Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Another track. Another overtime.

Another headache.

Asaba sighed as he shrugged into his navy trench coat, offered a half-hearted goodbye to his colleagues, and stepped out of the studio without looking back. The air outside bit colder than he remembered. Winter had come quietly, creeping beneath his collarbones. Hands in his pockets, he drifted past neon signs and shuttered ramen stalls into the edge of the entertainment district.

Usually, he'd go straight home. Lock the door. Collapse into bed.

But tonight, home felt… pointless.

It was strange, still. Just six months ago, they were nobodies—an underground band playing to half-empty rooms and flickering bar lights. Then Inferno dropped, and everything exploded: views, followers, fan cams, international shows. People sang their lyrics in languages he didn't speak.

At first, it felt good. Euphoric even. The kind of validation you don't question—not when you've chased it for years. The lights, the noise, the grins too wide to be real.

Now it felt like cosplay. A pretty mask. A few borrowed lines. Play the part. Smile for the fans. Be grateful. Be charming. Be someone.

He used to mean what he sang. Now he just mouths it.

Asaba paused by a vending machine, letting the cold air cut through his thoughts. He didn't want a drink. He just didn't want to keep walking.

At least the others had their rituals. Soukaku disappeared into greasy takeout and endless food blogs. Miyabi buried herself in incense and deep-breathing apps. Yanagi—well, he wasn't sure if she managed her stress or just drowned it in projects. Probably the latter. It suited her.

And him? Booze. Noise. People who left before morning. Strangers with lips he couldn't remember. Names he never asked for.

It was a rhythm. Not healing—just something that numbed the silence.

Behind rows of canned coffee and neon sodas, the vending machine's glass caught his reflection—pale, drawn, eyes ringed with exhaustion. He barely recognized the man staring back.

His heart ached—a slow, dull throb beneath his ribs.

There it was: the suit, the styled hair, the frame honed by trainers, and sleepless nights. The kind of man he once dreamed of becoming. Wealth, fame, a body sculpted like it meant something.

And yet, the void remained. Unmoving. Undiminished.

All the noise outside—the cameras, the fans, the flashing billboards with his face on them—couldn't drown out the silence inside. He had built a temple to be worshiped in. But he never learned how to live in it.

A sharp gust cut across his cheeks. He blinked, breath hitching, and raised a hand to his face—pressing into the skin as if to confirm he was still there. Still real.

His fingers felt distant. As if the nerves beneath them had gone quiet.

Cold. Right. It was getting cold.

Asaba grimaced and walked—not toward anything, really, just away.

"Perhaps some booze will warm me up."

It never did. But the lie felt comfortable in his mouth.

The bass hit before he even turned the corner—a low, pulsing tremor that hummed up through the soles of his boots and into his ribs. He didn’t flinch as the street burst into color, neon bleeding across the wet asphalt like fresh paint beneath a butcher’s knife.

This wasn’t his first time here.

It wouldn’t be the last.

The scent hit next—perfume too sweet to be real, smoke that clung to skin, garlic from some late-night skewer stand burning under tired fluorescent bulbs. He inhaled it all without a flicker.

His eyes didn’t linger on the riot of flashing signs or the bodies slouched against alley walls. Instead, his gaze slid straight toward the chipped, faded signage of The Velvet Shadow —a name worn down by time and bad decisions.

A place that clung to him like a second skin.

Not home.

But close enough.

He pushed through the heavy curtain—and the world fractured.

The bass didn’t just hit; it rattled. Through the walls, the floorboards, the marrow. A relentless pulse, bodily and brutal—something he acknowledged but no longer felt in his gut.

The air inside was thick, syrupy with sweat and cheap alcohol. It tasted faintly electric, like the moment before a lightning strike.

Before him, the dance floor writhed—not a crowd, but a creature, breathing in sync with the beat. A vortex of limbs and laughter, wet skin glinting under strobe lights.

Bodies blurred into each other. Fluid. Fevered. Hips moved like incantations, primal and precise.

Almost inhuman in their rhythm.

Almost free.

He moved from the edge of the dance floor, drawn not by desire but instinct—a slow pivot of intent. His gaze, once fogged and drifting, sharpened like a lens snapping into focus. It locked onto the bar.

Asaba slipped into the current of bodies—a sidestep here, a shoulder brush there, each motion instinctual, refined by repetition. He didn’t part the crowd; he folded into it, invisible until he wasn’t.

The bass still pulsed underfoot, but here, near the bar, it dulled into a deeper thrum — less like a hammer, more like a heartbeat.

Behind the bar stood a wolf Thiren—tall, composed, clad in a white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up and dark straps crossing his arms in functional fashion. His crimson eyes met Asaba’s with a flicker of recognition.

No words passed between them.

Only the nod—small, precise, ritualistic. A code.

Strongest you've got.

The Thiren didn’t pause in his methodical rhythm, still polishing a glass, but gave a curt nod in return. His hand slid instinctively toward a worn, unlabeled bottle tucked in the corner of the shelf—one meant for regulars who didn’t need menus, only mercy.

With his order silently placed, Asaba surveyed the perimeter. His gaze wasn’t searching for company—or conversation. If anything, it was searching for distance.

He found it: a dim alcove tucked behind a decorative pillar, just wide enough for a single stool. Half in shadow, half in glow. Overlooked. Unbothered.

Perfect.

He moved toward it without hurry, ignoring the scattered glances from nearby patrons—half-curious, half-hungry. They didn’t matter. Nothing did, not tonight.

The stool creaked beneath him as he settled in, the leather cracked and familiar, like the seat of an old train car long retired.

From this vantage point, he had a full view of the dance floor — the kaleidoscope of limbs, the frenetic joy, the choreography of chaos.

He watched it all in silence.

Not detached—removed.

A ghost at the edge of the living.

His own little sanctuary, curated by absence.

He didn’t wait long.

The bartender, efficient and fluent in silence, slid two small, heavy glasses across the polished wood. They met his reach with a soft clink, the amber liquid inside catching the strobe light—glinting like molten glass, alive for just a moment before settling into stillness.

Asaba didn’t dive in.

He didn’t reach like a man parched, or desperate for forgetting.

Instead, he stared.

Twin reflections stared back at him from the surface—his own eyes, shadowed by the dim alcove, dark and uncertain. There was a flicker there. Recognition? Regret? A question with no words.

His fingers, long and unadorned, curled around the first glass. The cool weight grounded him. His grip tightened, then eased—not unlike someone deciding whether or not to light a match.

A slow breath slipped from his lips. Not exhaustion.

Permission.

Then the glass rose.

The first sip wasn’t a gulp. It was measured, patient—a communion rather than consumption. The liquor burned, a line of fire across the tongue, the throat, the chest. But it was familiar. Not unpleasant.

He savored the warmth like a man might cradle a dying flame—not to light the room, but to feel something before it went out.

The second glass remained untouched. For now.

He set the first glass down with a soft clink—a sound immediately swallowed by the club’s relentless pulse. A low, drawn-out “Gah” slipped from his chest, deep and reflexive. A subtle flush warmed his cheeks, blooming beneath the skin like an ember reigniting in the dark.

He blinked. Once. Twice. Slowly. As if refocusing a camera.

The edges of the world sharpened. Just slightly. The colors bled brighter. The crowd's chaos became something more sculpted—not less wild, just more alive. And beneath it all, a gentle lift in his head, a soft buzz unraveling the tight lines he hadn’t even known he’d drawn across his shoulders.

Without urgency, he reached for the second glass.

But he didn’t drink.

Instead, he shifted—leaned back against the bar’s cool, slick edge, the chill soaking into the cotton of his coat. From this new perch, he watched the floor unfold again. The swirl of limbs, the fractured light, the almost-silent screams — laughter and lust colliding beneath the strobes like insects against glass.

It was all a little sharper now. A little more vivid.

And still, it felt like watching a world behind glass.

Not untouched. Just unreachable.

He watched them dance—flushed, laughing, beautiful in their private abandon — and sipped from nothing, a silent spectator to someone else’s version of freedom.

His gaze, softened by the liquor’s slow bloom, drifted lazily across the sea of motion—until it snagged, unbidden, on something near the edge of the floor.

A boy. Young—younger than him, maybe by a decade — with a shock of silver-gray hair, sharp against the club’s bloom of color. He stood listening, rapt, to another man.

The second one… slick. Too smooth. Asaba knew the type—every bar had one. Mouth working like a well-oiled lie machine, spilling promises sweetened by intent. His smile was wide, warm, and utterly false—the kind of grin made for spotlights and mugshots.

And Asaba? He saw through it instantly.

It was in the posture—just a touch too casual. The lean-in. The pause that lasted a half-second too long. The hunger behind the man’s eyes, poorly hidden by layers of social silk.

The gray-haired youth, charmed and unaware, eventually excused himself and headed toward the bar—drink abandoned on the ledge behind him.

That’s when it happened.

A flicker of motion. The predator moved.

A quick hand. A subtle dip.

Something dropped. Small. Silent. Easy to miss—unless you were looking.

But Asaba was looking. And he knew. Knew before the object even hit the drink.

Something cold bloomed beneath Asaba’s ribs. Sharp. Real.

The fog in his head peeled back, just a little. Just enough.

No ceremony now. No slow reflection. He brought the glass to his lips and drank deep, downing it in a single, controlled motion. The burn hit harder this time—sharper, like it knew he needed it.

A hissed exhale left his mouth.

Glass down. Resolve up.

And then he stood.

The time for watching had ended. The world had come knocking—and Asaba had just answered the door.

