Anon knows she’s indulging in bad habits. She’s a smart girl. Top marks in every class, of course. Obviously she has her sights set on Haneoka student council president. Popular with everyone. Maybe not a vocalist, but rhythm guitar in a rising-star band isn’t bad. Also, obviously, very cute. So she really shouldn’t need to be doing this.
And yet.
She’s sitting with a cup of tea on the very nice couch in Soyo Nagasaki’s living room. The ceramic is hot against her fingers, just cool enough that it’s not burning her. It’s a beautiful view, the very best that Soyo’s mom’s salary could afford she’s sure. The sun is setting, the city below cast in the most vibrant shades of orange and amber, the sky a watercolor painting.
Anon wonders if Soyo ever sits and stares out over the beautiful city. It seems lonely, in this expensive empty apartment.
Soyo finally settles down beside her on the couch. She has her own cup of tea, one sugar to Anon’s three, and she doesn’t look at Anon or the window. She stares down into her own tea, index finger twitching slightly against the cup.
Tap. Tap. Tap. She’s anxious about something.
Anon knows better than to ask. If she brings it up, Soyo will shoot her down. Plus, she’ll call her out for faking a chipper mood, and it will sting slightly that Soyo can see through her so clearly, right to her core.
She does it anyway.
“Are you feeling okay, Soyorin?” Anon asks, smiling in that way that makes everyone at Haneoka acquiesce to her immediately.
Just as she predicted. Soyo narrows her eyes, stares harder down into her cup and taps harder.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Soyo says flatly. She doesn’t mention Anon’s tone, which surprisingly hurts twice as bad.
The hurt she gets from Soyo, though. It’s not the same as falling down and bruising her knee. It’s not even the same cold, hard pain she remembers from standing in front of thirty strangers who didn’t care enough to try and communicate with the Japanese exchange student. It’s something sharper. Like Soyo has a knife to her soul, like she’s peeling away the facade of Anon Chihaya and staring right into the raw center.
Anon wonders what pain Soyo gets from their conversations.
“I was only asking!” Anon complains, setting down her tea cup with a clink. “Sorry for caring.”
“I’m sure you do.” Soyo takes a big sip of tea and recoils slightly when the liquid touches her lips, like it was too hot, but then she keeps drinking anyway.
Anon knows one thing. She saw it while she was kicking off her shoes in the entryway, a little note marked on the calendar by the door. Mother home written across today’s date and the next two, in Soyo’s neat handwriting.
It was crossed out, and Anon was not surprised to see they were alone in the apartment that evening. It explained why Soyo was even shorter than usual at band practice, why she walked too fast for Anon on the way to the train, and why she was forcing herself to drink tea that was so hot it was basically boiling.
Only Soyorin could figure out how to hurt herself with tea , Anon thinks.
“So,” Anon tries again once Soyo is setting down the tea, once she’s no longer doing something that makes Anon want to avert her eyes. “What do you wanna do? Maybe we can watch something. I heard there’s some new movie on streaming that’s getting a lot of buzz online.”
They watch a movie on Soyo’s big-screen TV. It’s pretty good, and Soyo is less standoffish when there’s something else going on to distract her. She sits close to Anon, resting her head gently on Anon’s shoulder. She even wraps her arms around one of Anon’s partway through, curling towards her.
But the display makes Anon’s heart ache. When they’re close, the barrier around Soyo feels even more tangible. Because the second Anon makes any movement towards breaching it, she is acutely aware that Soyo will raise her defenses even more than before.
She’s still thinking about that and half-watching the movie when she feels wetness on her shoulder. Soyo staring ahead, a few tears slipping down her cheeks.
Anon is paralyzed.
“I wish you had said no,” Soyo says quietly. So soft it almost disappears below the din of the movie, but Anon nearly jumps.
“No to what? The movie?”
Soyo sits up, turns away from Anon. “I wish you hadn’t come over.” Her voice is monotone, cold.
