JE/NEWS/KAT-TUN- "NewS is the Smart Boyband"
HUR HUR I am not funny times a billion.
Title: NewS is the Smart Boyband
Universe: JE/NewS/KAT-TUN
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS, KAT-TUN (with cameos by members of Yax3 and HS7)
Warnings/Spoilers: The usual: crack, HUGE LIBERTIES with characterization, and oh yeah. THE USE OF REAL PEOPLE.
Word Count: 3,663
Summary: Why NewS is the smart boyband.
Dedication: Joanne, because we talked about how NewS is smart. And so I had to twist the words around for my own amusement. LOLZ.
A/N: I am SO SICK RIGHT NOW, so if this makes zero sense you know why. Actually, that’s probably a bad excuse; I don’t think I write any better or worse when I am sick (which is probably not a good thing? I dunno). I am just kind of the same all the time. I WISH I COULD GROW AND BE STRONGER. Maybe I need to read more of Yamapi’s inspiring articles or something. But in either case, this was brought to you by my cold, as I couldn’t SLEEP because of congestion, and was thus up at 7am writing this.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1. Yamapi Knows a Second Language
“Jin, let’s go eat dinner together!” Yamapi calls out happily as he and Ryo and Tegoshi invade KAT-TUN’s dressing room to issue the invitation. He throws his arms up over his head and spins in a circle to convey his excitement at the prospect. “Tegoshi says there’s a new restaurant three blocks from here that has really good xiaolong bao! I really, really want some!”
“Hold on a sec,” Jin replies with a frustrated-sounding huff, before turning back to Koki.
Koki gives the NewS members now gathered in the doorway a wary once-over before he looks back at his group mate; he widens his eyes and throws Jin what one might call a ‘significant’ look.
Jin scowls back and flails his arms a few times.
Koki replies by making a couple of vaguely insulting gestures towards the people standing by the door before waving back towards Kame, who is sitting at the vanity, peacefully ignoring the outside world as he reads a magazine.
Jin frowns.
Koki cups his mouth with one hand, makes a peace sign with the other, and then jerks his head sideways twice.
“What are they doing?” Tegoshi asks, and instinctively slips behind Ryo a little bit in case it ends up being contagious or something.
“Dunno, ask Yamapi,” Ryo tells the younger boy. Then he crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe so that he can close his eyes for a little bit; he is already bored with watching this week’s game of KAT-TUN Presents: Idiot Charades LIVE. Seriously, how can this group of people spend all their time together and not have killed each other already?
Tegoshi dutifully turns to Yamapi for clarification as per Ryo’s instructions, but when he does, he notices that Yamapi is now in a state of deep concentration. As such, Tegoshi doesn’t end up asking the older boy anything in the end, for fear of disturbing him in the middle of some critical and life-changing train of thought. One never knows with someone like Yamapi, after all.
In the meantime, Jin puts his hands on his hips, does a weird thing with his shoulder, and shakes his head. Koki sighs and makes a walking motion with the index and middle fingers of his right hand before bending his knees a little and clasping both hands together.
Jin ends whatever bizarre gesture game they are playing with a well-timed fist to the flat of his palm; he then follows up with a sharp slicing motion in the air in front of his neck.
After that, Koki sighs and throws his hands up in what Tegoshi can only assume is a sign of capitulation before he plops down on the couch sullenly.
Tegoshi is understandably, very, very confused.
But just as he’s about to give in and ask Koki outright for an explanation, he hears a soft sigh and an, “Ah, I understand now,” from beside him. He turns just in time to see Yamapi lean back against the doorframe; he is clucking and shaking his head knowingly.
“What is it, leader?” Tegoshi asks, softly.
“Koki wants Jin to talk to Kame about the birthday present Kame supposedly bought Koki but forgot to give him. But Jin doesn’t believe Kame really got him one anyway, so he’s telling Koki to either go and talk to Kame about it himself or just forget it,” Yamapi explains easily.
Tegoshi’s eyes get as big as saucers when he hears this; it takes approximately point-five seconds before he is sparkling admiration up to Yamapi at full power. “Wow… you understood all of that?” he breathes, “That’s amazing, leader! That’s really, really amazing!”
Yamapi grins. “I just try my best, ne?”
“Right!” Tegoshi agrees, and pumps his fist happily.
Ryo, in the meantime, doesn’t understand how Tegoshi can be so impressed by the fact that Yamapi speaks fluent moron.
Shouldn’t it be obvious that he can just by looking at him?
2. Koyama Improvises Well
Koyama and Massu and Nakamaru are shopping in Harajuku one afternoon on their day off; Massu is looking at T-shirts at the front of the store while in the back, Nakamaru is looking at ties and Koyama is trying on hats.
Koyama-as the perceptive one of the three present-immediately notices it when a group of girls recognize Massu through the storefront window and start wildly calling and texting people on their cell phones about it.
