JE/NEWS- "One Thousand and One NEWS Nippon Nights" (5/8)
*****
The following morning, over breakfast at the hotel before stage rehearsals begin, the members all sit down to a Western style meal at nine in the morning.
Shige is halfway through a plate of pancakes and bacon when Ryo finishes his coffee, sits back, and says, “Go.”
Shige stares. “Go where?”
Ryo indicates the clock above their private dining room. “We’ve got thirty minutes before we’re supposed to be at rehearsal. Start a story.”
The sounds of the others eating abruptly die down as they all turn to look at Shige and Ryo curiously. “Ooh, Shige has another story to tell?” Yamapi asks, looking pleasantly surprised.
“I’m in it this time,” Ryo mentions. “I mean, I better be.”
“Neat, Shige!” Massu and Koyama say at exactly the same time, while Tegoshi just yawns a little bit and gives a sleepy, noncommittal thumbs up in Shige’s general direction.
Shige puts his fork down and takes a grumpy sip of coffee before starting.
“This is the story about a tiny junior named Yamashita and how he got to hear some amazing stories…”
*****
The Seven Voyages of Sinbad (or A Journey Through Johnny’s Jimusho)
And so there happen s to be a young junior- new to the jimusho and as such, appropriately adorable-named Yamashita (because there always seem to be a lot of those). One day, when Yamashita-kun is working as a backup eye-candy piece during NEWS’s winter concert tour, he finds himself extraordinarily exhausted from school work, dance rehearsals, and the general heaviness of his ridiculous costume and as such, decides to take a break in the dark, narrow corridors of the backstage area, in a little nook that he is small enough to squeeze into so that no one will notice him. It is here that he observes the members of NEWS through a crack in the scaffolding, as they run through the dress rehearsal on the stage. Nishikido-kun is currently the center of attention, as he and the band do a sound check for his solo. In the meantime, Tegoshi-kun and Koyama-kun are gliding around on the stage pretending that they’re either airplanes or pterodactyls (or hybrids of both), being generally distracting and goofy as they wait for Nishikido-kun to finish so they can run through the next set.
Young Yamashita-kun sees this, and how the staff members defer to them and listen to their ideas and very seldom tell the NEWS members what to do. They can even ask for a bottle of water and someone else will go get it for them!
That, of course, is nothing like how the juniors are treated; the juniors don’t have their lunch brought to them in the dressing room, they have to bring their own costumes back and forth and keep track of all the parts, and worst of all, they’re supposed to stay quiet and out of sight when they don’t have any particular work to do, almost as if they’re props instead of the next generation of super idols.
Sighing wistfully as he watches some of the NEWS members skip around on the stage being ridiculous with one another, Yamashita-kun finds himself saying, out loud, “How come us juniors have it so hard when we’re just doing all these insignificant jobs, but the sempai get to do whatever they want?”
His voice is kind of bitter as he utters those words, and a moment later, a terrifyingly familiar voice answers, “Because we had to go through our own hardships for many years before we were allowed to do this.”
Yamashita-kun’s head snaps up and there, standing above him and looking down with a patient kind of scrutiny, is Yamapi himself. Yamashita-kun’s eyes widen in terror and for a moment he imagines he is going to be fired, or kicked out, or that he’s going to be grabbed and given the wedgie of a lifetime.
The fear on his face must show, because Yamapi hastily holds up a hand, shaking his head. “I’m not angry,” the older idol states reassuringly. “I um, I just want to tell you a story, okay? About how going through some difficult times helped lead us to where we are now.”
Young Yamashita-kun, heart pounding so loudly in his chest that it feels like his earlobes are throbbing, quickly nods, because of course he’ll take a lecture above being fired, kicked out, or wedgied until dead.
Yamapi looks thoughtful for a moment before settling down in the corridor next to Yamashita-kun and taking a deep breath. “This,” he begins, with an air of wistfulness, “is about one of my first jobs as a junior here…”
*****
The First Voyage of Sinbad (or Yamapi is Lucky)
It so happens that during Yamapi’s early days as a junior, he has to learn how to dance. He’s eleven-going-on-twelve at the time and so he really has no skills beyond the strength of his own determination and an above-average cute face. The technical stuff will take time, and so, like the rest of the kids his age, the moment he arrives at the jimusho after school he’s shuttled about the rehearsal offices, learning how to read music and clap in time and move his feet. It’s tedious and tiring but he forces himself to study it all very hard, so that one day, he’ll be able to make his dreams of stardom come true.
