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zukkokyaPart One
—
Yamapi washes his face with cold water, rests both hands on the frame of the sink, and stares at his distorted reflection in the faucet until the water warms on his skin. He waits until the shooting pain in his stomach ends, then he wipes his face off on his shirt and heads out to the parking lot where Takki’s still waiting for him.
Yamapi pulls the passenger door open, sits down, and slams the door.
Takki doesn’t start the car.
Yamapi doesn’t look at him. He’s having enough trouble keeping his expression neutral without adding the challenge of talking normally, too.
Takki starts to ask, “Where do you—”
“Home,” Yamapi interrupts. “Please.”
Takki says, “Okay,” and starts the car.
Yamapi stares out the window for the first ten minutes of the drive and brainstorms what to say. He owes Takki some kind of explanation since Takki’s probably missing something important to do this for him.
He finally decides on, “I’m sorry,” to start things off, and ignores Takki’s answering sound, all understanding and you-don’t-have-to. “I’m sorry that I asked you to do this,” he continues. Even though he didn’t, even though Takki offered, even though, even though. It should just be said regardless of why.
Takki just accepts it with a nod. He doesn’t ask what happened, but he’s definitely wondering, so Yamapi explains anyway.
“It was my fault, that night. I started…things. He’d had much more to drink than I had, and….” Talk faster. Tell him. Get everything said. To someone, anyone. What else? “Today, um. Ryo was there. He said he asked to be there, so we went in to Johnny’s office together. And, um. His concert’s been canceled. Johnny made it sound like he’d already made that decision before today, but what if he just did it because Ryo showed up? Would he do something like that? Oh, and my movie role’s going to be given to someone else. And I think NEWS is on an unofficial hiatus.” Johnny didn’t mention NEWS at all until the end, when he said that it would be in everyone’s interest to postpone any activity that might draw attention to their interaction.
Yamapi straightens his leg to get at the phone in his pocket. “I-I should probably send everyone an email to apologize.”
The car swerves onto the side of the road and stops. Yamapi looks at Takki, startled, and inhales too sharply when he realizes his eyes sting.
Takki doesn’t say anything, just takes Yamapi’s cell phone away with one hand and uses the other to squeeze Yamapi’s wrist. And there, in Takki’s car on the shoulder of the highway, Yamapi has a close shave with a panic attack. He’s tired and shaky and realizing his limits are closer than they used to be, and he can still feel phantom sensations from that night—soft hair between his fingers and a smile against his stomach.
Why did he let it go that far?
—
Uchi has a key—Ryo’s never asked how he got it—and no sense of propriety, and because Ryo has stopped trying to change both of those facts, he doesn’t even mute the TV when Uchi lets himself in.
“Missed my train,” Uchi explains, toeing off his shoes. “Why are you still up?”
Ryo hasn’t been paying attention to the time, but now that he checks, he’s a little annoyed with himself to see that it’s close to one thirty. It was eight o’clock when he turned on the TV and he can’t remember anything he’s watched since then.
He switches off the TV and cranes his neck to watch Uchi peeling off his sweater. “I’m not even close to the station,” Ryo tells him. He reaches one arm over his head to stretch out the crick in his back, but he can’t twist enough to make the vertebrae pop.
Uchi says, “Well, whatever. I’m here now. Do you have food?” He wanders into the kitchen.
Now it’s exactly one thirty, but instead of trudging off to bed like he should, Ryo just sprawls on the couch and closes his eyes and listens to Uchi move deftly around the kitchen. It’s been a long time since Ryo went home for a meal, and he misses the warm sounds of someone else cooking: the refrigerator door clinging to the frame and releasing with a soft snick, the muted chatter of water boiling, the gentle clang of metal covers placed over pans and pots and woks. It makes the world feel smaller.
Some mysterious amount of time passes, and then Uchi sits next to him, sinking the cushion that Ryo’s head is on. Ryo wakes up from a nap that could have become a deep sleep and sits up with a half-constructed complaint on his mind that he forgets when Uchi hands him a plate of pasta smothered in slices of tomatoes and store-bought sauce.
Ryo’s starving—he can’t remember the last thing he ate—and twirls up a knot of noodles the size of a tennis ball.
It’s halfway into his mouth when Uchi asks, “How’s Pi?”
Uchi probably practices his terrible timing. Just to be obnoxious, Ryo chews, swallows, has a sip of water, then two, before he says, “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked?”
“We talked.”
Uchi tsks through a mouthful of pasta. “About what? When? Have you talked since the thing?” On the last word, he sprays Ryo’s shirt with flecks of tomato sauce, then adds, “Sorry,” like an afterthought. “But yeah, when did you talk? Is he worried? Pissed?”
Ryo stands up and puts his pasta down on the low table near the window. “I’m going to go change shirts.”
As he turns to go, Uchi seizes his ankle and says, “Wait, wait, stop—sit.” He punctuates the command by yanking at Ryo’s knee until it bends, forcing Ryo to sit back down.
“What do you want?” Ryo snaps. “You spit all over my shirt. I just want to change.”
“Tough,” Uchi replies. He quirks a wry smile that shows just how smug he’s become in his position of power as Ryo’s pushiest friend. “Are you dating?” he asks.
Ryo looks away. “No. Idiot.”
“You’re lying to the wall,” Uchi says, maddeningly. “I’m sure the wall doesn’t appreciate it.”
“I’m not talking to the wall.”
“So stop looking at the wall.”
“I’m looking out the window.”
“I’m not out the window.”
Ryo gives a low, aggravated groan. “Just leave it alone,” he says, and puts a hand out behind him to brace his weight so he can stand up.
Uchi kicks him until he brings the hand back with an annoyed hiss taken in through his teeth.
“So you’re dating,” Uchi says, putting his chin in his hand.
Ryo glares at him. “I didn’t say that. And no, we’re not.”
“More lies,” Uchi says, looking deeply disappointed.
Ryo gets to his feet and moves fast out of Uchi’s reach. “No, it’s not, and stop.” Uchi withdraws his hand with an indignant noise. “I’m going to change,” he says, and, ignoring Uchi’s vaguely repentant nod, heads to his bedroom.
He’s not going anywhere for a while—nowhere that involves cameras, anyway—so he pulls on a ratty One Piece T-shirt Yoko bought for him years ago and tosses the stained shirt into a hamper brimming with a week’s worth of unwashed clothes. He’s deliberating how much longer he can put off doing laundry when he hears footsteps in the hall and a tap on his door.
He looks over his shoulder at Uchi, whose expression has finally ventured into the territory of genuine remorse. “I’m sorry,” Uchi says.
Ryo shakes his head. “Forget it.” If he puts the laundry bag on top of the washing machine, he’ll feel more pressed to—
“It happened to me,” Uchi says. “So I get it. Okay?”
Ryo remembers the morning Uchi called him sounding…everything. Stunned, guilty, terrified. I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, Ryo-chan.
This isn’t the same, but it feels like it’s the same, so Ryo forces out a quiet, “Okay.”
There’s enough laundry in the hamper that Ryo estimates three loads easy, maybe four if he separates whites—
“Pi says he’s sorry, too.” Ryo stares over at Uchi, who holds up his cell phone. “He wants me to take care of you.” Uchi scratches his chin. “I’m thirsty. Do you have beer?”
In three strides, Ryo’s closed the distance between them and swiped Uchi’s phone from his open palm.
Pi’s message says: I want to apologize. Not to anyone at the company—even though this is causing a lot of people a lot of stress, and I feel bad about that, so maybe I should—but to Ryo-chan, and to NEWS.
Anyway, thank you for checking on me, Uchi-kun, and I know you’ll take care of Ryo-chan, too.
Ryo smacks Uchi’s shoulder with the phone. “Why did you email him?” he demands.
“Because you’re a coward,” Uchi says, “among other reasons.”
Ryo smacks him again.
“Ow,” Uchi says, without heat. “Are you going to call him? Because you should. It’s kind of messed up that while all this is happening, you’re not even talking to each other.”
Ryo rereads Pi’s message, thumb pressed against the back button. Before he can think better of it, he forwards Pi’s message to himself, then holds the phone out to Uchi, who accepts it with an expression so smug it makes Ryo’s teeth hurt. “You’re welcome,” he says. “Beer?”
“You don’t get beer,” Ryo tells him, and turns back to his laundry.
—
Soon after Yamapi gets himself under control and Takki starts the car again, Jin texts to say he’ll be stuck at work for longer than he expected. Yamapi doesn’t really want to be alone or see anyone else, so he goes with Takki halfway across the city so Takki can catch the tail end of a meeting he was supposed to be attending with Tsubasa.
“I’m really s—”
Takki covers his mouth.
There’s an empty conference room one floor above the room in which Takki and Tsubasa are planning out their upcoming tour, so Yamapi switches on the lights and sinks into a seat near the window. He sends a message to Shirota and eyes the door, wondering if he should lock it. Probably not, if only because a locked door will cause more of a commotion than someone just nervously asking him to leave so the room can be used for some official business.
While he’s staring out the window at the clouds (one of which looks like a melted pirate ship, and there’s a tiny puff on the deck that looks like chibi pirate Ryo) a new email arrives from his manager. Nakamura’s stopped trying to call him, and that probably means Yamapi’s being unprofessional, but he doesn’t care enough yet to change. The tone of Nakamura’s email is even and calm, and Yamapi’s relieved to see that his manager seems to have gotten a much stronger handle on things now that some time’s gone by.
The gist of the situation as Nakamura sees it is this: We’ll treat this the same way we treat all incidents of this nature.
Translation: ignore, ignore, ignore.
Yamapi wants to ask if that’ll be enough to smooth things over with Johnny. At the meeting, Johnny hadn’t seemed angry. He hadn’t seemed anything, really. Just—dismissive, and that’s much, much worse than angry. Nakamura seems almost blase about things, but wouldn’t Johnny be the better guideline for what happens in his own company?
There’s a cluster of businessmen crossing the street together, no briefcases or files or anything in their hands. Late lunch, maybe, or early dinner. They’re all young, too, and Yamapi thinks they look like they belong in the weeeek PV.
Takki texts him to say, Finished. Where are you? so he goes to meet Takki and Tsubasa in the lobby. Tsubasa offers him a tight-lipped smile, but that’s okay. Tsubasa’s like that sometimes. It doesn’t mean he’s being cruel. Just…well. Awkward. He’s like Yamapi in that way, really, which explains why Yamapi’s staring at his feet instead of saying something to break the tension.
Will things be like this from now on, seeing the people he works with hesitate before talking to him? Or even approaching him?
