Wonderful Day & Day // Kis-My-Ft2
Wonderful Day & Day
Fujigaya/Kitayama, Kis-my-ft2
R, 3025 words
For this prompt: "Fujigaya keeps on reliving the same day over and over and over again. Every repeat, he gets the growing sense that things are missing, even if he doesn't realize that he's in a loop. It's like someone's trying to send him a message, only it might be too late by the time he figures things out." at the Happy Year of the Bunnies Meme. This version is slightly more edited, though, and I added an extra day!
The first thing out of Fujigaya's mouth that morning, stumbling into practice, is "I had the weirdest fucking dream last night, guys!"
From their various positions around the room, the rest of his band looks up at him. None of them seem to be very interested.
"Yeah?" Yokoo lazily asks after a brief moment, "What happened?"
"Well I- There was-" but suddenly, Fujigaya realizes that he can't remember any details, just a vague sense of foreboding that had settled in the pit of his stomach and then refused to leave, even in the face of the morning sunshine. So he shoves Yokoo over to the side and plops down on the couch next to him. "I guess I can't remember... but it was really fucking weird. I still feel weird about it, like it was warning me about something."
Nikaido makes a noise of derision in the back of his throat. Fujigaya shoots him a dirty look.
They don't get a chance to get into it, as they normally would have, because Julie bustles in with her clipboard and turtle shell glasses and stark utilitarianism, and ushers them downstairs to a recording studio. It's during this brief but familiar walk that she drops the bomb.
Debut.
Debut!
"What." Miyata says flatly, in shock. Senga cheers; Yokoo looks like he's about to cry; Nikaido is crying. Tamamori stops abruptly in his tracks, causing Fujigaya to bump into him.
"Yes," Julie pauses too and turns to them, "the six of you have made it. Congratulations." Her smile is warm and sincere - she's truly happy for them - and Fujigaya thinks she could knock him over with a feather. She continues down the hall, beginning to enumerate all the new possibilities that a CD debut would bring them, and Fujigaya's heart soars.
It's not until that night, when his head is warm and fuzzy thanks to celebratory drinks at the club and his body is warm and fuzzy thanks to his down comforter that he realizes what the niggling feeling at the pit of his stomach had been all day.
"Six?" he whispers to himself. "Kisumai isn't... seven?"
But then the alcohol takes over, and he falls asleep before he can continue the thought.
~
Fujigaya wakes up with the remnants of a dream still lingering inside his head. Nothing substantial sticks to his memories, just hints and flashes of sleepy brown eyes and warm hands, flaring emotions and strength of character. A feeling of deep comfort fills him, and he doesn't want to let it go so he hits the snooze button on his alarm clock and burrows deeper under his covers.
But of course, it's not so easy to return to a dream, and all that Fujigaya accomplishes is to be late to work. He arrives to a scene of chaos - jumping and crying and shouting, and it takes him a good 10 minutes before he can get any sense out of anyone.
"Serves you right for being late," Yokoo manages to scold even through his ear-splitting grin. "Debut! We're going to debut! Taipi, we've done it!" He sweeps the younger man up in a bone-crushing hug.
Then someone calls for a group hug and Fujigaya gets crushed under the weight of more than just the five other Kisumai members - there's also half of ABC-Z and Sanada and Choreographer-san and Make up-san...
By the time he gets out from the middle of the dog pile, he's flushed and his hair is sticking out of his head every which way, but for once he doesn't care. He's so ecstatic he doesn't even remember to make fun of Nikaido for crying like a baby. The dream that had bothered him so much that morning flies completely out of his head.
The euphoria lasts, for all of them, until about two hours into recording. They're laying down a bunch of tracks for their album ('Their album!' Fujigaya still can't think of it without a hitch of excitement in his breath) but it's not going very well at all.
"Fujigaya!" the producer barks at him, "You need to be stronger here! It needs to sound more raw, not like you're at some tea ceremony!"
Fujigaya bows his apology and promised to try harder. He understands what the producer wants, but is having problems getting his voice to cooperate. The song they're working on has a strong dance beat, almost techno, and while Fujigaya's voice is strong, it's also too smooth, and somehow the staccato melody turns into a refined legato when he sings.
The next take gets stopped abruptly in the middle, and the producer pulls him out of the recording room to send Nikaido in his stead. It's almost a solution, until they realize that Nikaido doesn't have the vocal range for the second half of the verse.
