JE/NEWS- "Tegoshi for President!"
Title: Tegoshi for President!
Universe: JE/ NewS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, stupidity.
Word Count: 2,110
Summary: In the future, NewS continues to accomplish great things.
Dedication: Ann- you wanted it, you got it. DON’T BLAME ME FOR THE STUPIDITY.
A/N: Haha yeah, I know squat about Japanese politics; this was all skimmed off of wikipedia and kind of liberally incorporated as I saw fit. If I’m wrong about anything just ignore me and pretend that the future works this way, okay? RIGHT. Clearly I am still trying to get over my dry spell after FINALLY finishing my je_holiday fic only to find out that the deadline to sign up for the Reborn lyric wheel challenge was already past. I SUCK.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Distribution: Just lemme know.
In the twenty years that Shige and Tegoshi have known each other Tegoshi hasn’t changed at all, so when Shige gets a call one day at five am and sees his groupmate’s name on his cell phone display he picks up knowing that Tegoshi only calls at times like these when he wants a favor from Shige.
“What?” he groans irritably into the receiver, and waits for the request to come, as it inevitably will.
“Shige, ohayo!” Tegoshi chirps from his end, loudly.
“Tegoshi, it is five in the morning,” Shige tells the younger man slowly, on the offhand chance that Tegoshi just did not know it when he decided to call.
“Shige, be in my cabinet!” Tegoshi declares next, and blatantly ignores Shige’s statement. This means that he clearly does know that it is five am right now; he just doesn’t care.
Shige blinks. “Be in your what?”
“Be in my cabinet.”
Silence.
Then, “Are you drunk dialing?”
Tegoshi twitters. “No, I’m serious. I’ve decided to run for President.”
“We don’t have a President, we have a Prime Minister,” Shige corrects, before he fully comprehends what Tegoshi is saying. To be fair, it is five am.
“I know that! I just think that President sounds cooler; when I get appointed I’ll see if I can get them to change it for me ne.”
Pause. Blink.
“Tegoshi…why are you calling?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m running for Pre… Prime Minister and I want Shige to be in my cabinet.”
Now Shige wonders if he’s drunk and this is a weird, weird dream. He pinches himself; nothing happens. “You’re what?” he asks again, just to be clear. Maybe being awake at five am at his age makes the hearing go, or something.
“I’m running for Prime Minister.”
Pause. “Why?”
“Well, I decided I wanted to be the first from our company to do something, ne,” Tegoshi explains simply. “I was thinking about my career and stuff and I realized that even though people always praise me for a lot of various things, I was never actually the first one to do any of those things! Like, even though I debuted really quickly I wasn’t the first to debut within a year of joining Johnny’s; and even though I went to Waseda, I wasn’t the first Johnny to go there either, ne. I wasn’t even the first to win an Oscar!”
There is a decided pout to Tegoshi’s tone as he lists his many enviable accomplishments over the years like they mean nothing; Shige groans when he hears it because that means Tegoshi is more likely than not being completely serious about starting a political career.
“So… to fix the fact that you weren’t the first to do a lot of things in Johnny’s you decided that running for Prime Minister was the best solution?” Hearing it said out loud by a sane person just makes Shige’s head hurt that much more.
“Exactly! Because no other idol has run for office yet!” Tegoshi clarifies. “I’d definitely be the first.”
Shige has known Tegoshi for a long, long time, and so he knows that when Tegoshi says it like that, it makes perfect sense to him in his own head and doesn’t seem ridiculous or impossible at all.
“You don’t know the first thing about being Prime Minister!” Shige protests for Tegoshi’s own good, and is starting to really wake up now. “You’d be horrible at it!”
But Tegoshi just laughs at Shige’s criticism, sweet and clear. “I know! That’s why Shige has to be on my cabinet, ne. Since Shige is smart, Shige can teach me everything I need to know about laws and stuff.”
“…you’re serious about this.”
“Yup!”
Sigh.
“And you aren’t going to give up until I say yes, are you?”
“Nope!”
A moment.
Then, “Fine. I’ll be on your cabinet,” Shige agrees. What harm could it do? It’s not like Tegoshi is actually going to become the Prime Minister or anything. And to be honest, Shige knows it’s pretty useless to fight Tegoshi about, well, anything.
“Yay!” Tegoshi cheers brightly, when Shige capitulates. “I’m gonna call Massu next and ask him to be in my cabinet too, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Great.”
Tegoshi hangs up first and Shige stares at his cell phone for a while afterwards.
