Under the Dust 1/3
Title: Under the Dust
Beta: snowing_inside
Pairing: Kame/Jin, background Ryo/Meisa, brief mention of Hayato/Ryu
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 22k
Warnings: mentions of institutional abuse and suicide, probably too many dick jokes
Summary: Jin comes to Japan to see and document some lesser known abandoned places. Along with a fellow urban explorer Kame and a couple of friends, Jin might get to see more than he signed up for.
Author's Notes: Written for kame_chameleon during pt_pirates 2018 Hide and Seek Exchange. Heavily inspired by my random marathon of watching urban exploring videos on YouTube.
Kame is entering what must have been quite a nice, cozy kitchen once upon a time, when his phone buzzes with an incoming call in the back pocket of his stylish, ripped jeans. It’s been set on quiet all day so the only indication someone is trying to reach him is the low vibration, and he can easily ignore it.
He’s too distracted by the things he sees. Looking around, taking in all that’s there as well as all that’s been already lost in time, he makes sure to film every single detail of the place. The kitchen cabinets are still holding together, with only about a half of the door either having fallen off completely or teetering on the last corroded hinge. It won’t take long and all the inside shelves will be exposed to the curious eye of people who will discover this place later, to insect and rodents seeking whatever might be still edible in the few fading boxes sitting on the unsteady racks, and to the elements finding their way inside the house through broken windows and the roof that partially caved in sometime last winter.
Kame is glad he has made it over here just in time to document it all. The perfect line between what this place used to be and its inevitable end.
The whole area has been bought by a big developer firm whose plans for this place don’t include a small, pretty much ordinary house built here at the time of Kame’s great-grandparents.
But for people like Kame, places like this are anything but ordinary.
Each one of such places tells a story of the life that has been. Of people once having lived that life.
People who cooked in this kitchen, a family that gathered around the kitchen table that’s now standing in the middle of the room covered in dust and mold and a few precisely arranged objects someone put there recently to get a nice shoot for their Instagram; those people and their ordinary morning routines and Sunday lunches, birthday parties, and everyday little things. The people are gone, but what’s left behind has a story to tell.
“This is amazing, guys,” Kame tells to no one in particular. He slowly walks over and films a close-up of one of the half-open cabinets. There are cups and plates, none of them broken, and a couple of random spices and sauces that are better left inside their boxes and glasses. No one has actually cooked in this kitchen for over thirty years, possibly longer. “You know how much I love cooking,” Kame goes on, checking the fading colors and writings on the labels. He can recognize some of the ingredients, by their name mostly, because the packaging has changed over the years. “And here I am, in this kitchen, thinking of what I would’ve possibly cooked if I had been here three decades ago…”
There’s a can of something that looks like beans, but the top is all bulging up and Kame doesn’t dare touching it. He steps back, turns slowly around to find more treasures left here in this amazing time capsule.
Through the doorframe on the opposite wall, he can see glimpses of lights as his friends are moving through the other room. From the look of it, it’s a living room with two doors leading to small bedrooms.
Kame can’t wait to see it all.
“Hey, Kamenashi! You must see this!”
The camera in Kame’s hand shakes as he takes a sharp turn after the voice. He’ll need to edit this part out later. Or not.
“What?”
His heartbeat actually speeds up as a rush of curiosity and excitement runs through his body. He recognizes the well-known feeling and basks in it for a second. It’s one of the reasons why he does this, why he loves doing this. The moments when you find something incredible under piles of thrash or covered in decades worth of layers of dust.
He wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the whole world.
“Man, this is incredible!” Another voice.
Kame hurries over to the living room, leaving the rest of the fouling contents of the kitchen cabinets behind. He hasn’t even checked the old fridge with a single magnet stuck on its rusty door, an old souvenir from Mt. Fuji.
“What do you have here?” Kame asks as he enters the room.
His friends are huddled around a low cabinet that seems to be holding together by some magical trick rather than the laws of physics. The large window on the front wall is shattered which leaves the living room exposed to weather changes. There’s an old swallow nest up in the corner, and the only reminder of the birds once using it is the mess all over the floor underneath.
Kame makes a little mental note to film a close up of both later.
“There are pictures of the family that lived here.”
Meisa steps aside to make room for Kame. She’s got her ‘EXPLORE WITH MEisa’ hoodie on, her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her camera seems to be permanently glued to her hand. There’s no doubt she’s getting some cool pictures for her Instagram today. Kame can tell because even if only a half of the footage he’s filmed so far could be used for his new video, it would still be worth every mile they had to drive to get here.
“Look,” Pi joins in with his own excitement, still hunched up over the shelf and slowly recording every inch, every detail. “They even had a dog.”
“We should check the backyard later,” Meisa suggests.
“So cool.” Kame quickly points the camera to the fading black and white family pictures carefully lined up on the top of the cabinet. He’s careful not to touch anything, partly aware of the possible mold contamination and partly worried the whole structure might collapse if someone as much as breathed out in the wrong direction around it. There are pictures in frames as well as small knick-knack, things that used to be a part of people’s everyday life. A dusty case with a pair of glasses, a box of matches with a few unused still inside, a decorative candlestick…
“Wait until you see this,” Meisa calls from a couple of feet away, pointing at yet another cabinet with yet another picture frame. This one holds a photo of a woman in her forties, presumably, her dark hair carefully combed up and held by an ornate comb in an old fashioned hairstyle not many wear these days. She seems to be looking past the camera, at someone or something. She’s not beautiful in a traditional sense, but there’s something about the gap in time between when the photo was taken and today that makes her look fine and delicate. Life couldn’t have been easy back in the day for whoever lived in this house, but for the single day of the photo session, this woman became someone else.
“Look at the details on her kimono. Here.” Kame points a finger at the picture, not quite touching it. He’s filming it all, talking to both his friends and his viewers at the same time. “It must’ve cost a fucking fortune.”
“My dad bought one of those things for my mom for their wedding anniversary a few years back,” Pi says. Then he points at the picture. “Maybe her man did the same.”
“Oh, a declaration of love, I like that,” Kame says.
“You have no idea.” Meisa stands between the two of them and snaps a quick picture that will probably never make it past their private collection of material taken during their exploring. “The guy loved his wife more than anything. She died when she was forty two, or something.”
“So probably around the time this picture was taken,” Kame muses. He moves the camera from the picture to Meisa, waiting for her to continue the story. Somehow, Meisa always knows all the juicy backstories about the places they visit. She says she ‘has her sources’, and at first Kame kind of thought she was making it all up, but she mostly isn’t. Most of the stuff she talks about is legit and can be proved as such.
Well, not so much the ghost stories she loves to tell…
“Yeah, pretty much,” Meisa agrees. “I think she was sick. The guy never left this house after she passed away, and by ‘never’ I actually mean never. His kids brought him groceries and took care of him. After he was gone, they just left the house as it was.”
“They could’ve sold it,” Pi suggests. No doubt that’s what he would do.
“Not according to the last will. The house is not to be touched as long as there’s a family connection to the couple.”
Pi snorts at that. “So, let’s say, six generations down the road, there will be someone owning this place but they still won’t be able to do anything with it?”
“Exactly. There’s a lawsuit currently open, and the developer who got this place probably won’t be allowed to tear this all down, even though they would love to.”
“What the hell?” Kame shifts the camera back to the picture again. He wants to make sure people watching his video later will ask the same questions he’s asking now. Why would anyone want his family to own a ruin taken over by nature and all kinds of mold?
Meisa’s face lights up. Like she’s been waiting for that exact reaction all along. “Because they are still here,” she says with a grin. “Or at least he is.”
“Oh, shut up!” Pi rolls his eyes. “We said no ghost bullshit this time.”
“It’s no bullshit. The picture here?” She points a finger at the portrait. “It moves from room to room. You can check the videos of other urban explorers who have been here, and you’ll clearly see the same photo being placed somewhere else in each of them.”
