JE/NEWS- "The Best Day Ever"
Title: The Best Day Ever
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: Shige+Time loop
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS
Warnings/Spoilers: crack, ooc, magic. LAMENESS TO THE NTH DEGREE.
Word Count: 9,910
Summary: Shige gets stuck.
Dedication: Ann! Thank you for the TEPPEN CD!
A/N: Ahaha this actually began as a possible Crys b-day fic but I ended up being too lazy to write it. Now, now it’s just… fic I want to clear out of the unfinished folder. LOL One of many. I’m sorry it’s not funny; when I started it out it was supposed to be you know, short and sweet and punchy. But the months and months of thinking it over and redoing it and messing around with it have made it pretty much indecipherable. And way, way too long. At least it’s done? I will do better next time, I swear.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Prologue
The day begins with Shige in pain.
In that pain is how Shige is first stirred to consciousness very early that morning, when he is brutally ripped out of a series of pleasant dreams that all involve acing his next round of exams and landing the lead role in an upcoming buzz-worthy spring drama.
What happens, specifically, is that Koyama walks by Shige’s bed while brushing his teeth and ends up tripping on something that got carelessly left on the floor last night after the two of them had stumbled into the room once that evening’s concert rehearsals were done; in so doing, the eldest member squawks, cartwheels his arms in the air for a moment in a weird sort of suspended animation as he tries to stay upright, and then tips forward (inevitably) when he loses his futile-at-best battle with gravity. From there Koyama ends up landing on Shige’s bed and more importantly, Shige; those thin, switchblade elbows on the older boy’s bony arms then proceed to very cruelly dig into Shige’s stomach while his chin knocks Shige right in the sternum.
His toothbrush hits Shige in the face. Frothy toothbrush-spit and all.
“Oh god! What are you doing?!” are Shige’s first pain filled words of the day; given his usual luck, he supposes-in retrospect, many times over-that he should have known the whole thing was just an omen as to how the rest of the day was going to go (and go, and go) for him as well.
~~~~~
Shige and Koyama end up being fifteen minutes late to breakfast after that because it takes Shige about that long to recover from having the wind knocked out of him and the life scared out of him; he knows that there’s going to be a series of ugly bruises on his chest and stomach later today because it’s already started to throb dully in those places and he thinks he’s developing a headache too.
Koyama doesn’t stop apologizing for it the entire elevator ride downstairs.
“You’re late,” Ryo grumbles when he sees the two of them down at the breakfast buffet, as he’s waiting for his first cup of coffee.
“I’m sorry! It’s my fault!” Koyama apologizes promptly, sounding loud and mournful as he does. “It’s because I hurt Shige in bed this morning, ne!”
Silence.
Shige looks around and realizes that yes, the silence means that all of the staff members have stopped eating breakfast and/or loading up equipment and/or chatting amongst themselves because they are too busy staring at Koyama and Shige.
Koyama and Shige who-apparently- hurt each other in bed.
The sudden silence-while mortifying- at least helps Koyama realize exactly what he’d said out loud just now; he promptly turns beet red. “I mean! Not like that! I don’t normally hurt Shige in bed, ne!”
Some of the female staff members actually burst out laughing.
Shige slaps a hand to his forehead and grabs a muffin; he walks away-to the other side of the room- muttering darkly to himself.
A beat.
“Oh god! I didn’t mean it like that either!” Koyama screams, for the second time that day.
Ryo takes pity on him and lets him have his cup of coffee.
~~~~~
After breakfast is over and the staff members have all magnanimously decided not to tease Koyama and Shige about what they do in bed together anymore, there is another quick review of yesterday’s rehearsals as NewS begins the final preparations for this year’s concert tour grand finale.
Everything goes relatively smoothly during the course of the recap considering the fact that, as it is going on, Tegoshi is busy using the documentary camera to take extreme close-up shots of random members’ body parts (he keeps saying something about “Guess that member” as he does); the only snafu occurs when Shige goes up for harness rehearsal.
Or rather, as Shige finishes harness rehearsal.
Just like yesterday, the music stops, the twirling motion ceases, and Shige patiently waits to be let down, back to the safety of the ground.
Except today, nothing happens.
He waits.
Still nothing.
The other members start to fidget.
“Um,” the stage director begins on the microphone after a moment, “we’re just having some technical difficulties, Kato-kun. Hang on.” Nervous laughter. “You know, when you look at it positively, we had some good luck in that that we only got these kinds of glitches on the last day.”
Shige sighs.
Meanwhile, down below, Tegoshi is pointing the camera upwards, at what Shige can only assume is his foot.
“Guess that member!” Tegoshi narrates obliviously, until he gets bored of watching Shige’s dangling body and bounces off to go see if Massu will let him film his ear next.
It takes forty-five minutes for Shige to get down.
~~~~~
After that is lunch; they order from a place nearby that delivers, and Shige specifies that he wants cold soba to Koyama, as Koyama phones in the order for everyone.
When it comes he gets hot soba-which he supposes is fine-except as he’s about to eat it, the manager takes him aside to talk to him about changes they are going to make to his harness segments given that it looks like his rig is malfunctioning.
When he gets back from his quick run through of the alterations, one of his shrimp tempura is gone (Ryo is smirking mysteriously from where he is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Tegoshi), and his noodles are all soggy.
As he sits down and debates whether he actually wants to go ahead and eat it anyway, Massu ambles by with his empty bowl and sees Shige’s, still miraculously full even after all this time. “Shige,” he begins, blinking down hopefully at Shige’s one remaining shrimp tempura, “are you going to eat that?”
Shige sighs and hands the bowl over.
~~~~~
When rehearsals resume and Shige is preparing for his solo walk-through, Tegoshi suddenly appears right next to him with the camera and declares, “Guess the member!” right in Shige’s ear as he films what Shige can only assume is his cheek.
Shige screams in surprise and promptly falls off of the catwalk.
Back on the stage, Tegoshi furrows his brow and turns the camera back on his own face. “I guess you all know which member that is now, ne,” he sighs, before peering over the edge and asking-very calmly- if Shige is okay.
From the floor, Shige looks up at Tegoshi’s concerned face and can’t wait for today to be over.
~~~~~
During the actual show itself Shige only falls once, on his way down the stairs behind the stage as he’s going for his next costume change. He’s too busy thinking bitterly about that person he saw in the stands with a stupid uchiwa that says “Shige is my third favorite,” and while he’s dwelling on it, ends up getting hit by a Random Junior in a too-big costume who doesn’t know where he’s going quite yet.
Shige lands on his ass on the staircase upon impact, but luckily no one is there to notice (including the Random Junior, whose shirt had been stuck over his head at the time).
“Almost done,” Shige breathes, and rubs his butt while limping towards his change rack.
Though he does spend the entire rest of the MC thinking about that stupid uchiwa anyway.
~~~~~
That night, after their final bows in the concert hall are done and opening night is over, Tegoshi whoops and plops onto the dressing room couch next to Ryo happily, face flushed and rosy from the adrenaline and hair drenched with sweat in that annoyingly pretty way cinematographers and photographs usually have to specially light their subjects for. “Eh, what a great final show, ne!” Tegoshi sighs breathlessly-still in skirt-as he rests his cheek on Ryo’s shoulder. “Wasn’t that fun, Ryo-tan?”
“Yeah,” Ryo answers absently, looking worn out but pleased that Tegoshi is pleased. And still in a skirt.
Tegoshi beams at him before turning to Shige; “Shige!” he chirps, “Shige, wasn’t today the best day ever?”
Shige, sweaty and tired in that way salary men get when they have to take the rush hour train home packed like sardines after a hard day at the office in the summertime, glares half-heartedly at the two of them as he trudges into the room. “My back is sore,” he mutters, and groans as he tries to stretch it out. “It’s going to hurt in the morning.”
Tegoshi laughs at him, like he’d just said some sort of very funny joke. “I wish,” he begins wistfully after a moment, as Yamapi starts to strip on the other side of the room while absently declaring that it’s time for everyone to go shower together, “that days like this could last forever.”
He very clearly doesn’t want the tour to be over.
Shige just snorts and pulls his shirt off before wordlessly following Yamapi into the shower; he ignores Tegoshi because he doesn’t have the energy to respond and all he wants to do is wash up and go home.
As far as he’s concerned, he’s just glad they’re finally done.
~~~~~
1. Loop One
Shige wakes up in pain.
Again.
“Waaaaaaaah, Shige watch out!!” Koyama squawks, as he trips on the debris scattered around their hotel room floor. He flails, tips backwards, then forwards, and then loses the fight with gravity by spilling into Shige’s bed, elbows and chin and other bony, knobby parts taking flying kamikaze death dives right into Shige’s (luckily) not as bony, not as knobby parts.
Shige gets the wind knocked out of him again.
“OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT?!” Shige sputters after he gets his breath back a few minutes later, toothbrush-foam splattered on his face in such a way that would get him in some serious trouble if paparazzi ever saw it and photographed it.
Koyama blinks at him. “I’m sorry!” he says hastily, before pouting. “But Shige, Shige this is the first time I’ve done this ne. Can’t you be a little more forgiving of me on the last day when I’m so tired?” he sulks.
Shige groans tiredly and can’t believe how dumb his best friend is (or how lame his memory is). He rubs his chest and glares. “What are you talking about? Yesterday was the last day, stupid. We’re leaving today.”
Silence.
Koyama stops sulking in lieu of looking very, very worried. “Shige,” he murmurs after a beat, “Shige, are you sick? Today is definitely the last concert day ne.”
Shige thinks it is too early for this kind of ridiculousness. “Look,” he growls, and fumbles for his cell phone on the night stand. He shoves it in Koyama’s face. “It’s over. We’re done.”
Koyama stares at Shige’s LCD display and looks like he’s concentrating very hard to try and see whatever point it is that Shige is trying to make.
Shige gets impatient. Turns the phone towards himself. “Look!” he shouts, “It says…”
He trails off abruptly when he sees the date.
Blinks.
Shakes his phone. Looks at it again.
Turns to Koyama. “Really?”
Koyama wordlessly nods.
Eventually, the older idol moves to open his mouth.
Shige holds up a hand. “I am not sick,” he insists. “I feel fine except for where you attacked me just now.”
Koyama’s jaw snaps shut again, but he doesn’t look convinced.
Shige has a headache.
~~~~~
“Maybe it was a dream,” he tells himself a little while later, when he and Koyama are on their way down to breakfast. “Like one of those dreams where you dream that your alarm goes off and you’re getting ready to go to work and just as you walk out the door, you’re alarm really goes off and you have to do your morning routine all over again.”
He cheers up a little at the prospect; maybe yesterday being horrible had just been a nightmare and today will go much better than that in reality.
~~~~~
His optimism lasts up until harness rehearsal, when he gets stuck.
Again.
He slumps as he hangs over the arena and thinks that maybe it was too much to ask that this not be his personal rendition of Groundhog’s Day.
Down below, Tegoshi points the camcorder up at his foot and brightly declares, “Guess the member!”
~~~~~
Forty-five minutes later, Shige orders hot soba this time, on the offhand chance that it will get him the cold soba he actually wants.
When the deliveries arrive and there is indeed, hot soba waiting for him, he sighs and automatically hands it to Massu before resigning himself to the worst case of déjà vu ever.
~~~~~
On the plus side, he does manage to avoid falling off the cat-walk during his solo rehearsal later, because he is not surprised when Tegoshi jumps out at him screaming “Guess the member!” at the top of his lungs.
Instead, he dodges left, stumbles over his own untied shoelace, and falls up the platform.
He stares up at the ceiling in disbelief while Tegoshi calmly turns the camera towards himself and says, “I guess you know the member now, ne.”
When he’s finished, Tegoshi smiles and calmly offers Shige a hand up.
~~~~~
At the end of the night, while Tegoshi and Ryo are cuddling on the couch waiting for everyone to go to the locker room together and Shige is icing his leg from that run-in backstage with the same Random Junior as before (he’d forgotten about it in light of things), Shige sits at the table and tries to figure out why this is happening to him (though a part of him bitterly thinks that of course it’s happening to him).
He very reasonably starts by making a list of the possibilities:
1. I hit my head the last time I fell.
2. I have suddenly developed psychic powers that allow me to see into the future.
3. God hates me.
4. I am slowly going crazy (blame Tegoshi).
5. This is all just a strange coincidence.
He manages to narrow it down to the two most likely causes by using logic.
In the end, he’s left with the option that either three, God hates him, or five, this is all just a strange coincidence.
