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rhodochrosite) wrote2020-12-30 09:58 pm
rhodochrosite) wrote2020-12-30 09:58 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] take the remorse out of defeat
take the remorse out of defeat
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: niou&/marui, background jackal/marui + kirihara/an + yagyuu/niou, mentioned yukimura/marui (r63)
rating: general
word count: 2.3k
futurefic in which marui tries to convince niou to attend kirihara and an's wedding. also everyone is a girl in this except kirihara don't think about it too hard. assumed backstory of this timeline is that yukimura drops out of high school after leading rikkai to a nationals victory with their original lineup in second year to go pro full-time, and then marui drops out of high school shortly afterwards to become an idol, and niou basically goes ghost after graduating high school. an also attended rikkai high and was the tennis club's manager. i guess this means kirian got married at 21? sure why not
--
“Yo, Niou,” Marui says easily. “I need you to do me a favour.”
A brief silence. Marui wonders if maybe she should have started off with an introduction, considering she hasn’t spoken to Niou in five years. Then, in Niou’s shockingly familiar drawl: “Shoot.”
“So I have to pick up Jackal from the airport in a couple hours so we can get to the wedding, but I don’t want my fans following me there, I’m not gonna ruin An-chan’s special day. So I need you to be me for a bit and show up somewhere on the other side of the city to throw them off. Not a switch,” Marui hastens to add. “Not even an Illusion, if you don’t want to. I just need you to be my body double. I’ll take care of all the cosplay supplies and whatever. You in?”
Another silence, this one longer. “Hmm,” Niou says. “What’s in it for me?”
“The personal satisfaction of testing your abilities?” Marui suggests. Niou scoffs. “Okay, I’ll treat you to a meal or something, how’s that?”
“You’re an idol, you make millions just by batting your eyelashes,” Niou sneers. “And all I’m getting is a free lunch?”
“Well, what do you want, then?”
“That’s a secret,” Niou says.
“I’m literally trying to bribe you,” Marui says, exasperated. “Just give.”
“No, I think I like the idea of an open-ended favour.”
“Fine, whatever. How soon can you get here?”
“Soon,” Niou says cryptically, and hangs up. It’s only while staring at the CALL END screen that Marui realises she hadn’t told Niou where she’s staying, but it’s Niou, after all. She’ll find her.
Sure enough, not more than twenty minutes pass before the doorbell rings. Marui flies to the door and flings it open, and there she is, standing in the hotel corridor, hands shoved in her pockets. Niou looks exactly the same as she did the last time Marui saw her, which was also the last time anyone saw her, at the graduation ceremony Marui attended as a guest and not a participant. The spiky tufts of white hair, the arrogant slouch, the perpetual crooked half-smile, all of her a bony and hostile stack of inhospitable angles. Marui’s struck by the urge to sweep Niou into a crushing hug and never let her go again, but refrains; Niou’s too skittish. Instead, Marui nods to the shopping bags strewn across the bed. “Everything you need should be in there.”
“Hope you didn’t skimp on the goods, Bun-chan,” Niou says, sauntering past her into the room. “I’m an expensive date.”
“Oi, don’t call me that. Makes me feel like I’m at work.”
“I called you that in middle school, though. Does that make me your first fan?” Niou rifles through the paper bags and fishes out the long red wig Marui had tasked her manager with purchasing earlier, shaking it out. She purses her lips. “Guess this’ll have to do. Alright, where’s your makeup stuff? Bathroom?”
Marui nods, and trails Niou into the ensuite, hitting the switch to turn on the fluorescent lights. Unceremoniously, Niou dumps the guts of Marui’s makeup bag out over the bathroom vanity. “Aren’t you gonna ask me where I’ve been,” Niou says idly.
“Are you gonna tell me?” Marui says. She sits down on the edge of the bathtub.
“Nope.”
“Super productive conversation,” Marui says. “Aren’t you gonna ask how I got your number?”
“Just so you can say some shit about how you’re so genius-like? Also no,” Niou says. “Pass me the contacts.”
Marui ducks back out to retrieve the small case from the bags on the bed, tossing it to Niou from the entrance to the bathroom. With practised movements Niou peels back her eyelids and pops the violet contacts in, blinking rapidly, narrowing her eyes at her reflection. Marui’s head reels, a sense like vertigo. For a terrifying moment it’d felt like it used to, years and years ago back when they all still thought themselves invincible and interminable because Yukimura said they were and because they hadn’t known any differently, not yet. “I didn’t see you on the RSVP list,” Marui says.