Eventually he realizes that all he can do at this point is comfort himself with the knowledge that there is no way Tegoshi would win a political election with only a bachelor’s in psychology from Waseda; even if the younger man is serious about trying to run, his candidacy will merely be considered a ridiculous publicity stunt by the general public at most. Hell, it might even be good promotion for NewS’s upcoming Best Hits Anniversary Album No. 2.
Shige goes back to sleep feeling assured that democracy and good sense will win the day.
~~~~~
Six months later, Tegoshi is the first Johnny’s ever appointed as Prime Minster.
“I hate the world,” Shige says after he is sworn in as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. He cannot fathom how Tegoshi got the members of the Diet to agree to appoint him to the position; he imagines foul play, blackmail, and those big puppy eyes of doom were all involved somewhere along the way.
The rest of NewS is not as wary of the whole situation as Shige is.
“This will be fun!” Yamapi cheers as they pose for another picture together in the massive offices of the Kantei; he is the new Minister of Justice.
Koyama is the Minister of Health, Labor, and Wellfare and Massu is the Minster of Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology. Ryo is appropriately, the Minister of Defense.
“Member-ai, ne!” Koyama agrees, pouring everyone tea while Massu decides on whether or not he thinks there should be an official holiday named in honor of gyoza. Thus far, all signs point to yes.
Even Ryo is so fascinated by the fact that he can now order raids on the homes of people who annoy him that he forgets to complain about the extra workload alongside Shige, while Tegoshi just goes off to hundreds of parades and luncheons and charity events everyday, waving to crowds of adoring fans who think he is the cutest Prime Minister ever.
Shige ends up sitting in his office doing paperwork. A lot of paperwork.
“I hate politics,” he gripes.
~~~~~
When Tegoshi thinks there should be a national “Adopt a Puppy Day” he naturally goes to Shige to get the documents drawn up.
“It’s a good idea, ne?” he chirrups to his groupmate, and rests his chin on Shige’s shoulder. “Because puppies are cute!”
Shige sighs helplessly and draws up the documents for him.
When Tegoshi thinks it’s only fair thereafter to also have an “Adopt a Kitty Day” as well, he bats his eyelashes sweetly at Shige and makes him do the paperwork again.
By the time his suggestion of a “NewS’s Member-ai Day” gets passed around the Diet Shige already has a template written up that reads: “Application for the Indoctrination of _________ Day,” which he just fills in as appropriate whenever the occasion arises.
Every time he does it, Shige thinks that Japan is doomed.
~~~~~
Shige starts getting used to the additional workload after a few months; he discovers that juggling his Johnny’s commitments, hosting talk shows, filming his winter season drama and etc. while serving in Tegoshi’s cabinet isn’t unlike balancing his Johnny’s commitments and college back when he was younger; he sometimes marvels at the fact that entering the jimusho had taught him basically how to do everything, except just all at once.
And he can’t help but think that maybe Tegoshi is right; it is kind of nice to get to call yourself the first Johnny’s group to ever hold political office.
He wishes Ryo would stop ordering raids on his house, though.
~~~~~
It is during his work as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications that Kato Shigeaki learns how truly stupid smart people can be in large groups. The inefficiency of the smaller prefectural civil authorities stuns him into a bitter rage time and time again and at one point he gets so irritated by lack of response that he publicly says something inappropriate about one of the local police commissioners and almost causes a scandal.
But everything blows over when Yamapi invites the insulted police commissioner out to dinner with he and Shige; he pays for everyone’s meals and they all talk candidly through their problems with one another until everyone is smiling at the end of the night.
“Because our job is to work together to make everyone’s lives happier!” Yamapi tells them as they toast drinks. “It’s our responsibility, ne.”
At that moment, Shige thinks that if other world powers stopped and tried to follow Yamapi’s lead every once in a while, wars would no longer be a problem.
~~~~~
Sometimes Shige is dead certain that Tegoshi is the world’s most ineffectual leader.
But most of the time he suspects Tegoshi is the world’s most perfect leader at the same time, because even if he doesn’t really do anything, he can get people to do everything for him. Efficiently at that.
Proposals get turned out and voted on faster than ever before, policies are updated, disagreements ironed out, details negotiated, then checked, and then double checked again. It seems like all Tegoshi has to do to get people to act is bat his eyelashes or smile brightly at them; Shige has seen hardened politicians of several decades turn to goo in the palm of Tegoshi’s hands after spending just twenty minutes with him sipping tea and talking about how nice the weather is today. It is both fearsome and awe-inspiring all at once and Shige thinks that no one else on this earth could have done it except for Tegoshi and his godlike powers.
