JE/NewS- "Five Times Tegoshi Demonstrates Member-ai to the Rest of NewS"
Title: Five Times Tegoshi Demonstrates Member-ai to the Rest of NewS
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: As stated above
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (Kame in brief)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack? OOC? Stupidity? THESE PEOPLE REALLY EXIST OH GOD.
Word Count: 3,012
Summary: With time, Tegoshi wins his bandmates’ love. And everything else.
Dedication: Ann’s “5 Things” request from my drabble/fic meme.
A/N: Last one, Ann! Sorry this is lame and that it took forever. >> Massu is hard to write outside of a food capacity, so I clearly fail. SIGH. Though sadly, his is not the worst one of these five things. I AM SORRY MY STORY IS NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS YOURS. OR LONG.
1. Love Is All You Need
Ryo blinks down at Tegoshi and is torn between shoving the younger boy off of him and asking him whether or not he has gone crazy in the last five minutes. They’ve only known each other for a few months; what they are doing right now is completely overreaching the boundaries of what Ryo considers normal, acceptable behavior within that timeframe of acquaintance.
Or in some cases, ever.
“Have you gone crazy!?” he demands, after he realizes that in the long run, even he can’t shove a helpless Tegoshi (especially given that the kid has clearly lost all of his precious few self-preservation instincts just now).
Instead, Ryo glares down at his groupmate as harshly as he can muster; he thinks that maybe it will scare Tegoshi away and make him stop acting so strangely. “Why are we hugging!?” Ryo barks. Pause. Then, stubbornly, “You still can’t have my phone number.”
But Tegoshi just looks up at Ryo and smiles back at him like he knows something Ryo doesn’t; his arms are wrapped around the older boy and his chin is resting on Ryo’s shoulder as if that is a place where Ryo lets other people put their chins on a regular basis. “Just wait,” Tegoshi whispers to him confidently.
Ryo squirms and quickly turns away from those big, thick-lashed eyes-somehow they seem dangerous if you look at them for too long at once. “Wait for what? No!” he snarls, and stubbornly tries to disentangle himself from Tegoshi’s embrace. “Let go!”
Tegoshi only hugs him closer; he hangs on as tightly as he can and refuses to let go even a little.
Ryo thinks that maybe he needs to hit and/or shove Tegoshi after all; he even raises his fist to go ahead and do it.
But then Tegoshi looks up at Ryo with a warm, loving smile.
And that is the exact moment that something very strange happens to Nishikido Ryo.
“Uh,” he says suddenly, and frowns. He stops moving; lowers his fist. “Huh.”
He may or may not even relax a little.
Tegoshi glows at him. “See?” the younger boy chirps happily, and presses his cheek against Ryo’s neck. His breath is warm, and when he talks his lips tickle Ryo’s skin.
Ryo doesn’t know what he’s doing or why when he ends up hugging Tegoshi back; it just kind of happens.
And as it turns out, he discovers that the rest of Tegoshi is pretty warm too.
“Huh,” Ryo says, again. He sounds a little bit dumbfounded by this influx of new and strange sensations.
Tegoshi laughs against Ryo’s neck. “Nishikido-kun, we’re friends now, right?”
Ryo doesn’t actually know how to respond to that; he’s too busy hugging.
So he doesn’t say anything at all; they stand there like that for what feels like a really, really long time.
The next morning, when Ryo arrives to work humming and with coffee and donuts for everyone just because, Koyama nearly passes out from the shock. Even Uchi looks at Ryo like he has grown another head.
“Are you sick?” Koyama asks him, frantically. He reaches out and puts his hand on Ryo’s forehead without thinking about how dangerous that is. “Should I call a doctor? An ambulance? Do you feel dizzy?! Sit down, ne!”
When Ryo kicks Koyama in the shin, it is automatic.
In the meantime, Tegoshi cheers obliviously to himself in the background and thanks Ryo for breakfast; he loves donuts, how did Ryo-tan know?
Ryo scowls when he hears this and kicks Koyama again, just because.
