JE/NEWS- "The One Where NewS Members Become Gods (AKA That’s Divine NewS!!!!!!)"
Title: The One Where NewS Members Become Gods (AKA That’s Divine NewS!!!!!!)
Universe: JE/ NEWS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, randomness, stupidity.
Word Count: 5,400
Summary: Following the events of “The One Where NewS Members Really Become Superheroes This Time”- For season three of NEWS’s TV show, there’s nowhere to go but up.
Dedication: written for Tegoshi’s birthday! Also for thawrecka and all you other kickass November b-days. Special thanks to Ann for the beta, and pipsqueaks for listening to me flail and whine. It is a tough job fixing me and listening to me, so I'm glad you two were up to the task. XD
A/N: Take two! LOL I had a different three or four ideas for Tegoshi’s birthday but this is the one that stuck I guess. So much for trying a serious angle. I am way too out of practice with writing fic.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
1.
What all Johnnies eventually learn about being in Johnny’s is that it is-at its essence- a business centered around finding a way to constantly top yourself year after year. In this industry, staying above water means always being able to do something in the next twelve months that is more fantastical and more original and more captivating than what you did in the twelve months prior.
You cannot-by any means-let yourself become boring. Boring leads to stagnant leads to loss of consumer interest leads to people forgetting your name leads to you no longer are required to come and perform at Countdown anymore, thanks very much for the best years of your life.
So given that by now, the members of NEWS have all been around long enough to have figured out this basic tenant of the entertainment industry, none of them can admit to being all that surprised when the producers of their TV show finally come up with a proposal for the program’s third season, one that they feel will somehow top the fact that last season, all the members of the group developed real life super powers.
“Survivor NEWS!” they explain to the boys excitedly at the meeting. “It kind of goes with your Lawson’s TV CMs, which is why they’re willing to sponsor most of the exorbitant production costs. We did some market research about how well something like that would go over as well, just in case, and everyone who we asked definitely said that they want to see what would happen if NEWS was really stranded on a tropical island with one another.”
A moment.
“Did you make sure the people you were asking in these test panels were people who actually like us?” Shige feels the need to ask. Because if they only asked KAT-TUN fans-for example- then there is a high percentage of likeliness that those respondents only wanted to see NEWS stranded on a tropical island so they could slowly watch them die.
“They were all huge fans,” the producers assure him, smiles unchanging.
From the seat beside Shige, Koyama laughs nervously and chimes in that it’s great to know that everyone watches their commercials with such interest.
Silence
Ryo raises a hand next, with a question that isn’t so much a question as a resigned sort of assertion that he knows exactly where this is all headed regardless of how much NEWS might struggle. “No matter what we say, there’s no getting out of it either way, right?” he says.
The producers, with those same unchanging smiles, simply tell them that the plane that will take them to the boat that will ferry them to the island leaves tomorrow from Narita at noon.
Massu frets and asks if they’re allowed to bring snacks, while Shige bangs his head on the table.
2.
The island is huge and beautiful and thankfully, does not seem to have any giant pink/purple pythons living on it, at least from what they can see in their first few minutes of being there. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t have a Lawson’s like in their commercials, and once the ferry that brought them out to the island is merely a distant dot on the far horizon, all they’ve got amongst them are the 18 kilograms of raw rice Yamapi brought, Koyama’s duffle filled entirely with senbei, Shige’s two gallons of water (that no one would help him carry), Tegoshi’s bottle of preserved seaweed and iPod, Ryo’s box of canned ramen, and the bento Massu’s mom made him this morning as she’d sent him out the door.
The rest of what they have is from the company and includes a couple of boxes of matches, some sunscreen (as necessitated by the agency not wanting everyone to come back with unattractive leather-face), a cooking pot, a knife, a compass, a basic first-aid kit, a pocket-sized island survival guide, and a string of solar-charging camera batteries with a camcorder each, so they can properly document their island survival adventures.
“Sometimes I hate being in Johnny’s,” Shige admits, before any of the cameras are turned on.
Tegoshi laughs at him and tells him that at least they get to travel to exotic places and meet new people and see new things.
“I would rather have electricity, really,” Shige counters logically, while Koyama and Yamapi immediately start stripping one another and running towards the surf like this is a magical happy time vacation.
In the meantime, Massu finishes his bento before wandering curiously over towards Ryo’s box of canned ramen.
3.
Two days later, NEWS is completely out of food, huddled under the makeshift shelter Ryo and Yamapi managed to pull together out of some palm leaves and tree branches.
“This is your fault,” Ryo feels the need to point out to Massu, as he sits on the flattened remnants of his canned ramen box in an effort to keep dry and out of the islands occasional torrential rainstorms.
Massu looks properly contrite even though no one in good conscience can really blame him, because they’ve always known that Massu will always do what Massu does at his own pace (whether it be very slowly or in this case, much too quickly). “I was hungry,” he explains apologetically to his groupmates anyway, and looks at his empty bento box with the saddest eyes in the whole wide world.
“Trust me, we understand how you feel,” Shige quips darkly, while Tegoshi watches the third episode of Ryo and Tackey’s latest drama on his iPod and says they should probably go look for food if that’s the case.
Koyama has to turn off his camera when Shige responds; the words he uses wouldn’t make it onto TV anyway.
4.
The next day, the members decide to split up to go in search of food. The island is huge, Shige reminds them, and tells them to very clearly mark their paths as they go so they can find their way back. “We only have one compass, and I’m the only one who actually knows how to use it anyway.”
“Must be from the experience of always getting lost,” Ryo rejoins, before he and Koyama head north.
Massu remains at the beach in the hopes of catching some fish, while Shige heads east, Tegoshi heads west, and Yamapi goes wherever it is he feels like because the island scenery is beautiful to him.
“Stay safe and don’t get lost, everyone!” he says dutifully as leader as they part ways, and hefts his camera over his shoulders as he strolls off into the jungle underbrush like he is taking a Saturday afternoon stroll in Tokyo.
Everyone refrains from saying that he’s the one they’re worried about getting lost the most.
5.
That night, Shige is the first one back; in all the miles he managed to travel through the muddy and overgrown terrain, all he could find in terms of food was some lousy unripe fruit and a couple of thick, white worm-like things he is pretty sure he saw people eating on that weird foods show they play on the Discovery Channel. Koyama comes back second with some coconuts and a lot of mosquito bites, Ryo returns covered in dirt and full of surly, and Yamapi eventually strolls back to base camp with a pocketful of shiny rocks and the precious (unhelpful) memory of the most beautiful jungle waterfall in the world.
