[fic] to perfectly perform in reverse

[rhodochrosite]

to perfectly perform in reverse
fandom: prince of tennis

ship: r63 yagyuu/niou, like 500 background ships including: niou/marui, yukimura/niou, kirihara/an, jackal/marui, inui/yanagi, sanada/yukimura, jaemin/jeno
rating: g
word count: 5.7k

notes: direct sequel to <this 3b nyotayuri futurefic> because i wanted to write 82 reunion at kirian's wedding reception. less a fic and more an extremely self-indulgent collection of various highranker interactions and crossover cameos and futurefic headcanons lol. everyone is a girl except kirihara.

> re: why is nct dream there - because i said so. marui did a jp collab single with dream ala dnyl and they stayed in touch. chenle is a kirihara stan, kirihara is a dream stan (haechan oshi). renjun watched a tennis documentary bc she had fomo, her oshi is yukimura. jaemin does not know who kirihara is and possibly does not remember who marui is either

> re: languages - marui learned english so she could promote globally and also knows basic kr/cn for similar purposes, niou is a polyglot due to literally already being a shapeshifter in canon, atobe is a polyglot due to growing up as the heiress to a multinational corporation, hyotei alumni know english since hyotei is basically a british boarding school, jaemin is speaking bad english on purpose

re: names:

• yanagi renji (蓮二) -> yanagi renge (蓮華)
• inui sadaharu (貞治) -> inui sadako (貞子)
• marui bunta (ブン太) -> marui bun (舞音) - only girls name i could find starting with bun but i think it works, very assigned idol at birth
• jackal kuwahara -> jackal kuwahara
• shiraishi kuranosuke (蔵ノ介) -> shiraishi kurari (蔵莉) - i could actually only find kurari spelled 夢莉 so i don't think this is a real name but i wanted something that would still nickname to kurarin and also it's matchies with yukari and 莉 for plant association ofc
• tachibana kippei (桔平) -> tachibana kikyo (桔梗)
• chitose senri (千里) -> chitose chisato (千里)
• yukimura seiichi (精市) -> yukimura seika - help girl does anyone on tennis tl remember which kanji we agreed on i only remember 世 for se. 世唯香? feels kinda epic and fitting though i kinda wanna use one of the various plant related words with ka pronunciation for the last syllable
• akutsu jin (仁) -> akutsu shinobu (仁) - apparently shin is also a feminine pronunciation of 仁 but i wanted to also do a shoutout to my chihayafuru onepick who is not like akutsu at all except for being a godmoded slayer
• tohno atsukyo (篤京) -> tohno atsuki (篤姫) - yeah i chose 姫 for the kanji cause it's funniest
• zaizen hikaru (光) -> zaizen hikaru (光)
• echizen ryoma (リョーマ) -> echizen ryo (燎) - same as my nyotayuri atoryo fic this is a shoutout to beloved samurai girl ryo from blade of the immortal, though echizen ryo probably just uses リョー anyway. ryoga is just リョーカ/ryoka
• mukahi gakuto (岳人) -> mukahi takako (岳子)
• akutagawa jirou (慈郎) -> akutagawa juri - haven't decided on kanji yet but 純璃 kinda cute
• yagyuu hiroshi (比呂士) -> yagyuu hiromi (比呂美)
• i was just thinking masako for niou but 雅羽/masaha is kinda soooooo cute >__<

--

It turns out almost exactly as Marui had predicted, which is great news for Marui’s career security: Niou will have to tell her later that she has a solid future as a fortune teller lined up once she’s done with the whole idol thing. Or she won’t, because it’s not a particularly good joke. Niou likes to think that if nothing else she is still capable of being an entertainer.

For an Atobe production, the reception decor is remarkably aesthetically restrained, other than vivid accent splashes of Rikkai yellow, Fudomine pink. Naturally, the entirety of their old school tennis circuit has shown up, along with a whole slew of various other athletes and celebrities Niou’s seen throughout various forms of media. The guest list is a veritable who’s who of the sporting and entertainment elite. It’s hardly surprising; Kirihara has always been infectiously gregarious, even in the throes of his literally violently difficult adolescence, and An builds networks on a professional basis, to say nothing of the social cachet of their nearest and dearest.

Yanagi, standing by the door, is Niou’s first checkpoint. “Yo, sanbo,” Niou says easily.

