Hinata's roommate wasn't asked to continue on to the second quarter of their first year. Just like in high school, it was that fast. There was probably a scientific name for the waiting itself taking forever, but the results and their consequences being so fast. Hinata gently asked Sharon if she wanted help packing since packing was terrible and two people could make it go faster. Sharon nodded. "I just want to go home," she sniffled. Home for her was fifteen hundred miles away. Hinata had suddenly remembered she had to go do something far away when Sharon got the news. That way, Sharon could cry and scream in private if she needed to. They'd agreed on this when they first met. They weren't close. They'd had different social and academic schedules, and never really got to become friends. They'd gotten along well as roommates, which Hinata was grateful for. She'd heard a lot of horror stories. Hinata and Sharon lived off-campus. Away from school. Meaning the rules didn't apply. But no, Sharon and Hinata had really only been home at the same time a few hours per day at most.
Sharon's friends arrived to help. Too. Hinata ducked into her room and placed an ad for a new roommate. Someone who'd graduated from the conservatory had suggested doing that immediately. It wasn't heartless; it was the housing market. So Hinata had typed a draft and kept it on her laptop until now. The woman who'd graduated was right so often and in such specific ways that some students thought she was a supervillain. Others thought she was psychic, Hinata among them. Or that she just had a really good memory and instincts. Either way, this woman frequently commented with advice on social media. Hinata returned to the living room and her cell phone chimed. She looked down and hurried back into her bedroom.
Neji had gone over to Hinata's before she moved to school. "I wasn't going to leave until you said goodbye." She smiled sadly at him. They sat in silence for a few moments, holding hands. Neji didn't know half of what he was feeling, but none of it felt good. He couldn't think of anything to say. Neji kissed Hinata. When he pulled back and opened his eyes, Hinata started crying. Neji had fled, embarrassed and ashamed. He spent his first quarter of college sleeping with as many women as he needed to in order to forget that he'd kissed his cousin and she'd started crying. He thought she'd never want to hear from him again. His family probably hated him.
Sasuke tried to find out what was wrong. Neji yelled at him and Sasuke snapped back. Neji was shocked when Sasuke texted Hinata. "We have a friendship outside of you, Neji," Sasuke reminded him, trying and failing to sound like a smug librarian. It was an inside joke and, as always, it got Neji to smile. All Sasuke ever said that he and Hinata talked about was being performers. Hinata was even more private than Sasuke. She'd say something generic and positive, then change the topic. "Do you want me to tell her anything?" Sasuke asked. He was trying to get them talking again. Neji shrugged. "I am willingly acting like it's middle school again," Sasuke informed Neji coldly. "The proper response is 'Thank you, Sasuke', since—"
"I texted her. Happy?"
"No! You won't tell me what's wrong!"
Purple monkey dishwasher, the text from Neji read. Fuzzy unicorn pants, Hinata sent a text message back. Purple monkey dishwasher was their code for "I can't think of anything to say but I'm not ignoring you." Fuzzy unicorn pants was their code for "Okay cool. Same here." They'd come up with it after accidentally giving one another the silent treatment as teenagers when they weren't mad at each other.
Hinata was mad at him, though. She didn't know how to explain it, how to bring it up or how she wanted to fix it, so she hadn't said anything. Neji had kissed her before she left. It felt like he was doing it so she'd stay behind instead. Like it was a way to make her feel bad, when he'd known this is what she'd worked so hard for! She hadn't meant to go so long without texting or calling. Attending a music conservatory, navigating a new city in a different state, and a variety of other things proved to be more time-consuming than Hinata had anticipated. Oftentimes when she came home, she went right to bed. The city was so loud and crowded that it was hard to feel the least bit tired, even when her body was exhausted. She drank tea sometimes. It helped. She hadn't had any alcohol since before leaving to visit family in Japan and didn't feel like it now.
The apartment was silent and Hinata smiled. She checked her email in the living room and started checking out possible roommates. After phone calls and emails back and forth, a few days later, Naruto had moved in. He paid four months of the rent up front. They were both from major cities with skyrocketing rent, and both understood why the other was making the decisions they were. It turned out that Hinata and Naruto went to the same conservatory. Naruto was a pianist and Hinata a singer. They chatted about it amiably. "I don't want you to be my accompanist, just my roommate."
"Thanks," Naruto sighed in relief. Hinata watched, fascinated, as movers carefully placed an old, upright piano and bench in the living room at Naruto's direction.
