Chapter Text
The first time Akito got into a fight was first grade.
He'd been in music class, surrounded by a bunch of other fidgeting kids as they turned some poor song into the kind of train wreck only six year olds could manage. A chunk of them somehow forgot the words even after a month of practice and were just singing whatever, anime theme songs and basic nursery rhymes drifting in and out like a scrambled radio. The kid next to him always skipped the same rest every time, never got back in sync, and fucked up everyone else around them. Most of them went wildly off key once it got too loud to hear the piano.
Back then, he’d liked music the way most kids like anything that doesn't require them to shut up and sit still, but even he was over it by verse two.
The music teacher— Yukina-sensei? Something like that— had let them finish the song anyway, her smile not even twitching as the volume doubled, the whole class jumping on the last, flat note. It still sticks with him how she grinned through every class, how much she didn’t seem to care about the awful noise. She always looked so happy to listen to a bunch of kids sing a little bit better than before, and he could never tell if she was bullshitting or partially deaf. He's still not sure.
As they’d lined up and waited for the next teacher to take them back to their classroom, Yukina-sensei went down the line complimenting each and every one of them. He’d definitely been scowling. Anyone could tell they sucked, but she got around it by saying they improved. “Takahashi-kun, good job remembering the lyrics.” “Aoi-chan, your pitch is getting better.” On and on, down the line, until she got to Akito.
“Your voice is so sweet and pretty!” she said, smiling wide. “You’re nice and loud, too. Great job remembering the words, Shinonome-chan!”
He remembers grabbing fistfuls of the skirt his mom had begged him into that day for his visiting grandparents, something like numbness clouding his head as he stared at its ugly floral pattern. He remembers the boy a few kids down being told he has a “cool” voice, all the feelings he couldn’t figure out tangling into each other until the only thing left was a balled-up scream stuck in the back of his throat. He remembers feeling frozen despite the bright summer sun lighting up the room, heavy like ice had leached into his limbs, frostbitten and numb. He remembers one of the boys behind him tugged on his long hair and teased him about his sweet voice.
He doesn’t remember hitting him, but he remembers not feeling bad about it.
For just a heartbeat, when everyone in the room stared at him in shock, right before the other kid hit him back, it’d felt like his skirt, his long hair, his voice… none of that mattered. He wasn’t the girl with the pretty little voice; he was whatever this thing inside him was, angry and violent and there to be seen.
He doesn't remember getting punished, either— he had to’ve, there’s no way his mom let him get away with that— but he does remember the attitude change in the school, how he became something else for awhile. A “troubled” girl, yeah, but not just a girl, and it was the only thing that came close to the feelings still constantly clogged in his throat.
He forced his singing voice lower after that. Yukina-sensei sometimes made comments about singing higher. He ignored her.
“I can't wait ‘til my voice drops,” he told Ena at some point later.
Ena, already a damn menace at eight years old, laughed at him. “Girls’ voices don't drop, stupid,” she said.
He definitely remembers getting grounded for pushing his sister, because she hit her elbow off the table and got a huge bruise that she milked for weeks. His mom'd been pissed, but he had no way to explain how this buzzing, numbing fear hadn’t left his head ever since Ena said that, that it was like the weight of the broken world was crushing his chest, something fundamental he always thought was true ripped away from him with a laugh.
“She started it” didn’t cut it.
It took him a long ass time to piece it all together, even longer to get to the point others would get it, but he learned real early what it took to get something as simple as his own name, and that nothing in life was ever gotten without a fight.
Akito wakes up with a sudden jerk and a gasp, eyes flying open before he slams them shut with a groan. He shifts, the backs of his eyes flashing as sunlight beams directly onto his face, and he quickly throws an arm over his eyes with another annoyed noise. That’s what he gets for forgetting to check if the stupid blinds’re closed the whole way before he passes out.
Already he can feel the full-body exhaustion from the last week creep in like coffee spilling onto a new pair of pants, his irritation only pushing sleep further and further away. He's trying to hang onto it— he does not want to be awake— but he can feel awareness stubbornly stain his mind, his tired limbs demanding attention as they throb in time with his heartbeat.
He’s gonna kill whoever woke him up. There's no way in hell it’s not too damn early for him to be awake.
“Akito!” A voice is yelling from his headboard above him, tinny and compressed, like a call just barely coming through a phone. “Akito, up here! I heard you! Akito!”
“Len, stop,” he grumbles, blindly swiping towards the noise. His heavy arm bends awkwardly. He feels his charger pop out of the socket as it tangles in his fingers, almost smacking him in the face as falls, his phone following it onto his mattress. It bounces once before slipping down the crack between his bed and headboard, a solid ping as it hits the frame once before clattering to the ground.
“Shit,” he mutters, a little more awake.
“Akito, come on! We need help! I’ve been trying to wake you up forever!” It’s way quieter; his phone must’ve landed face-down. Good, Len can wait a few hours.
Akito rolls over until he’s against the wall and pulls his blanket over his head, trapping his lingering body heat inside. After the week they’ve had, his worn-out body should at least let him fall asleep again nice and quick. Hopefully his legs won't feel like concrete the next time he opens his eyes.
“Akito-kun, please wake up.” It's a different voice, older, dependable. “It’s important.”
…Sighing, he curls into himself for a few heartbeats, just to savor the warmth, and pushes himself up. Of all the virtual singers, he only trusts one of them to actually know when something can’t wait.
With a quick flick of his wrist, Akito finally closes the blinds. The brown panels turn a glowing orange in the dim morning sun. He wraps his blanket around his shoulders, careful to hide his unbound chest, and fumbles under the bed for his phone.
“Meiko-san,” he greets, his voice rough from sleep, grating in his raw throat. He clears it, wincing, and tries to quickly swipe the sleep crumbs from his eyes. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to wake you so early,” she says genuinely. She pats down her hair, the blue halo around her not enough to hide how messy it is, and something uneasy chills his chest, chasing away the little warmth left from sleep. “We know you all had a long week and a late night, but we need you over in the Sekai. Toya-kun—”
It would've been less effective for her to physically shake him awake. “What’s wrong with Toya?”
“He’s fine,” Meiko-san says quickly. Her hands raise in a calming motion that only makes his heart pound harder. “He’s here. We just need some help.” She’s trying to be soothing, but it’s more cryptic than anything.
“‘Help?’” Akito echoes, brain slowly sputtering into gear. Toya’s in the Sekai? Why? It’s— he glances at his clock— nine in the morning!? They dropped him off around three! They don’t have practice, so why’s Toya even up? What could’ve happened in six hours?
Shit, how’s Akito only slept for five?
“It’s nothing bad,” Meiko-san assures him. “There’s a—” She glances off screen, eyes wide and panicked. Distantly, so faint he could be hearing things, there’s something that sounds like a crash.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Akito says.
Meiko-san nods, already turning away. “See you soon.”
And then he’s alone, tired eyes burning and sleep completely wiped from his body.
Damn it.
The next few minutes're like trying to do homework right before the teacher collects it.
There’s not really much Akito can do. He's got deep bags under his eyes can't get rid of, his clothes’ve somehow wrinkled in the minute between the bathroom and his shelf, and his hair…fuck, his hair. It’s the unique chaos that only happens from a hard sleep and a wet head, fighting the best of his frantic efforts to look halfway decent so it can stick up like some barely designed anime character. If he’d just sucked it up and dried it completely last night after his shower he might've been able to pull off something, but he didn’t, so he can't.
Worst of all, his mom’s already started laundry, so his go-to binders’re out of the picture. It’s not the best idea, but there’s no choice except to squeeze an older, smaller one over his chest.
Akito's not stupid. He knows that even if the oversized binders he wears to perform don’t cause breathing issues, the long hours he's been pulling in them're definitely not great for his body. He was counting on today being mostly a break, but he can take it long enough to deal with whatever's going on. It won't kill him.
Pulling out his old sports bra is not an option. Forget the way it’s like debating whether to stab himself or not— he already looks like shit. There’s no way in hell he's showing up in front of Toya without a binder, too. He’s already been blowing it as a boyfriend, so the absolute last thing he needs is to look like less of one when Toya might be starting to notice…
The thought lingers like a shouted threat on an empty street, but he forcefully shoves it away. He’s gotta help Toya now, not get distracted with his own shit.
In a last-ditch effort to shake off the lingering exhaustion, he tries to toss some cold water on his face, but all it does is make him feel worse, more tired, and wet.
Awesome.
A minute left, he looks at himself in the full-body mirror in his bedroom, the initial sting of it barely registering anymore, an old injury. A plain, baggy shirt with a dark jacket over top keeps his silhouette straight and masculine. His loose pair of sweatpants’re kinda boring, but they match and won’t rub at the injection site if he decides not to change for his appointment later. His outfit’s good, but the rest of him…
Whatever, it's fine. He did his best. If he’s lucky, Toya won’t really notice how rough he looks, but he’s not holding his breath. Somehow, Toya always zeros in on exactly what Akito doesn't want him to at exactly the wrong time.
He checks his messages one last time, but there’s still no response from An or Kohane. It’s not like he really expected them to answer since they got home later than him, but knowing he could get them just in case would be, y'know, nice.
A sigh, a quick tap, a few blinks to clear the light from his eyes, and he’s in the Sekai.
Akito's not sure what he was expecting, but it isn't silence. The whole Sekai's unnaturally still, like waking up in the small gap of early morning between when the street lights shut off and the birds start singing, the world stuck in some in-between before it falls into the day.
Inside Crase Cafe, Rin and Len’re staring towards the back of the building without a word, not a single drink on their table, the quietest he’s ever seen them. He’d almost think the Sekai was bugging out if he couldn't see Len’s occasional leg bounce or Rin fiddle with her hair bow nervously. Miku leans next to the door inside, silent as a statue, only her finger moving as she taps her elbow in a slow tempo, eyes locked on the same corner.
Meiko-san and Toya are nowhere to be found.
Akito approaches the cafe, glancing up and down the empty street, eyes catching on the new, twisting graffiti disappearing around the side of Crase Cafe. The door sticks as he pulls the handle, and he frowns, pulls a little harder. It rattles.
“It’s locked,” Miku says, her voice muffled through the glass.
“‘Locked?’” Akito echos dumbly. He didn’t know it could do that, but it feels obvious. Of course it can. Why couldn't it?
“Yeah, just in case,” she says, like that explains anything. She jerks her head to the side, not taking her eyes off the corner. “Meiko and Toya are in the back. I’d go around if I were you.”
Akito looks at Rin and Len, both of them suddenly tense in their chairs, and decides Miku’s probably right. He nods his thanks and hurries around the side of the building, an explosion of sound following him.
