VIVIDWords | AkiToya (Project Sekai)

Accusatory {13}

     "I think you got the wrong number," he said dryly, his phone pressed against his ear. His head was beginning to pound from the scratchy audio, mild desperation to get the woman on the other side to shut up concentrating itself in his mind.
     "You know who I am!" She groaned, practically yelling into the receiver of her phone, causing the ginger to flinch away.
     "Nope. No clue who this Toya dude you're talking about is," he shrugged, his right hand mindless clicking on his laptop as he attempted to work on his song. He, truthfully, was glad to hear her voice, the familiarity of it bringing a wave of warmth over him, a sensation he had become particularly fond of. Regardless of the produced feelings, though, he couldn't deny his frustration from her; she had been pestering him for a few hours, maybe four or five. "I don't know who you are, either," he quickly added.
     "You do know me!" She yelled, her voice strained. "An Shiraishi? Your singing partner?"
     "Still doesn't ring a bell. I'm at work right now, mind leaving me alone?" His hand blindly moved around, seemingly undistracted by his phone call.
     "Akito. Why did Toya come home at twelve? Where the hell was he?" He could faintly hear the unusually loud punching of a pillow from An's side.
     "Are you his roommate or something?" He asked genuinely, yet a provoking tone overtook his voice, clouding the meaning behind his words. "Why does it matter to you, anyways?"
     "Shut up!" She shrieked, the aforementioned punching noise increasing in frequency and loudness. "Can't you tell me instead of pretending like you aren't Akito? Where the hell was he?"
     "Not an answer," he said, his eyes darting from the phone screen back to the laptop. He clicked play, the audio flooding the room.

     The melody sounded rough, ragged, almost. It felt like a perfectly flat rock with too many tiny cracks, an uncomfortable friction created from what should be pure smoothness. Muddy, maybe, was a fine adjective for it, or at least finer than the music itself. He sighed, the sound nowhere near what he had in mind, his brain unintentionally tuning out the sounds coming from his phone. His hand quickly glided across the mousepad mindlessly, attempting to edit out whatever added to the messiness.

     "Are you ignoring me?" An seethed, breaking him out of his accidental trance. "I'm coming over to your apartment."
     "You don't know where I live though?"
     "'I think you have the wrong number'," she mocked. "I'll ask Toya, no big deal. And then you're gonna explain to me where he was, Akito."
     "Why are you assuming I know?" He said, not paying any heed to how he, in fact, did know where he was.

     He waited for a response before pulling the phone away from his ear, noticing she had hung up. He let out a groan, holding in a following scream; he didn't want to deal with a noise complaint alongside something akin to an interrogation.

     Smoothly closing his laptop and pushing himself away from the desk, he stood up and stretched, trying to mentally prepare for what he presumed to be an unnecessarily large ordeal.
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     "Mizuki?" An stuttered, startled at the presence of someone else in front of Akito's door.
     "Oh, hey! It's been a while, hasn't it?" They said cheerfully, their pale blue skirt hardly covering their knees, leaving little protection against the cold. "I see you're also here for Akito?" She said, knocking on the door.
     "Yeah, I was here to ask him about some stuff," she held her hands against her hips, characteristic confidence slipping between the cracks of utter confusion. "What about you?"
     "Also asking him about business related stuff," they said casually, earning a confused tilt of the head from An. "Nothing I've talked to him about before though. We've only," they paused, eyes fixated on the wall as they attempted to find the right phrasing, "had small talk. It's like proposing business offers, ya know?"
     "Mm," the other nodded, glancing at the door. "How long have you been waiting for? I only texted him twenty minutes ago, so..."
     "Maybe thirty."
     "Thirty?" She gaped.
     "Yeah. I've just assumed he's focused, and that his sister—" their hand ran nervously through their hair at the mention of her— "isn't there."