2. Sharing is Caring
Tegoshi suddenly (and with no ill-intentions) calls Masuda “Massu” on TV in front of everyone during a filming one day. Masuda gets laughed at and everyone calls him Massu for the rest of the program in an overly friendly way.
He is not sure whether he is annoyed by this or not; during lunch that day, he finishes his gyuudon and frowns at Tegoshi thoughtfully for a while afterwards, while he digests. He decides that that sort of nickname is too familiar for someone who is four years his junior in the jimusho, isn’t he supposed to be Tegoshi’s senpai too?
But when Tegoshi catches Massu looking at him from across the cafeteria he only smiles back brightly and says, “Does Massu want the rest of mine? I can’t finish, ne!” He holds out his tray to the older boy in invitation- there is practically an entire katsu cutlet left!
And Massu finds himself smiling and taking it; he immediately forgets his annoyance from earlier because now he supposes that everything is okay since it seems that he and Tegoshi are better friends than he first thought they were.
He enjoys Tegoshi’s Katsu-don a lot and is glad NewS is getting along so well like this.
More importantly, he thinks to himself that pork cutlet is really delicious.
3. Brotherly Love
Tegoshi says it offhandedly and with complete sincerity during a magazine interview a few months after the first single is released; “I’ve decided that Kei-chan is like a real big brother to me, ne!” he tells their interviewer with large, shining eyes.
Koyama is beside himself with pride when he hears this; he can’t stop smiling for a week after Tegoshi says it. “Ah, I’m so happy! I’ve never been anyone’s big brother before. NewS’s member-ai is really strong, ne! We’re like a real family after all, ne!” Koyama babbles to Shige happily one afternoon, when he is sitting in the lounge waiting for something.
Shige just smiles and shakes his head at Koyama’s enthusiasm. “I guess so.” Then he pauses and looks at his watch. “Why are you still here, anyway?” he asks Koyama, “Didn’t you finish recording your radio program two hours ago?”
The older boy nods, still smiling. “Yup! But I’m waiting for Tegoshi to finish his.”
Shige blinks. “Um. Why?”
Koyama beams. “I promised to drive him home today, ne!” He flashes a cheerful V-sign at Shige as he explains this. “That’s what a good big brother does in this circumstance, right?”
Shige blinks.
“Didn’t you buy him dinner yesterday?” he asks Koyama slowly.
“Yup!”
“And you took him to the amusement park too, this past weekend, right?”
“Yes! We took purikura together and I bought him a hat with mouse ears! It was really, really cute!”
When he hears this, Shige looks at Koyama for a very long while. He debates with himself about whether he should say anything or not; but when he looks at the older boy-really looks at him- he eventually decides that Koyama seems happy where he is right now.
So after a moment, Shige simply sighs and says, “You’re doing exactly as you should be,” with as much solemnity as he can muster.
Koyama glows.
4. Yamapi wo Produce
Everyone can tell that Yamapi is nervous about the new drama he is supposed to start filming with Kamenashi in the next few weeks; they all know that it is one thing to work with a costar who doesn’t particularly like you, but it is another thing completely to have to work with a costar who is popular enough to know that he doesn’t need you either.
Yamapi hopes that things will somehow work out even under these trying circumstances; according to Kame, in the original Nobuta novel Akira doesn’t even exist!
Oddly enough, this is the most disheartening news of all to Yamapi; he’d known all along that Kame doesn’t really need him, but to find out that Shuuji doesn’t need Akira as well is somehow, even sadder than that.
In short, it is a very troubling concept to reconcile for Yamapi; he ends up holing himself up during every rehearsal break the group has in the following days so he can study the scripts to try to find Akira’s center, even if a part of him knows there isn’t one because Akira doesn’t exist, not even in the same book that Shuuji exists in. It’s like they’re a whole universe apart. That’s not how best friends are supposed to be.
On the day before filming is scheduled to start, Tegoshi bounces into the dressing room where Yamapi is; he is happily licking a Popsicle in ways that would be considered indecent and borderline-obscene if he did them in public places.
“I just finished reading the Nobuta novel so I would be fully prepared for Yamashita-kun’s drama when it airs, ne!” he says to Yamapi, and smacks bright orange lips.