He wants to say something, suddenly, to explain why it happened, but why now, why to Tsubasa of all people? Yamapi can’t figure it out, except that Tsubasa’s expression is so uncomfortable and Yamapi can’t stand losing anyone over this, even someone as distant from him as Tsubasa. He wants to say something, but he can’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound ridiculous and overwrought.
Yamapi sees Takki shift in his peripheral vision, and Yamapi expects to hear him speak, but it’s Tsubasa who says, “Ah, here, Pi-chan.”
A plastic bag appears in Yamapi’s field of vision.
He looks up at Tsubasa, surprised. “What is it?” he asks.
“Uh, clothes,” Tsubasa says, looking at something over Yamapi’s shoulder. “Um. Takizawa said you looked like you were probably wearing the same clothes from last night, so.”
Yamapi takes the bag, wide-eyed, and all he can think of to say is, “Why?”
Tsubasa clears his throat, and his gaze veers of to the side. “Um, well.”
Takki interjects, “He likes doing what I tell him to,” with a grin.
Tsubasa recovers some of his composure and says, “Oi,” poking Takki in the side. (Takki leaps and fends off Tsubasa’s hand with a poorly-aimed swipe.) “I did it to be kind,” Tsubasa tells Takki. “It had nothing to do with your tyranny.”
Takki pretends he doesn’t hear and gives Yamapi a warm smile. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
Yamapi wants to say no. Takki will end up paying, no question about it, and he’s already done enough.
It’s too much. He should say no.
He says, “Yes,” because it’s healthy to eat and he hasn’t eaten all day and maybe also he just wants to keep the company.
Tsubasa looks amused, at least. He says, “Good. You’ll have better taste than him,” and aims a thumb at Takki, who squawks an objection.
Tsubasa’s phone rings, then, and Takki leaves to get the car, so Yamapi goes to change. He finds a one-man restroom on the second floor, turns the lock, and fills the sink so he can wash off the worst of the grime from the club. As he strips off his shirt (stale, damp, tight), he avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to know how dark the bruises under his eyes are or how stretched his skin looks in the florescent lighting. He’ll look after he’s thrown water on his face and scrubbed hard enough to jump start his circulation. For now, he adds a few pumps of soap into the water and lathers under his arms and behind his neck and between his legs.
And then he does look—an accident, why else would he want to see himself like this?—and the absurdity of where he is and what he’s doing strikes him hard enough that he stops moving. A trail of soap creeps over his shoulder and down his chest and over the ridges of ribs now prominent where they weren’t a few months ago.
Whatever we were doing isn’t worth all this.
He’d tell Ryo that, he would, if Ryo got in touch with him. But it looks like things aren’t that comfortable between them anymore. There’s attraction still, and affection, if he read Ryo’s reactions in Johnny’s office correctly, but relationships and friendships stronger than theirs have disintegrated over scandals much, much smaller than the one they’ve caused.
The clothes in the bag feel soft and expensive, and Yamapi almost puts them back when he realizes they’re brand new. The tags themselves are gone, but the plastic stems are still there, poking out of the fabric. At the bottom of the bag is a long-sleeved sports jacket with scuffed elbows and frayed cuffs that looks too…pink for Tsubasa’s taste.
Someone tries the door’s locked handle, so Yamapi uses that as an excuse to stop thinking. He dries off quickly with a handful of paper towels and spares another few glances at the mirror while he combs wet fingers through his hair. He folds his clothes from last night, slides them into the bag, and as he’s opening the door to leave, he drops it into the garbage.
—
Ryo’s kissed men, fooled around with them. All of them have been somehow involved in the entertainment world, and some were better than others. It’s never been a difficult thing to initiate, considering the fine line he walks at work, and he’s never given it a lot of thought or let it influence his image.
For him, girls were unobtainable for a long time. Even though he was in Johnny’s, he was small and his voice was too highly pitched and girls called him adorable and he hated that. He knew someday he’d be taller and his voice would be deeper and girls’ eyes would darken when they looked at him—none of that “adorable” bullshit—but he wasn’t there yet. Guys were easier to deal with, not to mention more accessible.
When Ryo was fifteen, one of the other juniors who never debuted said to him, “Guys can mess around. It’s when feelings get involved that you’re really gay.”
Ryo’d always thought that kid was a moron, but he was charismatic, too, and whenever they kissed, the guy really went for it. In retrospect, desperately. Fearfully. He’d made Ryo feel older. Smarter, in a way, and powerful, too. That he could have both girls and guys and get away with it with his image clean.
Later that year, Ryo punched him for calling Yamapi ugly and never looked back.
When he was seventeen, Yasu kissed him just outside the reach of firelight at a summer bonfire for the juniors, and Ryo realized he wasn’t alone. Yasu, who was his age and endlessly affectionate and rapidly growing into his looks—Yasu liked guys and girls, too. Ryo’s crush on Yasu lasted for almost two years because Yasu was bright and sweet and he made Ryo’s crush on him fun.
And then NEWS debuted and Ryo was suddenly one of the oldest members of a group whereas before, with Kanjani, he’d been one of the youngest, and he didn’t know these guys the way he knew Hina and Yoko and Subaru. The way he knew Yasu and Tacchon and Maru.
He had Uchi, at least, and he had Pi.
And then he lost Uchi.
And, one night, with his face pressed into Pi’s shoulder, Ryo realized he’d been ignoring a much more complicated crush.
It was more comfortable than his crush on Yasu because Pi always kissed him back and laughed with him at what they were doing, but it was trickier, too, because it was more…aware. Like Pi knew what they were doing wasn’t just a game.
It’s never been a game to Ryo.
But as he knows from being around Eito so long, if you treat something like a game long enough, it becomes a game you lose.
—
The first four days after the photos are posted are chaotic with every second used. Yamapi sleeps maybe five hours altogether but tries to make up for the deprivation with fifteen-minute naps stolen when he’s supposed to be having meals. Most of his incoming calls are from staffers, and his outgoing calls are mainly to his manager and a group of staffers he’s never met before. He’s added seven new numbers to his phone, two of which belong to the publicist Kawazaki Noriko, and nine new contacts to his email address book, and whenever he’s on the train or being driven to his next meeting, he’s using his phone to send them all emails or answer their messages. Almost everything he reads begins with, “if we can make this stick” or “if this goes as we hope” or “if things doesn’t get worse.” Everything he hears is underscored with an unspoken, Don’t make things worse.
He doesn’t know what kind of repercussions the publicists keep scurrying out of the room to handle. No one keeps him informed of that, just of what he should do next. They’re allegedly working with Ryo, too, but Yamapi hasn’t seen or heard evidence of that yet.
On the fourth day, one of the more outspoken juniors makes a joke about the photos during Shounen Club, and even though it’s edited out, some fans who were in the audience blog about it and the frenzy of speculation rises. Koyama doesn’t host Shounen Club anymore, but he calls Yamapi to apologize on behalf of the current hosts who emailed Koyama in a panic after the show, terrified that Ryo would hate them for letting the joke happen.
“I told them Ryo-chan’s not that type of person, but I understand why they’re still nervous,” Koyama says. “How is he, anyway?”
After a pause, Yamapi says, “I wonder.”
On the fifth day, his schedule gets simpler, but there’s still no word on NEWS and whenever Yamapi sees Kanjani∞ on TV, they’re without Ryo. The number of meetings Yamapi has to attend decreases, but the number of phone calls and emails increases. He spends an hour sitting in an unused meeting room at company headquarters just answering emails and talking to his manager over the phone. He gets home around three in the morning and gets two or so hours of sleep before he has to leave again at dawn.
Ryo never calls, and Yamapi never calls Ryo. He prefers living with the suspicion that Ryo wouldn’t answer than actually calling and experiencing it.
Day six only requires him to be in two meetings, one to schedule him in an as-yet untitled drama next spring and one to finally discuss upcoming activities with NEWS. The first meeting goes well, and he bows as deep as he can to thank them for the role. He doesn’t remember what it is, forgets the story almost as soon as it’s explained to him—all he knows is that there’s a somewhat fixed event for him in the future.
It’s the second meeting that worries him. None of the members are there, just him and Ms. Kawazaki the Ornery Publicist Who Has a Scary Villain Voice on the Phone and a bunch of people Yamapi doesn’t know. Kawazaki sits across from him at the conference table and introduces him to the new faces. Yamapi strains to be as polite as he can and tries not to show his confusion or fear.
“Right now, NEWS is on hiatus,” Ms. Kawazaki tells him. He figured that, but NEWS hasn’t done much as a unit lately, so it would have been difficult to know for sure unless someone told him. “In fact, your group has been on something like a hiatus for quite some time, it seems.”
A rock lodges in Yamapi’s throat. That’s what this is.
She must see the understanding on his face and makes her formal expression softer. “Like all units, though, the members all have other activities,” she says. “Tegoshi and Masuda have their joint unit, Koyama’s schedule is full with multiple hosting duties, and Nishikido has, from what I understand, an enviable number of responsibilities outside NEWS. So that leaves you.” She breaks eye contact to open one of several folders in front of her.
But Yamapi is stuck on what she’s leading up to—what he thinks she’s leading up to—and all he can think is she didn’t mention Shige, and she can’t just forget about Shige like that. “Excuse me,” he says, raising his voice a little above what’s necessary to get her attention. She glances up at him, surprised, probably because he’s been nothing but docile until now. “What about Kato?” he asks.
“Kato?” she repeats, frowning. “Oh. I’m sorry. Kato. He has a radio show, doesn’t he? Oh, and he also earned a degree from Aoyama Gakuin University a few years ago, right?”
Yamapi doesn’t like her tone. “Yes. In law.”
She nods, pursing her lips, presumably to show she’s impressed. She doesn’t say anything more.
Yamapi fights to stay quiet. He doesn’t know for sure yet where she’s going with this line of conversation, after all, and he might jeopardize more than himself if he’s too forward, so he just sits up straighter and waits.
She hands him a sheet of paper, premium quality, with textured ridges and formal Johnny & Associates letterhead.
“This should explain the upcoming months in more detail,” she tells him.
He skims the first sentence, jumps halfway down the page, reads two sentences back, skips to the bottom, and over the static noise filling his mind he hears himself ask, “What about Ryo-chan?”
One of the men coughs, but Yamapi ignores him, looks directly at Ms. Kawazaki.
Her formal face is back on. “As I said, Mr. Nishikido has a full schedule even without his activities in NEWS. He’s an active member of another unit and he spends most of his remaining time with dramas and his own solo work.”
It’s not what he was asking, not at all, but he doesn’t know what he was asking, so he doesn’t say anything more.
“As for you,” she says, continuing where Yamapi cut her off, “it’s been agreed that your health may be at risk. This year alone you’ve had your second solo tour around Asia, a leading role in a movie, two dramas, recording for NEWS’s next album, and a number of smaller projects that fill up a page on their own. We’re suggesting you take some time to recuperate.”
