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When an entirely nondescript man steps out onto the balcony of a boring gala on a night like any other, he finds a woman has already beaten him to the chase.
The man notices how she leans against the rails with a fatigue similar to what he feels. Catches how her jeweled black dress melds into her dark hair in faux elegance. He decides to approach, loosening the button of his tuxedo, one he was born to wear, yet never seemed to fit. He could care less if she thinks less of him for daring to be unrefined, he just needs to escape the suffocating atmosphere, and she is nothing but one of many seemingly faceless strangers he’s met tonight.
“Do you mind if I stand here?” He asks in a low baritone.
The woman doesn’t viscerally react to him in any manner, looking as if she were off in a world of her own.
“You’re free to do as you please,” she replies, in a disconnected and quiet register.
A bald faced lie if the man’s ever heard one. He deigns that with a laugh that sounds more like a scoff, situating himself a respectable distance away, looking out at the bright cityscape before them.
The woman doesn’t miss the bitter sound, decides to speak.
“You aren’t enjoying yourself?” She asks, though she doesn’t wait for a response. “I understand, I mean this place…”
“Sucks,” he finishes for her.
She lets out a low disapproving sound.
“I would’ve been a little kinder about it.” She stews in thought for a moment. “It’s quite the high class event.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” he stiffly responds. “I have been to far too many a gala to count, they were all awful, and this one is objectively one of the worse I’ve been to.”
“How so?” The woman finds herself asking.
The man hums in a sour resemblance of amusement. He can tell this woman does not share his experience in formal events, something that he envies her for.
“The decorations are tacky,” he begins. “There is a difference between artfully laying out golden accents to select areas and dousing everything in ore to appear more sophisticated than you truly are. The paintings fall under the same trap as well, there is no theme to be found save for a price above 8 digits.” The man grows more irritated as he continues. “The food choice is limited and in terrible taste. It is not often that I find such a fixation on sea food at a gala event, especially with the main dishes being squid of all things.” A largely empty stomach is far from the thing that bothers him the most at this moment though. “And the music—”
The woman cuts him off with a sharp huff.
“God I can agree with you there, so stuffy and souless, something straight out of an uninformed documentary on the 1800’s.”
The man smiles. It’s rare that he hears such a brazen insult to the craft nowadays.
“Thank you. I performed it.”
She gasps.
“Oh god.. I’m sorry—”
He lets out a short sound to stop her.
“Don’t be, I agree with you. Classical music quite literally represents everything I utterly despise. The falsity of it all.”
The woman hums.
The man awaits a further response, it doesn’t come.
The man silently sighs and focuses his gaze back on the city, one that he detests with all his heart. The bright yellow lights are harsh on his eyes, and the subsequent lack of stars entirely erase what little appeal being on top of a 50 story building carries. He takes great care not to lower his eyes any further—
“Since you seem to be such a fan of these places, why do you even show up at all?” She asks.
The man blinks, stunned that he had not managed to kill the conversation with his prior bluntness. He supposes at this point there would be no use in holding back.
“The woman I’m married to loves them,” he says, the disgust in his voice, palpable.
The woman feels more than sympathetic. She in fact goes a step further and smiles ruefully, tapping her long nails against the glass paneled railing.
“My husband’s the same.”
A long stretch of silence.
The man tightens his lips. It’s a time as good as any, though far earlier than he anticipated.
The shuffle of fabric.
The click of a packet.
The flick of a lighter.
A masculine inhale, followed by the strong scent of expensive cigarettes.
“If I may be a little sentimental,” he begins after a long drag. “Do you ever wish you could go back?” He asks, smoke billowing out his lips.
“Back in time?” She looks over the city, knowing that if she just heads far enough north, she’ll eventually hit a familiar street. It’s an instinctive skill of hers, to always be able to reorient herself back home.
If she could even call it so anymore.
“Yes,” he replies. “In a sense, back to where you used to be, when you felt life was simpler, when you were truly happy.”
It’s far too cruel a question.
