[Arashi] Five Times Arashi Caused a Manager's Breakdown and One Time the Managers Struck Back"
Title: “Five Times Arashi Caused A Manager’s Breakdown and One Time the Managers Struck Back”
Pairing/Group: Arashi/Arashi (probably hints of Ohmiya because um…yea)
JeHols2008 Gift Fic for venus_aurea
Rating: PG-13 for Language
Warnings: Crack, utter crack.
Notes: Thanks to still_ciircee for the idea for this one. I had something else in mind completely, but that will be written at a later date seeing this worm needs an outlet before it eats my brain completely. Blame her.
Summary: Over ten years, the Arashi members have gone through more managers than they have awkward stages.
1. The Tale of Matsumoto
“Matsumoto-san, could you please hurry? We need you on-set in ten minutes,” the timid young man says, a clip board clutched tightly in his shaking hands. It’s his first day, you see, and he’s been assigned to one of the testiest Johnny in the company.
Ninomiya’s snickers can be heard from across the room as Matsumoto turns. There is murder in his eyes and the young manager thinks that possibly today is the last day of his life.
He flinches noticeably, though nothing comes of the murderous glare. Instead, Matsumoto drawls out smoothly: “You’ll learn.”
The young manager lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and nods simply. He’ll take the lashing from upper management about being late if it meant he lived to see another day.
Three weeks later, a blur can be seen running from the Johnny’s Entertainment building spewing apologies and crying profusely. Running full tilt behind him is one Matsumoto Jun, hand clenched around a now shrunken and ruined pair of 1,000,000 yen designer hand-painted jeans.
2. The Little Manager Who Could, aka “The One with the Breasts”
One manager has been with Arashi for, in their minds, forever. (With emphasis on the ‘forever’ because Aiba swears it makes things seem more dramatic that way.) She’s tall, blonde, and the one time Aiba was able to sneak a look into her bag, most definitely a D-cup.
Blonde-san (Aiba had never taken the time to learn her real name. Blonde-san fit well and it was some weird Swedish one anyway that Nino would make fun of him for pronouncing) was assigned to him sometime after the whole girlfriend debacle. In the mind of the higher ups, distracting Aiba with large foreign breasts daily would be enough to keep him away from car girls.
And it did work, at first.
But the attentions of one Aiba Masaki are easily swayed, especially when the knowledge that Blonde-san is engaged is helpfully fed to him by one Ninomiya Kazunari.
The next few weeks are full of puppy-dog eyes and crocodile tears as Aiba tries to ‘get over’ his manager, who spends her days sighing in exasperation and drinking with Ohno’s manager.
Near her breaking point (and close to broke from all of the alcohol imbibed to stay sane), Blonde-san places her notice with the head manager, stating ‘irreconcilable differences’.
This makes Aiba feel like he’s being divorced and sends him into a spiral of almost-depression, because depression would take one look at an Aiba Masaki smile and become the poster child for an acid-trip.
It’s at Blonde-san’s farewell party that the proverbial nail in the coffin is struck. Or, in this case, Ninomiya spikes Aiba’s punch a bit too much and spurs a confession of love from the gangly one.
It’s this heartfelt and very honest speech that makes Blonde-san stay.
Though, the following hug to her breasts nearly commits her to leaving once more.
She’s still around today, though now married and with a cute little Yorkie puppy she can shove at Aiba when distraction is needed.
3. Rip Van Sho-kun’s Manager, or ‘The One Who Slept for a Week Straight’
Sakurai’s manager thinks he has it easy when he first receives his new assignment. Sakurai Sho has the reputation of being slightly neurotic, but at least sane.
And things are easy. For the first few months.
He hears stories from Ninomiya about Sakurai’s previous manager. He brushes them off as a prank, but some of the stories stick. Especially the one about the time Sakurai snapped and didn’t sleep for three days straight, forcing his manager to stay awake to keep him awake lest he fail an exam.
