Stay - Chapter 1 - tsukinousagi (2024)

Chapter Text

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As a rule, Light does not cry.

He is twenty-seven years old and very brave. He is sure of himself and his place in the world and so it does not phase him when unexpected things come his way. He weathers all storms with poise and grace.

But it’s been three hours and no one has shown up to his cupsleeve event.

Shoulders up, back straight, he stares out the glass door of the cafe to the street outside, where the snow is falling in waves. His eyes are entirely dry.

He’d gotten here at seven-thirty this morning to set everything up, then barricaded himself beside the door. The cafe is nicely decorated in reds and blacks, the fancolours of RE:4PER; he’s got twisted streamers and balloons which he’d picked out carefully from a multipack, and confetti in the centre of every table to pull everything together.

More importantly, there are pictures of Beyond Birthday everywhere. He’d spent weeks sifting through ethical fansites and their official accounts to print enough to cover the walls in a collage of wicked smiles and sharp eyeliner and multicoloured hair from every era. He’d even taped up a real tour poster from their second album which he’d bought off eBay for thirty-five dollars plus shipping. This is, technically, a celebration of RE:4PER’s new album, but really it’s mostly for Beyond because he’s the best of them and no one loves him like Light does. He needs to be cared for and protected.

There is Beyond leaning into a mic, Beyond extending his arm on the stage with eyes cleaver-sharp, Beyond perched beside the ocean with cotton-candy hair, laughing a rare bright laugh.

Beyond is the subvocalist and lead dancer of RE:4PER, the best group in the world. They aren’t the most famous, yet, but they are the greatest, because they are the most talented and the most innovative and because they love their fans the most out of everyone.

He is also Light’s best friend. They have not met but this is true anyway. Beyond’s account is the first thing he reads every single morning. It’s the last thing he reads before he goes to sleep. Beyond had told him — and everyone, but Light most of all — that if he waits long enough the whole world will blossom for him like a rose and he will be able to drink the nector from it and that will be his reward for choosing to survive.

When Light looks at his pictures he knows that there will always and forever be someone who loves him, and he knows he can live, and now that he’s brought it to this cafe other people will know that too and so he’s done something real and important for the world.

Except no one has shown up.

He bites at the inside of his mouth, then glances back at the interior of the cafe.

It’s a gigantic cafe by Toronto standards — enough room for four tables and a bookshelf along one wall where they sell albums from groups that aren’t as good as RE:4PER. Along one wall there’s the bar, where they sell coffees and lattes and bubble tea and cute baked goods in the shape of animals on a glass shelf.

He’s pretty sure the baristas are looking at him with something like pity. He doesn’t want that, but he’s not sure what else he wants instead. He’d talked with the manager — a man around his age, impressively tall and broad-shouldered with a serious face and a friendly voice — quite a bit while he was planning the event, and he’d been so excited.

His decorations still look perfect. Utterly flawless, because no one has been here to touch them.

His face feels strangely prickly. He is really very determined not to cry, but he thinks he might possibly end up doing it anyway. Either that or he’s just going to start screaming into his hands or possibly at someone. He’s about to get started on one of the two when the door swings open.

For a second he’s certain it’s Beyond. It’s not entirely impossible — he advertised the event on Twitter, and Beyond obviously has that. But his vision resolves and he sees that it is not.

It’s a tall boy — a man, really — with black hair that falls all around his face, now crusted with snow, and big dark eyes ringed with liner, cut into sharp wings. He’s wearing a long black jacket with a bright red Canada goose jacket on the sleeve. The cold comes in with him, sharp and bright, and so does a flurry of snow which swirls around him like something out of a children’s picture book, as if he weren’t a person but rather some sort of fae being.

Light swallows against a sudden flush that rises up through him. He doesn’t have a type because his love for Beyond is pure and clean and singular and so he would never be attracted to another person. Not that he’s attracted to Beyond, either — he simply loves him, and is dedicated to him as a priestess to a god.

The man doesn’t look frightened, exactly, but he does look alarmed, as if the presence of another human being was unexpected to him. It’s an expression that Beyond would never have. Beyond is always certain and brave. He is untouchable unless Light needs to touch him and then he is gentle as a hand laid across a forehead, sweet as honey in milk.

Light pushes a sign-up sheet towards him.

“You can put your name on here for future events,” he says. He’d prepared for this. He knows this script. His plan is back on track. “And you can buy a raffle ticket for two dollars.”

