Chapter Text
i.
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t end with a bang. It doesn’t end with much at all.
Hitori used to have a misconstrued sense of what being in a band actually entailed. Her only sources were emerging rockstars; passion-ridden, rag tag misfits who skyrocketed from their first album and stayed soaring ever since. Hitori loved their stories, thrived from their energy, and completely took their experiences at face value. It took Kessoku Band a year to dismantle most of the misconceptions she had. Even now, some odd ideas slip through the cracks. The reality always leaves her drowning.
This time, it came as a text.
Nijika: Does anyone else think we should go on a break sometime?
Everyone did. Kessoku Band was put on an indefinite hiatus.
Hitori knew that this was coming. Nijika had canceled band practice for the day, then for the week, then eventually for the future. It was coming from a mile away.
Still, her eyes found themselves glossing over the fine text for the thousandth time, their movements trailing against every line of the kanji Nijika wrote. Just like that, it was over. Everything was over. In two messages.
The band break ups covered on the internet always had extensive coverage. There would be fighting and drama and bitterness, and eventually one of the members would come on stage and publicly denounce the others and everything would crumble to ashes. Young Hitori used to wonder how she would react if— No, when it happened to her. She used to think she’d die.
She’s drowning. It’s not like her to scream, but she should at least be thinking. Breathing. Her body hasn’t moved from underneath her futon in hours. The cramping from her frozen limbs becomes nothing but a distant, dull ache.
Two simple messages. Only two.
She doesn’t feel like much of anything. Kessoku is ending, ending…
Hitori is still very much alive.
ii.
She ends up staying in bed for three days. Her mother relents, but slips inside of her room sometime after the third. Hitori blinks out into yet another dreamless doze when she starts to comb the greasy tangles out of her hair. Groaning, she further buries herself into her futon.
Her mother presses a kiss on her forehead. Bitterness burns like acid as it bubbles up her throat, but she has long learnt to bite her tongue.
She would much rather not have anyone privy to her wallowing in self-pity like this, but it turns out asking your family for advice causes them to become very invested in your love life. Coming home near tears the day you said you were going to confess does not leave much to the imagination. The only reason why she bothered to get out of bed those days was for Kessoku Band and, well, the outcome of that looks pretty obvious now.
Her mother starts to hum while she cards her fingers through her hair. Hitori stays underneath her blanket in hopes she would eventually give up and forget about her. Everyone else did, anyway.
Time cycles. She relents her onslaught on her hair, but Hitori could still feel the soothing heat of her body next to her. The song is not something she recognizes.
“What is that?” Hitori’s voice is harsh and blunt, hardened by days of dormancy. She regrets saying anything.
“‘The Loneliness Girl,’” she replies easily. “It's from Carole and Tuesday. We can watch it– It's mother-daughter day.”
Hitori cringes at the implications– getting their hair and nails done, going shopping, dining on light snacks and gossiping… Ugh. “Futari is at school.”
“You know who I meant, Hitori-chan.”
Hirori groans.
“We can also try these new charcoal face masks. I saw they're supposed to help with wrinkles, so I brought one for both of us.”
The sound Hitori lets out is not quite a laugh, but it's not a groan either. Some groan-cough thing echoing from the depths of hell. Her mother continues.
“Afterwards, I was thinking of making karaage for dinner. You can help me if you're up to it. But you have to sit up first.”
Hitori squeezes her eyes shut as she weighs her options. Getting up seemed near impossible, but the temptation of food was too much to ignore. Eventually, her body slowly erupts from her futon like some sort of secret, vile monster, awakened only to create torment.
Her mother smiles at her.
“Hi,” she says, pushing away the greasy bangs from her eyes. Hitori nods, fidgeting with the blanket. Her fingers unravel strings.
“I don’t get… Why are you doing this?” She knows her mother loves her, but this special attention… She doesn't deserve it. Her hair is all sweaty and dull. She has these depressing eyebags despite the days of sleep she cycles through. She stinks– She hasn’t showered in days. Besides her hideousness, Hitori has been basically nonverbal ever since the band had that huge argument. Her patheticness demoted her from even sub-water flea status, right now she's sure she's probably on par with some microscopic amoeba.
“I feel you need some sunlight today, that's all.”
Sunlight? The outside looked like a wasteland, the brooding sky blending in with gray lumps of land in some overwhelming bland mirage– but maybe that was just her. Her view was veiled by constant shadows cloaking her bedroom. Depression coats the floor like dust.