Massu apparently managed to catch a fish while the others were off searching, but eventually got so hungry looking at it that he’d eaten it all himself by the time everyone got back. “Sorry,” he manages, looking sheepish at his actions and ravenous at the sight of Koyama’s coconuts all at the same time.
“Where’s Tegoshi?” Shige asks next, checking his watch. “He’s supposed to be back before sundown.”
“Maybe he found something good,” Koyama hopes. Then frowns. “Or maybe he ran into something bad,” he adds, before starting to worry in earnest.
But it turns out to be for naught, because five minutes later, just as the sun is disappearing below the horizon, Tegoshi arrives back to camp with everything he’s found today; notably, he is riding on top of palanquin as it is being hoisted up by a bunch of island natives who are all chanting his name in unison.
“Guys!” he breathes, looking rested and clean and no longer hungry. He pops his iPod earbud out of his ear and waves at his groupmates happily. “I found food!”
Then he turns to the natives and happily tells them, slowly, “You can let me down here!” he points to the beach as he does, and obligingly, the grass-clad islanders deposit him safely on the ground, still chanting his name.
His groupmates stare.
Tegoshi bounces up to them like all of this is the most normal thing in the whole world. “It’s so funny,” he starts after a moment, stretching his arms languidly over his head, “But apparently these guys have been waiting for me for two hundred years! I tried to tell them that’s silly because I’m not nearly that old, but I don’t think they understand me.” Then he laughs to himself like it is all a wonderful joke, before looking at everyone else’s loot. “Ooh, coconuts!”
Koyama has to turn off his camera again, when Shige starts yelling.
6.
“I think they think that we’re gods,” Shige whispers to Koyama some time later, as they are sitting seiza-style in a large grass hut atop a hill, while a village full of wide-eyed onlookers is serving them food and bowing every time they say something.
“This fish is delicious,” Massu says from Shige’s other side, finally happy again after going nearly ten hours without anything substantial to eat.
“I hope they don’t want to sacrifice us into a volcano or anything,” Koyama replies to Shige, still holding up his camera.
“There aren’t any volcanoes on this island,” Shige reassures him, though refrains from saying that there are other ways holy sacrifices can be held.
“Try the pineapple,” Massu insists.
Tegoshi in the meantime, is happily chattering with the tribe’s chief about something; eventually he hands over one of his earbuds and introduces the island’s leader to a little something magical called Glay.
From there, the bowing begins all over again.
7.
“I feel like we should do something nice in return for all the things the people are giving us,” Massu says a few days later, as he is sipping coconut milk from a halved green coconut and two island girls are happily waving palm leaves over his head to keep him cool.
In the background, Koyama is watching some of the children play; when one of them falls down and skins his knee in the dirt the oldest NEWS member is immediately at his side with their tiny jimusho-provided first-aid kit, spraying disinfectant on the wound and bandaging it up good as new. “Be careful!” he says to the child cheerfully, and the game resumes.
Meanwhile, Yamapi is napping in a hammock while Shige is chatting (or more like pantomiming) a conversation with the chieftain and Tegoshi is sitting by himself in the shade of a palm tree, iPod on full blast.
From beside Massu, Ryo just mumbles noncommittally to whatever it is his groupmate was just babbling about as he reaches into his pocket for the waterproof pouch that has his cigarettes and his lighter inside of it; now that their basic needs of food and shelter have been met, he’s reminded of other pressing matters like nicotine, and feels that now is the time to sacrifice one of his precious few cigarettes to the cancer gods.
The minute his lighter flicks to life, the islanders around them gasp and cower, covering their heads with their arms.
Ryo blinks. “Huh,” he says, and very slowly puts the lighter away.
8.
“Based on what I’ve been able to decipher from their language,” Shige announces a few days later, “this is a single village that was formed a long time ago from five different villages that used to be scattered all over the island. The paintings on the rockface that the chief showed me earlier today suggests that it was due to a prophecy, wherein the people had to unite their different beliefs and customs into one entity to invite the gods down from heaven to bless them.”
Tegoshi politely tries to look more interested in what Shige has to say than in the strange soccer-like game some of the children are playing down in the square.
“They think we’ve come down from the heavens,” Shige finishes eventually, looking guilty. “Today the chieftain called me the God of Knowledge.”
“You were trying to correct the way those ladies were cooking that meat earlier,” Tegoshi laughs.
“It was unsanitary!” Shige counters, indignation written all over his features. “Anyway, from what I’ve gathered, Yamashita-kun is the God of Freedom, Koyama is the God of Mercy, Massu is the God of Plenty, and Nishikido-kun is the God of Wrath.”
“What about Tego-nyan?” Koyama asks, when Shige very obviously leaves one of them out.
Shige just shrugs. “I can’t quite figure out what he’s trying to say when I ask about that. All he does is make this big circle with his arms.”
“Maybe he’s the god of sports!” Yamapi reveals, because Tegoshi is long gone, down the hill and playing the soccer-like game with the kids in the yard. “Maybe he meant a ball when he did that.”
Shige blinks. “Maybe,” he says, as he watches Tegoshi laugh amongst the children like they all understand each other perfectly well.
9.
During their second week on the island, Shige notices that the inhabitants of the eastern part of the village all seem very interested in him, gesticulating all sorts of questions to him or outright asking them to him as he slowly picks up some of the words and meanings of certain things in their native language. He shows them how to write his name in katakana in the dirt, and delighted by the characters on the ground, they begin to ask him what their names would look like in his strange language. He spends a few days teaching them all about it, until some of them catch on to how to read katakana as a whole.
Naturally he is very proud of this accomplishment, and brags about it to the rest of the group at the end of each day. “The people in the eastern part of the village really seem to want to learn,” he says with a natural air of self-satisfaction. “They’re really smart!”
“That’s nice Shige,” Tegoshi responds automatically, while he’s scrolling through his iPod in search of some love songs to fall asleep to tonight. “But is it really useful for them to learn Japanese?”
Shige sniffs at that noncommittal reaction and supposes that some people just don’t understand the importance of knowledge.
10.
In the meantime, the inhabitants of the northeast part of the village seem to all like Koyama the best; he smiles and laughs with them and helps to care for the children and the elderly. “Seeing their happy faces is the best,” he tells his groupmates and the cameras at the end of each night, despite the fact that he is always exhausted and aching whenever he hobbles back in from his day’s labors. “I think I’m helping them become more attentive to one another like this.”
