Chapter Text
A quiet epiphany strikes him on an utterly mundane Tuesday afternoon, staring at the backside of Tsukasa’s spectacularly round head during a quiz. He’s already finished with his worksheet—finished about ten minutes after their teacher said “begin,” actually—but his star’s still diligently working at it, grumbling and groaning and tapping his pencil against his temple.
He makes a lot of noises. A lot of very goofy sounds to relay to his audience what he’s feeling at any given time. Distinctive verbalizations that mean, “I’m thinking very hard right now so please don’t interrupt me,” or “I’m working very hard right now so please don’t interrupt me,” or “I’m very busy pretending to be mad right now so please don’t interrupt me,” that Rui’s memorized and put to rote. And despite all those many many noises, even the ones he’s listening to right now, he realizes abruptly that he doesn’t actually hear Tsukasa laugh that often.
Of course, he hears him preen. Loud, bellowing laughter that’s distinctly practiced, each breath punchy and enunciated so perfectly that it seems to magnetically attract attention towards his star actor. He sees him smile, bright and blinding and effortlessly confident. Tsukasa pulls out those eye-catching performances at the drop of a hat, cycling through comedic faces, smiles and tears and pouting irritation, as easily as he breathes.
Does he smile fondly at the silly antics of their little theater troupe? Yes, indeed he does. Does he exhale loudly, when Emu drags him into yet another spontaneous situation? Another yes. Does he laugh at jokes? No, not particularly. Not that anyone in their group really cracks jokes in the first place. They rely mostly on well-timed quips and situational comedy. But he can’t actually recall a single time in recent memory that he’s heard Tsukasa do anything more than chuff like a horse at any rambunctious happenings.
He’s used to it, of course, because he considers himself decently well-versed in Tsukasaisms. The longer he thinks about it, though, and the longer he stares at and memorizes the curve of his troupe leader’s skull and the way some of his hairs curl like he hadn’t quite managed to iron them down properly, he realizes that it’s strangely incongruous with the person Tsukasa portrays himself as. Like a living, breathing contradiction, a flaw in the tautology he tries to paint. He’s full of all sorts of contradictions like these, and that’s the core of this epiphany he stumbles upon.
It's not as if this is a new thing, either. He's always known that Tsukasa was rife with these sorts of paradoxes. It’s just that he’s seen more of these contradictions, recently. Had them shoved in his face while watching him shave away his soul on stage. It’s hard to put it out of mind, and so they grab his attention when he sees them.
Said logical fallacy finally scribbles down the last answer with a raised pencil and a subdued-yet-clearly-audible “aha!” before setting his writing implement down on the table with a definitive click. He leans back in his chair, clearly satisfied by his own intellect, and Rui’s certain without looking that a particularly smug grin is painted across his face. What a strange person he is. Most people hesitate to outwardly express their feelings when nobody’s watching, and yet Tsukasa always seems to defy common sense at every turn.
He used to think that he acted like that to garner attention, but he’s come to realize that Tsukasa does it purely for the love of the game, as they say. He doesn’t care if people watch him at all. He’ll do it anyways, even if nobody’s around.
What a strange, wonderful person to be in the company of. Rui smiles to himself quietly, the foreboding thoughts from earlier pushed out of his mind as Tsukasa starts to grow increasingly restless in his seat. His foot’s bouncing right now, and he’s crossed and uncrossed his arms about three times in the last five minutes. There’s still some more time before class lets out to lunch, after all, and Tsukasa’s always hungry right about now.
“Tenma,” their teacher finally says with an all-encompassing exasperation that all of Kamiyama’s faculty seem to harbor towards them. “If you can’t keep it down, go to the bathroom.”
Tsukasa squawks out a stammered apology, ears scarlet as he stops shifting around and sits ramrod straight in his seat. Rui laughs quietly, and wordlessly continues cataloguing whatever inconsistencies he can observe.
When class finally lets out for lunch, Tsukasa rises from his chair with remarkably articulated movements. He stands crisply, pushing his chair in with the same motion. Then he pivots on his heel, pathing straight towards Rui’s desk like a man on a mission. And Tsukasa always is, to be perfectly clear—he’s always on one mission or another because despite being the troupe leader of a band of imagineers (not to co-opt the turn of phrase, but surely a multi-billion dollar conglomerate will hardly mind the transgression) and the sole catalyst of an entire pocket dimension that surpasses their wildest fantasies, he’s remarkably incapable of expending his precious energy on frivolities. He doesn’t meander when he can run, and he doesn’t stop to smell the flowers.