In the end, they manage by splitting up the verse and cobbling together everybody's strengths. It's what all the other groups do, and it sounds good, truly, but Fujigaya still feels unsatisfied. It's like there's something missing, he just doesn't know what.
~
Despite the big news, Fujigaya is having a terrible day.
He wakes up with a huge crick in his neck that makes his shoulders tense all day. Senga is so excited about debuting that he's over-enthusiastic during dance rehearsal and slams into Fujigaya, and now Fujigaya thinks he might have twisted his ankle. He forgets his bento and Kawai, that stingy bastard, refuses to lend him 500yen to buy some bread at the combini. He can't get rid of the feeling of emptiness that his dream last night has left him with, despite the fact that he can't even recall what happened in the dream.
Things look up, though, when Takizawa comes by in the afternoon with presents for all of them.
"My favorite junior group, ne!" the man chirps.
(Kawai, using up the oxygen in Kisumai's dressing room and being a parasite as usual, makes a noise in protest but Takizawa dismisses him with a wave of the hand.)
"Or - not really juniors anymore, huh? Congratulations!"
He waves away their chorus of "thank you, Takizawa-kun!"s as well, and then presents them with their gifts with a huge flourish. It's another set of roller skates, this time with wheels and laces in each of their image colors, and Kis-my-ft2 crowds around, ooh-ing and ahh-ing.
Then Yokoo, ever their businessman, asks Takizawa a question about dealing with the press, and it turns into an impromptu advice session. It seems that they're all nervous and scared and squirming inwardly about a billion things, from Yokoo's sensible "What do you do if the press asks about a girlfriend or somebody we're not supposed to mention?" to Miyata's anxious "Is there a way to prevent too much armpit hair from showing in photo shoots?".
It all makes Fujigaya, who’s similarly on pins and needles, wish they had somebody in the group who would always be relaxed and self-confident, somebody to calm the group's tension at times like this.
"Maa, ultimately, you should just enjoy what you do," Takizawa tells them wisely. "Don't worry too much about all the things that could go wrong or you'll get stuck in a rut. You can never step in the same river twice, after all."
The quote resonates with Fujigaya so he stores it away in his mind, something to think about on a rainy day.
"Incidentally," Takizawa asks Fujigaya later as they're all planning to go out to dinner, "how come your image color is pink instead of red? That's a primary color, but nobody's using it?"
"Ah, that's because-" He stops. There was a reason for it, he knows it instinctively, but can't for the life of him remember what it was.
"Taipi didn't want to be red," Tamamori remarks mildly, paying more attention to his reflection in the mirror than the conversation. "Negative past associations with the color or something."
"Um... that's right," Fujigaya agrees. He wonders why he can't recall the negative associations at all.
~
Normally Fujigaya hates Wednesdays. They're right in the middle of the work week, so that whatever refreshment he’d derived out of the weekend has been worn off yet there's still no end in sight. But after today, Wednesdays may have suddenly become his favorite day of the week. In any case, this particular Wednesday, with the incredible news about Kis-my-ft2's debut in the morning, and then a celebratory dinner with all of his best friends at night, followed by dancing at his favorite club, is definitely going down in history as his favorite day ever.
"There's a hot guy across the room making eyes at you," Goseki tells him, leaning a casual elbow against the bar counter.
Fujigaya laughs and almost says that he doesn't want a random hookup, with all its potential complications, to screw up this most perfect of days, but then he sees the man Goseki is talking about. He's short and dark-skinned and in need of a haircut, but completely gorgeous. He doesn't look away when Fujigaya meets his gaze, but instead smirks in a way that's both inviting and a challenge.
"I won't need this back," Fujigaya says shortly, handing his still mostly full drink to Goseki before plunging onto the dance floor.
The unknown man waits until Fujigaya is only separated from him by a handful of people before he moves away. With occasional stops to ensure Fujigaya is still following, he leads the way to the back of the club, where there are seedy but private rooms.
Fleetingly, Fujigaya thinks he probably shouldn't be back here at such a momentous time in his career, but they're behind one of the doors before he finishes his thought, and then the shorter man's lips crash onto his own and nothing else matters. There's no foreplay beyond that one kiss; they simply push their pants down - not even down, really, just enough so that they have access - and grind against each other, strongly.