“Everyday,” the woman readily responds.
The man nods, he takes another long inhale of his cigarette. Perhaps he could chance being a little brave.
His throat constricts, and he lightly coughs.
As if he could ever be so.
“Then, would you like to hear a story?” He quietly asks, honestly mutters, near inaudible in comparaison to the meaningless chatter leaking out from the gala.
The woman’s lip quirks up, because she’s always had a fine tuned ear. One that she’s also always been more than happy to lend out to others.
“We’ve made it this far haven’t we?” She almost wryly asks. “Have at it.”
Once again, the man finds himself surprised. However, he does not squander the scarce opportunity presented to him.
“There was once a boy raised to be the exact image of his father. Forced to spend hours upon hours learning how to play notes for events just like these.”
The woman senses that she knows those notes all too well.
“Mind if I take a guess as to what follows?”
“Go ahead.”
“The boy grows to despise his father and the music he associates with him.”
“Correct, So the boy rebels, he dives into everything his father would detest, revels in singing and dancing in ways his father would find abhorrent.” His voice softens. “And he’s found by another boy, one that burns bright and unabashedly. Our boy is taken, and they become partners. And the boy follows his partner’s lead further into a world he had only toed. The boy makes friends, he finds love with his partner, he grows braver, bigger with the support all around him.”
The woman feels nostalgic for the time the man describes, listens attentively as he continues.
“The boy’s father puts his foot down, demands he stop associating with his partner and his friends. The boy refuses,” he sighs. “He began to believe himself untouchable… and maybe he would’ve been, if he wasn’t a coward at heart. Because when the boy’s father demands he move and marry for his own good, when it really mattered most to stand up for what he wanted… the boy buckled and obeyed, telling no one before leaving.” The man’s grip tightens on the railing in a long silence that follows.
“Why?” She eventually asks.
“Maybe deep down, the boy didn’t want to disappoint his father, or maybe it was because he let himself falter and believe for a moment that what his father thought was best was for the best. Maybe it’s because he never changed at all—”
A tanned hand lands on his white knuckles.
The man startles, staring wide eyed at the lightly colored scar that mars the base of her thumb. “Ah,” He belatedly lets out. “Maybe this story has become a bit too personal.”
The woman just gently laughs, in a manner made more to reassure than anything else. “It’s fine, it’s been personal from the start.” She retracts her hand and bites her lip in contemplation. “Would you like to hear mine?”
“Sure,” the man dutifully responds, unable to tear his eyes away from his hand where she had touched. Her hand had been slightly calloused, and above all, soothingly warm in a way he hasn’t felt in ages.
When had been the last time someone had even deigned to reach for him in such a manner? He cannot remember.
“There once was a girl, with a dream so much bigger than herself,” the woman begins, a happy tinge to her voice as she’s momentarily sent back. “She sang and danced day in and day out to make it happen, but there was just something missing. One day, the girl meets another girl, and it’s like fate, what she’s been looking for. They become partners. They start working together, they form a team with friends and it’s all that it’s meant to be.” The woman’s smile steadily fades. “The girl’s partner worked harder than any other to be an equal to the girl, to match her passion. The girl’s team put their all into becoming the best they could be… and the girl…” She trails off.
“What about the girl?” The man prods, a tint of displeasure in his voice. He does not like how close the sentiments she has seem to be to him.
It only makes him ache for what’s gone all the more.
“The girl realized she was falling behind…” The woman continues. “That everyone that worked with her was miles ahead, and she realized that everyone that supported her saw it. She tried and tried to keep up, but she found herself outshone by her team, but most of all, her partner. The girl wondered then, if everyone’s so much further ahead, then why should she even stick around? She’ll only do nothing but drag them down after all. They’ll all leave her eventually, so might as well spare them the effort, she tells herself as she leaves in the dead of night. It’s for the best, she reminds herself as she tries to move on, they’ll be worse off with her there. She’s a burden. The girl marries a man she doesn’t love, not in the same way she did her partner. And when her marital life is terrible, when she regrets it all… she remembers that she deserves it, and that’s that.”