“Because I didn’t RSVP,” Niou says. She clicks open the CC compact and begins dabbing cream over her cheeks and forehead with the sponge.
“But are you going to go?”
“Fuck no,” Niou says.
Marui crosses her arms. “You should go,” she says.
“I said I’d help you throw your stalker fans off the scent, not that I’d show up to the wedding,” Niou says sharply.
“Why not? You didn’t show up to Akaya’s graduation, either.” As Marui often does, she wishes Jackal were here already, just for the comfort of someone she knows will always be on her side. Relentlessly, she adds, “Besides, you owe Seika-chan. Aren’t you tired of letting her down by now?”
Niou’s mouth goes tight. She puts the compact in her hand back down on the counter. “Fuck off. I bet you still haven’t told her about the deal you made with Kimi-sama.”
“That’s—so not the point. I did that for her. And I didn’t break her heart by vanishing into thin air the second I could—”
“She left first,” Niou says. “Even you left. At least I stayed until the end.”
“It isn’t over,” Marui snaps. “It didn’t end—”
“And yet neither of us have stood on a tennis court since we left Rikkai.”
“You know it was never about tennis!” Too shrill. All those years of stage training down the drain. With some effort she moderates her tone. “And you would have done the same. If it were you. You would have done what I did.”
“I would have done worse,” Niou says calmly.
Marui has to shut her eyes, abruptly unable to bear the sight of Niou. “So why won’t you come back?”
“Marui. Wake the fuck up. You know it’s never gonna be the way it was in middle school ever again.”
“I know,” Marui says. “God, Niou. Why is it so hard to believe that maybe I just missed you?”
When Marui opens her eyes again Niou is staring at her. Always a rare sight, a speechless Niou. Back in their school days Marui would’ve been smugly triumphant; now she’s only tired.
“Come to the wedding,” Marui says, then, more softly. “Here, I’ll tell you how it’ll happen—”
“What, does clairvoyance come with your genius-like powers now—”
“Shut up. There’s going to be a spare spot on Oishi’s table because of course Yanagi accounted for the probability that you’d show up unannounced anyway, and she’ll tell you that probability with decimal points when she sees you. Then Akaya will cry, and then Seika-chan will kill you for making him cry on his wedding day before she could.”
Niou makes a noise that could be classified as a laugh. “Reckon she’ll make me run laps around the venue?”
“If she doesn’t, Sanada will totally try.”
“Not like I ever listened to Sanada anyway. Is Yagyuu coming?”
Niou would never deign to have anything as obvious as a tell, but Marui hasn’t survived five years in an industry that hinges on performativity without picking up an instinct for this kind of thing. The pointed lack of emphasis screams special interest to anyone with a working understanding of Niou’s personal language. You really haven’t changed at all, have you, Marui thinks.
“Obviously,” Marui says lightly. “It’s the sports royalty event of the year. Our baby is getting married to our cute manager. Everyone who has ever vaguely registered on our radar is going to be there.”
“A free high school reunion, what joy.”
Marui soldiers on. “Plus, you’ll get to see Seika-chan cold-shouldering Inui the whole night. She still mostly tries to pretend Inui doesn’t exist even though Yanagi brings her as her plus-one to everything ever, it’s pretty funny.”
Niou says, “I didn’t get the happy couple anything.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m pretty sure Atobe’s bought out the entire registry like five times over.”
At that, Niou cracks a smile, and picks up the compact again. “Of course Atobe’s meddling. Surprised Yukimura let her interfere in family business.”
“Atobe meddling includes her stacks of credit cards, so.”
Niou hums, attention back on doing her makeup. Stroke by stroke, Niou becomes Marui. Contour softening the angular planes of Niou’s face, the bright eyeshadow Marui’s adopted as her trademark. The wig goes on last, a spill of red over Niou’s shoulders. Marui can’t quite tell if Niou is bolstering the effect with a little Illusion, and it saddens her; she always used to know. Niou hasn’t changed, frozen out of time as she always has been, so it must be Marui. So it must be everything else.
Finally Niou holds the tube of concealer out to the side. She isn’t looking at Marui, but there’s a brittleness to the gesture, something of a concession. Marui takes the concealer from Niou’s fingers.