“Ah, those fans outside could be trouble,” Koyama tells Nakamaru, “We don’t want to cause a scene for the owners, ne?”
Nakamaru blinks, “Should we run, then?” he asks. “I just found some really nice ties.”
Koyama shakes his head. “Running might cause trouble for people on the streets outside if those girls decide to follow us. The foot traffic is already bad because it’s summer, ne?”
Nakamaru agrees on that front; Koyama is always very considerate of others like that. “Well what should we do, then?” he asks.
Koyama purses his lips and thinks about it for a moment-it is a bit of dilemma. But after a minute or two, he snaps his fingers and smiles. “I have an idea,” he says.
Nakamaru doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t like the look on Koyama’s face.
Later, when a large mob of girls suddenly shows up at the shop looking for idols, they don’t end up finding any. Rather, they only run into some random guy sipping a bottle of oolong tea in the corner by the ties. They are understandably confused; didn’t the messages they got from their friends just now say that Masuda and Koyama from NewS were shopping here? Haven’t those friends been watching the shop like hawks ever since?
They pout and leave after a few minutes, thinking to themselves that maybe Koyama and Masuda just left the store through the back door when no one was looking. If they hurry, they might be able to catch a glimpse of them on the nearby streets.
In the meantime, Nakamaru sighs and waits until the group is gone. Then he turns around and frowns at Koyama and Masuda, who are hiding behind him. “They’re gone,” he reports.
Masuda grins and stands. “Your plainness is really useful, Nakamaru!” he says to his friend cheerfully, and then goes to finish his shopping.
Koyama smiles and agrees; he shoots Maru a thumbs up. “NewS could really use an ordinary guy like you!” he compliments the older boy obliviously, and then heads back to the hat rack.
Maru sighs as he watches them go; he wonders if all those roller coasters were for nothing after all.
3. Tegoshi Analyzes Data
Tegoshi senses something is off between them as of late, and as such, makes it a point to study both Jin and Kame carefully for X number of days. After a while he thinks that he is right, something is definitely off about their relationship.
For instance, in the cafeteria, Tegoshi notices when Kame brushes past Jin without a word of greeting or an “excuse me” either way; he also notices how Jin scowls and brusquely dusts off the part of his jacket that Kame’s shoulder touched before going back to another one of his strange gesture conversations with Koki.
A few days after that Kame takes Jin’s arm on TV for a game, but Jin shakes Kame’s hand off and shouts, “Don’t touch me!” in front of the entire studio audience.
Then Jin calls Kame narcissistic on the same show and a few days later, he bursts out laughing at Kame when Kame trips on a sound wire as they’re climbing onto stage for a live performance.
Kame frowns and ignores Jin through most of these incidents, though Tegoshi catches some choice words about what happened when Kame is talking to Junno about it during lunch the following day.
After the third or fourth time Tegoshi sees Jin slam his fist into his palm with regards to Kame during one of his mute conversations with Koki, Tegoshi thinks he finally knows exactly what is going on here.
But he can’t be too sure because he doesn’t know either of them all that well, and in order to be certain, he decides that the best way to find out the truth is to be direct about it. So he approaches the two of them when he sees all of KAT-TUN gathered in the hallway one afternoon, right before he and Koyama are scheduled for their respective radio show recordings.
“Ne,” Tegoshi begins, and looks back and forth between Kame and Jin with no ill-intentions at all, “do you two hate each other?”
Silence.
He patiently waits for an answer-these things take time, after all, and talking about their problems is the hardest but most crucial step at this stage of their relationship.
But before the two older boys can say anything, Koyama is suddenly there; he clamps a hand over Tegoshi’s mouth and laughs nervously. “Kids these days, right?” he says to Jin and Kame, and then picks Tegoshi up and runs down the hallway as fast as he can go.
He only puts Tegoshi down after they are safely tucked away in one of the recording rooms.
Tegoshi blinks up at him. “What was that for, Kei-chan?” He pouts. “I was talking to them! It was very important.”
Koyama wrings his hands. Maybe no one told Tegoshi about the rule? It’s entirely possible, since it’s a rule they’re technically not supposed to really talk about in the first place (which in turn makes it hard to inform others about it, and Koyama thinks that he will never ever understand some of the rules the jimusho establishes because of weird things like that).
But in this case he thinks he should open his mouth and tell Tegoshi about the rule, because Tegoshi is fearless and sometimes that causes trouble.
“There’s a rule,” he begins carefully, and looks over his shoulder just to make sure there aren’t any shadows with perfectly quaffed hairdos looming on the other side of the door, “and that rule is that we don’t talk about KAT-TUN’s problems out loud. Especially not to KAT-TUN!”
Tegoshi blinks. “There’s a rule that says that?”
Koyama nods emphatically.
This causes Tegoshi to sniff. “That’s a stupid rule. My psychology textbook says that if this keeps going like it is and they don’t talk about things, one of them has an eighty percent chance of checking into a domestic violence shelter within the next three months.”
