September Tears 1/9
It's been too long since they've talked, it seems, much, much too long. The years slowly drift by and they slowly drift apart. It's been too long since he's heard one of the classic KAT-TUN tunes and he suddenly realizes he misses the younger years. Life's been quiet and calm ever since Kame left the jimusho. No more crazy, shiny, overdone costumes. No more off-key singing and blinding concert lights. No more fanservicing and obsessive-compulsive fangirls. No more Johnnys.
It's the second Thursday of the fourth September since Kame left. A stroll down the streets of Manhattan are nothing compared to a mad dash across the road in Tokyo. Here, Kame could take his time. He could lift his nose and sniff the cold, crisp air; he could linger at the duck ponds and watch the lonely sunset disappear behind the thick smog. He could walk as slow as he liked and carry Ran-chan on his shoulders and enjoy other people's astonishment and amusement at the little Dachshund propped up on his back. He could take off his sunglasses, pull off the hoodie, not worry about any makeup or his hair and just chug down liters of coffee at his own expense. Here, there was no one to nag him or warn him about health effects or push him around. There was an unlimited amount of freedom stretched out forever around him, here.
But here, it was not home to Kame. It never had been and it never would be, he supposed.
The pale sunshine that was not offering one ounce of warmth pecked briskly at his winter-bitten cheeks as he aimlessly wanders down the lightly packed snow-covered sidewalk near his house. The slow slush slips between his delicate steps and he lifts his chin, stares at the bright, blue sky for a long, long time until tears come streaming down his cheeks. Just a little something he used to do with Jin back when they were sixteen - just a bunch of awkward little kids worrying about puberty and pimples and girls who were developing way faster than they were.
Jin.
Kame shakes his head and tucks a lose strand of sun-bleached hair behind his ear, his rusted, worn-out pinky ring accidently touching his skin with the cold metal and sending shivers down his spine. Jin is something he doesn't need to think about right now, Kame assures himself as he pushes the images and memories out of his mind for the millionth time. It's been long enough, he can handle this for a little while more, he's sure of it.
To distract himself, he turns his attention back down towards the fiction novel he has in his hand. The print is small and the edges worn of old age. It's Japanese.
The Kanji and the Hiragana feel like home to him after all these years filled with confusing looking letters of the alphabet and strange symbols. It's a classic one: The Operating Room by Kyoka Izumi-he and Jin used to spend hours debating on the true moral of the story and who was the real hero. It was their favorite. They used to read it together in the corners of the crowded, colorful noisy dressing rooms while the others bustled with commotion and loud talk and the frantic voices blasted from the intercoms. In the quietest edges of the room, they huddled together, sharing a jacket and a cold latte, taking turns reading softly aloud. Kame's copy is now worn out to the core, the corners nearly all torn and the pages themselves turning yellow and the cover unrecognizable. However, the characters are still readable but he has a squint a bit to make sure he's reading the correct thing. The syllables still easily spell out inside his head and he can't help but smile, knowing that Japan will forever be his home.
He is good at English now, nearly fluent. Sometimes there are a couple vocabulary words that stump him but most of the time, he can understand the language with no trouble. It still sometimes sounds foreign coming off his tongue but he slowly adjusts to it-Kame's always like that: adaptable.
A little further on down the sidewalk, Kame stops beside a tree, kneels down beside it, the frigid snow instantly soaking the knees of his dark wash jeans. He shivers a bit, pulls the jacket tighter around his body, and tightens the wooly soft white scarf adorning his neck. Here, beneath the tree, he looks upward. Little rays of light filter through the think canopy of the enormous willow tree and Kame sighs-content.
This was not part of his planned morning stroll but it was already too late. Every time he came here to this ancient tree, he felt like he was at home. This was only place he could ever feel at home in this barrenly empty city.
Jin had been there with him … a long, long time ago. How many years had it been now?