He circles the second option and tells himself that it makes the most sense; if all goes accordingly, the world will be right again in the morning and he can forget all about today and yesterday (that was also today).
In the background, Tegoshi rests his head on Ryo’s shoulder and declares that they had a great final show while Yamapi wiggles out of his shirt and happily announces to everyone that it is naked male bonding time.
When Shige hears Tegoshi say, “I wish that days like this could last forever,” to Ryo, he gets an inexplicably cold chill down his spine.
He grits his teeth and reminds himself of his list full of logic and reasoning; he tells himself stupid things like wishes for time loops don’t just come true.
It is, he declares to himself stubbornly, a physical impossibility.
~~~~~
2. Loop Two
Shige wakes up to Koyama’s chin slamming into his chest for the third time in so many (sort of) days.
He ends up writhing in pain on the bed for the third time in so many days (sort of ) as well, gasping and wheezing for air while Koyama apologies profusely and tries to clean the toothpaste-spit off of Shige’s face.
At the sight of it all, Shige thinks he feels something like a cold rage boiling up somewhere inside of his chest.
Apparently nothing, he thinks to himself bitterly, is impossible after all.
~~~~~
Fifteen minutes later, down at breakfast, the whole staff sees it when Shige storms into the room, followed by a worried Koyama.
“You’re late,” Ryo starts to say, but gets ignored when Shige marches right past the catering line and up to Tegoshi instead. He grabs the youngest member by both shoulders and proceeds to shake him like he kills babies professionally.
“UNDO IT!” Shige yells, while Tegoshi obliviously holds up his camcorder and chirps, “Good morning, Shige!”
Everyone stares.
Koyama puts his hands on his face. “I’m sorry, everybody!” he wails, trying to block out the image of member-on-member violence from their line of sight with his body, “I think I hit Shige’s head with my knee in bed this morning, ne.”
Silence.
Ryo snorts. “In bed, huh?” he scoffs, and everyone giggles a little.
Shige slumps and feels exhausted. “Undo it please?” he asks Tegoshi, much softer now.
Tegoshi zooms the camcorder in on Shige’s nose. “Guess the member!” he declares brightly. Then blinks. Cutely. “Undo what, Shige?”
~~~~~
A little while later, they are all gathered in the dressing room while Shige paces along the floor in front of them, brow furrowed very seriously and hands clasped behind his back in a comparably severe manner.
“I,” he tells them gravely, “already experienced today. Yesterday. Twice.”
The others share a concerned look. Koyama has a silent conversation with Yamapi from across the room that involves pointing to his knee and then to Shige’s head.
Shige ignores them.
“I think,” he begins rationally, “that it has to do with Tegoshi.”
In the background, Yamapi frowns and makes a striking gesture with his knee, sharp and hard. Koyama looks horrified and silently shakes his head. Yamapi does the same motion again, only softer this time. Koyama looks guilty.
Yamapi nods knowingly.
Shige keeps ignoring them. “The reason I say this is because after the show yesterday, Tegoshi wished that today could last forever. Now I am stuck in a time loop, and the fact that he asked for it is the only thing that makes any sense anymore.”
Ryo raises his hand. “Actually, it makes no sense at all unless we all decide you’re crazy first. Then it makes sense.”
Shige scowls. “You don’t believe me.”
Everyone nods.
“Fine, you want me to prove it?” Shige asks. “I know exactly what’s going to happen today.”
Ryo crosses his arms. “Fine, what am I going to say next?”
Shige’s jaw works.
Ryo looks expectant.
Shige sputters.
Ryo yawns.
“Okay things clearly changed between yesterday and today since I’m bringing this up with you!” Shige argues. “I guess technically this is a parallel universe now or something, because the choices are different. But I’m still stuck in a day that I already experienced!”
Massu looks confused. “But if things changed between yesterday and yesterday today, then doesn’t that make them different experiences? So you’re not actually experiencing the same yesterday anymore? So it’s not really the same day?”
Shige stares at him.
Massu smiles back.
Shige makes a face. “You just don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he tells Massu eventually. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Oh,” Massu says, and supposes that maybe these kinds of complicated things are more for Shige to figure out anyway, because he’s the smart one.
Tegoshi raises his hand. “If this is a parallel universe, shouldn’t we lock Shige up so he can’t meet himself here and make the world explode?”
In the background, Yamapi makes that striking motion with his knee again, only super hard this time.
Koyama helplessly nods.
~~~~~
“I do not,” Shige growls a few hours later, as a thermometer gets shoved into his mouth and his blood pressure gets taken, “need a checkup.”
The doctor Koyama got management to send over reports that Shige’s blood pressure is a little bit high.
Koyama asks him how hard one might have to take a knee to the head before he starts hallucinating.
~~~~~
“Maybe you just had a weird dream last night and only thought you lived yesterday, ne,” Tegoshi tells Shige a little while later, voice echoing loudly all around Shige. Worst of all, it is full of that concerned pity that makes Shige want to yell and throw things. “Like sometimes,” Tegoshi explains cheerfully, “I dream that my alarm goes off and that I’m getting ready to come to work, and then, just when I’m about to walk out the door, my alarm really goes off ne. And I have to do the whole thing again! Except for real this time.”
“No,” Shige grumps as he gets slid the rest of the way into the MRI machine, “I don’t think that’s it. I still think it’s your fault. Your fault.”
But Tegoshi isn’t listening anymore because he’s marveling at something the doctor is doing on the control panel; he just smiles absently and tells Shige to feel better soon.
The machine turns on then, and as Shige stares up at the white, white walls of the MRI as he gets scanned, he supposes that at least it’s better than being suspended in the air for forty-five minutes.
But not by much.
~~~~~
They make it back just in time to perform, and somehow, somehow, Shige forgets about that damned Random Junior again and hits his ass on the stairs when they collide.
“WHY AM I STUCK IN THIS DAY!? WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS HERE?!” Shige screams suddenly when it happens, and sends the poor kid scurrying-wide-eyed-back towards the dressing room.
That night, rumors about Shige’s head meeting Koyama’s knee this morning (in bed) at mach three speeds spreads through the backstage area like wildfire.
~~~~~
“Just unwish it,” Shige whines afterwards, in the corner of the dressing room with his knees tucked up against his chest and his forehead resting tiredly on top of them. “Just unwish it and make it all stop.”
Tegoshi blinks. “Unwish what?”
Shige glares. “Your wish for today to last forever.”
Tegoshi laughs, crossing his legs and smoothing the skirt over his thighs even though the whole world has already seen his underwear on multiple occasions. He rests his head on Ryo’s shoulder. “I didn’t wish that, Shige.”
“Yet,” Shige hisses.
Ryo snorts. “If he wished for today to last forever, why would you be the only one who remembers it?”
Shige suddenly thinks of option five again, on the list he made out yesterday (today). Bites his lip. “Maybe I remember it because I’m the smart one,” Shige replies instead, sensibly.
Ryo rolls his eyes, while in the background, Yamapi whoops and pulls his shirt over his head.
“Group shower time!” he cheers, and happily steers Koyama towards the locker room by his hips.
“Let’s go get clean, Tego-nyan. Leave the sick crazy person alone so he can heal,” Ryo says, and stands up, before offering Tegoshi a hand. “We don’t want to catch what he has.”
“Just humor the sick crazy person and unwish it!” Shige begs.
Tegoshi takes Ryo’s hand and lets the older boy pull him to his feet; as he does he looks at Shige and smiles in that pitying way that usually makes Shige want to choke him. But then he says the magic words. “Okay, I unwish that today will last forever, ne,” he declares, and Shige forgets about his superior attitude right away.
“Thank you,” Shige breathes, and at peace for the first time today, stands and joins everyone else in the shower as well.
~~~~~
Later that night, as the two of them are getting ready to go to sleep so they can wake up in the morning and take the early train back to Tokyo, Shige hums a little to himself as he changes into his pajamas.
“Shige,” Koyama starts, still looking a little worried, “are you feeling better now?”
“Much better,” Shige tells him truthfully, and can’t wait to get to bed so that today will finally end.
Koyama looks pleased that Shige is pleased too, and obligingly turns out the lights, even though it is only eleven pm.
~~~~~
3. Loop Three
Once again, despite his best efforts, Shige wakes up with Koyama’s chin planted firmly in his sternum.
“WHAT THE HELL?!?” Shige screams, and promptly throws a flailing Koyama off of him (and the bed) before getting up and storming downstairs.
He doesn’t care that he’s still in his pajamas.
Needless to say, his arrival downstairs for breakfast is awkward for everyone; even Tegoshi pauses in the middle of his zoom-in “Guess the member!” spiel when he sees Shige that morning, hair a mess and pajama pants brushing the ground with every menacing step he takes forward.
He grabs Tegoshi and shakes him. Again. “YOU DIDN’T MEAN WHAT YOU SAID TO ME LAST NIGHT AT ALL, DID YOU?!” he demands, loudly. “YOU LIED.”
In the background, the juniors start whispering amongst themselves that it must be some sort of a lover’s spat.
Koyama only confirms their suspicions when he runs into the room after Shige, profusely apologizing for what he did to Shige in bed this morning (while still in the middle of buttoning his shirt up all the way).
~~~~~
“Time loop!” Shige barks by way of explanation later that morning, after Ryo had to throw cold water on him to get him to stop shaking a very confused Tegoshi. “I am stuck in a time loop and it is all Tegoshi’s fault!”
“A time loop? Like in Groundhog’s Day?” Massu asks, blinking sensibly.
Shige does not deign to reply, as he wipes his face off with a paper towel and scowls in front of his breakfast.
“Great, now he’s crazy for real,” Ryo sighs, and tries not to actually look worried at the way Shige is twitching every few minutes.
Shige does not assuage everyone else’s fears when he starts to laugh to himself in the corner, low and dark under his breath.
~~~~~
Massu is the one who buys Shige an energy drink later, after Shige yells that he doesn’t want soba-cold or hot-from the place they’re ordering lunch from.
He holds the bottle out to his groupmate and asks, “Are you really in a time loop right now?”
Shige eyes him, before sighing helplessly and taking the drink. “Yes.”
Massu smiles. “Eh, that’s kind of neat, isn’t it?”
“What?” Shige balks. “Why?”
Massu scratches his head. “Well, it means you’re the hero of this story, isn’t it? When the rest of us wake up again we won’t remember any of this, but Shige will. It’s like he’s a Superman here to save the day.”
Shige stares at him. “A hero for the worst day ever? How is that neat at all?”
Massu smiles. “If it’s the worst day ever, then maybe Shige’s mission is to make it become a good day instead, ne. That’s saving the day in a different way than Superman, but it’s still saving it, right?”
Shige is about to say something, but before he can, he gets called for the dreaded harness rehearsal.
For the forty-five minutes he is hanging up there with nothing to do, Shige inexplicably thinks about what Massu said.
Meanwhile, down below, Tegoshi obliviously points the camcorder up at Shige’s foot and chirps, “Guess the member!”
~~~~~
“I think,” Shige declares to a creeped out Koyama that night, “that maybe Massu was right.”
Koyama asks Shige if he wants him to call an ambulance for him. “Maybe I made things bleed internally when I hit you this morning, ne,” he suggests, nervously.
Shige ignores him. “Maybe Tegoshi is just the catalyst. He’s not the problem. I have some sort of mission, or some task I have to fulfill to get this whole thing to stop.”
After a moment, Koyama very carefully replies, “What mission?”
Shige is too tired to answer (especially when he knows Koyama will forget all about it in the morning); instead he plops down on his bed and mutters something to himself about not being the hero type before pulling the blankets over his head and bracing himself for impact tomorrow (even though it won’t matter).
Koyama stares at the Shige-shaped lump on the bed for a long time after that, before sneaking into the bathroom to call Tegoshi and ask him if he can borrow one of his psychology textbooks tonight.
~~~~~
4. Loop Four
When Koyama slams his face into Shige’s chest the next morning, Shige screams in pain but doesn’t call Koyama names.
Instead he sighs, very calmly sits in the bed regaining his breath, and tells Koyama that it is okay.
Koyama tears up at Shige’s kindness so early on the morning and they head down to breakfast together.
Shige even doesn’t mind it (too much) when Koyama suddenly blurts, “Even though I hurt Shige in bed this morning he didn’t get mad at me, ne!” really loudly to the others, in front of all the staff and juniors.
At harness rehearsal, when he gets stuck, he even obligingly wiggles his feet down below, for a Tegoshi who is obliviously filming him.
He eats hot, soggy soba and doesn’t fall during his solo rehearsal because Tegoshi doesn’t scare him and his shoelaces are tied this time. He even sings the opening on time.
