Work Text:
Five past twelve, just two weeks after the opening ceremonies. The sun had escaped the cloudy morning, and had only started warming the window panes, casting long rectangles of light and shadow over the classrooms. Most of the class trickled out of the room in search of some place better to eat lunch-- the rooftop, the courtyard, the empty stairwells. The only thing they left was the scent of their home-cooked meals.
By the windows, a group of girls sat in a packed semicircle, laughters bright and rousing. Others peeled off in triads and pairs, preferring the solace only one or two companions could bring.
Nijika, on her lonesome, trailed a few girls in hopes of joining them, but they drifted too far, sparing her no call or glance. No one looked back. Not even a dismissal. She could swear she heard one of them mention something about her eagerness. No, desperation, more like.
It was then, at twelve oh eleven, that she fell on her chair with a groan. Her lunchbox thudded on the desk. Here she was with her too-full a lunchbox that she'd slaved away the whole morning just to prepare. There was everything she could possibly prepare in it: rice balls, tamagoyaki, broccoli, mochi. It would've been nice to share a piece with a friend.
Today, though, it seemed no one wanted to be friends.
It's fine , Nijika thought. They'll come to you in droves when they come back, and smell how good your cooking is.
The silence in the room stretched far and thin. Even though there were a dozen people in the room, it felt hollowed out. Everything echoed and creaked and stank of nothingness.
"Ijichi, was it?" A voice from the silence.
Nijika looked behind her.
Yamada.
Nijika was beginning to think that the girl didn't speak at all. For two weeks, Nijika had only ever been able to spot her with her head down, jotting down things that couldn't have been lecture notes.
Now, she was actually talking.
"Can you really finish all that?" Her finger gestured lazily to her open lunchbox.
Nijika blinked. "Huh?"
The Yamada girl tilted her head, as if Nijika was wrong to be confused. "That's a lot of food. It looks like it's enough for two."
Nijika gazed back down at her lunchbox with unspoken sadness.
"I like to cook," she replied, a little too quickly. Then, smoothing herself down. "I thought I might share it with someone."
Yamada paused, gears turning in her head, but the silence didn't linger for too long.
Before Nijika knew it, she left.
Was that real?
Did she just walk off?
Seriously?
Then-- shhhhk.
She heard it, the slow, lazy dragging of the chair like she wanted people to know she was doing it. Then, Yamada sat down, not quite across from Nijika, nor beside her. Diagonal. Like a weirdo.
"I could eat," she said simply with eyes that asked, so very softly, would it be alright? Her hand still on the chair, ready to pull away if she wasn't wanted.
Nijika couldn't turn her away, not when she looked at her like that. Like a starving puppy.
Six on the short hand, thirty-two minutes on the longer hand. It had been six and a third months since she and Ryo started talking daily. The preparations for the cultural festival were already in the works, after-school hours had grown longer, yet Ryo still had no urgency.
Ryo sat with her legs propped on top of a chair's top rail, hammering away at a small piece of decoration.
Nijika thought it was counterintuitive. Wouldn't that break it?
But that thought is stupid, Nijika thought. Yamada Ryo wasn't the type to abide by conventionality.
Nijika shot her a glance before setting her sights back on her own work. She sat on the floor, surrounded by piles of wooden boards just waiting to be painted. She'd only done three of them so far, and they still needed seventeen more.
If she had it in her, she would've walked away from it long ago. The tedium of it all, the monotony of painting and writing the same thing over and over-- the routineness grated more than it soothed. She swore that if she had to do this longer– her hand, though honed through years of playing the drums, would stiffen up.
She flexed her fingers. They trembled faintly. Still, she dipped the brush back into the white paint and pressed the bristles against the wooden surface. Smooth, even strokes. Again. And again.
She paused, waiting for the surface paint to dry.
She took a different brush, already black at the tip. This one was for lettering. This needs precision , the class representative said.
The first stroke went down clean enough. The second was just a tad slower.
On the third, something bit her on the wrist.
Clack.
The brush went and rolled away, and the pain crept up her palm like a viper.
Nijika hadn't even groveled in the pain for more than a second before Yamada rushed in.
She hushed her while all Nijika could do was bite her tongue in defiance of her body.
