Day 4: A-Side
Part 17: Eyes of Heaven
"Today's a big day, huh? Lots at stake here… sorta. Let's keep this conversation quiet and brief. Waking her up would be rude.
What? Not one for conversation today? Just sent here to spy on me? Hah! I'm just playing around. We both know it's past 'observation' at this point, and you sure as hell do too. Hm? The station? Look it up, or something. I don't know much about Hachioji."
Nagi's alarm cut through what little sleep she was able to piece together. Her heart in her chest, she scrambled to switch it off before it could wake Fret. She sighed as it was silenced, calm for the moment. Her fears were misplaced, it would seem, as she turned her head towards Fret, completely conked out. She didn't blame him for the exhaustion – yesterday was a lot for the both of them. Even now, Nagi's 6 am awakening had her head throbbing and her eyes calling out for more sleep, something she wasn't entirely used to even after all-nighters. She quickly threw her blanket off to prevent herself from drifting back off to dreamland and tried to make her way to the bathroom as quietly as possible. Dim light shone through the base of her blinds, providing just enough illumination for her to make her way to her destination and flick on the light. She stared at herself in the mirror, briefly taking into account how bedraggled she looked and sighing, before running herself a hot shower.
As the water fell down around her, she felt its warm lull and slid down into the basin until she was sitting, the stream hitting her whole body, arms wrapped around her legs. She felt some residual back ache slowly fade away and buried her face in her knees. The water wasn't warming her any more. She closed her heavy eyelids to let them rest a moment and cleared her mind of all but the hissing sound of the shower raining on her for a while. She couldn't truly empty her head, but the closest thing she could do was focus on anything that wasn't the low-points of the day prior, which exhausted her, or the dream she had earlier which filled her with equal parts dread, guilt and misery. The water would still not warm her. She chose instead to focus on her breathing, heavy and slow, or the feeling of drizzle against skin, or the darkness that encompassed her vision with her eyes so tightly shut like this. None of it was enough. She could not keep those thoughts at bay. She let out a weak groan of frustration and pulled her legs closer to her body. Some water was warming her now. It spilled from eyes and flowed down her cheeks.
Nagi stepped out of the shower and dried herself off. Quickly running through the rest of her morning routine as quietly as possible, she finished tying her all-important ribbons into her hair and closed the door behind her, leaving it unlocked so Fret could leave later – she'd maybe even get back before he left to meet Rindo. Nagi stepped out into the morning air, a dim sun dawning through the clouds of Hachioji, painting the sky behind them a sickly, pale blue. As she fiddled to produce a pair of headphone she'd quickly slipped into her rucksack, she felt her phone buzz. She expected an EleStra notification, but was met with something decidedly different.
_06:41_
Shiki: Hi Nagi!
U there? :)
Nagi: Ah, Lady Misaki.
Awake at this hour?
Shiki: Don't remind me :(
In a meeting with a bunch
of suits all night long
Nagi: Oh? About?
Shiki: Expansion outside
Shibuya
I'll spare u the boring details
until later?
Nagi: Later?
Shiki: Oh! Right (| _ |')
Me and Eri are headed
into Shibuya later
Wanna join up?
Nagi: Sounds like
an opportunity I may
take you up on
Shiki: You don't have
to come if you don't
want to but
Well
Nagi: Hm?
Nagi pressed her student card to the sensor on the gate and pushed it open, keeping her eyes transfixed on the screen. She had never spent a day with just Shiki before, yet the more she thought about it, the more appealing it sounded. She was certainly a more serene change of pace to the normal high-energy, or high snark, of her fellow Twisters.
_06:45_
Shiki: I've been told
that you're
Um
"Going through it"
And I just think that it
would be nice to spend a
bit of time with you and
maybe
help? (^ ^;)
Nagi: That's very
thoughtful of you, Lady
Misaki.
Though let it be known
I'd've indulged in your
company even without
present matters.
Shiki: Oh! That's great!
Meet you about…
two-ish?
Nagi: It's a done deal.
