Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mina sighs and turns to the clock on the wall.  3:05, and the café has been empty for an hour.  The polished floor gleams in the lights, the large black windows onto the runways are silent.  She picks a CD, Naoko this time, and puts it on.  Manhattan Joke , the song of sad airports and sad hallways, the song which seems made for the only café in the Narita arrival hall still open at three in the morning.  The chairs and tables shine with her last wipe down, and the counters shine in the yellow-white light.  The song plays, and she remembers happier days.  Hectic days, but happier.  From far away the click of shoes on the hard floor, and she sits upright again, listening.  As the steps approach, she distinguishes the rolling of luggage wheels.  She waits, and a magazine cover appears, hat and coat and shoes and glasses matched perfectly to a face of ethereal, soft beauty, and she doesn't realise she has pushed the stool back until the woman slowly turns her head to the noise.  

"S-sorry," she squeaks out.  But the woman only smiles, and goes over to the counter to sit.

Some minutes later, she sips at the infusion she ordered, the ochre coat folded on the seat beside her to reveal the beige layer beneath.   From behind the golden rims of the glasses, the large eyes flick about the chairs, the tables, the lights, Mina.

"Sorry, are you, uh, are you Myoui Mina?"  Accented, lilting Japanese.  

"Y-yes."  Mina steels herself for the next question, feels her mask returning.

"You're even prettier than the pictures," she says serenely.  Mina blushes, looks hard into the poster on the wall.  A famous actor stares out of the frame, holding a cup of coffee in his hand.  A cold morning, green and fresh, a cup of hot coffee, and a book.

"I suppose it's unfair if you don't know my name.  Chou Tzuyu.  You might have heard of my father," and indeed Mina has, jolted back to the cafe of brown and yellow.  Perhaps they are more similar than she thought.

Silence descends again, and now Naoko sings the last notes of Gimonfu , the instrumental fades.  Smile for Me is next, and the stranger, Tzuyu, finally speaks again.

"A Taiwanese singer covered this song, too."

"Teresa?"

"No, someone else.  Teresa probably never sang this one."  They laugh, not really knowing why.  Silence falls again, and Naoko sings and sings, her smile with a crooked tooth beaming from the album cover, forever.  

"You can ask me if you want, you know."

"What?"  The bespectacled eyes gaze curiously back at her.

"No, it's just, when people recognize me, they always ask me a bunch of questions."

"That figures.  Do you see fans often?"

"Not really.  Maybe once every week or so.  It's nice, in the end, to know people still remember me."

"You're a hard person to forget," the stranger says sincerely.  Unlike me , she seems to leave in its wake.  Just someone a disgraced and fleeing father had shunted the collapsing empire onto to deal with the aftermath: an afterthought for him, for the press, for everyone.

"I expect they will, quite soon."

"I don't think I will, at least," she says, smiling.  Is she just being polite?

"Are you doing okay, though?"  Still the same even tone, as if the weather was at hand.

"More or less.  Surviving," she says with a laugh.  It's her own fault for opening herself up to questions, after all.

"Sorry.  I had to know."  For a long while there was only the hum of lights and machines, Naoko singing a summer song, slow sips from the steaming cup.

"Had to know?"

"You were my ultimate bias, after all.  I don't think I could stand not knowing if you were at least doing okay."  Casual again, letting it slip out, and Mina blushes to her ears this time.

"I'm fine, really.  Most of us are getting by somehow."  Somehow.  Some of the shifts are at strange hours, but they don't pay badly.  And then the occasional gig, a little venue to relive the old days, taking what she can.  After the sensation that was Half-Moon Serenade , she tried her own hand at writing a few melodies, and even now with what little time she has with her keyboard she writes little tunes, not knowing if they will see the light of day.

"And you?  No-one to pick you up from the airport?"  Did that come out too snarky?

"No, no-one.  I don't have anyone much, nowadays.  The negotiations are only in a few days anyway."

"Tokyo?"

"Yokohama."

"Oh, that’s where I live now, actually."

"Not Chiba?"

"It was cheaper, and I already had a place there."

"Isn't it far?"

"It's okay.  I listen to music on the way, and there’s always a seat."

Over the background music the other woman, Tzuyu, hums, lost in thought.  It is a few seconds before Mina recognizes the tune with a jolt.  She doesn’t seem to have realised, and absently stirs her half-finished drink, still humming the melody, a song from Mina’s third album.

“That track took a long time to get down, I remember.”  It is the other’s turn to flush a little now, embarrassed.  

“The producer kept asking for a different tone, and it took a whole day to get it right.  I think it was the first time I actually cried from recording an album.”  

“That’s harsh!”

“The song came out well, though, if I say so myself.”

“I think so too.  Your voice was perfect.”  Does she never stop to think when she blurts these things out?  She looks again at Tzuyu, but her face remains even, her eyes remain large and unruffled.

“Do you still sing?”

“Sometimes.  Not often.  Random event managers who remember my name call me up.  Even the larger events don’t pay that well, though.”  If there are events at all.  Everything has dried up since the crash, after all.  

“Songwriting?”

“I have to eat, you know.  I got into it too late, anyway.  What about you?”

“Me?  Surviving, same as you.  If these next few weeks work out, we won’t have nothing, at least.”

“And if it doesn’t work out?”

“Are you guys hiring?”  The soft laughter pops something, and it deflates, is relaxed.  

The talk continues, pausing now and then with long restful silences, as if waiting for a bowl of clear water to fill.  She learns more about Tzuyu, the woman behind the pretty face, behind the hurried snaps of the news articles.  She has dogs, she likes the Mario games, she likes Seiko, Mina, and strangely enough, Yoko (Oginome, not Ono), campus folk songs, and of course, Teresa.  She likes beaches and the sea, especially when the sea is deep and calming and blue.  She grew up in Japan and Taiwan, but doesn’t have a home in Japan anymore.  A voice of yellow scented wood, soothing and light and clean.

Eventually, the disc plays itself out, and Mina puts in another, Akina this time, her low voice sounding from among the lush instrumentals.   Jukkai , full of blaring brass and danger, echoing into the empty halls.

“When does your shift end?”

“5:30.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“And then?”

“Which area do you live in?”

“I don’t think-”

“I’m getting a cab, so I thought to drop you off on the way.”

“I can get home myself, sorry, I think, I mean, with a fan,”

“Okay.  I understand.  Can I have another cup of the same?  And a toast set.”

“No toast sets at 4:20am, sorry.”

“Aww.  What about croquettes?”

“We don’t have fresh food now, are the reheated ones okay?”

“Of course.  Do you mind if I just stay until the end of your shift?”

“Of course not.”  Slow Motion plays, and Mina’s mind wanders to white beaches, blue seas and dark green pine trees.  

Just before 5, a wave of tired arrivals washes past, and a few customers trickle in for a first bite of the day.  Mina glances at Tzuyu now and then as she busies herself with the orders, and each time Tzuyu is gazing at her.  At 5:15, the next shift arrives in a knot of laughter and greetings, and Tzuyu is still watching.  

Just after 5:30, Mina is finally on the way to the train, and somehow Tzuyu and her suitcase follow her along.  Perhaps she is tired, perhaps something about the easygoing and friendly girl has seduced her, but she doesn’t object when Tzuyu sits next to her on the train, doesn’t put her earpieces in when she makes conversation, and there is something easy, too easy about this all, the way the words fizzle out into the quietude of the half-empty train and start again, understated.  Tzuyu may be a fan, but then she is no longer an idol, with no company and no manager, a part-time singer with no publicity, no press, nothing.  No, she isn’t special anymore: she can be anyone, she can be Shoujo A.  

The train is empty, almost empty, and the first stops rush by, past the fields and first scattered towns.  The next stop is announced, and some students troop in, a salaryman in a loose suit.  The carriage fills, with the scent of sleep and cigarettes, dead warm air and whispered phone calls.  She falls asleep, and doesn’t see Tzuyu still staring at her as the train makes its slow way round the dreaming bay of half-dawn.  She wakes, and the train is crowded now, a too-frail salaryman staring them down the bridge of his squarish spectacles.  Ignoring him, ignoring them, they speak in half-whispers, letting the dust and streaked buildings rush past behind them.  

It is almost 8 when the train finally reaches Mina’s stop, and there is still a transfer to go.  Mina sees the question in Tzuyu’s eyes after 2 hours of a slowly soring bum, and explains before it comes.

“I don’t mind, really, it’s nice to watch people come and go.”  There are still a flood of questions to be answered, but she has a feeling this won’t be the last time she sees the pretty face which sticks with her even as she transfers to a local line.  

“Don’t you have a hotel to go to?”

“I, I suppose I do, I’m sorry.  I’ll go and-”

“No.  Stay.”  Mina has surrendered everything now, lets it all down and releases it all.  If she gets spotted by a stray camera, if Tzuyu turns out to be a stalker, so be it.  

“I don't want to be the kind of fan”

“I'm not an idol anymore, in case you haven't noticed.  If I didn’t want you around, I would’ve said so just now.”

“I suppose, but”

“Please?”

“Of course.”  

Back in the apartment, Tzuyu sips on a glass of water while Mina washes up.  Lounging at the table, sleep slowly finds her heavy eyelids.  The jeans and inner layer are not the best sleepwear, but something about the heating, something about sitting against the wall is strangely comforting, and she is asleep by the time Mina gets out of the shower, cradling her wet hair in a towel.  

“That smells nice.”  The drowsy voice startles Mina, lost in her book as her hair dries.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, did you want to play on the keyboard,”

“Don’t worry about it.  Get changed into something comfortable.”

“What?”

“You didn’t abandon your comfy hotel room to sit around here in jeans and thermal wear, did you?”

“But-”

“It’s not a sex thing, okay?  I just, it just feels right.  You can use my shampoos and stuff.”

“I’m too used to my own, sorry.”

“Suit yourself.  Now go.  I feel on edge just seeing you in your plane clothes.  It doesn’t match the house.”

“Yes, boss.”  Irony creeps into her voice and lends it an edge before it dissolves in a laughter of soft petals.  White petals, or white with a tinge of yellow, the frangipanis she had seen on a trip to Thailand or somewhere.  Yes, her laughter was falling frangipani petals,  yellow and white and terribly, terribly soft.

The kettle whistles, and she turns to drench the tea leaves, watches the steam as it rises from the teapot.  The steam rises, mingles with the muted morning light on the posters of idols and Sapporo girls and idols again.  Hefting the teapot with one hand, she crosses the invisible dining-living line, and sets the teapot on the low table, the steam rising this time against the doorframe, against the hung jackets and unhung jackets, curling against the shelved books and stray books, the framed moka express poster.  Tzuyu emerges with her hair hung about with a towel, one of her own, pale pink on her blue shirt and loose trousers.  

“Genmaicha?”

“Thanks.  You had a dog?”

“Yeah, during my idol days.  I was usually too busy to play with him, and,” and a lump fills her throat looking at the leash still hanging near the cabinet, the water dish which she has not thrown away.  

“He got ill, and by the time I had all the time in the world to spend with him , he was gone.”  Tzuyu is silent for a long while at this, and then sighs, as if remembering.  

“I had two.  Dogs, I mean.  Never mind, not today, sorry.  Do your parents visit much?”  Mina only deigns a derisive laugh in response.

“Friends?”

“Sometimes.  Most of them are in Tokyo.  What about your friends, the ones you holidayed with?”

“I don’t meet up with them much, or well, I used to.  Most of them don’t look me in the face anymore.”

“What?”  Something rises in her chest, something like anger, but Tzuyu’s voice is so even that even that is stilled.

“It’s complicated,” and Mina does not probe, sipping at the tea.  

The minutes pass, Mina not wanting to sleep, Tzuyu looking around the apartment, making little comments, saying things which seem almost random, talking about the colours of the clothes (dark with a splash of mint or purple), about the varieties of coffee (numerous), about the vinyls on the little desk (covers tattered and peeling), about the small fridge (empty).  The late autumn sun shows itself in the windows, the apartment fills with light.  At some point the keyboard comes from where it leans against the sink to the low table, and something in the air changes.  Tzuyu picks out a tune and laughs, adding chords on the fly, and Mina sings something, one of her old songs.  Tzuyu proves quick to pick up harmonies, quick to twist the accompanying figures this way and that, and her voice is wavering but sweet, raw material which would have made a comfortable following and career twenty years ago.  Neither of them knows where the morning has gone, melodies and figurations scribbled on stray manuscript paper, nonsense lyrics for the improvised tunes which flow and die away like so many cherry blossoms in a distant spring.

“Come on, Mina, I’m hungry, and you really should sleep.”  With a shiver Mina realizes she has dropped the formalities, and some strange thrill or presentiment of fire fills her, but she does not disagree.

“What about your hotel, Tzuyu?”  Tzuyu, plain and simple, the same finger of running heat, trembling.

“I, I guess I’ll have to pack and um,” no, no, she could not go, Mina had been the one to invite her in, make her comfortable, and she could not oust her like that, make a face of rejection, present excuses about their reputations.  

“Stay until, uh, the evening at least.  I’ll take a nap, uh, and then, and then we can have, have dinner.  I’m off tomorrow, and then I have some day shifts-”

“I can’t stay with you, you’re right.  Tell me when your shifts are, though, I’ll go visit, if it’s not too much”

“Of course!  Come whenever.”  A strange relief, which she doesn’t know is the relief of knowing Tzuyu wants to see her again as well.

Mina snores on the thin mattress, and Tzuyu lets herself out, closing the metal door slowly.  She will come for the luggage later.  At a cheap café, one of those left over from the 60s with glowing flowers and leaves for lamps, the waitresses are not so pretty as at the airport, but the drinks are cheap, and the tacky leather seats are soft.  Perhaps an iced milk tea would be okay.  The details of the company negotiations fill her mind with creeping dread.  She has a horrid feeling she has not quite plumbed the depths her father sank to in the heady days before the collapse, and the possibility of what little she has left being torn away looms as a vast and unhappy tower above her, the columns of the Battersea power station in the grey and unforgiving London sky.  A face of white jade surfaces in the murky depths, and she grasps at it to stay afloat.  She will go to Narita the day after tomorrow.  Not to catch a flight, no, something much more important than that.  Perhaps she will have a toast set with an egg and decaf, or another of those croquettes, those were nice.

Chapter Text

When Tzuyu returns for the luggage, she hears the keyboard in the corridor.  She knocks before turning the spare key in the lock, and a rush of footsteps comes to open the door.  

“Awake already?”

“I can’t sleep too much now anyways, have to get the schedule back to normal.”

“Didn’t you need to shop for food?”

“Oh, yes, of course.  Come with me?  Come back for the luggage later.”  

“Okay.”  Everything is easy, everything is simple.  Mina buys in a fit of resolve miso, carrots, spring onions, eggs, meats and noodles and vegetables for the recipes which float up in her mind, and doesn’t think about why.  Tzuyu follows her about the aisles, picking up random cartons and bottles, buying juices and sandwiches for later.  Only later, back in the apartment, does Mina realise she forgot the cooking oil.

From the window, Tzuyu looks out over the city, Blue Light Yokohama, and already she misses the bedroom-kitchen of the morning.  Leaving the window open for the lights to stream in, she goes to turn off the room light.  For a long time she lies awake, thinking of lonely cafés, silent malls and shopping streets where the dust gathers on half-lit neon signs.  Now and then the silent face of white jade comes back, smiling eyes at a soft joke, furrowed in concentration as she pours water for coffee, vacant as she looks into a distance unseen and remembers old times.  Giving up, she goes to the chair by the window, and stares down the beetling city lights.  For a long while she looks at the pedestrians and bikes, stopping and moving and crossing when the cars halt, entranced.  The lights in the windows of the apartments switch off, on and then off.  In their silhouettes she imagines story after story, behind the shadows of plants and women and men, she dreams.  

She wakes, and the windows are dark, the streets are dark, she makes her drowsy way to the bed.

The next morning, her first thought is what Mina is doing, whether she is free to hang out, but she brushes the thought away.  She has many visits to make today, administrative ends to tie up, and everything hangs heavy.  The street is filled with fallen leaves, with sad wind.  Plane trees and fine rain.  The subway entrance brings a wave of warmth with it as she enters, and she descends the stairs slowly, switching to the left side of the stairs when she sees the stream of passengers ascend.  

It is not yet morning, but Mina is wide awake already.  She turns over with a sigh, staring now at the shelves of detritus, of music scores and albums and photobooks.  She shuts her eyes, hoping for a little more sleep, but now her heart seems to thump too hard in her chest, her breathing refuses to even and settle.  She gives up, pouring herself a glass of water.  Another crush, another few months of slowly getting to know a girl until it turns out she likes guys.  Or until her manager finds out.  Or until it turns out she was a creepy obsessed fan all along.  Can it be different this time?  Can she dare to hope?  At the very least, she doesn’t have a manager anymore.  The night is silent, save the occasional bump and shifting chair of a neighbour, and there is no answer to be found in the cars which roar past the streets below.

An hour later, it has started raining, and she is slumped on the table in tenuous sleep, dreaming of long afternoons, of endless hallways, of an ochre coat and leather shoes and pretty face.  

When she wakes it is morning, and the twice- and thrice-attenuated sun makes the apartment dingy and cold.  Coffee.  Coffee and breakfast.  And then that shift at the convenience store because the old guy has fallen ill.  The slow stream of water and steam on the grounds, the slow drip of coffee into the pot.  She scrabbles about for the starter, and with a few clicks the thin blue flames burn from the stove.  The pan is still clean, and she drizzles the new oil in.  When it runs and coats the flat bottom, she cracks the eggs in, letting them crisp and sizzle.  The flame off, she hunts for a plate.  Bread, eggs, coffee.  A little soy sauce onto the soft centres, and she digs in.  Bread, eggs, coffee, a bubble of warmth in the rain and red leaves and yellow.  The morning stretches by, the pan soaks in the sink. 

At 3pm, Mina is regretting she agreed to cover the old guy.  Much less well-rested than she had supposed, the thought of yet another crate of baumkuchen or canned highballs to unload only fills her with exhaustion.  Mercifully, there is a lull after the scruffy young man finally finishes his oden and takes his umbrella to leave.  She daydreams at the counter, singing softly a tune of her own invention.  The door opens, and she sits upright again to greet the customer, freezes when the newcomer (boots, knee-length down coat, gloves) looks her way, the familiar doe eyes pinning her in place.  She remains frozen as she browses, not knowing if she is mistaken.  Rice balls, coke, some packets of instant noodles.  She slowly scans the items, hoping for a word, a flicker of recognition, but she has bagged the items and still not a word, not a hint that it is her.  

"Thank you for coming.  You should, you should eat better."

"Mina?"

"It's me, yeah," she blurts out lamely, and a bright dimpled smile chases the clouds away in an instant.

"I didn't realize it was you, sorry.  Don't you have work tomorrow?"

"Somebody was ill, and I could do with the cash."

"See you tomorrow, then.  Don't push yourself too hard, okay?  It must be tough doing so many shifts."  That smile again, freezing her in place, choking the goodbye she has prepared in her throat.  The rest of the shift goes by quickly, the dead spaces filled with warm thoughts, soft smiles.  The tan smiling face with its dimples, frowning in concentration, or laughing, the dimples going deeper in the soft cheeks.  Was it possible?  Could she be reciprocated?  So many memories of male singers or actors, sending her flowers or envelopes on thick paper, envelopes and flowers which invariably lent a dash of colour to the rubbish bags before she took them out.  More painful still are the kind, the pitying smiles of the women who promise not to tell anyone about her preferences.  And after that she goes on stage, and sings, papering the wound over with a short skirt and saccharine smile.  

On the way back, the rain has stopped, and the now-dark sky hangs over the wet street of many lights.  She takes a detour to follow the river, dripping with bare trees, masses of black branches silhouetted in the neon glows.  A game arcade stares dishevelled into the riverbank, the large flat façade with its name in a curled and faded font.  She walks past drunks, shouting, shops of white lights and peeling paint.  Two bridges later she crosses and passes under the blue lights, the red lights, passes the lift lobbies and signs for hotels.  Under the train tracks the violent smell of vomit or something noisome, and she hurries past, following the dark and looming tracks awhile before turning off toward her apartment.  

She forces herself to use the ingredients she bought, frying the pork with some vegetables, using the miso paste for a quick soup with tofu.  The rice is cooked, and she putters around, scrambling for the flat rice-scoop which seems to have vanished.  Finally she gives up and settles for using a smaller bowl to scoop rice into the bigger bowl, trying not to touch the steaming rice with her bare hands.  To-morrow she will use the rest for porridge.  Wait, did she buy frozen clams?  Why did she buy frozen clams?  Then again, those would be fine for the porridge, with the Miso.

After dinner, despite her exhaustion, despite the sleep which clogs her eyelids, despite the thinness of the walls and the late hour, she sits at the keyboard, hot cocoa beside it on the low table.  Shuffling through the manuscripts left from Tzuyu's visit for the first time since, she tries out the melodies and harmonies, prods them this way and that, and before long she has the inkling of a song without words.  Unable to further resist sleep, she drags herself to the shower, leaving the keyboard and manuscript paper scattered about.  She snores lightly, and the cocoa has gone cold on the table, to be rediscovered the next morning.

Tzuyu is finally on the bus back to the hotel.  Half-empty, the bus seems lonelier than ever.  Outside, the sky darkens, and the water in the road splashes.  She watches the shops go by, a car repair shop, a stationery shop.  An old man with bulging eyes glares at her from across the bus, but she pays him no heed.  A housewife sits next to him, her face drawn taut with age and care, drumming her fingers on her knees, staring at the grainy bus floor.  Out of the bus, and the trees are dripping into dim puddles and wet tarmac.  Alone by the window: how can she endure till the sky turns dark?  The faceless windows loom above her, and it is not yet the hour for the lights in them to glow.  She hurries along the grey street of grey people and grey lamps, trying to fix in her mind the still-fresh scene of Mina in her uniform, sitting at the counter, the wide eyes and deep dark hair.  The smell and taste of ash upon the air, and then as she enters the lobby of the hotel, clean carpets and elevators, and she is back, in a marble-floored lobby somewhere in London, waiting.  It is her first time without her parents, and she paces about, shoes clacking the hard floor.  Fake flowers, low couches, high ceilings.  Low shining tables with ashtrays.  When they arrive in a tumble of suitcases from a car door and push into the revolving doors, she fairly runs to greet them, a cluster of Japanese voices in an English hotel lobby.  

She breathes deeply of the smell, her face creased and trembling with memories, and with a bell which startles her the elevator is arrived.  She stares at the couple in the opposite corner, whispering in Mandarin with a thick northern accent.  They get off, and then she gets off.  The door closes behind her, and she is left facing an ornate vase of orchids.  Back in the room, she hangs up the long coat to air, ungloves the gloves onto the table, sits at the desk without getting changed, thinking.  Perhaps it will be fine after all.  She smiles, and thinks of what she will order at the airport tomorrow.

Chapter Text

The door closes behind Tzuyu, and without taking off the long prussian blue coat or the high ochre boots she crashes into the bed, letting the drops of rain stain the sheets.  Despite the heater and the thick puffed coat, she remains prostrate for a long while, as if crushed to the soft sheets by a heavy weight.  At length she rolls over and sits up, surveying the room with puffy eyes, drawing the curtains to reveal the glowing city, sliced and spattered with the wind and running water which streaks the outer pane of glass.  6pm.  An imitation of some impressionist painting hangs above the bed, and her gaze lights and lingers upon it, as if seeing it for the first time.  Cliffs tower above a sea of waves: probably, almost certainly Monet.  Finally, she takes off the gloves, placing them beside her, and rises to unzip the coat, revealing the stiff shirt beneath.  

In the bath she braces herself against the smooth tub, throws her head back to stare at the ceiling, following for an eternity a fine crack in the blank white.  When she feels the wrinkles in her fingers and toes she makes to drain the water, drying herself off mechanically before the loose night-clothes drape about her exhausted and thinning frame.  

At the desk, she discovers she has run out of instant noodles, and collapses onto the cold varnished wood in defeat, letting the glasses press uncomfortably into her forehead.  Even the phone for room service is distant, and the receiver, too, is heavy, so heavy, and the thought of the mediocre and overpriced food being charged to her bill is enough to paralyze her.  In the morass of sludgy thoughts which refuse to move, a single bright spot remains in the gloom.  With a sigh she rises, drawing the curtains to change back into fresh clothes.  She drags the unwilling umbrella from where it stains the carpet, and takes the keys as she goes, a ghost of a smile on her face, the first in a long time.

Just past 9pm, Mina has returned from dishing out an order of parfaits and ice creams to an English family when she sees the familiar large eyes, the familiar ponytail, the familiar face and stride, only today it is all wrong, today everything is disjointed, and the eyes seemed glazed over and puffy.  

“Our heiress is in a mood today, eh, Minari?”  Sana teases her, but the grin falters even as she speaks.

Egg and rice on the fork, and into the mouth and chew.  Into the mouth and chew.  A gulp of iced barley tea.  Rice, egg, tea.  Where is Mina?  Still busy.  Egg, rice, tea.  Sit back and stare.  Smell of coffee.  Behind her someone.  Scent of a woman, flowered.  Egg, rice.  Chew one and two and chew.  Steam from the pots, steam from the pans.  Let him be crushed, let him be crossed.  Candy-wrapper crackle.  A back cricks, a chair creaks, glossed paper rustles.  Hurries past unseeing, the long ponytail.  Egg, rice, tea.  Tea, cold and buzzing against the teeth, tea and grains of roundish rice.  The clouds clothe her, the flowers rouge her.  The plate empties, and still she sips at the tea.  

9:40pm, and a lull in the customers prods Sana into action.

“Go on, Mitang, go and talk to her.  She looks like she needs it.”

“But the-”

“The next arrival won’t be for a while, me and Momo-ring can manage until then.”

“Really?  Okay.”  Momo, too, eggs her on with her eyes, and she goes to take off the apron and put a sweater on.

“Something wrong?” 

“Tzuyu?”  

“Mina.”

Tzuyu breathes slowly, heavily, at the veneer of the table wood, at the melting ice in the cup.  Drops of condensation mottle the glass.  The plate is smudged with sauce and a stray grain, reddish with ketchup in the plain white plate.  She can hear the breathing, soft against her heavy and heaving own.  She doesn’t want to look up just yet, doesn’t want her to read the sadness and anger which she knows is written there.  She sighs, and settles back into the fake leather cushion.

“Do you, do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not just yet, sorry.  I’ll tell you later.”

“I’ll come over later, okay?  I have to get back.”  Tzuyu nods, finally lifts her head, and the ghost of a smile lifts her lips.  

At the next table an old man sits alone, too, sipping at a tisane of some kind.  His pastry remains half-eaten, and his sallow wrinkled face looks far away, beyond the rain-stained windows into the vast dark.  The ice in the glass melts, slowly, the condensation runs.  She drinks deeply of the ice-melt.  The old man packs his things to leave, and if he was waiting for someone, they have not arrived, for he walks slowly away, and the tapping of the cane fades away.  

Another glass of tea, a croquette set while they are still freshly made.  Another little group of suitcases wheels in, all chatter and laughter, and they pore over the menu, puzzling out the items in a foreign language that could be Spanish.  A couple, evidently from the same flight, passes by and heads for the taxi stand.  She watches the yellow matching suitcases wheel by and out of sight.

It is well past midnight, and the last shift are gone in another wave of laughter, the now-familiar faces of Sana and Momo and Sakura passing by.  Now Mina cleans something, wipes something, washes something, and Tzuyu watches.  Her own plate and cups have been cleared long ago, and she rises to go to the high counter, and in response Mina goes to clean up the table she has just left.  Her umbrella is dry now, and she stuffs it in the box below her seat.  

“So,” and the remark startles her, made while Mina is still wiping a cup dry, not even looking at her.

“How bad is it?”  At the question, a ridiculous question, she cannot even bring herself to laugh.  

“Whatever you imagine, it’s worse,” she finally manages.  In moments of wild optimism, she still saw everything as a dream, afloat in a space where nothing made sense, because it didn’t, of course it didn’t make sense, how could something like that happen in real life?  No, it had been a dream, a bad dream, and she would wake up soon, and-

“Hey,” and the dream is shattered, the dream of a dream gone with a puff, and the tight cords of reality threaten to close in on her.  She wants badly to order a beer, a highball, something, but she doesn’t want to start, not now.  

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"No."  A quiet sound, full of despair.

"Friends, family?"

"No, none."  Adrift, plucked from everything she had trusted, torn away from everything she thought she knew.  The tears would come again, soon, if Mina didn't stop trying to pry everything from her.

“Do you need a place to stay?”  Mina remains gentle, unflinching.  

“No.”  It comes out harsher than she intended, and she backpedals. 

“I don't, I can't impose, it's bad enough to, I can't just be a burden to more people,”

“If not, what were you planning to do?  It's going to drop below freezing at night soon, you know, if not this week, then next week.  Have you looked into dorms?"

"Dorms?"

"Like, you know, beds for cheap.  They had those in the UK too, surely?"

"Oh, well, uh, I guess?"

"Never mind.  Do you want to stay a few nights at my place?  You can look around for options."

"Are you, are you sure?  Is, is there, uh, space?"

"I can move the table and stuff, don't worry."

"Okay."  Mina isn't sure why she asked, but something nags at her, tells her that the woman in front of her is not ready to deal with winter alone.  She breathes a sigh of relief.  

2am has come and gone, and Tzuyu seems calmer, almost happier, but is now yawning alarmingly often.  The café is empty save the two of them once again, and they spend a long time looking at the empty tables, the empty hallways.  The few travellers who hurry past the café do not stop to get a drink or snack, all anxious to get a cab at this strange hour.  The stillness and hum of electricity rings throughout, and Mina puts on another CD, some City Pop this time, Anri or someone, to drown out the silence.  

"Did you take a look at the music after that day?"

"Yup, it's pretty good, I forgot to tell you.  Here, I brought some of them today."  She turns off the CD, and takes out a sheaf of neatened-up manuscript paper, the jottings of ideas for lyrics.  Tzuyu follows the lines and sings, looking over the tentative lyrics, nodding, frowning, nodding again.  She scrabbles in the pocket of her coat for a pen, and produces it with a flourish.  Even this makes Mina smile.

They fall into their familiar rhythm, Tzuyu suggesting things, writing things down, Mina adding things in, and even without a keyboard they become lively again, their laughter and voices and humming echoing through the tiled hallways like distant memories of songs, like melodies which float from afar in a dream.  Now and then, the click of boots or leather shoes on tiles makes them look up, but no, no-one comes, no-one seems to find them strange.  At some point, the papers get shunted aside, and the talk shifts back to miscellaneous, unimportant things.   

"Yes, once, my parents brought me, I think it was the Yotsuya Kaidan."

"Urgh."

"Yeah, the make-up scenes were terrifying."

"I went a few times, too, only I forgot the names completely.  I think one of them was the Chushingura, but I was really young at the time."  A shadow of sadness upon heart.

"After so long, I haven't seen a single Takarazuka Revue."  Mina stiffens a little, and Tzuyu drops the subject.  A little too close to home.  It is almost 3am, and Tzuyu is feeling deeply the exhaustion of staying up so late.  Mina hums and looks again into the gleaming whiteness as Tzuyu naps on her coat, her glasses lying askew with the half-cup of tea, like a still-life painting.  She wants very much to pet the soft head of hair, to stroke the thick dark brown about the tired face.  Some minutes later, the first customer of the next day walks in, and he, too, senses something in the air, perhaps, since he keeps his steps quiet, does not disturb the slumbering woman on the counter.  The water comes to a boil, and Mina pours the thin stream onto the waiting ground coffee.  Trickling water, dripping water, a sudden snore.  No toast sets, the salaryman discovers just as Tzuyu did, but a reheated sandwich works just as well for a first hurried meal and coffee.  When she goes back behind the bar, she stands a little way away from Tzuyu, trying not to stare too much.  Just before the next flight arrives, she gently pushes at the head, discreetly.

"Hmm?  Oh, Mina, sorry I fell asleep, I, uh,"

"It's fine, honestly, you must be exhausted."

"My shift's ending soon, and I have to pack up.  Meet you later at the flight information display?"

"Mhmm.  You're sure I can crash at your place?"

"Of course.  Don't worry about it."

"Mmmf.  I drooled."  Their soft laughter forms a little bubble, which pops with the voices and luggage wheels.

Mina casts another glance over, and busies herself with the new orders.  It almost slipped out, a line about how cute she was asleep, but she stopped herself just in time.  Not yet.

Tzuyu sleeps all the way on the train back, and Mina has to wake her to figure out how to get to her hotel.  It is clear after the rain, and the walk from the train to the bus stop, from the bus stop to the hotel is graced by a clear sky slowly bluing into dawn.  The sharp morning air pricks Tzuyu fully awake, but she only looks sad as she gets down the bus, looks still sadder when she enters the revolving doors into the lobby, and Mina knows she is saying good-bye.

Chapter Text

Mina is already changing out of her work clothes, but Tzuyu only stands there, suddenly large and awkward with her suitcase.  

"Sorry for disturbing," she finally squeaks out before wheeling her suitcase in.  

"Go and change first, and then we'll figure out the sleeping arrangement."

"Are you sure-"

"Yes, I already agreed, come on."  

Mina sits and drinks another cup of cocoa.  She needs to buy more of the powder soon.  Another cup sits placidly beside it, a weird domed penguin cup whose only merit was its novelty.  Oh well.  It was the only clean cup still around.  She forces herself to go to the sink to finally wash the others, not bothering with the dryer rack.  The room fills with the sounds of showering, a faint and soothing roar, and the running water as she washes the cups.  How much of her offer was having a crush on Tzuyu, and how much of it was genuine concern?  She doesn't really care, is too tired to care.  If it doesn't work out, she will figure something out, something that doesn't involve just throwing Tzuyu out onto the street in the middle of winter.  For now, excitement pounds in her breast at the thought of having someone to share in her music, in a way she can't do with her other friends.  

"Oh, is this cup for me?"

"No, it's for the ghost who lives here.  Of course it's for you.  Drink it before it gets cold."  Tzuyu rolls her eyes at the quip, and sips at the cocoa while Mina goes to take her shower.  The room is just as she remembered it, neither more or less messy than when she first visited.  It is a little alarming how familiar she is becoming with Mina, with her lifestyle.  She stands, cocoa warming her hands, and looks about.  A photobook of her, five years go, at the height of her popularity.  Her face smiles, sweet and fuzzy from each page, on the beach, at a fading amusement park, in a park of autumn trees.  She flips through Mina smiling, Mina laughing, Mina placid, seductive, wistful.  She puts the glossed pages aside, staring into the steam of the coca cup.  A sip, warm, chocolatey, sweet.  Mindlessly, she hums one of the tunes they worked on, and her fingers travel an invisible keyboard.  She wonders when she will next get to play on an upright, a nice Bösendorfer or whatever the good European brands are.  Kawai, just like Naoko.  Are they related?  

Drifting, she looks back to Mina, lost in a book, unconcerned.  Something by Mishima.  A deep silence, interrupted by a honking from the street.  She awakes on the mattress to see Mina in a sleeping bag, curled up beneath the table.  Such an idiot.  She barely has space for herself in this place.  Still exhausted, she lets herself be lulled back to sleep by the low hum of traffic.  The next time she wakes, Mina is making a late lunch.  She rises to see two plates on the table, a pot of coffee brewing on the stove, and another pot of tea, chrysanthemum petals in a clear pyrex teapot.  Already the guilt eats her up inside.

"You shouldn't have, I can't just let you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,"

"Stop that.  It's just temporary, alright?"  And Tzuyu doesn't argue, but nibbles with ever-worsening guilt at the porridge, sips gingerly at the mild tea.  She remembers a story, some Italian writer, about two children playing in a large luxurious house, a house where nothing was theirs, where they only felt like intruders the longer they stayed in that splendour.  She feels like that now, even in the cramped and messy apartment, treading on memories.  What was welcoming, relaxed just days ago is now fraught, each thing she does a trespass, an intrusion.  

"Relax.  Please."  Mina is pleading now.  Has she been out of line?  Has she done something to make Tzuyu uncomfortable?  "Come on, let's jam for a bit after lunch, I'm sure we can finish a song properly."  She hopes it will calm the obviously on edge Tzuyu.

"Okay."  The mention of music makes Tzuyu slightly more comfortable in her skin, and she subsists on stray melodies which flit as moths with pale wings in the dust and autumn for the rest of lunch, only coming to her senses with the sound of plates and dishes in the sink. 

"I'll wash the dishes."  She is imposing, she is taking advantage of the kindness, she had to do something.  

"Okay?  Don't worry about it."   Mina has read her mind, it seems.  Tzuyu breathes deeply, and sets to soaping the plates.  The water is freezing, and the suds white against her tan skin.  She wipes a plate dry, and lets it stand in a rusting rack.  Now Mina counts out some cash, her pay from the shift, probably, and Tzuyu watches from the corner of her eye, the guilt in her growing worse with every moment.  Mina is barely scraping by, and here she is eating her food, making herself a nuisance.

"Stop that, fucking stop that!  We'll figure something out, okay?  I have friends from old jobs, we can go and see if they're hiring later.  You're pretty, you're polite, somebody will want you, trust me.  Even if not, there's always other things to try.  Leaving you alone out there is my last option, believe me.  Just trust me on this, please."  But why do so much for her?  Why does Mina care so much?  What does she even get out of it?  Tzuyu looks at her dubiously, unsure of what to believe.

Mina, of course, had resisted the urge to scream her love at the top of her voice, claw back from her lips the line that that wanted to escape so badly, the confession at the tip of her tongue.  I'm doing all this because I like you, don't you know, can't you see?  And Tzuyu didn't see, couldn't see, or if she has none of it shows in the large eyes and dishevelled face fresh from sleep.

The outburst over, there is silence again, the silence of a cold day of bare trees and blue sky and white sunlight which streams in from the windows and makes everything crisp and clear, and even the things in the shadow of the sunlight seem clearer, drawn in a fine dark pen with clean lines.  After their showers, the keyboard surrenders its usual spot once more, and Tzuyu plugs it in as Mina digs out the manuscripts they were working on.  The sun yellows and fades, and they find their flow once more, their voices filling softly the white and grey air.  They polish up their first song, something melancholy, tinged with chromaticism, drenched with their pungent yearning for times long lost.  Mina glances over several times at Tzuyu, but she seems relaxed, happy.

Mina's stomach is the first to cave with a growling which makes them both giggle.  The light in the windows has long faded to dark, and the white humming fluorescent light casts its cold glow all about.  Tzuyu feels it again, suddenly, the creeping guilt of trespass, the feeling of a wanderer in a refuge not her own, looking at memories she cannot be a part of.  Mina does not push this time, and lets her sit a the keyboard for a while.  The home she can no longer return to, the roots she can no longer revisit.  She remembers a childhood home on the wild and wind-rocked north coast, all blue and black and white and green, she remembers the flat in Tokyo, the envy of her erstwhile friends, looking over the street of countless neon lights, red and yellow and white and blue.  After school, they had looked at the clothes, the trinkets in the shopfronts.  When the tears come again for the things lost and torn away, Mina is there, her smile and arms are there for her. 

Mina slices the beef thinly before it goes into a bowl.  Tzuyu likes spring onions, she knows, and good beef.  Well, it isn't the best, not on her pay, but it is a good bit better than the usual.  Not that she plans on telling Tzuyu and making her feel even more guilty.  The beef is next, and then the mirin, the soy sauce, the starch to marinate.  A little oil to finish.  She hums as she works, washing up before moving on to the vegetables.  A carrot, peeled and sliced into strips, then capsicums for the colour.  What next, what next?  Out with the soaked shiitakes, then slices, too.  Everything in slices, everything fine and neat.  More spring onions than usual.  After the noodles are done she will reboil the broth and add the Miso.  Butter, melting and bubbling, dashi powder.

"How is it?"  

"Tzuyu?"  But she only moves the noodles mechanically to her mouth, chews and crunches everything, and her eyes are far away, looking at things Mina cannot see.

"Hey!"

"Oh, Mina."  The voice, too, from an immense distance, dragged out from murky depths, exhausted.

"Is it okay, are the noodles, the soup okay?"

"Oh, theyr'e good," Tzuyu mutters, not sparing a glance.  Mina grits her teeth, and hides the hurt away.

"Is it too salty?  Is the meat too tough?"

"I, yeah, it's good."  It is Mina's turn to want to cry.  Her bowl is only half finished, but her keen appetite is entirely gone.  

"Is it enough, do you want to add a fried egg?"

"Stop that, you sound like my mom."  Something shatters, something splinters, but she presses it down, hides it deep.

The meal passes in silence, but it is a strange silence, and Tzuyu, after a time, feels it too, that this silence is off, that something has gone rotten less than a day into her stay here.

"Mina."

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."  Mina knows it is a stupid reply, that even the wavering anger in her tone can be heard from a mile away, but she cannot bring herself to say it.

"No, Mina, please.  Did I do something wrong?  I'm sorry, I was thinking of, of something else."  Mina softens a little.  The woman in front of her has just lost everything, less than 24 hours ago.  Who would blame her for spacing out?  How can she expect her to function and react as though nothing has happened?  It still hurts, but it is easier to press it down, make it smooth.  There will be other days, other meals.  It is still there, the smarting, the slight of her hard work being devoured in untasting mouthfuls by the crush she is trying to impress, but it stings a little less.  Just a little.  

"I'm sorry, I was being silly.  It's nothing, really.  I'll tell you another day, when you're less shell-shocked."

"Okay.  Promise?"

"Yes, yes, promise.  Now let me wash the dishes this time, you could do with more rest."  

"I-"

"I'm not the one with a traumatic life event in the last 24 hours, okay?"  And Tzuyu is silent, going back to staring into the window and lights, the countless lights in the windows which seem suddenly like lives cut off from her, things closed off from her forever, lost to the wind on the whims of corrupt old men.  Mina glances over as she immerses her hands in the soapy water, and the depths of sadness in Tzuyu's face pull at her heart, each tear another pluck, each sigh a fresh tug and turn of the tuning-peg of her heartstrings.  The dishes can wait, she decides.  An arm over the shoulder, and Tzuyu does not refuse.  They stare long into the lights, long into the wavering city lights, and all about them it is still save the rushing of the cars in the street.  

Chapter Text

Co-habitation is not what Mina imagined it to be.  Tzuyu has found a smattering of part-time jobs, none of them very nearby, and their schedules rarely match up, leaving them with precious little time to work on music together.  She supposes that in this economy, she was lucky there were any openings at all.  At least there is always enough to cover the rent now, and even a little left over after their daily wants, if she will stop buying expensive ingredients just to impress Tzuyu.  Even when they manage to be in the house at the same time, they are both too tired to do much except it at the same table, munching listless sandwiches, or fall asleep.  She cooks for Tzuyu when she can, leaves her food, but she craves her presence, smile, her long fingers at the keyboard, her voice overlapping with her own.  The ride to work is long and lonely without her, and she wonders how Tzuyu's new co-workers are, whether they treat her well, whether they ogle her all day.  She wouldn't put it past one of the depressed teenagers to get some weird crush on her.  And if she reciprocates?  Best not to go there, best not to overthink.  The buildings and bleary shops rumble past her, glowing neon blurred by soft rain.  An actress smiles a rain-trickled smile at her, and the windows of passing buildings glow.  She shivers, and pulls the thick coat tighter about her, even in the warmth of the train.  

Part-time work is not what Tzuyu expected it to be.  Not that she had many expectations of it in the first place, only having seen it in books, on television.  She didn't expect the toilet-scrubbing, the endless standing around at the places which don't allow the staff to sit down, but takes it in stride, forces herself to take it in stride.  Dealing with angry customers is roughly what she has expected of it, most of them being disarmed by a smile and a soft word, a tone and expression calculated to soften, to please.  She misses the time she spent with Mina, but doesn't think too much of it.  In the long hours of down-time, she finds herself thinking of that face, the voice, the mannerisms, and a little hollow forms in her, a little bubble of sadness she cannot chase away.  

