{Series} I'm Here for You - Chapter 1
Title: I'm Here For You - Chapter 1
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tegoshi/OC, Tegoshi/Masuda
Beta: crazyfaucet (because she's amazing^^)
Summary: There is always a glimmer of hope.
Warnings: Self Injury
Disclaimer: I do not own these people. If I did, I would not be pairing them up; I would keep them to myself. If I did this, I would be attacked by fangirls. Death by fangirl is not the way I want to leave this world, so I am not claiming to own them. :D
A/N: I think an authors note is necessary here. This fic was written before the death of Yuki Tamasawa, a close friend of mine who died in the Sendai disaster. I wasn't sure of whether to post it or not, but I feel that maybe it is the right thing to do because the character's behaviours and appearance are not the same as hers. Rest in peace, Yuki Tamasawa. The only Japanese acrobat I know of.
Prologue
Chapter 1
It was six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and the six members of NEWS were waiting outside of a large building in Daikanyama, Tokyo. It was a cold winter day and they had been freezing to death for almost half an hour waiting for somebody to open the door. Ryo kept banging on the door, getting more and more frustrated each time it didn’t open.
It would have perhaps made things better had they known exactly why they were there. All that they had been told was that they needed to be at that building at quarter to six in the morning ready for “training”. Whatever that was.
Suddenly, the door opened and a fairly young foreigner appeared. She had long platinum blonde hair with pale, baby blue lowlights and was incredibly thin, but covered up to hide the delicate bones that made her appear so incredibly fragile.
She appeared quite scared of the six of them standing there, and her body language showed it. Her legs were unsteady, her hands shaking slightly, and her already white face rapidly becoming paler by the second. Realising this, she quickly flashed them a dazzling but fake smile.
They were all slightly taken aback. She wasn’t exactly who they were expecting to have been behind that door, but nevertheless, they managed to brush off their initial reaction and compose themselves. Well, all except from Tegoshi.
Tegoshi couldn’t stop looking. There hadn’t been many foreign women around recently, and everybody knew he had a kind of “thing” for them, especially if they were blonde. This was his chance to get some action. He just had to seduce her.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting so long,” she said softly and shakily, bowing, “It took me longer than expected to set up. Please, come in.”
She smiled fakely, holding the door open and stepping aside, allowing each of them to pass through into the building. He smiled back at her, but she looked away.
When they walked in, they were taken aback by the décor, never mind the equipment that was hanging from the ceiling.
The room was huge, and the walls were painted white, with pink floral patterns painted all over. One of the walls was a photograph wall, with pictures of people hanging from circus equipment and presumably portfolio pictures, as well as photographs of the girl who had let them in and another eastern European-looking girl wearing unusual clothes in various different places in the world.
“This girl can’t be too bad,” Tegoshi thought. She looked happy enough in the photographs, although her fashion sense was like Massu’s.
“I am Miyabi Tamasawa. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” she said, perking up so that you could barely tell she was the same girl that had let them in, “I have been told to give you fitness training in my style today, a circus style. If you want to just put your things on the benches near where you just came in and then we can get started. ”She clapped her hands together and went to pull the mats from underneath the trapeze bar to the centre of the room.
The group members looked at each other. Who the hell was this girl?
“Tamasawa-san, why do you have a Japanese name when you’re not Japanese?” Koyama asked, slightly confused.
She continued moving mats around as she replied confidently, “I changed my name when I moved here so I would fit in,”
They did as she asked and put their things down, and once they had taken their coats and shoes off they were ready to begin so they went to help her arrange the mats.
They noticed another woman sitting in the corner, a Japanese girl, who was quite different from Miyabi. She had short black hair and had kind of a stocky, muscular body shape on a tiny frame.
“Kimura-san, can you come over and introduce yourself and get them warmed up while I find my lesson plan please?” Miyabi called, walking briskly over to the side of the room where there were piles of folders and sheets on the desk.
The Japanese woman came over and stood on the mat.
“I’m Ichigo Kimura,” she smiled, “I am an acrobat and a translator if needed - although... I’m not. Not often anyway,”
They laughed at this. It was true that so far, they hadn’t had a problem in understanding Tamasawa-san.
“Okay,” Ichigo said, sounding quite hyper and full of energy, “We need to warm up. The easiest way of starting a warm up is by doing a cardiovascular activity. So to get started, we’re going to play tag!”
“What?” Shige spluttered, but Tegoshi had already begun the game by tagging Massu before he could protest properly.
A few moments into the game, and Tegoshi slipped away to near where the blonde was.
“Right,” he thought, “Let’s start off like a gentleman. It’s time to use my charms.”
“Would you like some help there?” he asked, standing behind the frail looking blonde who was half-dreamily, but still frantically searching the files.