For all her childish complexities, Yamada Ryo was, surprisingly, mature at times.
In the small moments, between their teacher turning their back to write something on the board or the teacher calling one of their classmates to read a book aloud, Nijika liked to turn her attention to the girl at the back. That girl with blue hair whose attention was so often taken by the welkin above, whose ears preferred the buzz of the cicadas outside, whose mouth was oft used to mimic lyrics rather than speak.
Nijika didn't want to pull her hand back.
Ryo's hand was calloused and warm, a strong contrast to her whole being. It felt nice to be cradled by it.
"Is it okay now?" Ryo asked.
Nijika's eyes trailed up from their hands, to Ryo's neck, to the sharpness of her chin, her lips, the tip of her nose, and then to her golden eyes. Though, she must admit she lingered quite a bit on her lips.
The pain had gone away. It had been away for a while now.
"No, it still hurts," Nijika lied.
Thirty-two minutes past five in the afternoon, three weeks after the cultural festival. Nijika remembered it quite vividly: Friday, December first. The sky was grayish, almost a sickly-looking blue as the sun slowly set. The winter chill had begun to take hold, seeping through every ingress it could find. But despite the brisk chill, Nijika felt warm.
Classes had wrapped up a few hours prior, and while everyone else was at home, their noses buried in textbooks, preparing for the upcoming exams, Nijika and Ryo were on top of the world– Shimokitazawa’s rooftop, that is. Just this once, it was empty. Nijika couldn’t help but suspect that this was planned.
“We still have a week and a half to study anyway,” Ryo said with a shrug. “You’re smart, aren’t you? You’ll pass it even without studying.”
And so, neither of them were studying.
The both of them leaned against the parapet, the wind tousling Ryo’s hair, styling it in ways Nijika hadn’t imagined yet. Quietly, she was taking notes. While Ryo’s eyes looked to the quiet city streets, Nijika’s were too focused on their hands.
Ryo’s hand rested on hers. Her long fingers brushed lightly on the back of her hand in a sort of soothing motion; it was so subtle that it didn’t seem real. At that moment, she wondered if there was even a term that could supersede “feeling like you’re on top of the world.”
Heaven? Yes, Nijika was in heaven.
There’d been an emphasis on her hands ever since they cramped up: Ryo sending her low quality step-by-step hand exercises in the dead of night; Ryo reminding her to rotate her wrists; Ryo telling her to flex each of her fingers before doing anything; and strangest of all, Ryo telling her that her hands were pretty.
“Are you cold?” Ryo asked. “Your hand’s cold.”
Nijika thought, was it?
It was warm. She dressed for the upcoming winter, wrapped her neck in a woolen scarf, and held Ryo’s hand tight. She shouldn’t be anything else but warm.
Ryo turned slightly and let her hand go to show her. She was cold.
She stirred again, lifting Nijika’s hands, cradling them between hers. Nijika always underestimated how big her hands were– so big that they could nest both of her own. Then, without much warning, she pressed Nijika’s knuckles to her lips and blew softly. The warm air brushed over her skin like silk, drawing goosebumps on her skin.
“All better?”
Nijika nodded, and she would’ve answered, but her voice had gotten lost somewhere in her throat. There was no chill left in her hand.
It felt like summer in her body. Especially, in her chest.
The day was marked with regret: Eleventh of December, a cold Sunday afternoon. the clock’s minute arm pointed right up; its shorter hand hovered over the number four.
It was the first time Nijika ever had Ryo inside her room. They were here just for one thing: To study.
Well– cram , really.
“We still have a week and a half to study anyway,” Ryo had said, like a little bastard.
Slowly but surely, time ate away at her excuses.
A week and a half turned into just a week.
A week slipped into five days.
Five days became three.
Then, somehow, just one.
One single day before the exams.
It was fun while it lasted– the late night runs, the afternoons in the arcade, the sunsets at the park. While everyone else was neck deep in their textbooks, Nijika and Ryo were doing god knows what. Ryo had planned it all , Nijika thought. She must have planned all of this from the start– to corrupt her, to make her skip nightly reading, to hold her hand on the rooftops, to blow air onto her cold hands. This feeling in her stomach shouldn’t be her fault.