"I won't play it at weird hours."
"Thanks."
Neji couldn't figure out how to up his word count. This was bad, considering he was studying to become a film critic. Sometimes, all a movie got out of him was a pained groan. Sometimes, a huge grin. The longest positive review he'd written was almost eleven hundred words. He'd liked the movie so much, he'd watched it twice in one day. The longest negative review had been eighteen hundred words, and that was the short version without profanity. His eyes had felt somehow like they were bleeding, and he was convinced his brain was short-circuiting. Sasuke suggested it was a rage headache. Neji pointed out that he hadn't seen the movie. Sasuke did not care to. Now, Neji's phone rang.
"My textbooks are melting my brain."
"Have you diagnosed yourself with anything yet?"
"No. They said it was normal to, and everyone would do it at some point. I'm still trying to wait as long as I can."
"Do you have symptoms of anything yet?"
"Screw you," Sasuke mumbled.
"If that's the worst you can say, you definitely need a break. I'll pick you up."
It was nine at night, so they went to an all-night restaurant. The food was mediocre and somehow, despite the restaurant always being crowded, Neji rarely had to wait to be seated. "It's on me," Sasuke said before he'd finished sitting down.
"I invited you out. I drove," Neji countered.
"Whoever's card hits the server's hand first has it," Sasuke said from behind his menu. "How's your speedometer?"
"Fine," Neji chuckled. Sasuke lived closer to campus than Sasuke did, and walked there. Or he did for half a mile. Neji always drove by, then broke several traffic laws cheerfully as he decided to carpool with Sasuke. Sasuke, for his part, paid for gas and checked that there were no traffic cameras. There weren't; Neji always did this just out of range. He liked claiming he needed to test out different things to make sure the car was working. That morning, he had decided on the speedometer.
Neji was careful not to ask about a drama class Sasuke was taking. It was one of the 'choose one and it counts to your transfer degree' things. Sasuke had aged out of his theatre contract before he and Neji started classes. That had all been over six months ago, and Sasuke wouldn't say anything. So taking a drama class to fill a requirement couldn't have been easy. Not that Neji knew how to ask. The most he'd gotten out of Sasuke about it was, "I'm flying out to give Hinata my dress. Will you come with me? I'll pay for your ticket. It's only a two-hour flight." Sasuke told their parents, who arranged for them to fly privately because "how would you store that dress in the overhead compartment? It'd get crushed!" and because Neji would be drinking a little bit to get through it. That went without saying.
Sasuke was originally a toy soldier who understudied for the role of a doll. The director, stage manager, and dance choreographer discreetly asked if he'd be willing to understudy as the doll. He was delighted to. The scene the doll was in looked like a lot of fun. Toys in a toymaker's shop become sentient and fought the proprietor and her apprentice. They were stopped by a creepy wizard who unfolded his cursed handkerchief. The audience never knew if the creepy wizard would help or hinder the protagonists. In this instance, he turned them away from the toy shop, which he then burned down via the curtain closing and sound effects. Sasuke had a crush on the guy who had played the wizard, but never got a chance to ask for his number.
The director brought in a fight choreographer to work alongside the longtime dance choreographer. The big fight was a combination of both, and it was really six separate fights at the same time. Sasuke worked hard at the doll's ballet, which was his fight. The girl who actually played the doll was delighted and encouraged Sasuke. She rehearsed with him in costume and her in dance gear—an oversize t-shirt and well-fitting, lightweight sweatpants. The performance run had nearly ended when Sasuke got a phone call from the director. The girl was too sick to perform that night. Sasuke was terrified. He knew the girl, and she wouldn't fake an illness just to give her understudy a chance. Sasuke had made her say it out loud. The director told him to come in an hour and a half before his usual call time for hair, makeup, and dance choreography. He was a bony seventeen-year-old then, so the dress slipped easily over his head. The hem came to rest slightly below his knees. It zipped up the back, so he had to have help with that.
He got help, too, on how to sit in the dress. He'd never worn a tutu, and the dress' under-layer was a black tutu and a close-fitting top sewn together. That was under a layer of stiff black fabric with a pink hem and skinny pink straps at the shoulders. Sasuke got to wear pink leggings under the dress, and was relieved. The girl who actually played the doll wore pink stocking and Sasuke didn't have any. He had black ones. He wore black leather ballet slippers too. The company was required to wear them. The staff hated character shoes and weren't thrilled with jazz shoes. Ballet slippers were the way to go. Sasuke would later learn that the doll's makeup he wore was what a real ballerina would wear. The braided pigtails soaked in hair gel, then hairspray, were not necessarily those of a ballerina.
