Chapter Text
There’s no curtains to be lowered when the show comes to a close; no podium for the actors to stand on that separates them from the audience.
Rui takes in everyone's smiles first. Lets them soak into his skin, revel in the victory. The entire park has become a stage, and every person an actor.
What was once a thought trapped in his mind—mere words scrawled on tens of pages—now spreads before him, alive in the hundreds of waving lights and the cheering that rings out, unceasing. A glow of satisfaction takes root in his chest, mellow.
But it's with a different sort of heart that he turns to his troupe, afterwards. There's a different sort of shine to their faces, at least in his eyes, and as he quietly watches them, he takes the time to adore everything he can see.
Emu smiles so wide it's like she can't keep both her lips fully stretched and her eyes fully open at the same time. Her eyes squint in her breathless happiness, and she doesn't stop shaking with it even for a second.
Nene is the opposite. Her smile is a small, subdued thing, but her eyes are blown wide with excitement. It feels a little like she's drinking in all of the sights around her, barely blinking to not miss a thing.
And—
"Everyone around me is smiling."
—Streams of light peeking out from behind the clouds, is that soft hesitancy. Sunrise pink dusting round cheeks, and above them are wide, awed eyes. His voice is so quiet, like he can't quite believe what he's seeing. His smile is slow to spread, but it does: gentle, inevitable, devastating.
Rui can still see it when he closes his eyes. It’s not the burning red of that day at the Wonder Stage, but it’s something more tangible than just light. Like if he reached out, he’d know exactly what it feels like to hold a sunbeam in his palm.
With the closing of Project Wonder, Rui does what he does after any show: he looks back, and in his shadow he finds a trail of secrets. None of them he regrets, but it strikes him now that perhaps there’s no need for them to lie there, cold without the sun’s touch.
Tsukasa is his sun, but more than that, he is his friend. They could disagree, they could debate, and they could even argue. But he won’t turn his back on Rui so easily.
There are things Rui can nail down, and there are things he needs to just trust in.
And as his laugh mixes with those of the people he loves most, he decides. It’s time to bring everything to light.
.
.
The moment at the peak only lasts a few minutes more, until it’s time to begin the downward trek.
Members of other troupes pull Rui’s friends away, showering them with words of gratitude and congratulations.
When Rui finally catches sight of Tsukasa again, it’s to find him talking animatedly amidst a throng of people. He seems to have mostly gotten his composure back, but his eyes are still a little wide, his gesturing a little quieter. As Rui gets closer he can hear several conversations going at once rather than the singular, booming voice.
He’s pondering what to do when Tsukasa notices him. As their eyes meet, Rui offers a wan smile and a wave.
Tsukasa grins back, and before Rui can approach, he’s politely bowing out of the crowd, jogging over without any hesitation.
“Rui!”
“Hey.” Rui feels a squeeze of affection, even as he holds out a measuring device with a smirk. “I see you’re back up to 100 decibels.”
Caught off guard, Tsukasa frowns. “Do you just carry that everywhere you go?!”
“Only recently—it’s surprisingly useful around you.”
“To mock me, maybe…” Tsukasa gives a heavy sigh.
Rui feels his mouth relax into something gentler. “How are you feeling?”
Tsukasa turns away for a moment, looking over the sea of people before he answers. “It’s… a lot,” he admits, and Rui has to lean in closer to hear. “I knew we’d pull it off, but I also… can’t believe we really did it.”
Rui doesn’t say anything, caught once again by that quiet awe, and he almost misses it when Tsukasa says, “and you?”
“Hm?”
Tsukasa turns to look up at him, his gaze clear and expecting. “How do you feel?”
“The same. I knew we could do it….” He takes a breath, holds it for a moment with the words he needs to say. He’s never going to get a better opening than this. “I made sure we would.”
Tsukasa tilts his head in confusion, clearly catching something in his voice.
Rui picks his example carefully: something familiar. “When the announcement for the show started, the Otori brothers called on the console operator to stop it. Regardless of what the other staff may have agreed to, no one short of us would have said no to them directly.”
“...But the recording didn’t stop.”
“No. It didn’t.” Rui fidgets with the device in his hands, fingers stiff over the buttons before he finally shoves it in his pocket with a short exhale. “Because I created a situation that incentivized his cooperation.”
Tsukasa nods slowly, waiting, because Rui hasn’t really hit the crux of the matter, has he?
“...He’s afraid of me now.”