“Hello,” Yanagi says, mild, like they’ve only run into each other at the shops after school. “Have you signed in? I left a space open on Oishi’s table for you.”

Niou cracks a smile. “Marui said you would.”

“Ah, she convinced you to come?”

Since it’s Yanagi, Niou doesn’t have to justify herself. “Yeah, she ambushed me earlier.”

“Marui can be very persuasive,” Yanagi agrees.

“What was the probability of me showing up?”

“27.65%,” Yanagi says promptly. “Though I’ll admit to adding on a few more percentage points, out of hope.”

“Hope isn’t a good look on a strategist.”

“Luckily I am no longer a strategist,” Yanagi says, and freezes. Just an infinitesimal stilling, barely noticeable, but on Yanagi it’s the equivalent of deer-in-the-headlights panic. There’s a weird moment where Niou can tell that Yanagi is beating back a flinch, and also that Yanagi can tell Niou is doing the same thing, and they’re just staring at each other in horror pretending to be its absence. And very carefully not looking anywhere else, lest they cross gazes with, say, Yukimura. But the thing about Yanagi Renge is that she is ultimately a kind person, so the moment passes without remark.

“Your girl’s skulking around the drinks,” Niou says. “Might want to collect her before Yukimura catches her trying to poison everyone at this fine establishment.”

“Sadako has a degree in sports nutrition,” Yanagi says, but she moves away from the door, and Niou goes to pay her dues to the main event.

Kirihara gets to her first. He gives her the courtesy of a three-second warning to brace herself by means of an ear-piercing wail of NIOU-SENPAIIIII before Kirihara is barreling straight into her. He actually almost knocks her over. Niou's midsection was not made to withstand the battering-ram onslaught of a professional tennis player running full tilt in her direction; she’d never been the most solidly-built of athletes and now she doesn’t even have that level of physical resistance, whereas Kirihara’s gotten bigger along every dimension since she last saw him. Her footing slips backwards and it’s only Kirihara’s seamless adjustment for her weight, arm firm around her waist, that saves her balance. She isn’t sure if it’s a conscious action or pure reflex on his part, and then she has to bite down a very stupidly sentimental comment along the lines of you’ve grown up.

“Congrats, Akaya,” Niou says, petting his shoulder while he clutches at her and blubbers incoherently all over her dry-clean-only blazer, which she’s just decided to expense to Atobe, since Atobe’s apparently footing the wedding bill already.

After a few more moments An appears and briskly pries the human limpet of her newlywed husband off of Niou, shoving him like a damp air hockey puck in Shiraishi Kurari's direction. Obligingly Kirihara sails right into Shiraishi's side; Shiraishi pats him on the head, tucks him under her unbandaged arm, and continues conversing with Tachibana Kikyo about recipe macros or Chitose Chisato or whatever it is those two talk about. An gives Niou a much more dignified hug. “We’re so happy you could make it,” she says. “I missed you, Niou-san,” and when she pulls back her eyes are very bright, but Niou won’t mention it. That’s her wedding gift to the happy couple.

“You look beautiful,” Niou says honestly.

“Thank you,” An says. She smooths a hand down her satiny pink skirt. “The dress is from Kite-san—I don’t know if you remember, she was—”

“Higa’s old captain. I remember,” Niou says. Marui’s one-time triple-crossing doubles partner turned penpal, of course she remembers Kiteretsu. Of course she remembers the deal Marui cut lengthways across Kite, Marui’s integrity mortgaged away for Yukimura’s future. She wonders, again, if Kite knows. If Jackal knows. If this is a secret Marui has shared only with Niou, because Niou is the only other person in the world who understands what it means to slice out some vital part of yourself, knowingly and willingly, for the sake of a very specific type of love.

An really is beautiful. Aglow with joy in her perfectly-draped dress. It’s nice to think that Niou might have added to that incandescence instead of dimming it. She’s out of practice with sharing that kind of feeling. But An has the remainder of her hostess duties to attend to, so Niou lets An excuse herself to collect Kirihara and continue making the rounds.

