AN: Hanayo finally got a chapter! Sorry for the delay, I kept writing chapters and being unhappy with them so I'd write more chapters and realize x needed more foreshadowing and whatnot and would need to write another chapter.

Chapter 25: Honk School Confidential

HANAYO

Hanayo had not thrown up in the potted plant in the art gallery's lobby; although she had wanted to, and as panic bloomed in her chest, she considered her options. Running was one, although she would have to weave her way through professors, peers, rivals, the snooty perfect realism girl from figure drawing II, and several abstract sculptures of in the reception area. Hiding in the bathroom was another one. It was nice bathroom, if a little too modern for her tastes; as the toilet flushed, it would recite random lines from poems in a stilted electronic tone. Dying on the spot seemed the most appealing. Her heart was pounding fast enough to have a heart attack, anyways.

Hanayo wasn't the best artist in her class. Not by a long shot. No one had ever said anything to her, of course, but she could still feel the eyes of the other students. Middling. Average. An ex idol fallen into unwarranted fame. That was what they must be thinking. There was no way that this could be happening to her. How much hubris did she have? Couldn't she stop seeking attention by now?

A freshman getting a gallery show was ridiculous, after all.

She'd started drawing in earnest after u's disbanded. There was a void to fill. She did mostly figure drawing and fashion at first, sometimes referencing an A-RISE spread or the next newest idol group's get ups. One ink drawing was even in the show; a black and white silhouette of Tsubasa. (The gallery owner had loved the stark negative space and the use of lines, even if it didn't fit with the rest of the works.) But she'd branched out into strange landscapes and dark portraits soon after the first big painting she'd did.

There was something monumental about that painting, that she'd done her second year of high school. On the surface, it was a large painting of two girls holding hands. Hanayo had done it to practice oils, since she'd used predominantly acrylic paints. It should have been an ordinary work done in the old clubroom. At least, until it wasn't. Something clicked in her brain, when she'd laid out the underpainting. Her initial color scheme was wrong, all wrong. It was to be a drizzled gray background, soft shadows, the girls' hands entwinned, one must have a ring; it was as if some inner voice was asserting the platonic ideal of what this painting was meant to be. She lost herself in it for a few days, blindly following a half-dreamt outline, hardly sleeping or eating until it was finished. There was no painting anymore in her mind, it was mere pigment slapped on by a ghost-guided hand.

When Rin had seen it in the club room, she'd asked Hanayo if that was supposed to be her.

Hanayo had protested.

"Look, nya," Rin took out her cell phone and pointed to the background, a picture of Hanayo smiling sweetly, "Look how the lips are, you have the same smile. And the eyes of that girl are like yours, too. And you're both so cute!"

"B-b-but…"

"Is that me?" Rin gestured to the second girl, who, to Hanayo's 32-hours-of-no-sleep-brain, had merely been a random girl with random clothes and a random pose. She squinted. Maybe the girl's thighs were a bit muscular. Maybe she might have borrowed the nose unwittingly. Maybe that purple shade she'd mixed might have been a bit red for the hair.

"I… might… have…"

"Oh, are you going to buy me a ring like this? It's so cute, nya!"

After that incident (and a few paychecks towards a very nice ring for Rin) Hanayo had found herself drawn to strange places and melancholic portraits. Her style became dark, with muted colors and heavy strokes, trying to depict a reality she herself was foreign to. It was a hit with the art schools and teachers; she was praised for the maturity of her work: the expressions of the outline of dim sunshine over a piece of driftwood, a faint streak over color over a starry sky, the press of indigo lips to clear plastic. Only Rin worried at times, looking at the monochrome portraits and ruined landscapes. Hanayo had told her not to worry, that artists were just gloomy like that. Although she wondered still, what exactly she was trying to capture.

/

"Are you alright, Kayochin?" Rin had dressed up for the opening night; more so than Hanayo, really, in a gray sweater dress and boots, hair pinned into a handsome up do. She'd gotten taller, more muscular, her face narrow and intense. Hanayo had seen Rin her whole life, and yet every time she saw her girlfriend, it was as if she was seeing a vision of beauty and strength.

Hanayo shook her head at her girlfriend's question. She was not alright.

Rin took her hand and gave her a smile. the kind that had meant the most to Hanayo; with warmth reaching to her chartreuse eyes that never wavered in their conviction. It was a smile of encouragement, saying, you can do it, believe in me. If Hanayo would just believe. The gallery and the public faded away, only leaving Rin under the bright lights. She squeezed Rin's hand.

