A Thread Unspooling

Harua again, his bright eyes much too close to her face: “Hello hello~ How’s my two favorite dungeon dwellers today?”

She pushes his face away. “Begone, twink. Are you going to waste our time today too or are we going to be productive?”

He pouts, then bounces into the booth. The energy feels misplaced, almost frantic, since the studio air is thick and syrupy with humidity and late-afternoon dust motes; Fuma eyes them both, visibly deciding not to ask. “How was your day, Harua?”

“Boring,” Harua says instantly. “They still won’t tell me my album release date, do you think that the execs are actually incompetent? Do you want to stage a coup and start anew?”

“Hakaze would run an entertainment agency like the military,” Fuma says thoughtfully. “So maybe not a bad idea.”

“Oh, I had a brand deal with those energy drinks you like, I gave them your address to deliver them,” Harua says. “It’s payback for that time you fed us chicken when we were trainees.”

“We fed you all the time, ungrateful brat,” Hakaze says. “Go on, sing.”

They’re working on the next verse of the same song; the booth light glows gold on Harua’s face, making him look even more cherubic than usual. At least he seems more enthused today. Once he’s done, he comes skipping out, far too cheerful for the dim crypt of Fuma’s studio with its soundproof walls.

“What’s the word on the street, anyway? Are they done picking the lineup for the group that’s gonna replace us?”

At Hakaze and Fuma’s expressions, he laughs. “C’mon, I hear things too! And it makes sense, no agency wants to gamble it all on one group. That’s why it took them so long to recover from your disbandment, right, Hakaze?”

She bops him on the head, but it’s hard not to be proud of how sharp he is. Neonite’s leader Harua, baby-faced and sparkly-eyed, so cute that no one suspected that he had a mind like a steel trap.

“Well,” Fuma says, slowly, “I’m not sure, but last I heard, the final decision is up to a survival show.”

Harua whistles. “Brutal. Still haven’t recovered from ours.”

“I’m glad those weren’t a thing back in my day. I 100% wouldn’t have made it.”

“Eh, what are you talking about. You were the blueprint. The best there ever was. We’re all just scrambling to catch up in this path you paved.”

She narrows her eyes. “What are you up to, hm?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he sings. “But can I talk to you outside later? It’s about that thing I was talking about yesterday.”

She groans, standing. Fuma waves them off without looking up, as if shooing birds out of a quiet room.

Outside, the hallway is cooler. The air hums faintly from the vending machines down the corridor; a fluorescent panel flickers overhead, tinting everything a little ghost-blue. Harua leans against the wall again. His shadow stretches long behind him, thin as a crack in ice.

He crosses one ankle over the other, casual, but he keeps adjusting his sleeve —tug, smooth, tug again— like he can’t quite settle into his own skin.

She says, “So?”

“You know,” Harua says, staring at the floor, “it’s funny. The execs keep calling these leadership meetings on me, but they feel like interrogations. They keep holding my comeback hostage when as far as they know, I haven’t even done anything, they’re just being creative with excuses. It makes me wonder how bad things would get if they actually found out the truth.”

“No one made you get a girlfriend with this shitty timing, you know.”

“Don’t tell me to break up,” he says, and his voice is soft. Serious, like Harua rarely is. “I can’t bear it if you tell me that, too.”

“Now who’s getting creative,” Hakaze says, but she keeps her voice gentle. This stupid kid will be the death of her one day. “Plus, I don’t see the fans waiting outside the building going down. If anything there’s a lot more because your group’s been so quiet.”

“That’ll be Ren,” he sighs, breath whooshing out. “He doesn’t need the company for publicity. He only has to breathe to be on the news. Speaking of,” his eyes are bright again when he turns to face her. “What’s up with him? What’s the progress?”

Hakaze shrugs.

“Don’t play with me, I know you met Ren earlier. He was talking about it in the group chat. So? What’d he say?”

So he had recognized her. She’d wondered.

“He’s…got an interesting personality. I wasn’t expecting that. We didn’t really talk about anything.”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell me you smoked in dead silence with that hopeless square.”

Ashy dark hair, blue sky, the curl of smoke. Whatever you want. It feels like the fragment of a dream, dangerous to think about in an echoing corridor.

“Just about,” she says. Then: “Why are you worried he’s angry if he’s still updating the group chat?”

His gaze flicks away, to the old bulletin board with curling posters. “Well. You know. He takes his job as the oldest seriously. He wouldn’t let petty shit between me and him mess with the team dynamic.”

“That must be helpful. How are you so sure he’s mad at you, then?”

Harua blinks. Hakaze’s prepared for another slick brush-off—he’s always quick, always slippery—when he takes a deep breath.

“Ren is a really serious person. Being an idol is something he worked for his whole life. It’s not just a job to him. Do you know his parents raised him specifically to be a singer? The kind of pressure he puts on himself, he doesn’t forgive things that threaten what he’s worked so hard for.”

Quieter, he adds, “You didn’t see the look on his face that day. He didn’t even talk to me about it. Just turned around and left. He hasn’t said a word to me since.”

She softens without thinking. She pats his head; it’s like palming a beloved coconut, his eyes wide and surprised under her hand.

“And you haven’t tried to talk to him about it?”

He sighs. The tension is still in his shoulders, but it’s brittle now. “Not about this. I don’t even know what I’d say without it having to be an apology, and I don’t want to apologize for this. Not even to Ren.”

“If I apologize,” Harua says, “then I’m saying I was wrong to want it at all.”

“Want what?”

“I don’t know. Something that doesn’t disappear the second someone shines a light on it, I guess.”

She looks at her fingers clutching the can. She wonders when it was, when Harua -her smiling, laughing Harua, the pain in her ass, the younger brother she never had- ran so far ahead of her she stopped seeing anything but his broadening back. It’s as if the world is a cup that Harua had decided to drink deep, while Hakaze has been too wary to even touch hers. Thirty years old, and still in the ruts of habits she had when she was nineteen.

Harua nudges her and she elbows him back.

“Good leader, bad friend.”

“Hey, makes two of us.”

She sighs. This kid would be the death of her one day, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? Harua always caught her on the backfoot, a boy that made demands and ran away like he wasn’t used to people rolling up their sleeves to help. Like someone who never asked for help at all, not really, not when it mattered.

Harua’s shadow on the wall looks wrong. Too small, too fragile for how bright he is.

Years ago, Hakaze had found Reina passed out in the back of a club, her face pale, her pulse stuttering in her wrist. Hakaze had called a cab, and took them both home. Told no one until the story broke in the press, headlines in every outlet.

That was five years ago.

“Fine. But you have to promise to stop sniffing around about the new group. You know the execs don’t like it.”

Harua hums. “Of course, Hakaze.”

She doesn’t believe him for a second.