Standing by the canapes with Jackal and a couple of other girls, Marui waves her over with a huge perfect idol smile which means that her real one is too wobbly to pull out. Obviously she hadn’t believed Niou when she’d said she would come, which is kind of rude: Niou never lies. She just doesn’t always tell the entire truth, and if that leads people to the wrong conclusion that’s their own problem. Jackal clasps her hand and pulls her into a crushing hug, and when she lets go Niou eyes Jackal’s biceps, approximately the size of Niou’s head. Jackal is the only one she justifiably hasn’t seen in years, on account of Jackal having moved back to Brazil, so this should actually be the least fraught encounter of the night. One thing Niou has always appreciated about Jackal—or about Marui’s appreciation of Jackal; the boundaries are hazy—is her unchangeability. You knew exactly where you stood with Jackal and that was generally a pretty positive standing; both attributes together form a combination that runs somewhat scarce, in their circle.

The mini reunion gives Marui enough time to pull herself together and introduce her to the other girls; Niou remembers them from a collaboration Marui did a little while ago, an idol group from Korea. “This is Niou,” says Marui, in English. “We’re—”

“Classmates,” says Niou. “Used to be.”

“That’s dope,” says one of the girls, very earnestly. “I’m Mark.”

“Ye-e-e-s,” says the girl with candyfloss pink hair, stretching out the syllable. She stares at Niou with a sharp and deliberate intent that reminds Niou, briefly, of Atobe with her splayed fingers raised to her eyes. “I also have… classmate.”

“Unnie,” mutters the tallest girl. In hushed Korean: “Please—please be normal. You can’t do this, we’ve only just met Niou-ssi. Um… can you blink? You haven’t blinked in a really long time.” The pink-haired girl executes a mockingly exaggerated lowering and raising of eyelids like she’s heard of the so-called act of “blinking” but doesn’t quite believe in it. “Sorry,” the tall girl says, addressing Niou in English. She twitches like she means to bow but isn’t sure if she should. “I’m sorry. I’m Jisung.”

Niou can’t help letting out a quick laugh. Jisung’s unfortunate apparent impending stress-induced coronary aside, Niou can respect the drive to be the most unsettling person in a room full of the varying shades of insane represented by her particular generation of former school tennis club members. “Congratulations,” Niou says. “On the classmate.”

“Thank you,” the still-unnamed girl says, with manic cheer. “She is cute. So cute! Very cute!” She pauses. “I have other classmate… she is also there.”

Mark frowns. “Actually, I haven’t seen either of them in a while. Have you guys?”

“Not since we got here,” Jisung says.

“They will be okay,” Crazy-Eyed Bubblegum Hair says dismissively. “Jeno does not speak to other girls.”

“Yes, she does,” Jisung says.

“Though, other girls speak to her,” Coral Snake Anthropomorph continues, and then she also frowns. “Yes, we should go find her. And Haechan.”

The look on Marui’s face tells Niou she is also remembering that the remainder of the guest list comprises people like Akutsu Shinobu and Tohno Atsuki, who Kirihara has remained on bizarrely good terms with despite their U-17 World Cup doubles debacle back in middle school, but then again Kirihara has always had a bad habit of loving anything that caused him harm. “Haechin and Jenoppi?” Marui asks. “Don’t worry, they’ll be found… by Jackal!”

“Me?!” Jackal says, though she’s already passing her glass—looks like plain water, someone’s sticking to the nutrition plan—to Marui. She ducks her head down to kiss Marui on the cheek and slaps Niou across the delts. “Good to see you, Niou,” Jackal says. “Catch you later, yeah?”

She departs, trailed by the idol girls who give her little bows and waves like this is an awards ceremony, before Niou can decide on an answer. Good old Jackal, always making her life easier.

Marui shifts so she’s next to Niou instead of facing her. Side by side, surveying the scene together, the way they used to on the bench. “You talk to everyone else yet?”

“Yanagi, Akaya, An-chan,” Niou rattles off. “And you and Jackal, obviously. My bingo card’s almost done.”

“Make sure you go see Seika-chan soon.”

“Wouldn’t dream of missing out.” Marui snorts. Niou flashes her teeth. Then Niou says, staring directly ahead, “Thanks.”

In the periphery of Niou’s vision Marui pivots, angling her shoulders towards Niou. Surprised, Niou meets her eyes. With her unoccupied hand, Marui touches Niou’s elbow, then her wrist. “I’m glad you came,” she says quietly.

“I said I would,” Niou says.

“You know, you actually didn’t,” Marui says. “But thanks, also. For Illusioning me.”