Shige grins and says it’s like he really is becoming some sort of God of Mercy for them, just like he’s trying to pass on all the knowledge he can while he’s here.
“It would be a shame just to stay here and not try to contribute to the betterment of the people, right?”
Koyama warmly agrees, and as he gingerly lowers himself onto his sleeping mat for the night, is glad to be of service.
11.
A week or two later, Ryo is storming around the village, in search of Yamapi, who has taken the pouch with his lighter in it, presumably to go and explore caves around the island so that he can get more of those shiny rocks of his. “YAMAPI!!!” Ryo shouts vengefully, and his voice bounces off of the village walls with a frightening, nicotine-deprived echo. “GIVE IT BACK!!!”
Yamapi eventually returns and does exactly that, except that the lighter is completely empty by the time he does and Ryo’s cigarettes might be a little bit crushed as well. Snarling, Ryo kicks him in the shin and tells him he’s buying him cigarettes and lighters for the rest of the year when they get back to Tokyo.
Yamapi clutches his shin and apologizes around a sheepish smile, while Ryo stalks off to see which of his cigarettes are still salvageable.
The inhabitants in the northwestern part of the village notice all of this with a mixture of awe and terror.
12.
Yamapi in particular, befriends the southern part of the village, taking many of its inhabitants out to play on the beach or explore the jungles to take in their natural beauty. “It’s like they lived here all their lives and never realized how amazing everything is,” Yamapi tells his camera at the fireside one night, when he and his new friends are lying on the beach, stargazing. “I wonder if that’s how we are in Japan too,” he admits thoughtfully. “Yosh, when I get back, I’m definitely going to take advantage of the beautiful Japanese scenery!”
He pumps his fist into the air then, and in an echoing movement, so do all his fellow stargazers.
He can’t help but feel like this is their hearts all becoming one.
13.
Massu is a big hit in the western part of the village, where most of the crops are. The smell of cooking food often draws him over there, and as he watches some of the women cook, he innocently asks what certain ingredients are and what things are going to be eaten with what things.
He stumbles across a shed full of dried fruits one day, and thinks they would go well in the coconut milk rice they make with the day’s last meal every night. When he points it out, one of the old women manning the fires seems hesitant, but gives in to his bright smile and puts a few handfuls of the fruit into the cooking rice.
They feast on that concoction at dinnertime and it’s definitely delicious; everyone who tries it says so.
“It’s like teaching them a whole new way of eating!” Massu laughs happily to himself, and takes an extra double serving of the dish he’d helped invent earlier today.
“Eeh, it’s a little bit too sweet now, isn’t it, Massu?” Tegoshi answers as he nibbles on his. “I liked the original way better, ne.”
“Don’t be picky,” Shige chastises, while on his left, one of his more apt students copies his elocution almost perfectly.
“Don’t be picky,” the villager echoes, and then claps in glee.
Shige looks proud.
14.
Everything goes incredibly well after the first half of their stay on the island, definitely better than the members had initially thought it would go when they’d begun this whole “Haha let’s abandon our idols on a deserted island for the summer!” scheme in the first place.
The only downside to it that Shige can see is that Tegoshi isn’t contributing anything to anyone, simply spending his afternoons horsing around with the kids playing games or sleeping in patches of sunlight while Koyama and the northeast part of the village are running themselves ragged trying to make things better, while Shige is painstakingly trying to better educate the natives from the eastern side of the village who come to him with questions, and Massu is helping the western farmers improve the taste of the food daily. Ryo has taken an unofficial sort of leadership with the northwestern sector of the village as they ask him how to become stronger and manlier like he is, and Yamapi and his peaceful southerners have formed a close friendship based on beachside walks and swimming together under the waterfalls.
“You really need to stop being so self-centered and give something back to these people who are giving you so much,” Shige lectures Tegoshi smartly one day, when he sees Tegoshi playing with one of the children’s balls in the village square by himself, juggling it back and forth to himself like a soccer ball. “These people look up to us; we have to set an example.”
Tegoshi beams at Shige. “I’m teaching the kids soccer!” he announces, like that is some sort of grand and wonderful feat.
Then, just because he can, he also adds, “Shige works too hard at things sometimes, doesn’t he?” in a completely superior and condescending way.
Shige thinks that for all Tegoshi’s god talk, he sure doesn’t take the responsibility very seriously when it does appear.
15.
The first problems start to occur towards the end of the second month, when someone from Shige’s eastern side of the village derides a woman from Massu’s western side about wasting their precious dry food stores on making fancy dishes no one needs. “We’ll be out of food when the rainy season ends, you idiot!” the Easterner argues, while the Westerner bites back that the God of Plenty will provide everything they need and that the Know-it-Alls from the eastern side should mind their own business since they’re not actually doing any of the real work.
“Just a little tiff,” Shige decides when his villager tells him about it. “Though you were clearly right and if the dry season is coming, you really should be saving food.”
The villager agrees and calls everyone on the western side of the village an ignorant moron.
After that Koyama’s northeasterners get into a tiff with Yamapi’s southerners when a northeastern woman who is tirelessly going to fetch water from the river for the cooks for tonight’s dinner sees a group of southerners lying in the shade of a tree, meticulously counting the fronds on a palm leaf. “You know,” she tells them, sweating profusely, “if you don’t have anything important to do, maybe you can help us out. Our God of Mercy states that anyone who is decent would do such a thing.”
The southerners grow agitated at the insinuation that they are not doing anything important, “Our God of Peace says that taking the time to appreciate our surroundings is a task of great importance that many people forget about, because they are always rushing around doing things that only seem important.”
“Lazy!” the northeastern woman declares.
“Busybody!” the southerners shout back.
In the meantime, NEWS members start to notice it when the atmosphere on the island starts to become a lot like sitting in the middle of KAT-TUN’s dressing room.
16.
By the middle of the third month, things have degenerated even more. Ryo’s northwestern villagers are threatening to go to war with Shige’s eastern villages due to various insults made against their intellect. The dry food stores have gone empty as the rainy season approaches its end, and the hardworking villagers from Koyama’s northeastern section completely blame Massu’s western farmers and Yamapi’s southern bums for not contributing to any of the village’s needs.
“It seems,” the village’s chieftain reports sadly to NEWS in their hut atop the hill, “that the five villages of our ancestors that came together as one have split apart again. They have each chosen a different god’s philosophy to follow and have shirked their loyalties to one another because of it.” He looks to each of the different gods for guidance, and sheepish, Shige promises that they’ll find a solution before things get out of hand, because they’d never meant for anyone to turn on anyone else.