Too many insinuations. Too much unspoken. Yamapi can’t decide what to say in response.
He settles on, “How long?”
Her uncomfortable silence shatters his resolve to remain calm. With seventeen minutes left in the meeting, Yamapi stands up and excuses himself to use the bathroom. He takes his phone with him.
—
Even though Ryo watched Johnny tell his secretary to cancel Ryo’s solo tour, it’s apparently only been postponed. One of the obligations on the new schedule his manager emailed him is attending a meeting to discuss venue options for the spring. Ryo can’t puzzle it out, but he’s smart enough not to question it.
The other surprise is a two-hour block to record his part in Kanjani∞’s next album.
He writes to Subaru about it immediately because he never responded to Subaru’s phone mails on the day he missed their production meeting, and he’s pretty sure Subaru got the wrong message from that. While he waits for a response, Ryo wipes the screen with his shirt over and over.
The message arrives with one of the phone’s bland custom chirps (Ryo reset all the sound functions before the meeting with Johnny, and now he wishes he hadn’t).
I’m not scheduled for anything in Tokyo today, it says. Why are you going in alone? Is it your solo track?
It’s the longest message Ryo’s gotten from Subaru in recent memory, but it just makes him feel sick.
Each of the other members says something similar. Working in Osaka, traveling out to Kagoshima, filming in Kyoto. Ryo realizes with a jolt that he hasn’t seen any of them since this whole mess started, and he wonders if Johnny’s been keeping them busy.
So Ryo goes into the studio alone. He arrives early, introduces himself to the staff and bows lower than he usually would. They’re nice guys, relaxed, casual, and all of them seem like they couldn’t care less about idol gossip. Talking to them, Ryo feels unknown again, or at least unremarkable.
He sings the chorus twice in the booth and then asks Fujisawa to play both takes back for him. Six seconds into the first, Ryo sees his phone light up where it’s sitting on a stool in the control room. It goes dark for a few seconds, then lights up again. Whoever’s calling him tries four more times with only a few seconds between each attempt. Ryo can’t imagine who would feel so urgently about getting in touch with him right now unless there’s a problem.
The playback ends. “Thanks, Fujisawa,” Ryo says. Then, to the intern next to Fujisawa, “Kayo-kun.” The kid sits bolt upright out of his slouch. “Could you see who keeps calling me?”
“Sure!” Kayo jumps up and almost picks up Ryo’s phone, but he glances at Ryo first—panicked eyes—to make sure it’s okay. “It’s ‘Momo,’” he reports, grinning at Ryo through the glass.
The sound guys have no idea who “Momo” is, so they spend the next five minutes laughing and trying to find out who “she” is and why Ryo would give her a katakana-rendered name like “Momo” in his contacts.
Ryo fends off their questions and theories with automatic denials, each one less emphatic than the last because his mind is already three steps out the door.
Why would Pi call so many times? Ryo considers asking for a break, just to check and see if…what?
But whatever the reason Pi had, he seems to have given up for now, so Ryo forcefully puts off thinking about him. He focuses instead on sound quality and breathing and timing. He sings the chorus again, this time over-enunciating that one word that his voice always goes weak and reedy on.
He nails it on the third try, his eyes closed so he can’t keep checking his phone.
At 4:28, Ryo thanks everyone for their hard work and excuses himself from the studio. His phone is open before he’s even out the door—
From: Momo
Received: 15:45
I want to see you.
A text message to top off the seven missed calls that preceded it.
Ryo types out a response so fast he almost cancels the message twice before he manages to hit the send button. What happened? He presses the elevator call button and reopens Pi’s message and reminds himself that he hasn’t seen Yamapi since the meeting in Johnny’s office.
Yamapi’s response arrives as Ryo’s stepping into a cab.
NEWS is on hiatus again.
Ryo sits in the backseat, silent and staring at his phone, aware that the driver has asked him twice now where he wants to go.
He says, “Turn left up at the light.”
He doesn’t write back.
—
Koyama is late. Luckily, everyone in the square is more focused on getting out of the rain than idly looking around, so Shige sits on a low wall and worries less about being recognized than he would in better weather. He puts his umbrella handle between his shoulder and jaw so he can hold his phone with both hands and rereads the message he starred an hour ago:
From: Kusugawa Junichiro
To: Koyama Keiichirou, Tegoshi Yuuya, Masuda Takahisa, Kato Shigeaki
Received: 16:12
Subject: Schedule
Please discard the current NEWS schedule as it is undergoing revisions. Until the new unit schedule is sent out, please work hard on your other obligations.
—Kusugawa Junichiro
As with most communication within the jimusho, the content excluded from the email is more informative than what’s there. For example, Yamashita and Nishikido-kun weren’t attached. That could mean too many things, so Shige doesn’t analyze it too deeply.
The one thing that’s clear is that NEWS is on hiatus. Again.
Shige’s sure it won’t last long. NEWS has been consistently well-received since their debut and their album sales are enviable even by jimusho standards. The hiatus is just a way to let all the attention on Nishikido-kun and Yamashita dissipate. It might even be a nice break. He’ll finally be able to—
Chirp.
A text message from Tegoshi appears on his screen. Shige murmurs, “Eh?” louder than he meant to, and a young passerby in a school skirt glances at him and smiles. It’s the “he’s cute” smile, not the “he’s an idol” smile, and Shige hates that he knows the difference. He should have worn something with a hood, or sunglasses, or whatever it is the savvier idols wear when it’s raining.
He settles for bringing the umbrella lower and angling it more to shield himself from view than from the rain.
Kei-chan and I are waving at you.
This time Shige says, “Eh?” without meaning to at all. He lifts the umbrella and looks around the street.
A chirp.
Not down there. Up here!
Shige looks up. Store, store, restaurant, cafe, restaurant, store. What the hell?
Chirp.
Shige! You just looked past us!
Shige feels his face going red with frustration, and then he sees Koyama in one of the windows jumping up and down and waving his arms like he’s doing jumping jacks. Tegoshi’s wave is subtler, almost presidential in its reserve.
Shige leaves the wall and tromps up the stairs to the cafe they’re in. His university friends asked him to go out with them for someone’s birthday, and instead he’s cold and damp and sneezing and why the hell is Tegoshi here?
A beaming server dashes to the door as Shige walks in. “Welcome!” she says, stopping in front of him with a small bounce. She’s like a hybrid of Tegoshi and Yasuda and a labrador puppy. “Just yourself?”
None of the other customers (all women under thirty, awesome, good choice, guys) have noticed him yet, so Shige bobs his head at her and gestures to the fairly well-hidden table that Tegoshi and Koyama have staked out behind a blue-painted trellis. He can see Koyama’s fingers sticking out of one of the notches and wiggling. The server’s smile somehow expands, both rows of gleaming teeth now on display, and she ushers him over to his bandmates so quickly that only one other customer has time to look in their direction.
Once seated, Shige asks for a cup of whatever Koyama’s drinking and then the giddy server hurries off and the three of them are left alone.
“You’re funny, Shige,” Tegoshi tells him, grinning.
“We were waving,” Koyama adds.
Shige considers knocking the cup in Koyama’s lap.
Tegoshi’s expression goes serious. “Massu will be here soon. He’s coming from Shibuya.”
The smile on Koyama’s face drains slowly, and he lowers his eyes to his tea. The abrupt change in mood knocks Shige off-balance. Has something else happened?
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Tegoshi gives him a sharp look. “What do you mean? Didn’t you read the email Kusugawa sent us?”
“I know about that. I meant why are you here? I thought I was just meeting Koyama.”
Koyama makes a pacifying sound. “Shige, don’t be rude.”
Tegoshi pretends he hasn’t heard, idly sipping his tea and peering over his shoulder at the rain collecting on the window. Shige opens his mouth to say more, but he thinks better of it when Tegoshi’s chin rises a little higher, a hint of anger in the set of his jaw.
“I invited him,” Koyama tells Shige quietly, as if Tegoshi really can’t hear them.
Tegoshi puts his teacup down and bends his head until his hair covers his face.
Not anger, Shige realizes with surprise. Hurt.
He can’t think of anything else to say, so he keeps himself busy by warming his hands on the heated damp towel in front of him. He doesn’t speak until the server returns with a small white pot of Earl Grey.
“Thank you,” he says to her, and she gives him a bright smile before rushing off again.
As Shige reaches for the pot, Koyama says, “I’ll—” but they’re both stunned silent when Tegoshi picks up the teapot and pours the gently-scented tea into Shige’s cup.
When it’s almost full, Shige says, “Uh, that’s fine.”
Tegoshi nods, puts the teapot down, and goes back to staring out the window.
Shige gives Koyama a bemused frown. Koyama answers with baffled owl eyes.
Massu arrives ten minutes later, and Shige has a clear enough view of the door through the trellis that he can see Massu’s tired face transform into its usual mask of cheer as he approaches the table.
Tegoshi dredges up a smile for him, but it doesn’t last long.
They’re all quiet while Massu orders a few macaroons and some orange tea. It’s only when they’re alone, just the four of them, that Koyama asks, “When do you have to leave, Tegoshi?”
Shige’s lost. He doesn’t understand any of this. As far as he knew, he and Koyama were going out for yakiniku and karaoke together. When did Tegoshi and Massu factor into it?
“I have time,” Tegoshi answers.
“What’s going on?” Shige demands.
Massu looks up, startled, and Koyama darts a glimpse at Tegoshi. “Shige—”
“Seriously,” Shige interrupts, giving Koyama a look, “what’s going on? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Tegoshi says. “I just wanted to see you.” It’s clear he means you, plural. When Shige doesn’t respond, Tegoshi finally meets his eyes. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look angry, either. Just kind of sad.
Shige says, “Sorry,” without really knowing why.
Tegoshi makes a dismissive noise, then lifts the tofu-flavored macaroon off Massu’s plate.
The silence persists for another few seconds, and then Koyama jumps in to ask Massu why his jacket is soaked and doesn’t he have an umbrella?
Throughout Massu’s story about a strong wind and a cat, Shige drinks his tea in tiny sips, careful not to empty it in case Tegoshi decides to pull the same unnervingly thoughtful move again. The minute hand on his watch crawls past the thirty mark, then thirty-six, thirty-eight, forty-three.
Koyama keeps checking on him, a small glance thrown sideways every few minutes. Shige has thought up seven excuses to leave early, but he can’t bring himself to use any of them. He still wants to hang out with Koyama. He’d just prefer to do so without Tegoshi around to make him feel weird and uncomfortable.
