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Dinners are more mechanical than Mafuyu remembers. She nods and smiles and responds on cue to her parents' gestures, their questions a conductor’s baton. School’s fine, as always, and of course, she’s working as hard as she can, she’s going to be studying biology and medicine. For them.
Good girl. Her mom breathes frostbite down Mafuyu’s neck from across the table. Good girl.
That smile sandpapers the inside of Mafuyu’s mouth, sudden sensation in the mulch of her mouthful of food. Rice, cucumbers. Fish. She can swallow the food easily, today, and some distant part of her is relieved. Sometimes chewy things are worse for her, and get caught in her throat, or some other part of her just refuses to swallow.
Mafuyu says, I should really get back to studying, as she cleans up her dishes. Tests are coming up. Her voice bubbles as it comes out, she’s speaking underwater. She can’t hear herself.
Are you not hungry, Mafuyu? You've been eating so little recently!
Her stomach churns. No. She’s fine. She’s still full from lunch.
Take care of yourself, study well.
Those words come muffled from her father. Today, he has no mouth, it’s sealed over with skin. And her mother has no eyes, a black bar tapes over them. Her mother turns her head back over to Mafuyu at the sink. She feels like she’s drowning. Her hands can’t feel how hot or cold the soap and water is, though they grip the porcelain bowl harder, until the knuckles turn white.
Don’t waste your time on frivolous things, her mother reminds her. The walls squeeze in on Mafuyu. It’s not worth it if it isn’t useful to your future.
Mafuyu’s answering smile is papery. She knows. Her parents raised her to be good.
She shuts her bedroom door and opens her eyes up in sekai.
Her hands are still shaking. Broken spires of steel reach like fingers towards gray, barren skies. Gray slabs stack here and there, careless footnotes of decor. The world is endless, expansive, vast.
There are no walls here, no pressure. Her breathing comes easier. When she presses her nails into her palms, she feels it. That’s good. She just needs to sit with Miku for a bit before returning, re-collect the segmented parts of her facade, and piece the fragments into something presentable, impenetrable.
Hands of ice brush against her ribs. She ignores them, as she always had before she understood the feelings even existed. She picks a direction and walks. No matter where she goes here, the world bends for her. It’ll bring her to her destination.
Or… so she thought. Instead, she finds Mizuki, leaning against one of those great steel towers with an unreadable expression on their face, gazing up at the sky, before their eyes drift back down to Mafuyu standing a distance away. Surprise draws their eyebrows up.
“Are you okay?” Mafuyu asks. The words are out her mouth before she catches herself, and before she could question why she thought to even ask.
Mizuki laughs, a sudden, bright noise with an easy smile on their face. Sakura petal pink in the gray world. “Am I okay. Are you okay? I haven’t seen you make a face like that in a while.” They pat the ground beside them eagerly. “You wanna sit? I could use some company.”
“Mm.”
Mafuyu’s hands are steadier when she sits down next to them. The pressure in her chest alleviates, less like she’s inhaling oceans every time she breathes.
Mizuki stretches their legs out. “I was talking with Luka right before you came, asking her about how everyone was doing. But then she ups and leaves! In the middle of her sentence!” They huff. “I mean, I guess she felt you coming in, or something, but I thought she would have at least said hi?”
“I didn’t see her.”
“Lukaaaaa,” they groan, head dropping into their hands. “It’s fine, Kanade’s almost done with the new song, so you can see her sooner or later, anyway.”
“Yeah.”
Mizuki fidgets with the sleeve of their school uniform. Come to think of it, they had logged off earlier than usual last night, citing school as the excuse. How long have they been here?
“Ahaha… sorry. I can shut up or leave if you need some space,” they say.
Mafuyu shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Luka wanted them to be with one another, most likely, especially if she hadn’t greeted Mafuyu at all. Her advice tends to be more cryptic than Ena, who scowls at Luka’s back when she thinks the vocaloid isn’t watching, or Mizuki, who looks a pinch exasperated every time, would prefer.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mizuki asks. “I was a little worried when you first came in, but you… seem a little better, now, so…”
“There’s nothing to say. It was just a normal dinner.” It shouldn’t have affected her as it had. She’s had countless dinners with her parents her entire life, why was tonight any different?
Mizuki frowns. “That goes to show your dinners were never normal to begin with…” they cringe, then wave their hand in front of them, physically swiping away their words. “Sorry! I don’t mean to make assumptions or — or sound like I know everything about your home life. It’s just — I thought you had a lot on your plate recently, and… sometimes the pressure gets to you. At least, I know it’d get to me.”
Mafuyu supposes that’s true. It’s been a long week, in between her classwork; testing season is coming up, and her classmates have begun the seasonal, lazy swarm around her desk for support, her club; expectations loaded in every arrow she releases with national competitions are right around the corner, her parents.
