Chapter Text
When Nagi’s death was revealed, time started to move weirdly.
It was hard to take in what Taiga was saying, trapped in between an intense worry for An and a dull panic over his group and all their work until now amounting to… nothing. “You aren't enough. Not by a long shot.” The words themselves aren’t new. Advertising yourself as the next big thing invites scrutiny and scorn. But the source of the words? It’s so inconsistent, so nonsensical. Why work so hard to build them up only to tear them down?
Ever, Tono, Mita, all deemed ‘not enough’ by Taiga or the crowd. It’s clinical and distanced, even when talking about Nagi.
“I could kick and scream all I wanted, but she was never coming back. I've felt that loss...” There's emotion to the words themselves, but not to the way he
Toya takes a glance at the growing crowd around them. He’s come to recognize many of these faces overtime. The rest of his members don’t even bother looking around. They all seem stuck, watching, disbelieving. Taiga meant almost everything to them.
To Akito, his main inspiration. The reason he was here in the first place.
To Kohane, a mentor that made her feel like she was allowed to be here.
To An, a family member, a consistent face in her childhood memories.
To Toya… Nothing
The better part of the last few years had him focused on fighting off the idea of being an imposter. It’s hard to take in everything (or anything really) when the vast majority of his life prior had been monotonous black and white keys. There were days where it all blurred - when the excitement of Vivid Street and the weirdness of the Sekai felt as close to a fantasy as any book off his shelf. Letting his mind sink further into that feeling, he takes a solid step forward. All eyes turn to him. He's had a lifetime of learning how to feign impassivity in front of a crowd, always watching and waiting for him to mess up. Forcing the fear, shock, and grief down, he tells himself that this is no different.
“I...want to know. I want to see how far we are from surpassing RAD WEEKEND...”
He's certain that they have to face Taiga now. This is their first and only chance to see if they actually have what it takes to be more than a moment in this scene. Akito, as always, is never far from his side. Kohane follows next. The persistent absence of their fourth is what made him turn to her.
It’s just a glimpse, but it burns into him. Any visible display of betrayal, anger, devastation, anything would have been preferred to this. Her usual ‘larger than life’ presence had collapsed into a black hole, eyes glazed and staring at him, unseeing. It's takes a moment for the image to effect him, but once it does, every emotion ignored comes back in full force. It happens at once, taking away the steadiness of his voice and stride.
Embarrassment and worry clouds his every move, making him mess up again and again. Akito and Kohane are no different, each flagging for their own reasons. It’s bad and getting worse, until An appears beside him. She looks frantic, but a small part of him breathes a sigh of relief at seeing her join in. Her singing betrays none of the situation until the bitter end. Just as she had come to lift them up, they come crashing down together.
All of them are breathing hard, hands on knees to keep themselves up when Taiga moves in closer to them. “Is that really you can do, An?" he says, loud enough so everyone left in the crowd can hear. "Is this all Nagi gave you?"
Toya's head shoots up, incredulous. In response, An collapses to the ground.
The whispers and scathing remarks of the crowd are worse than Toya expected. The same faces he had seen smiles on in the past were now twisted into smirks. Others left quietly, eyes averted. Dizzy from effort, Toya reaches out to An.
Everything afterwards is split between lost memories (How did they reach Ken’s cafe? Why can’t he remember?) and memories that he would prefer to forget. It’s not entirely surprising that all four of them are there for it all, from An's breakdown to Ken’s explanations, but he aches for An. She had no choice in how public Taiga made it and now she's forced to be seen like this by her closest friends. She withdraws through it all, quiet and holding onto herself away from them.
She doesn’t say anything, not for a long time and eventually drifts upwards to her home above the cafe. No words are needed really, not even for Ken to politely ask them to leave.
It's as he's stepping through the door out, Kohane to his front and Akito lagging behind, that he takes stock of himself. He’s dizzy, shaky, nauseous, but he walks on. There’s static stuck in his head and chest.