With a slight shifting of weight, the other man reaches between them for Fujigaya's cock. He seems to know all of Fujigaya's sensitive spots and strokes him with just the right speed and pressure, and Fujigaya spends himself into the man's hand with a mewling cry.
By the time Fujigaya catches his breath, the man has smeared Fujigaya's cum on his own length, using it as a lubricant. When Fujigaya reaches over to return the favor, he finds, to his surprise, that the weight of the man's cock in his hand is a sensation he's familiar with. He seems to know exactly what the other man likes, as well. And there's no palpable change in the other when he comes, yet Fujigaya is somehow ready and expecting it.
They clean up with a wad of tissues that the unknown man pulls out of his pocket.
"So well prepared," murmurs Fujigaya, amused.
In response the other chuckles, a throaty sound that Fujigaya finds he loves.
The man slips a piece of paper into his hand before he slips out the door. Fujigaya unfolds it immediately, eagerly, squinting to read it under the single dim light bulb in the room.
"Hiro" is written on it, in hiragana, with a number. The writing isn't neat, but it's graceful, like calligraphy, and familiar like something he's seen before in a dream or a past lifetime. When he inputs the number to his phone, the path his fingers take is a familiar one, too.
Fujigaya leaves the club soon after he emerges from the back room. He barely remembers to let someone know that he’s leaving, head too full of the gorgeous stranger.
~
Fujigaya rarely ever remembers his dreams, but today he does. A lot of details escape him, as is wont to happen with dreams, but he thinks he’s got most of the important ones down.
There was a man, shorter than him, but older, and impossibly attractive. A lot of people had adored him - Kisumai, the fans, even Fujigaya himself. He’d been jealous; he can still feel the sharp, wretched sting of jealousy. He can still hear himself snapping, “Why don’t you just disappear!”
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth that neither toothpaste nor mouthwash can get rid of.
The feeling follows him around all day. Even when Julie gathers all of Kis-my-ft2 into one of the jimusho conference rooms in the afternoon and tells them that they’re going to debut, Fujigaya still feels the taint of the dream dragging down on his mood.
“That’s great news,” he says, “but aren’t we missing a K? And an I?”
Julie looks at him like he’s suddenly sprouted another head. “Does it matter?”
“Um…” he replies, lamely. He thinks it matters, a lot, but has no idea how or why, and certainly no idea how to rectify the situation. So he just shrugs helplessly and gives up the argument.
Julie stares at him for a moment before continuing, talking to them about Oricon rankings and advertising promotions and market shares and all sorts of things that involve numerical data. Fujigaya finds his eyes glazing over. He figures Yokoo will listen to it all.
Instead, he lets his mind drift, and wonders how good his chances would be of ever meeting the man from his dream.
~
He doesn't know where it comes from, but Fujigaya wakes up with the thought that today would be a good day to quit Johnnys. He's been with the jimusho for more than a full zodiac cycle and has only so much to show for it. Perhaps his father is right when he says that a man can't live on glitter and spotlights forever; perhaps the stable life of a salaryman would be best for him, in the long run.
He turns the idea over in his head all throughout his train ride to work. It's still a tough decision, after all, because he'd be leaving friends and brothers, not just co-workers.
But actually being at work helps him make up his mind. Kisumai hasn't been getting along these days, and Fujigaya is at the end of his wits. He can't hold the group together by himself, but Yokoo is obstinate and too often a contributing factor to fights, while Miyata, the next oldest, is too much of a pacifist. So, when he hears Nikaido throwing another tantrum while he's still in the hallway, he decides that enough is enough.
He pauses outside the door of their dressing room, steeling himself to deal with whatever is the problem today, and also trying to think of how to tell his bandmates his decision.
"Fujigaya-kun?"
Julie is standing behind him, with several of the higher-ups in the company, which means it's either great news or terrible news. He wonders which it is today, bows a polite 90 degrees, and opens the door for them.
It turns out to be bad news, worse than he'd imagined.
"Don't take this personally now," says the manager who's worked with them the most, looking at directly Nikaido, "but it's been decided that Kis-my-ft2 should be split up. Your butais just aren't getting the sales numbers we need. ABC-Z has been pulling in the numbers, so there's no reason why you guys shouldn't be, yet..."
It looks like more than just Nikaido is about to protest, so Julie takes over quickly with her "teacher voice" that's been rumored to have kept even KAT-TUN in check.