“Yeah, because some assholes can’t keep their hands to themselves and have to move stuff around for fucking ‘aesthetic’. Give me a break.” Pi is not buying any of it.
“Maybe,” Meisa shrugs, “But when my source was here, the frame was sitting on a night stand in the master bedroom, and I can vouch that the person isn’t one of the assholes you’re talking about.”
“Well, then someone was here between then and now and moved it.”
While the two bicker on about stupid kids vandalizing abandoned places and the pros and cons of the existence of ghosts, Kame studies the woman’s face.
Could she be a ghost? Or could she be a reason why someone else became a ghost? To roam the place where they had lived together, shared a life and raised kids?
A light breeze touches the nape of Kame’s neck, and a shiver runs down his spine.
He doesn’t remember pulling his hood down, but he must have at some point, because his neck is exposed to the sudden chill.
He stops recording and shakes his head.
He’s not buying any ghost stories either.
His phone buzzes again. He ignores it just like the first time. There’s still a few interesting rooms and corners to explore around here and he’s not letting anyone distract him.
“Honestly, I don’t care if you believe me or not,” Meisa finally says. “It’s not going to change my mind about the story being pretty cool.”
“Because you wish you could go full-on Sixth Sense,” Pi makes a grimace, and his voice quivers on purpose as he continues in a mocking tone, “I can see dead people.”
“I don’t need to see dead people or ghosts or whatever to believe there’s a strange energy lingering at some of the places we go to. Capitalism and consumer oriented lifestyle have changed people from being ‘just people’ to being ‘people and things’,” she stresses the two with air quotes, “So when there are so many personal belongings left behind somewhere, it’s easy to imagine a part of the person those things once belonged to is stuck at the place as well. Kind of unable to detach itself from the material possessions.”
“Then how do you explain like, medieval ghosts?” Pi narrows his eyes.
“The really old ghosts are stuck to places that meant something to them, rather than objects. So, in a way, the same rationale, just different means.”
“Oh dammit, could you repeat that on camera?” Kame promptly switches the camera on, cursing himself he hasn’t had it on the whole time.
“What?” Meisa rolls her eyes while next to her, Pi is not even trying to muffle giggles. Of course, his camera has been on the whole time. It’s gonna cost Kame a drink, or ten, to get the footage from Pi so he could use it in his video.
“Come on, for the record.”
Meisa hesitates, and that alone should tell Kame he’s not getting a repeat of her ghost philosophy, but he’s two seconds too late to realize it, because Meisa is already leaning close to his camera, her face all serious grimace and warm brown eyes wide open, and when she speaks up, her voice is fake deep and snappy. “Ghosts. Are. Fucking. Real. Get. Over. It.”
And that’s it.
Pi is laughing so hard he needs to bend over, Meisa gives Kame’s camera the finger, and Kame sighs and groans and wonders why he’s still hanging out with these two.
“I’m getting it on a t-shirt,” Kame warns in a fake attempt to sound grumpy, but really, with two other people lost in an uncontrollable fit of giggles, it’s hard not to join in.
“Oh, you totally should!” Pi agrees.
“It’s totally copyrighted,” Meisa deadpans.
“Says who?”
“The ghost behind you.”
This time it’s Kame flipping her off, but as soon as Meisa throws her head back with laughter, Kame gives the space behind him a quick glance anyway. Just in case. The tiny hairs at the nape of his neck are still up for some reason, but he decides it must be the late afternoon breeze coming through the broken window.
-
They spend two more hours in the house and its backyard, eventually finding also a kennel with its roof fallen in and its rotten walls overgrown with weeds. A small dirty bowl filled with rain water and moss is hiding under one of the planks. A smudge on its side indicates there used to be a picture of a dog paw at some point. The dog’s name scribbled on it can’t be deciphered anymore. Meisa takes a picture, crouching and nearly toppling over to get the angles and light all right. She posts the final photo on her Instagram right away.
Overall, however, there’s nothing much left outside of the house itself, which makes a nice contrast to all the preserved treasures inside.
It’s almost midnight when they get back to the city and Meisa drops Kame off at the entrance to the building where he lives. Pi was the first to say goodnight, even though Kame suspects he will be up all night sorting through the pictures and footage recorded today.
The little house in the middle of nowhere was like a museum. Like a window back in time. It’s places like these Kame loves the most, but he can get just as much excited about closed down amusement parks, abandoned industrial spaces, or communal buildings, such as hospitals or schools. He and Pi were in some pretty cool abandoned hospitals in the past, and there’s still so many out there that Kame wants to document before someone decides it’s time to tear it all down and build something new and modern, something that will make money.
In general, people lack imagination. They think they need to destroy everything and build something new in order to make profit.
Kame?
Kame has built a quite comfortable life for himself by traveling around, filming places, and allowing his subscribers and anyone else who wants to see to take a peek into the lives long gone.
And he loves every minute of it.
He loves it so much that he’s now doing the very same thing he expects Pi to be doing-he’s had a shower, made himself a coffee, and is sitting on the sofa in his tiny living room, his laptop in his lap and his two year old dachshund comfortably curled up against his thigh and every so often quietly whimpering in her sleep.
That’s Kame’s world.
One day, he plans to expand it, little by little. He and Meisa previously talked about a possible trip to Malaysia or Thailand to do some exploring there. And if that goes well… who knows?
For now, though, he takes life one day at time, and tonight it means going through the pictures taken in a small abandoned house miles aways from the nearest city.
He’s just reached the part of his camera feed where the pictures of the kitchen start, when a pop-up window appears at the bottom of his screen, announcing an incoming video call from Pi.
Kame accepts the call and in no time Pi’s sleep deprived but somewhat still suspiciously bright face takes over the laptop screen.
“Yo! Check your phone!” Pi blurts out. The squeak in his voice wakes Ran-chan up and she sleepily looks up, her tiny pink tongue stuck between her teeth and poking out of her mouth. Kame glances down at her and chuckles, petting her head.
“What’s going on?”
It’s not the first time Pi calls him at such a goddamn hour, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. Kame thinks he should’ve gone to bed when he had a chance.
“Check. Your. Phone.”
It makes Kame wonder where his phone is. He’s been so busy with his camera that he completely forgot about everything else.
After a moment of rummaging around, his phone is finally in his hand. There’s six missed calls.
Kame’s breath hitches in his throat. What the hell.
A quick look tells him it’s neither his family or any of his friends. An unknown number.
“Seriously, why do you even have that thing when you don’t bother picking up?” Pi goes on, his weird excitement not waning.
A frown crosses Kame’s forehead. “Was it you?”
“You wish!” Finally, Pi calms down enough to speak in whole sentences that aren’t about Kame’s obvious inability to be social. “Just Jin is coming to Japan and wants to meet with us!” Ran-chan is once again disturbed from her sleep by Pi’s voice, and fidgets around until her head is pressed between Kame’s ass and the backrest of the couch. It can’t be comfortable, but she’s a dog, so what can Kame know about it… “He tried to reach you but then called me, and me-unlike someone-actually answered the phone.”
Kame rolls his shoulders back. “Just-who?”
“Oh, come on! Jin Akanishi? The dude from the States who did the series about amusement parks a while ago? We watched it all in, like, two days!”
Kame rakes his memory until he’s able to match Pi’s description with an actual visual memory. And then he feels stupid, because yes, Just Jin is a pretty big name in the online urban exploring community, not just in the States. As far as Kame can remember at the moment, Jin and his crew have done some exploring also in Europe, though Kame hasn’t watched much of the material filmed there.
“Okay, so he’s coming here.”
“Yes.”
“And he wants to meet with us.”
On the screen, Pi nods so vigorously his neck might snap. “Yes!”
“Does he also want to do some exploring or…?”
“Yes! Yes! YES!” Pi is bouncing on his bed and for a moment Kame can’t see much else but colorful smudges of Pi’s flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt with a cartoon ghost printed on the front. “That’s like, the best thing. I can’t believe he knows about us… you… well, us.”