“All we wanted to do was help out,” Koyama frets, and in his periphery, realizes again, what a real miracle it is that the members of his group get along so well all things considered.
“That dried fruit was really good,” Massu adds beside him, sadly.
In the background, Tegoshi is watching a movie on his iPod and suddenly giggles loudly to himself.
Shige throws a pillow at his head.
17.
Things really get out of hand when one of Ryo’s warlike northwestern villagers finally has enough of the tension and rallies some of his compatriots to forcibly take over the remaining dry food stores so as to ration them from the others’ frivolity and uselessness. “As the protectors of this village we should get the most, while the farmers of this western side and the hard workers from the northeastern side get the second most for providing the food. The lazy southerners and the useless know-it-all easterners will have the least,” they declare, despite the chieftain’s protests.
Early the next morning, the easterners form an alliance with the southerners to attack the northwesterners and take back the food shed, which the merciful northeasterners automatically protest against when they hear. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!” their former neighbors cry, and don’t mind marching through the hapless northeasterners to get to where they want to go.
The sound of crowds of people moving towards the center of town with a mission is what wakes NEWS from their slumber on the top of the hill that day; they hurry outside to see what the commotion is about and see that all their worst fears have suddenly become real.
Down below, in the village square, five different villages that used to be one whole are ready to go to war.
“We are the worst gods ever,” Ryo sums up weakly when he surveys the situation, and beside him, his groupmates all nod.
After a moment, Massu feels the need to add, “Has anyone seen Tegoshi?”
18.
Shige sees him first, as it turns out, down below in the very center of the village square, happily doing his morning exercise by jogging around and juggling one of the children’s leather-stitched balls while listening to his iPod full blast.
“God dammit,” Shige exclaims hotly, and everyone else agrees before Koyama can turn off his camera.
They all take off down the hill.
19.
The villagers hardly notice that one of the gods is amongst them as they’re too busy glaring at each other, weapons at the ready as they sling accusations and insults to one another in the early morning light, the tension steadily building as everyone poises themselves for an all out melee to win back their village.
In the meantime, Tegoshi continues to juggle his makeshift soccer ball, before realizing that he is no longer alone. He smiles when he sees everyone gathered around him suddenly, and looking for some familiar faces in the crowd, finds some of the children he spent the last few weeks painstakingly teaching the game of soccer to, hiding amongst their parents.
Unabashedly, he grabs a few of them out of the mob and says, “Oh you’re up already? Then let’s play!”
He kicks the ball at one of the children from the eastern part of the village and declares that he and two of the western kids are on the same team. “And you too,” he adds, to a fourth child from the southern part of the village. “The rest of you are on my team!”
The children, having grown bored with their parents and the elders’ squabbling and glaring over the past few minutes, readily agree. They can’t say no to one of the gods, after all.
And just like that, everyone stops what they’re doing when they realize that children from all the different parts of the village are playing together, in the middle of their warzone.
20.
As Shige, Koyama, Yamapi, Massu, and Ryo finally make it down the hill and into the village proper, the chieftain is stepping forward too, into the center of the circle formed by the five different sections of the village.
“Do you see what the God of the Gods has done?” he asks them, shaking his ceremonial walking stick at the villagers in shame. “He has seen through your pettiness and chosen the children instead, who can still live together in harmony while we squabble amongst ourselves like animals.”
There is a general murmur from the mob. “But the southerners…”
“Are still your neighbors!” the chieftain finishes, before more insults and accusations can pass between the sides. “For hundreds of years we have lived together in harmony, to await the coming of the gods to this land. Now that they are amongst us, you’ve decided to destroy everything that was built in their honor? They came down to us and passed to us their great wisdoms and kindnesses so that we might share them amongst one another together, not so that we might use them to destroy each other.” He pauses then, and turns to the breathless, wide-eyed gods panting at the edge of the square behind them. “Isn’t that right?”
“We just wanted to help,” Shige starts to explain with his broken, limited knowledge of the language, still slightly out of breath. “We wanted to help make things better in our own ways.”
“But you all were definitely fine just the way you were,” Yamapi chimes in, with an encouraging nod.
“Sorry we messed it up like this, ne,” Koyama adds, while Ryo looks sheepish and Massu promises to have their producers bring lots and lots of ramen for the islanders during the dry season.
Meanwhile, the villagers hang their head in shame and quietly, amongst one another, begin to make peace with their neighbors again.
The chieftain smiles a wise, knowing smile as he sees this. “You have taught us all very much,” he tells the NEWS members gratefully, with a fond look over his shoulder in the direction of Tegoshi and the children.
And it is at that point when Shige suddenly-finally- figures out what the chieftain had meant all those months ago, when he had gestured to Tegoshi and made that strange circular motion with his arms, back in the first pantomimed conversation he and Shige had had with one another.
Shige realizes it had meant everything somehow, even when Tegoshi had made it look like it wasn’t anything at all, like he was just letting everyone and everything be.
But then again, maybe that’s the best thing for a god to do.
“God of Life,” Shige breathes to himself disbelievingly when it all comes together in that moment, and under normal circumstances, thinks he would feel ridiculously upstaged if he didn’t already feel so incredibly relieved instead.
From beside him, Yamapi just looks pleased. “Life is full of surprises,” he says vaguely, around a peaceful smile.
“Yeah,” Shige answers, strangely humbled as everyone watches the children play their haphazard game of soccer together, not keeping score and without a care in the world.
In the middle of it all, Tegoshi laughs the loudest and hardest of anyone.
Epilogue
A few weeks later, after the producers are finally finished poring over the months and months of footage the members had taken during their summer sojourn to the tropical island, NEWS is invited into the editing studio to take a first look at the initial rough cut the staff has put together for the show.
And as they sit in the dark together, watching Shige’s know-it-all believers deride Ryo’s temperamental ones while Yamapi’s villagers build sand castles, Massu’s grow fat, and Koyama’s work themselves into the ground, the members find themselves silently wondering how it is possible that they-somehow, despite all their numerous differences- always seem to get along just fine.
Well, Tegoshi doesn’t; he just points and laughs at the footage of the members that amuses him and doesn’t say anything much at all.
At the end of the viewing, seeing that everyone is still pondering the same conundrum that he is (save for the obvious suspect), Shige is the one who sums it up as best he can, given that he is the group know-it-all.
He turns to his groupmates with a resigned sort of air and simply says, “There but for the grace of god go I.”