His footsteps echo dully as he hurries down the alley. The bright colors of the main streets’re duller here, faded and functional, the division sharp like a dingy backstage versus a live house’s floor. The shining shapes that always lurk in the corner of his eyes thin out a bit, and the sun's dimmed by the tall buildings around him.
The graffiti from before's just barely visible on the walls as he rushes past, only the darker colors that’re the hardest to wash off still stubbornly stained there, faded blacks and deep blues barely more than smears on the brick. The original picture it was part of's impossible to make out now. It's not much different some of the walls on Vivid Street, the ones a few owners always try to keep clean of any graffiti, everything from shaky smiley faces to full on art pieces washed away once a month, only to reappear stubbornly the next week like a weed that keeps pushing up through concrete.
On the ground, a few other splotches of faded blue trail along the alley. It follows him around the corner.
Thanks to Meiko-san, the actual back entrance of Crase Cafe has a little more life to it. Red paint outlines the space in a lopsided twisting pattern, the same color as her usual nail polish. Little potted planters full of green herbs sit on make-shift tables to catch the sunlight sneaking through the buildings. Mismatched tables and chairs’re littered all around, some of them missing arms or legs, and a couple of them are halfway stained a new, darker color.
His eyes catch on old bar chairs pushed far up against the wall near the back door to the cafe, similar enough to the ones he knows’re at the bar inside that it makes his head hurt trying to remember if he’s seen them before. It's not important, but his mind sticks to it like gum on a shoe. Are they new? Did they rotate out and he just never noticed? Off-balance, he forces his eyes off them, searching for the real reason he’s here.
Meiko-san and Toya are sitting together off to the side near one of the sunbeams, their faces hidden as they bend towards each other. His heart skips an embarrassing beat when he notices Toya’s wearing the jacket Akito picked out for him a few weeks ago, the nice, dark green color vibrant in the sun. It’s ridiculous how strong the sudden craving is for Toya to turn around so he can see how the color makes the silver in his eyes pop, and he stuffs it down as he jogs over.
“Hey,” Akito says, then stops. Blinks. "Dude, what the fuck happened?!”
An ice pack hides Toya's hand from view, jarringly white against his skin like seeing a polar bear in the middle of Tokyo. Meiko-san steadily holds it in place for him, barely reacting to Akito's voice, but Toya glances up and—
Damn, he seems almost as exhausted as Akito feels. Toya’d been looking a little better the last few weeks, whatever bit of progress he had with his task letting the bags under his eyes slowly disappear, but the ghost of them’s back, a dark swipe on his pale skin.
Toya smiles, small but tired, and Akito’s heart flinches.
“I’m okay,” he says, gently taking the pack from Meiko-san so he can face Akito. It gives Akito a better view of the hand not being iced, and he stares at the faint red lines criss-crossing over each other like a bad tic-tac-toe board, complete with little dots scattered around them like eraser bits. What's the covered hand look like?!
“Are you? I’ve never even seen you with a hangnail!” Akito sweeps his eyes over him, but the rest of him's still in one piece. A bowl of soapy water sits on a small, slanted table beside them, the rag draped over the lip blotted with faint red patches, and there's the faint smell of alcohol on the breeze. At least he’s been taken care of, but jeez! “How’d this happen?!”
That makes Toya look away from him, eyes drifting off his face. His jaw works as he considers his words. There's a small, embarrassed tilt to his lips that Akito’s started to like recently, but right now it just makes his nerves jitter faster.
Finally, Toya admits, "I got into a fight."
…There's no way he heard that right. “Huh?”
Toya clears his throat and says louder, “I was in a fight, and it didn’t go well.” Anyone else, Akito would’ve thought it was a bad joke, but there’s no tilt to his lips, no teasing gleam in his eye. He’s dead serious.
“Do you even know how to throw a punch?” Akito asks weakly before wanting to slap himself as Toya shakes his head. Of course he doesn’t! Toya wasn’t even allowed to do Sport’s Day as a kid! Hell, Kohane can probably throw a better punch just from hanging out with An. No one on Vivid Street’s ever messed with him too bad, either, so the only fight Toya’s been in before this one's—
Their fight. It's the last time he's seen Toya hurt, too.
Akito goes rigid for a few heartbeats. A chill like getting blasted with AC directly on his neck swipes through his body before he forcibly relaxes himself, ignoring Toya’s eyes flashing in confusion. It’s an old hurt, but it’s already fixed. It’s no different than thinking about Crawl Green or his first battle with Tono or any of the other million failures that dog his steps. He’s beyond it— they’re beyond it— and it melts out of him slowly.
Toya seems to notice he’s settled. His lips curl in a ghost of a smile that makes Akito’s heart thump, off-beat. Akito moves forward and knocks their knees together to get some of the energy out, Toya's body heat chasing away the rest of the cold as it shoots through his body, fingertips tingling.
Akito taps the ice pack. “So why the hell’re you throwin’ punches?”
"If I approach from the direction of my house, there’s a cat I tend to pass near Vivid Street,” Toya says, the slightest bit of affection underscoring his voice like a steady drumbeat. Akito shifts impatiently but stays silent, knowing Toya’s gotta give him all the info instead of cutting to the chase. “I think people call him Momiji? He moves around between a few areas, but he’s usually on Nakacho Street most mornings. I was hoping to see him before I went to record a few more samples.”
Akito just barely keeps an “Oh?” from slipping out, clamping down on it in his throat because that’s way too much. Just because he's gone with Toya to grab new samples every other time since they started dating doesn't mean Toya’s always gotta ask him to tag along. He doesn't want him to feel like it should.
…But lack of sleep's got him off balance, and his eyes drift to the unfamiliar sight of Toya's hands. Doubt creeps in like a light frost, and he rubs his arm to warm it away.
It's probably not— he knows it's probably not— but…is it already at this point…?
“I thought about inviting you,” Toya says, off-handed, “but you would've gotten home close to your morning run time. I assume you did it before going to bed rather than running later in the day.” He cocks his head. “Am I wrong?” he asks innocently, lips twitching.
Akito blinks, an embarrassingly gooey flame in his chest overshadowing the uncertainty like a bonfire in the night, briefly protected, thawed. “No, you're not,” he admits, and the proud smile that creeps onto Toya’s face is worth the call out.
Then it wilts, taking that warmth with it, replaced by a slightly worried frown that doesn’t match the size of the hole it puts in Akito. “I’m sorry. You have an appointment today, right? But we woke you up to come help.” His gray eyes turn calculating, the same look he gets when asking about homework. “How long did you sleep?”
Akito waves him off. “’S fine,” he says impatiently, hoping the shade hides his own dark eye bags. “Your hand, man. What happened?”
After a heartbeat, Toya nods, taking the bait, and Akito holds back a sigh of relief. “The cat wasn’t at his usual spot. I thought maybe I missed him, but then I heard the sound of glass breaking.” He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I was worried the cat had gotten into something he shouldn’t have and went to check.
His hand comes up to twist his necklace with nimble fingers. “I found a group of men on a side street. They were laughing and stumbling around, so I figured they were college students walking back from a party and tried to leave before they noticed me. Then I heard a hiss.”
Toya’s eyebrows furrow. His jaw clenches, eyes growing stormy and dark, and his fist tightens around his necklace. Akito’s gotten pretty good at reading Toya, knows his expressions by heart, but this? This is a new one, and it’d be clear as day to anyone looking at him. It’s beyond the anger he’s seen a handful of times; this is rage.
“When I got closer I saw they were throwing things into an alley. I told them to stop, pushed my way in, and then… I’ll do my best, but everything happened very fast after that.” He's got the gall to look apologetic, like it’s his fault things got crazy.
Akito knocks their knees together again. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Just lemme know what you remember.”
Toya closes his eyes, and the heavy mood isn’t enough to keep Akito from admiring the way the bridge of his nose wrinkles as he thinks. “They were saying things to me about hurting their friend when I pushed my way past, trying to pick a fight,” he continues slowly. “I kept telling them we’d talk once they let Momiji out, but Momiji wouldn’t move. He wouldn't let me get close, either.
“They kept crowding in on us," Toya continues. "One of them grabbed my jacket. I tried to shove him off me, and then— I’m not sure now, but it looked like he tried to hit me.” He moves his iced hand, grins at himself sadly. “I couldn’t get him off me, so I tried to hit him… I think.”
“‘Think?’ Did you hit ‘em or not?” Akito reaches for Toya, and his partner lets him gently move his hand so he can lift the ice pack.
It's…not as bad as he thought, actually. His knuckles are a little red, and it's definitely a little swollen, but it looks like the kind of damage that’ll heal fast. It's not bad enough to look like it was a solid hit, and nothing feels out of place around his fingers, either.
“I don’t remember really making a fist, but I wanted to get him away,” Toya admits softly, curling his index finger to catch on Akito's. Akito doesn't quite manage to stop his hand from jerking in surprise, the ice pack almost slipping. “I was worried about hurting either of us since I’m so inexperienced with fights.”
Akito snorts. “Shoulda just went for it. You can hurt yourself way worse with a half-hearted hit.” Gently, he puts the ice pack back on Toya's hand. Toya places his free hand over Akito's, the heat of it almost too much after the chill of the ice, and slides his hand away.
Akito clears his throat. “So what're the scratches from?” They don’t look deep enough, but anger lights his chest. “It's not from glass, right?”
“No. The man stumbled after I hit him, so I scooped up Momiji and ran. He scratched at me, of course.” A sigh. He glances up at Akito, wearing the particular disapproving expression that only ever comes up when Tsukasa-senpai's involved. “I don't blame Momiji. He was already scared and possibly hurt. It makes sense he started clawing at me to get away.”
“Yeah, yeah, no blamin' the cat. I get it.” Akito shakes his head. He’ll do his best, but no promises. Sure, it's an animal, but how can't it tell when someone's trying to help?
Toya's shrugs, lips quirking up, before sliding back into a more serious look, eyes steely. “I could hear the men chasing us, and I panicked. I wasn’t sure if I could outrun them before Momiji wiggled out of my hands, so I waited until I turned a corner and came here.”
It takes Akito's tired brain a few sputtering moments to connect the dots. “You brought it here?!”
“The cat's in the cafe,” Meiko-san says, making them both jump. He completely forgot she was still here! She smiles apologetically as he takes a small step back from Toya, readjusting his jacket. “Miku, Rin, and Len are keeping an eye on it. Judging by the runaround Momiji has been giving them, the cat isn't injured, just scared.”
“That's good.” Toya breathes out, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders with it. “Still, it might be smart to take him to a vet. Shiraishi told me before that there's a few people on Vivid Street that make sure the strays are taken care of and keep them up to date on vaccinations. Asking them seems like the best option, especially since I'm not sure how to take care of him.”