Kame fakes nonchalance with a shrug, because he wants to keep his cool, and all, but deep down… damn, his YouTube channel must be doing better than he’s thought, considering someone like Jin Akanishi actually noticed him and went the extra mile to contact him-fine, to contact Pi, because Kame is basically an asocial, which is pretty funny, given his livelihood depends on social media. He feels a grin slowly spread across his face.
Pi immediately catches the difference. “Now, that’s the reaction I want to see.”
“This is so cool!”
“I know!” Pi laughs.
“So fucking cool!” Kame’s voice raises. Ran-chan huffs and tries to burrow herself further into the couch.
“And you almost missed it.”
At Pi’s words, the whole realization hits Kame hard. He almost missed it indeed. All those missed calls from an unknown number. An overseas number. Jin has been calling him from the other side of the world, and Kame had his phone vibrate against his ass instead of picking it up.
Sure, he was busy. Busy exploring and discovering and filming. Talking rubbish about ghosts.
“He could’ve sent an email,” Kame says after a moment. “Where did he even get my number. Or yours?”
“Probably from Ryo?” Pi shrugs and leans back against the headboard of his bed. Kame can see a bag of chips tossed on the empty space next to the spot Pi is sitting at.
“Who is Ryo?”
“A guy Jin often does abandoned with? Also a guy I’ve known online for years, ever since we talked about One Piece in this Crunchyroll group…”
Kame chuckles. “Seriously?”
“Hey, don’t judge me. I’m pretty sure you’ve got some weird friends on baseball forums in the depths of the dark web.”
“There’s no such a t-you asshole! I don’t need to talk about baseball online. And I’m pretty sure the baseball discussions on the dark web have nothing to do with the game.”
Pi wiggles his eyebrows. “Now I’m curious.”
“And I’m disturbed,” Kame mutters. What the hell are they even talking about? Anyway. “So, you know this Ryo guy. And he knows Jin.”
“What can I say, it’s a fucking small world.”
“Do you know when they are coming?”
-
“Dude! This is sick! We’re in fucking Japan!” Ryo bounces through the arrival hall at Narita, a camera on a stick in his hand as he films Jin who is filming him back, recording invaluable footage he can use later to embarrass Ryo. Not that Ryo will care one bit. They still need to pick up their bags, but so far all the shop windows and fast food restaurants with exotic menus have proved to be too much of a distraction. Ryo has already managed to buy an ‘I ❤ JAPAN’ baseball cap and Jin doesn’t know whether to feel embarrassed while publicly acknowledging Ryo’s presence, or laugh at how ridiculous this all is.
Ryo is right though.
They are in fucking Japan.
He quickly turns his camera to film himself. “Guys! We’re in fucking Japan!” He laughs and people are watching him, watching both of them, but Ryo doesn’t care and Jin doesn’t either.
They both film everything they see, from the architecture of the place to all those unknown cartoon characters displayed at every step, trying to sell them coffee and snacks and bags, but also cheap accomodation and guided tours to all the well-known historical sites and tourist traps.
Jin thinks they could fit a bit of those into their schedule here as well, but first thing first.
As they finally pick their bags, Jin calls Yamapi. After the first unsuccessful attempts to reach Kamenashi, he decided to communicate with Yamapi. At least Yamapi doesn’t ignore phone calls, and since this whole trip is kind of a spur of the moment thing, Jin doesn’t want to waste time exchanging emails back and forth when finalizing details on the phone is so much faster, the completely different time-zones regardless.
Eventually Jin has to drag Ryo out of the manga section of a bookstore or they could easily get stuck at the airport forever.
They meet Yamapi and Kame outside the main hall. Japan gives them a warm, sunny welcome. It’s weird to see Ryo and Yamapi greet each other like a couple of old friends who have grown up next door, and not someone who met on an ancient online site for nerds. While those two fall right off into a chatter Jin knows nothing about, he and Kamenashi are left to their own.
“I’m Jin. Hi.”
Kame smiles. “Kame. Well, Kazuya. But... Kame is fine.”
His accent has a soft touch to it, but that’s something Jin has already known. He’s done all his homework and watched Kame’s videos, well, most of them anyway. And he really, really wants to see it all with his own eyes. Japan has got some of the best preserved abandoned places out there, hands down. Most of them aren’t vandalized either, which is something Jin doesn’t often come across back at home. If there’s anything more merciless than the teeth of time gnawing at stuff left behind, then it must be teenagers and assholes who can’t keep their hands to themselves and have the urge to leave their mark on everything, like a dog pissing at every corner to show all other dogs they aren’t the first coming across that very spot.
Sure, some places look cool with a bit of graffiti here and there, but most places… not so much.
“Nice to meet you, Kame is fine,” Jin jokes, because it’s easy.
And it seems he’s not the only one seeing it that way, because Kame fires right back at him, “You too, Jin, Just Jin. And welcome to Japan.”
They don’t shake hands because neither of them offers first.
Instead, Jin flashed out his camera that’s never too far from his reach, and starts filming again. “Hey, what’s up, Jinsplorers? Me and Nishikido have finally met our impromptu guides, Kame and Yamapi-Yamapi is currently too busy revisiting old Crunchyroll times with Ryo, so it’s just me and Kame here. Wanna say hi to my Jinsplorers?” He turns the objective at Kame who looks like a deer caught in headlights for a second.
“Your Jinsp-what?”
Jin beams. “Jinsplorers! People following my channel and my Instagram. It’s a mash-up of ‘Jin’ and ‘explorers’ because they are all exploring all these amazing places with me.” He looks into the camera. “That’s you, guys, am I right? All my amazing Jinsplorers. We’ve been together to some insane abandoned places, and now we’re here in Japan to see more of that shit. And you all will love it, I can feel it.”
“I can think of a place or two I want to show you,” Kame offers.
“One or two? How about all of it?”
The enthusiasm makes Kame laugh. Good. Jin is laughing as well.
“You want to see everything?”
“You have no idea.” Jin nods. Then he finally turns to Ryo and Yamapi. “Hey you two, are you done fangirling over each other? I want to see Japan, not just this parking lot. And Kame here just promised to take us everywhere.”
“I so did not!”
It’s only when they get in the car, Yamapi behind the wheel with Ryo beating everyone to take the passenger seat, and Jin and Kame sitting in the back, that Ryo finally snaps out of the haze he seemed to be in since the moment their plane touched the runaway. He fidgets around and looks over his shoulder at Kame.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
Jin’s eyes roll back. Maybe it was for the best when Ryo was busy discussing manga and other shit with Yamapi, after all.
“Who?”
It can’t be a language barrier. Kame is just genuinely confused.
Yamapi, on the other hand, is snorting and giggling, and making all sorts of weird noises, because apparently, his brain has caught up with Ryo’s stupid question way before Kame’s. When also Kame realizes what’s this all about, his eyes widen and he quickly shakes his head.
“You mean Meisa? No, no, she’s not my… she’s not…”
Jin kicks the back of Ryo’s seat. “Happy now? You guys should know Ryo only agreed to join me on this trip because he really wanted to meet your friend Meisa. He doesn’t care about the cool abandoned places here at all.”
“Shut up, Akanishi!” Ryo flings an arm back in an attempt to hit Jin, but he misses by a couple of inches, only adding fuel to Jin’s wicked amusement.
“He couldn’t stop talking about her all the way down here.”
“That’s so not true. And besides, I thought she and Kamenashi were a thing.”
Jin reaches out and pokes Ryo’s shoulder. “That didn’t stop you from fantasizing about her.”
Now Yamapi is laughing out loud, his fingers curled around the steering wheel as the last resort preventing him from clapping his hands. “This is priceless. Meisa will love to hear it. Her and Kamenashi dating! That would be something.”
“Oh please, like I would ever be interested,” Kame snorts.