Tegoshi doesn’t get it; Koyama just pats his shoulder and offers to buy him dinner.
END
EDITS?
Universe: JE/ NEWS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, randomness, stupidity.
Word Count: 5,400
Summary: Following the events of “The One Where NewS Members Really Become Superheroes This Time”- For season three of NEWS’s TV show, there’s nowhere to go but up.
Dedication: written for Tegoshi’s birthday! Also for thawrecka and all you other kickass November b-days. Special thanks to Ann for the beta, and pipsqueaks for listening to me flail and whine. It is a tough job fixing me and listening to me, so I'm glad you two were up to the task. XD
A/N: Take two! LOL I had a different three or four ideas for Tegoshi’s birthday but this is the one that stuck I guess. So much for trying a serious angle. I am way too out of practice with writing fic.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
1.
What all Johnnies eventually learn about being in Johnny’s is that it is-at its essence- a business centered around finding a way to constantly top yourself year after year. In this industry, staying above water means always being able to do something in the next twelve months that is more fantastical and more original and more captivating than what you did in the twelve months prior.
You cannot-by any means-let yourself become boring. Boring leads to stagnant leads to loss of consumer interest leads to people forgetting your name leads to you no longer are required to come and perform at Countdown anymore, thanks very much for the best years of your life.
So given that by now, the members of NEWS have all been around long enough to have figured out this basic tenant of the entertainment industry, none of them can admit to being all that surprised when the producers of their TV show finally come up with a proposal for the program’s third season, one that they feel will somehow top the fact that last season, all the members of the group developed real life super powers.
“Survivor NEWS!” they explain to the boys excitedly at the meeting. “It kind of goes with your Lawson’s TV CMs, which is why they’re willing to sponsor most of the exorbitant production costs. We did some market research about how well something like that would go over as well, just in case, and everyone who we asked definitely said that they want to see what would happen if NEWS was really stranded on a tropical island with one another.”
A moment.
“Did you make sure the people you were asking in these test panels were people who actually like us?” Shige feels the need to ask. Because if they only asked KAT-TUN fans-for example- then there is a high percentage of likeliness that those respondents only wanted to see NEWS stranded on a tropical island so they could slowly watch them die.
“They were all huge fans,” the producers assure him, smiles unchanging.
From the seat beside Shige, Koyama laughs nervously and chimes in that it’s great to know that everyone watches their commercials with such interest.
Silence
Ryo raises a hand next, with a question that isn’t so much a question as a resigned sort of assertion that he knows exactly where this is all headed regardless of how much NEWS might struggle. “No matter what we say, there’s no getting out of it either way, right?” he says.
The producers, with those same unchanging smiles, simply tell them that the plane that will take them to the boat that will ferry them to the island leaves tomorrow from Narita at noon.
Massu frets and asks if they’re allowed to bring snacks, while Shige bangs his head on the table.
2.
The island is huge and beautiful and thankfully, does not seem to have any giant pink/purple pythons living on it, at least from what they can see in their first few minutes of being there. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t have a Lawson’s like in their commercials, and once the ferry that brought them out to the island is merely a distant dot on the far horizon, all they’ve got amongst them are the 18 kilograms of raw rice Yamapi brought, Koyama’s duffle filled entirely with senbei, Shige’s two gallons of water (that no one would help him carry), Tegoshi’s bottle of preserved seaweed and iPod, Ryo’s box of canned ramen, and the bento Massu’s mom made him this morning as she’d sent him out the door.
The rest of what they have is from the company and includes a couple of boxes of matches, some sunscreen (as necessitated by the agency not wanting everyone to come back with unattractive leather-face), a cooking pot, a knife, a compass, a basic first-aid kit, a pocket-sized island survival guide, and a string of solar-charging camera batteries with a camcorder each, so they can properly document their island survival adventures.
“Sometimes I hate being in Johnny’s,” Shige admits, before any of the cameras are turned on.
Tegoshi laughs at him and tells him that at least they get to travel to exotic places and meet new people and see new things.
“I would rather have electricity, really,” Shige counters logically, while Koyama and Yamapi immediately start stripping one another and running towards the surf like this is a magical happy time vacation.
In the meantime, Massu finishes his bento before wandering curiously over towards Ryo’s box of canned ramen.
3.
Two days later, NEWS is completely out of food, huddled under the makeshift shelter Ryo and Yamapi managed to pull together out of some palm leaves and tree branches.
“This is your fault,” Ryo feels the need to point out to Massu, as he sits on the flattened remnants of his canned ramen box in an effort to keep dry and out of the islands occasional torrential rainstorms.
Massu looks properly contrite even though no one in good conscience can really blame him, because they’ve always known that Massu will always do what Massu does at his own pace (whether it be very slowly or in this case, much too quickly). “I was hungry,” he explains apologetically to his groupmates anyway, and looks at his empty bento box with the saddest eyes in the whole wide world.
“Trust me, we understand how you feel,” Shige quips darkly, while Tegoshi watches the third episode of Ryo and Tackey’s latest drama on his iPod and says they should probably go look for food if that’s the case.
Koyama has to turn off his camera when Shige responds; the words he uses wouldn’t make it onto TV anyway.
4.
The next day, the members decide to split up to go in search of food. The island is huge, Shige reminds them, and tells them to very clearly mark their paths as they go so they can find their way back. “We only have one compass, and I’m the only one who actually knows how to use it anyway.”
“Must be from the experience of always getting lost,” Ryo rejoins, before he and Koyama head north.
Massu remains at the beach in the hopes of catching some fish, while Shige heads east, Tegoshi heads west, and Yamapi goes wherever it is he feels like because the island scenery is beautiful to him.
“Stay safe and don’t get lost, everyone!” he says dutifully as leader as they part ways, and hefts his camera over his shoulders as he strolls off into the jungle underbrush like he is taking a Saturday afternoon stroll in Tokyo.
Everyone refrains from saying that he’s the one they’re worried about getting lost the most.
5.
That night, Shige is the first one back; in all the miles he managed to travel through the muddy and overgrown terrain, all he could find in terms of food was some lousy unripe fruit and a couple of thick, white worm-like things he is pretty sure he saw people eating on that weird foods show they play on the Discovery Channel. Koyama comes back second with some coconuts and a lot of mosquito bites, Ryo returns covered in dirt and full of surly, and Yamapi eventually strolls back to base camp with a pocketful of shiny rocks and the precious (unhelpful) memory of the most beautiful jungle waterfall in the world.
