A Performance for One

(Akane's PoV)

—

Sora blinked at me, still frozen mid-step under the amber light of the streetlamp, with her blue eyes darting between my hand on her sleeve and my face.

"Akane, I— you don't have to walk me home; my apartment is only fifteen minutes—" She tried to say.

"I don't care," I cut in, tightening my grip by a fraction as I released the blazer and slid my hands into my coat pockets instead. "You're not walking alone at this hour. Shin and I will drop you at your door. End of discussion." I said, with a smile.

Sora opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Then, slowly, a small, embarrassed smile broke across her lips, and she ducked her chin against the collar of her uniform.

"Okay," she murmured. "Guess I have no other choice."

"Ah well, you can't say no to Akane. That's clearly a death wish." Shin said, smiling.

"Oh? That's the first time you said something intelligent, Ishikawa. Nice one. I might avoid killing you later." I replied, gently punching his shoulder.

"Oh, no! Spare me!" Shin replied, raising his hands.

I saw Sora laughing again

"Shall we go?" She asked.

"Yep. Let's go," I replied.

And then, Shin's shoulder brushed lightly against mine as he moved to my right, his hands buried in the pockets of his cargo pants, his sweater still bearing the small dried patch of mozzarella milk that neither of us had commented on since we'd left the restaurant.

The three of us fell into an easy walking rhythm, our shoes tapping against the pavement in an uneven pattern as we moved past the shuttered storefronts and the softly buzzing vending machines lining the street.

The night around us felt like something you could reach out and touch: warm at its edges, still full of the taste of ragù and the memory of Sora's laughter over the calamari, still full of that quiet, unfamiliar thing I did not have a word for. The thing that had settled behind my ribs when I had watched her laugh in the alcove.

I had two people at my sides.

It was strange. I turned it over in my head as we walked, running my thumb absently along the inside of my coat pocket, feeling the small ridge of the seam beneath my nail.

Two.

For the past few years, everything about my social life could be summed up in a single word: alone.

Alone in the corner of the classroom. Alone at lunch. Alone on the ridge behind the school with a cigarette and a book. Alone in that apartment with the thin walls and the cold radiator.

Yes, I still had Kurone and Hoshiko, but in the end, I was still alone, empty.

And now, in such a short time, everything had changed.

Shin, the love of my life, walking on my right with his quiet, steady presence and the small smile still faintly touching the corner of his mouth from something Sora had said two minutes ago.

Sora, walking on my left with the soft rustle of her skirt against her stockings, her fingers absently tracing the strap of the small bag on her shoulder, her cheeks still faintly pink from the wine.

I let myself have exactly seven seconds of it.

Seven seconds of that warm, foreign thing sitting quietly in my chest, unnamed and unexamined. Seven seconds of pretending I was the kind of girl who had friends and boyfriends and evenings that ended with three sets of shoes walking home under a streetlamp.

But then... I heard them.

The laughter came from across the street first, that specific, high-pitched frequency of a group of girls who have had too much to drink and not enough shame to keep it contained.

It cut through the quiet of the avenue like a poorly-tuned radio, bright and grating and completely uninvited.

My jaw tensed before my eyes had even located the source.

Four of them. Bleached hair in shades ranging from platinum to honey. Tanned skin that had absolutely no business being tanned this time of year. Miniskirts that were shorter than any regulation I had ever read. Nails, lashes, glitter, perfume.

That's the whole aesthetic that had always made my skin itch, that particular loud, weaponized femininity that treated existence like a runway.

Gyaru. My exact opposite. The kind of girls I hated before they had even opened their mouths.

I tilted my chin slightly and shifted my gaze back to the sidewalk ahead, trying to ignore them.

'Not my problem.' I thought. They were on the other side of the street. We were going to walk past each other, and I was never going to think about them again.

Then... one of them stopped.

She stopped in a way that felt too clean. A single, sharp halt in the middle of her stride, with her honey-blonde hair swinging around her jaw as she turned her head and lifted one long, glittering acrylic nail to point straight across the road.

"Shin-kun?! Sora-chan?!"

In that moment, my blood dropped six degrees as I understood what was going to happen.

For some reason, I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the shape of a monster you have been briefed about in advance.

There was only one Gyaru who could know Shin's name, and it was Tsubame Yamamoto.

The name arrived in my head with a cold, clinical precision, dragging every scrap of information I had ever collected about it into perfect, uncomfortable focus.

