dreamcrystals | open 💀 first recording

Sender: Beat
To: Everyone
Subject: Passive Dream Recording
Warnings: Some spoilers for the OG The World Ends With You.

Whenever this time of the year came around, a sense of dread would bubble up deep within him. It would start in his stomach and slowly make its way up to his throat, settling itself there. It was uncomfortable and no matter what he'd do to try to gulp it down, it remained stuck.

This day was no different.

Beat seems to be a few years younger, wearing a slouchy beanie with a skull sewn onto it, his hair pulled back and tucked underneath it. His usual headphones are absent from his head. He’s dressed in a school uniform, but his surroundings do not depict him to be in any such place.

Instead, he wanders Shibuya aimlessly—riding down the streets of Dogenzaka on his skateboard, perusing new albums available in Tower Records, even just hanging out at the convenience store by the Moyai statue. Everywhere but where he was supposed to be.

He reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone, navigating his way to the unread message from someone named “Rhyme”.

Are you coming home soon?

A moment passes before he types up a reply:

ill head home when i feel like it

His message was cold and he knows it deep down. But he sends it anyway, tucking his phone away before he continues loitering about the city.

By nightfall, he finds himself staring up at a modest two-story home, standing just outside its gate. He doesn't know how much time has passed since he's gotten here, but he lets out a sigh, steeling himself for what was to come. The gate’s hinges creak slightly as he pushes it open, a plaque on the gate reading the family name “Bito”.

The lump in his throat still remains.

It isn’t before long that he finds himself standing in front of a Japanese man, dressed in business attire, his tie loose around his neck after a long day at work. To his side sits a rather tall woman with blond hair, an apron draped in front of her dress. He’s filled with dread once again, the pit in his stomach growing larger and deeper as a tightness begins to form in his chest.

Beat reaches out and hands over a card toward them. On it are his grades for the semester. They are well above the passing grade, but nothing spectacular. He knows they’re nothing spectacular. He knows he isn’t anything spectacular. Not in their eyes.

The expression on his face is hard to read as they go over his grades and Beat hasn’t said a single word throughout. His lips remain a straight line and his eyes appear to be downcast. Is it apathy? Is it fear?

He opens his mouth, ready to put himself down, ready to fight them. That’s how it always is after all.

“Good job, son.”

The words catch in his throat before they could leave him. Beat’s eyes widen and his mouth hangs open, staring at them. They look back at him with proud smiles on their faces.

“You did well, Daisukenojo,” said the man.

Beat recoils when he hears the name but doesn’t say anything at first. He continues to stare at them for a moment longer, dumbfounded by the turn of events. “Are you two serious?” he finally asks. His usual manner of speech is missing, but the same inflections and brash tone of his voice remain.

“Of course we’re serious.” This time it’s the woman who speaks, looking back at him incredulously. “You did your best, didn’t you? As long as you do that, we couldn’t be any prouder of you.”

The man stands from his seat and walks to Beat, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s eat out tonight to celebrate, all four of us. How does hot pot sound?”

Beat looks at the man, then the woman. Finally, the surprise on his face disappears and he lets out a laugh. His voice almost cracks when he speaks. “Yeah, hot pot sounds great, dad.”

He hears a quiet ring of a bell nearby. Turning towards the source, he sees a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes smiling at him, a bell pendant hanging from a leather strap around her neck. He smiles back at her, blinking back the tears that begin to pool at the edge of his eyes.

And then he wakes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's nosy of me to ask this, but I can't help it. What is it that you're looking for?

[Or maybe he's not looking for anything. Nier is in a very special set of circumstances. This is the only life he gets. There is no going back for him. So for him, everything he does, everything he says is done with intention.

He has to remember that not everyone can understand that or would approach things in the same way. Beat, after all, is younger. He's just an old man. He sees the world in an entirely different way.]

i...

[Nier is right, the question was a bit nosy. What did he even expect him to say? And even with what he did know, it wasn't something that he could say very easily.

That he didn't want to feel inadequate? That he wanted some kind of acknowledgment from someone who wasn't his friend? That he didn't want it to be done out of pity?]

yo i dunno how to even answer that

[The self-reflecting questions are always the hard-hitting ones. For Nier, his own answer is easy. But that's because by the process of elimination, he doesn't exactly have anything outside of this moment. It's Songerein or nothing. Old man's willing to bet that Beat probably isn't in a situation like that.]

Maybe you just need time to figure out the answer to that. If you've got friends here, they'll help you find the answer to it if you let them.

[Asking him of that isn't as easy as one might think. Beat had always been restless so sitting down and mulling things over was never his strong suit. It didn't help that the person he would go to for these sort of things, his most trusted confidant, wasn't around either. He groans, wishing that it was easy to just will someone into showing up. But he couldn't dot hat to his sister even it were possible. Not to Rhyme.

While he did have friends around, even he realizes that he'll have to be a bit more open about his insecurities. That alone is no easy task.]

i mean i guess i could but how dyou even bring that sorta thing up?
just go yo i dunno what im doing or what i want
wanna help a brother out?

[For all it seems Beat doesn't know how to handle this, what he says is perfect. At least it is in Nier's eyes and maybe that's because Nier just has no sense of elegance or refinement. There's no need to pretty it up, wrap it in a bow or whatever.]

Yeah, actually. Nothing wrong with being straight about it. If that's how you feel, that's how you feel. Have to say, if someone ever said that me, I'd be damn ready to help.

[Says a man who wants to help everyone, regardless of whether they ask for it or not. Nier is nothing more than a Grade A Meddlesome Meddler.]

[Could it really be that easy? Beat was usually pretty blunt and straightforward himself but even the directness of this approach is enough to give him some pause.]

i dunno man
feels like asking that outta nowheres just gonna make things all awkward you know?
its cool that you down for helping out like that but aint sure its gonna be the same for my friends

[He's assuming of course, but even he knows he'd feel like he was being put on the spot if he was asked something like that.]

Maybe not open quite like that. Just tell them you need some help. You don't need to overcomplicate it. Your friends care about you. They're gonna wanna help.

[That sounds presumptuous of him, but friendship just works that way. If they didn't want to help, they wouldn't be very good at being friends.]

And if they don't know how to help, they're gonna wanna listen. Even just having others who feel the same is better than trying to handle it all alone.

[He does have a point. Beat's usually pretty straightforward about most things, so he didn't have to make this harder on himself too, right? Especially when a few of his friends have already offered to hear him out when he wanted to talk. Now may not be the right time, but when it is, he just needed to reach out to them to get things started.]

guess you right that it dont gotta be overcomplex

[There's a short pause before Beat begins to scrawl on the page of the paper once again, his writing coming out very heavy-handed.]

AIIIIGHT imma do esactly that when i wanna talk about it
thanks old man

[His mission is complete. He has, in some way or another, changed someone else's life. Possibly for the better. Possibly for the worse.]

It's nothing. I'll be rootin' for you, kid.

[...Probably a kid. Quite possibly another Mammon case.]

open 💀 first recording | passive dream

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