He stares down, but says it as clearly as he can. No mumbling, no rushing through the words: the honest truth, laid as openly as he can offer it. His hands close around nothing, and it takes another breath before they can open again, before he can raise his gaze to meet Tsukasa’s eyes.
Tsukasa’s lips are pursed. Just a bit. “Why?”
“Because”—How explicitly should he put this?—“of what I said I could do, and what I—”
“Not that,” Tsukasa cuts in, which catches Rui off-guard enough that he stops short in surprise. Tsukasa winces slightly, but he bowls determinedly onward. “I know what you can do; I meant, why’d you do it?”
To put on the best possible show. Isn’t that obvious? That’s always been Rui’s reason for everything. And for a moment he contemplates in saying just that—it’s reasoning that Tsukasa could understand and perhaps grow to accept.
Tsukasa’s still looking at him, amber too intense to be kind, but too trusting to be a glare. Make it clear, it says.
“You know,” Rui starts quietly, “I want to put on the best show possible, to draw out the brightest smiles. Because that’s what captures me—it’s what I love doing.”
“Yeah,” Tsukasa says, his voice only a little louder than his own. His eyes never leave Rui’s face, open; only the tiniest wrinkle between his brows betrays his feelings.
“When I told Aoyagi that, he said he knew someone like me. That we see differently when we give our all to what we love. And I figured that meant being blind to other things… but now I think I don’t feel blinded so much as I've decided—I’ll put what I love above all else.”
His hesitation, his scruples, the hurt feelings and pride of the people who’d get in his way. He feels a nudge against his wrist, and it’s another beat before he realizes he can see the fingertips which caused it—ah, he’s looking down again.
When Rui lifts his head, Tsukasa is still there, his barely outstretched hand pulling back. He looks a little sad. “And he wouldn’t have listened to you any other way?”
It would be so, so easy to just say yes. But Rui promised himself no more secrets.
“...I don’t know that for sure,” he admits. “It could be that there was a way—maybe if I’d tried focusing him on what enthusiasm he had, or found something else to motivate him or…” He stops, pulling in another breath.
“But in the end, I just couldn’t bring myself to trust that.”
The things Rui loves most: the best productions to beget the brightest smiles—and equal to those, higher than those, the three people who built the place where he belongs.
“I couldn’t trust him with all of you,” he says simply.
There it is: the root of the issue, the clearest explanation. Rui’s heart laid bare.
And then—
“...Oh,” Tsukasa breathes. It’s a sound nearly lost under the crowd.
When Rui looks closer, he sees glistening, every surrounding light suspended in Tsukasa’s eyes for the moment it takes for him to blink them rapidly away.
“I, you—” Tsukasa looks away, voice catching. When it does, Rui’s heart drops into his stomach, and his breath stops up in his throat.
“Tsukasa—”
“No! No, don’t—” Tsukasa quickly turns back to him, looking up even with shiny eyes. “This is… it’s not bad. It’s, um…”
He presses the side of a knuckle to his lips, smothering a slightly disbelieving laugh. “It’s… it’s nice. Ah, no, that’s not what I—” He claps both hands over his cheeks, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s not nice, but I just didn’t think… it’s not exactly unexpected, since I figured for shows, maybe you would, but for…”
“Oh.” Rui’s hands waver awkwardly in the air, half reaching, half not. He’s not sure what to do. Good, bad? The rush of feeling that sweeps through him leaves him spinning, unable to tell which is happening.
He watches Tsukasa take a deep breath, full if a little shaky on the exhale through his lips.
“Rui,” he calls firmly, swiping a quick hand over his eyes. “Thank you for telling me.”
…Good, then. Definitely good.
Rui swallows, feeling himself slowly steady, and he nods.
Tsukasa half-nods in return, his face relaxing into a smile. His eyes don’t quite dry, another tear clinging to his bottom lashes without spilling, and he gives another little huff as he turns to wipe it away.
Whether it’s from a need to fill the silence, from happiness, or a mix of both, Rui fumbles for words. “I just wanted you to know. I wasn’t sure if—I wasn’t expecting you to take it this well.”
Tsukasa hums as he presses the heel of his palm against his eye. “Well, it’s not an entirely good thing, but—wait.” He stops, furrowing his brow as he peers up at him. “What kind of reaction were you expecting?”
The request for clarification is a familiar one, and Rui huffs a laugh even though he doesn’t understand where the confusion lies. “It’s the kind of thing that’d make anyone balk, even if just for a moment, no?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question,” comes the automatic reply, and Rui laughs again.