The response is too placating for her taste. She grows deeper, pushing towards pity, who wouldn’t pity her– “Are you, uh, going to ask me about it?”
“Do you want me to?”
She pauses. All of her thoughts were dedicated to Kessoku Band, yet thinking of words to convey anything felt like grasping at smoke. Her feelings felt intangible yet so suffocatingly real.
“I wouldn't know what to say,” Hitori finally whispers. Her response is not yet soft, but gentler somehow. As if all the bitterness that had taken its time rotting her vocal cords had been strained from exiting. It left her small and quiet, oddly light.
“You’ll find your words.” She shakes her head, outstretching her hand. “Come on, it's time to get up.”
Hitori extends her entire strength to take it. Her mother's grin grows when she does, slowly pushing them out and up and standing on ground. She keeps them steady all the way out.
iii.
Futari says something about her becoming a lovesick NEET on day four. On day five Hitori finally has the strength to go to school. These events aren’t remotely related.
School, surprisingly, hasn't changed at all. She watches the same cliques gossip in front of her, the same teachers lecture on the same topics. No one spares her a passing glance. She finds herself oddly disappointed.
Hitori had moved schools to escape from her sinful past– she shivers, she had long buried that history– yet the nothingness it provides offsets her now. Somehow, she expected someone to pull her aside to ask her how she's doing. At least one ‘Oh, the pink blob from the back of the class is gone, I wonder who took it.’ No one does. The world blurs, quick with its need to spin on its axis.
Wait, no, that's a lie. One person had bothered to see her, the one person she found herself dying to escape from.
“Hitori-chan!”
Hitori freezes below the stairway. She knew she shouldn't have come here, but her feet blindly retraced the steps soon as lunch began. She jolted as soon as she regained her bearings, preparing to run in the opposite direction, but the shout of her name completely immobilized her.
Kita is still entirely beautiful.
Hazy-gold daylight pours from the dreary blue window above, pushing against the thin slithering bars of the stairwell. Kita stands in the middle of it all, golden under the sun. The space under the stairs looks akin to a gilded cage.
She frowns. “You didn't bring your guitar.”
…Right. It's in her closet. With her notebook. And her laptop, her songs. How hopeless.
(It seems the only open wounds are on her fingers and in her mouth. It's the reason why her fingers tend to blister and her teeth catch onto the tough skin of air. Some time ago she wanted that expression, needed to carve the words out of herself. Nowadays she'd probably bleed out before the song ends.)
She hasn’t thought about it much, so she shrugs lamely. “I felt like I needed a break from music.” A shift, Hitori looks at the golden bars. “So I just left it, I guess.”
To leave music… The very thought makes her want to gag.
“I tried to take a break, but I almost forgot most of our new stuff!” Hitori flinches at the blind enthusiasm and Kita’s smile dwindles, just a bit. She heaves the guitar case off her back and onto a wall. “I have to keep practicing, just to keep up.”
“It's good that you're trying your best,” Hitori says, gathering enough strength to smile weakly. Kita grins as takes her place next to her.
“Yeah! It's tiring, but it's worth it! I can't wait to blow you all away when we get back together!”
Surprisingly, the conversation grows normal. Kita talks about Isosta and classes and music, although sparingly, and Hitori tries her best to mumble acknowledgements here and there. She almost relaxes here, as if she doesn’t know who they are, as if this entire routine wasn’t already clockwork.
Before she knows it, Kita's lips are on hers.
It's a frequent thing. Kita is inevitable and Hitori is an object of gravity. They were a match made in heaven.
(Her feelings were with Ryo and Nijika. She saw the force she took when they announced they were dating, how long ago was it now? That was love– pure, selfless love. But what does she know?)
The things they got up to thirty-minute lunch periods were nothing more than quick, sinful distractions. Hitori…
She shouldn't mind. She shouldn’t, but every touch of her lips awakens the ugly abyss coiling in her abdomen. It brews angrily within her, a storm of boiling desire and overwhelming revelation.
Hitori pushes against her. “Kita-chan.”
She has to be hurting too, right?
Kitas eyes flutter open, brows creasing in concern. “Is everything okay?”
She immediately flushes, squirming like panicked vermin. It –how long has it been since she called their relationship other than just “it” – still manages to fluster her. She has kissed Kita over a hundred times. “I-I uh… I don't– well...”
