Welcome to a brand new story! Wow. I haven't written anything new in about 2 and a half years. It feels strange to be back.

This story is a spiritual successor to my previous Vocaloid fanfic called Behind The Curtain. You can find it on my profile as well. This year will mark the 5 year anniversary since I published the first chapter of Vocaloids: BTC - and indeed there's a five year gap between that story and this one. New chapters will come irregularly because I'm a busy man, so if you like this short first chapter, make sure to Follow the story so that you don't miss any updates.

I decided to create this fic because there are some brand new things I need to get off my chest, and things that I want more people to talk about. Therefore, a disclaimer is suitable. This story WILL contain some possibly triggering topics, most of which based around mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. If you've read my previous works, you know that this wouldn't be the first time.

On the other hand, I also pay homage to another one of my creative outlets: music. I've been a musician most of my life and it's another topic that's very close to my heart. I'm going to have fun dropping some musical terms and ideas every now and then, and I hope some people will be able to pick up on them. (:

I'll also let you know I plan to write ACTUAL music based on this fanfic. It's a strange concept that I've been toying with in my mind - to have a multimedia fanfiction, so to speak. I will let you know as soon as that happens, and I hope I'll be able to share it with you until this year is over.

That's it for my announcements. As always, I'd be happy for any sort of review you can provide, whether to praise my writing or to tell me all about what I did wrong. I hope we'll have some good times together!

-Author


CHAPTER 1: Setting The Scene (Introduction)

To her credit, Rin started the day on a high note. When she woke up, her brother was just making lunch. Len probably wasn't the best homecook around, but every once in a while his simplistic recipes took off some of the edge of Rin's misery. And it certainly was a nice change from all the shitty 4 AM burgers she usually chowed down these days.

So on that early afternoon, the twins sat in the kitchen, nibbling on Len's mac and cheese and talked. It wasn't that common for them to really keep each other updated on what's been going on; their lives were a bit separate now, aside from being flatmates. It'd been like that since they decided to move.

"So what have you been up to?" Rin asked while absent-mindedly gnawing on the metal fork. Some foods were simply not meant to be eaten with chopsticks.

Len patiently chewed and swallowed. "Same as usual, I guess. Probably gonna hang out with John later. I haven't used the camera just for fun in weeks."

"So school's been keeping you busy?" The twin brother was working towards a career in photography. It was the next best thing to spark his interest since the old gang disbanded.

"Very. And I'm also helping Meg with her thing when I can."

"Her thing." Rin smirked.

"You know what I mean!"

"Sure. Dude, why don't you just go for it already? You remind me of how Kaito was around Miku years ago."

Len frowned. "I can't be that bad. If anything, we're really good friends and we both know it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you come to me sobbing because Gumi won't give you enough attention-"

"Jeez, I get it. Look, I'm not a ball of nerves like Kaito. I can handle myself."

Rin felt a little bit of an uncomfortable pinch in her guts; she didn't want to upset her brother. "I'm sorry. I just want you to be happy is all."

The twins used to be a part of a six-piece pop group called Vocaloids. For about a year when the group was still fairly new and shiny, a love triangle existed between three of their colleagues. The blue-haired boy Kaito used to have a mad crush on Miku, the big star of the show, but hadn't acted up on it for months because he was either too shy, or scared of a possible rejection – quite justifiably so, given that the girl hadn't reciprocated his feelings for a long time. Things only changed briefly when her mental issues began to get the better of her, and the two of them dated for a few weeks when Miku was in desperate need of love and attention. Meanwhile, another one of their co-stars, Luka, was falling in love with Kaito, but she couldn't do anything about it while he and Miku were a couple. Eventually, though, the two inevitably broke up, and within three or four months Luka and Kaito ended up together.