After the show, when everyone is marveling at how oddly cool Shige is today, Shige doesn’t do anything to ruin it by complaining about how the way they say things aren’t compliments at all, and when Tegoshi wishes that today could last forever, Shige smiles indulgently and says, “Me too.”
He doesn’t even twitch when Ryo scowls and tells him to stop trying to be a character he’s not, because he fails at it.
Shige goes to bed that night thinking that it will all be over when he wakes up, because now he’s fixed whatever was wrong with today, now he’s turned the bad into good and so whatever god is up there trying to slowly torture him to death can stop now, he’s gotten the epiphany and made his amends. Skip to the end of act three, the happy ending.
“Shige,” Koyama murmurs when he sees Shige crawl into bed that night, “Shige it’s only eleven pm, ne.”
Shige ignores him and pulls the blankets over his head, all in anticipation of the new things tomorrow will bring.
~~~~~
5. Loop Five
Tomorrow brings Koyama’s elbow slamming into the inside of his thigh.
Again.
Shige stares up at the ceiling for five minutes afterwards in complete silence, in complete disbelief.
“S-shige?” Koyama whimpers, when Shige doesn’t yell or glare or try to throttle him even a little. “Shige are you okay?”
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” Shige screams at the heavens, and scares Koyama so badly that he accidentally jabs his knee into Shige’s ribs again.
Shige sits up and wordlessly locks himself in the bathroom.
~~~~~
That morning, in lieu of going to breakfast, NewS members get a worried mass text from Koyama stating that Shige won’t come out of the bathroom. Well, it says a lot more things than that, including a detailed, sorrowful explanation of what happened that morning and how Shige might be dying and etc., etc., etc., but the gist of it includes the fact that Shige is refusing to come out, even for rehearsals, even at the risk of his job.
A little while later, Shige’s five worried groupmates gather outside of his door.
Yamapi knocks first. “Shige,” he says, “Koyama is really sorry, ne. He’s just clumsy.”
“This isn’t about that,” Shige sulks, sitting on the toilet seat darkly.
“You’re going to get us all fired, you idiot!” Ryo tries next, and even glares at the door for effect (even though Tegoshi thinks Ryo just looks really worried).
Massu slides a package of snack seaweed under the crack in the door in an attempt to coax Shige out after that, and when that doesn’t work, Tegoshi points the camcorder at the door and flatly asks, “Shige, what’s wrong?”
“I’m stuck in a time loop all by myself and today is the worst day ever!” Shige snaps back, and renders everyone silent for a moment.
“A time loop?” Koyama hisses under his breath, “like in Groundhog’s Day?”
At the mention, something in the bathroom shatters.
Koyama’s hands quickly cover his own mouth. Sorry, he mouths.
“Why is Shige stuck in a time loop?” Yamapi asks next, looking thoughtful. “What causes time loops? One time I ate too many rice crackers and fell asleep without knowing it and woke up without realizing I fell asleep in the first place. I thought it was the same day then too, ne. Maybe Shige had too many rice crackers?”
Massu shakes his head. “Nope, pretty sure that’s not possible,” he says, and sounds like he knows from the sheer amount of rice crackers he has eaten in his lifetime.
“He’s gone crazy,” Ryo decides next, brow knit tightly. “The stress of school and being an idol are too much and he finally snapped.”
Koyama, Yamapi, and Tegoshi all look at each other (sort of confused); none of them move to confirm the possibility from their own experiences. Ryo sighs. “It was just a theory.”
Fifteen minutes later, everyone’s phones start to ring, as angry managers and drivers ask them where they are, it’s time to leave.
The members share a look, silently janken, and then obediently split off into different directions to take care of things when Ryo wins.
“I’ll make up an excuse,” Yamapi whispers to Ryo, as he and the others slide out of the hotel room door.
Ryo nods and stays behind.
After a moment, he gets impatient and kicks the bathroom door once or twice.
“I’m not coming out!” Shige insists, stubbornly.
“God you’re such a whiner that you don’t see a kick ass opportunity when you have one, do you?” Ryo says eventually, and tiredly rests his forehead against the door.
Inside the bathroom, Shige sputters. “Excuse me?”
“If you really are stuck in a time loop like you keep insisting, that means you could do whatever you wanted to whoever you want and the next day there wouldn’t be any consequences! The whole world would reset and only you would remember. The least you could do while you figure it all out is have a little fun and stop being such a crybaby about it. I can’t believe Pi is actually downstairs lying for you right now.”
Shige stares at himself in the mirror for a second.
Blinks.
Then sighs and opens the door.
Ryo crosses his arms and looks unimpressed. “So are you coming or not?”
Shige looks sheepish. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and moves to go change.
~~~~~
That day at rehearsals, the first thing Shige does is grab the camcorder out of Tegoshi’s hands and chuck it across the stadium, somewhere into the seats.
It shatters on impact, into hundreds of expensive electronic pieces.
Silence.
Then, “Jesus Christ,” Ryo starts, disbelievingly from the stage, “when I said you could do whatever you wanted I meant that you could eat like a cow and not worry about your disgusting pot belly or you could wear that stupid leopard print hat you like so much for two DVD filmings in a row, not that you could randomly destroy other people’s property just because you feel like it. What kind of lame sociopath are you? What if a piece of that hit someone in the eye? Holy hell.”
Shige turns red and profusely apologizes to everyone.
On the plus side, he supposes that this is one of those days he doesn’t mind getting to do over.
~~~~~
That night, on the way back to the hotel after the show, Tegoshi squeezes into the backseat between Koyama and Shige and rests his head on Shige’s shoulder. “Shige,” he starts, “Shige, are you having your rebellious phase now? It’s okay, since I know Shige is a late bloomer, ne.”
Shige blinks at him. “What?”
Tegoshi smiles. “That’s why you threw that camera today, ne.”
“What? No, that’s not…”
Tegoshi drapes an arm around his shoulders. “Shige has been stressed and grumpy lately, ne. It’s good to get these things out of your system every once in a while like that, whether you have to yell or break things or complain about the fans during the MC.”
Shige glares. “Stop psychologically evaluating me.”
Tegoshi sighs happily and doesn’t seem to hear him. “Yappari, being able to understand exactly how Shige and all the other members feel is one of my favorite things about tours, ne. We get to spend so much time with each other and learn more from everyone’s hearts every day!”
Shige scowls and doesn’t know how to respond; he shrugs Tegoshi’s cheek off of his shoulder and thinks that sometimes his groupmate is too carefree.
Some of them still have a time loop to try and stop.
~~~~~
6. Loop Six
The next morning nothing changes; Shige feels slightly disheartened and sulks through the day wondering-once again-what the universe wants from him.
Koyama thinks he is sick and makes him order soup for lunch and won’t leave him alone through the entire day.
Tegoshi decides to be especially annoying by making sure to tape every single one of Shige’s limbs for his “Guess the member!” game and Ryo snaps at Shige to stop snapping at Tegoshi so that he can save his voice for tonight.
Massu offers him an energy drink and Yamapi offers him a pat on the back and an energy speech as he downs the soup Koyama made him order (except that they give him kimchi soup instead of miso soup this time). As he chokes on the spices, Yamapi prattles on in the background about how exciting it is that this is the last show of the tour and how they have to make it especially great tonight to go out memorably for the year.
Shige still gets stuck in the harness for forty five minutes after that, and he still he falls a few times during the course of the day, and that fan with her uchiwa is still there during the concert, her “Shige is my third favorite” logo waving rhythmically to the music, like what it says is perfectly normal and acceptable.
Shige imagines himself ripping it out of her hands and tearing it to pieces on the stage.
When he almost does it, he thinks that maybe he needs to hurry up and get out of this time loop.
~~~~~
After the show is done, he very (sneakily) asks his groupmates a hypothetical question, while they are in the shower together. As in, he asks them, “If you guys were stuck in a time loop and you were the only one who knew it, what would you do?”
A moment of silence.
Then, Massu blinks. “A time loop? Like in Groundhog’s Day?”
Shige bites the inside of his cheek and nods very patiently.
Yamapi grins. “Learn English!” he declares.
“Skip work,” Ryo answers eventually.
Koyama smiles dreamily. “Go to the beach,” he sighs.
“Eat as much as I could!” Massu decides, with a serious look on his face.
Shige thinks that clearly his groupmates don’t know how dire a situation a time loop actually is. He looks at Tegoshi last, and expects Tegoshi to say something stupid like “Karaoke and play soccer all day,” or “get people to buy me nice things!”
Instead, the youngest member excitedly says, “I’d do all sorts of scientific experiments, ne!”
Which is somehow worse than what Shige had been imagining, just because it sounds so presumptuous coming from him. Especially since he is clearly trying to be a jock and a nerd all at the same time and that’s just not fair to the rest of them. Shige crosses his arms and looks at Tegoshi disbelievingly. “What kind of experiments?”
Tegoshi beams. “Well, ne, if the day is always the same over and over again, I’d try different things to change it.”
Shige snorts and is not impressed by Tegoshi’s very weak nerd power. He should clearly stick to being a jock. “Obviously.”
Tegoshi doesn’t notice the sarcasm. “Then, ne, then I’d see what’s still the same.”
Shige blinks. “Huh?”
Tegoshi looks pleased with himself. “Well, if a day is repeating, and I try to change it, some things will be the same no matter what I do, won’t they?”
Shige furrows his brow. “I guess that’s possible.”
“So then those things that stay the same… that means they’re really fated, right? Like no matter what I do in the universe, these are things that were simply meant to be. Then those are the things about the day that are special, aren’t they? Wouldn’t that be amazing to see?”
Shige thinks it all sounds completely nonsensical, to be honest. He sighs. “I don’t get it.”
Tegoshi laughs. “I just think things like fate are really impressive. That the things that were meant to be will always find a way to happen no matter what you do is an amazing concept, ne.”
Shige isn’t sure he gets where this is going, which leads him to automatically frown at Tegoshi and say, “That just sounds horribly depressing.” He may or may not be referring to the whole experience of being stuck in today.
Tegoshi pouts. “Well that’s just what I’d do, ne.”
Ryo splashes water in Shige’s face. “Isn’t this all a hypothetical situation in the first place? Why are you getting so worked up about it, stupid?”
Shige blinks. Turns slightly red. “Well yeah, it’s totally hypothetical. But what I’m saying still applies whether the situation is hypothetical or not! It’s still depressing to think that no matter how hard you try to change something it’s going to stay the same no matter what, isn’t it?”
Ryo snorts and calls Shige a nerd who is also, somehow, dumb at the same time.
Tegoshi just laughs obliviously and shampoos his hair peacefully. “Ne, maybe Shige is stuck in a time loop and needs help getting out. Wouldn’t that be funny if that was why he was really mad, Ryo-tan?”
Shige isn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
Luckily he doesn’t have to, because Yamapi talks next. “I wonder how many time loops it would take me to learn English all the way, ne,” the group leader wonders to himself out loud, while Koyama is absently scrubbing his back for him.
He laughs when it tickles.
~~~~~
7. Loop Seven
After Shige wakes up and Koyama falls on him and the whole sordid affair is repeated again the next morning, Shige thinks that Tegoshi was right about one thing.
He has to be more scientific in his reasoning and then create some sort of controlled experiment to find a way out of this whole ridiculous situation.
He decides to sit down and make a list of all the noteworthy parts of the day, to see if he can find some sort of a pattern below the surface, behind the obvious repetition of events. Whatever task or action he has to undertake to get out of this loop clearly has to be more subtle than any of the things he’s already tried; he just has to look for a clue as to what that is.
So he sits down during the morning rehearsal break and writes a list.
Time Loop Occurrences- Significant Events
Loop One
1. Koyama falls on me and wakes me up. Spends an inordinate amount of time fussing and apologizing. Asks me if I’m sick.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member.
3. Harness gets stuck.
4. Food place gets food order wrong.
5. Uchiwa that puts me in third place is there.
6. TEGOSHI WISHES FOR DAYS TO REPEAT.ARGH.
7. Go to sleep.
Loop Two
1. Koyama falls on me and wakes me up. Once again, thinks that I am sick. How is this always somehow my fault?
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member.
3. I tell the members. They call a doctor. Why does no one believe me? No harness this time though. Group insists on MRI at hospital instead.
4. I make Tegoshi unwish it.
5. Stupid uchiwa that is stupid is still there. And stupid.
6. Tegoshi once again, wishes for the day to repeat. Days repeating now don’t seem to have any significance to his wishes. I think?
