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“Actually, for this show, can I choose the script?” Tsukasa had said, excited but uncharacteristically bashful, “I, erm, wrote it myself!”
As he handed out printed copies, Nene was already on edge. The troupe had been requested to do a one-off charity show at a local care home and a repeat of Romeo: Battle Royale was definitely not going to fly. Still, the title seemed relatively normal, simply named ‘My feelings’, and Nene and the others had caught Tsukasa not-so-secretly looking into the art of play-writing recently. He must have worked hard on this. Nene opened it, cautiously optimistic.
The play started in an empty field, green grass long but not overgrown, and nowhere near civilisation so the clear night sky could be seen up above: vast and artfully painted with stars and distant galaxies as far as the eye could see, never-ending. The opening character stood in the middle of it all, a cool breeze tousling their hair and clothes. They held their hand out towards the big, bright moon, wistfully, and then they did a backflip as a metaphor for great beauty—
Wait.
What?
Nene looked up to gauge the others’ reactions, but they were still reading as seriously as they would any other script. At a loss, she could only put her head down again and continue reading. However, as she flicked through the pages, her face just became more and more incredulous.
Not only was the play filled with moments like that but it was also just generally bad: abstract symbolism scattered haphazardly like shrapnel, settings changing every scene and scene changing every ten lines, plotline literally non-existent.
Nene looked up again, more distressed this time, searching for any indication that this was— What? Some elaborate prank? Anything that would convince her she wasn't actively going insane. Tsukasa still looked slightly embarrassed (which he definitely should have been but Nene had a feeling it wasn't for the right reasons) but also hopeful, an anticipatory look in his eyes like a puppy waiting for praise. Emu just nodded along earnestly as she read as though the script made any sense at all. It was Rui's reaction that made Nene pause, though.
His face had coloured a delicate red, eyes widened and lips slightly parted, before they quirked up into a wobbly smile. She watched, in bewilderment, as he subtly brought his fist up to his mouth, schooling his expression into something less giddy. Finally, still looking far too pleased, he called, “Tsukasa-kun,” and Tsukasa practically jumped out of his skin, “In this section with the interpretive dance, could you show me what you had in mind?”
For a moment, Tsukasa just stared, tension written all over his figure as it had been for the past ten minutes, before he barked out a surprised laugh and it seemed like the weight of the world had been carried with it.
“Of course I can!” he declared, springing up with new life. Cheeks rosy and smiling bigger than ever before, he looked radiant under the golden light of the setting sun.
Unfortunately, that was immediately ruined by the way he dropped to the floor and started throwing his body around uncontrollably in a facsimile of a breakdance. Emu clapped and cheered from the sidelines and Rui gazed on with a wildly disproportionate amount of affection.
Okay. Clearly I'm missing something here, Nene thought to herself a little hysterically.
She scrutinised the sheets in front of her more thoroughly. The characters’ lines and actions were still utterly nonsensical but she noticed that each scene had a scribbled sub-title and they seemed to tell more of a story. Some were simple traits like kind and resourceful but others seemed oddly specific. Could blow up the school but won't because he cares too much in particular made Nene raise an eyebrow. She then looked at the cast list:
A showman, a clown, a songstress and an alchemist.
Wait a moment—
Unbidden, a memory arose in Nene's mind. A little over a month ago, the troupe had been doing one of their regular shows. Rui and Emu had been acting out a scene on stage while Nene and Tsukasa perched on some steps in the back.
“I'm going to tell him I love him,” Tsukasa had confessed in the break between lines. It was the quietest Nene had ever heard him. At the time, she had found it almost sweet—but as she stared down at the script with dawning horror, she knew it was her own fault for thinking Tsukasa Tenma could ever do something normally.
A love-letter. Or a love-play? Whatever. The point was that Tsukasa had written a really, really abstract play starring all the reasons he loved their very own director. One that they (including Nene!) would have to work on for the next few weeks and then perform.
As Nene looked over at her troupemates, who were now animatedly discussing how they would achieve the special effects, she realised, with great despair, that there was no getting out of this now.
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Their first run-through went as well as Nene thought it would.