Asaba’s gaze locked onto the predator—sharp, unwavering. “Scram, fucker,” he said flatly. “Or I’ll tell the kid what you just dropped in his drink.”

A muscle twitched in the man’s jaw. “Mind your own goddamn business.”

“Sorry,” Asaba murmured, voice low and precise, slicing clean through the bass. “I’d rather mind yours right now.”

The predator’s eyes narrowed. He scanned Asaba—not for weakness, but for hesitation. Found none. Just cold resolve. The kind of calm that said: I’ve already decided what I’ll do to you.

For a heartbeat, the tension held—a wire stretched taut between two men, the club’s chaos blurring behind them.

Then the man grimaced, almost imperceptibly.

No words. No threat.

Just a silent promise stitched into the way he turned, pushed off the bar, and vanished into the crowd—swallowed by strobe light and sweat and sound.

Gone.

The boy returned just as the man disappeared into the crowd. “Yeah, they didn’t have—oh.”

He froze mid-sentence, eyes falling on Asaba.

Asaba picked up the untouched glass and, without a word, tipped its contents into the slop sink behind the bar. The liquid vanished with a faint splash.

The boy blinked. “Um... was there something wrong with the drink?”

Asaba didn’t look at him. He set the empty glass down with quiet finality.

“Something not good for your body,” he said simply.

A pause hung between them—awkward, uncertain. Not fear. Not gratitude. Just the heavy realization that something almost happened.

The boy followed Asaba’s gaze—eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on the spot where the man had disappeared.  

“...Thanks.” The word felt foreign. Inadequate.  

Asaba didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the crowd a moment longer, then drifted back to the bar. He raised two fingers toward the bartender in a silent signal—the same drink, a clean one.

“I’ll get you another,” he said. Simple. Even.

As if he were just replacing something accidentally knocked over.

But the look in his eyes—cool, watchful—said something else entirely:

Not tonight. Not on my watch.

Asaba settled back onto the stool, eyes drifting toward the crowd—or maybe through it.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His voice was flat. Not hostile. Just void of real curiosity.

The boy hesitated, then slid onto the stool beside him.

“Well… I actually came with a friend,” he said, the awkwardness tucked just beneath his words. “They got busy tonight. So, it’s just me. Figured it was a good chance to check the place out.”

Asaba gave a quiet hum—somewhere between acknowledgment and dismissal. “Hmm. Figured.”

The bartender arrived, placing two fresh glasses in front of them. Asaba offered a barely-there nod. The boy murmured a soft “Thanks.”

A beat passed. The bass throbbed through the wood beneath them like a second heartbeat.

The boy shifted. Turned slightly toward him. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said carefully, “but… you don’t exactly look like you’re having the time of your life.”

“Having fun?” Asaba asked, lifting the glass for a small sip.

He winced—just barely. The sweetness caught him off guard. Not unpleasant, exactly. Just… not his kind of poison.

He set the glass down, eyes drifting once more to the dance floor—though they didn’t seem to see it.

“Life’s a bitch,” he muttered, tapping a finger once against the rim with a soft ting. “And it has a way of messing with everyone. This?”

He nodded slightly toward the glass. “This helps you forget. For a little while.”

Then, after a breath: “And you?” He didn't need to look at the boy. Didn't need to.

“Well,” the boy said, fingers fiddling with the glass between his hands, “I think I had fun tonight. And… I’m not sure I want to stop here just yet.”

Asaba turned to look at him, brow lifting ever so slightly. He was almost certain now — the kid didn’t recognize him. Didn’t see the idol, the performer, the man with the carefully sculpted persona.

Right now, he was just facing Asaba.

No lights. No cameras. No friendly, caring bullshit.

That realization tugged at something in his chest. He didn’t smile—not quite—but a quiet, mental chuckle stirred behind his eyes.

The novelty was... Refreshing.

Pleasant, even.

“The dance floor welcomes you at any time,” Asaba said, his gaze drifting back to the writhing mass.

He grimaced — not at the sight, but at the way the boy’s face shifted. Relaxed one second. Horrified the next.

“I’d imagine being soaked in sweat if I ever joined it,” the boy muttered, eyes narrowing as if trying to laugh it off.

Asaba’s gaze didn’t leave him. “You say you want to stay. Your face says you’d rather be buried alive.” A beat. “Which one’s lying?”

The boy stared into his glass like it might swallow him whole. A flush crept up his neck—not from the liquor. "I guess... my face is right. I feel stupid now."

"Mm, most people are lying to themselves, kid," Asaba hummed, swirling the glass. "Get used to spotting it," he said. "Or you'll start believing your own."

“Your taste’s too bland, kid,” Asaba said, setting the glass down with a quiet clink. “Next time, get something stronger. Helps dull whatever it is you’re pretending not to feel.”

He stood, rolling his shoulders once before glancing toward the counter.

“You want somewhere quieter?” he asked—not warmly, not coldly. Just... plainly. Like offering an umbrella before a storm hit.

The boy looked up.

Their eyes met. One bleary with liquor and exhaustion, the other wide with something harder to name—hesitation, maybe. Hope.

For a moment, neither of them moved. The bass kept thudding around them, uncaring.

Then the boy nodded, voice soft but certain.

“Yeah," the boy said. "I think I do."

They were out on the street. Late November. Freezing.

Asaba's left hand drifted to the coat’s pocket on instinct, fingers brushing the familiar shape of a cigarette pack and a battered lighter tucked beside it.

He pulled one out, lit it with practiced ease, then turned and held the pack out toward the kid.

The boy raised a hand, offering a faint wave.

“Thanks, but… I don’t really smoke.”

Asaba shrugged, slipping the pack back into his pocket. “Suit yourself.”

He took a slow drag, the tip flaring briefly in the dark. Smoke curled up into the night—pale, fragile, and already vanishing.

Now that he could finally see the kid—not filtered through LEDs and strobe light—the details settled into focus.

He had a lean, composed face framed by tousled gray hair, the kind that made him look calm, if a little undone. His sharp, sea-green eyes held a strange mix of intelligence and weariness, like someone who always thought ten steps ahead, but rarely spoke the truth of what he was feeling.

His features were soft, but sculpted. Balanced on that thin line between boyish and refined. There was a quiet melancholy behind those half-lidded eyes—not performative, not dramatic. Just lived-in.

He looked like someone who never stopped observing. Always calculating. And maybe—just maybe—someone who’d already figured you out before you even opened your mouth.

The kid was wrapped in a long winter overcoat—sharp lines, tailored clean. Underneath, a sky-blue turtleneck peeked out from the collar, vivid against the cold.

Soft where the coat was crisp. A splash of color in a grayscale night.

Like someone who understood presentation—but hadn’t yet learned to hide everything.

Maybe his friend shouldn’t have left him alone in that bar.

Asaba pinched the bridge of his nose—more reflex than frustration—and let out a slow breath.

For a moment, he tilted his head back, eyes tracing the stretch of black sky above. No stars. Just a blank ceiling to a long night.

And for that second, something in his shoulders eased—like gravity had loosened its grip.

“So… do you want to grab something to eat?” the gray-haired boy asked.

His sea-green eyes locked onto Asaba’s—clear, unwavering. For a second, Asaba swore he could lose himself in them. Not like drowning. More like drifting — slowly, without protest.

“Sure,” Asaba said, stuffing his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Could use something to fill me up.”

The boy’s face lit up—not bright, not dramatic. Just genuine.

“Great. I know a place.”

The walk didn’t take long. They stopped in front of a small izakaya tucked between shuttered storefronts and flickering street lamps. Warm light spilled out from behind a faded curtain, the scent of grilled meat and soy broth drifting into the cold.

It was small. Quiet. Peaceful.

Cozy, Asaba thought.

Yeah. He liked that.

The kid stepped in first, slipping past the curtain—but paused just inside, glancing back.

“You coming?”

“Give me a sec.”

Asaba flicked the cigarette to the ground, then crushed it beneath his boot—a slow twist, flame snuffed, ritual complete.

Only then did he step forward and slip through the curtain.

The first thing he noticed was the heat—not stifling, not sharp. Just warm.

Really warm.

It wrapped around him like a blanket fresh out of the dryer, chasing the cold from his bones. Asaba took a slow breath, the scent of broth and soy hanging heavy in the air, then followed the boy to a table tucked in the corner.

His eyes scanned the room—compact, quiet, a handful of empty seats.

Only one chef behind the counter.

Short. Crimson skin. A rig of mechanical arms sprouted from a device on his back, each one moving with precise, practiced rhythm.

Well, Asaba thought, that explains why he’s working solo.

Asaba picked up the menu, eyes skimming the options with practiced indifference. After a beat, he slid it across the table.

“Here. Knock yourself out.”

The chef approached not long after—his steps quiet, mechanical arms still twitching gently behind him like resting limbs.

“Shoyu,” Asaba said. “Extra menma. One glass of bee—”

He paused, glanced at the kid. “Make it two.”

The chef turned, eyes scanning the boy. “And you, young customer?”

The boy smiled, just faintly. “Tonkotsu, please.”

“So… what do you do?” the boy asked, hands resting lightly on his thighs.

Asaba glanced at him. Just for a second.

Then his gaze dropped, and he exhaled—slow, almost soundless.

“Music composer. Singer.”

No deflection. No posturing.

If the kid didn’t recognize him, then lying felt pointless. Redundant.

“Whoa,” the boy said, eyes widening just a touch. “That must take a lot of creativity.”

Asaba let out a low chuckle—dry, but not unkind. “It did.”

“Honestly... being a music composer?”

