Just like you said it would be

Hakaze does a good job staying distracted for much of the next few days. The universe reduces down to the cramped dungeon of their studio, her desolate apartment, and the bar where Nao and Kaori alternately yell at her and help her brainstorm.

In the world outside, pieces were moving and people were making connections, having conversations. Hakaze tracks social media obsessively, sets up some of her older filters with the keywords changed to Neonite. There are old clauses in Neonite’s contracts that still hold, odd survivals everyone had forgotten about. Hakaze rereads them until her vision doubles, an unsettled feeling joining the pit in her stomach. Fucking Kirishima thought of everything, didn’t he?

Her attempts to keep Ren off her mind has been going as well as ignoring a sword through her chest. Like a bad habit, she can’t help watching Ren’s interviews. Old ones, newly debuted and not as smooth at drawing on the princely mask as he is now. The more recent interviews were flirty and magnetic, and Hakaze spent good time on those as well, but those older ones—she could watch them forever, the real Ren darting across his glittering dark eyes when he set upon something with all that focus.

Newer interviews of Ren were slicker, poetry in motion. He thanked fans, thanked his team. He brought a grace to even the stock answers that every move ended up being a masterclass, and if this was all she would get of Ren for the rest of her life she thinks she should ration them out, not be so greedy with them--

But she gets something monumentally worse, one night while she watches TikTok thirst traps of Ren, alternately miserable and turned on. She’s been slamming energy drinks for a number of hours, eyes glittering with exhaustion as the time on her phone pushed closer and closer to 5am, her sense of time dulled and bloodshot when someone knocks on the door of the studio.

Hakaze twists, stretching in her chair and killing her phone screen, thinking that it’s probably Fuma locked out again: his hours were almost as unconventional as hers. Hakaze’s mouth presses against the buttery leather cushiniong of the upholstery, a slick taste as the knock comes again.

She gets up to answer it, steeling himself for human contact and not at all expecting to find Ren standing in the hallway looking ten years older than the last time Hakaze saw him, shadows bruising the fine skin under his eyes, forehead furrowed. Hakaze’s instantly stricken, her mind jamming like a record to see him so incongruous and handsome, so badly missed. It hurts to see him for a hundred different reasons.

“I knew you’d still be here,” he says.

Hakaze leans her shoulder against the doorjamb, the AC blowing frigid air on to the back of her neck. She thinks, with no small amount of panic, of slamming the door in his face. “You know me. Workaholic.”

His lips press together.

“Can I come in?”

“Fine,” Hakaze says, because she doesn’t know what else to do but shoot for normalcy, banish the anxious desolate ghost she’s been these few weeks and become the woman he knew, prickly and teasing in turn and self-assured always, not so badly thrown off. Ren being here feels like a strike of lightning from a clear sky, something that her defenses hadn’t even thought to fortify against. “I can get you a snack, you look like you haven’t eaten in days.”

Hakaze disappears to the back cupboards, one hand flat over her heart. She doesn't know what face to wear for this.

Ren steps in and takes a moment to observe the studio; the flickering lights from the screen and the leather upholsteries. The screen of her monitor is still on TikTok.

“What are you watching?”

Hakaze swallowed, answering with a nod at the TV, “There’s a trend of making edits of you over romance anime audio, it’s huge with your international fans.”

He looks briefly baffled, the expression well-loved and familiar on his face before he schools it into neutrality. “You’re watching my fancams?”

“What?” Hakaze reminds herself that she’s done nothing wrong. It sounds unconvincing in her own head. “They make them of Harua too.”

The pained line of his mouth tightens further. He opens his palms, shows them to Hakaze, unarmed in a war, and Hakaze has to choke down air with great difficulty when her whole body feels wrung out.

May a love like mine never find you again, the speakers on her laptop sing. May all your roses have no thorns.

This is intolerable. She needs him out of here.

"Why are you here, Prince," she asks, tired. "I assume you're not here for a repeat of last time's humiliation."

She means hers, mostly, but he seems to take it to mean something else, because a muscle in his jaw jumps as he looks away.

He says, abruptly, “Are you the one behind the papparazzi being convinced that ? Because it’s working. My publicist says that it’s close to tipping the scales.”

“That was the point.”

“Did you already know?