He tries not to dwell on the stories as he’s informed of the fact that on top of Arashi’s busy schedule, Sakurai will be covering the Beijing Olympics for News Zero. It’s just one extra week, right? It can’t be nearly as bad as when Sakurai was still in Keio, right?
What the man didn’t account for was the Summer tour immediately prior, 24 hour Television immediately after, followed by an all new Around Asia tour and a concert in the largest stadium in Japan.
Somewhere around Korea, he gets a text message from a number he no longer recognizes asking “Daddy, when are you coming home?” He brushes it off as a wrong number; the towers in Korea must be messing with his phone and crossing signals.
In Shanghai, he sees a little girl with pigtails at the airport and gets a pang of remembrance, but the rush of trying to help his charge through the mobs and the security occupy his mind and he brushes it off as coincidence. After all, didn’t his sister wear her hair like that at one point?
Finally home to Japan, he finds himself driving the car he forgot he owned back to what he assumed is his apartment. He’s sure the take-out Chinese has grown fur by now, but he’s more keen on curling up in his bed and sleeping more than anything.
He’s confused when the key he has refuses to work, and he stands there for several minutes before pulling out his phone to dial his landlord.
Another message blinks on his phone, and he opens it, finding a sad picture of a little girl with the text “Are you home yet, daddy?” sprawled across the bottom.
Realization hits him like a ton of bricks and he makes his way quickly to the home and family he’d forgotten.
He doesn’t even bother with a formal resignation.
4. When All Else Fails: Drink - The Autobiography of Ohno Satoshi’s Manager
Ohno’s manager has been with them almost as long and Blonde-san, and has the distinguished honor of earning a nickname from Aiba as well: Drink-san.
Drink-san didn’t start out as Drink-san, though. He started out like every other Johnny’s manager: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as it were.
Ohno seemed like an easy match at first. Drink-san was laid-back and easy going, much like Arashi’s leader. They both shared a love of Michael Jackson music, fishing, and sleeping late. Ninomiya also had the sneaking suspicion that Drink-san’s mother still bought his clothes, as well.
No, Drink-san didn’t start out as Drink-san. Really, it was Ninomiya’s fault.
None of the other managers had the foresight to warn the young man of the dangers of unlocked green rooms. They figured it came with the territory. What they didn’t count on was the fact that Drink-san came from the much tamer world of Hello!Project, originally, where the worst thing you could possibly walk in on were bra and panties.
Not one of your charge’s bandmates kneeling between said charges legs and bobbing suspiciously while said charge’s pants are around his ankles.
Had Drink-san been appointed during a Summer Tour, he would have been initiated into the world of Ohmiya SK in a much gentler fashion. Possibly.
The smug grin on Ninomiya’s face as Ohno let out a squeak of recognition probably didn’t help things any.
But instead of fleeing like managers before, Drink-san merely hit the bottle.
He and Ohno are now great drinking buddies.
5. The Un-Manager, or ‘The One with the Super Powers’
In the course of his years in Johnny’s, Ninomiya has had 143 managers. Some lasted longer than others, while some landed in psych wards. One notable case still has to be restrained anytime an Arashi song plays on the radio.
In desperation, the head managers called in their last hope: Ninomiya-mama.
Ninomiya’s contract held a stipulation: “Should no proper manager be located, Ms. Ninomiya shall assume any and all responsibility as acting manager for her son until such a time as a proper replacement can be established.”
Lucky for her, in five years, none has been found.
Little did anyone know that Nino’s Spawn of Satan tendencies actually stemmed from his mother’s side of the family.
All seemed well at first. Ninomiya was behaving, and it had even been a full two weeks since Drink-san had ‘stumbled’ upon an Ohmiya love-fest.
Then Jun started with the teasing.
“Oi, Nino, when is your Mommy going to come pick you up for filming?”
“Nino, I think I saw your Mom with Drink-san last night. Is he your new Daddy? Wouldn’t that make Ohno-kun your brother?”
Jun’s screeches could be heard throughout the building when the painted pants wound up shrunken and ruined in the dryer. It wasn’t his fault Jun’s manager listened to him when he said they needed to be washed in hot water and dried on high heat!