Asaba leaned back slightly, gaze drifting—not at the boy, not at the room, but somewhere far and forgotten.

“It used to be something else. A calling, they’d say. A purpose.”

He exhaled.

“Now? It feels more like a really elaborate echo chamber. You sit there, staring at a blank screen. Or a piano that just sits there, silent—like it’s mocking you.”

His fingers twitched slightly. Memory or habit, even he wasn’t sure.

“I remember when an empty staff paper felt like a world of possibilities. A blank canvas. A chance to pull something out of the air—something beautiful. Something real .”

A beat.

“Now it’s just... lines. Lines waiting for notes that won’t come.”

He glanced down. “My fingers hover over the keys, but there’s no melody. No harmony. Just this vast, aching silence where the music used to live.”

Across the table, the boy didn’t interrupt. Didn’t flinch. His sea-green eyes were still and listening.

Asaba continued, quieter now: “You try to force it, of course. You pull every trick you’ve got. Load up a shiny new VST. Switch to 7/8. Hell, throw on some Mongolian throat singing just to pretend you still feel something.”

A humorless exhale — half laugh, half exorcism.

“But it’s all fake. You're trying to fake a feeling you don’t even believe in anymore.”

He shifted in his seat, then added, almost grudgingly:

“And singing...”

The pause stretched. “Singing’s worse.”

He chuckled—dry and tired.

“At least with composing, you can pretend it’s coming from somewhere. But singing? You’ve got to embody it. Drag it up through your throat like it still matters. Like you matter.”

His voice dropped. “And it doesn’t. Not anymore.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward—it was heavy. Respected. The boy looked down at his own hands, thumbs grazing over one another before he finally spoke.

“…That sounds lonely.”

Asaba blinked. He hadn't expected pity, or argument—but somehow, that word cut deeper.

“I mean,” The boy added softly, “you’re describing it like you’re the only one left in the room. Like the song’s abandoned you.”

Asaba gave a slow shrug. “Maybe it has.”

The boy didn’t smile. Didn’t offer a cliché. Just said:

“I think you miss being heard.”

Asaba stilled—something tightening in his chest, so subtle it barely registered.

“And maybe,” he continued, gaze steady, “you’re tired of singing to people who only want your voice, not your words.”

Asaba looked at him. Really looked. That sea-green stare—too young to be that perceptive, too quiet to be performing.

He swallowed something dry in his throat.

“The worst part?” he muttered, voice coarse again. “The clients. They show up with stars in their eyes, talking about their ‘vision.’ They want something epic. Something heartbreaking. Something that’ll ‘change the world.’”

He scoffed. “I nod. I smile. I scribble notes. Knowing damn well I’m about to hand them something… fine. Technically solid.”

A long breath. “But not mine. ”

His voice dropped, a whisper just above the surface of his glass.

“Just a ghost of what I used to be capable of.”

The kid was quiet. Then he said:

“…Ghosts still linger for a reason.”

Asaba stared at him for a long moment, not defensive. Not angry.

Just stunned by the sheer sincerity of it.

“Here you go. Fresh and steamy.”

The chef’s voice broke the quiet just in time—or too late. Asaba couldn’t tell. Relief brushed the edge of his thoughts. Or maybe regret. Or both.

He didn’t know anymore.

The boy wasted no time—he picked up his chopsticks, split them with a clean snap.

“Itadakimasu,” he said, cheerful but soft, like the word belonged to him.

Asaba watched him for a moment—the ease, the warmth, the way the boy leaned slightly over his bowl like it was a small shrine.

Then he looked down at his own.

Steam rose from the broth in slow, ghostly spirals—thick, fragrant, opaque. It blurred his view, clung to his skin. The heat of it touched his cheeks, a gentle pressure, not unlike tears that hadn’t been shed.

He clasped his hands together, fingers laced.

“Itadakimasu,” he murmured — barely above a whisper, as if saying it too loud might crack something open.

The food was good.

Better than any takeout he’d had in months—maybe years. There was something real about it. Honest. The kind of warmth that didn’t ask questions.

Asaba blew gently across the broth, watching the surface ripple in response. Then he took a careful sip.

“It’s… hot,” he said, pausing, letting the heat settle in his chest. “But good.”

The boy looked up at him then—eyes soft, glinting beneath the low lights.

“Everything worth feeling is,” he said.

The line landed with quiet precision.

Asaba didn’t respond. Not with words.

He reached into the bowl and, with practiced ease, split his marinated egg in two—clean, perfect, the yolk holding firm inside the white.

Across the table, the boy’s egg didn’t fare as well. The moment his chopsticks touched it, the yolk collapsed—spilling into the broth, golden and uncontained, painting the surface with warmth.

Neither of them commented.

But Asaba noticed. And for a moment, the silence between them didn’t feel empty.

It felt… full.

“And your profession?”

Asaba’s voice was quiet. Not sharp. Not probing. Just... curious.

The boy blinked—just for a moment. As if surprised to be asked. Then his face smoothed, calm as ever.

“Ah—sorry,” he said, setting his chopsticks down and reaching for a handkerchief. He dabbed gently at the corner of his lips, wiping away a streak of broth. “Forgot to tell you about that. Only fair I share in return.”

A soft breath. No theatrics. Just truth.

“I’m a Computer Science major,” he continued. “Finishing up university.”

“I’m also working a part-time job,” the boy added, sipping his broth between thoughts. “Gotta save up for rent. Right now I’m sharing a place with a friend—he’s a Thiren too. Cat-type.”

He glanced up, a small grin tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Wants to be a cop. Says the city needs ‘someone with claws and a conscience.’”

Asaba snorted—softly, before he could stop himself.

The boy kept going. A little faster now. Looser. Talking about late-night shifts, microwave disasters, his roommate’s bizarre sleep habits, how the radiator makes a noise like it’s about to explode every other Tuesday.

And somewhere in the middle of that ramble — somewhere between ‘We keep a bucket under the sink for drips’ and ‘He tried to arrest a pigeon once’ — Asaba laughed.

Really laughed.

Just a small, honest sound, almost foreign in his own throat. But it was real. And it stayed with him longer than it should’ve.

Something in his chest eased. Unclenched.

For a brief moment, the weight slipped off.

And what was left behind was something startlingly light.

Not joy. Not peace. But gratitude.

Quiet. Unspoken. And maybe undeserved.

But there, all the same.

They stepped out of the Izakaya and into the freezing night. The cold hit Asaba like a slap—sharp, sudden, and far too real.

He swayed.

Two glasses of the strongest wine, chased with cheap beer, now churned in his blood like poison and poetry. The world tilted, slow and merciless.

“Shit,” he muttered, closing his eyes. The pounding behind his forehead pulsed in time with his heartbeat—relentless, rising.

He reached out for balance and found none.

God, what a scene: barely upright, coat stained with drink, hair falling messily across his face. If anyone saw him now—if anyone recognized him…

Their favorite idol, slumped in an alley, looking like a washed-out ghost.

He nearly laughed at the thought. Nearly.

“Here,” the boy said softly, stepping in without pause, without question.

One arm slipped around Asaba’s waist. The other guided his own arm up and over narrow shoulders.

“I’ve got you.”

It was that simple. No hesitation. No embarrassment.

Asaba didn’t resist. Couldn’t, really. The warmth of the boy’s body cut through the winter air like a quiet defiance of the cold.

He allowed himself—just this once—to lean.

To not carry everything alone.

“Is your home somewhere around here?”

Asaba gave a slow, sluggish nod. His breath curled into the cold air, barely visible—like everything else about him tonight, barely held together.

The boy didn’t press further. Just tightened his grip slightly and adjusted Asaba’s arm over his shoulder. Step by step, they moved.

The streets blurred past them in a haze of neon reflections and shuttered shopfronts. Asphalt glistened beneath flickering lights. A taxi passed by without stopping. Somewhere, a distant siren howled, then faded.

Asaba didn’t speak. His boots scuffed against the pavement like they were dragging the weight of a decade behind them. The boy matched his pace—slow, steady, patient—letting the silence hang without trying to fill it.

It wasn’t far. A few blocks. A narrow alley tucked between an old pachinko parlor and a karaoke dive. A metal staircase that groaned beneath their combined weight.

They reached the second-floor landing—a peeling, faded door with worn kanji painted above the bell. Asaba pulled away slightly, patting his coat like a man trying to remember his own name.

“Wallet… key…” he mumbled. “Shit—wait—damn it—”

He pulled his wallet out halfway before it slipped from his fingers and hit the ground with a soft, almost apologetic thud.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face.

The boy bent down and picked it up, holding it delicately.

“Where’s the key?” he asked gently, not mocking, not amused. Just asking.

“Front pocket,” Asaba said, nodding toward the coat’s inside flap. “Little zipper. Left side.”

The boy found it easily—a small, plain silver key with a fraying keychain shaped like a music note.

He slid it into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door.

The apartment was dark, save for the faint orange glow of a standby light from some forgotten device. It smelled faintly of incense, vinyl sleeves, and something less defined — lived-in exhaustion.

They stepped inside.

Asaba shrugged off his trench coat without ceremony. It slid from his shoulders and hit the floor like a dropped curtain. He didn’t stop to pick it up. Just staggered forward, guided more by instinct than memory.

The boy followed, arm still around his waist, steady as scaffolding.

Down a short hallway. Past shelves lined with CDs and books, and a keyboard half-covered in sheet music. Into a room that felt more like a cave than a bedroom.

Asaba didn’t hesitate.

He collapsed onto the bed face-first, limbs splayed, boots still on. A soft grunt escaped him as the mattress absorbed his weight.