“Can we just go see some abandoned shit now?” Ryo groans and sits straight in his seat, the security belt clipped tight across his chest and eyes glued to the front window.
“Now we’re talking,” Jin says.
“So, where is it going to be?” Yamapi asks when the whole car finally calms down. “Your hotel, Meisa’s place, or something abandoned?”
Ryo groans again and slides a little lower in his seat.
-
Instead of going straight to do the nearest abandoned place, even though Jin looks like he wouldn’t mind at all, or making Ryo’s unspoken wish of meeting Meisa come true, Yamapi drives the car first to the address of Jin and Ryo’s hotel, and as soon as the two leave their bags in their rooms, they are on the move again, this time to find a place to eat and do some obligatory sightseeing.
It turns out Ryo loves more about Japan than just manga. He takes a ton of pictures and pretty much spams his own Instagram and Twitter, and then laughs at people leaving him comments that range from, “Enjoy the trip and say hi to Jin!” to, “WTF you’re in Japan and I didn’t know??” to, “I’ve followed you for abandoned, not this tourist crap, bye,” to, “You guys should do a fan meet-up when you’re here!”
When Ryo reads the last one aloud, Jin seems to be interested in giving it a serious thought.
Kame is a bit in awe, and while he wouldn’t admit it aloud, perhaps a little envious, too. Jin is a real superstar. He’s one step from having people recognize him and approach him on the street. No one would probably recognize Kame, but that’s fine, too. He’s not in this for fame and fortune. He’s just doing what he likes, and somehow it pays the bills. It’s pretty neat.
They are sitting in a small restaurant that is a little aside from the usual evening rush hour, eating noodles and drinking everything from coke to beer.
There’s not a moment of silence and it’s almost like they have all known each other for years. It’s easy to find a topic to chat about when you all love the same thing.
Jin and Ryo have tons of stories about all sorts of places they’ve visited, and their enthusiasm and love for all things abandoned seeps through their every word.
“So you’ve always wanted to do this?” Kame asks later, when it’s just him and Jin at the table because Ryo excused himself to the bathroom and Yamapi is ordering more drinks at the bar.
Jin’s comfortably sprawled in his seat, a little slumped down, his long fingers playing with a straw left at the table after Yamapi took their empty glasses away. He raises a brow. “Sit here with you? Probably not, given I didn’t really know about you until recently.” A smirk is tugging at the corner of his lips.
Kame wants to smack him. “Well, I didn’t know about you until last week.”
“Ouch.” Jin drops the straw. “You’ve been doing abandoned for two years-”
“Two years and three months.”
“-and you seriously didn’t hear about me? You must have been doing something wrong.” Jin narrows his eyes.
“We’ve got our own urban exploring legends here, you know. Just last October I even got to do a location with Tackey&Tsubasa. They took me to Fukushima.” And it was pretty much the highlight of Kame’s career so far. Tackey&Tsubasa were documenting decaying structures around Japan already back in a day when Kame was still sitting in his high school class and pretending he could understand math.
“Wait,” Jin perks up, “You know Tackey&Tsubasa? Like, know know them?”
Jin’s interest is suddenly palpable in the air between them, and as the feeling settles down, it warms Kame’s insides a little bit. He may not be a superstar, but he can still impress Jin a bit. A second hand bewilderment.
“A little. Yeah. I think they are in Cuba right now, kicking off their South American adventure. Tackey mentioned he wanted to drive down across the west coast and see what they can find along the way.” After having all but paved the road for a whole new generation of young Japanese urban explorers, Tackey&Tsubasa moved on to documenting life in rural areas in different regions and countries. They would still share videos of abandoned places, but those aren’t the main focus of their brand anymore.
“That’s so cool,” Jin sighs. Then picks up the straw again and taps it against the table. “But back to your question. No, and yes. I’ve always loved taking pictures; first on my phone, then I got myself a better camera as soon as I had the money. I knew I wanted to do something artsy, though I also knew drawing or painting wouldn’t cut it. My first year at university I even took some art classes, but my professor saw right through me and told me his lessons were about painting and not ogling the naked models sitting in front of us.”
Kame laughs. He’s known Jin for only a couple of hours, but he can see it clearly. “You couldn’t have been the only one affected though.”
“Probably, but the others were better at hiding their interest. And their boners.” Jin giggles like a five year old. It’s cute.
Kame watches Jin with growing curiosity; he likes listening to other people’s stories, because each one is so different from the others. Jin’s low, soft voice with an occasional crack of chuckles is nice to listen to, too.
“Then one day I was sitting outside, minding my own business,” Jin continues, finally able to form words without snorting, “and Jess, one of the models, came to me and asked if I’d be maybe interested in this little project… They were shooting pictures in an old factory for someone preparing a fashion show.”
“That sounds pretty cool.”
“It was.” Jin nods. “I helped with lights, and pretty much anything that was needed, and while they were doing their stuff, I walked around and took a few pictures myself. Not of the dresses, though.”
“Yeah, who needs dresses when there’s corrosion and bird poop everywhere, right?” Kame snorts, because said aloud, it kind of does sound ridiculous. The truth is, however, that he understands it all too well.
“Exactly!” Jin laughs. “And that’s how I started my Instagram. Then I wanted to see more places like that, so I did some digging, and after that… I don’t know, I’m probably not the best photographer out there, after all, and taking videos and talking to people seemed easier.” With a shrug, he adds after a moment, “It’s not, not really, you still need to think of lights and angles, and all that shit, but it’s not the first thing people judge when they watch videos. As long as they can see something, it’s cool. Ryo is an excellent photographer though.”
Kame has seen some of Jin’s pictures and they are pretty good, too. But frankly, Jin’s probably right. Ryo is better. His Instagram is a work of art, from the little Kame had a chance to see-mostly thanks to Pi’s unhinged excitement over the two of them coming to Japan and wanting to meet Kame and Pi.
“How about you?” Jin leans a bit forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “What brought you to do abandoned stuff?”
“I don’t know. We had two empty houses in the neighborhood while I was growing up, and my brothers used them as a hanging spot. It wasn’t really safe, but for that very reason it was the safest place to try smoking and drinking out of parents’ sight.”
“Naturally.”
“Then I found out Tackey&Tsubasa actually did a video of both those places, which was pretty cool. I watched it and thought, maybe I could do this, too. I had nothing much else going on anyway.” Kame shrugs. “Not smart enough for university.”
“Nah, higher education is overrated. I quit after three semesters-turns out, studying art isn’t all about naked bodies all the time. All that theory crap was killing me. And anyway, you actually can find everything online these days, if you’re willing to take the time and look for it. My first videos were literally me step by step following a WikiHow article on video-editing.”
Kame doesn’t think he watched any of those, but man, he can imagine it all too clearly. “I know what you mean!” He throws his head back with laughter as his brain presents him a flash of his own memory, him spending an endless, frustrating night over his laptop and trying to understand how to put together a video with some cheap cut effects and a music background that wouldn’t drown the natural sounds of the filmed material.
“I want to see those houses,” Jin says.
“They were torn down last year, I’m afraid.” One of Kame’s older brothers tried to come up with a petition against the demolition, because, quote, ‘The future generations of local kids deserve to have the opportunities we had,’ but it definitely didn’t click well with the authorities, or even Kame’s parents.
Jin slides down the chair a bit more. Under the table, his knee bumps into Kame’s, but neither of them cares about shuffling their legs away.
“Damn.”
“I know,” Kame agrees and nods.
“So where do we start?” Jin asks, shifting the gears of the conversation. “I’m all pumped up to see some sick places.”
Kame doesn’t really need to think about it too much. Jin and Ryo are here for two weeks, that’s fourteen days of travelling and exploring and having fun, and while it’s tempting to show them all the obvious, well-known spots, Kame kind of wants to offer Jin something else. Something not everyone filming abandoned in Japan gets to see, unless they know the locals. And Jin knows one just fine now.
“I think I’ve got the perfect place to start with,” Kame grins.
