Gift fic for krysyuy
To: krysyuy
From: psychoniji
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Golden Bridge
Pairing/Group: KAT-TUN (Taguchi, Jin)
Rating: PG-13 for language
Warnings: Freaky Friday-ing, Jin on a solo career, Taguchi’s really bad puns.
Notes: For krysyuy! I hope you enjoy this; I had a lot of fun writing it. ;) Thank you to C for brainstorming, handholding, and beta-ing. As for why Jin is in LA, it’s just because there’s been no news of him returning to Japan as of yet, and it’s easier that way. Or harder, I’m not sure. Regardless, happy holidays! ♥♥♥
Summary: They’ve got a bit of a switch-uation.
Taguchi wakes up with a bad headache in sheets that feel unfamiliar. For a moment he thinks he’s at Rena’s, but there isn’t any of her perfume lingering in the air when he inhales deeply, just a deep musk that borders on familiar but he can’t exactly place where he’s smelled it before.
His hair tickles his nose when he shifts in bed, squeezing his eyes more tightly together against the bright sunlight.
It’s funny. He feels like he hasn’t slept at all but he knows it has to be morning, possibly even early in the afternoon from the light that he can’t quite filter out with just his eyelids.
Wait, afternoon?
He jolts up in bed, eyes suddenly wide open, and realizes with a start that the white sheets and blue comforter and soft cream, undecorated walls are definitely not his apartment. It’s not Rena’s apartment either.
His body feels stiff when he leaps out of bed and pulls the curtains open. Outside he’s greeted with a sprawling cityscape, palm trees here and there but mostly buildings and sunshine and-if he’s seeing them correctly-highly attractive foreigners walking the streets below.
It seems like kind of a joke. Maybe the rest of KAT-TUN drugged him, put him on a plane, and sent him off to Hawaii for laughs. At this point, it doesn’t seem entirely impossible.
“Maybe that’s it,” he mutters, chuckling to himself. “Get a hold of yourself, Junnosuke.” He sighs, shaking his head like he’s being silly, and reaches a hand up to push the hair back from his face.
When he touches it, it feels different, the way it slips through his fingers so much slicker than he remembers, the strands long and unruly and a little bit coarse. He twirls a strand of it around his finger and wonders when it got so long. The last time he looked in a mirror, it had definitely been shorter.
Suddenly, he looks at his hand and realizes that it’s tanner than he remembers, and that is definitely not the lighting in the room. Upon closer inspection, the fingers are less bony, cuticles ragged and uncared for, guitar calluses that he can’t remember ever having gotten because he doesn’t really play the guitar other than to annoy Ueda in the dressing rooms with random chords.
And suddenly, it’s like he realizes that everything about him is distinctly not himself, from the clothes on his body to the spread of his toes.
If this is a joke, it’s definitely a thorough one.
He glances around the room to find a mirror and spots an open door that he assumes to be the bathroom. Dashing inside of it, he clutches onto the porcelain of the sink, stares at his own reflection in shock, and almost doubles over in laughter, hands reaching up to grasp at his cheeks and chin, raising his eyebrows and making the most awkward face he can until the muscles hurt from moving.
Well, if he’s being honest, nothing he moves is actually his.
It’s Jin’s.
If this is a joke, then somewhere, he hopes all of KAT-TUN is enjoying a laugh at his expense.
After Taguchi has sufficiently calmed down enough to accept the fact that it isn’t a rigged mirror and that he really does have Jin’s face and body and sneakers and closet and everything (and by that, he means everything-he checked), he does the only thing he can think to do:
He sits down on Jin’s bed and has a nice, long laugh because if he thinks about it really, really hard, it’s absolutely hilarious. Especially the thought that if he’s stuck in Jin’s body, then the other man is most definitely stuck in his. He wonders for a moment if this is divine intervention for the group, then decides that it’s not fair if Ueda and Ryo haven’t switched bodies either.
Taguchi entertains the idea for a moment before deciding that he is actually taking this quite well, considering that he’s more or less stepped into that drama that Kato from NEWS was in with Aragaki Yui. This could even be kind of fun.
On second thought, he thinks, when he picks up the phone and spends what is probably a lot in calling his own cell phone from across the Pacific Ocean and gets a mumbled, “Hello?” in English in response, that this would be a whole lot easier if he were actually in the same country as the other man. It’s definitely his own voice, but hearing that lightly accented English is more than a little bit odd.
“Hey,” he says, and the person he hopes is Jin grunts on the other line. “Akanishi, I think we have a problem.”
“Who the hell is this?” Jin answers in irritated, tired Japanese, and Taguchi can hear the other man shift. “This… is not my fucking phone. What the hell, this isn’t my apartment either.”
A moment later, Jin speaks into the receiver again, the confusion clear in his voice. “Who are you and why are you calling from my cell phone?”
“It’s Taguchi,” Taguchi replies, as casually as possible. “I think we have a problem.”
“You don’t sound like Taguchi. His voice is more annoying than that,” Jin replies evenly, an eyebrow raised. “Look, if this is a scam, you’re not fooling anybody.”
“Sit up and look in the mirror to your left, please.” Taguchi sighs patiently, and hears a scoff of disbelief before the line goes dead. He has no doubt in his mind that Jin has probably listened to him and is doing a great deal of freaking out right now, and when the phone in his hands goes off, he knows exactly who it is.
It’s definitely been a while since they were last together for a long enough time, he thinks when the voice on the other end is shrill enough to make him wince. Jin is barely coherent on the other end; all Taguchi can make out is a few choice English expletives and some questions about what happened, why does he suddenly have Taguchi’s face, is this all just an elaborate joke-
“It’s not,” Taguchi says, rifling through Jin’s pantry for food. He’d found the kitchen while Jin had been panicking, but all he seems to have is dry cereal and some weird American snack food called Chex Mix stored on the small shelves.
Jin makes an indignant sound on the other end. “Then what the hell is it?”
“It’s a serious switch-uation,” Taguchi answers, smiling to himself at the pun, and waits for the inevitable silence.
It comes, but not for long. Jin chuckles, nearly inaudible over the static of the phone. “You’re making puns at a time like this? I guess I’m not surprised.”
For a moment, he is uncharacteristically silent as Jin closes his mouth on the other end of the line. “So do you think we’re the only ones stuck like this?” he tries, tapping fingers thoughtfully against the refrigerator door.
Jin laughs, an odd sound because it’s his laugh in Taguchi’s voice and entirely unfamiliar to the both of them. “You’re worried about that? I want to know if we’re stuck like this forever.”
Taguchi thinks about it for a moment before he pulls the refrigerator door open and seizes a carton of orange juice, because it’s the only thing in there that might not upset his suddenly churning stomach.
“Yeah,” he manages, and swallows heavily. “Me too.”
They talk a while longer and work things out maybe halfway. They agree to do each other’s work and not complain too much, as well as to exchange emails and chat every few days on the phone to keep up with things on the other side. Jin proposes telling the other members and their managers, but halfway through changes his mind as he tries to think of a precise, understandable explanation that doesn’t sound completely insane.
Taguchi is relieved that they’re not going to attempt explaining it to the other members. They wouldn’t believe him. Ten years, he thinks when they hang up, and stares pensively at his glass of orange juice. Ten years and they’re sick of him.
He knows his jokes stopped being funny to them a long time ago; he just tells them now because he knows it exasperates them and the fans love it. In a way, he’s just become tired and jaded over the years, sick of feeling like the least favorite in the group and being ignored and feeling underappreciated by the other five-now four-members.
But at the same time, he’s gotten used to it. He likes his group members, as often as they sometimes seem to not like him back.
He wonders how Jin feels, going back to a group he left. It’s probably awkward as hell for the other man, like sticking an animal back into the wild once it’s lived in a zoo for a while-or vice versa; Taguchi isn’t sure which is the more proper analogy. But at least Jin will be able to adapt back; he knows how Taguchi acts around the other members and Taguchi has enough faith in Jin for him to play the part well.
Himself, he’s not so sure about. He has no idea how Jin acts around his American friends, especially outside of Japan and in America. Hell, he has no idea how Americans in general really act, just remembers the portrayals of them on TV and variety shows.
At the very least, he tells himself when the phone rings and he almost answers, “Moshi moshi?” instead of “Hello?”, that Jin’s English speaking abilities seem to have transferred over to him for the time being. It makes the conversation a lot easier when he can both understand and talk to the other person on the other end, a girl he remembers was one of Jin’s dancers last month during the tour.
She’s nice and laughs when he asks where the dance studio he’s supposed to meet her at is, and spells out the address for him.
“We’ve really got to get working. See you soon, Jin,” she tells him, and he almost cringes at the way she pronounces it.
“Yeah,” he says, and almost forgets that Americans say good bye to each other on the phone instead of just hanging up.
For a little while longer, he stands in the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror, tracing over Jin’s features with fingers that feel unfamiliar.
Out of curiosity, he touches Jin’s clavicles. It tickles, more than he would have expected.
He smiles fondly as he remembers that Jin never did like being tickled when they were juniors. It all makes sense now.
Jin’s jeans are all too baggy and Taguchi wonders how the other man stands feeling like he’s wearing sweatpants all day. He has to go to a press conference, according to the call he receives from Jin’s manager who is conveniently away doing things in Japan, about his time in the studio and his tour.
Taguchi fingers the worn denim and pokes a finger through a hole in the hem of one pant leg before he decides that it’s a very good idea to at least wear something classy on top.
As he belts the jeans as tightly as possible, he silently curses the other man and hopes that he’s in dismay that Taguchi’s pants are all kind of tight.