“Yeah, I’ll be collecting my debt soon,” Niou says. “Don’t forget.”

Truthfully she has not yet decided what it is she wants from Marui. It's not like it was a difficult task, Illusioning into her. Idols are easy for her to mimic because they are by definition larger than life; Niou could probably do someone like Psycho Pinkette right off the bat without any further preparation. Marui always shone in the spotlight, soaked it up until she was radiating light herself and then it was nothing for Niou to skim off a little bit of that brightness to coat herself in, Marui’s candy colour scheme, Marui’s sunny catchphrases, Marui’s smile. Niou’s an entertainer, too, but she’s a magician, not an idol. Marui’s trick is herself. Niou’s trick is everything but herself.

“An-chan’d kill me if she knew I was cutting these kinds of deals—” Marui's gaze catches on something by the entrance; she starts and waves. “Hey, Aoi just arrived—Blue Angel, she's a friend, I did a VR live with her once, she's actually Zaizen Hikaru's cousin, you know—Zaizen from Shitenhoji, Zaizen from Akaya—”

”I know who Zaizen is,” Niou says. She knows who Aoi is, too; she'd watched the live in question.

“D'you wanna come meet Aoi?”

Niou waves her off. "I'll let you two catch up," she says. Marui dithers, clearly unhappy to leave Niou by herself, so Niou waves more insistently. “Besides, I’ve gotta go find Yukimura anyway, don’t I?”

That gets Marui to finally relent and leave, and Niou slouches back a little further against the wall. She does need to find Yukimura, but maybe not for the moment. It's not like she'd specified when. She can delay it a little longer.

What the hell, she thinks, and stretches the ambiguously metaphysical clingfilm of a second skin over herself. The Illusion, unfamiliar as it is, comes reluctantly, not the old and comfortable pullover of the people she’s had practice becoming. It’s easier when she can supplement an Illusion with props, but even in the absence of wigs and makeup she can still manage a pretty decent facsimile.

“Jaemin-unnie!” someone calls, in a town square clocktower bell kind of voice that cleaves right through the ambient chatter. When Niou turns in the direction of the sound, the girl elbowing her way through the crowd towards her—another idol girl from Marui’s collaboration—rears back. Her eyes narrow, assessingly. This one is a fan of Kirihara, Niou remembers that too. Degrees of separation, the fine mesh of association radiating outwards. “You aren’t Jaemin,” the girl says.

“Nope,” Niou agrees, switching to Korean to mirror her, though she doesn’t drop the Illusion. “What gave me away?”

The girl shrugs. “I don’t know… something’s off. You kinda don’t look enough like you might have killed someone without batting an eye.”

Niou gives her the wide and toothy smile that she knows the body she’s inhabiting tends to use. “How do you know I haven’t?”

The girl contemplates this for a moment. “Fair enough, I’ve seen Kirihara Akaya’s old matches, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had murderers at his wedding. Cool trick, though. But don’t let unnie see you.”

“Thanks,” Niou says. “I’ve been told I’m fun at parties.”

“But have you?”

“Been fun at parties?”

“Killed someone.”

Niou laughs. “It’s complicated.” She gestures at the face she’s wearing. “Has she?”

“Well, she wouldn’t have told us if she did, so who knows?” She reaches out and snags the sleeve of another shorter girl, halting her in her path. “Wait, Renjun, Renjun, check this out,” and she brandishes a finger at Niou like Niou is a zoo exhibit. The one called Renjun frowns, and then her eyes go round and startled.

“Piyo,” Niou says.

“Oh my god, definitely never let Jaemin-unnie hear you either. She already makes enough weird noises, she doesn’t need the inspiration.”

“Pupiina,” Niou says, saluting.

“This is… very weird,” Renjun says slowly, her eyebrows settling back into place. “You definitely aren’t Jaemin, I can tell. But you do look exactly like her.”

“See, that’s what I said!”

Niou sighs and lets the Illusion dissipate. “Two people seeing through me in seconds… I must be losing my touch.”

“No, it’s a really good impression! It’s just…” Renjun’s brow creases in what seems like sincere and serious consideration. “I think we know her too well. We’ve been together for a really long time.”

“How sweet,” Niou says.