Massu apparently managed to catch a fish while the others were off searching, but eventually got so hungry looking at it that he’d eaten it all himself by the time everyone got back. “Sorry,” he manages, looking sheepish at his actions and ravenous at the sight of Koyama’s coconuts all at the same time.
“Where’s Tegoshi?” Shige asks next, checking his watch. “He’s supposed to be back before sundown.”
“Maybe he found something good,” Koyama hopes. Then frowns. “Or maybe he ran into something bad,” he adds, before starting to worry in earnest.
But it turns out to be for naught, because five minutes later, just as the sun is disappearing below the horizon, Tegoshi arrives back to camp with everything he’s found today; notably, he is riding on top of palanquin as it is being hoisted up by a bunch of island natives who are all chanting his name in unison.
“Guys!” he breathes, looking rested and clean and no longer hungry. He pops his iPod earbud out of his ear and waves at his groupmates happily. “I found food!”
Then he turns to the natives and happily tells them, slowly, “You can let me down here!” he points to the beach as he does, and obligingly, the grass-clad islanders deposit him safely on the ground, still chanting his name.
His groupmates stare.
Tegoshi bounces up to them like all of this is the most normal thing in the whole world. “It’s so funny,” he starts after a moment, stretching his arms languidly over his head, “But apparently these guys have been waiting for me for two hundred years! I tried to tell them that’s silly because I’m not nearly that old, but I don’t think they understand me.” Then he laughs to himself like it is all a wonderful joke, before looking at everyone else’s loot. “Ooh, coconuts!”
Koyama has to turn off his camera again, when Shige starts yelling.
6.
“I think they think that we’re gods,” Shige whispers to Koyama some time later, as they are sitting seiza-style in a large grass hut atop a hill, while a village full of wide-eyed onlookers is serving them food and bowing every time they say something.
“This fish is delicious,” Massu says from Shige’s other side, finally happy again after going nearly ten hours without anything substantial to eat.
“I hope they don’t want to sacrifice us into a volcano or anything,” Koyama replies to Shige, still holding up his camera.
“There aren’t any volcanoes on this island,” Shige reassures him, though refrains from saying that there are other ways holy sacrifices can be held.
“Try the pineapple,” Massu insists.
Tegoshi in the meantime, is happily chattering with the tribe’s chief about something; eventually he hands over one of his earbuds and introduces the island’s leader to a little something magical called Glay.
From there, the bowing begins all over again.
7.
“I feel like we should do something nice in return for all the things the people are giving us,” Massu says a few days later, as he is sipping coconut milk from a halved green coconut and two island girls are happily waving palm leaves over his head to keep him cool.
In the background, Koyama is watching some of the children play; when one of them falls down and skins his knee in the dirt the oldest NEWS member is immediately at his side with their tiny jimusho-provided first-aid kit, spraying disinfectant on the wound and bandaging it up good as new. “Be careful!” he says to the child cheerfully, and the game resumes.
Meanwhile, Yamapi is napping in a hammock while Shige is chatting (or more like pantomiming) a conversation with the chieftain and Tegoshi is sitting by himself in the shade of a palm tree, iPod on full blast.
From beside Massu, Ryo just mumbles noncommittally to whatever it is his groupmate was just babbling about as he reaches into his pocket for the waterproof pouch that has his cigarettes and his lighter inside of it; now that their basic needs of food and shelter have been met, he’s reminded of other pressing matters like nicotine, and feels that now is the time to sacrifice one of his precious few cigarettes to the cancer gods.
The minute his lighter flicks to life, the islanders around them gasp and cower, covering their heads with their arms.
Ryo blinks. “Huh,” he says, and very slowly puts the lighter away.
8.
“Based on what I’ve been able to decipher from their language,” Shige announces a few days later, “this is a single village that was formed a long time ago from five different villages that used to be scattered all over the island. The paintings on the rockface that the chief showed me earlier today suggests that it was due to a prophecy, wherein the people had to unite their different beliefs and customs into one entity to invite the gods down from heaven to bless them.”
Tegoshi politely tries to look more interested in what Shige has to say than in the strange soccer-like game some of the children are playing down in the square.
“They think we’ve come down from the heavens,” Shige finishes eventually, looking guilty. “Today the chieftain called me the God of Knowledge.”
“You were trying to correct the way those ladies were cooking that meat earlier,” Tegoshi laughs.
“It was unsanitary!” Shige counters, indignation written all over his features. “Anyway, from what I’ve gathered, Yamashita-kun is the God of Freedom, Koyama is the God of Mercy, Massu is the God of Plenty, and Nishikido-kun is the God of Wrath.”
“What about Tego-nyan?” Koyama asks, when Shige very obviously leaves one of them out.
Shige just shrugs. “I can’t quite figure out what he’s trying to say when I ask about that. All he does is make this big circle with his arms.”
“Maybe he’s the god of sports!” Yamapi reveals, because Tegoshi is long gone, down the hill and playing the soccer-like game with the kids in the yard. “Maybe he meant a ball when he did that.”
Shige blinks. “Maybe,” he says, as he watches Tegoshi laugh amongst the children like they all understand each other perfectly well.
9.
During their second week on the island, Shige notices that the inhabitants of the eastern part of the village all seem very interested in him, gesticulating all sorts of questions to him or outright asking them to him as he slowly picks up some of the words and meanings of certain things in their native language. He shows them how to write his name in katakana in the dirt, and delighted by the characters on the ground, they begin to ask him what their names would look like in his strange language. He spends a few days teaching them all about it, until some of them catch on to how to read katakana as a whole.
Naturally he is very proud of this accomplishment, and brags about it to the rest of the group at the end of each day. “The people in the eastern part of the village really seem to want to learn,” he says with a natural air of self-satisfaction. “They’re really smart!”
“That’s nice Shige,” Tegoshi responds automatically, while he’s scrolling through his iPod in search of some love songs to fall asleep to tonight. “But is it really useful for them to learn Japanese?”
Shige sniffs at that noncommittal reaction and supposes that some people just don’t understand the importance of knowledge.
10.
In the meantime, the inhabitants of the northeast part of the village seem to all like Koyama the best; he smiles and laughs with them and helps to care for the children and the elderly. “Seeing their happy faces is the best,” he tells his groupmates and the cameras at the end of each night, despite the fact that he is always exhausted and aching whenever he hobbles back in from his day’s labors. “I think I’m helping them become more attentive to one another like this.”
Shige grins and says it’s like he really is becoming some sort of God of Mercy for them, just like he’s trying to pass on all the knowledge he can while he’s here.