“It's okay if you don't want to,” Kita says, leaning back and waving her hands. Hitori squints as she is blasted with Kit-aura. The sudden burn is hot, razor sharp as it plunges into her ghostly skin, but in it she wonders how it feels to have sunlight pour from your palms and deal with the afterburn. Kita is amber itself, a love in the form of daybreak and golden hours, but constantly burning must get tiring. Even the sun has an expiration date. It's a worrying thought. “We can do it another time. Say, have you seen that new cafe in–”
“I don’t think we can do it, uh, anymore.”
Hitori hasn’t done anything to help in that regard, hasn't she? She has been too tired, too insecure, too anxious. She never crafted herself to be enough.
“Oh.”
She has to end this.
“Yeah.”
This is the right thing to do.
“Did I do something wrong?”
She thinks this is the right thing to do. It is. Right.
“No. I, uh– I wanted it too.”
When Hitori was thirteen she used to sit in her closet, face hot and sticky with summer, and rerun different music videos of rock bands in the dark. Her eyes caught into skin and sweat like teeth and pulled, desperation wanting in. It was one of the first times she ever felt an attraction othering friendship and music. It was the first time she felt anything bordering otherworldly.
“Then why?”
Her connection with Kita surpasses anything else.
Kita is beautiful, yes, but she is also so funny and adorable and mesmerizing. Photos cannot comprehend how holy her laugh sounds. She's careful to take time with hang out with all her friends. She's so smart and willing, absolutely lionhearted.
(Sometimes, she texts the band chat goodnight at three in the morning and arrives at school with more foundation under her eyes. Her guitar is pressed so close against her skin it pulses with her blood. Hitori can't help but love this too, can't help but wonder what love music brings for her.)
She tries too hard to mend her with her gentleness. Hitori doesn’t want to be around when she realizes she can’t. Her loathing is wide and intangible, opening up space and pulling everything into its inky depths. A freefall into a gaping oblivion.
Hitori has already ruined this good thing, but perhaps she could catch her before she stumbles into the dark.
She turns away, unable to watch the hope run from her eyes. “I just–” I don't know if I could ever be someone else. “I know you have feelings for someone else.” I love them. I love you. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship, so I guess we should…” You can't burn out. I won't swallow you.
The silence bleeds upon one moment to the next horribly. Hitori doesn't want to say what's next, she isn't sure if she knows what's next. Unfortunately, Kita doesn't either. They sit in silence for eons before the anxiety writhing under Hitori's skin forces her to look at the other. She freezes immediately.
The concern had never left; It still floats upon her. But anxiety almost drowns her. Her eyes are blown out, pinpoints shrinking in fear. She looks at her as if she's the only one keeping her afloat.
“Please don't break up with me.”
Hitori almost shoots into the ceiling. “What?!”
“It's just that–” Kita tries to smile, her lips thin and stretched upon unwilling skin. “I know we have a very, uh, complicated relationship right now, and our feelings are all over the place, but– I feel we can get through this! I love you, and you love me, so I don’t really get it…”
Hitori stares. Was Kita her girlfriend? Is she her partner now?
“I don’t get why things are like this.” Her smile sours as she continues. “Getting so worked up when the woman of my dreams is right there.” She pauses, clears her throat. “I get why you would think I would want to pursue them when I’m this shameless, but I’m committed to you. I'll get better for you. I’ll–”
“Kita-chan.”
Kita blinks once, twice, before finally realizing the confusion on her face. She explodes in color.
“I think– Sorry! I thought, disregarding the, uh, kissing, we spent all this time together, right? And last month you started taking me out to all these places, and I just thought…”
Kita doesn't deserve to change herself for someone so hopeless as her. It's for the best, really.
This is for the best.
She takes a breath, gulping in a drastic air of courage. She almost chokes on it. “Kita, we were never dating.”
There it is. Spidering cracks dance along Kita's expression. There's webs of them, spirals. Nevermore does Hitori want to put her together again, just as she did to her many, many times, but her words create a sort of distance she cannot breach. She isn't sure she wants to, despite being so close she could feel her breath shutter between them.
“Oh.”
'This is okay,' she reminds herself. 'This is the right thing to do.'
Her gaze retreats.
“Um.” Her voice breaks like a forgotten branch left to die on a pathway. Kita eyes still brand hot sunspots into her, maggots of flame writhing throughout her skin. She has never felt so shameful. “Sorry, can I–”
“Yeah.” Kita presses trembling hands against her face. She wants to repair her, to hold her. She stands. “You can go. Please.”
“I'm sorry.” What for? Allowing her to believe in a dream unbecoming? It was always obvious.
