A completely unremarkable man stood on the edge of the crowd, nursing a beer and surveying the stage from only a few yards away. If there were anything to lean on, he would have been leaning. As it was, he stood, blazer open, shirt tucked in, tie loosened, one hand in his pocket the other wrapped around the bottle tight enough that his knuckles were going white. He observed the spare few people who wandered on and off the stage, setting up microphones, moving wires, unpacking keyboards. In minutes the space was cluttered with instruments. He wondered what the next band was planning. They were probably the type to compensate with chaos. The previous set was dull enough to put a corpse to sleep so chaos might be welcome. He hated this waiting. His jaw was set and sweat was already beading on his scalp. Nerves always made him choke.

An intimidating woman in shorts and a tank top approached Izaya from behind, "Hey, you gonna finish that or am I going to have to drink both of these?" She gestured towards him with a new bottle of beer.

Izaya downed the lukewarm dredges in the bottom of the bottle before turning to Mikage with a warm smile, an attempt to suffocate his nerves, "So, what do you think this next group is doing? Trying to overcompensate lack of skill with noise?"

Mikage scoffed, "Guess we'll find out." She handed a drink to Izaya who managed to drink half the bottle in one swig. "You know there's nothing to be nervous about, right? Everyone here is drunk anyway. They won't care if we fuck up."

"I'm not nervous."

Just then stage lights went up and half a dozen people walked onto the stage, greeted with deafening cheers from the crowd. The group was a strange jumble of people one would never expect to see sharing a stage together. A man in a lab coat made his way towards the drums while chatting incessantly with a guitarist in a black biker suit and brightly colored helmet. A quiet, familiar looking man took his place behind the keyboard on stage right while a serious looking blonde woman moved to the keyboard on stage left. The blonde woman was discussing something apparently funny with the bassist—a dark-skinned man with glasses and dreadlocks pulled back in a ponytail.

Izaya's eyes went wide and he laughed, "Oh my god, Mikage, I know that drummer! Shinra Kishitani, you sick bastard, still chasing dead women after all these years."

"Who?"

"He was my best friend in middle school. Well, I guess that's what he was. By the rest of the world's standards, anyway." He shrugged.

"You had friends?"

Izaya ignored the barbed comment, "And is that that actor?" He pointed at the quiet looking man on the keyboard.

Mikage looked in the direction Izaya gestured and took a moment to judge for herself, "Y'know, I think you're right."

A tall, blond man carried a cider on stage with him…well, a six pack of cider. The cheering resurfaced as soon as he stepped out. He approached the microphone and introduced the group as everyone picked up their instruments. "Hey, Ikebukuro. It sounds like a lot of you guys already know us, but if you haven't read the program, we're Rooftop Remedy—" he paused as the crowd cheered again, he took the opportunity to hide his annoyance with a swig from his drink. He kept drinking until the audience began to quiet down, then he flashed a sardonic smile at them and continued, "—you guys gonna let us play, or what?"

Izaya chuckled at the man's crass attitude. It stood in stark contrast to the music they began playing as they laid into their set. The show was lively to say the least. During pauses, the group had short conversations with the audience, the lead man jumped all around the stage and must have gone through at least half of the six pack. The guitarist in the helmet also displayed intense energy to match the singer. The blonde woman seemed unable to take her eyes off the leading man, but the bassist kept making comments to her in attempts to steal her attention, which only showed minor success. The drummer threw his whole body into his art with a palpable love, he frequently tried to catch the eye of the helmeted guitarist.

Izaya found himself completely captivated by this jumble of people. When a particularly sad song came on, he found himself suppressing tears. There was something about the desperation in the singer's voice and the way he performed with his whole being that struck Izaya. He wanted to hate it. This man was spilling his guts all over the stage and it was incredible. It was primal and pathetic. Izaya couldn't look away.

"Got a crush?" Mikage teased.

Izaya laughed, "He's just so interesting, like a train wreck. He looks like he's going to throw that mic stand across the room or drop kick the speaker."

"We should head back stage before they finish up, we've got to get our shit ready."

Izaya gave the blond man one last lingering look. They locked eyes for a second, forcing a pause into the middle of a song. Izaya flashed the singer a sinister smile and tucked his hair behind his ear as he turned away.

Up on stage, Shizuo followed the slight man with his eyes until he was out of sight. It was only a couple seconds but that moment might as well have been a lifetime. That smile infuriated him. When he crashed back to reality his song took on a new sort of desperate energy. That momentum carried him through the rest of the set. The audience loved it. Some of those in the first few rows noticed the strange moment and wouldn't stop discussing it for the remainder of the night.

Backstage, Izaya met with his own group to discuss their set list. Namie nonchalantly flipped through a magazine as she reclined on a beat up old couch in the green room, elbow propped on the armrest and head resting on her hand.

Izaya tried to grab her attention, "Where are Manami and Izumi?"

Without looking up from her reading, Namie replied, "How should I know?"

Mikage, who was leaning against a wall with her arms crossed, said, "You know they'll be back in time anyway, they always do this."

Izaya sighed and pulled out his phone, "I'll just text them with the set list changes then."

"What changes?" Mikage leveled an icy glare at Izaya.

"I'm just adding one song to list, around the middle, it will make it flow better." Izaya replied, not taking his eyes off his phone which he was rapidly typing on.

"Which song?!"

Namie sighed from the couch as she flipped to the next page in her magazine, "You know which one."

"Sun and Moon?" Mikage inquired of Namie, who nodded in response. Mikage turned back to Izaya, hands now balled into fists, "You can't just add a song to our set right before we go on!"

Izaya held a hand out and shrugged, "You know the audience loves that gushy crap though. They go ham over it." He tucked his phone back into his pocket, "Why did we cut it from the show in the first place?"

Mikage's irritation was apparent, "Because you were bored with it!"

"That does sound like me."

"Besides if you want to shove a love song into the set, you could have picked something," Mikage threw her hands out in exasperation, searching, "I don't know, a little more romantic? It's really not a love song, y'know."

"Still," Izaya shrugged, "I think we should play it." He surveyed the room, "Let's put it to a vote: Namie, what do you think?"

Namie's response surfaced through a haze of boredom, "You're still talking about this?"

Izaya put his right hand to his heart, "And your opinion matters a lot to me."

Namie sighed, "Do whatever you want. It's not one of my songs so I don't care what you do."

Izaya threw his hands up in triumph, "A vote yes from Namie!"

"Though it's a pathetic way to try and get that guy's attention, don't you think?"

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"That blond guy you've been drooling over for the past hour." She stated, turning another page in her reading.

Mikage grimaced at the realization, "I knew this was about more than the audience."

"Of course," Namie shrugged, "He never breaks out that number unless he has a reason." She closed her magazine and turned her gaze to Mikage, "It's such a cliched metaphor, though."

"Ever the critic." Izaya jumped in, "So, Mikage? What do you say?"

Mikage shrugged, at last resigned, "We might as well play it. The crowd will want to hear it anyway; and hell, if there's a chance it will get you out of my hair for the night I'm all for it."