“Right. I meant…” He hates to admit it, but his voice becomes more muted when he says, “maybe, something like how you said it wasn’t an entirely good thing.”
But Tsukasa’s expression feeds Rui’s curiosity more than it does his trepidation: he looks like he’s trying to both raise and lower his eyebrows at the same time, and his mouth is partially pursed, partially pressed straight.
“That’s quite the face you’re making, Tsukasa. Maybe I’ve only served to confuse you more?”
“…No,” Tsukasa denies, and for a while, that’s all. But then, he continues, “I didn’t mean I have an issue with what you’re willing to do or why. I meant, societally speaking….”
Rui waits for Tsukasa to keep processing, but what happens instead is: “Was this what you kept spacing out about?”
He tilts his head to one side. “I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Hmph.” Tsukasa crosses his arms. “Do you realize how many times I had to repeat myself to you in the past few weeks?”
Rui runs through the last few weeks in his mind. Sure, there were a few times where he’d been tunneling into his plans, but… had he done it often enough to come off as unusual?
At his silence, Tsukasa frowns even deeper, until he looks almost frustrated. "Were you really that…"
He pauses, stuck there for a moment. Rui watches warily. "Was I what?"
Tsukasa opens his mouth like he's about to say something, but shuts it again, considering Rui carefully.
“You must know,” he says, and while the phrase is insistent the tone is not. There’s an uncertainty in it that reminds Rui of a time on their SEKAI’s stage, a reaching hand and a please believe me. “You must know that I would—that we would…”
He trails off again, and Rui’s about to take his cue to ask, but then Tsukasa puts both hands on his hips, shutting his eyes as he breathes out a rough huff of air. When his eyes open again, his brows are turned sharply down, and his smile is wide and clear and all determination—maybe even a little mischievous.
“Rui. Go find Emu and Nene.”
Rui blinks, for the second time in this conversation caught well and truly flat-footed. “Huh?”
“I think,” and the smile shifts slightly into a rueful grin, “you might have missed something. I’m not going to give you more than that. Find me again when you get it.
“Now,”—he puts his hands on Rui’s shoulders and spins him around—“off you go, troupe leader’s orders!”
And without further ado, he gives Rui’s back a warm but firm shove.
.
.
It’s Emu who finds Rui, rather than the other way around, with her eagle’s eye and a running tackle of a hello.
There is no crowd here, and the air is colder without the heat of hundreds tightly packed. It makes the girl who touches him so easily feel warmer against his chest.
Rui lets her pull away before he says, “I was just about to send a drone off to find you. What are you doing all the way out here, Emu?”
Perhaps something’s got the better of all of them, not just Tsukasa, because Emu’s smile is softer than it is bright, and that softness seeps into her voice when she speaks. “I was telling my grandpa about the show.”
She walks back a few steps, toward the waist-height railing that cuts off the park from the forest. When she turns her back to him and keeps going, Rui follows, lengthening his stride so he can fall into step at her side.
They walk along the railing, the metal smooth without a single sign of rust. Emu trails a hand on it as she goes. “My brothers are way older than me, so they didn’t hang out with me much when I was little. But one time, we all came here together with Grandpa.”
She stops at one of the posts, lowers a hand to indicate an imaginary height that’s below the railing. “I was thiiis small back then, and I had these really cute stickers with me. They were the first set I ever got.” She crouches, then turns her face up to look at him with a hand curled around the lower half of the post. “I wanted to see if they were still here.”
Rui crouches at her side. “Are they?”
She shuffles a little closer, lets their knees touch as she takes the back of his hand and runs his fingers up the far side of the post. The surface is smooth until a thin ridge catches under the pads of his fingers, and she lets his hand go.
He hesitates there, feeling out the jagged silhouette of a sun. There’s a small tear in the top edge, a wrinkle from top to bottom at the curve, and he imagines tiny, earnest hands patting it into place.
As he does, Emu explains, “I put it on the back because I didn’t want to get in trouble, but my brothers found out right away.”
It, meaning one sticker. But earlier, she’d said they. Rui slides his hand up, feels the fuzzy edge of a second sticker, the flattened crease in a third. Five stickers in total, the last one right at a child’s eye height. “There’re other ones here,” he says.
“Yeah!” Pink waves in the corner of his eye, and when he looks, Emu has a hand at her ear, tucking back strands of hair. She beams at him, wide and unhesitating. “One for my grandpa, and my sister, and for each of my brothers. It was our little secret.”
