Break is at an end once again.
Most of the people in Len's year carry on to school, despite not having to attend classes anymore, for the opportunity of roaming the halls until graduation. It's this type of sentimentality that the young man would rather not have any involvement in had he not been pestered into doing so.
Gym wasn't something he ever looked forward to.
Sweat, sun, and the now-frozen outdoors, is exactly how he imagines hell to be.
Strolling in the city five hours later, ignoring the phone in his pocket even as it vibrates every few minutes demanding to know when he'd be home wasn't ideal either. His father was finally in the country after a long absence ー the longest, yet, and it makes Len feel guilty to admit he's less than enthusiastic about this return.
These thoughts soon enter disruption; as he's numbly staring at the text on his screen (risking a chance to read what the older man had written, just in case there was an emergency he was neglecting), a child no older than the age of six roughly shoves against him along the pavement, crying for her mother, causing his phone to slide from his grasp and crack against the kerb.
Surprisingly, however, this time, Len doesn't have the heart to scowl. It's normal for children to panic when they're lost, he convinces himself, and the agitation fades away.
The streets are crowded as ever, with large, hanging ornaments of electric-angels in the middle of the square. Hoards of families gather to take pictures beneath the shimmering lights.
The young man gathers his phone off the pavement before it's stepped on, then quickly continues to wade through a sea of people from the fourth avenue into the fifth, ignoring each and every sunken shout from his friends directed towards him, evidently exhausted over his tendencies of wandering off alone.
Just as usual, whatever deemed personal to him should remain personal, and the blond is more vague than he will ever be explanatory.
There are things he needed to do, and he'd rather do them alone.
Len raises an arm to wave towards the group, gesturing for them to go on without him.
They separated eventually; Hiyama Fukase with three other boys from their class headed off to a pub, while he was left on his own.
After an hour of aimless wandering on the streets, followed by the childlike wonder of whether he'd genuinely managed to get himself lost ー Len stood by his destination; a large shop with little porcelain dolls in the storefront, pink balloons floating to touch the short ceiling, some in the shape of a flamingo. Steadying his breath, he pushes against the door, barely getting any time to revel at the immediate warmth of the heater as it washes over him until his legs instinctively move to the end of the building, searching for pure cotton in the shade of the shallow sea.
Imagination bursts in, filling up the gaps of how such a dress would adorn a child with the skies at twilight in the palm of her hands.
His memory is of soft breath, violet lilies, ocean eyes at the palest tinge of hyacinth blues.
Five minutes into the search however, to no avail, the dress is nowhere to be found. New garments were on the shelves, abundance in stock, yet none were even half as lovely as the one he had seen before
But something else catches his eyes; white fleece, brown-black buttons above it's nose, two floppy ribbons over each side of it's head in imitation of a rabbit's ear.
This time he buries the burning warning of regret. The boy snatches it off the shelf, and walks forwards with that decision, not looking back.
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No amount of sentimentality excuses taking a child out of their slumber in the middle of the night.
But here she was, skipping off the stone steps of the house with her daughter's drowsy grasp falling from her chest.
Len keeps his voice beneath a whisper, but has no choice but to nag this girl, as stupid as she can be, in protest. "Rin, we have a set bedtime. Eyes closed by nine, no more than that."
"She misses you."
He doubts that. The only thing this child could ever miss is sleep. But even so, there's a certain poignancy to Kagamine Rin's behaviour that convinces him he'd do well to stay silent rather than share his thoughts.
Len fiddles with his collar outside the gate until the young woman pries open the lock, allowing him to pass through. Mirai maintains this certain, calculated stare, the corners of her eyes crinkled with crust and the slightest dust of snowfall beginning to collect on her lashes. He inches closer as Rin shoves away the key, disposing of the bag he has in his hands to the floor to dab away the crust his daughter has gathered on her face.
Behind them, the fountain continues to stream. Goldfishes shimmer beneath the splashes of a four-inch waterfall.