7. Go to sleep.
Loop Three
1. Koyama continues to fall on me and think I am ill.
2. Tegoshi still playing guess the member.
3. I may or may not act crazy. Massu buys me a drink and suggests I play hero.
4. Harness gets stuck.
5. I am still third. THIRD. Why would you even write that? To what end?! What purpose does it serve?! Just keep those things to yourself.
6. Tegoshi wishes again. Sigh.
7. Sleep.
Loop Four
EVERYTHING IS THE SAME AS LOOP ONE DESPITE MY ZEN DEMEANOR. THIS SUGGESTS THAT THE UNIVERSE HATES ME.
Loop Five
1. Koyama falls. I lock myself in the bathroom.
2. Everyone comes to tell me to come out of the bathroom.
3. Management calls; everyone leaves. Yamapi makes excuses while Nishikido-kun suggests I try having fun/do what I want.
4. While Tegoshi plays guess the member, I grab and throw the camcorder. Nishikido-kun yells at me. I was not aiming for anyone’s eye, for the record.
5. Tegoshi psychoanalyzes me; I am acting out?
6. Stupid uchiwa fan is still there and stupid.
7. Sleep
Loop Six
1. Koyama falls. Despite my having no energy to yell at him, he still thinks I am sick for some reason. Tells everyone I am getting sick.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member even more than usual.
3. Massu gives me his drink. I still don’t want it.
4. Food comes and it is the wrong kind of soup. Yamapi makes a speech. Assume it is encouraging as I wasn’t really listening because the spicy soup that it WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE is busy burning my esophagus. What is wrong with that restaurant anyway?
5. Uchiwa continues to irritate.
6. Bring up hypothetical time loop. No one seems to realize how serious being in a time loop actually is. Tegoshi’s theory is stupid.
7. Sleep.
Loop Seven (Current)
1. Koyama falls. Somehow that makes me sick again. I don’t get it.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member still.
3. Stuck in harness again. Argh.
Rest of Day PENDING (more misery in the forecast).
Once he’s done, Shige sits back in his chair and looks intently at his notes. These are the things, he deduces eventually, that stayed-for the most part-the same all the way through.
He tries to think of things they have in common.
All he can come up with is the fact that each and every one of them was annoying.
He groans.
“Eh, is Shige stuck in a time loop right now?”
Shige screams and nearly falls out of his chair when Tegoshi’s voice is suddenly right by his ear, loud and happy and as usual, not in tune with the atmosphere surrounding Shige at all.
“DON’T DO THAT!” Shige shouts once he can get enough air in his lungs to breathe properly with again, hand clutched over his chart and about ten years gone from his life.
Tegoshi cocks his head to the side. “Don’t do what?” he asks obliviously, as he rests his chin on Shige’s shoulder and glances down at the list’s title again. “Well?”
He looks at Shige expectantly.
Shige glares and snatches his list to the side. “Well what?”
“Is Shige stuck in a time loop right now?”
Shige sighs and figures Tegoshi won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway. “Sure,” he answers eventually, and gives up on trying hiding his list from his groupmate’s unsubtly prying eyes. “I’m stuck in a time loop right now, so I’m making a list to see what I need to do to get out of it.”
Tegoshi nods very seriously. “That sounds like a good idea, ne.”
Shige doesn’t have the energy to think about why Tegoshi easily accepts the possibility of time loops occurring but still can’t understand why he’s tired at rehearsals after getting up at three am to play soccer every morning.
Another one of life’s many mysteries, Shige supposes.
In the meantime, Tegoshi cranes his neck and reads Shige’s list over all the way. “Wow, Shige,” Tegoshi laughs as he finishes examining each of the items written on it closely, “everyone really loves you a lot! At least the day you’re looping in seems like a nice one, ne. That’s pretty lucky!”
Shige sputters.
Meanwhile, Tegoshi gets distracted by Koyama asking for everyone’s lunch orders from across the room; he promptly skips off, leaving Shige irritated and disbelieving behind him.
“How the hell is any of this nice?” Shige demands to himself grumpily, and looks down at the paper in his hands again.
He wonders if Tegoshi maybe forgot how to understand Japanese suddenly, after all those late night hours staying up watching soccer in Spanish.
“What the heck is wrong with him?” Shige mutters, and arbitrarily calls out, “Cold soba,” while knowing it won’t be when Koyama prompts him for his order.
“Eh, are you sure you don’t want something warm, Shige? I still think you’re catching a cold, ne,” Koyama replies, and Shige rolls his eyes.
“I’m not getting sick,” he assures him, and glances sideways at Koyama, whose bottom lip might be wibbling a little.
He sighs. “Okay, hot soba,” he amends, just because.
Koyama lights up. “Right!”
Mission thus accomplished, the oldest member pads off-looking satisfied with himself-and moves to phone in the group order.
Shige snorts to himself and immediately goes back to his list, because while other people can act carefree and oblivious, he still has a big problem to solve. A pattern to find. A riddle to unravel.
Even though so far he’s got nothing except the fact that his only constant seems to be misery.
He scoffs when he hears Tegoshi’s laughter-high and loud-from the couch, where he’s sitting with Ryo, the two of them doing impressions of Koyama-kaasan and petulant eldest son Shige-kun. Shige rolls his eyes; he supposes that this day looping wouldn’t be so bad to some people, all things considered. But then again, Tegoshi has always been a stupidly happy guy like that, and Shige is fairly certain that anything can be good if you’re determined to see it that way (regardless of what it actually is).
He stops.
Blinks.
Stares at his list.
“Perception,” he mutters to himself disbelievingly after a while, and maybe it’s the crazy talking, but he suddenly thinks that he’s found a pattern after all.
He looks at his list again, only differently this time.
And definitely, definitely sees it there.
Because every loop consisting of Koyama constantly assaulting Shige and then fussing at him and asking him if he’s sick or getting sick (while very annoying) can also be construed as tender concern, as the worry of one person over another person who has become as close to him as family.
Because while the whole group suspending rehearsals to take Shige to the hospital for an MRI can be taken as excessive and a waste of time, it can also be taken as greater concern for Shige as a friend than Shige as a coworker.
Because while Shige hates the taste of Massu’s nasty energy drinks, he knows that Massu loves them a lot. That he’d give one up after going through the trouble of paying for it says something.
Because even if Ryo had yelled at him and called him names for locking himself in the bathroom during the fourth loop, the fact that he’d been the one to stay behind to talk Shige out of being petulant and selfish means something more, beyond the surface of the yelling and the name calling. Just like what it means when Yamapi had to go downstairs to make an excuse to management on Shige’s behalf, especially given the fact that everyone knows Yamapi is so strict with himself that he’d never make an excuse on his own behalf first.
Because while Tegoshi constantly waving the camera in Shige’s face and shouting “Guess the member!” at the top of his lungs is irritating and gets old real fast, Shige also knows that Tegoshi is an all or nothing kind of guy; he only pays attention to the things that are important to him, the things that he cares about and likes. Which, apparently, includes all aspects of Shige for some reason.
Because even if that stupid uchiwa says that that fan likes Shige third best, it also means that that fan likes Shige, at least more than half of the rest of NewS. At least enough to put in the time and effort to make an uchiwa with his name on it.
Because when you look at it like that, even the worst day ever can suddenly become-as Tegoshi had put it-a nice one.
Shige briefly wonders if that’s what he’s been missing this whole time.
From across the room, Yamapi suddenly yells, “Every moment is precious!” at the top of his lungs without warning and promptly startles Shige from his reverie; the young law student stares at his group leader with large eyes and wonders if Yamapi knows more than he’s letting on.
“Hurry!” Yamapi continues, oblivious to Shige’s surprise. He bounces from foot to foot anxiously as Koyama apologizes while rapidly redialing the delivery place so that he can try and add an extra helping of rice to go with Yamapi’s order before the car leaves the restaurant.
And then Shige laughs helplessly to himself.
“Every moment is precious,” he repeats, in an incredulous sort of daze.
It’s enough to make Massu worry when he hears it from the couch behind Shige; Massu thinks that maybe Shige’s blood sugar is low and quickly pads off to the vending machines across the arena to buy him an energy drink before he collapses or something.
~~~~~
For the rest of the day, when everything goes wrong for Shige on one hand, it somehow feels like nothing does all at the same time as well.
The wrong order comes at lunch again, and Ryo steals his shrimp again, when he isn’t looking. His soba gets soggy while he’s rehearsing and he ends up giving it to Massu again, just because. When he gets an energy drink in return, he drinks it instead of tossing it into his bag and thinks that even though it tastes horrible, it’s refreshing in its own way, too.
He poses dramatically the next time Tegoshi shoves the camera at him (this time with the intention of filming his collarbone), and when Ryo calls him a doofus when he falls during one of the dances, Shige grins and asks for a hand up, which Ryo doesn’t deny him despite the yelling and the name calling.
During the show, when Shige sees the uchiwa he reacts to be funny rather than because he actually feels mad. Somehow he ends up doing something the others call a Shigelujah chance, and as mortifying as it is, Shige supposes that given the circumstances, maybe it is the most fitting thing to happen to him in all the loops he’s been through thus far.
Shige falls and trips and messes up on his solo and gets teased non stop for the entire rest of the show and when he crashes into that Random Junior backstage they laugh about it because everyone is working hard for the sake of a good performance.
That night, they have the final show of the 2008-2009 NewS winter concerts together, and despite the things he’s gone through (repeatedly) today, when Shige stops to think about it afterwards, while they’re in the dressing room relaxing and getting ready to shower and go home, it all feels strangely satisfying.
Like he did his best no matter what.
“Shige!” Tegoshi chirps as he plops down on the couch and stretches luxuriously in his skirt and wig, “Shige, wasn’t today the best day ever?”
Shige sighs helplessly in the face of that-in the face of what it’s taken him to learn in all these days of the same thing over and over again-and leans back in the couch. “Yeah,” he admits eventually, “I guess today was pretty good.”
Tegoshi smiles and wishes that tomorrow can be just as good. “Just like today,” he breathes, “Days like this should last forever."
At this point, Shige doesn’t even have the heart to throttle him for it anymore either.
All he can do is see what tomorrow brings him.
~~~~~
Epilogue
When Shige wakes up the next morning, it is because Koyama has tripped over the debris on their hotel room floor and has slammed face-first into Shige, toothbrush and all.
Shige wakes up screaming and thinks that no matter how many times he lives through this he will never, ever get used to it.
“Shige!” Koyama yelps, looking horrified and guilty as he hastens to wipe toothbrush spit off of Shige’s face, “Shige I’m so sorry!”
Shige sighs. “It’s okay,” he says, rubbing his chest with a small grimace. “I’m okay.”
Koyama looks relieved, but still guilty. “Oh god, Shige,” he murmurs in a moment of self-loathing, “I can’t believe I did that to you two days in a row, ne. I must really be tired after the lives.”
Shige blinks. “Two days in a row?”
Koyama nods. “Two days in a row.” Pause. Frown. “Shige must be really tired too, if he doesn’t remember me doing something as painful as that.” He automatically reaches his hand out.
Shige laughs suddenly, and is so relieved that today is today and not yesterday that he doesn’t even swat Koyama’s hand away from his forehead when it makes contact.
Instead, he flops back onto the bed and stares up at the ceiling.
“Of course it had to be as simple as a lesson in Carpe Diem,” he snorts to himself disbelievingly, and throws an arm over his eyes so he can bask in the joy of having finally made it to tomorrow for just a little bit longer.
“Shige, are you feeling okay?” Koyama asks after a beat, voice full of concern. “Did I hit you in the head just now?”
Shige looks thoughtful as he peeks out at his best friend from under his arm. “Koyama,” he starts, “no matter what happens, everything should be okay as long as we work to make every day the best day ever, right?”
Koyama blinks.
Then smiles helplessly. “That’s what we do, isn’t it?”
Shige laughs, and when Tegoshi sleepily hands him the camcorder later that morning at the train station as they wait for the shinkansen back to Tokyo, he whirls it on his groupmate, zooms it in on the mole above his lip, and declares, “Guess the member!”
Ryo snorts on his way past Shige and says, “Tour’s over, moron.” Pause. Blink. “Are you feeling okay? You’re acting especially retarded today.”
Shige replies by promising that he feels fine. “It’s just… every moment is precious, right?” he asks from behind the camera, mysteriously. When the others stop to consider it, Shige thinks that he is very lucky to be in a group full of people who care about him enough to humor him (even if sometimes, they call him names while doing it).
“Sure!” his groupmates agree, eventually. They even smile and pose a little while Shige films them like that on the platform, all together.
In the meantime, each of them secretly worries that Shige is getting sick.
