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Ah, he’s on a stage, Akiomi can feel the heat of spotlights and the screaming cheers of so many and it’s like grating against his ears but it’s so beautiful-
He can’t get carried away, he pulls himself back into the music, although it’s slightly too fast and almost discordant, it’s like the stage twists around him, following his footsteps like mud. Sticky and slippery, all at once. The light’s from the audience are almost blinding, but Akiomi looks anyway - there’s still something more than that, a light so bright it’s impossible, the brightness he can remember burning it’s way into the insides of his eyelids.
He sees it when he sleeps, it’s image invasive. As an idol’s image should be, if the entertainment industry is as much of a battlefield as modeling is and was. He’s half-convinced that some of the audience is screaming jeers, he’s betrayed at least a few of his fans but the whole modeling industry. It’s something he’s always tried to run from.
God, he can’t make a single face out - but that’s to be expected, he’s nowhere near the audience. They look up to him like he’s their God and he’s dancing for them - an audience so much bigger than he should have, the sort of audience that would gather for a real Idol, like what Sagami-senpai is. A sun, one that shines far brighter than mere humanity. If anything, Akiomi’s more like a moon, the weakly shining reflection of something far greater, there’s no amount of practice that can change that. No hard work turned the ugly duckling into a beautiful, shining swan - the duckling had just been a swan all along. Which is to say, no matter how hard he works, he may never catch up to Sagami-senpai. It’s a strange realization to have onstage, desperately trying to keep up to the evermorphing beat of the music - he’s going to stumble at this rate but -
He feels so disconnected from everything, his limbs feel slow and heavy, the air feels syrupy from heat, blood cold and slow, skin hot and slippery. The audience is all he can look at, dancing like a doomed man, like he’s the girl in the red shoes, like if he just keeps going it’ll be atonement for lying to himself and thinking he could’ve ever been an idol fit to stand on a stage like Sagami Jin, a true and beautiful idol. Yes, the audience is screaming, and he still can’t understand why, and it’s almost so loud he cannot hear the music through his earpiece, and -
He steals a look down at the stage, where he understands what he’s standing on is blood before he really sees it, dark red and sticky. Ah, stages are a battlefield, so he shouldn’t bat an eye at it. There’s something like disgust, but Akiomi wonders just when his blood will scatter like this - not long now.
If this is the price, the violent demand of standing on the same stage as a super-idol, one of those legendary, god-like few, then Akiomi will pay it gladly to stand on the same stage as his Sagami-senpai.
When he hears that voice, it’s like a relief and a death sentence, he thinks the music cuts out for Sagami Jin’s words, but the screaming only gets louder. He can still hear them though, hear how he keeps the audience in the palm of his hand, skillfully playing up his image, being their Sagami Jin. The knowledge of his Sagami-senpai -the one that falls asleep wherever he feels like he won’t be found (although Akiomi can always find him), the one that tells him that he will wait until Akiomi is skilled enough to join him on stage- makes him feel a cut above the rest of the audience.
He still hasn’t stopped dancing, frantic, unskilled, barely keeping to the beat because the music is unrecognizable and discordant. Calmly and quickly, with each blink Sagami Jin, the super idol comes closer. His steps are perfect, but when he reaches Akiomi his mouth is split by a smile.
And, oh, he’s far too bright. Akiomi wants to scream at himself for forgetting how it is, by nature, impossible to get so close to an angel, or an Idol, god’s exact replica. Or, someone whose existence is like a simulacrum of God.
Even though his eyes are closed, Akiomi obviously doesn’t need them to feel how Sagami-senpai leads him in a dance, despite his stumbling, Sagami-senpai must be doing perfect.
Yes, this is why he’s okay with being a stepping stone.
Singing long abandoned, Akiomi just tries to look at Sagami again. Burn his face into memory, for the last time.
And then there’s hands around his neck and, and-
He’s on his back on the stage, Sagami-senpai looming above and it all feels like far too much, far too soon. Maybe he’d deluded himself into thinking he could somehow, by chance, spend just a little more time dancing. Maybe if he had just been better. This was just what happened after all, Sagami Jin the super-idol, carving a beautiful and shiny, bloody and cruel swathe through the industry.
He doesn’t mind it. He’s Icarus, laughing in joy for just being able to get that little bit closer to the sun, burning up in its beautiful, beloved warmth. There’s probably nothing beautiful about him like this, sweaty and - he thinks- giggling like a madwoman.
His hair must be soaked through with blood, his costume irreparably damaged. Icarus couldn’t have put his wings back together anyways.
The hands around his neck tighten, and Akiomi is only half sure of the music reaching its crescendo. All downhill from here, but he’s not exactly sure that he can get any lower. Or, if this show is for Sagami-senpai, he wants to warn him. It’s difficult to think like this, he feels like he’ll burn to death and it’s exactly what he’s been wishing for, all this time. He’ll stand on the same stage as Sagami Jin even though he isn’t skilled enough, even though it'll cost him his life.
His vision blurs but all he can think of is above him and on him, and he reaches a hand up, to touch his face with all the reverence of a pilgrim.
He can die happy like this.
─────
Akiomi Kunugi wakes up in a capsule hotel, neck aching with a phantom pain, with a gasp and a scream ready to rip its way out of him. Sweaty and tangled in the sheets, he feels sick with himself. He shouldn’t be having dreams like this, as real as it feels. But it’s not like his subconscious is wrong. He would die happy, at least as an idol, if it was Sagami-senpai who killed him. The last super-idol, his beloved senior.