Akito shrugs. “I tried to message her already. Those two definitely got back late, so it’ll be a bit. More importantly,” he cuts a look at Toya's hands, “worry about yourself, dude. Should you go see someone for all that? I’ve never needed to do more than ice my hand, but I’m not sure ‘bout the scratches.”
“The swelling's almost completely gone,” Meiko-san cuts in, level-headed as always. “I made sure there's no pain when he uses his hand, and I disinfected the cuts as well. It wouldn’t hurt to get it checked, but you should be safe if the cat's up to date on shots, Toya-kun.”
Silence. Toya's eyes go a little unfocused as he thinks, looking far beyond them. His free hand fiddles with his necklace, rolling the slim silver in his long fingers, and Akito quickly looks away, back to his face, throat a little dry. The skin around his waist tingles with the ghost of touch, and he swats it out of his mind too fast for it to hold.
Finally, Toya looks at him. “I want to stay here until we figure out what to do with Momiji, whether that's giving him to someone on Vivid Street or taking him to the vet ourselves. After that, I’ll reevaluate the scratches and my hand. As long as nothing gets worse and we can confirm he's gotten vaccinated, I think I’ll avoid the doctor.” He tilts his head slightly, too handsome for six hours of sleep. “Does that sound good?”
“Your call,” Akito says, shrugging. “I’m just glad you're okay.” He moves to knock their knees again—
…Shit, he messed up. His hand. He shoulda been going for his hand this whole time like any decent boyfriend. It's probably more comforting too, right?
Akito's stomach sinks like he's halfway through a math exam realizing he's used the wrong formula, the distinct taste of fucking up sand in his mouth. He stutters to a stop. His fingers twitch at his side, and Toya's eyes dart towards it like a neon sign, his expression flickering—
There's a muffled crash as the three of them whip their heads towards the back door, and a shout faintly breaks through. “Kaito, don't!”
Meiko-san's a lightning bolt. She's at the back door in an instant, cracking it open just enough for her to slip inside, and another yell leaks through before she slams it behind her. It's Rin's voice, panicked: “The cat—!”
Akito's gut plummets.
He pivots on his heel and runs back towards the front of the cafe, Toya's steps following him a few heartbeats after. Already he can feel his smaller binder restricting him more than he expects. His lungs fight against the lack of space, his breaths not as deep as they should be, but he pushes past it, flying around the corner.
He's just in time to watch a blur of color juke around a startled Kaito-san onto the street, Len crashing into him as he dives for it. The two fall, clogging up the door, Rin barely catching herself from stomping directly on her partner with a yelp. Miku and Meiko-san fumble around the collision, bottlenecked, and he hears Toya's quiet, worried gasp behind him as the cat takes off into the Sekai.
Akito doesn't even need to think; he makes his decision immediately.
Toya calls after him as he speeds into a sprint past the door, but Miku's voice drowns it out. “Akito, don’t lose sight of the cat!”
He grits his teeth. Easy for her to say! The damn thing's already taking a turn out of his line of sight!
Akito's tired brain scrambles to remember which street that is like this place doesn't change on a dime, but the image drips from his mind's eye like sludge. Just please let it be long enough for him to see which turn the cat takes next. As long as he's got that, he can deal.
Miraculously, it's one of the longer streets, the pavement stretching ahead of him. Bright graffiti blurs together as he runs past, and generic, empty storefronts are packed tightly together with no alleys in sight, trapping him in a straight line. Perfect!
Momiji's paused halfway down, still too close to the fork at the end of the road for comfort. Its fur's obvious on the gray asphalt, a strange orange-yellow that seems to sway between each color as it frantically breathes, perfectly suited to its name. It goes rigid as it snaps its head towards him, frozen in surprise. Black pupils shrink to pinpricks, swallowed by the dark yellow of its eyes as he bears down on it.
For a heartbeat, only a few steps away, Akito can picture himself scoping it up and returning to a smiling Toya.
Then it takes off, outstripping him in a second. Cursing, he doesn’t even consider laying off the gas and follows as it turns left.
The cat's a flash of orange on the next street, its tail just barely visible before it disappears down an alley to the right. Then it's a startled yellow blur on a short street, slowed down just enough by a fallen trash can that he's able to track its movement around another corner. By pure luck turn after turn, Akito's just barely keeping up, but there's no way his luck’ll hold for long. He needs to catch it soon.
Worse, he's fighting another battle. His worn out body is screaming for air that he can’t suck down enough of. His heavy limbs're more like aching weights as they beg for a break. His binder's curled up on the bottom and pressing hard on his lower ribs, and the back of his throat's cold and raw from his gasps, no better than sandpaper. He's flagging, and there's nothing he can do about it.
Akito knows he's losing this cat. He knows, but he won't stop, like finishing a set list in front of an indifferent crowd, determined to go until he can’t. If he could just corner it somehow, but he's never even seen a dead-end in the Sekai…
His stuttering brain catches on a blood-red splash of graffiti on the corner of a boring store sign as he runs past. Didn't Toya mention he looks at signs when he wanders around, said they turn and take him where he wants to go?
If it was anyone else, Akito would've thought they were screwing with him. This Sekai's always been a maze; more than four turns, and he can't follow the same path back. Either the virtual singers come find him on their own or he's gotta blunt force his way back to the cafe. It's great when he doesn’t want anyone to bother him, but the rest of his teammates always manage to walk around without an issue.
Least Toya's got an explanation. An just shrugged the one time he swallowed his pride to ask her how she manages, told him to look at the stores like they aren’t just empty ass husks.
Desperation painful in his dry mouth, he skims the shop signs as he runs, begging this place to throw him a bone since he's helping Toya, but there's not even a twitch. Sign after sign, street after street, absolutely nothing changes, and he has to give up when he almost misses the cat's next move as he hip checks a trash can.
Akito grits his teeth. Whatever, he's not a stranger to sink or swim.
Turning what feels like his thousandth corner, he scans the area, but a large burst orange paint the same color as the cat slashed across a sign grabs his attention against his will, a brief impression of flames entwining he has to forcibly rip his eyes away from to just barely catch the tail vanishing to the left. His legs tremble as he tries to push them faster, at their limit, but he's ignored those before. He turns left, right, barely catching a glimpse as he turns another corner, and then—
There's nothing. No cat, no movement, no nothing.
Akito takes a few steps down the long, straight street, whipping his head back and forth, heart loud in his ears, and stumbles to a stop. He leans his back against a wall and pulls on the front of his binder to suck in more air, clothes catching on the rough brick as he takes a full breath.
There's no sound except his harsh breathing. He closes his eyes and tries to smother the sound with his hand, straining for any noise, begging this stupid cat to knock over a trash can or something, but it's no use. Finally, inevitably, his luck runs out, and he falls short.
He has no idea where the cat is. He lost it.
Irritation is hot as an iron, the heat trapped against his skin, pushing at his seams. He kicks backwards at the wall, choking out a rough “Dammit!” from his raw throat. His free hand clenches against his side, shaking as he holds back from hitting it against the wall even as he craves the impact jolting through his body. Can’t even keep his eye on a fucking cat! He can’t even do this much for Toya!
Underneath it, suddenly rising to drown the flames of his anger, is sadness. He tries to hang onto the safety of his frustration, but it drowns his exhausted mind in an instant, left to ride it out as he urgently gasps air into his screaming lungs, falling apart.
All he can picture's Toya's expression when he comes back empty-handed, another failure piled on top of the rest. Toya won't blame him, but’ll this be what finally exposes all the other issues? Is this how he notices?
Is this how Toya realizes how much Akito sucks at all of this?
Akito doesn’t half-ass things. He knows how a boyfriend's supposed to act— texts in the morning, holding hands ‘n stuff— so he does it all. He consciously runs it over and over like he's trying to learn a new song, knowing enough to get that he can't keep doing the same shit as before, that things gotta be different from being partners and being Partners. He's waiting for it to be second nature even as it feels closer to forcing his voice up higher than it should go, straining and unnatural. He keeps forgetting the lyrics, too, no matter how many times he runs the song, just like earlier behind Meiko-san's.
Honestly, the only part of it all that comes naturally's kissing Toya. That's instinctual, an energy even more exhilarating than performing on stage, his whole body an explosion.
It's easy to let his mind blank and only feel the other's hands clenched on the back of his jacket, on the side of his neck, his jaw. It's easy to go go go when time's limited, only focused on trying to fit all of it— the fire, the feeling fluttering in his heart, his absolute awe at being able to do this— into a few stolen minutes. It's easy to trace his thumb over Toya's cheek when he angles his head for a deeper kiss. If that was easy, he used to think, then all he had to do was wait until the rest of it caught up.
And it was all going fine until last week, when two things knocked him flat on his ass back to back.
The first was his breakthrough with Ken-san. Hell, his hands shake just remembering it. He’d been rung out like a damn rag by the end of that practice, but it felt good to put all of him into his singing, climbing higher than ever before as he whole body trembled with the force of it. He was weightless, shaken free of something that’d been dragging him down without noticing, only aware of it now that he’d had a taste of life without it.
But he never really noticed when it crept back in the next day, a small leak filling him back up so slowly he didn’t even feel the weight gradually being added. It disappeared again that night when he sang, gone without a trace in their next event as he poured all of himself out to a crowd of faceless, morphing shadows with his teammates beside him. He was dizzy with freedom again, running full speed downhill, and he could only notice how heavy it'd been once it was gone again.
It was rinse and repeat after that, a back and forth, but that made him wonder if there was a way to always keep it off. If he could just figure out how to have that feeling all the time, would that make his fuel better? Couldn't he climb even higher if he was never dragged back down? But how? After a week, he wasn’t any closer to an answer.
The second was when Toya asked, “Can I set the pace today?”
He said it with those big, shining eyes, the same ones he held up a slightly lopsided pepper with, knife shining dangerously in his other hand. The same ones Akito's always been weak as hell for.
So of course Akito said yes.
That day, Toya's house was empty. It was the first time they’d had real alone time together since kicking up their training with Ken-san. Toya's handsome face had that undercurrent of determination that made Akito stop near that street corner years ago, that still steadies him right before a performance.
Watching that bright curiosity shift into something strong and focused and unbreakable, his eyes flashing with a new heat Akito’d only recently figured out was want… it's still like an electric shock up his spine when he remembers, tingling through his whole body. Learning Toya's expressions over the years's always been something he's been proud of, a sign of how much their partnership's grown, but that was something new. That was something Akito brought out of Toya that almost overwhelmed him even as it sparked his own.
And it was good. Honestly, it was better than the other times at first. Without time breathing down his damn neck, it wasn’t just the flash fire of lips and pressure that he always initiated. Instead, it was the feeling of Toya's mouth and warmth gradually melting into his own, Akito keyed into every shift of his partner's body as the pressure of Toya's hand on his jaw slowly trailed downwards. It drifted lightly over his neck, his shoulder, his arm, and back up, tracing him over and over. The feeling of Toya's weight leaning on him was oddly satisfying as he reclined back, and it felt really fucking nice to just feel the carefulness of Toya's hands like he was something important.