"Wanna get something to eat, nya? Someone had snacks over by your scary painting. Let's go!"

Unaware of the strict professors and snobbish assholes that lined her path, Rin pushed through the group and next to the ocean painting. There were in fact snacks, meat pastries and sweets, and Hanayo helped herself to the strawberry donuts with the special icing. It was her art showing and she was going to eat that messy, sprinkle-covered donut, snooty perfect realism girl from figure drawing II be damned.

"How come…" The donut was perfect, with sweetness and tartness in perfect synch, "How come you think that painting is scary, Rin?"

Rin, mouth full, just waved at the painting with a fierce expression.

A dark-haired woman stood before the oil painting, as if in a trance. Her hand was out— a single ring on her finger, hovering inches above the textured waves. There was something distinctly familiar about her; with voluminous waves down to the waist and a resigned posture. The woman had curves that Hanayo both envied and admired; did she want to be her or did she just want to draw her? There was something defeated in the sloping shoulders and a lone sigh. It was… evocative. It was as if the woman belonged on that beach, with her hand stretched out to touch the waves.

With a clack of heels on the checkered floor, the woman turned around and smiled, her teal eyes bright with familiarity. "You've become a wonderful painter, Hanayo."

"N-Nozomi?"

She was older now. An adult, Hanayo took in, who clutched a practical-looking handbag, with one hand, as if it were a buoy; with her hair pulled into a both practical and elegant bun, make-up tastefully done. Mature. Beautiful. A real live adult.

"Nozomi!" Rin bounded forward unquestioning, springing into a hug on the older girl. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too." Nozomi motioned for Hanayo to join the hug, and Hanayo did; she smelled the same after all these years— chamomile and lavender, faint vanilla. "I missed you guys a lot."

"We missed you too! It's so cool that you're in town! Is Eli with you? Let's go do something all together! Do you wanna see the cool painting Kayochin did, it kinda looks like me and it's super cool. Kayochin is the best! She's a beautiful artist." Hanayo flushed, as she flushed on a daily basis when Rin said these things to everyone from professors to cashiers. "There's a ramen bar a few blocks away, but if you guys want something else we can get that too, let's let Kayochin decide, it's her big day!"

"Oh my, well, Eli isn't with me, but we can go wherever Hanayo wants."

"Aww, is she working?"

Nozomi didn't look at them for a moment, eyes lingering on the ocean painting again. "Yeah. She's working."

"Boo! I wanna see her too. So uh, what do you wanna do, Nozomi?"

"I did come for the art show, you know." She winked at Hanayo. "I would like to look at a few more things before we leave."

Hanayo shifted from foot to foot, having let herself lean on one for too long. "I-I'm surprised you heard about it. I m-mean, it's not a super big deal. I'm glad you like it though. It's great to see you."

"Rin told me." She stuck out her tongue at the girls. "It's not every day one of us have a big show like this, you know. Let me know when Rin's games are too, okay?"

An image of Nozomi and Eli cheering Rin on in the stands appeared in Hanayo's mind: Eli standing up and clapping every time Rin scored and Nozomi bringing hot tea for everyone when it got cold out. "I'd like that, Nozomi."

"Yeah, you guys should all come watch me hit stuff, and then we can all hangout afterwards!"

"Just like old times." Her voice was quiet. "Anyways, tell me about this painting, Hanayo. I haven't been able to stop looking at it since I got here."

"T-the ocean one?"

"Yes. It's beautiful. I think it's your best piece."

The ocean painting had been done over the summer, one of her most recent ones. Just water and sand and sky, the shoreline detailed in silhouetted black shapes. A towering lighthouse pushed its way into the stormy clouds above. The ocean itself was abstracted into choppy waves that ranged from greys to seafoam. (By abstracted, what she meant was a gestural mess of aggressive, random brushstrokes and slaps of paint.)

"Uh, um, the professor wanted us to do a landscape painting, and uh… I did this."

"Isn't it kinda creepy?"

"A little." Nozomi's expression was utterly neutral, as if she were reciting a paper to the student council. "What was the inspiration for it?"

At this Hanayo felt herself reddening again. "It's… it's very silly…"

"I do read fortunes for a living, Hanayo." Her eyes softened as she spoke. "I believe in a lot of things."

"Yeah, I bet it'll be cool! Did you base it off a horror story?"