“Renjun-chan, Chenle-chan, Niou, lovely to see you all again,” Atobe calls in English as she sweeps towards them, flanked by a retinue of a few of the old Hyotei contingent and, strangely enough, Echizen Ryo’s older sister whose name escapes Niou at the moment, the one from America or Spain or somewhere. After that first World Cup Niou had briefly contemplated learning how to Illusion into her as an academic exercise, but it probably wouldn’t have worked; Illusion is a temporary state, and the elder Echizen’s abilities seem to operate with irreversible effect.

“Yo, Atobe,” Niou says.

“Hi, Atobe-sama!” Chenle chirps.

Atobe gives Niou a dinner party hostess nod, somewhat undercut by her conspiratorial smirk, and then she turns her dazzling media smile on Renjun and Chenle. “Enjoying ourselves, hmm?”

“Yep,” Niou says, switching into English. “Very multilingual experience so far.”

“She turned into one of our members,” Chenle says.

“She does tend to do that,” Atobe says.

“Kabaji not at court today?” Niou says.

“She’s on Juri duty,” Oshitari drawls; seems she’s still physically unable to speak in anything other than a drawl. Mukahi Takako, who clearly stopped growing in elementary school, elbows her in the ribs.

“Thought being within a certain radius of Marui cured Akutagawa’s narcolepsy thing,” Niou says. “I was just talking to Marui, she’s definitely around.”

“Are you Bun-chan’s friend?” Renjun asks.

“Sure,” Niou says, since it’s true. In fact she had been Marui herself just a few hours ago. “I’m the one who came up with that nickname, you know. We go way back. We used to play tennis together.” In those words it sounds so simple. The rest of it isn’t something she wants to or even could explain to someone on the outside who did not live through it.

“Then you were also in the same tennis club as Yukimura Seika?” Renjun says, brightening up. “I watched a documentary—I mean, I didn’t know Bun-chan was a world-class tennis player before she was an idol, but she was even on the same school team as Yukimura! Yukimura Seika’s an amazing player—”

“Kirihara’s better,” Chenle interjects. “He's the goat. G-O-A-T. Greatest of all time.”

“Literally untrue,” Renjun hisses. “You don't understand everything Yukimura Seika went through—”

Echizen Not-Ryo finally speaks up, sounding highly amused. “Gotta say though, Echizen Ryo has beaten them both, so that's my vote in the pro tennis player power scaling bracket.”

“Disqualified for nepotism,” Atobe says. “And I’ll abstain from voting. Conflicts of interest.”

“I suppose it falls to me to take a stand for Shishido and Ootori,” Oshitari says, sighing. “Atobe, whatever happened to Hyotei Old Girls’ pride and solidarity…?”

“Eh, doubles is different,” Mukahi says.

“Doubles is different,” Niou agrees. Her heart squeezes, momentary. “But yes. Yukimura, Akaya, Marui… we were all on the same team.”

Suddenly Niou’s struck by a sense of separation, dizzying scale. She wishes she’d gone with Marui to meet more of the people who took her place, all of Rikkai’s places, this new context Marui’s transplanted herself into. But what remains of the old context? She’d dislocated herself from it, time and time again. It isn’t over, it didn’t end, Niou knows it too. Better than Marui, even. The process of severance is a fresh and unhealing wound.

There are too many gamemakers in this little circle of people. Too much clarity of vision, none of it from the people Niou wants to have it. So, spouting off a vague excuse, Niou does what she does best: gets the hell out of there.

Since she’s running out of major reunions, she figures she might as well get the most annoying part of the night over with, and allows herself to drift into Sanada’s line of sight.

”Tarundoru!” Sanada barks the second she lays eyes on Niou, as expected. Her arm twitches like she’s gearing up to backhand Niou, and Niou spends a hot second internally debating the costs and benefits of dodging the incoming slap versus just taking the hit. She’s a little out of practice with that kind of pain, but it’s probably deserved, anyway, and she’s feeling nostalgic.

Then Yukimura materialises at Sanada’s shoulder and Sanada’s thunder visibly subsides, ceding the lead. Niou takes a breath, half-involuntary. There it is, the familiar clean and light floral scent that doesn’t seem to be perfume and might actually just be some kind of chemical reaction naturally produced by Yukimura’s cells. It’s one of the things Niou has never been able to replicate, the handful of times she ever tried to Illusion into Yukimura.