-
(part 2)
Beta: snowing_inside
Pairing: Kame/Jin, background Ryo/Meisa, brief mention of Hayato/Ryu
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 22k
Warnings: mentions of institutional abuse and suicide, probably too many dick jokes
Summary: Jin comes to Japan to see and document some lesser known abandoned places. Along with a fellow urban explorer Kame and a couple of friends, Jin might get to see more than he signed up for.
Author's Notes: Written for kame_chameleon during pt_pirates 2018 Hide and Seek Exchange. Heavily inspired by my random marathon of watching urban exploring videos on YouTube.
Kame is entering what must have been quite a nice, cozy kitchen once upon a time, when his phone buzzes with an incoming call in the back pocket of his stylish, ripped jeans. It’s been set on quiet all day so the only indication someone is trying to reach him is the low vibration, and he can easily ignore it.
He’s too distracted by the things he sees. Looking around, taking in all that’s there as well as all that’s been already lost in time, he makes sure to film every single detail of the place. The kitchen cabinets are still holding together, with only about a half of the door either having fallen off completely or teetering on the last corroded hinge. It won’t take long and all the inside shelves will be exposed to the curious eye of people who will discover this place later, to insect and rodents seeking whatever might be still edible in the few fading boxes sitting on the unsteady racks, and to the elements finding their way inside the house through broken windows and the roof that partially caved in sometime last winter.
Kame is glad he has made it over here just in time to document it all. The perfect line between what this place used to be and its inevitable end.
The whole area has been bought by a big developer firm whose plans for this place don’t include a small, pretty much ordinary house built here at the time of Kame’s great-grandparents.
But for people like Kame, places like this are anything but ordinary.
Each one of such places tells a story of the life that has been. Of people once having lived that life.
People who cooked in this kitchen, a family that gathered around the kitchen table that’s now standing in the middle of the room covered in dust and mold and a few precisely arranged objects someone put there recently to get a nice shoot for their Instagram; those people and their ordinary morning routines and Sunday lunches, birthday parties, and everyday little things. The people are gone, but what’s left behind has a story to tell.
“This is amazing, guys,” Kame tells to no one in particular. He slowly walks over and films a close-up of one of the half-open cabinets. There are cups and plates, none of them broken, and a couple of random spices and sauces that are better left inside their boxes and glasses. No one has actually cooked in this kitchen for over thirty years, possibly longer. “You know how much I love cooking,” Kame goes on, checking the fading colors and writings on the labels. He can recognize some of the ingredients, by their name mostly, because the packaging has changed over the years. “And here I am, in this kitchen, thinking of what I would’ve possibly cooked if I had been here three decades ago…”
There’s a can of something that looks like beans, but the top is all bulging up and Kame doesn’t dare touching it. He steps back, turns slowly around to find more treasures left here in this amazing time capsule.
Through the doorframe on the opposite wall, he can see glimpses of lights as his friends are moving through the other room. From the look of it, it’s a living room with two doors leading to small bedrooms.
Kame can’t wait to see it all.
“Hey, Kamenashi! You must see this!”
The camera in Kame’s hand shakes as he takes a sharp turn after the voice. He’ll need to edit this part out later. Or not.
“What?”
His heartbeat actually speeds up as a rush of curiosity and excitement runs through his body. He recognizes the well-known feeling and basks in it for a second. It’s one of the reasons why he does this, why he loves doing this. The moments when you find something incredible under piles of thrash or covered in decades worth of layers of dust.
He wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the whole world.
“Man, this is incredible!” Another voice.
Kame hurries over to the living room, leaving the rest of the fouling contents of the kitchen cabinets behind. He hasn’t even checked the old fridge with a single magnet stuck on its rusty door, an old souvenir from Mt. Fuji.
“What do you have here?” Kame asks as he enters the room.
His friends are huddled around a low cabinet that seems to be holding together by some magical trick rather than the laws of physics. The large window on the front wall is shattered which leaves the living room exposed to weather changes. There’s an old swallow nest up in the corner, and the only reminder of the birds once using it is the mess all over the floor underneath.
Kame makes a little mental note to film a close up of both later.
“There are pictures of the family that lived here.”
Meisa steps aside to make room for Kame. She’s got her ‘EXPLORE WITH MEisa’ hoodie on, her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her camera seems to be permanently glued to her hand. There’s no doubt she’s getting some cool pictures for her Instagram today. Kame can tell because even if only a half of the footage he’s filmed so far could be used for his new video, it would still be worth every mile they had to drive to get here.
“Look,” Pi joins in with his own excitement, still hunched up over the shelf and slowly recording every inch, every detail. “They even had a dog.”
“We should check the backyard later,” Meisa suggests.
“So cool.” Kame quickly points the camera to the fading black and white family pictures carefully lined up on the top of the cabinet. He’s careful not to touch anything, partly aware of the possible mold contamination and partly worried the whole structure might collapse if someone as much as breathed out in the wrong direction around it. There are pictures in frames as well as small knick-knack, things that used to be a part of people’s everyday life. A dusty case with a pair of glasses, a box of matches with a few unused still inside, a decorative candlestick…
“Wait until you see this,” Meisa calls from a couple of feet away, pointing at yet another cabinet with yet another picture frame. This one holds a photo of a woman in her forties, presumably, her dark hair carefully combed up and held by an ornate comb in an old fashioned hairstyle not many wear these days. She seems to be looking past the camera, at someone or something. She’s not beautiful in a traditional sense, but there’s something about the gap in time between when the photo was taken and today that makes her look fine and delicate. Life couldn’t have been easy back in the day for whoever lived in this house, but for the single day of the photo session, this woman became someone else.
“Look at the details on her kimono. Here.” Kame points a finger at the picture, not quite touching it. He’s filming it all, talking to both his friends and his viewers at the same time. “It must’ve cost a fucking fortune.”
“My dad bought one of those things for my mom for their wedding anniversary a few years back,” Pi says. Then he points at the picture. “Maybe her man did the same.”
“Oh, a declaration of love, I like that,” Kame says.
“You have no idea.” Meisa stands between the two of them and snaps a quick picture that will probably never make it past their private collection of material taken during their exploring. “The guy loved his wife more than anything. She died when she was forty two, or something.”
“So probably around the time this picture was taken,” Kame muses. He moves the camera from the picture to Meisa, waiting for her to continue the story. Somehow, Meisa always knows all the juicy backstories about the places they visit. She says she ‘has her sources’, and at first Kame kind of thought she was making it all up, but she mostly isn’t. Most of the stuff she talks about is legit and can be proved as such.
Well, not so much the ghost stories she loves to tell…
“Yeah, pretty much,” Meisa agrees. “I think she was sick. The guy never left this house after she passed away, and by ‘never’ I actually mean never. His kids brought him groceries and took care of him. After he was gone, they just left the house as it was.”
“They could’ve sold it,” Pi suggests. No doubt that’s what he would do.
“Not according to the last will. The house is not to be touched as long as there’s a family connection to the couple.”
Pi snorts at that. “So, let’s say, six generations down the road, there will be someone owning this place but they still won’t be able to do anything with it?”
“Exactly. There’s a lawsuit currently open, and the developer who got this place probably won’t be allowed to tear this all down, even though they would love to.”
“What the hell?” Kame shifts the camera back to the picture again. He wants to make sure people watching his video later will ask the same questions he’s asking now. Why would anyone want his family to own a ruin taken over by nature and all kinds of mold?
Meisa’s face lights up. Like she’s been waiting for that exact reaction all along. “Because they are still here,” she says with a grin. “Or at least he is.”
“Oh, shut up!” Pi rolls his eyes. “We said no ghost bullshit this time.”
“It’s no bullshit. The picture here?” She points a finger at the portrait. “It moves from room to room. You can check the videos of other urban explorers who have been here, and you’ll clearly see the same photo being placed somewhere else in each of them.”