“Then why’d you ask me?” Anon retorts. Her face is growing hot, and she has to resist the urge to ball her hands into fists. She had kind of known it all along, somewhere. That Soyo had no interest in Anon, no interest in her kindness, no interest in anything but using Anon. Another instrument for Soyo to hurt herself with.
Soyo confirms it with a steely gaze despite the tears. Her mouth can be so beautiful, but now it’s set in a straight, hard line. She can say such wonderful things that make Anon feel like she isn’t alone, but right now she’s using her silence as a weapon.
The thing is, Anon is mad but she can’t be too mad. Because Soyo has actual problems, above and away from Anon’s failed study abroad. Like, certifiable mental issues-level actual problems. They’ve all come to understand it now. Soyo lies because she’s a pathological liar. Soyo ignores everyone and skips band practice because she gets depressed. Soyo gets cruel because she needs to turn the daggers inside her heart away from herself.
Paradoxically, it makes her even madder.
Anon lies because she wants to. Anon doesn’t skip practice because she has to be responsible and she really needs the practice. Anon lets Soyo’s daggers needle her and draw blood because otherwise they might find a softer target. She lets the insults roll down her back, find new ways to sink into her skin and hurt her in a way that… invigorates. A salivating sickness, pins and needles in her limbs, that leads to her turning a fiery gaze on Soyo. The sickness is fed by the way more tears are falling, stubborn, down Soyo’s cheeks and onto the fancy couch, soaking in between her elegant fingers, down into the fabric bought with money Soyo won’t appreciate, disappearing only to be replaced by more teardrops.
The evil thing inside of Anon is a living creature trapped behind her ribs when Soyo is around. It fills her limbs and moves her towards the door, like she’s a marionette. It makes her not turn back at Soyo’s small gasp of “wait ” and stoop down again at the entrance, reach for her shoes to slip them on. The monster does all this because it knows what will happen next. They have done this all before.
Anon anticipates the impact before it happens. Soyo’s footsteps patter across the floor and her body weight crashes into Anon from behind. It doesn’t knock her down because she knew it was going to happen, she prepared for it.
Soyo’s breath is ragged against the back of Anon’s neck. They sit there, at the stoop of the entry way, for a minute or an hour. The wetness of Soyo’s cheeks presses damp against Anon’s skin, soaking into the fabric of the school uniform she never changed out of. Her breath is warm, coming out of her beautiful mouth, but Anon knows it is coming from deep within her where she is ugly and wrong. Where she is sick too, like Anon is.
Soyo’s arms wrap around Anon’s shoulders. It’s too tight, they’re wrapping around her so strong Anon’s muscles ache, and then Soyo’s fingernails find Anon’s bare skin at her wrists, where her sleeves have ridden up. Soyo’s fingernails are perfect round ovals, manicured and clean, and they sting like shards of glass when she digs them into Anon’s skin. Anon exhales through her teeth, slow and steady. She thinks about the pain, the way it hurts less and less sharply with every passing second. When Soyo relaxes her grip, it will hurt worse again, and there will be little empty half-moons criss-crossed across Anon’s skin.
So really, if Soyo lets go, that’s worse, right?
“So you want me to leave or you want me to stay?” Anon asks.
Soyo says nothing, but tightens her grip. The dull pain blossoms again, and Anon has her answer. This should be where the dance ends, where Anon gives up and turns around, leads a silent and sullen Soyo back to the living room. Where she ends up borrowing pajamas and sleeps stretched out in Soyo’s full size bed, letting the night pass with barely a word between them.
But that isn’t what Anon wants, she realizes. With Soyo’s fingers close to drawing blood, with the sickness boiling inside of her higher than ever before, Anon has the inclination to push. No more of the act, no more happy-Anon, cheerful-Anon, supportive-Anon.
When she speaks, her voice is so harsh it shocks her.
“If you don’t say it clearly, I’m gonna leave.”
Soyo stiffens against her back. Anon knows this is cruel. But just the same, a thrill runs through her.