Ryo was sprawled on her bed like she owned it, holding her workbook up in the air, sleeves half-rolled. She wasn’t even writing. Maybe, she wasn’t even thinking.
Nijika could tell she wasn’t by how many times their eyes met.
Nijika hadn’t turned a page in fifteen minutes, and it was all Ryo’s fault. All of this was her fault.
She looked at Ryo on her bed, at her abdomen, at her shoulders, at her leg dangling on the edge. She stared at those bangs that have grown so long that they now brush against her lashes. These were parts she had yet seen.
Nijika liked to think that she knew Ryo well enough; she had known her for eight months now. She knew her voice: How it goes deep when she orders at a counter, and how high it went when she was with her. She knew her hands: How calloused they were at the tip, and how soft they were at the palm. She knew her mind: How she’d rather think of music than school, and how much space there actually was for everything Nijika says.
This time, Ryo was different. She looked like she belonged here, in Nijika’s bedroom.
This Ryo Yamada was unguarded in a way Nijika hadn’t seen before: stomach peeking out beneath her shirt, feet tapping softly to her imaginary music, the faint rise of her boxers under slouched pajama pants.
Nijika thought of it, of seeing her like this every day, of living with her.
“Hey, you know. Even if I crash and burn, at least I still have you.” Ryo smiled.
She wasn’t going to pass this semester.
No, not like this.
On that winter night, the twenty-sixth of December, half-past ten, Nijika and Ryo made it back to Starry after a quiet walk from Shibuya. It was a happy, tiring day.
They blew most of their savings on stupid things. Keychains. Bubble tea. Bass picks. Drumsticks.
Stupid things.
Records. Tee-shirts. Capsule toys.
Things she’s going to keep on her bedside table from here on out.
Their photo strip. A necklace with an enamel bass. A plushie Ryo had won out of pure luck.
Stupid things that she’s going to cherish for the rest of her life.
Ryo and her walk down the streets of Shimokitazawa, down the clandestine staircase of STARRY Live House, hands bound together while they lugged along their haul.
Nijika fumbled with the keys for a bit, misremembering which one would open the doors. She got it eventually.
The live house was asleep for tonight, and so was most of the street. The stage lights were tucked in the corners, amps and speakers were covered with a thin line of cloth, and the faint smell of soda and sweat lingered, and Nijika was thankful that it was a tolerable smell.
Ryo laid out everything on the counter.
Within minutes of sitting down, she had already dozed off while Nijika went and brought their spare heater out.
Her head was tilted slightly, mouth parted to breathe, brows lifted in a way Nijika rarely saw.
Nijika didn’t mean to stare. At least, not for too long. Well, maybe she did. She just wanted to capture this moment– A Ryo so sleepy that she had forgotten to take off her jacket, arms crossed and laid on the table, head cradled by her forearms.
She leaned forward beside her, tentatively running her hand over her shoulder.
“Ryo,” she whispered. “You wanna sleep on the couch backstage?”
Ryo stirred, face scrunching. “Mm?”
Nijika hesitated for a moment longer before leaning in, just a little, intending only a gentle nudge to rouse her. A kiss on the cheek, quick and nervous– a small gesture, small enough to bring her back to reality.
The other girl blinked, barely processing what happened through the grogginess, and it all flipped on Nijika. Ryo reached out and grabbed her with eerie accuracy for someone who was half asleep a second ago. Pulled her in, as gently as she always was with her.
“You missed,” she mumbled. “Try again.”
Is this real?
Nijika’s heart thudded in her ears. “Ryo—”
“Please.” That was Ryo Yamada’s first.
It’s not a… joke?
It’s a request…
So Nijika leaned in again. This time, toward her lips.
Nijika could hear it– the drumming of their heartbeats– as she leaned closer and closer.
When their lips finally met, it felt like formless, unfathomable chaos in her body. It was soft at first, then it quickly turned desperate, a want that so swiftly turned into a need. Nijika held herself back before Ryo stood up and pulled her close, gripping her by the waist.
Nijika stumbled back, Ryo pulling her in again, steadying her. Her stomach twisted like something solid was melting inside her.
“Ryo,” she mumbled between kisses. Her voice cracked but she couldn’t care less. “Ryo…”
Again and again, Ryo went back in.
“Ryo.”