Koyama stares at him. “W-what?”
But Tegoshi is already moving on; he stops to look at his watch. “Ack, I need to get to my studio. Let’s go eat dinner together afterwards, ne Kei-chan? I’ll wait for you,” he proposes brightly, and smiles like he had not-less than three seconds ago- suggested out loud that Jin was going to assault Kame or vise versa.
“Uh…okay,” Koyama says weakly, because he can’t think of anything else to say in light of that.
“Yay! We’ll get shabu shabu ne?”
And with that, the younger boy turns around and bounces out the door.
Koyama watches him go, and for some reason, he can’t help but wish that he had some of Tegoshi’s power.
4. Ryo Thinks Fast
It’s a scene straight out of a Hong Kong action movie-Ryo and Yamapi are both waiting at a crosswalk in Shibuya after having dinner at a trendy fusion restaurant together when suddenly, a woman’s panicked scream pierces the air.
It’s a purse snatcher; he’s grabbed some fat obaachan’s bag. The two of them both see it when the thief shoves the purse into his shirt and jumps over the edge of the sidewalk to make his escape. Once he’s in the bike lane of the road he pulls out the skateboard he’s got tucked under his non-purse snatching arm and hops onto it. This disheartens the few good Samaritans who are attempting to give chase on foot and they abandon their pursuit, looking on hopelessly as the robber gains momentum on his skateboard down the avenue.
In the meantime, startled onlookers start taking cell phone pictures of the incident. The fat obaachan wails.
Ryo and Yamapi however, both notice that the thief is headed straight for the intersection they are standing in front of, and fast.
Yamapi turns to Ryo first; he says, “Ryo-chan, we have to do something!” like any well-behaved idol would in such a fantastical situation. He has a determined, serious look on his face that tells Ryo jay walking be damned, he’s going to do something whether the crosswalk signal changes in time or not.
For once Ryo completely agrees with Yamapi, and so he does the first thing that comes to mind.
He shoves Yamapi into the robber’s way.
After that the newspapers start reporting that NewS is not only the smart boyband in Johnny’s jimusho but the heroic boyband as well, and even though Yamapi has been crying about the pain a lot, Ryo thinks that it’s not that a big deal in the end, especially considering the fact that what they accomplished was for a greater good.
Besides, Yamapi only really needs one finger and a thumb to hold his mic up anyway.
As for everything else, it will heal eventually. Knowing that, Ryo thinks that the big baby needs to stop whining.
Honestly, is he a man or not?
5. Masuda Demonstrates His Implicit Memory
“What are you doing?” Koyama asks one day, when he sees Tegoshi take Masuda’s bento box from the table and casually hide it under one of the couch cushions in the dressing room.
“Homework,” Tegoshi tells him.
“Oh,” Koyama says. He blinks.
Sometime later, when everyone else comes in for lunch and grabs their orders, Massu notices that his is the only one that isn’t there. He cocks his head in confusion and looks around for a bit before asking, “Has anyone seen my bento?”
“It must be around here somewhere,” Tegoshi prompts. “Do you want me to help you look?”
“No,” it’s fine,” Massu tells him, and begins looking around the room on his own.
Tegoshi surreptitiously starts the timer on his watch when that happens-Masuda finds his lunch three minutes and forty-nine seconds later.
“Ah, there it is!” Massu says happily, and sits down to eat with everyone else without noticing how weird it is that his lunch was under a couch cushion when no one else’s was.
The next day Tegoshi does the same thing.
“Eh?” Massu whines, when he sees that his bento isn’t there again. “Where’s my bento?”
Tegoshi starts his watch again-Massu finds it under the same couch cushion two minutes and ten seconds later.
The next day he finds it in one minute, and the day after that it only takes twelve seconds.
After day five, he automatically goes to the couch to look for his lunch every time, and Tegoshi records his findings with a very satisfied expression on his face.
“This is great!” he tells Koyama later, when Koyama demands to know what, exactly, is going on. “I have to do an experiment for my psych class,” he explains, “but since they won’t let me bring rats into the studio I had to improvise.”
Koyama blinks-“Oh. I guess it’s okay if it’s for school.” Pause. “Wait…what are you studying anyway? Food?”
“Implicit memory,” Tegoshi tells him, patiently. “Here!” He hands Koyama his text book and taps a certain paragraph that is highlighted and annotated several times over.
It reads:
“The radial maze experiment is one example of an experiment that can serve to test the contextual memory in animals. In a radial maze experiment food is placed at the end of certain arms of the maze and a rat goes to the ends of these arms to pick up the food. Implicit, or non-contextual memory, can be tested by always placing the food at the end of certain arms of the maze. After some time the rat will remember to always search these arms for food. Implicit memory in this case would be assessed by noting how long it takes for the rat to recognize that it only receives food from certain arms of the maze.”