"Okay, well, um…" She'd told her classmates it'd been taken from a photograph. That was… half true. She'd found the photo on google images, when she'd been working on her driftwood piece. The explanation didn't account for vivid dreams imprinted in her head every morning, following her from the bedroom to the studio, the endless searching for that coastline, which yielded nothing but false leads, or how after the painting was done, the webpage hosting the image had been shut down. "I saw a photo and… well, I got really bad deju vu, so uh, it was inspiration. I guess. I've never been there. It just felt like I had."

"Aww, that wasn't weird at all, Kayochin! I wanted a horror story. That's too serious."

Nozomi nodded, her blue-green eyes wide. "Do you know where it was? It is a very striking shoreline."

"I have no idea. South, maybe. I've looked a few times." She shivered. It felt wrong, talking about it. Like she'd told a friend's secret.

"Actually…" Rin stared at it again.

"Do you remember something?" There was an expectation in Nozomi's voice, to say something, discover something, although Hanayo could not possibly figure out what that vague expectation was.

Rin shook her head. "Nyaa!" She did her kitty pose, drawing a few looks from the crowd. "Art is too serious. Let's go look at that big rice ball painting."

/

The heavily rice themed restaurant had been a warm sanctuary from the chill autumn air, and even as the night wound down to only three girls in a low booth, who still ordered snacks and drinks every half hour. They had gone a little overboard, but Hanayo had sold one of her paintings that evening, the night sky piece, and she'd been more than happy to try each new cocktail the waitress suggested. They had been exuberant after a few drinks; with Nozomi teasing Rin and Hanayo, Hanayo still glowing after the sale, and Rin snuggled up to Hanayo with a buzzed affection. Nozomi seemed to let go, for a moment, when she'd told them about the customer asking for a fortune for their pomeranian, and how the couple down the street had wanted astrology charts done for their entire polyamorous molecule. "The pomeranian was actually quite a lucky dog. She was going to be meeting the love of her life very soon. There were big career changes coming up for her, too. Dingo was going places."

"Woowwww. I didn't know dogs could be in love. Did she? Did the owner tell you if Dingo fell in love?"

"I don't know, but a cute little shiba inu moved in next door the week after." Nozomi was grinning ear to ear as she told them, with her seer's voice. "Their love was written in the stars."

Rin's eyes were as wide as Nozomi's smile. "You really are a psychic."

Rin had nodded off on Hanayo's shoulder after a few hours. It was then that Nozomi had suggested shots; something with tequila, something with sugar along the rim. Hanayo had a surprisingly high tolerance, even more so than Nozomi, and it was only after six drinks and four shots that she was starting to really feeling it. (Drinking was typically limited to critique days for Hanayo and Rin, and even then Hanayo rarely got drunk.)

It was after the second cranberry-jaeger drink that Nozomi got a little weird.

"Touch my cards, Hanayo."

"Um."

"Look." Nozomi pulled out her deck, her narrow fingers caressing the smooth cardboard like a familiar lover, the way her index figure circled around the central knot of the card almost obscene. "They tell me everything."

"W-what do they tell you?"

"They tell me…" She stared at the wall for a moment, then took a long sip of her drink. "About a storm. A big one. You can feel it too, can't you?"

Hanayo had no idea what Nozomi was talking about. "What… what are you talking about, Nozomi? Is something happening? I feel like something is happening." If she let herself examine her thoughts, which she often tried to ignore, she knew something in her subconscious was unhappy. Something was down there. Something was wrong. It was screaming at her, taking her hands and cross-hatching their way to the surface, demanded to be remembered and-

"The tower will be struck soon."

"The tower?"

With a languid, tipsy grace, Nozomi knelt across the table, with a crystal pendant swinging on its silver chain over her dress, making a perfect, if somewhat uncomfortable focal point of her chest. She put forward a card. Illustrated was a tower behind a dark sky, struck by lightning. People were diving out, escaping the rising flames. "Most people are afraid of the death card. But death doesn't actually mean death, you know. It means change. Change can mean anything, really. I always tell my clients not to fear death. The tower, on the other hand…"

A jolt of coldness tingled up Hanayo's spine. For some reason, just then she really wanted Nozomi to stop talking. "…does… does the tower mean death?"

Nozomi gave her a loose, tipsy smile. "It means shit's fucked."

Hanayo's stomach dropped. This was bad. What the bad thing was, she could not say, but everything was suddenly Bad and Wrong. "I don't…" Everything felt wrong. "Is something fucked?"

Her laugh was a strange bark. "Not me, that's for sure."