“I’m not going near your girlfriend, either,” Jin says, and Taguchi can’t help but think how strange it is to hear his own voice in Jin’s lazy Japanese, quiet and slurred together a little bit. It’s a nice gesture, at least; and even if Jin not going after a girl is a normal occurrence, he appreciates the thought. “She called earlier today.”
“Oh?” Taguchi thinks of Rena. He wonders how she’d take it if he came back to her with a face like Jin’s. She’d probably kick him out, screaming obscenities all the while. He grins a little at the thought. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I had a temporary case of crabs so we shouldn’t see each other,” Jin deadpans, sounding irritated. “She just made a disgusted noise and hung up.”
“Why so crab-by, Akanishi?”
He can’t help himself. It’s a natural instinct nowadays, the puns and corny jokes just slipping out; he doesn’t even think about it anymore, just opens his mouth and lets the puns go when it’s even a little bit appropriate.
Unsurprisingly, Jin doesn’t laugh. “I’m not dealing with her,” he informs Taguchi. “Older women are gross.”
“Aw,” Taguchi chuckles, and thinks about Rena with a sigh. He misses her a little already. “I like Rena.”
Jin makes a sound like he’s throwing up over the phone. Taguchi can hear the grimace in his voice when he speaks again. “You’re gross too, Taguchi.”
“I know, I know, Jin-kun,” he smiles, and Jin just snorts on the other end of the line. For a moment, all he hears is the crackling of static over the long distance line, until Jin mumbles something he can barely hear. “What?” he asks, and Jin audibly sighs.
“I miss my own body. Yours is too tall,” Jin replies.
That is definitely not what he said before, but Taguchi lets it go with a laugh. “Yours is too fat,” he teases, and this time Jin laughs along with him after making a scandalized sound on the other end.
The first time, Jin had said, “What happens if we don’t go back?”
Taguchi doesn’t want to think about it.
Jin decides one night about a week of pretending to be each other that, as awkward as it’s going to be, he wants to make sure that Taguchi does nothing weird to his appearance. Taguchi jokes that he’s more worried about Jin making him look like a slob, although he knows deep down that it’s more of a reassurance to both of them that they’re still who they are on the inside.
So he turns on the webcam of Jin’s laptop and blinks at his own appearance, eyebrows raised because it’s very odd seeing his face wearing Jin’s expression.
“This isn’t so bad,” Jin mumbles, and Taguchi is transfixed at the sight of his mouth moving to the sound of Jin’s Japanese in his own voice. “Except it’s fucking weird.”
“Yeah,” Taguchi breathes, and Jin squints at the camera. “How is everyone?”
Jin makes a face and waves a hand in the air. “Same old, same old. You guys haven’t changed at all. Kame’s still an uptight little prick, Koki is a woobie on the inside-you know, the usual. How’re things over there?”
“Your choreography is hard,” Taguchi replies, resting his chin on a palm. He feels very unlike himself and sighs, stretching out his neck before he grins as widely as he can. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi desu!”
Jin just stares at him, unimpressed. “You’re so KY.”
“I’m slick like that,” Taguchi replies in English, Jin’s lazy Californian drawl taking over, and this makes Jin laugh loud and hard, clamping a hand over his mouth because it’s very late at night over there.
Suddenly, he doesn’t feel as alone anymore.
But in truth, he’s alone as alone can be sometimes.
Learning things solo is something Taguchi hasn’t had to do for a long, long time. Sure, he sings by himself when he’s trying to figure out his part for a song, and he has solos during concerts and for Shounen Club on occasion, but there has never been a time when Koki or Kame or Nakamaru or Ueda or even Akanishi wasn’t around to poke fun at his harmonies or tell him that his footing was off here.
Suddenly, as Jin, the more attractive voice is nothing close to a trade-off for feeling very, very alone in the middle of a dance studio.
“Jin!” The choreographer snaps when he’s lost in his own thoughts again, and he looks at the man with raised eyebrows. “We all know you’re beautiful, okay, man? You don’t need to keep confirming it by staring at yourself in the mirror.”
“Oh,” he manages, and the English flows out with ease. He glances down at the floor, at the sneakers that he’d never pick out and the baggy jeans that are more Koki’s thing. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“You alright, man?” A hand rests heavily on his shoulder and he looks up. The other man’s face is concerned, thick eyebrows furrowed and thin lips pressed into a neat line. If he imagines hard enough, it looks a little like Koki wearing those fake moustaches from Cartoon KAT-TUN over his eyebrows. “If you’re tired, we can stop.”
“No, no!” He straightens his back and brings his hands up in front of him, waving them around as animatedly as he can. “I’m fine, really! Let’s keep going.”
The choreographer just looks at him, eyebrows raised in apprehension. He grins back before he remembers that his usual sunny smile definitely does not belong on Jin’s face and mutes it to a small smirk. He supposes he’s going to have to get used to that.
“You and your fucking Asian work ethic,” the man sighs, but shakes his head and reaches down to press play on the small stereo next to him. “One, two, three, four!”
As Taguchi launches into the routine he’s only barely familiar with, he blesses the stars that if nothing else, he can always count on remembering the dances he’s taught.
Dancing in Jin’s body is awkward. Taguchi wishes he could close his eyes and pretend that he’s dancing in his own.
He tries, but when he opens his eyes, all he sees is Jin’s face staring back at him.
After a while, Taguchi gets used to all of this. He pretends he’s Jin, Jin pretends he’s Taguchi, and no one seems the wiser.
Sometimes he entertains the idea that they’re never going to get back to their own bodies. He imagines that Jin is surprisingly optimistic about it the way that Taguchi should be, but in all honesty he knows they’re both thinking it. It might be a long while before they turn back, especially since they can’t think of any reason they switched bodies in the first place.
“Maybe it’s like in that movie,” Jin mutters halfway through December, tapping his fingers against his chin. “You know, the one with Lindsay Lohan when she was still with Disney, before she got addicted to crack.”
Taguchi just stares at Jin, like the man has gone insane or something.
Jin frowns back at him. “Freaky Friday! Have you never seen it? The mom and the daughter are in the exact same situation as we are, Taguchi.”
“Oh.” He contemplates this for a moment.
Jin sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. “Go to the video store across the street and to the left, about a block down and next to a taco place. Have a taco and rent the movie, and then we’ll talk. I’ve got to go answer interviews for you anyway. I’ll see you later, Taguchi.”
“Bye,” Taguchi waves at Jin and stares at the clock. It’s just past nine and he has nothing better to do, so he throws on a coat and heads down the street, stepping past clubbers on their way out and people on their way home from work. In some ways it feels like Tokyo, the cars whizzing by and the streets all lit up in neon.
But Los Angeles is a different place entirely, he is reminded when he stands outside of the grimy windows of the video store and smells the tacqueria that almost reminds him of yakitori but not quite because there are more chiles and onions in the smoky air. He closes his eyes and no one knocks into him even though it’s a relatively busy street.
And then he walks inside, finds the movie, and pays for it without getting a second glance from the cashier. He eats what is possibly the most delicious Mexican food he has ever eaten, then returns home and puts the movie into Jin’s laptop, staring at the screen when loud American pop fills his ears.
The movie isn’t bad and Lindsay Lohan was cute before she turned into a crackhead. But overall, the way they’re supposed to get back to normal is essentially that he’s supposed to do something selfless for Jin while Jin is supposed to do something selfless back for Taguchi.
Well, he thinks, that couldn’t have been vaguer. When he calls Jin and asks what ideas Jin has, all he gets in response is a blank silence and, “I don’t know, I was hoping you would have a clue.”
“Oh.”
For a while they sit in silence, static crackling over the phone. Jin is the first one to talk, voice quiet and sullen. “We’ll figure it out, right?”
To be honest, Taguchi doesn’t know how to answer the question. Yes, maybe they will, and then they can go back to their respective lives and live like they always have been. But then again, no, maybe they won’t, and maybe Taguchi will be stuck with a solo career that he never asked for in a style of music that he isn’t used to, and Jin will be back in KAT-TUN again, pretending to be cheerful and happy and terribly amusing.
The idea is difficult to swallow, but Taguchi does anyway.
“Yeah,” he says, partially because he thinks so, partially because it’s his job to be the optimist, but mostly because he knows it’s what the other man desperately wants to hear. “We’ll be back to normal in no time, Jin.”
When he gets no response, Taguchi imagines what Jin must look like right now, maybe lounging all over his couch or his bed or even his desk chair, a serious expression that Taguchi can’t even pull off during dramas plastered over his face. He thinks about Rena-what would she say if she found out that Taguchi isn’t really Taguchi, that he doesn’t have crabs, that he’s actually stuck inside the body of a rumored playboy and solo artist an ocean away.
“We’ll be back to normal in no time,” he repeats, except this time it’s for himself.
“You said that already,” Jin mutters.
And Taguchi lets out a short bark of laughter, suddenly realizing how different his voice is than Jin’s. It’s disorienting to hear himself speak in a voice too dulcet and not nearly as nasal as it should be, even more so than the first day he woke up and realized he was in Jin’s body.
“I’ll look into it,” Jin tells him, and hangs up without saying good bye.
Taguchi wonders how difficult it would be to get his hands on a copy of Kato’s drama to see how they got back to normal as he stares outside at the cars whizzing by the streets of Los Angeles.