Rui turns up to him as he approaches, gaze soft, a warm, knowing grin creeping up on his face. “How do you think you did on that quiz, Tsukasa-kun?”
Tsukasa puffs hot air out his nose and makes one of his pencils roll across his desk. He chuckles in the back of his throat, an itchy smile making a mess of his dignified face, and Rui finds it all delightfully fun to watch from his place in the front row.
“An excellent question, Rui. I’ll have you know…”
He slams his hands on Rui’s desk, leaning in, beaming. Rui doesn’t pull away, but he does quietly go “oh my,” under his breath. He’s really quite close right now. Close enough that he can smell his floral shampoo. Tsukasa doesn’t usually like being so close to people, he’s noticed, but he sometimes seems to make an exception when it’s his director’s personal space he’s intruding on. Another weird contradiction.
“I STUDIED ALL THE CORRECT SUBJECTS!!” He shouts. “Your advice was right on the mark, Rui! As expected of my director! You’ve pulled me away from the precipice of failure, yet again!”
Rui only smiles wider. “All I really did was point you in the right direction… but I’m glad I could help, Tsukasa-kun.”
He thinks his star might be underselling himself, though. He’s known for a while, but he’s a surprisingly intelligent person for someone so criminally dense and lacking in tact. He picks up new topics quickly, and his academic skills aren’t actually lacking. His near scrape with repeating the grade last year was largely because Tsukasa himself defies the laws of physics with shocking regularity. Can a perpetual motion machine really truly come to comprehend conservation of energy when it exists solely to subvert it? No, not really. In the same way, a man being blown out of a cannon will struggle to calculate his velocity and acceleration on his journey to the stars. And this is absolutely not Rui’s fault.
Tsukasa returns his hands to his side, where they rest proudly on his hips. Rui’s eyes linger on the taut, sun-kissed skin stretched across his knuckles before lifting up to his face again.
“With you at my side,” Tsukasa says, and he’s sure the grin on his face pulls wider, “I’m sure this year will be a breeze! What a relief we’re in the same class.”
Rui chuckles. “Oh? That’s not the attitude I would expect from a member of the disciplinary committee. What happened to setting an example for your fellow students?”
He’s a fascinating mess of inconsistencies. Despite everything he says and does, Tsukasa, he’s noted, doesn’t seem to actually care about school at all. He puts on a good show of it, of course, because Tsukasa fanatically loves following rules and directions. Wash your hands for thirty seconds. Face the person you’re speaking to and maintain solid (and a little bit too much) eye contact. Don’t speak when you have food in your mouth. A student’s duty is to their education, first and foremost, except he regularly seems to forget that rule when a show is on the line. He would never admit it for himself, of course, but Rui’s seen firsthand, and with great amusement, the way his motivation withers when he comes across a subject he resolutely has zero interest in.
If anything, Rui finds it impressive that he’s managed to make it this far with such surface level enthusiasm for academia. He had the opportunity to glance over his other class grades during that final mad dash to pass his second year, but he was consistently above average in most of his other subjects– so the natural conclusion from his observations and those occasional Freudian slips is that his current academic performance might just be the result of chronic coasting and cramming.
Which is testament to his underutilized smarts, really, and he would never judge a fellow coaster. He just never imagined it would be his ever so disciplined troupe leader, of all people.
Tsukasa barks like a dog. “What!? No! No, don’t frame it that way! You’re intentionally misrepresenting me in a court of law! This is defamation! Take that back!”
What? Oh, sure. They’re in court now. He can’t help but laugh. “The plaintiff hasn’t offered substantial evidence to suggest that my accusation is untrue, though.”
“Because you’re blatantly twisting my words! I was just saying that you– Rui!! You know what I was trying to say!!”
He likes the way he gives up on trying to defend himself and resorts to whining, too. He does know what he was trying to say, but he likes messing with him. Like a preschooler with a crush, Nene had said once. Grow up.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe he should. Rui laughs anyway, pushing his seat back to stand. “Well, if the plaintiff has no further claims, the defendant has to go buy a chicken salad sandwich. Can court be adjourned?”
Tsukasa’s brows furrow into two little unimpressed mounds. “Have you considered buying something you can actually eat?”
Rui’s lips quirk up into a grin, and he waves at his star as he heads out of the classroom. “I’ll see you on the rooftop, Tsukasa-kun.”
“RUI!! I’M NOT TRADING LUNCHES TODAY!!”
He does, in the end. Tsukasa sets down the wrapper of his chicken salad sandwich as Rui polishes off the last of his homemade bento, placing his palms together and offering his thanks for the meal. This is another trait that he finds funny about Tsukasa— namely that his bark is so, so much worse than his bite. He’ll complain and refuse and put up a defiant stink, but it never sincerely amounts to anything.