Yamapi glances up from his script and smiles nervously. “Oh.” Pause. “Did you like it?”
Tegoshi thinks about this. “It was good,” he admits, eventually.
Yamapi deflates a little. Kame had been right all along; Shuuji doesn’t really need Akira.
But then Tegoshi continues talking, he says: “But there is no Akira and Shuuji-kun kills himself in the end, ne! It was very surprising!”
Yamapi blinks and looks up from his script. “He what?” he asks Tegoshi.
Tegoshi smiles. “There is no Akira and Shuuji kills himself,” he repeats, like he is giving a report about how nice the whether is today and not talking about a high school student’s tragic suicide. And then he licks languidly at his Popsicle again, before any of the juice can drip down onto his hand.
Yamapi’s eyes become very, very wide (and not because of the Popsicle). “Shuuji does? Majide?!”
Tegoshi nods. “Yup!” And then he pumps his fist at Yamapi in the exact way that Yamapi does whenever he is encouraging the rest of NewS to do their best before a live show. “Work hard tomorrow, Yamashita-kun!” he cheers.
And then, without another word, Tegoshi skips out of the room to go see what Kei-chan and Ryo-tan are up to and to ask either of them if they want a taste of his Popsicle; it’s really yummy.
Yamapi just stares after him. A minute or two later, he sits up straighter in his chair and pumps his fist too. “Yosh! I have to work hard!” he says to himself, and goes back to his script with renewed vigor.
The next day on set Kame is confused and just a little bit scared; Yamapi takes him aside first thing in the morning before filming is slated to start and puts his hands on Kame’s shoulders. He looks intently into the younger boy’s eyes as he tells him, “this time it’s different! I’m here, so it’s okay, ne!” before making the “kon” fox and embracing Kame like they are longtime friends after all. He looks more confident and determined in that one moment of contact between the two of them than he had during any of the times that they’d been rehearsing together over the past few weeks.
Incidentally, Yamapi also doesn’t let Kame handle any sharp objects or get too close to the edge of the school roof for the rest of the shoot. It is all very odd and disconcerting; even the staff thinks it’s a little strange.
But whenever Kame asks Yamapi about why he is doing that, Yamapi’s only response is a “kon” hand and an ambiguous smile.
Kame wonders if Yamapi has gone crazy.
More importantly, he hopes that this drama will be well received even if one of the leading actors has suddenly become insane.
5. Fun for Everyone
Koyama has taken an interest in all sorts of different games lately; first it had been billiards and then Chinese checkers, after that it was regular checkers and now Chess.
He also likes making Shige take part in these hobbies with him whenever he finds a new one; Shige doesn’t really mind so much most of the time, but there are times-like now-when he wishes Koyama would become more proficient at his own interests before dragging Shige into them as well; doesn’t he have any consideration for anyone else’s feelings on the matter?
After all, isn’t it a little rude to get someone involved in something and then prove to be insufficient at stimulating that person’s interest from there on out?
But then again, Shige supposes that this is Koyama he is talking about; maybe his hopes are too high and not realistic after all.
So he doesn’t end up saying anything even though he is kind of annoyed, instead he sighs helplessly and moves his rook into place for the final blow of this game. “Checkmate,” he announces to Koyama, and sounds bored.
From beside them, Tegoshi is watching cheerfully. “Ah that was a good one, ne!” he says to Koyama, who sits back and pouts at Shige.
“Not really,” Shige replies with complete honestly. “It would be a good one if it lasted more than fifteen minutes.”
Koyama squirms. “I’m still learning!” he protests. “Give me time, ne!”
“We started learning together,” Shige reminds him.
Tegoshi laughs at them both. “It looks fun! Can I learn too?”
“It takes patience,” Shige warns Tegoshi. He does not think Tegoshi has the attention span for this quite yet; he still zones out in a lot of their interviews and those are only fifteen-to-twenty minutes long each.
Koyama does not think about this though, he immediately brightens and says, “I’ll teach you, Tegoshi! It’s what big brothers do, ne!”