He misses Japan. He misses his own body, not waking up stiff, being able to pull off short hair, wearing jeans that aren’t too baggy. He misses his parents and he misses Ueda’s music, he misses Nakamaru’s sweaters, he misses Kame’s neuroticism, and he even misses Koki making fun of his jokes and telling him he’s not funny even though he laughs at Taguchi’s jokes sometimes.
He bets Jin misses himself too.
“God, I fucking hate being you,” Jin groans over the webcam, and Taguchi blinks back at his own face. “Why the hell do you have posters of yourself all over the place? I don’t want to wake up and see your face on the wall and then have to look into the mirror and see it again. Once is enough.”
“Being you isn’t exactly a walk in the park either,” Taguchi shrugs, and Jin sighs, shoulders slumping visibly on the fuzzy camera. “What do you look like when you act like me?”
Jin gives him a questioning look, but beams and waves his hands about in the air. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi desu!” he chirps. It’s not an inaccurate imitation of his gag, but it’s unenthusiastic. When Jin lowers his arms and stops smiling, the difference is immediately apparent: the slouch, the dark eyes, the brooding air that always seems to surround Jin went with him when their bodies switched.
It’s a little bit scary when he’s confronted with the sight. He wonders if the rest of KAT-TUN notices the difference.
“What about you?” Jin asks suddenly, lazily resting his chin in his hand, eyes fixed on the computer screen.
Taguchi just looks at him, still lost in thought.
Jin laughs, clapping his hands, and for a moment, Taguchi feels like he’s watching himself. “That’s pretty good,” Jin chuckles, lifting a hand to rub at his eyes. “I bet you’re not getting constantly asked if there’s something wrong.”
Taguchi blinks. “Are you?”
Jin nods and waves his hand in the air with a roll of his eyes. “Apparently they think it’s weird when your puns are worse than usual.”
And Taguchi has to laugh at this, partly out of relief and partly out of gratitude. “Akanishi,” he chortles, shoulders still shaking a little bit. “Thanks for trying.”
“Don’t get all sappy on me now, you oaf,” Jin mutters, making a face. He yawns, lifting Taguchi’s arms above his head to stretch. “I’m tired,” he mumbles, but doesn’t reach to turn the webcam off like he usually does when it gets to be this late. “There’s so much work to do.”
“Sorry.” He doesn’t know why he’s apologizing. “How is everyone?”
“Kamenashi is worried that I’m not replying to his emails,” Jin answers, and points a finger at Taguchi. “Do it for me, will you? My password is jinlovespin, all lowercase-don’t you fucking dare laugh, Taguchi, I’m sure yours is equally as embarrassing.”
Taguchi doesn’t have the heart to tell him that his is just a couple of letters and numbers and hides his laughter behind one hand.
“Don’t read anything but the ones from Kamenashi or I’ll make you strip on national television,” Jin threatens, as if it’s not already a regular occurrence for Johnny’s. “And don’t open any spam, I don’t want my emails all corrupted again.”
“Roger that,” Taguchi salutes. It looks silly in Jin’s body when he glances at the image that displays his own side of the world, and he takes the time to commit the image to memory for later laughs. Jin clicks off Taguchi’s webcam and a small popping sound tells Taguchi that he’s no longer in a video chat.
He opens up what he remembers Jin’s last mail client was in the browser and finds the username and password saved in the boxes anyway.
The first email is from Yamapi. Despite the little voice in his head that tells him to just see what it says, he scrolls down until he sees an email dated yesterday, from a contact labeled “Anal Retentive Turtle x)” in English. It makes him laugh.
He reads about everything Jin has already told him, that they’re finishing up promotion for the new single, that Nakamaru is griping over coursework still, that Ueda’s been hanging out a lot with someone named Masami (if Taguchi were anyone else, he’d assume that it was a girl, but he knows Ueda well enough to know that it’s just the guitarist from Mouse Peace-he thinks, at least), and that Koki is catching a bit of a cold now that December has arrived.
Taguchi, on the other hand, has been acting weird lately. He’s quiet and his jokes are getting to be especially awful. I don’t think he’s fought with his girlfriend lately, but he hasn’t been telling us those lengthy stories about her these days either. I know you two don’t exactly talk, but do you have any clue what’s up with him?
I’m kind of worried, as is Nakamaru (and Ueda and Koki are too, but they won’t admit it), but maybe he’s just tired.
Kame, of all people, saying that makes Taguchi closes his eyes and presses fingers to his chest. He can feel his heart beating rapidly under Jin’s T-shirt and something rising in his throat and maybe even a little to his eyes.
Relief. That’s what it is.
Jin calls him the next day and bitches about how Kame asked if anyone knew what was up with Akanishi because he seemed overly nice and polite and completely non-explicit in his emails.
Taguchi just smiles because he knows Jin cares about Kame too.
“So,” Jin frowns at him when Taguchi waves at the webcam. “It looks like you’re enjoying yourself.”
Taguchi has no idea what Jin means until the other man holds up a Japanese newspaper with his face plastered all over the front, most of it smiling. Taguchi can’t quite make out the headline, but he does catch “pun” and a couple of exclamation points. He remembers that press conference; the atmosphere had been getting awkward and quiet and so he had tried to liven things up a little.
And then he’d gotten asked if he’d been influenced by one of his old bandmates, and what else was there to say than “Yes, I’ve been talking to Taguchi-kun lately. He’s really funny. He’s more awesome than I am,” anyway?
“It’s just like you to take advantage of this and go on about how awesome you think you are,” Jin says, a slightly exasperated smile on his face. Taguchi can see he’s tired, but he’s not irritated.
“I can’t help it, it’s the truth!” he replies, pumping his fist into the air. “Just spreading the love, Jin-kun.”
“You’re going to make it sound like we actually get along,” Jin groans, covering his-Taguchi’s-his-whatever-face with his hands.
Taguchi has to smile at this. “Don’t we though?”
Jin laughs, nodding. “Yeah.”
And things just keep on going. For the entire month of December, they work in each other’s lives, slowly assimilating to being someone else. It’s not so bad after a while; Taguchi feels a little bit like it’s an acting gig, except there aren’t cameras recording his every move (most of the time, at least) and he can’t slip out of character unless he’s alone.
In a way, it’s easier because he’s watched Jin for a long time, knows how the other man would feel and act in most situations. Ten years worth of knowledge about the other man all come into play right here and right now, and Taguchi realizes that even if Jin started drifting away from them towards a solo career, they’ve always been friends-slash-groupmates-slash-coworkers-slash-whatever long enough to be able to pull this off.
Taguchi is glad that when they switched bodies, he switched with Jin.
It’s kind of weird when Jin’s manager calls (still in Japan, what is this madness?) to remind him that he’s got a flight to catch in about two days so he can return to shoot the cover of the CD jacket before the release of “Eternal” and start planning for the Saitama arena cons.
It’s kind of both a relief and nerve-wracking at the same time, because first, he’s going back to Japan at last-not that Los Angeles isn’t a great place, but it’s different, and he misses good Japanese food-and second, he’s faced with the prospect of having to learn all of Jin’s songs and maybe even perform as him if they’re not going back to their own bodies any time soon.
When he presents this thought to Jin over their next phone call, Jin pauses to think, nose scrunched up the way he used to when he was a junior before everyone started making fun of it. “Well,” he says, shrugging, “if we’re not back to normal by January, you’re going to have to.”
And all Jin gets is stunned silence in response.
“You’re not going to tell me that you’re just going to have to perform in my body?” Taguchi breathes, raising his eyebrows. “Our performing styles are totally different. I’ve only seen you onstage that one time I secretly went to your solo lives in Japan, how am I supposed to perform as you?”
Jin just laughs. He laughs. Taguchi swears he’s gone insane; maybe all that time with KAT-TUN wasn’t good for him. “It’s not like you to be this insecure, Taguchi,” he responds, sounding amused. “We’ll jump that hurdle when we reach it, okay? For now, just head back and we’ll see what happens. Maybe being in the same timezone will magically make us switch bodies again.”
“That definitely didn’t work in Freaky Friday,” Taguchi sighs.
“Yeah, well I’m definitely not stupid enough to run at you at full speed and knock our heads together. You don’t have enough brain cells as it is.”
“Look who’s talking, at least my nickname isn’t Bakanishi!” Taguchi shoots back, and they both laugh because it’s true and because Jin probably misses being called that. Taguchi can still only imagine what returning to Japan was like for Jin, what suddenly being a part of KAT-TUN again was like, even if it was under the pretense of Taguchi’s face and body. It had to have been hard for the other man, even more so than Taguchi adapting to Jin’s lifestyle in America.
“I’ve got to go,” Jin says suddenly, making a disgruntled noise. “Kamenashi’s on my case for being late all the time, and we’ve got rehearsal for Shounen Club in the morning. I’ll see you when you get back to Japan, okay?”
“Roger that,” Taguchi answers in English because it’s gotten to be so effortless, so natural. He even salutes, even though the other man can’t see it.
And maybe that’s the scary thing-they’ve been in each other’s bodies for so long now, pretending to be Jin is as natural as breathing because he has to do it almost all of the time. Even when the phone rings, even when he just steps out on the street, even when he’s meeting up with someone he just met.
Never let it be said that he’s a bad actor, but it’s getting to be tiring and he just wants to go back to being himself. It’s been nearly a month since the end of Jin’s lives, which means it’s been nearly three weeks as the other person. It shouldn’t seem like long, but it honestly has been.
God, he misses Japan.
And so, the next day, he packs his bags and flies back to Japan, where he ignores the horde of reporters the way Jin always has and crosses his fingers on the car ride back to Tokyo that magically, once they get within a ten-mile radius of each other or something, they’ll just switch bodies again.