It’s not like this is something Niou can’t do on her own, but Marui remembers Yagyuu and Niou’s pre-match rituals had consisted of touching up each other’s disguises. Niou drawing her beauty mark onto Yagyuu’s chin with eyeliner, Yagyuu holding Niou’s chin between forefinger and thumb to dab concealer over Niou’s own beauty mark. A clinical briskness to the motion that somehow turned it even more intimate than it would have been if executed gently. Just as briskly: Yagyuu, after Niou’s disappearance, tucking her hair behind her ear—if Niou-kun wants to be found, she will be.
Marui grasps Niou’s chin. Forefinger, thumb. She’s good at being what other people want, these days. Niou’s eyes lid. How long has it been since someone did this for her? Carefully, Marui dots concealer onto Niou’s beauty mark, then pats the pigment in with the tip of a finger until the mole disappears from view.
“Done,” Marui says, capping the tube again with a click and tossing it back onto the counter. She leans back, under the guise of surveying the finished product. “Huh, not bad.” It’s far from not bad, actually. Niou’s impression of her is so uncanny it’s setting her nerves on edge, the visceral strangeness of a reflection that doesn’t mirror her. “Can you still do my voice?”
“Even if we’re far apart, I feel in my heart that you’re next to me,” Niou sings, in a mockingly precise studio-recording imitation of Marui.
“Wow, that’s even a b-side,” Marui says. “Didn’t know you listened to my albums! Do you want my autograph?”
“Like I said, I was your first fan,” Niou says. “How much are your autographs going for? I could always do with some extra cash.”
“If you were really my fan you would know,” Marui sniffs.
Niou’s face is still very close to hers. If Marui wanted to, it would not take much to slide her fingers into Niou’s hair, feel if it’s still as unexpectedly soft as it used to be, close the distance. But kissing Niou won’t fix her; she’s tried that. Kissing Yukimura didn’t fix her either, but at least Yukimura had smiled afterwards, pale and exhausted in her narrow hospital cot. Her fingers fluttering weakly against Marui’s; she’d already lost the majority of her grip strength at that point. Niou’s hands as she pressed Marui down had been bruising, viciously so. She wanted it to hurt, and Marui wanted to hurt, if it meant Niou would hurt a little less. Marui’d believed, then, that pain was something that lessened with distribution, rather than simply resulting in two extremely miserable people instead of one.
So many things she’s done, trying to lessen other people’s hurt. So many things she is still trying to do.
Niou turns away first, lifting a lock of her wig up to the light to inspect it. “Hey, if we’re deadset on reliving the old days, can we at least get drunk and make out in the middle of the dance floor?”
“I am in a committed relationship, Niou,” Marui says.
“Damn.” Niou sighs. “Guess that’s a no, then. Or maybe Jackal won’t mind—”
“Niou.”
“You’re no fun anymore,” Niou says. She scrunches up her face, not a Niou expression but one Marui recognises from watching back over her own variety show appearances, exaggeratedly cute in a way conducive to screenshotting and Twitter propagation. Marui swats her on the shoulder.
“My sales figures and legions of devoted fans say otherwise,” Marui says.
“My sales figures and legions of devoted fans now,” Niou says.
Watching Niou’s face floating beside hers in the mirror, a perfect replica of her own, there’s enough distance for the unease to gradually alchemise itself into nostalgia. How Niou used to Illusion into Marui mid-rally to throw her off her rhythm with the sudden appearance of a doppelganger staring her down over the net. The ache strikes her like a hunger pang. So she does want them back, all those sunglazed days of her youth. Retying Niou’s hair ribbon in the 3B classroom, gossipping with her on the bench at tournament matches, even the endless laps they slowed to a walk the moment they were out of Sanada’s line of sight.
Surely she should be able to come up with something to say to Niou by now, but she can’t find the words. Her vocabulary of gratitude and encouragement amassed over the past five years of her career gone blank in an instant, the same way everything slid out of her mind as Yukimura slid to the ground on the train platform and all she had was the heart in her mouth, useless, congested with longing, desperate to reach out over an unbridgeable gap. She doesn’t know how to make Niou stay. She doesn’t think Niou knows how to stay.
Yagyuu was wrong, as she’d probably known she was when she said it: it isn’t that Niou doesn’t want to be found, it’s only that there’s nobody who is capable of doing the finding except Niou herself. Marui has never understood the intricacies of whatever lay between Yagyuu and Niou. Maybe it would be easier if she did. Again, she wishes she had Jackal with her, that point of steadiness in the wild sea.