In the meantime, he’s still trying to figure out why he got roped into this whole mess too.
Tegoshi clearly doesn’t need him to win.
~~~~~
It’s exactly ten months into his career as a civil servant when Shige thinks that he’s starting to get the hang of the whole politics thing.
He surreptitiously slips ten thousand yen under the table to Nishikido during a meeting one afternoon and miraculously, his house doesn’t get raided for one whole month.
But at the same time, some months he forgets, and when an armed NPA squad inevitably ends up kicking down his front door at three am whenever that happens, he can’t help but wish that he could return to having a normal idol life again.
He counts the days until Tegoshi’s term is over.
~~~~~
“We’re really making a difference, ne?” Koyama crows during a cabinet meeting one and a half years into their careers as government officials. “Everyone seems happier lately, don’t you think?”
To prove it, he has a line graph displaying the data that he has collected from a representative sample of Japanese civilians; every one hundred of the interviewees is signified by a thumb tack with a yellow happy face hand-painted on the end.
Shige hates to admit it, but what Koyama says is kind of true. Everyone thinks it’s because NewS’s smiles are contagious and thus make everyone in the country happier, but Shige likes to think that maybe part of it is because he helped improve the efficiency of the civil service system by simplifying the forms while managing to squeeze out enough budget to upgrade cell phone reception in 90% of the country’s most rural areas as well.
“Tch. Don’t get cocky,” Ryo snorts, when he sees the very vaguely smug turn of Shige’s smile during Koyama’s report. “My department is still bigger than yours.”
Shige actually laughs.
~~~~~
Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister Tegoshi sidles up to Shige one day and plops himself down into his cabinet member’s lap like it’s home. “Shige,” he says, and somehow manages to pull off the whole sitting in another grown man’s lap thing even though he is nearly 35. “Shige, should I run for reelection?” he asks sweetly, and completely out of the blue.
Shige sputters. “Are you serious?!”
Tegoshi just has to look up at Shige with big, bright eyes and Shige has his answer.
Silence.
Then, Shige surprises himself when he sighs-long suffering-and says, “Well…why not? I mean… if it’s everyone together it should be fine, right?”
Tegoshi laughs brightly and hugs Shige when he hears this.
“Okay then!” he agrees, happily. “I guess the UN can wait a few more years, ne.”
Shige chokes on his own spit.
END
Edits plz.
Universe: JE/ NewS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, stupidity.
Word Count: 2,110
Summary: In the future, NewS continues to accomplish great things.
Dedication: Ann- you wanted it, you got it. DON’T BLAME ME FOR THE STUPIDITY.
A/N: Haha yeah, I know squat about Japanese politics; this was all skimmed off of wikipedia and kind of liberally incorporated as I saw fit. If I’m wrong about anything just ignore me and pretend that the future works this way, okay? RIGHT. Clearly I am still trying to get over my dry spell after FINALLY finishing my je_holiday fic only to find out that the deadline to sign up for the Reborn lyric wheel challenge was already past. I SUCK.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Distribution: Just lemme know.
In the twenty years that Shige and Tegoshi have known each other Tegoshi hasn’t changed at all, so when Shige gets a call one day at five am and sees his groupmate’s name on his cell phone display he picks up knowing that Tegoshi only calls at times like these when he wants a favor from Shige.
“What?” he groans irritably into the receiver, and waits for the request to come, as it inevitably will.
“Shige, ohayo!” Tegoshi chirps from his end, loudly.
“Tegoshi, it is five in the morning,” Shige tells the younger man slowly, on the offhand chance that Tegoshi just did not know it when he decided to call.
“Shige, be in my cabinet!” Tegoshi declares next, and blatantly ignores Shige’s statement. This means that he clearly does know that it is five am right now; he just doesn’t care.
Shige blinks. “Be in your what?”
“Be in my cabinet.”
Silence.
Then, “Are you drunk dialing?”
Tegoshi twitters. “No, I’m serious. I’ve decided to run for President.”
“We don’t have a President, we have a Prime Minister,” Shige corrects, before he fully comprehends what Tegoshi is saying. To be fair, it is five am.
“I know that! I just think that President sounds cooler; when I get appointed I’ll see if I can get them to change it for me ne.”
Pause. Blink.
“Tegoshi…why are you calling?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m running for Pre… Prime Minister and I want Shige to be in my cabinet.”
Now Shige wonders if he’s drunk and this is a weird, weird dream. He pinches himself; nothing happens. “You’re what?” he asks again, just to be clear. Maybe being awake at five am at his age makes the hearing go, or something.
“I’m running for Prime Minister.”