She can’t make eye contact with her mother anymore. Every time she tries, vertigo steals her balance, dread waterlogs her insides.
(Her mom’s going to find out about her lies. She’s going to find out that she’s been hiding, and she’s going to be puppeteered and marionetted and never allowed to leave)
Mafuyu’s hands are trembling again. “You might be right. Everyone… always wants something. It takes more energy to give that to them.”
“Hey,” they say softly. Their foot nudges against hers. “Only one more year left before you’re off to college. Hang in there, okay? We’ll always be here for you, so you don’t have to shoulder everything on your own.”
“I know,” Mafuyu says, after a moment.
Having some hazy, distant future to look forward to is foreign, too. Once she’s out of the house, once she’s standing on her own two feet. It’s terrifying, in some regard, not being told what to do or how to function, but the nausea and mounting dread of being in her own household is starting to get harder to bear.
Fractures along a facade, spiderweb injuries along aquarium glass. She touches the panes.
In hindsight, Mizuki, Kanade, and Ena probably gave her the hammer, not that she ever regretted taking the swings.
Mafuyu glances back at Mizuki, still looking like a guilty puppy for bringing up the conversation at all. “Thank you, Mizuki. I think I needed the reminder.”
“Of course!” Their eyes brighten immediately, grin returning, then it takes on that obnoxious, teasing quality that so often irritates Ena. “Heh. I always knew we’d grow on you. We’re too cute to resist.”
“All of you were very persistent.” Even when she didn’t want them to be.
“For a good cause! You’re our lyricist, we couldn’t let you disappear without doing something about it.”
“Is that the only reason why?”
Mizuki rolls their eyes. “You know what I meant. I don’t think any of us wanted someone else in your spot. N25 isn’t N25 without you.”
“Mmm.”
“Am I getting through to you, like, at all?”
“I’m still here,” Mafuyu says. All of her members say that counts for something, so she’ll stay for longer. Mizuki makes a face at her.
“That’s good enough for now. I guess.”
Mafuyu doesn’t know what to make of that response. So instead, she asks, “Why were you in the sekai?”
Mizuki blinks at her, clearly caught off-guard. “Me? Ahhh…”
They hesitate, eyes glancing away from Mafuyu. Their legs cross, then fold together when they remember they're wearing a skirt. Knee bouncing. “Err. I… was… at school. And then I decided to skip.”
They’re utterly terrible at lying, nowadays, squirming underneath the weight of Mafuyu’s stare.
“I’m going to be here for a while. Talk if you want,” Mafuyu says, giving Mizuki the same space they gave to her.
They hunch in on themself, shrinking, shoulders pulled up. “You don’t have to pretend to care. I’m over it now, and it’s — it’s honestly kind of really stupid.”
Mafuyu can make some guesses — in the weeks leading up to Mizuki’s confession, they had been distant, a pre-emptive, ‘just-in-case’ severing of relations should the others not accept them, or even worse, scorn them.
The nightcord server, the sekai, it all felt emptier without Mizuki there. Wrong, a hollowing impossible to ignore. It was just as discomforting as Mafuyu’s innate numbness.
Mafuyu thought the issue had been resolved after Mizuki had told them. Clearly, it hasn’t. The thought of Mizuki hiding away again, of weeks spent in tense voice call silences — ice static pinpricks underneath Mafuyu’s skin.
“I’m interested enough to listen, otherwise I wouldn’t have offered.” Or, maybe she’s ill-suited for comfort. “Kanade and Ena will also be on nightcord in a few hours.”
Mizuki looks distinctly uncomfortable with that reminder. “I wouldn’t want to bother them either, to be honest, but, um, since you’re asking… it’s really dumb though! I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. The people at my school think it’d be better if I dressed ‘normally’, if I didn’t want the attention, and I just… I just overheard some comments. That’s it.”
They hold their breath, shrinking into themself even more. Bracing for something, for an impact. Like the flinch and recoil of the body right before the knuckles meet the jaw, like Mafuyu before family dinners.
Mafuyu feels her mouth pull into a frown. She’s never known Mizuki to be meek, before; it doesn’t suit them at all. “I’m sorry. That sounds difficult.”
It takes another second for the tension in Mizuki’s body to release. They attempt a smile. “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you.”
“... You’re still afraid of being honest with us,” Mafuyu says.
Mizuki cards their hand through their hair, not looking at Mafuyu. “Sorry. Believe me, I’m trying, but it’s — it’s harder than I thought it’d be. I thought I’d be okay after I told everyone, but now I’m just afraid you’ll change your mind if I talk about it too much. Something like that.”
Distantly, she acknowledges the small spike of foreign, red irritation, scrolling up and down her spine, towards faceless strangers who culled Mizuki’s confidence and trust in people. She isolates the emotion away; she’ll study it later. It’s irrelevant and distracting to the conversation at hand.
“Then why do you do it?” Mafuyu asks. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to pretend?”
