The boy behind the door [always half of a whole] -prologue-
Title: The boy behind the door [always half of a whole]
Fandom: Kinki Kids
Pairing: Tsuyoshi/Koichi
Rating: up to R eventually
Summary: It is Koichi's job to make Tsuyoshi's life go according to plan, but what if he is the very reason that changes everything?
AN: Hello! I am in fact alive. This is the beginning of the fic einery_here bought from me at the arashi_on fundraiser for Japan. At first i wanted to post this in one, but then illnes and exams both got in the way, and I am very sorry for that.
It's also a Adjustement Bureau AU of sorts.
Koichi only faintly remembers what led him here, or how his life turned out to be the way it is now.
He remembers when the men in suits came to visit his house, and how his mother told him that he would have to leave for a very special boarding school because he was a very special child.
Somehow, he had accepted this, and it was only much later that he realised he would probably never see her again.
Koichi lives behind the doors. Some people would like to call them heaven, or a parallel world, but it is really just the other side of the world all the other people live in. Here the men in suits are training Koichi to become one of them. He goes to school here, and he lives here, and he doesn't question any of it, because it's logic - some people have to execute the plan.
The plan is omnipresent. Again it's a concept people have invented different names for, some call it fate, but there is really nothing mysterious to it at all.
The plan is decided by the chairman. Only few ever get to see him, and none of them are allowed to talk about it, but the chairman is undoubtedly the person who keeps the world in its balance, and his tool to do so is the plan, guiding the movements of each being on this planet.
There are a lot of men in suits, and all of them ensure the execution of the chairman's plan to varying degrees by influencing the lives of all the normal people on the other side of the doors. Some people only need a few nudges here and there, but are unassuming enough that they mostly stay on plan. Their existence is plain, and there is no big plan for them.
Other people have more important lives, their plan changes often and so do their decisions, requiring constant monitoring.
Koichi, who works hard and asks for nothing, has been selected to watch over someone, someone important.
At sixteen Koichi is introduced to that person. He is not really formally introduced, because normal people are not supposed to learn of his existence, but his person is shown to him for the first time.
The one person only he can take care of.
That person is Domoto Tsuyoshi.
Domoto Tsuyoshi isn't just someone.
He has been born with a gift which allows him to alter several people's lives, and also the temper and determination to use this gift, but sometimes even those who are meant to become someone of importance need to be shown the way.
At sixteen, Koichi is still a student. He learns how to make himself invisible, and he learns all the little ways in which he can be a distraction, a catalyst to a change of course that is completely unnoticeable yet makes all the difference.
He also studies and catalogues everything there is to know about Tsuyoshi, simply by watching him.
Koichi knows that Tsuyoshi tends to sleep on his left side, he knows his favourite kind of tea and how hot it has to be, the witnesses his relationship with his parents and all his friends, discovers his hobbies and even the vague interests, his hopes and fears.
It is a necessary procedure in order to be able to predict how someone will react to an interference in their lives, and what route to take if you want to plant an idea into someone's head without him noticing.
After half a year of following Tsuyoshi everywhere, Koichi is handed his first official task by his supervisor Higashiyama.
After finishing school just a few months earlier there have not been many opportunities for Koichi to consult with his supervisor, as all of them have their own person to watch, even multiple people for the best of them.
Koichi has learnt many things by himself, left to rely on his own speed and intelligence, as this is said to be the best way to learn, to become attuned to a person the way only you could, without someone's good advice influencing you in your decisions concerning situations where often seconds can decide whether Koichi is going to be successful or not.
What he does, is act as some sort of human coincidence, the glue between all the relationships Tsuyoshi will have to form, the guide to all the places Tsuyoshi has to go to.
Koichi is strangely proud of his work after a while. It might just be the temporary euphoria of a teenager who has has fully come to understand his importance, or the rush of seeing all of it play out before his eyes, but Koichi feels that even though he is not the one responsible for the plan, without him Tsuyoshi could never be the person he is, or the person he will be.
At sixteen it starts with simple things - things all people experience during their puberty, and that help us grow into adults first and people later.
Koichi can make use of small ingredients, like the puddle on the floor on the way to Tsuyoshi's home-room that he slips on and that will send him crashing into his first boyfriend.
Tsuyoshi's orientation is nothing influenced by Koichi or any plan the chairman could have come up, but without this incident he might never have discovered it either.