“Well, I’m off first,” Niou says, standing up. “See you later.”
“See you,” Marui echoes. She hopes she will.
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: niou&/marui, background jackal/marui + kirihara/an + yagyuu/niou, mentioned yukimura/marui (r63)
rating: general
word count: 2.3k
futurefic in which marui tries to convince niou to attend kirihara and an's wedding. also everyone is a girl in this except kirihara don't think about it too hard. assumed backstory of this timeline is that yukimura drops out of high school after leading rikkai to a nationals victory with their original lineup in second year to go pro full-time, and then marui drops out of high school shortly afterwards to become an idol, and niou basically goes ghost after graduating high school. an also attended rikkai high and was the tennis club's manager. i guess this means kirian got married at 21? sure why not
--
“Yo, Niou,” Marui says easily. “I need you to do me a favour.”
A brief silence. Marui wonders if maybe she should have started off with an introduction, considering she hasn’t spoken to Niou in five years. Then, in Niou’s shockingly familiar drawl: “Shoot.”
“So I have to pick up Jackal from the airport in a couple hours so we can get to the wedding, but I don’t want my fans following me there, I’m not gonna ruin An-chan’s special day. So I need you to be me for a bit and show up somewhere on the other side of the city to throw them off. Not a switch,” Marui hastens to add. “Not even an Illusion, if you don’t want to. I just need you to be my body double. I’ll take care of all the cosplay supplies and whatever. You in?”
Another silence, this one longer. “Hmm,” Niou says. “What’s in it for me?”
“The personal satisfaction of testing your abilities?” Marui suggests. Niou scoffs. “Okay, I’ll treat you to a meal or something, how’s that?”
“You’re an idol, you make millions just by batting your eyelashes,” Niou sneers. “And all I’m getting is a free lunch?”
“Well, what do you want, then?”
“That’s a secret,” Niou says.
“I’m literally trying to bribe you,” Marui says, exasperated. “Just give.”
“No, I think I like the idea of an open-ended favour.”
“Fine, whatever. How soon can you get here?”
“Soon,” Niou says cryptically, and hangs up. It’s only while staring at the CALL END screen that Marui realises she hadn’t told Niou where she’s staying, but it’s Niou, after all. She’ll find her.
Sure enough, not more than twenty minutes pass before the doorbell rings. Marui flies to the door and flings it open, and there she is, standing in the hotel corridor, hands shoved in her pockets. Niou looks exactly the same as she did the last time Marui saw her, which was also the last time anyone saw her, at the graduation ceremony Marui attended as a guest and not a participant. The spiky tufts of white hair, the arrogant slouch, the perpetual crooked half-smile, all of her a bony and hostile stack of inhospitable angles. Marui’s struck by the urge to sweep Niou into a crushing hug and never let her go again, but refrains; Niou’s too skittish. Instead, Marui nods to the shopping bags strewn across the bed. “Everything you need should be in there.”
“Hope you didn’t skimp on the goods, Bun-chan,” Niou says, sauntering past her into the room. “I’m an expensive date.”
“Oi, don’t call me that. Makes me feel like I’m at work.”
“I called you that in middle school, though. Does that make me your first fan?” Niou rifles through the paper bags and fishes out the long red wig Marui had tasked her manager with purchasing earlier, shaking it out. She purses her lips. “Guess this’ll have to do. Alright, where’s your makeup stuff? Bathroom?”
Marui nods, and trails Niou into the ensuite, hitting the switch to turn on the fluorescent lights. Unceremoniously, Niou dumps the guts of Marui’s makeup bag out over the bathroom vanity. “Aren’t you gonna ask me where I’ve been,” Niou says idly.
“Are you gonna tell me?” Marui says. She sits down on the edge of the bathtub.
“Nope.”
“Super productive conversation,” Marui says. “Aren’t you gonna ask how I got your number?”
“Just so you can say some shit about how you’re so genius-like? Also no,” Niou says. “Pass me the contacts.”
Marui ducks back out to retrieve the small case from the bags on the bed, tossing it to Niou from the entrance to the bathroom. With practised movements Niou peels back her eyelids and pops the violet contacts in, blinking rapidly, narrowing her eyes at her reflection. Marui’s head reels, a sense like vertigo. For a terrifying moment it’d felt like it used to, years and years ago back when they all still thought themselves invincible and interminable because Yukimura said they were and because they hadn’t known any differently, not yet. “I didn’t see you on the RSVP list,” Marui says.