It felt like something inside him settled.
But the slowness of it gradually pulled the heat from his body, boiling water slowly starting to cool even as the live wire of his nerves kept every touch a shock. Awareness crept in. All this care, for what? Him to just sit there? Was that how it's supposed to go, just taking everything and giving nothing? Was Toya getting disappointed? Wasn't this kinda lame of him, doing nothing? Should he be pushing Toya back, reversing their positions like this weird nagging inside him insisted? Or would it be worse to completely ignore what Toya asked for after agreeing?
The fire pooling in his gut, the flash of his live-wire nerves, the sinking feeling of being a loser, the slow pace— they were all threads on a fraying t-shirt jabbing at him. Which one should he listen to?! All of them were so loud, he could barely think.
It meant that, when Toya slipped his fingers just barely under the hem of Akito's shirt, there was no usual heady haze to guide him, no adrenaline rush to take the edge off, and no idea what he was supposed to do.
Like suddenly overextending a muscle he thought healed, Akito was achingly aware of his body, of the slight incline of it as Toya leaned over him a bit, of his muscle twitching under his fingertips. If Toya's hand went a little right, he’d feel the jut in Akito's hip that T and running never completely flattened. A little up, and he’d feel the dip of his waist. And then, of course, his binder was waiting at the top.
“Is this okay?” Toya asked, his breath a soft, hot puff against his lips. The gray of his eyes were bright, his lips red, and Akito's stomach swooped dangerously at the sight.
Akito released his own shuddering breath, a million directions tangled inside him. It wasn’t like he felt bad; there was just a deep, deep part of him that still remembered every fight it took to get here, and this? This gentleness and yielding? This was the opposite.
If he let go and was left with just his body, what else would go with it?
…He shook it off. The want was still simmering even if it flickered confusingly, and wasn't it even lamer to shove Toya away like some bashful girl? He could push through it.
Breathing against Toya's lips, he nodded. It was worth the eager light that lit Toya's face, making it something devastating. The fire in Akito's lower stomach bounced back, but a sour tinge remained at the back of his throat.
Toya's hand slowly flattened along his skin, something like awe on his face as his long fingers just barely brushed his hip bone. The slight chill of it helped Akito unclench the tiniest bit as Toya softly kissed him again. It was short and sweet, almost dazed, and knowing he’d done that to Toya only fanned the flames, started to burn away those doubts.
Then, slowly, Toya's hand started to move, and his brain took off. Should he say something? Did he warn him? About what? “Hey, by the way, I have a binder.” He already knew! Akito’d mentioned it in passing before! Or did he tell him not to touch it? No, that was probably fine— not under it? But that's also super obvious, so he’d just look even lamer, right?
It was just— it was always different, knowing something versus seeing it.
Distantly, Akito registered Toya's hand stopped a few centimeters short of his binder, his forehead against Akito's as he caught his breath. There was barely enough space between them to keep their chests from touching as they panted, and he focused on keeping his breathing even against Toya.
Neither of them moved.
It was impossible to get a good look at Toya's face like this. He heard his fast breathing, took some pride in that, but the stillness was worse. It was the closest he got to reaching out to Toya and going back to how it usually was, the fast energy and frantic kisses between them, but Toya asked to do this. He wasn’t gonna blow it for him just because he couldn't chill.
Abruptly, Toya leaned forward and kissed him, just a peck. His hand slipped off Akito's skin, and the weight of it settled next to him as Toya leaned back.
The lack of warmth made Akito want to grab his hand and put it back, but the release of tension in his body made him more breathless than the kiss, a taunt rope finally snapping. He hadn’t noticed exactly how wound up he was.
Going by the searching look Toya gave him after they parted, Toya had.
And that's when it all started going sideways.
Toya's definitely been watching him ever since then. He can't tell if Toya for sure knows something's up or's still trying to figure out if that day was a one off, but the bright, happy look in his eyes sometimes shifts to something more searching, a troubled wrinkle in between his eyes.
Every time, Akito wonders if Toya finally caught on. If he's noticed that Akito fumbles his way through their walks home. If he's noticed that Toya's the only one of them who doesn’t gotta think about grabbin' the other's hand even though he's had his damn tongue in his mouth. If he's noticed Akito has no idea what he's doing and can barely do what he should.
If he's realized Akito's just a shitty boyfriend and that he's completely not made for it at all?
The only thing Akito can be proud of is that it hasn’t messed with the team or their performances. As long as he maintains that, he's still got time. It's not bad enough yet. He can still fix whatever's going wrong inside him and not need to distract anyone else.
Fuck, it's just— he likes Toya a lot. He wants to watch that quiet, content smile appear like the sun over the horizon in quiet moments, relaxing more and more each day. He wants to see his face light up when he tries something new, turning to him with an excited “Akito!” He wants to hear his teasing laugh that he only ever pokes at Akito, the jabs never really stinging. He wants to be there for him like he deserves, right at his side, as a good partner and a good boyfriend.
So why can't he figure this out? The hell's wrong with him?!
…Akito physically shakes his head, slowly unclenches his hands, and stuffs it all back into himself even as it makes him feel like a box barely taped together. Stop it. That shit doesn’t matter right now. Catching this damn cat's something he knows he can do if he stops wallowing for five minutes. If An can find Vivi during a random wedding photo shoot, he can find Momiji; he just has to figure out a game plan.
He breathes in. He breathes out.
Letting his head rest on the brick, Akito sighs, breath finally slowing down. Letting his binder snap back into place, he fidgets over his clothes to roll the bottom back down, but it scrunches up, ready to slowly roll back up. He shoulda sucked it up and grabbed a wet binder. This sucks ass.
At a quick glance, he can't see any turns on this street besides the one he came from. Momiji ran just as much as him. If there's no noise and he couldn't see it, maybe it stopped running and hid. Is there anywhere nearby he could find it? And does he have a way to keep it from running again even if he does?
Above him, he can just barely see the lip of the roof. Wasn't Vivi in a tree? But scaling a building's way different. There's no way Momiji could’ve got up there without him noticing.
Akito’d get a better view if he climbed up, though. He's definitely seen some ladders here and there, but they’ve always felt decorative, like the bowl of fake fruit his mom keeps on the table or the empty storefronts that line the streets. Even if they could take his weight, he’d have to get back down before the cat ran off, so it's a no-go. He'll have to search at ground level.
Akito closes his eyes. Should he wait for someone to catch up to him so they can try and surround the area, keep it from slipping away? He wasn’t running for that long, even if it felt like forever, but he took a lot of turns. Is anyone gonna be able to find him fast enough to matter? He's got his injection appointment in a few hours. He can't afford for it to take forever.
Plus, Miku's frantic voice keeps scraping at him. For some reason, she really wanted him to keep his eye on Momiji, so the virtual singers must not be able to track it down like they can for the rest of them. Sucks, but makes sense. If the cat gets too far away while he waits, it’ll get infinitely harder to grab, which means he can't afford to completely stand still.
He's gotta keep moving.
Opening his eyes, Akito finally takes a real, hard look around him and frowns. For the most part, it's not that different from all the other streets. The asphalt stretches out way, way ahead of him without a turn in sight, too far to make out the end, and a buncha trash cans and dumpsters dot the way like before. What's weird is the large, jagged crack running the whole way down, jigsawing sharply back and forth through the middle of the road.
Actually, looking closer, there's more weird shit. All the buildings are the usual brick, but they look naked without any colors splattered all over them, washed out like they've been in the sun for decades. Signs stick out at random heights, all fighting to be seen, but their characters're gibberish, like someone who only knows what Japanese looks like tried to copy it from memory. Even the awnings look dull, the usual bright color on them completely faded to different, ugly shades of murky brown. The only thing that looks normal's the wall across from him, just a plain, metal door and an old window embedded in the brick.
…Or is there something—?
Akito straightens, shaking it all off. What's it matter? Don’t get distracted. Keep moving.
But first thing's first. He pokes his head around the corner he came from and grabs a trash can lid, the metal weakly shining in the sun. He sets it in the middle of the street— no, he sets it closer to the left since he came from there. As long as he walks in a straight line he can't get too lost, but last thing he needs is to get any more turned around.
Moving quietly, he starts forward down the long road, ears strained for the slightest hint of a noise. His slower speed makes his already singed nerves feel like they'll burst, and he grits his teeth against it. Heart a steady beat in his ears, he darts his eyes between the trash cans, the signs, the dumpsters, the distance, and back again over and over in time with it. Keyed into any movement like this, it's impossible to miss the way the windows he passes reflect his every move, the inside unseeable.
Akito noticed a long time ago most of the windows in the Sekai are never actually see-through. The tint's always just a bit too dark to see inside, or the light always hits them in just the right way to only reflect him, or there's some other convenient crap to block his view inside. It used to creep him out way more, but it's like bitching that the background in an old video game's a jpeg; it's set-dressing. The point is the streets, not the buildings, and you can’t really have streets without buildings.
Still, it's distracting enough that he almost bangs his sneaker right into a trash can lid on the ground. He only barely manages to react fast enough to stumble to the side with a smothered grunt— shit— as he smacks his shoulder off the wall, eyes closing with the impact.
Opening his eyes, Akito tries to get his bearings. The asphalt stretches ahead of him without a turn in sight, too far to make out the end, a bunch of trash cans and dumpsters dotting the way. The same large, jagged crack's still running the whole way down, jigsawing sharply back and forth around the middle. He glances behind him—
…Akito shakes his head and closes his eyes.
Again, he looks behind him. Then he looks ahead.
It's the same. Exactly the same. The same naked buildings, the same gibberish signs sticking out at the same random heights, and the same ugly brown awnings. The wall across from him's the same normal-ass wall, just a plain, metal door and an old window embedded in the brick. It's just the same road on the same road on the same road the whole way down, like someone copy pasted it over and over and over.
His stomach sinks as he jerks head head back and forth. There really is nothing to tell them apart. He pivots on his heel, the trash can lid on the ground flashing in the light—
Akito's pulse roars in his ears. There is one really important difference; there's a single trash can on the road, and it's the one that's directly next to him.
If there's no lid behind him, this's gotta be the one he set down a few minutes ago. That means he looped around somehow even though he only went straight, which means he should be at the only turn on this street.
But the side road he came from is gone. It's just one street as far as the eye can see.
He jogs backwards, counting the stores as he goes, and stops when he suddenly sees a trash can lid gleaming faintly on the road. Behind him, the road is empty.
There's still no side road.