He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t apologize.

Just let out a long, slow breath—like he’d been holding it since the Izakaya.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t bother kicking off his boots. Didn’t care where he landed.

The bed held him like a low tide.

Behind him, the door creaked. A soft shuffle of footsteps. Then stillness.

No words.

Just presence.

A weight shifted near the edge of the bed. Then fingers—careful, hesitant—unlaced one boot. Then the other.

Asaba didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

The mattress dipped slightly as the boy straightened the blanket and laid it across his back.

A quiet sigh escaped from his throat—not pain, not relief. Something in between.

He turned his face slightly, half-buried in the pillow. One bleary eye cracked open.

“You…” he murmured, voice ragged.

He wanted to ask something.

Maybe a name. Maybe why he cared.

But the words didn’t come. The moment passed.

His eye shut again.

And the world went dark.

Chapter Text

The headache arrived first—a dull, insistent drum behind his temples, beating in perfect sync with the neon that still strobed beneath his eyelids whenever he blinked. Asaba groaned, rolled onto his back, and let the morning light knife across his face in thin, horizontal scars. His tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth; it tasted of ash, anise, and something softer he couldn’t name yet.

He didn’t open his eyes right away. Fragments floated up like torn film strips: silver hair catching strobes, a steady arm around his waist, steam blooming between two bowls. Each image dissolved the moment he tried to hold it. Dream or memory—he’d lost the knack of telling them apart.

Then the scent found him.

Hinoki and rain-wet pine, faint but stubborn, clinging to the pillowcase. Not his cologne, not the studio’s air-freshener, not anything that belonged to his life before last night. The smell alone was proof: the boy had been real.

Asaba pushed himself upright. The room lurched, righted itself. His navy trench coat sagged over a kitchen chair, half inside-out, sleeves dangling like emptied arms. Water-dark patches clung to the seams; the faint reek of last night’s whiskey still steamed off the wool.

Asaba hesitated—then changed into a new T-shirt instead. He never hung it that way. He usually dropped it over the keyboard, let it slide to the floor, forgot it until morning.

He crossed the room slowly, floorboards cool under bare feet, and touched the coat’s shoulder. A single strand of silver hair glinted against the navy wool—fine, luminous, impossible. He lifted it between thumb and forefinger, half-expecting it to vanish. It didn’t.

The boy’s words came back, quiet as breath: “Everything worth feeling is.”

His phone buzzed against the nightstand—short, vibrating bursts that rattled the empty glass beside it. Asaba squinted at the screen.

8:05 AM.

7 missed calls

3 unread messages

He thumbed the first message.

[08:01] Yanagi: Wake up. Inferno Remix rehearsal, 9:30 sharp.

[08:02] Yanagi: Producers want “more heat.” Don’t be late.

[08:03] Yanagi: Coffee’s on me if you’re alive.

He exhaled, a dry laugh scratching his throat. No manager on the line, no polished steel—just the usual avalanche of pings and a bribe of caffeine.

I’ll be there, he typed, and meant it.

He ended the screen, but didn’t move. Instead, he opened his wallet—worn leather, edges frayed—and slid the hair beneath the clear plastic window meant for photos. It settled beside an old guitar pick, the one he’d carried since his first live house gig. Two relics now: one from the beginning, one from somewhere new.

Some people weren’t meant to be found twice. They were meant to be carried.

Black coffee, burnt toast.

He drank it standing at the sink, steam fogging the window. Bitter edges, butter refusing to melt in the cold kitchen air. He didn’t care. The taste was honest; it matched the grainy film of last night still playing behind his eyes.

He rinsed the cup, watched a single droplet cling to the porcelain lip before letting go.

Nothing was stolen. Nothing disturbed. Drawers closed, laptop shut, vinyl records slightly rearranged—small courtesy he’d never asked for, never expected. The boy had moved through the apartment like a soft exhalation: present, careful, already fading.

Asaba opened his wardrobe, took his light khaki trench coat, buttoned it, and stepped out into the morning. He’d bought the coat on impulse last tour and never worn it—too light for the stage, too plain for interviews. Today, it felt like borrowed skin: clean, anonymous, forgiving.

He caught a ghost of last night’s whiskey still clinging to his fingertips; the khaki coat, untouched until now, smelled only of cedar hangers and winter air.

8:28 AM.

He had exactly one hour before the studio doors opened.

For the first time in months, the ticking clock sounded less like a countdown and more like a rhythm he could walk to.

The studio was too big.

Not just physically —though its ceiling soared like it was built to house orchestras, not four exhausted individuals with guitars. The walls were lined with soft foam and slick glass, black tile polished to reflect nothing. Screens glowed silently. Mics slept on their stands like upright ghosts.

Technically, it had everything: high-end monitors, analog mixers, velvet couches nobody sat on. But standing there, Asaba always felt... displaced. Like a visitor in a house he paid for but never truly lived in.

It was too clean. Too intentional. Too loud in its silence.

Oppressive.

Asaba reached the front door and grabbed the handle and—

Clunk

Huh?

He released the handle and tried again. Same result.

He stared at the doorframe, then down at the panel beside it: a small red LED blinked once, slow and deliberate, the way a bouncer answers when your name isn’t on the list.

Lockout.

The word hit him like a second hangover. He tugged again—clunk—metal catching metal, final and bored with his efforts. No keypad, no intercom, just that single red eye.

He fished his phone from his pocket. One bar of signal flickered in and out.

08:57 AM.

He was supposed to be in the booth at 09:30.

Asaba exhaled a laugh that fogged the glass and vanished. Of course. The building’s new “smart security” had auto-locked at 08:30. The key card—the one he’d never bothered to fetch—was upstairs on the kitchen counter, probably keeping the coffee cup company.

He leaned his forehead against the cool metal.

He sighed.

The phone call came first.

Asaba thumbed Yanagi’s name, expecting a scolding, and pressed the speaker to his ear.

One ring, two—then a groggy, half-awake “’lo?”

“Yanagi, I’m locked out. Studio key’s upstairs, security auto-kicked me. I’ll be late—”

A yawn cut him off.

“Relax. Session’s pushed to ten. Final text went out at 08:15. You never check your phone after you leave the dressing room, do you?”

Asaba blinked. The red LED above the door suddenly looked less like a bouncer and more like a tired traffic light.

“Ten?” he echoed.

“Ten. Coffee’s still on me. I’ll be there nine-forty-five. Go sit somewhere quiet.”

The line clicked dead.

Silence pooled again, but lighter now—almost breathable. He slid the phone back into his pocket and crossed the street to the café whose sign flickered OPEN against the morning frost.

Inside: two tables occupied, the espresso machine sighing like an old dog. He ordered black coffee, no sugar, no small talk. The barista—hair the color of burnt cinnamon—handed him the cup wordlessly.

Asaba took the corner seat by the window. Steam rose between his palms; outside, a delivery scooter skated across slick asphalt, tires hissing. He watched it vanish.

The café quieted to a hush broken only by spoons clinking saucers. Thirty minutes—gift-wrapped, unasked. He slipped the wallet from his pocket, opened the clear plastic sleeve. The silver strand glinted under neon café light.

He closed his eyes.

A small, almost shy hum left his throat—The notes curled downward, soft as the steam that had drifted between their bowls last night, carrying the faint salt of broth and the hush of a promise neither of them had spoken aloud. He looped it once, twice, letting the interval settle in his chest, the way dew settles on leaves.

It wasn’t a chorus yet. It wasn’t even a verse.

It was simply the first true sound he’d made in months.

When the barista passed again, he didn’t notice.

When the clock behind the counter flicked to 09:38, he finally stood, pocketed the tune along with the hair, and walked out—still humming, quietly, as if the street itself were a microphone waiting for its cue.

“Harumasa, you're quite... early today," Yanagi drawled, coat still halfway off. "Did the building finally scare you into punctuality?"

Asaba flashed a half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Blame the building’s security. It locked me out and then gave me an unexpected overtime with my own thoughts.”

Yanagi arched a brow. “Thoughts? Those must be heavy if they got you here before the coffee.” She paused, studying the faint dark circles under his lashes. “You okay?”

“Just… humming something new,” he said, voice low. The hum from the café still lingered in his throat, a quiet aftertaste no espresso could wash away.

Yanagi’s fingers paused mid-twirl of her cup lid. A single brow arched—curiosity flickering, then shuttered behind the usual smirk. “Right. Notes.”

He saw the question in her eyes—What could you possibly have to hum about?—and almost laughed.

Almost.

Yanagi produced a tall takeaway cup from her tote and pressed it into his hand—heat blooming through the thin cardboard like a quiet apology.

“Still, as promised,” she said. “Black, no sugar. Consider it your reward for not freezing to death on the doorstep.”

He curled both palms around the cup, letting the warmth leak into his cold knuckles. For a second he only breathed in the steam—bitter, honest—then raised it in a small salute.

“Thanks,” he murmured again, voice rough. “Today feels like it might actually need two of these.”

Yanagi tapped the rim of her own cup once, brisk.

“Mm—glad to hear it.” A quick flick of her eyes to the studio clock. 09:14. “Let’s lay the cables, dial the room in. The other two can jog in whenever they finish their beauty sleep.”

Cables already snaked across the floor where Yanagi had marked the loops with neon tape; stands clicked into place like impatient metronomes.

Asaba crouched over the patchbay, fingers flicking mute buttons in a quiet cadence—tap, tap, silence—while the last overhead light warmed to the same amber that had pooled in their ramen bowls the night before.