Tegoshi beams back at him; “Right!”
Shige’s brow furrows at the thought of Koyama teaching Tegoshi how to play and how embarrassing that would be for Tegoshi in the future. “Maybe I better teach him,” he tells Koyama reasonably.
“Okay!” Tegoshi says readily, and Koyama sulks a little at them both before admitting that yes, that would probably be a better idea.
So Shige spends the next ten minutes explaining the ways each of the pieces can move on the board and the basic strategy of the game to Tegoshi. Tegoshi’s only comment the entire time is that he thinks the horsies are cute.
“Maybe we should play a game to help you learn,” Shige says, and does not really have any optimistic thoughts about how well this is going to go.
Tegoshi on the other hand, does not look like he is having any thoughts at all. “Okay!”
They set up and start playing; after five minutes of awkward fumbling it feels like all Tegoshi is doing is making pretty patterns on the board out of his black pieces.
After another twenty minutes Koyama gets bored and goes to see what the others are doing; after twenty more Shige has killed off five of Tegoshi’s pieces and Tegoshi has killed two of his because Shige doesn’t want to be a complete beast about this.
“Are you sure you want to move there?” Shige asks Tegoshi, on his next move.
“Yup!” Tegoshi grins and pets his knight on its horse-shaped head as he releases it into its new square.
On the other side of the board, Shige’s queen takes one of Tegoshi’s bishops.
Fifteen minutes after that, Tegoshi pauses and looks at his watch; “Wow, we’ve been playing for an hour already, ne!”
Shige blinks; have they? “Really?”
“It’s fun, ne!”
“Sure,” Shige says.
And then Tegoshi promptly kills his queen.
Shige blinks. “Um…good work,” he manages.
“Yay!” Tegoshi laughs.
Two more moves and Tegoshi kills one of his rooks; five more and Shige’s bishop and his last rook are both trapped, forcing the older boy to choose which one gets to live and which one gets to die.
He chooses his bishop; Tegoshi decides to kill neither.
Instead, he takes out one of Shige’s pawn with his knight and declares, “Checkmate!” with another cheerful pat of the horse’s head.
Shige is not sure how all of this happened.
“Um,” he starts, and his eyes skim the board as he tries to assess what the hell is going on suddenly-maybe Tegoshi just doesn’t know what the word “checkmate” actually means.
Except that it looks like he does.
And as his eyes scan the pieces and he replays all of the moves in his head, Shige realizes something else that is strange about all of this; perhaps even stranger than Tegoshi happily killing a bunch of his pieces in one fell swoop just moments earlier. “You could have pulled that combination off and killed me fifteen minutes ago,” he says, and hopes Tegoshi hadn’t seen it until just now; that it had all been blind luck somehow.
But Tegoshi just cocks his head to the side cutely; he is holding Shige’s king in his hand and is trying to spin it around on his palm by poking at the cross on top of its head with his index finger and rotating it on its edge. “But I thought Shige wanted to play a longer game, right?” he says, and concentrates very hard on the spinning white king.
Shige’s head hurts. “Excuse me?”
Tegoshi beams at him with no pretense whatsoever. “Because Shige said that it’s more fun if you can play longer, isn’t it?”
“So you…”
Tegoshi nods. “Since I watched Kei-chan and Shige play earlier, I learned what ways Shige likes to move his pieces so I could make the game longer and more fun for everyone, ne!”
Shige suddenly-inexplicably- remembers something he read in The Art of War once a long time ago; he inches backwards from Tegoshi instinctively.
And he wonders what the game they played just now has taught him about the younger boy’s unintentional tactical capability.
“Let’s always have fun like this together in the future, okay, Shige?” Tegoshi suddenly prompts with no ill-intentions, and stirs Shige from grim thoughts with his bright cheerfulness. The younger boy gently sets Shige’s king back onto its spot on the board, where it is surrounded by a pair of deceptively cute black horses.
A beat.
Then Shige reaches out and tips his king on its side. “I am glad,” he tells Tegoshi with complete sincerity, “that you are not my enemy.”
Tegoshi just laughs at him and calls him silly.