“Oh,” says the boy. He’s got a surprisingly soft voice — gossamer, like the thrum of insect wings. “Hello.”

“Hello,” says Light, then turns to fumble with the freebie packs. He pulls one out and hands it to the boy. “You’re one of the first fifteen, so you can have one of these. It has stickers and a magnet and some photocards. They’re not real. I printed them at Staples.

“Oh,” the boy says again. He carries on staring at Light. Light shakes the freebie pack at him, and he takes it with two fingers, as if it might get him dirty.

“You can buy a raffle ticket,” Light informs him. “The money is going to be donated.”

“I see. Ah. Do you take credit?”

“No,” says Light. “I do not take credit. I take cash. You can put it in this bucket.” He pushes the bucket forwards. The boy fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a battered leather wallet. It looks like it was probably expensive twenty years ago, before it got torn up and water-stained. He slips out a toonie and drops it into Light’s bucket, where it falls with a lonesome rattle.

Up close Light can see that he is maybe older than he’d seemed. He’s wearing so much makeup that it’s a little difficult to tell, but Light can see the faint lines of crows-foot wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, a few strands of grey glittering against the stark black of his hair. He’s maybe Light’s age, or possibly a little older. There’s a silver cuff on his left ear, which looks alarmingly cool.

Light breaks a raffle ticket off his loop and drops half into his raffle bin; he hands the other half to the boy, who looks at it for a second, then puts it in his pocket.

“You need to write your name, phone number and raffle number on the sheet,” Light tells him.

The boy does. Light peers over.

L, it says, and nothing else.

“Your full name,” he says.

“I don’t want to do that,” says L.

“You have to. If someone else has the same first name it could get mixed up.”

L looks down at the list. “But there’s no one else on it.”

“It’s the rule.”

“Okay,” L says. “You can take me out of the raffle, then.”

Light can feel is eyes beginning to prickle. “But you’ve already paid.”

“Alright,” says L, with an alarming degree of gentleness. “Look. How about this. I’ll put a number after it. See?” He writes down 001 after his name. “There. Now I’m L 001. If another L shows up, they can use their full name, or 002 if they prefer.” L reaches over, and for a second Light thinks he’s going to pat his hand, but instead he taps the table twice, gentle in the movement. “Now it’s all differentiated, and everything will be alright.”

Light swallows. He doesn’t know why this makes him feel the way it does. “Okay,” he says. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

He points towards the bar, where the baristas are very clearly looking at them. “You can go there,” he says. “They have the cupsleeves. You can get one for every drink they buy, and if you buy a cake they’ll give you a second one. If they run out, you can come here and I’ll give you one.”

L glances down at the sign-up sheet. His name is still the only one on it. Light pulls it away. He doesn’t want L looking. It feels strangely vulnerable, like being caught in his underclothes. “It’s private information,” he says.

“Right. Of course. I’m going to go buy a drink now, Light.”

Something about that sets off alarm bells in Light’s head, but he’s not sure exactly why.

He watches L go. In all the pink and sugar-spun colours of the cafe he looks like a spot of spilled black ink, entirely out of place, until he reaches the decorated back of it, where he suddenly belongs, wreathed with the decorations Light has placed there. He heads for the counter, then brushes the snow out of his hair.

He doesn’t move quite like Beyond, but if he looks close enough that Light can see them blur together in his mind if he squints.

Light watches him purchase one of the bubble teas that he’d helped design and pretends it’s Beyond buying it instead. The drink is black sesame with crushed strawberry and strawberry popping boba at the bottom so it’ll look red and black, just like RE:4PER’s colours — the baristas had smiled at him when he explained how it was meant to work. It looks kind of muddy, actually. In his mind it had been bright, like blood against iron. But the real thing hadn’t stacked up.

Outside the snow is falling thicker. He always forgets how quickly this happens — the grey sky has gone white, and the glass is fogging up at the corners. The cold is palpable now.

He looks back. The boy has found a seat, now, the one at the back nearest the biggest poster of Beyond, the one where he’s sitting high up on a metal beam, staring to the side of the camera, a bruise-purple sunset behind him. L carefully arranging the cupsleeve around the drink, resting it there without locking it into place. He takes a photo. Then he takes it off and places it next to him. He straightens it with two fingers, then takes a sip. He scrunches up his nose, then starts tapping away at his phone.