She jumped. She hadn’t known he was there.
“You need to warm up,”
He inched his way closer to her.
“It might be easier to find if you have some help,”
“I can manage,” she replied, her voice wooden.
“You look like you need some help.”
“I’m fine,”
“If you need help with anything, you can always come to me,” he said, flashing a dazzling smile.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at him agitatedly and raising her eyebrow, “But what I need you to do right now is go back to warming up. I don’t want to get sued for you injuring yourself,”
“Rejected?” Tegoshi thought, “I got… rejected?”
He nodded silently, going back to the game and tried to think of a better plan. He had to have her.
After a few minutes of intense playing, Miyabi had found her lesson plan and stopped the game. She made them do forty five minutes of intense stretching to prepare them for what they were going to do and to discover just how flexible and agile they were.
“Today you’re going to be training static trapeze,” she said, still peppy and almost hyper, “Shall we start?”
*******
After two hours they were all exhausted and dripping with sweat. To say that she had pushed them to their limits was an understatement. Their session was short, but she had packed a lot into it. They cooled down and sat for a few minutes, talking, all apart from Miyabi who was doing paperwork.
“Masuda-san,” Kimura beamed, sitting down next to Yamapi, “You did well. Would you ever consider switching from music to circus?”
“I don’t think so. The group needs all of the members. What would they do without me?” Massu smiled, chuckling slightly.
“Well we might actually get to eat something if you weren’t around,” Shige teased, causing Tegoshi to collapse into laughter, “But you’re not much better Mrs. I’m-terrified-get-me-off-this-thing,” he laughed, directing his comment at Tegoshi.
Tegoshi pouted, “I guess that’s good for you, then. We all know that you are secretly drawn to Yuuko. You’d rescue me any day!”
This earned him a smack from Shige and he crawled over to Massu. The others fought back tears of laughter.
Miyabi was busily putting equipment away and seemed like the emotionless doll she had been when she came to the door again, but this almost made her smile.
By stereotypical western standards the six of them looked like girls anyway, so she thought there would be no need for Tegoshi to cross-dress for Shige to be “drawn” to him. Despite that, she had to admit that they were all gorgeous, and Massu had an impressive body. In her opinion though, she wasn’t going to be surprised if any of them ended up together.
Yamapi turned slightly to watch Miyabi clearing up, looking quite fragile compared to the heavy equipment.
“So Tamasawa-san, what brought you to Japan?” he asked, intrigued, and trying to change the subject before anybody said anything inappropriate.
She came over and stood, looking through papers, quite separate and very much distanced from them but so that she was facing Shige and Koyama.
“I just like it here,” she said simply, her fake smile wobbling.
“Where are you from, then?” Koyama immediately asked. She shifted uncomfortably.
“Scotland…,” she said, her voice monotone
“Just keep smiling, Miyabi. If you can fool those idiots in the audience of a theatre production you can fool a bunch of idiot idols,” a voice in her head whispered, as she looked blankly ahead.
Then she snapped back to reality.
“I did pretty much everything performance-wise there before I decided that I needed a change of scenery. It just wasn’t home, you know.”
“So… is Japan is the place where you belong?” Tegoshi asked, head tilted slightly to one side studying her, thinking hard. Her behaviour really was strange, and it unnerved him slightly. None of his foreign friends ever behaved like this, but he guessed this didn’t really matter if he was just going to sleep with her.
She avoided his gaze, looking straight at the opposite wall and replied confidently but robotically, “I belong wherever I am needed,”
“But surely Japan must mean a lot to you if you learnt the language to fluency..,”
There was an awkward silence as everybody waited for Miyabi’s answer.
“Um… you should go now, you have recording later, right?” she said quickly, “You don’t want to be late. I shall see you on Wednesday, yes?”
She stood up and opened the door, waiting for them to leave. Massu raised his eyebrow at her odd behaviour and guided the rest of his band mates, who wouldn’t have left by choice, to the door of the facility. He could clearly see that it was only going to get more awkward.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly beaming, but her eyes still emotionless, “I hope it hasn’t been too tiring. I look forward to teaching you again… on Wednesday.”
As they were leaving Tegoshi searched her eyes more closely, trying to find a hint of how she was feeling. There was nothing, yet so much at the same time. Her eyes told a story but they didn’t show a trace of happiness or sadness. They were just cold.
She closed the door behind them and slid down to the floor staring into space.
The voices were swirling round her head. Telling her “What was that?! That was pathetic!” and “You’re going to give yourself away, you idiot!” She clutched onto her head, pulling at her hair, trying to replace the voices with pain.
“Are you okay?” Ichigo asked, picking up her things and walking over.