Oh yes…approximately three years and four months ago…Jin had actually been here. Stood beside Kame while they laughed awkwardly, swung their legs as they sat high up in one of the strong, sturdy branches. The entire band had come to visit him for a week here in New York. They acted somewhat like strangers-always keeping their distance and trying hard not to get attached to the place, or get attached to Kame again, for that matter. Of course, the reunion was huge, a bunch of fully grown men breaking down in tears-honestly, it was a sight to see.
They didn't try to convince Kame to come back to Japan, didn't try to get him to return to the Jimusho-all this had already been done much too many times and failed. He didn't blame them for trying, though. He could understand and he felt touched that they didn't want to let him go.
When they came to visit, the week seemed to fly by. Although all five of them came to see him, they all knew deep inside that the person Kame wanted to see most was Jin.
After all, all the times they've shared and all the memories they've created throughout the ten years they'd known each other and been best friends wouldn't just go away in a couple years spent apart.
So when Jin came, Kame was speechless. He always imagined Jin being inside his quaint little guest room, slinking in the worn mattress of his little blue chair. He always imagined Jin at the dining table, gazing thoughtfully out of the clear window in front of him while he sipped at a cup of steaming mango tea. But most of all, he imagined Jin sitting beside him at this willow tree-the two of them silently watching the sun sink behind the skyscrapers just like old times.
Kame reaches to the side of the tree trunk. The frozen layer of ice thaws underneath the touch of his fingertips, revealing what he was searching for. Just a couple of Kanji characters carved sloppily and crookedly into the bark of the tree. All it said was: "Akame-ten years and still going"
Kame cracks a sad smile at the characters he feels under his fingers. It's been too long, he thinks again.
Finally, after a long time and his legs have gone numb, Kame pulls away, some sort of inexplicable anger bubbling up inside of him. After having a hard time getting up, he finally manages to pull himself up, swaying unsteadily on his feet.
The lonely walk back to the apartment convinces him more than ever that September is indeed the most depressing month of the year. Clutching the aged novel deathly close to his chest, he sighs heavily at the sinking feeling in his stomach.
It's been so long he's beginning to forget what Jin's face looks like.
---
As soon as he gets home-a racket of jangling keys and loud, off-tune humming, he enters the apartment after swinging the door open and kicking his shoes high in the air. He watches amusedly as they land with a thud, a puff of dust exploding as the sneakers hit the ground. Kame can't remember where he picked up that ridiculous habit…probably from Jin, he concludes, smiling subconsciously to himself.
Just as he is taking off the woven scarf and his outer coat, a simple, familiar melody tinkles into the winter-silenced atmosphere. Kame whips around, a fading smile playing on his lips as he reaches for the cellular phone laying at the edge of the marble coffee table. Effortlessly, Kame picks up the sidekick and glances momentarily at the blinking screen, Clair de Lune chiming from the object in his hand.
The area code is strange numbers he doesn't recognize-somewhere far away, he guesses. The actual phone numbers are also foreign to him. As he smoothly slides the phone open, places it next to his ear, he's ready to tell the person on the other line that they have the wrong number.
But the words he receives after saying "Moshi moshi?" are in a stream of Japanese. Japanese that is spoken too rapidly, too hurriedly, and too lazily so that they are slurred and run-on sentences overlapping each other. But Kame has no problem at all figuring out what the words were.
Japanese that belongs to Jin.
"Kame, is that you?" says the other voice.
Kame freezes, hand's unable to move. Unable to set the phone down, his mouth incapable of responding coherently. Even worse, his brain pretty much decides to stop functioning and he is left there staring at the sidekick with a gaping open mouth. If anyone walks in right this second and sees him, they would probably think he saw the phone with seven heads or something crazy like that.
After a really long time of the other person going, "Hello? Hey! Is anyone there? Helloooooo…Kame?"
He manages a low, "Hmm…i-it's Kame."
The phone is threatening to slip out from his sweaty palms and crash to the tiled floor.