But the next moment, her smile fades, and she wraps her arms around her knees. She looks back at the pole, at its untouched front. “I haven’t come here for a long time,” and her voice gets a little smaller, a little wispier, “because I thought they wouldn’t be here anymore.”
She leans into him then, pressing light at first, then heavier. Rui wraps an arm around her to prevent her from unbalancing. Her head tilts to rest on his shoulder. It’s the first time she’s done something like this, but it feels familiar, gentle. Rui’s heart beats calm in his chest.
When she speaks again, her voice is loud in his ear even as she brings it low. “But after our show, I felt like everything would be okay.
“It wasn’t just me anymore, doing whatever I could and living in my own dream world.”
Rui twitches at that, and he knows she can tell, because she moves her head a bit like a cat, a slow rubbing motion. It keeps him in place, but his heart runs a touch faster, and his hand around her shoulder is a touch tighter. He says, careful with his wording, “Isn’t it better to forget what he said?”
“I don’t want to.” She replies with no hesitation, plaintive, like a child protecting a precious toy.
Rui can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips. “Why not?”
“Nene is so shy, but she took my hand and protected me anyway.”
Oh. He knows where this is going.
“Tsukasa cares so much about first impressions, but he shouted at them. And even though you thought it wasn’t right, you said all those things to them.
“It was the first time anyone did things they wouldn’t normally do, just because I got hurt. I didn’t know—“ and she stops. Then, she starts again, her voice wavering, tenuous, “I didn’t know people would do that for me.”
The thought rings familiar, uncomfortably so. It feels… almost like an injustice, to see that uncertainty mirrored in Emu, who’s wiped that same feeling away from others time and time again. Doesn’t she know?
I would do it again; I would have done more, he opens his mouth to say, but Emu isn’t done yet.
“With Project Wonder, too. Everyone worked so hard to make it come true. Tsukasa was always talking to people, and Nene gave sooo much advice, and you were super jumpy, too.”
Rui’s heart misses a beat, but he forces his breathing to stay calm. “I didn’t think I was all that nervous.”
“Mmm,” she hums, and squeezes her upper arm out from between their sides. Rui feels a tickle on his knee, spinning in idle circles, round and round. “Maybe it was more like, sneaky-sneak?”
She taps two fingers across, miming a person running, but Rui almost doesn’t feel it.
“Sneaking, hm.” He holds himself still. “Like a criminal?”
“Or a ninja!” Emu’s fingers speed up, before suddenly bending in a faux-impression of a crouch. “With a hush-hush mission… Wouldn’t that be a good play?”
It’s strange: even without him saying anything, it’s like she knows exactly where in the shadows to look for every hidden thing. I see you!, she seems to say, as easily as if it were a game. But even as she does, his heart doesn’t skip again.
Instead, something is falling into place where it beats.
Rui thinks, says, “I could come up with all sorts of hidden techniques.”
He feels her lift her head to nod excitedly beside him, narrating over the little stage she’s made on his knee. “And I could flip and say, ‘my lord, let me handle this!’ and schwing and swoop in—!”
“And with a puff of smoke, or perhaps a flare, half of the enemies are already down—”
“Yeah!”
“An Edo-era tale of loyalty and friendship!” Rui’s smile spreads. “We’ll have to let the others know.”
“Hehe.” Emu’s hand finally relaxes, the warmth of her palm closing over the stage, and her head returns to his shoulder. “Those are my favorite kinds of stories.”
Rui blinks hard.
The weight of the reassurance she’s thrown him is so heavy in his hands. He scrambles, searching for words to offer that could come even close. Then, sounding out the idea as he goes:
“Every one of us wanted this just as much as you did…. No,” he corrects himself, “because you wanted it, we wanted it too. And—we all did whatever we could.”
Now that he’s put the words out there, the understanding solidifies.
Every member of Wonderlands x Showtime did whatever they could, in whatever way they could. For Rui that means, as Emu described it, sneaking around. Whether he's building a new robot or pressing in the steel of a threat, he's still chasing—sharing the same dream.
And that means it isn’t just Emu anymore, thinking up ideas every waking moment and putting on shows, day after day, for nothing but empty benches.
Emu, sharing dreams that she knew others didn’t embrace.
Emu, not wanting to bother others with problems she thought were her own.
Emu, being uncertain about what it looked like to join hands, to see the same view, to chase the same goals.
“I think you’re missing something.”
There’s a moment where only the wind sighs through the trees, and the park babbles at their backs. Rui wonders if his words were enough.
