Work Text:
Normally, Kanade would write the music for their songs, Ena would draw the art for the cover, Mizuki would animate the video, and Mafuyu would do the mixing (except for the period of time in which she had been unable to) and write the lyrics. Eventually this would result in a music video once they had all recorded their parts, and the process was tried and true, so there was little reason nor desire to mess about with it.
Therefore, it was understandable that Mafuyu was surprised, to say the least, when Kanade requested that she hand over the responsibility for the lyrics – or maybe just the chorus – for their next song. Kanade promised she'd be allowed to mess around with it, to fix the wording if needed, but the thought of it still made her uneasy. Was Kanade... displeased with her work? Had she looked at some of Mafuyu's oldest compositions and realized that the girl she would give anything to save had cared so little whether that happened or not? Mafuyu knew – or at least she thought – that Kanade still cared so much for her, would never stop caring for her, but the thought of having hurt the person whose presence was always calming and warm, so warm it made the corners of her lips pick up not out of politeness but because she felt... happy, she believed the word was – that mental image made her cower in fear. For to hurt Kanade would be to hurt someone who knew what true warmth was, and if she was being honest with herself, Mafuyu hated it when Kanade would force herself to overwork. Seeing her light, her hope , mess up her health and her life made her heart pang with an emotion she could not fully name. Besides, to lose Kanade would be to lose the most powerful source of warmth in her life, and what could she do without that warmth?
Psychologists tended to agree that codependency was unhealthy, and looking at their studies, Mafuyu had to concede the point, but she felt the best she had in years now that she was living with Kanade, and giving that up was not on her list of priorities nor the one for good ideas.
She still wrote a set of lyrics after listening to the demo, as was routine, and hummed the melody as she did her work at school, quiet enough that no one else in the classroom could hear. She'd found that the song didn't need much mixing and had already finished her cut despite having had only two days thus far to try things out with it. Mafuyu knew that there was a right way to complete things – like the math equations on her worksheets and the essay due next Wednesday for her science class – but when it came to music, she allowed herself to be experimental, as she did a lot of things that involved Nightcord.
A few days after she'd sent Kanade her mix, she got her first look at the lyrics. It was really an accident; Kanade probably hadn't meant to leave her word processor open on one of her computer screens, but in the ten seconds Mafuyu had to find her phone without raising suspicion (she'd left it on Kanade's desk the night before), she caught a few words of the chorus.
It seemed to be a love song. For Mochizuki-san, then? Or Ena, perhaps. Mafuyu had not been aware that Kanade liked girls, but the lyrics didn't seem to be directed at a boy – no, as far as Mafuyu knew, Kanade didn't know any boys their age well enough for this. Theoretically, it was possible, but considering how often Kanade left the house...
Mizuki was another candidate, though they seemed too energetic for someone like Kanade to want to love.
Then, Mafuyu heard Kanade calling her from the kitchen to ask if she'd found her phone, and the mystery that now plagued her mind had to be folded away into her mind to be reopened after breakfast.
It nagged at her during math class when one of her classmates whispered to another that Naoko-chan from class 3-C had a boyfriend now. She tried not to see Kanade as a romantic partner; she questioned whether she was capable of loving anyone in that way. Never could she remember having a crush or wanting to love someone as her parents supposedly loved each other. Romance movies did not make her want to live in one. Nothing... nothing made her feel that spark the girls in the halls giggled about.
One of the girls mentioned that Naoko was the sort to want a typical romance, including the wearing-your-boyfriend's-shirt cliche, and Mafuyu's mind decided to picture Kanade wearing one of her outfits, which... well... aesthetic attraction was real, and it was a definite explanation for this, and that was probably what was happening here, so-
Admittedly, she wouldn't mind it if Kanade borrowed some of her clothes and never gave them back. Or if Kanade wrote a song to her with obvious romantic intent, or...
What had Mizuki meant when they'd said that roommates to lovers was just as possible, maybe even more possible, than friends to lovers, while nudging Ena with the subtlety one might expect from an elephant?
And why had Ena asked if by any chance the warmth she felt around Kanade was different or stronger from that which she felt around the rest of Nightcord?
Mafuyu looked down at her hands and saw that her pen was shaking; her face still remained perfectly happy. Poised. Ready to assist any classmates who had been passing notes during lesson. On her worksheet she had written the derivative of x as nineteen plus a squiggle of dark ink. Then she remembered she'd forgotten to pick up the white-out she'd needed, and never did she require any assistance from anyone, so now she would be handing a very imperfect-looking math assignment. And this was the last question.
Five too many articles on the symptoms of a crush later, Mafuyu had to answer a very pointed question about her emotions posed by none other than Hinomori Shizuku, who had just last week asked her for advice on how to confess to Momoi Airi though Mafuyu had thought for months that they were already dating.
"I may have feelings for my roommate," she said.
And then , because she'd allowed her mask to slip and used the correct term to refer to Kanade, she had to explain why she was no longer living with her parents in a way that would not raise any suspicion for her mother's parenting style being the cause behind her running away from home; forever she would be a good daughter though she had, at least according to an annoyed Ena, "five thousand reasons not to."
When all was said and done and Mafuyu had been able to properly talk about Kanade, she felt warm. Unlike the cold she normally experienced at school. The sensation stayed with her until her last class of the day, and she found herself missing it as she changed into her gym uniform and left her bag in its rightful place in the locker room. She scored well during the basketball game she played, and though all the running around was supposed to give her a large boost of happiness through the release of neurochemicals such as endorphins, she only felt a slight warmth there and it dimmed the very instant someone offhandedly mentioned how perfect they perceived her to be after the three-pointer she'd made.