“Because I didn’t RSVP,” Niou says. She clicks open the CC compact and begins dabbing cream over her cheeks and forehead with the sponge.
“But are you going to go?”
“Fuck no,” Niou says.
Marui crosses her arms. “You should go,” she says.
“I said I’d help you throw your stalker fans off the scent, not that I’d show up to the wedding,” Niou says sharply.
“Why not? You didn’t show up to Akaya’s graduation, either.” As Marui often does, she wishes Jackal were here already, just for the comfort of someone she knows will always be on her side. Relentlessly, she adds, “Besides, you owe Seika-chan. Aren’t you tired of letting her down by now?”
Niou’s mouth goes tight. She puts the compact in her hand back down on the counter. “Fuck off. I bet you still haven’t told her about the deal you made with Kimi-sama.”
“That’s—so not the point. I did that for her. And I didn’t break her heart by vanishing into thin air the second I could—”
“She left first,” Niou says. “Even you left. At least I stayed until the end.”
“It isn’t over,” Marui snaps. “It didn’t end—”
“And yet neither of us have stood on a tennis court since we left Rikkai.”
“You know it was never about tennis!” Too shrill. All those years of stage training down the drain. With some effort she moderates her tone. “And you would have done the same. If it were you. You would have done what I did.”
“I would have done worse,” Niou says calmly.
Marui has to shut her eyes, abruptly unable to bear the sight of Niou. “So why won’t you come back?”
“Marui. Wake the fuck up. You know it’s never gonna be the way it was in middle school ever again.”
“I know,” Marui says. “God, Niou. Why is it so hard to believe that maybe I just missed you?”
When Marui opens her eyes again Niou is staring at her. Always a rare sight, a speechless Niou. Back in their school days Marui would’ve been smugly triumphant; now she’s only tired.
“Come to the wedding,” Marui says, then, more softly. “Here, I’ll tell you how it’ll happen—”
“What, does clairvoyance come with your genius-like powers now—”
“Shut up. There’s going to be a spare spot on Oishi’s table because of course Yanagi accounted for the probability that you’d show up unannounced anyway, and she’ll tell you that probability with decimal points when she sees you. Then Akaya will cry, and then Seika-chan will kill you for making him cry on his wedding day before she could.”
Niou makes a noise that could be classified as a laugh. “Reckon she’ll make me run laps around the venue?”
“If she doesn’t, Sanada will totally try.”
“Not like I ever listened to Sanada anyway. Is Yagyuu coming?”
Niou would never deign to have anything as obvious as a tell, but Marui hasn’t survived five years in an industry that hinges on performativity without picking up an instinct for this kind of thing. The pointed lack of emphasis screams special interest to anyone with a working understanding of Niou’s personal language. You really haven’t changed at all, have you, Marui thinks.
“Obviously,” Marui says lightly. “It’s the sports royalty event of the year. Our baby is getting married to our cute manager. Everyone who has ever vaguely registered on our radar is going to be there.”
“A free high school reunion, what joy.”
Marui soldiers on. “Plus, you’ll get to see Seika-chan cold-shouldering Inui the whole night. She still mostly tries to pretend Inui doesn’t exist even though Yanagi brings her as her plus-one to everything ever, it’s pretty funny.”
Niou says, “I didn’t get the happy couple anything.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m pretty sure Atobe’s bought out the entire registry like five times over.”
At that, Niou cracks a smile, and picks up the compact again. “Of course Atobe’s meddling. Surprised Yukimura let her interfere in family business.”
“Atobe meddling includes her stacks of credit cards, so.”
Niou hums, attention back on doing her makeup. Stroke by stroke, Niou becomes Marui. Contour softening the angular planes of Niou’s face, the bright eyeshadow Marui’s adopted as her trademark. The wig goes on last, a spill of red over Niou’s shoulders. Marui can’t quite tell if Niou is bolstering the effect with a little Illusion, and it saddens her; she always used to know. Niou hasn’t changed, frozen out of time as she always has been, so it must be Marui. So it must be everything else.
Finally Niou holds the tube of concealer out to the side. She isn’t looking at Marui, but there’s a brittleness to the gesture, something of a concession. Marui takes the concealer from Niou’s fingers.
