❀ FEEL ALIVE | TOKYO REVENGERS
🤍 kokonoi hajime
💿 female reader, second pov (you/your), angst with a happy ending, hurt / comfort, tw: family, au - canon divergence, au - college, established relationship, imagine
📅 june 13, 2021
🔗 main
kokonoi hajime always finds out things you try to hide about yourself—even your guarded love for dance.
“Do you really think that this will get you money?”
It’s always money. Money is power. Money will get you this. Money will get you that. Money will make your life easier.
You always thought differently. So what if money can get you anything you want? So what if money can pay your bills and make you happy? Does money cause the rush of pure bliss in your whole being? Does money give you moments to remember? Does money give you your mother back?
Money does not revive a dead person back to life. What is dead, stays dead.
And you learned that soon enough. So you turned to the closest thing that reminded you of your mother instead, which was dance. She was a dancer, a shining star on the stage that is the world. It was her whole life, what made her feel alive, that full lightening gust that flows in her veins. It was what made her happy.
Until everything from her waist to down was paralyzed.
Not only had she lost her escape, she lost her mind as well; and soon enough, she lost her life. And when she lost her life, your father lost his light.
And now, he was saying it to his nine year old daughter who told him she wanted to dance as well.
“Do you really think that this will get you money?”
Money does not revive a dead person back to life. What is dead, stays dead.
You wish to say that to your father, to say it straight to his face, to snarl and to shake him by his shoulders to see that Mom is dead. It isn’t even money anymore, it’s about bringing back was gone. Your father had long lost it, thinking that everything was about money, money, money. If had more money, would he have afforded an operation to let his wife feel her legs again? Would he have steered her away from her demise?
It doesn’t leave your lips.
Not even ten years later.
So here you stand, in the very stage your mother once performed on, decades prior. With slow confident steps, gazes gravating to you, body moving perfectly in sync with every beat. There was no destination, no place on whichever space of the floor, that you have to go to. Your spot is in no one place, it’s the whole stage.
You feel no nervousness, all drowned out underneath the adrenaline. No cheers enter your ears, only the music blaring in your head, and despite the loudness, you only feel calm. Your moves were languid, no sign of tension or reluctance, in every step, every lock, every pauses and every turn.
You moved freely, the practiced choreography feeling as if you were dancing it for the very first time but having the same ease as one would have if they practiced it for years.
The music stops and you do as well, perfectly poised in your final position, frozen in time and the expression on your face eerie to match the lethal end of a song.
Then you hear the applause, you feel the warmth the lights above you emits, you see the audience standing and cheering you on.
You breathe out, body slightly shaking as you take in the people looking at you and you alone, mesmerized with the number, the story, that you had just performed. You felt as if you were flying, as if you had just lost all the weight on your shoulders that you had accumulated all those years.
“I see a talent in you,” a teacher in your high school once said to you, holding you by your shoulders. “Dancing is a skill, it’s something you learn. But once on a blue moon, someone is blessed with a talent for it, someone can reach the highest level that those who acquired it never can.
“And I think, that this time, that someone is you.” He sent you to a college for performing arts, a scholarship in your name, and a future already in front of you.
And barely a few months in, you were given a chance to prove yourself. One choreography, one performance, in front of the cameras, in front of a live audience. A chance.
This. This was everything you ever wanted.
And then you see him.
The person that you had left behind to pursue this dream. The person who you loved, the person who made you feel the same as how dance makes you feel.
Alive.
He stands there, watching you. From the distance, you couldn’t tell the emotion in his face, the spark in his eyes. He’s just watching you.
Then everything comes crashing down.
“Do you really think that this will get you money?” Your father once said, disgusted as he looks at the nine year old you, a mere child telling him what they want to do.
If there was one thing you knew about Kokonoi Hajime, the very person you loved, it was his obsession for money. For just like your father, he had lost someone so dear to him, someone he once loved—more than how he loves you. Someone he couldn’t chase because he didn’t have money.
You stand in front of him, the event long over, the questions long finished, the adrenaline long faded. You stand in silence, fearing what he would say.
“Do you really think that this will get you money?”
I’m not Akane.
And you will never be.
Just like your father, he obsessed over money until it wasn’t just about his love anymore. It was an obsession with money itself, and nothing else. Not even his excuses about for Akane seemed sincere anymore.
Because Akane is dead.
And you cannot bring the dead back to life no matter how rich you are.
Just like your father, you were prepared for the backlash coming from him as well. Despite not being related, they were the same. The only difference was that you loved Koko. You always had.
And when he finally managed to let go of Akane and he finally started seeing you, it was one of the best things in your life. It was something that not even dance could recreate, a story that you cannot even tell through moving your body, an expression that not even the best actors can ever express.
But Akane was his first love. Money is his second. You stood at third.
For you, dance was your first. Koko was your second.
You weren’t each other's priorities.
“Do you really think that this will get you money?”
You were more than ready to hear that from him.
“I’m so proud of you.”
What?
A pair of lips was on your forehead and his arms were wrapped around you. “You looked so beautiful, so perfect, so alive, so happy. And I’m happy for you.”
Dance makes you feel free, feel as if wings were sprouting out your back. And you were wrong. Koko doesn’t make you feel like how dance makes you feel.
Dance makes you feel free, invincible, breathless, and alive. To a world of adventures and leaps and pops, of moving and intense quick choreographies.