“Hey, Yukimura,” Niou says lightly.

The expression on Yukimura’s face is inscrutable. Niou remembers the brittle flash of fury in Marui’s eyes back at her hotel room when she’d said, aren’t you tired of letting Seika-chan down? and all Niou could think about was being fourteen and standing alone on the court in a body that was not her own, nauseous to the borrowed marrow with exhaustion, Fuji’s open eyes across the net exactly the same shade of sizzling blue as the cloudless sky overhead and with all that attendant inevitability. For a moment Niou is struck by the inexplicable terror that Yukimura might actually start crying, which would mean Niou would have to kill herself on the spot, even if just to deprive Sanada of the opportunity to snap Niou’s neck with her giant cleaver hands first; Niou figures Marui is too far away to beat Sanada to the punch. To the… manual guillotine.

But Yukimura only smiles, and kisses her, once on each cheek. She cups Niou’s face in the well of her palms, and says, low and warm, “I’m glad to see you again, Niou.”

By no means does this signal that Niou is safe; even in middle school Yukimura had the grip strength capable of one-handedly crushing apples into pulp. But this, too, sings through her body like a hit of pure adrenaline, how viscerally and viciously she wants the threat and the serenity of her old captain’s touch again. All of the years collapsing in on themselves.

“Glad to be back, captain,” she mumbles, heart in her throat, and Yukimura, still smiling, doesn’t refute the title. That’s Yukimura’s kindness to her. Niou understands. It doesn’t make it smart any less. She doesn’t want to want Yukimura’s forgiveness, but she can’t help it. And its inverse, too: she wants not to want to forgive Yukimura. Or more precisely, she’d never forgiven Yukimura in middle school because there had simply been nothing to forgive. If there had been, maybe it would be easier to stay away. The topography of guilt and obligation between them holding steady as a bridge, or a chain.

It’s true: Niou is a coward. She had to sever every tie completely or she would never have been able to leave at all, seeing what it had done to the others. She had to leave because the alternative was too much to bear. It’s almost a genetic impulse. She will always want to come back to Yukimura. She will always want Yukimura.

The crystal chime of metal striking glass except magnified several hundred times louder than such a sound would normally be reverberates through the room and probably the rest of the prefecture too. “If everyone could please begin making their way to their seats,” Yanagi says from where she’s standing at the front, into the ensuing stunned silence. She’s holding what appears to be a normal fork and a normal champagne glass, so Niou can only surmise that she and/or Inui made use of their combined laundry list of material engineering credentials to synthesise new volume-enhancing metallic and/or crystalline substances capable of making hyper-audible dings, possibly specifically for use at this event.

“We’ll talk later,” Yukimura says. She lets go, and Niou manages to escape the black hole of the attention of the Child of God without needing to commit ritual suicide, or undergo summary execution, or experience some horrible lapse of bodily control causing her to cry in public herself. Saved by the bell.

Niou glances back over her shoulder. Echizen Ryosomething has abandoned Atobe’s entourage and is now chatting to Renjun and Chenle alone, so Niou sends a silent prayer in their direction, but if they’re accustomed to a bandmate who secretly engages in homicide or something they can probably hold their own. Niou makes her way to her assigned table, which comprises the old Seigaku third-year crew sans Tezuka, who has predictably been spirited away by Atobe. If she Illusioned into Tezuka she could blend right in; see how long it took the table to notice the imposter in their ranks. She could do with some of Tezuka’s shocking mulishness right now.

“Oh! Hi, Niou-san,” Oishi says, which nixes that idea. Niou’s a gracious loser, though. She takes her seat next to Oishi. “Um… wow! I haven’t seen you in years…”

“Nobody has,” Niou says agreeably. From Oishi’s other side, Kikumaru makes a friendly cat’s paw gesture at Niou. Across the table, Fuji smiles at Niou, and the instinct to step back prickles down the nape of Niou’s neck, even though she’s already sitting down.

Oishi blinks. Valiantly she rallies, which has always been Niou's favourite thing about her. “So what have you been up to?”

"Stuff," Niou says. “Here and there.”

Oishi blinks again. Then:

"Apologies for cutting in, Oishi-kun," comes Yagyuu Hiromi’s unfailingly polite voice from behind her. “Would you mind if I borrowed Niou-kun for a moment?”