After that, Shige decides that playing with Koyama is not so bad after all.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: As stated above
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (Kame in brief)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack? OOC? Stupidity? THESE PEOPLE REALLY EXIST OH GOD.
Word Count: 3,012
Summary: With time, Tegoshi wins his bandmates’ love. And everything else.
Dedication: Ann’s “5 Things” request from my drabble/fic meme.
A/N: Last one, Ann! Sorry this is lame and that it took forever. >> Massu is hard to write outside of a food capacity, so I clearly fail. SIGH. Though sadly, his is not the worst one of these five things. I AM SORRY MY STORY IS NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS YOURS. OR LONG.
1. Love Is All You Need
Ryo blinks down at Tegoshi and is torn between shoving the younger boy off of him and asking him whether or not he has gone crazy in the last five minutes. They’ve only known each other for a few months; what they are doing right now is completely overreaching the boundaries of what Ryo considers normal, acceptable behavior within that timeframe of acquaintance.
Or in some cases, ever.
“Have you gone crazy!?” he demands, after he realizes that in the long run, even he can’t shove a helpless Tegoshi (especially given that the kid has clearly lost all of his precious few self-preservation instincts just now).
Instead, Ryo glares down at his groupmate as harshly as he can muster; he thinks that maybe it will scare Tegoshi away and make him stop acting so strangely. “Why are we hugging!?” Ryo barks. Pause. Then, stubbornly, “You still can’t have my phone number.”
But Tegoshi just looks up at Ryo and smiles back at him like he knows something Ryo doesn’t; his arms are wrapped around the older boy and his chin is resting on Ryo’s shoulder as if that is a place where Ryo lets other people put their chins on a regular basis. “Just wait,” Tegoshi whispers to him confidently.
Ryo squirms and quickly turns away from those big, thick-lashed eyes-somehow they seem dangerous if you look at them for too long at once. “Wait for what? No!” he snarls, and stubbornly tries to disentangle himself from Tegoshi’s embrace. “Let go!”
Tegoshi only hugs him closer; he hangs on as tightly as he can and refuses to let go even a little.
Ryo thinks that maybe he needs to hit and/or shove Tegoshi after all; he even raises his fist to go ahead and do it.
But then Tegoshi looks up at Ryo with a warm, loving smile.
And that is the exact moment that something very strange happens to Nishikido Ryo.
“Uh,” he says suddenly, and frowns. He stops moving; lowers his fist. “Huh.”
He may or may not even relax a little.
Tegoshi glows at him. “See?” the younger boy chirps happily, and presses his cheek against Ryo’s neck. His breath is warm, and when he talks his lips tickle Ryo’s skin.
Ryo doesn’t know what he’s doing or why when he ends up hugging Tegoshi back; it just kind of happens.
And as it turns out, he discovers that the rest of Tegoshi is pretty warm too.
“Huh,” Ryo says, again. He sounds a little bit dumbfounded by this influx of new and strange sensations.
Tegoshi laughs against Ryo’s neck. “Nishikido-kun, we’re friends now, right?”
Ryo doesn’t actually know how to respond to that; he’s too busy hugging.
So he doesn’t say anything at all; they stand there like that for what feels like a really, really long time.
The next morning, when Ryo arrives to work humming and with coffee and donuts for everyone just because, Koyama nearly passes out from the shock. Even Uchi looks at Ryo like he has grown another head.
“Are you sick?” Koyama asks him, frantically. He reaches out and puts his hand on Ryo’s forehead without thinking about how dangerous that is. “Should I call a doctor? An ambulance? Do you feel dizzy?! Sit down, ne!”
When Ryo kicks Koyama in the shin, it is automatic.
In the meantime, Tegoshi cheers obliviously to himself in the background and thanks Ryo for breakfast; he loves donuts, how did Ryo-tan know?
Ryo scowls when he hears this and kicks Koyama again, just because.
2. Sharing is Caring
Tegoshi suddenly (and with no ill-intentions) calls Masuda “Massu” on TV in front of everyone during a filming one day. Masuda gets laughed at and everyone calls him Massu for the rest of the program in an overly friendly way.