Upon her arrival at Kanade's house, she was greeted by a mess of light blue hair and a gentle smile that made her want to return one in kind, so she did. It was getting easier to smile and have the emotion reach her eyes the longer she lived with Kanade.
"Ah, Mafuyu, did you not have club activities today?"
"They were cancelled last minute."
"Mochizuki-san and I had planned to make supper together, but if you'd like to join, I would welcome the help." Kanade seemed a little embarrassed by that, if the way she clasped her hands together a little more awkwardly than normal was any indication, but Mafuyu did not bring it up. Unlike Ena, she was not the teasing sort.
"I'll put my things away first."
Preparing supper was fairly simple, especially given that Honami was doing most of the work. As a thank-you, Mafuyu washed the dishes while Kanade and Honami talked over cups of tea at the table, but there were few and it did not take her long, so she joined in on their conversation midway through. It felt... peaceful. Warm. Kind. Once Honami left, Mafuyu turned to her studies, but she had little homework, and at only ten, she was lying in bed with nothing to do. At Kanade's behest, she was refraining from obsessively studying in the way her mother would encourage ( she only wants the best for you, she could almost hear her father saying, and she knew he was right, but her mother wasn't going about this in the right way, everyone said, and weren't they right?), and though her average now sat at ninety-seven instead of ninety-nine, the theoretical weight on her shoulders felt like it had lessened considerably.
Mafuyu did not want to intently ponder who Kanade could be writing a love song about, but that was what her mind wished for, so she thought about it in the way she did her schoolwork – meticulously. Weighing ever possibility, considering variables, and weaving together plausible narratives. She crafted stories much like those she wrote for songs and allowed them to flow in the rivers of her mind like patrons of the lazy rivers Mizuki mentioned they would like to visit.
In this state of mind, she felt every texture against her skin – that of her pajamas, her blankets, her own hair, and her pillow – but she only noticed a slight warmth in her heart. Presumably it had dimmed because of how she was dwelling on something that she had no control over.
At quarter past midnight, there was a knock on her door. Kanade struggled to open it since it was quite a lot heavier compared to others in the house, but she succeeded, and came to sit on Mafuyu's bed, one hand instinctively going to take Mafuyu's in hers and the other running a hand through the hair that Kanade had brushed out for her that morning. This felt strangely nice.
"I've finished the lyrics," Kanade whispered after a moment. "Would you like to see them?"
"I... sure."
Two minutes later, they were sitting in their work area around Kanade's desk. Mafuyu was unsure if the emotions she was feeling were positive or negative, but according to everyone in Nightcord, the fact that she was aware of them was a major improvement compared to when they had met the real her almost a year ago. If she thought too much about her emotions, she would fall into a spiral in which she questioned many things about her old home and her role in this world, and thus she'd learned to request support if she wanted to think through such things deeply.
Kanade was fiddling with her headphones, clicking the worn buttons and turning them over and over again in her hands. Such signs of nervousness were rarely seen in her behaviour; what could have made her anxious enough to show it? While Mafuyu always appreciated knowing how she felt, and would adapt her schedule as needed if Kanade was having a particularly bad day, she normally had to request that information because if there was one thing other than composing that Kanade absolutely excelled in, it was hiding her negative emotions until someone asked her what was wrong.
"I was hoping to sing it for you," she breathed, so quietly Mafuyu thought she'd imagined it at first.
"Of course."
If one asked Asahina Mafuyu to describe the quality of Yoisaki Kanade's voice, knowing that a very biased result would likely be given, she would first flounder in search of the correct adjectives before settling on words such as 'breathy' and 'silk'. The rich fabric had a texture she found rather nice to the touch and if it was possible to turn such a soft material into sound waves, then that must have been done to give Kanade the voice she sang with because such beauty was rare and hard to obtain by nature.
The lyrics had a noticeable romantic connotation and Kanade's face was as red as the tomatoes they'd prepared for supper earlier. Was she embarrassed about the quality of her writing? While the second verse needed a little work with the wording, for someone who rarely wrote lyrics these days, it was an excellent job.
Once the song was over, Mafuyu realized she was smiling rather oddly; her face felt warm in an uncomfortable way, but her heart felt content. Kanade drank from the water bottle Mafuyu had purchased for her in an attempt to reduce her reliance on energy drinks before asking, "Did you like it?"
"It made me feel warm. I... I think I liked it. I'm sure the person you wrote it for-" It's Ena , she told herself, it has to be "- will like it too."
Had Kanade gone for a second drink of water, Mafuyu might be applying her first aid knowledge right now. "I thought you knew..."
"What?"
"That I wanted to write the lyrics to you ."
Oh.
Oh.
That made slightly more sense. Still-
"You... wanted to write a love song for me?"
"Isn't that what people do for each other when they're in love?"
Mafuyu shrugged. "Not all people." There was merit to doing such a thing, though, and it was a very Kanade thing to do. Really, most hopeless romantics might dedicate playlists to those they crushed on in this day and age, but only Kanade would go so far as to write an original song for the person she loved in that way. "I am not fully sure what it is what I feel for you. It is different from how I feel about Ena and Mizuki, but what exactly it consists of, I cannot tell."
Kanade took both of her hands in hers. "We can figure that out together if you'd like." How was someone so cold to the touch making her feel so warm?
"That would be... I'd very much like to find out."
Then, Kanade smiled at her, and Mafuyu swore the world got a little brighter in that moment.
... maybe there was a high chance her feelings were not entirely platonic.