“They put too much mayonnaise in it,” he grumbles. “There’s not usually that much mayonnaise.”
“Oh?” Rui says, closing the lid and tucking Tsukasa’s chopsticks back in their little case. “I picked that one because it seemed saucier than its friends. You usually prefer it that way, don’t you?”
He frowns a little, disgruntled. “Well, yes, but… There was just too much. It overpowered the flavor of the chicken entirely.”
A beat of silence passes. Rui waits patiently, smiling at him.
“Wait!” There it is. “Don’t pick them out based on my preferences! It’s like you’re trying to steal my lunch!!”
Which he is. To be clear. Because he’s a preschooler with a crush.
“I’d never,” Rui says, lying, proceeding to make up more bullshit that’s easily disproven by recalling a conversation from thirty minutes ago. “They just didn’t have anything else by the time I got there, likely because I was too busy being held up in a courtroom.”
Tsukasa does not in fact remember the conversation from thirty minutes ago and fails to call him out on his bullshit. “For unlawful and gross misconduct, you foul perpetrator! You deserved it!”
“That’s not what I was being charged with earlier. I never imagined I’d be held in contempt by a kangaroo court…”
Rui leans against the chainlink fence of the rooftop with his legs crossed, watching Tsukasa’s expressions change with rapt, fond attention as they stroll through small talk and rapidly changing topics. He makes so many faces, all unique, and he couldn’t possibly stand to miss a single one.
But, inevitably, they make their way back to shows, as they always do. Now that they’re an independent troupe, they’ve both been making strides to increase their backlog of original productions. Shows for the present, shows for the future, shows to revisit and revamp—this one in particular is a show that Tsukasa supposedly has had in mind for a while, but hadn’t thought to utilize for their shows at Phoenix Wonderland. Too complex for an audience of mostly children, he’d said, and Rui certainly agrees after reading the first draft.
It’s a period piece centered around two twins, which is a rarity for Tsukasa despite his deeply ingrained appreciation for stories centered around familial love (which is another odd inconsistency that he notes). They were born in an era in which a prophecy had heralded tragedy following the birth of twins, and so one was summarily imprisoned in a dark cellar while the other lived in blissful ignorance of the other’s suffering. The unfortunate brother breaks free of his chains and massacres the townspeople, leading to his brother going off on a journey to hunt him down and avenge his friends.
He’d thought, upon reading the synopsis and knowing Tsukasa’s appreciation for happy endings, that it would end with the two brothers reconciling, somehow. That the fortunate brother would understand what his twin went through, and embark with him on a journey of atonement.
It does not. The fortunate brother kills his twin in cold blood.
And the story ends there.
That in itself is fine. Tragic stories are just as compelling as comedies, after all. Rui has a fondness for them, but even this one is a bit too nihilistic for his taste.
“...Tsukasa-kun,” he starts. “I think we need to include at least one flashback scene for the audience to understand Magatsuboshi’s background.”
“Hmmmghh,” Tsukasa says, loudly announcing his displeasure to make sure everybody (Rui) is acutely aware of just how hard he’s thinking, “Hmmmmmmghh. Do you? I feel it undercuts the momentum of the second act.”
“I understand that,” Rui replies. “That was a concern I had myself, but… It’s necessary to understand Magatsuboshi’s circumstances. Otherwise, I’m afraid the ending will feel lackluster to our audience.”
He seems disappointed by that. But of course, any storyteller is when they’re told their work is lacking. Rui knows this, but he also knows that there are compromises that neither of them can make if they seek to put on the best show possible.
“...I just can’t agree,” Tsukasa says quietly. “What would we even talk about? How Magatsuboshi felt? That should be obvious, no?”
“It is, considering what your script tells me about the characters,” Rui says, feeling strangely like he needs to be careful about his wording. “But the way this is written, I fear the audience won’t be able to empathize with him at all.”
“Huh?” Tsukasa says, and that single utterance is one of the most confusing things Rui has ever heard come out of his mouth, immediately beaten out by what comes next. “Why should they?”
“...His... setting,” he replies, utterly confounded, “positions him to be a very sympathetic villain, Tsukasa-kun. Don’t you want to capitalize on that?”
“He is?”
Rui blinks and stares at him, dumbfounded. Tsukasa’s eyes are wide and golden, and his expression is unfathomably genuine.
“...Yes?” He replies, voice lilting into an accidental question. “He spent his life in a cellar, Tsukasa-kun.”