The door swung open at 10:00 sharp. Miyabi slipped inside first, scarf half-hiding her mouth, Soukaku on her heels clutching a take-out bag like contraband.

“Paparazzi,” Miyabi muttered, kicking the door shut. “We took the long way round.”

Yanagi lifted the mic, two crisp taps—tock, tock—then leveled her gaze at Miyabi and Soukaku.

“Cables hot, levels green. Whenever you’re ready, let’s roll the scratch.”

Miyabi gave a small nod; Soukaku slid the take-out bag under the console and closed the lid with a soft click.

Yanagi flicked the talkback switch; the red bulb above the door glowed like a single, patient eye.

“Check one, check two.” Her voice flattened through the monitors, then bloomed again in the cans. She angled the mic toward the empty stool beside Asaba. “Harumasa. One-take, scratch vocal—no pressure.”

Asaba adjusted the headphones, felt the plush seal around his ears. The room hushed itself: Miyabi’s fingers hovered over her keyboard, Soukaku muted the last hi-hat channel, and the only sound left was the low, breathing pad he had stretched five minutes earlier—D-minor, infinite, waiting.

He leaned in.

A single, soft hum—the three-note steam phrase—slipped past the pop-filter and into the pre-amp. The waveform spiked once, then settled into a slow, luminous arc.

Yanagi’s eyebrow lifted, yet she didn’t stop the roll.

Instead, she mouthed, “Again,” and hit LOOP.

The pad breathed deeper—D-minor swelling like a lung finding its rhythm after years of shallow gasps. Asaba’s hum wove into it, three notes spiraling like steam from broth. Not a melody yet. A question.

Tap.

Yanagi’s finger froze over the STOP button. Her other hand moved—slow, deliberate—turning a knob on the console. The high shelf EQ lifted, just a hair.

In the cans, Asaba’s voice gained edges like frost on glass: fragile, luminous.

He didn’t stop.

The second loop began. This time, words formed—not lyrics, not yet. Syllables without meaning, consonants catching like seeds in wind:

“Ka-ze no… oto…”

The waveform bloomed. No longer an arc. A constellation.

Soukaku’s hand hovered over the takeout bag. Forgotten. Miyabi’s fingers drifted to her keyboard, tracing an F# without pressing down—a ghost chord for a ghost tune.

Yanagi leaned into the talkback, voice sanded soft: “Third take. Keep the air. Keep the… cracks.”

Asaba closed his eyes.

The khaki coat hung heavy on his shoulders.

The silver strand burned in his wallet.

The boy’s voice echoed: “Everything worth feeling is.”

He inhaled.

This time, the sound tore—not loud, but raw. A scrape of gravel under boots on a wet street. A door clicking shut in an empty apartment. The silence before a stranger says “I’ve got you.”

“—mae ni.”

Silence.

Not empty silence. The kind that hums.

Yanagi killed the loop. The red light above the door blinked out.

“Scratch track saved,” she said, too evenly. “File name: ‘Scars_01’.”

Asaba peeled off the headphones. The plush seal left a red band across his temple—a new scar to match the morning light’s.

Soukaku broke first. She ripped open the takeout bag. The smell of warm butter-sugar flooded the booth.

“Who the hell was that?” She mumbled around a mouthful. “Sounded like you dug him out of a grave. In a good way.”

Miyabi unwound her scarf.

“It sounded… cold," she said. “But the kind of cold that wakes you up.”

Asaba reached for his coffee. Cold now. He drank it anyway. The bitterness felt earned.

Yanagi was watching him. Not smirking. Not arching brows. Just… watching. Her fingers whitened around the pencil, then simply let it roll across the console—clack, clack—before she exhaled and said, “We scrap Inferno.”

Soukaku choked. Miyabi went still.

“Yanagi, our managers.” Miyabi glanced at her pink-haired colleague.

Asaba’s thumb found his wallet through the fabric, pressing until the guitar pick inside left a dent in his skin. He said nothing.

“Our managers can argue with the board,” Yanagi turned to face the three of them, palms still steady on the console.

“That scratch is track one—no compromise. We’re rebuilding the album around it, but only if all four of us say yes. Hands in?”

Asaba’s fingers slipped from his wallet, lifted.

Soukaku raised a drumstick like a flag.

Miyabi’s hand settled over Yanagi’s on the fader.

Four hands, one beat.

Lunch break finally hit at 12:30.

The last LED strip dimmed to afternoon amber. Headphones came off like shed skin.

Yanagi rolled her neck, cartilage clicking. “Hot tofu cart across the street—coming Sou?”

Soukaku nodded and crushed the pastry wrapper.

Yanagi's eyes glanced at Miyabi and Asaba.

“I’ll skip the crowd,” Miyabi said, already coiling the headphone cable. “Onigiri upstairs—enough for two.”

Asaba gave a small shrug. "Bring extras if they've got any," he said, the request feeling foreign on his tongue—like a habit he'd forgotten he once had.

Yanagi flashed a thumbs-up, already steering Soukaku toward the door. The studio door hissed shut behind them, sealing away the weight of unfinished tracks.

Miyabi paused mid-step, the onigiri bag crinkling in her grip. She didn't turn, but her shoulders relaxed a fraction—enough to say she'd heard.

He followed her up the stairs, leaving the studio's chill behind.

They settled over a table. Miyabi placed down the bag and popped it open; steam rose between them—warm rice, faint nori, and the mellow scent of grilled salmon tucked inside.

She nudged one triangle towards him.

“Thanks,” Asaba murmured, cradling the onigiri like something breakable.

She bit first, chewed slowly, listening to something that he couldn't pinpoint.

Three heartbeats of silence.

Then, without looking at him:

“That track… is different.”

“Different how?” he asked, thumb brushing the seam of nori.

“Like it already knows where it’s going,” she said, still not meeting his eyes. “And it doesn’t need us to follow.”

“It's still a scratch...,” he muttered.

Miyabi nodded slightly, her teeth biting gently into the onigiri, her eyes sweeping over Asaba then towards the window. The afternoon light had begun to turn golden, casting dancing dust motes in the air.

“Knows where it's going?” Asaba repeated, his voice softer than a whisper. He looked at the onigiri in his hand, the pure white grains of rice. “Or is it just... lost?”

Miyabi slowly chewed her rice, her silence seeming more like deep listening than waiting. “Even being lost is a kind of going," she said, finally turning to look at him. "But this one, it doesn't beg for guidance. It just... exists.”

Her crimson eyes, usually distant, now held a rare understanding. “It has a voice. Even without words.”

Asaba frowned. He took a bite of the onigiri. The saltiness of the nori, the richness of the salmon, and the warmth of the rice spread in his mouth, a raw simplicity so different from the complex flavors he usually used to mask his emotions. “A voice... of what?”

Miyabi shrugged faintly, the steam still lingering between them. “A voice of scars. Of what can't be said. Like... the way you hummed it.” She paused, her gaze briefly drifting away. “It's cold, but like I said... it wakes you up.”

He remembered Yanagi's words, about "the cracks." It wasn't a flaw, but a part of the truth.

“Is that why... it's called 'Scars_01'?” Asaba asked, unclear if he was asking Miyabi or himself. The guitar pick in his wallet pressed gently into his skin.

Miyabi didn't answer directly. She took a second bite of onigiri, looking out the window, where a delivery scooter had just passed.

“I think... some things don't need to be fully understood," she said, her voice soft. “Just... felt.”

Asaba nodded slowly. He took another bite of onigiri, letting the lingering bitterness of his cold coffee mingle with the saltiness of the salmon. He no longer felt the need to defend the track. Miyabi had heard it, truly, without needing any explanation.

In the quiet room upstairs, with the afternoon sun filtering through the window and the warm scent of rice, Asaba felt a new lightness. The "steam phrase" was still there, wordless. And the scars, now, were no longer a burden. They were simply the first notes.

The second session wrapped at five.

He’d emptied every last flicker of himself into the track.

Still, the waveform stared back—technically perfect, emotionally vacant.

Again and again he reached for the café hum, that soft steam-phrase, and again it slipped through his fingers like breath on glass.

Crimson soaked the sky, bleeding from the rooftops to the street.

Asaba stepped outside and let his legs walk—no route, just reflex—toward the only district that still knew his name.

“And maybe, you’re tired of singing to people who only want your voice, not your words.”

He stopped.

The cigarette flared like a wounded eye in the dusk.

Asaba exhaled a thin plume of smoke that curled skyward—aimless, a ghost with no destination.

The city pulsed around him, alive and uncaring.

He stood at the edge of Lumina Square, one boot resting against a chipped curb, the other toeing a discarded flyer for some idol’s upcoming winter showcase.

Not his.

Not anymore.

He flicked ash off his knuckle and watched it vanish in the streetlight’s glow.

He didn’t want to go back.

But he didn’t know where else to go.

Behind him, voices swelled—shoppers, lovers, delivery drones whining overhead. Cameras clicked in the distance. Too distant to matter. But not far enough to feel safe.

He pulled his coat tighter, collar up, cap low. Not hiding, just... avoiding.

He slipped between shadows—convenience store awnings, thrift shop doorways, a ramen cart he used to visit before Inferno charted.

The Square was a kaleidoscope of movement: neon reflecting off rain-damp brick, laughter echoing in mismatched rhythms.

Everywhere he turned, faces blurred. Lights bled. Names half-whispered behind cupped hands.

“Was that...?”

“He looks like... but thinner.”

“I swear I saw him live once. Right?”

He kept walking.

Then he saw it.

A café he didn’t recognize. Tucked in a cul-de-sac of silence just outside the Square’s roar.

