A/N: I feel a bit like I went out on a limb for this, but I hope that doesn't detract from it. I worried that it may be a little tough to relate to because the characters involved are so wrapped up with Innocent Sin, but… aheh, well, it's different? Please enjoy.
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on the ground filled with noise
Lisa used to stand before the shrine with strange kids and wonder why she felt so sad, but somewhere along the way this time she teaches herself not to, and teaching herself things has always been her forte so it's okay. The goofy visual dope eyes her shiftily from across the street on their parallel pilgrimage to Araya today; since she's never liked being stared at unless already secured in the warm plastic glow of her heavily-manufactured music, she turns a premature corner and heads to the park instead. All she does is stand there in the rubble— of construction, or so they've said forever. Right? Right?
Mami and Miho call her down— a cute little message riddled with hearts and notes that Meepo must've typed out herself— to Aoba Park. It seems their producer has resurfaced, and Lisa chews her lip on the bike ride down and can't quite recall where it was he'd gone, anyway.
The first thing she does when she sees him is frown. Or perhaps frown is an understatement because really she'd like to spit or bludgeon him with something but can't really think of any reason why, aside from abandoning them all for however long and that an unsavory aura pulses out from him in waves. It's intense and unnatural and gross and it raises her hackles as he sits sprawled between Meepo and Asacchi on the park bench with one ankle on his knee and only the wood keeping his hands from their backs.
Work fends it all away.
Ginji permits her to sing in Cantonese for their next release, and for the moment all intangible trespasses are forgiven. Because Ginji knows (to her smug pleasure) fuck-all about Cantonese she is to help him write it. In return, she tries her best to act like she doesn't notice day by day when he ducks out of the room to vomit. For some reason she grows the littlest bit more sympathetic to him each time he meanders back in. Perhaps this is cosmic and Wang Long tells her so. Perhaps not.
Ginji is not as extroverted as he seems when not wearing his— how do you say?— business face. At first Lisa does not know what to make of this, nor is she able to entirely register his very nearly feral devotion to that which he absolutely cannot lose again. Well, she's always liked men with that quiet inner power, she thinks, misinterpreting desperation as strength.
He has a persistent cough for about two weeks more. One day she turns her head just fast enough and catches a glimpse of the viscous black slime in his handkerchief and completely forgets about discretion.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong, Lisa-kun."
A strange, small part of her hates the placating, mild quality of his tone, the one that always comes out a little too gentle, the one designed with no pretense to persuade and persuade well. Next time he makes her a drink to complement his own and since no one will know it's all right. It's all right. It's all right, and it makes her feel grown-up. Because Lisa innately lacks the foresight to realize the hazard in creating secrets for Ginji to know she mistakes the recurrent gut-flare of no for comfort.
"You're lucky I'm so supportive."
"Uh-huh." No gravity.
Ginji who is strong and smart and desperate and pukes black stuff and can do enough thinking for both of us but is that really okay? Lisa thinks not but Lisa thinks a lot of things that never happened.
Somewhere write this part turned into write this song and this is the least perfunctory gift Ginji is able to offer so it's all right. Bangs that smell of cologne and product brush her forehead while she holds his pen in a young and vital hand, scrawling words— hoh san luo, hoh san luo, hoh san luo.
"Oh, Lisa-kun—" His fingers cover hers and direct her, show her how to do it, how he likes it to be done, and make her stomach flutter pleasantly and not pleasantly. And when it's over and her wrist aches she sees such a grateful (gratified) look on Ginji's face and thinks that Ginji might not be such a bad guy after all.
Two months later she calls Ginji chingyan and can't help but feel like she's missing something.
fin