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the day visty debuts, their agency gifts them each a small bouquet of roses in their assigned colors. they can surely pay for something more extravagant, but aoi doesn’t think about that, instead happy to be given anything at all. the past few weeks had been a whirlwind, so he’s glad to have something physical as a reminder that all their hard work hadn’t been for nothing.
he wonders if the others feel the same.
once the five of them return to their shared apartment, aoi takes his flowers to his room and carefully cuts the stems, avoiding the few small thorns that remain not having been snipped before being packaged. they place the flowers in a tall, skinny vase that he slides to the side of his desk, not wanting to accidentally knock it over.
aoi isn’t sure what the others do with their roses, but they find themself admiring his flowers for maybe longer than he should. in his defense, though, the thrill of successfully debuting with the people he looks up to — maybe even views as family — hasn’t completely worn off.
however, no matter how well aoi tends to the flowers, it doesn’t take long for some of the roses to wilt, their petals drooping and changing from a soft lavender color to something closer to brown, losing their vibrancy as they fall onto his desk.
it’s nothing more than a sign of passing time. it probably sounds a little silly, but aoi feels a spike of fear in his stomach when he walks into his room after school, not even two whole weeks since their debut, to see nearly all the roses are wilted. he could very well throw them out, but they feel attached to the flowers. maybe it’s the memory of their first real live — the distant cheering rings in aoi’s head at the memory; the lights had drowned out the crowd from where he was on stage, but he could still hear them nonetheless — or something equally as sentimental.
in the end, they decide to press the flowers to keep a few as a little memento before they all wither away.
aoi sorts through the remaining flowers, the ones that have yet to fully die, only to find that there’s one rose that’s still the same purple hue it was the night he’d received them. he sets that one aside for three more to join it, though they’ve already begun to unfold as their petals turn lighter.
after searching for the easiest way there is to press a flower and then waiting the next few weeks for his heaviest books to do their jobs, aoi finds themself with a permanent reminder of the home they’ve found.
the apartment is quiet after kei announces his leave. aoi doesn’t expect anything different.
shogo is withdrawn as he attempts to tie up all the loose ends so that the four of them remain afloat all while sacrificing his own sleep for it if the bags under his eyes mean anything. toma, as always, tries his best to carry conversation over dinner or whenever he happens to run into one of them in their shared space, but all his effort falls short from truly lightening the atmosphere further than a forced smile. and kantaro… well, aoi isn’t sure how many days it’s been now since any of them have seen him out of his room.
to say they’re a mess is a bit of an understatement.
the pressed rose, the one that had yet to lose its color, sits on aoi’s desk. the others he’d slipped into plastic and now remain in books half read. instead of the pleasant reminder they’d started as, the flowers feel like a cruel joke.
aoi stares at the flower sometimes. it catches his eye while studying and distracts him from his homework.
he isn’t sure how to feel about it.
about the flower.
about kei.
they’ve always looked up to the people around them. aoi yearned to be like those people, so bright and confident and strong. to define a place for himself among those types had always seemed so far out of reach, but he had done it in the end, hadn’t he?
but now, with those steady pillars they’d grown used to crumbling before their eyes, all of them being thrown off by kei’s sudden departure, aoi isn’t sure what to do. he wants to be angry, that the five of them came so far as a group, as friends, only for it to be tossed away so easily. it’s not fair that kei gets to walk away from it all like he did while the four of them are stuck scrambling to try and make everything right again in his absence.
aoi knows that being the youngest of the group doesn’t help him any; they know that toma and shogo keep things from him and kantaro, so maybe aoi should feel some kind of anger towards them too. but, same as kei, he can’t be angry at them either. he can’t feel much of anything than a muted sense of sadness about everything.
after all, debuting and reaching the level of popularity they managed in such a short amount of time truly felt like a dream. and aoi would be dumb not to realize a dream always has an ending, and this awakening was about as abrupt as it could’ve been.
(aoi can only imagine how the stellas who showed up to every live and every stream feel. maybe they can be outraged enough for the four of them.)
mind distant from the words he’d written in class, even further from the concept of studying, aoi shifts his notebook further up his desk. they rest their cheek on their outstretched arm, staring at the flower.
the flower stares back.
their fingers inch closer to it, fingertips brushing against the surface of the desk as they near the flower. aoi feels the edge of its plastic covering, a sharp little corner, before pulling his hand away.
crossing his arms on top of the desk, aoi rests his forehead on them and closes his eyes.
how foolish to try and reach for a dream again.
the rose moves up to aoi’s bookshelf where it’s easier to ignore. his eyes are no longer drawn to it when he walks into the room and as odd as it is, he does feel a bit better with it gone from view.
or maybe that sense of relief is from the four of them having found a solution in the form of paradox live. hip hop isn’t exactly visty’s style, but aoi knows they’re desperate enough to try any way they can to claw their way up from the edge of the cliff they’d been stranded on. that and they’re accustomed to phantometals already, having been using them in their performances since their debut.
(aoi hasn’t missed the nightmares that came with using the metal, reliving the same words over and over and over until he feared he’d still hear them echoing around in his head even when awake. but still, they can deal with them as long as it means they can stick together. shogo seems sure of visty’s ability to stick it out through this tournament. or maybe it’s the desperation taking hold of him as he too realizes with startling clarity that this really is their last chance.)
even so, aoi finds themself feeling a bit more calm knowing that shogo has faith in the four of them, no matter how many comments on social media or late night specials have nothing better to do than to talk about visty’s sudden fall from grace. with that confidence, aoi feels his own growing, although more tentatively.
with the flower out of his view, aoi feels he can breathe a little easier. they have a way to get out of this mess and if they’re to get anywhere in this competition, he knows they have to prepare.
the chill of early morning air does wonders to block out the thoughts racing through aoi’s mind as they do their daily jog. the date for visty’s appearance in paradox live grows nearer and nearer and even with all the practicing the four of them have been doing, both as a group and individually, aoi can’t help but wonder if it’s enough.
he knows it doesn’t do any good to be pessimistic about a performance and it’s not like they don’t have confidence in their ability as a group, but there’s just this nagging dread at the back of aoi’s mind. no matter how hard they try to ignore it, will it away, it remains annoyingly persistent through every waking moment to the point of losing sleep.
aoi knows that visty isn’t exactly in a good position — not that they have been in a while, if he’s being honest — but he’s stuck with the others long enough to know that whatever may happen, even with however strong their fellow competitors may be, they have a fighting chance. they won’t let this chance slip between their fingers.
they need this win to survive.
his breath comes in puffs, throat stinging slightly from the cold air.
aoi slows to a walk, looking over the nearby buildings they idly pass. there’s a cat or two in a few windows, blinds still drawn on a few, customers entering and exiting a nearby coffee shop. but then he pauses, spotting a small gathering of white flowers, their little petals facing downwards in an apartment window.
he’s not sure what they are, but there’s something about them that stirs a feeling in their chest that they can’t quite put a name to.
aoi exhales, breath turning into a faint cloud before disappearing. he shakes out his hands and begins jogging once more. they’re almost back to the shared apartment now. as nervous as aoi is about performing on a new stage as big as paradox live, about this being their one and only chance to stay as visty — to continue their dream as four instead of five — he feels a sliver of hope that whatever the outcome may be, visty will remain.