“I’m fine,” she said, dropping her hands to her sides, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You don’t seem fine…”
“Well I am,” she insisted, calmly and quietly. She was used to fighting to hold her anger back.
“You were disorganised, and it was like you were on another planet,” Kimura said worriedly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said and went to change her shoes. Kimura followed.
“You’ve been like this for a while and…”
“I thought I told you to stop being stupid,” she snapped, tears forming slightly in her eyes.
“I’m not being stupid! I’m worried about you!”
“I’m fine, okay? Please just leave,” she said firmly, glaring slightly, “Thank you, but go now!” Her voice was thickening. Ichigo quickly picked up her things and walked out of the room.
Miyabi slammed the door after and ran to her bag, tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t sure exactly why she was crying, but she couldn’t stop the tears falling. It wasn’t like she needed a logical reason to cry anymore anyway.
She pulled out her scissors from her bag. They weren’t ideal, but they would do. A knife would be better. Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks, and she was unable to control them. Her head was pounding. Voices, flashbacks and past conversations playing in her head all at once.
“Why do you have a Japanese name when you’re not Japanese?” echoed through her memory
“They don’t want you here. You ruin their culture by having a name that shouldn’t belong to you,”
“Where are you from? What brought you to Japan?”
“Japan is the place you belong?”
“They are trying to kick you out. They don’t want you here, and they don’t want you in England. You don’t deserve to live in any country that takes you. You can’t follow instructions, you deceive people and you lie. You don’t deserve it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a useless waste of space that nobody cares about.”
“Shut up!!!” she screamed, bringing the scissor blade straight down against the skin of her arm, and watching the blood slowly ooze out of the wound. The blood made the voices weaker and made the flashbacks irrelevant. “I don’t have to listen to any of this,” she sobbed, “I don’t have to listen to any of it!”
********************
The members of NEWS were waiting at the station for the train to get to their recording session. Of course they couldn’t all stand together or they would be mobbed by fans, so they were all standing separately, avoiding eye contact so they didn’t arouse suspicion.
Tegoshi panicked. He couldn’t find his mobile phone. He searched his pockets frantically but couldn’t find it anywhere. The only place it could be was back at Tamasawa’s studio. He had no choice but to run back and get it, because otherwise he would get stuck after the recording session, unable to get home. He ran back as fast as he could towards Tamasawa’s studio, leaving the others wondering what was going on.
It didn’t take him long to run back even though he was exhausted from training, because it was only two blocks away.
He knocked on the door and there was no answer like last time. Not this again. He waited to catch his breath back before he knocked again, but there was still no answer. There was faint music still playing that he could here, so he knew that she was in there. He tried the door handle just in case she had left it unlocked, and to his surprise she had.
“Leave me alone! I don’t want you any more! I never did! You’ve made my life hell!”
Tegoshi stood in shock, watching the small, frail figure on the floor in tears, screaming, and desperately clutching a sharp pair of scissors. She was screaming at thin air in English, and he wished he could understand her. All he could understand was that this situation was bad.
He didn’t know what to do. What were you supposed to do if you walked in on this kind of thing? He couldn’t ignore it, and taking his mobile and leaving her like that could make him responsible if she did anything stupid, but he wasn’t sure what he could do.
She focused in on the blade. It was the only freedom she was going to get. She had to do it again; she had to feel that pain, that sense of release.
Tegoshi noticed that change in her. She had suddenly become quiet and was crying less, preparing to cut the deepest that she could, and he wasn’t going to stand there and watch her hack herself to pieces.
“Don’t!” he said, almost shouting and making her jump out of her skin.
She turned, startled, eyes wide as saucers, with tears still streaming down her face.
“Don’t,” Tegoshi repeated, more softly this time, almost a whisper, and walked over to her slowly. He knelt down and pulled her close, holding her as she cried. The scissors slipped from her hands onto the floor.
He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, why she was crying, or why she was cutting, but he didn’t know what else to do that could make any difference. He’d never dealt with anything like this in real life before.
Miyabi wasn’t used to this. She wasn’t used to people being close to her, especially not men. People weren’t that nice to her usually and they certainly weren’t attracted to her because of how dead she looked, so she never went near other people unless it was absolutely necessary, like during duo acts. Those were rare, too.
Somehow, though, Tegoshi was comforting. He was warm and sort of soft and huggable. She felt awful for letting him see her in this state, but it felt nice to feel that somebody actually cared about her. Having somebody there to comfort her as she cried seemed to make the pain slightly less... painful.