He pushes his family under the roof where the snow can't reach them.
Their daughter, ladled with sleepy curiosity, reaches out towards the wall of rocks. Her runny nose drenches Rin's nightdress through the cloth of her jacket, visibly upset over the loss of her dreams, especially when her mother spins their bodies around to face another direction... a decision that effectively takes away her only source of delight.
There's a soft hiccup of shock.
Len realises the calm before the storm before hell threatens to break lose.
"Oh, god, Rin." His hisses come as immediate as they are frantic, rushed over the upcoming burst of tears. "Are you purposely trying to make her scream? She was looking at the fountain!" It was another struggle altogether to keep his voice low. "Bounce her, no, not like that, pass her over."
Rin looked as if she was going to have a meltdown of her own.
"She's going to wake up the entire neighbourhood."
It was nothing short of a miracle when he remembered to yank out the stuffed animal from his bag.
The chaos is stifled. Mirai, despite a trembling bottom lip and hands gathered into fists, is miraculously handled just three seconds short of a bawl when her father takes her weight into his own hold and shoves the ear of the rabbit into her hands.
His second plan of action is to lean over the pond, giving her the opportunity to run a single, chubby finger through the water in innocent wonder, and, in Len's case, hope for these fishes to work as a distraction. But her other arm is wound tightly around the stomach of the white, cotton fur, attention divided into equal halves.
In a moment, the one-year old is feeling the breeze under her hands, the lights illuminating beneath her chin, and her incessant babbling under his ear about whatever it is that could ever fascinate a child, (while Len pretends to have understood each and every noise she makes: yes, yes, I know, yes, such pretty fishes, I'm sure mummy thinks so, too,) with approving nods of his head.
In another moment, she shoves the rabbit's ear into his mouth, as if that was her way of displaying affection and sharing the present between them.
Her mother, on the other hand, was one simple nudge to the hip short of collapsing from exhaustion.
The young couple shot a glance towards the upper floor windows, wondering, had anyone been up there, whether they could spot two teenagers sitting on the step of the stairs.
Careful not to make any more noise, both pursed their lips.
The two were a curious sight, beneath the stars by themselves. Len is dressed in the same clothes he'd worn since crawling out of bed an hour past, hidden under his father's borrowed coat; and his usual converse are replaced with sandals one should bring for an outing to the beach rather than at three in the morning in order to meet their girlfriend in the midst of winter... Rin was wearing lace hardly considered appropriate had it not stopped below the knees.
Modesty never was limited to attire. This young woman's words certainly drove far from it. "... come upstairs. Bed with me."
Her breath is cold, but her words, scalding, and he welcomes the weight of her head against his shoulder where blonde curls of hair tickle his nose. "I can't. Someone will see." He doesn't hesitate to refuse. "Mirai has to get back to sleep too."
"You can't expect yourself to sit out here all day..." Though he has, once before, hasn't he?
While it was positively freezing then, and while she's gone numb to her toes even now.
Len shifted on the ground. His socks stood out against his sandals, and she found it a curious sight.
But his thoughts were on other matters.
A hundred nights of religiously tucking their daughter in bed by eight in the evening, to wake at seven for sunrise the day after, ks now gone to waste. Not if the child's schedule was going to end up as unpredictable as her mother's emotions... he was struggling not to be overwhelmed by disappointment. Rin was usually better at keeping track of time.
She must've realised by the look on his face, because in an instant, she flared up all the way to her neck.
Their subject of discussion was none the wiser: cherub cheeks glued to wading her fingers through the coldness of the pond. Her cheek is squished against her father's heartbeat, as he tenderly takes hold of her other hand in his own ー still wrapped around the bunny rabbit, to feel her temperature... and she was cold to the touch. It's a surprise she isn't breaking into tears already.
Rin stands beside them, dusting imaginary dirt off the nightgown's skirt, not realising the way her companion's face hardened at all. "We can't stay outside forever. Just come upstairs with me."
