It often Rhymes

“Did Harua say he was running late?”

Hakaze looks up. Fuma’s leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closed, and he burps happily when she pushes his bottle of tea closer. The bentos they’d had for lunch had been very good, and Hakaze grins at him as she scrolls through her feed.

“Not yet,” she replies. She checks her chat with Harua to be sure, only to find that her last few messages have gone unread. “Huh. He didn’t even thumbs-up when I said we were waiting.”

Fuma wheels over and whistles. “Holy shit. I didn’t realize you typed full sentences.”

Hakaze’s too preoccupied to be offended. So she’s a lazy texter, with mostly “k” or emoji reacts whenever she texts most people. With Harua, though, she has a tendency to get into stupid back-and-forths late into the night when they’re both delirious.

This game my partner’s playing has a romance option that looks like Ren

is she going to romance him

you joke but I actually think they might TT I think Ren’s their bias

mine too.
his resting bitch face and obsession with being the best have bewitched me

You joke but I’ve never seen him be so unfiltered around anyone else, you’re really getting the full Ren experience
Nobody loves me. Sad Harua. Sad unpopular Harua.

That had been almost a week ago. Harua’s studio sessions have died down as of late; his whole album’s been greenlit, and all they do in the studio is try to wade through the tracks they discarded for anything salvageable for a future solo album or even ones for Neonite.

She scrolls back down to her most recent messages (multiple variations of “where are you”s and “hello???”’s) when there’s a knock on the door.

Fuma rolls his eyes. “Come in!”

Hakaze’s so prepared to see Harua that she almost doesn’t recognize who steps in.

“Ah, good work!”

It’s one of Kirishima’s PA’s, a slick-faced kid that always hovered at Director Kirishima’s side tapping on an iPad. He looks at them both square in the eye now, smiling in that forceful way that the corporates always seemed to; confident but a little hollow, unconvincing. Hakaze gives him a taste of the idol-dazzling version of the same smile just to watch him deflate.

“Good work to you too, er,” says Fuma. “What brings you down here to our lair?”

“I’m here to communicate official news that Director Kirishima felt needed to be imparted in person,” he says. “It was decided this morning, officially, that Harua’s album release will be postponed to a later date.” He pauses delicately. “As part of a new push to give our younger artists more recognition, he has kindly agreed to step away from this project for the time being.”

Fuma, beside Hakaze, has gone perfectly still. Hakaze doesn’t know what expression her face is making, but the PA won’t meet her eyes.

“Just like that.”

“We appreciate the work you’ve done,” the PA adds quickly. “It’s not scrapped—”

“We were tracking final mix notes last night,” Fuma says. His voice is calm in the way that meant it wasn’t. “You don’t do that on a project that’s ‘postponed.’”

“And we appreciate it! It’s not scrapped, far from it. We’ve just agreed that the concept doesn’t align with Harua’s image right now.”

“That’s so strange,” and there’s something in Fuma’s voice that jolts Hakaze out of her funk; something like a thread of real anger. “Because he seemed excited as fuck about it.”

“Where is he?” Hakaze cuts in before Kirishima’s lackey can rattle off anything else. “We’d love to talk about his future plans for the album in that case. Or see if there’s any adjustments we can make, so it fits his…image…better.”

“We defer to the experience of you both, of course,” says the guy, who looks about Hakaze’s age and therefore way too old to be this pathetic. “Your guidance has been invaluable in making Harua shine as a soloist. It simply happens to be that Harua has outgrown the need for mentors as…influential…” and here, his eyes flick to Hakaze, and Hakaze can imagine the nictating membrane over a double eyelid, a long tongue catching flies out of the air—“as you both.”

“So he’s grounded from even setting foot inside a studio,” Fuma says flatly. “I know he has a baby face but he’s not a kid. What did he say?”

“It’s simply an unofficial hiatus. Harua understands that making adjustments to his schedule might be painful, but necessary for his and Neonite’s future at Astreon.”

Hakaze hears herself ask, “And what about Ren?”

That suave look of certainty fades. “Ren’s been on an unofficial hiatus for even longer. He’s stayed in the public consciousness without any company backing, but we’re confident his popularity will fade once the new group has debuted. Neonite can return to promoting once their popularity has stabilized.”

Once they’re not more famous than God, he means. Once their fans don’t outnumber all other groups three to one, and Astreon can actually make demands from them instead of the other way around. What a pathetic power play.

Four years of Neonite, and they still hadn’t realized that Ren was a different monster entirely.

Her instincts are to stay quiet and gather information, but she can’t stop herself from saying, “And you expect them to lie down and take it?”

“There’s calls for a boycott of the agency from Neonite’s fans already,” Fuma adds.

“Risk Management and PR have already discussed this. Those threats have always existed. When the new survival show airs, it will generate enough interest for even the naysayers to show an interest. After all,” he says, and he’s looking at Hakaze again; the thwick of imagined nictating eyelids. “It only takes a blink of an eye for an idol’s career to die.”

He taps his tablet and bows at them both, quick and perfunctory. Hakaze twinkles her fingers in a wave. They both watch his pomaded head fade into the elevator, walking slightly fast.

Fuma doesn’t move for a full three seconds. Hakaze’s grateful, because she’s struggling to store away her anger in a way that hasn’t happened in a long, long time.

He doesn’t appear to hear her. “Do you know what really gets me?”

She thinks she’s too angry to even speak, but then she manages: “Tell me.”

“They say ‘postponed’ like that doesn’t erase months of labor.” His jaw tightens. “We’ve already locked two masters. The rest have passed QC! Manufacturing asked if we wanted to soft-hold a window!”

He laughs, sharp and humorless.

“I told them yes. Because stupidly I didn’t realize there was a power play against the most popular boy group in the country and the agency’s fine with losing any amount of money for it.”

Hakaze turns to him.

“They’re holding a slot,” she says.

“Mid-quarter,” Fuma says. “And if we don’t confirm soon, we lose it. And getting it back—” He shakes his head. “They don’t like being jerked around twice.”

He rubs his eyes. Hakaze feels a surge of misplaced sadness—she wonders if he got angry on Eclipse’s behalf like this, once upon a time. She wouldn’t be surprised. Fuma’s a good guy.

In the dinginess of the basement studio he’s worked in for years now, Fuma looks tired and sad. Hakaze examines her own feelings and finds that under her white-hot rage, there’s an echoing numbness, white noise filling her ears till she can’t hear him anymore. Some animal part of her brain is retreating into a cave, eyes alight in the darkness: it’s happening again.

Calm, calm, quiet. Harua saying, two years ago: please take care of me, Senior. It’s an honor to work with you.

Harua’s just her reflection. Her gremlin of a little brother. They were doing this to her again.

“Kirishima talks a big game,” Fuma’s saying. “But I wonder what their brilliant plan to throttle Neonite’s costing us. Fuck. I have to call so many people to  explain why we’re swapping Harua’s slots.”

Hakaze hums under her breath, nods. She feels it like a tug on her ribcage: she needed to make phone calls too. Something long-buried resurfaces, or maybe she’s been feeling like this under the tide of her thoughts for a long time.

They weren’t getting away with it again.