Work Text:
Anon barges into Soyo’s life in the same way she would do everything else here on out. Essentially: loudly, disruptively, and in a way Soyo can’t pull away from.
She asks about Tsukinomori and bands and says she wants to form one as a guitarist and vocalist, and Soyo thinks to herself that this girl needs to learn a single scrap of delegation skills, though she smiles with a start and reminds herself not everyone can be Sakiko.
There are many rules to Nagasaki Soyo’s life. Here are four she has held tightly since the moment her father left, suitcase gripped tightly, for what Soyo did not know then would be the last time:
- There are no coincidences.
- There is no fate.
- There is no god.
- Trust no one who believes in any of the above.
So when Anon tells her she loves her, adrenaline-excitement induced rush, she reminds herself there’s no coincidence in the fact that she must be discarded eventually. She reminds herself, mentally, not to get attached; slowly, as if that’s something she needs to point out. This will be easy. She is hardly all that attached to Tomori, and Tomori must stay in the band for Crychic’s revival to work as Soyo is certain it will. Some girl she doesn’t know will be no problem at all.
Soyo smiles, hands still clasped. The smell of tea fills the air, the chair an ache against her back. Across from her is a girl with pink hair and naïve eyes, and what they both do not know yet is Soyo is going to break her heart, and Anon is going to break hers clean in return, and what they do not know yet can’t hurt them.
Irritatingly, agonizingly, wretchedly, dazzlingly:
Anon makes herself part of Soyo’s routine, nestles herself into the everyday like some sort of dependent dog. She does not become someone Soyo wants to consider. She forces herself to be someone Soyo must.
Here is the issue with Soyo’s plan, she has to seem attached for it to work. Which is stupid. She doesn’t care about Anon. A quiet scoff to herself: as if some girl with hair a sickly bubblegum who talks in an infuriating, perpetual sing-song and acts like she knows more about all the things Soyo knows she has no experience with could ever become Soyo cares about.
Anon is a bad liar. Soyo is not. This will get her far.
Taki is the first to pick up that Anon is lying about knowing the guitar as intimately as she claims to. Soyo knows this because she was the second, only a guess at first, and she had a feeling if there’s anyone she can ask for a certain answer on the topic it would be Taki.
Taki nods, arms crossed, legs one over the other. “Yeah. She’s a liar. I’d tell her but I don’t want to make Tomori upset. What does she even see in her anyway?” She asks, though by now Soyo knows it’s only to herself, rolls her eyes.
“So she doesn’t know anything?”
“Probably the basics. Not enough for a band.”
“She does kind of pale in comparison to Raana-chan, huh?”
“Don’t get me started.” And then she begins to make a show of examining her nails, which is one of Taki’s tells that she’s done with a conversation, so Soyo stands up and pushes her chair in with a sorry smile.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be for too much longer,” she chuckles, hopes it sounds convincing. There’s sweat against her forehead and she knows it from the gross, sticky feeling. Taki looks at her with furrowed brows and Soyo decides someone willing to start problems with Sakiko doesn’t deserve an explanation.
Anon tells her about the streamer she likes, the makeup artist with purple hair and bright pink eyes, and Soyo is unsure why she’s been sacrificed as tribute for Anon’s incessant rambling. She took up drumming, by the way, if Soyo didn’t know.
(She did. Anon made sure to tell her at least twenty-seven times. And then a few more, just for good measure.)
Anon, as Soyo has learned, leeches on people. Like a parasite. It’s a fair comparison. She finds someone she likes, or something like that, and she makes it her job to drive them up the wall with facts about idols and streamers and the songs she’s humming are always whatever unbearable pop song is on the radio, popular if only by means of catchiness, Anon singing along as if she can actually stand it. So gullible.
They’re the first to practice, the first one after Anon admitted she doesn’t know shit about her instrument, humming as she sets up all intolerable and pretty, and maybe this timing is just the universe playing an awful trick on her. The joint concert is only a few days out by now.
“Hey, Soyorin,” Anon calls over to her, and Soyo fakes a smile as she asks what’s up. She can tell from the way it feels on her own face that it looks more like a grimace. “Thanks.”
Soyo tilts her head, trying to figure out what she means, and for a moment she is struck by a horrible desire to actually want to know what is going on inside of Anon’s head, and–
And she decides it, then, left in motion in more ways than one, that if it gets her to leave her alone she’s going to become someone Anon can’t stand.
(They’re playing Haruhikage. Her head’s rushing and she doesn’t know who started the chords, who is to blame. All she knows is someone has to be. The bastards. They said they wouldn’t, they promised, they played her like her own damn bass and she hates every single one of them.
Sakiko is crying. They made Sakiko cry. How dare they. She’s going to kill every sign of life in this band if it’s the last thing she does.)
And it goes wrong, expectedly.
Soyo feels the final nail in the coffin of her love for Sakiko over a conversation under streetlights and spring sunlights, trying so hard to shatter everything and in the end the only thing that broke was her heart for yet another time.
Sakiko says she’s unseemly and Soyo wants to say she knows but her lips only form a beg and the air pushed out pleads her to stay.