"Quiet." He scowls, "And get her to bed. She's freezing."
Alright. Now she felt the hostility. "I don't hear her complaining."
"Because she can't speak."
"Whose fault is that? Don't you dare talk as if I don't know how to raise my own child." Rin shoves a palm against his shoulder, humiliated. "I'm the only one who talks to her, bathe her, feed her, while you're never even there everytime my father forces me to stays in that family's house, telling me its necessary for them to get 'closer' to Mirai."
He held a breath.
"Rin, ー"
Len reaches for her face behind his fingers, roaming soothing circles to bring her close. Those eyes, at storm, delve deeper into the clouds.
They avert from where he hoped them to land, instead towards the ground by their feet.
He releases a hush for her name, gentler now, upon the glassy tears left to shed on the young woman's face. "It's alright... I'm here, now."
There's the rustle of the trees above, causing them to spare another glance towards the upper windows. A neighbour, somewhere down the same street, issues a drowned-out sneeze.
It's another reminder to lower their voices.
"You're here now. But you won't always be. You're not here whenever I need you the mos-"
"I need to to figure things out." He gritted out the words between his teeth. Mirai eventually breaks ut of her sweet reverie to realise the growing tension between her mother and father ー that same focus causes Rin to veil her expression with a reassuring smile, lovingly waving one of the rabbits ears to redirect the infant's attention. But Len continues to drift forwards. "I don't know what you want me to do.. it's not like you've got any idea how lost I am. I've tried my best. I'm trying, Rin."
His last few words are nothing more than whispers, weak, nearly unheard as it carries off with a gust of wind. He covers his daughter deeper into his coat, then into the blanket her mother had brought down around that tiny body, in hopes it would be sufficient, if not ample, protection from the cold.
"My daughter's not a bargaining chip. She's not a bargaining chip... they can't keep treating her like one!" She gripped his arm. "... my surgery is in January... they've got a date, everything down to the last bit..."
".. no. I know what you're going to say, and-"
"Just run away with me." She begged. "Take me away from here."
"We can't!"
"Len I lov-"
A little slip of the tongue is all it takes for his blood to go cold.
He stands, frozen, like a deer caught on headlights. His body moves on it's own to smother the young woman's words with a sweating palm before she's able to finish what she meant to say. The next few seconds pass by in nothing more than a haze: the shameful abandonment of rationality.
She should've screamed at him, push him away, demand reason, anything to distance them instead of narrowing the gap.
Her heart chooses a different path. Dainty fingers bury deep into his shoulders, then to his neck, to the chiseled sculpture of his jaw. Her desperation takes whiff of his scent, praying for it to be the only thing she can ever think and breathe when he leaves her a searing kiss. Her memories, as vindictive as they can be, flood through the whispers of Neptune with the tides lulling her deeper into sea to melt into foam.
His mouth is burning, her tongue pushes through his mouth, and he doesn't have to break his promise when she eventually slips again.
They separate, both lips left sore and red, and it's only when he tastes the salt over his tongue does he realise he'd been tasting his own tears.
She covers her face in her hands, and when he pulls her back, she swears to do nothing but look away.
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An entire weekend is wasted. He has no work to do, and it's becoming increasingly impossible for him to sleep through the night for days.
A large hand runs over the top of his head, calloused fingers on his scalp, and the young man jumps when such contact alerts him that he's not alone. .
His father was dressed in a suit.
Pale lilies in a bouquet, held tightly to his chest, when lighty extending an invitation to come along and pay respects to that woman (when Len hasn't done so in years). This time, the boy pulls resentment by the reigns to consider the offer properly. But there is no chance to refuse, or even accept, for that matter, when Leon immediately looks over his shoulder towards the bowl of cold cereal, books spread across the table, then decides there would be no reason to wait around for an answer too easy to predict.
He heads for the door without another word, save for an absent peck to his son's forehead on the way out.
Len stares numbly at the ceiling, and it's all he can do. An end is out of sight, too far from reach.