“Nothing, huh?” Anon says after a few seconds of silence. “Maybe I’ll see if Tomori wants to hang out. Let go so I can put my shoes on.”
“No.”
“Not clear enough, Soyorin,” Anon sighs, and starts trying to wrench her wrists free. She manages to peel Soyo’s fingers off one wrist, one by one, revealing skin clawed raw. Blood pools in one semi-circle. She’s wondering how she’ll explain this one away when something jolts her arm so hard she’s pulled to her feet, almost wrenching the bone out of joint.
Soyo, looking furious all of a sudden, pulling her with more force than Anon thought she was capable of. Well, she guesses the bass is pretty heavy, but still—
Another sudden yank, and Anon yelps. What the hell! she thinks, and grits her teeth. She tries to dig her feet in, but she’s wearing socks and the floor is slippery. Instead she tries to shove Soyo forward at the same moment Soyo is giving her another tug, and the momentum sends them both toppling to the floor. Soyo cries out underneath her in surprise.
The monster takes over again. Anon shoves and pushes until she’s pinning Soyo’s shoulders against the ground, rising above her, the victor of their battle.
Soyo glares up at her, face caught between confusion and anger.
Ha, Anon thinks. She pushes down harder and Soyo’s mouth finally contorts into a wince of pain. There’s a little resistance and then Soyo’s muscles beneath her hands slacken—Anon has some leverage in this position. She shifts so the weight of her knees is resting on Soyo’s hands, just enough so that she can’t lift them.
“Honestly,” Anon sighs. She’s feeling confident all of a sudden. “Don’t you get that if you just said what you mean, everything would be so much easier for you, Soyorin?”
Soyo shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. Her honey-brown hair is pooled around her on the hardwood floor, so long and healthy it’s annoying. It had smelled good, like some floral shampoo, when Soyo was laying next to her on the couch earlier. Annoying, annoying, annoying. Anon is overcome with the urge to pull it until Soyo yells, to see her expression morph until she’s gasping in pain.
She wonders how hard she’d have to pull until she would tear the tendrils from the root, whether she could look into the new hole on Soyo’s scalp and see the ugliness underneath that way. Anon used to do something similar when she was younger, when she felt particularly despondent and plastic, pluck out a hair and examine it from tip to root, trying to determine where the her inside herself ended and Anon Chihaya began. A fruitless exercise, but it somehow comforted her just the same.
Anon does not pull Soyo’s hair. She ignores the twitch in her fingers and pushes them down, hard enough she hopes she leaves little bruises in Soyo’s shoulders.
“Maybe you should ask yourself that,” Soyo hisses. “Selfish, selfish girl. Moving schools because you couldn’t explain you weren’t perfect to the girls there.”
Anon takes in a sharp breath because suddenly some faces flash before her eyes—girls she hasn’t seen in two years, girls whose messages have sat unread in her inbox so long ago she forgot they ever sent them at all, girls she’d shared secrets with and ate lunch with and gone to karaoke with.
Because that’s the kind of person Anon is. She would build a graveyard for all the friendships she’d ever had rather than let them see that Chihaya-san isn’t real.
One of Soyo’s hands wrenches free, taking advantage of Anon’s distraction. Her hand slides up Anon’s uniform shirt and she actually scratches Anon’s side, like a fucking stray cat.
“Ow!” Anon yells, because she’s pretty sure she’s actually bleeding now. She’s off balance, and when Soyo moves to sit up, Anon tumbles off and finds herself lying on the ground.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she complains, gingerly lifting her shirt to confirm that yes, she has four shallow lines etched across her skin, blood beading up along them. Also, her back hurts from hitting the hard floor, her muscles are aching from pressing down on Soyo so hard, and she’s getting a headache.
“I could ask you the same thing.” Soyo is rubbing her shoulder like it’s sore, and Anon notes with satisfaction that her perfect hair is mussed up and tangled in the back now. Dried tear marks still mar her cheeks, but even though her eyes are red-rimmed she just looks annoyed. Anon almost launches herself at Soyo again—how irritating, that she isn’t angrier—but whatever.