Somewhere in town, on a street of honking cars, Tzuyu stands and shivers, shifting her weight from left to right and back again, trying to get out of the way of the stray droplets ot rain.  No-one looks at her, no-one glances her way.  She wishes she was inside, but there is still an hour to go before Mariko takes over.  Mariko, her new coworker, whose parents, too, used to be wealthy.  Until they weren't.  She watches the street, misted in the rain, hoping her smile gets through to the passers-by.  Another slow day.  She hates getting assigned to the door all the time, but she doesn't dare object.  She rubs her hands, puts on a smile.  Being the pretty face means getting the most visible spot, she supposes.  Mariko comes over with another hot pack, and she takes it with a smile, a real one.  A car zooms by, sending up sprays of water, and in its wake the lights of the street glitter and shatter and form again.  Opposite her is an office of grey lights, and she reads the Kanji over and over.  Sumiyoshi, has she heard the name before?  Perhaps a friend in school.  Sumiyoshi, Sumiyoshi, Sumiyoshi.  The wind blows, the rain spatters.  Other shops stand deserted, stray boards and faded kanji.  She puzzles out the board next to Sumiyoshi, half the characters faded and chipped away.  It is madness to stand outside in the rain in winter when no-one is out and about, but it is what it is.  Another few minutes of worsening rain, and Mariko comes to tell her that she can come in: the manager has decided the weather is too bad for touting.  She steps in with a sigh of relief, and Mariko, bless her, comes over with a cup of hot barley tea.  

"Thanks, Mariko, you're a godsend."

"Don't worry about it."

The dinner hour is already come, but the rain is fierce.  They sit, and the steam rises in the dead air.  There is a smell of cooking, a sound of simmering, the pots of broth and pre-prepared meats from the kitchen.  The manager sits with them, one Takada, whose given name Tzuyu hasn't asked yet.  He recognized Tzuyu the moment he saw her, but has not showed a trace of pity for her, for which Tzuyu is deeply grateful.  They put on a tape, and Tzuyu sips at the hot tea in silence.  Matsuda Seiko reminds them of summer, her bright and cheery voice brightening the silence.  How long has it been since she has gone to see Mina?  The door opens, and Tzuyu shoots from her seat, almost guilty, but her manager doesn't seem to mind.  The first customer of the evening.  She steadies her smile, the one she used to put on for the endless meetings, and goes out to greet them.  

After closing, there is much cleaning to do, and by the time they leave and let Mariko lock up she is drooping with exhaustion, dragging her feet as she walks.  She hopes Mina is still awake.  She isn't but she left a note and a pot of camomile tea on the stove, which makes the standing in the rain worth it.  Almost.  

The weekend comes, and as far as she knows, Tzuyu is free as well.  But when Saturday rolls around, she wakes to see Tzuyu preparing to leave, and hides the dismay on her face.

"Oh, I'm shifting my Friday stuff to Saturdays from this week.  The old place had too many people, but recommended I go to this one Chinese place."   Mina hides her resentment, and smiles, happy for her.  

Tzuyu passes Mina the address on a piece of paper, somewhere in Chinatown.  Something strange growls, creeps up in Mina's breast.  The air stings her face, and she wraps the scarf about her face a little tighter.  

A gaudy sign advertises Chinese food, from some part of China Mina has not heard of.  There are UFOs on the menu, somehow, which seem to be some kind of deep fried oyster thing.  Pork liver noodles?  Duck liver noodles?  What is going on?  She pushes the door open to a tinkling bell, gingerly.  The interior of the eatery is all white light and plastic tables, and the waitress who greets her is stunning, too stunning to be a waitress: Chou Tzuyu in a cheap tacky uniform is somehow even prettier than usual, her hair tied in a ponytail, her eyes bright and smiling.  In a half-daze, Mina lets herself be led to a table, orders something at random, the fried noodles, and a sour plum juice.  Tzuyu smiles as she takes the order, a customer-service sort of smile which still makes Mina all fuzzy inside.  

She eats the noodles, which are rather nice and remind her of yakisoba, just with more sauce.  The sour plum juice is very cold, and very fresh.  Over at the side Tzuyu is deep in conversation with the other waiter.  Not in Japanese, in something which she takes to be Chinese.  No, not Chinese, she has heard Chinese before, and it doesn't sound like that.  The ugly bubbling again, a creeping choking feeling which spoils her appetite.  Tzuyu laughs, and the feeling grows worse.  She's not yours, she's not yours.  Get a grip, Mina, they're just talking, they're just bloody talking, not flirting, and she doesn't know you like her, please- Tzuyu laughs again, a laugh she knows by heart, a laugh which bubbles forth only when she is enjoying herself.  Come on, finish the food at least.  You came to see her, not get riled up by every little thing.  But why can't she just schedule her shifts to match with mine?  She has enough control to finish the meal and pay, and Tzuyu smiles warmly at her, but she only heads for the door, hurrying to the station.  

Tzuyu wonders as Mina hurries away.  What did she do wrong now?  Something was weird about the way she just went off.  The door opens again, distracting her from completing the thought.  

On the train, Mina is calmer.  Doesn't she chat like that with Momo and Sana all the time?  What is wrong with her?  She still wants to see Tzuyu more often, though, that hasn't changed.  The buildings rush by, endless lights in the dark.  For some reason, she feels like crying.  

Later, Tzuyu comes back when Mina is asleep, but Mina drowses awake, chats a little anyway.  A hot cup of chrysanthemum tea for the cold night, steaming and lonely in the white light.  

"How are your coworkers, by the way?"  

"Not bad.  The guy you saw just now is pretty nice.  He's the nephew of the owner: they all fled from China when the communists took power, and then from Taiwan to Japan.  They're all pretty cool."  God, not the jealousy again.

"That's nice.  You're free tomorrow?"

"Yep."  A simple answer, music to her ears.  

They both wake up late, when it is almost time for lunch.  How does a dishevelled Chou Tzuyu look so hot?  The face she makes at Mina as she awakens, the eyes which have not fully opened, somehow arranged perfectly on the round face, framed and crisscrossed by stray hair.  Sunday, and it is freezing cold outside, so they stay in and watch the clouds in the winter sky.  The heating is not the best, but it is enough with their thick coats.  Mina makes a pot of coffee, a pot of longan tea, this time with some Chinese herbs Tzuyu mentioned she likes with her herbal teas, going off her list of roughly-remembered ingredients, added in haphazard proportions.  Tzuyu giggles at the goji berries, which have expanded to a whole layer above the brown sugared liquid.

"You didn't need to add that many."

"I didn't know, okay?  I don't use them in my soups," she huffs.

"It's okay, I like them."  And that is enough for Mina.  Tzuyu takes a sip, and then a gulp, chewing thoughtfully on a date.  Mina has at least put them in for long enough.  She remembers the first time she tried to use them in a soup, and she threw the dates in haphazardly, and in the end they were dry and horrible on the inside, nothing like how her aunt made it.  She has stolen, well, been inspired by some of the dishes at her new workplace, and wants to show them off to Mina for punch.  She hasn't really cooked much, even in her time in England and Germany, but she knows roughly what to do.  Roughly.  

What roughly means is she doesn't realise there isn't a stopper on the bottle of cooking wine, and the resultant gurgle of liquor all over the noodles makes everything taste vaguely of cooking wine.  Urgh.  Mina laughs, but doesn't seem to mind eating the wine-flavoured noodles.  Her mother used to make chicken with red fermented rice, and she wonders if she can ask someone at her work for a recipe.  Mina grimaces at the bitter alcohol as she eats, but there is something endearing, too, about the way the face wrinkles, about the way she laughs, soft and restrained.  

Without thinking, they leave the dishes and drift over to the keyboard, and Mina has the presence of mind to get Tzuyu to at least wash her hands first.  Another pot of tea, and then the rest of the day is lost to the keyboard.  It is almost scary how fast time flies, lost in the beginnings of a bundle of five songs, odes to loss, to lost loves, and songs of deep yearning.  If Tzuyu notices Mina staring at her, lost in her features, she doesn't say anything, or she thinks it is normal.  But as usual, she likes Mina's expression best when she is concentrating, when a progression won't come out quite right, the way she scrunches up her face just a little and releases it again, and then smiles when she gets at the sound she wants.  Now and then they have to warm their thin fingers around hot cups, huddle a little closer for warmth before they can continue.  

"Don't you visit your parents at all?"  Ah.  She clears her throat, thinks of what to say.

"It's okay if it's awkward.  It's just, well, I don't know where you're from."

"Nishinomiya.  It's near Kobe."  She can say that without getting emotional, at least.

"I know.  We had an office in Kobe."  And the conversation simply drifts away.  Tzuyu never pushes, never makes her uncomfortable.  Conversely, she opens up about herself so naturally that Mina doesn't have time to be guilty about the asymmetry.  She learns about the pets, the school friends, the company friends, the company gossip, the years of opulence which seem now of another world.  Tzuyu slowly recounts one of the many drinking parties organized by her father which she has come to regret ever going for, and the steam drifts, the teapot empties, the windows mist up with the warm air inside, and the flats and trees of the street are blurred and fogged.  

The next day, when Mina arrives at work, Momo and Sakura are already there.  Sana comes fifteen minutes late, panting from having run all the way from the subway, accepting another dent in her pay with a forlorn pout.  But-

"What happened to Dahyun?"

"She went back to Korea for good.  Family matters."  Momo says it flatly, but everyone knows she had a crush on the Korean girl, and shake their collective heads.  There are layers to this melancholy: Dahyun mentioned an ailing father often.  

Sadness, melancholy colours the rest of the day at work, the bright eyes and pale face a constant in their lives which now leave a strange tofu-shaped hole in their routine.  She feels like she is mourning a loss, even though it isn't really like that: Korea is not really that far away, and they can always text.  Yet it is different, just as sitting at the same piano as Tzuyu and making music is different from going to her workplace to see her and vice versa; sitting down for a meal of freshly prepared food is different from leaving out a portion for Tzuyu with a note when she cooks.  

The next day, Tzuyu sleeps until the afternoon, exhausted from her shift at the convenience store, but joins Mina for a sort of afternoon tea.  Mina has braved the cold to get a box of six from Mr. Donut, budgeting be damned.  Tzuyu could do with the treat, she decides, and she herself is partial to the old-fashions, even if she has no idea how they got that name.  Tzuyu wakes to tea, coffee and donuts, and the smile on her face is its own sort of bliss for Mina.  

"Can, uh"

"What?"

"Can you ask if, or I mean, do you think I could, uh"

"What?"

"Since you guys have a vacant spot, do you think they'd take me?"  Well.  Why was Tzuyu being so nervous?  

"I can ask.  Don't you have your Chinatown thing on those days?"

"I'll probably stop doing that soon.  The nephew guy is being weird these days."

"What?"  A protective urge rises in her, a touch of bile as she thinks of what he could have done to her.

"No, nothing really, well, inappropriate, not compared to when I was at my father's company.  He just keeps asking if we can hang out after work, or on our off days or whatever."

"Well," Mina tries to keep her voice even, "that might be nice, right?  Expanding your friend circle?"  And she does mean it, really.

"No, it's really obvious he's hitting on me, and I don't like it."  Wait.  Is it obvious to Tzuyu that, wait, stop, calm.  Can she tell Mina is, well, if, if not then, wait, okay, calm.  She has to stop overthinking.

"I'd rather hang out with you, anyway, it's comfy."  Oh god.  Chou Tzuyu just called her presence comfy.  Mina wants to burst with happiness, wants to sing something, anything, like The Hills are Alive or Singing in the Rain or something.  Okay, wait, what was the topic?  Oh yes, getting Tzuyu as a coworker.  Mina smiles conspiratorially to herself.  Their boss could never resist a pretty girl: that's how Sana got her job despite being the clumsiest woman east of Nagoya.  West of Nagoya she would have to compete with Mina's high school friend, who somehow managed to lose four pencil cases in three terms, even the fancy one her parents bought her in the hopes she would look after it better.  Tzuyu, as far as she can tell, is a quick learner, and has the looks to, what was the term she mentioned?  Make the fish sink and the geese fall?  Something like that.  She is giggling to herself when Tzuyu's inquisitive face snaps her out of it.  How does Tzuyu not notice?  Is she just hiding it?  What did 'comfy' mean? 

Tzuyu watches as Mina giggles softly, in the way only Mina can, with her hand over her mouth.  Is there something funny about wanting to work at the airport with her?  She knows most of them already, from her frequent visits in the weeks before the collapse, and it would be nice if she could see them again, Sakura and Sana and the rest.  

For Tzuyu, the upshot is that she gets her first proper friends after Mina since coming back, Momo and Sana's antics always threatening to spill over at work, and then completely overwhelming her after work.  Sana in particular reminds her of an over-enthusiastic hamster, excited about everything, the opposite of Mina's reserved silences.  She is wary at first, but Sana is so genuine that no-one can be wary of her for long.  

For Mina, the upshot is that Tzuyu looks like a goddess in an apron, and gets stares from all the customers.  Momo and Sana have especially taken a fancy to their new, elegant coworker, and seem suspiciously prone to giggles whenever Tzuyu is nearby.  And Mina is starting to doubt the wisdom of this whole idea, because, well, as it turns out, having Chou Tzuyu as a coworker is distracting.  Very, very distracting.  Okay, coffee, yes, coffee, not Tzuyu bringing a tray of omurice to a gaggle of America girls fresh from a long flight.  Another free day tomorrow to spend with Tzuyu, and Mina wonders how long this bliss can last.  

Chapter Text

Things are not going well in the temporary Chou-Myoui living arrangement.  Well, everything was going swimmingly, as far as Mina was concerned, and then one day, it wasn't.  Both of them have endured pay cuts, and Tzuyu has been let go from one of her jobs for essentially petty reasons.  Even after Mina tries a few of the old places, no-one seems to be taking her up on the singing jobs anymore, and the monthly figure is now uncomfortably deep in the red.  At least they have a little more time with each other, poring over books and scores and the keyboard, hoping that the music will drive away the everpresent worry of money.  Mina has taken to skipping meals when she knows Tzuyu won't be around, and Tzuyu for her part has been going all over the city in desperate search of further openings, only returning when Mina is fast asleep.  

It is the last day at another of her jobs, and Tzuyu cannot hide the tears in her goodbye.  How will they eat?  Walking back, she stares up at the sky, at the cold stars.  She looks up as she walks, so that the tears do not fall.  All the shops are closed, shutter after shutter, and from behind the closed doors of an old stationery shop the lights shine, casting their diffuse glow on the sidewalk.  Further on, and the lights and sounds of a pachinko parlour fill the freezing street.  From somewhere alcohol, from somewhere cigarettes, from somewhere hacking coughs and a scream in the night.  The shadows of buildings loom all about, strangely oppressive against the clouds and red of the night sky.  

"A penny for your thoughts."  A voice makes her jump back, hugging her arms to herself.  Who is talking to her?

"Over here."  She looks down, and a tiny woman frowns at her.  She frowns back, unsure at how to react to a stranger accosting her.  Is she drunk?  Doesn't seem to be, although there is a distinct smell of cigarettes, different from the kind her colleagues smoke.  Short hair, sharp face, large eyes, and thin, thin to the point of looking too frail for a winter night on a dark street, even with her coat on.  

"Do you need, uh, anything?"

"No, not really, you just look, uh, really depressed."

"I am."  And what about it?  Is this some kind of, what did the westerners call it, therapy?  Didn't therapists usually have offices?  Did they accost random depressed-looking people on the streets?  From what her university friends said, that doesn't seem to be the case.  She looks puzzled now.

"You're really pretty.  Like, super pretty."

"I am, yeah."  Enough people have told her that that she believes it now, and doesn't bother disputing it when they tell her the same thing for the millionth time.  For some reason Mina hasn't said it yet, which is strange.  

"So why are you sad?"

"Just because.  What business is it of yours, anyway?"  The other's lips curl into a smile, which would be cute if Tzuyu didn't get an icky feeling from all of this.  

"Do you need money?"

"I, well, yes, but."

"Can you dance?"

"Not, well, not badly, but, I mean I can learn, wait, where is this going?"

"Whatever, not important.  Here, and you're welcome,"  and the slip of a girl scribbles onto a page in a notebook which seems to have appeared from nowhere.  The torn page shows an address, an area which Tzuyu doesn't recognise, and a name, Chaeyoung, in Katakana. 

"You're Chaeyoung?"

"Yes.  What's your name, pretty girl?"  The accent in her Japanese is showing.  

"I'm Tzuyu," she says drily.  "You work at this place?"  She points at the address hesitantly.  

"No, I'm just friends with the owner.  I paint for my living.  Or used to.  Not many people commission artists in this economy."

"An artist?"

"Yeah, I was in art school and all."

"Mmm."  For some reason, there is something captivating about this woman, the way she talks, the way her sentences lilt.  They have started walking, and the orange light reveals a lively face, a catlike smile.  She breathes whiteness out into the frosted air, pretending she is blowing smoke from a cigarette.

"And now?"  Usually she wouldn't have asked, but-

"Getting by I guess.  Some foreigners still buy my works.  It's getting tougher, though.  I don't have your face, so I can't pull off that sort of work."

"What sort of work?"  

"You'll see."

She looks up again, but the girl has disappeared into some passing shadow, like a ghost of the night.  A van passes, roaring into the distance, and the exhaust fumes add to the cigarettes and the faint sweat of the parlour.  Well.  There is no harm in taking a look tomorrow. 

The stars glimmer, faint and sad in the light pollution, but they glimmer all the same.  Venus, Orion's belt, three stars become six as the tears form and roll down, scalding the face which is numb with cold.

Tzuyu is forced to transfer twice before taking a ten-minute walk to the address, and she fervently hopes this Chaeyoung girl isn't just wasting her time.  Already she is thinking of Mina, her cooking, her music.  The place is closed, and she has to knock several times before Chaeyoung opens the door.

"You came."  A smell of smoke, faint but persistent, as if smoke and sweat and stains of booze have permeated the place since ancient times, and nothing short of an apocalypse would rid this place of the smell of weird cigarettes and human bodies.  It is surprisingly bright, a light and airy space which somehow manages to smell and feel oppressive, walls about a very wide dance floor sparsely stuck with posters, and a bar which Chaeyoung now lounges behind.  The floor is large enough that she cannot clearly make out the posters on the opposite walls, and in the middle there is a raised dais, no doubt for performances.  She has doubts that they will hire a string quartet to play Haydn on the stage.

"Yes.  You're Chaeyoung, right?"

"Yup.  The boss is out now, wait a bit, I'll get you a drink.  Coffee?  Tea?"

"What are you, an air stewardess?  Tea, please."

"Do you care what kind?"

"Yes, but you want me to say no, so no."

"Fine, it was all tea bags anyway.  And genmaicha.  How about some genmaicha?"

"That's fine, too."

"Okay.  Once cup of genmaicha coming right up."  Chaeyoung gropes around for a flask, and finding it below the counter, pours some into a kettle to heat it on a stove.  In the day, she is even messier than at night, a jacket too large for her, glasses with lenses too large for her, everything too large, as if she just picked up random clothes and accessories from somewhere, and they all turned out to be sized a little too big for her small frame.  Her shoes are nice though, and seem to be well cut and scarlet.  Her hair seems to be a mess, but the chopstick which holds it up is too nice and glossy and carved to be a real chopstick.  If she wanted the artist look, couldn't she have gone for a pencil?  Tzuyu sits at a bar stool, waits.  

"You're from Japan?"

"Taiwan."

"Oh!  Cool.  I'm from Korea, if the name hadn't tipped you off already."

"What do you draw?"

"That was sudden.  Uh.  Still life, I guess, random objects around the house, around the streets.  Also I paint, not draw.  Sometimes I take a leaf from Matisse's book and stick bits of paper into shapes which look like still life.  Multi-media."

"Things, like, like shoe-racks and door stoppers and things?"

"Why are all your examples at ground level?"  Office desks, dressing-tables too."  Chaeyoung takes the kettle of the heat, and pours Tzuyu a cup.  The tea is neither here nor there, but it is warming.  Tzuyu prods further about Chaeyoung's art, and Chaeyoung is only too happy to oblige with details.  It transpires she has a small studio round the back, mostly because the owner wasn't using the space and rented it to her for cheap.  

"So what is this place, anyway?"  How far does the entertainment go?

"What does it look like?  Night life, club, bar whatever, and a club needs dancers, beer girls and such."  Dancers.  Servers, possibly flirtatious.  Okay.  The dance which her family hammered into her is probably a little shaky by now and probably not the kind they want in a nightclub, but Chaeyoung did mention it the night before.  Hopefully the pay is good, and hopefully she is up to whatever standards the boss has.  

The door opens, and if Tzuyu is surprised that the owner is a woman, she does not show it.  She is just a little taller than Chaeyoung, perhaps, but her features seem to have the opposite effect: a round face and hair tied tightly back into a ponytail, smartly dressed in the way she assumes a nightclub owner would be, yet her suit is a little too close to her body, and Tzuyu is more put in mind of an exceptionally confident secretary than anything else.  One with muscles to back up the confidence, but a secretary nonetheless.  But none of her derision shows in her face, all smiles as she shakes the outstretched hand.

"Jihyo.  Park Jihyo.  Tzuyu, right?  Chaeyoung mentioned you were interested in working here?"

"Yes, I am."

"Previous job experience?"

"Division Head, Chou Technologies, Overseas Division; Waitress, Kuukou Coffee; Cashier, the Family Mart in front of X station.  And some others."  She recites it casually, without a blip, and does not react to Chaeyoung's open mouth, not even with a smile. 

"Right," breathed Jihyo.  "Chou Tzuyu.  Right.  Of course.  Not the kind of thing you're used to, eh?"

"No, not in the least.  But I get by."  They laugh a dry laugh, together.

"Dancing?"

"Spent ten years learning it, and another ten years forgetting it."

"Hm.  We'll see.  We do pay more if you dance, and extra if you sing."  

"Okay."

"Any experience with dealing with drunks?"

"More than most."

"Right, yes.  I read the articles about that, too."  When it came to painting a picture of the wanton excesses of the Chou family, the media spared no details of the debauchery to which Tzuyu was a long-suffering observer.  Jihyo describes the concept of their club, the music which they play, or whatever, but to Tzuyu this is just a normal club with a weird location and pretentious music.  Well, she might change her mind later.  The pay is good, though, definitely enough for the rent.  Mina will be happy.

In the end, Jihyo has her on probation for a week, just to see.  She is, after all, the prettiest woman she has laid eyes on.  

"What do you think, Chae?"

"She's snarkier than she looked."

"I like that.  And she didn't seem to quail from having to act a little sexy."

"We'll see."  Chaeyoung lounges around for a little longer as Jihyo goes to her office, thinking of the face which just exited the door.  She should draw her sometime, just for fun.  She hasn't done faces in a long time.  Maybe one portrait, and then one of her on the dance floor, like something out of Toulouse-Lautrec.  

A week later, and Tzuyu announces to Mina that she has found another place, and the figure she gives Mina makes her blink and ask if she heard it right the first time.  Another slip of paper with another address, carelessly torn from some notepad, and Mina checks the scrawl with a frown.  Somewhere out of town, somewhere she doesn't want to go alone, not at night.  She sighs, and wonders if she can get Momo and Sana to go with her.  She is not sure why she makes sure Tzuyu is at the toilet before getting them over to a corner of the counter, as if conspiring something.  

"You're going alone?"

"No you moron, I'm telling you to ask you guys if you could come along."

"Oh.  When is she there?  Tomorrow?"

"Yeah, tomorrow."

"Are we all free?  Shall we take a look at our heiress' nightclub job?"

"How about next month?  This week I'm super busy, and then I have to go back to my parent's place for New Year."

In the end, a whole month passes, during which the tips Tzuyu brings back pay for the rent and then some, and Mina gets increasingly curious as to what sort of place it is.  The first snow comes and goes, a dusting which leaves the street shining with ice and meltwater, flakes which land on her nose, on Tzuyu's nose as they look into the sky.  Christmas comes and goes, and Mina has no-one to visit, no-one to go home to, and neither does Tzuyu, which means they are both stuck with the night shift at the airport on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and a bunch of the days in between.

The train curves through town, through a layer of snow.  They sit in the empty carriage, thinking of the dinner party Sana kept talking about.  Sana and Momo had made extra sure to rub in their misery by gushing about their New Year's Eve plans.  Wistfully Mina remembers nights spent watching the Kohaku, wondering if her name would ever come up in the list.  She remembers watching Takada Mizue, the tanned and petite face and rabbit teeth framed by short hair, the melancholy of the song which sounded a bit like Cosmos, at least a little.  She married the Sumo guy, right?  She remembers Akina, the sharp intake of breath as she prepared to sing Jukkai, the world in those eyes, the rich and messy hair.  She hasn't followed her music in a while.  Is she still releasing?  Naoko was there, too, with, Smile for Me.   No, it was Half Moon Serenade or some such song, she no longer remembers, no longer has anything to do with that world, with the cheers of a vast hall.  She stares into the glass and city lights, thinking it would have been nice to be invited at least once.  

The flat expanse of tables in the yellowish light is lonely against the black, against the windows stained with sleet and rain.  She and Tzuyu, at the counter, staring into the polished floors, the smooth tables, the black sky beyond the glass.  She finds herself staring at the way the sleeves of Tzuyu's uniform rumple at her bent arm, at her own fingers.  Minako sings her signature songs on the sound system, trembling and thrilling strings and a sharp beat in a minor key.  She wonders if Sana and Momo are having fun.  When was the last time she had mochi soup?  She remembers the train to Osaka, one year, a fine day of blue skies and freezing cold.  The sky was cloudless, and behind the factories and telephone poles was Fuji, serene and snow-capped, like a Hokusai print.  That was the first year after her debut, when she thought success would change her parent's minds about their daughter.  From Osaka to Kobe it was only a short way, yet from Kobe back to Osaka the train journey seemed interminable.  That night she couldn't even bear to take the train back, and crashed at a friend's house, deeply embarrassed to be intruding on their New Year celebrations.  

All alone, the towering buildings in glass and tiles loomed large and sad.  She took the train to the Shin-Osaka station, and had the presence of mind to call her manager first.  

"Mina?  What is it?"  Her manager sounded sleepy.

"I'm in Osaka now.  I'll be back in Tokyo today.  Don't bother picking me up, I just thought you should know."

"What?  What happened?"

"Nothing, just, I'll explain when you get back.  Don't worry about me, I slept over at a friend's."

"Okay.  Remember to keep the receipts for the Shinkansen."

"Yup."  She leaned against the plastic of the payphone, looking through the scratched and stained plastic at the December, no, the January sky.  The streets near the station were empty, almost empty.  She cried and cried, slumped on the phone stand, slowly slipping to the floor, a puddle of coat on the floor of cigarette stubs, cigarette packs, used make-up tissues.

She ended up at the Yodo River, on the banks of the vast river, looking out onto the endless flats and towers, the bridges over the sluggish blue.  Her breath scalded her throat with cold, and the sun barely warmed her frozen face.  The park by the river was empty, the river was empty, the roads were empty.  A woman walking her dog came into view, breaking the vast emptiness, and Mina smiled as the woman wished her a happy new year.  She waved back, greeted her in turn, and she was gone, and Mina was alone again.  She sighed, and began the long walk to the station.  Maybe she would take a sub-express train this time, and have a good look at all the small towns which usually rushed by at top speed.

Tzuyu watches the night, and a man rolls his suitcase by, immeasurable exhaustion in the lines in his face, vanishing into the maw of the departure gates.  She remembers a night out, not even in London: someone's dad had somewhere in Paris, and they had taken the train across the Channel.  A few days in Paris, wandering about the streets, and she breathed in once more the buildings, the air of cigarettes and the ground of cigarette stubs.  Even the flues, the railings of the balconies were all different in the Hausmann buildings.  Each time she went to Paris, she would walk by the Seine, and each time the Seine would surprise her with a view, with a shop of stamps or curios she had not seen before.  She had not known that that would be her last time in the city.  Would she ever see Paris again?  A view over the Paris rooftops, a view of the tower, of the fireworks, everyone stamping their feet and rubbing their hands with the cold.  The fireworks, the euphoria over, they returned to the warmth of the room, and there was wine, Champagne, and a dark red from somewhere in the South, near the Lot?  The Tarn?  The Garonne?  

"Say, Tzuyu, you're pretty."  One of her Taiwanese friends, practicing her French on her.

"Heard that one before.  Tell me something new."

"Have you heard it in French, though?"

"Yup.  And somehow the one saying it is usually drunk."

"Hey, I'm not one of those racist bums, okay?"

"Who said I was talking about the racist bums?"

"I love you, Tzu."

"Sure, love you too." 

Only long after did she realize that perhaps she had not been joking.  After the crash, she had been the first to cut ties with Tzuyu, one of the more bitter pills to swallow.  God, she missed them.

Eleven o'clock at the only café open on New Year's Eve at Narita, and the large and glinting halls are empty, as if the pilots, too, have all gone on leave, an the stewards and stewardesses have all stayed home to watch the Kohaku.  There is still one hour to go before the new year rolls in, and the two girls at the counter are lost in memories, lost in happier times.  

Chapter Text

An early day for both of them, and Tzuyu sits draped in a blanket, sipping at cocoa, still on the couch, having pushed aside a clutter of files to sit.  Mina is preparing breakfast, trying to use up the last of the eggs before getting a new box.  Egg over rice with natto, and then an extra boiled egg.  On impulse, Tzuyu has bought some Chinese pickles, and those will go well with rice.

The phone rings, and Tzuyu rushes to answer. The slightest frown creases Mina's face, and she stops herself. Now that Tzuyu has fewer shifts, she has been seeing more of her than ever, twice a week, even, yet still feels resentful of anything that interrupts their time together.

"Hello?"

"Mina?"

"This is Tzuyu. Who's this?"

"Oh! Great, this is, this is Sana. You're free today? Wanna hang out in Tokyo?  Momo's coming too."

"Sure. Where do you go in Tokyo? I don't have the money to shop in the swanky districts anymore, you know." Mina, listening in, laughs her soft laugh.

"Anywhere is nice when it snows. And don't you have the new gig somewhere to make you rich?"

"That barely covers the expenses and you know it."

"Enough for a nice café, right? And that one Chinese place in the middle of Jimbocho."

"Fine. Mina?" Mina's face brightens just a little at her name, and then it is her turn to hash out the plan with Sana.  She doesn't mind interrupting her free day with Tzuyu, she supposes, not if Sana and Momo are there too.

The song which they have called "The Title Track (Temp)" is pretty much done now, at least in their heads. They have an idea of the instruments they want, the sound they want, and are trying to get some way to record it properly. Mina dreams of hearing her voice with Tzuyu's, dreams of letting the world hear her voice with Tzuyu's, letting them hear how Tzuyu plays the piano. The old urge wells up in her again, to be seen, to be heard, to be applauded, but she puts it away. Soon, when they have saved up a little more. Soon.

The snow is thick, cloying the air with countless flakes. The trains to Tokyo are still running, thankfully, but further north there are delays, blockages. Out of the station, their boots crunch in the snow. The sky is white, and the flakes are white and pretty against the black and glass of the towers near the Tokyo station. They are supposed to transfer, but the snow is so nice that they end up making a round around the station, watching the streets of slow cars, of people bundled up thick just like themselves. The iron lamp-posts, the old station building white-roofed.

"Wouldn't if be nice, if the trains to the airport broke down and we didn't have to go to work?"

"I suppose." Tzuyu is distracted by a fresh patch of snow, and a line of bootprints which run by its edge.

"Being stuck inside with bad heating isn't much better though." Momo has an ongoing battle with her heating system, and for the past few days she has been rooming with Sana to avoid freezing at night.

"I wish I could stay home all day." Mina's small and muffled response makes them giggle.

"And leave poor Tzuyu to do all the breadwinning?" Sana laughs into her scarf, and Mina pouts. Tzuyu bumps her coat against Mina's, and they both giggle. Her hood is put all the way up, but she doesn't have a scarf on. All the better for Mina to admire her pretty face. Deep blue, navy blue, her favourite colour, not Mina's favourite, but she is forced to admit it makes a stunning combination with Tzuyu's skin tone, with the shade of red on her lips. She could stare all day at the face framed by the round hood of the down jacket, and then some, the eyes following a snowflake, a trembling leaf. Tzuyu notices her stare, and breaks into a smile.

Under the railway tracks they huddle for a little while, out of the snow. A few carts, a few shops, now closed, now empty, now home to a few sleeping bags and spread newspapers. Mina shudders, thinking of the cold, of the deep and horrid cold of winter. She wants to get back to the station, but Sana and Tzuyu love the snow too much, and she endures it a little longer. Momo, too, is getting a little grumpy, and finally they hurry back to the station to find their transfer.

The café Sana has found is a dark and dim affair, full of relics from another era, some movie stars that Tzuyu recognizes, and others she can only vaguely place. Piles of magazines, piles of books, a statue of a dancing girl, an imitation of the one by Degas. They find a table behind where the chairs and cushioned and low, and with a sigh of relief the thick coats come off, and the four of them sit around, getting used to the sudden warmth. Mina and Tzuyu on one side, Momo and Sana on the other, with Mina facing Sana. Coffee with a mound of cream on top for Sana, a simple black coffee for Mina, and tea for Tzuyu. Momo frowns, trying to decide, and in the end copies Sana's choice.

"Mm, it's good. Tzuyu?" She offers the cup, the cream moustache still on her lips.

"No, I really can't, sorry."

"Mina?"

"Thanks." She takes a sip. Better than she thought it would be.

"So you make tea and coffee just for yourself and Tzuyu every day?"

"Yes. And usually the herbal kind." She smiles, thinking of how much she has learnt about the kinds of infusions Tzuyu likes. Tzuyu munches on the lemon cake she has ordered first, and then takes a few sips of tea. Not too strong, thankfully.

"Housewife material, Minari." Sana this time, teasing her.

"You wouldn't say that if you saw the mess she makes every day." Tzuyu scrunches her nose at the thought of the clothes she has to pick up, the plates she has to sort out, the bills she has to tabulate to figure out who pays what.

"Figures. How's the new job, Tzu?" Why does Sana use a nickname? She herself isn't sure, but it's so easy with Tzuyu, so easy to slip into casual address, especially when Tzuyu's face visibly brightens at the nickname.

"Not too bad. The people are nice. One of them is an artist, and her paintings are good."

"What do you do, then?"

"Oh, you know, serve drinks and snacks, chat to the customers. They do pay extra if you can make the drinks and put on a show doing it, but I'm not qualified."

"Oh." How does that pay so well, then? Is there something she isn't telling? Momo and Mina seem to roll with it, though, so she doesn't press the issue.

The silence is decidedly not the same as those with Mina, Tzuyu decides. Sana glances around, and Momo stares straight at her, as if asking a question. The clinking of cups, soft laughter, soft words. She takes another sip of tea, another bite of cake, and leans back, watching Momo, who makes a face at her. Cute. Music plays in the background, Anri or someone, to remind the patrons of summer, to loosen the air. She stirs the tea, meaningless when she has added neither sugar nor milk, and makes a face back at Momo. Sana is back at it again, asking Mina something, asking Momo something else, and they get into animated conversation, but Tzuyu watches from the sidelines, watching as Mina laughs at something silly, watches as she sips at her coffee, slowly savours the liquid, and sets the cup back down. Her face in profile sparkles with laughter, forms a fake pout as Momo and Sana make a joke at her expense, and now Tzuyu is drawn in as well, laughing along with them until the cup of tea is empty and she orders another.

They don't want to leave the warmth of the café, but Sana is adamant that they should get a more substantial lunch. She hurries them over to the Chinese restaurant which caught her eye, and they follow obligingly. The snow has almost stopped, a few flakes which drift halfheartedly, but the sidewalks are still thick with white. The bare trees laden, too, with white against the shops signs, the shop windows. They pass the street of secondhand book stores, and Momo has to pull Mina away from staring too long into the windows. Up the stairs, back into the warmth, and a wave of deep nostalgia assails Tzuyu as they enter: the yellowish lights, the tablecloths, the chopstick-holders and shallow dishes, the smell of a Chinese restaurant.

Scallops porridge, and steamed crabs, lots of steamed crab. The porridge is much softer than what Mina was used to, but it is tasty, and the scallops are fresh. Still, though, to be ordering crabs-

"Relax, Minari, my treat this time." Sana pre-empts Mina with a smile. She watches as Tzuyu picks apart a crab, imitates her in using the nutcracker. In the end she makes a mess of it, but the crab meat she gets out of it does taste rather good.

Tzuyu, in turn, watches as Mina's deft fingers learn to get the meat out, watches as she gets roe all over her hands (she's not sure how they got crabs with roe in January, but she isn't one to ask), laughs with the others as Mina flushes red with the mess she's made. She holds up a napkin for Mina to lick the roe off her fingers without too much embarrassment, watches as the dainty fingers are slowly licked off and wiped clean, god, where is her mind going? She flushes beet-red too, but somehow Sana doesn't notice, or if she does, she pretends not to notice as an act of mercy to Tzuyu. The rest of lunch passes without incident, thankfully, and the tea is good, an Oolong which manages to be not too strong, which lets the rich meat and roe slide down the throat with porridge. Slowly, and without thinking, she is slipping down the slopes of memory, the lights and the smell of tablecloths and vinegar and tea, the sounds of ceramic on ceramic on wood on tablecloth which bring her back to any number of fancy places in Taiwan, or in China, Shanghai probably, the mellifluous dialect slipping by her ears, dishes upon dishes and wines upon wines. She does not miss those dinners, no, not in the least. She catches Momo's eyes, and smiles. Another bit of crab meat with the vinegar, with the porridge.

They stay and slowly eat and chat, and it is almost half-past two when they finally call for the bill. Mina doesn't want to be out in the cold again, and Sana, for once, agrees. With the warmth of tea and porridge in their stomachs, they wander about for a little bit before ducking into a shopping mall to avoid the wind which has taken to howling down the long wide roads, whipping the falling snow in eddies, and burning the faces of the few people still out and about. The lights and warmth hit them again, the signboards in yellow and red and blue and purple. The smell of old shops, old cloth and old dirt. They walk past the empty shops, the tailors which sit and watch the days pass, the bookshops where faded tomes frown from the windows, or else the second-hand shops where old magazines and esoteric books jump at them from the displays. Tzuyu sniffs the air, and frowns and the strange scents, walks a little closer to Mina and Momo than she usually would. The sound of sizzling from one of the shops, something frying, shops where even the oil smells old. From another shopfront the smell of burnt coffee, and Mina wrinkles her nose in distaste.

Her mother, who each morning would burn a pot of coffee in the pot, a strange octagonal thing which Mina was never allowed to touch. Newspapers, a blue sky, the cicadas of summer, and the acrid coffee.  Something sizzled on the stove: breakfast.  The first round of auditions.  She hid the nervousness in her face as best she could, and thankfully her mother did not notice.  To calm her beating heart, she fixed her gaze on the bamboos in ink on the opposite wall, the only decoration in the house.  Eggs, bread, butter.  She crunched the toast slowly, drank her juice slowly.  She could never understand why her mother would have hot coffee even on a summer's day.  Washing up, picking up her bag, answering all the usual questions: her readings were done, her homework was on schedule, and it would be with Kazuha.  Only she neglected to mention that Kazuha would be auditioning with her.  

They take a train, and then a bus, and barely register the buildings as they go by, only the numbers on the buildings as they increase.  A large office building, and they check and re-check the number, the name on the building front.  The waiting room is small but clean, and pictures of current and former singers at the company adorn the walls.  Mina takes a cup of water from the dispenser.  They are the only ones today, at least so far.  The receptionist was kind, but her smile did little to still the nerves.  She runs through the song again in her head, the inflections which she learnt from the cassette tape, the parts which she sang and sang again in the practice rooms at school, when she told her mother she was with the club, and told the club she had to go home early.  Kazuha beside her was no less jumpy, and kept pacing about the room from her seat.  Her name was called first.  

On the way back she comforted Kazuha, trying and failing to stem the flow of tears from the distraught junior.  It was barely lunchtime.  Down a wide avenue, Mina followed the smell of food onto a shopping street, clothes and food and arcades all at once.  The streets burned with heat, with sun, with brilliant white light, and they hurried into the shade.  The arcade would be good.  They mashed the buttons on mindless games until Kazuka felt better, and Mina forgot to try to let Kazuha win, but she seemed happier all the same.  The arcade buzzed, hummed, laughed, and bright lights were all about.  Two weeks until the next round.  She had an idea of what she wanted to sing, and she just had to go find the tapes to practice.  Kazuha could always try again the next time they had a call for auditions.  Momoe stared at her from the wall, and she stared back, wondering what it was like to be her.  

Out of the arcade, and Smile for Me was playing, and the a young woman passed by in a scarlet dress, god, what a pretty scarlet dress, seamed and fitted in just the right way, below her short hair and healthful face, flashed a smile at the two girls.  A young man rode by, smart in white and blue, hatted and smiling, and Mina was struck by the impression of youth, of freshness all about.  The smell of grilled chicken, the blocks of cut fish, the shops which still sold winter coats in the height of summer, fresh and buzzing with bees and strung up with flowers.  A smell of something wafted on the air, different.  The smell of coffee, it turned out, at a bright and glass-fronted place which chattered with noise.  On impulse, not thinking about the allowance, she led Kazuha in, ordered a cup of coffee, French toast, whatever.  Who cared?  It was only the first round, but already she could taste the thrill of it, the rush of singing for someone other than the desks and chairs of the practice room.  

The practice rooms, barely soundproofed, but of elegant and smooth wood, with the keyboard and the thin metal stands which always seemed on the verge of snapping.  So long ago, so far away.  The coffee came, and strangely it was a little sour, a little sweet, just a little bitter, not at all what she thought coffee was.  She laughed, and chatted about anything and everything with Kazuka.  Pink Lady and Enka back to back.  She laughed at the coffee, at the juxtaposition of songs, at the other tables of laughing people, giggled, and laughed and floats off into the bright summer morning, ten years ago.  The snow falls, the petals fall, the sky is white and the sun is white.

Chapter Text

They knock, and Mina has just gotten ready, a dress which she bought because it looked like one of her idol outfits, but less frilly.  Momo in black and Sana in White, and Mina in purple.  She takes her jacket, and a thick coat besides, and braces herself for the cold.

"Mina, you have the address, right?"

"Yup.  Let's go."

"Did you tell Tzu?"

"Y-es."

"Did you?"

"Yes, I did.  Let's go."  Why was it so far out of town?  

As they pull up, the warehouse stares gauntly back, and over the field where the cars park a pin-up girl stares down, surrounded by large and shouting words in blocky font.  Where are they?  They step out of the car, and the blast of icy air smacks her in the face.  A short queue leads to the warehouse entrance, and they join it.  What is this place?  The place is derelict, not much more derelict than the surrounding factories, the rusting gates and peeling paint of façades which only look sadder in the sickly sodium street lamps.  Mina glances about at the clientele, and nervously notes that most of them are men, some in suits.  The dry air seems to chap her nose as soon as she breathes in.  She reaches for Momo's hand, and Momo obliges.  

They get in easily, more easily than they expected.  Maybe cute girls get past bouncers easily, maybe Sana is just super charming.  Mina winces as Sana counts out the cash they pooled for the entry fee, much more than she is comfortable with just to enter a nightclub.  The noise, the smoke, the sweat.  God, it's hot.  They leave their coats in the coatroom, and make their way to the main area.  Dance floor, dim and dimmer, and club music of some kind, all thudding beats and electronic sounds and very little melody.  They order drinks, Tequila, Margarita, Mojito with lime.  The music stops, changes and this time, weirdly, it is some sort of heavy beat with blaring trumpets, strident oboes, strings.  What kind of music do they even play?  The music changes several times, and they dance haphazardly, drinking now and then, but Tzuyu is nowhere to be seen.  Some weird dishevelled girl sits in the corner, not drinking, not dancing, her head hidden in a sketchbook.  

After some time the music changes again, and the patrons clear out a little space near the middle, where there is, she notices for the first time, some kind of platform.  The music starts again, throbbing, and a low melody starts up.  In a costume which hugs her skin and makes Mina's eyes pop is Chou Tzuyu, at the side of a formation of five dancers.  The music leads them on, their hips, their arms, their legs, switching positions, now four of them trooping round the dais when the central dancer is spotlighted, now three of them on the platform and two of them off it, and now all five in formation, and Tzuyu is among them, sometimes at the centre, sometimes not.  The music fades to softness, and with a jolt she realizes the voice she is hearing above the beat is Tzuyu's.

Tzuyu sings into a microphone conjured from somewhere, standing in the centre of the formation while the others move, and the voice is thick and low, strangely alluring.  Mina shudders as the melody slides over her, blinks as she tries to process this new voice which purports to be Tzuyu's.  Now another of the dancer sings, and Tzuyu goes back into the formation, hands her the mike slickly, practised.