Koichi witnesses it for the first time then, the charming magic that is watching two people fall in love with each other.
he doesn't know it then, but the plan breaks them apart after ten months. Teenage romance are not made to last, anyway.
Yet it is the first time Koichi experiences something like failure, and it doesn't sit well with him.
It is one of the things he has been prepared for in school, how to handle emotions no matter how illogical they are, but while it all made sense in theory without experiencing it first hand (people cry, people shout, people smile) in reality they are not that easy to deal with.
Distress hits Koichi unawares. He is a tool, has no plan of his own, and as such he is not likely to be exposed to situations that require an emotional response unless it is related to his work, but he is angry and disappointed and doesn't know what to focus his anger on.
He forgets about it and continues working.
At eighteen, during Tsuyoshi's last days of school, Koichi has to take care of an array of important matters in rapid succession.
It feels like an important year for both of them, as it will lead to the decision what Tsuyoshi wants to be doing for the rest of his life.
It feels early to make a decision like this, but it's not like Koichi is in a position to question the plan.
"His decision gives him the direction he will turn in, and a lot of people don't change direction after a while."
"So is it really him deciding if the chairman already knows what is going to happen?" Koichi asks, confused.
"Does it make a difference?"
To Koichi it doesn't.
That year, Koichi puts a Spanish concert guitar into the window of the small neighbourhood shop for musical instruments.
It's a nice instrument, dark brown, polished wood, and just begging to be played.
Tsuyoshi walks past it for a few weeks, and Koichi catches all the secret glances he throws the instrument until he makes a deal with his parents to buy it for him if he is successful with his guitar lessons instead of asking for it as a present for getting into a good university.
The guitar is a catalyst for a few rushed decisions that are nonetheless made with determination, and winning a small talent show in a café a few months later seems to cement these even further.
Tsuyoshi has a talent. He doesn't want to go to university any more.
"What does he want to do?" Koichi asks Higashiyama. He isn't far enough up the hierarchy yet to be equipped with one of the small notebooks that script the plan of each individual in a way only the men in suits have learned to read, and usually he wouldn't ask, wouldn't want to be influenced, but Koichi is suddenly and inexplicably excited.
During the past two years, Tsuyoshi has grown to him. It's only natural, Higashiyama tells him, as it is like living a life they don't get to have through someone else.
That way Tsuyoshi is as much of a tool to Koichi as the boy behind the doors is to him.
Now Koichi feels like they are going places, as if they are moving, and he feels like he's growing wings.
Higashiyama raises his eyebrows at him, but he looks amused, and fond.
"He wants to become an idol."
"That's fantastic!" Koichi burst out, "He will surely make it!"
Koichi has witnessed Tsuyoshi's uncanny determination, and is often still amazed how so much will, and patience and love could reside in a person barely older than eighteen.
It feels like someone told him of his plan already, as if there is no doubt he will follow it
Higashiyama bites his lip.
"That..." he says slowly, "...is not the plan."
The plan decides that only half a year later, on the way to the headquarters of Johnny's management agency, Tsuyoshi is to have an accident.
Tsuyoshi has not been driving for long but insisted on driving there himself, his mother in the passenger seat next to him, his precious and by that time well-played guitar in the back of the car.
They goodbye to Tsuyoshi's father who would have to go to work later and couldn't join them, smiles brilliant on their faces, and Koichi leaves them to receive orders from Higashiyama.
"You follow them, of course," he said, "But take a different route. There is a broken street light on the way, so make sure to run the third red light."
Koichi frowns.
Why would he drive a car in the first place instead of just following Tsuyoshi the way he usually did?
It takes him years to discover the answer, and even longer to accept it.
Koichi had been tricked and thus caused an accident that sent Tsuyoshi's mother to hospital and that would leave Tsuyoshi shell-shocked, scarred for life.
The men in suits do not bear fault. They have a mission, and they carry it out because they are supposed to. They do not think about fault, but necessity, and of changing another man's fate at any cost.
Koichi had known all that, and yet the memory of Tsuyoshi's mother, of shards of glass and of surprised screams, the break marks on the road and the onlookers, all that stayed with him.
To himself, he had never just been the catalyst, he was at fault.
Obviously Tsuyoshi never makes it to the audition.