Of course, it doesn’t happen, but it never hurts to hope.
“Countdown,” his manager says, throwing down a leaflet of paper on the table in front of him. “Get ready for it.”
“What?” Taguchi says sharply, staring down at the plans. “Why?”
“Because the boss says we need to at least pretend you’re on good terms with everyone, so if we don’t get you back in touch with people, we’re going to have some serious problems,” the other man sighs, sitting down in the folding chair opposite him. “You keep telling magazines that you haven’t really gotten in contact with the others, right?”
“That’s not true, I mentioned Taguchi in an interview a while ago,” Taguchi replies, but Jin’s manager just shakes his head and points to the papers.
“Get planning, you have the Saitama concerts to work on too,” the other man says, and then checks his watch. “I have a meeting to get to, Akanishi-kun, so I’ll talk to you later about this.”
Taguchi just watches as Jin’s manager briskly walks out of the room. “Uptight old geezer,” he mutters, and picks up the papers to skim through them. Jin’s phone rings shortly afterward, and the number that flashes on the screen is his own.
It’s the first time he’s answered with “moshi moshi” instead of “hello” in a long time. It feels kind of foreign on his tongue, awkward and different and altogether strange. It shouldn’t, but it does.
“Yo, let’s meet up,” Jin says on the other end. “Maybe that’ll get us back to normal.”
“Okay,” he nods, and they discuss a meeting time because Jin has to rehearse with KAT-TUN still and the jimusho’s break rooms would be a strange place for them to be seen together.
The idea of meeting Jin again is a little frightening.
When Taguchi sees his own face and body in person for the first time in nearly three weeks (wow that sounds weird when he thinks about it), he’s flooded with relief. It doesn’t seem like anything has changed, from Jin adapting Taguchi’s style to his walk. It’s like watching himself on television, but without a screen in the way.
“Hey,” Jin says, and it’s even weirder hearing Jin’s speech come out of Taguchi’s mouth. “So, what’s going on in my life?”
“Countdown,” Taguchi blurts out, and Jin freezes. “If we’re not back to normal in less than a week, I’m going to have to perform as you.”
He’s more nervous than he ever has been, and Jin seems to sense this. “No worries,” he says, even though Taguchi can tell that the other man is a little freaked too. It’s not about singing a solo in a concert, it’s about Taguchi pulling off Jin’s music and his voice. KAT-TUN for Jin is no big deal; he’s used to it. But Jin is an entirely different genre of music and a different brand of performer when he’s solo.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he mutters, lacing his fingers together around his coffee.
Jin just looks at him. “I think you might be able to,” he replies softly, lips pressed together in a solid line of determination.
For a moment, Taguchi believes him.
Rehearsal isn’t bad. Taguchi keeps to himself and Jin goes over the logistics with him beforehand, telling him what he would do and what Taguchi should do. Some juniors and senpai come to see him, and mostly Yamapi is too busy to even talk to him, which is good because Taguchi doesn’t know if he’d be able to pull Jin off to his best friend.
The day before Countdown isn’t terrible either, in retrospect. Jin calls to complain that Rena is begging him to go out, but in the end they just sit around Jin’s coffee table together with cans of beer and some take out because they’re too lazy to cook.
The day of, they get into ridiculous costumes (you just can’t escape the sparkles) and Jin wanders over to the dressing room he’s supposed to have to himself and leans against the doorframe, much to the surprise of a few juniors that pass by. “Stop worrying, you’re not going to suck completely.”
“I can’t remember how to sing,” Taguchi whines, shaking his head. “Or dance.”
Jin steps inside and closes the door behind him, then looks at Taguchi for a moment, eyebrows raised. “You’ll be fine,” he says, voice dead serious. “You can do it.”
And then he’s called away for a sound check, and Taguchi is left all alone in Jin’s body, alone in the dressing room, and feeling lonely in general.
The moment Countdown starts, he hates his life because even though all he wants to do is hide in a broom closet somewhere, he steps on stage and pretends to be Jin and no one seems any the wiser. They cycle through a few groups, singing and dancing and doing their jobs, and then it is Jin’s turn to ride on a ridiculously tall platform while singing.
As Taguchi steps onto it, he can see KAT-TUN rushing offstage. Jin pauses, sending him a wink and a thumbs-up, and in that moment, Taguchi feels reassurance as the platform begins to move, the doors of the arena opening to reveal him to too many viewers.
But the moment he opens his mouth to sing, all he feels is a rushing of air in his throat and bright light behind his eyes, so he closes them and hopes that he can pull this off even though he has no voice.
When he opens his eyes again, he sees Kame peering at him curiously. “Are you alright?” he asks, and Taguchi hopes that he didn’t do something stupid like collapse onstage. But he seems to be standing on both feet, maybe a little unsteadily. Maybe he just blocked out the entire performance. “You look nauseous.”
“Yeah,” he nods, and watches as Koki shoves Kame out of the way, brow creased in something between concern and irritation.
“Taguchi, I don’t know what’s up with you right now, but we have to get out there again in a few minutes and we can’t do that if you’re going to collapse onstage. Because then we’d have to call an ambulance and someone would have to ride with you in it and that someone would end up being me, and I just want to go home to see my dog,” he says crossly, frowning. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, reall-wait,” he pauses, looking at Koki. “What did you call me?”
“Taguchi?” Koki replies, eyebrows raised. “It’s not that loud back here, come on, man.”
“Taguchi,” he mumbles, and looks down at his outfit. It’s brazenly sparkled and definitely not what he was wearing when he got onstage. Something feels different, less uneasy and more like everything is right in the world. Without another word, he runs off to find a mirror.
When Taguchi stares into the glass, he runs fingers over his face-and by that he means his face, a little narrow-eyed and high-cheeked and smiling-and he can’t help but laugh even though Ueda comes and drags him off because they have to get back on stage soon.
“He’s finally snapped,” Ueda announces bluntly when he keeps laughing, running over to Jin when the other man is getting offstage and “Yuuki 100%” starts playing out in the arena, almost jumping on the other man in glee.
Taguchi almost doesn’t hear Kame mutter, “Akanishi is going to kill him,” when Jin tries to shake him off and gets him in a choke hold in response.
“Jin!” he breathes when he finally straightens up and throws his arms around the other man again. “We’re back!”
“I noticed,” Jin grunts, and manages to escape Taguchi’s arms after a moment of struggle. But he smiles and chuckles when Taguchi just lifts his arms in the air in victory, and lifts a hand to high five the other man in victory, just because he can.
“Oh god, they’ve both snapped,” Ueda groans from afar.
In response, Taguchi runs over and tosses arms carelessly over Ueda. “I’ve missed you too, Uepi!” he chirps.
“Wait, no, stop, you’re going to take off the butterfly-Taguchi! If you keep hugging me, I’m not going to look at your lyrics anymore!” Ueda protests as Taguchi reaches over and pulls Koki and Kame into the hug as well. They both voice some discontent, but don’t struggle too much when he gets arms around them and squeezes tightly. “I guess at least you’re not being weird anymore,” Ueda mutters, almost low enough that Taguchi can’t hear him. Almost.
He also pretends he doesn’t hear Kame and Koki mumble their agreement.
“Yucchi, you too!” Taguchi grins at Nakamaru, who just shrugs and loops an arm around Koki’s neck and Taguchi’s shoulders.
“Good to know you’re back to normal, Taguchi,” Nakamaru says, even though Taguchi can barely hear him from where Ueda is complaining about how Taguchi hugs too hard.
After about two seconds more of the group hug, Koki finally ducks out of Taguchi’s grasp and crosses his arms. “Taguchi, we’re all glad you’re not acting weird anymore, and Happy New Year too you too, but this is kind of gross,” he grunts, and brushes off the arms of his jacket, sending glitter everywhere, much to the dismay of the wardrobe staff around them.
Taguchi finally relents and the rest of KAT-TUN wander off to wait to get back onstage (but not without a punch in the arm from Ueda because the decal is definitely coming off), while Taguchi just moves toward Jin, who is standing awkwardly to one side.
“You look happy,” Jin says, a little quietly.
Taguchi smiles in response. He has no idea of what exactly Jin’s been up to in his body, whether he fully played the part of Taguchi and sapped all over the place and made really bad puns, or if he played a semi-muted character instead, but at the very least, he seems to have done a good job of it.
“You know what Kame told me once?” Taguchi sighs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Jin raises his eyebrow curiously. “Actually, it was all of them. The day Johnny told us that you were leaving us officially.”
Jin looks a little uncomfortable as Taguchi pauses, lifting a hand to scratch at his head. “What?” he asks, sounding a bit uneasy.
“They said they were kind of proud of you. Because you had the courage to dream about something other than just KAT-TUN, and you took the opportunity when it was presented to you,” Taguchi replies, and he’s smiling so widely, his face feels like it’s about to break because he remembers this, clear as day. “No one thinks you’re very selfish, Jin, even if it’s hard to say.”
And because he has to get back onstage, he pats Jin on the shoulder and rushes off to perform with his group.
But he does catch Jin’s smile right before he walks through the doors with half of the company right before midnight, bright lights beating down on him and cheers resounding through the dome.
Nakamaru flings an arm around Koki’s waist and Taguchi’s shoulders, and Kame does the same for both him and Ueda-even if Taguchi is too tall for him to get an arm around comfortably-and the group he hopes he’s going to be with for at least ten more years to come walks out onto the stage of Tokyo Dome as one.
In that moment, he’s never been so grateful to be a part of KAT-TUN.