She was the girl who made Shin reek of a disgusting perfume.

And now she was crossing the street toward us with a bright, uneven, slightly tipsy skip in her step, her friends whooping behind her with the loud, encouraging noise of a group that had already committed to whatever was about to happen.

Beside me, Shin's shoulders shifted with the smallest sign of tension. That wasn't fear, it was just the recognition of something incoming.

Beside me, Sora let out a soft, involuntary breath that carried something between recognition and embarrassment. "Oh no."

"Oh no?" I echoed under my breath. "You know her?" I asked, just to gather new information about that slut.

"She was my senpai in the drama club two years ago before she graduated. She's—" Sora's mouth pulled into an apologetic grimace. "She's a lot."

Then, Tsubame reached us in five bright, bouncing steps.

She did not hug Sora first or introduce herself to me.

She did not do any of the socially acceptable, low-effort things a normal person does when they encounter acquaintances on a night street.

She went straight for Shin.

Her arm hooked around his bicep with the smooth, weightless ease of someone who had never once in her life considered that someone might not want to be touched by her.

After that, her cheek came to rest, briefly, almost affectionately, against the top of his shoulder.

One glittering hand came up to pat his chest, right over the small, dried milk stain, as if she were greeting an old friend.

"Shiiin-kun~" She said, with the same voice of a squeaking toy.

My eyes widened by about three millimeters. But that was the only external sign.

My body remained perfectly still on the pavement, with my hands loose in my coat pockets, and my expression flatlined into that specific neutrality I had spent years perfecting for exactly these kinds of moments. The mask that made people underestimate me until it was too late.

But internally, my body and soul started to scream just one thing in unison:

'I want to kill her.'

The thought arrived in my head fully formed, unedited, with the clean clarity of a bell being struck.

I wanted to grab her by her honey-colored hair and physically remove her arm from his body, and I wanted to break her acrylic nails one by one for touching something that was mine.

Luckily, I did not do any of these things because, beneath my killing instincts, there was something else.

Something was off.

The way Tsubame had hooked his arm was too fast, and she hadn't drifted into contact the way drunk gyarus drift into contact with cute boys they know; she had aimed for it with the precision of someone following a plan.

Her eyes, when she glanced up at Shin's face, were not the glassy, unfocused eyes of a girl who had genuinely lost her filter to alcohol. They were sharp. They were watching him.

And they were not, at any point in the last twenty seconds, looking at me.

That was deliberate too.

I knew it. I had grown up in a house where deliberate was the primary language, and I could read it in a stranger's shoulders from across a street.

Whatever Tsubame Yamamoto was doing right now, it was a performance. And a performance had an audience.

That knowledge unclenched something in my jaw by about one degree, just enough to let me breathe through my nose without making a sound.

I lifted my chin, folded my arms loosely across my chest, and settled in to watch.

"Are you ready for next week's rehearsals?" Tsubame was saying, her voice pitched into that specific, syrupy register that a certain kind of girl uses when she wants a boy to feel like she's letting him in on a secret. Then she rubbed her cheek lightly against his shoulder, straightened, and kept her arm firmly hooked through his. "Because I am eager to work with you!"

Sora made a small, choked sound beside me that I could not tell whether it was suppressed laughter or actual concern.

Shin, to his credit, tried.

He shifted his weight backward by a careful, respectful half-step, angling his shoulder in a way that opened a small, polite gap between his ribs and her chest without physically peeling her off.

His voice, when he answered, was even and mild.

"Yamamoto-san. I don't think that this is the right mom—" He tried to say.

"Shin-kun, you're being so serious right now," she said, laughing brightly, tilting her head to look up at him from under her lashes. Her free hand came up and gave his sweater a small, playful pat again, right over the stain, as if she were smoothing a wrinkle for him. "Relax a little! We're not in class right now."

Something behind my molars ground together with a very small, very controlled click.

Relax a little.

As if she knew him.

'I'll remember that, you slut,' I thought, still trying my best to control myself.

Then, Sora cleared her throat gently. "Ahem... Tsubame-senpai, we're just walking home from dinner, we—"

"Oh, Sora-chan, don't be so tense either! You always look like someone is about to give you a pop quiz." Tsubame laughed, finally releasing Shin's arm to reach across and pinch Sora's cheek with the same casual, invasive affection. Sora's face went pink up to her hairline. "You need to loosen up! Both of you! Life is short!"