That is to say, utter dogshit.
(The others seemed to disagree.)
The play was somehow even more ridiculous when acted out in real life and Rui seemed intent on letting Tsukasa do what he wanted, basically forgoing his directing duties completely—and all with this stupid, sappy look on his face. Emu was no help either. In fact, based on some of the lines, Nene suspected she had actually helped in the writing of it.
“Look! It's a platypus,” the showman recited, face red as though he had said something romantic.
The alchemist replied with utmost sincerity, “That's so wonderhoy.”
Nene looked down at the title of this scene to try and figure out what on earth this was meant to represent. Devoted passion for all that he does, she read. Huh. Go figure.
She looked back up to see Tsukasa flopping about on the floor like a dying fish on steroids.
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As if being subjected to this nonsense during rehearsals wasn't enough, Tsukasa and Rui's behaviour during school time had also suddenly shifted, much to Nene's anguish.
It wasn't like they weren't lovey-dovey before. Everyone knew they had been dancing around these feelings since the beginning of the year—the pair were rather infamous; when they somehow managed to make sprinting from teachers together look intimate, people knew something was up—but now it was like a dam had broken, or rather, in true Tsukasa-and-Rui fashion, exploded. They were attached at the hip with all sense of personal space forgotten, longing gazes and subtle touches no longer secret. They weren't even dating yet but Tsukasa's little plan had set their honeymoon phase off with a vengeance. A vengeance against Nene specifically.
Rui, in particular, was acting even more loser-ish than usual. He clung to Tsukasa like an overgrown leech, going back and forth between teasing him and singing his praises, turning bright red no matter the other's reaction. At one point, he even gave the other a long lick across the cheek like a cat. Tsukasa didn't even flinch.
“What the fuck,” Shinonome had said, emphatically, as he passed by.
Nene was inclined to agree.
——————————
As rehearsals went on, the pair got no better. In fact, if anything, they had gotten worse. As they got used to their lines and each other's presence, they grew more confident in themselves, no longer blushing and stuttering—which Nene thought would be a good thing but Rui had, tragically, decided to take a more flirtatious tone instead and Tsukasa, not one to back down, had, even more tragically, followed suit.
Even during their random sword fight (because Tsukasa apparently couldn't go a single play without adding one), Nene felt like she was intruding on something. Rui hadn't once looked away from Tsukasa's lips even as his character got stabbed by the other—something about knights, evil sorcerers and homoerotic tension, he had said, brightly, as a vague explanation.
After one specific rehearsal wherein Rui was acting particularly coy, Tsukasa had come up to Nene and asked, “Do you think he's caught on yet..?”
Nene, dumbfounded by his sheer stupidity, had just gaped before eventually replying, “I'm not sure… Maybe you should ask him?”
Tsukasa had looked thoughtful for a moment before he started frantically scribbling in his notebook. Though, it seemed like he only took the first part of Nene's reply to heart, because he came back, a week later, with sun-and-moon themed costumes for himself and Rui respectively (“Surely, he'll realise now!”) that he proudly announced had been designed and sewed by him and his sister. Rui's eyes lit up as bright as the heinous volume of glitter on them when he saw.
“Thank you, Nene,” he had said, later, with a far too knowing glint in his eyes. He looked very much like the cat who caught the canary—or, rather, the cat who caught the pegasus and knew just how much despair it brought the canary.
(Another week later, Tsukasa came back with costumes for Emu and Nene as well. Emu's was based on a phoenix and, hers, a dragon.
Nene hadn't known how to feel about that.)
——————————
On one particular day, Emu's brother came to see their progress. Within the first few minutes, Nene watched in real-time as Shosuke's face went through the five stages of grief—or, more accurately, four; Nene didn't think he ever quite reached acceptance.
In one of the scenes, Nene and Emu stood in the middle of the stage as Tsukasa gallivanted around it, bridal-carrying Rui the whole time. Tsukasa seemed to think it looked graceful and elegant but Rui's long limbs and even longer desire to not change any part of his dear Tsukasa-kun's script made him one wrong move away from snapping his neck. Emu had once cheerfully declared that it felt like she and Nene were being sacrificed.