Sakiko does not, because really, when has Soyo ever gotten what she wanted? Mutsumi is standing next to her and Soyo has spent so long trying to rebuild Crychic she doesn’t know what to do with the broken heart of a second-time rejection.
She lets herself sit there, Mutsumi to her side, never once moving, the moment never once breaking. There is a single streetlight still turned on above her and it feels like scrutiny. There is the bitter, metallic taste of blood on her tongue and it’s then she realizes she’s been biting her lip.
She waits for Sakiko to come back. She waits for what feels like two seconds and two years until she comes to the realization she feared most: she doesn’t know if she wants her to.
In the end she finds once again that she is a child lost and confused, and a child that has had to grow up too fast; and the only thing she can think as the repetition of fading footsteps from Sakiko walking away finally leaves her mind for a moment is she would’ve spent forever with her if she’d asked at any time before, but if she were to turn back around and ask for it now, she doesn’t think she could.
Chihaya Anon is a fucking headache. Mark her words. She’s followed her into her life, her routine, her band, her heart, and now into her house.
(That order feels all messed up and backwards, somehow.)
Anon tells Soyo she thinks she’s vile. Soyo says she thinks the same of her. Anon tells Soyo she thinks she’s human. Soyo can’t find the words to describe how that feels.
Soyo’s going to end the band. She voices as much. Anon’s not going to let her, going to put up a fight, the aggravating person she is. She is a chalkboard of mixed signals. She keeps her voice level and acts like Soyo isn’t a terrible person. She smirks and tells her she’s mean and cruel.
She makes Soyo want to kiss her, or ruin her, maybe both at once. She looks like she’d let her.
When she opens her eyes again, glares, Anon’s expression mirrors hers, and it’s only then that she allows herself to properly realize the crux of the issue:
She’s picked the wrong person, all along. Anon is nothing if not too determined for her own good- she’s been enticing the one person who would not let the band end in a careful dance to destroy it, and she didn’t realize Anon had been in charge of just as many steps as she had. And now she has to pay the price for it.
Shit.
Soyo hates caring about people without a root cause. She hates not knowing the moment distaste of presence turns to distaste of absence, can’t stand not knowing the millisecond her life begins to shift around the very presence of someone warm.
It’s always been this way. Her heart all but bent over backwards to spell Sakiko’s name. She had a crush on Tomori, before, way back when she couldn’t tell if she loved the way she sang or hated the way the lyrics rooted in her chest and squeezed.
Make no mistake, she is not in love with Anon. But the problems go: she finds herself thinking about her often in the waining of Sakiko’s presence in her mind, because Anon has made it her job to be so unbearably there, and she doesn’t know if she hates it.
She thinks she might hate the unknowing, the grey-cloud stormy confusion more than she hates Anon, and she doesn’t know when she stopped hating her, and the face staring back at her in the mirror is more scared than she is angry.
Maybe she’ll never be fifteen in the rented studio again, maybe she’ll be sixteen and fearful forever. Maybe she should stop pondering forevers. Crychic wasn’t forever. Mygo won’t be.
Maybe she misses Anon. As if she didn’t see her the other day and won’t see her in another few. She lets the thought shatter like glass and the blood left drips down her arm like a bad omen, that’s stupid.
But the voice in her brain when she’s alone and the tip-tapping of her heart in morse code sound a lot like Anon, and once again Soyo is left to wonder why she can’t let things go without leaving scratches and pleads to stay, or break, or something equally confusing, all over them.
(Don’t get her wrong. She does not want to be here.)
Tomori’s song sees the fleeting touch of Anon’s hand against hers, against her hand, her hair, her insufferable warmth. Here lies the problem: Chihaya Anon is not warm. She is a fucking heatwave.
If Soyo will give her one thing it’s brightness, the eyesore kind, eyes squinted against the light, Anon is too damn insufferable for anyone to witness, let alone willing.
Seemingly, she likes her. Anon insists this is true.
Anon also insists on calling her Soyorin like she’s some kid, like she knows anything about her, like they’re on the same level, like she knows if Soyo would let anyone kiss her after Sakiko broke her heart freshly fifteen it would be her.
Which is to say, she’s long since learned she’s powerless in the field of being loved without restraint, being seen. Anon looks at her and she sees her not right, not how she wants to be seen, but wholly. She squints and tells her she’s a mess and needs to get her shit together in her own home she invited herself into, the bastard, sat all politely like she’s not making a scene. She gives her a stupid grin and tells her she’s not going anywhere.
She makes Soyo’s heart race until she thinks she’s going to pass out and her head pound and she giggles some stupid laugh when Soyo says it’s because she’s so annoying. Soyo doesn’t know what’s so funny, it’s true. Anon says she’ll admit it eventually.
(She will press her forehead to hers and wipe her tears and shush her like she is something deserving of being held, and she will tell her she’s pretty when she’s crying, no, all the time, soon, though Soyo does not know this right now.)
So she allows Anon to pull her up. It’s the only thing she can do.