From: psychoniji
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Golden Bridge
Pairing/Group: KAT-TUN (Taguchi, Jin)
Rating: PG-13 for language
Warnings: Freaky Friday-ing, Jin on a solo career, Taguchi’s really bad puns.
Notes: For krysyuy! I hope you enjoy this; I had a lot of fun writing it. ;) Thank you to C for brainstorming, handholding, and beta-ing. As for why Jin is in LA, it’s just because there’s been no news of him returning to Japan as of yet, and it’s easier that way. Or harder, I’m not sure. Regardless, happy holidays! ♥♥♥
Summary: They’ve got a bit of a switch-uation.
Taguchi wakes up with a bad headache in sheets that feel unfamiliar. For a moment he thinks he’s at Rena’s, but there isn’t any of her perfume lingering in the air when he inhales deeply, just a deep musk that borders on familiar but he can’t exactly place where he’s smelled it before.
His hair tickles his nose when he shifts in bed, squeezing his eyes more tightly together against the bright sunlight.
It’s funny. He feels like he hasn’t slept at all but he knows it has to be morning, possibly even early in the afternoon from the light that he can’t quite filter out with just his eyelids.
Wait, afternoon?
He jolts up in bed, eyes suddenly wide open, and realizes with a start that the white sheets and blue comforter and soft cream, undecorated walls are definitely not his apartment. It’s not Rena’s apartment either.
His body feels stiff when he leaps out of bed and pulls the curtains open. Outside he’s greeted with a sprawling cityscape, palm trees here and there but mostly buildings and sunshine and-if he’s seeing them correctly-highly attractive foreigners walking the streets below.
It seems like kind of a joke. Maybe the rest of KAT-TUN drugged him, put him on a plane, and sent him off to Hawaii for laughs. At this point, it doesn’t seem entirely impossible.
“Maybe that’s it,” he mutters, chuckling to himself. “Get a hold of yourself, Junnosuke.” He sighs, shaking his head like he’s being silly, and reaches a hand up to push the hair back from his face.
When he touches it, it feels different, the way it slips through his fingers so much slicker than he remembers, the strands long and unruly and a little bit coarse. He twirls a strand of it around his finger and wonders when it got so long. The last time he looked in a mirror, it had definitely been shorter.
Suddenly, he looks at his hand and realizes that it’s tanner than he remembers, and that is definitely not the lighting in the room. Upon closer inspection, the fingers are less bony, cuticles ragged and uncared for, guitar calluses that he can’t remember ever having gotten because he doesn’t really play the guitar other than to annoy Ueda in the dressing rooms with random chords.
And suddenly, it’s like he realizes that everything about him is distinctly not himself, from the clothes on his body to the spread of his toes.
If this is a joke, it’s definitely a thorough one.
He glances around the room to find a mirror and spots an open door that he assumes to be the bathroom. Dashing inside of it, he clutches onto the porcelain of the sink, stares at his own reflection in shock, and almost doubles over in laughter, hands reaching up to grasp at his cheeks and chin, raising his eyebrows and making the most awkward face he can until the muscles hurt from moving.
Well, if he’s being honest, nothing he moves is actually his.
It’s Jin’s.
If this is a joke, then somewhere, he hopes all of KAT-TUN is enjoying a laugh at his expense.
After Taguchi has sufficiently calmed down enough to accept the fact that it isn’t a rigged mirror and that he really does have Jin’s face and body and sneakers and closet and everything (and by that, he means everything-he checked), he does the only thing he can think to do:
He sits down on Jin’s bed and has a nice, long laugh because if he thinks about it really, really hard, it’s absolutely hilarious. Especially the thought that if he’s stuck in Jin’s body, then the other man is most definitely stuck in his. He wonders for a moment if this is divine intervention for the group, then decides that it’s not fair if Ueda and Ryo haven’t switched bodies either.
Taguchi entertains the idea for a moment before deciding that he is actually taking this quite well, considering that he’s more or less stepped into that drama that Kato from NEWS was in with Aragaki Yui. This could even be kind of fun.
On second thought, he thinks, when he picks up the phone and spends what is probably a lot in calling his own cell phone from across the Pacific Ocean and gets a mumbled, “Hello?” in English in response, that this would be a whole lot easier if he were actually in the same country as the other man. It’s definitely his own voice, but hearing that lightly accented English is more than a little bit odd.
“Hey,” he says, and the person he hopes is Jin grunts on the other line. “Akanishi, I think we have a problem.”
“Who the hell is this?” Jin answers in irritated, tired Japanese, and Taguchi can hear the other man shift. “This… is not my fucking phone. What the hell, this isn’t my apartment either.”
A moment later, Jin speaks into the receiver again, the confusion clear in his voice. “Who are you and why are you calling from my cell phone?”
“It’s Taguchi,” Taguchi replies, as casually as possible. “I think we have a problem.”
“You don’t sound like Taguchi. His voice is more annoying than that,” Jin replies evenly, an eyebrow raised. “Look, if this is a scam, you’re not fooling anybody.”
“Sit up and look in the mirror to your left, please.” Taguchi sighs patiently, and hears a scoff of disbelief before the line goes dead. He has no doubt in his mind that Jin has probably listened to him and is doing a great deal of freaking out right now, and when the phone in his hands goes off, he knows exactly who it is.
It’s definitely been a while since they were last together for a long enough time, he thinks when the voice on the other end is shrill enough to make him wince. Jin is barely coherent on the other end; all Taguchi can make out is a few choice English expletives and some questions about what happened, why does he suddenly have Taguchi’s face, is this all just an elaborate joke-
“It’s not,” Taguchi says, rifling through Jin’s pantry for food. He’d found the kitchen while Jin had been panicking, but all he seems to have is dry cereal and some weird American snack food called Chex Mix stored on the small shelves.
Jin makes an indignant sound on the other end. “Then what the hell is it?”
“It’s a serious switch-uation,” Taguchi answers, smiling to himself at the pun, and waits for the inevitable silence.
It comes, but not for long. Jin chuckles, nearly inaudible over the static of the phone. “You’re making puns at a time like this? I guess I’m not surprised.”
For a moment, he is uncharacteristically silent as Jin closes his mouth on the other end of the line. “So do you think we’re the only ones stuck like this?” he tries, tapping fingers thoughtfully against the refrigerator door.
Jin laughs, an odd sound because it’s his laugh in Taguchi’s voice and entirely unfamiliar to the both of them. “You’re worried about that? I want to know if we’re stuck like this forever.”
Taguchi thinks about it for a moment before he pulls the refrigerator door open and seizes a carton of orange juice, because it’s the only thing in there that might not upset his suddenly churning stomach.
“Yeah,” he manages, and swallows heavily. “Me too.”
They talk a while longer and work things out maybe halfway. They agree to do each other’s work and not complain too much, as well as to exchange emails and chat every few days on the phone to keep up with things on the other side. Jin proposes telling the other members and their managers, but halfway through changes his mind as he tries to think of a precise, understandable explanation that doesn’t sound completely insane.
Taguchi is relieved that they’re not going to attempt explaining it to the other members. They wouldn’t believe him. Ten years, he thinks when they hang up, and stares pensively at his glass of orange juice. Ten years and they’re sick of him.
He knows his jokes stopped being funny to them a long time ago; he just tells them now because he knows it exasperates them and the fans love it. In a way, he’s just become tired and jaded over the years, sick of feeling like the least favorite in the group and being ignored and feeling underappreciated by the other five-now four-members.
But at the same time, he’s gotten used to it. He likes his group members, as often as they sometimes seem to not like him back.
He wonders how Jin feels, going back to a group he left. It’s probably awkward as hell for the other man, like sticking an animal back into the wild once it’s lived in a zoo for a while-or vice versa; Taguchi isn’t sure which is the more proper analogy. But at least Jin will be able to adapt back; he knows how Taguchi acts around the other members and Taguchi has enough faith in Jin for him to play the part well.
Himself, he’s not so sure about. He has no idea how Jin acts around his American friends, especially outside of Japan and in America. Hell, he has no idea how Americans in general really act, just remembers the portrayals of them on TV and variety shows.
At the very least, he tells himself when the phone rings and he almost answers, “Moshi moshi?” instead of “Hello?”, that Jin’s English speaking abilities seem to have transferred over to him for the time being. It makes the conversation a lot easier when he can both understand and talk to the other person on the other end, a girl he remembers was one of Jin’s dancers last month during the tour.
She’s nice and laughs when he asks where the dance studio he’s supposed to meet her at is, and spells out the address for him.
“We’ve really got to get working. See you soon, Jin,” she tells him, and he almost cringes at the way she pronounces it.
“Yeah,” he says, and almost forgets that Americans say good bye to each other on the phone instead of just hanging up.
For a little while longer, he stands in the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror, tracing over Jin’s features with fingers that feel unfamiliar.
Out of curiosity, he touches Jin’s clavicles. It tickles, more than he would have expected.
He smiles fondly as he remembers that Jin never did like being tickled when they were juniors. It all makes sense now.
Jin’s jeans are all too baggy and Taguchi wonders how the other man stands feeling like he’s wearing sweatpants all day. He has to go to a press conference, according to the call he receives from Jin’s manager who is conveniently away doing things in Japan, about his time in the studio and his tour.
Taguchi fingers the worn denim and pokes a finger through a hole in the hem of one pant leg before he decides that it’s a very good idea to at least wear something classy on top.
As he belts the jeans as tightly as possible, he silently curses the other man and hopes that he’s in dismay that Taguchi’s pants are all kind of tight.