Tegoshi was completely confused. He was hugging a girl he barely knew - the girl he had earlier made up his mind to seduce - whilst she was having some sort of breakdown. That plan went out of the window. He couldn’t do that to her now, not after seeing her like this - all broken and tearful.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand her cutting. Why would she do that to herself? It was just wrong. He knew that people did that - he was majoring in human sciences after all, and he had briefly had to research behaviours like that - and he knew that it wasn’t exactly an uncommon practice for people nowadays but he was still shocked, horrified and well… worried. It wasn’t a healthy thing to do. But then again, she didn’t look healthy, or feel healthy. Holding her, all he could feel were her bones.
He couldn’t take advantage of her. She was already a broken, porcelain doll.
It wasn’t like him to act this grown up. He was the baby of the group. Ordinarily he would have let somebody else deal with things as emotional as this, but now he was the only one who could do anything to help.
After what felt like hours, but was just few minutes she tried to speak.
“Tegoshi-san… I’m so sorry,” she whispered, stuttering and tearful.
He wasn’t sure what to say back really. She didn’t really need to apologise, but the whole situation wasn’t good.
“It’s ok,” he replied, softly, stroking her silky hair.
“Is it really?” she pulled away and looked at him, the worst of her crying was over, just tears kept falling.
He was silent and just looked straight into her eyes, again trying to read them.
“What…is it… that is troubling you?”
She looked away.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said robotically, wiping her eyes with her hands and standing up. He grabbed her hand to stop her from walking away.
She panicked at the feel of his soft hands touching hers.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, tearfully.
“It’s none of my business, but you were cutting yourself…” he tried to pull her back.
“Wow, genius,” she snapped, shaking him off, before feeling awful seeing the hurt expression on Tegoshi’s face, “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I didn’t mean that.. It’s just… everything is such a mess…”
She burst into tears all over again, and Tegoshi stood up and pulled her close again, holding her tightly but being as gently as he could.
“What’s a mess Miyabi-chan?” he replied softly, calling her by her first name.
“Everything! My life, my career, absolutely everything…!” she sobbed again.
“It can’t be that bad…”
She just sobbed even more.
“Please don’t tell anybody Tegoshi-san,”
“Look…, Miyabi-chan, I’m not going to tell anybody…. Just… Let me help you? I just don’t want to see you like this.”
“You barely know me,”
“Then I’ll get to know you. I can’t just let you be like this,”
“What? Would it look bad on you?” she spat, before kicking herself for saying that, “God, I’m sorry… it’s just…”
Tegoshi ignored her comment, seeing how messed up she was, and he picked his mobile up off the floor in the corner. “Miyabi-chan, what is your mobile number?”
“Eh?” she wiped her tears again.
“Please give me your mobile number. Then you can contact me if you need somebody to talk to,”
“I can’t talk to you about it,”
“Well… I want you to. So you have no choice,” he used a more stern version of his puppy dog eyes on her.
She looked carefully at the face he made. He looked so innocent and kind, like he genuinely wanted to help. Nobody ever gave her a look like that.
“…..Whatever…fine…”
“I’m going to message you later and you need to reply, okay?”
She nodded tearfully.
“You should go now Tegoshi, or you will be late…”
“I can’t leave you here like this,”
“I’ll be fine,”
“Will you?”
Truthfully, she wanted to tell him not to go; to beg him to hold her closer and never let her go. He was the only person who had shown that kind of care to her, and it was the kind of care she craved desperately. Having him there was the most amazing moment she’d had in a long time and she never wanted it to stop, but she couldn’t say that to him. It would sound ridiculous,”
“Yes I will… just go please… I’m sorry…,” she whispered, forcing a smile on her face.
“You don’t need to be sorry, but make sure you get your wounds bandaged up.”
“I will…”
“Please don’t cut yourself Miyabi-chan. You are so beautiful but you’re ruining it,”
“I’m not beautiful!” she protested.
“Yes… you are… but you just can’t see it… Look, I don’t know what you’re problems are, but I know that you are only seeing negativity, and you need to look at the positive in life… like Kei-chan does,”
Miyabi didn’t say anything, she just looked down. What was the point? There was no positive.
“I have to go now,” Tegoshi said, “But please take care. And reply to my message. I’ll see you later in the week,”
“Okay…,”
He kissed her forehead and then left the building slowly, feeling awful about leaving her alone in such a state. On the way to the station and for the rest of the day everybody remarked on how distracted he seemed. He was hatching a plan to get to know Miyabi better because he couldn’t get her out of his head. If anything happened to her now he would feel responsible for not helping.
Miyabi was curled up on the floor. The voices were still shouting at her, but all she could think of was what happened earlier. Her head was replaying Tegoshi’s kind words, and they played out over the top of everything. She lay there in agony, with stabbing pains in her arms and legs, and her wounds throbbing, sore and still bleeding, but despite all of that, for once in her life it felt like there might just be a glimmer of hope.