Tzuyu dances, and each move in the heat, the lush beat and noise of the club is an icicle in her heart, tearing her up within.  The clouded and deadly gaze flicks over to Mina, and she knows that it is not for her.  She downs the last of her drink, nearly spitting it all out again from the bitterness, and runs out, away, gasping for air, trying to forget and failing.  Back in the parking lot, the pinup girl stares back at her, mockingly, bright and surreal over the payphone.  The way back.  She just wants to get back, somehow, anyhow.  No more trains, no more taxis, not on her pay.  Fuck.  She tries to breathe and fails again.  What had she been thinking?  The eyes come to the front of her mind's eye once more, eyes misty with seduction and the low and husky voice which defied and betrayed the sweet voice she used to sing with on the lazy afternoons, which now seem so long ago.  The strip of paper with the address, torn up and tossed to the wind.  At least no-one will take notice of a heaving girl outside a club.  But home-  The smell of cigarettes brings with it a new fear, a horrid and primal fear.  The voices, the smoke pass by without incident, and she exhales in relief.  Spruced up by the the freezing air, her mind clears a little.  Who drove them here?  Momo.  Right.  Find Momo.  And Sana, too.  Guilt at curtailing their night chews at her.  She didn't even take her coat, and she shivers in her dress.  

"Mina, there you are, you shouldn't just disappear, what's wrong?"  Momo, crouching in front of her, her face and bobbed hair, lines of worry in a frown.  But Momo, Sana, they know already, they know why she has run out in a panic.  They have taken her coat and jacket for her, thank goodness.

"Tzuyu, she"

"I don't think it's what it looks like"

"I DON'T CARE!"  At her scream, one of the nearby smokers casts a look at them, and Mina reddens with embarrassment.  

"Oi, tone it down, it's not like you're a girlfriend being cheated on.  Did you even tell her you like her?"  Um.  

"So?  Knock it off, Mina."

"Pretty sure she likes this sort of thing.  Even her eyes were slutty, for god's sake, Momo,"

"Are you serious?  And so what if she does?  Have you like, asked her?"

"Let's go back first, okay?  We can talk things out later, have a nice cup of tea.  Are you okay with driving to your place, Mo?"  Sana pleads, her eyes brimming.  Mina forces herself to breathe, but the image of Tzuyu dancing, seductive and sinuous comes to the front of her brain again.  Did she really look like she hated it?  Is Momo just lying to try to make her calm?  Something is tarnished, something is ruined for her.  She acquiesces for now, glad to have her friends by her side.  

Momo's flat is neat and sparse, the only mess being bowls from a hurried dinner, and a shirt fallen from its hanger.  The barley tea is warm in the cold of the flat, and pierces the haze of Mina's brain.  The freshly-repaired heaters start having some effect, and they take off their coats.

"Okay, so, let's get this straight.  Tzuyu dances well enough, but, honestly, she looked like she was forcing it."  Mina sees that Momo neans it, and does not press the issue.  How could she have missed it, though?  Sana is nodding, too?  Was she so blind?

"How well does it pay?"  Sana doesn't beat around the bush, doesn't let her dwell.  Mina mentions the figure, and their jaws don't exactly drop, but they do widen appreciably.  

"Okay.  And I guess getting her to quit isn't exactly an option?"  Mina grimaces, shakes her head.  How did things come to this?  She should have taken better care of her, done something, prevented it. 

"Well, we shouldn't assume either way, and, like," always diplomatic, Sana interrupts her negative thoughts.  

"I know, all right?  I just can't reconcile, it's like she's betrayed me somehow, I know she hasn't, she hasn't, but-" Mina knows she hasn't, but the tears come in a flood all the same, trying to get rid of the hurt and failing.  Does it make sense, that she hates Tzuyu now?

Momo and Sana try to get her to calm down a little, but Mina can't or won't understand their arguments, is stuck to the misted and seductive eyes which stare at her from the stage, which make her breath catch, fluster her beyond what she thought humanly possible.  And the worst is that the gaze is not for her, not meant to seduce her, flicks past her with dismissal to seduce the others in the crowd.  

"Okay, we can talk this over some other time, I think we could all do with some sleep."  Momo, evenly and calmly, and firm, and already her voice, when not arguing with her, does much to soothe Mina.  Perhaps things will be better tomorrow, when she can talk things out with Tzuyu.  She doesn't really think so, but she clings to the hope.

"Wow, that wasn't too bad."  Seulgi, one of the other dancers, shares a hug with Tzuyu after.  Has she enjoyed it?  Honestly, she was too caught up in the dance to notice.  She definitely has many things to improve, and Seulgi will not let those slide in the least, but she feels she is getting used to it, getting used to moving her body in just the right way, but also getting used to how they stare at her, mouths slightly agape, some with their eyes fixed and fishlike and unpleasant.  From the rooms in the back they can hear the faint beat of the thudding music, the strident melodies of the next number.  Sticky leather couches on skin.  Today the tops have long sleeves, cropped above the belly, followed by a leggings, but apparently the next time they might have to do it in sleeveless bodysuits, the kind which shimmer in the dimness of lights.  A low table, white walls stained with grey, peeled posters and new posters over the peeled parts, not quite covering the cracks and torn paper.  The lamp hanging from the ceiling is harsh and white.  Seulgi has coffee to keep her awake, but Tzuyu has prevailed upon them to get her a flask of hot genmaicha for the night.  A covered box of cakes and sweets, sugar to help them get through the shift.  Tzuyu takes a piece of cake and pops it into her mouth, some kind of layered butter cake gifted by an Indonesian regular.  Beside it are peanuts, dried persimmons, mochi, a strange assortment of snacks in the compartments of the shallow box, maroon and textured to imitate lacquer.  

The door creaks open, and a familiar figure in a faded red jacket jacket appears, a better fit on her body this time.  

"Oh, Chaeyoung," they say in unison.

"How's the new girl, Miss Kang?"  Chaeyoung always calls her that just to tease her, and no-one really knows why.

"Pretty good.  She learns quickly, and her face is a plus."  Tzuyu takes another sip of tea, and then a dried persimmon in little bites.  She stares around at the posters, woodblock prints inmixed with Sapporo girls, and of course club advertisements, the ones by Toulouse-Lautrec, and then the other ones, like the Chat Noir.  The woodblock prints all show stylized Japanese beauties in loose robes, Harunobu or Kiyonaga or whoever, and not for the first time she notes the irony of the Korean and Taiwanese women in tight outfits lounging below them.  She studies one of the prints, a beauty with a sharp nose and face admiring the snow while another in a hood looks the other way, all in three colours, rather like those Tang figurines.  

Seulgi prefers the peanuts to the persimmons, and she takes another.  A few more minutes, and then back to the bar for Seulgi, back to serving the drinks for Tzuyu.  She prefers sitting like this, with Seulgi and Nana and Yumi, and the new girl, uh, Akina?  No, that's the singer.  Akiko, right.  The air is warm, and even in the tight clothes, she feels comfortable, weirdly enough.  When she wakes up, she feels like dying from embarrassment, but apparently she has only dozed for a quarter of an hour, and the others didn't want to wake her.  Sheepish, she goes to serve the drinks, still in costume.  They like it better when she does that.  If the clientele are anything to go by, it is little wonder the pay is comfortable.  Hopefully she doesn't run into one of her father's old associates: she's pretty sure a few of them are still pottering around, with enough money to live a cushy life.  Her father, too, fled to whatever country he fled to, leaving her to pick up the pieces, leaving her to make herself sexy for old farts like him, struggling to even rent a small flat while he, while they

"Tzuyu, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. It's nothing, I shouldn't have done that."

"No, it's fine, we all have bad days."  She lets the busyness of work flood out the horrible thoughts.  Wasn't Mina supposed to come and see her today?  Oh right, she didn't mention the dancing to them.  Well, that would be an added bonus.  The night passes, they do a few more dance numbers, but still no Mina.  During one of the dances, Seulgi catches her eye, and gives an approving wink.  Another time, she adds a raised eyebrow to a routine on the spur of the moment, and something like pride wells up in her when she catches Chaeyoung's reaction from the corner.  She has been promised a painting of her on the dance floor, but doesn't really know what to expect.  She is picturing an updated version of Degas, with a nightclub instead of ballet, but Chaeyoung doesn't paint in that style.  She should needle her about it later.

The next morning is a late one again, with Mina already asleep when Tzuyu pushes the door gingerly open.  Her coat lies strewn on the floor, and she has changed out of one of her nicer dresses without bothering to put it away.  So she was at the club then.  Why didn't she come over to say hi?  Tzuyu picks up the rumpled dress and leggings and puts them to the dirty clothes basket, making her way around the piles of books and the guitar, which they really should throw out soon.  There will be time to go to the laundry tomorrow.  This time there is no late-night pot of chrysanthemum tea, and she goes straight to sleep.

Mina makes coffee and tea as usual, but everything about her demeanour screams coldness, rejection.  Tzuyu doesn't push, and sits in the silence, savouring the tea, which is still excellent.  The breakfast of kaya and butter on toast is over, and still Mina does not say a word.  She looks over at Mina, tryjng to catch her eye, but it is painfully obvious when Mina looks quickly away each time.  Worse, Tzuyu can see the condescension, the revulsion which never quite makes it to to open disgust even from a sideways glance.  Weren't idols supposed to be good at managing their faces?  

"What's wrong?"

"No, it's nothing."

"You're really bad at lying, Mina."  I'm not bad at lying, you're just too practised at picking it up.

"I-"

"Was it last night?"  Yes, but.  Yes, but.  Despite Sana's and Momo's entreaties, Mina lets her ugly feelings out all the same.

"Yes, I suppose.  Well, it's just that, I don't think you should have, I don't think it was appropriate," Mina isn't even hiding it anymore, and her voice bubbles with hatred, with resentment.

"And what business is that of yours?"  Mina has no response, stung to the bone by the ice in Tzuyu's voice.

"I said, what business is that of yours?"  Tzuyu has almost never raised her voice before, and Mina gulps at her suddenly strident tone, feels like she wants to shrink herself small. 

"I just, the performance, it was a little, uh slutty."  She tried to keep her voice, her words neutral, but her mouth betrayed her.  No, not that word, she should not have said that, any descriptor but that.

"Do you want me to move out, then?  Am I polluting your air with my whorishness?"  The tone is even, clear and flat and even and utterly terrifying.

"I, I mean, no, I'm sorry I mentioned it, I just, I'm so sorry,"

"It just slipped out, I suppose.  No, it's fine, at least I know what you really think of me now.  Isn't that nice?"  If the sentence was a donut and sarcasm was coffee the drops would be staining the tablecloth.

"I-"  Mina's voice fades and falters, and the fury, the twisted rage in Tzuyu's face fills her with shame.  She doesn't look as the coat is snatched from the hanger which it shares with Mina's coats, doesn't look as the key turns, the door slams, and the key turns again.  

Tzuyu is at the station, waiting for a train, any train.  It matters not whether it goes towards Tokyo and then Chiba, or the other way, towards Shizuoka, nothing matters, only that she must get away for a while, must get away from Mina for a while.  She has a shift at the nightclub the next day, sure, but she can probably crash at the club itself, or ask Chaeyoung to help her out somehow, but she cannot be in the same space as Mina just yet.  And tonight?  Where does she sleep tonight?  She does not know, has not thought of anything but taking the train, getting away.  It doesn't concern her if Mina is sobbing at home, unable to chase the sadness from her head with her walkman, doesn't concern her if Mina runs about Yokohama in a haze, unable to decide between looking for her and not looking for her, doesn't concern in her in the least if a car nearly hits her as she stumbles across a red light in a daze, doesn't concern her in the least.  She manages to fool herself all the way to Kamakura, all the way to Atami, at the end of the line, manages to fool herself in the random café where aloof waitresses serve bad decaf, manages to convince herself that she doesn't give a damn about Mina for half the length of the waterfront as she walks along, watching the waves of the Pacific crash to shore, and only then does she fall into a crouch where she stands, trying and failing to forget the pale face, the tiny smile of happiness whenever Tzuyu tells her she is free that day, the laughter of petals and porcelain, the mole which reacts to her smiles and frowns and moods in all the right ways.  When she makes coffee she is cute, when she plays the piano she is cute, and when, and when she busies herself cooking for Tzuyu she is the most adorable thing to walk the earth.  Damn it.  God fucking damn it.  She is in love with Myoui Mina, and Myoui Mina thinks she is a fucking whore.  

Chapter Text

"Tzuyu?"

"Hi.  Sorry for coming so early, were you busy?"  Chaeyoung is there, as she always is.  No-one answered at the front door, so she took the liberty of knocking at Chaeyoung's studio, and her face now peeks out curiously at a dishevelled Tzuyu.  

"No, what's wrong?"  Well.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure, not to the studio, though, I think it's fine if we stay in the club area."  Chaeyoung is sensitive about her space, maybe because of her art in progress, which is what she claims, or maybe because it is extremely messy, which Tzuyu privately thinks more likely.  Chaeyoung takes a key, and Tzuyu follows her petite figure in the fading winter light to where she opens the back door.  The club is empty, but Tzuyu still smells the sweat and cigarettes she smelt on the first day.  Only the flavour of the cigarettes changes a little.  She looks about at the dimness of things, the half-shadows of flasks and bottles and chairs before the lights go on, bathing everything in their whitish glow.  A space heater goes on, just for the bar area where they sit.  Tzuyu flopping into a comfy chair, and Chaeyoung at the bar, at a high chair, looking down.  Tzuyu is still in the clothes she left the house in, dark blue over dark blue, letting only her hands peek from the long sleeves.

"Thanks.  Can I get a coffee, stewardess?"  

"Coffee?  That bad?"

"No, I lied, tea for me as usual."

"That's more like it.  You look awful, though."  Without missing a beat, Chaeyoung springs down from the chair, and goes to get the barley tea, which is still not Tzuyu's favourite, but she is used to it.

"Well, I slept in a capsule hotel last night, and my neighbour was a snorer."

"Yikes.  Wait, what about, weren't you sort of rooming with the pretty used-to-be-an-idol girl?"

"Not anymore, probably won't be for a while."  Her voice, unable to stand the strain, wavers, cracks.

"Oh shit.  You sound awful, too.  Tell me all about it."  Chaeyoung places the tea in front on Tzuyu, and she sips at it, sets it down with a sigh.

"What is there to tell?  She came, she saw, she judged.  Now she thinks I'm some kind of, I don't even know what exactly she thinks.  She can't even look at me without disgust in her eyes anymore.  And also I just found out I like her."  To keep herself sane she stares at one of the buttons on Chaeyoung's shirt, an office shirt which just like all her other clothes looks large and awkward and messy on her.  Chaeyoung remains silent, so she continues.

"I don't know, I, she must have come last night, I mean the night before but didn't even come over to say hi, probably because she saw me dance, and then today, no, yesterday, I don't know, she, her voice, the hatred in her voice, the disdain, I can't, she tried to apologize, but even the way she, the way she did anything when I was near her, I don't know, I, how am I supposed to be around her when I know she just assumes I'm not much better than an escort or something, and we don't even do that sort of thing, she could have talked it out, I should have talked it out instead of just leaving, I don't know, she said I was slutty, Chaeyoung, she just said it, I didn't know I would care so much about what she thought until she said it, I'm"

"Okay, calm, chill."  Chaeyoung paces a bit, biting her lip, as if she was a detective in a story, working on a case.  "Did you tell her what the work was?"

"No, I guess I,"

"Dammit.  You could have done that during the probation period, right?"

"I don't, I didn't think it would be a problem, it pays well, and she was skipping her meals just to get by, she thinks I can't tell,"

"Right, yes, you said you needed money, the first night I met you."  So she did.  It was impossible.  Impossible to return to the flat, equally impossible to let Mina starve.  Sending her part of her salary would be more like an insult, a provocation.  Chaeyoung looks angry, glaring at nothing in particular, as if Mina were really there.

"If I were you," slowly, as if afraid of her reaction, "if I were you I would just let her starve."

"What?  No!"  

"What business is it of hers how you get the rent money?  She should be fucking grateful you even cover her expenses-"

"No, it's, urgh, wait, later, I just realized, I need to call, call someone, I don't know if she's told anyone we fought, it'd be just like her to keep mum-"  Chaeyoung shrugs, points her to the phone.  She wonders what it is like, to care so deeply for someone who hates you.

"Hello?  Momo?"

"Yes, speaking?"

"It's Tzuyu, I'm calling from the, uh, place I told you I was working, the new place."

"Don't your shifts start late at night?"

"So didn't Mina tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"We fought, and I've been out of the flat these two days.  Don't worry about the airport shifts, I'll be there.  Please check up on her, you or Sana or someone, I'm, I"

"Fuck.  Mina didn't say a word about this to us.  Is it okay if I come over to talk?  I can't do this on the phone.  I'll try to get Sana to check up on her, she should be free, and also better than me at this sort of thing."  Tzuyu mouths and uses hand gestures to pose the question to Chaeyoung, and she nods.

"Sure.  You have the address, right?  The back door is open.  I'm sorry, Momoring, it wasn't, it wasn't supposed to be like this-"

"I get it.  We talked to her that night, too, but, okay, we'll talk there.  Thanks for calling, Tzu."

"See you."

Tzuyu waits, fidgeting.  Looking about the dance hall, the couches, the low tables which form the seating area.  Would Momo judge her, too?  The pale face with a small smile, the scrunched up face as she transcribes a passage to a score, and she cannot get Mina out of her mind, cannot stop thinking about her now that she has turned her back on her, and the tears are back again, softer this time, less of a heaving and rushing of waves and white water, but a twisting and tightening from within that will not let go.

Momo enters, and suddenly feels sad.  A nightclub in the dingy white light is only forlorn, and smells faintly unwholesome.  The dark and inviting space, filled with dim lights and moving bodies, suddenly empty, suddenly hollow.  She treads gingerly, with the feeling she is not supposed to be here, that she is trespassing.  She looks around, and her eyes light on Tzuyu, and a messy-looking midget comforting her.  Faint sobbing.  She enters stage left, and they look up at the sound of her boots.

"Hey."

"Momo."  She has not seen or heard Tzuyu this distraught before, and it makes her heart clench.  

"Who's the midget?"  Both of them shoot her indignant looks.

"I'm Chaeyoung, and are you always this rude?"  

"N-o, sorry, I-"

"Are all your friends like this?  Can you just cut ties with them?"

"No!  Sorry about that, Chaeng, that's just how she talks."

"Who is she anyway?  Why are you on nickname terms already?"  Momo was just being annoying now.

"What is this, a jealous scene?  God, why do you make everything so difficult? "

Momo concedes and takes a seat opposite Tzuyu, and Tzuyu is the one who gets her a drink.  Momo isn't staff, so she leaves the money for the canned coffee in the cashier.  Chaeyoung is back at her bar stool, slightly miffed.  

"You know, you could have told us."  Momo crosses her arms, bristling a little.

"I-, well,"

"You didn't tell us about the sexy dancing, and you can't deny it.  You were hiding it, weren't you, when Sana asked?"  Momo's voice is sharp now, edged with displeasure.  Momo doesn't like being kept in the dark, doesn't like being lied to, or obfuscated to.  

"Yes, I, I didn't know how you guys would"

"And you guys shouldn't be judging!"  Chaeyoung yells at them in exasperation.

"Where do you come into this?  I don't give a damn if Tzuyu wants to be sexy for some rich men, but at least, at least you could have, I don't know, warned us, or we could have had a discussion.  Something."

"I thought, I" and Momo hates that Tzuyu's pleading voice is working, the strained sound of her voice, the little hand gestures that get aborted halfway.  An urge to protect her, to keep her from harm.  And now she looks so lost, so defeated, that Momo wants to hold and comfort her.  The look in her eyes, as if she will lose them forever.

"She shouldn't have to discuss it at all!  What are you, her mom?"  Chaeyoung cuts in in exasperation.  "You didn't have a problem before, but now your bigot of a friend is acting up, you blame her?  Are you kidding?"

"Chae, no,"

"No, she's right.  What I think," Momo scrunches up her face, gathering her thoughts.  "I think, if it was something, if there was something that made you hesitate about telling us the whole truth, all the more you should have, all the more you should have realized, we would find out eventually when we came over, right?"  Well, now it was blindingly obvious when Momo said it out loud.  "You know you can just, like, go back, right?  Mina-"

"No, Momoring, I'm sorry, if her attitude in the morning was anything to go by, it will be worse than hell to be in the same house as her.  I'm done with her eyeing me like I'm some kind of insect, and then pretending she's not doing it."

"That bad?"  

"Yes, that bad.  I, I don't know, I didn't think"

"Okay, well, I guess going back isn't exactly an option, then.  I think, we should talk about the living arrangements and stuff.  Did you bring your things?"

"No, they're still at Mina's."  Momo sighs heavily.  

"Room with me while you find a new place?"

"That's what Mina said, and look how that turned out."

"Well, Mina has a crush on you, that's different."  Well, she didn't mean to say that.  Shit, just roll with it.

"Come again?"

"She likes you, dumbass.  How cliché can you get?  You're telling me you didn't notice she looks at you differently from literally everyone else?  Why do you think she conveniently never brought up that it was supposed to be a temporary arrangement?"  That, well.  That explains the times she caught Mina staring at her for apparently no reason.  And also why Mina was always buying expensive ingredients to cook for her.  And also why she made sure to memorize her favourite infusions, her favourite teas, her favourite dishes.  And also, and also-

"She's not worth it, Tzu.  You're going to lose sleep over some stupid overreacting bitch?"  Momo opens her mouth in indignation, but Tzuyu beats her to it.

"Don't call her that!"  Tzuyu fairly growls, or what would be a growl if it were pitched in Tzuyu's mellow voice.  "She's my friend, alright?"

"She's your friend?  Whatever the hell she's doing doesn't sound friendly in the least, I'll just say."

"Look, it's not that simple, okay?  My feelings for her won't just disappear overnight for something like this!  And now I find out she had a crush on me the whole time?"  

"You have feelings for her?"  Momo has missed that part.

"I just realized.  Yesterday.  In Atami.  Long story.  Or I think I do?"

"You think?"

"Like, I, I can't imagine not having her around, and, I don't know, she's comfortable to be around?  And when I think of her doing stupid mundane shit I get, uh, happy?  I don't know!"  Tzuyu clutches at the armrests too tight, trying to place her feelings, pinpoint them and make them definite, wraps her arms around herself, huddling up, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it all.

"Yeah, okay, that's, uh, not a good sign."  Silence, except for the whirring of the heater, the hum of the lights.  

"Mina won't, uh, have a big problem getting through this month, right?"

"Probably.  I mean, she doesn't have much of her idol money left, but, this month."

"Okay, we have a month or two to reconcile you two.  And"

"And get her off her fucking high horse.  She likes you, but the minute you act a bit raunchy she looks at you like scum?  What's that about?"  Momo glares at Chaeyoung, and continues.

"I was about to say, get you two together, since you guys-"

"This isn't a romantic comedy!"  Chaeyoung slips down the chair and turns on Momo, furiously, looking up to glare at her with all of her short frame.  "What, were you going to trust in time, the great healer?  That doesn't, she won't just magically stop thinking you're a glorified sex worker.  Even if you quit, even if you explain, her first impression is set, trust me."  Ah, a sore point.  Momo brings up her hands, and picks her words carefully.

"We, we should at least try to, to do something about it.  From, from what I know, Mina still cares very much for Tzuyu, and vice versa.  I really don't want to ruin this, alright?"

"Sorry," mutters Chaeyoung, and she might even mean it.  

"Go and get your things soon, Tzu, and then you can stay at mine for a bit, now the heating's back on.  Give me a call, I'll come for you after your work.  And before you say anything, you won't be a burden, I promise.  Sana's going to be over often, it'll be fun."  Tzuyu smiles at Momo's hopefulness.  Her heart is lighter now, just a little, and she doesn't keep circling back to Mina in her head. 

Chaeyoung looks skeptical, but doesn't say anything when Tzuyu assents to Momo's proposal.  Momo gives her a reassuring smile, and a thumbs up as she leaves.  Chaeyoung rolls her eyes as the bob-haired figure exits. 

"Sorry about that, I, uh,"

"It's alright, really.  Thanks for, I don't know, thanks for sticking around.  I guess we're friends?"

"Weren't we?"

"I don't know, I came here, well, because I didn't know where else to go.  I mean, we were on nickname terms, but- say, does this thing work?"  She goes over to the record player, runs an inquisitive finger over the wood finish.

"Sure."  Chaeyoung goes to a shelf Tzuyu didn't know was a shelf, opening the door to reveal a modest array of discs, grouped vaguely by language and genre.  

"I don't suppose those are Jihyo's?"

"No, she keeps her favourites in her office.  These are gifts."

"Figures."  Chaeyoung takes a disc from the Japanese section, and it turns out to be The Candies.  She slides it out of the sleeve, fits in onto player.  A click and whirr, and Sue's voice soars into the dingy club.  Chaeyoung is at the comfy chairs now, taking Momo's vacant spot, watching as Tzuyu stares into the lights.  Tzuyu is nodding off during the second song, and by the third song she is fast asleep, mouth ajar.  Chaeyoung goes to wash up her glass of barley tea, goes to take her sketchbook.  Tzuyu asleep, as a record plays in a background, perhaps with Chaeyoung herself at a bar stool, watching her slumbering figure.  She is still working on something else, a scene she passed by just some weeks ago, a painting of boots and an old camera placed by a blind wall, where someone left an offering of food, for some reason.  All the studies are done, and the composition pretty much in place, but she really wants to do one of Tzuyu, work on it for a bit first, while the raw material is still accessible.  The disc plays out, and Chaeyoung puts on another, switching the angle of her sketch, with Tzuyu against the bar instead of the dance floor.  Or facing the window, almost totally blocked by the chair, with only her lolling head and mussed hair visible against the light.  The record plays out, and she puts on another.  

Chapter Text

Mina is hungry.  Mina is thirsty.  Not that she cares much.  She wants to stay like this all day.  All week.  Forever.  Her head is ringing, her head is throbbing.  Wait, no, just throbbing.  The ringing is the doorbell.  Her heart leaps, and sinks again when it is only Sana.

"Mina!"

"Sa, Sana.  Are you, do you know, where is, where Tzuyu, I, I mean, come in, sorry, it's"

"Shhh."  Sana steadies her, and leads her to her own dining table.  Sana is resisting the urge to run and squeeze her in a tight hug, she knows, and she decides to indulge Sana, just today.

"You can hug me, Satang, I think, I think I need it today."  And Sana obliges, and Mina, for once, leans into the first human contact she has had in more than a day.  Why couldn't the warmth of the body pressed against hers be Tzuyu's?  Why does it have to come to this?  She imagines the long arms, the sharp chin, pressed close to her, and doesn't tell Sana she is pretending it is Tzuyu who embraces her instead.  This close, she doesn't have to imagine Tzuyu's eyes, Tzuyu's sinuous body tight-clad in whatever the hell their costume was, and, ah, she is crying again, the way one cries when you think there are no tears left, but they come all the same.  

Sana gets up, takes a glass of water for her.  Why do her friends do things for her?  She sips at the water anyway, and turns to gulping it down when she realises how badly dehydrated she is.  It is a bright enough day, but already the sun is fading into the early evenings of winter. 

"Thanks, Sana."  The fading street in the fading sun.  Half-light, cold-light, and soon the lamps are on in the street.  Cold, so very cold, even if the heater is on.  Sana is making coffee, the kind Mina likes.  She knows where the beans are, what to do with them.  Tzuyu has no idea of the beans she uses, where she keeps her filter and papers, and yet she wants her gaze on her, her inquisitive eyes following Mina's every move.  What is wrong with her?  Sana is the one who is here, now, in the present, making a pot of hot coffee, taking from a plastic bag an array of buns and sweets, like Doraemon's magic pouch, comforting her, and all she can think of is Tzuyu.  She hasn't had the money to indulge in new beans for a while, and a dread of instant coffee fills her heart.  

"You're thinking of her, aren't you?"  Mina startles, jolts.  

"How did you know?"

"That's easy, Mitang: you're always thinking of her."  The coffee is ready, and Sana is seated opposite her, an indefinite expression in her face.  It's true, isn't it?  Mina takes a bite of a bun, red bean, and then a sip of coffee.  It's true, isn't it?  The winter sun fades all too quickly into night, into the lights of the apartments, into the neon signs of the shops, but from where Mina sits, she can't see them.  Tzuyu would stand at the window and look down into the shops, sometimes, Tzuyu would-  A hand in hers, thumb and fingers in her palm, reminding her.  Sana, yes, not Tzuyu.  Sana's face, now lined with worry, worry and sadness, eyes now downcast on the table, thinking of what best to do.  Sana, yes, Sana. 

"I'm sorry.  I'm, I got used to her."  

"Of course you did, Minari, of course you did."  Sana looks around at the apartment, full of traces of Tzuyu, the jar of chrysanthemums, another jar of goji berries, books in English and Chinese, clothes in dark blue, coats in colours which Mina would never wear.  

That afternoon in Tokyo, they had spent the afternoon looking at the old bookstores, breathing the scent of old paper.  Tzuyu bought a book on orchids, and an old foreign novel called Hopscotch.  Mina had flipped through a book of bijin-ga without buying it, and Sana seemed to be excited just reading the spines of random books.  Momo just stood and watched them, bemused.

The streets were dark when they came out of the mall, and the snow was back again.  Thick snow, soft snow, bluish in the light of shop signs, and white street lamps.  The long alleyway of tall and windowed buildings, glinting and glimmering with the lights of cars and grained by dancing lightwhited flakes of snow.  Tzuyu's tall frame, bulked by the thickness of the coat, pressed against hers.  They stood and stared despite the freezing cold, watching the lights of cars and shops run in the street of snowmelt and salt, shimmering and shivering unbearably sad.  Tzuyu pressed close to her, Sana pressed close to Momo, huddled silhouettes in the sea of lights.  Lights in the sporadic windows, each light a worker or a family or a hotel room, white and sterile or yellowish and warm or dim and curtained.  She imagined an office worker staring out into the snow, in an office of white and flat lights, typing something out, some report to be handed up, and still the snow falls, the attenuated lights of things in the street shifts and wavers in the double panes of the windows.  

"It's not that fun, you know, working in an office?"  How did Tzuyu know?  Was it the way she was staring at the lights?  

"I know, you told me before.  The lights are pretty, though."

"They are, aren't they?"  They stand in silence until the cold is too much, and dinner calls.

After the water and the snacks, Mina sips at the coffee.  She lets the warmth fill her mouth, lets the slight sourness flood her tongue, lets the taste of coffee wash out the memories she doesn't want to keep revisiting.  A blend of sour and bitter and sweet, a little like the coffee she drank on audition day, so long ago.  She remembers meeting Sana for the first time, with Momo, and back then they already came as a pair, as an inseparable unit, no matter that they were technically rivals, models in the same agency who competed for the same contracts, for the same opportunities.  She remembers going public with their friendship, a little Kansai Trio who wowed the fans with their looks, an idol and two models.  She remembers the fancy parties which she soon tired of, the afternoons spent trying on clothes, them trying to make a model of Mina.  

Sana stares at her, her face not very different from the face on television years ago, when she was given a hosting gig with Momo, the two of them in identical and stylish dresses, introducing musical acts and comedy acts with the same endearing tone.  God, she misses those times.  Sadly, the flats on the opposite side, the windows which frame Sana's hair.  The light behind picks out the stray wisps of hair, softly aglow in the glow of street lamps.  

"I miss it, Satang."

"What?"

"Everything.  Me and you and Momoring, I miss it so much, you don't know-"

"I know, Mitang, of course I do.  So much.  But all that's over now."  Another pause, another sip of coffee, warmth spreading down her throat, into her belly.  That feels better.  And Sana was right, it is all over now.  Even if she and Momo get some event gigs now and then, they don't pay well enough.  Most places don't pay well enough anymore for singers, for emcees, for speakers.  And then the singers and models and entertainers stay in small flats and struggle to get heating in winter, and only get to go out together once every few weeks.  

"So, Tzuyu-"

"She's not coming back, Mitang, not until she thinks you can talk to her normally."  Sana's patient voice, her voice of deep and pinkish melancholy.

"I do!"

"Ah, Mitang, always bad at lying."  For the last time, I'm not bad at it, you're just too good at picking it up.  The place between her nose and eyes sours, and she presses her lips tight to control her face.  She sniffs, wipes her nose, adds the paper towel to a growing pile from the time spent crying.

"I, okay, I can't help it, all right?"

"You know she likes you, right?"  No?

"The moment she catches sight of you, her whole body just sort of relaxes, and she gets this vacant, happy look on he face, like nothing else matters.  She doesn't even know she's doing it, but it's blindingly obvious.  Not to Momo, but it is to me."

"So, like"

"Can you imagine for a bit how she must feel, Mitang?  To see you close up your face whenever she talks to you?"

"I didn't know, and, I," so defeated, so terribly sad.  What is she to do?  What is there to do?  What about the songs?  The album they had planned and composed as if they were going to produce it someday?  Was she supposed to just forget that ever happened?  More coffee, more snacks.  Sana is chewing on a snack, her cheeks puffed like a hamster, the thing she liked to do on variety shows or cooking shows.  She laughs, and Sana laughs too, covering her mouth to stop the bread from coming out.  Petals and crystal white in the white air.  

"Let's go shopping?  I'll buy you something nice, just today."  When Sana says it it doesn't sound like pity, doesn't sound patronizing.  Slowly she gets up, slowly she takes a bath at Sana's prodding, puts on her sweater and coat, delicately, as if she is still fragile, careful not to break the thin glass seal which Sana has put on her sadness.  The cold out of the doors makes her shiver, and the ice of the breeze scores her face, but Sana is giggling at something, and she giggles along, not really knowing what's so funny.  

A long, long street, full of lights of shops which pour onto the pavement, full of signs vertical and horizontal and squarish and round.  Sana is in front, and Mina overtakes, waddling a little as she goes, looking at a display of fine watches.  She looks over them, mesmerized by the glittering stones, the glinting metal, pinkish-gold and goldish-pink, watches endlessly as the slim second hands tick down the minutes to 7pm.  Behind the cases, in the shop, staid uniforms stand and wait for customers, and she tries to catch their eye.  Sana joins her, laughing, and their breath fogs up the glass.  She hasn't laughed this much in some time.  They drift down the street, looking at things, going in to some shops to try clothes on, but Mina doesn't want anything, is happy just to let Sana dress her up.  Colours she has never imagined herself in: orange, white and blue, green and pink, under the white-yellow lights and clean white walls.  Well, the idol costumes were forced on her, and don't count.  She looks longingly at a simple dress in deep green, but turns away.  Sana shoots her a questioning look, which means she wants to buy it for Mina, but Mina shakes her head, smiles.  

Sana watches as Mina turns to have a last look at the nice green dress she so obviously wants, the warm shop lights catching her face in profile.  She looks happy, though.  They look at two more shops before going for a late dinner, and Mina is always in front now, running in small steps to the things which she wants to admire.  The music shop is still open, and before Sana can say anything Mina is already past the wooden door into the Europe-styled interior, running her fingers over the keys, admiring the bodies of the stringed instruments.  They have saxophones, French horns, and they peer at their own faces in the polished brass. 

A hasty dinner later, they return to the apartment, whose mess feels suddenly homely and cosy after the bright and minimalist shop interiors.  Mina falls asleep on the couch in the apartment, and Sana watches her, wistful.  Just today, at least, Mina is content.  Tomorrow would be another problem, and Sana, energetic as she is, patient as she is, cannot do this everyday for Mina, cannot substitute for Tzuyu.   

Jihyo comes in to find Tzuyu's lanky body curled up and fast asleep on the chair to a song of peaceful pastel Saturdays, until her footsteps awaken her.  She stretches, and Jihyo is put in mind of a cat waking up, a particularly long and thin cat in sleek dark blue fur.  

"Ah, Tzuyu.  Thankfully Chae warned me beforehand."

"I'm, I'm sorry, I was really, I was super tired, and"

"Don't worry about it.  Have you eaten?"

"No, not yet,"

"You can't just survive on the dressing-room snacks, you know."

"I'll go to the station and get a, beef bowl or something.  There should be just about enough time, right?"

"I have a better idea.  Seulgi has a mobile phone, I'll call her and ask if she can help you get dinner."

"She does?"

"She doesn't go around flaunting it, that's all."

"If it's not too much trouble, then."

"Of course not."

"What happened?"  Seulgi watches with a kind of motherly concern as she wolfs down the beef bowl in the dressing room.

"Long story, tell you later," Tzuyu manages to get out between mouthfuls of rice.  Seulgi hums, understanding.  Her quick meal over, she washes her face on borrowed wash, does a semblance of skincare, letting the dim lights and makeup hide the rest.  The rest of the night goes well.  Better, actually.  Tonight, somehow she is more flashy, more showy, more deadly than ever, more suggestive with each smile and laugh even when she serves the drinks.  Seulgi watches her unofficial apprentice, wondering.  She pokes Chaeyoung about it, but Chaeyoung keeps mum, a little to her annoyance, since Chaeyoung is immune to her pouty face, unlike most people.  

The night is winding down, and Tzuyu sits at a corner table, clung by the scarlet bodysuit from the chest down.  Yellow lights, the dim bar, and through the double-glazed window the moon, white and shining and cold over a corrugated roof.  Exhaustion sags her body, noodles her velveted arms over the armrests, but her eyes are sharp, sorrowful as they watch the moon in the clear winter sky.  Now she turns her gloved hands over and over, watching the smooth fabric wrinkle and crease.  She pinches the white and mottled moon with her thumb and index finger, eclipses the moon-sun with a thumb-moon. She misses Mina.  She wants nothing more to drag her exhausted self back to the flat and flop down on her half of the mattress to sleep.  And then they would wake up, and Mina would be smiling at her over a pot of tea, and-  

The moon fragments with tears, wavers and doubles in the glass of the window.  What is love?  Is it the feeling whenever she thinks of Mina?  The feeling that they could go on for ever when they sing and play at the keyboard?  What about the twisting feeling in her gut when Mina looked at her in disgust, is that love, too?  The moon, through the faint dirt of the windowpane.  She rises, slowly, looks around the seating area and dance floor.  Almost no-one.  A drunk salaryman, asleep despite the strident music.  She goes to gently wake him, putting on her best angel impression.  She leads him to the door, calls him a cab, beaming all the while.  She turns back, and the moon is still in the window, so terribly white in the night sky.  She should call Momo, tell her to come over soon.  

Chapter Text

Now Mina gets more work, far out of town, not as far as the airport, where they like her voice enough for her to call out the names at a pharmacy.  Shifts with Tzuyu at the airport are torture, but Tzuyu is nothing if not calm and businesslike, and none of her previous vitriol shows.  No more volunteering to take the same red-eye shifts, and definitely no more sitting together to watch the lonely travellers with tired eyes in the wee hours of the morning.  She doesn't mention her stuff, the books and clothes and teas which haunt Mina with their presence.

"Tzuyu, I-"

"Yes, Ms. Myoui?"

"I'm sorry about, I,"

"You still think I'm a whore, don't you?"  Mina stutters, caught off-guard by the deft and casual way Tzuyu says the most awful things politely, formally, finds her next sentence caught in her throat.  It isn't that, it isn't.  It isn't her fault she still associates Tzuyu in her mind with her sultry dance that night, it, it really-

"I guess that's a yes, then.  And you think apologising will change that how?"

"I-"

"The eggs should be ready soon, Ms. Myoui.  I think it's best not to discuss private matters at work."  And that is that.

The shift wears on, and each glance at Mina slowly tears up her insides just a little more, but Tzuyu forces her best work face on, forces herself to keep her face blank.  Mina talks to Momo and Sana normally enough, but Tzuyu doesn't want to look back when Mina sees them go back together, pretends not to hear the tiny sob which Mina cannot force down as she watches Tzuyu leave with Momo.

Tzuyu wakes up.  Momo and Sana have another schedule somewhere in downtown Tokyo, and she is free the whole day.  She is used to the mattress in the living room by now, but she cannot get used to the spotless walls, the tidy shelves.  She gets up, expecting to see a cup of cocoa or tea, expecting to hear the sound of breakfast in the pan.  Mina never let her cook breakfast.  She takes a slice of bread, makes toast, manages to not burn the toast, manages to fry a passable egg with soy sauce, manages to make a cup of cocoa.  Why is she doing this to herself?  Most days she gets by with bread and jam, or a sandwich she got from a convenience store the night before.  But today she wants to.  After breakfast she washes up, slowly, imagining the pale hands at the sink, imagining the pale face laughing at something she said.  She goes to the keyboard, and of course there is no keyboard, and no Mina either.  She goes to the window, and the view of the river and suburbs startles her.  The black water roars, rushes with snowmelt, as if all the snow in the Kanto plain were melting into the narrow river.  A bird flaps and flies into the buildings, alone.  Two men, thickly coated and in conversation, the faint puffs of their cigarettes visible against the dark concrete of the flats.  The cold seeps in through the double pane of the window, and she goes to make another cup of cocoa.  She has gotten halfway through Hopscotch so far, or what passes for halfway in the suggested chapter order, but she doesn't feel like reading much, not yet.  The radio crackles to life, and she turns the dial through deeply boring news and overly-cheerful hosts until she lands on a song, one of Seiko's.  Between the cocoa, radio and winter sky, only her stomach reminds her that it is lunchtime, and there is no food in the house.  Well, there is, but Momo was going to use it for dinner.  Momo is still doing the cooking, a little to her chagrin, and is firmly refusing Tzuyu's offers to help.

Along the rushing river she crunches, scarf and hood against the winter air.  She runs her leathered finger against the railing, brushing the thin snow from the black.  Step after step, mesmerized by the black water, by the dead reeds, by the flats and streets on the other side.  Step after step after step, and she has reached the street of low flat-roofed shops which run by the river, a car mechanic and a convenience store and then another mechanic.  A little soba stall, a cramped space of dark wood and white steam, and she pushes the door hesitantly in.  The chrysanthemum leaf tempura and noodles are gone before she realizes it, and she goes to get another bowl.  She remembers Kyoto, the first time visiting, a tiny space like this one, a strange soba in a starchy broth which warmed her up all over inside.  She watches the other patrons, a man and woman, dating probably, laughing and gesturing, slurping the soba, greeting the owner as they leave.  

After that is a small arcade, and she enters, relishing the warmth.  In the afternoon it is mostly students, the noise of fighting games, mechanical blips and bloops and grainy background music.  She goes over to a mindless shooting game, spending 100-yen coins until she is all out, letting the smell of plastic and spilt drinks and air freshener wash over her, listening in to the conversation of the other little groups, staring at the screen when she is out of coins.  She swivels in her chair to watch a gaggle of students at a claw machine, listens in to their excitement and disappointment.  The prize is a bear plushie, a rather ordinary sort of plushie, with cuteness as its only distinguishing feature, but to them the stakes could not be higher.  In the end a girl in bangs bags it with a cry of triumph, and they all laugh, look on with envy as she stuffs it into her bag.  Tzuyu watches as they laugh and coat themselves against the cold, stares as they disappear into the street.  As if she is old, very old, she gets up, slowly goes to the door, walks back, wondering why she never asked Mina which arcade games she liked.  Does she have a favourite fighting game character?  

The apartment is still empty when she gets back.  She turns the radio and heating back on, goes to the sofa to sit and read, and hopefully get through a little more of Hopscotch.  When Momo comes back she is staring into the dark, and the radio is on, and she is crying with her eyes open to an old song.  

The air tinkles with tea, with soft words, with scones from a fancier western-style place, Sana's favourite, bought with money from a series of fancy events downtown who remembered Sana's name enough to invite her to emcee, at rates almost approaching the old days.  

"Look, Tzuyu, did you apologize to Mina, at least?"

"What for, exactly?"  Tzuyu has been gifted a particularly expensive tea by a Taiwanese customer, an oolong which she is steeping for Momo and Sana, in one of their afternoon parties.  Well, the first, the first time they have a free afternoon together since Tzuyu moved in.

"You didn't tell her-"

"We've been over this before, Mo, I can't apologize to her when she refuses to change her own point of view!"

"Fine.  Have it your way.  I just, I just can't stand seeing you two act so distant, when"

"Look, I hate it too, I hate it so much that we can't talk like we used to, that I can't just go back, can we just, can we not talk about this?"

The topic changes, but her mood is ruined.  The tea turns out good, at least, but she doesn't care anymore.  Sana, at least, takes the chance to distract, asking her about the London, about Paris, about Münich, and it doesn't like feeling she is papering over the cracks.  Sana always seems naturally curious about everything, a curious-puppy front which works like a charm to chase away unwanted topics of conversation.

The next day, she goes out early, and returns in the afternoon with a suitcase, her suitcase.  Momo returns much later, but the suitcase is still unopened, pregnant and awkward in the living room, as if asking for permission to exist in this space.  Tzuyu is at the window again, and it is a freezing clear night, cold even for February.  The lights pick out the roads of tired shops, but the canal is unlit by lamps, a strip of black between the lights.  She wants to open the window to see if she can hear the rushing water, but the cold even through the closed window is oppressive.  Momo taps her on the shoulder, and she follows the head of carefully bobbed hair to the grey sofa.  Tzuyu sits on theside closer to her luggage, as if protective of it.