“I’m not going near your girlfriend, either,” Jin says, and Taguchi can’t help but think how strange it is to hear his own voice in Jin’s lazy Japanese, quiet and slurred together a little bit. It’s a nice gesture, at least; and even if Jin not going after a girl is a normal occurrence, he appreciates the thought. “She called earlier today.”
“Oh?” Taguchi thinks of Rena. He wonders how she’d take it if he came back to her with a face like Jin’s. She’d probably kick him out, screaming obscenities all the while. He grins a little at the thought. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I had a temporary case of crabs so we shouldn’t see each other,” Jin deadpans, sounding irritated. “She just made a disgusted noise and hung up.”
“Why so crab-by, Akanishi?”
He can’t help himself. It’s a natural instinct nowadays, the puns and corny jokes just slipping out; he doesn’t even think about it anymore, just opens his mouth and lets the puns go when it’s even a little bit appropriate.
Unsurprisingly, Jin doesn’t laugh. “I’m not dealing with her,” he informs Taguchi. “Older women are gross.”
“Aw,” Taguchi chuckles, and thinks about Rena with a sigh. He misses her a little already. “I like Rena.”
Jin makes a sound like he’s throwing up over the phone. Taguchi can hear the grimace in his voice when he speaks again. “You’re gross too, Taguchi.”
“I know, I know, Jin-kun,” he smiles, and Jin just snorts on the other end of the line. For a moment, all he hears is the crackling of static over the long distance line, until Jin mumbles something he can barely hear. “What?” he asks, and Jin audibly sighs.
“I miss my own body. Yours is too tall,” Jin replies.
That is definitely not what he said before, but Taguchi lets it go with a laugh. “Yours is too fat,” he teases, and this time Jin laughs along with him after making a scandalized sound on the other end.
The first time, Jin had said, “What happens if we don’t go back?”
Taguchi doesn’t want to think about it.
Jin decides one night about a week of pretending to be each other that, as awkward as it’s going to be, he wants to make sure that Taguchi does nothing weird to his appearance. Taguchi jokes that he’s more worried about Jin making him look like a slob, although he knows deep down that it’s more of a reassurance to both of them that they’re still who they are on the inside.
So he turns on the webcam of Jin’s laptop and blinks at his own appearance, eyebrows raised because it’s very odd seeing his face wearing Jin’s expression.
“This isn’t so bad,” Jin mumbles, and Taguchi is transfixed at the sight of his mouth moving to the sound of Jin’s Japanese in his own voice. “Except it’s fucking weird.”
“Yeah,” Taguchi breathes, and Jin squints at the camera. “How is everyone?”
Jin makes a face and waves a hand in the air. “Same old, same old. You guys haven’t changed at all. Kame’s still an uptight little prick, Koki is a woobie on the inside-you know, the usual. How’re things over there?”
“Your choreography is hard,” Taguchi replies, resting his chin on a palm. He feels very unlike himself and sighs, stretching out his neck before he grins as widely as he can. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi desu!”
Jin just stares at him, unimpressed. “You’re so KY.”
“I’m slick like that,” Taguchi replies in English, Jin’s lazy Californian drawl taking over, and this makes Jin laugh loud and hard, clamping a hand over his mouth because it’s very late at night over there.
Suddenly, he doesn’t feel as alone anymore.
But in truth, he’s alone as alone can be sometimes.
Learning things solo is something Taguchi hasn’t had to do for a long, long time. Sure, he sings by himself when he’s trying to figure out his part for a song, and he has solos during concerts and for Shounen Club on occasion, but there has never been a time when Koki or Kame or Nakamaru or Ueda or even Akanishi wasn’t around to poke fun at his harmonies or tell him that his footing was off here.
Suddenly, as Jin, the more attractive voice is nothing close to a trade-off for feeling very, very alone in the middle of a dance studio.
“Jin!” The choreographer snaps when he’s lost in his own thoughts again, and he looks at the man with raised eyebrows. “We all know you’re beautiful, okay, man? You don’t need to keep confirming it by staring at yourself in the mirror.”
“Oh,” he manages, and the English flows out with ease. He glances down at the floor, at the sneakers that he’d never pick out and the baggy jeans that are more Koki’s thing. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“You alright, man?” A hand rests heavily on his shoulder and he looks up. The other man’s face is concerned, thick eyebrows furrowed and thin lips pressed into a neat line. If he imagines hard enough, it looks a little like Koki wearing those fake moustaches from Cartoon KAT-TUN over his eyebrows. “If you’re tired, we can stop.”
“No, no!” He straightens his back and brings his hands up in front of him, waving them around as animatedly as he can. “I’m fine, really! Let’s keep going.”
The choreographer just looks at him, eyebrows raised in apprehension. He grins back before he remembers that his usual sunny smile definitely does not belong on Jin’s face and mutes it to a small smirk. He supposes he’s going to have to get used to that.
“You and your fucking Asian work ethic,” the man sighs, but shakes his head and reaches down to press play on the small stereo next to him. “One, two, three, four!”
As Taguchi launches into the routine he’s only barely familiar with, he blesses the stars that if nothing else, he can always count on remembering the dances he’s taught.
Dancing in Jin’s body is awkward. Taguchi wishes he could close his eyes and pretend that he’s dancing in his own.
He tries, but when he opens his eyes, all he sees is Jin’s face staring back at him.
After a while, Taguchi gets used to all of this. He pretends he’s Jin, Jin pretends he’s Taguchi, and no one seems the wiser.
Sometimes he entertains the idea that they’re never going to get back to their own bodies. He imagines that Jin is surprisingly optimistic about it the way that Taguchi should be, but in all honesty he knows they’re both thinking it. It might be a long while before they turn back, especially since they can’t think of any reason they switched bodies in the first place.
“Maybe it’s like in that movie,” Jin mutters halfway through December, tapping his fingers against his chin. “You know, the one with Lindsay Lohan when she was still with Disney, before she got addicted to crack.”
Taguchi just stares at Jin, like the man has gone insane or something.
Jin frowns back at him. “Freaky Friday! Have you never seen it? The mom and the daughter are in the exact same situation as we are, Taguchi.”
“Oh.” He contemplates this for a moment.
Jin sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. “Go to the video store across the street and to the left, about a block down and next to a taco place. Have a taco and rent the movie, and then we’ll talk. I’ve got to go answer interviews for you anyway. I’ll see you later, Taguchi.”
“Bye,” Taguchi waves at Jin and stares at the clock. It’s just past nine and he has nothing better to do, so he throws on a coat and heads down the street, stepping past clubbers on their way out and people on their way home from work. In some ways it feels like Tokyo, the cars whizzing by and the streets all lit up in neon.
But Los Angeles is a different place entirely, he is reminded when he stands outside of the grimy windows of the video store and smells the tacqueria that almost reminds him of yakitori but not quite because there are more chiles and onions in the smoky air. He closes his eyes and no one knocks into him even though it’s a relatively busy street.
And then he walks inside, finds the movie, and pays for it without getting a second glance from the cashier. He eats what is possibly the most delicious Mexican food he has ever eaten, then returns home and puts the movie into Jin’s laptop, staring at the screen when loud American pop fills his ears.
The movie isn’t bad and Lindsay Lohan was cute before she turned into a crackhead. But overall, the way they’re supposed to get back to normal is essentially that he’s supposed to do something selfless for Jin while Jin is supposed to do something selfless back for Taguchi.
Well, he thinks, that couldn’t have been vaguer. When he calls Jin and asks what ideas Jin has, all he gets in response is a blank silence and, “I don’t know, I was hoping you would have a clue.”
“Oh.”
For a while they sit in silence, static crackling over the phone. Jin is the first one to talk, voice quiet and sullen. “We’ll figure it out, right?”
To be honest, Taguchi doesn’t know how to answer the question. Yes, maybe they will, and then they can go back to their respective lives and live like they always have been. But then again, no, maybe they won’t, and maybe Taguchi will be stuck with a solo career that he never asked for in a style of music that he isn’t used to, and Jin will be back in KAT-TUN again, pretending to be cheerful and happy and terribly amusing.
The idea is difficult to swallow, but Taguchi does anyway.
“Yeah,” he says, partially because he thinks so, partially because it’s his job to be the optimist, but mostly because he knows it’s what the other man desperately wants to hear. “We’ll be back to normal in no time, Jin.”
When he gets no response, Taguchi imagines what Jin must look like right now, maybe lounging all over his couch or his bed or even his desk chair, a serious expression that Taguchi can’t even pull off during dramas plastered over his face. He thinks about Rena-what would she say if she found out that Taguchi isn’t really Taguchi, that he doesn’t have crabs, that he’s actually stuck inside the body of a rumored playboy and solo artist an ocean away.
“We’ll be back to normal in no time,” he repeats, except this time it’s for himself.
“You said that already,” Jin mutters.
And Taguchi lets out a short bark of laughter, suddenly realizing how different his voice is than Jin’s. It’s disorienting to hear himself speak in a voice too dulcet and not nearly as nasal as it should be, even more so than the first day he woke up and realized he was in Jin’s body.
“I’ll look into it,” Jin tells him, and hangs up without saying good bye.
Taguchi wonders how difficult it would be to get his hands on a copy of Kato’s drama to see how they got back to normal as he stares outside at the cars whizzing by the streets of Los Angeles.