See, she thought, There is somebody who cares. Fuck you, voices.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tegoshi/OC, Tegoshi/Masuda
Beta: crazyfaucet (because she's amazing^^)
Summary: There is always a glimmer of hope.
Warnings: Self Injury
Disclaimer: I do not own these people. If I did, I would not be pairing them up; I would keep them to myself. If I did this, I would be attacked by fangirls. Death by fangirl is not the way I want to leave this world, so I am not claiming to own them. :D
A/N: I think an authors note is necessary here. This fic was written before the death of Yuki Tamasawa, a close friend of mine who died in the Sendai disaster. I wasn't sure of whether to post it or not, but I feel that maybe it is the right thing to do because the character's behaviours and appearance are not the same as hers. Rest in peace, Yuki Tamasawa. The only Japanese acrobat I know of.
Prologue
Chapter 1
It was six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and the six members of NEWS were waiting outside of a large building in Daikanyama, Tokyo. It was a cold winter day and they had been freezing to death for almost half an hour waiting for somebody to open the door. Ryo kept banging on the door, getting more and more frustrated each time it didn’t open.
It would have perhaps made things better had they known exactly why they were there. All that they had been told was that they needed to be at that building at quarter to six in the morning ready for “training”. Whatever that was.
Suddenly, the door opened and a fairly young foreigner appeared. She had long platinum blonde hair with pale, baby blue lowlights and was incredibly thin, but covered up to hide the delicate bones that made her appear so incredibly fragile.
She appeared quite scared of the six of them standing there, and her body language showed it. Her legs were unsteady, her hands shaking slightly, and her already white face rapidly becoming paler by the second. Realising this, she quickly flashed them a dazzling but fake smile.
They were all slightly taken aback. She wasn’t exactly who they were expecting to have been behind that door, but nevertheless, they managed to brush off their initial reaction and compose themselves. Well, all except from Tegoshi.
Tegoshi couldn’t stop looking. There hadn’t been many foreign women around recently, and everybody knew he had a kind of “thing” for them, especially if they were blonde. This was his chance to get some action. He just had to seduce her.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting so long,” she said softly and shakily, bowing, “It took me longer than expected to set up. Please, come in.”
She smiled fakely, holding the door open and stepping aside, allowing each of them to pass through into the building. He smiled back at her, but she looked away.
When they walked in, they were taken aback by the décor, never mind the equipment that was hanging from the ceiling.
The room was huge, and the walls were painted white, with pink floral patterns painted all over. One of the walls was a photograph wall, with pictures of people hanging from circus equipment and presumably portfolio pictures, as well as photographs of the girl who had let them in and another eastern European-looking girl wearing unusual clothes in various different places in the world.
“This girl can’t be too bad,” Tegoshi thought. She looked happy enough in the photographs, although her fashion sense was like Massu’s.
“I am Miyabi Tamasawa. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” she said, perking up so that you could barely tell she was the same girl that had let them in, “I have been told to give you fitness training in my style today, a circus style. If you want to just put your things on the benches near where you just came in and then we can get started. ”She clapped her hands together and went to pull the mats from underneath the trapeze bar to the centre of the room.
The group members looked at each other. Who the hell was this girl?
“Tamasawa-san, why do you have a Japanese name when you’re not Japanese?” Koyama asked, slightly confused.
She continued moving mats around as she replied confidently, “I changed my name when I moved here so I would fit in,”
They did as she asked and put their things down, and once they had taken their coats and shoes off they were ready to begin so they went to help her arrange the mats.
They noticed another woman sitting in the corner, a Japanese girl, who was quite different from Miyabi. She had short black hair and had kind of a stocky, muscular body shape on a tiny frame.
“Kimura-san, can you come over and introduce yourself and get them warmed up while I find my lesson plan please?” Miyabi called, walking briskly over to the side of the room where there were piles of folders and sheets on the desk.
The Japanese woman came over and stood on the mat.
“I’m Ichigo Kimura,” she smiled, “I am an acrobat and a translator if needed - although... I’m not. Not often anyway,”
They laughed at this. It was true that so far, they hadn’t had a problem in understanding Tamasawa-san.
“Okay,” Ichigo said, sounding quite hyper and full of energy, “We need to warm up. The easiest way of starting a warm up is by doing a cardiovascular activity. So to get started, we’re going to play tag!”
“What?” Shige spluttered, but Tegoshi had already begun the game by tagging Massu before he could protest properly.
A few moments into the game, and Tegoshi slipped away to near where the blonde was.
“Right,” he thought, “Let’s start off like a gentleman. It’s time to use my charms.”
“Would you like some help there?” he asked, standing behind the frail looking blonde who was half-dreamily, but still frantically searching the files.