Pause. “Why?”
“Well, I decided I wanted to be the first from our company to do something, ne,” Tegoshi explains simply. “I was thinking about my career and stuff and I realized that even though people always praise me for a lot of various things, I was never actually the first one to do any of those things! Like, even though I debuted really quickly I wasn’t the first to debut within a year of joining Johnny’s; and even though I went to Waseda, I wasn’t the first Johnny to go there either, ne. I wasn’t even the first to win an Oscar!”
There is a decided pout to Tegoshi’s tone as he lists his many enviable accomplishments over the years like they mean nothing; Shige groans when he hears it because that means Tegoshi is more likely than not being completely serious about starting a political career.
“So… to fix the fact that you weren’t the first to do a lot of things in Johnny’s you decided that running for Prime Minister was the best solution?” Hearing it said out loud by a sane person just makes Shige’s head hurt that much more.
“Exactly! Because no other idol has run for office yet!” Tegoshi clarifies. “I’d definitely be the first.”
Shige has known Tegoshi for a long, long time, and so he knows that when Tegoshi says it like that, it makes perfect sense to him in his own head and doesn’t seem ridiculous or impossible at all.
“You don’t know the first thing about being Prime Minister!” Shige protests for Tegoshi’s own good, and is starting to really wake up now. “You’d be horrible at it!”
But Tegoshi just laughs at Shige’s criticism, sweet and clear. “I know! That’s why Shige has to be on my cabinet, ne. Since Shige is smart, Shige can teach me everything I need to know about laws and stuff.”
“…you’re serious about this.”
“Yup!”
Sigh.
“And you aren’t going to give up until I say yes, are you?”
“Nope!”
A moment.
Then, “Fine. I’ll be on your cabinet,” Shige agrees. What harm could it do? It’s not like Tegoshi is actually going to become the Prime Minister or anything. And to be honest, Shige knows it’s pretty useless to fight Tegoshi about, well, anything.
“Yay!” Tegoshi cheers brightly, when Shige capitulates. “I’m gonna call Massu next and ask him to be in my cabinet too, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Great.”
Tegoshi hangs up first and Shige stares at his cell phone for a while afterwards.
Eventually he realizes that all he can do at this point is comfort himself with the knowledge that there is no way Tegoshi would win a political election with only a bachelor’s in psychology from Waseda; even if the younger man is serious about trying to run, his candidacy will merely be considered a ridiculous publicity stunt by the general public at most. Hell, it might even be good promotion for NewS’s upcoming Best Hits Anniversary Album No. 2.
Shige goes back to sleep feeling assured that democracy and good sense will win the day.
~~~~~
Six months later, Tegoshi is the first Johnny’s ever appointed as Prime Minster.
“I hate the world,” Shige says after he is sworn in as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. He cannot fathom how Tegoshi got the members of the Diet to agree to appoint him to the position; he imagines foul play, blackmail, and those big puppy eyes of doom were all involved somewhere along the way.
The rest of NewS is not as wary of the whole situation as Shige is.
“This will be fun!” Yamapi cheers as they pose for another picture together in the massive offices of the Kantei; he is the new Minister of Justice.
Koyama is the Minister of Health, Labor, and Wellfare and Massu is the Minster of Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology. Ryo is appropriately, the Minister of Defense.
“Member-ai, ne!” Koyama agrees, pouring everyone tea while Massu decides on whether or not he thinks there should be an official holiday named in honor of gyoza. Thus far, all signs point to yes.
Even Ryo is so fascinated by the fact that he can now order raids on the homes of people who annoy him that he forgets to complain about the extra workload alongside Shige, while Tegoshi just goes off to hundreds of parades and luncheons and charity events everyday, waving to crowds of adoring fans who think he is the cutest Prime Minister ever.
Shige ends up sitting in his office doing paperwork. A lot of paperwork.
“I hate politics,” he gripes.
~~~~~
When Tegoshi thinks there should be a national “Adopt a Puppy Day” he naturally goes to Shige to get the documents drawn up.
“It’s a good idea, ne?” he chirrups to his groupmate, and rests his chin on Shige’s shoulder. “Because puppies are cute!”
Shige sighs helplessly and draws up the documents for him.
When Tegoshi thinks it’s only fair thereafter to also have an “Adopt a Kitty Day” as well, he bats his eyelashes sweetly at Shige and makes him do the paperwork again.
By the time his suggestion of a “NewS’s Member-ai Day” gets passed around the Diet Shige already has a template written up that reads: “Application for the Indoctrination of _________ Day,” which he just fills in as appropriate whenever the occasion arises.