She presses her face further against Anon’s shoulder. There’s no space left between them in the first place. A myriad of words: you’re terrible, you’re terrible, I love you, don’t touch me, don’t you dare let go of me.
Anon understands, maddening and electrifying as she is, fingers warm and tapping against Soyo’s skin, lips hovering above her hair so close Soyo can feel the ghost of it, as if it’s something she’d done before. As if it’s something Soyo wanted her to do before.
“Soyorin,” she whispers, and there is tenderness in such a nickname that has never been there before, and surely she must feel the way Soyo’s face shapes into a glare because she stops, allows Soyo room to speak. Still: what she does not allow her is detachment, space to breathe, and Soyo finds herself so desperate not to be let go.
She hates it.
“You’re the worst,” she says, eventually. “I’m awful. Don’t do this- don’t care about me.”
“It’s too late for that,” Anon giggles, and terribly, Soyo loves the sound.
“Stop it, then.”
“You wouldn’t want that.”
“I would.”
“Nope,” she says simply, pops the p, and Soyo can hear her smirk even as she keeps her voice low. Not gentle anymore, not pity, just enough for Soyo’s ears to stop ringing from the silence. She’s dizzy. She hardly knows where she is.
The room is so dark and grimy and humid and she’s got Anon’s shoulder all wet, the sound of her voice all but saying Anon is very close to doing the same for her, and here she is: sixteen and falling apart in a stuffy room after everyone else has left for the night — the night, the night, not forever — and it is not Togawa Sakiko holding her together, but the one she used to get to her.
She can only sob harder.
“Hey, hey,” she chuckles, and it’s awkward. Anon rubs her back and Soyo doesn’t have the mind to stop herself from pushing into it. “I know you.”
Is that supposed to be comforting? God. She’ll never understand her. She’ll never understand why she wants to.
“You don’t,” she scoffs. The waver of her voice betrays her. She can feel her hands start to shake and Anon holds one, keeps the other arm around her steady, firm, so unlike the girl about to run when accused of running away at all.
She’s changed, Soyo realizes, and when she looks up Anon is smiling. Genuinely smiling. Not a grin or a smirk, not a half-smile — a full smile, head tilted.
“What’s so funny?”
“I love you.” Anon says it like a prayer, like she would say it again and again should Soyo ask, like it’s not the killing blow, and then Soyo watches in real time as Anon’s brain catches up to her stubborn, hyper mouth and she puts a hand over her lips.
(Only one. The one on her hand. She doesn’t let go of Soyo’s back. It’s only when Anon lets go does she realize that at some point her hand had stopped trembling.)
“…Ahaha- sorry, I mean your shirt, haha, glad I didn’t get it wet, right? You got mine all gross. You really owe me one now, Soyorin.” She flicks Soyo’s forehead and Soyo realizes she has two options. Both feel like some sort of end.
One, reciprocate.
Two, leave.
“…Soyorin?” And it is here at the sound of Anon’s suddenly shaky, prying voice that Soyo decides on the nuclear, heretofore undecided third option, leaning her head on Anon’s shoulder.
The many problems with Chihaya Anon include but are not limited to: she is annoying, and she shows up right when you need it both least and most, and Soyo isn’t lying to say she truly does hate her, to some degree. They also include: she is perceptive, for all her idiocy. Horribly aware. Observant. And when she moves the hand on Soyo’s back to tread through her hair, the chuckle she lets out is best described as fuzzy.
“You’re not gonna say it,” Anon states plainly.
Soyo sighs, a weak, tired little noise. She resents it. She hates being weak. She hates sounding the part even more. “Not right now.”
“But you do.”
“Unfortunately.”
And this is the moment where Anon does the worst thing anyone has ever done after someone says their crush on someone else is an issue: she laughs, truly laughs, high and side-splitting, so hard she hiccups.
She takes a hand out of Soyo’s hair to wipe her eyes and Soyo does not have time to miss it or process all the things that would imply. “Soyorin, you’re so mean! You’re so lucky I love you.”
Soyo gasps.
“…Right. Too soon?”
She hums. “A little.”
“Sorry.” It sounds genuine. It sounds tender.
“It’s fine.”
Anon nods, and Soyo feels it against the side of her head, and then she yawns. “Wanna get out of here?”
“In a bit.”
“Alright,” she titters in acquiesce, and it is that exact moment, half-laugh brushing warm air against her ear and surprisingly soft hair tickling her nose, hands that little bit too warm threading through hair already neat simply for the act of doing so, Soyo realizes two things:
One, she has fallen in love again. Properly. Wholly. Stupidly, as if it was all simple, like her heart wasn’t broken and bleeding from the last time.
Two, the imperative: this time will be different.
(Anon’s still giggling to herself about something Soyo tuned out in her overthinking, and when she asks what’s so funny Anon laughs more because apparently the concept of Soyo wanting to know what - if anything - is going on in Anon’s head is utterly hilarious, and she can’t stop herself from thinking that maybe in time she’ll be okay.
Anon breathes out, serious all of the sudden, as if she knows what she’s thinking. Soyo breathes in, and it feels like a late beginning.)