A sob shutters through Kita, grief sharp and loud like lightning, and the sound gives her the jumpstart to start running. It's only until she reaches her classroom that Hitori realizes she doesn't have anywhere else to go.
iv.
It takes Hitori eleven hours to muster up the courage to check up on Kita over text. Kita replies in less than five minutes, full of exclamation marks and emoticons, and Hitori has to shut her phone off before she gets sick. Neither of them continue the conversation.
She wakes up to a good morning text in the band chat the next day.
v.
Hitori can't go inside Starry.
It's been a week since Kessoku Band's hiatus. Two days since she broke up with Kita. The Manager had called her to verify that she was not dead a day ago. She wanted to see her. Staring down the dark pit that was Starry’s descending entrance, Hitori finds that she just can’t do it.
She used to fret here all the time when she first joined Kessoku Band. Looking back, it all seems trivial. All that hopeless kicking and screaming, for what? She still made it in.
She can't go inside. She can't. She physically can't. Something had deconstructed itself from her between the hiatus and now, and she can't put herself together. Gravity is the only thing shoddily presses against her broken pieces. It’s akin to slamming two solid blocks together.
Hitori has a misconstrued sense of what life actually entailed. Her only sources are emerging rockstars; weird, socially awkward losers with a penchant to music and entertainment. The world embraced their weirdness. She thought she was embraced too, at times. Silly.
In the real world you have to rise to the challenge. You have to meld yourself to the status quo, because that’s the only reason people talk to you. Weirdness is contrived. It’s cute when you stamper and flush at the slightest things. It’s creepy when you stand staring at Starry’s entrance for an hour because you can’t go inside.
You can’t be meek. You can’t be quiet. You have to step up.
Hitori, step up.
She whimpers. Not even a stifled scream could escape her lips. Her feet are pressed to the ground, stamped on concrete by freezing sweat and culminating frost. Her arms, pale and blue, dangle like loose noodles against the wind. Her head is heavy with hot-cold hypotheticals and every part of her fighting one another. Something deep and secret in her chest begins to throb.
It’s so stupid, she thinks. You’ve done this before. You’ve done this, over and over again, for a year. You’ve done more– you’ve performed, you laughed, you’ve kissed. You’ve allowed yourself to be seen, Hitori. And it brought you everything, but it’s all gone– for what? A fear of disappointment? Some teenagers who you cooked up unrequited crushes on? Silly. Silly.
Step up. Go. Move.
Hitori wants to go home. She would take the cramped two hour train ride. Hell, she would even deal with Futari calling her a loser for the rest of the month. Real life is scary. God, she’s scared shitless.
Yet, her family was rooting her on, weren’t they? They practically rejoiced when she mentioned she was going to work. If she returned now… She knows they’ll support her, but they had to have ulterior thoughts. Would they be disappointed? Unsurprised? How many times does your fuck-up daughter has to come home empty handed until one realizes that she is defective?
She can’t go home. Not like this. Not two steps behind from where she was yesterday.
There’s twenty stairs descending into Starry. That’s twenty-five steps if she counts getting onto the stairway and into the door. She counts them all, front to back, over and over and over and over. Twenty-five is such a substantial number. And digits could only go up– into fifty-five, into a hundred and five, into a thousand– and suddenly she can't breathe.
She hates being like this. She hates thinking, rethinking, overthinking the same thing again and again. She hates when she breaks off the shackles for one moment– one brief, golden hour– and runs, freedom soaring under her arms. She hates when it all eventually catches up to her. It’s like scratching a vinyl before placing it on a turntable, her hand unraveling a torture repeating, pain forever creating. She’s so sick of the noise.
It’s euphoric to be free, yes, but is it worth it to repeat this same cycle? To feel this same heartbreak? If it would save herself– silly, she always had a lack of self preservation– giving up would be the best choice. To pack up the guitar, leave love and music to find more suitable suitors. Who needs her when she can’t walk into a door? What’s the point when she's just going to fall?
Hitori sinks to her knees. The frigid wind sharply plows against her huddled form, gusts of bitter cold and ice chunks lodging themselves in her hair. The abyss breaks the pact of reason lining of her abdomen and bleeds outwards, gathering clots across time and space.
Maybe this is good for her. If she can't do anything of note then she's better off nowhere, right?
This started with nothing more than a TV interview and an old Les Paul. She had watched a man babble on television like it was gospel. Like someone could save this ugly rot writhing from inside of her.
