Chapter Text
It happened in the practice room.
The thermostat had gone rogue, keeping the heat on no matter the temperature inside, and the heating company couldn't send a technician to fix it until tomorrow.
Everyone else had to keep re-tuning their strings as their instruments adjusted to the heat.
Most of Nijika's drums had drifted out of their sweet spots too, but tuning drums was a tedious process that she couldn't pull off quickly between songs, so she'd just resolved to push through it.
The heat had caused the members of Kessoku Band to shed layers, leading to one of the rare occasions that Bocchi wasn't wearing her track pants beneath her skirt.
Unaccustomed to her vulnerable state of dress, Bocchi had habitually hiked her leg up onto her amplifier during a particularly difficult riff, and Nijika had been unable to stop her eyes from wandering to the motion just beside her drum kit.
(She wasn't proud of it, but she was only human, and it was hard to look away from a pretty lady...)
But what she'd seen had shocked her.
Not sexy.
Not embarrassing.
Panic inducing.
Bandages caught her attention first.
Neat little rectangles of white gauze held on with beige medical tape, contrasting against the dark blue of the girl's skirt.
Rusty splotches on some of them.
Then she saw the scars.
Thin lines, dark, pale, and every shade in between.
Dozens of them lining Bocchi’s inner thighs.
Nijika had quickly averted her gaze, proceeding to botch nearly every cue in the remainder of the song. It was hard to remember how many bars she'd been playing a beat for when her mind was firing on all cylinders, worrying about her friend.
She'd quickly excused herself, mumbling about a headache and retreating to the bathroom after the song ended. She received concerned looks from all her bandmates.
Oblivious to what she'd seen.
And there she'd practically ripped her hair out of her scalp as she tried to process this new information.
Now, in the wee hours of the following morning, Nijika sat awake in bed, still processing.
How could she not have seen this?
She cared for Bocchi so much. The girl had saved the band on multiple occasions, and in a more personal level, she'd made Nijika feel things so much more intensely. She hadn't even realized how gray her existence had become before the pink-haired girl had come to splash everything with vivid color.
Like everyone, Nijika recognized that Bocchi dealt with a lot of anxiety, and that the valleys of her wildly-fluctuating self image were extremely low, but cutting herself?!? Nijika had never considered that bocchi might do something like that.
Was that stupid of her?
There had been brief moments, grieving the loss of her mom, that Nijika had considered leaving life behind. Moments where she'd looked at the razor cutter in the drawer and considered taking it into the bathtub, to be found at peace in a crimson pool like the movies.
Was cutting herself Hitori's way of flirting with the same idea, or was it something else?
The thought of losing the pink-haired girl for good— of attending her funeral— made the taste of bile creep its way up Nijika's throat. Electrified her chest with tingling panic. She was not capable of dealing with another loss like that.
She had to do something.
Even if the other girl wasn't suicidal, Nijika couldn't just ignore Bocchi's suffering. Such a sweet, misunderstood girl… it hurt her heart.
But how did she bring it up? Would bocchi not just shut down, or have some kind of panic attack if she mentioned seeing the scars? Would she lash out and leave the band, so none of them would be able to help her?
She took a deep breath. Maybe Seika could give her some kind of advice? She certainly couldn't talk to her dad about it…
Nijika uncovered herself and tiptoed to the bedroom door before opening it just a crack. In the stillness of the night she could hear the faint sound of voices through tinny speakers. Her sister was listening to a podcast or a documentary or something.
Still awake.
Nijika followed the sound, and was promptly proven incorrect.
Her sister was passed out on the chabudai table, a laptop open to a spreadsheet in front of her. A podcast about marketing played in the background, but the voices of the hosts had clearly failed to keep Seika awake.
Her lip was raw at the corner— she had a bad habit of chewing on it when she was particularly stressed.
Sneaking over to inspect the spreadsheets, Nijika felt her stomach drop.
These were the books for Starry, and it seemed like the club was barely scraping by. The projected cost for the heating repair was likely to put them in the red for that month.
Maybe now wasn't the best time to bother Seika.
But it wouldn't be good to let her sleep there all night, practically folded in half and sprawled out on the table.
Nijika crouched down. “Hey,” she gently touched her sister’s shoulder. “You're gonna be sore from sleeping like that. Why don't you get in bed?”
Seika grumbled. Non-verbally at first, then “what are you doing awake?”
“Nothing,” Nijika replied. “I-I just woke up to use the bathroom and I heard your podcast still playing.”
“I can tell when you're lying. Something's wrong. You're upset.”
Why was she always so deadpan and straightforward?
Nijika wanted to snap back but she felt like this wasn't the time to argue or be spiteful. “You have more than enough to worry about,” she said. “I… don't wanna add to your stress.”
Seika’s eyes narrowed. “Nijika. Spit it out. It's my job to look after you.” She patted the floor beside her, and Nijika sat down.
Nijika knew this translated to something like ‘I always have time for you when you're upset, I care about you so please tell me.’
She wished her sister would say it kindly more often…
So much for ‘straightforward’
“I, uh… I found out that one of my friends is… hurting themself. A-and I’m worried. I don't know if they're secretly suicidal, or… i-if it's for some other reason, but I'm just… I feel so overwhelmed and s-scared for h– for them and… I don't know what to do.”
Seika stared blankly as she processed Nijika’s words. She was still obviously drowsy, and the bags under her eyes betrayed that this wasn't the first late night she’d had lately.
“Jeez. These kinds of situations are hard, cause they really have to want to get better for you to help them. Which… isn't always the case.” Nijika watched as heartache flashed across her sister’s face. “If I could make people want to heal, Kikuri wouldn't be drinking herself toward an early grave.”
Nijika frowned.
The woman in question had been sliding into a sort of mentor role for Bocchi, which certainly didn't help ease any of her concerns.
If Bocchi’s cutting was some sort of coping mechanism in the way alcohol was for Kikuri, Nijika didn't want to even imagine Bocchi indulging in it to the same extent that the older woman drowned her problems in drink.
“S-so I have to make her… want to stop.”
Seika raised an eyebrow at ‘her’.
sh*t.
Seika sighed. “Assuming this… person is your age, they probably have someone looking after them, so that's a good place to start I guess. Assuming their caretakers aren’t the reason. Maybe they can figure out if something at home is making the kid wanna do that.”
“R-right.”
Bocchi’s parents seemed nice, from what she could remember. Maybe they could talk to her?
But would being told to get better by her parents make Bocchi feel even worse?
“M-maybe I just need to like… be open about how much they mean to me. M-make them feel… valued.”
“Y-yeah,” Seika said as a reflective expression came over her. “Maybe you're right. Y-you’ve always been a bit better at that kind of thing than me.”
Nijika frowned. She at least had a starting point now.
Maybe.
“Should… sh-should I tell them I know? They… don’t know I saw it.”
Seika scratched the side of her head as she pondered. “That depends on the person. Like, one person might clamp down and get defensive, where another would see it as a reason to open up. ‘No use hiding any more if they already know’— that kind of thing.”
Saika paused before she continued, “If… you're talking about who I think you are, you might wanna be careful not to overwhelm them. Some people burn out or shut down when you confront them, even if it's gentle.”
“So… ease into it over time?”
The woman nodded, before pulling Nijika into a hug. “I'm sorry you've gotta deal with this. You've been through too much for a kid.”
Nijika felt a sting behind her eyes. For some reason, hearing someone else acknowledge the pain she'd been through always caused that. “I'm not a kid anymore. A-and there's plenty of people my age who’ve been through worse.”
“That doesn't make it right.”
A hand gently ran up and down Nijika's back, and finally, she let herself cry.