That day Koichi swears to himself never to hurt him again, that human being that only he could take care of.
Fandom: Kinki Kids
Pairing: Tsuyoshi/Koichi
Rating: up to R eventually
Summary: It is Koichi's job to make Tsuyoshi's life go according to plan, but what if he is the very reason that changes everything?
AN: Hello! I am in fact alive. This is the beginning of the fic einery_here bought from me at the arashi_on fundraiser for Japan. At first i wanted to post this in one, but then illnes and exams both got in the way, and I am very sorry for that.
It's also a Adjustement Bureau AU of sorts.
Koichi only faintly remembers what led him here, or how his life turned out to be the way it is now.
He remembers when the men in suits came to visit his house, and how his mother told him that he would have to leave for a very special boarding school because he was a very special child.
Somehow, he had accepted this, and it was only much later that he realised he would probably never see her again.
Koichi lives behind the doors. Some people would like to call them heaven, or a parallel world, but it is really just the other side of the world all the other people live in. Here the men in suits are training Koichi to become one of them. He goes to school here, and he lives here, and he doesn't question any of it, because it's logic - some people have to execute the plan.
The plan is omnipresent. Again it's a concept people have invented different names for, some call it fate, but there is really nothing mysterious to it at all.
The plan is decided by the chairman. Only few ever get to see him, and none of them are allowed to talk about it, but the chairman is undoubtedly the person who keeps the world in its balance, and his tool to do so is the plan, guiding the movements of each being on this planet.
There are a lot of men in suits, and all of them ensure the execution of the chairman's plan to varying degrees by influencing the lives of all the normal people on the other side of the doors. Some people only need a few nudges here and there, but are unassuming enough that they mostly stay on plan. Their existence is plain, and there is no big plan for them.
Other people have more important lives, their plan changes often and so do their decisions, requiring constant monitoring.
Koichi, who works hard and asks for nothing, has been selected to watch over someone, someone important.
At sixteen Koichi is introduced to that person. He is not really formally introduced, because normal people are not supposed to learn of his existence, but his person is shown to him for the first time.
The one person only he can take care of.
That person is Domoto Tsuyoshi.
Domoto Tsuyoshi isn't just someone.
He has been born with a gift which allows him to alter several people's lives, and also the temper and determination to use this gift, but sometimes even those who are meant to become someone of importance need to be shown the way.
At sixteen, Koichi is still a student. He learns how to make himself invisible, and he learns all the little ways in which he can be a distraction, a catalyst to a change of course that is completely unnoticeable yet makes all the difference.
He also studies and catalogues everything there is to know about Tsuyoshi, simply by watching him.
Koichi knows that Tsuyoshi tends to sleep on his left side, he knows his favourite kind of tea and how hot it has to be, the witnesses his relationship with his parents and all his friends, discovers his hobbies and even the vague interests, his hopes and fears.
It is a necessary procedure in order to be able to predict how someone will react to an interference in their lives, and what route to take if you want to plant an idea into someone's head without him noticing.
After half a year of following Tsuyoshi everywhere, Koichi is handed his first official task by his supervisor Higashiyama.
After finishing school just a few months earlier there have not been many opportunities for Koichi to consult with his supervisor, as all of them have their own person to watch, even multiple people for the best of them.
Koichi has learnt many things by himself, left to rely on his own speed and intelligence, as this is said to be the best way to learn, to become attuned to a person the way only you could, without someone's good advice influencing you in your decisions concerning situations where often seconds can decide whether Koichi is going to be successful or not.
What he does, is act as some sort of human coincidence, the glue between all the relationships Tsuyoshi will have to form, the guide to all the places Tsuyoshi has to go to.
Koichi is strangely proud of his work after a while. It might just be the temporary euphoria of a teenager who has has fully come to understand his importance, or the rush of seeing all of it play out before his eyes, but Koichi feels that even though he is not the one responsible for the plan, without him Tsuyoshi could never be the person he is, or the person he will be.
At sixteen it starts with simple things - things all people experience during their puberty, and that help us grow into adults first and people later.
Koichi can make use of small ingredients, like the puddle on the floor on the way to Tsuyoshi's home-room that he slips on and that will send him crashing into his first boyfriend.
Tsuyoshi's orientation is nothing influenced by Koichi or any plan the chairman could have come up, but without this incident he might never have discovered it either.