Nino is almost surprised when he’s not scolded by his mother for causing the ruin of Jun’s favorite jeans.
What he doesn’t know, is on his weekly date-night with Ohno (Wednesdays, 8pm, unless they have filming, then it’s later) his mother holds the meetings for “The Society of Arashi Managers for Prevention of Mental Incarceration”.
They’ve had a success rate of 4/5. Sho’s manager was a lost cause from the beginning, anyway.
They meet and plot ways to somehow subtly pay back their charges for their transgressions.
Jun’s newest and longest-lasting manager suggests horrible hair styles and even provides fashion magazines that prove the fact.
Blonde-san starts wearing less revealing clothing. Though, the punishment doesn’t last long as she’s forced to bring the Yorkie to work again to quell the tears.
Sho’s new (though a distinguished vet in the Jimusho with no real family to speak of) manager takes to switching Sho’s coffee with decaf. It only works until Aiba happily suggests Sho start drinking Red Bull when he yawns during one too many filming. Sho’s manager thinks subtly trying to dope him up enough to sleep on Nyquil was a bad idea when he sees a 50,000 word essay titled “The strife of the modern man and his inability to sleep well and really, why does anyone like the color blue? It’s just a random color, red is much nicer, etc.” sitting on his desk the next morning and Sho huddled in a large arm chair rocking back and forth muttering things in a language he’s pretty sure Sho made up.
Drink-san encourages Ohno’s drunk-dialings to Nino, nearly squealing in glee when he can hear either an overly sleepy or overly pissed at interrupting his game Nino on the other end. He also starts carrying a leash on him at all times for when the cameras are off. He looked into a Sheepdog, but his salary didn’t cover things like dog food and obedience training.
Ninomiya’s mother stays just that: his mother. She does embarrassing things like hold up a pair of threadbare boxers for all to see and declaring her son a hobo. She licks off bits of imaginary dirt in highly public places. And the coup de grace comes when she starts bringing a video camera with her everywhere.
Nino is sure one of these days he’ll be able to find her stash of incriminating videos and burn them, but until that day, he’s forced to make nice with the managers.
Pairing/Group: Arashi/Arashi (probably hints of Ohmiya because um…yea)
JeHols2008 Gift Fic for venus_aurea
Rating: PG-13 for Language
Warnings: Crack, utter crack.
Notes: Thanks to still_ciircee for the idea for this one. I had something else in mind completely, but that will be written at a later date seeing this worm needs an outlet before it eats my brain completely. Blame her.
Summary: Over ten years, the Arashi members have gone through more managers than they have awkward stages.
1. The Tale of Matsumoto
“Matsumoto-san, could you please hurry? We need you on-set in ten minutes,” the timid young man says, a clip board clutched tightly in his shaking hands. It’s his first day, you see, and he’s been assigned to one of the testiest Johnny in the company.
Ninomiya’s snickers can be heard from across the room as Matsumoto turns. There is murder in his eyes and the young manager thinks that possibly today is the last day of his life.
He flinches noticeably, though nothing comes of the murderous glare. Instead, Matsumoto drawls out smoothly: “You’ll learn.”
The young manager lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and nods simply. He’ll take the lashing from upper management about being late if it meant he lived to see another day.
Three weeks later, a blur can be seen running from the Johnny’s Entertainment building spewing apologies and crying profusely. Running full tilt behind him is one Matsumoto Jun, hand clenched around a now shrunken and ruined pair of 1,000,000 yen designer hand-painted jeans.
2. The Little Manager Who Could, aka “The One with the Breasts”
One manager has been with Arashi for, in their minds, forever. (With emphasis on the ‘forever’ because Aiba swears it makes things seem more dramatic that way.) She’s tall, blonde, and the one time Aiba was able to sneak a look into her bag, most definitely a D-cup.
Blonde-san (Aiba had never taken the time to learn her real name. Blonde-san fit well and it was some weird Swedish one anyway that Nino would make fun of him for pronouncing) was assigned to him sometime after the whole girlfriend debacle. In the mind of the higher ups, distracting Aiba with large foreign breasts daily would be enough to keep him away from car girls.