He is not sure whether he is annoyed by this or not; during lunch that day, he finishes his gyuudon and frowns at Tegoshi thoughtfully for a while afterwards, while he digests. He decides that that sort of nickname is too familiar for someone who is four years his junior in the jimusho, isn’t he supposed to be Tegoshi’s senpai too?
But when Tegoshi catches Massu looking at him from across the cafeteria he only smiles back brightly and says, “Does Massu want the rest of mine? I can’t finish, ne!” He holds out his tray to the older boy in invitation- there is practically an entire katsu cutlet left!
And Massu finds himself smiling and taking it; he immediately forgets his annoyance from earlier because now he supposes that everything is okay since it seems that he and Tegoshi are better friends than he first thought they were.
He enjoys Tegoshi’s Katsu-don a lot and is glad NewS is getting along so well like this.
More importantly, he thinks to himself that pork cutlet is really delicious.
3. Brotherly Love
Tegoshi says it offhandedly and with complete sincerity during a magazine interview a few months after the first single is released; “I’ve decided that Kei-chan is like a real big brother to me, ne!” he tells their interviewer with large, shining eyes.
Koyama is beside himself with pride when he hears this; he can’t stop smiling for a week after Tegoshi says it. “Ah, I’m so happy! I’ve never been anyone’s big brother before. NewS’s member-ai is really strong, ne! We’re like a real family after all, ne!” Koyama babbles to Shige happily one afternoon, when he is sitting in the lounge waiting for something.
Shige just smiles and shakes his head at Koyama’s enthusiasm. “I guess so.” Then he pauses and looks at his watch. “Why are you still here, anyway?” he asks Koyama, “Didn’t you finish recording your radio program two hours ago?”
The older boy nods, still smiling. “Yup! But I’m waiting for Tegoshi to finish his.”
Shige blinks. “Um. Why?”
Koyama beams. “I promised to drive him home today, ne!” He flashes a cheerful V-sign at Shige as he explains this. “That’s what a good big brother does in this circumstance, right?”
Shige blinks.
“Didn’t you buy him dinner yesterday?” he asks Koyama slowly.
“Yup!”
“And you took him to the amusement park too, this past weekend, right?”
“Yes! We took purikura together and I bought him a hat with mouse ears! It was really, really cute!”
When he hears this, Shige looks at Koyama for a very long while. He debates with himself about whether he should say anything or not; but when he looks at the older boy-really looks at him- he eventually decides that Koyama seems happy where he is right now.
So after a moment, Shige simply sighs and says, “You’re doing exactly as you should be,” with as much solemnity as he can muster.
Koyama glows.
4. Yamapi wo Produce
Everyone can tell that Yamapi is nervous about the new drama he is supposed to start filming with Kamenashi in the next few weeks; they all know that it is one thing to work with a costar who doesn’t particularly like you, but it is another thing completely to have to work with a costar who is popular enough to know that he doesn’t need you either.
Yamapi hopes that things will somehow work out even under these trying circumstances; according to Kame, in the original Nobuta novel Akira doesn’t even exist!
Oddly enough, this is the most disheartening news of all to Yamapi; he’d known all along that Kame doesn’t really need him, but to find out that Shuuji doesn’t need Akira as well is somehow, even sadder than that.
In short, it is a very troubling concept to reconcile for Yamapi; he ends up holing himself up during every rehearsal break the group has in the following days so he can study the scripts to try to find Akira’s center, even if a part of him knows there isn’t one because Akira doesn’t exist, not even in the same book that Shuuji exists in. It’s like they’re a whole universe apart. That’s not how best friends are supposed to be.
On the day before filming is scheduled to start, Tegoshi bounces into the dressing room where Yamapi is; he is happily licking a Popsicle in ways that would be considered indecent and borderline-obscene if he did them in public places.
“I just finished reading the Nobuta novel so I would be fully prepared for Yamashita-kun’s drama when it airs, ne!” he says to Yamapi, and smacks bright orange lips.