No name on the awning, just a small brass sign etched in cursive: “Riverside Still.”

He almost didn’t stop.

But through the slatted fence—half-covered in creeping ivy and late-blooming jasmine—he caught a glint.

Silver.

Hair, tousled.

Head tilted.

Eyes soft.

Hands wrapped around a steaming cup. Sitting at the farthest table, backlit by the last gold of the dying sun, was the boy.

Him.

No crowd. No flashbulbs. No rush.

Just him, humming something under his breath—low, airy, melodic in its incompleteness.

His gaze rested not on his drink, but on the river just beyond the railing, where boats drifted like forgotten thoughts and the sky spilled its crimson across the water like ink in milk.

Asaba froze.

Not from fear.

But because the sight hit him like harmony finally resolving after hours of dissonance.

Not a shock.

Not a scream.

Just... rightness.

He stepped closer, but not too close. One hand resting on the café’s chipped wooden post. The smoke from his cigarette curling between them like a bridge not yet crossed.

The boy hadn’t seen him yet. He was still humming—soft, distracted, maybe content. Maybe not.

Asaba’s heart knocked once, twice—then settled into an uncertain rhythm.

The street behind him still buzzed with life. His name probably still lingered somewhere in the gossip-laden air.

But here, in this pocket of twilight, this alley of hush and riversong—

He was just a man again.

His body moved without permission—one foot after the other, heel-toe, silent on the ground.

It felt like someone else’s stride, someone else’s weight.

The cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers, smoke curling upward like a question he’d never finish asking.

He heard it before he felt it—The boy's soft hum threading the air, thin as steam above soup.

The sound slipped inside his ribs and settled, a warmth he hadn’t invited.

His own breath caught, then released in a slow, involuntary cadence that matched the tune.

Yesterday rose unbidden: “Thanks, but I don't really smoke,” the boy had said, polite, final, eyes clear.

The refusal had stung in a place Asaba hadn’t known was still tender.

Now the ember between his knuckles felt suddenly profane.

He flicked the cigarette to the ground.

One boot came down—slow, deliberate—grinding the cherry to black.

A faint hiss, the smell of burnt wood, and then nothing but the river and him and the last note hanging between them like a bridge half-built.

He stood in stillness, cigarette ash settling like quiet snowfall at his feet.

Then the boy turned.

Not startled. Not alarmed. Just… aware.

Like he’d known, somehow. As if the hum had been an invitation, not a habit.

Their eyes met across the soft hush of the outdoor patio—only a few meters apart, but the weight of a city between them.

Asaba’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

The boy blinked once. Then again, slower.

And a small, almost imperceptible smile formed—not bright, not performative, but real. Real in that painful, unmistakable way.

He gestured—two fingers tapping the opposite side of his small iron table, near the empty cup.

An invitation. A seat offered. No questions yet.

Asaba’s throat tightened.

No cameras. No lenses. No pretenses.

Just him. Just the boy. And a table between them.

He moved forward—not rushed, not hesitant. Just present.

Each step felt like a note pressed lightly on ivory. He didn’t sit right away. He stood beside the chair, eyes on him.

“...You still hum when you think?”

His voice was quieter than he meant. Hoarse. Almost reverent.

The boy's gaze flicked toward the river, then back to him. A soft chuckle. “Only when I don’t know what else to say.”

Asaba let the words settle. He nodded once, slow, and sank into the seat across from him.

The iron chair creaked under his weight. The dusk caught the edge of his jaw, cast half his face in orange and the other half in old shadow.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Between them, two cups, one folded receipt, and a wind that smelled faintly of jasmine, river, and roasted barley from some stall down the block.

Finally, the gray-haired youth leaned forward—fingers cradling the warm rim of his cup like it still held something.

“Sorry about the coat,” he murmured, fingers tracing the rim of his half-empty cup. “It was still wet this morning. I didn’t know how to dry wool, so… I left it on the chair.”

Asaba blinked—caught off guard not by the apology, but by the softness of it. Like the words had waited all day to be let out.

“I noticed,” he said. “Still smelled like whiskey and regret.”

A short, sheepish laugh from across the table. The boy glanced down, then up again.

“Guess I owe you dry-cleaning.”

Asaba stilled, his frame folding into the iron chair like a man settling into a memory. He studied the boy for a breath, then another.

“You don’t strike me as the type to owe anything,” he said.

The boy tilted his head, sea-glass eyes curious. “What type do I seem like, then?”

Asaba took a beat. Let the question linger. His gaze drifted toward the river.

“The type who vanishes before dawn but leaves everything a little neater than it was.”

“...Fair,” the boy conceded.

A moment passed, the kind too quiet to be awkward.

Then, idly, Asaba asked, “So, fourth year of school?”

The boy nodded. “Technically. Final thesis. Defense is in three weeks if the committee doesn’t implode again.”

Asaba gave a thoughtful hum.

“You don’t look like you’re barely legal,” he added—half a joke, half observation.

The boy raised an eyebrow. “I’m not.”

The boy smiled faintly but didn’t offer it. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thin leather wallet—not flashy, worn around the edges—and began idly fiddling with a folded proof of enrollment; just a slip of printed paper, not the full ID—and slid it across the table with two fingers.

“No name. Just age and student code. I use it for discounted metro rides.”

Asaba skimmed it. University insignia. Class cohort. Graduation track. Birth year.

He leaned in, squinted. Blinked once.

“Twenty-one?” he said aloud, almost accusatory.

The boy’s eyes widened a fraction. “Why, did I fail the test?”

“No—” Asaba leaned back, arms folded. “You’re just... not what I expected.”

“Because I don’t act twenty-one?” the boy offered, teasing.

“Because I called you ‘kid’ last night.”

The boy grinned.

“And I didn’t correct you,” he said. “Maybe I thought you were a washed-up thirty-something whose glory days smelled like hair gel and bad cologne.”

Asaba huffed a laugh. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“Exactly,” the boy said, raising an eyebrow. “Six years. That’s not that bad.”

“Bad enough for me to feel like an idiot,” Asaba muttered, brushing his fingers through his hair.

“Then I guess we’re even,” the boy said, sipping the last of his now-cold tea. “We both made age assumptions and survived.”

Asaba watched him—watched the way his eyes crinkled slightly when he smiled, the way he seemed... more centered than most twenty-one-year-olds he’d ever met. More centered than he had been at that age.

Their gazes met across the table—less like strangers, more like two people finding the edge of something unspoken and deciding not to cross it just yet.

Asaba gestured at the folded slip. “So you’re twenty-one, finishing a CS thesis, drink tea in alley cafés, and quote discount transit fares.”

“And you,” the boy replied, “are still wearing a coat that smells like stage fog and second chances.”

And then, without cue or ceremony, they both laughed.

Not loud. Not explosive. Just sudden, shared, and clean —like breath after holding it too long.

The tension cracked, subtly but surely. Something inside Asaba's chest shifted.

For the first time that day, the city’s noise didn’t feel so sharp.

The boy leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head with a soft sigh. His eyes traced the horizon—where the river caught the last embers of daylight, and the sky flirted with violet.

“This spot’s kind of perfect,” he murmured. “You get the light, the water, and just enough distance from the shouting.”

Asaba followed his gaze. The sun was folding into itself, dipping behind the bridges like it was tucking in for the night.

“Do you come here often?” he asked, tone low but earnest.

The boy shook his head. “First time.”

He paused, then added, "I almost picked another café—closer to the station. But the smell of grilled mochi from the alley made me turn left instead."

“Grilled mochi,” Asaba repeated. “The great cosmic compass.”

The boy chuckled. “Better than Google Maps.”

They fell quiet again, but this time the silence felt different. Like a space made intentionally. Not hollow— held.

Asaba found himself watching the boy’s profile—how the gold light hit his cheekbones, how the breeze ruffled silver hair like it was trying to read his thoughts.

The boy turned slightly, catching him in the act.

“What?” he asked, bemused.

Asaba blinked once. Then looked away, half-smiling.

“Nothing,” he said. “You just… remind me that the world still moves without a soundtrack.”

“Does yours usually have one?” the boy asked, playful.

“Used to,” Asaba replied, then shrugged. “Now it’s mostly static.”

The boy didn’t answer. Just looked back toward the water. And for a while, they sat like that: two silhouettes in the last light, surrounded by the scent of tea, old iron, and jasmine.

Then the boy broke the quiet—not with a question, but a musing.

“I think this might be the best cup of Genmaicha I’ve had in months,” he said, swirling the last sip thoughtfully.

Asaba glanced over. “Genmaicha?”

The boy nodded. “Green tea with roasted rice. My grandfather used to make it every morning. Said the scent of toasted grain keeps the world honest.”

Asaba raised an eyebrow. “Sounds poetic.”

“He wasn’t,” the boy replied, lips twitching. “He was just cheap. Said Genmaicha’s for students and old men too stubborn to buy sencha.”

That made Asaba huff a laugh. “And which are you?”

The boy smirked. “Both, probably.”

Then, as if remembering something, the boy glanced at the two cups in front of him and nudged the untouched one gently forward.

“You can try it, if you want,” he said.

Asaba reached for his own cup—lukewarm now, a forgotten order from earlier—and took a small sip. His brows furrowed.

"You ordered two?"

The boy sighed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I ordered two by mistake. Thought the waitress misunderstood and tried to cancel, but she just smiled and brought both anyway.”

Asaba set it down gently. “Lucky me, then.”

“Depends on your taste in tea,” the boy said, glancing sideways. “Genmaicha’s not for everyone. It’s kind of…”

He paused, searching.