"Ooh, the ribbons would look great with his hair." One of the hairdressers carefully snipped lengths of thick pink ribbons and secured Sasuke's black hair. It all matched the dress and leggings nicely. He'd worn his hair pinned under a hat when he was a toy solider. The costume had been hot under the stage lights compared to this one. It might have been why his choreography was less intense then too.
Neji and Hinata had both been able to get tickets to this performance. So far, they had squirmed in their seats and agreed to tell Sasuke the show wasn't boring, because he'd invited them. Neji was wearing a new suit and tie. Hinata was wearing a bright blue cocktail dress that she was increasingly annoyed by. She'd wanted to try a new designer. She did not like this new designer. The curtain rose to reveal a stage full of dolls and toy soldiers. As the toymaker strode onstage with his apprentice, Neji wondered vaguely how expensive twelve lifelike mannequins of different shapes and sizes had cost and how long it had taken to dress them. Hinata frowned as the toymaker scolded her apprentice for spilling black paint and not wiping it off a prized ballerina doll's dress.
The ballerina stood with her arms in a circle in front of her. Her left leg was out at an angle. Hinata had seen dancers at school do this, but forgot what it was called. The ballerina leaned forward at the waist slightly. The hair on Neji's neck stood up as he whispered that those weren't mannequins. The apprentice pushed the ballerina upright. "Stay there." Lean. "No, right there." Straighten, lean, arms perfect this whole time. "There." The apprentice walked over to another toy and the ballerina leaned again. "Fix her leg," the toymaker grumbled. The apprentice crouched down. The audience laughed nervously at all the uncanny valley effects happening.
One of the other teen actors had some experience in puppetry and ventriloquism. He made creaking noises without moving his lips as Sasuke moved this way and that before standing up with them together. Sasuke smiled vacantly and tilted his head slowly so he wouldn't laugh. He'd forgotten the creaking sounds would be done. Neji recognized Sasuke. Eyes wide, he nudged Hinata, who nodded. The protagonists entered and tried to talk to the toymaker. They were interrupted by the ventriloquist performing a sound effect of metal springing as Sasuke's leg shot out again. The ventriloquist made a sound like wood splintering, and the fight broke out.
One soldier who had been sitting down near a doll this whole time was supposed to sit on the base of her spine and roll around the stage on her tailbone, evading her opponent. The actress had done this perfectly for weeks. She cued the other actors with this move. Tonight, somehow it went wrong. She pinwheeled around the stage, unable to stop her momentum as her legs shot out. She nearly knocked over two other kids, who instantly jumped downstage. Upon forgetting their original fight choreography, the two actors did the first thing they thought of: their no-contact sparring for their intermediate karate class. In a gown and pea coat and leggings, respectively.
The toymaker caught Sasuke before he nearly tripped. They performed a ballet combination. It ended with Sasuke in first arabesque and pretending to kick the toymaker. Freeze. Thunderous applause. Scene change. Sasuke dashed backstage to have water and try to cool down. He hoped he wasn't sweating all his makeup off. Ten minutes later, he walked out with the other for curtain call. Hinata and Neji gave him a standing ovation and he laughed.
"Your scene made the whole play worth it," Neji said as they went out for dinner after.
"You were so pretty!" Hinata chimed in.
"Yeah, pretty creepy," Neji quipped.
"The hair and makeup artists will be glad to hear that," Sasuke laughed.
"The dress was fantastic," Hinata continued.
Seven months later, Sasuke turned eighteen and aged out. A week later, the theatre shut down. Before the final day, Sasuke snuck into the costume building. He found the dress within ten minutes, shoved it into a garbage bag he'd hidden under his shirt, and rushed home. For the next few months, the dress was carefully hung in his closet. Hinata was so surprised and excited when Sasuke flew down with Neji to give it to her. She wore it to feel confident, beautiful or both, and described events she wore it at to Sasuke. Oftentimes, these were costume parties where she told everyone about the origins of the dress. Sometimes it was at rehearsals her friends were in because she couldn't go to the actual performance. One day, it was for a mock audition.