Yamapi glances up from his script and smiles nervously. “Oh.” Pause. “Did you like it?”
Tegoshi thinks about this. “It was good,” he admits, eventually.
Yamapi deflates a little. Kame had been right all along; Shuuji doesn’t really need Akira.
But then Tegoshi continues talking, he says: “But there is no Akira and Shuuji-kun kills himself in the end, ne! It was very surprising!”
Yamapi blinks and looks up from his script. “He what?” he asks Tegoshi.
Tegoshi smiles. “There is no Akira and Shuuji kills himself,” he repeats, like he is giving a report about how nice the whether is today and not talking about a high school student’s tragic suicide. And then he licks languidly at his Popsicle again, before any of the juice can drip down onto his hand.
Yamapi’s eyes become very, very wide (and not because of the Popsicle). “Shuuji does? Majide?!”
Tegoshi nods. “Yup!” And then he pumps his fist at Yamapi in the exact way that Yamapi does whenever he is encouraging the rest of NewS to do their best before a live show. “Work hard tomorrow, Yamashita-kun!” he cheers.
And then, without another word, Tegoshi skips out of the room to go see what Kei-chan and Ryo-tan are up to and to ask either of them if they want a taste of his Popsicle; it’s really yummy.
Yamapi just stares after him. A minute or two later, he sits up straighter in his chair and pumps his fist too. “Yosh! I have to work hard!” he says to himself, and goes back to his script with renewed vigor.
The next day on set Kame is confused and just a little bit scared; Yamapi takes him aside first thing in the morning before filming is slated to start and puts his hands on Kame’s shoulders. He looks intently into the younger boy’s eyes as he tells him, “this time it’s different! I’m here, so it’s okay, ne!” before making the “kon” fox and embracing Kame like they are longtime friends after all. He looks more confident and determined in that one moment of contact between the two of them than he had during any of the times that they’d been rehearsing together over the past few weeks.
Incidentally, Yamapi also doesn’t let Kame handle any sharp objects or get too close to the edge of the school roof for the rest of the shoot. It is all very odd and disconcerting; even the staff thinks it’s a little strange.
But whenever Kame asks Yamapi about why he is doing that, Yamapi’s only response is a “kon” hand and an ambiguous smile.
Kame wonders if Yamapi has gone crazy.
More importantly, he hopes that this drama will be well received even if one of the leading actors has suddenly become insane.
5. Fun for Everyone
Koyama has taken an interest in all sorts of different games lately; first it had been billiards and then Chinese checkers, after that it was regular checkers and now Chess.
He also likes making Shige take part in these hobbies with him whenever he finds a new one; Shige doesn’t really mind so much most of the time, but there are times-like now-when he wishes Koyama would become more proficient at his own interests before dragging Shige into them as well; doesn’t he have any consideration for anyone else’s feelings on the matter?
After all, isn’t it a little rude to get someone involved in something and then prove to be insufficient at stimulating that person’s interest from there on out?
But then again, Shige supposes that this is Koyama he is talking about; maybe his hopes are too high and not realistic after all.
So he doesn’t end up saying anything even though he is kind of annoyed, instead he sighs helplessly and moves his rook into place for the final blow of this game. “Checkmate,” he announces to Koyama, and sounds bored.
From beside them, Tegoshi is watching cheerfully. “Ah that was a good one, ne!” he says to Koyama, who sits back and pouts at Shige.
“Not really,” Shige replies with complete honestly. “It would be a good one if it lasted more than fifteen minutes.”
Koyama squirms. “I’m still learning!” he protests. “Give me time, ne!”
“We started learning together,” Shige reminds him.
Tegoshi laughs at them both. “It looks fun! Can I learn too?”
“It takes patience,” Shige warns Tegoshi. He does not think Tegoshi has the attention span for this quite yet; he still zones out in a lot of their interviews and those are only fifteen-to-twenty minutes long each.
Koyama does not think about this though, he immediately brightens and says, “I’ll teach you, Tegoshi! It’s what big brothers do, ne!”
Tegoshi beams back at him; “Right!”