He misses Japan. He misses his own body, not waking up stiff, being able to pull off short hair, wearing jeans that aren’t too baggy. He misses his parents and he misses Ueda’s music, he misses Nakamaru’s sweaters, he misses Kame’s neuroticism, and he even misses Koki making fun of his jokes and telling him he’s not funny even though he laughs at Taguchi’s jokes sometimes.
He bets Jin misses himself too.
“God, I fucking hate being you,” Jin groans over the webcam, and Taguchi blinks back at his own face. “Why the hell do you have posters of yourself all over the place? I don’t want to wake up and see your face on the wall and then have to look into the mirror and see it again. Once is enough.”
“Being you isn’t exactly a walk in the park either,” Taguchi shrugs, and Jin sighs, shoulders slumping visibly on the fuzzy camera. “What do you look like when you act like me?”
Jin gives him a questioning look, but beams and waves his hands about in the air. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi desu!” he chirps. It’s not an inaccurate imitation of his gag, but it’s unenthusiastic. When Jin lowers his arms and stops smiling, the difference is immediately apparent: the slouch, the dark eyes, the brooding air that always seems to surround Jin went with him when their bodies switched.
It’s a little bit scary when he’s confronted with the sight. He wonders if the rest of KAT-TUN notices the difference.
“What about you?” Jin asks suddenly, lazily resting his chin in his hand, eyes fixed on the computer screen.
Taguchi just looks at him, still lost in thought.
Jin laughs, clapping his hands, and for a moment, Taguchi feels like he’s watching himself. “That’s pretty good,” Jin chuckles, lifting a hand to rub at his eyes. “I bet you’re not getting constantly asked if there’s something wrong.”
Taguchi blinks. “Are you?”
Jin nods and waves his hand in the air with a roll of his eyes. “Apparently they think it’s weird when your puns are worse than usual.”
And Taguchi has to laugh at this, partly out of relief and partly out of gratitude. “Akanishi,” he chortles, shoulders still shaking a little bit. “Thanks for trying.”
“Don’t get all sappy on me now, you oaf,” Jin mutters, making a face. He yawns, lifting Taguchi’s arms above his head to stretch. “I’m tired,” he mumbles, but doesn’t reach to turn the webcam off like he usually does when it gets to be this late. “There’s so much work to do.”
“Sorry.” He doesn’t know why he’s apologizing. “How is everyone?”
“Kamenashi is worried that I’m not replying to his emails,” Jin answers, and points a finger at Taguchi. “Do it for me, will you? My password is jinlovespin, all lowercase-don’t you fucking dare laugh, Taguchi, I’m sure yours is equally as embarrassing.”
Taguchi doesn’t have the heart to tell him that his is just a couple of letters and numbers and hides his laughter behind one hand.
“Don’t read anything but the ones from Kamenashi or I’ll make you strip on national television,” Jin threatens, as if it’s not already a regular occurrence for Johnny’s. “And don’t open any spam, I don’t want my emails all corrupted again.”
“Roger that,” Taguchi salutes. It looks silly in Jin’s body when he glances at the image that displays his own side of the world, and he takes the time to commit the image to memory for later laughs. Jin clicks off Taguchi’s webcam and a small popping sound tells Taguchi that he’s no longer in a video chat.
He opens up what he remembers Jin’s last mail client was in the browser and finds the username and password saved in the boxes anyway.
The first email is from Yamapi. Despite the little voice in his head that tells him to just see what it says, he scrolls down until he sees an email dated yesterday, from a contact labeled “Anal Retentive Turtle x)” in English. It makes him laugh.
He reads about everything Jin has already told him, that they’re finishing up promotion for the new single, that Nakamaru is griping over coursework still, that Ueda’s been hanging out a lot with someone named Masami (if Taguchi were anyone else, he’d assume that it was a girl, but he knows Ueda well enough to know that it’s just the guitarist from Mouse Peace-he thinks, at least), and that Koki is catching a bit of a cold now that December has arrived.
Taguchi, on the other hand, has been acting weird lately. He’s quiet and his jokes are getting to be especially awful. I don’t think he’s fought with his girlfriend lately, but he hasn’t been telling us those lengthy stories about her these days either. I know you two don’t exactly talk, but do you have any clue what’s up with him?
I’m kind of worried, as is Nakamaru (and Ueda and Koki are too, but they won’t admit it), but maybe he’s just tired.
Kame, of all people, saying that makes Taguchi closes his eyes and presses fingers to his chest. He can feel his heart beating rapidly under Jin’s T-shirt and something rising in his throat and maybe even a little to his eyes.
Relief. That’s what it is.
Jin calls him the next day and bitches about how Kame asked if anyone knew what was up with Akanishi because he seemed overly nice and polite and completely non-explicit in his emails.
Taguchi just smiles because he knows Jin cares about Kame too.
“So,” Jin frowns at him when Taguchi waves at the webcam. “It looks like you’re enjoying yourself.”
Taguchi has no idea what Jin means until the other man holds up a Japanese newspaper with his face plastered all over the front, most of it smiling. Taguchi can’t quite make out the headline, but he does catch “pun” and a couple of exclamation points. He remembers that press conference; the atmosphere had been getting awkward and quiet and so he had tried to liven things up a little.
And then he’d gotten asked if he’d been influenced by one of his old bandmates, and what else was there to say than “Yes, I’ve been talking to Taguchi-kun lately. He’s really funny. He’s more awesome than I am,” anyway?
“It’s just like you to take advantage of this and go on about how awesome you think you are,” Jin says, a slightly exasperated smile on his face. Taguchi can see he’s tired, but he’s not irritated.
“I can’t help it, it’s the truth!” he replies, pumping his fist into the air. “Just spreading the love, Jin-kun.”
“You’re going to make it sound like we actually get along,” Jin groans, covering his-Taguchi’s-his-whatever-face with his hands.
Taguchi has to smile at this. “Don’t we though?”
Jin laughs, nodding. “Yeah.”
And things just keep on going. For the entire month of December, they work in each other’s lives, slowly assimilating to being someone else. It’s not so bad after a while; Taguchi feels a little bit like it’s an acting gig, except there aren’t cameras recording his every move (most of the time, at least) and he can’t slip out of character unless he’s alone.
In a way, it’s easier because he’s watched Jin for a long time, knows how the other man would feel and act in most situations. Ten years worth of knowledge about the other man all come into play right here and right now, and Taguchi realizes that even if Jin started drifting away from them towards a solo career, they’ve always been friends-slash-groupmates-slash-coworkers-slash-whatever long enough to be able to pull this off.
Taguchi is glad that when they switched bodies, he switched with Jin.
It’s kind of weird when Jin’s manager calls (still in Japan, what is this madness?) to remind him that he’s got a flight to catch in about two days so he can return to shoot the cover of the CD jacket before the release of “Eternal” and start planning for the Saitama arena cons.
It’s kind of both a relief and nerve-wracking at the same time, because first, he’s going back to Japan at last-not that Los Angeles isn’t a great place, but it’s different, and he misses good Japanese food-and second, he’s faced with the prospect of having to learn all of Jin’s songs and maybe even perform as him if they’re not going back to their own bodies any time soon.
When he presents this thought to Jin over their next phone call, Jin pauses to think, nose scrunched up the way he used to when he was a junior before everyone started making fun of it. “Well,” he says, shrugging, “if we’re not back to normal by January, you’re going to have to.”
And all Jin gets is stunned silence in response.
“You’re not going to tell me that you’re just going to have to perform in my body?” Taguchi breathes, raising his eyebrows. “Our performing styles are totally different. I’ve only seen you onstage that one time I secretly went to your solo lives in Japan, how am I supposed to perform as you?”
Jin just laughs. He laughs. Taguchi swears he’s gone insane; maybe all that time with KAT-TUN wasn’t good for him. “It’s not like you to be this insecure, Taguchi,” he responds, sounding amused. “We’ll jump that hurdle when we reach it, okay? For now, just head back and we’ll see what happens. Maybe being in the same timezone will magically make us switch bodies again.”
“That definitely didn’t work in Freaky Friday,” Taguchi sighs.
“Yeah, well I’m definitely not stupid enough to run at you at full speed and knock our heads together. You don’t have enough brain cells as it is.”
“Look who’s talking, at least my nickname isn’t Bakanishi!” Taguchi shoots back, and they both laugh because it’s true and because Jin probably misses being called that. Taguchi can still only imagine what returning to Japan was like for Jin, what suddenly being a part of KAT-TUN again was like, even if it was under the pretense of Taguchi’s face and body. It had to have been hard for the other man, even more so than Taguchi adapting to Jin’s lifestyle in America.
“I’ve got to go,” Jin says suddenly, making a disgruntled noise. “Kamenashi’s on my case for being late all the time, and we’ve got rehearsal for Shounen Club in the morning. I’ll see you when you get back to Japan, okay?”
“Roger that,” Taguchi answers in English because it’s gotten to be so effortless, so natural. He even salutes, even though the other man can’t see it.
And maybe that’s the scary thing-they’ve been in each other’s bodies for so long now, pretending to be Jin is as natural as breathing because he has to do it almost all of the time. Even when the phone rings, even when he just steps out on the street, even when he’s meeting up with someone he just met.
Never let it be said that he’s a bad actor, but it’s getting to be tiring and he just wants to go back to being himself. It’s been nearly a month since the end of Jin’s lives, which means it’s been nearly three weeks as the other person. It shouldn’t seem like long, but it honestly has been.
God, he misses Japan.
And so, the next day, he packs his bags and flies back to Japan, where he ignores the horde of reporters the way Jin always has and crosses his fingers on the car ride back to Tokyo that magically, once they get within a ten-mile radius of each other or something, they’ll just switch bodies again.