"Fans have always enjoyed your collaborations with ABC-Z, as EbiKisu, so some of you may become assimilated into that group. Nikaido and Senga, probably, and Fujigaya."
"No, thank you," Fujigaya speaks up. "I... I'm grateful, but I've decided it would be better if I didn't pursue this line of work any more. I've had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, but... it's just not for me any more."
Somebody - Senga - makes a choked sounding noise behind him, and Fujigaya can't look. He tries, but finds he can't meet the eyes of anyone in his group. It's running away, he knows, but he swings the bag that he hadn't even put down onto his shoulder and just leaves.
As he walks through the now mostly empty streets back to the train station, he breathes the cold air deeply and wishes it could bring clarity to his mind. What's done is done, and he doesn't really regret it or anything, but quitting didn't bring quite the catharsis he was hoping for.
It still feels a little like his world is spinning not quite on track.
"Damned if I do and damned if I don't," he mutters to himself.
"Eh, what's that?" a crone huddled by the stairs of the train station calls out to him. "Tell you your fortune, young man? I can tell you're missing something important in your life all the way from over here. Not something, someone."
"Uh, no thanks," mutters Fujigaya, hurrying past. "Maybe tomorrow."
~
When Fujigaya wakes up, the first thing he does is reach for his phone. Without opening his eyes, he hits speed dial and hears the familiar ring tone sound a billion times, as expected, before the other person picks up.
“Th’fuck d’you want?” Kitayama’s voice is gravelly with sleep.
He doesn’t know why, but a feeling of intense relief spreads through his body at the sound of the older man’s voice.
“You,” Fujigaya says, before quickly hanging up the phone. It rings almost immediately, and he smothers a laugh against his pillow, imagining Kitayama’s bewilderment.
He has a feeling that today is going to be a very good day.
~
OUTTAKE
Totsuka whines and clings - uselessly - to a barstool as Goseki and Tsukada do their best to drag him onto the dance floor.
“I don’t want to dance,” he complains, “You guys can go. I’m not stopping you. Just let me sit here and drink my alcohol in peace! Kitayama wouldn’t make me go!”
“Who?” Tsukada looks at him questioningly.
Totsuka blinks. “I- don’t know. But see! I’m already drunk and spouting nonsense, so you can leave me alone now!”
Fujigaya/Kitayama, Kis-my-ft2
R, 3025 words
For this prompt: "Fujigaya keeps on reliving the same day over and over and over again. Every repeat, he gets the growing sense that things are missing, even if he doesn't realize that he's in a loop. It's like someone's trying to send him a message, only it might be too late by the time he figures things out." at the Happy Year of the Bunnies Meme. This version is slightly more edited, though, and I added an extra day!
The first thing out of Fujigaya's mouth that morning, stumbling into practice, is "I had the weirdest fucking dream last night, guys!"
From their various positions around the room, the rest of his band looks up at him. None of them seem to be very interested.
"Yeah?" Yokoo lazily asks after a brief moment, "What happened?"
"Well I- There was-" but suddenly, Fujigaya realizes that he can't remember any details, just a vague sense of foreboding that had settled in the pit of his stomach and then refused to leave, even in the face of the morning sunshine. So he shoves Yokoo over to the side and plops down on the couch next to him. "I guess I can't remember... but it was really fucking weird. I still feel weird about it, like it was warning me about something."
Nikaido makes a noise of derision in the back of his throat. Fujigaya shoots him a dirty look.
They don't get a chance to get into it, as they normally would have, because Julie bustles in with her clipboard and turtle shell glasses and stark utilitarianism, and ushers them downstairs to a recording studio. It's during this brief but familiar walk that she drops the bomb.
Debut.
Debut!
"What." Miyata says flatly, in shock. Senga cheers; Yokoo looks like he's about to cry; Nikaido is crying. Tamamori stops abruptly in his tracks, causing Fujigaya to bump into him.
"Yes," Julie pauses too and turns to them, "the six of you have made it. Congratulations." Her smile is warm and sincere - she's truly happy for them - and Fujigaya thinks she could knock him over with a feather. She continues down the hall, beginning to enumerate all the new possibilities that a CD debut would bring them, and Fujigaya's heart soars.
It's not until that night, when his head is warm and fuzzy thanks to celebratory drinks at the club and his body is warm and fuzzy thanks to his down comforter that he realizes what the niggling feeling at the pit of his stomach had been all day.