“…nostalgic in a way that sneaks up on you.”

Asaba considered that.

The warmth. The faint bitterness. The roasted note lingering at the back of his tongue like an old song played on worn-out tape.

“…Yeah,” he said quietly. “It kind of is.”

Their eyes met again.

And for a moment, it felt like the entire city leaned back to give them space.

Then the boy said, almost idly, “The clouds look like rice bowls tonight.”

Asaba tilted his head. “Huh.”

“See that one? With the chopsticks?”

He pointed. And Asaba followed.

He didn’t see it at first.

But then… he did.

And he laughed again—quieter this time, but with something genuine behind it.

The static faded.

Just a little.

Chapter Text

Asaba blinked once, curling and uncurling his fingers to ground himself in reality, to know that he was still here, still existed, not alive.

The studio hummed its usual false silence—machines breathing, wires buzzing, LEDs blinking with mechanical patience.

On the monitor: Scars_01. The title pulsed in pale font, timestamped, immutable.

He hit play.

The phrase rose, looped, died. Again. Again. Each repeat promised something, then delivered only memory.

He leaned in, shoulders hunched, eyes tracing the waveform like it was scripture he had forgotten how to read. No matter how many times he split it into segments, stripped the EQ, stared at the raw line like a cardiograph—he couldn’t find the pulse that had lived in it that night. The hum that had been warmth, not static.

Now it was just data. Peaks, troughs, empty valleys.

His right hand twitched. Fingers curled into a fist, opened, curled again. Grounding, or pretending. The pressure of his nails against his palm was sharp enough to prove he was still here.

Not alive, maybe, but still tethered to something.

He blinked again, hard. The screen blurred, reformed. Still Scars_01. Still flat. Still a ghost of itself.

He lifted his gaze.

Yanagi had folded forward onto the console, cheek pressed to a mixing board that glowed faint green beneath her hair. A pencil rolled in the shallow dip between two sliders, tapping lightly against her breath.

Soukaku sprawled across the couch like a casualty, drumsticks clutched loosely in one hand, the other dangling toward the floor as if fishing for a rhythm in sleep. One sock half-pulled down, heel exposed, pale against the leather.

Miyabi was gone. The faint trace of sandalwood in the air said she’d retreated upstairs, no doubt cross-legged in some dark corner, exorcising the static with breathwork and incense.

For a moment, Asaba let his eyes linger on them—these three people who had bound their lives to his voice, his silence, his failures. They slept without ceremony, trusting the quiet to hold.

And him? He sat before the screen, a man trying to resurrect a feeling from pixels. Fingers flexing. Breath shallow. A song that had once been alive now nothing more than an echo.

The studio’s soft hum went on, steady, as if mocking him: machines dreaming, humans dreaming, and him—the only one still awake, still failing.

Asaba exhaled through his nose, low and bitter, and pushed the chair back. The wheels skated noiselessly over the polished floor, softer than the sound in his chest.

Yanagi murmured something in her sleep, one hand twitching over the console as though she were still running levels. Soukaku snored once, a sharp bark of breath that rattled the empty soda can on the floor.

He rubbed his temples, the drag of callused fingertips grounding him more than the loop ever could.

This wasn’t working.

Not the track. Not him. Not this room with its padded walls and endless hum.

He stood, quietly enough that no one stirred. Coat shrugged on, scarf tugged loose from the back of a chair. The air outside the booth bit colder, sharper, but at least it was air he hadn’t already breathed a hundred times.

The door sighed him out onto the street.

He walked without aim, boots pacing the frost-stained pavement until the storefronts began to shift—smaller shops giving way to the gleam of the central mall. Glass panels, sterile light, escalators gliding up and down like veins pulsing in a giant body.

The city hummed around him—car engines, footsteps, fragments of conversation bleeding together into something almost musical.

…

Almost.

That's what he needed. Not the silence of the studio, but real sound. Human sound. The kind that had weight, texture, and accidents. Maybe if he could capture something authentic, something unpolished—

He stopped at the mall entrance. His reflection caught in the revolving door—cap low, collar high, eyes ringed like bruises. Inside, voices echoed off glass and chrome. Hundreds of people moving, talking, existing without performing.

This was where songs lived before they died in studios. In the chaos of real life.

He pulled out his phone, opened the voice memo app. Just background noise, he told himself. Ambient texture for the track. Something to layer underneath the melody that wouldn't come.

The revolving door swept him into the fluorescent brightness. Conversations layered over each other—complaints about prices, laughter from the food court, the electronic beeping of registers. He held the phone loose in his palm, recording everything and nothing.

A child's shriek of delight near the toy store. The scrape of chair legs against tile. Footsteps echoed in different rhythms, creating accidental polyrhythms that lasted three seconds before dissolving.

He was hunting for something he couldn't name. A sound that would unlock whatever had died inside Scars_01. But every voice he caught felt thin, hollow, like trying to bottle air.

Anonymity still held. For now.

Inside, the brightness was surgical. He felt like a specimen on display in a tank of glass, shoppers milling like curious fish.

Asaba moved through the crowds with practiced anonymity—just another face in the retail crowd.

His phone sat heavy in his coat pocket, voice memo app already open. He'd convinced himself this was research—that somewhere in the cacophony of consumer noise, he'd find the missing piece. The sound that would make Scars_01 breathe again.

But walking through the corridors, listening to the blend of voices and footsteps and electronic beeping, everything felt flat. Processed. Like the audio equivalent of artificial flavor—technically correct but missing whatever made real things real.

He let the crowd carry him deeper into the mall’s current, past towers of chrome, shelves of perfume, racks of clothes too loud to wear. His gaze stayed low, his breath shallow.

Then—

“—told you, the thesis committee’s a joke. Professor Yano keeps changing the parameters every week—”

Asaba stopped. The words slipped through the din, familiar, undeniable.

That voice. Soft, exasperated, familiar as his own heartbeat.

He turned, slow as a prayer.

Asaba froze.

Twenty meters away, near the electronics section, silver hair caught the light. The boy—his boy—stood beside a display of tablets, gesturing with one hand while the other held a small paper bag.

Next to him: a cat Thiren. White-haired, police academy sweatshirt, ears twitched in what looked like sympathetic annoyance.

"Maybe you should just write what you want and let them figure out if it fits their boxes," the Thiren was saying, tail flicking.

The boy laughed—three descending notes like a private key—exactly the cadence Asaba had been trying all morning to trap in studio amber.

"Seth, that's terrible advice. I can't just—"

The boy's gaze drifted, scanning the crowd with the idle curiosity of someone killing time. His eyes found Asaba's.

Recognition bloomed across his features—not dramatic, just a gentle widening of sea-green eyes and the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth.

He raised a hand. Small wave. Unmistakable.

The Thiren, Seth, followed his gaze.

Time snapped taut.

Seth's purple eyes narrowed, pupils contracting to vertical slits. Head tilted. Once. Twice. The way a predator tracks movement.

Then his ears went completely flat.

"Holy shit," Seth breathed, voice pitched too low for the boy to catch. “That’s-’’

"Seth?" The boy's brow furrowed, glancing between them. "What's wrong?"

Asaba's chest constricted. His hand found his phone, gripping it until the edges bit into his palm. The voice memo app was still open, still recording—capturing this moment of everything falling apart.

Seth’s gaze locked onto his. Recognition burned there—not gentle, not curious. Sharp. Complete. His mouth opened slightly, as if words were fighting to escape.

The boy looked back and forth between them, confusion creeping across his features. "Do you two know each other?"

Asaba couldn't breathe; thought narrowed to the arithmetic of loss.

Three weeks. Three weeks of being seen as human. Three weeks of conversations that weren't transactions, of silence that wasn't performance, of someone who looked at him and saw possibility instead of product.

He thought of the hair tucked in his wallet. The hum that had saved his voice. The way the boy had said "everything worth feeling is" like it was a benediction instead of a platitude.

His eyes found the Thiren's across the charged space.

Please.

Not a word. Not a sound. Just the shape of desperation pressed between them like a secret.

The cat stared back. Lavender eyes unblinking. Calculating. His tail had gone completely still, ears still pinned.

The pause stretched—one heartbeat, two, three—like a held breath before a verdict.

Then the Thiren's expression shifted. Just slightly. The recognition didn't fade, but something else crept in. Understanding, maybe. Or mercy wearing the mask of indifference.

"No," he said finally, voice carefully level. "I don't think we've met."

The lie trembled in the air like spun glass. Fragile. Dangerous.

The boy's shoulders relaxed. "Oh. Sorry, you just looked... familiar, I guess."

Asaba exhaled—silent, shaking, grateful beyond language.

"Yeah," he managed, voice rougher than he meant. "I get that a lot."

The Thiren's gaze lingered on him a moment longer—a warning, maybe, or a question. Then he turned back to the boy, tail resuming its lazy sway.

"Come on. Let's grab coffee before your next class."

The boy glanced back once as they moved toward the mall's central corridor. His smile was small, uncertain, but real.

"See you around?" he called.

Asaba nodded. Couldn't trust his voice.

Just before disappearing, the boy hummed the same three notes—soft, absent, exactly the spacing Asaba had hunted all week. The phrase lodged behind his ribs like a key sliding home.

Then they were gone, swallowed by the crowd like they'd never existed at all.

He stood there, the phone cutting into his palm, watching the space where honesty had just saved him from his own truth.

For once, he thought, he wanted to earn the next conversation.

Instead of stealing it.

The studio smelled like coffee that had gone cold an hour ago and the ghost of the incense Miyabi had burned upstairs.