“Yeah, because some assholes can’t keep their hands to themselves and have to move stuff around for fucking ‘aesthetic’. Give me a break.” Pi is not buying any of it.
“Maybe,” Meisa shrugs, “But when my source was here, the frame was sitting on a night stand in the master bedroom, and I can vouch that the person isn’t one of the assholes you’re talking about.”
“Well, then someone was here between then and now and moved it.”
While the two bicker on about stupid kids vandalizing abandoned places and the pros and cons of the existence of ghosts, Kame studies the woman’s face.
Could she be a ghost? Or could she be a reason why someone else became a ghost? To roam the place where they had lived together, shared a life and raised kids?
A light breeze touches the nape of Kame’s neck, and a shiver runs down his spine.
He doesn’t remember pulling his hood down, but he must have at some point, because his neck is exposed to the sudden chill.
He stops recording and shakes his head.
He’s not buying any ghost stories either.
His phone buzzes again. He ignores it just like the first time. There’s still a few interesting rooms and corners to explore around here and he’s not letting anyone distract him.
“Honestly, I don’t care if you believe me or not,” Meisa finally says. “It’s not going to change my mind about the story being pretty cool.”
“Because you wish you could go full-on Sixth Sense,” Pi makes a grimace, and his voice quivers on purpose as he continues in a mocking tone, “I can see dead people.”
“I don’t need to see dead people or ghosts or whatever to believe there’s a strange energy lingering at some of the places we go to. Capitalism and consumer oriented lifestyle have changed people from being ‘just people’ to being ‘people and things’,” she stresses the two with air quotes, “So when there are so many personal belongings left behind somewhere, it’s easy to imagine a part of the person those things once belonged to is stuck at the place as well. Kind of unable to detach itself from the material possessions.”
“Then how do you explain like, medieval ghosts?” Pi narrows his eyes.
“The really old ghosts are stuck to places that meant something to them, rather than objects. So, in a way, the same rationale, just different means.”
“Oh dammit, could you repeat that on camera?” Kame promptly switches the camera on, cursing himself he hasn’t had it on the whole time.
“What?” Meisa rolls her eyes while next to her, Pi is not even trying to muffle giggles. Of course, his camera has been on the whole time. It’s gonna cost Kame a drink, or ten, to get the footage from Pi so he could use it in his video.
“Come on, for the record.”
Meisa hesitates, and that alone should tell Kame he’s not getting a repeat of her ghost philosophy, but he’s two seconds too late to realize it, because Meisa is already leaning close to his camera, her face all serious grimace and warm brown eyes wide open, and when she speaks up, her voice is fake deep and snappy. “Ghosts. Are. Fucking. Real. Get. Over. It.”
And that’s it.
Pi is laughing so hard he needs to bend over, Meisa gives Kame’s camera the finger, and Kame sighs and groans and wonders why he’s still hanging out with these two.
“I’m getting it on a t-shirt,” Kame warns in a fake attempt to sound grumpy, but really, with two other people lost in an uncontrollable fit of giggles, it’s hard not to join in.
“Oh, you totally should!” Pi agrees.
“It’s totally copyrighted,” Meisa deadpans.
“Says who?”
“The ghost behind you.”
This time it’s Kame flipping her off, but as soon as Meisa throws her head back with laughter, Kame gives the space behind him a quick glance anyway. Just in case. The tiny hairs at the nape of his neck are still up for some reason, but he decides it must be the late afternoon breeze coming through the broken window.
-
They spend two more hours in the house and its backyard, eventually finding also a kennel with its roof fallen in and its rotten walls overgrown with weeds. A small dirty bowl filled with rain water and moss is hiding under one of the planks. A smudge on its side indicates there used to be a picture of a dog paw at some point. The dog’s name scribbled on it can’t be deciphered anymore. Meisa takes a picture, crouching and nearly toppling over to get the angles and light all right. She posts the final photo on her Instagram right away.
Overall, however, there’s nothing much left outside of the house itself, which makes a nice contrast to all the preserved treasures inside.
It’s almost midnight when they get back to the city and Meisa drops Kame off at the entrance to the building where he lives. Pi was the first to say goodnight, even though Kame suspects he will be up all night sorting through the pictures and footage recorded today.
The little house in the middle of nowhere was like a museum. Like a window back in time. It’s places like these Kame loves the most, but he can get just as much excited about closed down amusement parks, abandoned industrial spaces, or communal buildings, such as hospitals or schools. He and Pi were in some pretty cool abandoned hospitals in the past, and there’s still so many out there that Kame wants to document before someone decides it’s time to tear it all down and build something new and modern, something that will make money.
In general, people lack imagination. They think they need to destroy everything and build something new in order to make profit.
Kame?
Kame has built a quite comfortable life for himself by traveling around, filming places, and allowing his subscribers and anyone else who wants to see to take a peek into the lives long gone.
And he loves every minute of it.
He loves it so much that he’s now doing the very same thing he expects Pi to be doing-he’s had a shower, made himself a coffee, and is sitting on the sofa in his tiny living room, his laptop in his lap and his two year old dachshund comfortably curled up against his thigh and every so often quietly whimpering in her sleep.
That’s Kame’s world.
One day, he plans to expand it, little by little. He and Meisa previously talked about a possible trip to Malaysia or Thailand to do some exploring there. And if that goes well… who knows?
For now, though, he takes life one day at time, and tonight it means going through the pictures taken in a small abandoned house miles aways from the nearest city.
He’s just reached the part of his camera feed where the pictures of the kitchen start, when a pop-up window appears at the bottom of his screen, announcing an incoming video call from Pi.
Kame accepts the call and in no time Pi’s sleep deprived but somewhat still suspiciously bright face takes over the laptop screen.
“Yo! Check your phone!” Pi blurts out. The squeak in his voice wakes Ran-chan up and she sleepily looks up, her tiny pink tongue stuck between her teeth and poking out of her mouth. Kame glances down at her and chuckles, petting her head.
“What’s going on?”
It’s not the first time Pi calls him at such a goddamn hour, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. Kame thinks he should’ve gone to bed when he had a chance.
“Check. Your. Phone.”
It makes Kame wonder where his phone is. He’s been so busy with his camera that he completely forgot about everything else.
After a moment of rummaging around, his phone is finally in his hand. There’s six missed calls.
Kame’s breath hitches in his throat. What the hell.
A quick look tells him it’s neither his family or any of his friends. An unknown number.
“Seriously, why do you even have that thing when you don’t bother picking up?” Pi goes on, his weird excitement not waning.
A frown crosses Kame’s forehead. “Was it you?”
“You wish!” Finally, Pi calms down enough to speak in whole sentences that aren’t about Kame’s obvious inability to be social. “Just Jin is coming to Japan and wants to meet with us!” Ran-chan is once again disturbed from her sleep by Pi’s voice, and fidgets around until her head is pressed between Kame’s ass and the backrest of the couch. It can’t be comfortable, but she’s a dog, so what can Kame know about it… “He tried to reach you but then called me, and me-unlike someone-actually answered the phone.”
Kame rolls his shoulders back. “Just-who?”
“Oh, come on! Jin Akanishi? The dude from the States who did the series about amusement parks a while ago? We watched it all in, like, two days!”
Kame rakes his memory until he’s able to match Pi’s description with an actual visual memory. And then he feels stupid, because yes, Just Jin is a pretty big name in the online urban exploring community, not just in the States. As far as Kame can remember at the moment, Jin and his crew have done some exploring also in Europe, though Kame hasn’t watched much of the material filmed there.
“Okay, so he’s coming here.”
“Yes.”
“And he wants to meet with us.”
On the screen, Pi nods so vigorously his neck might snap. “Yes!”
“Does he also want to do some exploring or…?”
“Yes! Yes! YES!” Pi is bouncing on his bed and for a moment Kame can’t see much else but colorful smudges of Pi’s flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt with a cartoon ghost printed on the front. “That’s like, the best thing. I can’t believe he knows about us… you… well, us.”
