Maybe this Time, I'll be Lucky

Nao picks her up that night, her arm draped over the passenger seat as she drove, effortlessly cool. The car smells of Nao’s lavender perfume, even when the windows are cracked just enough to let in the evening breeze. Hakaze finishes off her last few edits to the track that Fuma had sent the night before on her laptop.

“You’re still using that,” Nao observes.

“It’s still working.”

“It’s like showbiz left literally no mark on you.”

Hakaze grins, though this is, for all intents and purposes, a massive stretch. The more time passes after her retirement, the more she’s convinced that she wasn’t truly built for being famous. Not like Nao. Not like Ren.

That reminds her: “Met Ren yesterday. Just saw him, too.”

Nao whistles. “Damn. What was he like?”

“Really fucking hot.”

Nao laughs, throwing her head back. “Called it. You were always so weak to pretty faces.”

“Yours most of all!”

“Ehh, you flirt. Hope you weren’t this bad with him.”

Hakaze snorts. “He’d hate me even more if I did. He’s a super serious guy. If I flirted he’d have scratched me, like a cat.”

“Hm, that’s new. I’d heard he was the typical prince type, dialed up to eleven.”

“Nothing typical about him,” Hakaze says, shutting her laptop and letting it rest against her knees. “You know how Kaori’s always complaining that every celebrity has the same public persona? Not this guy.”

They hit a red light. Nao turns her head to look at her, the city’s neon lights sliding across her face like shifting filters. She always had Hakaze figured out. “Hakaze, I don’t need to tell you what a pain it’d be to get involved with someone like that.”

She laughs. “I told you, it’s not like that. There’s something so cool about him, I can’t put it into words. Like he’s from an anime or something. Like he was born to be an idol.” She stretches out her legs as far as she can. “The company’s terrified of him. So is Harua, I think. He has last boss vibes.”

“Isn’t Harua his leader?”

“But Ren’s the center, and he’s like, stupid popular. I heard there’s a guy whose whole job it is to turn down his brand deals,” Hakaze sighs. “And I think Harua’s right. There’s definitely something going on.”

“Like what?”

“They’re both so convinced it’s the end of the line for Neonite. That something’s gonna happen that’s either gonna make them disband, or have to become irrelevant. I thought it was Harua’s whole girlfriend thing, but that seems like a stretch, doesn’t it? Even we didn’t go to pieces just because Reina dated.”

“That was part of it, though. You tried to handle everything by yourself. And I think Harua’s doing the same, even if we don’t know what he’s dealing with.”

She shakes her head. “I just don’t buy it. Harua wouldn’t risk the whole group over a relationship. That’s not who he is.”

“Maybe he’s not as much like you as you think,” Nao says lightly.

They pull into the parking garage, Nao wordlessly tapping Hakaze’s code and slipping into her dedicated slot like she’s done a hundred times before. She turns off the engine. “Mind if I crash at your place tonight? There’s some paparazzi outside my building and I’d rather not deal with the hassle.”

“Of course,” Hakaze says, instantly.

They sing along to one of their songs playing in the elevator. Nao always makes her feel eighteen again; freshly debuted and forever clashing with her mirror image, manic grins on their faces and delight as they bickered over everything and nothing. Play-fighting at the izakaya, in the back of company cars, at award shows, at practice. On a lot of days, that’s what Hakaze misses the most: the person she was, when she was with her three best friends everywhere she went.

When they step into her apartment, Nao whistles. “I keep forgetting how fucking depressing it is in here.”

Hakaze rolls her eyes. Near the door there’s a huge case of energy drinks, and she blanks out for a second before she remembers they’re from Harua. She hauls them inside as Nao clicks all the lights on. Nao’s gaze lingers; on the bare shelves, the identical throw pillows, the spotless counters. The only spot of personality is a Lego tree with polaroids of their group hanging from it, the four of them glittering at the camera through five years. Five blazing, brilliant years.

A beat later, she lets out a long, quiet exhale Hakaze pretends she doesn’t hear.

Okay, so she basically lived in an IKEA showroom. Nothing wrong with that! She just happened to spend a lot of time at work, and socializing with her friends. At least it was clean.

“I’d take messy over haunted,” Nao comments when she points this out.

Hakaze ignores her, bustling around and making food. Nao asks her to heat up the leftover Chinese in the fridge, but there’s the afterimage of Ren as he frowned at his notes that makes Hakaze reach for ramen instead. She wonders how he took it at home; just bare-bones, eating it over the counter as quickly as he could? He seemed the type. It was most efficient after all.

The thought makes her smile. Whoa. She really was a fan now.

In her living room, Nao has turned on the TV to some drama. They watch it in glassy-eyed silence, their legs draped over each other’s as they ate.

Later, Nao crawls into bed with her. The edges of her hair are still wet from her shower, and she smells like Hakaze’s body wash.

“You make me so, so scared sometimes,” she whispers. “I feel like me and Kaori let you down by moving on. When will you let someone else in?”

Hakaze half-laughs. “What brought this on? And that’s not true, I’ve moved on.”

“Sure, you’ve moved on. That’s why you live like a college kid.” She nudges her. “I wish you’d tell that kid to fuck off. Harua. This benevolent senior stuff, it doesn’t suit you.”

This flays Hakaze more than anything she could have said. She stays still and quiet, like a prey animal that’s been spotted.

“All this stuff about what a good leader you were is revisionist history and I’m sick of it. You were only ever looking out for us because you loved us, not because you were a good leader or anything. You used to be so mean. They-- they declawed you, and you just let them.”

Hakaze shudders. In the dark of her room it feels like Nao’s slipped a knife under her ribs without her seeing, the thoughtful cadence of her voice so well-known and well-loved even as it strips her like this. Only Nao could reduce her to shreds like this: make her lose the veneer of respectability she’d clawed out of her tattered reputation after the world had ended.

“You used to be a terror,” Nao continues. “You used to torture our managers. No one wanted to fuck with us because you wouldn’t let a single thing go, wouldn’t leave a single cent on the table for anyone else. General Hakaze.”

“Is it so bad,” Hakaze says, her voice raw, “if I changed?”

Nao exhales. The smell of lavender in the air, her color-damaged hair in Hakaze’s mouth. It would be so easy to imagine times were simpler, that they were pleasantly drunk and would get up and go onstage tomorrow.

“It wouldn’t be,” Nao says, “if you weren’t just going along with Astreon. Them telling you what your story was, and what the next step should be.”

“I think I lost the right to do anything about that when I failed Reina.”

The name makes all the air go out of the room, and she can feel Nao flinch.

“Of course,” she says, and it’s all bitterness now. “Stupid of me to think any of us could compare to the first great love of your life.”

It’s an old argument. Hakaze treads the familiar ruts of it anyway.

“She helped me when I was about to give up, Nao. I never would have even made it close without her. And being in ECLIPSE with you was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I can’t—whatever, Hakaze. Good night.”

She turns sharply away. Hakaze sighs, and burrows deeper into her pillow.

It takes a long time, but Nao’s breathing finally evens out. Hakaze watches the play of shadows on her ceiling. She did have other projects going on; summer was imminent and almost every group under the label was making new tracks, and the studio was busier than ever. She couldn’t just focus on Harua’s problems.

But still.

“It’s a second chance,” Hakaze whispers to the shadows. “Maybe this time I’ll get it right.”

Nao mumbles questioningly, half-asleep, and Hakaze lets go of the breath she was holding, throws an arm over her best friend, and closes her eyes.