Akito runs his hand through his hair, disbelief nosediving hard into anger that sparks to life in an instant, combusting. No one’ll be able find him. He's fucking stuck!
The only way out's his phone, but there's no way he can just leave the Sekai now. But the hell else's he supposed to do if he can't go anywhere?! Walk in circles? There has to be something!
He whips his head around again— maybe if he keeps going backwards?— but freezes, something uncomfortable breaking through the anger, the flames settling in confusion.
Slowly, Akito turns his head to look at that same basic wall, a shiver of unease making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Like a performer finally falling out of sync with their group, something about that same metal door and old window feels off, but what?
It takes a few frantic heartbeats to figure out why, brain scrambling to understand what's out of place before it clicks, a rusted gear finally giving.
Akito can see into the window.
He glances at the other windows up and down the road, but the sun's mysteriously blocking the inside like always. The shops down the road, too— all of ‘em are too dark to see. It really is only this one.
He moves closer. The window's small, its frame a stiff, sun-bleached metal square with barely there flecks of old, light blue spray paint on its sides. The bottom of it's about nose level, but he can still see that the perspective inside moves with him as he approaches. It looks like there's a whole ass room in there, not some weird picture just faking him out. The building's too generic to guess what's inside, and he can't make out much more than it being white as hell in there. A clinic? Maybe an office?
The metal of the frame sends a cold shock up Akito's arm as he puts his palms on it, his body jerking as he shivers. He quickly pulls his sleeves over his hands before putting them back on the sill, using it to balance himself on his toes for a better look inside.
What immediately hits him is how there's no way this room belongs to this window. The second's how bougie it is.
Big arched windows line the wall on the other side of the glass, stretching beyond what he can see, their long, draped curtains a creamy color that immediately makes him feel like he's looking into another, fancier world than this worn out street. The box trim walls are the type of white that only comes with a fresh coat of paint or an insane amount of cleaning. A couple round tables with spotless flowing tablecloths are precisely set around the light carpet, and he can just barely make out a chandelier poking down from the ceiling.
Akito leans closer to the glass. It's shockingly cold, chilling his cheek as he presses up against it, trying to see more, but it's no use. He can't tell how far it goes in either direction, but it looks big.
Sighing, his breath fogs the glass. All of it's so… staged. Either it's a set or people work really hard to keep it picture perfect, but it's impossible to tell from out here.
A heartbeat. His eyes land on the old metal door to his left.
“Akito-kun!” says a voice behind him, the excited tone bending electronically.
“Wha—?!” Yelping, Akito's hands slip off the window sill, and he lands heavily on his heels, the impact rocking through him. He turns, quickly pulling his sleeves back from his hands, and stares. “Luka-san?!”
Sweeping her long, pink hair out of her face, Luka-san shoots him a lazy peace sign with her free hand, grinning. The shoulder of her jacket carelessly slides down her arm, exposing the light purple quilt inside before she shrugs it back on, and her hair moves with it, exaggerates the motion. The silver accents on her purple skirt flash in the sun; her big earrings sway in the breeze. All of it makes her feel like she's never really standing still even if she doesn't move any closer.
“Heya! Never expected to see any of you the whole way out here!” Her smile widens, digital blue eyes shining with interest. “ What’cha doing, hm~?”
“‘Out here?’” Akito echoes and looks around. It's still the same repeating buildings and streets, still no side road in sight. “You know where we are? Wait, how’d you—?”
“This is the edge of the Sekai!” Luka-san spreads her arms wide like a game show host, her shadow swallowing the crack in the road. “I mean, it was.” She flicks her hair, earring flashing. “It's usually pretty floaty around here, but it's here here since you're here, so I guess it can’t be the ‘edge’ right now. If you aren't here, then it doesn't have to be anything anymore.” She nods sagely as his brain fights to unscramble all of that. “So! What brings you alllll the way out here? ”
Akito shakes his head. Is this why he's stuck? ‘Cause he's near the edge… maybe? Whatever. If she's here, that at least means the others can get to him, but how? Could he leave the same way? “I was chasin’ a cat—”
“One appeared in the Sekai?!” Luka-san says, leaning forward excitedly. Her long hair moves around her with the force of the motion, the shadow of it dancing on the brick like a bird flying overhead. “Are they cute~? Did you guys name them yet? You should let me do it!"
“It's got a name,” he says quickly, pressure already building in his head. How does he get her back on track? “Momiji. Toya saved it and brought it in, but where did you—?”
“A real cat?" Her excited tone's gone, voice pitching high with worry. "Running around here?”
The whole time he's known her, Luka-san's constantly been on the brink of too relaxed. She moves without any real tension in her body, fast but easy, more like the wind than a person. Even when she sings, there's always a looseness to it that's the opposite of him, his own body sometimes tighter than a spring from how much power he forces through it. As unserious as she can act, he does admire it.
This is the stillest he's ever seen her. Her eyebrows knit together, and she straightens, body a stiff line as her mouth flattens. Even her hair seems to settle down, her shadow unmoving, the silver on her skirt dimmer. Anyone else, he probably wouldn’t’ve thought about it too hard, but Luka-san? It makes his already frayed nerves flare, burning even shorter.
Akito nods, shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, 's that bad? It can’t fall off the edge or somethin’, right?” It's mostly a joke, but Luka-san's not laughing.
Ice lodges itself in his chest, chills him to the bone. What does falling off the edge of the Sekai even mean? It’ll just kinda float around?
Or something worse?
“It shouldn’t!” Luka-san says quickly. “We just can't let it get too far from us.” There's a weird undertone in her voice, like a single voice in a backing track is just a hair off pitch. He’d almost say it's a lie, but it kinda breaks his brain to think about, like the lock on the cafe. She's hiding something.
He can see her realize he's noticed before she sighs, slumping. “It was gonna be a surprise!” she whines, surprisingly Rin-like as she pushes her cheeks out. “The Sekai's… well, it's doing something, but I dunno what yet. It's not really showing around Meiko's, but it's suuuuper obvious out here.” She waves toward the door. “I think it's why you and Momiji got so close to the edge. Usually the Sekai could turn you both around before you got here, but it's distracted doing other stuff.”
He nods, pieces finally slotting into place. “So you're worried whatever's goin’ on out here’ll let the cat get where it shouldn’t.”
“Like I said, it should be fine as long as they don’t get too far away from you.” Luka-san gives him a reassuring smile, but his brain catches on the ‘should’ like sticking his finger through a small hole in his jacket pocket. “It’d also be awful if the lil' guy got hurt running around after the trouble Toya-kun went through to rescue it!”
That makes Akito sigh. He can just picture how devastated Toya’d be, too, the deep frown and the sad downturn of his eyes… He’d probably even try to hide it if he thought Akito would blame himself, and he can’t add that to Toya's plate.
Time presses down on him likea boulder as he looks around the endless street. “Okay, but how're we supposed to find it? There's nowhere to go!”
“Oh?” Luka-san puts a hand on her chin, thoughtful. Her eyes drift to the side, staring at wall near the trash can lid before going back to him. “Well, the Sekai should react to your feelings waaaay more since you're the only one out this far. Since you're looking for Momiji, it might be trying to help, y’know?”
He holds back a snort. Yeah, it's real helpful sending him in circles. There's nowhere to go! It's all the same except for—
The white room peeks through the glass, pristine.
…Well, it's better than walking in circles.
Akito goes to the door near the window, Luka-san a few steps behind. It's an industrial gray, the kind that's only really meant for employees to see as they dump trash, and its handle's just a solid, horizontal bar of metal. He doesn’t really expect it to give under his hands, but it does, and damn does it feel like he's about to wander into some random shop. Still, he slowly pushes the bar in.
There's no faint click of the latch; the door was already opened. It moves with his light push, and the hinges barely squeak as he swings it open completely.
Any clinging doubts about this change in plans disappears in a flash. That cat easily could've slipped in here, and he wouldn't’ve heard a thing.
The inside of the building might as well be another planet, a clear line between the street and the clean carpet like the world's just decided to stitch itself together at the doorway. The room is even longer than he expected, and both sides end way past where this building should let it. Outside the big windows, bushes and trees too green for fall stand proudly in sunlight way too bright for this early in the morning.
Unless he's been here longer than he thought.
Akito pulls out his phone, letting out a breath when it lights up to show it's before ten. It hasn’t even been an hour since he woke up. Still, he rubs at his eyes as he puts it back in his pocket. Feels like it's been days.
Experimentally, Akito sticks his hand out and wiggles his fingers in the room. It feels normal. He pokes his head inside to look around the corner where the small window he looked through should be, but there's no sign of it, just more tables and big-ass windows the whole way down.
Seriously, the hell would a cat be doing here?! He can't remember the last time he was somewhere like this. Last time he even wore a suit was—
“It's the weddin’ hall,” he says suddenly, pulling his head out, “from when Toya helped out with that actin’ gig.”
“Is it?!” Luka-san rushes up behind him. “Oh, wow! It's so pretty~!”
He shifts out of the way, trying to think as she shoves her own head inside. Why the wedding hall? He hasn’t been here in awhile. Something's not adding up, but his brain won't grab the thought long enough to do anything with it, exhaustion making it clumsy.
…Could be random? Guess it doesn't really matter when there's nowhere else to go and a time crunch hanging over his head.
“Luka-san,” Akito says finally, “you mind holdin’ the door? I’m gonna drag one of the tables over to keep it open.” Even if it's some fake version, using a trash can off the street feels wrong in a place this nice.
There's still no obvious air change when he walks in completely. The carpet feels like carpet under his feet, and his eyes take a minute to adjust to the light change, no different than going into Crase Cafe. Only Luka-san and the door stick out, both of them like a magazine cutout slapped onto a nice painting.
From this angle, everything really is exactly like he remembers, from the tables to the colors to the big double doors on either side of the hall. It's only the silence that's different since he’d been running the dance routine almost constantly the whole time he was here.
He grabs the closest table, the wood smooth and well-maintained underneath the table cloth. It feels sturdy, but it still moves dangerously under the weight of the door when Luka-san lets go. He drags another one over for good measure, finally satisfied it won’t move, and sighs.
There's no sign of Momiji.
“It's gotta be under a table,” he says to Luka-san, not a single tablecloth twitching as his voice. Can't be that easy. “Let's work our way down. Be ready for it to run.”
The two of them slowly work their way down, the only sound their quick footsteps and the soft shhh of the shifting tablecloths. They're silky on his fingers like he expected, all of them way too damn expensive to be tossed carelessly up over the tables like he's doing, but it's the easiest way to keep track as he goes. It's fine— it's not real, he's not gonna crease the nice cloth— but he stops about two-thirds of the way down, watching the tablecloth bunch as he drops it.
