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The hotel room was still, save for the soft whirr of the AC and the distant city hum seeping through the high-rise windows. The post-concert adrenaline had long since faded, leaving behind the weightless calm of content exhaustion. Kaela Kovalskia sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, arms draped over her knees, hair damp from the shower, still wearing the oversized tank top she'd thrown on earlier.
On the other side of the bed, Koseki Bijou lay on her stomach, face half-buried into a hotel pillow, her bejeweled strands spilling over her shoulder like scattered marbles.
Neither of them had said anything in a while. There wasn’t a need. Just the quiet rhythm of comfort between people who knew each other’s silences.
Then Bijou shifted, eyes peeking over the pillow.
“Hey, Ela…”
“Hm?”
Bijou hesitated—not because she didn’t know what she wanted to say, but because she wasn’t sure how it would sound out loud.
“…What if we wrote a duet song together?”
Kaela blinked slowly. Her head tilted, like she was making sure she heard that right.
“…You mean, like, actually write one?”
“Yeah,” Bijou perked up, pushing herself upright with her elbows. “Like… just us. Something that’s ours. I mean, we’re already part of a group, but this would be just you and me, y’know?”
Kaela rubbed her chin. “I’m down. I think it’d be fun. But who’s gonna write the lyrics? What kind of song is it even gonna be?”
Bijou smiled, a little excited. “We brainstorm it together.”
Kaela turned her head slowly to look at her.
“…Eh?”
Bijou’s smile faltered.
“…What, is that weird?” she mumbled, deflating a bit. “I just thought it'd be fun, like—just the two of us working on something from scratch. But if it’s dumb, we don’t have to—”
Kaela leaned back on her hands, staring at the ceiling. “I mean, it’s not dumb…”
“…But?”
“…I just never thought about writing lyrics with you. You're all brainrot.”
Bijou frowned and flopped back into the pillow. “Wow. Rude.”
Kaela smirked. “I didn't say it was bad.”
They sat in silence again. The room felt still, like the idea was floating above them, waiting to be caught or dropped.
“…Alright,” Kaela finally said, picking up the remote and turning the TV volume down to a near whisper. “Let’s give it a shot. If you say we brainstorm, we brainstorm.”
Bijou turned her head. “Wait, really?”
Kaela met her eyes and gave her a lazy thumbs-up. “You’re not the only one who wants something that’s just ours.”
The look on Bijou’s face was worth it. That quiet sparkle that showed up when she got unexpectedly touched by something. The kind of happiness she tried to hide with a snarky comment or a puffed-up retort.
“Okay,” Bijou said, reaching for her phone. “First question: are we doing something cute, dramatic, or like… emotional devastation?”
Kaela raised an eyebrow. “Those are the three options?”
Bijou nodded seriously. “Yup. Pick your fighter.”
Kaela tapped her knee, thinking. “I feel like everyone expects us to go full chaos or full sweet. Maybe we do something slower. Not sad, just… honest?”
“…Like a story?”
“Yeah.”
Bijou hummed. “A song that’s like… us trying to say something we normally wouldn’t say out loud?”
Kaela chuckled. “You say everything out loud.”
“Okay, you don’t, though.”
Kaela smiled, but didn’t deny it. She shifted closer, so their knees touched. Bijou didn’t move away.
The notes app was open now. Bijou started typing nonsense—phrases like “we never needed a script,” and “the quiet between us has a name.”
Some of it made Kaela raise her eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno yet. I’m vibing.”
They sat there for a while, trading phrases, questions, melodies Kaela hummed without thinking, and lines Bijou typed down before she could second guess them.
Their laughter came soft and slow, like the way waves lap at the edge of a dock. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
This wasn’t a song that needed to be big.
Just theirs.
And in the quiet space of a hotel room far from home, Kaela realized she liked the way Bijou’s voice softened when she got thoughtful. Bijou realized she liked the way Kaela always circled back, even after teasing her—like an orbit that never drifted far.
Outside, the city lights sparkled like scattered gems.
Inside, two girls started building a song out of things they usually kept inside.
Bijou chewed on the edge of her phone case as she stared at the screen. “Okay, okay—what about this line: ‘your silence speaks louder than my whole heart.’”
Kaela wrinkled her nose. “That sounds like something people tweet after getting ghosted.”
Bijou groaned and slapped the pillow. “Okay, rude again!”
“I’m just being honest,” Kaela grinned. “Try something simpler. We’re not writing a ballad for a breakup montage.”
Bijou huffed, but her eyes were smiling. She backspaced the line and typed something else. “Alright, what about… ‘you never say much, but I always hear you anyway.’”
Kaela tilted her head. “That’s not bad. Can we make it more... specific?”
“Like what?”
Kaela leaned forward and grabbed a pen from the hotel desk, flipping over a room service notepad. She scribbled in her precise, oddly elegant handwriting:
‘You look at me like I already know the answer.’
Bijou blinked. “Whoa…”
Kaela shrugged. “That one just kinda fell out.”
Bijou took the notepad and underlined it. “That’s staying. That’s definitely staying.”
“Your turn,” Kaela said, voice low, a bit fond.
Bijou sat up, legs folded under her, hair a tousled gem-colored halo around her shoulders. She murmured, half to herself, “What about… ‘when we walk side by side, I count our shadows like promises.’”
Kaela paused. “That’s… really good.”