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Hiyama Fukase took all of ten minutes in the home entrance to simply shed off winter boots, socks, alongside four other layers of inner clothing, as if the world would perish if he dared wear garments less than a man in the fifteenth century.
The blond couldn't help but think of how, the other day, he personally had gone out in nothing more than cotton pyjamas and borrowed coat that barely fit his own body. While he was left pondering, his friend, returned from a trip to the convenience store for snacks, flung a bag of crisps directly to Len's head. He snatched the bag reflexively, as if second nature, and he could catch it even if he were completely blins.
Good catch, Piko mumbled on the carpet behind them, fidgeting with the DVD player he'd borrowed from a family friend.
This bot, for instance, believes the longer he tempers with a device he doesn't understand, the higher the chance a eureka would dawn upon him and he'd know by instinct how to us work the object without needing to open an instruction manual even once in his life.
The eldest between the three, on the other hand, circles the walking space to sink into the couch.
"I feel like I haven't been to your house in years."
Oh, obviously. Len, contrastingly, feels like he wants to shrink into the size of a slug considering he's fully developed the mental state of one.
It has been years. It's been ages.
And to be honest, he would've appreciated this type of streak to keep going for a while longer.
Not that he was ungrateful to have friends concerned enough to check up on him, nor was it that he didn't appreciate any company, but he'd intended to spend an entire day doing nothing more than stare at the wall of his bedroom for several hours until successfully fading from existence.
(Or have somebody, perhaps a robber, break in the house to shoot him through the heart.)
(Neither scenario was necessarily more ideal than the other.)
But now those plans are ruined.
A hum is drawn out, contemplative, and he grits his teeth at the noise, trying to distract himself through other methods like the sound of the ceiling fan or the distant sea through the open window, the moons pushing and pulling the tides.
A sudden wonder lights up in his mind, and he decides to release it before he forgets. "Fukase, has anyone ever told you they loved you?"
The older boy wasn't even caught off guard. He treated spontaneity as if it were natural.
"Rather out of the blue, isn't it? That type of question." The cushion beside him sinks deep, their weights pushing deeper into the couch. "Am I right to assume that you are trying to tell me something, Len?"
"No, I mean ー that's not what I meant."
"Then, with a more careful assumption that my parents don't count, it's a no," His friends' eyes narrow with mock-suspicion, only until the one with curled hair, blindingly red-to-amber at the tips, releases a laugh. "Why?"
"How would you react, if, or when, a girl... tries to tell you she loves you? Would it be rude to cut her off?"
"A girl told you she loves you?"
He's interrupted in the middle of speech , and that's all it takes for the small, dwindling motivation the young man even has to wholly fade away.
The blond wrinkles his nose, not answering the question in favour of asking them to forget that conversation ever happened.
It was some sort of luck for that to be the exact moment Piko managed to get the player to work, and connect it to the big screen.
The topic wss treated like taboo until the early hours of the morning.
Len's friends had insisted on spending a night together for the weekend. With them not being the only ones awake in mind, he made a reminder to keep his voice low, believing dawn, followed by their departure, couldn't come soon enough.
"I did come close to it once," Fukase admitted later that night, and upon the younger boy's lack of interest, he added a small bit of information to make the blond's head turn. "Two winters ago... meeting Kagamine Rin again."
That did capture his attention. A little too quickly to pass off as mere curiosity.
His bedroom was too cramped. It could barely fit a smaller-than-average girl pressed against him, let alone had there been enough space to allow three teenage boys at the peak of their growth in such a miniature room, even if they tried to squeeze themselves into tetris cubes.
So they opted to spread out three mattresses on the floor of the living room instead, him in the middle, facing Piko's sleeping form, observing the rise and fall of his chest, while Fukase slept on his left side, too closely to the blond's ear.
His dad was home instead of at another bar with some colleagues ー the light of the man's study peeking through the gaps of the door, and he kept himself hush.
"That's impossible."