"You got your stuff from,"

"From Mina's place, yes."

"Did you tell Mina you were going to get your stuff?"

"No, I, um, well,"

"You didn't tell her?"  

"I, uh, I know when her shifts are."

Momo sighs, presses her glasses into the bridge of the nose, but lets it go.

"Whatever, what's done is done.  Welcome to the Hirai apartment, I guess."  Momo sighs, goes to the window, wonders what Tzuyu likes about this mundane view.  She still hasn't changed out of her work blouse and skirt, and with her wiry figure and bunned hair the effect is stunning.  

"You should have told her, at least, you know?"  Tzuyu is still silent, staring now at the old TV, now at the floor, now at the doorway where she thinks of where she will put her other pairs of shoes.  Momo comes from behind the couch, and places her hand on the thick hair, follows a lock of hair down to her shoulder.  In her heart she thinks the whole thing ridiculous, but she has no idea what to do.  

Mina stumbles into the flat, ready to drop off straight to sleep, and

Oh.

She is, no, she is already gone, but they are gone, too.  The books, the coats, the clothes, the goji berries.  The scores are left untouched, but everything else, down to the dresses in the drawers, her pine shampoo, her red toothbrush, all gone.  She should have known, she should have expected this, and yet- As if she was never here at all, as if the months of coming back to find her asleep, or waking up next to her, as if, as if none of it happened.  She goes over slowly to the scores, the pages scribbled with her handwriting, the only things she has left, the only evidence Tzuyu was ever here at all.  Tzuyu has slipped the key which used to be a spare key underneath the door, locking herself out of the space, forever.

"I'm sorry, Mitang.  I miss you, too."  Neat handwriting, a signature in Kanji (were they Kanji if she intended them in Chinese?), and a heart.  The heart only makes things worse, somehow.

Mina stumbles along the wide street, not really know where she is going.  She should have layered up a littler more.  Cold, insistent, piercing.  From all around cold wind and blasts of icy air.  She goes into a shop, leaves just as quickly.  She should have known, should have expected it.  But now Tzuyu has really erased herself from her life, and it hurts so much more than she expected.  She could go back to normal, right?  How hard could it be to pretend nothing ever happened?  Sana said she liked her.  She must be hurting, too, then.  But then how does the pretty rosewood face keep its composure at work, why do the large eyes and gilded glasses stare at her, ice cold, without a flicker or shadow of fondness?  She makes a large circle, and ends up back at her block of flats.  She takes the lift up, just out of habit, and enters again, as if the second time round everything will be back to normal.  

Without so much as a goodbye, without so much as a word, only a card with the words which she reads over and over, the heart which she traces over and over.  She falls asleep, and when she wakes the flat is dark, and even the clutter is lonely, everything is lonely, freezing cold.

"Next Tuesday and Wednesday we'll be closed for Lunar New Year.  Are you going home for-" Tzuyu snorts, shakes her head.

"We'll be having a dinner somewhere, just the girls, maybe in the club area.  Most of us don't have family here, so we do this for New Year instead.  Do you want to come?"

"Of course."  A dinner, a good night out, a reunion of sorts, without the stress of relatives.  She wonders about her father, wherever he is, how he will celebrate.  Jihyo lists off the others, some names she knows and some names she doesn't know. 

"Oh, and don't bring anything to drink.  Really.  We need to use up the liquor we got in gifts.  I swear, I have no clue where they're getting their money, but I'm not complaining."

"Are we making dumplings?"

"What?"

"Dumplings?  I thought they did in Korea, too."

"No?  Seulgi or, like, Chaeyoung might bother, but I'm too lazy, and I know most of the others are, too."

"Oh.  I might get some frozen ones, I know a good place in Chinatown."

"Sure.  I think we can do a big order, Korean and Chinese food and stuff.  We'll have a little meeting tomorrow to finalise everything, if not we'll end up overordering and wasting a ton of food like last time.  Come a little earlier to work, if you don't mind."

"Sure," Tzuyu shrugs, goes to get changed.  The first New Year away from family.

For breaking down at work for the second time in a week, Mina has been let go, and now she really has no money.  She has tried, tried to put on her best mask, but it doesn't work, nothing works, nothing in her years of idol work has prepared her for this.  At her other jobs, her colleagues look askance when she comes in, as if afraid she will malfunction at any moment, and she is so tired, too tired to try to function at all.  The guitar will probably have to go.  Who needs proper meals, who cares about eating, when her mind is filled with Tzuyu, when each glance around the space they used to share reveals the gaps of her not-things, spaces where Tzuyu should be but isn't?  Why does she even bother anymore?

In the watery winter daylight the apartment is cast in shadow, the many things astray and piled up suddenly strange, shadows of shadows she hasn't noticed before.  She watches from the couch, the pile of books, the photos, the clothes in the dimness, and it seems to her that her own home has never been so alien, so strange.  Soon it is almost too dark to see, just dark enough to make out the shapes of things, to imagine their colour.  Only the hum of the heater can be heard.  Mina gets up from the couch, slowly traverses the dark and dim, as if swimming in the liquid thick dark.  She treads softly, and the dark ripples about her.  Soon the lights of the street will shine in, and she will make dinner for, for herself, just for herself.  

The guitar is indeed the first to go, and Mina discovers, as everyone who has pawned anything does, that it goes for rather less than she hoped.  Next are her own photobooks, the best of her dresses.  She turns the fabric over in her hands, thinking of the ones she would have worn for Tzuyu, the ones she would have worn in spring, in summer, the ones Tzuyu would like, the ones she would cock her head and look quizzically at, the-

Things she can try to sell off, things she can throw away, and the rest.  Slowly the apartment empties, as if Tzuyu's things vanishing were just the beginning.

There is nothing much left now, just the bare furniture and the memories.  The memories she packs up into a bag, the photos and books and the scores she worked on with Tzuyu.  She packs up the keyboard in its case, and then is gone.

Tzuyu pushes open the doors into the club.  Today they are in one of the private rooms, just about big enough for the ten of them.  These are just bits of warehouse which have been walled up along the side, and left almost undecorated.  Jihyo was going to try to make it fancy, but Chaeyoung convinced her it would be tacky.  In the end she stuck with plain and smooth white, and paid Chaeyoung to do a tiny bird in the corner of each room, one a kingfisher, one a crane, one an egret, one a crow.  She is the second to arrive after Chaeyoung, and they sit, and chat, and neither of them bring up Mina, and it doesn't occur to Tzuyu that none of them have heard from Mina since she took her stuff from the flat.

If they look at her weirdly for her keyboard and duffel bag, she doesn't care.  A last big sum for the ticket, a ticket to somewhere she has never heard of, as far as she can go.  The train trundles through tunnels, and then out into a greyness of winter and fields, and then tunnels and mountains again.  Houses rush by, not as fast as they did on the Shinkansen, but fast enough to make her glad she is out of town.  The grey fades and fades to black, and soon, except for the occasional town, the occasional street, the world out of the train is deep black.  She stares out as another town rushes by.  The low buildings grow taller, slow down, and the blurred logos and signs become clearer.  It is snowing.  Not yet, not just yet.  The next big town, and she will get off. 

Night, and the street signs glow onto the street.  It has stopped snowing, at least, and the cars and trucks trundle by, their lights shining into the eyes and face and coat of the lone tired woman, who walks by the shops without going in.  Cold, so cold.  She sniffles, pauses, and goes on, watching her boots in the thin snow.  She stops in a small alley, hoping no strange men lurk in the shadows.  She didn't think about that angle when she packed everything up to leave, and now the fear is everywhere, hiding in the darkness below a neon sign, behind a glass arcade door, behind a tree, which last turns out to be a fur-wrapped woman and a cigarette, looking like she just stepped out of an old movie.  The main road peters out into some railway tracks, and the fear returns, worse than ever.  She scrunches herself up small in front of the large double doors of some shop which presumably sold clothes in the day, trying to figure out her next move.

Tzuyu wakes up on a couch to Chaeyoung's face.  Discovers she is sitting on a large armchair.  Did she sit here last night?  What happened last night?  Liquor, quite a lot of it.  She brought the dumplings to defrost, other people brought a bunch of other dishes which she only remembers hazily.  Pancakes?  The Korean variety, with kimchi and seafood and things.  Yes, pancakes.  Rice cakes, as well, in both the Chinese and Korean styles.  She had sat with Chaeyoung and one of the Chinese girls she wasn't really close to, prodded Chaeyoung about the painting of her dancing she had been promised, but Chaeyoung had been rather hush-hush about it.  Whatever.  Chaeyoung now offers her a glass of water, and she accepts, gratefully.  The room had been rather warmer than was strictly necessary, and now she feels a little sticky, in need of a good bath.  The water washes the stickiness from her mouth, clears her head, and in a short while she feels significantly less gross than a short while ago.  She looks around, sees Seulgi, Yizhuo, Han Dong lounging around, recovering from what must be immense headaches from the pained looks in their eyes.  Chaeyoung, somehow, is bright and cheery.  They had sung songs at random on the Karaoke system, trying to stick to the upbeat songs, but Tzuyu insisted on picking sad Taiwanese campus songs which got boos from the audience.  Jihyo one-upped her by belting Tears of Mokpo, and then a deeply depressing song about mortality, just Sada Masashi and his guitar, which got her banned from picking songs for the rest of the night.  And then there were the cocktails, which seemed less impressive when the bargirls were wearing t-shirts or baggy sweaters instead of curve-hugging costumes.  A few drinks later, and Tzuyu is singing along to Blue Mountain Range and Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy, abandoning all thought of introducing obscure Taiwanese singers to this bunch.  The pancakes are good, as are the dumplings. 

Mina is curled up small in the shadow of a corner of a blind wall in her sleeping bag.  She has padded the thickness with towels, the towels she had the presence of mind to pack, but they are but scant protection against the searing creeping cold.  Layered up as much as she can, it is bearable, but the thought of strange men, of unsavoury characters in the night keeps her awake.  A glowing tip of a cigarette passes in the street lamp, blocks the sight of a sign, and is gone, leaving only a faint smell.  Voices, faint and far.  Nearer, now the voices, and she huddles even closer in, a strident woman's voice, a husky man, and then they, too, fade.  Humming of generators, of heaters.  A drop drips, somewhere, barely audible, and a car passes in the road.  The cold seeps in, slowly, gradually, invading the sleeping bag, and then the towels.  She hunches in, trying to keep off the pernicious fingers of chill.  Will she die if she falls asleep?  The night drips, groans, creaks, the night shivers with green and red and yellow.  A train trundles by on some nearby tracks, the last.

After the food, they sit around and drink, singing occasionally, Tzuyu sneaking rounds of water in between to pre-empt the hangover.  Midnight approaches, and the second last song before midnight turns out to be Blue Light Yokohama, a song for the sad rivers and flats and reflections of flats in rivers and shop signs in the snow and rain, a song for the forlorn arcades and shopping streets and shopping malls which glimmer well into the night, a song for the walks she had imagined along the river in the summer evenings which would never happen anymore, not with Mina, a song for the lights in the window of a flat she would never see again.  They give her the honour of the last song before midnight, and it is Manhattan Joke, a song for the empty airport, the large and sad arrival hall, a song for the only café open at 3a.m. at Narita, and the only worker on shift, a pretty face of pale jade who stares at her as she trundles by, who starts back in embarrassment when she is noticed.  

Is there a hot pack?  Did she bring one?  Even the last of the passers-by are gone now, and she has convinced herself at least that there is no more risk of assault, not on a freezing night like this one.  Is there a hot pack, even a single one?  She is loath to leave the relative warmth of her little huddle of towels and sleeping bag, but she forces herself to scrabble about in the duffel bag, finally lighting on the a package which she brings to the nearest street lamp to puzzle out.  Thank goodness.  She breaks it in two, slips it between her scarf and neck, and huddles up again.  Drops drip.  A lone strange bird calls.  Far away, a car, a car horn.  She watches the neon sign, thinking of hot coffee, and finally drifts off to sleep.  It is just past midnight.

The first song after midnight is, of course Congratulations, Congratulations, which they sing and shout with slurred voices, and the air is full of song and cheers.  Congratulations, the New Year is here, and winter and snow is gone and done with, and the lights are warm and the couches are comfy, and the air is warm, too warm with breath and liquor, the laughter too loud, far too loud, congratulations, congratulations, congratulations.

Chapter Text

Mina has never hated the snow, the wind this much before.  Hour after hour of cold, it seems to have seeped all the way through her layers, deep into her skin.  She shivers, stamps her feet, walks about, but it is not enough.  Didn't it stop snowing last night?  Why did it start up again?  She huddles into a crouch, stands, sits, walks, keeping in the shelter of the railway tracks, staring at the fast food chain just opposite with deep longing.  She has been thrown out of three or four chains for loitering already, and she can only look on as the customers walk in, take off their coats and scarves in relief at being out of the snow and cold, order cups of steaming coffee and tea which make her ache with longing for their warmth.  From the pale imitation of busking she tried to perform in the cold, her fingers are half frozen, and she barely got enough for a bun, which she ate long and slowly at the convenience store, savouring the bread and the warmth, trying not to cry.  She barely read at the station name when she got off yesterday, barely knows where she is, only that it is far away, far from Tokyo and Yokohama, a town just big enough to be busy, not big enough to think of checking.  She should call them, at the very least.  Leaving her keyboard and duffel bag, she treks about in the worsening snow, finally spots a payphone.  Does she have change?  Just enough, two coins for two calls which will not last more than a few minutes.

In the afternoon, Tzuyu has recovered from last night, recovered enough to make tea for herself and Momo, sitting and watching the snow come down.  Her fingers play over her lap, an old song about sunsets, boats on still rivers, and she sings along, softly.

"So that was, like, your first Lunar New Year away from your family?"

"Yes."

"Was it fun?"

"I suppose.  I got pretty drunk."  Low laughter.

"I can't imagine you drunk."

"We should get drinks some day."

"Mmm."  And then quiet, the quiet of a winter's day.  Tzuyu is silent, not blanking out, as Momo soon discovers, but staring intently at something or the other, and then at the window, at the ruffling of the clouds in the sky, which is her best guess.  

"I wish it would be spring soon."

"Soon.  We can go and see the flowers.  We used to go with Mina, there's a few photos out there of us in some park, Ueno or somewhere, in some magazine."  It is Momo's turn to fall silent now, reminiscing about the magazine covers she used to grace, the shoots, more often than not with Sana.  The thrill of the cameras and eyes trained on her, knowing her every movement and gesture was entrancing, enthralling, that more than one eye in the room widened not just in appreciation, but in desire.  She laughs again, a low and rich chuckle.  Tzuyu doesn't respond, and only watches the window.  Is it the clouds, the droplets on the windowpane, or the steam from the teacup which she is looking at?  Or their juxtaposition, condensation on condensation on condensation?  She sneezes, and the noise jolts Tzuyu from her musings, and they smile.  Tzuyu reads, and Momo turns on the radio, listens to a news program, nodding along in concentration, as if trying to really understand what they were saying, as if the real news were hidden somewhere in the interstices of the broadcast news, somewhere in the blips and crackles between words. 

The phone, and Momo ambles over to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mo?"

"Satang?"

"Mina, she-"  Momo waits as a battle for control happens on the other end of the line.  Sana breathes, crackling into the phone, and starts again.

"Mina isn't picking up, and"

"Wait, what?"

"She called me and told me, she called me to say not to look for her, I don't even understand, I called her house number but she isn't picking up, I'm scared, Momoring, she sounded so sad, and I haven't gone to check on her recently.  I'm, I should have"

"Never mind that.  Are you free now?"

"My next schedule is at five, so, yes,"

"Tzuyu?  Tzuyu!"  Tzuyu, busy with her book on orchids, looks up to Momo's face of consternation, frowns.

"Mina-"  A shudder passes through her body, and suddenly she is on edge, face tight with worry.

"Mina just called Sana, and we're, uh, a little worried.  You're free now right?  We should check on her.  Wait for me, Satang, we should be there soon."  Tzuyu nods, and pads over to take a coat, some snacks she knows Mina will like.  One never knows, after all.  The phone rings again, and Momo rushes to it, fairly snatching up the receiver to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Momo, Momoring,"

"Mina?"

"I'm safe, please don't look for me, please, I'll be okay, please just forget about me, please,"

"Mina!  Tzuyu is here, do you want to, Mina!"  The line cuts off, and Momo is left standing there, still pressing the receiver in close, as if she would be able to summon Mina's voice from the other end of the line if she squeezed it against her face hard enough.

The door is not even locked, and the bare room tells them all they need to know.  The shadows of posters on the walls, the white spaces where books and photos once were.  Tzuyu runs a finger over the outlines of where the 1950s advert would be, brushes her fingers across the space the keyboard used to occupy, not understanding, refusing to understand, as if they are still there, just rendered invisible by some evil magic, as if at the snap of the fingers, Mina and her things will re-appear, and everything will be normal again.

"Wait, did she terminate, did she even tell, like the landlord, she can't just vanish like this and tell us not to look for her, what is she thinking?"  Momo is sat in the couch, pressing her hands to her head, trying to understand.  Papers still scattered about, booklets here and there, forgotten or deemed unnecessary.  A stray photo album, and Tzuyu picks it up slowly, carefully, turns to pages to photo after photo of Mina backstage, on the stage, with Sana, with Momo, with the both of them, with idols, some of whom she recognises.  Mina smiles by a Ramen shop, sits down on a bench to eat bread at Shinjuku Park, lounges on a couch with Sana in what Tzuyu recognizes to be Momo's current flat.  Mina with cherry blossoms, Mina posing in bunny ears by another river with autumn leaves, Mina's laughing windruffled smile against the rails and dark water of a ferry, Mina, Mina, Mina, 

"Tzuyu!"

"Look, Tzu, the statement, she barely had any savings left"

"She told me, she told me there were, she said she had like a few months worth, I should have known when she didn't even give a concrete number, dammit dammit dammit, I, okay, I think we can, I just, even if we let the place go we need to move the furniture out somehow, god, how could she,"

In the end they decide to cover the rent for now, until they can get ahold of Mina.  Even then, Tzuyu roams about the small space, scraping together the few memories she left behind, trying to remember what it was like.  

"Come on, Tzu, she's not, she's not dead or anything, I, she just called us to say she's safe, which means she hasn't, she won't give up so soon.  We'll find her, alright?"

"I suppose."

"Yeah, I suppose."  She supposes.  They suppose.  There is nothing left to say, only the silent apartment, the open maws of cupboards wide and unspeaking, the smooth vinyl tabletop blank and staring.  Unheated, the apartment is cold, and they leave, morose, taking the key with them from where it lies on the chair.  The door closes with a sort of sad finality, and the sound, more than usual, seems to ring all about the empty corridor and stairwell.  

"So your stu- I mean, your, your friend just vanished into thin air?"  Chaeyoung has stayed up to do more sketches of the dancers, painting her impressions straight onto cardboard like Toulouse-Lautrec until she decides it is getting pretentious, and switches back to sketching them onto paper.  Tzuyu sits in a chair, resting after a dance number, doing an excellent impression of the Seated Dancer in Pink Tights, except her dress and tights are all rubber and leather and nylon, gaudy and flashy.  

"Well, not thin air, she called us, telling us not to look for her,"

"Seriously?  Dramatic bit- sorry, I mean, isn't that a little extreme?  If she doesn't have money and can't go back to her parents, where the hell is she going to stay?  It's still snowing all over Japan, you know."

"I know, and its been awful weather in Tokyo, too, I hope she went for the south or something, hopefully its warmer there."

"Well, you don't have to give a f- you don't have to care, right?  Since you moved out of her place and all.  I was there when you guys decided it, remember?"

"I, I still care for her, alright?"

"Not to mention she's just overreacting, as usual."

Tzuyu is so obviously stung that Chaeyoung backtracks in a hurry, and they speak of other things.  They lapse into silence, Tzuyu humming and staring into the prints on the walls.  Soon, Tzuyu has to go back out, and if she was slighted by Chaeyoung's words before she does not show it.  Chaeyoung stays to do a few more studies of the dancers, and then drifts off to the upstairs room where she sleeps.  She barely pays Jihyo any rent for it, so she bears with the muted club music.  She has padded the walls, and it staves off most of the thudding bass, enough to sleep.  Shit, her sketchbook.  She goes down to the dressing room, pit-patting down the stairs, hoping no-one has peeked inside.  She finds Tzuyu at the couch again, gripping her hands to her legs, her face tight with worry, muttering to herself.  The gloves and tights are smooth, so that her hands squeak against her thighs as she presses her fingers about them, and Chaeyoung knows she is worrying about Mina.  

"What if, what if she dies, Chaeng, what if" caught off guard, Chaeyoung stutters, trying to form a response.

"Look, it's, uh, it's not your, it's not your fault, okay, and definitely not your friends' fault either, the, the Momo person or whoever, like, look, she decided this herself right, uh,"

"But I, I just left, and then I took all my stuff, I don't know, I should have, I could have done something, Chaeng, and now it's so cold and she's going to die, she's going to fucking die out there and it'll be my fault, all my fault," she suddenly feels helpless, powerless, unable to stop whatever horrible fate Mina is about to face.

"No, stop, stop, just stop, that's not how it works, it, it really is her own problem, okay?  Stop, just stop, please."  Chaeyoung has pressed her tiny hand right over her heart, as if trying to slow its furious beating by pressing into the smooth fabric.  Tzuyu looks up, and sees to her surprise a pair of tearing eyes, pleading eyes.  

"She'll be okay, alright?  She, you, you can't do anything for her now, except maybe figure out where she is, but, but that's for tomorrow, not in the middle of the night at the club, surely?"  Tzuyu nods slowly, and acquiesces.  Hopefully she would be okay.  There are hostels, the ones Mina told her about, there are places which would maybe let her sing for a fee, or soup kitchens like those her friends volunteered at in England, there are, there is hope.  Is she getting enough to eat?  Is she staying warm?  The thought makes her heart tighten all over again, and it takes another round of Chaeyoung's ministrations to get her mind off Mina.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  You can't just run off like that, you can't just make us all sick with worry, Momo is going to go mad soon, please Mina, just come back, please-

The snow has thinned to a drifting of flakes now, and Mina's singing is at least good enough to attract a good amount of attention.  A few charitable coins later, and she has just enough for a cup of coffee, the cheapest she can find.  Slowly she sips at the warmth, trying to remember what it was like to be like the others around her, the women and men who can talk easily to each other, casually, without worrying about their next meal, without worrying about someone taking their stuff while they get their coffee and tea and toast and omelette rice, and even then she berates herself for having a coffee instead of a proper meal, regretting the money she could have spent on another bun.  She lingers until she sees a waitress approaching with kind but firm apologies written all over her face, and hurries out again, putting her hood up against the wind.  No-one has taken anything, thank goodness.  Not yet.  

The rest of the day, she gets just about enough for a single beef bowl and a sort of groundsheet to stop the wet pavement from ruining her sleeping bag, and even then she is hungry, with a hunger which refuses to leave her alone until the wee hours of the morning, when she finally falls asleep, only to be awoken by a blast of freezing air when the sky is barely light.  She lies still, trying with all her might to fall back asleep, but the engines, the chatter, the little itches from days of being unwashed and the cold, the awful, horrid cold refuse to leave her alone.  She gives up and gets up to find a couple staring at her, and she doesn't even have the energy to glare back as they mutter and shake their heads and go on their way, gazing at the dark ground and scattered snowflakes, trying to press down the feeling of humiliation which grows in her gut.  

Evening, at Momo's again.  Tzuyu sits on the couch facing the TV, and Sana straddles the chair backwards, frowning as she think.  Momo paces about, barely able to contain the frustration and bewilderment which burns her up from within.  Tzuyu has made some herbal tea, but Momo's cup lies untouched on the coffee table.  Sana's frown deepens a little, and at length she breaks the silence.

"She hates the cold, right?  She wouldn't go up north, or to the north coast, the snow there is something horrible."

"Doesn't narrow it down that much, though."  Tzuyu sighs.  Would she have chosen a small town, or a big town?  A small town ran the risk of standing out, especially if she was going to start singing for the inhabitants.  Yet she would be more likely to bump into old fans of hers in the big cities, so where did that leave them?  

"God, I'm going to get off at every damn stop on the local lines all the way down to Fukuoka or somewhere if that's what it takes.  Myoui Mina, if you, if you get into trouble, if," Momo buries her head in her hands, and then paces about, then stops to collapse into the sofa again.  She really is going to go crazy soon, and Tzuyu can't console her, can't say anything to make it better, when the worst of her worries could very well be happening, right now, to a helpless Mina, somewhere in the vastness of Japan. 

"I mean, she could still be in Greater Tokyo, and we could never find her."  Tzuyu shrugs hopelessly.  Hundreds, thousands of suburbs in the sprawling plain from Kanagawa to Saitama and Chiba, and each of the streets, the hostels, the nooks and crannies could hide Mina.  Who was it who said it was easier to hide in a city than in any labyrinth?  The Minotaur only needed to get off at a suburban metro stop, and he would be lost in the Tokyo sprawl, impossible for a single Theseus to find.  Silence again, Sana still thoughtful with here head resting on the back of the chair, now cradled in her loose-hung arms, now alert and thinking.  

"I think, I mean, she did this basically on impulse right?  She probably didn't think that much, only that she wanted to get away from here."  Sana picks her words slowly, pronounces them slowly, trying to narrow down the hopeless search, even a little.  Momo is at the window now, staring into the dark.  What had Mina been thinking?  Had she been thinking at all?  She had just packed up, moved out, left without so much as a good-bye, or a reason why.  Momo could see it now, Mina dragging her keyboard and bag, sitting on the train in a sigh of relief, waiting for the train to take her somewhere far away.  

"I suppose."  Momo's breath fogs the inner window, and she turns around to pace about again.  She picks up her cup, takes a sip, relishes the tart and bitter as it spreads through her mouth.  "Then she must, well, she won't have gone to Kansai."  Not with the shadow of her family home still looming large over the area.  Wakayama at the very furthest, then, with the hills acting as a kind of psychological barrier from the bay of Osaka.  

"South, then?  After Hyogo?"  Tzuyu pipes up.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps nearer at hand, without the need for more transfers.

"Do you think, do you think she would take a transfer?"

"Perhaps."  The familiar hopelessness, something very like despair. Who knows?  Momo can imagine Mina getting off, picking another line, getting on, taking her inland, taking her all the way south, taking her to an obscure suburb of an obscure town, and her chest feels crushed by the sheer impossibility of it all.  

"I don't think she would have spent all that money on a Shinkansen ticket, surely?  And if not, well, not the train past Hyogo, that would take almost a whole day."  Tzuyu isn't sure if Sana is reasoning it out, or just saying things to make them feel better.  But there is some sense in that: in that state of flight, of fleeing everything on impulse, Mina would hardly wait around for the better part of the day on platforms and trains, much less have the presence of mind to figure out the trains to go south.  At least, that is what she tells herself.  

"So our working hypothesis is somewhere between, uh, Hamamatsu and Wakayama.  Great.  Just great.  We could spend years in Nagoya alone and have zero chance of finding her.  Fuck this.  I don't even, I don't even want to do this anymore."  Momo's voice crawls with rancor, and Tzuyu cannot resent her for it.  The strain of trying to cover for Mina's missed shifts, trying to figure out how to pay her rent, what to do with the furniture is taking its toll.  They have checked with all the places they know she has worked at before, the usual parks she likes to go to, with no results.  And now she could be anywhere in a huge sprawl of hundreds of kilometres, probably very cold and very hungry.  If she is alive.  She is alive, she has to be.  How could she not be?  It couldn't happen, not to Mina, at least not to Mina.

Everything is cold, everything is freezing.  It is meaningless to try to sing, to try to play, when her frozen fingers can barely move, when ice scalds her throat each time she takes a breath.  She stands and plays the keyboard which somehow still works in the cold and wind and snow, but every few lines she coughs, every few lines a note comes out wrong.  What has she done?  It would be better to have stayed, to have tried to endure.  She tries again, picks a popular tune which she knows the accompaniment for, but she barely gets a few lines in before it is too much, everything is too much, the cold, the exhaustion, the sadness, and she slumps to the ground, into the keyboard, letting her forehead play a cluster of discordant notes, trying not to cry.  A round-faced red-cheeked woman is looking curiously at her, and she turns instinctively away, but the moment is gone, and the woman is gone, a few coins in the cup.  She stares numbly into the street as it grows dark, into the snow as it starts and stops, flakes here and there which add to the thin dusting on the pavement.  

Four coins, each five hundred yen, two thousand yen, twice the amount she has gotten the rest of the day.  Two thousand, enough for, for a bunch of hot packs, at least, and then, and then an instant ramen, at least for tonight.  

Tonight she finds the slight warmth of a drain cover under shelter, in a side street where there is no-one, and falls asleep.  The street is empty, cold and desolate and empty.  On a nearby main road a lorry trundles by, an overcoated man whistles by, but she slumbers on.  Later, she wakes up hungry to a policeman who torments her with his torch, a cruel brightness which will not go away no matter how she turns.  Tired, so tired, and yet she forces herself along, trying to get out of his hateful gaze.  She drags her body and bag and keyboard to the gates of a train station, and then to the doors of a high-rise, looking into the glass where the letterboxes, the elevators are, wishing with deep longing she could just go in, take a lift, fall onto a soft bed.  She troops off again, and at length finds her way back to the shelter of the railway tracks the first night, thankfully empty.  Another two hot packs, and she collapses to sleep, awoken by the rush of cars, the blaring of horns.  How many more days of this can she stand?  She wants, she needs a coffee.  Of the two thousand yen, perhaps five hundred remain from dinner and the hot packs.  Perhaps a coffee and toast?  God, she is wasteful.  She can't, no, just the toast, and yet so tired, with her head throbbing, pounding.  So, so tired, so, so cold.  

In the end she gets neither coffee nor toast, and watches hungrily past her keyboard as they go into the coffee place for breakfast, tells herself she will get enough for a proper meal soon.  She watches the clothes shop, less fancy than the one Sana took her to.  Maybe she should have let Sana buy her that deep green dress.  The lovely warm lights on the mannequins, the dark concrete above the glass, how lovely, how sad.  A woman in black and deep brown hurries buy, and then an older woman with a cane, for decoration or for support is not really clear.  Lunchtime passes, and still she has not eaten.  Rumbling hunger, sharp hunger.  A few more coins, and she will go and eat something.  Sings, her voice cracking with exhaustion and cold, sings and sings and sings.

The round-faced woman again, in a pale blue coat which stands out against the sea of black and dark grey, hand in hand with a man, no, another woman, sharp features and short hair.  Under a single large umbrella, and their smiles, their giggles make her heart ache for Tzuyu.  The former is smiling as she approaches, cheeks chapped with cold and beaming with two protruding front teeth.  Mina looks down quickly, as if ashamed of the two thousand she accepted as charity.  Now the other, the handsome woman in a fur hat hurries over as well to where she sits and sings, and another four coins clatter in, another two thousand yen.  She sits, stunned, and stops singing altogether.  The warmth of another hand envelops hers, and she tightens her grip about the warmth.  Such a large hand, and so warm, now cloaking her own as if cupping a tiny bird, so sad and gentle and warm.  They turn away back into the snow, the boyish woman comforting the other, and Mina stares at them for a long time, wondering.  Two thousand yen.  How could they, they couldn't just-  yet it is still money, money for another cup of instant noodles, money for another bun, for a cup of hot coffee which she brings out carefully from the convenience store, letting the steam warm her frozen cheeks, letting the warmth through the carboard cup warm her frozen fingers.  

That night a gang of youngsters, barely out of school from the looks of it, harasses her, hollering and whistling and laughing, scattering the precious coins all over the pavement, taunting her as she scrabbles for them, guffawing as she begs them to leave her alone.  She tries to curl up in her sleeping bag, hoping they will tire of their sport, but the butts of cigarettes, the prodding of sticks, the sharp pain of scattered stones flung at her head keep her from rest.  Defeated, humiliated, she gives up her precious spot, trying and failing to find somewhere out of the cold.  A hostel, with "women-only" printed below the main neon sign.  Mina looks hopefully at the prices, and slinks away defeated.  Trudging through the streets, getting out of the icy wind by ducking into she shadows of walls and nooks and crannies, then going on her way again.  So tired, so exhausted she can barely walk, and yet there is nowhere to sleep, nowhere to spend the night.  Another stumbled street corner, another policeman, maybe even the same one.  When would she find rest?  She is tired to the point of collapse, and a deathly weight pulls her down.  An hour or so at a convenience store just to try to pass the night, pretending to look at things, pretending to think pf buying something, pretending that she is not on the verge of falling over where she stands, and then back out, and hopefully no-one will disturb her this time.

Tzuyu startles awake from a dream, and the living room, the couch and ceiling and table suddenly seem strange, unfamiliar.  Mina, where is Mina?  No, this is Momo's flat, where the lights stream in and form weird shapes on the ceiling, and Mina is somewhere out there, far away.  Mina, where can she be, what is she doing now?  Deep in the night, the cold out of doors is biting.  Did she bring enough warm clothes, is she sleeping somewhere safe?  Where is she?  Tzuyu rises, brushes off the thick blankets, wades in the dark of formless lights.  She goes to the window, the familiar view, and she imagines Mina, hidden in the shadows of the bank of the canal, asleep in one of the windows of the dark flats, coming to knock on the door, coming back.  She clenches her fists, trying to stop her exhausted mind from running in the futile circles they had traversed and re-traversed the past few days.  She could be kidnapped, she could be starving, she could be dead already, anything could have happened, if only she hadn't just vanished without a warning or word.  Worse still, the weather, instead of getting warmer after the Lunar New Year, only worsened, with snow and frost all over Japan.  Sleep comes eventually, but not before another bout of tears.  She could sleep in tomorrow anyway, since the club shift was at night.

The day dawns bright and fine and desperately cold, and Tzuyu has to turn up the heating as Momo leaves the house before settling back into the couch.  The living room was always going to be harder to keep warm than the bedroom anyway.  Today she makes herself breakfast again, a fried egg, this time with bread and soya sauce.  Never mind she is just copying a Ghibli movie breakfast, it works well enough with a pot of strong black tea.  She doesn't feel like chrysanthemum or honeysuckle today, so she will endure the pins and needles today.  In Europe she got by with just skipping breakfast, or splurging on Dim Sum in the overpriced Cantonese restaurant down the road.  In her final year a Taiwanese restaurant opened down the street from her place, and she lost count of the number of times she trooped over for a porridge with sweet potato and salted vegetables or a salted egg which cost at least three times what it would have back home.  

Staring over the river blue with sky and sun, she drums her fingers on the railings, presses out a children's tune on an invisible piano with just her index finger.  She laughs to herself, and watches the bare branches as they shimmer in the light.  The other way on the river now, towards the large and bustling street, where the school is, where the arched bridge with a plaque is.  She turns onto the street, watches as shops begin their day, watches as housewives and workers in coats cycle past, as students hurry toward the subway entrance.  Above everything a glow of winter sun, pale fingers creeping in with the wisps of clouds.  Another shopping street, barely hanging on, a few shops with clothes and fish among the rows of shutters and closed doors.  There is still a grilled chicken stand, and the smell wafts over, the faded woman in an apple-patterned apron smiles at whoever passes.  Mina smiles at her from the grilled chicken stand, gazes at her from the counter of one of the few shops still open, and none of them are her, none of the sad and distant gazes which she meets are anything like the bright and crinkled eyes in a smile, none of the lined and kindly faces she sees are anything like the pale jade of little moles, cabbage and jade katydid.  No, Mina is somewhere else, far away, the bright smile and tiny gestures and slightly waddled walk are far away, bitterly cold, bitterly hungry, bitterly lonely.  

Chapter Text

Despite the rumbling of trains, despite the blaring horns, she manages to catch another nap after dawn.  When she wakes from her huddled street corner, the sky is bright and blue, and after the past few days of snow, Mina breathes a sigh of relief.  Her breath comes out as faint white puffs against the clear air, and she lolls about in the sun rays, even if they don't give much warmth this time of the year.  It is good to be back in the sun, but eventually the hunger and thirst and cold nip at her, anxious mutts who refuse to let her get a moment's respite from their bite and rough barking.  She stretches, trying to get the tightness out of her muscles, but in the confining layers it doesn't do much.  She needs to relieve herself.  For the past few days she has found a discreet corner, but today, the bright sun seems to expose everything, poke into all the corners and crannies, leaving her wary of even the slightest transgression.  Well, if she landed in jail for something, it would be a place to sleep.  The cells might even have some heating.  

In the end she gets coffee and the cheapest burger at a fast food place, coffee whose sole redeeming quality was its price, and then relieves herself in the bathroom there, has a change of clothes.  She needs to wash her inner layers soon, and she has no idea how or where, or worse, how much it will cost.  The fast food chain is bustling, the lights warm and inviting, but to Mina they are a mockery, a taunting reminder of what she cannot have.  So deeply lonely, so deeply sad, each laugh and spoken word, each slurp and munch and whiff of fragrant food alienating her, walling her off, pushing her away, closer and closer to the door and ever-present cold.  Yet the weather is clear today, and there are more people out and about, which means perhaps more income.  She is hopeful.  She goes back to her things, praying as usual that no-one has taken anything.  Lucky again.  She hums to herself, sets up the keyboard legs, takes out the scores of songs she knows.  She wonders when she will need a change of batteries.  There is no chance of a speaker or microphone, so she will have to keep going as best she can with just her voice and the accompaniment.   

Tzuyu sighs.  She has messed up the dance, missing her position, and then turned straight into Seulgi's face not thirty seconds later, and it took all her reflexes to avoid a collision.  She troops shamefaced back to the dressing room, hoping the next number will go better.  Yet her mind is elsewhere, fraught with what has seemed like hours of listening to the radio and gazing at the news channels, hoping for and fearing the words "former idol Myoui Mina" in equal measure, fraught with guilt and regret for not trying to make up with her.  Will she see the face, the moles, the rich dark hair again?  She tries to remember what it was like, those afternoons spent with tea and coffee, those afternoons spent at the keyboard, those hours which suddenly seem too few, far too few.  If only she had not blown up at Mina, if only she had kept her calm, if only-

"Look, I think you should just not do the dances tonight.  We'll just leave in a hole in the formation, it should be fine just for today, so don't worry about that, okay?"  Seulgi has come over to gently break it to her, and the other dancers nod in agreement.  Embarassed, ashamed, Tzuyu has no choice but to acquiesce.  

"What's there to be ashamed of?  I'm not going to probe, but I think none of us mind if you need some time alone today.  Just, don't dwell on it too much, alright?  Whatever it is, it's not worth it.  Trust me."  And Seulgi floats away, leaving Tzuyu to her thoughts.  The rest of the night passes glumly, with the lingering feeling she has failed them, failed someone.  At the bar, at the tables at least she is all smiles, focussing all her energy into her wiles, to try to make up for her mistakes.  She watches as they dance, watches the space where she would be in the formation.  A regular spots her, waves, and she puts on a cheery smile, waves back.  As the night winds down, she is standing in a corner, watching, when she feels a hand about her wrist.  She turns to see Seulgi, afraid of a reprimand, afraid of 

"You worked hard today, too.  I noticed, you know?"  

"What?"

"You were putting extra effort with the service tonight, don't think I didn't notice.  I didn't know you were so into this sort of thing?"  Seulgi grins, teasing.  Tzuyu laughs, and the grey mood is lightened.  

"What happened, if you don't mind me asking?"  Tzuyu stiffens a little, fixes her eyes on an ellipse of light on the club floor.  The ellipse lengthens, diffuses into the dimness, and then is replaced by another.  Ellipse after ellipse, lengthening and fading, like a shadow in the streetlamps along an endless street.

"My, uh, close friend, she, uh, went away without warning, without telling us," choosing her words carefully, slowly, "and she doesn't have a place to stay, and, and we're really worried, because, well, it's gotten so cold these few days, and, she might be, anything might have happened to her."  Seulgi nods, listening to the spaces between the words.  Tzuyu's hands flex and unflex, exactly as though she wants to ball them into frustrated fists, but doesn't want to show it in front of Seulgi, and her jaw is set, with a face which looks so much like she wants to cry that Seulgi finds herself on the verge of tears, too.  

"Well, don't beat yourself up over it.  It was her own decision, right?  Have you gone to the police?"  The police.  To file a report, to have it spread in the papers, to have it known that the former idol was missing, to have some fan triumphantly recognise Mina, have her the object of national pity.  She could think of nothing more repugnant, nothing more repulsive, nothing Mina would hate more.  Perhaps her face says it all, since Seulgi takes a peacable step back.  Perhaps it is better to stare together out of window from her favourite couch, the one with a view out onto the street and factories in the day.  Tonight, there is no moon, or it is hidden by a cloud, and everything is dark, except for a faint lamp or window light tiny and dear.  They troop into Kazuha's car afterwards, the five of them who live nearish to Momo, and the others fall asleep, Seulgi leaning her head against Tzuyu's shoulder, and Tzuyu staring out as the highway rushes past.  Department store, still bright with lights, and flats, cut off by the highway.  On and on, between office and flat, looking into the bright logos which glow endlessly down, into the endless street lamps.

"Something on your mind?"  Kazuha glances in the mirror now and then to see her staring into the window.  

"Yes, rather."  A silence muted and cold, peppered with endless sodium lights and neon lights and long fluorescent lights, and the humming of the engine.  She listens to the whirr of the air-conditioning, squeaks her finger over the glass, wipes out her finger-mark with her glasses cloth.  The others drowse, Seulgi laughs in her sleep at something.  The long hair tickles at her neck, and the warm breath makes her regret letting her try the garlic roasted peanuts.  Seulgi mumbles again, and she strokes the head of rich hair.  Mina asleep on the mattress, letting Tzuyu have the bed no matter how Tzuyu chided her for it.  Mina catching a furtive nap in the staff room past 3am.  4am, vibing to the eponymous Ohnuki Taeko song, waiting.

Kazuha's dark eyes in the rear mirror, flicking to her and then back to the highway, the empty freezing highway.  

"Don't worry about it, by the way.  We're not idols, we can't always be perfect on the job.  Even idols can't always keep up the façade, you know?"  Something about the way Kazuha says this is deeply sad, a little jaded and terribly sad.

Tzuyu says nothing, but smiles, making sure Kazuha can see.  Seulgi mumbles a name, Juyun or Jooyun or something, and giggles in her sleep.  A line of drool tickles her shoulder, and she laughs a small laugh.  Tzuyu sings to herself, dances in the sweet memories, a song for endless highways and endless flats in a warm car.

Later she is the last to get off, and Kazuha has a drive through the suburbs to get to Momo's place, and then a short drive back.  

"Will you be coming in tomorrow?"

"Yup."

"You sure?"  Tzuyu scrunches up her face, wondering if she should take offence.  The light turns red, and Kazuha brakes to a halt.  

"Mind if I smoke?"  Tzuyu shakes her head.  She asks each time, and Tzuyu shakes her head in the same puzzled way each time.  It hasn't occurred to her that Kazuha does it precisely because she adores Tzuyu's invariable response, the bemused doe eyes caught in the street lights, the half-lights of shops and cars.  She turns on the ventilation, pushes the cigarette slowly into the lighter, long fingers elegant against the black plastic.  

"They meant it, you know, when they said we would understand if you took a break.  You think we haven't had our share of heartbreak?"

"But,"

"Look, like I said we're not idols, we're not even professional dancers most of us, just girls who can make money off looking pretty for the clubgoers, right?  Most of us didn't even get any training until the in-house practices, even.  At least I had my ballet, and you have your school dance experience or whatever."  The light turns green, but with the road empty behind them, she lets the car idle just behind the line, watching the seconds count down on the red man and empty road.  Endless whiteness of traffic lights, all the way down the long straight road of windows and windows and windows.  Lights and lights and lights, warm heater air, the low drone of the engine.  

"Don't take it too seriously, alright?  I know Jihyo doesn't."  A tap of ash into the ashtray, and another.  In the dim, in the half-light, with her tight black dress and smooth choker, Kazuha is especially deadly.  Most of the others changed out of the outfits once the shift was over, but today Kazuha had to deal with several overly enthusiastic customers, and rushed straight down to her car afterward.  The makeup in the mirror, the shoulder which peeks from the sleeve.  