There’s a huge billboard outside advertising cologne. The image is black and white and features Yamapi in black suit pants and white dress shirt sitting on the arm of a gray leather couch. A single band of color stretches diagonally across the frame, putting his collarbones and the left side of his jaw on display.
Where is he right now?
Tegoshi stands up, cutting Koyama off mid-sentence. In a fluid move, he picks up Shige’s wrist and says, “Look how late it got!”
“Oh,” Koyama says, “you have to leave now?”
Tegoshi nods and lifts the strap of his bag over his head.
Massu says, “Here,” and hands Tegoshi a caramel macaroon wrapped in a napkin. Tegoshi accepts it with a wide smile that suggests there’s more to the gesture than Shige’s seeing, and it’s that, that one small exchange, that reminds Shige that he doesn’t really know Tegoshi as well as he should. As well as he could, if he really tried.
He can feel Yamapi’s solemn eyes boring into his head.
Tegoshi says goodbye to Koyama and Shige as a pair, and as usual Koyama answers for both of them, except this is the first time Shige notices that’s what he’s doing, and before he thinks about it, he says, “Call me later.”
Tegoshi stops short, eyes comically large. “Shige.”
Frowning, Shige says, “Seriously. Um. Yeah.”
Nishikido would laugh at him. How suave, or, No wonder you’re single.
Aware of Koyama and Massu gawking at him, Shige picks up his teacup and hides behind it by taking a long gulp.
Tegoshi stares at him for another few seconds—long ones—before he nods. “I will.” Then he’s gone.
Shige keeps drinking, eyes fixed on the table.
“Shige,” Koyama says, sounding watery.
“Wow,” Massu adds. “In a good way.”
“He probably won’t,” Shige says. His cup is empty, but he refills it before Koyama can even start to reach for the pot.
“He will,” Koyama says. “He’s missed you.” It’s clear he means you, singular.
“He just misses them,” Shige says, stubborn.
It’s after he says it that he realizes he does, too.
If Yamashita were here right now, he’d poke Shige’s cheek until he laughed or complained or tried to smack Yamashita’s hand away. Nishikido-kun would be smirking, or maybe just grinning; he’s been letting himself act more and more childishly with all of them lately. Less intimidating, less distant.
Shige misses them. Without Nishikido-kun’s weird brand of affection and Yamashita’s unusual style of leadership, NEWS doesn’t work.
Shige tries not to lean into it too much when Koyama squeezes his shoulder.
—
At three in the morning, Johnny calls Ryo back. His voice is chiding but kind when he says, “Ryo, I’m an old man. I sleep less than people your age, but I do need some.”
Ryo’s called him nine times over the last eleven hours, a move he considers both justifiable and impertinent on a level even Jin probably wouldn’t touch (in fairness, that’s more because Jin wouldn’t even bother). For balance, Ryo tries to put some humility into his voice when he says, “I’m really sorry, but I needed to talk to you.”
“NEWS is on hiatus,” Johnny says, and from the tone of his voice it’s clear he’s recently had to tell someone else the same thing (probably Pi, but maybe Tegoshi, if he’s been told). More neutrally, Johnny asks, “Can you tell me why?”
Ryo manages to say, “No, I can’t,” with only half the bite of insolence he believes the situation calls for.
“Careful, Ryo. I give you responsibility because you’ve proven that you can handle it. However, if you can’t tell me why you crossed that line with Yamashita, then it’s difficult for me to know if you can be trusted not to cross the next one.”
Ryo’s pulse hammers in his ears. What does that imply?
“I won’t,” Ryo says, slipping into Osaka dialect before he can stop himself. “He won’t. You don’t need to put NEWS on hiatus because of this. I’ve seen the reaction—there are more fans who don’t care at all than ones who do.”
“Hmm,” is all Johnny says to that.
Ryo tries to think of something to come back with, one of the many arguments he’s had on his mind—but all he can think about, what’s on loop in his head, is Uchi sobbing on his shoulder and apologizing over and over and over and Ryo thinking, It can’t be permanent, because what about NEWS and Kanjani? Johnny wouldn’t make Ryo pull that kind of weight on his own, wouldn’t take Uchi away, because what did Uchi even do that Ryo’d seen a dozen other juniors do without consequences?
“Get some rest, Nishikido,” Johnny tells him.
“What’s going to happen to Tomo—Yamashita?”
“Good night, Ryo.”
The line disconnects, and Ryo’s stunned to realize that his eyes are wet.
Instead of going to sleep, he writes emails to Tegoshi, to Koyama, to Massu, and even one to Shige. In each, he apologizes and makes it specific to every individual member. He’s surprised when he writes four whole paragraphs to Shige, full of things he’d never normally want Shige to hear, but somewhere around the third sentence that describes how terrified Shige was of him in the beginning, Ryo’s seized by some bizarre need to make Shige understand him better. We’re not close, Ryo writes in the last sentence, but you’re family anyway, and I expect a lot from family. He adds the last part because he was dangerously close to writing something affectionate.
He saves Yamapi for last, and then he can’t think of anything to say. He doesn’t want to explain why he didn’t respond to Pi’s earlier message telling him about NEWS. He doesn’t know why he chose not to go, just that he simultaneously wanted to and was afraid to.
So, in the end, what he writes is, We need to try harder, and even he doesn’t know what it means. Something generic, something to fill the silence. But when Yamapi doesn’t respond, it just makes the silence hurt.
—
Yamapi doesn’t listen to or delete any messages on his phone. He just watches the numbers increase, fascinated by his phone’s storage capacity. He doesn’t go out with Shirota or Toma or Jaejoong or any of the people who want to help him by removing him from Jin’s apartment, where he’s more or less become a second tenant.
Jin, proving his infinite loyalty, skips work two days in a row to stay in and “nurse” Yamapi. Unsurprisingly, this nebulous activity seems to include a lot of unhealthy behavior. On the first day, they eat Dominos delivery pizza that Jin claims isn’t anywhere near as good as the stuff in New York, then they play video games full of car theft and monster death and princess rescue, and they end the day drunk and watching some American TV dramas viewed on Jin’s region-free DVD player. Jin translates some of the dialogue in the first show, but then he gets lazy and bullshits to cover up what he doesn’t understand. Yamapi drops his head on Jin’s shoulder and tells him that he would study the art of making New York pizza if it would keep Jin in Japan.
“Stop leaving me,” he murmurs, punching Jin in the stomach.
Jin just drapes an arm around Yamapi’s waist and rubs his side. “I always come back, don’t I?”
“You do,” Yamapi agrees, hiding an embarrassing sound inside a forced cough.
Jin lets him fall asleep there, and when they both wake up in the morning with their skin branded red by the creases of jeans and shirts, Jin just strips, shoves Yamapi off the couch, and goes back to sleep with a huge grin on his face.
That night, Jin invites over some of his friends and there’s drunken mayhem that Yamapi participates in because he can’t be bothered not to. Uchi’s there for part of the night, maybe, or else Yamapi imagined him, and he wakes up at five in Jin’s bathtub curled around a plunger that has cat ears taped to the sides.
Yamapi remembers the handful of times he’s woken up in the morning with Ryo. Once on a futon at that inn in Sapporo, once on a Western-style bed in Hiroshima, and once on a bus driving east into the rising sun, but maybe that one doesn’t count.
Eyes closed, Yamapi imagines the look of laugh lines and the feel of guitar callouses and the sound of sleep-roughened Kansai syllables. More than one person must have those things, too.
He rests his head on the rim of Jin’s bathtub and thinks about how much more comfortable his bed is. More comfortable than the futon in Sapporo and the bed in Hiroshima and Jin’s bathtub combined. It’s been underused lately.
Unsurprisingly, Jin is called in that morning for a lecture about missing work, so Yamapi spends the day in his car driving around the fringes of the city. Here, he can sing with NEWS and enjoy relative anonymity since hardly anyone thinks to look through the windshield at him. And every so often, he’ll spare a glance at his phone to watch the numbers there climb optimistically up toward infinity.
—
Ryo’s schedule used to have huge blocks carved out for meetings and appearances and recording and filming and now, instead, he has a patchwork of mundane bullshit mixed in with obligations of middling importance. It’s like jimusho limbo—he’s still busy, but now it’s with mind-numbing drone work interspersed with long stretches of waiting to do mind-numbing drone work.
Today, for example, is this:
Omelette rice with too much ketchup 6:23-6:57
Morning news 6:58-7:03
Gym 7:30-9:00
Long phone call w/ publicist 10:00-10:44
Longer phone call w/ manager 10:45-11:50
Shower 12:00-12:47
Cup noodles 12:59-1:06
Watch recording of most recent episode of Ohkura’s drama 1:08-1:30
Publicist 1:30-2:20
Manager 2:21-2:45
Watch recording of most recent episode of Janiben 2:50-
The guest on Janiben is some kind of intensive yoga instructor, and he chooses Yasu to be his first “student.”
Ryo opens a can of beer because no one’s here to call him on it, and puts his phone on the couch next to himself.
The instructor tells Yasu over and over that he has a stellar physique (his words) that’s ideal for this type of yoga, and Yasu should really consider dropping by the instructor’s gym for a private lesson. Little hearts appear on the screen and cartoony love-love music plays to emphasize everything he says.
After the instructor spends five minutes praising Yasu’s body, Subaru volunteers Yoko to do the same stuff Yasu just did.
Yoko, unsurprisingly, has some difficulty, and the audience’s laughter fills Ryo’s otherwise silent apartment. No air conditioner, windows closed, neighbors all at work.
“Push your hips out,” the instructor tells Yoko. “Reach up to the ceiling. Frame your ears with your arms like this. Push your hips out more. More. Like this.”
“OWOWOW.”
“There you go,” the instructor says, stepping back. “Now, feet together. Look up. You should feel a lengthening in your torso.”
Yoko isn’t following the coach’s instructions, looks pained at just the suggestion of changing position, so the instructor moves in to help. Four small adjustments later, Yoko makes a raw noise of incredible agony that incites a round of group cackling from the rest of Kanjani∞ seated on the couches behind him.
Ryo doesn’t laugh, doesn’t grin. He just watches Yoko limp back to his seat on the front couch. Watches Hina ask the instructor questions about spinal alignment and pressure points. Watches Subaru on the back couch inch closer and closer to Yasu. Watches Yasu move over to widen the space between them. Only—no, that’s wrong. It’s when Maru shifts over, too, that Ryo realizes what they’re doing.
They’ve made a gap on the back couch about two feet wide, and it’s directly behind the instructor, so whenever the camera focuses on him, it also highlights where Ryo should be.
At the end of the episode while Hina is making his final remarks, Subaru looks straight at the camera and flattens his hand on the empty place beside him.
