She's just really tired y'all.
(The title is from the song 'Some Nights' by Fun. The power of Song Lyrics was too irresistible, forgive me)
(Also, it's been like a year since I started uploading this O.o)
Winter blusters through to take hold of the rest of the world unusually quickly; Rinko can't tell if it's a blessing or a curse. People are rather miserable in general with the foul weather and shortening days layered on top of the fact that SAO has not yet been ended, but she's had time to become more or less resigned to Mother Nature's whims, if nothing else. The cold isn't new.
At the same time, the days seem to get longer even as the amount of sunlight only shrinks. On days she has to come into work, she finds herself exhausted already by the time she arrives in the morning, hands sore from clenching the steering wheel with white knuckles all the way down from the mountain in murky darkness.
She really should just suck it up and get an apartment in town, but she hasn't the mental energy to start looking. A temporary solution is the most permanent of all, as they say.
As winter freezes the world over, Rinko feels trapped inside a glacier, dragging herself inch by inch through every day. The weather keeps her inside, and even if she had things besides work to keep her attention with, she wouldn't have the energy to engage with the world besides the bare minimum.
Her life runs on a repeat like a broken tape, her days spent sitting in the kitchen or in her room most days, typing away at her laptop with several blankets draped heavily on her shoulders, broken periodically by unnecessary naps that do more harm than good. She could sleep for a hundred hours and wake up wanting to sleep for a hundred more as soon as the cold seeps into her bones again.
If she could just sleep away the winter entirely, she would. But then, who would take care of her housemate?
Akihiko comes in to check on her occasionally, and more often than not finds her asleep at the table, face smushed against the keyboard or some papers. Sometimes he'll bring her fresh coffee before waking her up, and although she knows she probably shouldn't, she can't resist. She wonders if that's his genius master plan, to shamelessly encourage her insomnia and drag her down to his level. If it is, that's evil. Still, coffee is great.
He tells her about how his guild recently moved into a new base on Floor 39. On one hand, it's gratifying to know that the players haven't given up, and are still forging their way through the castle, Floor by Floor; on the other hand, she knows just how many they've lost, and it makes her sick to think of how many more they might lose as they reach for greater and greater heights. The higher they climb, the further they have to fall.
Sometimes they talk about real world life. Mostly, he tries to help her cope, suggesting that she buy a sun lamp, try these recipes he found who knows when, or decorate the house for Christmas even if no one will be partying in it. The first one helps, the second one might, and she's thinking about the third—she could buy a mini tree and some generic ornaments, cram as much tinsel and fairy lights as possible in the car, and completely turn the house upside down overnight while he's Diving. The house is small enough that she could do it herself, and the thought of surprising him brings a tiny smile to her lips.
Oddly enough, Rinko thinks he might be spending more time in the real world these days—at least, he's here more frequently, even if for only a minute or two. Why he bothers, she'll never know. Making sure she's still here, perhaps? Really, hasn't she made it abundantly obvious that she is going absolutely nowhere?
She's staying with him in his room one night when her alarm buzzes at midnight. It's basically her 'go to sleep already' alarm to remind her that she has to work in person the next day, except she almost always ignores it anyways, just like today, when she reaches over to silence it.
But even as she sets her phone down, she can't help but feel like there's something she should know…
Frowning, she checks the date on her lock screen again, and the hole in her chest yawns in realization.
It's their anniversary. Well, technically, neither of them can remember when they started dating by the conventional definition. After about a year, Rinko decided for them that it might as well be today—not that she remembers why, but at the moment, it was probably just an excuse she made up on the spot to justify dragging him away from drowning in his work. He knew better than to argue.
Some years, they've remembered to do something out of the ordinary. Other years, it completely slipped their minds, and they spent the whole day working because they forgot to make other plans.
But still, Rinko thinks to herself, suddenly feeling very alone, they were always together, weren't they?