"Six?" he whispers to himself. "Kisumai isn't... seven?"
But then the alcohol takes over, and he falls asleep before he can continue the thought.
~
Fujigaya wakes up with the remnants of a dream still lingering inside his head. Nothing substantial sticks to his memories, just hints and flashes of sleepy brown eyes and warm hands, flaring emotions and strength of character. A feeling of deep comfort fills him, and he doesn't want to let it go so he hits the snooze button on his alarm clock and burrows deeper under his covers.
But of course, it's not so easy to return to a dream, and all that Fujigaya accomplishes is to be late to work. He arrives to a scene of chaos - jumping and crying and shouting, and it takes him a good 10 minutes before he can get any sense out of anyone.
"Serves you right for being late," Yokoo manages to scold even through his ear-splitting grin. "Debut! We're going to debut! Taipi, we've done it!" He sweeps the younger man up in a bone-crushing hug.
Then someone calls for a group hug and Fujigaya gets crushed under the weight of more than just the five other Kisumai members - there's also half of ABC-Z and Sanada and Choreographer-san and Make up-san...
By the time he gets out from the middle of the dog pile, he's flushed and his hair is sticking out of his head every which way, but for once he doesn't care. He's so ecstatic he doesn't even remember to make fun of Nikaido for crying like a baby. The dream that had bothered him so much that morning flies completely out of his head.
The euphoria lasts, for all of them, until about two hours into recording. They're laying down a bunch of tracks for their album ('Their album!' Fujigaya still can't think of it without a hitch of excitement in his breath) but it's not going very well at all.
"Fujigaya!" the producer barks at him, "You need to be stronger here! It needs to sound more raw, not like you're at some tea ceremony!"
Fujigaya bows his apology and promised to try harder. He understands what the producer wants, but is having problems getting his voice to cooperate. The song they're working on has a strong dance beat, almost techno, and while Fujigaya's voice is strong, it's also too smooth, and somehow the staccato melody turns into a refined legato when he sings.
The next take gets stopped abruptly in the middle, and the producer pulls him out of the recording room to send Nikaido in his stead. It's almost a solution, until they realize that Nikaido doesn't have the vocal range for the second half of the verse.
In the end, they manage by splitting up the verse and cobbling together everybody's strengths. It's what all the other groups do, and it sounds good, truly, but Fujigaya still feels unsatisfied. It's like there's something missing, he just doesn't know what.
~
Despite the big news, Fujigaya is having a terrible day.
He wakes up with a huge crick in his neck that makes his shoulders tense all day. Senga is so excited about debuting that he's over-enthusiastic during dance rehearsal and slams into Fujigaya, and now Fujigaya thinks he might have twisted his ankle. He forgets his bento and Kawai, that stingy bastard, refuses to lend him 500yen to buy some bread at the combini. He can't get rid of the feeling of emptiness that his dream last night has left him with, despite the fact that he can't even recall what happened in the dream.
Things look up, though, when Takizawa comes by in the afternoon with presents for all of them.
"My favorite junior group, ne!" the man chirps.
(Kawai, using up the oxygen in Kisumai's dressing room and being a parasite as usual, makes a noise in protest but Takizawa dismisses him with a wave of the hand.)
"Or - not really juniors anymore, huh? Congratulations!"
He waves away their chorus of "thank you, Takizawa-kun!"s as well, and then presents them with their gifts with a huge flourish. It's another set of roller skates, this time with wheels and laces in each of their image colors, and Kis-my-ft2 crowds around, ooh-ing and ahh-ing.
Then Yokoo, ever their businessman, asks Takizawa a question about dealing with the press, and it turns into an impromptu advice session. It seems that they're all nervous and scared and squirming inwardly about a billion things, from Yokoo's sensible "What do you do if the press asks about a girlfriend or somebody we're not supposed to mention?" to Miyata's anxious "Is there a way to prevent too much armpit hair from showing in photo shoots?".
It all makes Fujigaya, who’s similarly on pins and needles, wish they had somebody in the group who would always be relaxed and self-confident, somebody to calm the group's tension at times like this.
"Maa, ultimately, you should just enjoy what you do," Takizawa tells them wisely. "Don't worry too much about all the things that could go wrong or you'll get stuck in a rut. You can never step in the same river twice, after all."
The quote resonates with Fujigaya so he stores it away in his mind, something to think about on a rainy day.