Resolutely Niou stares down at her empty plate, to stave off for just a little while longer the final boss encounter she’s been passively avoiding all night, feeling resentful in no particular direction. She doesn't have to go. But her body has already stood up again, moving after Yagyuu of its own accord. Through the constellation of tables and out of the doors, into the quieter night.

Outside, Yagyuu turns to face her, and Niou braces herself for the sucker punch of familiarity.

“Niou-kun,” Yagyuu says.

Everything about Yagyuu is, visually speaking, unchanged. Her hair a blunt curtain falling to just below the line of her shoulders. Even her glasses are the same frames she’s had since the first time Niou saw her in middle school. Niou still has a pair, somewhere. Vertigo swirls through Niou’s head. She breathes in.

“Yagyuu,” Niou returns.

The resentment might be anticipation. It’s hard to tell the difference. The physiological signs are the same. Dryness of the mouth, accelerated heartbeat, adrenaline spike, some kind of heaviness, almost physical, in her stomach. The addictive threat and serenity, not the deadening blanket of Yukimura’s presence but the fine and lightless scalpel of Yagyuu’s cool gaze.

“You look well,” Yagyuu says.

“Yeah,” Niou says. She shoves her hands in her pockets, warding off a shiver. It’s briskly cold outdoors, away from the crush of bodies. There is only Yagyuu, which is like saying there is only herself. “You look… the same.” The words leave her mouth with startling relief.

“Where were you?”

“You know, I didn’t think you were gonna ask,” Niou says. “I thought about everyone. Whether they’d ask. Yukimura, no. Yanagi, no. Sanada, yes, unless Yukimura got there first. Marui, fifty-fifty, though that didn’t really count ‘cause she found me early. Jackal, no. Akaya, also yes, if he wasn’t, you know, in the middle of getting married. And you. I thought you wouldn’t ask.”

“You didn’t think I would be curious?”

“I…” Niou swallows. There’s little point masking her tells in front of Yagyuu, because they are also Yagyuu’s tells. It’s difficult to remember whose mannerisms were originally whose. After some time Yagyuu’s habits just became Niou’s own habits, no longer mimicked affectations, and then the distinction didn’t seem quite so important anymore. “Couldn’t have said for sure it was something you’d care to find out.”

Yukimura is unreadable to Niou because she is so fundamentally different she might as well be an entirely alien being; Niou has accepted that she will never be able to place herself in Yukimura’s shoes and thus Yukimura will forever remain miles out of reach. Yagyuu occupies the precise opposite extreme in terms of distance from Niou and yet she is just as unreadable. The gap between an object and its reflection in a mirror is no less a gap for its asymptotic approach to zero. We’ve been together for a really long time, Renjun had said, but hadn’t Rikkai, too? Invincible Rikkai, infinite immutable Rikkai, and none of that had helped them to know the difference.

Yagyuu’s lips are pursed. It’s not her expression of irritation, sublimated three layers down because it wasn’t becoming of a lady to show such an unsightly emotion so plainly. This is her contemplative face, the one reserved for inward reflection. Niou has to consciously stop herself from replicating it.

But all Yagyuu says is, “It’s rather cold, isn’t it?” She gives a cursory glance to the thin silver crescent of the moon in the sky. “Shall we run a lap? For old times’ sake.”

“Sure. Why the hell not. Let’s do Sanada’s job for her.” Niou kicks off her heels, knocking them out of the way with the side of her foot. Yagyuu bends down to undo the straps of her own shoes and does the same, just with more steps in between.

Niou does a short round of half-hearted stretching to appease the inculcated habit, the residual harrowing fear of injury not so much for her own sake but because the team could not afford to have her out of commission, though it’s not like that matters anymore, except that it always will. Again, Yagyuu does the same. Identical outcome, similar though more detailed process, does the parallel track extend to the originating motivation as well? Who could say.

Together they set off around the courtyard at a moderate pace in a silence that Niou isn’t sure qualifies for companionable. But it is a silence, and it is with a companion, so by technical definition it must be companionable silence, and Niou has always made a point out of rules-lawyering technicalities just on principle. It’s pleasant running terrain, at least. The grass under her bare feet springs back, soft and cool. This feels nothing like doing laps back at school. This feels a little bit like the night Niou told Yagyuu she was done with Illusion. They’d gone for a run, then, too. Yagyuu had matched her pace perfectly. The line between the familiar and the unknown fades in and out of definition.