“Ah, I see,” Koyama murmurs, and blinks. “So that’s what you’re doing.”
Tegoshi nods. “Massu learns really fast, ne?”
“I guess so.” Pause. “So you’re finished then?”
“Not yet… now I have to test explicit memory part.”
Koyama blinks some more. “Eh?”
“This section,” Tegoshi tells him, and points to the next paragraph of text in his book.
It reads:
"Explicit memory, on the other hand, can be measured by assessing the number of times a rat goes back to the arm where it has already received food. So, although a rat may learn that a certain arm always contains food, it is a more complex task to remember whether it has already gotten the food from that arm, as the rat has to take into account first, where the food is located, and, second, the time at which the food was last eaten."
Koyama is confused. “How are you going to test that?” he asks.
Tegoshi smiles.
The next day, he pours Masuda’s bento into Shige’s and throws the box away.
When everyone comes in a little while later, Massu doesn’t panic because he thinks that his bento is still there, under the cushions. He automatically goes to the couch.
“Eh, it’s not here!” he says, when he doesn’t see it. “Why isn’t it here?”
Tegoshi looks at him. “Massu, didn’t you already eat your bento earlier?” he says, carefully.
Massu frowns. “I did?” Pause. “Oh. I guess I did.”
He sighs and digs change out of his pocket before going to the vending machine for a post-lunch (apparently) snack.
Tegoshi makes a note.
The next day the same thing happens.
And the day after that too.
In fact, Masuda still doesn’t get it after a week of having to eat vending machine candy for lunch.
Tegoshi sighs to himself and doesn’t know what to do with these findings. “This doesn’t make sense,” he says to Koyama. “He should get it by now.”
Koyama looks sympathetic. “At least he passed the first part?” he says, and always finds a way to look at the positive side of a situation.
“I guess,” Tegoshi agrees, reluctantly.
Ryo in the meantime, eyes Shige critically. “Shige,” he barks, “are you getting fatter?”
6. Shige Helps the Juniors with their Homework
Shige sighs and looks down at Hikaru’s paper. “Are you really asking me this?” he says to the younger boy.
Hikaru nods.
Shige has a headache. “The derivative is the velocity.”
Hikaru grins. “Oh!” he says, and then jogs off smiling. “Thanks, Shige!”
Five minutes later Shige is surrounded by a small mob of twelve-to-seventeen year olds asking him for help on their assignments.
“One is a contraction and one is possessive. Oh my god, why are you asking me this? Didn’t Jin spend six months in America learning English?”
Ryosuke sighs. “I did ask him. But then he looked at it, said ‘X times Y equals cursive J’ and then gave me candy and told me that kids my age should be outside playing in the sunlight and fresh air.”
Shige blinks. Oh. Well. “Fine. Run along now.”
Ryosuke smiles. “Thanks, Shige.”
“Shige, this one next!” the kids all say, and jump up on their tip-toes to show Shige their homework.
It isn’t until two hours later that the crowd has finally cleared and Shige has time to sit down and breathe. So much for a break between shows.
Koyama comes up to him a few minutes later, holding a cup of tea. He smiles at Shige and hands him the drink. “Man, you sure are popular, Shige!” he says.
Shige groans. “I don’t know why they keep asking me stuff. You and Tegoshi and Yamapi all go to college too.”
Koyama nods. “That’s true…none of us were very busy just now,” he muses, “I wonder why they didn’t ask us if you were so swamped?”
“Yeah, that’s weird.” Shige sighs to himself and leans back on the couch; he takes a look around the backstage commons as he sips his tea. It seems that Yamapi is in the middle of conversation with Jin; their arms are flailing wildly in the air and they are making weird gestures with their faces to one another without actually saying anything out loud.
Tegoshi, in the meantime, is playing with the sequins on Yuuto’s costume and making happy giggling noises to himself as he does. “Ah, it’s so shiny, ne?” he chirrups.
Shige stops to think about these things that he is seeing for a moment.
And then it all starts to make some sense.
Because he knows that if it had been him as a junior in the same set of circumstances, he probably would have also looked at Yamapi and Tegoshi before deciding to only trust Kato-kun as the one member of NewS who could give the correct answers between the three of them.
But that still doesn’t explain…
He turns to Koyama. “Oi. Where were you all this time, exactly?” he asks.
Koyama blinks. “Eh? Me? Oh, I was talking in the back with Nakamaru about next week’s SC taping.” Pause. “They probably just didn’t see me.”
“Ah,” Shige says. And sadly enough that makes sense as an explanation too- it seems that at the time, Shige really was the only one who the juniors could ask for help.
What a bother.
He leans back deeper into the couch and closes his eyes; he thinks to himself that it would be really convenient if NewS had an ordinary looking member like Nakamaru amongst them all the time.
Maybe the next time the juniors need help en masse like that, Shige will follow Koyama's lead and hide behind him as well.