“And then he killed all of the townspeople,” he says, like it’s common sense. “He’s a miserable person who takes out his anger on other people, Rui, he’s not intended to be sympathetic.”
Rui’s eyes widen. “He spent his life in a dungeon?”
Tsukasa frowns. “Yes? It was for the best. That’s why tragedy strikes as soon as he escapes.”
This is, most assuredly, odd. It’s definitively strange, and Rui would go as far as to say it’s almost uncharacteristic of him, despite how normally he says it all. Tsukasa loves sympathetic villains, he loves reconciliations, and he loves humanizing even the smallest role. He loves happy endings, and he loves stories that end in smiles. Even in his darker stories, there’s usually a comedic element to it all that acts as a note of finality– a reminder to the audience that there’s still hope to be found.
What could it be, then? What could it be that’s caused this change? He asks the question, but there’s only one possible answer. Paranoia suddenly grips his stomach, and his grip on the lunchbox in his hands tightens.
Tsukasa continues despite Rui’s silence, oblivious to his frantic thoughts. “He was never meant to escape, you realize. He’s the root of the conflict in the story! I do see where you’re coming from, but a story that focuses on Magatsuboshi would be a completely different—,”
The bell chimes before he has a chance to finish, and Tsukasa immediately looks away, gawking. “GWAH! I LOST TRACK OF TIME!! Come on, Rui, we need to get back to class!”
“Oh,” he replies, not quite feeling like it’s his own voice saying it. “Right. Here, Tsukasa-kun. Your lunchbox.”
“Ah, thank you!” Tsukasa says, bright and sunny as he thanks Rui for returning a lunch that was stolen from him. “I appreciate it– Get up now, hurry! We can talk about that script later!”
He doesn’t know if he wants to, and that he feels that way at all makes him wish he could drag a rake through his own intestines.
Just last week, he lived in a world where these contradictions meant nothing. No, they never meant nothing—they meant something to Rui, certainly. They were symbolic of how strange Tsukasa was; how odd he was, how weird he was, how distinctly other he was. He might be the only person in the world who’s more of an oddity than Rui is, and every inconsistency he observed was emblematic of that.
(“Don’t speak to me,” Tsukasa says, gaze clouded and distant. “Just a little further, and I can do it. I can push them over the edge.”)
He thinks, staring at the round backside of Tsukasa’s head as he plugs away at a worksheet Rui hasn’t even looked at, that the apprehension twisting in his gut might be fear. He’s read about it before— it’s similar to how one must feel staring into the uncanny valley. There’s a paradox sitting in front of him whose shadow twists and contorts into something he can’t recognize, and he’s drifting further and further away from what Rui knows.
Maybe he never really tried to know him in the first place. Maybe he always looked away, because it didn’t really matter. He didn’t like him when they first met. He thought he was annoying, just like everybody else did. Maybe he fell for the act, too. Maybe he was the first one to fall.
Now, that paradox is his best friend, and the boy he loves. He’s a boy who’s always, and never laughing. He’s a boy who follows every, and none of the rules. He’s the one that runs ahead, and he’s also the one who waits. He’s further away than he’s ever been, and yet he’s seated right here in front of him.
But Rui is, at his core, a man of science. The unknown is something to be studied and dismantled— and egotistically, he thinks that there may be no one alive better equipped to undertake this task than he is. Nobody has tried to observe him as closely as Rui has, and therefore, he’s the only one who can.
He has the data. He just needs to start figuring out how it all connects. He’ll unwind all of these contradictions and finally learn more about his best friend, several years too late. He’ll lay the truth of the matter bare and see Tsukasa for who he really is, instead of a web of inconsistencies and paradoxes that make up the shape of someone he might know.
Once he does, he’ll be able to understand that story Tsukasa wants to tell. Once he does, he’ll be able to protect his friend from whatever it is that’s twisting his shadow like that. Once he does, he’ll be able to stand his own against the cruel people that would try to turn his best friend into a vacant shell.
Once he does, maybe he’ll know exactly how to make Tsukasa shine the brightest. And then, he won’t be so afraid of him drifting away— because Tsukasa will want to be with him.
What a selfish thought. Is it just for his own gain, in the end? It might be.
But that’s fine by him. If being selfish means knowing more about Tsukasa, then that’s fine. If it means returning half of what he’s been given, he’ll be greedy, he’ll be ugly, he’ll want so much that it’s filthy.
He’ll just start small—because he’s greedy, not courageous. He’ll start, he thinks, staring at the inconsistent curl flipping up on the back of his glimmering, gleaming star’s head, by asking him why it seems like he straightens his hair.