They were still a pair to this moment, even with the group's end. From what little Rin knew about them these days, she was trying to make it as a sound engineer and EDM producer, while he wrote articles for music magazines. As for Miku, she was the only one who still kept her initial pop singer career going. The twin thought it'd been headed that way naturally: the turqoise star used to be the main focus of their Vocaloids shows and had much wider popularity compared to the rest of them.

Still, it was hard to say if there was a particular breaking point that led to the group dissolving. Rin felt that her friends, including herself, have just grown tired of that lifestyle over time. They'd been doing it for almost five years, and especially for the twins who started with the Vocaloids at the age of fourteen, that was a very long time. And she in particular realised that the pop crap they were doing was just... fake. She needed to do something more real with her life. With her music.

"I'm just not comfortable talking about this," Len continued. "Specifically in here with you when Meg is right upstairs."

"Would you be more comfortable talking about it if I took you out sometime?"

"If it's just the two of us? Possibly."

The twins were finished with their lunch; Rin stood up and took their plates to the sink.

"We don't really talk much anymore, do we?" she said. "Maybe that would be nice."

Her brother's gaze followed her. "To be fair, we're barely ever free at the same time."

There was a hint of accusation in his voice and Rin picked up on it immediately.

"The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"Well it's just that..." Len scratched the back of his head. "I go to school by day, and you... socialize by night."

"I'm trying to run a band, douche! That's my life right now." She had her arms crossed at that point.

"Okay. I'm just... I hope you know what you're doing. I'm still proud of what you're trying to accomplish." And Len smiled faintly.

After the Vocaloids ended as a group, Rin, by that point turning 19 years old, wanted nothing more than to wipe her slate clean. Together with her brother, they grabbed two other kids (including the aforementioned Gumi), flew across two continents and rented a four bedroom house in Liverpool. She knew she would have had little chance to step out of her own shadow back home; and obviously the show had its fans all over the world, but she was hoping that it wasn't such a big phenomenon in Europe that it would prevent her from being able to start over. Gumi and John, their 4th and final flatmate, initially went along for the ride, but once all four of them were there, everyone had to financially support the household equally. The twins couldn't expect to live off of their small Vocaloid fortune for the rest of their lives either.

And so, John and Len were in photo school together; while Rin's brother was making some money on the side from some minor shooting gigs, John and Gumi were both moving between different fast food, restaurant and diner jobs. The girl – and Len's apparent love interest – was also trying to become a singer-songwriter. Because of their professional music background, Len had a small pull with some people who knew how to get around, and so he was able to find a really good vocal coach in the area for Gumi fairly easily. It was just one of the little things he had been doing for her since she told him about her dream.

In the meantime, Rin focused on contributing to the local rock scene. For a couple of years she had been gathering some of her own musical ideas and was just about ready to do things her way: edgy, emotional and real. A couple of people in the business helped her meet a lot of new faces, and she was currently working on a project they called Rest In Neglect, or simply RIN for short. She would often sit in her room and doodle with her guitar or spill her thoughts out onto a notepad so that she could bring new ideas to the band; she was the frontgirl and it was therefore her responsibility to gather the material.

It was entirely different from what they did in the old group. With Vocaloids, Rin's creative spirit could never sprout – the stars had their songs pre-made, and choreographers hired by the company came up with dance routines for them. She used to be the least focused of the bunch and sometimes rebeled against the rules; and as time went by, she slowly realised this was simply not the way she wanted to do things.

That was part of why Len being proud of her was really reassuring. Rin had to keep herself busy to make herself forget that she had no idea what she was actually doing. The fact that her brother thought she was on the right path made her feel a bit more grounded.

"Are you happy, twinnie?" she asked him. "Do you think we made the right call?"

"With moving here? I think so. Look, there was no way I'd let you come here without me. You're my best friend."

Rin giggled. "Oh, stop it, I'm not. You've got tons of better friends."

"Would you not question it, please?" Len stood up and walked up to her. "You're my sister, my other half. And we're supposed to take care of each other. Especially here on the other side of the world."