"I suppose.  There's a car coming behind."  They move off, slowly, a turn at the next junction, and then down a still narrower road.  Tzuyu always insists it's fine to let her off at the main road, and Kazuha always refuses, crawling the car into the narrow back lane where the back entrance is to let Tzuyu off, watching until the tall figure vanishes into the doors.  Time to go home.

Tzuyu falls onto the couch, ready to pass out with exhaustion, but sleep is hard to come by tonight.  She turns over, and in the dim half-light puzzles out the textured leather of the couch, the folds and creases and buttons.  A shifting light passes like a sheen of mist or water, and everything is still.  Please, let Mina be safe, let her be well-fed, content, wherever she is.  Is that so much to ask?  

The clear weather has indeed proved to be a boon for Mina, and for the first time in days she has a proper meal at a family restaurant.  She relishes the taste of things, the texture of meat and rice, and the sound of conversation and cutlery is for once inviting, cosy.  For an hour or so, the noise of conversation, the sound of footsteps, the clinking of plates and ice and glass are part of her world, and she dreads the time when she leaves the place, where they will suddenly become hostile again.  With lingering longing she pushes the door open, and returns to her keyboard, her bag, the things which keep her leashed to one place.  She fantasizes about leaving everything, taking off the thick overcoat and jacket, walking alone into the freezing cold, following the sign posts which do not point back.  If she goes far enough, will she get out of the cold?  How many days can she spend in the same clothes, the same thick layers, the same boots?  A train rumbles by.

She sings, takes a break to take a gulp of the bottled water which is still freezing cold, sings, and soon she loses herself in the playing and singing, forgets the cold and exhaustion.  She chases it, the feeling from long ago, just her voice and the piano to no-one in particular, riding the exhilaration of hitting the notes, shaping the melodies as they emerge, and for several blissful moments she is back at the piano with Tzuyu, showing her a new melody, a new germ of an idea, waiting know what she thinks, waiting for the tilt of the head or nod of assent, and of course it doesn't come, there is no dimpled smile beside her in the dingy shade of the railway tracks, no-one but the passing curious gazes to see her tears and hear her voice.  Another train, a horrid roaring which she has grown to detest.  She leaves her station for a while, makes a round around the block, looking now into the sky and now into the ground.  Perhaps it is not so important if her things go missing, if someone decides to steal her clothes.  How far would they get with the keyboard, anyway?  After the first day, she has invested in a face mask against former fans and the winter air, but now she removes it to suck in the clear ice and sun.  

An electronics shop, and she ambles in for the warmth, pretending to be interested in the cameras and camcorders and radios and speakers.  She ungloves her fingers, lets them soak in the warmth, runs them over the smooth black.  Why were they all black?  Couldn't they be blue, or green?  Well, there were the silvery digital cameras.  She stays awhile, until she is sure her unwashed smell is attracting weird looks, and the goes back out into the cold.  Along the street, looking into the shops, touching and feeling out the things, as if they come from another world, as if she is seeing them for the first time.  She looks at herself in the glass, at the grainy hair, at the thinning face, and turns away. 

Tzuyu stares out of the train window, a slow train around the clear blue sweep of the bay in winter.  After much chiding, she has agreed to take a few days off, and now she is on the train, to somewhere, she doesn't know where, perhaps trying to imagine the train Mina took that day, trying to imitate her route and somehow find her.  Opposite her is a mother and two children, all wrapped up and warm.  The girl sports a coat in pink, and the boy, a little younger, is in green.  The boy keeps trying to run off somewhere, and the mother has to grab his arm to keep him in his seat.  The girl is silent, but now and then will yell out at something in the windows, and Tzuyu will turn to see what it is, a bird, a Keio logo above a department store, a dark cedar whose branches weep into the street.

An old eatery, determinedly sixties themed, and a window seat.  She feels like a song, a summer song with a wistful melody over descending fifths, a song for wind chimes and iced barley tea and shrill cicadas, years and years ago, looking out to a sea of washing white waves.  Matsutoya Yumi plays from somewhere, faint and grainy, like an old record.  The same chord progression plays out in her mind, over and over, wistful waves on a distant shore, against lonely rocks and lonely beaches, and she watches from a lonely path in the lonely green hills.  They have decaf, and she sips at it.  Not too bad.  The omelette rice, too, is good, good enough.  

Long after the plate is empty and the cup is drained, she sits and listens, watches, daydreams.  Slow walk around a fading town, where the shops ring with silence.  Many shops are shuttered, or simply empty, and still others doze in the afternoon, oases of warmth and dust and memories.  She goes into a clothes shop, looks over the winter coats.  Out of the shop, and then a roasted sweet potato from where a vendor sells them, nestled among the smooth hot stones.  A drink to go with the sweet potato, Calpis, why not, sparkling, from the convenience store.  Mina sitting at the cashier, watching her with doe eyes, curious eyes.  Mina back from the convenience store, waving her over to show her the newest in instant noodle flavours or snacks, for when she was too lazy to cook.  

She makes her slow way to the station, and a shop full of prints and paintings catches her eye.  Well, there is time.  

When she gets back, Tzuyu hangs the print above the couch, on a nail where another painting used to hang.  She stares at it well into the evening, the sparrows and flowers and flowing calligraphy.  When Momo gets back from her late shift, she sees Tzuyu fast asleep beneath the large print.  She bites her lip, and goes to change.  

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Yeah," but Momo's voice is a little flat.  

"Sorry, I guess I should have asked, if you want me to,"

"It's fine.  It's pretty, it really is."  They stare for a while more at birds and pink flowers, and Momo goes to make breakfast.  Now and then her eyes wander over to the large print, taking in its lines, taking in the colours, and each time Tzuyu wonders if she is about to say something, and each time she remains silent.  

The snow has left off for the third consecutive day now, and Mina hopes fervently that it will not come back.  She needs to get out, get away from her corner, from her keyboard, or she will vomit.  She loathes the sight of the railway, loathes the rumbling of trains every few minutes.  She needs to go, needs to get out of here.  She shoves her keyboard back into its case, and shoves the whole into the concrete inlet below the vastness of the tracks, and sets off, at random, basking in the busy streets, the signs of shops.  If she ignores the itching below her coat, the grainy state of her hair, she can pretend she is on a stroll in a new city, pretend she doesn't have to worry about her next meal, about her stuff getting stolen.  Into the subway, jostling with the women and men, uncoating herself as she feels the warmth of the station.  She buys a ticket to a stop, not too far away, sits in the cushioned seats, watching the faces get on and off, listening to the bright jingles at each station.

The wide river which flows straight into the sea, crossed by arched and pillared bridges, now raging and rushing with snowmelt.  So wide the clear sky goes all the way to the hills, dark and knobbly and fading into the clouds.  On the other bank are reeds and grasses, dead in the dead winter air, distant flats.  She watches the black river, and not for the first time imagines herself, tiny and afloat in one of the countless eddies, a twig in the frothing raging stream.  So tired, so terribly tired she just wants to sleep, to curl up somewhere and sleep, in the grass, on the road, by a tree, anywhere.  The path is still stained with rain and melted snow, and her boots ring out in the air.  

"She did?  That sounds nice?"

"I, I don't know, Satang, she didn't even ask me."

"This isn't some kind of power struggle, Mo, just let her have it, she hasn't had her own space for like, months?  It didn't seem like she had much space to call her own at Mina's, either."  Momo frowns, leans back into the couch.  Sana's flat, flooded with copies of paintings, with knick-knacks and ornament.  She fixes her gaze on a cheap vase, celadon in imitation of the Chinese style.  Momo takes a preserved plum, inspecting it, and pops it into her mouth, puckering her lips at the burst of sourness.  Sana giggles at the way her face contracts, takes a plum for herself.  

"She could have said someth- fine, I'll drop it, okay?  Wanna go for dinner?"

"Hmm?  Where are you thinking of?"

"Let's get something nice, my treat, yakiniku or something."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's a while since it's been just the two of us.  There's this place nearer to the bay I really like."

"Sure.  It's still early, though."  Sana looks out of the window.  The winter sun is half-set, and there is a long way to dinner.  Momo gets up to use the bathroom, and Sana follows her figure as she goes to the light switch, as she opens the door.  There was a time when Momo's every movement and glance would electrify her, drive her crazy, a time when she hungered for something more to their friendship, but now that, too, seems far away.  Not that Momo has grown less attractive, less seductive, less endearing, not in the least.  The longing has mellowed, perhaps, become something wistful.  They are too busy nowadays to spend time like this together often, they can't risk some scandal about two former top models getting together, any number of excuses well up on command.  But just now, just as Momo opens the bathroom door to her bob-haired figure in a neat blouse and skirt, Sana feels, just faintly, a familiar throb in her chest, a familiar rush of heat on her face.  Momo doesn't seem to have noticed, has never noticed in almost ten years of knowing each other.

Later, above the smoke and yellow lights of the yakiniku, Sana watches Momo's eyes as she grills the meat, lets the chatter of things blend in with the saxophones and strings of some Honda Minako song.  At the window seat, she lets Momo get on with the grilling, looks out to the street, where the road fades into evening, where the white lights glow, where the weary pedestrians pass, and one or two sniff at the smell of grilling meat.  She touches her finger to the grimy glass-pane, looks back to Momo, who has already placed a slice of meat on her plate and one on her own.  Momo looks back, curiously, not quite understanding why Sana's eyes are suddenly streaming with tears.

Chapter Text

Chaeyoung exits the subway to a strange neighbourhood.  The dark of the street, the cold of the air.  On a street such as this she saw Tzuyu, alone and sad, the large eyes despondent.  Such a pretty face, yet so full of sadness: she could not have borne just letting her pass by.  She thinks of the painting of Tzuyu asleep, the base layers of which are nearing completion.  A few more details, things barely seen in the gloom of the room.  She scrabbles about her coat for a smoke, only to realise she left them in the other coat.  Damn it.  Slowly, down the road, towards the glow of a red Tobacco sign.  One in each coat, and they would deplete slower anyway.  The sleepy wrinkled woman in green, counting out her change, hair which seems full of the ash of cigarettes.  Scratching, lighting, watching the flame for a little while before snuffing it out.  A couple of old houses nestled among the taller buildings.  Old houses, old shops, old signboards.  Everything weary with age, with dust, with damp. 

She runs a finger over old wood, over the freezing metal of the lamp-posts.  Step after step in the quiet and gloom.  Peers into a shop for old trinkets, and another for stationery, both shut up and dark.  Another breath of white smoke, the white and glinting air.  She checks her watch.  About half an hour more, and she would have to head back.  She notes in her mind the way back to the subway entrance, by the supermarket, by the family restaurant and electronics shop.  The neon logo of a cocktail in green and pink and red, and she traces the bright lines in her mind.  Leant against the glass window of the stationery shop, she watches the street.  Canvas roof, a pipe, kanji in blocky metal letters gleaming in the street lights.  So still, so cold.  

Another few days scraping by, and Mina has just about enough for a single night at the women-only hostel.  Just about enough.  She remembers where she saw it two days ago, and begins her long trek, not wanting to waste money on another train ticket.  The bag and keyboard case are heavier than ever, but she trudges on, thinking of warm beds.  Her feet are sore, her shoulders are sore, and she really, really, really wants a shower.

She turns onto the main road, long and straight, so terribly long.  A hotel lobby, bright with yellowish lights and a lunch buffet, almost empty.  She stops for a moment, and goes on, stomach growling.  Shop after shop after shop, and the next station is not yet.  How long more?  Her feet scream at her, the cold nicks at her face, and sleep harries her, but she does not dare slow her steps.  Heavy, so heavy.  Even in the cold, she is sweating.  Another shop, watches, and then dresses, a little like the one Sana took her to that day, where she had not bought the green dress.  Sana.  She should call them soon.  Would they try to find her?  Momo surely would.  She misses Momo.  Well, if she missed her, why didn't she go back?  Oh, yes, Tzuyu.  The name inspires still longing, sadness, faint revulsion;  Pushing on, through the air and now the slight drizzle.  The new clear umbrella, which she has persuaded herself would be a worthwhile expenditure of her five hundred yen.  Wind, now into the umbrella, now against it, buffeting her.  How long more?  Lights, people, lights, faces.  Countless faces, none of them staring at her, none of them familiar.  Glass windows, tall and towering buildings and glass windows.  Among the coats and suits, her own worn-out coat seems out of place, dusty, coarse.

Tzuyu.  So pretty, so terribly, devastatingly pretty.  That one rainy night at the airport, rain out of the glass windows, Tzuyu eating the reheated croquettes.  Grey, the grey city dotted with signboards and billboards.  Yellow and red and blue, the vertical signs which nestle among the lines of the buildings.  Straight ahead, and then, and then westwards at the main road, and then she will figure it out from there.  Plodding, plodding.  Pavement concrete and drizzles.  Rose-wood face, the large eyes which stared quizzically at her, burned into her brain, indelible, sending a frisson through her which is not the cold.  

She pushes open the door, and is greeted by the stern gaze of a boyish, a handsome, wait-

She apologises, stutters out some excuses, and makes to go.

"Wait, no, hey!"  She moves far faster than Mina thought she could, and is blocking the door.  The same handsome face, now loosely above a hoodie, staring at her with eyes wide open, recognising her from the heavy keyboard and bag, and the pale face and pretty eyes, now gaunt and sleepless.    

"Do you have a sleeping bag?"

"Y-yes."

"Here, put it in this bag and leave it outside.  We don't want bedbugs."  Okay.  That makes sense.  She has heard of that rule, from, not from Tzuyu, maybe from Sana?  Probably Dahyun, who has by her own account survived on cheap hostels for a whole three months when she first came over from Korea.  The lobby is grey, with scattered tables and chairs, and the woman from that day sits behind the counter, looking curiously at Mina, who looks at the white lights, the knick-knacks which pass for decoration.

"Thanks for the other day, by the way."  She flushes at the thought of the two thousand yen, no, four thousand in total.  Was the other, the round-cheeked woman, was she here as well?

"Your voice is great.  You should be an id- did I say something wrong?  Wait, wait, oh, oh my god!"  She almost shouts, and Mina shushes her with a finger, frantic pleading eyes- "Nayeon!"  She sees Mina's terror, and her excitement stops dead.

"Sorry."

"What's the fuss, Jeong?"  Bunny teeth, round face, frazzled from being disturbed.  It was her after all.

"Nothing.  I just realised it's nothing."

"Okay."  And Nayeon doesn't even sound suspicious, doubtful, just seems to have drifted away without a second glance at Mina.  

"It's stupid, it really is,"

"No it's not."  The one called Jeongyeon, all seriousness and concern.  The common room is warm, so warm she wants to cry.  Is it possible?  Could she be in this warmth?  Could she get a shower?  She stares into the bleak white lights, into the plastic chairs, sipping at the tea which Jeongyeon has made, for what seems like no reason at all.  She wants, she wants to fall asleep, badly.

"How do you know?"  She feels sleep creeping into her voice, takes another sip.  Warm, so warm.  Everything is greyish and plastic and cheap, but warm, so very warm.  And they won't chase her out, they won't come to her with polite and firm smiles after an hour, and she can stay, at least for a night, she can stay.  

"I said so."  What?  It is making less and less sense to Mina now.  She spills it anyway, lulled by the warmth and comfort, in fits and starts, rambling, trying to understand what she did, why she tore herself away.  

"and she's so pretty, you can't imagine, she, I don't even understand, how can some, how could she be so pretty, and then, and then she went, without telling us, Momo and Sana, us, how can be, could she be so, so pretty and then go and do that, serve drinks to, and then the dancing, like some kind of pro, prostit, I can't say it, it's so awful, how could she be"

Jeongyeon sighs, puzzled.  She doesn't really get it, but it had to be a really big deal, if this girl who looked like a model or idol could just up and go from all her friends in Yokohama because of it.  She has fallen asleep onto the common room table.  Her eyes are puffy, from tears or from days of bad sleep she cannot tell.  Without her thick coat on, she suddenly looks thin, terribly thin, terribly pitiful, and the pale face is endearing when not lined with tears and worry.  Nayeon appears at the door with a click, and Jeongyeon shushes her with a finger to the lips.

Mina jolts awake to a strange room of sterile chairs.  Where is she?  Her arm is numb, her sleeve is stained with drool.  She staggers to her feet, remembering the hostel.  No-one else is in the common room.  Where is the owner, Jeongyeon or whoever?  What about the round-faced woman, with the bright smile?  She picks up her keys, stumbles out into the corridor.  105.  There.  Stumbles into the room, four beds in two bunks, which flower-patterned sheets and pillows, and bedframes pretending to be solid wood.  One of the lower bunks is occupied, and she takes the other.  Lucky.  Her bag goes at the foot of the bed, and she plops down on the softness, the unbelievable softness she still cannot really believe is hers until tomorrow morning.  Dinner.  She needs dinner.  But first, a bath. A bath, a change of clothes, a chance at laundry for a coin.  A bath.  

She stumbles from the shower in a daze, still unable to believe the feeling of clean skin, of the softness of her own face without the dirt and oil which seemed to accumulate no matter how many times she washed it off.  She plops onto the bed with a sigh.  

"Hello."  She startles, glances about to find another woman on the bed next to hers.  Long hair, lightly curled hair, unnervingly beautiful, with a steely gaze which seemed the opposite of Jeongyeon's. 

"Hi."  She casts about for something to say, but her sleep-deprived brain comes up blank.  

"You look pretty tired.  Having it rough?"

"Yes, you could, uh, say that."

"I, wait, you're, aren't you that, I've seen you on TV before."  Oh no.

"I, uh,"

"Weren't you with the two Kansai models, the ones with a TV show?"  Okay, play it cool, she's not Simon Peter, she can deny she ever knew them.

"Who?"  

"It's alright, I won't pry.  I'm Joohyun, you can call me Irene."  She slows her sigh of relief, hoping she hasn't noticed.  The other is silent, her eyes too still, too fixed upon her, and she feels herself shrinking, faltering.  

"I, I'll get some dinner.  I haven't eaten."

"Neither have I.  Let's eat together.  They have instant noodles in the common room."

Their meal is a silent affair, Mina's gaze darting all about.  She tries to make small talk, but her own feeble sentences sputter and fade into the silence of the gum of the lights, the drone of the fridge, the distant revving of cars.  Irene does not ask before lighting a cigarette, and Mina doesn't say anything.  She clears the table, and for the first time notices between the grey walls an upright.  Moved by some impulse, she goes to play.  The keys are heavier than those of her keyboard, and the tuning is a little off, but she gets through two or three songs before the pungent smell of cigarettes makes her look up to see Irene right by the piano, staring at her with frightening intensity.  

"Sorry.  I didn't mean to interrupt."  She turns away to let a breath of smoke out into the grey air.

"It's fine.  Was I, was I disturbing you?"  Those eyes, beautiful, serene, discomfiting.  

"No, well, I was just-" silence again, the hum of the lights, of some generator.  Her breath, cigarettes, mint.  A screech of wheels, a noise like a cracker or gunshot and shattering glass, screams.  And horribly, inexplicably, they laugh, Mina's soft laughter with Irene's sharper laugh, before their eyes widen with what they have just heard.  Irene rushes to take her coat, runs onto the street, and Mina only watches, too stunned to move, listening to the shouts and screams outside, wondering when the sirens will start.  

"Come on, Tzu, clear up your tea leaves,"  Momo chides her, but doesn't sound angry.  

"Sorry, I forgot."

"Just remember next time."  Tzuyu nods, goes to wipe the table, put the container back in her shelf, the spot Momo has cleared out for her stuff.  The towel from beside the sink, and then she washes the towel, wrings it, puts it back.  Neat, as always, well-kept.

"I'm gonna be neat, neat every-day" Sana teases Momo with her singsong rendition, and Momo glares at her.  Now Tzuyu sings along as well, caught up in the tune, oblivious to Momo's grumbling at being teased on both sides.  Tzuyu turns with a giggle, and Momo, faced with her laugh, can only admit defeat.  The towel wrung, replaced, Tzuyu goes back to the table where the donut box is laid out, takes one for her plate.

"Do you mind if we go look for you at work on Friday?"  

"Hmm?  Sure."  Tzuyu is munching on a donut, pulling out a mochi-filled section of the hexagonal pastry.  If Mr. Donut sells them, they count as donuts, the purists be damned.  The tea is cool enough to drink in gulps now, and she lets it roll around her mouth with the dough and sticky filling.  "Any reason especially?"

"No, not really, I just really liked sexy Tzuyu, but after all that happened we haven't gotten to go back."

"The admission is steep, though," Sana pouts.  

"You spend a whole day's pay on impulse buys sometimes, so, like, you can't grumble now."

"Hey!"  But she chortles, takes another donut, one of the custard ones.  

"You didn't get to meet Chaeng that night, right?  I think you guys would get along."

"What?  I distinctly remember not getting along with the midget."

"Will you stop calling her that?  Please?"

"Fine.  But she's so small and, uh, midget-y, especially with the twintails.  And super cute."

"Look, you can't just call people midgets based on your first impressions, this isn't rocket science, Mo."  Momo hears the exasperation in Tzuyu's voice, and concedes the point.  

"Who is that?"  Trust Sana to perk up at the mention of a cute girl.

"An artist, she's a friend of the owner, and she has her studio there," Tzuyu explains.  

"Her name is, uh, Korean?"

"Yup, she and the owner, they're both Korean.  Well, she was born in Japan, I think, but her parents are Korean."

"Cool.  An artist!  I haven't met one before.  Are her clothes always stained with paint and stuff?"

"No?  Not always.  Sometimes she's working when I get there, and sometimes she's not.  If she's not working she has normal clothes, I guess.  Messy clothes, but normal."    

"What does she paint?"

"Uh, well,"

"Aren't you like, friends with her?"

"She does sketches of us dancing and in our costumes and stuff, but I'm not sure if they're for her work, or just for fun."  What had Chaeyoung told her?  Views of mundane things or something.  Not that she had ever seen a finished piece.  "She told me she does, uh, still life?"  Was that it?  "She doesn't let us look at her works in progress, understandably.  Look, you should ask her yourself, actually."

"Is she usually around?"

"Not always.  She likes to go to bed early, before most of our shift.  You can come a little earlier, though, catch her looking contemplative and out of place at the bar, she likes to do that."

"She sounds like a character."  And they laugh, lowly.  The sky is still bright, and the apartment is cosy, with Sana lounging on the couch, Tzuyu at the dining table, and Momo at the seat beside her, turned to face the couch and Sana.   She goes to the window, the view she never tires of, the sky stretched thin and taut, and the bare trees below, and far in the distance, wisps of vapour which may be clouds or factory smoke.  She watches the black river, and a lone woman who walks slowly by in a black coat, slowly.  Sana is saying something, but she doesn't know what.  In the reflection, she thought she saw a figure in a loose top, playful eyes above a playful smile, about to go to the piano to try out some new melody, but it is only Sana, only Sana watching her with a puzzled look, and she smiles.  No, nothing is wrong.  

Joohyun is back, and maybe Nayeon or someone, Mina can't really tell, and she watches Joohyun, mute, stricken, and looks away.  

"Sorry," she says lamely, uselessly, unsure what she is apologising for.  Joohyun does not seem to have heard.  Back to her room, rummaging about for her nightclothes, the ones she doesn't remember if she packed.  Penguins.  Yes.  She goes to change, to brush her teeth, and falls into a deep sleep.  When Joohyun returns, she hears the soft snores, and watches the peaceful pretty face which peeks from the covers, a little envious.  She putters around for a little while, trying not to think of what she saw outside.  Putting on her coat, she throws a last glance back at Mina before heading out, letting the door lock itself as it closes.  At the convenience store, she puzzles out the half-familiar characters, looking for powdered cocoa.  

The common room is empty, save the owners, Korean like herself.  She goes to make the cocoa, but one of them, the one with shorter hair and a warm gaze, is already going over with a cup of warmth which she takes thankfully in her palms, and they join her at the table.

"Are you alright?  You seem pretty shaken."

"Yes.  I hadn't seen anything so, so bad before."

"I didn't get a good look," says the spectacled one with a pout.  

"And a good thing too, you'd be crying about it to me for weeks," says the other.  "I'm Jeongyeon, by the way, and she's Nayeon.  Nice to meet you."  Barely a few sentences in, and they have slipped into Korean. 

"It's a nice place, if a little tacky," Joohyun says by way of changing the topic, only to see Nayeon's face fall.  Oops.

"Hey!"

"No, she's right, it is a little, but that's part of the charm."

"Booooo, you guys hate fun or something?"  Joengyeon sighs, but takes Nayeon's hand in hers.

"And the piano?"

"The what?"

"No, in the corner, the piano,"

"Oh, that.  We put it there some time ago, oh were you playing just now?"

"No, that was the other, the other woman, tired-looking one.  I liked her playing."  Something wistful about it, tunes which sounded like old tunes from twenty, thirty years ago, except she couldn't place them.

"You're not here for business, surely?"  Nayeon interjects without warning.

"Well, I suppose not, there is not much in the way of business to be done here, it is true."  She sighs, letting a memory flood out the unpleasant sights of things which still seared at her mind.

"I was looking for, I thought an old Korean acquaintance stayed in this town, but she has moved, and nobody knows where to."

"Tough luck.  She's not back in Korea?"

"No, I don't think so."  She sighs.  Nayeon looks sadly over, her round cheeks puffed out.  Cute, somehow.  She seemed to be the older of the two, though.  

"How long will you be staying in Japan?"

"A few more days.  I might as well see the sights.  I haven't even been to Tokyo."

"Really?  Never?"

"I've only been to Osaka."  As she says this, Jeongyeong goes to put something on in the CD player, just to pass the time.  Crooning enka, Hiroshi Uchiyamada or someone, sad saxophones and sadder ports, seagulls which circle and circle in the eternal goodbyes of ports, the vast Pacific blue.  Joohyun is thinking of someone, that is what they think, as they watch her listening to the music, leaning back in her chair to stare at the grey ceiling.  

In the dim of dawn, Joohyun lies asleep, her long hair and troubled brows barely visible in the glow of the window and street lights.  Mina brushes her teeth, and quietly, very quietly takes her things to bathe.  Out into the corridor, our into the lobby, out of the door.  "Thanks for the room.  I'll, I'll be going," she says to no-one in particular.  Back into the cold, back onto the hard pavement.  One night of warmth, one night of hot showers, a clean bed, and deep, dreamless sleep.  She stares longingly at the lobby, the wacky decor, the tacky bobs and ends which Nayeon thought of as ornamentation, and chokes down her sobs.  There is really nowhere she can call home, not anymore.   

"Oi.  Where are you going?"  Mina jumps, and sees Jeongyeon.  Her keyboard almost dropped, and she hugs it closer to her.

"I, I'm checking out, I guess."

"No."

"What?"

"Stay here, please, don't go just yet."

"But,"

"Look, checkout is 11am, and its barely half past seven."

"I, I can't stay, I don't have, money,"

"Never mind that.  Let's talk for a bit.  Leave the sleeping bag."

Jeongyeon has made coffee, rather nice coffee for a cheap hostel.  Mina looks at her, curious.  Matsutoya Yumi's sharp voice from the CD player, penetrating the early morning silence with wistful harmonies.  

The weather gets warmer, and Mina sheds the thick winter coat at long last, only to slip into it again when the nights get cold.  She saves up just enough to wash her clothes, just enough to have fresh tops and trousers for the next few days.  Even so, the laundry money is eating into her meal budget.  She thinks of Jeongyeon's offer, replays in her mind her own refusal.  Why?  Now that she was back out in the noise of the city, the warmth and softness of a bed of her own tempted her.  Why had she refused? 

Momo waves to Tzuyu as she sets off, and then an hour later, Sana arrives, and they get ready together.  Today they are in shades of red and purple on Momo's suggestion, and as Momo drives Sana watches the road wet with rain.  Now and then there are plum blossoms, white and pretty.  She thinks of Hiroshige's print, the singular branch of plum streaked across the foreground, and the human figures made tiny by perspective.  She wishes suddenly that Mina was with them.  How is she doing?  Is she alive?  Is she eating well?  Does she think of them now and then?  The sun has set some hours ago, and now they pass the lights of shops, neons and neons, yellow and green and red.  Reading the idle kanji, white on red and black on white, shop signs in neons and shop signs carved in calligraphic paint on old wood.  They pass a bright shopping street, one of the few which remained busy all day, and the lights and bustle of people flash by.  

It is still raining when they pull up to the large parking lot, and with careful umbrellas they make their way to the entrance, where they uncoat themselves to reveal the lush dresses which softly rustle as they move, darkly shimmering where they are glinted and embroidered.  The club floor is not yet crowded, and they mill about, order snacks and drinks.  At they bar they spot a small figure in a large and loose shirt which can only be Chaeyoung, and Momo goes over to say hi.  The figure, face pale in the dimness, glares at Momo when she recognises the face above red and pink dress.  

"You're here again?"

"Yeah.  It's a pretty nice place, I guess."

"Where's your random friend?"

"Didn't Tzuyu tell you? She-"

"Well, I thought she would have come back crying to you guys by now."

"That's not"

"She's probably dead of hypothermia by now, right?  Unless she went to Okinawa or somewhere."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Or she got fucked up by some thugs, and is tied up somewhere as their like sex sl-"

Chaeyoung nearly falls off the chair from the slap, reeling.  Pain floods her face, stinging shoots through her cheek and jaw, and she barely notices as Momo turns away curtly, leaving with Sana in tow.  As the pain fades, she blinks and steadies herself, feeling about her mouth for any loose teeth.  It tastes a little of iron, but her teeth seem to be fine.  Well.  She probably should not have said that.  Now Tzuyu or someone is going to ask her about the bruise, and she will have to painfully explain how she ran her mouth off.  She still doesn't know why she did that, actually.  Was the sight of Momo so aggravating?  Not really.  If pressed, she would admit that Momo was, say, really pretty.  Well, just the eyes.  Especially the eyes.  What about the full lips, just a little ajar?  Or her posture, the way she holds herself about the glare, the haughty stare?  Wait, what did she want to do again?  Pain, stinging.  Right, yes, she just almost got her teeth blown out by a woman scorned.  She wants to say something, but Momo is already gone, lost to the crowd with her companion.  

"Chaengiieee."  She tries to turn around, but is too slow for Tzuyu.

"Oh my-"

"Shhh.  That was my fault," she says thickly.  She protests, but lets Tzuyu lead her over to a brighter corner, fetch a pad of wipes to daub at the bruise, lets the long and smooth fingers figure out the extent of the bruising, lets herself be fussed over.  Tzuyu, as expected, doesn't let it go so easily.

"What happened?  Was that Momo?"  The music is quieter in this corner, but she still has to raise her voice.

"I, uh, I mean, I said some things I shouldn't have.  And she, well, yeah.  Don't get angry at her, though, I was being an ass."

"About Mina?"

"N-, yeah, uh," she would have gotten the story from Momo anyway.  Chaeyoung shrinks a little, hoping Tzuyu isn't too angry, but she only seems annoyed, resigned.  

"Look, why are you two so determined to annoy each other?"  

"Tzuyuuuu," Seulgi leans her head out of the doorframe and yells over the throbbing music.

"Comingggggg, okay, I have to go, go and apologise to her or something, or don't, I'm not your mom."  She stalks off, leaving Chaeyoung a little deflated.  Hopefully the bruising isn't too bad tomorrow.  She'll just have to sleep on one side tonight.  She troops off to bed, slumping her shoulders, hoping she doesn't bump into anyone else.  She can deal with the worried questions tomorrow.  

"It's okay, Mo,"

"It's not okay, it's not, I hate, I hate her so much, she can't have said that, it's not decent, it's not," and Momo has run out of words, shrieks into the bathroom stall door.  

"Is everything all right?"  A familiar voice, and before Momo can register who it is, Sana pushes the door open apologetically to a short and spry woman, unmistakably Chaeyoung.  Momo makes to go, but Chaeyoung rushes in front of her, blocking the way out of the narrow washroom.

"What do you want?  Should I have a go at the other side?"

"Wait, no, okay, I, I'm really sorry I said all that, I didn't, I didn't really mean-"

"There's a line for the bathroom, just get out of the way and can it."  She shoves past Chaeyoung and the two women in the line, leaving her to bubble in embarrassment as she steps into the vacated stall.  

"Mo!" 

"Oh, Tzuyu, are you on break now?"

"Sort of, one of the numbers just ended, you guys missed it."

"So, about your, uh friend,"

"What happened?  The bruising looked awful."

"She was, urgh, tell you about it later, I don't want to ruin the night.  Could we have a drink, pretty girl?  Whatever we got last time"

"She's on her break, Mo,"

"It's fine, rather you guys than some of them," and the quick eyeroll is lost to the dim of the dance floor.  She goes to order drinks, and on an impulse pays for them, a little guilty for Chaeyoung's antics.

Mina can't sleep.  Not that this is new.  Despite her exhaustion, the sound of dogs barking, of whistles, of generators in the spring air refuse to give her any peace.  She stays still, very still, hoping sleep would just find her, but the sputtering of another old engine as it revs by jolts her awake again.  How long more till the dawn?  A slow trickle of sweat forms, tickling her awake, and she wants to scream.  Why couldn't they just leave her alone?  Why couldn't her own body give her any peace?  She wishes she had taken up Jeongyeon's offer.  She could still go back.  She knows Jeongyeon won't mind, won't judge her either.  She smiles at the thought of Nayeon, the ditzy Korean who seemed to need Jeongyeon to remember anything at all.  Her spot by the train tracks, although beset in the day by the roar of countless trains, had turned out to be surprisingly peaceful at night.  Yet with the warm weather comes the cops who constantly turn her out of every peaceful spot she finds, as if they were determined to hound to exhaustion those who survived the snow and winter.  The keyboard and bag dig into her shoulders as she treks in search of yet another new location, and she wishes yet again she could just cast them down, leave them far away.

Tzuyu returns with the drinks, refuses to let Momo pay.  They drift about for a while, and she watches as they bring the glasses to their lips, watches as they sigh at the liquid, a little bitter, a little sweet.  Momo is doll-like tonight, and flashes her smile at the passing girls.  Sana is clingy tonight, even on one cocktail.  The bright smile, the puppy eyes.  Chaeyoung had admitted it had been about Mina.  The searing cold in the pit of her stomach, back again even though she thought it long gone.  Alone, in the dark, and lights go flashing by, the drinks and chatter and music swirl all about, and it is cold, terribly cold.  Mais Madame écoutez-moi donc vous perdez quelque chose  -  c'est mon coeur pas grand-chose.  Just her heart, after all, fallen with a burst of shards in the spinning lights and music, lost to the gloom of the club floor.  The next number is up soon, and she goes to prepare.  

Chapter Text

It is Spring, finally it is spring, and though the nights are still chilly, the flowers are out, the peach and the cherry blossoms, and all over Japan the cherry blossoms, streets of them, gardens of them, rivers of them, white and pink and dark pink, shivering in the warm wind, hanging over roads, above canals, above picnickers and lovers and winding paths in parks.  In Kamakura the main street is all white, blinding white with brilliant flowers from one end to the other, and in the Shinjuku gardens, in Ueno park the crowds wander beneath the sea of petal-clouds, mill about under the shade of the swathes of pink flowers.  In Kyoto the Kamo river is awash with flowers, with old houses and fresh pink petals, in Osaka the Okawa is studded with boats admiring the view of waterfalls of flowers, washes of flowers, and everywhere there are cherry blossom beers, cherry blossom rice balls, cherry blossom crackers and cherry blossom buns.  

It is spring for everyone but Mina, it seems.  Tired, so tired she can barely function some days, barely getting enough for her meals, barely getting enough for anything.  She wants to curl up small, shrinks away from the people as they pass, as if ashamed of her own failure, afraid of the condescension in their eyes.  As if the city itself refused to let anything mar the perfection of spring flowers, refused to let her stay in more than one place for even an hour without being hounded out, mocked, humiliated.  She tries everywhere, the railway tracks, the park, the river even, but rain and cops and citizen patrols refuse to let her have any peace.  So heavy, so terribly heavy, the bag and keyboard which she just wants to toss into the wide river more than ever.  She considers the next town over on the train line, or relocating still further, but even the small fare for the local line feels expensive next to the coins leftover after her meals.  And the spare socks after all the others wore out from all the walking.  And the toothpaste.  And the toothbrush and the coins for the laundry and then the sewing stuff because a button came off one day and she hadn't brought them from Yokohama and aspirins for when the headaches got too bad and then the fried chicken in the convenience stores just because she wanted it so badly, the, so many things she hadn't thought of, so many things which ate into her coins and kept her stuck, leashed to this town which was trying its best to make her life unliveable.

One fine spring night, she has been awoken again by yet another torchlight, and she is close to collapsing with every step she takes, trying to get out of their line of sight, trying to find a spot for herself, anywhere.  In the large windows of the apartment blocks the lights are off, save two or three night owls, and stares up at them, envious.  At the end of the street, as if a switch went off in her head, her steps quicken, and she stumbles her way down the horridly familiar streets, heading straight for the one place she knows she can go.

Petals and lights in the puddles of the night.  Chaeyoung's boots splash in the shallow puddles and ripples the pale petals.  She takes another long breath of cigarette, letting the warmth and smoke deeply in, breathing it out again.  Jihyo lectured her about going out alone at night, but what did Jihyo know?  She craves it, the feeling of walking alone in parts unknown, not knowing anyone or anything, just walking along.  A bicycle, the core of an apple, a bun wrapper.  A man in a loose coat silhouetted in the harsh white of a convenience store, and beside the store the warm lights of a grilled chicken place.  Boots, splashing.  Another drag, the last, and she stubs the fag-end out, lets it join the detritus of paper and other fag-ends and petals on the dim street.  Drunk stumbling in the sodium orange, and she pulls down her cap, passes by.  She sighs a long sigh, a whistling sigh as she looks about again, at scaffolding and at shops, at the trees and lamps which line the street.  She frames the street in her mind, the figure of yet another drunk against the lamp-post, imagines the colours of things, the green of a flyer, the grey of a coat.  Bright shopfront against dark wall, coloured books against grey walls.  Soft, sad, the cool air.  Momo.  The stinging pain, the rage in those glittering eyes, the turn and twist of the dark hair, the purple of the dress.  Pretty.  The curve of the lips which snarled at her, lovely lips ajar.  Pretty.  A petal falls, spirals, floats, falls on the roughness of pavement, and from nearby a dog barks.  She sighs, slows her steps until she stops by a lamp-post.  

A bicycle zooms by, squeals to a halt at a traffic light, and moves off again, and she watches the long-haired figure disappears round a bend.  Another car on the wetness, sprays of fine water in the orange, in the white, in the yellow.  She makes no sketches, takes no pictures, no notes.  She would have to take a cab back if she stayed out much longer.  And yet she does not head into the warmth and hum of a station, does not follow the huddled passers-by into the maw of the tunnel entrances.  She continues down the street, stopping in the doorways, watching.  Another fifteen minutes along the main road, and the last train has left.  She passes a station, the gantries closed, dark and unlit save several reddish lamps, exit signs.  At this hour things are strange, and have an unfriendly look about them.  Suddenly, she is cold.  She touches a hand to the largely faded bruise, still a little tender.  She would have to get a cab somehow, and Jihyo would be angry.  So would Tzuyu or Seulgi, if they were on shift.  She wonders where they stay.  Perhaps one of them is nearby, watching her.  Perhaps Momo is nearby, in one of the anonymous flats, watching her, her vulnerability.  She glances about, swallowing, as if trying to prove something, as if trying to make the apology she couldn't make that day to an invisible Momo.  Another cigarette for the warmth.  A click, a glow and then two, slow breath.  A little better.  Some of the trees are bare, and some are thick with leaves.  Some of the cherry blossoms are all fallen, replaced with thin green buds, a strange colour under the insistent orange of the sodium lamps.  She thinks of the woman she had mocked, the one called Mina, all alone like herself, somewhere in Japan, all alone in the night, and a shiver of cold, a creeping finger of icy liquid trickles down her back.  She braces herself against a wall, suddenly afraid.

Without thinking she pushes a door open, and finds herself in a shopping mall.  The sonorous clank of the escalator against the musty silence.  She tiptoes about, suddenly uneasy.  Shuttered shops in the flickering white.  She startles at the sound of her own footsteps, as if they were a stranger's.  She should go.  No, not a cab, not until the fees for the next commission come in.  Fuck.  Another cigarette, to calm the palpitating, the hammering heart.  She should have listened to Jihyo.  

Back out in the coughing cold of the street, she casts about for a payphone.  Hopefully Jihyo was in.  Or Seulgi.  What if they couldn't hear the phone?  What if they were out?  Nausea, bile.  The first payphone she sees is home to a drunkard slumped in its glass interior.  Damn it all to hell.  Along the street again, and the next one is worse, smelling of vomit and ashes and vomit and faeces.  Does she have coins?  She scrabbles about her purse, trying to endure the smell.  A ring, two rings.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Jihyo?  Chaeng here. I, uh,"

"What happened?"

"No, it's stupid, I, missed the last train and I, don't have enough money for a cab, and, uh,"

"You idiot."  What face is she making over the phone?  Is she worried?  Smiling?  Resigned?  A sudden blast of music which fades.  "Wait a mo, I'm on the phone with Chaeyoung, no, it's nothing serious, but I might have to be out for a while.  Hello?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"So where are you, dummy?"

"Oh. Right.  Uh,"  the phone clatters, and Chaeyoung runs out to look for an address.  "Right.  P-dori, Q-machi, near, uh, I think the station is Z-cho?"

"Are you serious?"  What?  "Son Chaeyoung, if you get murdered I'll kill you, I swear."

"What?"

"Never mind.  Wait for me at the station.  God, I can't believe this.  I should be there in forty, forty-five.  Don't get knifed by some psycho, please."   This last sentence comes out a little cracked, and only then does Chaeyoung realise how worried she is.  

That weekend, Momo and Mina decide to make a trip to Kyoto, and Tzuyu takes a day off, tags along gladly.  They have arranged it to spend the whole of Saturday in Kyoto, and then come back on Sunday, and hopefully there will be fine weather.

"Which side tickets do you want?  The Fuji view?"

"Sea view for me, please."

"Let's just all sit together, then.  Are there blocks of three?"

"Yup."  They get out of the ticket line, and make their slow way to the platform.  Momo has gotten tickets for the slow train in fifteen minutes, and there is no rush.  Fresh from Tokyo, the train grinds to a halt, and they get on, bustle in for their seats.  The train is crowded today, and they wear masks just in case.  They let Tzuyu have the window seat, and she looks out at the towns, at the rivers and bridges, and the glimpses of sea, and finally falls asleep after Shizuoka.  She wakes up to sad factories, large warehouses and fading buildings, smokestacks and flues.  The sky is clear and the sea is blue and the factories are sad and rusting and peeling and grey.  They pull into Nagoya, and some seats empty, are filled again.  There is buzzing in the warm train air, excitement at the thought of cherry blossoms.  Why Kyoto?  There were any number of spots for cherry blossoms, so why Kyoto?  Perhaps just because Momo suggested it, and nobody minded.

Out of the train, and the blast of cool air refreshes them after the warm carriage.  It is a fine day, and Kyoto is crowded, more crowded than Tzuyu remembers.  They go to the hotel first, and manage to check in, just after 4pm.  Momo promptly falls sleep on the big double bed, and Tzuyu and Sana stare at each other and giggle.  

"Come on, let's get changed, we can hang out somewhere.  I know a nice nice tea place north of town."  Tzuyu is surprised by her own candidness, how easily she knows Momo won't be waking up anytime soon, won't want to do anything until nighttime.  They change into new clothes, take the short corridor to the lift, down into the lobby, simple and sparse and pastelled, and the lady at the desk greets them as they pass.  There is still some spring sun left to the day, and they walk down the street, not going anywhere, not knowing where they are going.  Sana got a hotel in the south, nearish the station, not near enough the tracks to be disturbed by the rumble of trains.  A friend had recommended the place, apparently, and the wide beds and fresh rooms had not disappointed so far.  They walk along the street, all thought of Tzuyu's tea place totally forgotten. They walk in silence, down the wide straight road, and at length reach a small park, right by the river, overgrown with cherry blossoms, a few trees already shedding their pinks onto the grass below.  There are swings, one for each of them.  

"Do you think she'll come back?"

"I, I can't say, Tzu.  Even back in the day, she was always harder to read."  There is barking, and the bell of a bicycle rings.  The first time she came to Kyoto without her family, they made a tour of the fancy and old-fashioned tea-houses and cafés, and Tzuyu got the shakes from drinking one too many cups of tea.  A scattering of clouds floats by, countless tiny scales of white marble.  Above the sky is blue, pale blue.  Another bird, not a sparrow, mottled and flitting and chirping.  Far above, egrets, and their croaking call, and near at hand bees float about the flowers, buzzing.