She actually doesn’t get the chance. She blinks and Soyo is grabbing her again, sliding her hands—elegant hands, but fingertips calloused from playing the bass—down Anon’s arm, past, the raw skin of her clawed-open wrist, down to hold her hand. With kindness, reverence, Soyo slowly runs her thumbs across Anon’s palm, opening her hand up.
It’s gentle, a soothing gesture. So comforting that Anon doesn’t realize Soyo is lifting her palm up to her mouth until Soyo’s incisors touch her skin.
“What the f—” Anon wants to jerk her hand away, but she can’t. Her other hand twitches, free—she should use it, slap Soyo away, wrench herself free from Soyo’s bite, but it won’t move. The monster takes her vision—it watches transfixed as Soyo, like a half-feral animal, sinks down into Anon’s flesh, not piercing the skin but pinching, uncomfortable pressure. Soyo’s teeth are sharp and diamond-hard. Her breath is warm, her tongue wet.
It hurts like hell. It’s amazing. Anon’s heart is beating harder than it ever has before, reverberating in her ears.
She feels alive. She, herself. Not Anon Chihaya, not Chihaya-san, not Ann, not Anon of MyGo!!!!! Sitting there, on the floor of the most expensive apartment she’s ever set foot in, being attacked by some girl she barely knows and yet knows better than almost anyone.
“Will that make me stay?” Anon says, breathing steadily so that the words don’t come out shaky.
Bright blue eyes flicker up to Anon’s gaze. Soyo bites down a little harder. She says nothing.
Anon can hardly dare to keep talking. She forces the words out. Dangerous territory on all sides, and she is going to push them both into it if it’s the last thing she ever does.
“Do you think…” Anon starts, then her breath catches in her throat. Blinks a few times to clear the tears from her eyes, returns Soyo’s gaze without wavering.
“Do you think you could have kept Sakiko-san with you like this?”
Soyo lets Anon’s hand drop out of her jaws. It’s not half a second later before, a flash before Anon’s eyes, she’s on top of Anon, flailing and hitting and pushing and sobbing.
Anon knew it was coming.
She gives back what she gets.
It’s nighttime now. Soyo didn’t close the blinds in her room, so the city twinkles outside all around them, closer than any stars would ever be. It’s actually comforting, like a nightlight would be. Anon stares up at the barely-illuminated ceiling above her, thinks about the way the expensive pajamas she borrowed feel on her bruised and scratched-up skin. She wonders if Soyo feels the same way—Anon certainly got a few good hits in.
Beside her, she hears Soyo’s slow, rhythmic breathing. Dead asleep. Her bare feet are brushing against Anon’s under the covers, the smallest touch linking them together. After the fighting, after the band-aids and rubbing alcohol, as Anon slipped into the bed beside Soyo, she had said something Anon thought was probably the most genuine thing she’d said all night.
“Thank you for being here.”
Anon had just sighed and rolled over.
Tomorrow, she would have to figure out how to explain the bruises and scratches and band-aids to her classmates and her mom (there was a 95% chance that Tomori would not remark on it at all—a Tomori quirk she was grateful for). She would have to analyze Soyo’s body language and all the words she didn’t say, to try and figure out how this would change the amorphous, weird relationship they had. Anon would probably have to reflect on the stuff about Sakiko she’d hissed at Soyo as they had fought. She would probably have to reflect on the cruel things Soyo had hurled at Anon as well, about her attention-seeking and selfishness.
But for now, she stares up at the ceiling, at the soft and distant lights reflected off its surface. She thinks about the evil thing inside her. She thinks about the evil thing inside Soyo.
Maybe, after all, they are the same kind of twisted, messed-up, selfish girls. They’ve seen each other’s ugliness and lived. Anon wonders if Soyo feels the same sense of being truly alive as Anon feels now. Like being on stage, but more base. Their souls, on fire.
Maybe they will save each other.