"Kazuya…it's me…it's-"
"Jin…it's Jin, isn't it?" Kame cuts him off. His eyes are closed now and at the sound of the oh-so-familiar voice, a flood of unwelcome memories invade his mind and flood into his thoughts without any warning whatsoever.
He can almost hear Jin nodding and smiling softly halfway across the world.
"Guess what, Kame?"
"…huh…"
"Me and the guys…we have the entire month off starting tomorrow…"
Kame nods, then realizes that Jin can't see him. It's already too late to fix his mistake though.
"Johnny-sama says we can go wherever we like for vacation. My parents are in Japan and I've been visiting them a lot lately already so instead I figured I should come see you!"
Kame stops breathing completely.
"If you don't mind, that is. I just need to catch up with you on some things…" Jin continues with his familiarly slurred Japanese and he throws in a couple English words here and there.
"It's been too long," they both speak softly at the same time, the words overlapping each other. Kame realizes it feels good to speak to another human being in Japanese once again after all this time. He hadn't fully realized how much he'd been homesick until this very second.
"Jinx," Jin declares instantly and they end up breaking up in awkward, nervous chuckles and giggles.
"I'll see you then, I guess. I look forward to it," he says in a low whisper-the voice box inside his throat unable to make any other sound.
"Okay then!" chirps Jin happily on the other line. Then suddenly he adds, "The thing is, I got off earlier than the other guys so I could plan for my trip to New York. I was actually going to surprise you further but it's sorta cold out right now so do you mind opening the door for me?"
Kame drops the phone for real this time.
And then he faints.
The world is a dark, messy blur.
----------------------end part 1-----------------------
A/N: *happy sighhhh* akame~! ^___^ i've missed them dearly. They've been overrated for a while but I'll still love them no matter what. And this angst feels really darn good to write XDD i feel all insightful and whatnot. Hope you guys liked it~! Let me know if i should continue and finish this ~! (i have hope in this fic ^^) Miss all my beloved readers. I don't think I'm going to x-post this...wel...let's just wait and see ? (: Please leave comments and feedback so I can decide what to do with this (:
thanks so much for reading from your long-gone author >_<;;
comeback fic ftw! XD -bricked-
Next Part...
It's the second Thursday of the fourth September since Kame left. A stroll down the streets of Manhattan are nothing compared to a mad dash across the road in Tokyo. Here, Kame could take his time. He could lift his nose and sniff the cold, crisp air; he could linger at the duck ponds and watch the lonely sunset disappear behind the thick smog. He could walk as slow as he liked and carry Ran-chan on his shoulders and enjoy other people's astonishment and amusement at the little Dachshund propped up on his back. He could take off his sunglasses, pull off the hoodie, not worry about any makeup or his hair and just chug down liters of coffee at his own expense. Here, there was no one to nag him or warn him about health effects or push him around. There was an unlimited amount of freedom stretched out forever around him, here.
But here, it was not home to Kame. It never had been and it never would be, he supposed.
The pale sunshine that was not offering one ounce of warmth pecked briskly at his winter-bitten cheeks as he aimlessly wanders down the lightly packed snow-covered sidewalk near his house. The slow slush slips between his delicate steps and he lifts his chin, stares at the bright, blue sky for a long, long time until tears come streaming down his cheeks. Just a little something he used to do with Jin back when they were sixteen - just a bunch of awkward little kids worrying about puberty and pimples and girls who were developing way faster than they were.
Jin.
Kame shakes his head and tucks a lose strand of sun-bleached hair behind his ear, his rusted, worn-out pinky ring accidently touching his skin with the cold metal and sending shivers down his spine. Jin is something he doesn't need to think about right now, Kame assures himself as he pushes the images and memories out of his mind for the millionth time. It's been long enough, he can handle this for a little while more, he's sure of it.
To distract himself, he turns his attention back down towards the fiction novel he has in his hand. The print is small and the edges worn of old age. It's Japanese.