Ryo coughs to get rid of the itch in his throat and rewinds to the beginning.
Part Three
Yamapi washes his face with cold water, rests both hands on the frame of the sink, and stares at his distorted reflection in the faucet until the water warms on his skin. He waits until the shooting pain in his stomach ends, then he wipes his face off on his shirt and heads out to the parking lot where Takki’s still waiting for him.
Yamapi pulls the passenger door open, sits down, and slams the door.
Takki doesn’t start the car.
Yamapi doesn’t look at him. He’s having enough trouble keeping his expression neutral without adding the challenge of talking normally, too.
Takki starts to ask, “Where do you—”
“Home,” Yamapi interrupts. “Please.”
Takki says, “Okay,” and starts the car.
Yamapi stares out the window for the first ten minutes of the drive and brainstorms what to say. He owes Takki some kind of explanation since Takki’s probably missing something important to do this for him.
He finally decides on, “I’m sorry,” to start things off, and ignores Takki’s answering sound, all understanding and you-don’t-have-to. “I’m sorry that I asked you to do this,” he continues. Even though he didn’t, even though Takki offered, even though, even though. It should just be said regardless of why.
Takki just accepts it with a nod. He doesn’t ask what happened, but he’s definitely wondering, so Yamapi explains anyway.
“It was my fault, that night. I started…things. He’d had much more to drink than I had, and….” Talk faster. Tell him. Get everything said. To someone, anyone. What else? “Today, um. Ryo was there. He said he asked to be there, so we went in to Johnny’s office together. And, um. His concert’s been canceled. Johnny made it sound like he’d already made that decision before today, but what if he just did it because Ryo showed up? Would he do something like that? Oh, and my movie role’s going to be given to someone else. And I think NEWS is on an unofficial hiatus.” Johnny didn’t mention NEWS at all until the end, when he said that it would be in everyone’s interest to postpone any activity that might draw attention to their interaction.
Yamapi straightens his leg to get at the phone in his pocket. “I-I should probably send everyone an email to apologize.”
The car swerves onto the side of the road and stops. Yamapi looks at Takki, startled, and inhales too sharply when he realizes his eyes sting.
Takki doesn’t say anything, just takes Yamapi’s cell phone away with one hand and uses the other to squeeze Yamapi’s wrist. And there, in Takki’s car on the shoulder of the highway, Yamapi has a close shave with a panic attack. He’s tired and shaky and realizing his limits are closer than they used to be, and he can still feel phantom sensations from that night—soft hair between his fingers and a smile against his stomach.
Why did he let it go that far?
Uchi has a key—Ryo’s never asked how he got it—and no sense of propriety, and because Ryo has stopped trying to change both of those facts, he doesn’t even mute the TV when Uchi lets himself in.
“Missed my train,” Uchi explains, toeing off his shoes. “Why are you still up?”
Ryo hasn’t been paying attention to the time, but now that he checks, he’s a little annoyed with himself to see that it’s close to one thirty. It was eight o’clock when he turned on the TV and he can’t remember anything he’s watched since then.
He switches off the TV and cranes his neck to watch Uchi peeling off his sweater. “I’m not even close to the station,” Ryo tells him. He reaches one arm over his head to stretch out the crick in his back, but he can’t twist enough to make the vertebrae pop.
Uchi says, “Well, whatever. I’m here now. Do you have food?” He wanders into the kitchen.
Now it’s exactly one thirty, but instead of trudging off to bed like he should, Ryo just sprawls on the couch and closes his eyes and listens to Uchi move deftly around the kitchen. It’s been a long time since Ryo went home for a meal, and he misses the warm sounds of someone else cooking: the refrigerator door clinging to the frame and releasing with a soft snick, the muted chatter of water boiling, the gentle clang of metal covers placed over pans and pots and woks. It makes the world feel smaller.
Some mysterious amount of time passes, and then Uchi sits next to him, sinking the cushion that Ryo’s head is on. Ryo wakes up from a nap that could have become a deep sleep and sits up with a half-constructed complaint on his mind that he forgets when Uchi hands him a plate of pasta smothered in slices of tomatoes and store-bought sauce.
Ryo’s starving—he can’t remember the last thing he ate—and twirls up a knot of noodles the size of a tennis ball.
It’s halfway into his mouth when Uchi asks, “How’s Pi?”
Uchi probably practices his terrible timing. Just to be obnoxious, Ryo chews, swallows, has a sip of water, then two, before he says, “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked?”
“We talked.”
Uchi tsks through a mouthful of pasta. “About what? When? Have you talked since the thing?” On the last word, he sprays Ryo’s shirt with flecks of tomato sauce, then adds, “Sorry,” like an afterthought. “But yeah, when did you talk? Is he worried? Pissed?”
Ryo stands up and puts his pasta down on the low table near the window. “I’m going to go change shirts.”
As he turns to go, Uchi seizes his ankle and says, “Wait, wait, stop—sit.” He punctuates the command by yanking at Ryo’s knee until it bends, forcing Ryo to sit back down.
“What do you want?” Ryo snaps. “You spit all over my shirt. I just want to change.”
“Tough,” Uchi replies. He quirks a wry smile that shows just how smug he’s become in his position of power as Ryo’s pushiest friend. “Are you dating?” he asks.
Ryo looks away. “No. Idiot.”
“You’re lying to the wall,” Uchi says, maddeningly. “I’m sure the wall doesn’t appreciate it.”
“I’m not talking to the wall.”
“So stop looking at the wall.”
“I’m looking out the window.”
“I’m not out the window.”
Ryo gives a low, aggravated groan. “Just leave it alone,” he says, and puts a hand out behind him to brace his weight so he can stand up.
Uchi kicks him until he brings the hand back with an annoyed hiss taken in through his teeth.
“So you’re dating,” Uchi says, putting his chin in his hand.
Ryo glares at him. “I didn’t say that. And no, we’re not.”
“More lies,” Uchi says, looking deeply disappointed.
Ryo gets to his feet and moves fast out of Uchi’s reach. “No, it’s not, and stop.” Uchi withdraws his hand with an indignant noise. “I’m going to change,” he says, and, ignoring Uchi’s vaguely repentant nod, heads to his bedroom.
He’s not going anywhere for a while—nowhere that involves cameras, anyway—so he pulls on a ratty One Piece T-shirt Yoko bought for him years ago and tosses the stained shirt into a hamper brimming with a week’s worth of unwashed clothes. He’s deliberating how much longer he can put off doing laundry when he hears footsteps in the hall and a tap on his door.
He looks over his shoulder at Uchi, whose expression has finally ventured into the territory of genuine remorse. “I’m sorry,” Uchi says.
Ryo shakes his head. “Forget it.” If he puts the laundry bag on top of the washing machine, he’ll feel more pressed to—
“It happened to me,” Uchi says. “So I get it. Okay?”
Ryo remembers the morning Uchi called him sounding…everything. Stunned, guilty, terrified. I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, Ryo-chan.
This isn’t the same, but it feels like it’s the same, so Ryo forces out a quiet, “Okay.”
There’s enough laundry in the hamper that Ryo estimates three loads easy, maybe four if he separates whites—
“Pi says he’s sorry, too.” Ryo stares over at Uchi, who holds up his cell phone. “He wants me to take care of you.” Uchi scratches his chin. “I’m thirsty. Do you have beer?”
In three strides, Ryo’s closed the distance between them and swiped Uchi’s phone from his open palm.
Pi’s message says: I want to apologize. Not to anyone at the company—even though this is causing a lot of people a lot of stress, and I feel bad about that, so maybe I should—but to Ryo-chan, and to NEWS.
Anyway, thank you for checking on me, Uchi-kun, and I know you’ll take care of Ryo-chan, too.
Ryo smacks Uchi’s shoulder with the phone. “Why did you email him?” he demands.
“Because you’re a coward,” Uchi says, “among other reasons.”
Ryo smacks him again.
“Ow,” Uchi says, without heat. “Are you going to call him? Because you should. It’s kind of messed up that while all this is happening, you’re not even talking to each other.”
Ryo rereads Pi’s message, thumb pressed against the back button. Before he can think better of it, he forwards Pi’s message to himself, then holds the phone out to Uchi, who accepts it with an expression so smug it makes Ryo’s teeth hurt. “You’re welcome,” he says. “Beer?”
“You don’t get beer,” Ryo tells him, and turns back to his laundry.
Soon after Yamapi gets himself under control and Takki starts the car again, Jin texts to say he’ll be stuck at work for longer than he expected. Yamapi doesn’t really want to be alone or see anyone else, so he goes with Takki halfway across the city so Takki can catch the tail end of a meeting he was supposed to be attending with Tsubasa.
“I’m really s—”
Takki covers his mouth.
There’s an empty conference room one floor above the room in which Takki and Tsubasa are planning out their upcoming tour, so Yamapi switches on the lights and sinks into a seat near the window. He sends a message to Shirota and eyes the door, wondering if he should lock it. Probably not, if only because a locked door will cause more of a commotion than someone just nervously asking him to leave so the room can be used for some official business.
While he’s staring out the window at the clouds (one of which looks like a melted pirate ship, and there’s a tiny puff on the deck that looks like chibi pirate Ryo) a new email arrives from his manager. Nakamura’s stopped trying to call him, and that probably means Yamapi’s being unprofessional, but he doesn’t care enough yet to change. The tone of Nakamura’s email is even and calm, and Yamapi’s relieved to see that his manager seems to have gotten a much stronger handle on things now that some time’s gone by.
The gist of the situation as Nakamura sees it is this: We’ll treat this the same way we treat all incidents of this nature.
Translation: ignore, ignore, ignore.
Yamapi wants to ask if that’ll be enough to smooth things over with Johnny. At the meeting, Johnny hadn’t seemed angry. He hadn’t seemed anything, really. Just—dismissive, and that’s much, much worse than angry. Nakamura seems almost blase about things, but wouldn’t Johnny be the better guideline for what happens in his own company?
There’s a cluster of businessmen crossing the street together, no briefcases or files or anything in their hands. Late lunch, maybe, or early dinner. They’re all young, too, and Yamapi thinks they look like they belong in the weeeek PV.
Takki texts him to say, Finished. Where are you? so he goes to meet Takki and Tsubasa in the lobby. Tsubasa offers him a tight-lipped smile, but that’s okay. Tsubasa’s like that sometimes. It doesn’t mean he’s being cruel. Just…well. Awkward. He’s like Yamapi in that way, really, which explains why Yamapi’s staring at his feet instead of saying something to break the tension.
Will things be like this from now on, seeing the people he works with hesitate before talking to him? Or even approaching him?
