Chapter Text
Shiho arrives to detention late.
She’d like to say it’s on purpose — it fits with her whole image, rebel, tough, fuck school, etcetera — but she only overslept. She’d climbed into bed as the sun was rising just hours earlier, still amped-up from a night of running around, and woke up with hair in her mouth and her alarm beeping insistently from next to her.
An’s already there by the time she arrives. In a stroke of luck, there’s still a desk empty next to her, even as the rest of the room is already crowded with bored delinquents similar to Shiho’s caliber. Shiho only has to endure one painful conversation with the teacher chaperone before she’s dropping herself into the seat with a muffled groan.
An reaches over to tap on Shiho’s desk and mouths, are you okay. Shiho gives her a thumbs up and mimes scribbling on a surface. An gets the hint and gets to work on quietly tearing out a piece of paper from her notebook.
Shiho watches her: the knit of effort between her eyebrows, her deliberate hands. In all her weeks of attending detention, she’d never been able to figure out what exactly landed An there. She just doesn’t seem the type. Her wardrobe consists of inoffensive tee-shirts and jeans on casual days, and on normal days, she’s never caught with a uniform infraction at the very least. Never a hair out of place: tie neatly arranged, sleeves cuffed at her wrists, skirt falling just above her kneecaps.
This lives in direct opposition to Shiho and her friends. There’s Saki, who acts like wearing a pair of plain white socks personally offends her, Ichika, who claims she needs to “let her forearms breathe”, and Honami, who loses her ribbon every two business days.
And Shiho, of course, who says fuck it all and does everything wrong that she possibly can. Even if not for getting caught vandalizing the school, she’s sure she could have landed herself an equal sentence in detention from uniform infractions alone if the hall monitors actually took their job seriously.
She can’t deny she’s curious about what An's big crime is, but then again Shiho doesn’t like when people are nosy with her as a general rule, so she never asks her about it. It’s more fun to speculate, anyway: what kind of skeletons could good girl An Shiraishi have in her closet?
An taps on Shiho’s desk again. A piece of lined notebook paper is folded into a small square in her hand, and she tosses it seconds later. Shiho catches it and unfolds it carefully.
up late again? it reads, in An’s neat scrawl.
yup, Shiho writes, tho i regret it now, im fucking tired
She kicks An’s foot with her own to signal her before throwing the paper back. As she waits for her to respond, their shoes stay pressed against each other’s for a long moment before Shiho quickly retracts her leg.
The notes routine started in week one. They exchanged names on week two, Shiho laughed outloud because of a response for the first time in week three, and by week four Shiho had a crush. Dealing with that would be a lot easier if they could just text — turns out working up the courage to ask someone out is a lot harder when you have to write rather than type the words out — but they aren’t allowed have their phones in detention.
It’s not as if they can't talk outside of Saturday mornings, yet Shiho could never bring herself to ask for An’s number either. Besides, texting felt like it would break the sanctity of passing notes; their friendship existed in this quiet bubble between Shiho’s two lives. She sometimes wished she could bring An into either of them, but it would be too uncertain. She doesn’t know what’ll happen if she breaks their careful routine.
An’s next note lands on Shiho’s desk suddenly. It nearly skids off before she catches it with her hand; in her An-thinking she’d been too distracted to notice her signal.
can i ask what you were up to
Getting right to it, huh. Despite Shiho’s self-restraint in poking into An’s business, An doesn’t seem to hold the same reservations for her. She should find it annoying, but it’s kind of flattering that An is paying this much attention to her, remembering the little details that Shiho tells her even with the week-long gaps between each detention.
The thing is, Shiho wants to tell her, but she doesn’t know how An would react if she found out that Shiho spent her nights playing at dingy live houses with Leo/need and occasionally running from the cops.
if i told you id have to kill you
An’s mouth presses into a thin smile when she reads it. Her response: it can’t be that bad
it’s not, i was messing with you. ichika sucked me into this new netflix show
The next note Shiho receives catches her off guard: somehow i don’t quite believe that either
When she tosses back her response — two words, why not, despite belaboring with herself about what to say — she throws short and the note drops to the floor. She picks it up and passes it to An; when their hands clasp in between their desks, the way their fingers lock and slide is strangely familiar to her.
She looks up — for a second, the sun through the blinds cuts out An’s shape so all she can see are her eyes and the arch of her eyebrows.
And then, all of a sudden, it hits her. An Shiraishi, this girl— Shiho'd grasped onto her hand the night prior, climbing into the cargo bed of a pickup truck, and those eyes have bored into hers in the dark too many times to count, albeit through gold contacts with her face shrouded in a mask.