END
EDITS?
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: Shige+Time loop
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS
Warnings/Spoilers: crack, ooc, magic. LAMENESS TO THE NTH DEGREE.
Word Count: 9,910
Summary: Shige gets stuck.
Dedication: Ann! Thank you for the TEPPEN CD!
A/N: Ahaha this actually began as a possible Crys b-day fic but I ended up being too lazy to write it. Now, now it’s just… fic I want to clear out of the unfinished folder. LOL One of many. I’m sorry it’s not funny; when I started it out it was supposed to be you know, short and sweet and punchy. But the months and months of thinking it over and redoing it and messing around with it have made it pretty much indecipherable. And way, way too long. At least it’s done? I will do better next time, I swear.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Prologue
The day begins with Shige in pain.
In that pain is how Shige is first stirred to consciousness very early that morning, when he is brutally ripped out of a series of pleasant dreams that all involve acing his next round of exams and landing the lead role in an upcoming buzz-worthy spring drama.
What happens, specifically, is that Koyama walks by Shige’s bed while brushing his teeth and ends up tripping on something that got carelessly left on the floor last night after the two of them had stumbled into the room once that evening’s concert rehearsals were done; in so doing, the eldest member squawks, cartwheels his arms in the air for a moment in a weird sort of suspended animation as he tries to stay upright, and then tips forward (inevitably) when he loses his futile-at-best battle with gravity. From there Koyama ends up landing on Shige’s bed and more importantly, Shige; those thin, switchblade elbows on the older boy’s bony arms then proceed to very cruelly dig into Shige’s stomach while his chin knocks Shige right in the sternum.
His toothbrush hits Shige in the face. Frothy toothbrush-spit and all.
“Oh god! What are you doing?!” are Shige’s first pain filled words of the day; given his usual luck, he supposes-in retrospect, many times over-that he should have known the whole thing was just an omen as to how the rest of the day was going to go (and go, and go) for him as well.
~~~~~
Shige and Koyama end up being fifteen minutes late to breakfast after that because it takes Shige about that long to recover from having the wind knocked out of him and the life scared out of him; he knows that there’s going to be a series of ugly bruises on his chest and stomach later today because it’s already started to throb dully in those places and he thinks he’s developing a headache too.
Koyama doesn’t stop apologizing for it the entire elevator ride downstairs.
“You’re late,” Ryo grumbles when he sees the two of them down at the breakfast buffet, as he’s waiting for his first cup of coffee.
“I’m sorry! It’s my fault!” Koyama apologizes promptly, sounding loud and mournful as he does. “It’s because I hurt Shige in bed this morning, ne!”
Silence.
Shige looks around and realizes that yes, the silence means that all of the staff members have stopped eating breakfast and/or loading up equipment and/or chatting amongst themselves because they are too busy staring at Koyama and Shige.
Koyama and Shige who-apparently- hurt each other in bed.
The sudden silence-while mortifying- at least helps Koyama realize exactly what he’d said out loud just now; he promptly turns beet red. “I mean! Not like that! I don’t normally hurt Shige in bed, ne!”
Some of the female staff members actually burst out laughing.
Shige slaps a hand to his forehead and grabs a muffin; he walks away-to the other side of the room- muttering darkly to himself.
A beat.
“Oh god! I didn’t mean it like that either!” Koyama screams, for the second time that day.
Ryo takes pity on him and lets him have his cup of coffee.
~~~~~
After breakfast is over and the staff members have all magnanimously decided not to tease Koyama and Shige about what they do in bed together anymore, there is another quick review of yesterday’s rehearsals as NewS begins the final preparations for this year’s concert tour grand finale.
Everything goes relatively smoothly during the course of the recap considering the fact that, as it is going on, Tegoshi is busy using the documentary camera to take extreme close-up shots of random members’ body parts (he keeps saying something about “Guess that member” as he does); the only snafu occurs when Shige goes up for harness rehearsal.
Or rather, as Shige finishes harness rehearsal.
Just like yesterday, the music stops, the twirling motion ceases, and Shige patiently waits to be let down, back to the safety of the ground.
Except today, nothing happens.
He waits.
Still nothing.
The other members start to fidget.
“Um,” the stage director begins on the microphone after a moment, “we’re just having some technical difficulties, Kato-kun. Hang on.” Nervous laughter. “You know, when you look at it positively, we had some good luck in that that we only got these kinds of glitches on the last day.”
Shige sighs.
Meanwhile, down below, Tegoshi is pointing the camera upwards, at what Shige can only assume is his foot.
“Guess that member!” Tegoshi narrates obliviously, until he gets bored of watching Shige’s dangling body and bounces off to go see if Massu will let him film his ear next.
It takes forty-five minutes for Shige to get down.
~~~~~
After that is lunch; they order from a place nearby that delivers, and Shige specifies that he wants cold soba to Koyama, as Koyama phones in the order for everyone.
When it comes he gets hot soba-which he supposes is fine-except as he’s about to eat it, the manager takes him aside to talk to him about changes they are going to make to his harness segments given that it looks like his rig is malfunctioning.
When he gets back from his quick run through of the alterations, one of his shrimp tempura is gone (Ryo is smirking mysteriously from where he is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Tegoshi), and his noodles are all soggy.
As he sits down and debates whether he actually wants to go ahead and eat it anyway, Massu ambles by with his empty bowl and sees Shige’s, still miraculously full even after all this time. “Shige,” he begins, blinking down hopefully at Shige’s one remaining shrimp tempura, “are you going to eat that?”
Shige sighs and hands the bowl over.
~~~~~
When rehearsals resume and Shige is preparing for his solo walk-through, Tegoshi suddenly appears right next to him with the camera and declares, “Guess the member!” right in Shige’s ear as he films what Shige can only assume is his cheek.
Shige screams in surprise and promptly falls off of the catwalk.
Back on the stage, Tegoshi furrows his brow and turns the camera back on his own face. “I guess you all know which member that is now, ne,” he sighs, before peering over the edge and asking-very calmly- if Shige is okay.
From the floor, Shige looks up at Tegoshi’s concerned face and can’t wait for today to be over.
~~~~~
During the actual show itself Shige only falls once, on his way down the stairs behind the stage as he’s going for his next costume change. He’s too busy thinking bitterly about that person he saw in the stands with a stupid uchiwa that says “Shige is my third favorite,” and while he’s dwelling on it, ends up getting hit by a Random Junior in a too-big costume who doesn’t know where he’s going quite yet.
Shige lands on his ass on the staircase upon impact, but luckily no one is there to notice (including the Random Junior, whose shirt had been stuck over his head at the time).
“Almost done,” Shige breathes, and rubs his butt while limping towards his change rack.
Though he does spend the entire rest of the MC thinking about that stupid uchiwa anyway.
~~~~~
That night, after their final bows in the concert hall are done and opening night is over, Tegoshi whoops and plops onto the dressing room couch next to Ryo happily, face flushed and rosy from the adrenaline and hair drenched with sweat in that annoyingly pretty way cinematographers and photographs usually have to specially light their subjects for. “Eh, what a great final show, ne!” Tegoshi sighs breathlessly-still in skirt-as he rests his cheek on Ryo’s shoulder. “Wasn’t that fun, Ryo-tan?”
“Yeah,” Ryo answers absently, looking worn out but pleased that Tegoshi is pleased. And still in a skirt.
Tegoshi beams at him before turning to Shige; “Shige!” he chirps, “Shige, wasn’t today the best day ever?”
Shige, sweaty and tired in that way salary men get when they have to take the rush hour train home packed like sardines after a hard day at the office in the summertime, glares half-heartedly at the two of them as he trudges into the room. “My back is sore,” he mutters, and groans as he tries to stretch it out. “It’s going to hurt in the morning.”
Tegoshi laughs at him, like he’d just said some sort of very funny joke. “I wish,” he begins wistfully after a moment, as Yamapi starts to strip on the other side of the room while absently declaring that it’s time for everyone to go shower together, “that days like this could last forever.”
He very clearly doesn’t want the tour to be over.
Shige just snorts and pulls his shirt off before wordlessly following Yamapi into the shower; he ignores Tegoshi because he doesn’t have the energy to respond and all he wants to do is wash up and go home.
As far as he’s concerned, he’s just glad they’re finally done.
~~~~~
1. Loop One
Shige wakes up in pain.
Again.
“Waaaaaaaah, Shige watch out!!” Koyama squawks, as he trips on the debris scattered around their hotel room floor. He flails, tips backwards, then forwards, and then loses the fight with gravity by spilling into Shige’s bed, elbows and chin and other bony, knobby parts taking flying kamikaze death dives right into Shige’s (luckily) not as bony, not as knobby parts.
Shige gets the wind knocked out of him again.
“OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT?!” Shige sputters after he gets his breath back a few minutes later, toothbrush-foam splattered on his face in such a way that would get him in some serious trouble if paparazzi ever saw it and photographed it.
Koyama blinks at him. “I’m sorry!” he says hastily, before pouting. “But Shige, Shige this is the first time I’ve done this ne. Can’t you be a little more forgiving of me on the last day when I’m so tired?” he sulks.
Shige groans tiredly and can’t believe how dumb his best friend is (or how lame his memory is). He rubs his chest and glares. “What are you talking about? Yesterday was the last day, stupid. We’re leaving today.”
Silence.
Koyama stops sulking in lieu of looking very, very worried. “Shige,” he murmurs after a beat, “Shige, are you sick? Today is definitely the last concert day ne.”
Shige thinks it is too early for this kind of ridiculousness. “Look,” he growls, and fumbles for his cell phone on the night stand. He shoves it in Koyama’s face. “It’s over. We’re done.”
Koyama stares at Shige’s LCD display and looks like he’s concentrating very hard to try and see whatever point it is that Shige is trying to make.
Shige gets impatient. Turns the phone towards himself. “Look!” he shouts, “It says…”
He trails off abruptly when he sees the date.
Blinks.
Shakes his phone. Looks at it again.
Turns to Koyama. “Really?”
Koyama wordlessly nods.
Eventually, the older idol moves to open his mouth.
Shige holds up a hand. “I am not sick,” he insists. “I feel fine except for where you attacked me just now.”
Koyama’s jaw snaps shut again, but he doesn’t look convinced.
Shige has a headache.
~~~~~
“Maybe it was a dream,” he tells himself a little while later, when he and Koyama are on their way down to breakfast. “Like one of those dreams where you dream that your alarm goes off and you’re getting ready to go to work and just as you walk out the door, you’re alarm really goes off and you have to do your morning routine all over again.”
He cheers up a little at the prospect; maybe yesterday being horrible had just been a nightmare and today will go much better than that in reality.
~~~~~
His optimism lasts up until harness rehearsal, when he gets stuck.
Again.
He slumps as he hangs over the arena and thinks that maybe it was too much to ask that this not be his personal rendition of Groundhog’s Day.
Down below, Tegoshi points the camcorder up at his foot and brightly declares, “Guess the member!”
~~~~~
Forty-five minutes later, Shige orders hot soba this time, on the offhand chance that it will get him the cold soba he actually wants.
When the deliveries arrive and there is indeed, hot soba waiting for him, he sighs and automatically hands it to Massu before resigning himself to the worst case of déjà vu ever.
~~~~~
On the plus side, he does manage to avoid falling off the cat-walk during his solo rehearsal later, because he is not surprised when Tegoshi jumps out at him screaming “Guess the member!” at the top of his lungs.
Instead, he dodges left, stumbles over his own untied shoelace, and falls up the platform.
He stares up at the ceiling in disbelief while Tegoshi calmly turns the camera towards himself and says, “I guess you know the member now, ne.”
When he’s finished, Tegoshi smiles and calmly offers Shige a hand up.
~~~~~
At the end of the night, while Tegoshi and Ryo are cuddling on the couch waiting for everyone to go to the locker room together and Shige is icing his leg from that run-in backstage with the same Random Junior as before (he’d forgotten about it in light of things), Shige sits at the table and tries to figure out why this is happening to him (though a part of him bitterly thinks that of course it’s happening to him).
He very reasonably starts by making a list of the possibilities:
1. I hit my head the last time I fell.
2. I have suddenly developed psychic powers that allow me to see into the future.
3. God hates me.
4. I am slowly going crazy (blame Tegoshi).
5. This is all just a strange coincidence.
He manages to narrow it down to the two most likely causes by using logic.
In the end, he’s left with the option that either three, God hates him, or five, this is all just a strange coincidence.
He circles the second option and tells himself that it makes the most sense; if all goes accordingly, the world will be right again in the morning and he can forget all about today and yesterday (that was also today).