On one particular afternoon, after the first round of end-of-semester tests at his school, Yamapi is at work, bleary-eyed and wishing he could take a nap as he and a bunch of other kids his age are herded down a maze of complicated hallways towards a studio where they will have one of their first honest-to-goodness choreography lessons. Yamapi is both intrigued and intimidated by the implications of learning a dance that requires moving your hands and feet in different directions all at the same time, and with a sort of growing horror, finds himself stopping in the middle of the procession to peek into the open doorway of one of the other practice rooms, where the kids that are fifteen and older are busy doing what looks to be some pretty complicated movements in front of a mirror.
He stops to watch an entire eight-count run through with wide eyes and mouth slightly agape, thinking that there is no way in a million years he’ll be able to accomplish something like that, not when he can barely remember his own name in the mornings when his alarm first goes off.
It is while he is staring at his sempai like this that the rest of the kids in his age group disappear into the aforementioned maze of complicated hallways, and by the time Yamapi remembers that he has somewhere to be and dancing to learn, he looks up and realizes that everyone from his group is gone.
Panicky, he takes off in the direction they had originally been headed in, only to curse to himself when the hallway branches off into three more directions. “Yabai,” he mutters out loud, hands in his hair as he looks around, hoping to hear or see a glimpse of his group. The fear of being fired or kicked out or laughed at prompts him to close his eyes, take a deep breath, and guess the direction in the next few seconds, which takes him left. He sprints down the hallway until he reaches a dead end, where a looming, unmarked door is the only thing left in his way. Crossing his fingers and praying for some luck, Yamapi throws the door open and dashes headlong through it.
Where he crashes into a dark room and finds himself buried in something that is incredibly soft and incredibly sharp all at the same time.
“Oof,” he grunts, and opens his eyes, trying to figure out what kind of material he is currently swimming in.
But as stated, the room is dark, and the things he’s brushing against scratch his face and arms and make him instinctively close his eyes again, at least until he can backtrack a little and to get something that feels like feathers out of his face.
Of course, stepping backwards at this point has him bumping into the edge of the open door, which only serves to push the door closed again behind him. It clicks with the familiar sound of a lock settling in place, and when Yamapi opens his eyes again, he finds, much to his horror, that this is not the dance studio he is supposed to be at with the other kids and that he is effectively locked in a costume closet, having just now run into a rack full of bright pink-and-white zebra-patterned sequin outfits with tufts of fur and feathers sticking out on either side. Upon turning on the dim single light in the room, he finds that other racks full of similar but very different costumes line the walls, making the room very colorful and claustrophobic.
He stares at all the monstrosities he is currently trapped with for a good minute before turning around and starting to pound desperately on the door. “Someone help me!” he shouts, as loudly as he can.
For all his eleven-year-old brain knows, those costumes could come (back) to life at any moment and try to eat his brains.
His knocking and his screaming and his general trauma soon bear fruit however, because after about ten minutes, the door opens again, and an extraordinarily handsome face peeks through the door, belonging to a teen just a few years older than Yamapi but very obviously more accustomed to the horrible outfits.
“Wow, I didn’t expect there to be someone in here,” the good-looking teen murmurs when he sees Yamapi, lost in the sea of outrageous colors, fabrics, and patterns. “I’m Tackey. I’m looking for a hat.”
Yamapi, relieved that the door is open again, manages to breathe, “Which one?”
Tackey looks thoughtful. “Apparently it’s supposed to have purple leopard print on a straw construction with a green sequin band and some orange feathers sticking out of the top. Either feathers or flowers, I don’t remember which.”
Yamapi winces and knows exactly what Tackey is referring to; it’s on the far right side of the storage room and has probably been burned into Yamapi’s brain forever. He goes to the rack where it’s hanging and picks it up. “This one?”
Tackey nods, grinning. “I can’t imagine that there are very many that look like it.”
Yamapi hands Tackey the hat and Tackey holds open the door.
Yamapi, grateful, stumbles back out into the slightly more open corridor, breathing in relief. “Thanks,” he says, truly grateful to his savior.
Tackey finishes examining the hat in his hands and finally takes a moment to look at Yamapi’s face, now that it is clearly visible in the fluorescent lights of the hallway. He grins. “Hey,” he starts, conversationally, “you’re pretty cute, aren’t you?”
Yamapi’s eyes widen a little bit and he takes an instinctive step backwards; his friends at school had warned him about this kind of stuff going on at Johnny’s.
Tackey doesn’t seem to notice his sudden wariness however, and reaches out to grab Yamapi’s hand. “Come with me, kid. There’s someone you should see.”
“Uh,” Yamapi answers, as he gets tugged down a hallway. “I have a dance practice to go to.”
Tackey waves dismissively. “Trust me, this is way better.”
He pulls Yamapi down the hall.
Yamapi swallows and hopes that nothing Tackey means includes the phrase in my pants.
*****
A few minutes and a tense elevator ride later, Yamapi finds himself standing in front of Johnny-san himself.