It’s not like this is something Niou can’t do on her own, but Marui remembers Yagyuu and Niou’s pre-match rituals had consisted of touching up each other’s disguises. Niou drawing her beauty mark onto Yagyuu’s chin with eyeliner, Yagyuu holding Niou’s chin between forefinger and thumb to dab concealer over Niou’s own beauty mark. A clinical briskness to the motion that somehow turned it even more intimate than it would have been if executed gently. Just as briskly: Yagyuu, after Niou’s disappearance, tucking her hair behind her ear—if Niou-kun wants to be found, she will be.
Marui grasps Niou’s chin. Forefinger, thumb. She’s good at being what other people want, these days. Niou’s eyes lid. How long has it been since someone did this for her? Carefully, Marui dots concealer onto Niou’s beauty mark, then pats the pigment in with the tip of a finger until the mole disappears from view.
“Done,” Marui says, capping the tube again with a click and tossing it back onto the counter. She leans back, under the guise of surveying the finished product. “Huh, not bad.” It’s far from not bad, actually. Niou’s impression of her is so uncanny it’s setting her nerves on edge, the visceral strangeness of a reflection that doesn’t mirror her. “Can you still do my voice?”
“Even if we’re far apart, I feel in my heart that you’re next to me,” Niou sings, in a mockingly precise studio-recording imitation of Marui.
“Wow, that’s even a b-side,” Marui says. “Didn’t know you listened to my albums! Do you want my autograph?”
“Like I said, I was your first fan,” Niou says. “How much are your autographs going for? I could always do with some extra cash.”
“If you were really my fan you would know,” Marui sniffs.
Niou’s face is still very close to hers. If Marui wanted to, it would not take much to slide her fingers into Niou’s hair, feel if it’s still as unexpectedly soft as it used to be, close the distance. But kissing Niou won’t fix her; she’s tried that. Kissing Yukimura didn’t fix her either, but at least Yukimura had smiled afterwards, pale and exhausted in her narrow hospital cot. Her fingers fluttering weakly against Marui’s; she’d already lost the majority of her grip strength at that point. Niou’s hands as she pressed Marui down had been bruising, viciously so. She wanted it to hurt, and Marui wanted to hurt, if it meant Niou would hurt a little less. Marui’d believed, then, that pain was something that lessened with distribution, rather than simply resulting in two extremely miserable people instead of one.
So many things she’s done, trying to lessen other people’s hurt. So many things she is still trying to do.
Niou turns away first, lifting a lock of her wig up to the light to inspect it. “Hey, if we’re deadset on reliving the old days, can we at least get drunk and make out in the middle of the dance floor?”
“I am in a committed relationship, Niou,” Marui says.
“Damn.” Niou sighs. “Guess that’s a no, then. Or maybe Jackal won’t mind—”
“Niou.”
“You’re no fun anymore,” Niou says. She scrunches up her face, not a Niou expression but one Marui recognises from watching back over her own variety show appearances, exaggeratedly cute in a way conducive to screenshotting and Twitter propagation. Marui swats her on the shoulder.
“My sales figures and legions of devoted fans say otherwise,” Marui says.
“My sales figures and legions of devoted fans now,” Niou says.
Watching Niou’s face floating beside hers in the mirror, a perfect replica of her own, there’s enough distance for the unease to gradually alchemise itself into nostalgia. How Niou used to Illusion into Marui mid-rally to throw her off her rhythm with the sudden appearance of a doppelganger staring her down over the net. The ache strikes her like a hunger pang. So she does want them back, all those sunglazed days of her youth. Retying Niou’s hair ribbon in the 3B classroom, gossipping with her on the bench at tournament matches, even the endless laps they slowed to a walk the moment they were out of Sanada’s line of sight.
Surely she should be able to come up with something to say to Niou by now, but she can’t find the words. Her vocabulary of gratitude and encouragement amassed over the past five years of her career gone blank in an instant, the same way everything slid out of her mind as Yukimura slid to the ground on the train platform and all she had was the heart in her mouth, useless, congested with longing, desperate to reach out over an unbridgeable gap. She doesn’t know how to make Niou stay. She doesn’t think Niou knows how to stay.
Yagyuu was wrong, as she’d probably known she was when she said it: it isn’t that Niou doesn’t want to be found, it’s only that there’s nobody who is capable of doing the finding except Niou herself. Marui has never understood the intricacies of whatever lay between Yagyuu and Niou. Maybe it would be easier if she did. Again, she wishes she had Jackal with her, that point of steadiness in the wild sea.
“Well, I’m off first,” Niou says, standing up. “See you later.”
“See you,” Marui echoes. She hopes she will.