Mizuki looks at her for a moment, before their mouth pulls into a teasing smile, half-covered by their hand. It’s nothing like them from seconds before. Mizuki is really hard to understand, sometimes. “Oh, I don’t know. Do you think it’s easier to pretend?”
“Our situations aren’t comparable to that extent.”
“Well… I wouldn’t say that.” They lean their weight back on their hands, looking up at the sky. “Maybe it could have been easier. Maybe I wouldn’t have been gossiped about as much, or I could have had more friends. But… I was so tired of trying. I wanted to disappear, and every time I lied it felt like I was setting myself on fire.”
From the bottom of the ocean, atmospheric pressure reaches up to squeeze at Mafuyu’s chest, holds her tight. It aches for reasons she can’t understand.
Mizuki grins, a little lazy, a little resigned. Their eyes glow even brighter in their gray surroundings, midnight fog conceding to a sunrise.
They’re a painting in cloud colors. Fae and mercurial.
Inexplicably, Mafuyu cannot look away.
“It worked out in the end, didn’t it? I met N25, we’re an underground sensation, and I’m the cutest girl in the world. I can take a couple of bad days if it means there’s something good at the end of it.”
“You met us,” Mafuyu echoes.
“Yeah,” they taper into a laugh. “You’re awfully curious, today. What’s got you so invested?”
“I… I don’t know.”
They hold her loneliness in the palm of their hand, the thing Mafuyu still struggles to put pen to paper for, and — and drags it out into the open. They make her hurt sound so simple.
Mafuyu’s chest tightens as Mizuki’s smile becomes more fragile. “That’s okay. One day you will.”
Mizuki seems to belong here, in a way that Mafuyu’s never seen before. It’s like if she looks away for too long, Mizuki would dissolve into the world, and she would never be able to reach them again.
Who made you look like that? Who made you so lonely?
On impulse, Mafuyu closes the distance between them, hand grasping for Mizuki’s. For once, they aren’t teasing, or obnoxious, seeming to understand. They intertwine their fingers, and when they squeeze, it’s a reminder they’re still here with her. They aren’t going to vanish.
“It must have been hard. To find who you are and protect it,” Mafuyu says. “I… I didn’t know that was an option until I met the group.”
The wind doesn’t blow here. The sun doesn’t set. Mizuki stares at her, a little wondrous, and their grip on her hand is starting to become painful, but Mafuyu doesn’t really mind it.
She feels like she’s standing on the edge of something, too. Or at least her body does, with the way her heart pounds in her chest, like if it tries hard enough, even Mizuki could hear her rebellion.
Hammer knocks against aquarium glass.
She waits for something to pounce at her from the dark, that numbness, that dread, for the ocean to pool out from under her feet and swallow her. It doesn’t happen. She’s just here, with another girl who’s holding onto her a little too tight.
She doesn’t get it, not really. But…
“I think I want that,” Mafuyu says. She looks down at their joined hands, contemplative. “I’d like that, someday.”
Maybe it really is that simple. Maybe it’d make Mizuki look less lonely, too, with someone who would attempt to understand it.
“Mafuyu.” Mizuki’s voice trembles. She looks up in mild alarm, watching them swipe a sleeve over their eyes. “Um. I’m — I’m going to hug you, now. Is that okay?”
“... I don’t mind either way.”
Mizuki makes a frustrated, disbelieving laugh, but then their arms wrap around Mafuyu’s shoulders, pulling her in close. Mizuki buries their head into her shoulder, squeezing her tight. Her arms hang limp at her sides.
It’s nice. It’s warm. Hesitantly, Mafuyu brings her arms up around Mizuki’s, too, setting her hands on their back.
“I’m so proud of you,” they say, muffled. Their voice wavers. “I’m really, really proud of you.”
Strange. Her voice fails her. There’s a lump in the back of her throat that gets increasingly larger as her vision blurs, as she tries to respond to Mizuki’s overwhelming kindness. Her parents have said those same words countless times, but they’ve never felt so warm. Mafuyu’s next breath turns into a sob, and suddenly she’s squeezing Mizuki even tighter than they hold her, hands clenched in their shirt, burying her face into their shoulder.
Her parents have said those same words countless times, but never before have they felt so warm. What would her mother think of her, of Mafuyu hiding away from her grasp, thinking of running somewhere far, far away, with only N25 to know where she is.
Mafuyu latches onto Mizuki even harder when she thinks they’re pulling away (which is… childish, ridiculous) but they only shift, making themselves more comfortable before they fold Mafuyu into them.
Their lips brush against Mafuyu’s hair, accidental, she thinks, until they linger there. Mafuyu heaves another shuddering breath into them.
“Thank you, Mizuki,” Mafuyu says. Her voice is rough with tears.
“I’ll stay here as long as you need,” they promise.
Mafuyu closes her eyes. She’ll allow herself to be selfish just for tonight.