"Incidentally," Takizawa asks Fujigaya later as they're all planning to go out to dinner, "how come your image color is pink instead of red? That's a primary color, but nobody's using it?"
"Ah, that's because-" He stops. There was a reason for it, he knows it instinctively, but can't for the life of him remember what it was.
"Taipi didn't want to be red," Tamamori remarks mildly, paying more attention to his reflection in the mirror than the conversation. "Negative past associations with the color or something."
"Um... that's right," Fujigaya agrees. He wonders why he can't recall the negative associations at all.
~
Normally Fujigaya hates Wednesdays. They're right in the middle of the work week, so that whatever refreshment he’d derived out of the weekend has been worn off yet there's still no end in sight. But after today, Wednesdays may have suddenly become his favorite day of the week. In any case, this particular Wednesday, with the incredible news about Kis-my-ft2's debut in the morning, and then a celebratory dinner with all of his best friends at night, followed by dancing at his favorite club, is definitely going down in history as his favorite day ever.
"There's a hot guy across the room making eyes at you," Goseki tells him, leaning a casual elbow against the bar counter.
Fujigaya laughs and almost says that he doesn't want a random hookup, with all its potential complications, to screw up this most perfect of days, but then he sees the man Goseki is talking about. He's short and dark-skinned and in need of a haircut, but completely gorgeous. He doesn't look away when Fujigaya meets his gaze, but instead smirks in a way that's both inviting and a challenge.
"I won't need this back," Fujigaya says shortly, handing his still mostly full drink to Goseki before plunging onto the dance floor.
The unknown man waits until Fujigaya is only separated from him by a handful of people before he moves away. With occasional stops to ensure Fujigaya is still following, he leads the way to the back of the club, where there are seedy but private rooms.
Fleetingly, Fujigaya thinks he probably shouldn't be back here at such a momentous time in his career, but they're behind one of the doors before he finishes his thought, and then the shorter man's lips crash onto his own and nothing else matters. There's no foreplay beyond that one kiss; they simply push their pants down - not even down, really, just enough so that they have access - and grind against each other, strongly.
With a slight shifting of weight, the other man reaches between them for Fujigaya's cock. He seems to know all of Fujigaya's sensitive spots and strokes him with just the right speed and pressure, and Fujigaya spends himself into the man's hand with a mewling cry.
By the time Fujigaya catches his breath, the man has smeared Fujigaya's cum on his own length, using it as a lubricant. When Fujigaya reaches over to return the favor, he finds, to his surprise, that the weight of the man's cock in his hand is a sensation he's familiar with. He seems to know exactly what the other man likes, as well. And there's no palpable change in the other when he comes, yet Fujigaya is somehow ready and expecting it.
They clean up with a wad of tissues that the unknown man pulls out of his pocket.
"So well prepared," murmurs Fujigaya, amused.
In response the other chuckles, a throaty sound that Fujigaya finds he loves.
The man slips a piece of paper into his hand before he slips out the door. Fujigaya unfolds it immediately, eagerly, squinting to read it under the single dim light bulb in the room.
"Hiro" is written on it, in hiragana, with a number. The writing isn't neat, but it's graceful, like calligraphy, and familiar like something he's seen before in a dream or a past lifetime. When he inputs the number to his phone, the path his fingers take is a familiar one, too.
Fujigaya leaves the club soon after he emerges from the back room. He barely remembers to let someone know that he’s leaving, head too full of the gorgeous stranger.
~
Fujigaya rarely ever remembers his dreams, but today he does. A lot of details escape him, as is wont to happen with dreams, but he thinks he’s got most of the important ones down.
There was a man, shorter than him, but older, and impossibly attractive. A lot of people had adored him - Kisumai, the fans, even Fujigaya himself. He’d been jealous; he can still feel the sharp, wretched sting of jealousy. He can still hear himself snapping, “Why don’t you just disappear!”
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth that neither toothpaste nor mouthwash can get rid of.
The feeling follows him around all day. Even when Julie gathers all of Kis-my-ft2 into one of the jimusho conference rooms in the afternoon and tells them that they’re going to debut, Fujigaya still feels the taint of the dream dragging down on his mood.
“That’s great news,” he says, “but aren’t we missing a K? And an I?”
Julie looks at him like he’s suddenly sprouted another head. “Does it matter?”