By the time they make their way back to the fountain Niou’s breathing hard and vaguely nauseous from exertion. She doubles over, hands braced on her knees, then lowers herself into a crouch, palms to the grass for balance, some amorphous memory that increased proximity to the ground would give her heart a gravity-induced boost in pumping blood around the body. Her shins ache. The years she’s spent off the competitive circuit stridently making themselves felt.

Then Yagyuu speaks. “I saw you, once,” she says. If she’s winded, it is undetectable in her voice. “At Kannai station, across the platforms. It was only for a moment between trains. I called out to you, but you didn’t seem to see me.”

“Oh? Did you go after me?”

“I did,” Yagyuu says. Her gaze is direct, piercing. “I ran like fuck.” The expletive leaves her mouth crisply rounded off. “By the time I made it off the platform you were already gone.”

Niou’s pulse in her ears doubles in volume. “Not very ladylike of you,” Niou says. “I’m flattered.”

She hadn’t known. It unsettles her that she hadn’t known. She’d always had the vague expectation that some kind of supernatural sixth sense would have alerted her to Yagyuu’s presence, had they ever crossed paths by serendipity. How could it not? Hadn’t they spent long enough inside each other’s selves for a phantom-limb awareness of the counterpart to take root? But she hadn’t known, and Yagyuu hadn’t caught her, and it’d taken until now to face each other again.

Yagyuu touches the bridge of her glasses. “Would you like to know what I think, Niou-kun?”

“Go ahead.”

“You see, I believe that everything you do follows a particular logic, and does so strictly. It may be a strange logic, but it is a logic nonetheless. Understanding you is only a matter of understanding that logic,” Yagyuu says. “Here is my premise. Disappearing and cutting all contact seems to suggest that you wished to leave the past behind.”

Niou straightens back up. “You took a side of psychology with your English when you were at Cambridge?”

Unfazed, Yagyuu continues. “But you are the one who holds onto the past most tightly, I think. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept track of us, all this time.”

The unasked question coalesces as clearly as if Yagyuu had spoken it aloud; Niou could easily substitute her own voice, or her voice as Yagyuu. She could still run. She is very aware that Yagyuu has left her this escape route on purpose, courtesy or test or both. But she’s out of breath from the lap around the grounds, already. She does not think she could do another.

“I had to leave,” Niou says, “because if I didn’t leave, then I would be staying. Obviously.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with staying.”

“It’s just not what I do.”

Yagyuu says, “Then let me do it for you.”

As if on cue, the wind suddenly picks up around them, low and dislocating susurration through the canopy of leaves overhead. Yagyuu’s hair flares out around her shoulders. She looks absolutely nothing like Niou. Niou’s heart stutters, painfully teenage sensation. “What?”

“No need to play coy, Niou-kun.” Yagyuu smiles. “You know exactly what I mean. Correct me if I misunderstood, but I was under the impression that your self-imposed prohibition on Illusion extends only as far as the boundary of the court.” She sweeps her arm out over the lawn, the glittering fountain, the warmly lit-up pavilion that currently houses the entirety of Niou’s heart. And Niou’s estranged soul stands transplanted in front of her, a mirror that doesn’t reflect. “This is not a court.”

“Like… you want to Switch? Literally right now?”

Yagyuu shrugs modestly. “I may or may not have brought supplies.”

“No way,” Niou says, a laugh bubbling up in her throat. “You didn’t know I’d be here. I didn’t know I’d be here.”

“Of course I knew. Why are you surprised?” Yagyuu says. “I have always known you better than you know yourself.”

“Hope,” Niou says, “isn’t a good look on a lady.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yagyuu says. “I don’t hope. I leave that kind of thing to the others. Marui-kun and Yanagi-kun and such.”

“So if you don’t hope,” Niou says. The rest of the question hardly bears articulation.

“As I said,” Yagyuu says. “I know.” She holds out a hand to Niou, palm up, courteously expectant. “Your turn, I think, to be the lady.”

Niou looks at Yagyuu. Yagyuu looks back, unhesitant. Seeing her, and not the trick. Clarity of vision from the person she wants. The entire miasma of misdirection cleanly falling away. She takes Yagyuu’s hand.