Light had designed the cupsleeve himself in Photoshop. He’d bought Photoshop just for that, actually. It had seemed like a good investment. He can make edits with it later, if he wants. Maybe gifs. He’s never done that before but he thinks it might be fun. Often in the evenings he feels very sick and alone and he doesn’t like that — he needs something to do with his mind and his hands so he won’t do the things he does, won’t leave himself shaky and ill, sometimes crying but sometimes not, the exact opposite of numb, not peaceful or alive but panicky, his nerves rubbed sick and raw. It is so very hard to be alive and he thinks it would be easier if he were making gifs.

It’s sort of lonely here, all by himself at the door. Or, no. Not lonely. He’s just alone. That’s all.

He decides it’s his duty to make sure his guests are having a nice time.

He stands up and walks over.

He’d assumed that L was texting, but he turns out to be typing into some sort of word processor. He’s doing it impressively fast — Light wasn’t aware that you could type that quickly without a keyboard. He squints to see what it is, but L abruptly puts his phone down, then spins to look at Light.

“Yes?”

It should sound aggressive, but it doesn’t. He sounds like he really wants to help.

His eyeliner, inexplicably, looks even better under the flourescents.

“Are you having fun?” Light asks.

“Yes,” says L, and to Light’s surprise he breaks into a bright smile. It’s a sweet sort of smile, a child’s smile, guileless and joyous. He waves a hand towards his surroundings. “This is very nice. I didn’t think anyone would do anything just for him. I was worried you would cancel it.”

“Why would I cancel?”

“Because of the blizzard,” L says.

“It’s not a blizzard.”

“It is,” L tells him, without a hint of argument in his voice. Somehow, it still leaves no possible room for disagreement.

“Anyway,” says Light, then hesitates.

He used to be really good at talking with people, but he’s lost the knack. Years ago he had as many friends as he could possibly have wanted, and more besides, but now he spends most of his time alone; sometimes he hangs out with his parents or with Sayu. Sometimes his old friends come around, but something always seems to go wrong. They look at him like they pity him. Or he says things he regrets later, or at least knows he’s supposed to regret.

It’s fine, he supposes; there’s nothing to be done. And anyway it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day his real friends are RE:4PER, who are always there for him no matter what. They do lives for him and he can open up his phone whenever he feels like it to look at all their messages, which were meant for everyone but also just for him.

L tips his head towards the chair across from him. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I have to watch the door.”

“But you’ll see it from here. It’s alright. If someone comes in, you can get up and walk over.”

It’s bizarre how much he looks like Beyond. Disagreeing would be like turning down a request from Beyond himself. Light walks around the table and sits, then turns his chair at an angle so he can see the door.

L beams at him. “I like what you did with the decorations. It was you, wasn’t it? Did you do the whole thing?”

“I did.” Light looks back at the photos on the walls. It calms him to look at photographs of Beyond. “I printed the from Staples, too. They know my name there.”

“That’s very nice. Which one is your favourite?”

Light thinks about this for a second, then nods to the massive poster on the back wall. This is an official one. In it, Beyond is sitting cross-legged on a beanbag chair, looking directly into the camera. The room he’s in has been decorated to look like a bedroom from the 90s, all filled up with knick-knacks and plush animals and posters from bands that don’t really exist. There’s an electric guitar leaning against one wall, and a lava lamp on the other.

It looks exactly like bedrooms did when he was a child. Not his own bedroom, but the bedrooms of children he’d known. His was always very tidy. Now, when it’s not decorating his cupsleeve event, he has this photo in his room, which is the same room he’d grown up in. He likes to sit in front of it and think about what things were like when he was worried about math and was happy and good and clean. Unbroken.

“That one,” he says.

“I like that one, too,” L tells him. “It’s from their second album, isn’t it?”

“Dream version. I pulled A's photocard, though.”

“Mm. I always pull A. It’s a bit of a curse.”

“I don’t think he’s a very good singer,” Light says.



“Mm. No. I don’t either. Beyond is much better.”

Light stares at the photo.

“It’s got my favourite song on it,” L says.

“Oh.”

“Do you want to know which one?”

“What? Oh. Sure. Yeah.”

“Winter Rain,” says L. He says this very casually. Light turns back. L is staring at the poster on the wall, his eyes somewhat distant. “I like that line … what is it.” He says the line, but he says it in Korean.

Light doesn’t speak anything apart from the odd phrases nearly everyone picks up after spending enough time watching interviews, but he’s heard this song so many times that he knows this line. If you bloom, I’ll bloom too.

