Chapter Text
Objectively is a nice word , Rui thinks as he connects the wire to the battery’s terminal. The device he’s creating is working fine. School is fine. He’s passing the time at his desk by perfecting his combination circuits, after all–being a director doesn’t mean he can’t still be an inventor. He's definitely made a few of his teachers upset with his previous iterations of this device, but his genius can't be stifled. Failure is a part of the experimentation process, after all. So what if a few arm hairs get singed along the way?
Objectively, things are fine. The worst came to pass, and nothing bad truly happened–in fact, quite the opposite did. Wonderlands X Showtime is still performing together, they still have their sights set on a sparkling future that they can all achieve at the same time. No one was left behind, because the thing that all of them wanted most was to stay together.
And, objectively, things are great for Rui. He has multiple–multiple!–friends that have proven time and time again they’re there for him – a sometimes neurotic, eccentric person. He may be their director, but he’s also still their friend . They like him for him. Not just his shows.
Friend. Rui rolls the word around in his mind, feeling the corners of his mouth lift slightly. Part of him’s still not used to it, the warmth that thinking of his troupemates brings him. Distantly, some part of him wonders if he ever will be.
He looks at the clock, puts his circuitry away, and prepares for the chimes that will signal school’s end and finally let him go to practice. After meeting together at the front of Kamiyama, Nene and Tsukasa walk with him to Phoenix Wonderland Park, and Rui lets himself laugh softly at the banter exchanged between the two of them. It’s nice to just walk behind them and listen . At the moment, Tsukasa’s unveiling his idea for a gravity-defying space show, floating without the use of wires at all.
“Tsukasa, I don’t see how that kind of thing would be humanly possible,” Nene says, frowning. “There’s no way you could float without wire.”
“You underestimate my raw acting prowess! I’m sure Rui will come up with a way to make it so,” Tsukasa says loudly, throwing a glance behind him at Rui. “His genius has never failed us!”
Everything is fine. Objectively. There’d be no evidence to suggest otherwise.
~
“Ah, Rui! Come help us with this scene, will you?”
Walking back from a short water break with Nene, Rui smiles up at Tsukasa and Emu sitting together on the stage. The show they were producing at the moment was new and exciting in the sense that, after much grumbling, Tsukasa had relinquished the lead role to Emu. It’d been a funny conversation.
“Wh- Emu? But I’m the star of this troupe!” Tsukasa had said, genuinely bewildered for a moment. “Can’t I…”
Emu laughed. “Tsukasa can’t play the lead–the lead’s a girl!”
Something in Rui’s chest had twinged painfully, but he’d brushed it aside. It wasn’t important now–he’d figure it out later. Right now, he had to intervene.
“Ah–Tsukasa, if I may–wouldn’t a star such as yourself benefit from all types of roles, not just the lead? Why don’t you give your troupe mates the chance to shine?”
Tsukasa’d heaved–really, heaved was the only word appropriate for how dramatic he was being–a sigh and crossed his arms, looking at some distant point on the floor. “It’s not like this is my first time playing a side character… You make it sound like I’ve never done it before,” he’d said, almost wan.
Rui smiled. This show was going to work out perfectly.
Rui nods to Nene, then strides over to the Wonder Stage to see what the problem is. Some small part of him is hoping for something, he doesn’t know what. As he approaches, Emu and Tsukasa turn to look at him. Tsukasa’s face is open and energetic, while Emu’s is scrunched deep in concentration.
“Rui, thank goodness. I can’t decipher her Emu-language– but you can! Any idea of what she’s trying to say?” Tsukasa asks, grinning.
“Rui,” Emu starts, a questioning note in her tone. “If you were the lead… how would you act in this situation? Would you be all, ‘fwoom-fwoom-fwoom’, or, like, ‘ziinnnng!’?”
Rui supposes that she’s asking if the lead would be swift like air or swift like lightning in this scene. He reads the part of the script they’re on– the part where the heroine stands up to the main villain of the story for the sake of her family. She’s got a staff at this point, given to her from the friends she’s made along the course of the show. He hesitates for a second before climbing onto the stage, foregoing the stairs entirely. His legs are long enough that he can do it with little difficulty.
“If I were the lead…” he says thoughtfully, pulling himself up. If I were her… he thinks, and a warmth spreads through Rui’s chest. Standing up, he grabs the unfinished staff prop. I need to finish the LED circuit for this is what crosses his mind before he cements himself as the girl protecting her village. Brandishing the primed-but-not-painted stick at empty air, he envisions the great evil the girl faces.
He makes his movements fast and sharp, twirling the staff in his hand and envisioning it glowing like it would when filled with the magic of electricity. He recites the lines from memory easily, feeling the role envelop him into its- its- its something , he doesn’t know at the moment. He just knows that she’s probably feeling scared, and so her movements aren’t as light and airy as they might normally be otherwise, and her lines need to have some force behind them, like she’s trying to make herself believe it–
Rui’s done. The scene is over. And suddenly he is aware of how very, very quiet it is. He’s trying to catch his breath, he realizes… he must’ve gotten too into it.