It was during that scene that Shosuke made crazed, prolonged eye contact with Nene. It was the most uncomfortable she had ever been in her life (which was saying something considering all the other times Rui and/or Tsukasa had done something embarrassing in public) but she just couldn't look away. She owed the guy that much, at least, for letting the show get this far.
It was at that moment that Nene decided she finally had to put a stop to this.
——————————
“Rui,” Nene said, as the two of them walked to the wonder stage after school.
She opened her mouth to speak but Rui held up a hand to cut her off. She felt rather affronted. Rui never cut her off. She watched as he pulled out that godforsaken script from his bag. Oh, she realised, he already knew exactly what she was going to say. Of course he did. He wouldn't be Rui if he didn't. Without looking, Rui opened it up to a dog-eared page.
“Nene,” he said, at last, holding the script out to her, “Do you think this scene represents how he thinks I can make anyone shine with my directing?”
She thought, incredulous, was he actually trying to decode Tsukasa's nonsense?
She was about to ask as much but stopped short, again, as her eyes caught on the various post-it notes and scribbled annotations sprawling the sheets.
Oh.
He was.
She scrutinised Rui with a deciphering look but his smile only grew more amused. She sighed and took the proffered script, accepting defeat.
The scene in question was titled: Sees something special in all, and featured the alchemist turning the rest of the cast into precious gems with just one look like a rich man's Medusa. Rui's interpretation seemed accurate. Nene had thought it was one of the more self-explanatory scenes—but, as she looked at it more closely, she remembered something Tsukasa had once said.
“There's that…” she began, hesitantly, “But I think he also means just in general.” She paused to gather her thoughts at Rui's questioning look before continuing with more certainty, “He likes that you see the best in everyone, not just people you direct.”
“Oh,” Rui's lips parted in surprise. Then, a soft smile blossomed across his face, “...Does he, now?”
“Ooh! And this next one!” exclaimed Emu, wrapping her arms around the pair's shoulders (Nene realised with a start that, sometime in their conversation, they had already arrived), “This is about how you sit all elegantly, like waaah!”
“Hm?” Rui hummed, recovering quickly, "I thought he was just saying I had a cute butt.” Nene couldn't tell if he was being serious or not.
“Hmmmm, Rui-kun does have a really cute butt, but I don't think that's what Tsukasa-kun meant…”
The trio continued on in such a manner, debating the meanings behind Tsukasa's strange words until the boy himself arrived, late because of his disciplinary committee meeting. Rui was flushed by the end of it (which in turn flustered Tsukasa when he saw) but Nene didn't think she had ever seen him happier.
She never did end up putting a stop to the play.
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At last, the day of the performance came and of course, it was a complete disaster.
Rui had put his all into making Tsukasa's dream a reality so the settings, props and special effects were movie-grade—which only served to highlight just how shitty the plot (or lack thereof) was. The poor retirees didn't even have scripts so, without any guiding scene-titles, they could only watch in geriatric befuddlement as Tsukasa opened the play with his fateful backflip. And, really, it only got worse from there.
All things considered, Nene thought she'd feel more embarrassed. But as the two boys literally and figuratively danced around each other like idiots as though in their own little world, a smile found its way onto her face unbidden. Maybe she had finally gone insane. Maybe she just loved them.
The grand finale was nearing its end and she was almost done with this mess. Nene could remember the scene's title from the top of her head, clear as day: Rui, because really the only reason Tsukasa needed to love his dear director was that he was himself. How disgustingly romantic. Nene had wanted to vomit when she first realised. On stage, her two headaches said their last lines and bowed, hand-in-hand. Emu and Nene stepped up to join them. Then, for the first time in all their rehearsals, Rui went off-script.
Nene didn't even have time to stop him before he tackled Tsukasa to the ground with a kiss. Though, as she listened to the chorus of scandalised gasps and Emu's wild cheering, she realised she wouldn't have had it any other way.
(Upon their return, Tsukasa was officially banned from writing any more of their plays by the Otori brothers.
Nene would have been lying if she said she wasn't relieved.)