Kame fakes nonchalance with a shrug, because he wants to keep his cool, and all, but deep down… damn, his YouTube channel must be doing better than he’s thought, considering someone like Jin Akanishi actually noticed him and went the extra mile to contact him-fine, to contact Pi, because Kame is basically an asocial, which is pretty funny, given his livelihood depends on social media. He feels a grin slowly spread across his face.
Pi immediately catches the difference. “Now, that’s the reaction I want to see.”
“This is so cool!”
“I know!” Pi laughs.
“So fucking cool!” Kame’s voice raises. Ran-chan huffs and tries to burrow herself further into the couch.
“And you almost missed it.”
At Pi’s words, the whole realization hits Kame hard. He almost missed it indeed. All those missed calls from an unknown number. An overseas number. Jin has been calling him from the other side of the world, and Kame had his phone vibrate against his ass instead of picking it up.
Sure, he was busy. Busy exploring and discovering and filming. Talking rubbish about ghosts.
“He could’ve sent an email,” Kame says after a moment. “Where did he even get my number. Or yours?”
“Probably from Ryo?” Pi shrugs and leans back against the headboard of his bed. Kame can see a bag of chips tossed on the empty space next to the spot Pi is sitting at.
“Who is Ryo?”
“A guy Jin often does abandoned with? Also a guy I’ve known online for years, ever since we talked about One Piece in this Crunchyroll group…”
Kame chuckles. “Seriously?”
“Hey, don’t judge me. I’m pretty sure you’ve got some weird friends on baseball forums in the depths of the dark web.”
“There’s no such a t-you asshole! I don’t need to talk about baseball online. And I’m pretty sure the baseball discussions on the dark web have nothing to do with the game.”
Pi wiggles his eyebrows. “Now I’m curious.”
“And I’m disturbed,” Kame mutters. What the hell are they even talking about? Anyway. “So, you know this Ryo guy. And he knows Jin.”
“What can I say, it’s a fucking small world.”
“Do you know when they are coming?”
-
“Dude! This is sick! We’re in fucking Japan!” Ryo bounces through the arrival hall at Narita, a camera on a stick in his hand as he films Jin who is filming him back, recording invaluable footage he can use later to embarrass Ryo. Not that Ryo will care one bit. They still need to pick up their bags, but so far all the shop windows and fast food restaurants with exotic menus have proved to be too much of a distraction. Ryo has already managed to buy an ‘I ❤ JAPAN’ baseball cap and Jin doesn’t know whether to feel embarrassed while publicly acknowledging Ryo’s presence, or laugh at how ridiculous this all is.
Ryo is right though.
They are in fucking Japan.
He quickly turns his camera to film himself. “Guys! We’re in fucking Japan!” He laughs and people are watching him, watching both of them, but Ryo doesn’t care and Jin doesn’t either.
They both film everything they see, from the architecture of the place to all those unknown cartoon characters displayed at every step, trying to sell them coffee and snacks and bags, but also cheap accomodation and guided tours to all the well-known historical sites and tourist traps.
Jin thinks they could fit a bit of those into their schedule here as well, but first thing first.
As they finally pick their bags, Jin calls Yamapi. After the first unsuccessful attempts to reach Kamenashi, he decided to communicate with Yamapi. At least Yamapi doesn’t ignore phone calls, and since this whole trip is kind of a spur of the moment thing, Jin doesn’t want to waste time exchanging emails back and forth when finalizing details on the phone is so much faster, the completely different time-zones regardless.
Eventually Jin has to drag Ryo out of the manga section of a bookstore or they could easily get stuck at the airport forever.
They meet Yamapi and Kame outside the main hall. Japan gives them a warm, sunny welcome. It’s weird to see Ryo and Yamapi greet each other like a couple of old friends who have grown up next door, and not someone who met on an ancient online site for nerds. While those two fall right off into a chatter Jin knows nothing about, he and Kamenashi are left to their own.
“I’m Jin. Hi.”
Kame smiles. “Kame. Well, Kazuya. But... Kame is fine.”
His accent has a soft touch to it, but that’s something Jin has already known. He’s done all his homework and watched Kame’s videos, well, most of them anyway. And he really, really wants to see it all with his own eyes. Japan has got some of the best preserved abandoned places out there, hands down. Most of them aren’t vandalized either, which is something Jin doesn’t often come across back at home. If there’s anything more merciless than the teeth of time gnawing at stuff left behind, then it must be teenagers and assholes who can’t keep their hands to themselves and have the urge to leave their mark on everything, like a dog pissing at every corner to show all other dogs they aren’t the first coming across that very spot.
Sure, some places look cool with a bit of graffiti here and there, but most places… not so much.
“Nice to meet you, Kame is fine,” Jin jokes, because it’s easy.
And it seems he’s not the only one seeing it that way, because Kame fires right back at him, “You too, Jin, Just Jin. And welcome to Japan.”
They don’t shake hands because neither of them offers first.
Instead, Jin flashed out his camera that’s never too far from his reach, and starts filming again. “Hey, what’s up, Jinsplorers? Me and Nishikido have finally met our impromptu guides, Kame and Yamapi-Yamapi is currently too busy revisiting old Crunchyroll times with Ryo, so it’s just me and Kame here. Wanna say hi to my Jinsplorers?” He turns the objective at Kame who looks like a deer caught in headlights for a second.
“Your Jinsp-what?”
Jin beams. “Jinsplorers! People following my channel and my Instagram. It’s a mash-up of ‘Jin’ and ‘explorers’ because they are all exploring all these amazing places with me.” He looks into the camera. “That’s you, guys, am I right? All my amazing Jinsplorers. We’ve been together to some insane abandoned places, and now we’re here in Japan to see more of that shit. And you all will love it, I can feel it.”
“I can think of a place or two I want to show you,” Kame offers.
“One or two? How about all of it?”
The enthusiasm makes Kame laugh. Good. Jin is laughing as well.
“You want to see everything?”
“You have no idea.” Jin nods. Then he finally turns to Ryo and Yamapi. “Hey you two, are you done fangirling over each other? I want to see Japan, not just this parking lot. And Kame here just promised to take us everywhere.”
“I so did not!”
It’s only when they get in the car, Yamapi behind the wheel with Ryo beating everyone to take the passenger seat, and Jin and Kame sitting in the back, that Ryo finally snaps out of the haze he seemed to be in since the moment their plane touched the runaway. He fidgets around and looks over his shoulder at Kame.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
Jin’s eyes roll back. Maybe it was for the best when Ryo was busy discussing manga and other shit with Yamapi, after all.
“Who?”
It can’t be a language barrier. Kame is just genuinely confused.
Yamapi, on the other hand, is snorting and giggling, and making all sorts of weird noises, because apparently, his brain has caught up with Ryo’s stupid question way before Kame’s. When also Kame realizes what’s this all about, his eyes widen and he quickly shakes his head.
“You mean Meisa? No, no, she’s not my… she’s not…”
Jin kicks the back of Ryo’s seat. “Happy now? You guys should know Ryo only agreed to join me on this trip because he really wanted to meet your friend Meisa. He doesn’t care about the cool abandoned places here at all.”
“Shut up, Akanishi!” Ryo flings an arm back in an attempt to hit Jin, but he misses by a couple of inches, only adding fuel to Jin’s wicked amusement.
“He couldn’t stop talking about her all the way down here.”
“That’s so not true. And besides, I thought she and Kamenashi were a thing.”
Jin reaches out and pokes Ryo’s shoulder. “That didn’t stop you from fantasizing about her.”
Now Yamapi is laughing out loud, his fingers curled around the steering wheel as the last resort preventing him from clapping his hands. “This is priceless. Meisa will love to hear it. Her and Kamenashi dating! That would be something.”
“Oh please, like I would ever be interested,” Kame snorts.
“Can we just go see some abandoned shit now?” Ryo groans and sits straight in his seat, the security belt clipped tight across his chest and eyes glued to the front window.
