonight's episode, which marked his turn to the other side. Starting next week, he would appear before the protagonists in a distinctive black-cloaked costume; though she'd also heard that he'd rejoin their side in time for the finale. (The thing about dating an actor was that you inevitably ended up reading their scripts.) Ally, enemy, ally again. The kind of role that was easy to resent — she found herself wondering how Phainon would bring the character to life.
Ah. She'd been thinking too much. Sleep was beginning to pull at her......
Phainon will wake me up when he gets home, she thought, and gave herself over to it.
Dreams move in soft waves, and the body drifts along with them. When Stelle opened her eyes inside the dream, she was lying in a field of golden wheat.
She sat up, rumpled, and looked around. Maybe because it wasn't real, the wheat and the sky had the quality of something drawn in crayon — the lines slightly off, the colors shifting without logic. What kind of dream is this, she was thinking, when she noticed something and stopped short.
The wheat fields. The farmhouses. The windmills. All of it was identical to what she'd seen in the drama. Specifically — it was the exact landscape from tonight's episode, the lost past that Phainon's character had lived through.
Did I get too into it? She laughed a little at herself and stood up carefully, brushing at her skirt. The gold and red ticket that jingled against her chest felt unfamiliar. She wandered through this strange lucid dream, wondering what she might do with it, until she spotted a familiar silhouette.
White hair, full and soft, standing out against the golden field.
Phainon.
Not just over-immersed in the drama, then — apparently she was over-immersed in her boyfriend, too. Stelle smiled and ran toward him. She called out the nickname that worked like a secret code between the two of them.
"Partner!"
Normally he would turn immediately. He would see her running toward him and scoop her up with both arms, press his lips to every part of her face he could reach. I missed you, Partner, he would say, and fold her into something warm. That was Phainon. Her dedicated, attentive boyfriend. But——
──the response was somehow slow.
That was strange. Had he not heard her? Stelle was about to call out again when she noticed something wrong. That black clothing Phainon was wearing — he almost never dressed like that. And why was his neck so pale? Her footsteps gradually slowed. She approached carefully, on her toes, and came to a stop behind a man who was and wasn't her boyfriend. The wind had stopped, directionless. The wheat swayed in a way that felt wrong.
"......Partner?"
She called again. He still didn't turn. Stelle pressed her lips together and forced his name out.
"Phainon."
The man finally turned to look at her. A collar buttoned all the way to the throat. A face with hairline cracks running through it, like a fracture across porcelain. An expression that held nothing that could be called feeling. His face had the same shape as the Phainon she knew — but she could not call this man Phainon.
He looked at her.
Unease moved through Stelle, and she stepped back. Or rather — she tried to step back. With every step she took, the wheat around her caught fire. A single stalk, golden and bright, swept up in flame, collapsed into ash...... and then again, and again, the darkness spreading behind her like a cliff edge, the sky going black. The man who looked like Phainon hadn't moved — but every time Stelle tried to run, the world grew smaller. She looked around frantically. The man opened his mouth.
"Why."
A voice threaded through with grief, with something long suppressed.
"Why did it take you so long to come? Partner."
Oh. That voice.
That's Phainon. It was unmistakably him...... She stared at him, startled, and in that moment he reached out his hand. It came fast — fingers closing around her throat, lifting her off the ground. Eyes that looked up at her the way someone looks at the only thing that could save them: desperate and tender and full of blame, all at once. Suspended in his grip, Stelle gasped for air, clawed at his hand with her nails, thrashed her legs trying to find some way out──
Her vision blurred......
A dark, noise-like wave rolled in and swallowed the dream whole, and what came after was darkness.
She woke up gasping, her whole body damp with cold sweat. A nightmare — no other word for it. She was blinking slowly, trying to gather herself, when she noticed what was right in front of her──
"Partner?"
──Phainon was there. Very close. Close enough that leaning forward even slightly would have meant touching lips. Was she still dreaming? Only moments ago, that same handsome, cold face had been squeezing the life out of her throat. She'd thought she had barely managed to escape it by waking up — but maybe she hadn't gotten away after all. Fear still wrapped around her. She didn't even register the worried look on Phainon's face, and when his hand reached toward her──
──she knocked it away. A sharp, flat sound.
Silence settled over the living room.
It lasted less than three seconds, but in that time, Phainon's expression went through a remarkable number of changes. It deepened with concern, then drained completely white as he registered what she had just done, then his eyebrows fell into a shape like two tildes, and then — his eyes, unmistakably, filled with hurt.
"Ph... Partner......"
"......Oh."
Stelle finally understood that this was real, and opened her mouth to say something — anything. But she was a beat too slow. Phainon spoke first.
"......I don't mind, if it's from you. But — Partner, you're absolutely soaked in cold sweat."
On a surface reading, it was the picture of a considerate boyfriend setting aside his own hurt to worry about the person he loved — but the way he couldn't quite meet her eyes, the way his voice had dropped into something low and overcast...... it was obvious that he was sulking over being pushed away so bluntly. The sight of him, big and quiet and suddenly subdued like a chastened dog, was the kind of thing that made Stelle's heart ache before her own guilt could, so she rushed to explain.
"I had a bit of a frightening dream. That's all."
"What kind of dream?"
"......Mm."
Something like: You were in it, and you grabbed me by the throat and it felt like you were going to kill me — that particular honest answer was not one that even Stelle, the renowned Baseball Bat vigilante, was prepared to give under these circumstances. She went through several attempts at wording as Phainon watched her quietly. His blue eyes moved between her expression and the Phainon dog plushie she was still holding.
"Was I in your dream, by any chance?"
When someone you love presses for the truth, they have a way of cutting through you very gently. Stelle, struck clean through, found she had no answer to give — and Phainon, reading that silence, felt something shift in his expression. There is an old story about the sun: angry at a traveler who refused to remove his cloak, it beat down hotter and hotter out of spite. But the Phainon before her now — her sun — looked as though all the spite had drained clean out of him. His expression was simply empty.
Have I ruined things, Stelle thought, beginning to panic — and then a large hand came toward her. Gentle, the way it curved around her cheek and drew her in toward his chest. She ended up with her face pressed against him before she quite knew how it happened, and found herself closing her eyes without deciding to. A heartbeat, slightly faster than usual. Familiar warmth. A scent she had learned through so many times of being held exactly like this.
This is my Partner. Isn't it.
"I'd rather you weren't afraid of me......"
The words left a silence that said the rest. Even if I took on a role like that. Even if something about my performance blurred together with that image and startled you. The thought of you pulling away from me isn't something I can even imagine. She didn't need him to say any of it. It came through anyway. Stelle smiled, small, from inside his hold. And said:
"I know."
The tension in Phainon's arms released, just slightly. As if he had been waiting for exactly that. He pressed his lips to various parts of her disheveled ash-grey hair, and then said, with a hint of something playful creeping back in:
"So — what exactly did I do in this dream of yours, that has Partner so shaken?"
"Mm."
"......You don't have to tell me."
Some instinct, very much like that of a large and loyal dog, had informed him that hearing the answer would only make things worse — so he withdrew the question with impressive speed. Still tangled together, they tipped sideways onto the sofa. The two plushies dug into her back. Her chest, her whole self, felt full in a way that was almost too much.
She should probably suggest moving to the bedroom, for the sake of her own recovery — but one night like this, falling asleep with the distance between them closed to nothing, didn't seem so bad. Besides, tomorrow was a day off. And Phainon's neck, just visible, had color in it, and the sun tattoo was right there, unmistakably his──
──and Stelle knew, with the certainty of someone held by someone she knew, that nothing like a nightmare could actually reach her here.