He resists the urge to squirm under the old man’s scrutiny and instead, looks back as calmly as he can. Johnny-san is either impressed or amused by this, Yamapi can’t tell which.
“You were saying the other day you needed a really cute kid for this drama role, right?” Tackey points out, after having delivered the nasty hat to another teen about his age but with a slightly less creepy vibe about him. Tackey points to Yamapi. “I found him in the closet. I think he’s cute.”
So many things are wrong with that sentence, but Yamapi doesn’t notice because he’s still sitting on the couch trying not to be terrified as Johnny-san seems to scrutinize every pore on him.
Then, after what feels like forever, Johnny-san nods in approval. “He’s cute,” he agrees. “There’s something special about him.”
Tackey grins. “Right? He even helped me find that hat Nagase-san wanted. Cute and diligent in his work.”
Yamapi feels like he’s being a dissected a little bit. “Thanks?” he says.
Johnny-san seems to come to a decision then, and sits back, clapping his hands together once. “Yes, he’ll do,” he says to Tackey, before turning back to Yamapi. “You. Tomorrow, you’ll be filming a drama. There aren’t a lot of lines so it should be easy. Just look cool like you do now, okay? Do you think you can do that?”
Yamapi can only nod a little dumbly, because this is his boss. This is everyone’s boss. “Sure,” he says, and is surprised at how calm his voice is. “I can do whatever you want me to.”
Johnny-san is pleased with such a mature answer. “Okay then, leave your phone number with me and I’ll set everything up.”
Yamapi quickly writes down his phone number, and after that, Tackey is instructed to take him to the dance practice he was supposed to have been at nearly an hour ago.
At the door, Tackey grins at him and reaches out to ruffle his hair. “Not bad, kid,” he says. “Thanks for the help.”
“No problem,” Yamapi answers, still managing to sound pretty even-keeled despite everything.
He goes to dance practice and realizes that tomorrow he’s going to be filmed for TV.
END
*****
“And after that,” Yamapi finishes, just to clarify, “I lived up to my word to Johnny-san and did everything he asked me to, no matter how hard it was, or how much I didn’t like it, or even when I thought it was a small job or a pointless one.”
Yamashita-kun looks up at him thoughtfully, and only then does he realize that the rest of NEWS has somehow joined their leader in this narrow backstage area, all sitting around listening to the story and nodding like sages. He swallows. “Uh, so what you’re saying is, even if you had to do things you didn’t like, they all helped lead you to this?”
Yamapi’s eyes light up. “Exactly, ne. So even if you don’t like this work you’re doing now, if being an idol is your goal, you just have to tough through it and learn as much as you can. No job in this industry is so small that it isn’t needed.”
Yamashita-kun supposes it makes sense; if even a guy like Yamapi-who is rumored to be an android amongst some of the younger members of the agency-hadn’t liked the work at first, then by all rights, no one really enjoys being a junior. He doesn’t necessarily feel heartened by that knowledge, but at the same time, it does give him an odd sense of hope.
“Leader is amazing!” Koyama preens from nearby. “I was so touched by that story, ne.” He clasps his hands over his chest and looks meaningfully at Yamapi. “It’s so nice of Yamapi to take his break time to inspire his kouhai, isn’t it?”
Yamashita-kun blushes when he realizes how much attention has been paid to him today, and quickly stands, bowing to each of the members. “Sorry for being a distraction!” he tells them hastily. “I was just having a tough day today and Yamashita-san was nice enough to help cheer me up with that story.”
The NEWS members all coo something about how cute he is, and luckily, it is not as creepy as Tackey-san had sounded in the story.
Meanwhile, in the background, Nishikido-kun smiles crookedly at Yamashita-kun, even as he leans against a pillar and looks cool. “Come back during the break time tomorrow too, kid,” he instructs. “I’ve got a story you might like.”
*****
Shige manages to finish that last sentence just as their manager shuffles into the dining room and announces that the car is here to take them to the Kyocera Dome. Some of the members grunt in disappointment to the abrupt end to story time, but are quick to comply regardless, because they have a full day ahead of them.
On the way out to the lobby however, Ryo does stop to punch Shige in the arm. “I was in that for like three seconds,” he says.
Shige holds his arm and stares. “You just said put you in it, you didn’t say how much screen time you wanted!”
Ryo snorts and looks at Shige like he’s an idiot. “Of course when someone asks you to put someone specific in a story it’s because they want that person to be the main character.”
“Not true,” Shige shoots back, gesturing to Massu and Koyama. “They ask me to tell stories all the time, but for some reason they know they aren’t really main character material. They don’t seem to mind.”
“If I’m in the background, no one notices when I slip out to get snacks,” Massu explains as he slides into the middle seat of the transport van.