(It never died. It still entangles her insides, still embeds itself into skin, still wails like a child long forgotten towards Starry, towards the thing it had corrupted with its poison. Something unbecoming. Something meant to die.)
There's a sudden noise, but Hitori doesn't notice anything until a hand makes its way on her back. Its warmth decompresses her lungs enough to actually breathe and all the new sharp cool air comes in circling, pushing against her throat and into her lungs so fast that it hurts. She gasps and it hurts, it’s painful, it’s indescribable.
Hitori crumbles. Someone catches her.
She can hear soft murmurs float above her, but all she can focus on is the hot circles soothing her back and slamming air back in her lungs. She tries to grab onto humanity as she chokes and shutters on the weight of life, raw and dry and frantically real, and the circles tell her to slow down, hey, slow down– Breathe with me here, one breath then two and three. One, two, three. Just like that. One. Two. Three. There you go, Bocchi. You're doing great.
She gasps, but the action is easier, freer. She is breathing. Living. She almost died because she couldn't do a basic human function. The ultimate consequence of inaction, she supposes.
Freezing goosebumps rake her skin. She doesn't want that. Hitori doesn't want to die.
‘Easy,’ the circles say. “It’s okay. You'll be okay.’
Is it, really?
‘You’re doing good. It will all be okay.’
…Okay.
Voice swirls around in her head like howling winds. She reaches up for it, ignoring her dreary thoughts to grasp it firmly and whole. She gasps at its tangibility.
“Are you back with me?”
Hitori nods, shakily pulling away from warm arms. Air still rattles in her chest like haphazard pieces of shattered glass. She doesn't know where the Manager came from.
“Well,” The Manager looks at her with a pensive frown. She withers from the sight as her brain catches up with reality. Oh god, oh god. “What do you want to do?”
“What?” The sky had grown darker, invasive clouds looming closer. Her knees burn under cold concrete.
“You can stay and work.” Hitori convulses with dread. She's sure everyone saw her little freak out. Will they look at her differently? Will she forever be known as the girl who can’t go down stairs? “Or I can take you home.”
Hitori swallows, shaking the frostbite off her shoulders. Was this the same dilemma she was in before? She was pitted between two evils– face embarrassment or die a loser. Or were they the same thing in the end?
“Don't make me choose,” she rasps, desperate. The Manager simply tilts her head.
“It's your life.” Was it? Life was just an obstacle course made for her to fall. “To me, it looks like you've already put in the work to get here, but I understand if you're not up for it anymore.”
Work? Ha. She hadn't even got through the front door yet.
“D-Do you still have anything available..?”
Yet?
“Of course. But I can always wrangle Ryo to get it.”
She grimaces. Manager wasn't going to make this easy. This was her decision alone. Hers.
Hitori looks up at the Manager behind heavy bangs. Her gaze is hard, incomprehensible over swirling winter clouds and silvers of frost. Hitori doesn't know what she has done to be seen.
She doesn't want to inconvenience her.
She might be a microscopic amoeba, but she has two arms and two legs and some drive to do something. Amoeba can work. She can breathe. From there, she thinks she can obtain a sliver of worthiness.
(One breath, then two, and three…)
“I think– I think I'll stay. Ah– If you would h-have me.”
“Okay.” But something thaws from the Manager's expression. She stands before she could figure out what. “Let me offer you a hot chocolate and I can send you to work.”
Hitori makes a sound of protest. Even as despicable as she was, she did not want to be deemed as useless. Maybe that was worthiness in of itself? “A-Ah, I'm fine–”
“I don't want to deal with you getting sick and passing out.” Manager turns her back and jogs down the stairs, waving a disinterested hand around. She counts the steps she takes– twenty in total. “It's too cold. Let's go inside.”
“Mhm…”
Twenty. That's… nicer than twenty-five. Only twenty.
Manager faces her at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes beckon with something beholding over the shadows of Starry. Hitori blindly grips the handrail.
“Coming?”
“Y-Yes,” she gasps, lifting herself from the frozen ground. She stumbles through the entire twenty steps, an ironclad grip on the wall. The Manager pats at her shoulder when she makes it. Hitori, inexplicitly, relishes in her assumed approval, only to wash it down with a strong dosage of reality. She’s incompetence at its best. A sub water flea.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting.”
The door eases open with a heavy groan. She has to squint at the sudden warm rose-gold glow beckoning from the club. Tension burns from her shoulders from the sight of it.
“It’s no problem.” –and Hitori steps into the light.