Every time he does it, Shige thinks that Japan is doomed.
~~~~~
Shige starts getting used to the additional workload after a few months; he discovers that juggling his Johnny’s commitments, hosting talk shows, filming his winter season drama and etc. while serving in Tegoshi’s cabinet isn’t unlike balancing his Johnny’s commitments and college back when he was younger; he sometimes marvels at the fact that entering the jimusho had taught him basically how to do everything, except just all at once.
And he can’t help but think that maybe Tegoshi is right; it is kind of nice to get to call yourself the first Johnny’s group to ever hold political office.
He wishes Ryo would stop ordering raids on his house, though.
~~~~~
It is during his work as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications that Kato Shigeaki learns how truly stupid smart people can be in large groups. The inefficiency of the smaller prefectural civil authorities stuns him into a bitter rage time and time again and at one point he gets so irritated by lack of response that he publicly says something inappropriate about one of the local police commissioners and almost causes a scandal.
But everything blows over when Yamapi invites the insulted police commissioner out to dinner with he and Shige; he pays for everyone’s meals and they all talk candidly through their problems with one another until everyone is smiling at the end of the night.
“Because our job is to work together to make everyone’s lives happier!” Yamapi tells them as they toast drinks. “It’s our responsibility, ne.”
At that moment, Shige thinks that if other world powers stopped and tried to follow Yamapi’s lead every once in a while, wars would no longer be a problem.
~~~~~
Sometimes Shige is dead certain that Tegoshi is the world’s most ineffectual leader.
But most of the time he suspects Tegoshi is the world’s most perfect leader at the same time, because even if he doesn’t really do anything, he can get people to do everything for him. Efficiently at that.
Proposals get turned out and voted on faster than ever before, policies are updated, disagreements ironed out, details negotiated, then checked, and then double checked again. It seems like all Tegoshi has to do to get people to act is bat his eyelashes or smile brightly at them; Shige has seen hardened politicians of several decades turn to goo in the palm of Tegoshi’s hands after spending just twenty minutes with him sipping tea and talking about how nice the weather is today. It is both fearsome and awe-inspiring all at once and Shige thinks that no one else on this earth could have done it except for Tegoshi and his godlike powers.
In the meantime, he’s still trying to figure out why he got roped into this whole mess too.
Tegoshi clearly doesn’t need him to win.
~~~~~
It’s exactly ten months into his career as a civil servant when Shige thinks that he’s starting to get the hang of the whole politics thing.
He surreptitiously slips ten thousand yen under the table to Nishikido during a meeting one afternoon and miraculously, his house doesn’t get raided for one whole month.
But at the same time, some months he forgets, and when an armed NPA squad inevitably ends up kicking down his front door at three am whenever that happens, he can’t help but wish that he could return to having a normal idol life again.
He counts the days until Tegoshi’s term is over.
~~~~~
“We’re really making a difference, ne?” Koyama crows during a cabinet meeting one and a half years into their careers as government officials. “Everyone seems happier lately, don’t you think?”
To prove it, he has a line graph displaying the data that he has collected from a representative sample of Japanese civilians; every one hundred of the interviewees is signified by a thumb tack with a yellow happy face hand-painted on the end.
Shige hates to admit it, but what Koyama says is kind of true. Everyone thinks it’s because NewS’s smiles are contagious and thus make everyone in the country happier, but Shige likes to think that maybe part of it is because he helped improve the efficiency of the civil service system by simplifying the forms while managing to squeeze out enough budget to upgrade cell phone reception in 90% of the country’s most rural areas as well.
“Tch. Don’t get cocky,” Ryo snorts, when he sees the very vaguely smug turn of Shige’s smile during Koyama’s report. “My department is still bigger than yours.”
Shige actually laughs.
~~~~~
Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister Tegoshi sidles up to Shige one day and plops himself down into his cabinet member’s lap like it’s home. “Shige,” he says, and somehow manages to pull off the whole sitting in another grown man’s lap thing even though he is nearly 35. “Shige, should I run for reelection?” he asks sweetly, and completely out of the blue.
Shige sputters. “Are you serious?!”
Tegoshi just has to look up at Shige with big, bright eyes and Shige has his answer.
Silence.
Then, Shige surprises himself when he sighs-long suffering-and says, “Well…why not? I mean… if it’s everyone together it should be fine, right?”
Tegoshi laughs brightly and hugs Shige when he hears this.
“Okay then!” he agrees, happily. “I guess the UN can wait a few more years, ne.”
Shige chokes on his own spit.
END
Edits plz.