Of course, it doesn’t happen, but it never hurts to hope.
“Countdown,” his manager says, throwing down a leaflet of paper on the table in front of him. “Get ready for it.”
“What?” Taguchi says sharply, staring down at the plans. “Why?”
“Because the boss says we need to at least pretend you’re on good terms with everyone, so if we don’t get you back in touch with people, we’re going to have some serious problems,” the other man sighs, sitting down in the folding chair opposite him. “You keep telling magazines that you haven’t really gotten in contact with the others, right?”
“That’s not true, I mentioned Taguchi in an interview a while ago,” Taguchi replies, but Jin’s manager just shakes his head and points to the papers.
“Get planning, you have the Saitama concerts to work on too,” the other man says, and then checks his watch. “I have a meeting to get to, Akanishi-kun, so I’ll talk to you later about this.”
Taguchi just watches as Jin’s manager briskly walks out of the room. “Uptight old geezer,” he mutters, and picks up the papers to skim through them. Jin’s phone rings shortly afterward, and the number that flashes on the screen is his own.
It’s the first time he’s answered with “moshi moshi” instead of “hello” in a long time. It feels kind of foreign on his tongue, awkward and different and altogether strange. It shouldn’t, but it does.
“Yo, let’s meet up,” Jin says on the other end. “Maybe that’ll get us back to normal.”
“Okay,” he nods, and they discuss a meeting time because Jin has to rehearse with KAT-TUN still and the jimusho’s break rooms would be a strange place for them to be seen together.
The idea of meeting Jin again is a little frightening.
When Taguchi sees his own face and body in person for the first time in nearly three weeks (wow that sounds weird when he thinks about it), he’s flooded with relief. It doesn’t seem like anything has changed, from Jin adapting Taguchi’s style to his walk. It’s like watching himself on television, but without a screen in the way.
“Hey,” Jin says, and it’s even weirder hearing Jin’s speech come out of Taguchi’s mouth. “So, what’s going on in my life?”
“Countdown,” Taguchi blurts out, and Jin freezes. “If we’re not back to normal in less than a week, I’m going to have to perform as you.”
He’s more nervous than he ever has been, and Jin seems to sense this. “No worries,” he says, even though Taguchi can tell that the other man is a little freaked too. It’s not about singing a solo in a concert, it’s about Taguchi pulling off Jin’s music and his voice. KAT-TUN for Jin is no big deal; he’s used to it. But Jin is an entirely different genre of music and a different brand of performer when he’s solo.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he mutters, lacing his fingers together around his coffee.
Jin just looks at him. “I think you might be able to,” he replies softly, lips pressed together in a solid line of determination.
For a moment, Taguchi believes him.
Rehearsal isn’t bad. Taguchi keeps to himself and Jin goes over the logistics with him beforehand, telling him what he would do and what Taguchi should do. Some juniors and senpai come to see him, and mostly Yamapi is too busy to even talk to him, which is good because Taguchi doesn’t know if he’d be able to pull Jin off to his best friend.
The day before Countdown isn’t terrible either, in retrospect. Jin calls to complain that Rena is begging him to go out, but in the end they just sit around Jin’s coffee table together with cans of beer and some take out because they’re too lazy to cook.
The day of, they get into ridiculous costumes (you just can’t escape the sparkles) and Jin wanders over to the dressing room he’s supposed to have to himself and leans against the doorframe, much to the surprise of a few juniors that pass by. “Stop worrying, you’re not going to suck completely.”
“I can’t remember how to sing,” Taguchi whines, shaking his head. “Or dance.”
Jin steps inside and closes the door behind him, then looks at Taguchi for a moment, eyebrows raised. “You’ll be fine,” he says, voice dead serious. “You can do it.”
And then he’s called away for a sound check, and Taguchi is left all alone in Jin’s body, alone in the dressing room, and feeling lonely in general.
The moment Countdown starts, he hates his life because even though all he wants to do is hide in a broom closet somewhere, he steps on stage and pretends to be Jin and no one seems any the wiser. They cycle through a few groups, singing and dancing and doing their jobs, and then it is Jin’s turn to ride on a ridiculously tall platform while singing.
As Taguchi steps onto it, he can see KAT-TUN rushing offstage. Jin pauses, sending him a wink and a thumbs-up, and in that moment, Taguchi feels reassurance as the platform begins to move, the doors of the arena opening to reveal him to too many viewers.
But the moment he opens his mouth to sing, all he feels is a rushing of air in his throat and bright light behind his eyes, so he closes them and hopes that he can pull this off even though he has no voice.
When he opens his eyes again, he sees Kame peering at him curiously. “Are you alright?” he asks, and Taguchi hopes that he didn’t do something stupid like collapse onstage. But he seems to be standing on both feet, maybe a little unsteadily. Maybe he just blocked out the entire performance. “You look nauseous.”
“Yeah,” he nods, and watches as Koki shoves Kame out of the way, brow creased in something between concern and irritation.
“Taguchi, I don’t know what’s up with you right now, but we have to get out there again in a few minutes and we can’t do that if you’re going to collapse onstage. Because then we’d have to call an ambulance and someone would have to ride with you in it and that someone would end up being me, and I just want to go home to see my dog,” he says crossly, frowning. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, reall-wait,” he pauses, looking at Koki. “What did you call me?”
“Taguchi?” Koki replies, eyebrows raised. “It’s not that loud back here, come on, man.”
“Taguchi,” he mumbles, and looks down at his outfit. It’s brazenly sparkled and definitely not what he was wearing when he got onstage. Something feels different, less uneasy and more like everything is right in the world. Without another word, he runs off to find a mirror.
When Taguchi stares into the glass, he runs fingers over his face-and by that he means his face, a little narrow-eyed and high-cheeked and smiling-and he can’t help but laugh even though Ueda comes and drags him off because they have to get back on stage soon.
“He’s finally snapped,” Ueda announces bluntly when he keeps laughing, running over to Jin when the other man is getting offstage and “Yuuki 100%” starts playing out in the arena, almost jumping on the other man in glee.
Taguchi almost doesn’t hear Kame mutter, “Akanishi is going to kill him,” when Jin tries to shake him off and gets him in a choke hold in response.
“Jin!” he breathes when he finally straightens up and throws his arms around the other man again. “We’re back!”
“I noticed,” Jin grunts, and manages to escape Taguchi’s arms after a moment of struggle. But he smiles and chuckles when Taguchi just lifts his arms in the air in victory, and lifts a hand to high five the other man in victory, just because he can.
“Oh god, they’ve both snapped,” Ueda groans from afar.
In response, Taguchi runs over and tosses arms carelessly over Ueda. “I’ve missed you too, Uepi!” he chirps.
“Wait, no, stop, you’re going to take off the butterfly-Taguchi! If you keep hugging me, I’m not going to look at your lyrics anymore!” Ueda protests as Taguchi reaches over and pulls Koki and Kame into the hug as well. They both voice some discontent, but don’t struggle too much when he gets arms around them and squeezes tightly. “I guess at least you’re not being weird anymore,” Ueda mutters, almost low enough that Taguchi can’t hear him. Almost.
He also pretends he doesn’t hear Kame and Koki mumble their agreement.
“Yucchi, you too!” Taguchi grins at Nakamaru, who just shrugs and loops an arm around Koki’s neck and Taguchi’s shoulders.
“Good to know you’re back to normal, Taguchi,” Nakamaru says, even though Taguchi can barely hear him from where Ueda is complaining about how Taguchi hugs too hard.
After about two seconds more of the group hug, Koki finally ducks out of Taguchi’s grasp and crosses his arms. “Taguchi, we’re all glad you’re not acting weird anymore, and Happy New Year too you too, but this is kind of gross,” he grunts, and brushes off the arms of his jacket, sending glitter everywhere, much to the dismay of the wardrobe staff around them.
Taguchi finally relents and the rest of KAT-TUN wander off to wait to get back onstage (but not without a punch in the arm from Ueda because the decal is definitely coming off), while Taguchi just moves toward Jin, who is standing awkwardly to one side.
“You look happy,” Jin says, a little quietly.
Taguchi smiles in response. He has no idea of what exactly Jin’s been up to in his body, whether he fully played the part of Taguchi and sapped all over the place and made really bad puns, or if he played a semi-muted character instead, but at the very least, he seems to have done a good job of it.
“You know what Kame told me once?” Taguchi sighs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Jin raises his eyebrow curiously. “Actually, it was all of them. The day Johnny told us that you were leaving us officially.”
Jin looks a little uncomfortable as Taguchi pauses, lifting a hand to scratch at his head. “What?” he asks, sounding a bit uneasy.
“They said they were kind of proud of you. Because you had the courage to dream about something other than just KAT-TUN, and you took the opportunity when it was presented to you,” Taguchi replies, and he’s smiling so widely, his face feels like it’s about to break because he remembers this, clear as day. “No one thinks you’re very selfish, Jin, even if it’s hard to say.”
And because he has to get back onstage, he pats Jin on the shoulder and rushes off to perform with his group.
But he does catch Jin’s smile right before he walks through the doors with half of the company right before midnight, bright lights beating down on him and cheers resounding through the dome.
Nakamaru flings an arm around Koki’s waist and Taguchi’s shoulders, and Kame does the same for both him and Ueda-even if Taguchi is too tall for him to get an arm around comfortably-and the group he hopes he’s going to be with for at least ten more years to come walks out onto the stage of Tokyo Dome as one.
In that moment, he’s never been so grateful to be a part of KAT-TUN.