She only meant to pull him in for a brief hug, but once Rin had her arms around his neck, she didn't want to let him go. He was right. They were twins, and he was closer to her than anyone in the whole world, even if she felt like they didn't have much in common lately. That sheer, raw moment of closeness and understanding charged her up like a car battery, and Rin suddenly felt overwhelmed with emotion. It seemed like Len sensed it because he squeezed her and softly caressed her back.

Of course, it didn't last too long.

"What's happening?" the chipper, always slightly exaggerated voice of Meg – or Gumi, as most people called her – circled around the kitchen.

"Oh, nothing," Rin said back and glanced over towards the hall where the short green girl stood, wearing a light blue sundress which absolutely did not suit her hair color. "Just bonding."

"Bonding? I wanna bond too!"

Rin laughed and let go of her brother. "Sure, get over here, silly."

As the girls approached each other and shared a much more playful embrace, the twin couldn't help but think back to the time when she, Len and everyone on the Vocaloid train with the exception of Meiko, a former guest star who was now 30 and worked for an insurance company or something, dyed their hair as part of their image. It was in fact Gumi's inspiration to do that as well; she used to joke back in the day about green being "still available." The siblings used to be blond; before they moved, Rin changed her hair and wardrobe color to black to manifest the start of a new era. Her brother was much more tame in that regard: he currently kept his hair bleached and he dressed, well, like a normal young adult.

"Lenny," Meg said as she slithered from one twin to the other and jumped into the boy's arms; "I'm gonna need your help later. I wanna use a certain chord and I can't figure out how to play it."

Rin could have sworn she saw her brother sniffing Gumi's hair, and she rolled her eyes. "Sure, but why don't you ask Rin?" he replied. "She's a much better guitar player."

"Yep, but I'm also not a theory nerd like you, bro," Rin said to the two and turned around. "I'll be upstairs if you need me."

At last glance before she lost their view, the two were still preoccupied with each other. Rin smiled for herself, but there was a bit of a discomfort in that smirk. Her thoughts immediately jumped to how Len claimed she was his best friend and his other half – and how apparently Gumi was on the same tier, if not higher.

What if the two of them really got together one day? Would that make Rin a third wheel? And would she eventually lose her value in her brother's eyes?

She was trying to shrug that feeling off as she entered her safe haven. Rin's bedroom was pure chaos: stacks of clothes intertwining with pieces of paper, notebooks and pencils, a couple of books and piles of dirty dishes and empty chip bags and cookie boxes; there were three different shoes on the bed, the night stand lamp had a sock on top, and there was a near empty bottle of Jack on the desk right next to the laptop. At first glance, the only thing that looked like it was in the right place was a red mustang-style guitar, carefully placed onto a guitar stand in the corner underneath the window. The room had a faint smell, but Rin barely noticed it since she'd been accustomed to it by that point.

She never brought anyone up there. Rin would ocassionally meet with friends, go to parties or stay at someone's place overnight, but her room was the place that only belonged to herself. Part of it was because of the chaos, but mostly she just needed some free space where nothing of the outside world would matter.

Rin didn't feel as secure as she tried to make herself appear. The more she ran against the wall and tried to get exactly where she wanted, the more were self-doubt and anxiety sneaking their way into her mind. She wasn't noticing the process, just that every once in a while mundane tasks seemed too difficult, and she wondered if this path was even meant for her, or whether she should just give up trying and accept she won't ever be as impactful – or significant? – as she dreamed about.

And her twin brother was essential for keeping herself grounded. Therefore, each time Rin felt like Gumi might take her place as Len's most important person, she couldn't help but feel jealous. And each time she caught herself feeling jealous, that emotion would instantly reform into guilt – she didn't want to hog Len all for herself nor stand in the way of his happiness.

Rin picked up one of her notebooks and clutching it, she fell backwards onto her bed. She just laid there for a few minutes, soundless and motionless, before opening the notebook and writing a single sentence:

"The world moves too fast and I need it to stop."