He wants to say something, suddenly, to explain why it happened, but why now, why to Tsubasa of all people? Yamapi can’t figure it out, except that Tsubasa’s expression is so uncomfortable and Yamapi can’t stand losing anyone over this, even someone as distant from him as Tsubasa. He wants to say something, but he can’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound ridiculous and overwrought.
Yamapi sees Takki shift in his peripheral vision, and Yamapi expects to hear him speak, but it’s Tsubasa who says, “Ah, here, Pi-chan.”
A plastic bag appears in Yamapi’s field of vision.
He looks up at Tsubasa, surprised. “What is it?” he asks.
“Uh, clothes,” Tsubasa says, looking at something over Yamapi’s shoulder. “Um. Takizawa said you looked like you were probably wearing the same clothes from last night, so.”
Yamapi takes the bag, wide-eyed, and all he can think of to say is, “Why?”
Tsubasa clears his throat, and his gaze veers of to the side. “Um, well.”
Takki interjects, “He likes doing what I tell him to,” with a grin.
Tsubasa recovers some of his composure and says, “Oi,” poking Takki in the side. (Takki leaps and fends off Tsubasa’s hand with a poorly-aimed swipe.) “I did it to be kind,” Tsubasa tells Takki. “It had nothing to do with your tyranny.”
Takki pretends he doesn’t hear and gives Yamapi a warm smile. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
Yamapi wants to say no. Takki will end up paying, no question about it, and he’s already done enough.
It’s too much. He should say no.
He says, “Yes,” because it’s healthy to eat and he hasn’t eaten all day and maybe also he just wants to keep the company.
Tsubasa looks amused, at least. He says, “Good. You’ll have better taste than him,” and aims a thumb at Takki, who squawks an objection.
Tsubasa’s phone rings, then, and Takki leaves to get the car, so Yamapi goes to change. He finds a one-man restroom on the second floor, turns the lock, and fills the sink so he can wash off the worst of the grime from the club. As he strips off his shirt (stale, damp, tight), he avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to know how dark the bruises under his eyes are or how stretched his skin looks in the florescent lighting. He’ll look after he’s thrown water on his face and scrubbed hard enough to jump start his circulation. For now, he adds a few pumps of soap into the water and lathers under his arms and behind his neck and between his legs.
And then he does look—an accident, why else would he want to see himself like this?—and the absurdity of where he is and what he’s doing strikes him hard enough that he stops moving. A trail of soap creeps over his shoulder and down his chest and over the ridges of ribs now prominent where they weren’t a few months ago.
Whatever we were doing isn’t worth all this.
He’d tell Ryo that, he would, if Ryo got in touch with him. But it looks like things aren’t that comfortable between them anymore. There’s attraction still, and affection, if he read Ryo’s reactions in Johnny’s office correctly, but relationships and friendships stronger than theirs have disintegrated over scandals much, much smaller than the one they’ve caused.
The clothes in the bag feel soft and expensive, and Yamapi almost puts them back when he realizes they’re brand new. The tags themselves are gone, but the plastic stems are still there, poking out of the fabric. At the bottom of the bag is a long-sleeved sports jacket with scuffed elbows and frayed cuffs that looks too…pink for Tsubasa’s taste.
Someone tries the door’s locked handle, so Yamapi uses that as an excuse to stop thinking. He dries off quickly with a handful of paper towels and spares another few glances at the mirror while he combs wet fingers through his hair. He folds his clothes from last night, slides them into the bag, and as he’s opening the door to leave, he drops it into the garbage.
Ryo’s kissed men, fooled around with them. All of them have been somehow involved in the entertainment world, and some were better than others. It’s never been a difficult thing to initiate, considering the fine line he walks at work, and he’s never given it a lot of thought or let it influence his image.
For him, girls were unobtainable for a long time. Even though he was in Johnny’s, he was small and his voice was too highly pitched and girls called him adorable and he hated that. He knew someday he’d be taller and his voice would be deeper and girls’ eyes would darken when they looked at him—none of that “adorable” bullshit—but he wasn’t there yet. Guys were easier to deal with, not to mention more accessible.
When Ryo was fifteen, one of the other juniors who never debuted said to him, “Guys can mess around. It’s when feelings get involved that you’re really gay.”
Ryo’d always thought that kid was a moron, but he was charismatic, too, and whenever they kissed, the guy really went for it. In retrospect, desperately. Fearfully. He’d made Ryo feel older. Smarter, in a way, and powerful, too. That he could have both girls and guys and get away with it with his image clean.
Later that year, Ryo punched him for calling Yamapi ugly and never looked back.
When he was seventeen, Yasu kissed him just outside the reach of firelight at a summer bonfire for the juniors, and Ryo realized he wasn’t alone. Yasu, who was his age and endlessly affectionate and rapidly growing into his looks—Yasu liked guys and girls, too. Ryo’s crush on Yasu lasted for almost two years because Yasu was bright and sweet and he made Ryo’s crush on him fun.
And then NEWS debuted and Ryo was suddenly one of the oldest members of a group whereas before, with Kanjani, he’d been one of the youngest, and he didn’t know these guys the way he knew Hina and Yoko and Subaru. The way he knew Yasu and Tacchon and Maru.
He had Uchi, at least, and he had Pi.
And then he lost Uchi.
And, one night, with his face pressed into Pi’s shoulder, Ryo realized he’d been ignoring a much more complicated crush.
It was more comfortable than his crush on Yasu because Pi always kissed him back and laughed with him at what they were doing, but it was trickier, too, because it was more…aware. Like Pi knew what they were doing wasn’t just a game.
It’s never been a game to Ryo.
But as he knows from being around Eito so long, if you treat something like a game long enough, it becomes a game you lose.
The first four days after the photos are posted are chaotic with every second used. Yamapi sleeps maybe five hours altogether but tries to make up for the deprivation with fifteen-minute naps stolen when he’s supposed to be having meals. Most of his incoming calls are from staffers, and his outgoing calls are mainly to his manager and a group of staffers he’s never met before. He’s added seven new numbers to his phone, two of which belong to the publicist Kawazaki Noriko, and nine new contacts to his email address book, and whenever he’s on the train or being driven to his next meeting, he’s using his phone to send them all emails or answer their messages. Almost everything he reads begins with, “if we can make this stick” or “if this goes as we hope” or “if things doesn’t get worse.” Everything he hears is underscored with an unspoken, Don’t make things worse.
He doesn’t know what kind of repercussions the publicists keep scurrying out of the room to handle. No one keeps him informed of that, just of what he should do next. They’re allegedly working with Ryo, too, but Yamapi hasn’t seen or heard evidence of that yet.
On the fourth day, one of the more outspoken juniors makes a joke about the photos during Shounen Club, and even though it’s edited out, some fans who were in the audience blog about it and the frenzy of speculation rises. Koyama doesn’t host Shounen Club anymore, but he calls Yamapi to apologize on behalf of the current hosts who emailed Koyama in a panic after the show, terrified that Ryo would hate them for letting the joke happen.
“I told them Ryo-chan’s not that type of person, but I understand why they’re still nervous,” Koyama says. “How is he, anyway?”
After a pause, Yamapi says, “I wonder.”
On the fifth day, his schedule gets simpler, but there’s still no word on NEWS and whenever Yamapi sees Kanjani∞ on TV, they’re without Ryo. The number of meetings Yamapi has to attend decreases, but the number of phone calls and emails increases. He spends an hour sitting in an unused meeting room at company headquarters just answering emails and talking to his manager over the phone. He gets home around three in the morning and gets two or so hours of sleep before he has to leave again at dawn.
Ryo never calls, and Yamapi never calls Ryo. He prefers living with the suspicion that Ryo wouldn’t answer than actually calling and experiencing it.
Day six only requires him to be in two meetings, one to schedule him in an as-yet untitled drama next spring and one to finally discuss upcoming activities with NEWS. The first meeting goes well, and he bows as deep as he can to thank them for the role. He doesn’t remember what it is, forgets the story almost as soon as it’s explained to him—all he knows is that there’s a somewhat fixed event for him in the future.
It’s the second meeting that worries him. None of the members are there, just him and Ms. Kawazaki the Ornery Publicist Who Has a Scary Villain Voice on the Phone and a bunch of people Yamapi doesn’t know. Kawazaki sits across from him at the conference table and introduces him to the new faces. Yamapi strains to be as polite as he can and tries not to show his confusion or fear.
“Right now, NEWS is on hiatus,” Ms. Kawazaki tells him. He figured that, but NEWS hasn’t done much as a unit lately, so it would have been difficult to know for sure unless someone told him. “In fact, your group has been on something like a hiatus for quite some time, it seems.”
A rock lodges in Yamapi’s throat. That’s what this is.
She must see the understanding on his face and makes her formal expression softer. “Like all units, though, the members all have other activities,” she says. “Tegoshi and Masuda have their joint unit, Koyama’s schedule is full with multiple hosting duties, and Nishikido has, from what I understand, an enviable number of responsibilities outside NEWS. So that leaves you.” She breaks eye contact to open one of several folders in front of her.
But Yamapi is stuck on what she’s leading up to—what he thinks she’s leading up to—and all he can think is she didn’t mention Shige, and she can’t just forget about Shige like that. “Excuse me,” he says, raising his voice a little above what’s necessary to get her attention. She glances up at him, surprised, probably because he’s been nothing but docile until now. “What about Kato?” he asks.
“Kato?” she repeats, frowning. “Oh. I’m sorry. Kato. He has a radio show, doesn’t he? Oh, and he also earned a degree from Aoyama Gakuin University a few years ago, right?”
Yamapi doesn’t like her tone. “Yes. In law.”
She nods, pursing her lips, presumably to show she’s impressed. She doesn’t say anything more.
Yamapi fights to stay quiet. He doesn’t know for sure yet where she’s going with this line of conversation, after all, and he might jeopardize more than himself if he’s too forward, so he just sits up straighter and waits.
She hands him a sheet of paper, premium quality, with textured ridges and formal Johnny & Associates letterhead.
“This should explain the upcoming months in more detail,” she tells him.
He skims the first sentence, jumps halfway down the page, reads two sentences back, skips to the bottom, and over the static noise filling his mind he hears himself ask, “What about Ryo-chan?”
One of the men coughs, but Yamapi ignores him, looks directly at Ms. Kawazaki.
Her formal face is back on. “As I said, Mr. Nishikido has a full schedule even without his activities in NEWS. He’s an active member of another unit and he spends most of his remaining time with dramas and his own solo work.”
It’s not what he was asking, not at all, but he doesn’t know what he was asking, so he doesn’t say anything more.
“As for you,” she says, continuing where Yamapi cut her off, “it’s been agreed that your health may be at risk. This year alone you’ve had your second solo tour around Asia, a leading role in a movie, two dramas, recording for NEWS’s next album, and a number of smaller projects that fill up a page on their own. We’re suggesting you take some time to recuperate.”