Kohane hasn't said anything in her march forward, but she’s constantly turning back. She's constantly looking upwards as if she'll catch a glimpse of An through the window. Even when the building can't be seen anymore, the look in her eyes spells that she wants to go back. The further they get, the more she drags her feet. Toya starts towards her once or twice with an open hand or mouth, but always cuts the movement off before he reaches her, unsure of what he could offer to help.
Akito on the other hand is her polar opposite. He barely dragged himself out of the building when they left, uncharacteristically lagging behind them. The further they get away from it all, the faster he seems to want to move. He bumps into Toya and Kohane more than once, not out of frustration at their lagging pace, but more so because he's too lost in his own thoughts, un-noticing of reality.
When they get to their usual stop, where the Vivids usually turn away from Akito and Toya’s route, all three of them linger. It's late enough that they're the only ones on the dark street.
Kohane's eyes have been glued to the ground for a while now. That doesn't change when she silently waves them goodbye and turns to make her way home. It feels wrong to watch her walk away without a word. Apparently feels the same as he suddenly calls out Kohane's name. At the same time, Toya’s hand reaches out for her wrist. She stops, surprised with both of them.
Impulsivity is not word anyone would use to describe Toya, but he's finding more and more that these three bring it out of him. He lets go of her, takes a small step back, and opens his arms up. He feels awkward as soon as soon as he does it and the only thing that saves him from more embarrassment tonight is Kohane barreling herself into him. She does it with so much force that he loses his balance. Thankfully all he has to do is cling back, because without missing a beat, Akito’s behind him, steadying them. The night air is cool, but the warmth of the two of them stops a shiver he had felt coming on. As nice as it feels, there's something missing, and all three of them know it.
As much as they tease Akito for the mask he puts on, his face is beyond expressive. Today is no exception as his face takes on a pained expression while watching Kohane hide her face in Toya’s neck. The grimace is half out of sympathy and half a reflection of his own anxious thoughts. He puts his hand over her head.
"We'll figure it out. Just rest for now, and we'll figure it out together later.” He tells her, voice gently lowered in a way Toya has heard very few times.
She doesn't cry, but she does let out a breath at the words. When she pulls back, eyes misty, she nods. Once for them and one more time for herself, silently bringing some determination back into herself. They watch her walk off for a bit. She's clearly lost in thoughts, but something about it seems different now. It’s when she's out of sight that Akito let's out a breath of his own, and pulls Toya into him with an arm over his shoulder. It's not an uncommon move from him by any means, but it distinctly feels like they’re trying to hold each other up as they make their way towards the end of the miserable night.
Akito eventually breaks their silence. “How are you holding up?”
“I'm… worried. I'm worried about An, but I'm also worried about you two.” Kohane still looked shaken when they parted and Akito was no better. He scoffs at Toya, as if they weren’t pressed up against each other to keep the other from stumbling. Post performance exhaustion is already a lot, but the emotional weight of the nights events had them tripping on curbs.
“Don’t worry about me. But… An” He laughs without emotion, more akin to a breath of air forced out. “Back when we were kids, before we really knew each other, Nagi was all she would talk about.” He laughs for real now. “We weren’t even friends yet, but I still remember hearing her yell about it a couple times.” His smile drops the more he thinks. “I can’t even imagine...”
They reach Akito’s house first, as per usual. “Do you want to stay the night?”
It was tempting beyond belief, but he knew Akito would spend the night motherhenning Toya, doing whatever he could to help him out and ease his worries so he wouldn't have to face his own.
Forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the warm glow coming from the small window on the door, he coughs out an unconvincing, “I have some stuff to do at home,” and heads off. Akito’s expression clearly says he doesn't believe him, but he doesn’t question it.
“See ya tomorrow then.”
”See you.”
It's very quiet. It's been pretty quiet for a while. He's in class, but he doesn’t particularly remember getting here. It's not often that happens, but it happens enough that he's not entirely surprised.
Looking up from the pencil in hand, he realizes the teacher has given all of them instructions to do something. He remembers getting those instructions in the same way he remembers his day. In bits, and pieces, and it takes too much time and energy to put it together. He can recite what he thinks may have happened based purely off of routine, maybe can even see some images in his mind of what he did today, but they might as well be made up memories. Just, images in his mind, based on what he thinks could have happened.