END
EDITS PLS.
Title: NewS is the Smart Boyband
Universe: JE/NewS/KAT-TUN
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS, KAT-TUN (with cameos by members of Yax3 and HS7)
Warnings/Spoilers: The usual: crack, HUGE LIBERTIES with characterization, and oh yeah. THE USE OF REAL PEOPLE.
Word Count: 3,663
Summary: Why NewS is the smart boyband.
Dedication: Joanne, because we talked about how NewS is smart. And so I had to twist the words around for my own amusement. LOLZ.
A/N: I am SO SICK RIGHT NOW, so if this makes zero sense you know why. Actually, that’s probably a bad excuse; I don’t think I write any better or worse when I am sick (which is probably not a good thing? I dunno). I am just kind of the same all the time. I WISH I COULD GROW AND BE STRONGER. Maybe I need to read more of Yamapi’s inspiring articles or something. But in either case, this was brought to you by my cold, as I couldn’t SLEEP because of congestion, and was thus up at 7am writing this.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1. Yamapi Knows a Second Language
“Jin, let’s go eat dinner together!” Yamapi calls out happily as he and Ryo and Tegoshi invade KAT-TUN’s dressing room to issue the invitation. He throws his arms up over his head and spins in a circle to convey his excitement at the prospect. “Tegoshi says there’s a new restaurant three blocks from here that has really good xiaolong bao! I really, really want some!”
“Hold on a sec,” Jin replies with a frustrated-sounding huff, before turning back to Koki.
Koki gives the NewS members now gathered in the doorway a wary once-over before he looks back at his group mate; he widens his eyes and throws Jin what one might call a ‘significant’ look.
Jin scowls back and flails his arms a few times.
Koki replies by making a couple of vaguely insulting gestures towards the people standing by the door before waving back towards Kame, who is sitting at the vanity, peacefully ignoring the outside world as he reads a magazine.
Jin frowns.
Koki cups his mouth with one hand, makes a peace sign with the other, and then jerks his head sideways twice.
“What are they doing?” Tegoshi asks, and instinctively slips behind Ryo a little bit in case it ends up being contagious or something.
“Dunno, ask Yamapi,” Ryo tells the younger boy. Then he crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe so that he can close his eyes for a little bit; he is already bored with watching this week’s game of KAT-TUN Presents: Idiot Charades LIVE. Seriously, how can this group of people spend all their time together and not have killed each other already?
Tegoshi dutifully turns to Yamapi for clarification as per Ryo’s instructions, but when he does, he notices that Yamapi is now in a state of deep concentration. As such, Tegoshi doesn’t end up asking the older boy anything in the end, for fear of disturbing him in the middle of some critical and life-changing train of thought. One never knows with someone like Yamapi, after all.
In the meantime, Jin puts his hands on his hips, does a weird thing with his shoulder, and shakes his head. Koki sighs and makes a walking motion with the index and middle fingers of his right hand before bending his knees a little and clasping both hands together.
Jin ends whatever bizarre gesture game they are playing with a well-timed fist to the flat of his palm; he then follows up with a sharp slicing motion in the air in front of his neck.
After that, Koki sighs and throws his hands up in what Tegoshi can only assume is a sign of capitulation before he plops down on the couch sullenly.
Tegoshi is understandably, very, very confused.
But just as he’s about to give in and ask Koki outright for an explanation, he hears a soft sigh and an, “Ah, I understand now,” from beside him. He turns just in time to see Yamapi lean back against the doorframe; he is clucking and shaking his head knowingly.
“What is it, leader?” Tegoshi asks, softly.
“Koki wants Jin to talk to Kame about the birthday present Kame supposedly bought Koki but forgot to give him. But Jin doesn’t believe Kame really got him one anyway, so he’s telling Koki to either go and talk to Kame about it himself or just forget it,” Yamapi explains easily.
Tegoshi’s eyes get as big as saucers when he hears this; it takes approximately point-five seconds before he is sparkling admiration up to Yamapi at full power. “Wow… you understood all of that?” he breathes, “That’s amazing, leader! That’s really, really amazing!”
Yamapi grins. “I just try my best, ne?”
“Right!” Tegoshi agrees, and pumps his fist happily.
Ryo, in the meantime, doesn’t understand how Tegoshi can be so impressed by the fact that Yamapi speaks fluent moron.
Shouldn’t it be obvious that he can just by looking at him?
2. Koyama Improvises Well
Koyama and Massu and Nakamaru are shopping in Harajuku one afternoon on their day off; Massu is looking at T-shirts at the front of the store while in the back, Nakamaru is looking at ties and Koyama is trying on hats.
Koyama-as the perceptive one of the three present-immediately notices it when a group of girls recognize Massu through the storefront window and start wildly calling and texting people on their cell phones about it.