In the background, Tegoshi rests his head on Ryo’s shoulder and declares that they had a great final show while Yamapi wiggles out of his shirt and happily announces to everyone that it is naked male bonding time.
When Shige hears Tegoshi say, “I wish that days like this could last forever,” to Ryo, he gets an inexplicably cold chill down his spine.
He grits his teeth and reminds himself of his list full of logic and reasoning; he tells himself stupid things like wishes for time loops don’t just come true.
It is, he declares to himself stubbornly, a physical impossibility.
~~~~~
2. Loop Two
Shige wakes up to Koyama’s chin slamming into his chest for the third time in so many (sort of) days.
He ends up writhing in pain on the bed for the third time in so many days (sort of ) as well, gasping and wheezing for air while Koyama apologies profusely and tries to clean the toothpaste-spit off of Shige’s face.
At the sight of it all, Shige thinks he feels something like a cold rage boiling up somewhere inside of his chest.
Apparently nothing, he thinks to himself bitterly, is impossible after all.
~~~~~
Fifteen minutes later, down at breakfast, the whole staff sees it when Shige storms into the room, followed by a worried Koyama.
“You’re late,” Ryo starts to say, but gets ignored when Shige marches right past the catering line and up to Tegoshi instead. He grabs the youngest member by both shoulders and proceeds to shake him like he kills babies professionally.
“UNDO IT!” Shige yells, while Tegoshi obliviously holds up his camcorder and chirps, “Good morning, Shige!”
Everyone stares.
Koyama puts his hands on his face. “I’m sorry, everybody!” he wails, trying to block out the image of member-on-member violence from their line of sight with his body, “I think I hit Shige’s head with my knee in bed this morning, ne.”
Silence.
Ryo snorts. “In bed, huh?” he scoffs, and everyone giggles a little.
Shige slumps and feels exhausted. “Undo it please?” he asks Tegoshi, much softer now.
Tegoshi zooms the camcorder in on Shige’s nose. “Guess the member!” he declares brightly. Then blinks. Cutely. “Undo what, Shige?”
~~~~~
A little while later, they are all gathered in the dressing room while Shige paces along the floor in front of them, brow furrowed very seriously and hands clasped behind his back in a comparably severe manner.
“I,” he tells them gravely, “already experienced today. Yesterday. Twice.”
The others share a concerned look. Koyama has a silent conversation with Yamapi from across the room that involves pointing to his knee and then to Shige’s head.
Shige ignores them.
“I think,” he begins rationally, “that it has to do with Tegoshi.”
In the background, Yamapi frowns and makes a striking gesture with his knee, sharp and hard. Koyama looks horrified and silently shakes his head. Yamapi does the same motion again, only softer this time. Koyama looks guilty.
Yamapi nods knowingly.
Shige keeps ignoring them. “The reason I say this is because after the show yesterday, Tegoshi wished that today could last forever. Now I am stuck in a time loop, and the fact that he asked for it is the only thing that makes any sense anymore.”
Ryo raises his hand. “Actually, it makes no sense at all unless we all decide you’re crazy first. Then it makes sense.”
Shige scowls. “You don’t believe me.”
Everyone nods.
“Fine, you want me to prove it?” Shige asks. “I know exactly what’s going to happen today.”
Ryo crosses his arms. “Fine, what am I going to say next?”
Shige’s jaw works.
Ryo looks expectant.
Shige sputters.
Ryo yawns.
“Okay things clearly changed between yesterday and today since I’m bringing this up with you!” Shige argues. “I guess technically this is a parallel universe now or something, because the choices are different. But I’m still stuck in a day that I already experienced!”
Massu looks confused. “But if things changed between yesterday and yesterday today, then doesn’t that make them different experiences? So you’re not actually experiencing the same yesterday anymore? So it’s not really the same day?”
Shige stares at him.
Massu smiles back.
Shige makes a face. “You just don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he tells Massu eventually. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Oh,” Massu says, and supposes that maybe these kinds of complicated things are more for Shige to figure out anyway, because he’s the smart one.
Tegoshi raises his hand. “If this is a parallel universe, shouldn’t we lock Shige up so he can’t meet himself here and make the world explode?”
In the background, Yamapi makes that striking motion with his knee again, only super hard this time.
Koyama helplessly nods.
~~~~~
“I do not,” Shige growls a few hours later, as a thermometer gets shoved into his mouth and his blood pressure gets taken, “need a checkup.”
The doctor Koyama got management to send over reports that Shige’s blood pressure is a little bit high.
Koyama asks him how hard one might have to take a knee to the head before he starts hallucinating.
~~~~~
“Maybe you just had a weird dream last night and only thought you lived yesterday, ne,” Tegoshi tells Shige a little while later, voice echoing loudly all around Shige. Worst of all, it is full of that concerned pity that makes Shige want to yell and throw things. “Like sometimes,” Tegoshi explains cheerfully, “I dream that my alarm goes off and that I’m getting ready to come to work, and then, just when I’m about to walk out the door, my alarm really goes off ne. And I have to do the whole thing again! Except for real this time.”
“No,” Shige grumps as he gets slid the rest of the way into the MRI machine, “I don’t think that’s it. I still think it’s your fault. Your fault.”
But Tegoshi isn’t listening anymore because he’s marveling at something the doctor is doing on the control panel; he just smiles absently and tells Shige to feel better soon.
The machine turns on then, and as Shige stares up at the white, white walls of the MRI as he gets scanned, he supposes that at least it’s better than being suspended in the air for forty-five minutes.
But not by much.
~~~~~
They make it back just in time to perform, and somehow, somehow, Shige forgets about that damned Random Junior again and hits his ass on the stairs when they collide.
“WHY AM I STUCK IN THIS DAY!? WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS HERE?!” Shige screams suddenly when it happens, and sends the poor kid scurrying-wide-eyed-back towards the dressing room.
That night, rumors about Shige’s head meeting Koyama’s knee this morning (in bed) at mach three speeds spreads through the backstage area like wildfire.
~~~~~
“Just unwish it,” Shige whines afterwards, in the corner of the dressing room with his knees tucked up against his chest and his forehead resting tiredly on top of them. “Just unwish it and make it all stop.”
Tegoshi blinks. “Unwish what?”
Shige glares. “Your wish for today to last forever.”
Tegoshi laughs, crossing his legs and smoothing the skirt over his thighs even though the whole world has already seen his underwear on multiple occasions. He rests his head on Ryo’s shoulder. “I didn’t wish that, Shige.”
“Yet,” Shige hisses.
Ryo snorts. “If he wished for today to last forever, why would you be the only one who remembers it?”
Shige suddenly thinks of option five again, on the list he made out yesterday (today). Bites his lip. “Maybe I remember it because I’m the smart one,” Shige replies instead, sensibly.
Ryo rolls his eyes, while in the background, Yamapi whoops and pulls his shirt over his head.
“Group shower time!” he cheers, and happily steers Koyama towards the locker room by his hips.
“Let’s go get clean, Tego-nyan. Leave the sick crazy person alone so he can heal,” Ryo says, and stands up, before offering Tegoshi a hand. “We don’t want to catch what he has.”
“Just humor the sick crazy person and unwish it!” Shige begs.
Tegoshi takes Ryo’s hand and lets the older boy pull him to his feet; as he does he looks at Shige and smiles in that pitying way that usually makes Shige want to choke him. But then he says the magic words. “Okay, I unwish that today will last forever, ne,” he declares, and Shige forgets about his superior attitude right away.
“Thank you,” Shige breathes, and at peace for the first time today, stands and joins everyone else in the shower as well.
~~~~~
Later that night, as the two of them are getting ready to go to sleep so they can wake up in the morning and take the early train back to Tokyo, Shige hums a little to himself as he changes into his pajamas.
“Shige,” Koyama starts, still looking a little worried, “are you feeling better now?”
“Much better,” Shige tells him truthfully, and can’t wait to get to bed so that today will finally end.
Koyama looks pleased that Shige is pleased too, and obligingly turns out the lights, even though it is only eleven pm.
~~~~~
3. Loop Three
Once again, despite his best efforts, Shige wakes up with Koyama’s chin planted firmly in his sternum.
“WHAT THE HELL?!?” Shige screams, and promptly throws a flailing Koyama off of him (and the bed) before getting up and storming downstairs.
He doesn’t care that he’s still in his pajamas.
Needless to say, his arrival downstairs for breakfast is awkward for everyone; even Tegoshi pauses in the middle of his zoom-in “Guess the member!” spiel when he sees Shige that morning, hair a mess and pajama pants brushing the ground with every menacing step he takes forward.
He grabs Tegoshi and shakes him. Again. “YOU DIDN’T MEAN WHAT YOU SAID TO ME LAST NIGHT AT ALL, DID YOU?!” he demands, loudly. “YOU LIED.”
In the background, the juniors start whispering amongst themselves that it must be some sort of a lover’s spat.
Koyama only confirms their suspicions when he runs into the room after Shige, profusely apologizing for what he did to Shige in bed this morning (while still in the middle of buttoning his shirt up all the way).
~~~~~
“Time loop!” Shige barks by way of explanation later that morning, after Ryo had to throw cold water on him to get him to stop shaking a very confused Tegoshi. “I am stuck in a time loop and it is all Tegoshi’s fault!”
“A time loop? Like in Groundhog’s Day?” Massu asks, blinking sensibly.
Shige does not deign to reply, as he wipes his face off with a paper towel and scowls in front of his breakfast.
“Great, now he’s crazy for real,” Ryo sighs, and tries not to actually look worried at the way Shige is twitching every few minutes.
Shige does not assuage everyone else’s fears when he starts to laugh to himself in the corner, low and dark under his breath.
~~~~~
Massu is the one who buys Shige an energy drink later, after Shige yells that he doesn’t want soba-cold or hot-from the place they’re ordering lunch from.
He holds the bottle out to his groupmate and asks, “Are you really in a time loop right now?”
Shige eyes him, before sighing helplessly and taking the drink. “Yes.”
Massu smiles. “Eh, that’s kind of neat, isn’t it?”
“What?” Shige balks. “Why?”
Massu scratches his head. “Well, it means you’re the hero of this story, isn’t it? When the rest of us wake up again we won’t remember any of this, but Shige will. It’s like he’s a Superman here to save the day.”
Shige stares at him. “A hero for the worst day ever? How is that neat at all?”
Massu smiles. “If it’s the worst day ever, then maybe Shige’s mission is to make it become a good day instead, ne. That’s saving the day in a different way than Superman, but it’s still saving it, right?”
Shige is about to say something, but before he can, he gets called for the dreaded harness rehearsal.
For the forty-five minutes he is hanging up there with nothing to do, Shige inexplicably thinks about what Massu said.
Meanwhile, down below, Tegoshi obliviously points the camcorder up at Shige’s foot and chirps, “Guess the member!”
~~~~~
“I think,” Shige declares to a creeped out Koyama that night, “that maybe Massu was right.”
Koyama asks Shige if he wants him to call an ambulance for him. “Maybe I made things bleed internally when I hit you this morning, ne,” he suggests, nervously.
Shige ignores him. “Maybe Tegoshi is just the catalyst. He’s not the problem. I have some sort of mission, or some task I have to fulfill to get this whole thing to stop.”
After a moment, Koyama very carefully replies, “What mission?”
Shige is too tired to answer (especially when he knows Koyama will forget all about it in the morning); instead he plops down on his bed and mutters something to himself about not being the hero type before pulling the blankets over his head and bracing himself for impact tomorrow (even though it won’t matter).
Koyama stares at the Shige-shaped lump on the bed for a long time after that, before sneaking into the bathroom to call Tegoshi and ask him if he can borrow one of his psychology textbooks tonight.
~~~~~
4. Loop Four
When Koyama slams his face into Shige’s chest the next morning, Shige screams in pain but doesn’t call Koyama names.
Instead he sighs, very calmly sits in the bed regaining his breath, and tells Koyama that it is okay.
Koyama tears up at Shige’s kindness so early on the morning and they head down to breakfast together.
Shige even doesn’t mind it (too much) when Koyama suddenly blurts, “Even though I hurt Shige in bed this morning he didn’t get mad at me, ne!” really loudly to the others, in front of all the staff and juniors.
At harness rehearsal, when he gets stuck, he even obligingly wiggles his feet down below, for a Tegoshi who is obliviously filming him.
He eats hot, soggy soba and doesn’t fall during his solo rehearsal because Tegoshi doesn’t scare him and his shoelaces are tied this time. He even sings the opening on time.