Shige’s brow furrows at the thought of Koyama teaching Tegoshi how to play and how embarrassing that would be for Tegoshi in the future. “Maybe I better teach him,” he tells Koyama reasonably.
“Okay!” Tegoshi says readily, and Koyama sulks a little at them both before admitting that yes, that would probably be a better idea.
So Shige spends the next ten minutes explaining the ways each of the pieces can move on the board and the basic strategy of the game to Tegoshi. Tegoshi’s only comment the entire time is that he thinks the horsies are cute.
“Maybe we should play a game to help you learn,” Shige says, and does not really have any optimistic thoughts about how well this is going to go.
Tegoshi on the other hand, does not look like he is having any thoughts at all. “Okay!”
They set up and start playing; after five minutes of awkward fumbling it feels like all Tegoshi is doing is making pretty patterns on the board out of his black pieces.
After another twenty minutes Koyama gets bored and goes to see what the others are doing; after twenty more Shige has killed off five of Tegoshi’s pieces and Tegoshi has killed two of his because Shige doesn’t want to be a complete beast about this.
“Are you sure you want to move there?” Shige asks Tegoshi, on his next move.
“Yup!” Tegoshi grins and pets his knight on its horse-shaped head as he releases it into its new square.
On the other side of the board, Shige’s queen takes one of Tegoshi’s bishops.
Fifteen minutes after that, Tegoshi pauses and looks at his watch; “Wow, we’ve been playing for an hour already, ne!”
Shige blinks; have they? “Really?”
“It’s fun, ne!”
“Sure,” Shige says.
And then Tegoshi promptly kills his queen.
Shige blinks. “Um…good work,” he manages.
“Yay!” Tegoshi laughs.
Two more moves and Tegoshi kills one of his rooks; five more and Shige’s bishop and his last rook are both trapped, forcing the older boy to choose which one gets to live and which one gets to die.
He chooses his bishop; Tegoshi decides to kill neither.
Instead, he takes out one of Shige’s pawn with his knight and declares, “Checkmate!” with another cheerful pat of the horse’s head.
Shige is not sure how all of this happened.
“Um,” he starts, and his eyes skim the board as he tries to assess what the hell is going on suddenly-maybe Tegoshi just doesn’t know what the word “checkmate” actually means.
Except that it looks like he does.
And as his eyes scan the pieces and he replays all of the moves in his head, Shige realizes something else that is strange about all of this; perhaps even stranger than Tegoshi happily killing a bunch of his pieces in one fell swoop just moments earlier. “You could have pulled that combination off and killed me fifteen minutes ago,” he says, and hopes Tegoshi hadn’t seen it until just now; that it had all been blind luck somehow.
But Tegoshi just cocks his head to the side cutely; he is holding Shige’s king in his hand and is trying to spin it around on his palm by poking at the cross on top of its head with his index finger and rotating it on its edge. “But I thought Shige wanted to play a longer game, right?” he says, and concentrates very hard on the spinning white king.
Shige’s head hurts. “Excuse me?”
Tegoshi beams at him with no pretense whatsoever. “Because Shige said that it’s more fun if you can play longer, isn’t it?”
“So you…”
Tegoshi nods. “Since I watched Kei-chan and Shige play earlier, I learned what ways Shige likes to move his pieces so I could make the game longer and more fun for everyone, ne!”
Shige suddenly-inexplicably- remembers something he read in The Art of War once a long time ago; he inches backwards from Tegoshi instinctively.
And he wonders what the game they played just now has taught him about the younger boy’s unintentional tactical capability.
“Let’s always have fun like this together in the future, okay, Shige?” Tegoshi suddenly prompts with no ill-intentions, and stirs Shige from grim thoughts with his bright cheerfulness. The younger boy gently sets Shige’s king back onto its spot on the board, where it is surrounded by a pair of deceptively cute black horses.
A beat.
Then Shige reaches out and tips his king on its side. “I am glad,” he tells Tegoshi with complete sincerity, “that you are not my enemy.”
Tegoshi just laughs at him and calls him silly.
After that, Shige decides that playing with Koyama is not so bad after all.
END
EDITS PLZ.