“Ah, those fans outside could be trouble,” Koyama tells Nakamaru, “We don’t want to cause a scene for the owners, ne?”
Nakamaru blinks, “Should we run, then?” he asks. “I just found some really nice ties.”
Koyama shakes his head. “Running might cause trouble for people on the streets outside if those girls decide to follow us. The foot traffic is already bad because it’s summer, ne?”
Nakamaru agrees on that front; Koyama is always very considerate of others like that. “Well what should we do, then?” he asks.
Koyama purses his lips and thinks about it for a moment-it is a bit of dilemma. But after a minute or two, he snaps his fingers and smiles. “I have an idea,” he says.
Nakamaru doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t like the look on Koyama’s face.
Later, when a large mob of girls suddenly shows up at the shop looking for idols, they don’t end up finding any. Rather, they only run into some random guy sipping a bottle of oolong tea in the corner by the ties. They are understandably confused; didn’t the messages they got from their friends just now say that Masuda and Koyama from NewS were shopping here? Haven’t those friends been watching the shop like hawks ever since?
They pout and leave after a few minutes, thinking to themselves that maybe Koyama and Masuda just left the store through the back door when no one was looking. If they hurry, they might be able to catch a glimpse of them on the nearby streets.
In the meantime, Nakamaru sighs and waits until the group is gone. Then he turns around and frowns at Koyama and Masuda, who are hiding behind him. “They’re gone,” he reports.
Masuda grins and stands. “Your plainness is really useful, Nakamaru!” he says to his friend cheerfully, and then goes to finish his shopping.
Koyama smiles and agrees; he shoots Maru a thumbs up. “NewS could really use an ordinary guy like you!” he compliments the older boy obliviously, and then heads back to the hat rack.
Maru sighs as he watches them go; he wonders if all those roller coasters were for nothing after all.
3. Tegoshi Analyzes Data
Tegoshi senses something is off between them as of late, and as such, makes it a point to study both Jin and Kame carefully for X number of days. After a while he thinks that he is right, something is definitely off about their relationship.
For instance, in the cafeteria, Tegoshi notices when Kame brushes past Jin without a word of greeting or an “excuse me” either way; he also notices how Jin scowls and brusquely dusts off the part of his jacket that Kame’s shoulder touched before going back to another one of his strange gesture conversations with Koki.
A few days after that Kame takes Jin’s arm on TV for a game, but Jin shakes Kame’s hand off and shouts, “Don’t touch me!” in front of the entire studio audience.
Then Jin calls Kame narcissistic on the same show and a few days later, he bursts out laughing at Kame when Kame trips on a sound wire as they’re climbing onto stage for a live performance.
Kame frowns and ignores Jin through most of these incidents, though Tegoshi catches some choice words about what happened when Kame is talking to Junno about it during lunch the following day.
After the third or fourth time Tegoshi sees Jin slam his fist into his palm with regards to Kame during one of his mute conversations with Koki, Tegoshi thinks he finally knows exactly what is going on here.
But he can’t be too sure because he doesn’t know either of them all that well, and in order to be certain, he decides that the best way to find out the truth is to be direct about it. So he approaches the two of them when he sees all of KAT-TUN gathered in the hallway one afternoon, right before he and Koyama are scheduled for their respective radio show recordings.
“Ne,” Tegoshi begins, and looks back and forth between Kame and Jin with no ill-intentions at all, “do you two hate each other?”
Silence.
He patiently waits for an answer-these things take time, after all, and talking about their problems is the hardest but most crucial step at this stage of their relationship.
But before the two older boys can say anything, Koyama is suddenly there; he clamps a hand over Tegoshi’s mouth and laughs nervously. “Kids these days, right?” he says to Jin and Kame, and then picks Tegoshi up and runs down the hallway as fast as he can go.
He only puts Tegoshi down after they are safely tucked away in one of the recording rooms.
Tegoshi blinks up at him. “What was that for, Kei-chan?” He pouts. “I was talking to them! It was very important.”
Koyama wrings his hands. Maybe no one told Tegoshi about the rule? It’s entirely possible, since it’s a rule they’re technically not supposed to really talk about in the first place (which in turn makes it hard to inform others about it, and Koyama thinks that he will never ever understand some of the rules the jimusho establishes because of weird things like that).
But in this case he thinks he should open his mouth and tell Tegoshi about the rule, because Tegoshi is fearless and sometimes that causes trouble.
“There’s a rule,” he begins carefully, and looks over his shoulder just to make sure there aren’t any shadows with perfectly quaffed hairdos looming on the other side of the door, “and that rule is that we don’t talk about KAT-TUN’s problems out loud. Especially not to KAT-TUN!”
Tegoshi blinks. “There’s a rule that says that?”
Koyama nods emphatically.
This causes Tegoshi to sniff. “That’s a stupid rule. My psychology textbook says that if this keeps going like it is and they don’t talk about things, one of them has an eighty percent chance of checking into a domestic violence shelter within the next three months.”