“It would be a shame just to stay here and not try to contribute to the betterment of the people, right?”
Koyama warmly agrees, and as he gingerly lowers himself onto his sleeping mat for the night, is glad to be of service.
11.
A week or two later, Ryo is storming around the village, in search of Yamapi, who has taken the pouch with his lighter in it, presumably to go and explore caves around the island so that he can get more of those shiny rocks of his. “YAMAPI!!!” Ryo shouts vengefully, and his voice bounces off of the village walls with a frightening, nicotine-deprived echo. “GIVE IT BACK!!!”
Yamapi eventually returns and does exactly that, except that the lighter is completely empty by the time he does and Ryo’s cigarettes might be a little bit crushed as well. Snarling, Ryo kicks him in the shin and tells him he’s buying him cigarettes and lighters for the rest of the year when they get back to Tokyo.
Yamapi clutches his shin and apologizes around a sheepish smile, while Ryo stalks off to see which of his cigarettes are still salvageable.
The inhabitants in the northwestern part of the village notice all of this with a mixture of awe and terror.
12.
Yamapi in particular, befriends the southern part of the village, taking many of its inhabitants out to play on the beach or explore the jungles to take in their natural beauty. “It’s like they lived here all their lives and never realized how amazing everything is,” Yamapi tells his camera at the fireside one night, when he and his new friends are lying on the beach, stargazing. “I wonder if that’s how we are in Japan too,” he admits thoughtfully. “Yosh, when I get back, I’m definitely going to take advantage of the beautiful Japanese scenery!”
He pumps his fist into the air then, and in an echoing movement, so do all his fellow stargazers.
He can’t help but feel like this is their hearts all becoming one.
13.
Massu is a big hit in the western part of the village, where most of the crops are. The smell of cooking food often draws him over there, and as he watches some of the women cook, he innocently asks what certain ingredients are and what things are going to be eaten with what things.
He stumbles across a shed full of dried fruits one day, and thinks they would go well in the coconut milk rice they make with the day’s last meal every night. When he points it out, one of the old women manning the fires seems hesitant, but gives in to his bright smile and puts a few handfuls of the fruit into the cooking rice.
They feast on that concoction at dinnertime and it’s definitely delicious; everyone who tries it says so.
“It’s like teaching them a whole new way of eating!” Massu laughs happily to himself, and takes an extra double serving of the dish he’d helped invent earlier today.
“Eeh, it’s a little bit too sweet now, isn’t it, Massu?” Tegoshi answers as he nibbles on his. “I liked the original way better, ne.”
“Don’t be picky,” Shige chastises, while on his left, one of his more apt students copies his elocution almost perfectly.
“Don’t be picky,” the villager echoes, and then claps in glee.
Shige looks proud.
14.
Everything goes incredibly well after the first half of their stay on the island, definitely better than the members had initially thought it would go when they’d begun this whole “Haha let’s abandon our idols on a deserted island for the summer!” scheme in the first place.
The only downside to it that Shige can see is that Tegoshi isn’t contributing anything to anyone, simply spending his afternoons horsing around with the kids playing games or sleeping in patches of sunlight while Koyama and the northeast part of the village are running themselves ragged trying to make things better, while Shige is painstakingly trying to better educate the natives from the eastern side of the village who come to him with questions, and Massu is helping the western farmers improve the taste of the food daily. Ryo has taken an unofficial sort of leadership with the northwestern sector of the village as they ask him how to become stronger and manlier like he is, and Yamapi and his peaceful southerners have formed a close friendship based on beachside walks and swimming together under the waterfalls.
“You really need to stop being so self-centered and give something back to these people who are giving you so much,” Shige lectures Tegoshi smartly one day, when he sees Tegoshi playing with one of the children’s balls in the village square by himself, juggling it back and forth to himself like a soccer ball. “These people look up to us; we have to set an example.”
Tegoshi beams at Shige. “I’m teaching the kids soccer!” he announces, like that is some sort of grand and wonderful feat.
Then, just because he can, he also adds, “Shige works too hard at things sometimes, doesn’t he?” in a completely superior and condescending way.
Shige thinks that for all Tegoshi’s god talk, he sure doesn’t take the responsibility very seriously when it does appear.
15.
The first problems start to occur towards the end of the second month, when someone from Shige’s eastern side of the village derides a woman from Massu’s western side about wasting their precious dry food stores on making fancy dishes no one needs. “We’ll be out of food when the rainy season ends, you idiot!” the Easterner argues, while the Westerner bites back that the God of Plenty will provide everything they need and that the Know-it-Alls from the eastern side should mind their own business since they’re not actually doing any of the real work.
“Just a little tiff,” Shige decides when his villager tells him about it. “Though you were clearly right and if the dry season is coming, you really should be saving food.”
The villager agrees and calls everyone on the western side of the village an ignorant moron.
After that Koyama’s northeasterners get into a tiff with Yamapi’s southerners when a northeastern woman who is tirelessly going to fetch water from the river for the cooks for tonight’s dinner sees a group of southerners lying in the shade of a tree, meticulously counting the fronds on a palm leaf. “You know,” she tells them, sweating profusely, “if you don’t have anything important to do, maybe you can help us out. Our God of Mercy states that anyone who is decent would do such a thing.”
The southerners grow agitated at the insinuation that they are not doing anything important, “Our God of Peace says that taking the time to appreciate our surroundings is a task of great importance that many people forget about, because they are always rushing around doing things that only seem important.”
“Lazy!” the northeastern woman declares.
“Busybody!” the southerners shout back.
In the meantime, NEWS members start to notice it when the atmosphere on the island starts to become a lot like sitting in the middle of KAT-TUN’s dressing room.
16.
By the middle of the third month, things have degenerated even more. Ryo’s northwestern villagers are threatening to go to war with Shige’s eastern villages due to various insults made against their intellect. The dry food stores have gone empty as the rainy season approaches its end, and the hardworking villagers from Koyama’s northeastern section completely blame Massu’s western farmers and Yamapi’s southern bums for not contributing to any of the village’s needs.
“It seems,” the village’s chieftain reports sadly to NEWS in their hut atop the hill, “that the five villages of our ancestors that came together as one have split apart again. They have each chosen a different god’s philosophy to follow and have shirked their loyalties to one another because of it.” He looks to each of the different gods for guidance, and sheepish, Shige promises that they’ll find a solution before things get out of hand, because they’d never meant for anyone to turn on anyone else.