And it did work, at first.
But the attentions of one Aiba Masaki are easily swayed, especially when the knowledge that Blonde-san is engaged is helpfully fed to him by one Ninomiya Kazunari.
The next few weeks are full of puppy-dog eyes and crocodile tears as Aiba tries to ‘get over’ his manager, who spends her days sighing in exasperation and drinking with Ohno’s manager.
Near her breaking point (and close to broke from all of the alcohol imbibed to stay sane), Blonde-san places her notice with the head manager, stating ‘irreconcilable differences’.
This makes Aiba feel like he’s being divorced and sends him into a spiral of almost-depression, because depression would take one look at an Aiba Masaki smile and become the poster child for an acid-trip.
It’s at Blonde-san’s farewell party that the proverbial nail in the coffin is struck. Or, in this case, Ninomiya spikes Aiba’s punch a bit too much and spurs a confession of love from the gangly one.
It’s this heartfelt and very honest speech that makes Blonde-san stay.
Though, the following hug to her breasts nearly commits her to leaving once more.
She’s still around today, though now married and with a cute little Yorkie puppy she can shove at Aiba when distraction is needed.
3. Rip Van Sho-kun’s Manager, or ‘The One Who Slept for a Week Straight’
Sakurai’s manager thinks he has it easy when he first receives his new assignment. Sakurai Sho has the reputation of being slightly neurotic, but at least sane.
And things are easy. For the first few months.
He hears stories from Ninomiya about Sakurai’s previous manager. He brushes them off as a prank, but some of the stories stick. Especially the one about the time Sakurai snapped and didn’t sleep for three days straight, forcing his manager to stay awake to keep him awake lest he fail an exam.
He tries not to dwell on the stories as he’s informed of the fact that on top of Arashi’s busy schedule, Sakurai will be covering the Beijing Olympics for News Zero. It’s just one extra week, right? It can’t be nearly as bad as when Sakurai was still in Keio, right?
What the man didn’t account for was the Summer tour immediately prior, 24 hour Television immediately after, followed by an all new Around Asia tour and a concert in the largest stadium in Japan.
Somewhere around Korea, he gets a text message from a number he no longer recognizes asking “Daddy, when are you coming home?” He brushes it off as a wrong number; the towers in Korea must be messing with his phone and crossing signals.
In Shanghai, he sees a little girl with pigtails at the airport and gets a pang of remembrance, but the rush of trying to help his charge through the mobs and the security occupy his mind and he brushes it off as coincidence. After all, didn’t his sister wear her hair like that at one point?
Finally home to Japan, he finds himself driving the car he forgot he owned back to what he assumed is his apartment. He’s sure the take-out Chinese has grown fur by now, but he’s more keen on curling up in his bed and sleeping more than anything.
He’s confused when the key he has refuses to work, and he stands there for several minutes before pulling out his phone to dial his landlord.
Another message blinks on his phone, and he opens it, finding a sad picture of a little girl with the text “Are you home yet, daddy?” sprawled across the bottom.
Realization hits him like a ton of bricks and he makes his way quickly to the home and family he’d forgotten.
He doesn’t even bother with a formal resignation.
4. When All Else Fails: Drink - The Autobiography of Ohno Satoshi’s Manager
Ohno’s manager has been with them almost as long and Blonde-san, and has the distinguished honor of earning a nickname from Aiba as well: Drink-san.
Drink-san didn’t start out as Drink-san, though. He started out like every other Johnny’s manager: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as it were.
Ohno seemed like an easy match at first. Drink-san was laid-back and easy going, much like Arashi’s leader. They both shared a love of Michael Jackson music, fishing, and sleeping late. Ninomiya also had the sneaking suspicion that Drink-san’s mother still bought his clothes, as well.
No, Drink-san didn’t start out as Drink-san. Really, it was Ninomiya’s fault.