Koyama stares at him. “W-what?”
But Tegoshi is already moving on; he stops to look at his watch. “Ack, I need to get to my studio. Let’s go eat dinner together afterwards, ne Kei-chan? I’ll wait for you,” he proposes brightly, and smiles like he had not-less than three seconds ago- suggested out loud that Jin was going to assault Kame or vise versa.
“Uh…okay,” Koyama says weakly, because he can’t think of anything else to say in light of that.
“Yay! We’ll get shabu shabu ne?”
And with that, the younger boy turns around and bounces out the door.
Koyama watches him go, and for some reason, he can’t help but wish that he had some of Tegoshi’s power.
4. Ryo Thinks Fast
It’s a scene straight out of a Hong Kong action movie-Ryo and Yamapi are both waiting at a crosswalk in Shibuya after having dinner at a trendy fusion restaurant together when suddenly, a woman’s panicked scream pierces the air.
It’s a purse snatcher; he’s grabbed some fat obaachan’s bag. The two of them both see it when the thief shoves the purse into his shirt and jumps over the edge of the sidewalk to make his escape. Once he’s in the bike lane of the road he pulls out the skateboard he’s got tucked under his non-purse snatching arm and hops onto it. This disheartens the few good Samaritans who are attempting to give chase on foot and they abandon their pursuit, looking on hopelessly as the robber gains momentum on his skateboard down the avenue.
In the meantime, startled onlookers start taking cell phone pictures of the incident. The fat obaachan wails.
Ryo and Yamapi however, both notice that the thief is headed straight for the intersection they are standing in front of, and fast.
Yamapi turns to Ryo first; he says, “Ryo-chan, we have to do something!” like any well-behaved idol would in such a fantastical situation. He has a determined, serious look on his face that tells Ryo jay walking be damned, he’s going to do something whether the crosswalk signal changes in time or not.
For once Ryo completely agrees with Yamapi, and so he does the first thing that comes to mind.
He shoves Yamapi into the robber’s way.
After that the newspapers start reporting that NewS is not only the smart boyband in Johnny’s jimusho but the heroic boyband as well, and even though Yamapi has been crying about the pain a lot, Ryo thinks that it’s not that a big deal in the end, especially considering the fact that what they accomplished was for a greater good.
Besides, Yamapi only really needs one finger and a thumb to hold his mic up anyway.
As for everything else, it will heal eventually. Knowing that, Ryo thinks that the big baby needs to stop whining.
Honestly, is he a man or not?
5. Masuda Demonstrates His Implicit Memory
“What are you doing?” Koyama asks one day, when he sees Tegoshi take Masuda’s bento box from the table and casually hide it under one of the couch cushions in the dressing room.
“Homework,” Tegoshi tells him.
“Oh,” Koyama says. He blinks.
Sometime later, when everyone else comes in for lunch and grabs their orders, Massu notices that his is the only one that isn’t there. He cocks his head in confusion and looks around for a bit before asking, “Has anyone seen my bento?”
“It must be around here somewhere,” Tegoshi prompts. “Do you want me to help you look?”
“No,” it’s fine,” Massu tells him, and begins looking around the room on his own.
Tegoshi surreptitiously starts the timer on his watch when that happens-Masuda finds his lunch three minutes and forty-nine seconds later.
“Ah, there it is!” Massu says happily, and sits down to eat with everyone else without noticing how weird it is that his lunch was under a couch cushion when no one else’s was.
The next day Tegoshi does the same thing.
“Eh?” Massu whines, when he sees that his bento isn’t there again. “Where’s my bento?”
Tegoshi starts his watch again-Massu finds it under the same couch cushion two minutes and ten seconds later.
The next day he finds it in one minute, and the day after that it only takes twelve seconds.
After day five, he automatically goes to the couch to look for his lunch every time, and Tegoshi records his findings with a very satisfied expression on his face.
“This is great!” he tells Koyama later, when Koyama demands to know what, exactly, is going on. “I have to do an experiment for my psych class,” he explains, “but since they won’t let me bring rats into the studio I had to improvise.”
Koyama blinks-“Oh. I guess it’s okay if it’s for school.” Pause. “Wait…what are you studying anyway? Food?”
“Implicit memory,” Tegoshi tells him, patiently. “Here!” He hands Koyama his text book and taps a certain paragraph that is highlighted and annotated several times over.
It reads:
“The radial maze experiment is one example of an experiment that can serve to test the contextual memory in animals. In a radial maze experiment food is placed at the end of certain arms of the maze and a rat goes to the ends of these arms to pick up the food. Implicit, or non-contextual memory, can be tested by always placing the food at the end of certain arms of the maze. After some time the rat will remember to always search these arms for food. Implicit memory in this case would be assessed by noting how long it takes for the rat to recognize that it only receives food from certain arms of the maze.”