Bijou beamed, cheeks tinged with heat. “Y-you think?”
Kaela nodded. “Kinda poetic. Kinda dumb. I like it.”
“I’ll take it!” Bijou laughed, but she scribbled it down just the same, pen dancing over the paper now.
The notepad began to fill up—crossed-out words, arrows pointing between stanzas, little doodles in the margins (a tiny doodle of Kaela’s sleepy eyes, a crude but recognizable gem-shaped blob labeled “me”). Some lines were silly. Some lines were surprisingly heavy.
‘I don’t ask why you’re quiet. I just listen until I hear the shape of your love.’
Scribbled out. Too cheesy, Bijou said. Kaela shrugged, said it was nice anyway.
‘We don’t have to sparkle to be seen.’
That one stayed. It was simple. It was them.
Eventually, Bijou rolled onto her back, her hair spread out like a halo of diamonds. “You think we’re gonna actually finish this?”
Kaela stretched her legs out under the blanket, glancing down at the chaotic page they’d made together. “Doesn’t really matter.”
Bijou tilted her head. “No?”
Kaela shrugged. “I mean, yeah, I hope we do. But just this—working on it with you. That’s already kind of the song.”
Bijou stared at her for a long moment, eyes soft, unsure what to say. So instead, she reached out, took the notepad from Kaela’s hand, and tucked it under her pillow. “Then I’m keeping it safe.”
Kaela smirked. “What if you roll over in your sleep and drool on it?”
Bijou grinned, already sliding under the covers. “Then it’ll have my signature.”
Kaela laughed as she clicked the lamp off. “Gross.”
In the dark, their limbs tangled naturally, their warmth shared without needing to be discussed. Bijou pressed her forehead to Kaela’s shoulder, and whispered so faint Kaela barely caught it—
“…Thanks for giving it a shot.”
Kaela murmured back, already slipping into sleep, “Any song that’s about you is worth trying.”
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
It started as a joke during a collab stream.
Chat had caught wind of Bijou’s mention of the song project during a cozy zatsu with Kaela weeks later. At first, it was dismissed with their usual banter.
“Yeah, we’re totally making a song together,” Bijou had said, grinning.
“Sure,” Kaela deadpanned. “We just need, you know… money. And a composer. And free time. You know—dreams.”
But then the superchats rolled in. One by one.
“KaelaBijou Duet Fund!”
“Y’all better sing it or I’m refunding this donation.”
“Song title: Mining My Heart (ft. Emotional Damage)”
By the end of the stream, they had a lot more money than expected. Not just goofy change—enough to make things real for a low cost production.
A Week Later – Business Mode: Activated (kind of)
Kaela sat at her desk, arms crossed, watching the spreadsheet Bijou had made on Google Docs. It was… sparkly. Pastel fonts. A gem emoji every two bullet points.
“BUDGET FOR OUR EPIC LOVE SONG – DO NOT EDIT KAELA!!!”
Songwriter/composer: ~$500 - $1000 (depending on fame level lol)
Mixing/mastering: ~$300
Art for thumbnail: ~$200
MV budget: ~$500 (animated if we’re lucky???)
Other notes: I wanna wear a sparkly outfit in the art. You too.
Backup plan: We spend all the money on chicken nuggets and cry.
Kaela sighed. “This is the most cursed business document I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re welcome,” Bijou chirped over Discord. “We gotta make it cute if we’re gonna suffer!”
Still, it was real. They had the money. They had the idea. Now they needed people.
Kaela took the lead on reaching out to a few trusted freelance producers in the Hololive-adjacent scene—people she knew from her blacksmith-crafting commissions and from talking shop with other senpais. She kept her emails clean and professional, the exact opposite of the chaos Bijou would’ve brought. It balanced out.
Bijou, meanwhile, worked on song themes, lyric polish, and the all-important art direction. She made a moodboard, a Pinterest board, and a 60-slide PowerPoint called “What if Sparkles Could Sing?”
“This song is us,” she explained to Kaela over a late-night call. “Not just love, but like… real love. Like, dumb inside jokes and shared silence and crying on each other without needing to explain why.”
Kaela smiled. “That’s a big ask for three minutes of audio.”
“Then it’ll be the best three minutes we’ve ever made.”
A Month Later – Contracts and Creativity
They’d found their team:
A gentle, well-respected indie composer who specialized in vocal duets.
A mixer Kaela trusted from past projects.
An MV animator who agreed to use Bijou’s ridiculous scribbles as “inspiration.”
And for art? A fan who had done a soft, glowing portrait of them after their first Minecraft collab.
“It feels weird,” Bijou admitted one night. “I never thought I’d be this person. Making music. Planning a release. Like… isn’t this something idols do?”
Kaela raised an eyebrow. “What do you think we are?”
Bijou flushed, hiding her face in Kaela’s shoulder. “…Fair.”
Title: “Between the Beats”
The lyrics stayed theirs. Every word a collaboration. Even the disagreements were affectionate.
Kaela insisted on more restraint. Bijou wanted more metaphor.
Kaela wanted simplicity. Bijou wanted sparkles.
They settled for a song that pulsed between the two—quiet strength and trembling tenderness.
And when they finally heard the mastered version, side by side on the hotel bed again, there was a long moment of silence.
Then Bijou whispered, “This is what I sound like when I’m in love.”
Kaela, soft but certain, “Same.”