Hakaze finishes her energy drink and throws it to the trash, a beautiful arc that means she doesn’t have to look at Ren anymore. Light washing across her eyes like shame and regret, trying not to stare at the purpling dark circles under Ren’s eyes as he rubbed at them.

5am. A prince like him shouldn’t be up this late. This might be the first proof she had that she’d ruined him, that Kaori was right: she had trampled things she couldn’t even understand in her single-mindedness.

“Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to talk about that night,” Ren says tiredly, obviously enjoying this no more than Hakaze is. “But I’m getting a little tired of telling Harua that you’re not angry with him.”

That was a direct hit and causes Hakaze to look up at Ren with naked pain. Ren’s face falls for half a second, his mouth unhappy and unsure, but then he got himself back under control, his angles going taut.

“So why don’t you stop?” he says, dangerously soft. “You don’t have to do this. I—I don’t understand.”

And Hakaze, despite herself, has it worked out: the next five, ten years of their lives. Neonite wouldn’t actually die out: they’ll settle into something steadier under a label that actually cared for their wellbeing. Astreon wouldn’t learn their lesson either, attempting and re-attempting to recreate the success of Neonite and Eclipse. Hakaze will wake up one day and the rage will have stopped eating her alive, and she will be able to return Ren’s feelings the way he deserves.

It’s the life Reina settled for. And Hakaze feels it, now, with the sting of betrayal in her own heart, that she will never let that happen.

Hakaze surprises them both by laughing once, a harsh sound more like a cough.

“Because, Prince,” Hakaze says fast, catching on to the emotional undertow because that’s easier than thinking about what he just said. “You were right when you said I don’t let things go.”

Ren jerks his head, glaring at Hakaze. “It’s not yours to let go of.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Hakaze says, horrified to hear her voice crack, stepping on the gas to make sure he doesn’t hear. “I make everything personal, I can’t let Astreon do this again. And I’d do almost anything to make sure they don’t. I’m not sure I even care about Harua’s album anymore.”

Her hands are curled tight behind her back, nails biting sharp crescents into her palms. It’s unfair of him to come down here when her defenses were so eroded by sleepless nights. She couldn’t screen her emotions to let out what was acceptable; it all came tumbling out like a closet she’d swept up all her ugly messes into.

“That’s not true.”

There’s a long moment of silence, Hakaze actively fighting to keep from dwelling on the merciless wreck of the night. She summons those golden years again: when her façade of cool older sister was real and every sacrifice she made was worth it for Kaori making it through safe.

Senior, I’m honored to work with you, Harua had said, when her heart was a razed desolate wasteland, and she had promised herself never to get attached to someone as ephemeral as an idol again.

She glares at him, furious. “So you think I’m lying.”

“I think you’ll tell anyone what they want to hear if it gets you what you want.”

Fuck him. Fuck him fuck him fuck him, she thinks, fuck his golden throne and golden confidence. He looks as tired and brought low as she is, but his chin is up, and his shoulders are straight.

“The arrogance of it is beyond the pale, Prince,” she snarls. “You think you know me better than I do, you think your shitty little group doesn’t need help staying afloat when all it took was one video to take us down.”

“We don’t,” he says, dark eyes flashing. “It’s not arrogance if I know for a fact that the company’s dependent on my group, not the other way around. And I think you know that too. But this isn’t about revenge, not completely.”

She glares at him, speechless with baffled fury.

“There you are,” he says, half-smiling. “I spent a lot of time watching you, how you keep pretending you’re a washed-up nobody.”

“It used to drive me insane,” Ren says, quiet and intent on her face like he can’t look away. “Nothing you said ever added up. You kept saying you were just my fan every time I tried to get closer. Harua kept saying, she’s so mean to me, that’s how I know she cares. You kept letting everyone believe Reina had ruined you and left you to rot. The things you said and the things you did never made sense.”

“What are you talking about.”

“But you weren’t rotting, you were waiting, weren’t you? You’re finally moving forward because you care about something enough to fight again.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yeah,” Ren says with a shrug. Hakaze sneaks a look and finds Ren staring at her with the strangest expression, this sort of heated fondness mixed with a lazy relief. “You’re not the only one that’s been obsessed for a long time, Hakaze.”