It’s Vivid. Shiho's been with her crew for months, god, how did she never notice?
She skims over An’s response — when have you ever been interested in tv — and writes, im going to the bathroom, hoping An gets the hint.
The teacher might have a stick up his ass but he’s not a tyrant, so he lets Shiho go when she asks. She feels An’s eyes on her all the way out.
Exactly five minutes after Shiho excuses herself, the bathroom door swings open.
In that time, she’s meticulously combed over every moment she’s spent with Vivid after detention started, piecing little things together. She also checks her watch and the door obsessively. She can multitask.
The time Vivid bruised herself checking her knee on the cargo bed, wasn’t An wearing a bandaid on Saturday? 11:17. Closed. When Vivid bailed out sick one night and didn’t show up to detention either? 11:18. Closed. When An said in one of her notes that she had “unconventional hobbies”? 11:19. Open, but only for a not-An to go into one of the stalls, giving Shiho a weird look for the way she startles.
11:20 and the door opens and it’s who she’s looking for this time. Shiho forgets about everything because An is right there, nodding in lieu of a greeting and kicking the doorstopper out of the way.
“Vivid,” she says, accusatory. She realizes after the word has left her mouth that this is the first time An is hearing Shiho’s voice — the first time this An is hearing Shiho’s voice.
An’s mouth curls up into a pleased smile. “That’s me!”
It is so goddamn weird. She’s wearing a uniform; she looks so preppy standing in that bathroom, but the voice coming out of her mouth is that of the girl who immortalizes VIVID onto the undersides of bridges. The same one that dangles upside down with her knees hooked to the railing and asks Shiho to hold her cap so it doesn’t fall into the traffic. The same one who always runs a little faster than Shiho when it comes down to it but says, you know I’ll wait for you wherever we are.
It hits her, then. An was waiting for her.
“You knew?” Shiho asks. “Since when?”
An takes a moment to consider it. “The third week? Your phone went off in the bin and you argued with the teacher about it. Of course I know how you sound when you’re yelling at an authority figure.”
“Jesus Christ. Okay.” Shiho exhales deeply, running a hand through her hair. “That was the third week for you, too?”
Then it hits her: of course it was. Who was right beside her watching her spray-paint obscenities onto the walls of their high school that one night other than Vivid? When the security guards came, she stayed behind so Shiho could escape — not that it mattered when she accidentally dropped her wallet with her student ID in it on the ground in her haste.
It was so unlike Shiho to get caught, and for something that was such a big deal, too. She was suspended for a whole week after alongside indefinite detention, and hey, hadn’t she noticed An for the very first time because of the large stack of assignments she had on her desk that first Saturday?
“Oh my god. Duh. You should have bailed after that time,” Shiho says. She suddenly feels very guilty. “We got in so much trouble.”
An waves a hand dismissively. “It’s fine, I can always sneak into the office and change my records. They’ll probably convince themselves they just imagined the suspension.”
That shocks Shiho for a second before she remembers oh right. This An is that Vivid, and that Vivid wouldn’t hesitate to do something like that. Still, she can’t stop herself from asking, “Are you serious?”
An smiles faux-demurely at her, adjusting the ironed sleeves of her uniform. “Do I look like someone who would own a bottle of spray-paint?”
“…You’re good.”
“Playing by the rules has its benefits. But the rebel thing is really cool too, Shiho,” An reassures her earnestly. It would sound a little snarky coming from anyone else; it’s genuine only by sheer force of personality.
“Glad you think so,” Shiho mutters. She tries not to massage her temples; it’s a habit she’s picked up from Honami over the years. “So, let me get this straight. You’re — you’re An Shiraishi.” An nods helpfully. Shiho continues, “My detention inmate. But only because I indirectly dragged you into it. You’re also, you know, the same person who I hang out with almost nightly to—“
A toilet flushes, and the girl Shiho completely forgot was there walks out of the stall. She looks between the two of them for a beat before walking right between them to wash her hands.
“How much did you hear,” Shiho asks, voice small.
“Don’t involve me with, like, whatever this is,” she says, and walks out of the bathroom with wet hands, forgoing the row of air-dryers. Good choice, Shiho thinks.
“We should take this conversation somewhere else,” An says in a low voice. “My car.”
“You can drive?”
“Yeah, but Touya’s much better at getaway driving. I’m just Kohane’s chauffeur when she gets tired after and wants to get a McDonald’s breakfast,” An explains. “Do you want to go? We could, right now. Will it really matter if we have another week added onto our indefinite detention sentences?”
How come I never knew that? And how do you manage to show up to school on time after getting breakfast menu items at McDonald's? How do you balance your two lives so well?
Who really are you, An Shiraishi? Shiho thinks.