The Kanji and the Hiragana feel like home to him after all these years filled with confusing looking letters of the alphabet and strange symbols. It's a classic one: The Operating Room by Kyoka Izumi-he and Jin used to spend hours debating on the true moral of the story and who was the real hero. It was their favorite. They used to read it together in the corners of the crowded, colorful noisy dressing rooms while the others bustled with commotion and loud talk and the frantic voices blasted from the intercoms. In the quietest edges of the room, they huddled together, sharing a jacket and a cold latte, taking turns reading softly aloud. Kame's copy is now worn out to the core, the corners nearly all torn and the pages themselves turning yellow and the cover unrecognizable. However, the characters are still readable but he has a squint a bit to make sure he's reading the correct thing. The syllables still easily spell out inside his head and he can't help but smile, knowing that Japan will forever be his home.
He is good at English now, nearly fluent. Sometimes there are a couple vocabulary words that stump him but most of the time, he can understand the language with no trouble. It still sometimes sounds foreign coming off his tongue but he slowly adjusts to it-Kame's always like that: adaptable.
A little further on down the sidewalk, Kame stops beside a tree, kneels down beside it, the frigid snow instantly soaking the knees of his dark wash jeans. He shivers a bit, pulls the jacket tighter around his body, and tightens the wooly soft white scarf adorning his neck. Here, beneath the tree, he looks upward. Little rays of light filter through the think canopy of the enormous willow tree and Kame sighs-content.
This was not part of his planned morning stroll but it was already too late. Every time he came here to this ancient tree, he felt like he was at home. This was only place he could ever feel at home in this barrenly empty city.
Jin had been there with him … a long, long time ago. How many years had it been now?
Oh yes…approximately three years and four months ago…Jin had actually been here. Stood beside Kame while they laughed awkwardly, swung their legs as they sat high up in one of the strong, sturdy branches. The entire band had come to visit him for a week here in New York. They acted somewhat like strangers-always keeping their distance and trying hard not to get attached to the place, or get attached to Kame again, for that matter. Of course, the reunion was huge, a bunch of fully grown men breaking down in tears-honestly, it was a sight to see.
They didn't try to convince Kame to come back to Japan, didn't try to get him to return to the Jimusho-all this had already been done much too many times and failed. He didn't blame them for trying, though. He could understand and he felt touched that they didn't want to let him go.
When they came to visit, the week seemed to fly by. Although all five of them came to see him, they all knew deep inside that the person Kame wanted to see most was Jin.
After all, all the times they've shared and all the memories they've created throughout the ten years they'd known each other and been best friends wouldn't just go away in a couple years spent apart.
So when Jin came, Kame was speechless. He always imagined Jin being inside his quaint little guest room, slinking in the worn mattress of his little blue chair. He always imagined Jin at the dining table, gazing thoughtfully out of the clear window in front of him while he sipped at a cup of steaming mango tea. But most of all, he imagined Jin sitting beside him at this willow tree-the two of them silently watching the sun sink behind the skyscrapers just like old times.
Kame reaches to the side of the tree trunk. The frozen layer of ice thaws underneath the touch of his fingertips, revealing what he was searching for. Just a couple of Kanji characters carved sloppily and crookedly into the bark of the tree. All it said was: "Akame-ten years and still going"
Kame cracks a sad smile at the characters he feels under his fingers. It's been too long, he thinks again.
Finally, after a long time and his legs have gone numb, Kame pulls away, some sort of inexplicable anger bubbling up inside of him. After having a hard time getting up, he finally manages to pull himself up, swaying unsteadily on his feet.
The lonely walk back to the apartment convinces him more than ever that September is indeed the most depressing month of the year. Clutching the aged novel deathly close to his chest, he sighs heavily at the sinking feeling in his stomach.
It's been so long he's beginning to forget what Jin's face looks like.