"Do you suppose Momo is awake?"

"Not so soon.  Say, what about the kissaten you wanted to go?"

"Ah.  Slipped my mind, sorry.  It's kind of far from here, though."  A bee lands on a branch, floats away.

"Want to go tomorrow?"

"Sure.  They do a nice toast set and black tea."  Sana is gently pushing herself on the swing, making sure not to go too high or fast.  The world sways as she does, and the branches rock, the petals waver as she swings.  Another egret, going in the opposite direction from the ones just now.  She tilts her head, thinks with mouth lightly ajar.  

"They say there's going to be a new Ghibli movie."

"The Castle in the Sky people?"

"Yup.  And Kiki."

"Oh, yes, I suppose.  I really liked their European scenery.  We should go, someday."  She remembers spring holidays in Italy and Spain, towns on the Mediterranean, houses in pastel colours, towers looking out to a blue sea, distant hills, a volcano.  How much would a ticket cost, how much would she have to save up?  She remembers the stares at the only Asians in town as they made their way down the street, wondering at everything, at the orange trees, lemon trees, olive trees.  She remembers a painting in one of the endless museums, a man, a woman, on the outskirts of a large city, thick with clouds and still air.  She could feel the heat and muggy air, hear the distant thunder.  A bridge across the deep blue of a river, and she stared at it for a long time, losing track of her friends in the museum, who almost called the police in their panic.

"They don't have so many cherry trees, but the flowers were pretty all the same."  In England there were bluebells, magnolias, names from the English books which for her had been only a word in her mind, suddenly made into bright colour.  She recognized the rose, the magnolia, the plum, the peach, yet there were many others besides, of which she knew neither the name in Chinese nor English nor Japanese.  Strange flowers by the lawns, the strange flat expanses lined with shrubs which they loved for their gardens.  

"Let's go, when, let's go someday, and you can show us around."  Sana is dreaming of the old western buildings she sees in books, of the sandstone and blue-grey roofs of Paris which she knows from photos and watercolours in the western-style cafés, dreaming of the streets of paved stone and the neon signs of French cafés or bistrots, something like the paintings of van Gogh, or the one by Manet with the waitress lady.  

"Someday.  I think you'd like Trieste or Nice."

"What about Paris?"  

"It's pretty, too, but I thought you liked sunny places."

"Well, Paris is different."  Paris sera toujours Paris went that one kitschy song.  Chevalier?  Maurice Chevalier.  Endless Watteau paintings at the Louvre, endless still lifes.  A tiny Chinese bookstore, a Cambodian owner, relishing the words in her native tongue.  The old man gaping at her beauty, chuckling to himself.  She wants to be along the Seine again, or in some sad earth-smelling garden of rectangles and flowers, she wants to see the sights with Sana, with Momo, with Mina, wants to show off what French she remembers, wants to show them the museums, the bookshops of old books and strange books, everything.  

A light breeze, and Tzuyu is glad she wore her thicker coat.  Petals, petals, petals.  A couple walking a dog, the man in a loose khaki-coloured coat, and the woman in a deep green puffer.  The dog tiny and white and sniffing.  A petal falls onto the grass, pink and tiny and lovely.  They watch a sparrow, another petal, spinning in the air.  The sparrow flies off, and they are alone again, and the sun crests the tops of trees, the light on the petals and leaves and benches yellows.  She feels as though a cold and silent stream were running on the rocks of her heart, over the still bed of her innards, cold and fresh and terribly sad.  The get up , and walk slowly back, breathing in the faint flowers, the buzzing of insects, the roar of vehicles.  

Back in the room, Momo is barely awake, and they sit at the chairs, waiting.  

"How long did I, urgh, so sleepy, is it dark already?"

"Come on Mo, dinner."

"Grrfh.  Where, where did you guys go?"

"Just a park, and we sat at the swings."

"Typical Tzuyu stuff.  Let me get washed.  I know a good dinner place nearby."

"Sure."

Stumbling along, hoping she has gotten the right street, and her knees hurt, her ankle hurts, everything hurts, everything is killing her.  

"Who is it- oh, oh it's come on in, quickly, quickly," not Jeongyeon this time, but the other, Nayeon, who pulls her in, leaving her bag in the basket outside with a swiftness and firmness she had not thought the thin woman possessed.  

"Poor girl, poor girl, you look, come on, I'll get you a tea," and before she has time to protest, time to be angry at her pity, Nayeon is busy with the hot water, and anyway the chair is comfortable, the feeling of taking her coat off is comfortable, so terribly comfortable she is going to just fall asleep at the table again, no, she can't not after last time, she, she can't just-

The next day everyone is up early, and Sana is itching to get to the town centre, but Momo has other plans, and drags them all along to a car rental, bright banners fluttering in the spring wind, windows covered all over in ads and offers, tourists posters with pretty women and scenic views.  They follow Momo in, wondering.  Momo is humming as she gets the keys, and only smiles knowlingly when pressed about where they are going.  

Up the long and straight roads out of town, past the wide river and houses as they get older and smaller, and into the hills.  Hills and hills, north and north, and Tzuyu tries to stay awake to watch the scenery, the pine trees, the sprays of blossoms on the slopes, but is soon fast asleep, with Sana beside her in the back seat.  She wakes, startles Sana awake, and they both laugh.

"So where are we going, Mo?  Are you kidnapping us?"

"Just wait and see, you'll know soon enough."

"We came all the way to see the cherry blossoms, not mountain roads.  Come on, how far is it?"  Sana pouts, still thinking of the bustling town centre, the river, the old houses.  Tzuyu sips at the tea in her flask, hoping the car ride won't be too long.  

"Shhh.  Let me figure out which way I'm supposed to go."

"Where are we going, Mo?"

"Look, you'll get it when we get there, all right?  The weather's perfect, everything will turn out great, trust me."

"If you say so."

"Should we get snacks?  We didn't get snacks."

"Oh, come on."

"Will there be food there?   Will we need snacks?"  Tzuyu is insistent, and the natto with rice wasn't really enough for an early breakfast this morning.

"Urgh.  Fine, we'll get snacks somewhere, okay?"  Tzuyu nods, is pleased when Momo pulls over at a rest stop.  Sweet potatoes, nori, crinkly chips which look like fries.  Green tea, and Sana's favourite brand of apple juice.  Nobody wanted the cheap sake, and anyway Momo has to drive.  Momo is impatient, and hurries them back to the car, as if anxious to reach wherever it was she was bringing them.  They eat the sweet potatoes as Momo drives off, and take turns giving her bites of the rich yellow sweetness. 

"Are you sure this isn't a kidnapping?  We're not going to find a bunch of henchmen waiting for us?"  The car is turning into smaller roads now, and Momo is irritable as she watches each bend for oncoming cars.

"Urgh, stop that, we'll be there soon, okay?"  And just as she says this, they run out of hill, and the sea floods into view, vast and unbroken save the dims of distant islands, and the hillside is pink.  Patched with pale pink which is almost white, spotted with deep red, and painted in vast strokes with pink, and between the blue and green and blue and pink, there is not a single human to be seen save themselves, not a car or human habitation to break the vast beauty.  

"Oh."

Momo stops the car where the road turns to a path, and they stumble out, uncomprehending.  In silence they follow the path as it goes into the groves of murmuring petals, in silence they follow the path up the hill, further and further until they reach a clearing where they sit and silently eat their snacks under the sea of petals, watching the gentle sea through the trees. 

"This is nice."

"Yeah.  My family used to come here every year, then I moved to the Kanto area and got busy." 

For a long time they sit and watch the glimmering sea, the petals which glow beneath the blue of the sky, and there is only the wind, the distant sea, the crunch of chips and crackers.  The call of a distant gull, a tern far above the blue water.  Tzuyu gets up, walks among the trees and brush, lifting her feet high against the taller bushes.  Calm, as though they were really the only ones between the sky and earth.  

They get up, wander down the path now, down to a lookout of a few chairs, where they see the cliffs and foam of breaking waves in front, and behind them the sea of flowers spotted with the greens of other trees behind them, leisurely, slowly, waiting for the sun to come out from the shadow of the hills.  Birds, the trilling of a woodpecker, and sparrows in the branches.  The roar and crash of waves is louder now, yet still distant, terribly distant, and the birds, over the sea and beneath the branches, soaring, flitting.  Further in the woods an old pine, a cedar.  Gnarled trees and rough bark, deep green leaves which hide the birds.  Petals, leaves, sky.  Back down to the sea, back up to the trees, and they wander about, listlessly, not speaking, waiting for something to break the spell, not quite believing it is real.  White clouds, distant, and nearer, hurrying, scurrying.  The shadow of a cloud in the sun, the glittering sea.  Momo has fallen asleep on the grass, and Sana sits and watches the peaceful pretty face, hair splayed out on the grass.  Weren't there ants?  Tzuyu pulls at the petals of a nearby flower, feeling the softness of the petals, humming a song which Sana realises is Sakura, Sakura.  As far as the eye can see.  Is it mist, or clouds?  They laugh, and Momo drowses awake.  

Tzuyu does not how long they have been sitting there, enjoying the vast and deep silence, when the sky begins to cloud over, and the glittering sunlight becomes pale and flat.  She casts a worried glance at the sky, hoping it will clear, but the clouds only thicken and thicken, and then a drop of cold on the back of her hand.  

The drops come thick and fast now, and the pattering roar of rain on the leaves and upon the waves fills their ears.  They struggle through the whipping wind with their umbrellas, making their way to the car, sliding into the seats with a sigh of relief as rain pelts the windows and rattles the roof.  

"Looks like it won't let up soon."

"Shit."

"Don't worry Mo, we had a good time, didn't we, Tzu?"

"Yeah, that was, I don't know how to describe it really, I don't think I've been so at peace in a long time," but Momo still looks on the verge of tears.  

"Let's get lunch!  Do you any good places nearby?"  And somehow at Sana's excitement Momo's frustration dissolves away.  

Chaeyoung sits at her latest canvas, a large landscape where Seulgi and Tzuyu are outlined in quick strokes on the dance floor, and a table at the side, a seated figure.  The dark colours are being difficult, but she is getting closer to something she likes, at least she thinks she is.  She sets aside for a while the thorny palette, and casts her mind back to the orange night, the smells.  Jihyo had lectured her the whole ride back, but she had only been thinking about the vastness of the dark, the silence of the night, and, somehow, Tzuyu's unseen friend, the one who had vanished into its maw, alive or dead no-one really knew.  A little more blue?  A little more blue.  Something like that.  And then the colour of the flashing pinks, the dots of almost-white, the light of an open door.  Who will be the third figure?  Perhaps Jihyo, perhaps a young man, something youthful, nothing too weird.  The sharp-chinned guy in La Goulue, no, nothing like that.  Momo.  The name blinks and disappears, but the face remains, indignant eyes which glimmered in anger even in the dimness of the club.  Without thinking she starts sketching the dark bobbed hair, the sharp dress to be painted purple, and before she knows it she has decided on Momo, looking away into some unknown distance, lips slightly ajar, or what she remembers of her features, rendered roughly. 

She pauses, and the other large canvas in the room catches her eye, and she smiles.  She has had more time to work on it, with the the big commission behind her.  And then that fancy gallery in Ginza sold another two or three of her works, to Europeans or Americans or something.  And a Singaporean?  She didn't know they were into this sort of art in those parts.  She is glad she made those sketches.  A few more details, and the whole thing will be done.  Time for lunch.  

A town of rain, a small town of some tourists some way inland, in the valley of some river, awash with rain, white with rain.  Umbrellas, splashing through the wet streets, old houses with warm lights in some.  The sign for a sukiyaki place, and they push the door in, out of the wet into the warm wooded chatter.  

"Cheer up, baby, the food looks like it'll be good."  Sana, her bright smile from opposite the table.

"I, I guess."  It's not important, we had fun while it lasted, stop, stop ruining it, but reciting the words to herself cannot magically lighten her mood, and she shies away from Tzuyu's outstretched hand, eyes still wobbly with tears.  The food comes, thin-sliced meat and vegetables and fish and meat with a flaming pot of broth which makes her stomach growl.  The vegetables go in, and they wait for them to cook.

Glumly, she takes a slice of beef, a slice of daikon, and the softness, the thin softness blooms in her mouth, and several mouthfuls later the sadness of the morning is long forgotten.  Dipping it in the egg, mixing it with rice, and when Tzuyu and Sana chat, she feels herself drawn in, swimming along the surface of their words, taking endless portions of rice and vegetables and meat, wondering what she was ever angry about, how she could have lost her composure over such a little thing, when they were here, sitting opposite her, with the steaming pot of broth between them.  

Chapter Text

A hot shower, lounging in the luxury of warm water, and then sleep, real sleep, not the snatches of half-sleep on street corners and under train tracks, real, heavy lovely sleep which clings to her thin body, and refuses to let go, even though she knows it is breakfast, even if she knows she has to get up, she should get up soon, soon, just a little more, the bed is so lovely and soft and warm she can just lie there, just a little more and she will-

At noon, she finally drowses awake, and cannot understand why the bedroom in Yokohama refuses to appear, no matter how she blinks her eyes.  Where is she?  Is Tzuyu out for work yet?  And then the past few months hit her like a wave, and she jumps out of bed, scrambling for Nayeon, Jeongyeon, anyone, she has overslept, and

"Oh there you are.  Awake already?"

"Sorry, I-"

"Relax.  Just for today, the room's free."

"I can't,"

"You can, and you will.  Just stay put, get washed, and we can talk this out."  And the sound of Jeongyeon's voice, the measured words which put her at ease just with their cadence, their lilt.  

"So, you're staying?"

"I, if you'd be so good as to-"

"We went over this already.  Stay, even if for a few days, stay.  You have experience, yes?"

"Y-yes, a little.  At convenience stores, mostly, and at one of the cafés in Narita."  

"Did you do their coffee?"

"Y-yes.  I, I mean, I like making my own coffee anyway."  

"Good.  I think you'll be able to help me a lot."

"Are you sure?"

"What a silly question.  I've asked you at least three times, come on."  Jeongyeon, a little impatient, drags her along, and explains to her all the things which need to be done, the things that she and Nayeon cannot take care of on their own, and Mina just nods along, listening, still not quite understanding why she has been allowed this warmth, this bed, this sleep, this work.  

Jeongyeon leaves Mina to the cleaning, and goes to take a nap.  It is good to have someone around who wasn't just her and Nayeon.  And the new girl, the former idol, is pretty, which probably doesn't matter as much in an all-female hostel, but it is nice watching her at work.  She speaks little, which is also nice.  And better still, she can play the piano in the evenings, when the guests come down for their dinners.  She refuses to sing, though, probably just in case someone recognises her voice.  Yesterday it was her own arrangements of the Candies, Pink Lady, even older songs which Jeongyeon didn't know the singers of.  She had imagined something slower, more soothing, but it didn't matter so much when the music was good, and the playing was good.  She got the sense that the slender fingers had been craving the weight and feel of a piano for a long time, after having only her cheap electric piano by her side for so long.

She wakes up in a rising panic.  Mina, where is Mina?  No, she is in Momo's flat, and Mina, who can say?  The jade-porcelain face, flares up again in her mind's eye with frightening intensity.  The thought of her out there, alone, slowly starving to death is too much for her.  She can sing, she can play the piano, she can make good coffee.  Would that be enough?  That has to count for somethig, right?  And a smile from the face framed with long hair can send electricity through the soul, and the way she held herself and walked, each little movement when she ate and drank and made coffee could make anyone fall in love.  No, that last one was just Tzuyu.  She should have, she could have, and all the regrets she has forgotten come rushing back, squeezing her from the inside out.  She gets up from the couch, goes to the table to sit, watching the shadows around her, more familiar now.  She remembers waking up on Mina's bed because she insisted on the sleeping bag, watching the lights in the windows on the other side of the road.  Now she watches the canal, the road beside the canal, the streetlights, where now and then a car passed.  

"Uh, Tzu, I have something to ask."

"Hmm?" Chaeyoung is strangely nervous, she notes, her eyes darting about.

"You know your, uh, friend, Momo?"

"Yeah?" A wrinkle of her nose, and the large eyes are inquisitive.

"Yeah, well, I... could you ask her if she doesn't mind being a model for, like, one of my paintings? I'll, uh, pay her, of course."

"Hey, I'm right here.  How come you ask Seul and Tzu but not me?  I'm not pretty enough?" Kazuha butts in.

"I-"

"I'm kidding. But if I become one of your dancing figures, make me prettier than Tzuyu. That'll do as payment," she teases, and receives an eye-roll in return.

"So anyway-"

"I'll ask her. I don't really know her rates, though. And also, I'm pretty sure you haven't apologized for whatever you did that day. If I know Momo, she'll be hard to convince."

"What did she do? I bet she said something stupid. Again." Kazuha pokes her head in again, ignoring Chaeyoung's glare. Well, she isn't wrong.

"Wait, she's already a model? I guess that makes sense?"

"Hirai Momo, yeah, and Minatozaki Sana? SaMo's Pretty Girl Talk?" Nights in the dorm room at art school, with the TV always on to some program or another, two Kansai models and a guest on the grainy screen, one with a Barbie-girl body, a nasal voice and deep, attractive laugh, the other flirty, perfectly pretty and cutesy, with eyes that smiled more than her lips.

"Oh god, no wonder I thought I'd seen them somewhere before. That was, what, five, ten years ago?" Dreams, which suddenly seem to float again on the air, wisps of old dust, snatches of old voices.

"Wait, the Mina you have, had a crush on is Myoui Mina?" Seulgi has been listening on the side, but now she gawks at Tzuyu, wedging herself between the chairs, sitting on the armrest of Kazuha's.

"Uhhhhhh, yeah? You know her?"

"Well, okay, she wasn't one of my ults, those are Hiromi and Momoe, but, like, oh my god, I was wondering where she had vanished to, half of us were gossiping about it, and now, well-"

"And now she's missing." Tzuyu says softly, sadly, and the silence hangs heavy.

"Sorry, yeah, anyway I'll ask Momo. Or Sana?"

"No, Momo." Chaeyoung shakes her head firmly. Somehow the painting demands Momo, her bobbed hair, her gaze.

"Well, if she doesn't agree, I can, like, work off some old magazines? I'm sure she was on some. But it won't be the same."

"Mmm." Seulgi makes herself comfortable on the armrest, pops a chip into her mouth, offers one to Kazuha, who refuses.

"Chaeng?"

"Sure." She takes a chip, but seems distracted.

"Oh, yeah, Tzuyu, I, uh," her eyes darting around again, the second time that night.

"Something else to ask?"

"No, I mean, I guess I've been- wait, I'll go and get it," and promptly vanishes out the door, whereupon Seulgi slides straight from Kazuha's armrest into the vacant seat, elegant even in this action. They sit, rather nonplussed, and Seulgi crunches another chip, offering the next one to Tzuyu.

"Thanks. I wonder what that was about."

"One of her moods again, I guess," Kazuha chortles. A cigarette to fill the silence, as they wait for whatever Chaeyoung is about to spring on them.

A knock on the door.  Strange.  Tzuyu goes to get it, hesitant, and the door opens slowly to a huge canvas, or what they think is huge, larger than Chaeyoung can span with her arms: she has knocked with the toe of her boot, and on the canvas, Tzuyu slumbers in the large armchair opposite the half-lit bar, and light streams in from the window, yellowish and wan all at once, colors which give the whole an indefinable air of melancholy, of sadness, the peaceful sleeping face troubled by strange dreams.

"Oh my god." Kazuha can't think of anything to tease her about, and only stares, open-mouthed.

"She's- she's really your muse, isn't she?" Seulgi goes over to help carry the painting, patting Chaeyoung on the head with her free hand, unable to quite grasp the feeling welling up in her.

"It's beautiful, Chaeng. You've been working on this for- for weeks, for months, oh my god." And for no reason at all, after they have leaned the painting very carefully against another chair, Tzuyu goes to crush Chaeyoung tight in an embrace, and for no reason at all begins to cry, weeping at everything, the soft elegance of it, the care taken to depict her troubled sleep, more precious than any photo, more precious than- than what she doesn't know anymore, only that she has never felt quite like this before.

"Take it back to your place?"

"You're, uh, not selling it?"

"No? I'm not selling this to some collector and have your face hanging in any old corridor in some summer house in Europe, or some gallery in Ginza or Azabu or somewhere for anyone to gawk at."

"I, but you spend, it must have taken, and your other paintings—"

"And not all my paintings are work paintings, okay? I just, I saw you sleeping in the chair, and I just wanted to, I just wanted to—" and she doesn't need to say it in words, for it is all there, everything she wanted to do and say, seeing the distressed Tzuyu finally asleep in the chair that afternoon, every feeling she wanted to convey to the girl, lanky and lost and weary and half-curled up in the chair, whose coat she had placed carefully over her legs against the cold of the barely-heated club.

"I can't, uh, I can't take it back with me, though."

"Oh yeah, you don't have your own place, do you?" Her face falls a little, and Tzuyu rushes to reassure her.

"Keep it first, and next time, when I get my own place, if you don't mind, I'll have it in my room or something, I love it, I love it so much, Chaeng, you can't know how much it means to me." She goes over to look again, surprised by her own face, the lines so deftly captured in the light of the afternoon, the colors which call up cold afternoons, sad winter sun, wistful light, and brooding purplish shadow.

"How come we don't get cool paintings, huh?" Kazuha pouts slyly, prodding Chaeyoung, who slaps her hand away.

"I can paint you sitting at the bar or something, like Toulouse-Lautrec or Manet."

"Oh, to hell with your Toulouse-Lautrec, that sleazy old man."

"He is not—"

"Whatever, clearly we don't get the nice deep emotional portraits because we're like, second-class friends or something. Right, Seul?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Hey!" They laugh at Chaeyoung's pout, and help her to carry the painting to her bedroom. Tzuyu gives it another glance, and they close the door. Maybe Momo will let her hang it somewhere, but it's too large to fit anywhere in that small flat without disrupting all the other decor.

Dinner, fried beef slices, radish stew, pickles. Just Momo and herself in the flat today, and the warm spring evening. In silence, without feeling the need to talk, letting the smell and taste of food wash over them. She catches Momo's eye now and again, and wonders how long this living arrangement will last.

"Oh yes, I had something to ask."

"Hmm?"

"My friend Chaeyoung, she's the one who paints, and she's doing a painting, wants you to model for her."

"That midget?" Momo takes another chopstickful of meat, and mixes it with the rice in the bowl.

"Yes." Tzuyu hides her rush of irritation. Momo has every right to anger, after all.

"I'll think about it, I guess. Is there a number I can call?"

"Yeah, she has a card." Tzuyu hands it over, and Momo gives the plain white card the once-over before placing it at the side of the table, to be kept away later. Silence, chewing.

"You know, she's pretty cute."

"Who?"

"The artist girl. Chaeyoung."

"I, I thought you—"

"Yeah, I hate her guts, but she's pretty cute."

"Mm, she is rather."

"She'd look better if somebody gave her some nice clothes."

"Wouldn't that ruin her vibe?"

"You're right, probably. She has nice eyes." And then dinner is almost over. The last of the stew, and they sit there, a silence differently colored from Mina's but not unfriendly, full of Momo's searching gaze, her quizzical eyes as Tzuyu laughs at some private joke.  She looks away, blushing at little.  Is Tzuyu laughing at what she said about Chaeyoung?  Who can say?

As Tzuyu goes to wash up, she thinks it likely that Momo will call Chaeyoung the next day.

Rain, torrents of it, in the windows, drumming, endless. The cups and plates are all dry, and Mina sits and flips through the scores she has brought with her, humming along. The bird statue in painted metal on the counter stares unnervingly at her with a single brilliant red eye, and she turns it so both eyes face away. A clock, some European knickknack Nayeon has bought second-hand, with a ballerina who turns back and forth with the mechanism, making a single round every hour to the first few bars of the "Sugar Plum Fairy." Cliché, but charming all the same. Amazingly, Nayeon has also found its sister, with four ballerinas in swan-white in a ring, arms interlocked, chiming the "Dance of the Cygnets" instead, and it occupies a shelf at the reception, so the two melodies don't clash. The ticking of the clock, the quiet whirring of the mechanism.

Lobby, reception, common room, café. Two checkouts today, and she has to send the sheets for cleaning soon. The rain on the street, cars roaring past and sending up great sprays of water, rain rushing down into the drains. Someone clatters down into the common room, wrapped up tight in a raincoat, her round glasses peering out into the rain. The door swings shut, and Mina hears faintly the main door open and shut, watches as she hurries past, head lowered, raincoat already dripping with water. She rises to make her day's first cup of coffee, hoping no one will come in and interrupt her. As the water boils, she hears the main door open with a rabble of luggage wheels, hears Jeongyeon's muffled voice dealing with the check-in. The water boils just as she passes through the common room to the stairs, a pale pink jacket of rather nice material, mostly untouched by the rain. Mina makes sure to greet her, fix her with her masked gaze even as she pours the water onto the grounds. She doesn't want to pretend to be more popular than she is, but enough people come and go that she cannot risk going without it. She watches as the liquid soaks the grounds and descends into the cup, and remembers without warning the apartment so long ago, when she made coffee and infusions for the Taiwanese girl whose name she tries not to remember. Tzuyu. God damn it. The face floats into her mind's eye once more, indelible, unbearable.

Another flurry of steps, and another woman clad in a fitting grey puffer coat makes a beeline for the instant noodles.  The coat goes all the way down past her knees, and Mina admires how the upper half cleaves to her body, buttoned all the way from the hem to the collar, dark grey and reflective in the yellow lighting.  She fills a cup with hot water, keeps the lid shut with a pen, and goes over to look at the drinks.  Mina greets her, waits for the gloved fingers to order an oolong, and then goes to scoop the leaves into the strainer.

The woman in the puffer has started on the tea and the noodles, still in the gloves and coat, blowing on each chopstickful of noodles before slurping them up.  The new arrival opens the door gently, her body graced by a turtleneck in dark grey, and orders a coffee, watching as Mina prepares the water and grounds.  The faces disappear into magazines, and Mina goes back to her scores, thinking of which songs she wants to perform later.  The scores in her own handwriting and Tzuyu's (that awful name, that lovely name) she flicks past quickly, but she cannot bear to take them out of the binder, throw them away.  Lifting the mask for a sip of coffee, turning to face the shelves, before it goes on again.  

The noodles, the coffee and tea are gone when the woman in the raincoat returns, earlier than Mina had expected, storming and clomping her way to the room, her face streaked with rain or tears.  A few more minutes and she storms back out of the room in a thin grey jacket, orders a cup of black tea and goes to get a snack from the snack bar, crossing her furious arms in the seat.  Mina takes the tea, setting it down gently, bites down the giggle when she realises that with her own grey shirt below the staff apron (which Nayeon had insisted on), all of the women in the room are clad in grey.  The turtlenecked arrival rises, heads to the washroom, and the others barely glance at her.  The woman in the puffer coat, as if startled by the sound of the scraping chair, goes to dispose of the empty cup, return her empty teacup to Mina.  Long, slightly waved hair, untied, a stark contrast with Mina's bun, the turtleneck's braids.  The crying woman gets up to go to the counter, decides on a cutlet sandwich.  A cutlet sandwich.  Not the easiest, not the most difficult, scribbled onto the board because Jeongyeon had seen cutlets on discount at the supermart.  Mina keeps her expression kind as she steals glances at the raw and brimming eyes, the hair rumpled by the hood of the raincoat still unbrushed.  

The breaded cutlet goes in, the oil sizzles, and she takes off the gloves, goes to slice the bread.  The crying woman watches, still sniffling now and then, as if fascinated.  A shake or two of seven-spice chilli, mayo for the cabbage before the fresh cutlet sandwich goes onto the plate, and the turtleneck follows the plate with her gaze as Mina brings it to the table, as if tempted to order something for herself.  Just as she seems on the verge of ordering, she notices that Mina has put on the "closed for fifteen minutes" sign, watching with a slight pout as Mina goes to send the laundry to be cleaned.  In the hallway she passes Nayeon, who nods at her through the phone conversation with some supplier or other.  

When Mina returns, she takes the empty plate and cup, and the turtleneck lady, who had been staring glumly at the pork cutlet sandwich slowly vanish at the next table, asks for one as well.  She scrabbles about for change, and settles for paying with a five-thousand note.  Mina counts out the notes and coins, and goes to fry the cutlet.  The puffer jacket lady is hardly full from the instant noodles, and seems on the verge of ordering one as well, but thinks better of it, fiddling with the buttons on her coat, picking at her collar, watching longingly in turn as the turtleneck eats the sandwich in measured bites, savouring it slowly, orders another coffee to wash it down.  

"Want a bite?"  The puffer jacket lady is apprehensive, but does not refuse.  Mina laughs, and the puffer jacket lady laughs into the sandwich, and turtleneck lady laughs along, and even the crying lady takes a stab at a tearful chortle.  Mina takes another order of drinks, three black teas with milk, and at some point the three of them are at the same table, and puffer jacket lady invites her to sit with them.  She points to the sink and laughs, washes up all the cups, before putting on a CD, Ken Naoko's severe hair in black and white, mellow songs for a rainy afternoon, goes to clean the vacated tables.    

The crying lady is one Vivian, come all the way from Hong Kong to Tokyo, then to this mid-sized town on the coast, on the promises of a boyfriend who only dared to leave her a voice message in an empty room, without so much as a flower or reason why.  Mina looks steadfastly at the corner of the room, trying not to think about how she left them that day, leaving only a clean room with a note and a phone-booth call.  The puffer jacket is Heejin, freshly out of a job, on a visa which will only keep her for a few more weeks.  The turtleneck, finally, is Jiwoo, a businesswoman on a freeform holiday, who mostly chose this cheap women's hostel because the owners were Korean.  

In the middle of "Seagull, Seagull" another guest enters, and the noise of luggage wheels startles them.  Mina rises from the chair she has pulled to one side of the table to greet her, but she is soon out of the door.  They wait, but she does not come to the common room.  A collective sigh of relief.  

"They say that it'll be sunny tomorrow.  Let's go somewhere, or something," Jiwoo, for the niceness of her dress, seems almost the most excited of them.

"Together?"  Heejin, a little doubtful.

"Of course!  What about you, Mina?"

"I'm still working tomorrow, sorry.  My turn to man the reception."

"Urgh.  What about the day after?"

"Sure."

"Vivian?"

"I- I guess I don't have much to do, anyway, now."

"Let's go!"  

Momo pulls over to the familiar parking space, with the large building and sad posters, and goes to the front door.  The last time she came, it was to see Tzuyu.  This time, her artist friend, the one who took every chance to be rude about Mina.  But work is work.  

She watches as Chaeyoung messes around with the paints, compares pigments and tints in various lighting conditions.  She watches as the cigarette shifts from between the index and middle to the ring and pinky, shifts back to take a drag, the thumb resting just below, before it goes back between the ring and pinkie to take another brush.  For the tubes of paint she holds the cigarette in her mouth, squeezing a little onto the palette before plucking it away with her ring and pinky fingers, mixing the colours anew, frowning at them, mixing again, then smiling.  Of all that she understands nothing, but she does understand the way her figure is slowly taking shape onto the sketchpad, understands deeply in her body the poses she is asked to do, knows, somehow, what the artist girl wants of her with each request.  More sketches done in pencil now, angles and poses as Chaeyoung figures out how her figure should be posed and positioned on the canvas.  She shifts a little in the light when asked, and waits again, the strokes of the quick pencil filling the still afternoon.  A break, hot barley tea, a quick trip to the washroom.  

"And that's all for today.  Thank you so much!  It's been a pleasure," and Momo, to her surprise, feels that she means it.

"Same here."

"If I need another session, uh, I'll let you know?" 

"Sure."  Momo takes her coat, goes to the car, and Chaeyoung follows along. 

"Anything else?"

"No," and Chaeyoung looks smaller in the wan light of day, eyes scrunched against the light, too thin for her large coat.

"Well, do you want to get dinner?"  It has slipped out now, and Chaeyoung can't take it back.  

"No, not really.  Why do you imagine I'd want to talk to you outside of work?"  And that is that, leaving Chaeyoung glum in the spring afternoon, with the buds on the trees and the dust in the air from the fading car.  

"You what?"

"Shhh, not so-" but it is too late, and Kazuha has butted in.

"What did she do now?"

"Nothing."

"She asked her model out right after the session is what she did."

"You what?"

"Shut up, I hate myself enough as it is.  I don't know what I was thinking, okay?"  

"And your model, that's Hirai Momo, right?"

"I wasn't, I just wanted to be"

"What, you just wanted to be her friend?  We're supposed to believe that?"

"Oh, go away."  They pat her back and ply her with sweets, with slices of layered cake with plums and liquor from the Indonesian regular, but she stays morose in the armchair.  It is nothing, it is supposed to be nothing, just another model, and she doesn’t want to have dinner, so what?  So fucking what?  God, she needs a cigarette.  She has to finish the painting properly, too, or she will have gotten Momo to model for her for nothing.

"How was it?"

"Good, I guess.  She's weird, though."

"Weird?"

"She tried to ask me out for dinner afterwards.  Did she tell you?"

"Oh, yeah.  She can be weird like that."  Yes, she could be weird like that, Momo thinks.  A quick glance, at the frowning face, now thinking about something, now pleased at the results of her sketches.  Smiling as she hit upon something, decided on something.  Cute, really, pretty in her own way, different from Sana, from Mina, from Tzuyu, something always earnest in the pointed face, searching for something Momo could not see.

Chapter Text

The flowers are gone, but the weather is fine.  Her first off day, and the three foreigners from that day have asked her to go out with them.  It is a miracle, she thinks, walking through the same streets, really seeing everything, realising how much there is to see.  Nobody curses at her, nobody goes out of their way to torment her, humiliate her.  Why would they?  It was a fine day, she is walking around town with soon-to-be friends, her clothes are freshly washed and around her is the faint perfume of the others.  They have visited the shopping mall, and now wait for a train to the main temple.  

"Where should we go for lunch?"

"I told you, I didn't grow up around here."  

"You're the only Japanese one among us, though, we thought you could guide us," says Jiwoo, pouting.  She has swapped her long coat for a shorter chequered jacket and a beret, and Mina admires the way the sleeves hang off her arms as she takes out her transport card to tap.

"How about you, Vivian?  You've been here before, right, to see your ex?"

"I think we mostly ate at the beef bowl places, and like the family restaurants?  We were saving money and he kept talking about his new job."  She has settled for a denim jacket, stripping it off to tie around her waist as the sun warms the street, revealing a olive green long-sleeved shirt, her laughing hair lovely around her face, still tinged with sadness, but freer, relieved of a great weight.

"Urgh.  Whatever, we'll figure something out."  Jiwoo with a quick eye-roll.

"Hey, I remember, the last time I came, there was this busking girl at the station, right around there.  Her voice was really sweet."  Vivian sighs, thinking of a snowy afternoon with her ex, hot coffee, staring for a long time at the masked face, wondering how she could sing and play the keyboard in the cold.  Even in the spring sun, she shivers.  Such a sad voice, such a cold day, and the girl in the thick coat all alone.  

"Was there?  That sounds nice."  Heejin in her deep voice, still wrapped up tight in her puffer despite the sun and breeze.  Mina doesn't say anything as she looks away, unsure how to feel.  

"Well, I don't really know about the lunch places, but there's a nice yakiniku place near the temple which seems really popular," she says quickly, anxious to change the topic.  She remembers passing it, smelling the wafting smell of meat on the grill, watching the customers open the door to the smoke and noise, forcing herself to walk on even as her stomach rumbled, dreaming of warming her hands on the heat of the grill, dreaming of the slices of marinated meats, a little charred, and the thin slices of tongue with just a dash of lemon juice, dripping fat mixed with the rice and kimchi, and she wasn't crying, she wasn't crying, she just wished she could have, just a bowl of rice, just a little meat, she isn't crying, not at all.

"Are you alright?"  Heejin, surprisingly.  

"Yeah, just, spaced out a bit."

"The yakiniku place sounds good.  We could go there for dinner?"

"Sure."  The train pulls in, and they go into the cool of the car, crowded with day-trippers and the few tourists who have bothered to make the trip from Tokyo.  They stand, and chat, and still Mina wonders that no unfriendly looks come her way, that everyone is fine with her just taking the train like this, walking among them, as if they hadn't wrinkled their noses and stared at her matted hair just weeks ago when she had tried to board the subway.  The man in a suit just stares out of the window, the old women with their shopping just gossip, or read books, and nobody looks at her, or if they do, their gazes linger on her face, without malice, and some even greet her if they meet her eyes by chance.  

"Oiii.  Earth to Mina-chan."  She jumps, and giggles as they prod her from her thoughts.  They get off the train, and she follows along behind, listening to them chatter away, as if they were already close friends, letting the accented Japanese roll about her, swimming in Jiwoo's chirpy strawberry voice, Vivian's cooler, fluffier tone, Heejin's deeper tone, almost chocolate-like, listens and supplies them with the words when they forget the Japanese.  When Jiwoo and Heejin go into their own little Korean bubble, Vivian is there to butt in and remind them to switch back.  Mina wonders about Dahyun, how she is doing back in Korea, whether she will see the pretty pale face again, the catlike smile.  Of the other face she tries not to remember too much, but it refuses to leave her alone.   

At the end of the day they return in a chatter of voices to the hostel.  Nayeon is at the reception, and beams at them as they pass.  Leaving them to return to their rooms, Mina goes to the little room half-way between the first and second floors which is now hers, a tiny bed and a desk.  Though she is exhausted, the events of the day play and play again in her head.  They had gotten off to the street of many shops right in front of the temple, and they walked slowly.  There were souvenir shops for everything, it seemed.  Mina liked the mochi, and Heejin liked the shops with pickles and chilli oils.  They tasted a few chilli powder blends, a few pickled mushrooms.  Jiwoo ran into a shop full of wooden chopsticks, for some reason, and went around picking them up, feeling their weight.  In the end she left with a pair of chopsticks, a wooden bowl, and they all got mochi, each of them a different kind, so that they could share.  Mina's stick of mochi was savoury, with a strange sauce which she hadn't had before.

"Really?  Aren't you Japanese?"

"I spent most of my time in Tokyo and Yokohama anyway."

"True enough.  Back in Korea I barely get out of Seoul."

"I haven't been back in a while.  I miss Seoul a little, actually."

"It's the same old, honestly."

"But it's, I don't know, familiar, I guess."

The conversation at dinner turns to idols, and Mina holds her breath, hoping no-one mentions her.  But they only mention Kyouko, Hiroko, Naoko, some others which she hasn't heard of, or barely spoke to.  Heejin listens fanatically to Nakajima Miyuki, and also really likes Anita Mui, much to Vivian's delight, mainly for her lower voice and melancholy songs.  Jiwoo has recently discovered Taiwanese campus songs, Jean Shen and Chen Ming-Shao, and a shiver of ice steals across Mina's chest, at the memory of Tzuyu showing her the discs, playing her the songs back in the flat, memories which float up against her will no matter how she pushes them down.  

"Me?  Naoko.  She was nice."

"She's still around, right?  She released some stuff recently?  I think she composed more of her own songs."  Vivian knows her from the Half Moon Serenade cover in Cantonese, apparently.

"Well, uh, yeah, I haven't really been following her stuff, though," which was the truth.  The smile of crooked teeth, which never seemed to waver, even backstage, even out of sight of the cameras, unfaltering kindness like a warm hug.  

"Mina-chan keeps spacing out, it's cute."  She puffs her cheeks, and they laugh.  Akina, too, was nice to talk to, even though she only met her a few times.  She wonders if it was different at the Kohaku, if it felt different from the usual concerts, seeing all the other idols, the famous singers and bands.  Jiwoo takes another piece of tongue for her, shaking her from her thoughts. 

"Thanks.  It's pretty good."

"Right?"  Vivi was eating rice the way Tzuyu did, shovelling it into her mouth with the chopsticks.  Did Ouyang Feifei and Teresa eat like that too?  

"So soon?"  Down the road, turning into a shopping street.  Tzuyu walks slowly, going to feel out the textures of the shutters, the jackets on display in the clothes shops, and Momo follows along, sometimes feeling as though she is accompanying a child, albeit prettier and more elegantly dressed than any child in her dark blue dress.  Not a spring colour, but her favourite, and stunning with the grey jacket.  

"Yeah, I'll be shifting to just working at the night-club now, it should be enough to rent a small place on my own somewhere."  

"I suppose.  That's, well, that's good.  Will you be okay, uh, alone?  I'll help you look for a place, actually."  

"You're not busy these days?"

"Whatever.  There'll be time."  They pass a pachinko parlour, and then a restaurant Tzuyu hasn't noticed before.  She goes to look at the menu, thumbing through the thin pages.  

"Anything good?  I haven't tried this place before."

"Soba.  They have a duck broth option, but no mushroom soba."

"Pity.  Karaoke later?"

"What?"  Tzuyu looks up to see a large neon karaoke sign.  "Sure.  Why, all of a sudden?"

"No, no reason, or maybe I just like hearing you sing," and Tzuyu laughs, but Momo is dead serious.  

"Really?"

"Yeah, and, I guess if you're moving out soon, I, we won't be seeing each other as much."  

"Sure.  Let's do it now, two hours and then we'll be just in time for dinner."

"Okay."

They go into the karaoke, a little dingy with age, but good enough.  Their shoes and the hum of generators in the dim hallway, and then the elevator.  The bright ding of the fourth floor startles them, and they go to their room.  Spacious, dim, marked by the glowing rectangle of the karaoke machine.  Tzuyu opens with some of Teresa's songs, some in Japanese and some in Mandarin, in a lovely beige voice.  They have both gotten rice crackers and juices, and Momo sips at hers as she watches.  Now it is Momo's turn, her deeper husky voice tracing the melodies of Shinichi Mori or Maekawa Kiyoshi, less full but no less rich.  Tzuyu, it turns out, is good at singing Seiko's and Naoko's songs, and Momo tries her hand at her favourite Akina songs.  The mood lifted, they order highballs, on a whim.  Momo doesn't know where the two hours have gone, and they stumble out of the room to the first customers of the evening, blinking the the white lights of the shopping street.  A clear night, and cold, even in spring, or else it was the alcohol which flushed their faces and make them shiver.  

The same shops, still shut, some of them open.  Several nightclubs, full of alluring ladies on their posters, blaring with music which fades as they pass.  Walking along, passing groups of office workers, gaggles of young people in gaudy clothes who holler after the attractive women.  They quicken their steps, reaching the main road with a sigh of relief.

In an apartment in Tokyo, Sana looks down into the river, into the bridges which span it, and the far-away lights of the commercial district.  An old apartment, and the rent has not risen despite its closeness to town.  Not trusting in her own cooking, she unwraps the large tiered box of sushi.  It will be a long night, and she has sake.  From the wooden box, a nice lacquered thing her mother gave her, she plates the pieces, checking that none of them have fallen apart.  Her own soy sauce in a little dish, translucent brown on the smooth whiteness.  It has been a while since she has last seen Momo.  Sometimes she calls, but it isn't the same.  The first piece, scored squid with a tiny dollop of wasabi, dipped in the wasabi, and in it goes, and a mouthful of cold sake.  She likes this better than eating at the restaurant.  With the fingers again, the second piece of the same, no soy sauce this time.  Now for the sea bream.  A pause, another mouthful of sake, feeling it in her mouth, letting it slowly wash down the stray grains of pearly rice.  

The radio goes on, and she listens.  Policies to be enacted, gross domestic products, taxes.  She turns the dial to a music station, and lets it sit on some enka.  A jilted man, waiting for the ship which would bring his lover, endlessly.  Slowly she dips the next piece in soy sauce, slowly she brings it to her mouth, takes a bite.  More sake.  Waiting, waiting for the flowers to come, for the flowers to wilt, for the apples to fruit, for the apples to fall.  The rest of the sea bream disappears between her open lips, and the apartment is filled with the radio, her chewing, a generator.  Slurping, glugging, and a clink on the melamine of the table.  White lights, white rice, pink and glinting fish.  Did they give ginger?  Yes, in a little compartment on the side.  Perhaps the tuna scrapings with scallions would be next.

By the time she gets to the fatty tuna, she is tipsy, burping into the empty flat.  The lovely shiver of loneliness, warmed by the sake.  She lets the fatty flesh melt in her mouth, mingle with the mouthful of sake, trying not to cry.  Why does she want to cry?  The sky is clear, almost clear and black and starless, and the faint sparse clouds glow with the lights of largest city in the world.  Thirty million people, thirty million lights, thirty million glows in thirty million windows.  Which of them is in the rose-pink of the cloud above the river?  Further along the river is a bridge among tall offices, a fancy hotel.  When was the last time she stayed in one?  She is down to the last few pieces, saving the egg sushi for last, and she pours out a little more soy sauce into the platter.  