Too many insinuations. Too much unspoken. Yamapi can’t decide what to say in response.
He settles on, “How long?”
Her uncomfortable silence shatters his resolve to remain calm. With seventeen minutes left in the meeting, Yamapi stands up and excuses himself to use the bathroom. He takes his phone with him.
Even though Ryo watched Johnny tell his secretary to cancel Ryo’s solo tour, it’s apparently only been postponed. One of the obligations on the new schedule his manager emailed him is attending a meeting to discuss venue options for the spring. Ryo can’t puzzle it out, but he’s smart enough not to question it.
The other surprise is a two-hour block to record his part in Kanjani∞’s next album.
He writes to Subaru about it immediately because he never responded to Subaru’s phone mails on the day he missed their production meeting, and he’s pretty sure Subaru got the wrong message from that. While he waits for a response, Ryo wipes the screen with his shirt over and over.
The message arrives with one of the phone’s bland custom chirps (Ryo reset all the sound functions before the meeting with Johnny, and now he wishes he hadn’t).
I’m not scheduled for anything in Tokyo today, it says. Why are you going in alone? Is it your solo track?
It’s the longest message Ryo’s gotten from Subaru in recent memory, but it just makes him feel sick.
Each of the other members says something similar. Working in Osaka, traveling out to Kagoshima, filming in Kyoto. Ryo realizes with a jolt that he hasn’t seen any of them since this whole mess started, and he wonders if Johnny’s been keeping them busy.
So Ryo goes into the studio alone. He arrives early, introduces himself to the staff and bows lower than he usually would. They’re nice guys, relaxed, casual, and all of them seem like they couldn’t care less about idol gossip. Talking to them, Ryo feels unknown again, or at least unremarkable.
He sings the chorus twice in the booth and then asks Fujisawa to play both takes back for him. Six seconds into the first, Ryo sees his phone light up where it’s sitting on a stool in the control room. It goes dark for a few seconds, then lights up again. Whoever’s calling him tries four more times with only a few seconds between each attempt. Ryo can’t imagine who would feel so urgently about getting in touch with him right now unless there’s a problem.
The playback ends. “Thanks, Fujisawa,” Ryo says. Then, to the intern next to Fujisawa, “Kayo-kun.” The kid sits bolt upright out of his slouch. “Could you see who keeps calling me?”
“Sure!” Kayo jumps up and almost picks up Ryo’s phone, but he glances at Ryo first—panicked eyes—to make sure it’s okay. “It’s ‘Momo,’” he reports, grinning at Ryo through the glass.
The sound guys have no idea who “Momo” is, so they spend the next five minutes laughing and trying to find out who “she” is and why Ryo would give her a katakana-rendered name like “Momo” in his contacts.
Ryo fends off their questions and theories with automatic denials, each one less emphatic than the last because his mind is already three steps out the door.
Why would Pi call so many times? Ryo considers asking for a break, just to check and see if…what?
But whatever the reason Pi had, he seems to have given up for now, so Ryo forcefully puts off thinking about him. He focuses instead on sound quality and breathing and timing. He sings the chorus again, this time over-enunciating that one word that his voice always goes weak and reedy on.
He nails it on the third try, his eyes closed so he can’t keep checking his phone.
At 4:28, Ryo thanks everyone for their hard work and excuses himself from the studio. His phone is open before he’s even out the door—
From: Momo
Received: 15:45
I want to see you.
A text message to top off the seven missed calls that preceded it.
Ryo types out a response so fast he almost cancels the message twice before he manages to hit the send button. What happened? He presses the elevator call button and reopens Pi’s message and reminds himself that he hasn’t seen Yamapi since the meeting in Johnny’s office.
Yamapi’s response arrives as Ryo’s stepping into a cab.
NEWS is on hiatus again.
Ryo sits in the backseat, silent and staring at his phone, aware that the driver has asked him twice now where he wants to go.
He says, “Turn left up at the light.”
He doesn’t write back.
Koyama is late. Luckily, everyone in the square is more focused on getting out of the rain than idly looking around, so Shige sits on a low wall and worries less about being recognized than he would in better weather. He puts his umbrella handle between his shoulder and jaw so he can hold his phone with both hands and rereads the message he starred an hour ago:
From: Kusugawa Junichiro
To: Koyama Keiichirou, Tegoshi Yuuya, Masuda Takahisa, Kato Shigeaki
Received: 16:12
Subject: Schedule
Please discard the current NEWS schedule as it is undergoing revisions. Until the new unit schedule is sent out, please work hard on your other obligations.
—Kusugawa Junichiro
As with most communication within the jimusho, the content excluded from the email is more informative than what’s there. For example, Yamashita and Nishikido-kun weren’t attached. That could mean too many things, so Shige doesn’t analyze it too deeply.
The one thing that’s clear is that NEWS is on hiatus. Again.
Shige’s sure it won’t last long. NEWS has been consistently well-received since their debut and their album sales are enviable even by jimusho standards. The hiatus is just a way to let all the attention on Nishikido-kun and Yamashita dissipate. It might even be a nice break. He’ll finally be able to—
Chirp.
A text message from Tegoshi appears on his screen. Shige murmurs, “Eh?” louder than he meant to, and a young passerby in a school skirt glances at him and smiles. It’s the “he’s cute” smile, not the “he’s an idol” smile, and Shige hates that he knows the difference. He should have worn something with a hood, or sunglasses, or whatever it is the savvier idols wear when it’s raining.
He settles for bringing the umbrella lower and angling it more to shield himself from view than from the rain.
Kei-chan and I are waving at you.
This time Shige says, “Eh?” without meaning to at all. He lifts the umbrella and looks around the street.
A chirp.
Not down there. Up here!
Shige looks up. Store, store, restaurant, cafe, restaurant, store. What the hell?
Chirp.
Shige! You just looked past us!
Shige feels his face going red with frustration, and then he sees Koyama in one of the windows jumping up and down and waving his arms like he’s doing jumping jacks. Tegoshi’s wave is subtler, almost presidential in its reserve.
Shige leaves the wall and tromps up the stairs to the cafe they’re in. His university friends asked him to go out with them for someone’s birthday, and instead he’s cold and damp and sneezing and why the hell is Tegoshi here?
A beaming server dashes to the door as Shige walks in. “Welcome!” she says, stopping in front of him with a small bounce. She’s like a hybrid of Tegoshi and Yasuda and a labrador puppy. “Just yourself?”
None of the other customers (all women under thirty, awesome, good choice, guys) have noticed him yet, so Shige bobs his head at her and gestures to the fairly well-hidden table that Tegoshi and Koyama have staked out behind a blue-painted trellis. He can see Koyama’s fingers sticking out of one of the notches and wiggling. The server’s smile somehow expands, both rows of gleaming teeth now on display, and she ushers him over to his bandmates so quickly that only one other customer has time to look in their direction.
Once seated, Shige asks for a cup of whatever Koyama’s drinking and then the giddy server hurries off and the three of them are left alone.
“You’re funny, Shige,” Tegoshi tells him, grinning.
“We were waving,” Koyama adds.
Shige considers knocking the cup in Koyama’s lap.
Tegoshi’s expression goes serious. “Massu will be here soon. He’s coming from Shibuya.”
The smile on Koyama’s face drains slowly, and he lowers his eyes to his tea. The abrupt change in mood knocks Shige off-balance. Has something else happened?
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Tegoshi gives him a sharp look. “What do you mean? Didn’t you read the email Kusugawa sent us?”
“I know about that. I meant why are you here? I thought I was just meeting Koyama.”
Koyama makes a pacifying sound. “Shige, don’t be rude.”
Tegoshi pretends he hasn’t heard, idly sipping his tea and peering over his shoulder at the rain collecting on the window. Shige opens his mouth to say more, but he thinks better of it when Tegoshi’s chin rises a little higher, a hint of anger in the set of his jaw.
“I invited him,” Koyama tells Shige quietly, as if Tegoshi really can’t hear them.
Tegoshi puts his teacup down and bends his head until his hair covers his face.
Not anger, Shige realizes with surprise. Hurt.
He can’t think of anything else to say, so he keeps himself busy by warming his hands on the heated damp towel in front of him. He doesn’t speak until the server returns with a small white pot of Earl Grey.
“Thank you,” he says to her, and she gives him a bright smile before rushing off again.
As Shige reaches for the pot, Koyama says, “I’ll—” but they’re both stunned silent when Tegoshi picks up the teapot and pours the gently-scented tea into Shige’s cup.
When it’s almost full, Shige says, “Uh, that’s fine.”
Tegoshi nods, puts the teapot down, and goes back to staring out the window.
Shige gives Koyama a bemused frown. Koyama answers with baffled owl eyes.
Massu arrives ten minutes later, and Shige has a clear enough view of the door through the trellis that he can see Massu’s tired face transform into its usual mask of cheer as he approaches the table.
Tegoshi dredges up a smile for him, but it doesn’t last long.
They’re all quiet while Massu orders a few macaroons and some orange tea. It’s only when they’re alone, just the four of them, that Koyama asks, “When do you have to leave, Tegoshi?”
Shige’s lost. He doesn’t understand any of this. As far as he knew, he and Koyama were going out for yakiniku and karaoke together. When did Tegoshi and Massu factor into it?
“I have time,” Tegoshi answers.
“What’s going on?” Shige demands.
Massu looks up, startled, and Koyama darts a glimpse at Tegoshi. “Shige—”
“Seriously,” Shige interrupts, giving Koyama a look, “what’s going on? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Tegoshi says. “I just wanted to see you.” It’s clear he means you, plural. When Shige doesn’t respond, Tegoshi finally meets his eyes. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look angry, either. Just kind of sad.
Shige says, “Sorry,” without really knowing why.
Tegoshi makes a dismissive noise, then lifts the tofu-flavored macaroon off Massu’s plate.
The silence persists for another few seconds, and then Koyama jumps in to ask Massu why his jacket is soaked and doesn’t he have an umbrella?
Throughout Massu’s story about a strong wind and a cat, Shige drinks his tea in tiny sips, careful not to empty it in case Tegoshi decides to pull the same unnervingly thoughtful move again. The minute hand on his watch crawls past the thirty mark, then thirty-six, thirty-eight, forty-three.
Koyama keeps checking on him, a small glance thrown sideways every few minutes. Shige has thought up seven excuses to leave early, but he can’t bring himself to use any of them. He still wants to hang out with Koyama. He’d just prefer to do so without Tegoshi around to make him feel weird and uncomfortable.