---
As soon as he gets home-a racket of jangling keys and loud, off-tune humming, he enters the apartment after swinging the door open and kicking his shoes high in the air. He watches amusedly as they land with a thud, a puff of dust exploding as the sneakers hit the ground. Kame can't remember where he picked up that ridiculous habit…probably from Jin, he concludes, smiling subconsciously to himself.
Just as he is taking off the woven scarf and his outer coat, a simple, familiar melody tinkles into the winter-silenced atmosphere. Kame whips around, a fading smile playing on his lips as he reaches for the cellular phone laying at the edge of the marble coffee table. Effortlessly, Kame picks up the sidekick and glances momentarily at the blinking screen, Clair de Lune chiming from the object in his hand.
The area code is strange numbers he doesn't recognize-somewhere far away, he guesses. The actual phone numbers are also foreign to him. As he smoothly slides the phone open, places it next to his ear, he's ready to tell the person on the other line that they have the wrong number.
But the words he receives after saying "Moshi moshi?" are in a stream of Japanese. Japanese that is spoken too rapidly, too hurriedly, and too lazily so that they are slurred and run-on sentences overlapping each other. But Kame has no problem at all figuring out what the words were.
Japanese that belongs to Jin.
"Kame, is that you?" says the other voice.
Kame freezes, hand's unable to move. Unable to set the phone down, his mouth incapable of responding coherently. Even worse, his brain pretty much decides to stop functioning and he is left there staring at the sidekick with a gaping open mouth. If anyone walks in right this second and sees him, they would probably think he saw the phone with seven heads or something crazy like that.
After a really long time of the other person going, "Hello? Hey! Is anyone there? Helloooooo…Kame?"
He manages a low, "Hmm…i-it's Kame."
The phone is threatening to slip out from his sweaty palms and crash to the tiled floor.
"Kazuya…it's me…it's-"
"Jin…it's Jin, isn't it?" Kame cuts him off. His eyes are closed now and at the sound of the oh-so-familiar voice, a flood of unwelcome memories invade his mind and flood into his thoughts without any warning whatsoever.
He can almost hear Jin nodding and smiling softly halfway across the world.
"Guess what, Kame?"
"…huh…"
"Me and the guys…we have the entire month off starting tomorrow…"
Kame nods, then realizes that Jin can't see him. It's already too late to fix his mistake though.
"Johnny-sama says we can go wherever we like for vacation. My parents are in Japan and I've been visiting them a lot lately already so instead I figured I should come see you!"
Kame stops breathing completely.
"If you don't mind, that is. I just need to catch up with you on some things…" Jin continues with his familiarly slurred Japanese and he throws in a couple English words here and there.
"It's been too long," they both speak softly at the same time, the words overlapping each other. Kame realizes it feels good to speak to another human being in Japanese once again after all this time. He hadn't fully realized how much he'd been homesick until this very second.
"Jinx," Jin declares instantly and they end up breaking up in awkward, nervous chuckles and giggles.
"I'll see you then, I guess. I look forward to it," he says in a low whisper-the voice box inside his throat unable to make any other sound.
"Okay then!" chirps Jin happily on the other line. Then suddenly he adds, "The thing is, I got off earlier than the other guys so I could plan for my trip to New York. I was actually going to surprise you further but it's sorta cold out right now so do you mind opening the door for me?"
Kame drops the phone for real this time.
And then he faints.
The world is a dark, messy blur.
----------------------end part 1-----------------------
A/N: *happy sighhhh* akame~! ^___^ i've missed them dearly. They've been overrated for a while but I'll still love them no matter what. And this angst feels really darn good to write XDD i feel all insightful and whatnot. Hope you guys liked it~! Let me know if i should continue and finish this ~! (i have hope in this fic ^^) Miss all my beloved readers. I don't think I'm going to x-post this...wel...let's just wait and see ? (: Please leave comments and feedback so I can decide what to do with this (:
thanks so much for reading from your long-gone author >_<;;
comeback fic ftw! XD -bricked-
Next Part...