He feels something in him blossom.

He has these lines written on a poster on his wall; he has them saved as a screenshot inside his phone; maybe someday he’ll even get something about them tattooed on his body — a flower, maybe or the rainfall it receives.

The song was a gift from the group to him. It’s about a person who suffers and suffers until they bloom beneath the rain. It’s about being fed instead of destroyed.

“The tears that fell became a soft rainfall,” he says. “And watered the weeds which grew from impure ground.”

L smiles. He looks like he’d expected this somehow. He sings the line, sort of — or rather he sings it like a melody, his voice rising in Korean that Light knows but can’t speak. He has a nice voice, silver, shivering within itself; he might be a decent singer if he were trying.

Light says the words inside his head. My hands trembled like the monarch’s wings, but I drank the nectar that you grew.

“It’s like that interview,” he says.

L’s eyes light up. “His birthday live.”

“Yeah. Two years ago.”

“Yes. That’s the one. Where he says — what was it?” He tilts his head towards Light and — although he’s not sure how — Light is very certain that he knows them already, that he just wants to hear them spoken allowed by someone else.

“You have to promise to take care of yourself.” Light knows these words like a prayer, and he repeats them in the rhythm of Beyond’s voice, lilting, falling into itself. “The world is a difficult place, but you have to promise that no matter how hard it gets you’ll think of me and stay. You have to survive at all costs.”

“Yes,” says L. He’s smiling, still, but there’s something a little odd in it. Not something bad. He just looks very intense all of a sudden, and maybe a little sad, too, his eyes perhaps a little wet. Which makes sense. Beyond is important. His words are important. Maybe they’re the only things that matter, really.

Light has been following them. Trusting them. For years, now, he’s been surviving.

There are footsteps behind him. He turns and looks up to see one of the employees walking up behind him.

His name is David Cheung. Light knows him because he’d helped organize this event. He’d been the one who suggested that they use black sesame for the drink, to get the colours right.

“Excuse me,” David says. “We’re going to close the cafe.”

For a second Light thinks he’s mishead. “What?”

“The cafe. We’re closing it.”

It’s three hours early. The event is supposed to go on fr another two hours, and then he’s got another hour to get everyone out and clean up. He’d thought maybe he could make friends during that time. “Why? You can’t close it.”

“Because of the blizzard. Some of us need to drive home.” He waves a hand vaguely towards the other barista, who smiles at Light.

“No,” Light says. He can see what they’re doing, these baristas. They’re trying to make Light feel stupid because no one showed up except L. People could still come and David knows that because he doesn’t want them to because he wants to make Light look like an idiot in front of L, who he just met, and who could maybe be his friend, and Light simply will not allow that to happen. And besides, who the f*ck drives in Toronto? This is clearly a lie. “You aren’t going to do that. You’re going to keep the cafe open as long as you said you were going to. Because you made a commitment.” He makes his voice as firm as he can.

David’s face goes a little flat, as if Light had been shouting at him, which isn’t fair because he isn’t — he’s speaking a little loudly, maybe, but he’s allowed to do that, because he’s being polite. It’s okay to be loud as long as you’re polite. He has to stand up for himself.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says, his voice suddenly clipped and professional, as if they hadn’t been friends just before this. He doesn’t sound angry. He just sounds resigned. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“No,” Light says, and he can hear his voice going a little high, a little whiny, maybe — not whiny, actually, just upset, which he’s allowed to be, because something is going wrong and his feelings are valid and he shouldn’t keep them all inside. “No. You can’t. You’re not allowed. You said. You promised. I put it on Twitter. People are going to come.”

They’re going to show up and Light’s not going to be there and Beyond won’t be either and they’ll think Light lied and they’ll think Beyond can’t be trusted and all he’d wanted to do was to make this perfect little space for everyone, somewhere for people to know they’re loved and important and that they’re going to live and everything will be alright except now he’s made the exact opposite of that and everything is going to go wrong.

“I’m sorry,” David says again, even though he obviously isn’t. “You’re going to have to leave.”

“No. f*cking —“

Suddenly there’s an arm on his shoulder. He looks down.

L is staring up at him with big dark eyes. He looks like some sort of strange and gentle forest creature, something endangered and in need of an esoteric food source.

“Hey,” he says, soft. “Let’s go somewhere else. We don’t need to be here. Won’t it be nicer somewhere else?”