Was Eli not…? How did she even respond to that? "I.. um… I… I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Hanayo." Nozomi sipped at her drink. "I don't really have anything to say either. Don't worry about it."

"Nozomi…"

Rin snored into Hanayo's sleeve.

"Your ocean painting…" She pushed the card next to Hanayo's emptied rice bowl. "Looks familiar, doesn't it?"

"Um…"

"The clouds. The thunder. A tower struck by lightning. Do you remember how the waves rose and fell, how unforgiving the ocean was? Do you remember being pushed into the brine?"

"I…" Had Hanayo felt her painting like that? She wanted to say no, but the hazy days of that summer still hung over her like a grey cloud ready to burst. The image still haunted her, when she let it. How could Nozomi possibly know that? Could she actually read minds? "I think we're drunk, Nozomi."

Nozomi giggled. "I know something you don't know."

Hanayo patted Nozomi's head, eager for them to stop talking about art and weird feelings, which she had done entirely enough of for one year. "Uh huh."

"It's good. I mean. You know. You know, right? You have to know. It's so obvious."

"No?"

"Rin would kill me though. If I told you."

Dare she hope? "What about Rin? Is she okay?"

"She's gonna be greattt… here let me read your fortune, okay?"

"Um."

"Shuffle my cards. Here. Look at them. Feel them."

The cards felt like cards. She awkwardly shuffled through them, ungracefully spilling them onto the table a few times. Nozomi was undeterred by this, as if it were fate for the cards to narrowly miss a rice bowl. "For how long?"

"Until it feels right. You will know. The cards respond to your feelings, your thoughts. They know."

"Uh." How did cards communicate? Card on top of card, splitting them again and again. What did Nozomi want to tell her? One jumped out of her hands, the rest following suit onto the floor. She felt the vaguest sense of disdain irradiating from the cards. Sheepishly, she handed them back to Nozomi. "Here."

"We're going to do a simple reading, okay?" She laid out three cards in front of Hanayo.

"S-sure."

The first card was the sun. It looked rather cheery, with the sunflowers and the horse and the baby. "That's good, right?"

"Past. Happiness, success, fulfillment."

"…Love Live?"

Nozomi gave her a smile. "Yes."

Hanayo supposed that was reasonable. "Okay."

The second card she flipped over was a guy carrying a bunch of sticks. "Present. Ten of wands. You've been working hard and have benefitted from it. But it may feel overwhelming for you. Does that apply to you?"

"Y-yes."

"And now for the future…" Nozomi picked up the card, not letting Hanayo see it. A silence filled the room, as she stared at the card.

This did not look good. "What? Am… am I getting married? Are Rin and I okay? She's not going to get hurt, is she?"

For a long moment, Nozomi said nothing. A spark of something, that had been kindled briefly in her eyes, had been put out. "It's as I thought. Even with you two, who should be set in stone…"

"What? What's going on, Nozomi?"

Nozomi threw down the card. It was the tower.

"You can't mean…"

"Yes. It's not you, Hanayo. It's not even Rin. It's not what's supposed to happen."

"Are we going to be in an accident then? What's going on?"

Nozomi was too close again, her warm hand grasping Hanayo's arm. Hanayo could smell the jaeger on her breath. Her voice was a stained velvet, beautiful and desperate and somehow dirty, whispering quietly into her ear like a drunken prophet. "Hanayo, the only card I've drawn for the future in a month has been the tower. For everyone. For me. For Eli. For the old couple down the street. Your fate has always been with Rin's, and Rin's with yours, from the first time I met you at Otonokizaka. You have always been meant to be together. If you were soul mates beyond lifetimes, I wouldn't be surprised. Every time I ever looked, the two of you were together. I have gotten flashes of the future all of my life. I know these things."

"But then-"

The grip of Nozomi's fingers was beginning to hurt. "But those futures are erased, now. My fortunes are void." Her voice was cracking. "Everything is void."

This couldn't possibly be real, Hanayo told herself. There was no way. They were drunk. Nozomi was always a good storyteller, this couldn't possibly be real… She wished she could ignore her intuition, her screaming subconscious, her half-awake heart, telling her that everything Nozomi was saying was true. Something in the back of her mind was clicking into place, making sense of what Nozomi was saying even if Hanayo herself was not. "How… how can that be? How do you know these things?"

"You know. You've seen this happen before. You've seen the beach. You know what will become of this, when it all collapses."

Hanayo did know. She'd known all along, she just didn't recognize it. "Nozomi…"

"You won't remember this. Don't worry."