Bored of her tiny room, Mina goes back out to the common room, relaxing at the tables.  Jeongyeon comes over, waves.

"How was your day?"

"Good.  The Koreans and the Hong Konger were pretty nice.  I think they're on nickname terms already."

"That's nice.  Where did you guys go?"

"The temple?  And then we sort of walked around the town centre, did some shopping, had yakiniku afterwards."

"Wow.  Sounds like a good day. Did you guys go to the seaside?"

"Oh, no, they're going tomorrow I think, but I guess I can always go another day."

"Yeah, the beach will always be there," and then she goes, just as mysteriously as she came to say hello.  Before finally going to bed, Mina goes to take a cube of Lotte Ghana from the fridge, just, she didn't quite know why, or else it was that she missed knowing she could buy chocolate, the feeling of having something to snack on when she liked.  Vivian comes to turn on the TV, and some other guests are there too, watching some anime or the other.  She tunes out of the fuzzy screen, letting the excitable dialogue fade into white noise, thinking of the old days.  SaMo dragging her to a bar she didn't really want to be at, getting tipsy after just a drink or two.  Just after the crash, just after her contract ran out and never renewed, she had wandered around, lost, wondering what had become of the two of them.  Surely there would always be a demand for attractive women on TV?  Apparently not, as the news of the program cancellation broke just a week later.  Lonely, so lonely, flitting around clubs and event venues which cared less and less, paid less and less until they just didn't care at all.  

From the karaoke they go to the izakaya, and this time it is beer, great foaming glasses of it, with fried chicken and gyoza.  Momo keeps staring at Tzuyu, until she blushes through the alcohol flush, as if trying to take in as much of her face and body as possible before she leaves to live on her own.  

"This is good," says Momo, between chews.

"Yeah.  Sakura told me about this place."

"Isn't she from, uh, Fukuoka or Hiroshima or somewhere?"

"Kagoshima, but she's the biggest foodie ever, and also has been working in the Kanto area since forever.  Didn't she tell you?"  Gyoza, crispy, dipped in the vinegar.  A little cold, but good all the same.  

"I, uh, didn't ask."  Chicken, dipped in the mayonnaise, feeling the crackle of crispy skin.

"Oh, you're hopeless, Mo."

"Whatever, it's good food.  I remember there was a nice fried chicken, near the station at, uh, Matsumoto?  Or Toyama or something, one of those places."  A shake of chilli flakes before the next mouthful.  

"They're not even in the same prefecture!"

"I've forgotten everything they taught us about Hokuriku.  Did they teach us about Hokuriku?"

"Didn't your family take you skiing at all?"

"No?  My dad isn't the CEO of some huge electronics company."

"It's not that expensive, you know."

"Wait, Tzuyu, you've been, been talking to Sakura?"  Momo takes a gulp of beer, sets the glass heavily on the table, as if outraged.

"Yeah, she, like, phones the flat, sometimes, but you're never around.  You see her at work anyway, right?"

"Well, yes, just, she doesn't, uh, talk much at work?  Am I that unlikeable?"

"Maybe.  You're pretty prickly with new people."

"What?  I don't, I'm not, Sakura's not new people and your stupid friend Chaeyoung was making jabs at Mina!"

"No, apart from, uh, urgh, whatever."  A swig of beer, another dumpling.  

"Say, do you still think of Mina?"

"Of course."

"Really?"

"You think?"  And they lapse into tipsy silence.

"Come on, let's get out of here, the noise is getting to me."  They stumble into the street, the raucous street.  On the way they hear some catcalls, what could be catcalls, but they don't really care.  The lights of the street of old houses are dim, dim and yellow and dim.  Pavement, cold air.  In the next street are neon signs in red and blue and green, the pipes forming distorted kanji-shapes, others in English shapes of crowns and cakes and sundry things.  They get to the station without incident, manage to board a train in the right direction.  

Back in the flat, Momo presses her.

"You still like her?"

"I guess?  Even if I did, even if I did," and the words peter off as she throws her head back to look at the pale lights, the ceiling.  Even if she did, what use is it now, now that Mina is somewhere far away, could be dead for all they know?  

"I guess we got used to her not being around, didn't we?"

"I guess."  Were they so fickle, that they could forget her in just a few weeks?  Tzuyu misses suddenly the afternoons they eked out of their schedules together, composing the album of songs they wanted to record someday, and it seems so far away, the dream, the sheets of notes and words hammered out between them.  Are they lost forever?  Does Mina still have them?  She has hidden the memory of those chilly afternoons away in her heart, and now Momo has forced them out, they ache all over again.

"Sorry." Momo, too, regrets bringing it up at all.  Suddenly she hates Chaeyoung viciously for what she said about Mina.  Was it that important?  She had been on the point of forgiveness, on the point of forgetting, but now she has ruined it for herself.  It was the beer, she blames the beer and the highballs at the karaoke.  She puts on a CD one of the ones Mina had left behind for some reason, a Nakajima Miyuki compilation which only makes the sadness more poignant.  Is it the alcohol?  Back in the flat, she lets Tzuyu lie her head on her lap; finds herself looking down at the face and rich hair in side profile.  She sighs, stroking her temple, and Tzuyu doesn't seem to mind.  She taps her fingers along her head, pretending to be Mina at her keyboard, and Tzuyu brushes her hand away lazily.

"Cut it out, Mo, that feels weird."

"Sorry.  I'll miss you."

"I'm not even moving out just yet, though."

"Still.  Let's meet up, with Sana too, I haven't seen her in a bit."

"Doesn't she still take shifts at the airport?"

"Yeah, but we haven't been able to coordinate those for a bit now."

"I miss her, too."  Tokyo was large, sometimes too large.  She remembers the apartment in Yokohama, how Mina made the long journey to Chiba, to Narita, passing suburbs which never seemed to end, passing schools and shopping malls which all blended with each other.  Closer to Narita the houses spaced out, the flats spaced out, and then one fine afternoon a spray of balloons, hundreds of them, in party colours, tiny and impossibly suspended in the air as the train sped past.  

Sana dozes on the table, the basket empty of the last grain of rice and slice of ginger, the bottle of sake half gone.  She startles awake, thirsty, gulps down mouthfuls of cool water, feels the sticky places round her eyes where her tears have dried.  A headache, a hangover, and her arms are numb.  More water, ice-cold, and she goes to open a window, letting the cool night air flood her senses.  Opening and closing her fingers, letting the feeling return, leaning all the way out of the window to take in the view.  She wants it all in her arms, the lights, the river, the lights in the river, the windows and lamps and hotel rooms which are scattered in the ripples of its vastness, wants to gather them to her chest, hold them in her wide embrace, like some modern-day Li Po, so dear and pretty are they.  Reaching out, for something, for someone, the yearning to see Mina and Momo and Tzuyu melding together into a terrible river of sadness, wider than the one below her window.  In the imperial gardens the chrysanthemums have faded months ago, and then the cherry blossoms have come and gone, leaving the green branches for disappointed tourists.  Perhaps she should have done something different, something that would have saved her job and Momo's, something to stop Mina from going away, something, anything at all.  Something, anything, beyond the stilted life of a failed celebrity, something, anything, out there in the sky above Tokyo.  Leaning, leaning, holding the world in her arms, top-heavy, so heavy-

When she tumbles out of the window, a ragdoll of hair and limp limbs, she is at peace, waits for the ground which seems to take forever to come.

Chapter Text

For the next week, they go on their separate schedules, Jiwoo hurrying around, trying all the foods, sometimes with Heejin, sometimes with Vivian, but Vivian is more often alone in a café somewhere, or sitting by the ocean, watching the waves and the people, trying to forget.  Another day, she takes the local line north, all the way into the hills, and only returns late at night to Jiwoo and Heejin waiting at the reception, worried.  Heejin for her part stays in the dorms, making forays out for food or to take a jog in the cool morning air, returning with her hair slick with sweat and her face flushed.  Sometimes she roams about, takes the trains to the other small towns along the coast, wandering the streets, as if trying to find something, or someone.  When she is free, Mina chats with them in the common room, plays the piano for them.  

"So, Vivi, are you staying in Japan for good?"

"I haven't, I can't just overstay my visa, you know."

"True.  Find a job or something, do they allow you to apply for a job?"

"I haven't, I need to, I didn't plan on staying, like,"

"Oh well.  Heejin?"

"I don't know, either.  I think I might have to go back to Korea for a while, figure out what I want to do."  She sighs, takes another sip of beer.  Mina is off for the day, and they are at bar, soaking in the warmth, sipping at their beers, eating endless beans as they wait for the grilled chicken.  Heejin's gaze flicks between the tabletop, the beans, morose.  

"What about you?  Don't you have work to go back to?"  Vivian, inquisitive.  

"Yes, after next week.  I want to stay a while longer, though."  Wistful, looking at the counter behind which the skewers were grilled through the yellow of the beer, distorted and muted.  Another swig, another bean.  

It is the second week, and Momo visits the hospital for the fourth time.  Sana tumbled onto a ledge, and then grazed a second and hit a third before tumbling, ragdolling, freefalling the rest of the way until she hit the canvas roof over the café below, like a scene out of a Jackie Chan movie, except there was nothing really funny about it this time.  The first ledge had winded her, and then the next had snagged her arm somehow, the concrete scraping it raw, and then smacked her hips and belly against the third before the seven stories it took her to hit the canvas, planting her lower body straight through the ripping mass of it before slamming her into the table below, her the bones in her legs dislocating and fracturing before the table crushed her ribcage in, before finally her face and nose crumpled into the ground, saving her forehead and brain from the worst, the force of it still more than enough to knock her out cold.  Now, staring at her, unresponsive, Momo is cut adrift, does not know what to do.  At least she is breathing, through the protective braces which swaddle her, she is breathing if shallowly, she tells herself over and over, at least she isn't dead, but it is scant consolation.  Tzuyu will come tomorrow, but their schedules won't match up for another week.  

Tzuyu watches as Momo almost falls apart, helpless.  She has tried what she could, but all her efforts only remind Momo that she is not Sana.  Sana, all alone in her flat, and Momo, who hadn't spoken to her in too long, far too long.  What can she say which will not make the guilt worse?  She watches, puts her to bed when she passes out from drink the first day, calls their colleagues to try to get her out of work the next day.  When Momo wakes, she is there with a glass of water, and when Momo says the same words ever more dully into the night which will not reply her, she is there, just there, hoping that she is enough, that what she can do is enough to tether Momo to this side of things.  What was Sana thinking?  Was it worth it, as the ground rushed to meet her?  Sometimes, after another long night at work, she wonders, wonders if Sana saw something there, glimmering in the wide night of the big city, beyond.  After a week, Momo only sobs for a few minutes every night before sleep takes over, and Tzuyu counts it as a win.  

The phone rings, and Tzuyu rushes to answer, hoping it is good news.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mo, oh, is that you, Tzu?"  The voice, too high to be Momo, too soft to be Chaeyoung, slapping her in the face even over the crackling phone line.

"Mina," she breathes into the receiver, not daring to believe it.

"Yeah.  I, I found a job somewhere, it's really nice so far, tell Momo and Sana I'm fine, I, don't try to find me, the people here are really nice, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"

"Mina!  I, Sana, she," but the line cuts off, and Tzuyu screams, screams into the empty apartment, and who cares what the neighbours think, who gives a damn when Sana is teetering between life and death and Mina has just hung up on her, unceremoniously, not even waiting for her to finish her sentence.  Even now, Sana could have slipped over to the other side already, her vitals could be giving out, the doctors could be rushing to save her flagging heart for all she knows, and Mina has the insouciance to, the nerve to just, how, it is too much, altogether, and it isn't Mina's fault, it's all Mina's fault, as Tzuyu collapses onto the sofa, waiting for a second call which will not come.

"Tzu?"  She is peacefully asleep on the couch now, but cans of cheap beer lie crumpled up in the bin, and one she forgot about is still on the table, exactly as though she has squeezed them flat in a rage.  

"Oh, uh, Mo?  Sorry, I, forgot, there's one I forgot, sorry."

"What happened?"

"Mina."

"Mina?"

"She called," Tzuyu says miserably, "she called, she's doing fine."

"That's, like, good?"

"I was, I wanted to tell her about Sana, but she just, she hung up on me."

"She-"

"I guess it's better if she doesn't know."  At this she turns away to face the back of the couch.  Momo, stunned for several moments, collects herself and pulls a chair over.  She sits and watches the sniffling Tzuyu for several minutes, reaching out tentative feelers of comfort, like trying to figure out where to pet a cat without getting clawed.  Finally her arm settles over Tzuyu's shoulder, and her fingers hang down so that Tzuyu grabs them in her own.  She feels the thumb and fingers wrap around her own, feels the fingertips along her knuckles and palm (Sana's delicate fingers, smashed unceremoniously against the pavement, with enough force to tear the tendons, chip the bones), feels the heaving of the ribcage below her arm grow calm and settled (Sana's ribs, cracked, chipped, shattered in three places, poking into her lungs, Sana's breath after the operation, shallow and bubbling).

The next day, Heejin stays in again, lazing around, adorable in her long jacket, and Jiwoo and Vivian go over to the next town to do some sightseeing.  Mina is on cleaning duty this time, straightening out the beds, dusting the ornaments, cleaning the toilets.  Jeongyeon sits like a cat at the common room counter, watching for guests.  At dinner, the two of them convince Heejin to go with them to a soba place, and Heejin joins them, waving to Mina as they leave.  Yet when they return, Jiwoo and Vivian hurry back to their rooms without a glance at her, and Heejin rushes after them, shoots an apologetic glance back.  What?  Was there something wrong?  

Her workday over, she sits in the common room, wondering.  

"Hey."  Heejin's voice.

"What, what happened?  Did you guys quarrel?"

"Uh, no, well, a little, but uh, they, we went into a record shop after dinner, and you know how Jiwoo likes to buy random stuff?  Well, uh, we sort of saw your face on the vinyls.  I think they just got a shock."

"And, uh, you?"

"I guess I don't care either way, but I think they feel a bit lied to?  I don't know, but I think they don't like that, even if it's, you know, harmless."  Well, she had taken her mask off when hanging out with them, but, all the same, wasn't that, they didn't get it, urgh.

She goes to their room (they have asked Jeongyeon to move them to the same four-bed room), and Chuu is there, glaring at her.

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"I, I didn't want, I didn't want too many people to know, that's all."

"That's so cool, though!"  Chuu pouts.  "Did you get to meet lots of famous idols, too?"

"Some of them, I guess.  I don't think I got to talk to Seiko properly, but I got to meet Matsutotya Yumi once or twice."

"What about concerts?  How does it feel, doing a concert?"  Vivi now, the round eyes curious.  She sighs, resigning herself to the usual lines of questioning, except she can be a little more honest than with the magazines and TV show hosts.

"I mean, it's exciting, I guess.  And it's hard to believe you're doing it until they start cheering, that's when the rush really hits."

"Did you have to diet and stuff?  Did they ban you from dating?"

"Diet?  I guess they had, sort of, guidelines?  Unless we had to do sexy photoshoots, there wasn't much point in the serious diets.  Have you seen the Candies in their casual photobooks?  They definitely didn't starve for those.  Naoko at the beach, well, that's a different matter.  And, well, dating, I never really got the chance," and that is her honest answer.  She has heard somewhere that the entertainment industry is full of lesbians, but she needs to find the person who had started the rumour and give them a good thrashing, since her success rate had been exactly zero.  Well, Sana had been pretty obviously into an oblivious Momo, but they didn't count.

"Smoking, though, after the whole Warabe thing especially, nobody dared to touch a cigarette until they were safely at home.  Not that I smoke, but the others did."  She lapses into wistful silence, thinking again of other times, the smell of corridors, waiting rooms, studios.  They are still staring at her, and she smiles.  Chuu's expression is hard to read, almost sad.

"I auditioned, actually," Chuu says, out of the blue.  And then despite Heejin and Vivi's pressing, she doesn't say anything more.  A little deflated, they go to bed, and Mina goes back to her room, a little put out as well.  What was their deal?

Heejin can almost see it before her, the sea of people in front of the stage, the parties, the TV programmes with famous personalities.  Something vast was lost, she senses, a whole way of life which vanished into thin air, a wave which crested and peaked and ebbed, even before the first Korean idols.  She holds her hand up in the dim of the shared room, as if trying to grasp it, the dreams of so many men and women on the airwaves, illusory.  She wonders about applying for another job here.  The sea is nice at night.  Sitting up, she changes into her puffer jacket, slips out of the room, past the empty common room and reception.  Even the narrow street seems wider in the emptiness of the night.  Stars, in swathes barely visible, with pinpricks of brightness in constellations she never learnt to recognise.  She walks along the street, slowly.  What do the others dream of, even now?  Perhaps Vivian dreams of happier days with her boyfriend, perhaps Jiwoo dreams of the life which could have been, if she had passed the audition.  Perhaps Mina, the mysterious beauty whose smile always seems smaller, more reserved than the others, dreams of old friends now scattered to the winds.  Without thinking, she has reached the end of the street.  She has forgotten that a bus or train would be needed to get to the sea, but it is less than an hour's walk, in any case.

The air is cool, and the breeze is cool.  She passes flowers and faded flowers, willows by a canal.  

The sea at night, dark, deep dark, the roaring of waves which she imagines have come on the wind from Hawaii or California, riding the wind for thousands of miles of endless empty ocean only to crest and break in a nameless Japanese town by a sea, seen only by a jobless Korean woman who needs to get her life in order soon.  The beach is empty, with not even a loving couple or lonely fisherman to break the empty sand.  Mina mentioned the youth gangs which roamed at night, she just remembered, tormenting the homeless and harassing the women, and she pressed down her fear to enjoy the view.  No moon, either, or a sliver thereof, blocked by the sea wall which towers over the beach.  A vending machine glows onto the sand, and she buys a drink, a peach soda which may be a little sweet for her taste, but whatever.  

Chaeyoung pushes her chair back from the canvas, takes out another cigarette, and goes to the little window, from which she can see the road behind the warehouse, more warehouses, more factories, an evening of wind and high clouds.  She thought Tzuyu was pretty much over her friend's disappearance, but now something else is weighing her down, making her light steps heavy.  She wishes she knew what it is, but Tzuyu has been reticent about her other circle of friends at the best of times, especially after the Momo incident(s).  The model would probably accept if she asked for a second session, but she doesn't really need one, only wants an excuse to see her again.  She berates herself, trying to remind herself what had happened the last time she had feelings for anyone.  This is just a crush, though, just a small little obsession with seeing the full lips and barbie-doll face in real life, nothing serious.  The way she defended Tzuyu, and Mina, Myoui Mina, that was cute, too.  It would pass, like everything else, lost to the cigarette smoke and wind.  

A knock on the door, probably Jihyo.  She imagines for a single moment that it is Momo, come to apologise, to accept the dinner date, but it really is just Jihyo.  They want to have dinner, ostensibly to celebrate something or the other, but really to cheer Tzuyu up.  She isn't even the youngest among them, but nobody wants to see her kicked-puppy face, nobody can see it without the urge to give her a big hug, as big as her small arms will allow, the urge to whisper in her ears that everything, whatever it is, will be okay, if only it will stop the fake smile from sagging back into muted sadness during their breaks.  

"Okay, we have work later, so no drinking."
"Yes, boss," Chaeyoung snaps back, right on cue, and Tzuyu barely cracks a smile.  Oh well.  The others are busy ordering, but she only stares at the wall, or at her hands.  Chaeyoung pops a braised peanut into her open mouth and she chews on it obediently, with a giggle.  Laughing, that was good.  As if startled back to life, Tzuyu notices the sheaf of menus they have taken and takes one, glancing over it glumly, makes her order in a soft, sad voice which makes Chaeyoung want to smash her cup of tea on the ground.  

Tzuyu lets the strange strident music take her over, lets the part of her which wants to dance do its thing, taking over her brain enough to forget that one of her friends is in a town far away, avoiding her, and another is teetering between life and death.  Of the remaining friends, two of them seem to be secretly attracted to each other without really knowing it themselves.  She wonders if she should play matchmaker, if only to distract her from everything else.  She makes her face appropriately sultry for this number, and after the costume change is a cheesy number where she lets the cute out, scrunching up her face, using her eyes and mouth the way Seulgi told her to, and it seems to work, as far as the hooting and applause goes.  Back in the staff room, taking a break before the waitressing.  There is a roomful of Thai businessmen today, and she has been assigned to them after this.  She watches as Seulgi takes the seat opposite her, waves a small hello as Chaeyoung scoots in for a chat.  

"Feeling better?" and Tzuyu has the sense not to lie, shakes her head.  That makes Chaeyoung look crestfallen though, that was definitely bad, and Seulgi is pouting too.
"Do you want to switch?  I can-"
"No, it's fine, you've done the VIP rooms the last three shifts."
"If you're sure," Seulgi sighs.  In the end it goes alright, barely.  She can summon a smiling and flirty Tzuyu for just long enough to keep them happy, and her face helps a lot.  When they finally stumble away with the cabs she has called for them, she flops down, no longer caring if the armchair is one of the reserved ones or not.  Music, chatter, footsteps, the clacking of the dancer's hard shoes.  It would be Kazuha's unit on the stage now.  Drums, throbbing, soaring strange violins, a voice yelling, or singing.  Shadows in strange colours, mixing and unmixing, fingers and cups of translucent drinks blurred and enlarged on the wall.  She plucks at the fabric of the tight outfit against her skin, fiddles with the flashy hairpiece.  They had liked it, a lot.  At least none of them were too touchy, today.  Without thinking her heels have come off, and she massages her soles for a while, watching as the shadows go by.  A woman, her hair outlined in blue on the wall, and somehow she can see the strands of hair which stray from her head of bobbed hair.  

At length she rubs her eyes, and goes to the staff room to pass the rest of her break.  Kazuha comes in swinging for a change of costume, and a few minutes later goes swinging out again, followed by two pairs of eyes.  

"You look tired."
"It's fine.  Well, I am tired, but they were fine.  Nothing too out of line."
"That's nice."  Seulgi got up, went behind the armchair to massage her shoulders, and she doesn't object today.  
"Do you mind me asking what happened?"  Seulgi hopes she counts as a close enough friend to know what is eating her up inside.
"My other friend, oh to hell with it, just don't tell too many people."
"Sure?  Why?"
"Sana got into an accident, and now she's in a coma, and we don't know if she'll make it.  Yes, that Sana, the one you're thinking of.  Kansai trio.  I'm sure Momo's having it much worse than I am."  She feels the pressure on her shoulders stop, feels the arms collapse around her neck.  Seulgi's face, Seulgi's hair, pressed close against hers, as she tries to find something to say, and cannot.  
"I don't know how Momo's been able to stand it, frankly, she just goes to work, and tries to pretend I don't hear her crying herself to sleep.  And she still has it in her to try and console me, somehow?  Some friend I am."  Seulgi's only response is to place her hands on her shoulders, not really knowing what to say.  
"It sounds like, it sounds like you're being the best friend you can," she finally manages.  
"I haven't even-"
"It's the way you say it," she responds, "just keep doing whatever it is you're doing, I promise its helping.  Just be careful, okay?"  Be careful of what, she didn't really say, but Tzuyu nods anyway.  The break is almost over, but she doesn't want to leave her armchair.  

Well, Sana finds it inordinately funny for some reason, laughing hysterically at herself in the hospital bed to the unamused Momo and Tzuyu.

"Ah, it hurts to laugh, sorry, Mo, I'm so stupid," and Momo sighs.  Tzuyu is with her today, and Sana stares vacantly at the two pretty faces above her bed.  At night she is woken by strange pains, and wonders if she will ever see something that is not the sad ceiling of the hospital.  They prop her up to let her read books, which is nice.  At least the big surgeries are over, but she doesn't dare to ask how much they cost, including the scans and tests.  Yet it torments her on the sleepless nights, how much of it is insured, how much she will have to pay even with the insurance, at the end of it all, how she can afford to be here, lying here and watching the faint green light of the smoke alarm, slowly healing or dying, she doesn't quite know which.  At least she is awake, Momo tells her, but now that she has ended even the remnants of her modelling career, what is the point of being awake?  Sakura comes, Dahyun calls from Korea, spending precious international minutes just to hear the precious words which reassure her that Sana is fine, or if not fine, at least recovering, but Mina, where is Mina?  Even a call, even a message, but there is no news, and Momo only sighs and looks away when she asks.  Tzuyu hides her change in expression better, but Sana can see it at once, the tensing up of her face, the rigid smile which doesn't fool her.  Something has happened, and they don't want to tell her just yet.  Well, she won't push.  It can wait until when she is better.

Jiwoo is waiting for her at the door when she returns, and pulls her in angrily.  She is fairly dragged along to their shared room, which is still just thre three of them, before Jiwoo closes the door, almost slamming it before pulling back at the last moment when she remembers it is the dead of night.  

"What-"

"I woke up to go to the toilet, and then you were just gone, and you didn't come back for so long, what were, it's dangerous, and, oh my god Heejin what is wrong with you"

"Shhh, wait, it turned out fine"

"And if you'd gotten, attacked, a-, assaulted?"  

"Shhhhh, okay, I'm sorry, why are you so worried for me anyway?"

"Because we're like, friends?  In case you hadn't noticed?"

"Oh, I mean, I guess."

"Guys?"

"Oh, hey, Vivi."

"Fuck you, Heejin, oh my god, I was-"  Jiwoo, or Chuu as they have started calling her, is almost in tears, and Heejin whispers reassurances which don't seem to have any effect.  

"Sorry, am I being weird?"

"No, not at all, I guess I'd be worried too.  Mina did say something about youth gangs around here."

"About what?"  Now Vivi is glaring daggers at her, too.  

"Uh, nothing.  Let's go to bed."

They share a tight hug, and Heejin feels like she is back in high school, at a sleepover, except her friend's spacious home is a small hostel on the pacific coast of Japan, and the classmates she barely kept in touch with are replaced by Chuu and Vivi, foreigners like herself who will have to leave in a few days.  She changes back into her pyjamas, and flops onto her bed, listening to the murmur of voices in the dark, not really paying attention, and slips off to sleep without knowing what they were saying.

Chapter Text

When Sana takes her first steps after the fall with a walking frame, it is almost summer, and the first cicadas are buzzing in the trees outside the hospital window.  Another two weeks later, and she can limp on a cane out to a waiting Momo, watch as Tzuyu stumbles out of the car to help her into the back seat, and watch the first scenery out of the hospital in a month, scorching sun and swaying trees, and clouds which loom in the distance.  They tell her that Tzuyu has moved out to a little flat in a suburb of Tokyo she hasn't heard of, and that Mina called, only to hang up before Tzuyu could tell her about her accident.  Her face falls a little, but she is glad just to be out and about, even with the cane.  They make it to the flat fine, but even walking to the elevator, to Momo's flat makes her legs and back hurt in strange and new ways she didn't think of before.  She collapses on the sofa, accepts the glass of iced tea gladly, pats at the sweat which she feels on her temples and forehead.  

"How do you feel?"  

"Fine.  Everything seems to work, roughly."  Tzuyu sits beside her, and Sana smiles at even the shoulder which leans against hers.  Momo pulls a chair over from the dining table, but barely a minute later she is fretting, asking if she needs another drink, a pillow, a stool to rest her legs, but Sana only smiles, shakes her head, wonders when she became a child to be fussed over.

Sana wants to hit something.  Nobody told her it would be this difficult.  Well, the nurse had said so, and the doctor, but she hadn't believed them.  She can walk, sure, if that means going several metres before she has to stop, panting, and take a rest before the next few steps.  She can eat, sure, if that means dropping her chopsticks every few minutes.  She hates the way Momo looks at her when she does that.  And then there is the boredom.  No more running, no more dancing, and definitely no more modelling, unless the scars on her face get suddenly smoothed over tomorrow.  She reads, she reads the books she tells Momo to get from her flat, she does the exercises they have told her to do, but it barely passes the long hours when Momo is not in the flat.  Tzuyu visits, and brings snacks, new books.  They watch TV in silence, listen to old songs on the radio, but it is far from enough, and when Tzuyu leaves, she only feels emptier than before.  

It is raining, a rain which peters out to a drizzle and starts up again, and the light of the day fades to grey, and the lights have just turned on in the streets.  The distant buildings are hidden by the sheen of rain, and now it starts up again, heavier than ever, and she pushes herself from the chair to the window, taking the chance to watch the rain on the canal before Momo comes back to bother her again.  She turns on the radio, claws at one of the scars for a bit to stop it from itching.  Old songs and rain.  As she goes back to the window, she turns a little too fast, and winces.  Rain.  A warbling voice, Takada Mizue or someone.  She married the Sumo guy, right?  Is Keiko Fuji still married to the Utada guy?  She shakes her head, focusing back on the rain and sheen of water on the roads.  The light is almost all gone now, and the shadows of the apartment are strange.  Just as she goes to turn on the light, she hears the door creak open.  God damn it.  She prepares for the lecture about turning on the lights in case she falls down, but today none is forthcoming.  Momo, tired, falls onto the couch, and Sana hums along to the radio, wondering how long the moment will last.  

Tzuyu takes a mouthful of the failed fried rice, and washes it down with coke.  The sweetness and tingle of gas absolve her of the mushy rice and too-crunchy carrots.  At least the luncheon meat tastes good.  Then again, luncheon meat always tastes good.  What had Mina cooked for her the first day?  Fried udon, with nice beef.  She had taken a look at the fridge to find the beef, a grade above anything Mina had any right to be buying, but kept mum about it.  She sighs, understanding where Mina's savings went.  She is still covering the rent and upkeep of the empty Yokohama apartment, as if hoping she will return.  At what point does she just give it up?  At least the full-time work at the night club pays well, and the clients are generous when a pretty girl serves them.  She makes a mental note to add less water to the rice, another note to add the soy sauce around the side of the pan the way she saw Mina do it, wincing as she bites into an extra salty clump of rice.  She perseveres through the rest of the rice, washing it down with coke.  She should have asked Mina or Momo for tips.  She stares up into the lone lamp hanging from the ceiling, illuminating the dining-living area.  At least there is a window.  Outside, it is raining.  Sailor Moon is on, and the empty plate goes unwashed as she sits down to watch, as the opening notes of Moonlight Densetsu fill the tiny space.  She falls asleep before they defeat the villain, and wakes up to to another show, a rerun of Urusei Yatsura.  

An attractive housewife sells her a brand of detergent, and then an ad for tourism in Shikoku, somewhere she has never been.  Is Mina in Shikoku?  Perhaps she has gone past Kansai after all, and into the sparse areas beyond.  She remembers song of seagulls and love, Seto no Hanayome, and the cover by Fong Fei-Fei.  Outside, it is raining.  The other side of the street is a cheap hotel, and she watches the silhouette of a woman in the yellow, behind the light veil of rain.  She likes her decor, even if it is just the painting, and several odds and ends on the dining table and posters above the TV, and then the print she hung above Momo's sofa without asking.  Despite the rain, she takes her umbrella, wears her boots, and is out of the door.  

Slowly, quietly she steps, watching her boots in the pavement in puddles.  It is raining, but the air is mild.  The rain rattles on her umbrella, and her boots splash on the pavement.  She walks, slowly, feeling out each step, as if walking for the first time after a long convalescence.  She lets her boots rest atop a puddle, shifting them so that the water ripples about them, listening to the patter of rain on her umbrella.  A gust of wind, and she tilts her umbrella against it.  A large building and lobby beyond the glass, empty now save a single bored security guard.  Before she knows it, she has reached the big junction, and she raises her umbrella to get a view of the offices and shops against the glowing clouded sky.  She thought she had forgotten the pale face, the gentle laugh, but they have not faded.  She called to say she was safe, and not to look for her.  Is that enough?  

The hostel is quiet again, or quieter.  Perhaps it is busier from the summer tourists, some Americans and a German, a couple from Fukuoka who look alarmingly alike, yet without the Korean girls it is lonely.  She wonders how Vivian, Jiwoo, Heejin are doing, how Dahyun is doing.  She sighs, and finishes up the corridor, goes to pour the water away, keep the mop and bucket: the usual cleaning lady is sick, so there is no cute barista in a mask behind the counter for now.  The Fukuoka couple chirps their goodbyes at her as they leave for sightseeing, and she watches their short hair vanish into the door, thinking of Tzuyu, and what could have been.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"Just thinking of, of old friends."

"I see.  From before-"

"Yeah.  Before."

"Idol friends?"

"No, well, that's before before.  This is just before I was, uh, on the streets."

"Oh."  Jeongyeon nodded quickly.

"It feels silly now."

"It does?"

"I met this girl-"

"An old story."

"Sure, but she's, like, the prettiest girl you've ever seen."

"And you're not?"

"You haven't seen her."

"And you two-"

"Yes, but, well, actually, I," why is she here again?  And not back in Yokohama?  She doesn't want to explain why she has uprooted herself, for some reason.  Too late now.  Jeongyeon, as always, doesn't push.  

Chaeyoung paces glumly about.  She knew what she was doing when she poured all those hours into the big picture of Tzuyu, or at least she thought she did, but the dent it has made in her finances has turned out to be worse than she thought.  Well, this month, this month at least should go fine.  The delay in the fees last month left her rather tighter than she hoped, but the old fart who wanted the picture of the boots and soaked sneakers in the field has at least paid half of the promised sum this month.  She brushes the thoughts away, as she would a fly, and hurries out of the door, strides down the usual steps, perhaps a little too forcefully, and into the summer night.  Yet the thought will not stop nagging at her, the insidious question of whether it has been worth throwing away several hours a day for that one painting.  Frustrated, she makes her steps quicker, tries to pour the ugly feelings into the walk, but it only makes her sweat, only makes her calves burn.  Should she have just abandoned the idea, then, shelved it that one winter's day when she had seen Tzuyu asleep in the large chair?  Equally bizarre, equally impossible.  She could no more have stopped herself from the notion than she could have stopped herself from breathing.  Her steps along the street slow, and she watches her shadow, watches the lines of the factories shift as she walks by them, watches the shadows of ledges and windows and doors in the yellow lights of the street.  She breathes, taking in the warmth of the air.  The factories, the chips and stains on the paint, she has passed them many times now in her strolls, but she likes them all the same.  What was the Sei Shonagon quote?  The cherry blossoms bloom anew each year, but they are beautiful each time.   Tufts of hardy grass which peek from the cracks.  Mindlessly she walks, numbing the rushing thoughts with steady footfalls, letting the rhythm of her own feet lull her.  

The road goes on, under a highway where the smell of something strange or something rotten makes her hurry on.  Nobody sleeps underneath tonight, but she doesn't dare to look too closely.  The road goes on.  

She finds herself among fields, blocks of deep black, spotted with distant low houses.  Where is she?  A vending machine glows improbably by the road, and a shelter which used to be a sort of trust-based market, as far as she can make out from the peeling painted words in the sodium orange.  Boxes, metal boxes a little like lockers for the produce, and little slots for the payment.  Now it is all empty, all silent, and only the crickets can be heard in the night of clouds and few stars.  Where is she?  Her steps slow, and then stop, looking for a sign, an indication of where she may be.  She retraces her steps, but finds herself at a fork, with no sign of the factories in sight, only the endless road and unfamiliar warehouses.  She picks at her collar where the sweat has gathered, feels under her shirt to scratch her back.  Where is she?  She advances to where she can see the lights at the edge of the fields again.  If she kept going, would she reach a village, or a town?  She crosses a stone bridge over a canal, rushing in the deep night, and a sudden hoot makes her jump.  She is aiming for the houses on the other side of the field now, but the field buzzes with insects, with the flapping of soft wings, things which she doesn't understand, or understood long ago, in a village in Korea, and then forgot.  

The dark sea of the fields takes forever, even on the straight and narrow road which runs between the two vasts of dark.  Without streetlights, her steps are slow, one in front of the other, one in front of the other.  

The lights are on.  She rings the doorbell, once, twice, but there is no answer.

"Hello?" Crickets, not even a dog.  A rustling from within the house.  The door unlocks, and someone wizened, someone old, approaches the gate.  Her cane taps against the tarmac of the road.  Tap, tap, tap.  Chaeyoung finds herself backing away, and flees before she can meet her eyes. 

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" she thinks aloud to herself.  Has she just run away from a random old lady because she thought she was in a horror movie?  Panting, she looks about.  Around her are low shops, and from a window a birdcage hangs, empty.  All the shops are shuttered and dark, except for the glow of a convenience store at the end of the road.  Somehow, she hates the fact that she has to walk past the whole row of metal shutters and blocky shop signs to get there.  Not even a dog.  Her footsteps are loud, far too loud, and at the end of the road she bursts into the store to the electronic jingle and the clerk's monotone welcome, and heaves a sigh of relief when nothing untoward happens.

"Excuse me, how can I get to XYZ-cho, R-machi?"

"XYZ?  That's far, at least an hour's walk.  Should I help you call a cab?"  The clerk's young voice, polite to a fault.

"No, not a cab, which way is it to walk?"

"Are you sure?  It's really far, at least an hour."

"Yes, I think I should walk, just tell me, please," Chaeyoung bites her lip, and her voice creeps just a little higher.

"Well, if you walk further that way, then turn right at the next junction and keep going, you should get there.  Probably."  Does she trust him?  Does she?  She takes in a deep breath, runs out to check the street name again.

"Sorry, can I, can I use the phone?  I need to, uh, call someone."

"Sure."  He looks dubiously at her, but she is firm.

"Hello?  Jihyo?  I, uh, sorry, I got lost again, in the middle of nowhere, please, come quickly, uh, the address, its Q-mura, the main street, uh, the convenience store, please, I'm sorry, okay, I will."

Chaeyoung heaves a sigh of relief as she sees the familiar factories come into view.  Not long to home now.

"What did I say about"

"Sorry, Hyo, that place gave me the creeps."

"How did you even get there?  You walked all the way?"

"I was, uh, thinking about stuff."

"That business with the Tzuyu painting?"

"How did you-"

"You've been in the studio all day recently."

"Well, yeah, and I don't know if I can do all of them in time."

"It'll be fine.  Just don't keep getting lost, I can't bail you out all the time."

"It was really creepy!  I hate the whole village, it makes me cold all over."

"Okay, we'll get back and relax for a bit.  You can't just paint stuff all day in your studio, it's probably bad for your health."

"Mmm."  

Chaeyoung finishes off a second glass.  It's nice when it's Jihyo buying the drinks for her.  Well, the drinks were hers to begin with.  Or the club's.  Whatever.  Whiskey is whiskey. 

"Come on, Chaeng, don't drink too much."

"Yes, mom," she shoots back with a roll of her eyes.

"Was it really that scary?"

"You weren't there, Hyo, it was straight out of a horror movie.  Whatever.  You wouldn't get it."  The first customers are trickling in for the night, but they stay put at the armchairs and watch.  Today Seulgi will be coming.  Chaeyoung casts her eye on the familiar shelves of bottles, the rows of glasses, the high ceiling over the dance floor.

"How's Tzuyu these days?"

"Better, much better.  I think something happened to her friend, but now its fine."

"Wasn't that last year?  Or January or something."

"No, a different friend.  She has awful luck with friends, apparently," sighs Chaeyoung.

On the third glass she sees in her mind's eye, terribly clear, the house, the glow of the windows, the door opening to the old lady and her tapping cane.  Without the gate, perhaps.  Or else the whole framed by two bars of the gate, with the white gate wall in blocking off one side of it.  She imagines it as a Hiroshige print, as a photo, wonders if it will work.  She imagines it with the empty bird-cage hanging from a window, without, wonders about giving her a torch or a lamp, like the old dramas.  Jihyo barely raises an eyebrow when she runs off to make more sketches, and sighs, goes to make a cup of strong tea.

"Thanks, Hyo."

"Please don't sleep too late again."

"I won't, I just need to finish up-"

"Whatever, just don't look like a zombie every morning."

"Fine."

It takes just a week, a little more than a week for Sana to reach her breaking point.  The day is hot, terribly hot, and she watches from the air-conditioning as the rectangle of Tokyo she can see from her sofa burns in the heat.  Momo is asking her what she wants for lunch, or asking whether she has done her exercises and taken her pills, or something, she can't really tell anymore.

"Will you stop fussing for five seconds?  Is this why Tzuyu wanted to get her own place?"  Momo has no reply but to freeze in place, not quite understanding, not quite believing what she has just heard.
"Look, I can do that myself, so just- whatever."  Sana makes a superhuman effort, and pulls herself out of Momo's disbelieving, accusing gaze, and walks without stumbling out of the door, which she has enough strength to close with a slam, and Momo sits on the sofa, defeated, and by the time she has the presence of mind to run out after Sana, she is gone, perhaps in a taxi, perhaps in the subway station, already on a train, and a familiar feeling bubbles up in Momo's chest, not knowing which way to go to find her, not knowing where in Tokyo she may be. 

"Hello?"

"Tzu?  It's Momo."

"Oh, Mo, what is it?"

"Sana went out."

"That's nice."

"What?"

"Like, for a walk?"

"No, fuck, no, she went out and I don't know where she is, she got angry at me and went out and I don't know where she is and if she went back to her place or if she went over to your place and"

"Oh.  She's, she's not at my place, no, I'm, I'm sorry.  She'll be okay, she can get around."

"I guess."  She is about to go over to Momo's flat, when the phone rings again.  

"Hello?"

"Tzuyuuuu, it's, uh, Sana, can I, can I drop by your place?  I hate Momo now, and I don't want to go back home just yet."

"Sure."  Tzuyu sighs, wonders what it is.

"I'm nearby, be there in ten minutes."

"Okay."

When Sana shows up, she is dripping with sweat, and slightly drunk.

"Sana, what-"

"I got some, uh, drinks, from the conbini.  Not, well, not a great idea, heh, heheh, hehehehehe"

"Sana!  You can't just walk off like that,"

"Can too.  You don't know how it is, having Hirai Momo fussing over you.  God, she's a maniac.  She keeps telling me to sleep in her bed, its worse than the hospital."

"So you're going back to your flat?"

"Yup.  I can't take it anymore."

"Momo-"

"I don't want to hear it.  If she comes over I'll bean her with a chair."  Sana looks around, and sees for the first time the dark painting above the sofa.  

"Is that-"

"Oh, yeah, that's me, Chaeyoung painted it,"

"For you?"

"Yeah, I, I don't really know why she spent so much time on it-"

"She must really like you."

"Well, not like that, I don't think."

"Are you sure?"

"I think she might have a crush on Momo?"

"What?"

"She randomly mentions her sometimes, even though Momo's modelling thing with her was over long ago.  She asked her out for a date afterwards, do you know?"

"She what?"

"Okay, not really, she just asked if she wanted to get dinner.  Well, knowing her, she mumbled something about dinner, and Momo just refused on the spot."  Sana laughs and laughs in reply, and Tzuyu sighs, pours her another cup of iced tea.  

"Thanks, Tzu, you're an angel."

"And you're a handful, did you know that?"

"Worse than Mina?"

"What?"

"Wasn't she always leaving her stuff for you to clean up in your little shared flat?  Sorry, pretend I never said anything," she adds quickly.  Tzuyu glares at her, but lets it slide.  

Another off day, and Mina chews at the hamburg steak with black pepper sauce, thoughtful.  She washes it down with a sip of the free-flow soda, and takes a spoonful of buttered corn.  She remembers the pre-prepared meal at the Narita airport, and now all that seems far away.  The windows of black sky, the trundling of luggage wheels.  She can still, in her mind, take out a breaded cutlet, a portion of shredded greens,  prepare the plate for the cutlet and rice, she can still see the face at the table waiting for her order, or else on shift with her, following her instructions dutifully until she didn't need to be told what to do.  She still sees the long hair tied up in a bun, the apron two sizes larger than hers for the tall and thin figure, the face which was lovely in profile, from below, from above, pretty no matter how she looked, the eyes and smile which haunt her even in a town far away.  She remembers the voice which told her she had been her bias, as if it were the most obvious thing, even in a sea of more famous idols.  

She sighs when she realises the tears have started.  It will not do to cry out in public, but she cries all the same.  Tzuyu's eyes find her in the dim of the dance floor, but she no longer remembers why she was angry.  She remembers the day she cooked the fried udon with good beef for Tzuyu, remembers how she hung on her every word, hoping for validation.  Where is she staying now?  If not the Yokohama flat, then probably with Momo, closer to her night-club than Sana's place.  Does she still eat fried udon with nice beef?  Does Momo cook it for her?  It is her own fault, she tells herself, over and over, but the thought of Momo being the one to cook for her, eat meals with her makes her tighten up with something too much like jealousy.  She is probably staying with Momo, she thinks, eating Momo's cooking and arguing with Momo's strange obsessions, having tea with Momo in the afternoons and taking long walks along the canal where she looks at everything and nothing in particular.  In her mind's eye, Tzuyu points out a bird along the river to Momo, laughs at some inside joke with Momo and what, what on earth is wrong with her?  She looks the other way as she leaves the eatery, but the cashier has definitely noticed.    