Then, with the timing of an actress who has been counting her cues, Tsubame's eyes drifted over to me. For the first time since she had crossed the street.

She then looked me up and down like I was a demon, from the black hoodie, the coat, the combat boots, to my flat expression, with an appraising, unhurried gaze before she took one short step back and smiled.

It was a bright, perfect, weightless smile that traveled no farther than her teeth.

"Oh, sorry! How rude of me! I didn't introduce myself." She extended a glittering hand across the space between us with a little tilt of her head. "I'm Tsubame Yamamoto. Nice to meet you!"

Just the name.

No context or explanation of who she was, how she came to be standing here, or why she felt entitled to drape herself across my boyfriend under a streetlamp.

I looked at the extended hand, and I did not take it.

I let two full seconds pass, long enough to be a message, short enough to be plausibly polite, before I let one corner of my mouth curve into a small, dry smile of my own.

"Akane," I said. Just the name back. "Shin's girlfriend."

The smile on Tsubame's face did not change, but something behind her eyes flickered.

"O-Ohhh~ Ahaha...!" she said, drawing the syllable out with a little sing-song lilt as she withdrew her unshaken hand and pressed it against her collarbone in mock delight. "Shin-kun didn't tell me that he had such a good-looking and cute girlfriend!"

Cute.

The word landed with the same texture as a wet napkin.

"Thank you," I said pleasantly.

Behind Tsubame, her friends were calling from the other side of the street with a chorus of Tsuu-chan, hurry uuup, we're gonna be late~, complete with waving arms and someone's high-heeled boot tapping impatiently against the pavement.

Then Tsubame glanced over her shoulder at them, turned back, and clapped her hands together once with a bright, decisive clap.

"Okay! Well! We're going to Bar Kohaku, there's a live DJ and half-price cocktails until midnight, and it's going to be reeeeally amazing." She turned her body a full ninety degrees to face Shin, her weight rocking playfully onto one hip. "You three should come! All of you! Sora-chan, you need to loosen up before the semester ends, and Shin-kun, you look like you could use a drink, and — " she flicked her gaze toward me with the same weightless smile, " — you too, of course, Akane-chan."

The -chan landed with a small, deliberate condescension.

I lifted my chin, tilted my head slightly to one side, and let my dry smile widen by about a millimeter.

"I can smell the shallowness from two kilometers away," I said, my voice landing on the pavement like a small, precise stone. "But thanks."

Tsubame blinked once.

Then she threw her head back and laughed with a bright, genuine, completely unbothered laugh that filled the street for three full seconds before she wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye.

"You're funny! I like her, Shin-kun." She then reached over and patted his chest again before she stepped back with a little bounce. "Fine, fine, another time then. But Shin-kun, remember to check your phone later, okay? I'll send you a message about the rehearsal schedule."

She lifted one hand, and then, with the timing of a person delivering the last line of a script, she raised her palm to her lips, kissed the tips of her fingers, and blew the kiss straight across the space between them.

Straight at Shin.

'Okay, that was on purpose.' I thought.

Then she pivoted on her heel and bounced back across the street toward her waiting friends, her honey-blonde hair swinging behind her, the group erupting into fresh laughter and shrieks as she rejoined them.

I've even heard some of them mumbling, "Oh, that guy is really hot, isn't he...?"

Then, they rounded the corner, leaving a cloud of perfume and glitter.

The three of us stood on the pavement in a silence so heavy that the buzzing of the vending machine two doors down felt like a physical presence.

Sora let out a long, slow, deeply weary sigh, pressing her fingers briefly against her temple. "I'm so sorry."

"For what, Sora?" I asked, curious.

"Well, I couldn't stop her..." She sighed.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," I replied.

Shin scrubbed a hand slowly down his face, then let it drop to his side and turned his head toward me. His eyes were resigned, faintly apologetic, entirely unamused.

"So," he said quietly. "That was Yamamoto. The university girl I've told you about."

"Disgusting," I said flatly. "Even worse than I had expected."

Sora let out a small, startled laugh, the kind that came out before she could stop it.

"Well, Yamamoto-san was a really professional girl when she was my senpai. She graduated with the highest score, and she is now studying at such a great university..." Sora said, "But now... She's too different. Yeah, she was funny, touchy... but not like that." She added.

 "I don't care. I hate her already," I said. "So... let's go, I'm pretty tired..."