There’s unease, yet a cathartic sort of comfort to be found in the not quite quiet that follows.
The man examines and twists the cigarette between his fingers.
The woman feels the cold breeze sift through her long hair.
“What a pair we make,” the man, finally deciding to be the one to speak, says.
“Do you ever check back on how your people are doing?” The woman simply asks in response.
“I haven’t,” the man replies, a flashing thought appears to throw the cigarette out to the wind, he purposefully takes a long drag instead. “I ghosted everyone who truly cared about me. They have to hate me for my cowardice now.” He bitterly smiles. “And you?”
A moment.
Two.
“I could never gather the nerve to,” the woman says, the same undertone of darkness present in her otherwise matter of fact tone.
What a pair they make indeed.
…
….
….
…
Maybe the man is getting too emotional, because, right there and then, in the balcony of a shallow gala full of uncaring people alongside a woman who echoes troubles far too familiar to him, he begins to hum.
It isn’t a complex classical piece by any stretch of the imagination, but instead a groovy street style one that could only be found in the homes of a lower population, or perhaps sooner, the alleyways of adolescents, or maybe an older music shop, one that still sells records of bands that were comprised of over ambitious teens, still trying to forge their path through life, unknowing that only some of them were destined for greatness.
Its exactly 3 musical beats in that the woman joins in with the ease of someone rereading an old kindergarten project, the words are unidentifiable, but the feeling is still as vivid as ever, one that’s rife with loss, and longing and—
The man swiftly turns his head, he catches the woman’s hair swish as she does much of the same.
Cool gray eyes meet striking amber ones.
“Toya,” she breathes, visibly looks him up and down. “Toya Aoyagi.” She looks over him again, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing is real. She then fixates on the cigarette in his hand, and she gasps, lunging forwards. “What are you doing smoking?! You’ll ruin your lungs!”
Toya, more out of instinct than anything else, raises his hand holding the cigarette up and away from her grasp. His mind reeling.
“That’s the entire idea? My father and wife cannot force me to perform classical music for the rest of my life if I can no longer sing.”
She grabs his sleeve to force his hand down, an absolute ire unlike no other present in her features.
He stumbles in attempting to move away.
“Have you gone insane?!” She swiftly draws closer as he tries to step away, going on to close her fist over the collar of his suit in a bid to stop him, surely wrinkling the fabric. “Hey! No! Give it here.” She raises her hand for his sleeve again.
Faced with no other option, Toya does the only conceivable thing he can.
He tightens his grip and buckles down like a temperamental child.
“No.”
His hand is forcefully pulled to her level, and she begins pulling at his fingers.
“You don’t get a choice,” she snips as she pries each of his fingers open one by one. “I’m not letting you make such a dumb decision so long as I can do something about it.”
“You..”
She sternly meets his eyes, picks the crumpled cigarette out of his open palm, and flicks it off of the balcony. It’s exactly 7 seconds later that she begins fussing over him like the overly concerned mother he never had, attempting to smooth out the prominent wrinkles now present on his person.
“Geez geez geez,” she irritably mutters, the vocal tic far too comfortable to Toya’s ears. She looks up at him and proceeds to gawk in some measure of utter disgust. “And what on earth did you do to your hair?!”
“Gel,” he simply responds. “My wife won’t let me leave the house without it.” He finally manages to shakes himself enough out of his stupor to properly react to the bombshell in front of him. “What have you done to yours?” He asks in a dull semblance of alarm.
She pauses to run her fingers through unremarkable and flatly colored dark hair. “My husband said he likes his women plain. So I had to stop dying it and start straightening it.”
The words kickstart a blaring in his head. One that yells about how wrong. Wrong. Wrong—
“Your husband’s a dick,” Toya says, his chest seizes at the absolutely uncharacteristic look of one of his nearest and dearest friends. “You’re everything but plain! You’re An Shiraishi!”