“Ah, I see,” Koyama murmurs, and blinks. “So that’s what you’re doing.”
Tegoshi nods. “Massu learns really fast, ne?”
“I guess so.” Pause. “So you’re finished then?”
“Not yet… now I have to test explicit memory part.”
Koyama blinks some more. “Eh?”
“This section,” Tegoshi tells him, and points to the next paragraph of text in his book.
It reads:
"Explicit memory, on the other hand, can be measured by assessing the number of times a rat goes back to the arm where it has already received food. So, although a rat may learn that a certain arm always contains food, it is a more complex task to remember whether it has already gotten the food from that arm, as the rat has to take into account first, where the food is located, and, second, the time at which the food was last eaten."
Koyama is confused. “How are you going to test that?” he asks.
Tegoshi smiles.
The next day, he pours Masuda’s bento into Shige’s and throws the box away.
When everyone comes in a little while later, Massu doesn’t panic because he thinks that his bento is still there, under the cushions. He automatically goes to the couch.
“Eh, it’s not here!” he says, when he doesn’t see it. “Why isn’t it here?”
Tegoshi looks at him. “Massu, didn’t you already eat your bento earlier?” he says, carefully.
Massu frowns. “I did?” Pause. “Oh. I guess I did.”
He sighs and digs change out of his pocket before going to the vending machine for a post-lunch (apparently) snack.
Tegoshi makes a note.
The next day the same thing happens.
And the day after that too.
In fact, Masuda still doesn’t get it after a week of having to eat vending machine candy for lunch.
Tegoshi sighs to himself and doesn’t know what to do with these findings. “This doesn’t make sense,” he says to Koyama. “He should get it by now.”
Koyama looks sympathetic. “At least he passed the first part?” he says, and always finds a way to look at the positive side of a situation.
“I guess,” Tegoshi agrees, reluctantly.
Ryo in the meantime, eyes Shige critically. “Shige,” he barks, “are you getting fatter?”
6. Shige Helps the Juniors with their Homework
Shige sighs and looks down at Hikaru’s paper. “Are you really asking me this?” he says to the younger boy.
Hikaru nods.
Shige has a headache. “The derivative is the velocity.”
Hikaru grins. “Oh!” he says, and then jogs off smiling. “Thanks, Shige!”
Five minutes later Shige is surrounded by a small mob of twelve-to-seventeen year olds asking him for help on their assignments.
“One is a contraction and one is possessive. Oh my god, why are you asking me this? Didn’t Jin spend six months in America learning English?”
Ryosuke sighs. “I did ask him. But then he looked at it, said ‘X times Y equals cursive J’ and then gave me candy and told me that kids my age should be outside playing in the sunlight and fresh air.”
Shige blinks. Oh. Well. “Fine. Run along now.”
Ryosuke smiles. “Thanks, Shige.”
“Shige, this one next!” the kids all say, and jump up on their tip-toes to show Shige their homework.
It isn’t until two hours later that the crowd has finally cleared and Shige has time to sit down and breathe. So much for a break between shows.
Koyama comes up to him a few minutes later, holding a cup of tea. He smiles at Shige and hands him the drink. “Man, you sure are popular, Shige!” he says.
Shige groans. “I don’t know why they keep asking me stuff. You and Tegoshi and Yamapi all go to college too.”
Koyama nods. “That’s true…none of us were very busy just now,” he muses, “I wonder why they didn’t ask us if you were so swamped?”
“Yeah, that’s weird.” Shige sighs to himself and leans back on the couch; he takes a look around the backstage commons as he sips his tea. It seems that Yamapi is in the middle of conversation with Jin; their arms are flailing wildly in the air and they are making weird gestures with their faces to one another without actually saying anything out loud.
Tegoshi, in the meantime, is playing with the sequins on Yuuto’s costume and making happy giggling noises to himself as he does. “Ah, it’s so shiny, ne?” he chirrups.
Shige stops to think about these things that he is seeing for a moment.
And then it all starts to make some sense.
Because he knows that if it had been him as a junior in the same set of circumstances, he probably would have also looked at Yamapi and Tegoshi before deciding to only trust Kato-kun as the one member of NewS who could give the correct answers between the three of them.
But that still doesn’t explain…
He turns to Koyama. “Oi. Where were you all this time, exactly?” he asks.
Koyama blinks. “Eh? Me? Oh, I was talking in the back with Nakamaru about next week’s SC taping.” Pause. “They probably just didn’t see me.”
“Ah,” Shige says. And sadly enough that makes sense as an explanation too- it seems that at the time, Shige really was the only one who the juniors could ask for help.
What a bother.
He leans back deeper into the couch and closes his eyes; he thinks to himself that it would be really convenient if NewS had an ordinary looking member like Nakamaru amongst them all the time.
Maybe the next time the juniors need help en masse like that, Shige will follow Koyama's lead and hide behind him as well.
END
EDITS PLS.