…Something's not right about it. It reminds him of when Ena used to bug him about her drawings way back when they were kids, asking about proportions ‘n stuff. She got pretty mad when he couldn’t give her anything more than “It looks wrong,” and then he got pissed because he was trying to help. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t figure out the arm was too short or something! He just knew something was off.
The worst was when he did get better at pointing it out; she got even angrier when he figured it out before her. He stopped telling her real fast after that.
Akito moves closer to the table, lifting the cloth back up, rubbing it between his fingers, and— that's what it is! The fabric looks way thicker than it should be for silk, but it feels thin between his fingers. And if he really stares at it, the texture of it looks like it should be way rougher too, but it still feels like silk, even though there's no way it should.
Anxiety gnaws coldly at his throat, tightening it.
…He shoves it back on the tabletop and tries not to think about it. It's not important for what he needs to do.
The noon sun beams him in the face as he goes to the next table, and he scowls, turning his back to it. Everything in his brain's screaming at him it's later than it is, but he knows it's not even close to ten. He's still got a good amount of time before he needs to be at the clinic, but the longer it takes, the worse his appointment's gonna start chafing him, rubbing him raw. Rescheduling it would be a damn nightmare with how busy they are. He's gotta try and avoid it.
Sighing, he lifts the table cloth in front of him. Worst case, he might be able to get them to squeeze him in later today if he's lucky, but he's not holding his breath with the way the day's been going—
“Shit!” Akito yelps, reflexes kicking in just in time to grab at the orange shape that lunges past him.
The tip of its tail slips right through his hands, an instant too slow, and he barely catches his weight with his hands to keep from falling off of his feet.
“Luka-san,” he gasps, stumbling upright, “the door—!”
But the door they came in's gone. It's just a smooth, blank wall, the two tables they propped against it gone without a trace.
Luka-san sprints past him, not even looking at the wall Akito's gaping at, a flash of pink across his vision. Dammit, get into gear!
He whips around to follow her towards the end of the room, keeping close to the wall in case Momiji tries to get around her. If they can just trap it in a corner, he can wrap it in his jacket, and they can be done with it, and he can help Toya.
Except his eye catches on the doors at the end of the hall. Closer now, he can’t tell if his eyes are playing tricks on him or if one side of it's barely open, just a sliver of a crack that's impossible to see from a distance the perfect size for a cat to slip through.
There's no way in hell, right?
Luka-san hasn’t noticed, squarely focused on Momiji, ready to strike, and he tries to force his legs faster despite the screaming in his chest, tries to get ahead of her to slam the door closed, but it's too late; the cat's already seen it. It dodges her grab at it, takes off with a burst of speed—
And slips through the crack in the door.
Luka-san doesn’t manage to slow down time, almost crashing into the door, turning at the last moment to stumble into the wall, upright but dazed.
Akito, a few steps behind, just barely manages to pull back enough to turn his last few steps to the door into a jog. He fumbles for the knob, ignoring the burning in his lungs— this binder fucking sucks! — and throws the door open, bracing for the full force of the summer sun directly into his eyes as he runs forward.
Instead, he sputters to a stop in the doorway, squinting against fluorescent lights and a harsh, clinical white.
The room's practically a shoebox compared to the wedding hall. Its ceiling's probably a normal height, but it feels low, ready to cave in on him in a heartbeat, the lights unbearably close. The floor's crowded with clusters of the same uncomfortable gray chairs arranged in tight rows, all facing away from him towards a small, flickering TV embedded onto the white wall. The nurses' station gapes at him, empty.
Crisp pamphlets full of smiling people with peppy titles like "Understanding Mental Health” and “Know Your Discrimination Protections!” lay on the side tables nearby. A few creased, dog-eared magazines from a decade ago are mixed in, faded covers with unfamiliar celebrities peeking between the gaps in the bright new pamphlets.
It doesn’t even take him a heartbeat to recognize it. He's standing in his clinic's waiting room.
But why?!
Luka-san moves beside him, and, as instinctive as a flinch, he pulls the door towards him to hide it from view. There's not even a stutter in her step, easily pushing it open without a second glance and moving further inside. Her head whips back and forth as she searches, still trying to catch her breath from the sprint as she impatiently pushes her wild hair from her face. She drops to her hands and knees to check under the chairs in one smooth motion, pink fanning over the tile.
Hot shame and frustration melt together in his throat, coating his airway like soot, and Akito quickly follows her the rest of the way inside. He stuffs his jacket in the door— it's not gonna actually help but the thought of just letting it close makes his skin crawl— and tries to make up for his slip up by checking the door near the nurses' station, but it's too late. It's wide open, no cat in sight, just a long hallway that splits at the end. Whatever glimpse he could’ve gotten when he first walked in he wasted.
Another stupid mistake.
Sighing, Luka-san stands up, but her eyes widen as she really notices the room, blue shining curiously as her expression shifts to something almost gawking. The silver on her skirt reflects onto the wall as she turns to take another look around, tracing her progress in a quick circle. It's so damn weird seeing her here, full-sized and solid in the empty waiting room. Her eyes settle on him as she finishes, and her eyebrows raise in question.
Akito turns away, grabbing a side table to prop open the door. "We’ll have to split up,” he says before she can talk. The pamphlets and magazines on top of the table scatter on the clean floor like dying leaves as he pushes it in place. “The hall behind the door splits, and I think both those halls go a couple different ways, so we're gonna have to hope we pick the right one.”
He swipes his jacket off the floor, frowning at the harsh smear of red in the doorway, but he's learned his lesson: don't get distracted. There's none on his jacket, so it's not his problem. He pulls it back on.
“The Sekai's pulling from you,” Luka-san says like it's not a big deal, like it doesn't stab him in the gut, body flinching. The fluorescent lights wash her out and make her expression sharper; he's always hated the lack of windows in this room. “Whichever way you usually go's a good bet.”
He hums. It's all he can manage. An uncomfortable buzzing rattles his head, a feeling almost like the cold rush of panic when getting caught, but he's not! It's not some deep, dark secret. He's never actively lied about going to the clinic every few weeks, and it doesn’t matter if Luka-san sees it, either. It's stupid.
It's stupid, but it lingers.
It's just…it's like if Kohane accidentally burst into his room. He'd’ve probably let her see it if she asked, sure, but he doesn’t want her to wander in. There wasn't any chance to clean up, shit thrown everywhere and no time to pick what she sees.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. It can't matter.
Swallowing it down, Akito points to the hallway near the nurse station. “We’ll take a right at the first turn,” he says, words heavy on his tongue. “I’ve only been that way.”
There's not much to see once they reach his usual hallway, just a clean white floor and boring pale walls. Even the basic blue color of all the doors isn't anything more than a functional way to make them more obvious. There's not a single hair to hint at which one the cat disappeared behind, but all of them're slightly cracked open, nice and inconvenient.
He sighs. They better get started. He goes to the closest one and pushes it open.
But it doesn't move.
Frowning, he pushes harder. It shimmies barely a centimeter and nothing else.
He doesn't have time for this! Scowling, Akito puts his shoulder on the door before changing his mind and braces his foot near the doorknob instead. His scuffed shoe on the spotless door makes him pause, close his eyes. There's a big chance this just straight up breaks the wood, but it's the Sekai, not the real clinic. Even if it feels wrong, it's fine.
Breathing in deeply, he counts— one…two…three!— and sharply shoves his foot forward as he exhales. Hinges groan in protest, the impact racing up his leg, but the crack widens enough for him and Luka-san to get through, the wood still in one piece.
“Nice work, Akito-kun~!” Luka-san cheers. “I wanna do the next one!”
Humming absentmindedly in response, he considers the rest of the hall as Luka-san slips inside. There's a little over a dozen rooms. If he starts on the other side and Luka-san stays here, they should be able to pincher the cat between them. Even if it gets passed, they closed door at the start of this hallway to keep it from getting back to the waiting room. No matter what, they’ll have it in the bag.
“I’m gonna start on the other end,” he says, raising his voice to be heard through the door. “You take this room—”
Something clatters on the other side. “Oh, what's— Ah!?” There's more clattering, a loud thump.
Shit, he forgot; it's her first time seeing a doctor's office! Who knows what’ll be in there! He quickly squeezes his upper body through the door.
The blood pressure cuff thing's hanging off its mount, still swaying against the wall as Luka-san pokes its rubbery texture, eyes wide and unhurt. She at least looks guilty when Akito frowns at her, concern pivoting to annoyance in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t stop her from pointing at it and looking at him expectantly. “What's this do?”
“It doesn't look like there's anythin’ dangerous out, but don't touch stuff,” he says, ignoring her sulking when he doesn’t answer. “We got a decent shot to corner it, so let's work fast.”
Luka-san's shoulders slump, her dejection more dramatic thanks to her jacket falling lower on her arms, her exaggerated sigh. She nods, but her eyes catch eagerly on the stethoscope hanging nearby.
Akito sighs. “I’ll tell you 'bout whatever stuff you see later,” he says, and she peps right back up. Her excitement eases some of the sting of her being here, at least, even if it's not contagious. “Also, when you kick the doors open, make sure you kick near the knob. Be careful not to hit it with your foot. The safest way's to…”
Again they work their way down the hall, and, again, it's repetitive as hell. Even kicking open doors isn't enough to break up searching what's basically the same room over and over, the identical furniture arranged with the slightest variation like an overused sample. Every single one's got the same built-in wall desk, the same stiff medical bed, the same basic medical equipment, and the same window overlooking the empty street outside. They've all got the same two chairs, too— one against the wall for the patient and one near the desk for the doctor.
Despite the slog, there's that feeling creeping up his back again every time he enters a new room, the one from the wedding hall. Something's off, and he doesn't know what. It mixes with the buzzing in his head, a background refrain of nails softly dragging down a chalkboard he can't shake that splits off part of his attention.
Akito tries to force himself to concentrate, replaying the brief brush of fur against his fingertips in his mind, but doesn't matter. He can’t help trying to figure out what's off like poking at a loose tooth.
Every time he checks under the furniture his eyes linger, the impossibly silky tablecloth in the back of his mind, but there's not much to mess up. ‘S not like he knows a lot about the medical stuff, but the stethoscopes aren't fuzzy or nothing. The chairs and beds're the usual slightly uncomfortable material, too. It's gotta be something obvious if he's getting that feeling immediately in the doorway, but he can’t put his finger on it, a chorus from a song he only half-remembers.
The constant looks Luka-san keeps shooting him aren't helping, either, another bit of his limited attention taken. He catches glimpses of her expression getting more and more concerned between rooms, but she's not stopping and that's all that matters. He wants to get out of here as soon as he can.