That look on Ren’s face did bad things to Hakaze, called up novel electrifying flips in her stomach, and she bows her head, flushing deeply, angry beyond words on dual fronts at him, and herself for being so affected. She tries to suppress it, but she’d been spoiled by all the run-ins with him she’d had in the weeks prior, the scant inches between them in the quiet of the fourth floor balcony and the basement convenience store that she can’t help stealing looks, greedy for their proximity in a way she can’t even explain to herself.

Hakaze didn’t hear Ren approaching, didn’t notice until Ren closed his hand in Hakaze’s shirt at the shoulder, making Hakaze jump under her skin, yank her head up.

“You were scared that night,” he says, soft, wondering. “I was too focused on my own feelings. I’m sorry.”

What else, she thinks. What defenses did she have left against him.

“I talked to Harua. You were right, he’s as stubbornly obsessed with not losing to Astreon as you are. You knew that, didn’t you? You’d have forgiven me for making you admit you weren’t just my fan, but you couldn’t forgive me for putting Harua’s future in jeopardy.”

It devastated her in a way, that she had built a life out of obscuring her heart, and he had read her like a book. She had nothing to hide behind anymore.

“I’ll go along with your plan,” Ren says, unexpectedly. “I’ll pause my negotiations with the other label and focus all my attention on Astreon appearances. But if your insane gambit works, and the agency lets us promote again, you have to let me ask you out. Properly, this time. I keep fucking up around you, but I should be able to get it right this time.”

Hakaze doesn’t answer him. She thinks she might want to punch him; deck him clean across his pretty face, see how he liked being ripped open at the seams. She lets the shock of motion make her hands jerk up, watches in amazement as he doesn’t so much as flinch.

Her hands end up smoothing away the frown on the corner of his lips, and he goes so, so still, his pupils blown.

“You bargain like a fucking amateur, Prince,” she says, harsh, still. “You show up exhausted and you cave without me saying anything.”

His corners of his lips flutter under her fingertips like they want to push into a pout. “You wouldn’t have listened otherwise.”

Of course.

She doesn’t know what to call this feeling. That all those times she was dancing around him, he was following; that those sharp eyes caught everything, stored it away. Let me ask you out, he’d said. Ask her out, and then what? Let her attach herself to him, then leave?

She sucks in a breath through her teeth, frustrated. 

"I trust you to make your own decisions, Prince," she says, raw, "but I can't finish telling you what a bad idea this is."

His tired eyes soften. "I believe it'll work out, Hakaze."

"Your arrogance knows no bounds," she says, and can't keep the note of wonder from her voice. She takes a deep breath. Looks at him head-on.

When she steps closer, she can almost see herself reflected in his clear eyes. She reaches up and hooks a finger in the collar of his shirt, and he breathes very carefully, very still.

“If this doesn’t work,” Hakaze says, quiet and exact, “Astreon won’t recover Neonite leaving anyway. I’ll help you convince Harua, if it comes to that.”

Ren doesn’t look away. “And if it does work?”

She wishes he wouldn’t look at her like this. His tiredness has been wiped away, and his eyes are basically sparkling. He looks at her like he’s been waiting years for the opportunity to just stand this close and listen to her voice.

“Kirishima gets proven wrong, Neonite rides the wave of their popularity, then you switch labels anyway once all the sponsorships are under your name, not the company’s.”

“You’re a nightmare,” he says, hoarse and fervent. He twitches forward like he wants to touch her face, but he keeps his hands at his side like a good boy. “And then I'll ask you out?”

She looks up at him. Maybe she’s too used to thinking of herself as a blunt instrument to beat her problems to death with; he looks happy enough to be here in her presence. He looks flushed and sweet. Her aloof prince, the most arrogant man ever born, ambitious about everything.

She feels herself soften.

She doesn’t know when she learned this about herself, but fighting for or against something is the only way she can find meaning in her life, in her future, in what needs to feel easy or what needs to feel earned. The things she loves have to come in at an angle, have to draw blood, for it to feel real at all. Hakaze thinks Ren might have understood that about her right away because he’s the same way—that her hands would never be cupped for him to pour his love into, any more than his heart an open garden for her to stroll through.

“And then,” she says, “you’ll ask me out.”