What he does remember for sure is that he's been thinking about An all day. Whenever things got quiet around him, his mind would send him back to how still and empty she was when they last saw her. Something similar happens again in his next class, and he make an honest effort to stay aware of everything around him, he really does. Even so, when he's stepping out his last class and Akito asks him how his classes were, he doesn't know how to answer.
“Listen, obviously there's not going to be any practice today, but I already talked to Kohane and the three of us are going to meet to kinda... I don't know, do something.” He talks with his hands waving in the air on the ‘kinda’, but his movements are jittery and the skin under his eyes is purple. “She'll be there as soon as she can.” Toya nods at him and then tilts his head, motioning towards their usual path to Ken's cafe. Halfway through the walk, they take a sidestreet onto another familiar path of theirs. Hidden away from the public, they’re both already pulling up the songs on their phone, pressing play without checking no one was around.
Transportation to the Sekai is disorienting the first few times, but it's easy to get used to. It's like closing your eyes and imagining a whole new world, only to have that new world be there when they open back up. This time, the moment his finger hits the play button, he knows that something is wrong. In a way that's never happened before, his stomach swoops as if he had been dropped from the top of a building. His panic is cut short by the feeling of his hands and knees painfully hitting pavement. Both hands sting with small cut as he falls to his side, quickly covering his mouth in an attempt get a grip on the newfound dizziness and nausea.
Opening his eyes, he sees Akito was fairing better than him, but not by much. He was on his knees attempting to get up, but was swaying dangerously. Miraculously, he made the few short steps necessary to get to Toya. He opens his mouth to say something, but cuts himself short when his eyes catch something above Toya. Still too nauseous to get up or speak, Toya rolls over with a small yelp. Pain up his left arm sparks to life, rivaling the pain of the cuts on his hands.
Opening his eyes again, there's a wall in front of him. He recognizes it as one near Crase Cafe, but something is wrong. The further his eyes roam upwards, the more obvious the issue becomes. Instead of colorful posters and graffiti style art, it's littered in tape residue. Torn paper is barely clinging on with jagged spray painted lines across everything, like a poor attempt of censorship. Looking past the wall showed him that everything around them was slightly desaturated, as if all the life had been drained out of the world.
“What the fuck?” Akito swears and then takes a look at Toya’s hand still over his mouth. Cringing he asks “Are you going to…?”
He shakes his head no, slowly, willing away some of the dizziness the slight movement brings. After waiting for a moment to ensure Toya is okay, and wincing at his own state, Akito starts to limp quickly over to the cafe. He tries to pull the door and in response gets the sound of metal scraping onto metal loud enough to make them both flinch. It's dark enough that they can’t really see the inside nor what's blocking it.
While Akito tries a few more times, leaning on the doors to catch his breath more than once, Toya pulls up his phone and texts Kohane. “Do not come to the Sekai.” When he gives up, Toya shows him the phone. He puffs out almost a laugh.
”You couldn’t be more ominous if you tried.” Bringing it back to himself, he sees Kohane had responded with the succinct text of “???”
”Ah, that was not my intention. Although,” he says, pointedly looking around at their desolate world “at the very least, its fitting for the situation.”
”Good call on texting her. But what do we do now?” He sways a little as he stands, thinking out loud. “We’re could meet at my place,” he says with another cringe. “Ena should be the only one at home, but she should be asleep or just in her room.” He kicks at a balled up piece of paper while grabbing his own phone. It shoots across the ground and after a moment, returns as if it had never moved. A glitch in real life, Toya thinks. If the Sekai can even be considered real life.
Akito was too wrapped up in shooting an update text to Kohane to have seen it. He grumbles to himself a bit more before finally addressing Toya again. “If the journey here was that bad, I don’t even want to deal with it again for the way back.” He shivered. “But I definitely don't want to stay here either.”
It felt like they were both trying not to say it, but the air felt dead. It made it hard to breathe, adding to their anxiety and already bad states. Hell, Toya still wasn't good enough to fully stand, having been sitting on the ground the entire time. Always one for morbid curiosity, and subtly trying to delay having to go through the jump back to the real world, he asks his partner “What did it feel like?”