After the show, when everyone is marveling at how oddly cool Shige is today, Shige doesn’t do anything to ruin it by complaining about how the way they say things aren’t compliments at all, and when Tegoshi wishes that today could last forever, Shige smiles indulgently and says, “Me too.”
He doesn’t even twitch when Ryo scowls and tells him to stop trying to be a character he’s not, because he fails at it.
Shige goes to bed that night thinking that it will all be over when he wakes up, because now he’s fixed whatever was wrong with today, now he’s turned the bad into good and so whatever god is up there trying to slowly torture him to death can stop now, he’s gotten the epiphany and made his amends. Skip to the end of act three, the happy ending.
“Shige,” Koyama murmurs when he sees Shige crawl into bed that night, “Shige it’s only eleven pm, ne.”
Shige ignores him and pulls the blankets over his head, all in anticipation of the new things tomorrow will bring.
~~~~~
5. Loop Five
Tomorrow brings Koyama’s elbow slamming into the inside of his thigh.
Again.
Shige stares up at the ceiling for five minutes afterwards in complete silence, in complete disbelief.
“S-shige?” Koyama whimpers, when Shige doesn’t yell or glare or try to throttle him even a little. “Shige are you okay?”
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” Shige screams at the heavens, and scares Koyama so badly that he accidentally jabs his knee into Shige’s ribs again.
Shige sits up and wordlessly locks himself in the bathroom.
~~~~~
That morning, in lieu of going to breakfast, NewS members get a worried mass text from Koyama stating that Shige won’t come out of the bathroom. Well, it says a lot more things than that, including a detailed, sorrowful explanation of what happened that morning and how Shige might be dying and etc., etc., etc., but the gist of it includes the fact that Shige is refusing to come out, even for rehearsals, even at the risk of his job.
A little while later, Shige’s five worried groupmates gather outside of his door.
Yamapi knocks first. “Shige,” he says, “Koyama is really sorry, ne. He’s just clumsy.”
“This isn’t about that,” Shige sulks, sitting on the toilet seat darkly.
“You’re going to get us all fired, you idiot!” Ryo tries next, and even glares at the door for effect (even though Tegoshi thinks Ryo just looks really worried).
Massu slides a package of snack seaweed under the crack in the door in an attempt to coax Shige out after that, and when that doesn’t work, Tegoshi points the camcorder at the door and flatly asks, “Shige, what’s wrong?”
“I’m stuck in a time loop all by myself and today is the worst day ever!” Shige snaps back, and renders everyone silent for a moment.
“A time loop?” Koyama hisses under his breath, “like in Groundhog’s Day?”
At the mention, something in the bathroom shatters.
Koyama’s hands quickly cover his own mouth. Sorry, he mouths.
“Why is Shige stuck in a time loop?” Yamapi asks next, looking thoughtful. “What causes time loops? One time I ate too many rice crackers and fell asleep without knowing it and woke up without realizing I fell asleep in the first place. I thought it was the same day then too, ne. Maybe Shige had too many rice crackers?”
Massu shakes his head. “Nope, pretty sure that’s not possible,” he says, and sounds like he knows from the sheer amount of rice crackers he has eaten in his lifetime.
“He’s gone crazy,” Ryo decides next, brow knit tightly. “The stress of school and being an idol are too much and he finally snapped.”
Koyama, Yamapi, and Tegoshi all look at each other (sort of confused); none of them move to confirm the possibility from their own experiences. Ryo sighs. “It was just a theory.”
Fifteen minutes later, everyone’s phones start to ring, as angry managers and drivers ask them where they are, it’s time to leave.
The members share a look, silently janken, and then obediently split off into different directions to take care of things when Ryo wins.
“I’ll make up an excuse,” Yamapi whispers to Ryo, as he and the others slide out of the hotel room door.
Ryo nods and stays behind.
After a moment, he gets impatient and kicks the bathroom door once or twice.
“I’m not coming out!” Shige insists, stubbornly.
“God you’re such a whiner that you don’t see a kick ass opportunity when you have one, do you?” Ryo says eventually, and tiredly rests his forehead against the door.
Inside the bathroom, Shige sputters. “Excuse me?”
“If you really are stuck in a time loop like you keep insisting, that means you could do whatever you wanted to whoever you want and the next day there wouldn’t be any consequences! The whole world would reset and only you would remember. The least you could do while you figure it all out is have a little fun and stop being such a crybaby about it. I can’t believe Pi is actually downstairs lying for you right now.”
Shige stares at himself in the mirror for a second.
Blinks.
Then sighs and opens the door.
Ryo crosses his arms and looks unimpressed. “So are you coming or not?”
Shige looks sheepish. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and moves to go change.
~~~~~
That day at rehearsals, the first thing Shige does is grab the camcorder out of Tegoshi’s hands and chuck it across the stadium, somewhere into the seats.
It shatters on impact, into hundreds of expensive electronic pieces.
Silence.
Then, “Jesus Christ,” Ryo starts, disbelievingly from the stage, “when I said you could do whatever you wanted I meant that you could eat like a cow and not worry about your disgusting pot belly or you could wear that stupid leopard print hat you like so much for two DVD filmings in a row, not that you could randomly destroy other people’s property just because you feel like it. What kind of lame sociopath are you? What if a piece of that hit someone in the eye? Holy hell.”
Shige turns red and profusely apologizes to everyone.
On the plus side, he supposes that this is one of those days he doesn’t mind getting to do over.
~~~~~
That night, on the way back to the hotel after the show, Tegoshi squeezes into the backseat between Koyama and Shige and rests his head on Shige’s shoulder. “Shige,” he starts, “Shige, are you having your rebellious phase now? It’s okay, since I know Shige is a late bloomer, ne.”
Shige blinks at him. “What?”
Tegoshi smiles. “That’s why you threw that camera today, ne.”
“What? No, that’s not…”
Tegoshi drapes an arm around his shoulders. “Shige has been stressed and grumpy lately, ne. It’s good to get these things out of your system every once in a while like that, whether you have to yell or break things or complain about the fans during the MC.”
Shige glares. “Stop psychologically evaluating me.”
Tegoshi sighs happily and doesn’t seem to hear him. “Yappari, being able to understand exactly how Shige and all the other members feel is one of my favorite things about tours, ne. We get to spend so much time with each other and learn more from everyone’s hearts every day!”
Shige scowls and doesn’t know how to respond; he shrugs Tegoshi’s cheek off of his shoulder and thinks that sometimes his groupmate is too carefree.
Some of them still have a time loop to try and stop.
~~~~~
6. Loop Six
The next morning nothing changes; Shige feels slightly disheartened and sulks through the day wondering-once again-what the universe wants from him.
Koyama thinks he is sick and makes him order soup for lunch and won’t leave him alone through the entire day.
Tegoshi decides to be especially annoying by making sure to tape every single one of Shige’s limbs for his “Guess the member!” game and Ryo snaps at Shige to stop snapping at Tegoshi so that he can save his voice for tonight.
Massu offers him an energy drink and Yamapi offers him a pat on the back and an energy speech as he downs the soup Koyama made him order (except that they give him kimchi soup instead of miso soup this time). As he chokes on the spices, Yamapi prattles on in the background about how exciting it is that this is the last show of the tour and how they have to make it especially great tonight to go out memorably for the year.
Shige still gets stuck in the harness for forty five minutes after that, and he still he falls a few times during the course of the day, and that fan with her uchiwa is still there during the concert, her “Shige is my third favorite” logo waving rhythmically to the music, like what it says is perfectly normal and acceptable.
Shige imagines himself ripping it out of her hands and tearing it to pieces on the stage.
When he almost does it, he thinks that maybe he needs to hurry up and get out of this time loop.
~~~~~
After the show is done, he very (sneakily) asks his groupmates a hypothetical question, while they are in the shower together. As in, he asks them, “If you guys were stuck in a time loop and you were the only one who knew it, what would you do?”
A moment of silence.
Then, Massu blinks. “A time loop? Like in Groundhog’s Day?”
Shige bites the inside of his cheek and nods very patiently.
Yamapi grins. “Learn English!” he declares.
“Skip work,” Ryo answers eventually.
Koyama smiles dreamily. “Go to the beach,” he sighs.
“Eat as much as I could!” Massu decides, with a serious look on his face.
Shige thinks that clearly his groupmates don’t know how dire a situation a time loop actually is. He looks at Tegoshi last, and expects Tegoshi to say something stupid like “Karaoke and play soccer all day,” or “get people to buy me nice things!”
Instead, the youngest member excitedly says, “I’d do all sorts of scientific experiments, ne!”
Which is somehow worse than what Shige had been imagining, just because it sounds so presumptuous coming from him. Especially since he is clearly trying to be a jock and a nerd all at the same time and that’s just not fair to the rest of them. Shige crosses his arms and looks at Tegoshi disbelievingly. “What kind of experiments?”
Tegoshi beams. “Well, ne, if the day is always the same over and over again, I’d try different things to change it.”
Shige snorts and is not impressed by Tegoshi’s very weak nerd power. He should clearly stick to being a jock. “Obviously.”
Tegoshi doesn’t notice the sarcasm. “Then, ne, then I’d see what’s still the same.”
Shige blinks. “Huh?”
Tegoshi looks pleased with himself. “Well, if a day is repeating, and I try to change it, some things will be the same no matter what I do, won’t they?”
Shige furrows his brow. “I guess that’s possible.”
“So then those things that stay the same… that means they’re really fated, right? Like no matter what I do in the universe, these are things that were simply meant to be. Then those are the things about the day that are special, aren’t they? Wouldn’t that be amazing to see?”
Shige thinks it all sounds completely nonsensical, to be honest. He sighs. “I don’t get it.”
Tegoshi laughs. “I just think things like fate are really impressive. That the things that were meant to be will always find a way to happen no matter what you do is an amazing concept, ne.”
Shige isn’t sure he gets where this is going, which leads him to automatically frown at Tegoshi and say, “That just sounds horribly depressing.” He may or may not be referring to the whole experience of being stuck in today.
Tegoshi pouts. “Well that’s just what I’d do, ne.”
Ryo splashes water in Shige’s face. “Isn’t this all a hypothetical situation in the first place? Why are you getting so worked up about it, stupid?”
Shige blinks. Turns slightly red. “Well yeah, it’s totally hypothetical. But what I’m saying still applies whether the situation is hypothetical or not! It’s still depressing to think that no matter how hard you try to change something it’s going to stay the same no matter what, isn’t it?”
Ryo snorts and calls Shige a nerd who is also, somehow, dumb at the same time.
Tegoshi just laughs obliviously and shampoos his hair peacefully. “Ne, maybe Shige is stuck in a time loop and needs help getting out. Wouldn’t that be funny if that was why he was really mad, Ryo-tan?”
Shige isn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
Luckily he doesn’t have to, because Yamapi talks next. “I wonder how many time loops it would take me to learn English all the way, ne,” the group leader wonders to himself out loud, while Koyama is absently scrubbing his back for him.
He laughs when it tickles.
~~~~~
7. Loop Seven
After Shige wakes up and Koyama falls on him and the whole sordid affair is repeated again the next morning, Shige thinks that Tegoshi was right about one thing.
He has to be more scientific in his reasoning and then create some sort of controlled experiment to find a way out of this whole ridiculous situation.
He decides to sit down and make a list of all the noteworthy parts of the day, to see if he can find some sort of a pattern below the surface, behind the obvious repetition of events. Whatever task or action he has to undertake to get out of this loop clearly has to be more subtle than any of the things he’s already tried; he just has to look for a clue as to what that is.
So he sits down during the morning rehearsal break and writes a list.
Time Loop Occurrences- Significant Events
Loop One
1. Koyama falls on me and wakes me up. Spends an inordinate amount of time fussing and apologizing. Asks me if I’m sick.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member.
3. Harness gets stuck.
4. Food place gets food order wrong.
5. Uchiwa that puts me in third place is there.
6. TEGOSHI WISHES FOR DAYS TO REPEAT.ARGH.
7. Go to sleep.
Loop Two
1. Koyama falls on me and wakes me up. Once again, thinks that I am sick. How is this always somehow my fault?
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member.
3. I tell the members. They call a doctor. Why does no one believe me? No harness this time though. Group insists on MRI at hospital instead.
4. I make Tegoshi unwish it.
5. Stupid uchiwa that is stupid is still there. And stupid.
6. Tegoshi once again, wishes for the day to repeat. Days repeating now don’t seem to have any significance to his wishes. I think?