Light almost snatches his arm away. He probably would, if L didn’t look so much like Beyond. “Fine,” he says. “Fine. f*ck this. This place is sh*t, anyway.” He spins around and looks at the man. “David Cheung. I know your name. I’m going to put it on a Google review.”

The man just stares at him. He looks so tired.

“f*ck you,” Light says. He can’t stand the way David is looking at him, as if he’s acting stupid or crazy or wrong when all he’s doing is explaining the situation.

L tugs at his sleeve. “Come on,” he says, very gently. “Let’s head out, Light.”

Light starts towards his posters so he can collect them and bring them home, but David steps in front of him. “No,” he says. “Out.”

“I need my things —“

“I’ll get them,” L says, “Don’t worry. Here. How’s this. Why don’t you wait outside, and I’ll be right out after you. I know how much they matter. I won’t let anything happen to them.”

If Light doesn’t think too hard he can almost imagine that it’s Beyond talking to him.

He wants to badly for someone to be nice to him because all of this is simply unbearable and he has to do it alone all the time and it just isn’t fair. Someone should take care of him. Someone should tell him it’s okay. He deserves that.

He doesn’t actually like looking people in the eyes but L is looking at him so intently, with such gentleness.

“Fine,” he says, then storms away from the table, past the desk where he’d been handing out his raffle tickets, and out through the door.

It’s snowing hard, now. The sky has gone a colourless grey. In the overhand the snow isn’t that bad but he can see that if he steps just past the stoop it will buffet him. As it is, the wind simply carries the snow past him. It covers the whole world in a fog of white; it whistles in his ears. It’s going too fast and too hard to get into his little safe corner. There’s no one outside but him. The whole world is empty except for Light.

He crouches in the corner. His face is very wet. He wipes at it but it just gets wet again. He guesses he’s probably crying but it doesn’t feel like he is. His chest hurts and his stomach feels hollow. He wipes at his eyes again.

He turns back. Inside, he can see L talking to the baristas. He’s handing them bills, blue and green, crumpled up in his fist. They don’t look happy, really, but they’re taking them. He looks away again.

Everything he did was justified. He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, and they were the ones who were breaking all their promises. They’d told him he could have until four o’clock and he’d believed them and now if anyone else shows up he won’t be here and they’ll think he lied to them. There’s no one he can trust. He can’t be trusted.

He pulls out his phone and logs onto Tumblr and explains the situation, and then the door opens behind him and the heat rushes out so he slips it back into his pocket and looks behind him.

L is walking out through the door. He’s wearing his long black Canada Goose jacket again, and he’s apparently found Light’s poster rolls behind the desk because he’s got those in his arms, too, wrapped up in black plastic bags. Light’s red North Face coat is slung over one of his arms, and his Duffel bag is in the other.

“You forgot your coat,” L says. “You must be cold.”

Light stands. He takes the posters from L first and puts them into his Duffel bag, where they belong. His raffle box and his entry prizes and his RE:4PER stuffed rabbit with the pierced war are in there already. He zips it up, takes his coat, and puts it on.

He’s not sure he feels any better, but he does feel less cold. He digs into his pocket for his black mittens and toque, puts those on, then hoists the Duffel bag up and slings it over his shoulder.

“Shall we go somewhere?” L says.

Light feels very hollowed out. “Okay.”

L looks at him for a moment. “Alright,” he says. “Well. I’m not sure who else is likely to stay open. Would you like to come to my place?”

He’s about to say that of course he doesn’t want to do that — for all he knows, L could a a serial killer, and anyway nearly anything corporate will stay open until the snow caves their roofs in and possibly even past that — but then he thinks of the evening that’s waiting for him at home.

His home isn’t bad, exactly. It’s perfectly fine. He likes his parents, and he likes Sayu; he even likes his bedroom with all its books and its little TV. When he sits on his bed and reads his books he knows he’s safe. But he gets so tired of it, of sitting along in his bedroom watching videos while he can hear his parents moving around downstairs, worrying.

They don’t say it, but he knows they do. He can see it on their faces. He can feel the way they fret in the quietness of their movements. Sometimes in the night they’ll knock on his door, pretending to want one thing or another, but really they’re making sure he’s alive and he hates knowing that’s his fault, hates that they think he might die, and worst of all he hates the terror that they might be correct.

He won’t kill himself. But years ago that might have been taken for granted.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah, sure, fine.”

L smiles bright.