Tomogi woke to the sound of the alarm drilling straight into his skull. For a few seconds he lay completely still, eyes half-open, brain only processing the fact that his tongue tasted like the carpet at a dive bar. A groan drifted from the other side of the couch. Aoto slapped at the alarm until it went silent, then let his hand flop off the nightstand.

“Are we dead?” Aoto mumbled.

“Not yet,” Tomogi muttered. His head throbbed in time with his pulse. “But someone definitely tried.”

They lay there, both staring at the ceiling, letting the shards of last night rearrange into something like memory. The bar. The neon. Tomogi leaning a little too close. Aoto pretending not to lean back. The walk home—blurred, slow, warm. Tomogi remembered laughing, remembered Aoto catching his elbow when he stumbled. He remembered the moment on the stairs when he thought say something, but the words dissolved the second they touched his throat.

Aoto sat up first. “What… exactly did we do?”

Tomogi pushed himself upright, wincing. “We talked. We drank. You sang part of a love ballad to a fern in the hallway.”

“You swore you’d never speak of that again.”

“I’m hungover, not honorable.”

Tomogi got up and walked into the kitchen opening the refrigerator,

Aoto glared weakly, then sighed. “Did we… talk about anything important?”

Tomogi hesitated. A small, fragile silence opened between them—something unfinished from last night pressing at the edge of the room. Aoto’s expression said he felt it too.

Before either could speak, Tomogi’s phone buzzed violently across the coffee table. He grabbed it.

Nobunaga:

“Get dressed. We’re outside. It’s Friday. Pop-Up Event Happening.”

Tomogi stared at the message. “The idiots are here.”

Aoto flopped back onto the couch. “I swear I just woke up from the dead.”

“We’re being resurrected against our will.”

Ten minutes later, they stumbled out the door still half-asleep, hair messy, jackets thrown on over wrinkled shirts. Nobunaga, Kota, and Shinji waited by the curb like they were pre-gaming a kidnapping.

“You two look like frozen shrimp.” Nobunaga said.

“Thank you,” Tomogi replied, climbing into the car.

The drive to the club cut through the early evening haze. Neon was already bleeding into the streets when they arrived. The place wasn’t big—just a warehouse bar with a black-painted door and a line of people who all dressed like heartbreak was a lifestyle.

Inside, the stage lights flashed red and purple. A crowd pressed close, murmuring with familiar anticipation.

Kota nudged Tomogi. “You’re going to love this band. They’re intense.”

A shriek of guitar ripped through the room. The lights flared.

The Black Circles walked onstage.

Tomogi froze.

A woman with jet-black hair chopped just below her jaw stepped into the spotlight. Her eyes swept the crowd with the kind of confidence that made people shut up without meaning to. She lifted the mic.

“Evening, Tokyo.”

Her voice was the same. Sharp at the edges, warm in the center. A voice he used to hear laughing at two in the morning, or whispering lyrics while she scribbled them on napkins.

Aoto leaned toward him. “You know her?”

Tomogi’s jaw flexed. “No, I knew her.”

Aoto glanced again at the stage name glowing on the screen behind her. “Do I know her?”

Tomogi nodded as the drummer began thumping on the kick drum, “Uh-huh” he muttered.

The band slammed into their first song. Jade’s voice cut through the noise—ferocious, magnetic, dragging every eye to her. Tomogi felt the years between them gather into a tight knot under his ribs.

Kota whispered, “She’s insane live, right? Total monster on a mic.”

Tomogi didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Aoto noticed.

Through the set, Jade looked toward the crowd’s right side where Tomogi stood but never at him directly—but he kept catching the feeling that she knew he was there.

The final chord rang out. The applause surged like a wave.

As the lights dipped, someone tapped Nobunaga’s shoulder—a man in a clean black suit with a lanyard around his neck.

“You’re with Di$iPliN?” the man asked.

Nobunaga straightened. “Yeah.”

“The band would like to speak with you. Backstage. All of you.”

Tomogi felt Aoto shift beside him, suddenly alert.

The manager stepped aside, gesturing toward the hallway behind the stage curtains.

“Right this way.”