The quiet of it all makes it worse— nah, it's the emptiness that's the problem. The clinic's always crowded, voices bouncing around the halls in low tones and a chaotic drumbeat of movement as nurses and doctors run around. For it to be deserted but squeaky clean… it's like they all just disappeared without a trace right before Momiji slipped in.
If there was something to prove people’d been in here or even the distant sound of the city outside, it wouldn't be so damn eerie. Instead it's just two sets of footsteps broken up by loud kicks and screaming hinges, him and Luka-san the only two living things in an empty world.
At least he's been kicking the doors open wide enough to keep from hitting his chest on it when he slides in. One more thing and he's gonna start climbing the walls.
Akito straightens up from checking under a desk and rubs his eyes. Through the window on the far wall, the bright cityscape sits innocently, the late morning light still at odds with his phone clock. The sun's just high enough to miss beaming directly in his eyes when standing, but, if he sits in one of the chairs, it’ll blind him like he's used to. Makes sense since his appointments're always a little before lunch, but the stark reminder that this's all directly from his head makes it feel like ice chips are stabbing in his already raw brain.
Fuck, he hates this feeling! It always reminds him of the time in elementary school when a classmate blurted out his dad's That Shinonome, You Know, The Painter. Sure, the annoying comments only lasted for a few weeks, but everyone always knew after that, and it poked at him like a bad rhyme until he graduated, this thing he couldn’t do anything about.
Squeezing back out into the hallway, he goes to the door across the hall, giving it a good kick before slipping inside. It's the same desk, same bed, same chairs he's had to look under in the last four rooms. He straightens up from checking under a desk. Through the window on the far wall, the bright cityscape sits innocently, the late morning light still at odds with his phone clock. The sun's just high enough to miss beaming directly in his eyes when standing, but, if he sits in one of the chairs, it’ll blind him like usual. It makes sense since—
…Hold on a damn minute.
Akito slides back out, crosses to the other room, and shoves his head inside, shivering as he stares out the window. The sun's in the same position on the opposite side of the building.
There are two suns in the sky.
Anger safely obliterates the fear before it can sink into him, burning it up as he whips his head back out. This stupid cat better not get away again! They're already in his creepy-ass clinic, so what’d be next? He doesn't wanna go anywhere else!
Honestly, if he had to choose, he’d rather end up back in the weird fragment desert depending on what shows up next; at least he knows how to get through that. Wouldn't even be as bad as the first time as long as he doesn't get memory wiped again. Plus, he’d still have Luka-san if he did. She can't be any worse than the Kagamines.
Akito glances at her, accidentally catching her eye— well, "catching" implies she's not straight up staring at him now. Her lips are in a tight frown like she can barely hold the words back, and it only gets more exaggerated when she realizes he's looking, nakedly prompting him to ask what's wrong.
He's not doing this. He turns to the next room.
Luka-san gasps and stomps her foot. “Akito-kun! Don’t ignore me!” She rushes up to him, boots clacking on the tile. “Are you sick?!”
Akito can't quite hold back his sigh. “No.”
“But you have to come here a lot for this to show up so detailed!” Her frown shifts, just on the edge of a pout, and she puts her hand on her hip. “Do the others know and I just missed it?”
Another vague dismissal's already on his tongue, but Akito holds it back and lets it dissolve on his tongue. He takes in her furrowed eyebrows, her pout. Her eyes are searching, a bit too keen to be comfortable.
And he wonders, not for the first time, if she already knows about him.
Akito's personally told a handful of people about his transition, and they're the people who have to know: his family, his doctor, some teachers. Toya. It sucks every time, a few mortifying notches above walking up to someone and blurting out his fear of dogs, and he does everything he can to avoid ever having to do it.
By now he's learned deal with both the people who know and the ones who don’t. They're simple. Straightforward. The mental calculations he has to do aren't any harder than working retail, quickly cataloging the knowledge level in any given room and acting accordingly.
Frankly, it's the people who might know that drive him fucking crazy.
It's the guy who asks about the weird spandex he wears when he helps with the soccer club and frowns at his bullshit answer. It's the classmate who teases him a bit too sharply about changing in the bathroom. It's even Akiyama, eyes just like Luka-san's, a little too knowing. All of them're like going through his shift blind, fumbling his way through conversations he can only guess the dimensions of.
Vivid Street's a special kind of hell. It's a town that saw him pre-T, that saw him angry and squeaky and over-confident and wrecked him like he deserved. They talked about it in whispers as they bitched about him, in jeers about his unstable voice, in complaints about his attitude. Everyone knew, even if most of them were too nice to mention it like Ken-san and An.
But eventually, there were people who didn’t know. New performers. New live houses. EVER. Kohane. People left, came back as new groups, all mixing together until he couldn’t keep it straight. Now no one says it, and it's like waiting for the damn whistle to go off during a losing soccer game, trying to beat the buzzer even as he knows it’ll come.
Sometimes he thinks he can see it in some of the eyes on the street, can sometimes hear it in the odd backhanded compliment, but it's impossible to tell what's real and what's nothing more than a shadow in the corner of his eye. No one knows, and everyone knows, and he can’t do anything about it.
…Occasionally, when he's feeling particularly delusional, he wonders if he's actually got away with it. If his attitude and his layered clothes really do camouflage him completely now. If his voice's deep enough to hide his smooth throat, strong enough to overwrite the memory of a dumbass thirteen year old, and loud enough to make them think he was like any teen boy squeaking his way through puberty.
But it can’t be. He can try to erase that kid all he wants; the town’ll always remember. Graffiti doesn't disappear if you paint over it, just hides and waits for the paint to peel. All he can do is keep climbing higher and higher until they have to acknowledge what he is now, no more room for only that stupid teenager at Crawl Green in their minds, overwriting him until he's a second thought.
Akito considers Luka-san again. Then, dully, like pressing on a fading bruise to see if it still hurts, he wonders what it’d be like to actually ask her if she knows.
The virtual singers are different from normal people. This Sekai's made of their team's feelings, and all of them are a little too perceptive to be natural, something he just kinda got used to at some point. It's helped them out way too many times for him to care by now, but he's got no way of knowing how deep that sixth sense goes.
Luka-san specifically is driven by instinct, in and out like the breeze, blowing in long enough to be as sharp as a razor before disappearing. He's got his issues with her, but she's helped him more times than he can count with her intuition, including with his task. When he thinks of his gratitude towards Ken-san, she and the rest of the virtual singers aren’t far behind. There's not a lot he wouldn’t tell them if he needed to.
It's just… he's never really liked talking about the past or himself, not even as a kid, not even when it's unrelated to his transition. What's the point? What's done is done, but today, he could do something and keep moving. He won't blow people off if they ask— he's not gonna lie or make excuses— but he's not blabbing in the meantime.
The cold, exposed buzzing that's been going since he walked into the clinic clashes with the steady grateful flame that's thrummed through his body ever since his break through with Ken-san, a hurricane inside him. He blindly reaches for something to ground himself in the chaos, some guiding feeling to break through.
What comes out on top, like a spotlight on a dark stage, is the same thing that made him go to the virtual singers for help with his task. Trust calms everything down, the extremes equalizing into something steady, something manageable.
“'s a routine thing I gotta do,” Akito says haltingly, words caught in his throat. “A— hormone issue. Nothin’ serious.” A heartbeat. “Meiko-san knows I go here, but nothin’ else.”
Luka-san's blue eyes still look right through him, a soft techno-glow to them that's never seemed inhuman. Sometimes she reminds him of Ken-san and his too-pointed comments, but her careful look is more like An when she nods and says, “Got it.” She mimes locking her lips and flicks the imaginary key away. “Don’t worry! I do know how to keep my mouth shut. Just didn't want to be left out~!”
His nod's more like a jerk of his head. “...Thanks,” he says genuinely, his heart beating embarrassingly hard. He clears his throat and turns back to the next door, raising his foot to press next to the knob and end the conversation—
And almost falls over when it moves under his weight, swining open.
Akito quickly jumps for it, grabbing the knob and slamming it shut before anything can get out, the sound echoing in the bewildered silence.
…Experimentally, he turns the knob and pushes the door. It cracks open soundlessly. He closes it again.
He and Luka-san look at each other, eyes wide. This's the only door that's been normal. Does that mean the cat's…?
Energy zaps through his system like pre-show jitters, but there's no last minute mental run through of the set he can do to distract himself here, no crowd or teammates to feed off of. He settles for taking a deep breath, chest limited against his binder, and nods to Luka-san. She nods back after a heartbeat and moves to the side of the door, low and tense, ready to grab for anything that jumps out if he's too slow.
He breaths in, quietly taps to three with his fingers…
Like ripping off a bandage, Akiot quickly jerks the door open, slipping inside and slamming it behind him.
It's the same desk, the same stiff hospital bed, the same chairs, same window. There's no movement. There's no sound except his heart beating in his ears. He refuses to believe it until he goes through the usual checks, runs through them an extra time, but it doesn’t change anything.
The cat's not in here.
He groans, swiping an agitated hand through his hair, hating the feeling of it sticking up. Was this door just a random fluke? Is it really like this for the hell of it? Other ones’ve been easier to kick open than others, yeah, but none of them were this easy. Still, even after a third sweep he's still alone, and he slams his fist into the bed, the impact shuttering through his arm. Dammit! What's with this place?!
Luka-san's clearly expecting him to have it, impatiently bouncing on her heels, silver accents flashing in the harsh light as she looks at him excitedly. It's another full-body deflation when he shakes his head, the silver accents on her skirt going dim in her shadow, but she rebounds fast, flashing in the light. “Next one,” she says confidently, hand on her hip.
He takes a breath and nods, still simmering but not boiling over. He shuts the door behind him. Next one.
They go for the one across the hall. It's not a huge surprised when it moves without any effort, but Luka-san tilts her head as she hums softly, a thoughtful hand touching her chin. There's a slight crease between her eyebrows. Her mouth's slightly downturned, but it quickly smooths out as she moves to get into position again, gone like a soft sigh. He hesitates before directing his attention back; she’d tell him if it mattered.
Again, Akito easily opens the door and quickly slips inside, slamming it behind him. It's the same desk, the same stiff hospital bed, the same chairs, same door, same window. There's no movement. There's no sound except his heartbeat in his ears. He refuses to believe it until he goes through the usual checks, runs through them an extra time, but it doesn’t change—
Abruptly, his eyes land on the second door.
He closes his eyes. Opens them.
It's still there.
…That's right! It completely slipped his mind, but the rooms should’ve had two doors the whole time. They all connect to some back hallway the nurses and doctors use that he's never seen, and he can always hear them moving while he waits.
Akito's stomach drops like a vase. A feeling close to acceptance shatters through his body. The door looks closed from this angle, but something in him already knows it's not even before he moves closer and sees the small crack of space between it and the frame. Swearing, he opens the first door for Luka-san, hurrying her inside.