Then, Emu nods with her head still on his shoulder. It messes up her hair, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “Yeah,” she says simply, and in that one syllable he hears a thousand words.
He takes his hand from her shoulder and hovers it over her head, barely touching her hair. She doesn’t move away, so he relaxes, lets it rest there.
Her head fits the natural curve of his palm. It’s cold, at first, from the night air, but the longer his hand stays, the warmer it becomes.
.
.
It takes Rui much longer than expected to find Nene.
Linking up with Nenerobo came up blank, and she didn’t read his texts yet. It’s likely that she was occupied with talking to people. However, with Nene having helped singers from across all the troupes, he had a difficult time narrowing down the areas to survey.
It’s purely a coincidence, then, that he finds her just as he’s about to try the park camera network instead. She’s standing at the entrance to the Fairy Stage, staring quietly up towards the lights. There’s a small smile dancing on her lips—a moment of peace.
He gives her a few more seconds, loathe to interrupt, before he makes his way closer.
“Nene—”
“Kusanagi, do you have a minute?”
Rui pauses as he watches one of Nene’s chorus run up to her. Nene seems startled, hands coming up nigh instantly to fidget in front of her chest, but not unpleasantly so—she stands her ground, instead of retreating in shuffles. Satisfied, he hangs back.
“Thank you so much for your advice on the second verse,” the young woman says with a quick bow.
“No need,” Nene says, a little helplessly. “You already thanked me during practice, so—”
“I did… but I wanted to say it again. What you said helped me so much during the performance. To be honest, when I saw everyone looking at us today, my mind just blanked.”
Rui can’t make out the finer details of Nene’s reaction from where he stands, but he can tell she’s standing stiffer, her eyes wider than before.
“All the lyrics just flew out of my head, and I couldn’t even process the voices around me to get my place back.”
No, he has to intervene now. Rui takes a few steps forward, but the woman’s next words give him pause.
“I looked at you and listened to your voice, and that’s what helped me. I got through the rest of the verse because I focused on singing just with you. So,”—the woman shifts her weight—“I just had to tell you how glad I was for your help.”
“Oh,” Nene says. A flush blooms across her cheeks, and her hands still. “Um. I’m glad to hear that.”
Her words are bland, but at least to Rui, her body language and tone give her sincerity away.
The woman might have picked up on it too, because she brings her hands together in front of her with a bit of a nervous laugh. “I hope we can work together again! This was an amazing experience and, and… yeah.” She bows again. “That’s all I wanted to say.”
Nene nods. “Y-yeah. Thanks. Um….”
They dally there for a few beats, and Rui takes it upon himself to close the conversation. He approaches from an angle he knows the woman can see, and she takes the cue. “Oh, it looks like Kamishiro wants to talk to you, so I won’t take more of your time. I just want to say again, thank you so much!”
A third bow, and then the woman melts into the crowd.
“Congratulations,” Rui smiles as he steps easily into her vacated spot. “It looks like you’ve become someone’s idol.”
“You’re exaggerating.” Nene gives him a disgruntled look. “And that was too well timed. You didn’t have to step in like that, Rui.”
“Oh, I know. You handled it very well.”
Nene looks away. “I’m not Tsukasa. I don’t want compliments on every little thing.” Even so, there’s a smile playing at the corner of her lips, the usual steel tone of her voice half-hearted. “But… thanks.”
Rui inclines his head. She rolls her eyes, but still trails after him as he steps away from the crowds milling about the entrance to make their way around the side instead. It’s an old habit from when they were kids, his younger self quickly grasping that he’d only get decent conversation out of Nene if they were alone. And while that’s no longer true, it persists nonetheless.
“Why’d you come find me? Did you need to talk to me about something?”
“Ah.” Does he? Emu took the conversation into her own hands, but he’s a little at a loss as to how to start it himself. Besides, for Emu, the thing he was missing was about her, but what exactly has he missed about Nene? “Sort of.”
Nene squints at him. “It’s too early to head back, though?”
The usual routine is to use the time walking together to hash out anything that feels too fragile to bring up with the whole group. Rui chuckles a bit at how directly she makes a jab at it, and resolves to be just as direct in return.
“I’m here on ‘troupe leader’s orders,’” he admits. “So I’d need to report back afterwards.”
“Tsukasa told you to find me?” Nene tilts her head, nose scrunching. “Ugh. And you listened to him right away, no doubt.”
“I was pushed, actually.” Rui blinks, not fully understanding that reaction.