She jumped. She hadn’t known he was there.
“You need to warm up,”
He inched his way closer to her.
“It might be easier to find if you have some help,”
“I can manage,” she replied, her voice wooden.
“You look like you need some help.”
“I’m fine,”
“If you need help with anything, you can always come to me,” he said, flashing a dazzling smile.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at him agitatedly and raising her eyebrow, “But what I need you to do right now is go back to warming up. I don’t want to get sued for you injuring yourself,”
“Rejected?” Tegoshi thought, “I got… rejected?”
He nodded silently, going back to the game and tried to think of a better plan. He had to have her.
After a few minutes of intense playing, Miyabi had found her lesson plan and stopped the game. She made them do forty five minutes of intense stretching to prepare them for what they were going to do and to discover just how flexible and agile they were.
“Today you’re going to be training static trapeze,” she said, still peppy and almost hyper, “Shall we start?”
*******
After two hours they were all exhausted and dripping with sweat. To say that she had pushed them to their limits was an understatement. Their session was short, but she had packed a lot into it. They cooled down and sat for a few minutes, talking, all apart from Miyabi who was doing paperwork.
“Masuda-san,” Kimura beamed, sitting down next to Yamapi, “You did well. Would you ever consider switching from music to circus?”
“I don’t think so. The group needs all of the members. What would they do without me?” Massu smiled, chuckling slightly.
“Well we might actually get to eat something if you weren’t around,” Shige teased, causing Tegoshi to collapse into laughter, “But you’re not much better Mrs. I’m-terrified-get-me-off-this-thing,” he laughed, directing his comment at Tegoshi.
Tegoshi pouted, “I guess that’s good for you, then. We all know that you are secretly drawn to Yuuko. You’d rescue me any day!”
This earned him a smack from Shige and he crawled over to Massu. The others fought back tears of laughter.
Miyabi was busily putting equipment away and seemed like the emotionless doll she had been when she came to the door again, but this almost made her smile.
By stereotypical western standards the six of them looked like girls anyway, so she thought there would be no need for Tegoshi to cross-dress for Shige to be “drawn” to him. Despite that, she had to admit that they were all gorgeous, and Massu had an impressive body. In her opinion though, she wasn’t going to be surprised if any of them ended up together.
Yamapi turned slightly to watch Miyabi clearing up, looking quite fragile compared to the heavy equipment.
“So Tamasawa-san, what brought you to Japan?” he asked, intrigued, and trying to change the subject before anybody said anything inappropriate.
She came over and stood, looking through papers, quite separate and very much distanced from them but so that she was facing Shige and Koyama.
“I just like it here,” she said simply, her fake smile wobbling.
“Where are you from, then?” Koyama immediately asked. She shifted uncomfortably.
“Scotland…,” she said, her voice monotone
“Just keep smiling, Miyabi. If you can fool those idiots in the audience of a theatre production you can fool a bunch of idiot idols,” a voice in her head whispered, as she looked blankly ahead.
Then she snapped back to reality.
“I did pretty much everything performance-wise there before I decided that I needed a change of scenery. It just wasn’t home, you know.”
“So… is Japan is the place where you belong?” Tegoshi asked, head tilted slightly to one side studying her, thinking hard. Her behaviour really was strange, and it unnerved him slightly. None of his foreign friends ever behaved like this, but he guessed this didn’t really matter if he was just going to sleep with her.
She avoided his gaze, looking straight at the opposite wall and replied confidently but robotically, “I belong wherever I am needed,”
“But surely Japan must mean a lot to you if you learnt the language to fluency..,”
There was an awkward silence as everybody waited for Miyabi’s answer.
“Um… you should go now, you have recording later, right?” she said quickly, “You don’t want to be late. I shall see you on Wednesday, yes?”
She stood up and opened the door, waiting for them to leave. Massu raised his eyebrow at her odd behaviour and guided the rest of his band mates, who wouldn’t have left by choice, to the door of the facility. He could clearly see that it was only going to get more awkward.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly beaming, but her eyes still emotionless, “I hope it hasn’t been too tiring. I look forward to teaching you again… on Wednesday.”
As they were leaving Tegoshi searched her eyes more closely, trying to find a hint of how she was feeling. There was nothing, yet so much at the same time. Her eyes told a story but they didn’t show a trace of happiness or sadness. They were just cold.
She closed the door behind them and slid down to the floor staring into space.
The voices were swirling round her head. Telling her “What was that?! That was pathetic!” and “You’re going to give yourself away, you idiot!” She clutched onto her head, pulling at her hair, trying to replace the voices with pain.
“Are you okay?” Ichigo asked, picking up her things and walking over.
