Leaves were just starting to fall and the sound of Nogizaka46′s Taiyou Knock was filling the ears of Japan when she left. Luka had been crumbling in demeanor over so long and the stress of merely existing made her want to cry. (If you asked anyone, they should have seen it coming. She would faint in dance practices, she was hospitalized several times, and she never slept. Being an idol was all that her personality was.)
There was a bag under her bed she kept packed in case she ever got the courage to leave. She would pull it out at night sometimes, when everyone else slept, to look at it and pray that she could gain the confidence it took to leave the house, the contract, the spotlight. Her friends held her back. If she couldn’t do it, how were they feeling? None of them ever complained, but maybe she wasn’t as strong as them?
Miku made a comment the day before she left. A little teasing note on how deep her eyebags were and if they were Gucci. Luka gave her a smile and said, “No, they’re Chanel,“ but the damage was done and at 2:48 am she walked out of the Crypton house.
She cut her hair, dyed it brown, and lived off whatever odd jobs she could get under whatever random name she chose out of a hat. She would see posters of her old friends and smile fondly, maybe a customer would mention a new single and she would be happy that person was still making it, or sometimes she would see them out on the streets. First, it was Rin, and Luka froze, mind numb as Rin looked right at her, smiled, and kept walking.
After that, she decided they had forgotten her anyways and whenever she saw someone she would go about her day. The one person able to catch her eye was Len and the way he would glance at her like he was trying to remember who he knew with dark brown hair made her turn tail and run. Crypton was never to find her. Crypton would eat her alive again and take away her personality. Crypton is the villain in her story.
Until a month ago. It had been so long since she left that she didn’t recognize the executive that had found her. Luka backed against a wall like a trapped animal when they told her she was legally required to come back, that her contract wasn’t up. She couldn’t breathe when they said she would be background at first, work her back to her former self. Luka wanted to spit in his face and run away but she found herself staring at the dotted line with her loopy signature and the key to an apartment she would be staying in until they found a room for her in the Crypton house.
It was now a month later and nobody had been told that she was back. She was moving back into the house today. She was standing at the front door shaking when someone came up behind her.
Things had been hard, without Luka.
If there was anything Len was good at, it was overthinking. When Luka had disappeared in the night back then, it was all he’d been able to do for a while, head too cluttered with the wheres and the whys to do much else. Too attached, he was, clinging too tightly to her presence and the memories they’d created together, both good and bad. Now she was gone without a word, without a reason, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. Questions haunted him into the twilight, weaving themselves into his restless dreams and robbing him of what little time to sleep he had. Did she leave, or was she taken? Was she okay, or did fate have one more cruel twist up its sleeve? Was she happier where she was, or was she as distraught as he? Had she ever been happy, with them? Could he have done something to prevent this? Of course he could have — he doesn’t know what, but that doesn’t excuse him from this.
...Did that make it his fault, somehow? Because he did nothing?
It's silly to think that way, maybe. It certainly doesn’t do much to ease his grief; the very idea that he might've had a helping hand in it all makes his stomach knot up with unrelenting anxiety. He feels a little lost, unsure of what he’s supposed to do now — with her gone. Moving forward as if nothing were wrong was unfathomable, but breaking himself day in and day out with the reminder of that gaping void she’d left behind could only go on for so long. He wants to think about something else, anything to ease the pain, but that’s selfish. Luka was out there somewhere, doing who knows what, feeling who knows how, and he has no right to push her from his mind as if she were nothing. Funny, how she occupied even more space in his head than she had in their home like this. More than anything, he doesn’t want to risk forgetting, not even one thing about her. If tearing open the wound over and over would keep her in his mind’s eye, then he’d simply have to do it. No matter how many nights he’d lay sleepless, face smothered by his pillow until he could cry no more. What else could he do, when he remembers he’ll wake up to her absence again and again?
It had ebbed a little, eventually. Busyness kept him occupied, and music that had been lost to the white noise in his head finally started to sound like something again. He’d found himself trying to remember exactly what her voice sounded like sometimes, as her blurry figure drifted across the surface of his memory. He sees her in the little things, like cherry blossom trees in the spring that were pink like her hair had been, or the blue summer skies that matched her eyes. His heart still aches as seasons pass, unable to let go of her no matter how long she’d been out of his reach. He still lays awake at night sometimes, wondering how she’s doing, and where she is now. He hopes that she’s happy; to even consider anything else would send him spiraling again.
Not once did he ever sort through his feelings, though. He was, and still is, far too scared to rummage through the mess she’d left behind in his head. He missed her — that was all he needed to know, and all anyone else needed to know, right? He was sad she was gone, that was all there was to it. There was no point in dwelling on details like those... until now.
Truth be told, Luka’s assumption back then hadn’t been quite right. When he’d caught sight of that brunette on the street all that time ago, he hadn’t been wondering who it was he knew with that hair color at all — he’d been wondering who he knew with eyes like hers, too afraid to hope for anything more than a mere coincidence without even realizing it. But now that same brown hair was staring him in the face, pink adorning its roots and driving him into a corner as he finds himself a mere few steps away from ... her. He doesn’t want to believe it, at first. He can’t deal with the disappointment of it all being false, that burden atop the rest would simply be too much to bear. But his heart is already calling out to her, eyes unwilling to look away as if he feared she would disappear if he were to so much as blink. Those feelings he’d declined to give names to, suddenly they were flooding his senses, locking him into place as if they had become tangible weights on his shoulders.
He’s relieved. She’s alive. He’s happy, so happy to see her, happy that she’s here. He’s scared, so scared that he’s wrong and he’ll be looking at a STRANGER when he finally sees her face, scared to face the reality that he’ll never know what happened to her. He’s upset, maybe; he’s hurt. When he thinks about how she turned away from him in the street, looking like anyone but herself, he can’t help but feel a little betrayed — and so very ashamed of himself for thinking like that, as if her feelings didn’t matter any more than his own. The last one is one he can’t place a name to, the one that writhed in his chest and begged him to cast away his restraint. The one that nearly sent him crashing into her from behind, clinging too tightly, too afraid to let go before he’d even begun to hold on.
But he couldn’t, not yet. Not until he knew for sure.