“Hm. If he wanted you to talk to me… ” Nene fixes him with a look of displeasure, even as her eyebrows knit into something worried. “You’re stuck in your head, aren’t you? Or… you’re missing something.”
Rui stares at her.
She glances away, looking slightly embarrassed. “How long have we known each other?”
“A very long time,” Rui says, slowly. He forgets, sometimes, that if he knows Nene best, then the reverse is also true. "But I didn't realize I'd done this enough times for you to recognize it."
She immediately shakes her head. "It's not that," she says, fingers criss-crossing together where she's holding her hands. "You have… patterns, Rui. Once or twice is usually enough to tell."
How odd for her to say, when the first word anyone else would use to describe him would be unpredictable.
“So?” Nene prompts. “Which is it? Are you stuck or are you missing something?”
They enter the area between the stage’s side and the warehouse, which is as free of set pieces or props as it is of people. Rui stops when he finds a spot on the stage’s wall that isn’t draped in vines and turns to face Nene.
"The latter, apparently.” He leans against the wall, the bricks rough against his back. “Something to do with you. And Emu, but I just spoke to her."
"Me?" She blinks in surprise. There's zero recognition on her face, which only strengthens his belief that there's nothing he doesn't know about her. "About what?"
Rui hesitates. As sure as he is that he’s not missing anything, it’s too presumptuous to say it outright. "I don't want to put words in your mouth."
"You're taking a gentle touch now, of all times?" She makes an annoyed face at him, eyebrows pulling in. "Even with the Dragon Stage manager grimacing whenever you're around?"
“Ah,” Rui tenses a little involuntarily, before making himself relax. “That was a shame. I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
Nene looks unimpressed. “And what about the tech guy who couldn’t look you in the eyes?”
Rui opens his mouth, then closes it. It’s not that he ever thought Nene was unobservant, but—the steadiness of her gaze, the slight tilt of her head that says I have more—this is still admittedly unexpected. There’s no need to introduce the subject, is what he’s realizing. Somehow, she’s already well-familiar.
“I wouldn’t treat you like them,” he says instead, because it’s true. They’re uncountable miles away from her level.
Nene looks at him for a while, frown still etched in her face, before she slowly says, “I know that. But there's a happy medium between tip-toeing around the subject and threats, you know?”
This conversation has gone a little over five minutes. Rui has found himself at a loss for words for three of them.
“...Threats?"
“Yeah. There's only so many people who'd look like that just because you were rude to them," Nene huffs. "And you're not exactly a subtle person.”
A study Rui once read suggested that longtime companions often knew a person better than the person knew themselves.
“Especially not,” she continues, “when you're being protective.”
He thinks the study should have included a shock advisory.
Rui stares at her—again. Perhaps for a bit too long, because she shifts uncomfortably under his eyes.
“You—um.” She tilts her head, now clearly confused. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
At that, a slightly strained laugh escapes Rui’s throat. “I may have figured out what I was missing.”
“What, that there’s a middle ground?”
“No.” And despite himself, he feels the corner of his mouth quirk up. “Just… this. How much you really know me.”
"You're kind of high-handed, sometimes."
“…About you making threats? An issue would come up, get fixed, and then the person responsible suddenly wouldn’t look at you afterwards. Again, did you think you were being subtle?” Nene’s face is almost pitying, only softened by her half-smile.
"I don't really know if everyone would take it as a good thing but... Thanks."
Rui remembers now, the way she’d said thanks, that easy spread of a smile across her face. The expression from a moment before that: careful, considering, knowing. And then the familiarity of it all, repeated from every thank you she’s ever offered him.
All of it says, with a clarity he feels almost ashamed for missing, I get it. It’s okay. Nene’s known for a long time—and she’s still at his side.
Rui hums, tucking the realization close to his chest before he picks up the conversation again. Did he think he was being subtle? “Maybe, at least to people other than you.”
“Emu definitely picked up on it.” Nene waves a hand. “And, well, Tsukasa’s Tsukasa. It usually takes hitting him over the head with these kinds of things before he—”
She cuts off abruptly, fixing him with a suddenly suspicious look. “Hold on. You said Tsukasa sent you here because you were missing something. Not because you needed to tell me something.”
He gives her a vague smile, curious as to her direction. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes.” She crosses her arms. “He didn’t send you to make you confess. So what did you say to him that made him feel like you needed me?”
Bullseye.
He slips his hands into his pockets with a hum, taking a moment to pick the simplest configuration of words. “After I told him what I’ve been doing, I said I didn’t think anyone would take it well,” he admits. “But he did, and then so did Emu, and now so are you. Or rather, you already have.”