None of the other managers had the foresight to warn the young man of the dangers of unlocked green rooms. They figured it came with the territory. What they didn’t count on was the fact that Drink-san came from the much tamer world of Hello!Project, originally, where the worst thing you could possibly walk in on were bra and panties.
Not one of your charge’s bandmates kneeling between said charges legs and bobbing suspiciously while said charge’s pants are around his ankles.
Had Drink-san been appointed during a Summer Tour, he would have been initiated into the world of Ohmiya SK in a much gentler fashion. Possibly.
The smug grin on Ninomiya’s face as Ohno let out a squeak of recognition probably didn’t help things any.
But instead of fleeing like managers before, Drink-san merely hit the bottle.
He and Ohno are now great drinking buddies.
5. The Un-Manager, or ‘The One with the Super Powers’
In the course of his years in Johnny’s, Ninomiya has had 143 managers. Some lasted longer than others, while some landed in psych wards. One notable case still has to be restrained anytime an Arashi song plays on the radio.
In desperation, the head managers called in their last hope: Ninomiya-mama.
Ninomiya’s contract held a stipulation: “Should no proper manager be located, Ms. Ninomiya shall assume any and all responsibility as acting manager for her son until such a time as a proper replacement can be established.”
Lucky for her, in five years, none has been found.
Little did anyone know that Nino’s Spawn of Satan tendencies actually stemmed from his mother’s side of the family.
All seemed well at first. Ninomiya was behaving, and it had even been a full two weeks since Drink-san had ‘stumbled’ upon an Ohmiya love-fest.
Then Jun started with the teasing.
“Oi, Nino, when is your Mommy going to come pick you up for filming?”
“Nino, I think I saw your Mom with Drink-san last night. Is he your new Daddy? Wouldn’t that make Ohno-kun your brother?”
Jun’s screeches could be heard throughout the building when the painted pants wound up shrunken and ruined in the dryer. It wasn’t his fault Jun’s manager listened to him when he said they needed to be washed in hot water and dried on high heat!
Nino is almost surprised when he’s not scolded by his mother for causing the ruin of Jun’s favorite jeans.
What he doesn’t know, is on his weekly date-night with Ohno (Wednesdays, 8pm, unless they have filming, then it’s later) his mother holds the meetings for “The Society of Arashi Managers for Prevention of Mental Incarceration”.
They’ve had a success rate of 4/5. Sho’s manager was a lost cause from the beginning, anyway.
They meet and plot ways to somehow subtly pay back their charges for their transgressions.
Jun’s newest and longest-lasting manager suggests horrible hair styles and even provides fashion magazines that prove the fact.
Blonde-san starts wearing less revealing clothing. Though, the punishment doesn’t last long as she’s forced to bring the Yorkie to work again to quell the tears.
Sho’s new (though a distinguished vet in the Jimusho with no real family to speak of) manager takes to switching Sho’s coffee with decaf. It only works until Aiba happily suggests Sho start drinking Red Bull when he yawns during one too many filming. Sho’s manager thinks subtly trying to dope him up enough to sleep on Nyquil was a bad idea when he sees a 50,000 word essay titled “The strife of the modern man and his inability to sleep well and really, why does anyone like the color blue? It’s just a random color, red is much nicer, etc.” sitting on his desk the next morning and Sho huddled in a large arm chair rocking back and forth muttering things in a language he’s pretty sure Sho made up.
Drink-san encourages Ohno’s drunk-dialings to Nino, nearly squealing in glee when he can hear either an overly sleepy or overly pissed at interrupting his game Nino on the other end. He also starts carrying a leash on him at all times for when the cameras are off. He looked into a Sheepdog, but his salary didn’t cover things like dog food and obedience training.
Ninomiya’s mother stays just that: his mother. She does embarrassing things like hold up a pair of threadbare boxers for all to see and declaring her son a hobo. She licks off bits of imaginary dirt in highly public places. And the coup de grace comes when she starts bringing a video camera with her everywhere.
Nino is sure one of these days he’ll be able to find her stash of incriminating videos and burn them, but until that day, he’s forced to make nice with the managers.