“I’m fine,” she said, dropping her hands to her sides, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You don’t seem fine…”
“Well I am,” she insisted, calmly and quietly. She was used to fighting to hold her anger back.
“You were disorganised, and it was like you were on another planet,” Kimura said worriedly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said and went to change her shoes. Kimura followed.
“You’ve been like this for a while and…”
“I thought I told you to stop being stupid,” she snapped, tears forming slightly in her eyes.
“I’m not being stupid! I’m worried about you!”
“I’m fine, okay? Please just leave,” she said firmly, glaring slightly, “Thank you, but go now!” Her voice was thickening. Ichigo quickly picked up her things and walked out of the room.
Miyabi slammed the door after and ran to her bag, tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t sure exactly why she was crying, but she couldn’t stop the tears falling. It wasn’t like she needed a logical reason to cry anymore anyway.
She pulled out her scissors from her bag. They weren’t ideal, but they would do. A knife would be better. Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks, and she was unable to control them. Her head was pounding. Voices, flashbacks and past conversations playing in her head all at once.
“Why do you have a Japanese name when you’re not Japanese?” echoed through her memory
“They don’t want you here. You ruin their culture by having a name that shouldn’t belong to you,”
“Where are you from? What brought you to Japan?”
“Japan is the place you belong?”
“They are trying to kick you out. They don’t want you here, and they don’t want you in England. You don’t deserve to live in any country that takes you. You can’t follow instructions, you deceive people and you lie. You don’t deserve it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a useless waste of space that nobody cares about.”
“Shut up!!!” she screamed, bringing the scissor blade straight down against the skin of her arm, and watching the blood slowly ooze out of the wound. The blood made the voices weaker and made the flashbacks irrelevant. “I don’t have to listen to any of this,” she sobbed, “I don’t have to listen to any of it!”
********************
The members of NEWS were waiting at the station for the train to get to their recording session. Of course they couldn’t all stand together or they would be mobbed by fans, so they were all standing separately, avoiding eye contact so they didn’t arouse suspicion.
Tegoshi panicked. He couldn’t find his mobile phone. He searched his pockets frantically but couldn’t find it anywhere. The only place it could be was back at Tamasawa’s studio. He had no choice but to run back and get it, because otherwise he would get stuck after the recording session, unable to get home. He ran back as fast as he could towards Tamasawa’s studio, leaving the others wondering what was going on.
It didn’t take him long to run back even though he was exhausted from training, because it was only two blocks away.
He knocked on the door and there was no answer like last time. Not this again. He waited to catch his breath back before he knocked again, but there was still no answer. There was faint music still playing that he could here, so he knew that she was in there. He tried the door handle just in case she had left it unlocked, and to his surprise she had.
“Leave me alone! I don’t want you any more! I never did! You’ve made my life hell!”
Tegoshi stood in shock, watching the small, frail figure on the floor in tears, screaming, and desperately clutching a sharp pair of scissors. She was screaming at thin air in English, and he wished he could understand her. All he could understand was that this situation was bad.
He didn’t know what to do. What were you supposed to do if you walked in on this kind of thing? He couldn’t ignore it, and taking his mobile and leaving her like that could make him responsible if she did anything stupid, but he wasn’t sure what he could do.
She focused in on the blade. It was the only freedom she was going to get. She had to do it again; she had to feel that pain, that sense of release.
Tegoshi noticed that change in her. She had suddenly become quiet and was crying less, preparing to cut the deepest that she could, and he wasn’t going to stand there and watch her hack herself to pieces.
“Don’t!” he said, almost shouting and making her jump out of her skin.
She turned, startled, eyes wide as saucers, with tears still streaming down her face.
“Don’t,” Tegoshi repeated, more softly this time, almost a whisper, and walked over to her slowly. He knelt down and pulled her close, holding her as she cried. The scissors slipped from her hands onto the floor.
He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, why she was crying, or why she was cutting, but he didn’t know what else to do that could make any difference. He’d never dealt with anything like this in real life before.
Miyabi wasn’t used to this. She wasn’t used to people being close to her, especially not men. People weren’t that nice to her usually and they certainly weren’t attracted to her because of how dead she looked, so she never went near other people unless it was absolutely necessary, like during duo acts. Those were rare, too.
Somehow, though, Tegoshi was comforting. He was warm and sort of soft and huggable. She felt awful for letting him see her in this state, but it felt nice to feel that somebody actually cared about her. Having somebody there to comfort her as she cried seemed to make the pain slightly less... painful.