Her eyes soften. “Rui.”
“It feels a bit silly in hindsight, considering.”
“No, it’s not,” Nene disagrees with a gentle shake of her head. “It’s just… it’s like before, right? During Halloween. Like I said, you’ve got patterns.”
Ah. When he began to hold back without even realizing it, even after Tsukasa told him he didn’t want him to—the evidence was right before his eyes. Back then, he just needed some time to really see and embrace it. And now, perhaps it’s very much the same.
Rui laughs; this time, it comes easy. “Thanks, Nene.” And this, too, is familiar, because as many times as Nene’s thanked him, he could come up with a thousand more reasons to return the sentiment.
A happy flush has risen on Nene’s cheeks, eyes squinting a little with her smile. “Of course. Anytime.
“It’s really good to see you like this, Rui,” she says, softer now. “You’re so happy, chasing your dreams. You were putting on shows before but… you looked so tired, sometimes.”
Rui’s not sure how to respond, something snagging in his chest. He’d always tried not to worry her, but sometimes, at the end of yet another forlorn evening with a bag full of powered-down drones, he just….
“But you’re fighting for them now,” she continues, shoulders straightening in preparation even as her gaze fills with affection. “And I’m happy for you. So… if it still hasn’t sunk in, just know it would take a lot for me not to be happy for you.”
Rui breathes in, lets the words hang in the air long enough for every inch of their meaning to wrap warm around him. He wonders, very briefly, what he’s done to deserve a lifetime of Nene choosing to be on his side, every time. But then he thinks it doesn’t matter, as long as he does the same.
Maybe he could try and find words to explain that. But there’s no need, really. Not when there’s an easier solution.
“Thank you,” he says simply, again, and Nene’s answering smile is enough.
.
.
It’s late, later than Rui expected to stay. Nene waved him off once Nenerobo found them.
“I’ll ask Emu for a ride home so… Take your time, all right?”
The look on her face was a little odd, a grimace below cheeks tinged red, but he hadn’t had time to dwell on it. Rui’s spent the evening on a task, after all, one which has ended with a profound sense of fullness, and now the only thing left on his mind is the person who’d started it all.
The crowd is a shadow of what it was, continues thinning even as he weaves through it. Phoenix Wonderlands is still a big park, but Rui doesn’t bother with a drone. He just walks, past closed stages and attractions and around the congregations of people gathered by the remaining lights; walks, following the nudge of the compass in his head. He doesn’t stop walking until he catches a glimpse of blond behind rushing water.
The spouts switch to a drizzle, and Rui sees him.
Tsukasa’s perched on the lip of the fountain, his hands resting steady on either side of himself. He’s looking up at a sky made starless by the lights all around him—or, tonight, perhaps made starless by the magic of their show, the cosmos drawn in and pressed into each soft smile, each pair of clasped hands, each peal of joy that rang throughout the park.
Even with their audience and colleagues beginning to drift home, the glow lights the park with an odd fullness, almost matching the earlier crowd. Tsukasa seems to take the moment in, his shoulders relaxed, his back straight. Yet, there’s something expectant in his silhouette. He’s picked a spot not quite at the fountain’s edge, enough space for another at his side.
Rui feels something loosen inside him, breath whispering out through his lips.
With a muted rush, the fountain comes back to full life, its geysers obscuring Tsukasa from view again, and Rui’s feet finally move to correct it.
He steps around the fountain to the other side, the noise hiding his footsteps until he’s reaching out to tap a finger on a shoulder.
Tsukasa startles, swiveling quickly around. Whatever expression Rui wasn’t privy to is immediately taken over by the break of his smile, wide and excited.
“Rui!”
“Hey there, leader.” Rui feels the stretch of his lips as he says it. When did he start smiling? He didn’t notice.
He sits down, crossing his legs at the ankles and adjusting his coat to stay out of the water. As he turns so he can face Tsukasa properly, he leaves a hand of space between their knees.
When he looks up again, Tsukasa’s expression has slid to a self-satisfied smirk.
“Well?” he says, triumphant. “Wasn’t I right?”
Rui’s first instinct faced with this expression is to poke at it until he splutters, but this time he just huffs a laugh. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
“No, but it’s all over your face.” He leans down to prop an elbow up on his lap, looking up at Rui’s face with knowing glee. “You look like you’ve found something.”
Rui hums, thinking back to the warmth of Emu’s head under his hand. The same warmth in Nene’s ever-watchful gaze, always from a kept distance of no more than a couple feet away.