Koichi witnesses it for the first time then, the charming magic that is watching two people fall in love with each other.
he doesn't know it then, but the plan breaks them apart after ten months. Teenage romance are not made to last, anyway.
Yet it is the first time Koichi experiences something like failure, and it doesn't sit well with him.
It is one of the things he has been prepared for in school, how to handle emotions no matter how illogical they are, but while it all made sense in theory without experiencing it first hand (people cry, people shout, people smile) in reality they are not that easy to deal with.
Distress hits Koichi unawares. He is a tool, has no plan of his own, and as such he is not likely to be exposed to situations that require an emotional response unless it is related to his work, but he is angry and disappointed and doesn't know what to focus his anger on.
He forgets about it and continues working.
At eighteen, during Tsuyoshi's last days of school, Koichi has to take care of an array of important matters in rapid succession.
It feels like an important year for both of them, as it will lead to the decision what Tsuyoshi wants to be doing for the rest of his life.
It feels early to make a decision like this, but it's not like Koichi is in a position to question the plan.
"His decision gives him the direction he will turn in, and a lot of people don't change direction after a while."
"So is it really him deciding if the chairman already knows what is going to happen?" Koichi asks, confused.
"Does it make a difference?"
To Koichi it doesn't.
That year, Koichi puts a Spanish concert guitar into the window of the small neighbourhood shop for musical instruments.
It's a nice instrument, dark brown, polished wood, and just begging to be played.
Tsuyoshi walks past it for a few weeks, and Koichi catches all the secret glances he throws the instrument until he makes a deal with his parents to buy it for him if he is successful with his guitar lessons instead of asking for it as a present for getting into a good university.
The guitar is a catalyst for a few rushed decisions that are nonetheless made with determination, and winning a small talent show in a café a few months later seems to cement these even further.
Tsuyoshi has a talent. He doesn't want to go to university any more.
"What does he want to do?" Koichi asks Higashiyama. He isn't far enough up the hierarchy yet to be equipped with one of the small notebooks that script the plan of each individual in a way only the men in suits have learned to read, and usually he wouldn't ask, wouldn't want to be influenced, but Koichi is suddenly and inexplicably excited.
During the past two years, Tsuyoshi has grown to him. It's only natural, Higashiyama tells him, as it is like living a life they don't get to have through someone else.
That way Tsuyoshi is as much of a tool to Koichi as the boy behind the doors is to him.
Now Koichi feels like they are going places, as if they are moving, and he feels like he's growing wings.
Higashiyama raises his eyebrows at him, but he looks amused, and fond.
"He wants to become an idol."
"That's fantastic!" Koichi burst out, "He will surely make it!"
Koichi has witnessed Tsuyoshi's uncanny determination, and is often still amazed how so much will, and patience and love could reside in a person barely older than eighteen.
It feels like someone told him of his plan already, as if there is no doubt he will follow it
Higashiyama bites his lip.
"That..." he says slowly, "...is not the plan."
The plan decides that only half a year later, on the way to the headquarters of Johnny's management agency, Tsuyoshi is to have an accident.
Tsuyoshi has not been driving for long but insisted on driving there himself, his mother in the passenger seat next to him, his precious and by that time well-played guitar in the back of the car.
They goodbye to Tsuyoshi's father who would have to go to work later and couldn't join them, smiles brilliant on their faces, and Koichi leaves them to receive orders from Higashiyama.
"You follow them, of course," he said, "But take a different route. There is a broken street light on the way, so make sure to run the third red light."
Koichi frowns.
Why would he drive a car in the first place instead of just following Tsuyoshi the way he usually did?
It takes him years to discover the answer, and even longer to accept it.
Koichi had been tricked and thus caused an accident that sent Tsuyoshi's mother to hospital and that would leave Tsuyoshi shell-shocked, scarred for life.
The men in suits do not bear fault. They have a mission, and they carry it out because they are supposed to. They do not think about fault, but necessity, and of changing another man's fate at any cost.
Koichi had known all that, and yet the memory of Tsuyoshi's mother, of shards of glass and of surprised screams, the break marks on the road and the onlookers, all that stayed with him.
To himself, he had never just been the catalyst, he was at fault.
Obviously Tsuyoshi never makes it to the audition.
That day Koichi swears to himself never to hurt him again, that human being that only he could take care of.