Nagi put her phone back in her pocket and finally finished wrangling with the wires of her headphones, placing them over her ears and moving to the beat of Def Märch down the street. She wondered why Fret had told Shiki, in vague terms at least, about her current predicament. It would have to be him, right? No-one else knew about this, at least not as deeply as he did. And was he telling her because he couldn't talk to her today, or because he wished to delegate the task to someone else? Curious, curious. She would have to tell him later that it wasn't his 'duty' to take care of her or to ensure others did it, if that was his way of thinking. She didn't want him ending up like herself.
The city was always eerily silent around this time in the morning. Even the most dedicated students weren't happy about getting up at eight in the morning and so instead trundled their way to the station from the accommodation block like zombies. They could serve to learn the art of staying up three days straight from EleStra, Nagi thought, no matter how much Rindo and Neku insisted that behaviour was 'unhealthy' and 'psychotic'. They simply didn't have the vitality to tank it. The students that did not make their way out of bed like corpses simply did not bother showing up and this area of Hachioji, mostly being catered to students, was very quiet during these early hours. Nagi was fine with quiet. Quiet meant calm, quiet meant a break, quiet meant the ability to create elaborate audio-visual fanfiction with large battle scenes in her head while music played. But quiet seemed to have become lost to her recently. Looking to her side, she noted how odd it felt to be wandering alone now. She had grown so used to someone being at her side these past few months, even if it was just from a group. Returning to quiet would be hard, and perhaps not as welcoming as before. But… Nagi suddenly froze. This was not the quiet she was used to. That feeling was back, or maybe it had never left. This time it was more potent and acute than earlier. That feeling of being watched.
The discomfort that welled within her caused her to quicken her pace. If she could just reach the station, then it would probably disappear – just like last time. The sensation was indescribable, like eyes were literally burrowing into her head. Cold sweat traced a river down her back. This was not normal. Of course it wasn't; why on Earth did that thought even enter her mind? She closed her eyes and shook her head, which at any other time of day would've earned her some funny looks from the scant few students in the street beside her. As she approached the station the feeling intensified, almost nauseating at this point. With trembling fingers, she tapped the screen in front of her to pay for her tickets. The feeling still was not gone. She hurriedly reached for her ticket, which bent slightly in her fingers and fell from her grasp, causing her to flail wildly for it. She managed to seize it before it hit the ground, grabbing it slightly too tightly and crumpling it in the process. Why was the feeling still not gone?
She scanned around the station for anyone looking at her, but was only met with empty platforms and miserable-looking pedestrians sitting slumped on benches or leaning against walls. She stared into that cloudy sky, grey now, and at the buildings visible from the open air on the platforms. Ridiculous, she told herself. The chance of this working was sub-zero, completely ludicrous, utterly unfathomable. And she was right. Not a single figure was looking at her. She glanced over her shoulder, but still nothing. Just people milling around, waiting for their train to arrive. She resigned herself to this discomfort and, defeated, slumped onto a bench, waiting like everyone else for the train to pull into the platform. She turned her ears to the noise of the area, the sounds of construction nearby, the murmurs of people with enough energy to talk at this point, the grinding of wheels coming to a halt on tracks… but nothing that could indicate the source of the discomforting, seemingly endless gaze. That was an exercise in stupidity, she thought. Why even try something so pointless? She chewed at her glove in frustration and let out a Nagi-brand groan.
The train seemed to be running a bit late today. Curses. She was ready to voice her frustrations to the two people sitting next to her – a young office worker, of which Tokyo had an abundance of, and a stylish, pretty-looking young man with an odd haircut and two birds on his hoodie – before her train pulled into the stop. Two stations, two stations, she reminded herself, knowing if she got absorbed into EleStra too hard she may miss her stop. It had happened before, it could happen again. Stepping on and into the warm air of the train, she took her seat and tried to distract herself from the well of discomfort in the pit of her stomach. The train lurched and began to pull away from the station. The feeling dissipated with it.
Nagi should've felt comforted by this fact. She did not. All it meant was that whoever was watching her was in Hachioji, in plain sight, and she had just missed them. She tried to think comforting thoughts and her mind turned to Fret. Was he experiencing this phenomenon? Whatever the answer to that question was, she decided she'd confide in him once he was awake. Even in the warm air of the train, even with the sweat running down her body, once that thought left her mind all Nagi felt was cold once more.