"It's not, my Dad made me attend the education summit, two years ago... I was supposed to see which universities I wanted to apply for. Dhe was there, with the rest of her schoolmates, wearing one of the prettiest smiles I've ever seen."
"She goes to the same school as us."
"Funny, you mention that... she transferred. Apparently the teachers decided not to tell when a student drops off the face of the earth, as if it's important to keep everything all hush hush, even with that whole ruckus when the police were going around... my Dad wouldn't tell me anything, either."
"I bet you saw someone else."
"I didn't. I talked to her. Had a whole two-way conversation and everything." Fukase roughly grasped Len's shoulder, forcing them in the same direction to meet each other in the eye. Having a conversation with the back of a person's skull wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, nor was it far from disgraceful. "She went to a private girls' school up north. Expensive as hell, I found out."
"Odd."
"Isn't it?"
Of course it was.
It doesn't match up. None of this matches up.
"Then she told you she loved you." The blond repeats, in the emptiest manner. "That's it? So suddenly? You'll have to make me believe that."
"... well, in her words, she said she 'appreciated' me. That's close, I think."
The fuck. Len forced out a laugh. "Yeah, Kase, that's definitely close... keep this up and eventually you just might get married."
"Alright, I'm kidding... she approached me because she had something to ask about. You sound jealous."
"Despite common belief, I don't actually want to be fucked by you."
"Not what I meant."
Fukase pretended to twist his ear, for punishment from the embarrassment he's caused, then as an empty warning to shut up.
He could tell he older boy was falling asleep by the telltale softer, shallow breathing, echoed beneath the ceiling, and while it truly is as calming as it had been, the blond realised he couldn't close the eyes of his own. Now that he's already got one sip of wine about her, he's tempted to have another glass.
"... so? What was it?"
"What was what?" Fukase repeated after him, tone evidently irritated.
"The something she had to ask you about."
"Oh... 'you'."
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A now-dirtied white bunny trails behind her footsteps as she toddles down the steps of the stairs. The house gate has been left open for his visit, so, with that knowledge, Len pushes through the entrance to reach for the weight of the horror he made, and prop her up against his hip.
Her mother retreats into the house, gathering a bag with everything else they'd need for a day trip to the city (she had to go out to collect her medicine from the hospital, and he offered to come along), while Len takes his sweet time to the station in slow strides, leading Rin to easily catch up once she was finished making sure there was nothing she forgot.
Getting on the transport, this time, the child settles in her lap rather than his.
He wasn't complaining.
Rin's lips were thinned, fingers peeling back the thermal she wore. It gathers sweat from the heat in the vehicle; the bus made too warm, too stifling, but that only brings his awareness to how there's something off about Rin, yet be can't quite put a finger on what it was.
Her lack of smiles could be one thing,. The lack of attempts to touch him was another.
He keeps his eyes away, from the gentle pressure of everything that was her against his own body, and insists, instead, to observe through the window, of the vast ocean and the cars whizzing past on the road. He bears holes into the sunrise, wishing for it to permanently blind him, while she wishes for it to whisk her away.
Her eyes kept down, her fists in her skirt. "... did you... did you find out? Yuuma told you?"
Find out what. His brows, thick as they were, knotted together into a single line.
"... is that why you've been so distant to me lately?"
Him? Distant?
No ー and he won't understand a single thing unless she tells him what's wrong.
But he doesn't have to urge her to explain. Because when her daughter comes up, brilliant golden curls and starlit eyes staring at them under the shade, guilt overwhelms the young woman for what she's about to say, and for once, with face buried in Mirai's hair, breathing in her scent them cursing the heavens if it ever were to exist, as the world is already made to be her hell.
For once, Kagamine Rin resists the urge to cry.
"... I don't have any choice but to let them take her away."
ive lost the original draft of this chapter so this was the most draining chapter I've ever written :") am not half as satisfied with this chapter as it should've gone. desperate rewrite, eventually.
good luck with finals! again, stay safe!