”Shitty. I felt dizzy and everything got super bright for a bit.” He went quiet for a moment before adding on, “I could have swore I heard some voices.” At this, Toya’s head involuntarily shot up towards Akito. Ah, ow, still dizzy.
“Voices? What were they saying?”
”It wasn’t like they were really saying anything. More like… jeers. I’m assuming you had something similar?”
”No, surprisingly.”
”Oh?”
”For me, it felt like I was pushed off of a building. It was short, but enough. Nothing like you were describing, other than the dizziness and the way we both fell afterwards.”
“Ugh.” He kicked at the piece of paper again, not noticing it was the same one. It unfurled a bit, revealing itself to be one of the many band posters Toya had seen plastered around. “Well, we’ve gotta face it eventually.” At the look of hesitation on Toya's face, Akito stole his phone. “Sorry man, I know you don't want to, but we have to leave. I don't trust this.” He pressed the pause buttons and they were back in their original world. Akito was less lucky this time and landed face down. Toya was no better, landing again on the side with the already injured elbow.
“This shit is so…” He probably had a list of colorful words to complete the sentence, but was rudely interrupted by his nose starting to bleed.
”Unpleasant.” Toya finished for him. The response was the closest thing he heard to a laugh from Akito since last night. It probably would have been a proper laugh if it wasn't for him trying not to get blood in his mouth.
They had just arrived to Akito’s house when Kohane had turned the corner. As she got closer, seeing how obviously banged up they had been by the trips to and from the Sekai, she ran the rest of the way to meet them.
”What happ-? Huh? Did yo-” She couldn’t finish a sentence, eyes jumping from the way Toya was holding onto his arm to the dried blood on Akito’s face, hands, and shirt, and back to the various scrapes on Toya.
“Did you guys try to fight Taiga?” she finally got out.
Akito muttered something, but it was hard to hear him when he wasn’t opening his mouth fully. Sounded like something along the lines of “We should at this point.” He led them inside his home and tried to rush the two upstairs, but unluckily all three of them were caught by Ena exiting her room as soon as they got onto the second floor.
”Hey Akito, I need to a- Oh, holy shit. Are you good?” and then noticing Toya and Kohane behind him “Hi Toya, hi there…. “
”Ah, I’m Kohane Azusawa. Nice to meet you.”
Throwing his hands up in exasperation and mumbling about medical attention, he points Kohane and Toya towards his room while heading in the opposite direction to a bathroom.
”Nice to meet you Azusawa.” Ena says, eyes trailing Akito as he continues grumbling. “Both of you feel free to let me know if either of you need anything… be it snacks or… 'medical attention' I guess.”
Body moving on autopilot, he politely nods to her and makes his way to Akito’s room, taking his usual seat. By the time he’s on the floor, legs folded under the small table in the room, he notices Kohane shuffling from foot to foot in the doorway nervously.
“Ah, this is your first time here, isn’t it? I forgot.”
”Yeah,” she nervously lets out. “It’s a bit nerve-wracking. I don’t want to accidentally do something to annoy him, especially after yesterday and especially after… whatever happened to you two”
”Ah, I see. I'm sure won't be an issue. There's not much you can do to actually bother him, even if he's agitated at the moment.” He doesn't tell her, but he has the feeling that if the situation were any different, Akito would be happy to bring all three of them over. Over time, Toya noticed that his room was one of the few places where he would properly relax. The only other place in mind is the Sekai, specifically when it was just the four of them. It was slowly bringing out the quieter, slower, calmer side of Akito. At the thought of the Sekai and the news they have to bring to Kohane, his stomach twists uncomfortably.
Thankfully she doesn't notice his expression change on that thought, and laughs a little as she sits next to him. “I haven't seen him with a glare like that since I first met him.” Privately he’s happy she met him so late. Akito had built up a reputation for having a short temper in the early days of them being a duo. Thankfully those rumors are near non-existent at this point, since anything like that would surely have made Kohane’s anxiety about the situation much worse. This close up he can see that she too has dark spots under her eyes. He'd put aside the idea of how this would be weighing on her until now. She also had to deal with her own mentor turning on her. As someone perpetually experiencing a version of that emotion with his father, he knew it was a heavy weight.