“Sounds great. I didn’t have breakfast,” Shiho says.
“Let’s go,” An tells Shiho, and holds open the bathroom door until Shiho walks through.
An’s car is very much like her, Shiho decides.
There are stickers everywhere, dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and VIVID is written with blue sharpie on the passenger seat dash. She finally has time to take it in now, only now, as she bites into fries An insisted the one driving would pay for. It made no sense but Shiho stopped bringing her wallet to school when she wouldn't need it after the spraypaint fiasco, so. Whatever. It was kind of chivalrous in a weird way.
When she got into the car she had no shortage of things she wanted to say, questions she wanted to ask. She held her tongue because An looked like she was focusing firstly on getting the hell off school grounds, then she kept asking Shiho what she would want from McDonald’s and saying Kohane orders this and that and seriously. Forgive Shiho for not paying much attention to the decor at first.
The thing is, now that’s all she can do. She’s too nervous to start speaking and An is sipping noisily on her soda next to her, so she’s not going to be initiating anything, clearly.
“An,” she says after a while. An's car has a CD player, that's kind of cool. "Can I ask you a question?"
An stops sipping. “Shoot.”
“When did you get into the scene?”
An hums thoughtfully. After a moment she says, “Middle school?”
“Middle school?” Shiho only started thinking about it in freshman year, after Leo/need walked past some cool street art on the way back from a performance.
“Yeah, seventh grade, something like that. My dad’s cool; he doesn’t really care as long as I’m working my shifts at Weekend Garage and getting along fine in school. Hence the.” An gestures at her outfit.
“That’s cool. I wish my parents were like that,” Shiho says miserably. “Weekend Garage sounds so cool.”
“It is. You should come over sometime,” An says, and she’s giving Shiho a look, and she doesn’t know what the hell it means but she knows what she wants it to mean.
“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, okay,” Shiho says. Coughs. “What kind of store is it?”
“It’s like a cafe-live house fusion. You could probably play there if you wanted, with your band. You have the owner’s daughter on your side.” Shiho’s still stumbling through the thought of yes An knows you’re in a band because you told Vivid every time you had the opportunity when An says, “You guys are good enough that you could probably get a spot without me having to do any sweet-talking, though.”
The compliment sends Shiho's heart racing, but she's more distracted by what An actually said. “What? Since when have you heard us play?”
“We kind of frequent the same places, Shiho. I caught the tail end of one of your songs once — Peaky Peaky? It was pretty good.”
“God.” Shiho doesn’t know why she’s blushing. “If I knew you were in the crowd I would have tried a little harder.”
“Really, now?”
“Um.” It’s Shiho’s turn to sip loudly from her fountain drink. An has this smug expression like she has Shiho where she wants her, and that— that sort of makes her nervous.
After just long enough that the silence is starting to get uncomfortable, Shiho settles on something to say: “Come and watch me next time," deciding last minute to ditch the you should.
“I will.”
An agrees so readily, Shiho’s not expecting it. “Oh. Okay.”
“Time and place, seriously, and I’ll be there.” An hesitates briefly, then: “It’s a date.”
Crap, and Shiho's heart is off-time again. She likes An so much.
She decides, right then, that she doesn't want to play around about this.
“Is it really?” she responds. Maybe it’s stupid to show her hand just like that, but An makes her feel kinda stupid. She tacks on, mouth moving clumsily, “‘Cause sometimes people just say that, you know.”
“Do you want it to be,” An asks carefully.
“I mean, yeah. I think I’ve been kind of in love with you ever since that time you made Touya stop the car so I wouldn’t get left behind. And then again when you gave me your whale-print fountain pen when I forgot my ballpoint in week four,” she blurts out. The words keep tumbling out of her, but now that she’s finally speaking to An she doesn’t want to stop. “I don’t know, I… I really like you. We can be just friends if that's what you want, I just don't want this to be so ambiguous. I think I've had enough of that."
An looks surprised. She’s also blushing. Shiho’s sure she has her beat in that arena, though; all the blood in her body must have rushed to her ears.
That was so goddamn risky. But An's always had a way of making the risks seem less scary. Running from the cops, asking out a pretty girl — about the same level of involvement, Shiho'd say.
“Yeah, okay,” An says after a pause in which Shiho reevaluates whether the signals she was getting from An were made up or not. In a decisive movement, she reaches over and takes Shiho’s hand. Again, that familiar lock and slide. “It’s a date.”
It’s a little unromantic, what with the french fry grease on Shiho’s hand and how An’s is still cold and a little wet from being pressed against the condensation on her cup, but when An admits, “for the record, I like you too,” Shiho thinks she could die happy.