“I have. Turns out, the things I was missing were right under my nose.”
The smugness drains from Tsukasa’s expression, and now all that’s left is pride, open and beaming, as he leans over to knock his shoulder lightly against Rui’s. “See, what did I tell you?”
Rui’s heart does something funny in his chest.
“Our troupe will one day stand on the international stage!” Tsukasa straightens with a happy sigh. “You've been selling us short, Rui.”
“I wouldn’t have dreamt of it,” Rui says, tearing his eyes away to look down at his own hands, locked loosely on his lap. “But perhaps I was.”
A shift of movement out of the corner of his eye—Tsukasa, leaning on his own hands. He follows the line of his arms up to his face, and finds a softer curve, a quieter smile, something achingly gentle.
“‘Just ask, and I promise I’ll deliver.’” Somehow the words ring just as strong at this volume as they did when he’d called them from a stage. “I mean that as your friend just as much as I do as an actor.”
The corner of Rui’s lip quirks up again, and it’s been happening so often that it’s beginning to ache, now. “And that applies for all of us, I’m assuming?”
“Of course! Now you’re getting it.” Tsukasa grins and stretches his arms high above his head, then drops them with a satisfied exhale. “Alright! That’s one thing settled, but I still have something I want to talk about.”
Oh? “I’m listening.”
“I trust you, but I want to stay looped in. No matter what you’re thinking of—” Tsukasa crosses his arms, brow furrowing slightly. “Talk to me. I know it’s in your nature to do things on your own, and I know a lot of your work is specialization, but I can still be your rubber duck!”
“My sounding board?” Rui laughs. “Or my accomplice?”
“Whichever one you need,” Tsukasa impresses firmly.
Rui feels a lump tighten his throat. But he swallows it down, letting it fill out a smile instead.
“I really should have told you that earlier…” Tsukasa sighs. “But it was hard to think after you said—”
He stops, mouth open with no ensuing sound.
Rui blinks, zeroing in on the reaction. “...After I said?”
Tsukasa’s jaw works, eyes dropping briefly down to his lap and up again. “Earlier, I know you meant it as in, for the troupe—for all three of us, but—” Again he stops, nose scrunching as he scrubs briefly at the back of his own head. “Ah, never mind, it’s alright.”
It absolutely is not. Rui leans down a little to catch his eye, staring him down. “Tell me.”
Tsukasa doesn’t shy from his gaze, but his lips work like he’s chewing on the words for a moment. Finally he takes a breath, speaks.
“...Sometimes, when you look my way, I wonder if…”
He trails off again. Rui searches his expression, and he finds shifting eyes, a light blush over his cheeks. And then he thinks about how he’s been feeling, all the thousands of thoughts and sensations rushing through him whenever he’s looked at Tsukasa lately. About how even just a few of them might have shown on his face.
And it takes only another half-second for him to put a name to the collection of observations in front of him—Tsukasa’s flustered. Maybe he hasn’t figured everything out, but he’s seen enough in Rui to know that there’s something there.
(He’s been looking right back at him.)
There must be a hundred courses of action from here, but none of them come to mind. All Rui can do is try to find words. The right words, the winning words, any words.
You give me thousands of ideas, yet when I look at you I can’t think at all. You could make a symphony from all the different beats you’ve pulled from my heart. It means everything to me that you keep choosing me. I keep choosing you. I can trace my happiness to the day we met. When I think of hope, I think of your voice. I can do anything so long as you smile at me.
“Tsukasa,” he says, reckless and heavy. “The world could go dark and I’d still find you at its center.”
“...Oh.”
For a moment, it’s like Tsukasa is frozen in time, his eyes wide and unblinking, his shoulders utterly motionless, as if he’s forgotten how to breathe. The only sign that time walks forward is the red that rushes to his cheeks.
But then he reaches—over the gap between them and over Rui’s lap, to tug one of his hands free. Tsukasa’s fingers slip easily into the spaces between his own.
“Rui,” he says, a question and declaration in one.
He leans a little closer, hand squeezing gently in Rui’s grip, and Rui can see his throat move as he swallows.
Then again, quieter: a call. “Rui.”
Cool wind off of rushing water at his back. Rui leans in as well—feels the cold give way to the warm press of hair, soft at the side of his forehead, as another head meets his. This close, each breath he takes trades with another.
He shuts his eyes as the gap closes. Even now, long past twilight, sunspots blossom in the dark.