But he flinches as he looks across the hall, caught like a bug under a microscope, instinctual panic locking his joints. Perfectly framed by the wide open door he definitely shut, the sun stares at him, a looming, slightly bloodshot eye. A red ray of light slashes its way across hallway, growing thinner as it gropes towards him, the tip of it resting just a few meters away from his shoes.
Distantly, Akito realizes if he stood in the middle of the hall, he could see two suns in the sky.
The doors for the other rooms beside it start slowly moving, all of them creaking open in unison, every one just a little too off-tone to be in harmony. They grow louder as doors further down the hall join in, adding on like a microphone feedback loop, building and building as they open wider, more red sunlight leaking into the hall until the white floor is crimson—
He slams the door shut behind him, the noise cutting off.
Irritation floods his system, trying to drown the awful chill racing up his body, the sound of creaking doors still echoing in his mind. It's not much better than trying to dry off with a washrag. The after image of the sun flashes behind his eyelids with each blink.
Keep moving.
Looking at the new door, the sourest version of anticipation he's ever had makes his blood feel like it's freezing in his veins, a tight feeling squeezing his chest, his lungs ice. The shadows, the color, the knob— there's nothing obviously off. It's just a normal door with a few off-color chips of paint, but it feels like staring down a snarling dog, waiting for it to snap at him. There's gotta be something off about it again.
“Can Momiji just wander back through?” he says a little desperately.
Luka-san's not looking at him, staring at it as her eyebrows sink lower and lower, hand back on her chin. “They can,” she says, tone clearly implying it won’t. As deep in thought as she is, she doesn't look scared. She barely looks worried.
…Oh, there's nothing actually wrong with the door. It's just him. It's dread.
Of course it is; there's nothing he wants less than to walk in that door. He's got no idea what it's gonna open up to, what it’ll expose for him. He'd rather take his chances back in the hallway.
But he thinks about Toya's devastated expression if he comes back without the cat, lost at the edge of the Sekai, and doesn’t even need to think that hard about it. He’d go through hell and back to keep that from happening.
A hot burst of determination's only enough to thaw him into something resigned. He's going through that door. Now it's just how long he wants to bitch and moan about it.
For better or worse, he's never been one to drag his feet.
Impossibly tired, Akito sighs. The door knob feels like every other one in the building, smooth and clean despite its constant use. It doesn’t make him feel any better. “Let's get this over with.”
“Wait, Akito-kun—”
With a sharp jerk, he quickly yanks it open and hurries inside, stuffy and unmoving air oppressive on his skin.
Some of the worst singing Akito's ever heard claws at his eardrums, Luka-san's voice drowned out as his body physically reels from the impact, hands reflexively coming up to protect his ears. It's like walking into a live house stuffed with a million groups warming up at once, different notes and songs and skill levels clashing against each other all wrapped up in the grating squeak of kids' voices. Faintly, underneath it all, a piano's desperately trying to lead the mess into some song, but it only makes everything worse, another car on a kilometer-long collision clogging the air.
He turns to the source of the noise— it's barely music at this point— and meets about two dozen human-shaped shadows lined up against the wall to his left. Their featureless faces are all turned towards him, fidgeting as the music somehow gains another distinct melody. He’d swear they were kids if they weren’t so damn tall! None of them look or sound older than second graders, but they're all about his height.
Actually, it's not just them; the whole room's just a little too big to be right. The ceiling stretches almost as high as the wedding hall's, oversized lights longer than him hanging above, and he can just barely see over the edge of the windows lining the wall. Only a few massive trees are visible through a gap in the curtains, the leaves just barely beginning to shift colors. A taller shadow looms over a huge piano across the room, warped by the angle, but it's definitely more adult looking than the rest as it plays away with its blank face. On the other side of the room, he can see a long, once-familiar hallway through the sliding door's window.
Like taking a soccer ball to the side of the head, he realizes exactly where he is as Luka-san rushes in.
Akito wants out of here. He wants to be literally anywhere else. His body jitters with it, a shot of adrenaline numbing his hands like his voice just cracked during a performance, exposed and ugly, a million eyes on his mistake. He wants out of here right fucking now.
But he's gotta find this cat, because his partner cares about it so damn much and he can't keep letting him down.
The music room's way bigger than he knows it is— he's looking at it through a kid's height, he realizes— but it gives him an easy view of anything the cat would be under, let's him sweep the room easier. Small blessings.
He swats at the curtains hiding the summer sun, blinding himself. It's not there.
He kneels beside the piano, the sound reverberating in his skull. It's not there.
He opens the classroom's storage closet, rattles the instruments inside to draw it out. It's not there.
He hears a loud, high voice in the song and wants to slam his hands over his ears. It's not here.
All this and it's not even fucking here!
His chest feels like he's been impaled, close to bleeding out. His hands're shaking like he could turn into ice from the inside out. His heart beats in his ears, mixing with the noise that won’t stop, his thoughts mud, choking him, but it's fine. He's dragged himself through worse. He just has to keep moving. If he keeps moving—
There's motion in the corner of his eye. He whips his head around, just barely making out an orange-yellow fur ball on the other side of the door in the school hallway, a path of smeared red paw prints in front of it.
Luka-san's coming towards him. Her mouth's moving, the words impossible to hear, but her concerned expression's obvious enough for him to turn away. He points at the door, rushes towards the exit to get Momiji. To get out.
A ray of sun beams directly into Akito's eyes as he crosses the room. The noise gains another octave. The dread's back, souring his stomach, rancid, and he tries not to think of what's on the other side. He wants it to not be this. Just be something else!
Momiji meets his eyes through the glass, eyes wide and body frozen in shock. The door fights Akito, sticking in the frame, rattling dangerously as he shoves at it and shoves at it, metal handhold biting at his palm until it finally gives way, slamming home. He rushes past, catching its rebound on his shoulder as he steps forward, the cat already turning to run—
He blinks, blinded by clashing neon lights for the terrifying heartbeats it takes for his eyes to adjust, shoulder throbbing in time. Stumbling, he staggers forward a few steps into a ring of shadow people, the colored lights barely visible through their bodies. It's impossible to know, but it feels like they're staring at him.
In the center of the circle with him are three shapes. One of them sings, the sound piercing straight through him like a bullet. Akito grabs his chest with the force of it, and one of the other shadows mirrors him. That voice is Tono's! And the live house behind him… there's no doubt about it. This's the place he first battled Tono and got his ass handed to him, which means this is—!
Akito freezes, eyes locked beyond the ring of spectating shadows. His overloaded brain scrambles to make sense of it even as it refuses to accept what he sees, searching for what he knows should be there and buckling at the lack of it.
Vivid Street's the kinda place that never really goes dark, not completely. Between the bars, the live houses, and the shops, there's always some pinprick of light a couple buildings down leading the way or some performer bathing a corner with cheap stage lights.
A few meters beyond the ring of shadows is the type of darkness he's only ever seen in the woods, the kind when the stars're blocked out completely by trees and his own hand's invisible a few centimeters from his face. It flickers faintly like a candle— no, like a busted screen. The whole of it never lights up at once, different chunks visible just long enough to expose a gray, fuzzy emptiness that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Momiji! Where is it… there's no way it…
There's movement beyond Tono's shadow, and Akito rushes ahead, relief a speed boost. He flies past the shadows’ eyeless looks and away from the song, taking two steps at a time down the stairs of the live house, shouting at Luka-san to follow as she bursts onto the street. He barely stops himself from tripping down the last few steps, grabbing the door just as Momiji disappears inside the crack and throwing himself in after.
Akito bursts into his own bedroom, the walls and shelves unnervingly empty. Late afternoon light leaks through white blinds. Soccer posters are littered on the floor, and he almost trips on a box full of junk, barely missing a trophy that's sticking out of the top, the fake gold color a gross brown in the low light.
A small shadow's picking at the tape still stuck on the wall. The poster in its hand is wrinkled to hell and back, the player's face a mess of creases. There's a sound coming from it, low and muffled, quiet enough he might be hearing things.
The closet door creaks. He rips his eyes from the shadow and runs.
The dingy, off-color lighting of backstage almost makes Akito lose Momiji for a plummeting heartbeat, only its bright, orange fur blazing in the sliver of light leaking from the stage saving his ass. He keeps moving forward, ignoring the burning that's starting in his chest as he dodges around more shadows, lungs constricted.
Black clouds his vision. A shadow steps in front of him as it laughs, and he curses as he steps around it, his hand coming up to brace on its shoulder as he over balances. It goes right through, a shiver trembling up his body as he stumbles, disoriented as the shadow walks away without noticing.
Half a room away, he can barely see Momiji trying to duck through the shadows, slowed down as it darts back and forth. Akito takes a deep breath, pushing aside the instinct screaming at him, and rushes straight into the shadows in his way, eyes locked on the cat to ignore the bodies he flies through.
Momiji leads him around to the front of the live house. The floor's filled to the brim, and the music hits him full force for the first time, the voice that rings out inexperienced and unsteady with nerves. It's hard not to look, but he doesn't need to. He can picture the shadow that's alone on the stage, angry and small and sticking out like a sore thumb in a place like Crawl Green.
Even now the crowd works against him. The shadows shift just enough for Momiji to keep finding a space to slip through, a few steps ahead. With the kind of anger that's more smoke than fire, he watches it duck through the exit door.
Akito follows. He doesn’t know what else to do; he has to keep going. He runs through an alley on Vivid Street past a group of shadows fighting. He runs through a classroom, a boy loudly asking about his dad. He runs through the hallway of his house, Ena's crying loud in the silence, the sound following him through the doorway.
He runs through Toya's bedroom, the bed mercifully empty. He runs through Kamiyama Street, a shadow squeaking as it relearns to sing for a lower voice. He runs past a soccer field, the score board a damning 5-1. He runs past Vivid Street, An's loud sobs echoing. He runs, and he runs, and he runs deeper. Room after room blends into each other, each door just another shitty scene in the slideshow, the odd darkness always flickering dangerously a few dozen meters away, waiting.
In front of him, no matter how fast either of them seems to run, Momiji's always just out of reach. Behind him, Luka-san follows.
Akito's legs tremble as he tries to keep them at a steady pace, too scared to chance slowing down. His lungs ache, tearing at his insides for space to get down more air. He's reaching his limits, but he's ignored those before, just like he ignores the scenes flashing at his peripheral. By pure luck he's just barely keeping up, and he refuses for it to be a matter of time until it runs out. He's catching Momiji.
Exhausted, he reaches for another door. Just once, he wants what's on the other side to be somewhere he can pause, somewhere safe or a dead end to finally put an end to this awful chase. He throws it open, braced for more bullshit, steps forward—
And straight into Weekend Garage, quiet and empty and whole.