Chapter Text

The way back towards Tokyo is shorter than she remembers, without the weight and baggage of her life dragging her down.  At times she can see the ocean, and at times it is just the suburbs, unending, identical.  She remembers the long commute from Yokohama to Chiba, all the way around the bay, dozing, remembers the last café open at 3 a.m. at the airport.  The train rattles and bumps, and the grab handles sway.  She stares at them for a long time, watching how they sway, watching how they are grabbed, the pale fingers of a tired salaryman as he wipes his face of sweat.  

"The next station is XXX.  The doors on the right will open."  Lulled, lulled to sleep by the cool air and warm glass, her head lolls and then jerks awake.  The door opens, the cicadas flood in, and are muted again as they shut.  A few more stops.  The train slows to a halt, lazily, as if not believing anyone would get off here.  She stands, slowly, not quite believing it either, and walks with just her backpack out onto the station platform, and then past the ticket gates onto the street.  Melting, wavering in the heat, shrill with cicadas, with white and grey.  The hostel should be somewhere close by.  She tries not to remember if she is near Momo's or Sana's flats.  Not Sana, hers is more central.  The bright katakana of the hostel name call out to her from across the street, red against the grey.  She hurries over, not bothering with her umbrella, and gasps in relief as the doors open to air-conditioning.  Yes, she has a reservation.  Myoui.  No, yes please, thank you.  The room is empty, and she takes a bottom bunk.  The street burns in the heat, and she has a few hours to kill.  Lunch first.  

Momo places the omurice and drink on a tray, and walks out to where the Chinese tourists are sitting.  She serves them in the best English she can muster, and then goes back to the counter.  The last arrivals of the latest flight have their lunch, and she waits for the next one.  She wants to do something later, anything.  

The parasol protected her from the worst of the heat, and the cup of iced coffee helped.  Sana has been sitting at the park bench for the better part of the afternoon now, watching, listening to the endless cicadas and occasional cuckoo.  A mother strolls past with two children, a boy and a girl, picture-perfect.  The boy is the elder of the two, and the noisier.  She smiles at them through her mask, thankful her arms are not badly scarred enough for long sleeves.  She turns and takes another gulp of the coffee, feeling the shiver of cold before replacing her mask, letting only the tip of the scar drawn by the table leg fragment peek above it.  The woman and here children dally, as the boy clamours about something or the other, his toy, in a grating yelled voice, and now the girl is yelling too, and Sana feels for the mother, beleaguered by the heat and her insistent offspring.  Distracted, she unmasks to take another mouthful of coffee, and the boy seeing her face yelps, startled into silence.  She masks up again in a hurry.  She bites her lip, feeling out where the line from her cheek to just above her chin crosses her lip, smiles under the mask at the mother and feels the crinkling of scar tissue.  At least the big ones weren't so visible, most of the time.  She watches the curve of the woman's dress, blue below the blue sky, and feels her cheeks stop up, cramp up in indignation, finally giving way to a tear.  

Waking up from her nap, it is almost time to go.  The reception is is playing a song, one of hers.  She blushes.  No doubt the receptionist recognised her name.  The girl at the counter winks at her as she goes out of the door, and instead of feeling embarrassed, today she smiles.  

Momo wipes the last glass, sets the last empty table, and smiles at Sakura, on the night shift today.  The runways glimmer with the evening sun, and she watches the stream of travellers, listens to the endless trundle of suitcases, and walks, very slowly, to the parking.  A couple in tall backpacks laughs past her, and she watches as they get small and vanish past the gate.  The light catches dust in the air, bounces about the cool white of the airport walls and floors and makes it warm.  She passes the handbag store, waves at the bored clerk, who waves back with a smile.  Out of the staff door, she takes the long walk to the carpark, wondering if Sana will finally pick up her calls.  The hum of machines in the warmth of the underground carpark.   She settles in for the long drive back, and today her car eats up a Yamashita Tatsuro CD.  She sways to the beat through the dazzle of fading summer sun.  When the sun dims to red and the lights go on in the streets, she turns on her headlights, and switches the Tatsuro Yamashita at a red light for Nakajima Miyuki.

Tzuyu groans at the full costume.  The warehouse is too large to air-condition properly in summer, something Jihyo forgot back when she started renting it, and today is the first working day the heat outside has been this bad.  Strategic space heaters she only just noticed kept the temperatures bearable through the cold months, but, as Jihyo explained with a sigh, there were no good cooling solutions for summer without resorting to large and noisy industrial fans.  She zips Seulgi's back zipper up, and Seulgi does hers in turn.  The staff room is air-conditioned, at least.  Of the clamour of a hot summer's night on the outskirts of Tokyo only a faint rumour can be heard through the thick door.  She goes to her mirror, and stares for a long time at the colour of her lips, before finally taking out her deeper shade of red.  The black costume, the red tights, the lines of frills which cut this way and that, the leather bits which make her figure clear, the smooth fabrics which stretched over her arms and legs, the cradle of the headpiece about her head, things dreamt up by Jihyo and Chaeyoung and whoever their costume person was, undeniably attractive even in its weirdness.

Immediately out of the train, Mina sweats as she looks about for the transfer.  The buildings here are tired, grey and golden in the light, exhausted with limp heat.  From below the cicadas cry, less insistent now.  A shimmer of glass, a shimmer of steel.  She sips at her bottle of barley tea, and descends the steps, and casts about for the signboard for the local line.  Announcements ring about, and the murmur of the sparse crowd.  A woman in a dress shimmers past as a train roars in from above, and then a sweaty boy runs past for the train.  A few flights of steps later, and she is at the wrong platform, and grunts in irritation, making her way to the opposite side of the tracks.  The train comes, several carriages smaller than she expected, and she boards with the smattering of sweaty passengers, letting the cool air bathe her brow.  The sun dims, the light dims, and the train rattles.  She stares out of the window, at the houses which shimmer with deep yellow, and the factories and pipes and strange sloped buildings red, dark red, bloodstained in the summer setting sun.  

Momo is halfway around the bay when she decides to stop to call Sana again.  Across an anonymous office block, beside an ageing textile shop, she makes her call from the phone booth, watching the lights in the offices, smelling the old plastic, tasting the tang of old sweat on the air.  After the seventh ring there is an answer.  

"Momoring?"

"Satang?  Why haven't you been answering?"

"Just, just wanted my alone time, Mo.  Don't worry about me, I'm not rotting at home, you know, I went to the park today."

"Fine."  There is nothing more to say, so she hangs up, and makes her way back to the rest stop parking.  The tarmac still sizzles with heat, and she hurries back to the car.  

Music and voices which leak through the open door announce Chaeyoung's arrival, and Tzuyu looks at her loose shirt with some band's name on it with more than a little envy.  She plops down next to Tzuyu on the couch without a greeting.  The music fades until the door closes, a whiff of warm air and wine.  Tzuyu turns a little to look at her, at the thin arms, the dark tired eyes.  Before she can say anything, Chaeyoung is leaning against her shoulder, against the folds and frills of her costume, and she sighs.  Half an hour to go.  With her free arm she picks out a cashew and raisin from the snack box, and misses Chaeyoung's mouth.  With a grumble, Chaeyoung grabs them from her gloves and pops them into her mouth herself, chewing, breathing.  Spring is gone, but the plum blossoms still bloom on the print which hangs on the wall.  Somewhere, Kazuha laughs, and someone else, Chaewon or someone, joins in with a giggle.  The even lilt of Chaeyoung's head on her shoulder as she breathes tells her she has fallen asleep.

Momo reaches her flat, and the sky is grey and pink.  Everything is quiet, except the whisper of the radio she forgot to turn off in her bedroom, and the squawk of some crow outside the window.  She turns on the air-conditioning, and slowly undresses.  Might as well, she thinks, might as well.  She goes to turn the radio off, goes to pick out a nice dress, a light dress for the summer, goes to take a shower.  She clips up her bangs, touches up the shadows of her cheeks.  It would be fine to go alone, surely?  She blinks, and her dark eyes blink back.  She flexes and unflexes her fingers, lets her hand trail along the line of her black dress, low, but not plunging too far, sleeved, but flared to leave her arms loose.  A light fragrance, one of her favourite, something light and sweet, flowers and fruit and youth.

Sana snaps awake from the low table, and looks about, confused.  She smells her own sleep-breath, and wrinkles her nose.  Her arms tingle from the nap.  She stands up, and goes to her mirror, turning her arms this way and that, inspecting the ghosts of stitches and sutures, blemishes on her skin.  She sighs at the way her arms and legs have softened from weeks of inactivity.  Still, she rummages for her pink dress among the hangers of her cupboard.  She can still feel pretty, even now.  A soft collar, tapering slightly, falling straight down to just below her knees, simple and pastel.  She looks over her face and her arms, traces the little lines which she has traced many times, a hundred times before.  She can still powder her face, can still colour her lips, can still do her hair.  She picks her accessories, and slowly ties up her hair.  First, she darts to the phone, finds the number for a cab company.

She and Seulgi work to shift Chaeyoung's head, slowly, to lie on the softness of the sofa, with one of the smaller cushions to support her neck.  Chaeyoung only murmurs, and does not wake as they leave.  The heat is not too bad, she tells herself, until a few minutes pass, and she can feel the sweat on her temple.  Wine and laughter and music fill the air, thudding, thumping, and everything is more humid, more visceral, when the air drips with heat and inadequate air-conditioning.  Her hair itches under the headpiece.  They should have designed something different for the summer months, like birds with winter and summer plumage, or arctic foxes.  

Tzuyu fidgets with the ornaments on her costume as she waits for their turn.  The sweat flows freely under the fabric, and she feels it above her makeup.  At least the tights are breathable.  Sort of.  The dance starts, and as Seulgi said, the music lets her forget the beading sweat under the flashy fabric.  Even so, she is desperate to get out of her costume after three dances, and flops into the seat by the bar, staring enviously at a groggy Chaeyoung who lazes on the leather sofa.  The old one was peeling and smelt faintly of vomit in summer, so Jihyo had ordered another.  Several more hours before she can take the thing off.  Chaeyoung laughs when she scratches at the stiff collar, and she glares.

"Ugh, don't sit so close, Tzu, the sweat smells gross."

"Hey!"

"It's true, though.  And it mixes with your per, perfume, ew.  Bring me a whisky on ice, bar girl."  Tzuyu rolls her eyes, goes to take a few more orders.  Chaeyoung squawks when Tzuyu tells her she will have to pay for her own drinks tonight.

"That's for saying I smell."

"Sorry."  

Luckily, the customers don't seem to notice, but she can smell herself as the hour advances.  Urgh.  She hates that Chaeyoung is right.  She tugs at the collar gain, adjusting it.  She puts on the smile again, ignoring the smell, and goes to the next table, hailed by one of the regulars.  He is jovial, he, too, is sweating, laughing, drunk, and Tzuyu only smiles as he flirts with her.  Tries to flirt with her, messing up his words as his friend cringes inwardly and outwardly beside him, trying to stem his increasingly embarrassing flow of platitudes.  Tzuyu smiles, shrugs it off, playful.  He loves it. 

Sana counts out the cash for the cab with a heavy heart.  What is she doing?  She doesn't know, after all.  To feel the dimness of lights and the smell of bodies and drinks, to let a mouth of smoke and pale fire slide down her throat bidden, to be sultry, to be in the lights which swim and the bodies and dresses which swim and slither and slide.  She gets into the cab, slides in as though she is on the way to a shoot, and the driver smiles.  With a sputter and whine they are away, and he guides the old vehicle onto the highway several notches above the speed limit; she smiles as the flats rush by, and watches the distant rows of lights, orange glows so far away, and one of them, she likes to think, is where she will be going.

When Mina finally exits the station gates, the sky is almost completely dark.  The streets stretch before her, rows of old flats which peter out into shophouses, into wide factory grounds.  She checks the map again, and swallows.  She didn't think much of it when they came in Momo's car, but now the kilometre or so to the warehouse seems intolerably far, for a pretty woman alone, as the sky darkens.  Yet the shops in the street are open, and the lights shine in the windows.  There are no shadows for strange men to lurk in, no stretches of empty road where no-one will see her.  She passes the street, looking out for the numbers on the houses.  The sky dims, and the street is bright with lamps.  The buzz of cicadas from the grass as she passes.  Angular factories loom, but she presses on, past the terrain vague.  She passes under a highway, and suppresses the old urge to wonder if it would be a nice shelter in winter.  No, she has a nice job now, with Jeongyeon and Nayeon.  The warehouses are old and metal-roofed, picked out by stray lights, silhouetted against the sky.  Quicker now, quicker.  

After the second dance of the night, she is about to go for her break when she sees a pretty girl in a bow-shaped black dress.  Chaeyoung is still lounging, drinking something else, or whisky mixed with something.  

"Mo!"

"Tzuyu!  That was, uh, good.  Really cute and, and sexy.  When is your next dance?"  They lean close to make themselves heard.

"In an hour, more or less.  Where's Sana?"

"I came alone.  Looks like you improved from last time."

"Really?

Chaeyoung sits straighter, her half-closed eyes fluttering open as Momo approaches, and Momo doesn't notice.  Tzuyu says things, she doesn't really know what, something about the weather, her costume, and Chaeyoung doesn't even notice herself leaning forward, trying to find something to add to the conversation.  The slim costumed figure stands and leaves for the staff room with a smile, and Chaeyoung is left sitting at the table with her drink, next to some girl named Momo with a glass of some drink with mint leaves in it, a wedge of lime on its rim.  A mojito, that's what they were called.  At the back of the mind, she vaguely realises that Tzuyu has done this on purpose.

"Oh, uh, hi,"

"You look tired."

"Long, long day, lots of, uh, paintings, commissions, you know?"

"What about the one with me in it?  Is it done?"

"Al, almost, yeah, it's coming out perfectly."

"You're welcome."  They share a laugh, and Chaeyoung relaxes into her chair.  This is fine, really.

Sana moves her body to the beat, trying to get into it, but keeps stumbling.  She stops, clenches her fists, breathes.  Nobody has noticed her scars or her slight limp yet, and more than a few men have complimented her dress, her looks.  She can still feel pretty, after all.  She wants to talk to Tzuyu, to the artist girl.  She sucks in a deep breath, full of night and sweat and cloth and liquor, and laughs.  She catches someone's hand, a woman's, and they dance, laughing, and she stumbles, but the other woman isn't a much better dancer so who cares, and the music is giddy, or she is giddy and the music is heady with strident brass and strings and drums, whirring, piercing, laughing, giggling, and the hand leaves hers only to find her waist, and then she spins away, watching the face of the other as she floats off into the crowd.  

Momo relates a story from long ago, about something a client did for a job, one of her first, in a studio of harsh lights and the smell of cleaning fluid more than ten years ago. She traces the weary lines of her story, worn smooth from years of telling it to amused friends, the increasingly bizarre requests, the dog which peed on her dress, the back and forth between her manager and the offending man, shapes it just a little more as she tells it, letting the stream wear the surface just a little smoother, shinier.  Chaeyoung jumps in with noises of indignation, interrupts with anecdotes, and they pull this way and that, pad at sweat, scratch at places where the humidity pricks them, order another round of drinks.  Some vague impression of the dancers forming up fails to pull her out of the conversation, and Chaeyoung doesn't seem to have noticed, either. 

Her makeup retouched, Tzuyu sails past a pink dress which reminds her of something Sana has worn before to where the others wait for her.  Kazuha returns, pops a mint in her mouth to crowd out her cigaretted breath, smiles at her.  How long does she have left?  How long?  Years, not ten, perhaps five, and then?  The music starts, the music moves, Tzuyu moves, smiles, winks, smirks, the music stops, and Tzuyu stops.  How long more?  In the dimness of the crowd a face which reminds her too much of the jade and nephrite former idol she met at Narita months ago, months which seem years, but it is not Mina, it cannot be Mina, far away in some strange town, far away, and for a moment she is lost, unable to understand; the music starts again, and she pairs up with Seulgi, dances past Aeri, and the moment is lost to the heat and heady beat.

Mina winces, forks out the entry fee.  She is not the only one who has opted for a casual look, but the sleek and nice-cut dresses of some of the others irritates her a little.  I could dress like that too, if I wanted.  But she didn't want, wouldn't want.  She mills around, getting some water for much more than what water should cost, wondering.  The next number is announced, and they troop up onto the raised platform.  Finally.  Out of the corner of her eye she sees a pink dress she swears belongs to Sana, and another bow-like black dress which she finds uncomfortably familiar.  She watches the dance, and Tzuyu is there, at the front, and then at the back, elegant, her moves bewitching and smooth, better even than the first time Mina saw her on that stage.  The first dance ends, and Tzuyu's arms and legs flop from her ending pose, and for a moment she looks straight at Mina, no, straight past Mina, and the light picks out the lines of skin and tired sweat on her face, sad and soft with the ghost of a sigh, so pretty, so sad, so pretty; and Mina looks away.  The music starts up again, and when she looks again, the moment is past, and Tzuyu is back in position; she dances, smiles, winks, and perhaps it is the heat, perhaps it is the lights, perhaps it is the bass which bumps at her embattled brain, but Myoui Mina wants to vomit.

A face which looks too much like Mina hurries past the chair, and Momo startles, rises from her sofa, but the face vanishes among the crowd and noise, and she wonders if she imagined it.  She sits back down and takes another gulp of heady limed goodness.  Another edamame bean, another slice of fried tofu, and then another sip.  The food is not bad.  Almost as good as what she can whip up at home.  Chaeyoung tilts her head, quizzical.

"Saw someone?"

"No, no-one.  I, I must be seeing things."

"The mojitos getting to you?"

"No!  A little, I, uh, guess."  She takes another gulp, lets the iced cold fill her mouth, lets the ice and lime and alcohol swirl and cool her tongue and the roof of her mouth before letting it flow down the throat with an exaggerated gasp of cool relief.  Chaeyoung chuckles at her antics, and Momo needs to get a better view of her face.  Why is her face so small?  Chaeyoung starts talking about someone called Toulouze something, and once she starts she doesn't stop, but Momo listens anyway, tries to listen, tries to understand what she is saying.  He sounds interesting.  Toulouse?  She has seen the name somewhere before.  She asks Chaeyoung to spell the name, and Chaeyoung has to scribble it on a napkin in Roman letters, with the names of famous paintings.  Why does she care?  Well, it seems interesting.  Halfway through her third drink, she gets up to follow Chaeyoung somewhere.  Her room.  Right.  She nods along as the goes up some stairs, Mojito still in hand.  And why is she going to Chaeyoung's room?  For the book.  What book?  The art book, with the pictures, the pictures painted by Henri, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  Standing a little stiffly, she looks around the pare room as Chaeyoung goes to the bookshelf.  She leaves her empty cocktail glass on the desk.  Toulouse- what sort of name is that?  A French name.  French.  With a dash?  Alphonse Lamartine.  That's a French name too, but where has she heard it before?  She's pretty sure she's not supposed to be kissing Chaeyoung.  Why is she kissing Chaeyoung?  The book falls, and she hopes the pages didn't get folded.  Why is she kissing Chaeyoung?  Because her lips, even unrouged and unlipsticked, her pinkish lips are so kissable.  So, so, so- 

"Ow!"  A pinch in the flesh of her arm stuns Momo to her senses.  She jumps up ramrod-straight, and mutters an apology.  Chaeyoung doesn't look too angry though.  That's good.  "Right, your, your book.  Sorry." 

"Oh yeah, let me show you, and then I have these ones, of Rousseau, not the philosopher, the painter, wait, the Toulouse-Lautrec first," and she picks the book back up, casting nervous glances at Momo every so often.  They sit on the bed, and Momo has to resist the urge to pull Chaeyoung in for another kiss.  The pictures are nice, though.  The dancers really look like they are dancing, caught in the moment in the dim of the Moulin Rouge.  Chaeyoung keeps talking, but more and more she doesn't understand what she is saying, especially while trying to look at the pictures in the book at the same time.  

"What's that one?"  A nice pastel-coloured one.  Chaeyoung flips back to the page, two lovers in a blue-white-sheeted embrace, and facing them two lovers lying side by side in bed.  Lush white sheets and pillows, sleepy faces.  

"Oh."  She blushes.  "Uh, I'd better get going, sorry, show me another time, when I'm more sober.  Sorry, about, sorry about just now."  Nobody needs to know how much she wants to grab Chaeyoung by the collar and continue where they left off, nobody needs to know how much she wants that taste again, old cigarettes and dried sweat and strawberry chewing-gum, and she is halfway out of the door when she realises she is in no fit state to drive back home.  

"What's wrong?"

"I drove here."  

"So?"

Momo frowns.  "I can't drive back like this, I'll have to get a driver," she sighs, and lets the door close. 

It is  11;05, and Mina wants to go home.  Where, after all, is home?  She steps in again, out of the heat and into the heat, and takes refuge in front of one of the fans.  A guy smiles at her, and she shrinks away, trying to lose herself in the crowd again.  Where is Tzuyu?  She looks around, but the bright costume is nowhere to be seen.  She wants to go home.  To the lower bunk of a hostel in Tokyo she will call home for two days, at least.  She wants to go home.  To the Yokohama flat where she could while away the hours in her own music, not the popular tunes which get the most traction in a small seaside town.  That wasn't quite right, she had brought her keyboard with her after all, and neither Nayeon nor Jeongyeon had any problems with the tunes and harmonies she tried out in her own time, in her own little room.  What she wanted to go back to had vanished long ago: the afternoons spent practising in a secluded room in a girl's high school in Kobe; the thrill of knowing that a thousand faces followed her every move on stage; the cold afternoons where in a cold flat facing a cold grey street with a woman whose face tormented her dreams.  She was sitting down on a chair, a nice velvet one, and she realised she was sobbing.  The shadows of the tables and chairs in the classroom the day she decided to audition, Tzuyu's silhouette in the glass of the window as she frowned at the sheet music, the smell of cigarettes and hair oil in the room where her manager congratulated her on reaching tenth in the charts.  Is she greedy, if she wants it back, all of it?  

Chaeyoung watches Momo go, trying to process.  That had been her first time, after all.  After all the missed chances, the dates which went nowhere, the crushes which turned out one-sided, her first kiss is in a tiny room above a club on the edge of an industrial area, with a former top model with a dress which looks like a bow.  She quite enjoyed it, too.  She wants, inexplicably, more.  No, not inexplicably: with good reason, for she wants the scent of flowers she doesn't remember the name of in her nose again, she wants the large eyes locked with hers again, the full lips against hers again, more, she wants more of it, she wants to feel out the muscles and lines of the shoulders again, she wants to feel out so much more, so much more that she has never wanted before, she wants more of the frown and twitching nose as Momo listens to her rambling, more of the grainy nasal voice which sent shudders through her brain, more, more of everything, more of Momo, because to have Momo is to have everything.  But Momo is gone now, down the stairs, and Chaeyoung resists every urge to chase after her to finish what they started on the narrow bed where they had been looking at Toulouse-Lautrec. 

Sana sits listless in a chair, watching.  Watching.  They come and go, and talk, gesticulate.  She watches their dresses, the way the fabric folds and shadows in in the light.  She breathes in a deep breath, and out again.  She has danced too hard, and her repaired lungs and chest protest her folly.  A slickly suited man sits next to her, and the smell of his breath and body make her stand up and limp away, unable to muster up anything to say to him.  Where is Tzuyu?  She saw her just now, and then lost her again.  She tries to remember which table they sat at the last time she came, where the dancers had had their seats.  

"Sana!"

"Tzu!  I was wondering where you were."

"You're here, too?"

"Too?"

"Momo didn't tell me-"

"Momo?"

"Yeah, she's here too. She's over- never mind, I don't know where she went.  She's probably getting it on with-"

"I don't want to know.  Man, it's hot."

"Something to drink?  Champagne?  Wine?  Tequila?  Margarita?"

"Anything, Tzu, anything for you."

"You're pretty today, Satang."

"I'm always pretty.  A margarita?  A slushy frozen one.  That would be nice.  I'm, I'm not drunk enough just yet."

"Sure.  See you around, pretty girl," and Tzuyu leaves with a soft brush of thin-rouged lips on Sana's cheek, and Sana feels a heat flush her face.  Yes, she exalts, she can still feel pretty.  Gently she pads at a line of sweat down her neck, and smiles.  

How much for a cab?  More than Mina is comfortable forking out, far more, and she only wants to curl up in one of the chairs to sleep.  But no, she has to get back to the hostel, she has, she has to get back soon, get out of the hot night air and into the air-conditioned bedroom for four.  There are too many men, men who see her pale and pretty face in the dark, men whose eyes glint with lust, even in the dimness.  She hates it, she hates their eyes, their hands, the way she has to back away, hoping for relief.  How does Tzuyu manage?  

At a table near the door, Momo waits for her cab - shared with two other women who happen to live nearby, and Chaeyoung has wandered down to her, watching her expectantly, as if waiting for something.  Now and then the door opens, swings shut, and she watches the men and women as they enter and leave, some clinging to each other, drunk, and one of them is a man in a nice shirt running after a woman.  There is shouting, and then he returns, defeated.  She sees a pale face in a shirt and jeans stumble to the door, but her face is turned away, so she only sees her profile, her back. 

"Say, is that Mina?" 

"Who?"

"Over there, next to the- she's gone."

"Mina?"

"It, it looked like her.  Maybe I've been thinking about her too often recently."

"Maybe."

Tzuyu comes to say goodbye, and she wonders if Sana has left just yet.  Momo leaves with the other two, and Tzuyu leaves to prepare for the next dance, and Chaeyoung stares at the closed door for a long while, and then goes to bed. 

Sana is still dancing, with a woman in a suit and tie now.  The lights hurt her eyes when she looks at them, so she looks at the woman, her round and large-eyed face, her neck which sweats into her collar and tie.  She moves, and remembers how she used to move, this time she does not stumble, and even the pains from the places where they have cut her open and stitched her back up are forgotten in the moment.  She sweeps her leg wide, and she feels, hears the heel of the shoe against the smooth tiled floor.  She laughs, and the other chuckles, laughs in turn, full-throated and wonderful.  Her eyes are kind, so kind.  She is dancing, and for a few fleeting moments she feels like she did ten years ago, she feels that she could go on forever in the sultry dim, and never wake up from the long, beautiful dream she is dreaming.

She wakes up on Jihyo's bed (that was the woman's name) in tears, aching all over, unable to figure out where she is, unable to remember how she got here, except that perhaps something vast has been lost to her, perhaps forever.

Chapter Text

Tzuyu chews the rice haltingly, and heaves a small sigh of relief.  Better.  The grains still stick to each other a little, but the texture is already an improvement over the last attempt.  The sliced meat is chewy and bland, but she perseveres.  She decides to ask Momo about fried rice.  Mina, Mina marinated her beef.  Right.  Marination.  Corn starch.  A memory of the cook in her family home, watching her add a dusting of white powder to the meat with the oyster sauce and soy sauce.  Another gulp of coke to wash it down.  The summer rain falls, a roar of damp warm air, a screen of floating reeds which veils the lights of the cheap hotel.  Today there is no-one silhouetted in the yellow lights.  No, a man, someone who looks like the silhouette of a man, who stares out into the rain, faint figure against the yellow.  The figure stands there for a long while, and Tzuyu looks away, goes back to the last few spoonfuls of rice.  Did he notice her?  Perhaps she should ask someone, ask Momo about how to make her own fried cutlets.  She hums a tune to herself, one of her favourites, one of the songs they had been working on.  So many afternoons, now lost to memory.  Mina took the scores with her, the scribbled notes and lyrics in which she had slowly but surely fallen in love.  Written on a sheaf of manuscript papers, far away, sheafed up by an electric piano somewhere.  She imagines them in a stack by Mina's desk, she imagines them tossed out and rain-spattered, the notes and stems slowly blurring with the soaking rain.

She still has a bunch of her CDs, after all.  And, and?  She casts about the room, and lights on the two untouched boxes by the kitchen counter, drags them by their flaps to the table.  It takes some minutes of searching, but somehow she finds it: a pile of old tapes, and pressed beneath old books, a slim photobook, the only one she ever consented to release.  A younger Mina poses in Tokyo, in chic office wear.  Here she is at a park, and then in front of a long wide road of gingko trees, smiling, posing, with a coat and without a coat, and then with a lighter dress in the same park.  Tzuyu flips through them, one by one by one, and outside the window the rain falls, drips from roofs onto cars and umbrellas, flows in rivers and in striated sheets on the roads, murmuring, murmuring.  She is staring wistfully at a spread of Mina smiling at a wooden table, about to tuck into a plate of omurice, when she remembers the VHS tapes, and the rest of her fried rice and coke.  

Mina sits in the lobby of four or five cheap wooden tables, and the rain is endless.  There is no pianist in this lobby for this particular women-only hostel, only a CD player which croons endless enka, and the occasional disc of old songs in Korean, what seems to be Korean.  At least the rainy days are cooler.  She is on her third cup of black tea, and traces the rim of the white  cup with her finger, marvelling at its paleness in the white light of the lobby, in the grey light of the rainy afternoon.  What will she have for dinner?  Shoyu ramen, perhaps, and a glass of beer, tall and foaming and yellow, lovely and tall and foaming and yellow.  The image of Tzuyu floats up once more, unbidden, the sorrow of her gaze in the spotlight etched in her memory.  The eyes which seemed to look straight at her, then straight past her.  Did she imagine it?  Half a cup of tea left.  After this cup, she will go to get her umbrella, and then go out, somewhere, if only to watch the rain come down.  There is someone else staying in her bedroom, a young woman from Nagano, somewhere near Nagano, but she is out sightseeing.  She had re-entered her room near midnight to the sound of breathing in the next bunk, and the had listened as she fell asleep.  Smooth, even breathing, undisturbed by evil dreams, it seemed to her, unhaunted by mellow orange-flowered voices from the past.  The memory of a laugh and wide smile, yellow and blue in the winter air, and her chest tightens again.  

A series of ads blares from the screen, and Tzuyu speeds past them on the tape until she reaches the start of the show.  After an orchestral introduction and opening, she pauses just as they get to the star of the week.

"Recently, a rising female idol has caught our attention.  I'm sure many of you were surprised by her beautiful singing voice when her song came in at number 10 on the charts last week, isn't that so, Sato-san?"

"M-hmm, and what's more, Yamashita-san, she's stunningly pretty, with elegant visuals to die for.  If you've been keeping up with the latest idol hits, I'm sure you know who we're talking about by now!  Without further ado, let's invite on stage the guest for today, Myoui Mina!"

Mina from almost ten years ago enters the stage from the left, her hair severely straight, her face picture-perfect, her tiny smile absolutely adorable, absolutely heart-clenching.  This Mina is soft-spoken but cheerful, without the melancholy Tzuyu is used to, and a far cry from the quiet charming woman Tzuyu grew fond of.  She answers the questions, dodges some others, laughs, and it seems that she was made for this life, and Tzuyu might even say that a casual fan, watching the clip, could conceive of no other profession for her.  She had loved Mina for precisely all those reasons, back when she was just another fan among thousands, and then had gone and done it all over again, for almost the opposite reasons.  She turns off the TV, unable to continue watching.  She finishes up her fried rice, and goes to wash the dishes.  She wants to see her again.  

Momo nurses a headache with strong tea.  She had chosen a good day to visit the club.  She really should not have had so many drinks, so many that she could barely blurt out her address to the valet.  They had been good, though, the mojitos, and then, and then the other ones, the one she had ordered because the blue was pretty, which had tasted of oranges and the sea, but she had only imagined the sea, from its colour and pretty name, and in her mind the sea-colour and sea-name conspired to make her think of the sea in her mouth as she sipped the blue drink slowly, a lagoon of cold deep blue in the summer heat.  Somewhere else in her mind she has neatly shelved the memory of grabbing a certain Son Chaeyoung to plant her lips on hers, and her face burns as she savours the memory.  She looks out of the window, at the rain, and sighs.  

She looks around in her CDs until she finds a compilation album of the Alexandrov Choir, with Boris Alexandrov conducting.  She pushes against the slot, and the player swallows the CD with a whirr.  She bobs her head along as the first notes grow steadily faster, and stops when her headache starts getting worse.  She looks about the room, and wonders, as she did long ago, at the number and variety of polymers on display.  Polytheylene in her waste-bin, in her milk jug, and polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride, in this, in that, in everything.  Polyester and Nylon in the clothes, and acrylics with their carbon-nitrogen triple bond, and polystyrene, she has forgotten, about it, in, in pens and things.  The rubber of her hairband, stretched then unstretched by the cross-links.  Even the lacquer box which was a gift from someone, whose lacquer came from the polymerisation of the irritant sap urushiol.  Urushi, she repeats to herself, like Urushibara, the surname, urushi, lacquer.  Oh, and Teflon, in her non-stick pan, a sea of flourines which remains inert and smooth to everything, perhaps even chlorine trifluoride.  She had worked at a Chinese restaurant near the university, and the woks were well-seasoned, layer after layer of fat and oil denatured and polymerised into a non-stick crust upon which were fried noodles, rice, marinated beef slices and snow peas and chillies.  The sizzle of soy sauce poured in a deft circle along the side of the wok, caramelising as it went into the food.  What use would it be if she took out her old textbooks, now?  The words would only wash over her, droplets of oil and water on slick teflon, and fall away.  

The CD plays, and she remembers with faint irony the distant news of the revolutions which were happening on the other side of the world.  A road which snaked through the photo-forest, and a chain of men and women who linked their arms down its side, for miles and miles and miles.  She imagines standing on the road dense with trees on either side, with the sky and wisps of clouds above her, with the wind upon her face and in her hair.  The road would plunge down the hill into a bend, or perhaps open up to fields of animals and grain, and a little red car would pass by, slowly, and they would see it coming from far away, and wave.  

The young woman from Nagano pushes the door open with a green umbrella, forlorn.  The street pulses with rain, roars with rain and wind.  She places the dripping umbrella in the stand, and passes Mina with a greeting and a cute little bow.  Mina, on impulse, turns to her.

"I'm sorry, would you mind, uh, joining me for a while?  It's boring on a rainy day."  The girl tilts her head, a little puzzled, and then smiles.

"Sure!  I haven't had a proper lunch anyway."

She goes to the room to put her things down first, and then returns, ordering a hot coffee and a sandwich from the counter along the way.  Mina, suddenly faced with the consequences of her own impulse, does not quite know how to open the conversation.

"The rain is awful, isn't it?"

"Yes, isn't it?"

"Where did you go?"

"Nowhere, really.  I tried to go downtown, to Shinjuku, but it was raining so hard I couldn't enjoy myself, and didn't have an appetite for anything."

"Oh dear."  The coffee comes, and the woman blows on it, then takes a long sip, before leaning back with a sigh, the steam of the coffee and the steam of her breath mingling in the warmth of the lobby-cafe.  A timer somewhere beeps, and the girl at the counter goes to take the bread from the toaster.  The lobby is plainer, she thinks, than Nayeon's and Jeongyeon's establishment, and certainly without the charm of Nayeon's decorations.  The sandwich, menu, though, seems to have been made with some thought, western-style roast beef or ham with cheese and pickes, or râpée, or other foreign ingredients in katakana which Mina hasn't heard of.  They watch the counter girl assemble the sandwich and bring it to the table with a small bow, and now Mina wants a sandwich of her own.  Perhaps she would have one for dinner, when she was more hungry.  

The sandwich comes, and they fall silent.  In the silence the girl's chewing is loud, a little sticky, and Mina wishes it would stop.  She hums to herself to think of something else.  The rain lashes the window, and a car passes, splashing.  She taps out a melody on the table, her fingers curving with the black and white keys her mind paints on the melamine surface.  Momo had told her something before, about the polymer which made up the table coatings, but she had forgotten it.  She wanted to see her again.  What had she worn on the magazine cover?  The pink dress or the blue?  The memory of an ochre coat and blue jeans bubbles up, unbidden, luggage in tow at the Nagoya airport, and she sighs.  

"Are you on vacation, too?"

"Not really.  I'm, I'm visiting a friend in Tokyo."  Close enough to true that she could say it easily.  She should visit them, really, she should, she should go to their flats and knock on their doors, and perhaps they would slap her, and it would be all good in the end.  She should go to the river by Momo's flat and watch the egrets in the summer reeds, and wait for her to come by on one of her walks, go to the ramen shop which Sana loved, and wait there, at the counter, until she took her usual seat.  And Tzuyu-

The other woman watches her between bites of her sandwich and sips of her coffee.  Mina tries to ignore the noise, tries to find something to say, and gives up, staring at the grey walls instead.  The woman is half-done with her sandwich when Mina finally settles on something to say.

"Hopefully it'll clear up tomorrow."

"Hopefully.  I only have two days left here."

"Do you have friends in Tokyo?"

"Yeah, but they're busy."

"That's too bad," sighs Mina.  The girl takes another bite of her sandwich, and in that moment Mina decides she will go and visit Momo later, in the evening, or at least see if she is at home.  "This song is nice," she says, a little lamely, wondering why she ever asked the girl to join her.  A Teresa Teng ballad, slow and sad.

"It is, yeah.  I have one of her discs at home.  Kuukou is, uh, really good."

"Right?"  The girl is chewing again, and she hopes it will be over soon.

"I met, I went for one of her concerts, once, back in the 80s," Mina corrects herself.  Well, it had been a one-time event, a TV show she had been invited to for reasons she couldn't fathom.  Perhaps the host had had a crush on her, the way he kept coming to visit her backstage.  

"That's amazing!" says the girl between chews of sandwich.  Make it stop, please, make it stop.  The girl is down to the last third of the sandwich now, and takes another mouthful of coffee.  At least she drinks silently.  Mina heaves a sigh of relief when the girl swallows the last of the sandwich.  Maybe talking to her would be tolerable now.  The girl takes a pack of cigarettes from a pocket, and lights one up without asking.  Mina wonders if she has perhaps died and gone to hell. 

The rain spatters on her umbrella, on the road, softer now, softer.  The muted street mutters with rain, whispers with rain, with umbrellas.  Mina Takes slow steps toward the train station.  Momo would be having dinner soon.  

Momo has just started boiling a pack of udon for dinner when the doorbell rings.  Strange.  She looks through the peephole, and wonders if she is seeing things.  Perhaps she should ignore it, perhaps she should go back to her udon.  But no, she opens and closes the door without a word, goes to her udon without a word, watches from the corner of her eye as Mina takes a seat at the sofa where Tzuyu used to sleep before she moved out.  It is strange, seeing that face again, and she wonders if it will vanish if she looks to closely.  Her hand tightens around the chopsticks stirring the noodles to unstick them from each other.  She takes a tube of fish-cake, a packet of beancurd skin, and makes thin slices of the fish-cake, trying not to let her knife hand tremble. 

Finally, she readies another pot on the stove, and adds the dashi powder.  At last she goes over to the couch, haltingly, wondering if it really is Mina, as if there could be anyone else with the same eyes, the same hair, the same moles and the same mint-green dress which they seemed to have bought in a set of matching colours from the departments store just yesterday, or last week, and not ten years ago.

"Mina."  Momo steps in, and Mina follows, loosening the shoes off her feet as Momo goes to the fridge.  "Tea?  Water?  Something hot?"

"Water's fine."

"Momo."  Mina's gaze wanders all over her, and around the room, as if looking for traces of something, for traces of Tzuyu.  

"She's renting her own place now."

"Tzuyu?"

"Yeah.  Her job at the club is paying better now."

"Is she still-"

"Yeah, I went to visit her just yesterday.  Her dancing's really good now."

"That's nice."  Mina hasn't fully unclenched her fists, and her gaze still finds the window, the couch, the pot on the stove.  "Is that a new pot?"

"Mm-hmm, the old one was dented."  She goes over to check on the udon.  

"They have really nice pots and pans where I work."

"Do you cook for them?"  

"A little.  I help them make cutlets and sandwiches, but only a few."

"Where do you even work?"

"At, at a women-only hostel."  Momo turns for a moment from the pot, raises her eyebrows.  Turning back, she drains the cooked noodles, and replaces the pot on the stove with a rectangular omelette pan.  For a moment she turns it about in her hands, admires its shape as she has many times before, before going to take the egg mixture she had made in the morning.  "They're really nice.  The owners, I mean."

"Are there many tourists?"

"The peak period just ended.  I made friends with a few of them, they were, uh, from, from Korea, but they left."

"That's, well, I suppose that's nice."  She oils the pan, watches as the convection cells form in the oil on the heat.  Symmetry-breaking.  She rolls the oil about, brushes the pan with it, and finally pours the egg mix in.  On another day she would have added Chinese chives, or spring onions, but on some days she likes it like that, just the bright yellow egg in the pan.  There is silence as she waits for the egg to set enough to fold over and start on the second layer, and between them there is the sizzling of the egg, and the hum of the refrigerator.  Mina rises from the sofa to watch her roll up the egg, layer by layer. 

"I didn't make enough for two, sorry."  The egg sizzles, the broth bubbles, burbles, lightly, softly.  "Are you eating well?"

"How's Sana?"

"Oh, I should tell you later.  It's a long story.  Are you eating well?"

"Yeah, I, I mean, now it's fine.  I still cook for myself sometimes.  Did something-"

"I'll, I'll tell you later."

"That day, when I called-"

"Tzuyu wanted to tell you, but you hung up on her."

"Was she staying here?"

"I thought you knew?"

"She never told me where she was staying.  I suppose you said she moved out, just, just now."

"Yes, she was, she was here, on the sofa, until she found her, uh, her new place.  She was at home when they called about Sana."  

"They-"  Momo rolls up the omelette to let it set, and then adds the fish-cake and beancurd skin to the broth.  Almost done.  

"I'll tell you later.  I have some, uh, spare rice from yester-"

"Don't worry, I brought rice balls."  They move to the dining table, and Mina takes the rice balls from the bag, slowly unwraps them as Momo brings the udon and omelette to the table.  They eat slowly, and let the light fade in the windows.  Mina munches on the rice balls, and Momo slurps the udon, and takes pieces of tamagoyaki between slurps.  She offers some to Mina, but she refuses.  

"Sana?"

"Oh, Sana."

"Well?"

"She, uh, she fell out of her apartment window."  Mina stops mid-chew.  Sana's apartment window, ten, fifteen stories up from the street.  

"She's fine now."

"She-"

"They had to do a few surgeries, and, uh, she's not in great shape now, Mina."

"Oh."  Mina releases a breath and takes another, and releases it in a little puff from her nose.  

"So that day, when I called"

"Sana was in the hospital, and we didn't, uh, we didn't know if she would make, if she would make it."

"She, just ,she just fell?"

"She's a little cagey about the, the details."  Mina rises from the chair with a scraping, but there is no-one to question, no-one to confront, only the window of drizzling rain.  "I'm sure she'll be fine," Momo adds, but her voice is only tired, flat.

Mina sits down again, pops the last mouthful of rice into her mouth,  washes it down with a mouthful of cold water.  She wants something hot, for the weather.  She will buy a cup of tonjiru to reheat at the hostel.  Yet it will be hot again tomorrow, probably.  

"Are her off days the same?"

"Sana?"

"No, Tzu, Tzuyu."

"I think she's free, uh, today?"

"Today?  Isn't it, a, a little late?"

"Let me, uh, call her and ask.  I'm sure you want to see Sana, too."

"Yeah, it's just, that," that she has made Sana fall, somehow, that her leaving Tokyo is inextricably bound up with Sana falling into the street, with whatever made her plunge down from her window, all the way past window after window after window to finally come to a sudden and terrible stop at street level.  At least, from what Momo is saying, she is fine, or as close to fine as she can be in the circumstances, but the thought does little to console her.  Momo is already at the phone, and Mina wonders if she will have time to see Sana.  

Tzuyu stares into the convex blank screen.  The songs are over, as is the program, and the costumes and streamers of the bright stage have fled back into the spools of tape, fleeting.  The phone rings just as she is about to go and wash up.  Very slowly, she goes to pick up the receiver, letting the noise reverberate around the apartment a little more, as if to fill the space.  

She picks up the phone, and then drops it again.  For a long time there is Momo's anxious voice, crackling through the receiver, and it is another long, long pause before Tzuyu mutters a tiny 'yes', holding the phone very close to her lips, trying to make the small sound large, and hangs up before Momo can say anything else.