what you're given, what you live in

That evening Nao calls at the same time that Rina does, both their names flashing a second apart right as Ren steps into the basement convenience store.

Rina texts, a split second later: WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU ASSHOLE. CALL BACK

Ren looks good. He always looks good, but someone’s styled his hair since she saw him this morning, pushed back so his stark cheekbones stand out, and the almost obscenely sexy pout of his mouth is impossible to ignore, evil in the way that it makes the simmering rage of Hakaze’s thoughts grind to a halt.

He scowls half-heartedly when he catches her staring. “Quit it,” he says. “It was for a magazine.”

“I thought you were on an unofficial hiatus, Prince.”

His eyes sharpen. He’s like a knife, cutting a tall, pale figure in the middle of the faded aisles. Hakaze wonders what she must look like as well: in this rickety old chair that her disgraced group paid for, in the middle of claustrophobic rows of dead plants and expiring candy bars. She was texting some of her contacts in PR, but a lot of them have either switched careers or companies, moved on while she was stuck here.

The thought makes her teeth chatter, makes her give Ren a shard of a grin that’s mostly teeth when he says, “It’s from an old contract. I signed on as ambassador for five years.”

“So rumors of Neonite’s death are greatly exaggerated. At least as far as you’re concerned.”

He gives her another of those looks, that seems to strip past the surface of her smile, even past the sheen of anger that she can feel coating her like an oil slick; she has the brief, stricken thought that he’s adapted to her, that his annoyance is no more real than her teasing is.

“They told us last night. It was wrong of them to sideline Harua like that.”

So he knew, when she saw him. A rush of hot anger that follows throws her off, badly. It wasn’t as if he owed her anything.

“Planning on doing something about it, Prince?”

“I don’t foresee it having any impact on my career whatsoever.”

Her hands clench, and she sees his eyes drop to them. She puts them under the table. “Isn’t that a little cold? Harua has a lot riding on this.”

“His album will be just as popular if fans wait for it longer.”

“How are you so sure it’ll release at all?”

Apparently this is too many questions for her prince; he glances away from her and scowls again. “Was the place you got lunch from any good?”

“Huh? Yeah, it was alright.”

He refuses to answer this. “Would you like to come have dinner with me?”

The music in the convenience store is quiet, one of their older songs almost drowned under the whir of the vending machines: her own voice, painfully young, sings may a love like mine never find you again. The air conditioning is cool on the back of her neck.

The riptide of his words is dangerous, his pace is dangerous. Hakaze wants to sit in this chair until the whole world moves on, forgets about her and her fury and her grief.

But her prince’s eyes are so careful. He hasn’t taken a single step away from her.

She tips out of her chair, her stupid little rusted throne.

His shoulders go slack with relief. “I wasn’t sure you’d say yes.”

“How did you even know we went there?” she asks, as they wait for the elevator.

“You were behind me,” he says. “I’d never seen you outside the building before. It made me, um. Curious.”

His ears are red. Something about it endears her terribly.

“You know, Prince,” she hums, “you’re so much meaner to the people in your life than you are to your fans. I saw you with them earlier, I barely recognized you!”

“It’s natural,” he says, with something like exasperation. “You have to keep your selves separate. You can’t give all of yourself to anyone, and to try is inefficient. Especially as an idol.”

“You don’t think that’s dishonest?”

He ponders this. Hakaze is a fan of a lot of things about him, but maybe it’s this pottering pace of his conversations most of all: he thinks about everything he says the way she’s only seen grandpas do, a kind of unhurried gravity that impresses her despite herself. She didn’t even think it was possible for an idol—someone whose worth was defined by the illusions that they sold—to be so sure of themselves.

“It’s the opposite, actually,” Ren says at length. “For most of the world, Ren Mikazuki is a fairytale they tell themselves about the ideal man, that I am the embodiment of. It’s no more dishonest than hope is. That there’s someone good and handsome and perfect in the world, who cares about you specifically.”

He tilts his head.

“With you—with everyone else—I am myself. To you I’m not a dream. I’m right here.”

Ren stands beside her in the elevator, and she can hear his soft breathing. The material of their jackets rasp together and it feels too intimate. Hakaze thinks of the fanfiction title: trapped in an elevator with my favorite idol.

It’s a familiar thought, but for some reason it makes Hakaze feel deeply sad. His words still play on her mind: with you, I am myself. It’s such an earnest thing to say. Heavy. It makes it hard to retreat into the fizzy soda-pop delight of fangirling over him.

It’s unsettling, too. Honesty as something to be rationed, that he could simply decide who deserved it and who didn’t, and then simply… act accordingly. It sounds like a superpower to Hakaze, like mind control or something equally fantastical. Her stage persona is –was—a glittering extension of her personal life, and vice versa; and in both versions, she lies profusely. It’s a habit, a necessity, a social expectation—there was no such thing as an honest pop idol.

The doors slide open.

Ren steps out, then turns back and waits for her. His hands are in his pockets. His eyes are bright.

She follows, a quiet tension tightening in her chest. More and more, the question rises: why did he tell me that? And its twin: why is he even here? 

The revelation from upstairs doesn’t sit as easy as all the others, like his obsession with being the best or what his fingers look like curled around a cigarette or a mic: it feels like a burden that he’s handed to her, that he trusts her to share.

And she doesn’t know why, deep down, that scares her shitless.