“Now we’re talking,” Jin says.
“So, where is it going to be?” Yamapi asks when the whole car finally calms down. “Your hotel, Meisa’s place, or something abandoned?”
Ryo groans again and slides a little lower in his seat.
-
Instead of going straight to do the nearest abandoned place, even though Jin looks like he wouldn’t mind at all, or making Ryo’s unspoken wish of meeting Meisa come true, Yamapi drives the car first to the address of Jin and Ryo’s hotel, and as soon as the two leave their bags in their rooms, they are on the move again, this time to find a place to eat and do some obligatory sightseeing.
It turns out Ryo loves more about Japan than just manga. He takes a ton of pictures and pretty much spams his own Instagram and Twitter, and then laughs at people leaving him comments that range from, “Enjoy the trip and say hi to Jin!” to, “WTF you’re in Japan and I didn’t know??” to, “I’ve followed you for abandoned, not this tourist crap, bye,” to, “You guys should do a fan meet-up when you’re here!”
When Ryo reads the last one aloud, Jin seems to be interested in giving it a serious thought.
Kame is a bit in awe, and while he wouldn’t admit it aloud, perhaps a little envious, too. Jin is a real superstar. He’s one step from having people recognize him and approach him on the street. No one would probably recognize Kame, but that’s fine, too. He’s not in this for fame and fortune. He’s just doing what he likes, and somehow it pays the bills. It’s pretty neat.
They are sitting in a small restaurant that is a little aside from the usual evening rush hour, eating noodles and drinking everything from coke to beer.
There’s not a moment of silence and it’s almost like they have all known each other for years. It’s easy to find a topic to chat about when you all love the same thing.
Jin and Ryo have tons of stories about all sorts of places they’ve visited, and their enthusiasm and love for all things abandoned seeps through their every word.
“So you’ve always wanted to do this?” Kame asks later, when it’s just him and Jin at the table because Ryo excused himself to the bathroom and Yamapi is ordering more drinks at the bar.
Jin’s comfortably sprawled in his seat, a little slumped down, his long fingers playing with a straw left at the table after Yamapi took their empty glasses away. He raises a brow. “Sit here with you? Probably not, given I didn’t really know about you until recently.” A smirk is tugging at the corner of his lips.
Kame wants to smack him. “Well, I didn’t know about you until last week.”
“Ouch.” Jin drops the straw. “You’ve been doing abandoned for two years-”
“Two years and three months.”
“-and you seriously didn’t hear about me? You must have been doing something wrong.” Jin narrows his eyes.
“We’ve got our own urban exploring legends here, you know. Just last October I even got to do a location with Tackey&Tsubasa. They took me to Fukushima.” And it was pretty much the highlight of Kame’s career so far. Tackey&Tsubasa were documenting decaying structures around Japan already back in a day when Kame was still sitting in his high school class and pretending he could understand math.
“Wait,” Jin perks up, “You know Tackey&Tsubasa? Like, know know them?”
Jin’s interest is suddenly palpable in the air between them, and as the feeling settles down, it warms Kame’s insides a little bit. He may not be a superstar, but he can still impress Jin a bit. A second hand bewilderment.
“A little. Yeah. I think they are in Cuba right now, kicking off their South American adventure. Tackey mentioned he wanted to drive down across the west coast and see what they can find along the way.” After having all but paved the road for a whole new generation of young Japanese urban explorers, Tackey&Tsubasa moved on to documenting life in rural areas in different regions and countries. They would still share videos of abandoned places, but those aren’t the main focus of their brand anymore.
“That’s so cool,” Jin sighs. Then picks up the straw again and taps it against the table. “But back to your question. No, and yes. I’ve always loved taking pictures; first on my phone, then I got myself a better camera as soon as I had the money. I knew I wanted to do something artsy, though I also knew drawing or painting wouldn’t cut it. My first year at university I even took some art classes, but my professor saw right through me and told me his lessons were about painting and not ogling the naked models sitting in front of us.”
Kame laughs. He’s known Jin for only a couple of hours, but he can see it clearly. “You couldn’t have been the only one affected though.”
“Probably, but the others were better at hiding their interest. And their boners.” Jin giggles like a five year old. It’s cute.
Kame watches Jin with growing curiosity; he likes listening to other people’s stories, because each one is so different from the others. Jin’s low, soft voice with an occasional crack of chuckles is nice to listen to, too.
“Then one day I was sitting outside, minding my own business,” Jin continues, finally able to form words without snorting, “and Jess, one of the models, came to me and asked if I’d be maybe interested in this little project… They were shooting pictures in an old factory for someone preparing a fashion show.”
“That sounds pretty cool.”
“It was.” Jin nods. “I helped with lights, and pretty much anything that was needed, and while they were doing their stuff, I walked around and took a few pictures myself. Not of the dresses, though.”
“Yeah, who needs dresses when there’s corrosion and bird poop everywhere, right?” Kame snorts, because said aloud, it kind of does sound ridiculous. The truth is, however, that he understands it all too well.
“Exactly!” Jin laughs. “And that’s how I started my Instagram. Then I wanted to see more places like that, so I did some digging, and after that… I don’t know, I’m probably not the best photographer out there, after all, and taking videos and talking to people seemed easier.” With a shrug, he adds after a moment, “It’s not, not really, you still need to think of lights and angles, and all that shit, but it’s not the first thing people judge when they watch videos. As long as they can see something, it’s cool. Ryo is an excellent photographer though.”
Kame has seen some of Jin’s pictures and they are pretty good, too. But frankly, Jin’s probably right. Ryo is better. His Instagram is a work of art, from the little Kame had a chance to see-mostly thanks to Pi’s unhinged excitement over the two of them coming to Japan and wanting to meet Kame and Pi.
“How about you?” Jin leans a bit forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “What brought you to do abandoned stuff?”
“I don’t know. We had two empty houses in the neighborhood while I was growing up, and my brothers used them as a hanging spot. It wasn’t really safe, but for that very reason it was the safest place to try smoking and drinking out of parents’ sight.”
“Naturally.”
“Then I found out Tackey&Tsubasa actually did a video of both those places, which was pretty cool. I watched it and thought, maybe I could do this, too. I had nothing much else going on anyway.” Kame shrugs. “Not smart enough for university.”
“Nah, higher education is overrated. I quit after three semesters-turns out, studying art isn’t all about naked bodies all the time. All that theory crap was killing me. And anyway, you actually can find everything online these days, if you’re willing to take the time and look for it. My first videos were literally me step by step following a WikiHow article on video-editing.”
Kame doesn’t think he watched any of those, but man, he can imagine it all too clearly. “I know what you mean!” He throws his head back with laughter as his brain presents him a flash of his own memory, him spending an endless, frustrating night over his laptop and trying to understand how to put together a video with some cheap cut effects and a music background that wouldn’t drown the natural sounds of the filmed material.
“I want to see those houses,” Jin says.
“They were torn down last year, I’m afraid.” One of Kame’s older brothers tried to come up with a petition against the demolition, because, quote, ‘The future generations of local kids deserve to have the opportunities we had,’ but it definitely didn’t click well with the authorities, or even Kame’s parents.
Jin slides down the chair a bit more. Under the table, his knee bumps into Kame’s, but neither of them cares about shuffling their legs away.
“Damn.”
“I know,” Kame agrees and nods.
“So where do we start?” Jin asks, shifting the gears of the conversation. “I’m all pumped up to see some sick places.”
Kame doesn’t really need to think about it too much. Jin and Ryo are here for two weeks, that’s fourteen days of travelling and exploring and having fun, and while it’s tempting to show them all the obvious, well-known spots, Kame kind of wants to offer Jin something else. Something not everyone filming abandoned in Japan gets to see, unless they know the locals. And Jin knows one just fine now.
“I think I’ve got the perfect place to start with,” Kame grins.
-
(part 2)