“Um…” he replies, lamely. He thinks it matters, a lot, but has no idea how or why, and certainly no idea how to rectify the situation. So he just shrugs helplessly and gives up the argument.
Julie stares at him for a moment before continuing, talking to them about Oricon rankings and advertising promotions and market shares and all sorts of things that involve numerical data. Fujigaya finds his eyes glazing over. He figures Yokoo will listen to it all.
Instead, he lets his mind drift, and wonders how good his chances would be of ever meeting the man from his dream.
~
He doesn't know where it comes from, but Fujigaya wakes up with the thought that today would be a good day to quit Johnnys. He's been with the jimusho for more than a full zodiac cycle and has only so much to show for it. Perhaps his father is right when he says that a man can't live on glitter and spotlights forever; perhaps the stable life of a salaryman would be best for him, in the long run.
He turns the idea over in his head all throughout his train ride to work. It's still a tough decision, after all, because he'd be leaving friends and brothers, not just co-workers.
But actually being at work helps him make up his mind. Kisumai hasn't been getting along these days, and Fujigaya is at the end of his wits. He can't hold the group together by himself, but Yokoo is obstinate and too often a contributing factor to fights, while Miyata, the next oldest, is too much of a pacifist. So, when he hears Nikaido throwing another tantrum while he's still in the hallway, he decides that enough is enough.
He pauses outside the door of their dressing room, steeling himself to deal with whatever is the problem today, and also trying to think of how to tell his bandmates his decision.
"Fujigaya-kun?"
Julie is standing behind him, with several of the higher-ups in the company, which means it's either great news or terrible news. He wonders which it is today, bows a polite 90 degrees, and opens the door for them.
It turns out to be bad news, worse than he'd imagined.
"Don't take this personally now," says the manager who's worked with them the most, looking at directly Nikaido, "but it's been decided that Kis-my-ft2 should be split up. Your butais just aren't getting the sales numbers we need. ABC-Z has been pulling in the numbers, so there's no reason why you guys shouldn't be, yet..."
It looks like more than just Nikaido is about to protest, so Julie takes over quickly with her "teacher voice" that's been rumored to have kept even KAT-TUN in check.
"Fans have always enjoyed your collaborations with ABC-Z, as EbiKisu, so some of you may become assimilated into that group. Nikaido and Senga, probably, and Fujigaya."
"No, thank you," Fujigaya speaks up. "I... I'm grateful, but I've decided it would be better if I didn't pursue this line of work any more. I've had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, but... it's just not for me any more."
Somebody - Senga - makes a choked sounding noise behind him, and Fujigaya can't look. He tries, but finds he can't meet the eyes of anyone in his group. It's running away, he knows, but he swings the bag that he hadn't even put down onto his shoulder and just leaves.
As he walks through the now mostly empty streets back to the train station, he breathes the cold air deeply and wishes it could bring clarity to his mind. What's done is done, and he doesn't really regret it or anything, but quitting didn't bring quite the catharsis he was hoping for.
It still feels a little like his world is spinning not quite on track.
"Damned if I do and damned if I don't," he mutters to himself.
"Eh, what's that?" a crone huddled by the stairs of the train station calls out to him. "Tell you your fortune, young man? I can tell you're missing something important in your life all the way from over here. Not something, someone."
"Uh, no thanks," mutters Fujigaya, hurrying past. "Maybe tomorrow."
~
When Fujigaya wakes up, the first thing he does is reach for his phone. Without opening his eyes, he hits speed dial and hears the familiar ring tone sound a billion times, as expected, before the other person picks up.
“Th’fuck d’you want?” Kitayama’s voice is gravelly with sleep.
He doesn’t know why, but a feeling of intense relief spreads through his body at the sound of the older man’s voice.
“You,” Fujigaya says, before quickly hanging up the phone. It rings almost immediately, and he smothers a laugh against his pillow, imagining Kitayama’s bewilderment.
He has a feeling that today is going to be a very good day.
~
OUTTAKE
Totsuka whines and clings - uselessly - to a barstool as Goseki and Tsukada do their best to drag him onto the dance floor.
“I don’t want to dance,” he complains, “You guys can go. I’m not stopping you. Just let me sit here and drink my alcohol in peace! Kitayama wouldn’t make me go!”
“Who?” Tsukada looks at him questioningly.
Totsuka blinks. “I- don’t know. But see! I’m already drunk and spouting nonsense, so you can leave me alone now!”