There’s a huge billboard outside advertising cologne. The image is black and white and features Yamapi in black suit pants and white dress shirt sitting on the arm of a gray leather couch. A single band of color stretches diagonally across the frame, putting his collarbones and the left side of his jaw on display.
Where is he right now?
Tegoshi stands up, cutting Koyama off mid-sentence. In a fluid move, he picks up Shige’s wrist and says, “Look how late it got!”
“Oh,” Koyama says, “you have to leave now?”
Tegoshi nods and lifts the strap of his bag over his head.
Massu says, “Here,” and hands Tegoshi a caramel macaroon wrapped in a napkin. Tegoshi accepts it with a wide smile that suggests there’s more to the gesture than Shige’s seeing, and it’s that, that one small exchange, that reminds Shige that he doesn’t really know Tegoshi as well as he should. As well as he could, if he really tried.
He can feel Yamapi’s solemn eyes boring into his head.
Tegoshi says goodbye to Koyama and Shige as a pair, and as usual Koyama answers for both of them, except this is the first time Shige notices that’s what he’s doing, and before he thinks about it, he says, “Call me later.”
Tegoshi stops short, eyes comically large. “Shige.”
Frowning, Shige says, “Seriously. Um. Yeah.”
Nishikido would laugh at him. How suave, or, No wonder you’re single.
Aware of Koyama and Massu gawking at him, Shige picks up his teacup and hides behind it by taking a long gulp.
Tegoshi stares at him for another few seconds—long ones—before he nods. “I will.” Then he’s gone.
Shige keeps drinking, eyes fixed on the table.
“Shige,” Koyama says, sounding watery.
“Wow,” Massu adds. “In a good way.”
“He probably won’t,” Shige says. His cup is empty, but he refills it before Koyama can even start to reach for the pot.
“He will,” Koyama says. “He’s missed you.” It’s clear he means you, singular.
“He just misses them,” Shige says, stubborn.
It’s after he says it that he realizes he does, too.
If Yamashita were here right now, he’d poke Shige’s cheek until he laughed or complained or tried to smack Yamashita’s hand away. Nishikido-kun would be smirking, or maybe just grinning; he’s been letting himself act more and more childishly with all of them lately. Less intimidating, less distant.
Shige misses them. Without Nishikido-kun’s weird brand of affection and Yamashita’s unusual style of leadership, NEWS doesn’t work.
Shige tries not to lean into it too much when Koyama squeezes his shoulder.
At three in the morning, Johnny calls Ryo back. His voice is chiding but kind when he says, “Ryo, I’m an old man. I sleep less than people your age, but I do need some.”
Ryo’s called him nine times over the last eleven hours, a move he considers both justifiable and impertinent on a level even Jin probably wouldn’t touch (in fairness, that’s more because Jin wouldn’t even bother). For balance, Ryo tries to put some humility into his voice when he says, “I’m really sorry, but I needed to talk to you.”
“NEWS is on hiatus,” Johnny says, and from the tone of his voice it’s clear he’s recently had to tell someone else the same thing (probably Pi, but maybe Tegoshi, if he’s been told). More neutrally, Johnny asks, “Can you tell me why?”
Ryo manages to say, “No, I can’t,” with only half the bite of insolence he believes the situation calls for.
“Careful, Ryo. I give you responsibility because you’ve proven that you can handle it. However, if you can’t tell me why you crossed that line with Yamashita, then it’s difficult for me to know if you can be trusted not to cross the next one.”
Ryo’s pulse hammers in his ears. What does that imply?
“I won’t,” Ryo says, slipping into Osaka dialect before he can stop himself. “He won’t. You don’t need to put NEWS on hiatus because of this. I’ve seen the reaction—there are more fans who don’t care at all than ones who do.”
“Hmm,” is all Johnny says to that.
Ryo tries to think of something to come back with, one of the many arguments he’s had on his mind—but all he can think about, what’s on loop in his head, is Uchi sobbing on his shoulder and apologizing over and over and over and Ryo thinking, It can’t be permanent, because what about NEWS and Kanjani? Johnny wouldn’t make Ryo pull that kind of weight on his own, wouldn’t take Uchi away, because what did Uchi even do that Ryo’d seen a dozen other juniors do without consequences?
“Get some rest, Nishikido,” Johnny tells him.
“What’s going to happen to Tomo—Yamashita?”
“Good night, Ryo.”
The line disconnects, and Ryo’s stunned to realize that his eyes are wet.
Instead of going to sleep, he writes emails to Tegoshi, to Koyama, to Massu, and even one to Shige. In each, he apologizes and makes it specific to every individual member. He’s surprised when he writes four whole paragraphs to Shige, full of things he’d never normally want Shige to hear, but somewhere around the third sentence that describes how terrified Shige was of him in the beginning, Ryo’s seized by some bizarre need to make Shige understand him better. We’re not close, Ryo writes in the last sentence, but you’re family anyway, and I expect a lot from family. He adds the last part because he was dangerously close to writing something affectionate.
He saves Yamapi for last, and then he can’t think of anything to say. He doesn’t want to explain why he didn’t respond to Pi’s earlier message telling him about NEWS. He doesn’t know why he chose not to go, just that he simultaneously wanted to and was afraid to.
So, in the end, what he writes is, We need to try harder, and even he doesn’t know what it means. Something generic, something to fill the silence. But when Yamapi doesn’t respond, it just makes the silence hurt.
Yamapi doesn’t listen to or delete any messages on his phone. He just watches the numbers increase, fascinated by his phone’s storage capacity. He doesn’t go out with Shirota or Toma or Jaejoong or any of the people who want to help him by removing him from Jin’s apartment, where he’s more or less become a second tenant.
Jin, proving his infinite loyalty, skips work two days in a row to stay in and “nurse” Yamapi. Unsurprisingly, this nebulous activity seems to include a lot of unhealthy behavior. On the first day, they eat Dominos delivery pizza that Jin claims isn’t anywhere near as good as the stuff in New York, then they play video games full of car theft and monster death and princess rescue, and they end the day drunk and watching some American TV dramas viewed on Jin’s region-free DVD player. Jin translates some of the dialogue in the first show, but then he gets lazy and bullshits to cover up what he doesn’t understand. Yamapi drops his head on Jin’s shoulder and tells him that he would study the art of making New York pizza if it would keep Jin in Japan.
“Stop leaving me,” he murmurs, punching Jin in the stomach.
Jin just drapes an arm around Yamapi’s waist and rubs his side. “I always come back, don’t I?”
“You do,” Yamapi agrees, hiding an embarrassing sound inside a forced cough.
Jin lets him fall asleep there, and when they both wake up in the morning with their skin branded red by the creases of jeans and shirts, Jin just strips, shoves Yamapi off the couch, and goes back to sleep with a huge grin on his face.
That night, Jin invites over some of his friends and there’s drunken mayhem that Yamapi participates in because he can’t be bothered not to. Uchi’s there for part of the night, maybe, or else Yamapi imagined him, and he wakes up at five in Jin’s bathtub curled around a plunger that has cat ears taped to the sides.
Yamapi remembers the handful of times he’s woken up in the morning with Ryo. Once on a futon at that inn in Sapporo, once on a Western-style bed in Hiroshima, and once on a bus driving east into the rising sun, but maybe that one doesn’t count.
Eyes closed, Yamapi imagines the look of laugh lines and the feel of guitar callouses and the sound of sleep-roughened Kansai syllables. More than one person must have those things, too.
He rests his head on the rim of Jin’s bathtub and thinks about how much more comfortable his bed is. More comfortable than the futon in Sapporo and the bed in Hiroshima and Jin’s bathtub combined. It’s been underused lately.
Unsurprisingly, Jin is called in that morning for a lecture about missing work, so Yamapi spends the day in his car driving around the fringes of the city. Here, he can sing with NEWS and enjoy relative anonymity since hardly anyone thinks to look through the windshield at him. And every so often, he’ll spare a glance at his phone to watch the numbers there climb optimistically up toward infinity.
Ryo’s schedule used to have huge blocks carved out for meetings and appearances and recording and filming and now, instead, he has a patchwork of mundane bullshit mixed in with obligations of middling importance. It’s like jimusho limbo—he’s still busy, but now it’s with mind-numbing drone work interspersed with long stretches of waiting to do mind-numbing drone work.
Today, for example, is this:
Morning news 6:58-7:03
Gym 7:30-9:00
Long phone call w/ publicist 10:00-10:44
Longer phone call w/ manager 10:45-11:50
Shower 12:00-12:47
Cup noodles 12:59-1:06
Watch recording of most recent episode of Ohkura’s drama 1:08-1:30
Publicist 1:30-2:20
Manager 2:21-2:45
Watch recording of most recent episode of Janiben 2:50-
The guest on Janiben is some kind of intensive yoga instructor, and he chooses Yasu to be his first “student.”
Ryo opens a can of beer because no one’s here to call him on it, and puts his phone on the couch next to himself.
The instructor tells Yasu over and over that he has a stellar physique (his words) that’s ideal for this type of yoga, and Yasu should really consider dropping by the instructor’s gym for a private lesson. Little hearts appear on the screen and cartoony love-love music plays to emphasize everything he says.
After the instructor spends five minutes praising Yasu’s body, Subaru volunteers Yoko to do the same stuff Yasu just did.
Yoko, unsurprisingly, has some difficulty, and the audience’s laughter fills Ryo’s otherwise silent apartment. No air conditioner, windows closed, neighbors all at work.
“Push your hips out,” the instructor tells Yoko. “Reach up to the ceiling. Frame your ears with your arms like this. Push your hips out more. More. Like this.”
“OWOWOW.”
“There you go,” the instructor says, stepping back. “Now, feet together. Look up. You should feel a lengthening in your torso.”
Yoko isn’t following the coach’s instructions, looks pained at just the suggestion of changing position, so the instructor moves in to help. Four small adjustments later, Yoko makes a raw noise of incredible agony that incites a round of group cackling from the rest of Kanjani∞ seated on the couches behind him.
Ryo doesn’t laugh, doesn’t grin. He just watches Yoko limp back to his seat on the front couch. Watches Hina ask the instructor questions about spinal alignment and pressure points. Watches Subaru on the back couch inch closer and closer to Yasu. Watches Yasu move over to widen the space between them. Only—no, that’s wrong. It’s when Maru shifts over, too, that Ryo realizes what they’re doing.
They’ve made a gap on the back couch about two feet wide, and it’s directly behind the instructor, so whenever the camera focuses on him, it also highlights where Ryo should be.
At the end of the episode while Hina is making his final remarks, Subaru looks straight at the camera and flattens his hand on the empty place beside him.
Ryo coughs to get rid of the itch in his throat and rewinds to the beginning.
Part Three