“All we wanted to do was help out,” Koyama frets, and in his periphery, realizes again, what a real miracle it is that the members of his group get along so well all things considered.
“That dried fruit was really good,” Massu adds beside him, sadly.
In the background, Tegoshi is watching a movie on his iPod and suddenly giggles loudly to himself.
Shige throws a pillow at his head.
17.
Things really get out of hand when one of Ryo’s warlike northwestern villagers finally has enough of the tension and rallies some of his compatriots to forcibly take over the remaining dry food stores so as to ration them from the others’ frivolity and uselessness. “As the protectors of this village we should get the most, while the farmers of this western side and the hard workers from the northeastern side get the second most for providing the food. The lazy southerners and the useless know-it-all easterners will have the least,” they declare, despite the chieftain’s protests.
Early the next morning, the easterners form an alliance with the southerners to attack the northwesterners and take back the food shed, which the merciful northeasterners automatically protest against when they hear. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!” their former neighbors cry, and don’t mind marching through the hapless northeasterners to get to where they want to go.
The sound of crowds of people moving towards the center of town with a mission is what wakes NEWS from their slumber on the top of the hill that day; they hurry outside to see what the commotion is about and see that all their worst fears have suddenly become real.
Down below, in the village square, five different villages that used to be one whole are ready to go to war.
“We are the worst gods ever,” Ryo sums up weakly when he surveys the situation, and beside him, his groupmates all nod.
After a moment, Massu feels the need to add, “Has anyone seen Tegoshi?”
18.
Shige sees him first, as it turns out, down below in the very center of the village square, happily doing his morning exercise by jogging around and juggling one of the children’s leather-stitched balls while listening to his iPod full blast.
“God dammit,” Shige exclaims hotly, and everyone else agrees before Koyama can turn off his camera.
They all take off down the hill.
19.
The villagers hardly notice that one of the gods is amongst them as they’re too busy glaring at each other, weapons at the ready as they sling accusations and insults to one another in the early morning light, the tension steadily building as everyone poises themselves for an all out melee to win back their village.
In the meantime, Tegoshi continues to juggle his makeshift soccer ball, before realizing that he is no longer alone. He smiles when he sees everyone gathered around him suddenly, and looking for some familiar faces in the crowd, finds some of the children he spent the last few weeks painstakingly teaching the game of soccer to, hiding amongst their parents.
Unabashedly, he grabs a few of them out of the mob and says, “Oh you’re up already? Then let’s play!”
He kicks the ball at one of the children from the eastern part of the village and declares that he and two of the western kids are on the same team. “And you too,” he adds, to a fourth child from the southern part of the village. “The rest of you are on my team!”
The children, having grown bored with their parents and the elders’ squabbling and glaring over the past few minutes, readily agree. They can’t say no to one of the gods, after all.
And just like that, everyone stops what they’re doing when they realize that children from all the different parts of the village are playing together, in the middle of their warzone.
20.
As Shige, Koyama, Yamapi, Massu, and Ryo finally make it down the hill and into the village proper, the chieftain is stepping forward too, into the center of the circle formed by the five different sections of the village.
“Do you see what the God of the Gods has done?” he asks them, shaking his ceremonial walking stick at the villagers in shame. “He has seen through your pettiness and chosen the children instead, who can still live together in harmony while we squabble amongst ourselves like animals.”
There is a general murmur from the mob. “But the southerners…”
“Are still your neighbors!” the chieftain finishes, before more insults and accusations can pass between the sides. “For hundreds of years we have lived together in harmony, to await the coming of the gods to this land. Now that they are amongst us, you’ve decided to destroy everything that was built in their honor? They came down to us and passed to us their great wisdoms and kindnesses so that we might share them amongst one another together, not so that we might use them to destroy each other.” He pauses then, and turns to the breathless, wide-eyed gods panting at the edge of the square behind them. “Isn’t that right?”
“We just wanted to help,” Shige starts to explain with his broken, limited knowledge of the language, still slightly out of breath. “We wanted to help make things better in our own ways.”
“But you all were definitely fine just the way you were,” Yamapi chimes in, with an encouraging nod.
“Sorry we messed it up like this, ne,” Koyama adds, while Ryo looks sheepish and Massu promises to have their producers bring lots and lots of ramen for the islanders during the dry season.
Meanwhile, the villagers hang their head in shame and quietly, amongst one another, begin to make peace with their neighbors again.
The chieftain smiles a wise, knowing smile as he sees this. “You have taught us all very much,” he tells the NEWS members gratefully, with a fond look over his shoulder in the direction of Tegoshi and the children.
And it is at that point when Shige suddenly-finally- figures out what the chieftain had meant all those months ago, when he had gestured to Tegoshi and made that strange circular motion with his arms, back in the first pantomimed conversation he and Shige had had with one another.
Shige realizes it had meant everything somehow, even when Tegoshi had made it look like it wasn’t anything at all, like he was just letting everyone and everything be.
But then again, maybe that’s the best thing for a god to do.
“God of Life,” Shige breathes to himself disbelievingly when it all comes together in that moment, and under normal circumstances, thinks he would feel ridiculously upstaged if he didn’t already feel so incredibly relieved instead.
From beside him, Yamapi just looks pleased. “Life is full of surprises,” he says vaguely, around a peaceful smile.
“Yeah,” Shige answers, strangely humbled as everyone watches the children play their haphazard game of soccer together, not keeping score and without a care in the world.
In the middle of it all, Tegoshi laughs the loudest and hardest of anyone.
Epilogue
A few weeks later, after the producers are finally finished poring over the months and months of footage the members had taken during their summer sojourn to the tropical island, NEWS is invited into the editing studio to take a first look at the initial rough cut the staff has put together for the show.
And as they sit in the dark together, watching Shige’s know-it-all believers deride Ryo’s temperamental ones while Yamapi’s villagers build sand castles, Massu’s grow fat, and Koyama’s work themselves into the ground, the members find themselves silently wondering how it is possible that they-somehow, despite all their numerous differences- always seem to get along just fine.
Well, Tegoshi doesn’t; he just points and laughs at the footage of the members that amuses him and doesn’t say anything much at all.
At the end of the viewing, seeing that everyone is still pondering the same conundrum that he is (save for the obvious suspect), Shige is the one who sums it up as best he can, given that he is the group know-it-all.
He turns to his groupmates with a resigned sort of air and simply says, “There but for the grace of god go I.”
Tegoshi doesn’t get it; Koyama just pats his shoulder and offers to buy him dinner.
END
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