The others were already back at their posts—Soukaku tightening a hi-hat, Yanagi’s fingers drumming a silent pattern on the fader caps, Miyabi perched on a stool with her scarf pooled in her lap like red water.

None of them looked up when the door sighed open, but Asaba felt their attention slide across the floor and stick to his shoes.

He didn’t speak.

Just shrugged out of the coat that still carried a faint mall-food scent, hung it on the same hook he’d used since Inferno, and sat.

The headphones waited on the stool like a confession booth.

He slipped them on, pressed the left cup closer to his ear, and hit PLAY on the old take.
Scars_01.

The waveform crawled across the screen—three-note sigh, looped, dead.

He’d heard it a hundred times since noon, and every pass had felt like rereading a suicide note written in someone else’s handwriting.

Today it sounded… different.

Not alive, not yet, but no longer embalmed.

Somewhere beneath the static, he could still feel the mall’s fluorescent after-image: silver hair catching on tablet glare, the boy’s half-wave, Seth’s flattened ears.

And threading through it all, the quiet three-note hum the boy had left hanging in the air like a door left ajar.

Asaba closed his eyes and let the memory settle in his lungs. His shoulders, tight since morning, began to unknot. His breath fell into rhythm with the loop, shallow at first, then steadier, as if the track were exhaling for him.

When he opened his eyes, his hand was already on the MIDI keyboard.

He didn’t arm a track, didn’t roll back to bar one—just started playing into the loop, the way you speak over a lullaby so the kid stays asleep.

First came a low G, held until it trembled.

Then a grace-note slide up to B-flat that landed a hair sharp—messy on purpose.

He left the tail of the note open, no release, so the room’s own hum could seep in.

Over it he laid a single chord: D-minor add 9, voiced wide, the ninth clashing just enough to bruise the consonance.

It wasn’t a song.

It was barely a sketch.

But it had gravity.

Yanagi’s pencil stopped tapping.

Soukaku’s drum key froze mid-turn.

Miyabi’s eyes lifted from her scarf and fixed on the back of his head as if she could see the sound through bone.

Asaba kept going.

He duplicated the phrase, nudged the second iteration a sixteenth late—human error, the kind quantize would murder.

He rolled off the highs until the track sounded like it had been recorded in wool.

Then, without thinking, he opened his phone’s voice memos—still cued to the mall capture—and dragged the last ten seconds of ambient chatter beneath the chords.

Registers clanged.

A child squealed.

Footsteps overlapped like rain on a tin roof.

The sounds hit him harder than expected: the child’s shriek pressed warm into his ribs, the footsteps jittered in his chest like another heartbeat. For a second, his throat tightened; then, impossibly, it loosened, as if some muscle had been waiting months for this proof of life.

Yanagi inhaled—small, sharp, as if the air had grown teeth.

He let the loop run once, twice.

On the third pass he leaned into the mic, not to sing words but to exhale—a rasping, whispered hum that matched the boy’s cadence exactly.

The waveform spiked, then settled into a soft, living tremor.

Silence pooled when he hit STOP.

Soukaku was the first to move.

She set the drum key down with exaggerated care, the way you set a glass back on the table when you realize it’s crystal, not plastic.

Yanagi spoke without turning.

“Play it again.”

Her voice was low, stripped of its usual smirk.

Asaba did.

This time Miyabi rose, crossed the floor barefoot, and stood behind him—close enough that he caught the faint sandalwood still clinging to her sweater.

She didn’t speak.

Just placed two fingers on the edge of the console, anchoring herself to the sound the way you touch a rail to feel a train approach.

When the loop ended, the room felt denser, like the air had been replaced with something slower to move through.

“It’s… breathing,” Miyabi said finally.

Not a compliment.

An observation, soft and clinical, as if she’d just noticed a pulse return to someone she thought was already gone.

Yanagi exhaled through her nose, slow and deliberate.

“File name?” she asked.

Asaba looked at the screen—Scars_01 still blinking—and typed two words after it:

…breathes

He saved.

The cursor stopped blinking.

For the first time in months, the quiet that followed wasn’t the sound of something ending. It was the sound of something starting—messy, unsteady, but alive enough to move in his chest.

The apartment was already dark when Asaba keyed the lock. Six p.m., but the winter sky had folded in on itself, gray bleeding into black. He dropped his scarf on the back of a chair, shoes half-kicked off, and let himself sink onto the couch without turning on a light.

His phone buzzed against his thigh.

Yanagi.

He thumbed it open, expecting some clipped note about the session. Instead, the message unfurled like a knife.

The board overruled me. Heated fight. They want the Inferno remix back on schedule. Threatening breach-of-contract lawsuit if we don’t deliver.

If they push it through, they'll freeze tour support and promo—no marketing, no advance payments, and the spring dates get shelved until we comply.

A second message followed before he could even process:

I tried. I lost. Sorry.

The screen’s glow painted his hands pale. He read the words again, then again, but they refused to change.

For a moment, the room folded in on itself, air thick as wet wool.

The new track—Scars_01…breathes—felt suddenly microscopic against the machinery that owned his name.

He pressed his palms to his temples until sparks bloomed behind the lids.

Back to the lights, the choreography, the grin that isn’t yours.

The thought tasted like copper.

His chest locked. His throat felt raw, scraped clean, but it didn’t stop the thought repeating: you don’t get to escape. You don’t get to be human.

Another minute—maybe ten—he stood in the middle of the floor, chest heaving around a scream that refused to leave.

Then something snapped, quiet but definite, like a string giving way.

He turned toward the mirror beside the bookshelf.

Not the vending-machine ghost from that winter night—someone sharper, rawer, eyes ringed but present.

Him.

Still here.

Still capable of one last honest act.

A tremor ran through his fingers. He stood abruptly, pulled a battered sheet of staff paper from the desk drawer, and sat by the bed. The room’s quiet pooled around him—not sterile like the studio, but raw, the kind that settled on his skin like snow.

He closed his eyes.

Izakaya steam curling above two bowls.
Genmaicha bitterness at the back of the tongue.
Seth’s flattened ears, the boy’s three-note hum, the hollow temple he’d built out of spotlights.
Everything pooled behind his sternum until it ached.

His pencil moved without permission—no key signature, no bar lines, just slashes and dots that

looked more like heartbeats than notation.

When the page was full, he realized his hand was shaking.

Breath came in short, glassy puffs.

He reached for the battered acoustic that leaned against the wall—strings dead but still in tune enough.

Capo on two.

Fingers found the shapes the pencil had drawn:

Am – C – G – Dsus2 – Fmaj7 – C/E – G

A slow, open progression that felt like exhaling after months of held breath.

He started picking, thumb brushing low strings, nails catching the higher ones so they rang like small bells in an empty church.

Voice first a whisper—more air than pitch—then settling into the melody he’d carried since the mall.

Stage lights burn like accusations
Every note a scripted lie
I've been dancing in their shadows
While my real voice learned to die
Perfect pitch but no conviction
Sold my voice for streaming gold

No drums.
No autotune.
Just wood and wire and the crooked truth of his throat.

I'm a ghost inside the spotlight
Just an echo in the hall
Built a temple out of nothing
Where the faithful come to crawl
But the altar's always empty
And the hymns don't know my name

The notes cracked on “name,” but he didn’t smooth it.

He let the crack stay, like the boy had left the door ajar.

Behind the glass they polish
Every crack until it gleams
Feed me words I never written
For a life that's not my dreams
Count the hearts but not the heartbreak
Measure worth in manufactured screams

By the second chorus, his fingers had steadied; the guitar body vibrated against his ribs as if agreeing to carry the weight.

He sang softer on the bridge, almost speaking:

But I met someone who listened
To the silence underneath
Saw the man behind the mirror
Heard the song beneath the teeth
And for three stolen moments
I remembered how to breathe...

Still a ghost inside the spotlight
Still an echo wanting more
But the cracks are letting light in
And I think I've found the door
Where the real song's been waiting

The final line he delivered barely above a murmur, the string ringing out into the apartment’s dim:

For the courage to be born

Silence reclaimed the room, heavier now but not hostile.

He looked down at the sheet—pencil smudged, paper warped where a tear had fallen without permission.

Above the last chord, he wrote a single instruction in shaky kanji:

Play it only once, live.

For a moment, he almost believed it was enough.

Then he set the guitar on the bed, leaned the paper against the strings, and for the first time in months, the quiet inside him wasn’t the void.

It was the space where the next honest note could land.

The last syllable was still trembling on the low ceiling when he remembered the phone in his pocket. His fingers found it with the urgency of someone grabbing a life-vest—screen still cracked from last tour, battery at twelve percent.

He flipped to the voice-memo app, tapped record, and set the handset upright on the windowsill so the little red dot faced him like a single, honest eye.

“Don’t lose this,” he told it—voice raw, half-laugh, half-sob.

The apartment hushed itself: fridge compressor, neighbor’s TV, the faint ticking of the wall clock all stepped back so the guitar could finish breathing.

He played the piece once more, slower, letting the room’s own noises leak in—his own foot tapping on the floorboard, the exhale between verses, the accidental scrape of a pick against wound bronze.
Imperfect, unrepeatable notes.

Exactly what the board would want to polish away.

When the final open string faded, he hit STOP and stared at the waveform—ragged peaks, tiny valleys, the irregular heartbeat of a real moment.

He labeled it with the date and a single word: before.

He backed the file up to three different cloud services, and mailed a timestamped copy to a burner account linked to an old distributor—an address the board would never think to check.

If Monday’s mask came for him, at least this one minute would live somewhere they couldn’t auto-tune.

Chapter Text