Reaching one hand under the covers, she places it over his bone-thin chest, closing her eyes in an attempt to draw some companionship from the sluggish beating. Sobs sputter in her throat and she lets them escape, bowing her head to bury her face against the covers, muffling her cries even though no one is here to hear them. These days, she feels like crying less and less, but that just means it hits her when she least expects it.
She misses him when the sun shines, bringing her back to the days she would drag him to sit on the patio outside. She misses him on rainy days, when they would walk with umbrellas in hand in a world that felt as though it was all their own.
She misses him at the coffee shop, where they always lingered together, talking about who knows what while waiting for their orders. She misses him at the grocery store, when she used to dig around in her pockets for the list he gave her, wondering idly what his newest experiment in the kitchen would be. She misses him at home, because home is where he is but she'll never have more than a shadow; some days, she feels like she is nothing more than a shadow.
She misses sitting at the kitchen table, working while he cooks. She misses the light banter and playful bickering, the kind that everyone teased them for by calling them an old married couple. Hell, she even misses the Shigemura Lab, a place and a moment in time when she wasn't alone.
She misses saying, "See you tomorrow." It was a promise, the reciprocation of which she thought would always be implicit until it suddenly wasn't.
She wakes up curled into his side, cold even under the layers of blankets that feel as though they are doing nothing but stifling her, and she unconsciously tries to burrow further into his body heat. The stark ribs she can feel under her hand remind her that she's cuddling little more than a ghost.
Her eyes feel sticky; she refuses to open them, instead blindly fumbling around for her alarm to shut it off before quickly retracting her arm, shivering. The top of her head is pressed against something cold and hard—the NerveGear. So he's still out.
As winter solidifies its grasp, this becomes a more and more common occurrence, slipping carefully under the IV drip and into his bed early in the morning, eventually drifting off to a fitful sleep. Somehow, the rest leaves her feeling more exhausted than before.
Maybe it has to do with the cold and the possibly broken thermostat, or the fact that she feels absolutely no motivation to get up. He used to always wake up before her, chuckling in amusement, voice still hoarse with sleep, at her drowsy attempts to get him back into bed. Coffee would be waiting in the kitchen for her in a steaming cup on the table and the taste of it on his mouth by the time she would stumble out of their room. The motivation to get up just isn't there when the house is dead silent and cold, when there's no promise of coffee in the kitchen unless she makes it herself, when he won't leave her heart but he's still so far away.
After she eventually manages to drag herself out of bed, she shuffles through the motions of preparing coffee like a zombie and presses her forehead to the window, her lethargic breaths fogging up on the freezing glass. She lays a hand on the surface, then on her neck in an attempt to wake herself up; it helps, marginally.
Then it occurs to her that, lo and behold, she still has to work for the rest of the day, and by that point, she already feels like doing nothing except going back to bed.
It's not like this is anything particularly new, but the winter makes everything worse. It didn't use to be this way—winter was never her favorite, but it always heralded spring, which is her favorite. True, she was the child who would rather curl up somewhere warm with a book rather than make snow angels and go sledding, but at least she could look at the world of white and admire its beauty.
Now, every day she looks out the window to see the white blanking out everything else, all she feels is tired. Last year, winter held on tooth and nail for weeks past its time here in the mountains. She wonders numbly how much longer the cold plans to stick around this year.
Pathetic as it is, she finds herself slinking to his side for company more often than not. It's better than being alone, or at least she thinks so.
Some days, she thinks it would be better if she was alone; on those days, the bitterness and grief threaten to get the better of her.
Some days, when she drifts off with her laptop in bed and wakes up having mysteriously changed out of her day clothes and into more comfortable pajamas, covers tucked in around her, laptop plugged into the charger, notes neatly stacked nearby, with breakfast sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be microwaved, she doesn't know what to think or feel anymore.
There was so much untapped potential with the AkiRin dynamic that they just straight up ignored in canon and I'm forever going to be sad about that so I'm going to channel all that sadness through my girl Rinko T.T
(Also, this chapter should be called 'every night, I stay up')