Tegoshi was completely confused. He was hugging a girl he barely knew - the girl he had earlier made up his mind to seduce - whilst she was having some sort of breakdown. That plan went out of the window. He couldn’t do that to her now, not after seeing her like this - all broken and tearful.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand her cutting. Why would she do that to herself? It was just wrong. He knew that people did that - he was majoring in human sciences after all, and he had briefly had to research behaviours like that - and he knew that it wasn’t exactly an uncommon practice for people nowadays but he was still shocked, horrified and well… worried. It wasn’t a healthy thing to do. But then again, she didn’t look healthy, or feel healthy. Holding her, all he could feel were her bones.
He couldn’t take advantage of her. She was already a broken, porcelain doll.
It wasn’t like him to act this grown up. He was the baby of the group. Ordinarily he would have let somebody else deal with things as emotional as this, but now he was the only one who could do anything to help.
After what felt like hours, but was just few minutes she tried to speak.
“Tegoshi-san… I’m so sorry,” she whispered, stuttering and tearful.
He wasn’t sure what to say back really. She didn’t really need to apologise, but the whole situation wasn’t good.
“It’s ok,” he replied, softly, stroking her silky hair.
“Is it really?” she pulled away and looked at him, the worst of her crying was over, just tears kept falling.
He was silent and just looked straight into her eyes, again trying to read them.
“What…is it… that is troubling you?”
She looked away.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said robotically, wiping her eyes with her hands and standing up. He grabbed her hand to stop her from walking away.
She panicked at the feel of his soft hands touching hers.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, tearfully.
“It’s none of my business, but you were cutting yourself…” he tried to pull her back.
“Wow, genius,” she snapped, shaking him off, before feeling awful seeing the hurt expression on Tegoshi’s face, “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I didn’t mean that.. It’s just… everything is such a mess…”
She burst into tears all over again, and Tegoshi stood up and pulled her close again, holding her tightly but being as gently as he could.
“What’s a mess Miyabi-chan?” he replied softly, calling her by her first name.
“Everything! My life, my career, absolutely everything…!” she sobbed again.
“It can’t be that bad…”
She just sobbed even more.
“Please don’t tell anybody Tegoshi-san,”
“Look…, Miyabi-chan, I’m not going to tell anybody…. Just… Let me help you? I just don’t want to see you like this.”
“You barely know me,”
“Then I’ll get to know you. I can’t just let you be like this,”
“What? Would it look bad on you?” she spat, before kicking herself for saying that, “God, I’m sorry… it’s just…”
Tegoshi ignored her comment, seeing how messed up she was, and he picked his mobile up off the floor in the corner. “Miyabi-chan, what is your mobile number?”
“Eh?” she wiped her tears again.
“Please give me your mobile number. Then you can contact me if you need somebody to talk to,”
“I can’t talk to you about it,”
“Well… I want you to. So you have no choice,” he used a more stern version of his puppy dog eyes on her.
She looked carefully at the face he made. He looked so innocent and kind, like he genuinely wanted to help. Nobody ever gave her a look like that.
“…..Whatever…fine…”
“I’m going to message you later and you need to reply, okay?”
She nodded tearfully.
“You should go now Tegoshi, or you will be late…”
“I can’t leave you here like this,”
“I’ll be fine,”
“Will you?”
Truthfully, she wanted to tell him not to go; to beg him to hold her closer and never let her go. He was the only person who had shown that kind of care to her, and it was the kind of care she craved desperately. Having him there was the most amazing moment she’d had in a long time and she never wanted it to stop, but she couldn’t say that to him. It would sound ridiculous,”
“Yes I will… just go please… I’m sorry…,” she whispered, forcing a smile on her face.
“You don’t need to be sorry, but make sure you get your wounds bandaged up.”
“I will…”
“Please don’t cut yourself Miyabi-chan. You are so beautiful but you’re ruining it,”
“I’m not beautiful!” she protested.
“Yes… you are… but you just can’t see it… Look, I don’t know what you’re problems are, but I know that you are only seeing negativity, and you need to look at the positive in life… like Kei-chan does,”
Miyabi didn’t say anything, she just looked down. What was the point? There was no positive.
“I have to go now,” Tegoshi said, “But please take care. And reply to my message. I’ll see you later in the week,”
“Okay…,”
He kissed her forehead and then left the building slowly, feeling awful about leaving her alone in such a state. On the way to the station and for the rest of the day everybody remarked on how distracted he seemed. He was hatching a plan to get to know Miyabi better because he couldn’t get her out of his head. If anything happened to her now he would feel responsible for not helping.
Miyabi was curled up on the floor. The voices were still shouting at her, but all she could think of was what happened earlier. Her head was replaying Tegoshi’s kind words, and they played out over the top of everything. She lay there in agony, with stabbing pains in her arms and legs, and her wounds throbbing, sore and still bleeding, but despite all of that, for once in her life it felt like there might just be a glimmer of hope.
See, she thought, There is somebody who cares. Fuck you, voices.