Akito comes back in before he can respond, face stuck on that infamous glare, but it visibly softens when he sees the two of them. It makes something loosen in his chest a bit, and maybe it did for Kohane too as she loses some of her nervous energy.
“Alright Kohane, show us what you were telling me about.” He says, laying down on the floor on the other side of the table, face down. Either the floor is cooling his bruised nose like a poor ice pack or he’s particularly interested in recreating what he looked like after the Sekai travel from earlier. Maybe a visual demonstration would be better for explaining it to Kohane? Either way, Toya is barely suppressing the urge to lightly kick him from under the table. Apparently Kohane reads his thoughts, because she immediately pushes her foot into his side.
“… Ow?”
Even though he clearly wasn't hurt or upset, she looks mortified. “Sorry, instinct! I mean, a-accident!”
“Uh-huh… sure…”
“Hahaha…” she nervously giggles as she pulls some flashcards out of her pockets. Many, many, flashcards. “I've been making these since I got home last night. Some of them are small ideas on what we can do to cheer her up over time, others are more immediate ways we can support her. Some… some are just general ideas for what we can do for VBS’s future.” She gathers a couple of the cards and puts them off to the side. “It doesn't feel right to be thinking about stuff like that at a time like this, but it can't be helped.”
At this, Akito rises and mirrors their cross-legged positions. “You're right. It's good to keep writing those down as they come up.” He stares down at the table for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “We're gonna do what we can for An, that's our main priority. How we continue afterwards is something we'll figure out along the way, with all four of us.” Hearing no arguments, he starts to flicker between some of the cards she had placed out earlier. Toya tried to do the same, but stopped reaching out the moment his eyes caught on the cuts still layering his hands. Kohane caught the sight and winced in sympathy.
”Do you guys want to talk about what happened?”
”We should probably explain that to you, Azusawa. Let me clean myself up first.”
On his way to the bathroom, he nearly tripped on a box of bandaids and some towels left in front of the door. He should thank Ena on behalf of both of them before he leaves. By the time he came back to the room, Akito was holding one of the cards up and staring at Kohane in shock. “It’s really not that bad of an idea, we don’t have to fully discard it yet!”
”Kohane, are you crazy?”
At Toya’s questioning look, he flips the card around to reveal the words “Fight Taiga”. He watches Kohane very passionately try to make her case to them and mentally re-evaluates the relationship between violence and the tiny blond.
Without further deliberation, Akito puts down the card and proclaims it the rejected pile, somewhat at a distance to two vague piles that he clarifies are the ‘do now’ and ‘do later’ piles. It’s while Akito is explaining this that Toya watches her slowly slip the card off the table and into the 'do later' pile again.
”We didn’t want to go through much without your opinions so we just sorted some obvious ones. Like first and foremost, we’ll see if we can visit her soon.”
”Ah, before we get into it, will either of you explain what happened?”
”What happened?” Akito asks her back. With an unimpressed look (eerily similar to the one An usually gives him when he says something particularly stupid), she points to Toya’s now bandaged hands.
“Oh, my apologies Azusawa.” Toya wasn’t necessarily excited to break the news that their safe haven was essentially destroyed. Akito’s expression spelled something similar. Nor did he particularly want to let the implications of what it means for a place based off of their emotions to be so… destroyed… linger in the air. “It’s part of the reason we asked to meet you here instead.” Not wanting to continue, he turns to Akito and let’s him take over the explanation.
With each new detail, she shrinks into herself more and more. ”I guess we should have seen this coming to an extent. I definitely wouldn’t have predicted the way you guys got hurt, but it is based off of us. I wonder how much of this is from how An is feeling.” All of a sudden, she sits up straight. “We need to tell her! I don’t want her to accidentally get hurt.”
She brings out her phone, clearly about to text when Akito speaks up. “Put it in the group chat.” He picks up a card and waves it a bit, thinking.
“Ask if we can see her.”