“He sure is,” An replies as if it were normal. It should not be. “But it’s An Kodoku now, who sits and obeys because she deserves nothing better.” She grabs his collar to readjust it. “Toya Aoyagi, on the other hand, needs to stop convincing himself that he’s everything wrong with the world.”
The words serve as the equivalent of a slap to the cheek.
“That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.” He desperately takes her in, she somehow seems thinner to him than in their teenage years. Despite the application of foundation, he can see deep indents under her eyes that are akin to the eye bags that he carries. “Do you see how you speak of yourself? Did you talk to no one about this?!”
An tsks, a sharp sound.
“Did a certain someone think about telling anyone about his own horrible life changing decision before making it?”
The blaring is doused by freezing water, leaving him exposed.
“…You’re right.”
An steps back to throw out her arms in intense emotion.
“Of course I am! We’re both idiots and hypocrites.” She steps forwards again to pull at the bottom of his tuxedo jacket. “Unbelievable,” she mutters, presumably to herself. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you, but at the same time—”
“You wish it was under different conditions.” Toya plants his hands firmly on her shoulders, grabbing her attention. He needs to make his point, clear. “You’re supposed to still be in Vivid Street.”
“So are you for the record.” Her stare hardens. “Can you even begin to understand how what you did affected us?”
Such obvious words, yet they strike at Toya’s heart like a knife.
“I’m sorry.”
“Akito spent days out trying to find where you were sent off to. Kohane cried so much she was barely able to see. I had to—” she cuts herself off, looking off to the side in a pained manner. “Tsukasa, Saki, I don’t know what you told them on that phone call, but— and Mizuki! They weren’t the same, and Souma—”
The knife twists, further and further.
“Stop,” Toya rasps. He never wanted to hear this, any of it. “Please.”
An does, however, her stare burns him.
Toya, raw and pained, goes on to do what he now does best, he tries to retract.
An refuses to let him, her hand grips his wrist almost like a vice.
So he does the second thing he now does best, inflicting undeserved hurt.
He’s already done it well once before.
“It’s rich to hear such things from you,” he says. She needs to let go. “Do you think if everyone reacted that way to my leaving that they would take your sudden disappearance any better?” Only the inbuilt preservation insinct impeaches him from biting off his own tongue when the tide of regret strikes.
Thick, tense, moments pass.
Toya’s heart beats loudly in his ears.
He attempts to pull away again. An’s grip only seems to tighten, it should by all means hurt, but all Toya is able to properly feel is the sting where her eyes pierce his very being.
“I left letters,” she near silently whispers. “I had even written one for you, for if you ever went back.” She tugs his wrist towards her. Toya moves ever so slightly nearer. “5 handwritten pages long, calling you an idiot in every sort of way known to man.” Toya desperately wishes she would stop looking at him. He wishes even more that she never looks away. “My writing had gotten much better than when you saw it last. You probably would be proud.”
“It… sounds like I would,” he tries, partly feigning the upturn of his lips. “Three entire pages of writing for a test always seemed to be pulling teeth for you, five seems like quite the achievement.”
An’s eyebrows are wobbly, unable to stay in one single expression.
“If you think that’s impressive, consider the combined 102 that I wrote for everyone else.”
“… I hoped you spellchecked.”
It’s a sudden, unexpected comment that surprises even him.
An snorts, then begins to laugh, loudly.
Her grip on him lightens.
Toya does not dare to move, only sadly witnessing her.
The sound she emits is anything but upbeat, closer to hiccups, and sorrow.
He clenches his fists, his eyes begin to burn.
An hastily closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his torso and squeezing him as if he were a lifeline.
Toya scrambles to return the gesture, feeling himself shaking with his desperation. He buries his face into the top of her head, hesitantly inhales in a futile bid to stop the inevitable.
“Don’t,” An almost pleads.
“I’m sorry,” he tries his best to evenly say, though he’s sure he doesn’t succeed.
She just stuffs her face into his chest, trying with all her might to bring him even closer.
“I’m sorry too,” she responds, her voice wavering.