A few wires dangle out of the prop. Those need to be fixed , his brain supplies helpfully to fill the silence. He looks at the floor, but not before seeing Emu, Tsukasa, and Nene’s eyes turned towards him, wide with shock. Maybe it was too much, even for them. It was certainly too much for himself.
Was it?
“Ah. Apologies for the outburst. I suppose it would be more like… a ‘zinnnng!’ effect, like Emu said before…” He trails off. How to repair the situation? How to reconstruct the easy mood from before? It became unfortunately obvious that he could not think his way out of this one. As with most social situations.
“Rui…” Nene says softly, like she’s trying not to break anything. “That was–”
“ Amazing! ” Emu shouts, near deafening. Both Tsukasa and Nene shoot her a look she doesn’t (or refuses to) acknowledge. “I felt like I was really watching her take on that bad guy! Your motions were, like, shoo-shoo-shoo-shoom! , and super emotional too! I loved it! Sooo much!”
“I’m inclined to agree! Emu’s… well. Emu’s right about it being majestic!” Tsukasa chimes in loudly.
Rui picks at the sleeve of his jacket at some invisible piece of lint. He always forgets, somehow, that his friends do love him. Even when he’s being ‘strange’, or… too much .
“Geez, Rui, are you sure you shouldn’t play the lead?” Nene says, clearly joking.
Rui laughs softly. “I believe we already had a discussion with Tsukasa about this sort of thing,” he says sitting down on the stage. He hugs his knees to his chest. “Only Emu or Nene could play the lead role for this part.” Something squeezes in his chest again.
Nene frowns, suddenly serious. “You know men used to play the women’s roles in theater all the time, right?” She’s standing at the stage now, arms crossed over each other, resting on the floorboards of the old structure.
“Ah, but only because the women weren’t allowed to be on stage–it’s quite the unfortunate situation, but if you’d like to know more–”
“Aaaargh, stop,” Tsukasa interjects. “Practice mustn't be delayed any longer if Emu’s going to nail the scene like Rui did!”
“Wah! I’ll need to watch Rui again to get it just like him–Rui, Rui! Can you do it again?” Emu says, turning suddenly to face him. Rui smiles and shakes his head in a way he hopes comes off as mysterious and playful, and not in a way that shows the uncertainty he feels. That… outburst… affected his mood. If his emotional wellbeing was a stream, the once-clear waters are now muddy.
Luckily for Rui, the rest of practice goes off without a hitch, and he plays his role as the village leader well enough. It’s not hard for Rui to play a side character like it may be sometimes for Tsukasa–for Rui, it’s enough to just watch everyone grapple with their own roles and guide them into excellence. It’s always enough for him to just be there. When practice ends and he waves goodbye to Emu at the gate, Rui’s not thinking about what happened. When Tsukasa splits away from their group, Rui’s not thinking about how he felt during what happened.
He’s grateful for the semi-aloneness that walking home with Nene provides. The two of them walk in comfortable silence until they reach their homes, and Rui says goodnight with a smile on his face and absolutely zero strange heavy feelings in his chest. One of his secret skills is that he’s very good at hiding what he feels, even from himself. He walks into his workshop and sits on the couch (the jouch , Emu called it. In his defense, the denim couch was not his first choice, just what was available) and very carefully takes out the scepter’s LED circuit. The light is supposed to change colors for different spells the scepter performs. It was an idea Tsukasa and Emu suggested to him a few days into production of their show.
He leans back and sighs. Objectively, Nene is right. It wouldn’t be impossible for Rui to play the role of the lead, the girl trying to save her friends and family while overcoming her own fears. Human beings did that kind of thing all the time for worse reasons. There’s this… this feeling , though, in his chest, holding him back, the way a fist encloses a bird desperate to break free.
He doesn’t want to think about it, he realizes, teetering dangerously on a cliff there is no stepping away from. He makes himself stand up, puts his things away (away simply means on top of something else that isn’t the floor) and changes into his pajamas. Everything will be normal tomorrow. The world did not end because he was too excited to play a role. His troupemates don’t care. He’s being silly, getting all worked up over nothing, making himself feel… strange for no reason.
He sweeps his half-finished projects off of the cushions and lays down, carefully folding himself into a position that doesn’t hang over the ends of the jouch. His parents don’t really understand his eagerness to sleep on the ratty old thing when there’s a perfectly good room with a perfectly good bed in the house. When asked why, all he could say was the hum of machinery made for a nice white noise machine. He knows it goes deeper than that, though, something about how the space is more his than the empty room in the house that he’s supposed to want. He shouldn’t want to hunch over his robots for hours into the night. He shouldn’t want to invest more care into non-living things than himself. He shouldn’t be so invested in roles that aren’t his.
Rui pulls the blanket over his body. As he lets himself drift off, he thinks one thing clearly.
It’d be nice to play the girl again.
Rui doesn’t sleep much. He feels electrified.