7. Go to sleep.
Loop Three
1. Koyama continues to fall on me and think I am ill.
2. Tegoshi still playing guess the member.
3. I may or may not act crazy. Massu buys me a drink and suggests I play hero.
4. Harness gets stuck.
5. I am still third. THIRD. Why would you even write that? To what end?! What purpose does it serve?! Just keep those things to yourself.
6. Tegoshi wishes again. Sigh.
7. Sleep.
Loop Four
EVERYTHING IS THE SAME AS LOOP ONE DESPITE MY ZEN DEMEANOR. THIS SUGGESTS THAT THE UNIVERSE HATES ME.
Loop Five
1. Koyama falls. I lock myself in the bathroom.
2. Everyone comes to tell me to come out of the bathroom.
3. Management calls; everyone leaves. Yamapi makes excuses while Nishikido-kun suggests I try having fun/do what I want.
4. While Tegoshi plays guess the member, I grab and throw the camcorder. Nishikido-kun yells at me. I was not aiming for anyone’s eye, for the record.
5. Tegoshi psychoanalyzes me; I am acting out?
6. Stupid uchiwa fan is still there and stupid.
7. Sleep
Loop Six
1. Koyama falls. Despite my having no energy to yell at him, he still thinks I am sick for some reason. Tells everyone I am getting sick.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member even more than usual.
3. Massu gives me his drink. I still don’t want it.
4. Food comes and it is the wrong kind of soup. Yamapi makes a speech. Assume it is encouraging as I wasn’t really listening because the spicy soup that it WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE is busy burning my esophagus. What is wrong with that restaurant anyway?
5. Uchiwa continues to irritate.
6. Bring up hypothetical time loop. No one seems to realize how serious being in a time loop actually is. Tegoshi’s theory is stupid.
7. Sleep.
Loop Seven (Current)
1. Koyama falls. Somehow that makes me sick again. I don’t get it.
2. Tegoshi plays guess the member still.
3. Stuck in harness again. Argh.
Rest of Day PENDING (more misery in the forecast).
Once he’s done, Shige sits back in his chair and looks intently at his notes. These are the things, he deduces eventually, that stayed-for the most part-the same all the way through.
He tries to think of things they have in common.
All he can come up with is the fact that each and every one of them was annoying.
He groans.
“Eh, is Shige stuck in a time loop right now?”
Shige screams and nearly falls out of his chair when Tegoshi’s voice is suddenly right by his ear, loud and happy and as usual, not in tune with the atmosphere surrounding Shige at all.
“DON’T DO THAT!” Shige shouts once he can get enough air in his lungs to breathe properly with again, hand clutched over his chart and about ten years gone from his life.
Tegoshi cocks his head to the side. “Don’t do what?” he asks obliviously, as he rests his chin on Shige’s shoulder and glances down at the list’s title again. “Well?”
He looks at Shige expectantly.
Shige glares and snatches his list to the side. “Well what?”
“Is Shige stuck in a time loop right now?”
Shige sighs and figures Tegoshi won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway. “Sure,” he answers eventually, and gives up on trying hiding his list from his groupmate’s unsubtly prying eyes. “I’m stuck in a time loop right now, so I’m making a list to see what I need to do to get out of it.”
Tegoshi nods very seriously. “That sounds like a good idea, ne.”
Shige doesn’t have the energy to think about why Tegoshi easily accepts the possibility of time loops occurring but still can’t understand why he’s tired at rehearsals after getting up at three am to play soccer every morning.
Another one of life’s many mysteries, Shige supposes.
In the meantime, Tegoshi cranes his neck and reads Shige’s list over all the way. “Wow, Shige,” Tegoshi laughs as he finishes examining each of the items written on it closely, “everyone really loves you a lot! At least the day you’re looping in seems like a nice one, ne. That’s pretty lucky!”
Shige sputters.
Meanwhile, Tegoshi gets distracted by Koyama asking for everyone’s lunch orders from across the room; he promptly skips off, leaving Shige irritated and disbelieving behind him.
“How the hell is any of this nice?” Shige demands to himself grumpily, and looks down at the paper in his hands again.
He wonders if Tegoshi maybe forgot how to understand Japanese suddenly, after all those late night hours staying up watching soccer in Spanish.
“What the heck is wrong with him?” Shige mutters, and arbitrarily calls out, “Cold soba,” while knowing it won’t be when Koyama prompts him for his order.
“Eh, are you sure you don’t want something warm, Shige? I still think you’re catching a cold, ne,” Koyama replies, and Shige rolls his eyes.
“I’m not getting sick,” he assures him, and glances sideways at Koyama, whose bottom lip might be wibbling a little.
He sighs. “Okay, hot soba,” he amends, just because.
Koyama lights up. “Right!”
Mission thus accomplished, the oldest member pads off-looking satisfied with himself-and moves to phone in the group order.
Shige snorts to himself and immediately goes back to his list, because while other people can act carefree and oblivious, he still has a big problem to solve. A pattern to find. A riddle to unravel.
Even though so far he’s got nothing except the fact that his only constant seems to be misery.
He scoffs when he hears Tegoshi’s laughter-high and loud-from the couch, where he’s sitting with Ryo, the two of them doing impressions of Koyama-kaasan and petulant eldest son Shige-kun. Shige rolls his eyes; he supposes that this day looping wouldn’t be so bad to some people, all things considered. But then again, Tegoshi has always been a stupidly happy guy like that, and Shige is fairly certain that anything can be good if you’re determined to see it that way (regardless of what it actually is).
He stops.
Blinks.
Stares at his list.
“Perception,” he mutters to himself disbelievingly after a while, and maybe it’s the crazy talking, but he suddenly thinks that he’s found a pattern after all.
He looks at his list again, only differently this time.
And definitely, definitely sees it there.
Because every loop consisting of Koyama constantly assaulting Shige and then fussing at him and asking him if he’s sick or getting sick (while very annoying) can also be construed as tender concern, as the worry of one person over another person who has become as close to him as family.
Because while the whole group suspending rehearsals to take Shige to the hospital for an MRI can be taken as excessive and a waste of time, it can also be taken as greater concern for Shige as a friend than Shige as a coworker.
Because while Shige hates the taste of Massu’s nasty energy drinks, he knows that Massu loves them a lot. That he’d give one up after going through the trouble of paying for it says something.
Because even if Ryo had yelled at him and called him names for locking himself in the bathroom during the fourth loop, the fact that he’d been the one to stay behind to talk Shige out of being petulant and selfish means something more, beyond the surface of the yelling and the name calling. Just like what it means when Yamapi had to go downstairs to make an excuse to management on Shige’s behalf, especially given the fact that everyone knows Yamapi is so strict with himself that he’d never make an excuse on his own behalf first.
Because while Tegoshi constantly waving the camera in Shige’s face and shouting “Guess the member!” at the top of his lungs is irritating and gets old real fast, Shige also knows that Tegoshi is an all or nothing kind of guy; he only pays attention to the things that are important to him, the things that he cares about and likes. Which, apparently, includes all aspects of Shige for some reason.
Because even if that stupid uchiwa says that that fan likes Shige third best, it also means that that fan likes Shige, at least more than half of the rest of NewS. At least enough to put in the time and effort to make an uchiwa with his name on it.
Because when you look at it like that, even the worst day ever can suddenly become-as Tegoshi had put it-a nice one.
Shige briefly wonders if that’s what he’s been missing this whole time.
From across the room, Yamapi suddenly yells, “Every moment is precious!” at the top of his lungs without warning and promptly startles Shige from his reverie; the young law student stares at his group leader with large eyes and wonders if Yamapi knows more than he’s letting on.
“Hurry!” Yamapi continues, oblivious to Shige’s surprise. He bounces from foot to foot anxiously as Koyama apologizes while rapidly redialing the delivery place so that he can try and add an extra helping of rice to go with Yamapi’s order before the car leaves the restaurant.
And then Shige laughs helplessly to himself.
“Every moment is precious,” he repeats, in an incredulous sort of daze.
It’s enough to make Massu worry when he hears it from the couch behind Shige; Massu thinks that maybe Shige’s blood sugar is low and quickly pads off to the vending machines across the arena to buy him an energy drink before he collapses or something.
~~~~~
For the rest of the day, when everything goes wrong for Shige on one hand, it somehow feels like nothing does all at the same time as well.
The wrong order comes at lunch again, and Ryo steals his shrimp again, when he isn’t looking. His soba gets soggy while he’s rehearsing and he ends up giving it to Massu again, just because. When he gets an energy drink in return, he drinks it instead of tossing it into his bag and thinks that even though it tastes horrible, it’s refreshing in its own way, too.
He poses dramatically the next time Tegoshi shoves the camera at him (this time with the intention of filming his collarbone), and when Ryo calls him a doofus when he falls during one of the dances, Shige grins and asks for a hand up, which Ryo doesn’t deny him despite the yelling and the name calling.
During the show, when Shige sees the uchiwa he reacts to be funny rather than because he actually feels mad. Somehow he ends up doing something the others call a Shigelujah chance, and as mortifying as it is, Shige supposes that given the circumstances, maybe it is the most fitting thing to happen to him in all the loops he’s been through thus far.
Shige falls and trips and messes up on his solo and gets teased non stop for the entire rest of the show and when he crashes into that Random Junior backstage they laugh about it because everyone is working hard for the sake of a good performance.
That night, they have the final show of the 2008-2009 NewS winter concerts together, and despite the things he’s gone through (repeatedly) today, when Shige stops to think about it afterwards, while they’re in the dressing room relaxing and getting ready to shower and go home, it all feels strangely satisfying.
Like he did his best no matter what.
“Shige!” Tegoshi chirps as he plops down on the couch and stretches luxuriously in his skirt and wig, “Shige, wasn’t today the best day ever?”
Shige sighs helplessly in the face of that-in the face of what it’s taken him to learn in all these days of the same thing over and over again-and leans back in the couch. “Yeah,” he admits eventually, “I guess today was pretty good.”
Tegoshi smiles and wishes that tomorrow can be just as good. “Just like today,” he breathes, “Days like this should last forever."
At this point, Shige doesn’t even have the heart to throttle him for it anymore either.
All he can do is see what tomorrow brings him.
~~~~~
Epilogue
When Shige wakes up the next morning, it is because Koyama has tripped over the debris on their hotel room floor and has slammed face-first into Shige, toothbrush and all.
Shige wakes up screaming and thinks that no matter how many times he lives through this he will never, ever get used to it.
“Shige!” Koyama yelps, looking horrified and guilty as he hastens to wipe toothbrush spit off of Shige’s face, “Shige I’m so sorry!”
Shige sighs. “It’s okay,” he says, rubbing his chest with a small grimace. “I’m okay.”
Koyama looks relieved, but still guilty. “Oh god, Shige,” he murmurs in a moment of self-loathing, “I can’t believe I did that to you two days in a row, ne. I must really be tired after the lives.”
Shige blinks. “Two days in a row?”
Koyama nods. “Two days in a row.” Pause. Frown. “Shige must be really tired too, if he doesn’t remember me doing something as painful as that.” He automatically reaches his hand out.
Shige laughs suddenly, and is so relieved that today is today and not yesterday that he doesn’t even swat Koyama’s hand away from his forehead when it makes contact.
Instead, he flops back onto the bed and stares up at the ceiling.
“Of course it had to be as simple as a lesson in Carpe Diem,” he snorts to himself disbelievingly, and throws an arm over his eyes so he can bask in the joy of having finally made it to tomorrow for just a little bit longer.
“Shige, are you feeling okay?” Koyama asks after a beat, voice full of concern. “Did I hit you in the head just now?”
Shige looks thoughtful as he peeks out at his best friend from under his arm. “Koyama,” he starts, “no matter what happens, everything should be okay as long as we work to make every day the best day ever, right?”
Koyama blinks.
Then smiles helplessly. “That’s what we do, isn’t it?”
Shige laughs, and when Tegoshi sleepily hands him the camcorder later that morning at the train station as they wait for the shinkansen back to Tokyo, he whirls it on his groupmate, zooms it in on the mole above his lip, and declares, “Guess the member!”
Ryo snorts on his way past Shige and says, “Tour’s over, moron.” Pause. Blink. “Are you feeling okay? You’re acting especially retarded today.”
Shige replies by promising that he feels fine. “It’s just… every moment is precious, right?” he asks from behind the camera, mysteriously. When the others stop to consider it, Shige thinks that he is very lucky to be in a group full of people who care about him enough to humor him (even if sometimes, they call him names while doing it).
“Sure!” his groupmates agree, eventually. They even smile and pose a little while Shige films them like that on the platform, all together.
In the meantime, each of them secretly worries that Shige is getting sick.
END
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