Project Sekai | Metronome

[veryroundbird]

Rating: Mild
Words: 823
Characters: Shiho Hinomori, Honami Mochizuki
Relationships: Shiho/Honami
Summary: Shiho and Honami have very different methods for getting through life, but over lunch, Shiho realizes maybe they're not that different after all.
Notes: They're both autistic in this one. 2 for 1 special

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Shiho taps her foot to a beat that's just in her head; she can feel the music in her bones. It's no actual song she knows—maybe someday she'll try writing it out, but even though Leo/need keeps working on their original songs, this one feels—personal.

Yeah. A-major, A-minor, E-major—yeah. That's the sound. It carries between her ears even over the hubbub in the school courtyard over lunchtime. Her hands are too antsy, without it. Her head is too antsy.

"Mm... practicing?" says the voice next to her, quietly.

Oh—right. Shiho's good at tuning out the world and focusing on her own internal voice, and Honami's good at fading into the background until she can't even focus on herself.

Shiho shakes her head. "Not really," she says, eyes drifting to Honami's hands in her lap, twisting anxiously. "Just thinking. What are you worried about?"

Honami ducks her head, giving that shy little half-smile of hers. "I don't really know. It's not really anything." She picks at her fingers. "I always feel like this around lunchtime. Mm..." She goes quiet again, scanning around the schoolyard, eyes landing on the last petals falling from one of the blooming trees. "Maybe it's just the time of year. I, um... well, it's still a good time, even so—"

"You don't need to do that," Shiho cuts in, still working her way through the chord progression without looking up.

But she can hear the strain in Honami's "Oh." Other people, maybe not, but Honami—she can always tell.

She glances sideways, not quite making eye contact. "Sorry," she says, remembering to lead with that. "But you don't have to force conversation for me, if you don't want to. You're fine."

Honami twists her hands in her lap again. "...am I?" she says, quietly.

Shiho sighs. "Yeah," she says. "You are." She turns her head up at the cloudless blue sky; E-minor, C-major, A-minor, D-major. "You're more patient with me than most people are. I just—figured I couldn't be a normal girl, so I might as well not try, and you decided to try anyway."

"Ehe... getting compared to Shiho is a little flattering," said Honami, flushing pink and twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "But—well, when you say it, I know you really mean it. That's the kind of thing I always admired."

Yeah. It's easier this way to focus—just on what she wants to hear. Just on Honami, and on the song that's been playing in her heart for as long as she can remember, and they might as well be one and the same. "Well—" Shiho starts, and frowns. "Well, you're able to be a person other people like."

And then—

...and then, Honami tilts her head, to rest it on Shiho's shoulder. Just gingerly; she knows Shiho's squirrelly about touch. Just enough to be nice. "I like you," says Honami, and the metronome in Shiho's heart skips a beat.

"I—" It's rare that she stumbles over her words, but—it's a special occasion. "I l... I like you too. So just—don't try and make me happy. You do enough already."

"I hope so." Honami rests there, for a long moment, quiet. "I don't think I'm really a normal girl, either. I keep thinking—I could try harder. It seems so easy for nearly everyone, so—why not me."

Shiho clicks her tongue, as she slides her hand up the imaginary fretboard. "Is that what you want to be good at?"

There's a pause, and then—Honami laughs, bright and clear. "Well," she says, "I guess I don't know. But you keep telling me that people are going to like me anyway, and it keeps turning out that you've got the right idea, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," says Shiho, shrugging. "Because it's true." She pauses. "I'm not playing a real song. But if you want to play along, that's fine. Just improvise."

Honami tilts her head up toward Shiho's face—close enough for her nose to touch Shiho's jawline, which gives Shiho a weird sort of feeling in her chest she can't quite name. "Just improvise..." She laughs, again, lightly, and Shiho can feel it against her neck. "I might be bad at it."

Shiho snorts, trying to exhale the heat creeping into her face to no avail. "It's only for you. How could you be bad at it?"

For a moment, it seems like Honami has another argument to make against herself—but then, she taps her foot lightly. Again, and again, matching Shiho's pace; and then she flicks her wrist, chopstick in hand, against the imaginary snare in front of her.

And when they go their separate ways for class—it takes Shiho a moment to figure out what's changed, but something has.

Honami isn't wringing her hands anymore. Just smiling, tapping her fingers against her notebooks to a rhythm that belongs just to her.