“I like hearing about what everyone else is doing,” Koyama adds in his own defense as well. “Since I already know what I’m doing myself, ne.”
“Fiction!” Shige reminds them. “These are works of fiction!”
Koyama and Massu just shrug. “Yamapi and Ryo-chan are more main-character like anyway, don’t you think?”
The others nod in agreement.
Shige frowns. “What about me and Tegoshi?”
Tegoshi, nestling down next to Massu, looks as nonplussed as ever. “I like being a deus ex machina,” he ponders thoughtfully. “And I think Shige’s more of a reliable narrator type than a lead role type.”
Shige sighs. “So I’m destined to tell the story but never be the focus of the story?”
“Sounds about right,” the rest of NEWS says, in perfect unison.
Shige sits down and buckles his seatbelt. “You all suck.”
*****
Shige plans out all the details of the second story in that series while they are working that day, but as it turns out, the schedule is packed already and gets even worse as they make last minute concert adjustments before the shows are supposed to start. As it turns out, no one has a chance to breathe until after midnight that night, and disappointed at not getting to hear more of Shige’s stories, the others are shuttled off to the hotel half-asleep and given an eight am call time for tomorrow.
“I really wanted to hear Ryo-kun’s story,” Tegoshi admits sleepily in the elevator on the way to their rooms. “Can’t we hear it tonight?”
“It’s late and we have to get up in like, six hours,” Shige reminds him, and really doesn’t want to think under these conditions because his brain is fuzzy and who the hell can be expected to story tell like this? Every artist/writer/whatever is allowed to have an off-moment or two, aren’t they?
His groupmates turn the adorable idol eyes on him and clearly want more.
Shige sighs internally at their cute faces and does not dare say out loud that he loves them all way too much and that he is pretty sure that it is going to turn all his hair white or give him high-blood pressure or make him crazy one day.
“If people want to meet early for breakfast tomorrow,” he starts, as the car trudges along the measly few miles between the concert arena and the hotel, “I might be willing to tell a story after I’ve had coffee.”
“Yay!” NEWS cheers, satisfied with that. Shige eyes them all and thinks he can tell they’re all eagerly awaiting the arrival of tomorrow morning, like they think he’s creating stories for Christmas presents for them or something.
Shige gets back to his hotel room twenty minutes later and showers and brushes his teeth. Then he turns on his bedside lamp and pulls out his notebook and starts to write feverishly, because tomorrow his story is due and he has people who are not only looking forward to it, but are fully expecting it.
At four am, when he finally can set his pen and paper down and switch off the light, Shige closes his eyes, flops onto his side, and thinks that deadlines are the worst.
*****
But Shige manages to muddle through; it’s a lot like studying for exams, he notes, except that this time, the task had been voluntary (mostly), and all he can think as he trudges down to breakfast (early) the next morning is that his bastard groupmates better appreciate the thought and work and time that goes into creating his stories; he could have, after all, spent it doing more productive things, things like sleeping or working on organizing his photos or conditioning his skin properly.
But he feels a little bit gratified when he reaches the dining room and sees the rest of his groupmates already there, apparently eagerly awaiting his arrival in a not-quite-but-almost stalkerish way.
Koyama has even prepared a plate for him already, stacking it with things from the buffet that he knows Shige likes and making Shige coffee while Shige stumbles into a seat.
They even let him take a few bites of scrambled eggs before Ryo clears his throat and looks pointedly at the clock on the wall.
Shige sighs and wipes his mouth with a napkin.
“Okay, so the next day during the tour, young Yamashita-kun comes back at break time as instructed and finds all of NEWS already there waiting for him, because they apparently really love story time and can’t wait to hear Nishikido-kun tell his…”
*****
The Second Voyage of Sinbad (or Ryo Gets Stuck in a Hole)
Once, during his backup dancing junior days, Ryo had been working for V6 on their tour.
On this tour, there is a certain amount of special effects and stage stunts that the main performers and all of the backup dancers have to perform to make the visuals really pop (as the stage director puts it).
For one particular segment, a very small junior is required to crouch down in-between the cracks of the moving stages between songs, so that this very small junior can hand props through the cracks to the dancers at the appropriate times without being squashed by rotating scaffolding. It sounds complicated, but given that so many of Johnny’s Juniors are under the age of twelve and Japanese, it turns out that a lot of the kids fit the bill.
Slightly less however, are the number of juniors willing to spend a good deal of time scrunched up with his knees against his chest holding sparkly pimp canes or Sakamoto-san’s sequined tap-dancing shoes while the machinery behind the stages creaks and rotates ominously. As far as some of the kids are concerned, the stage could freeze because of a mechanical failure (as they often do) and they’d be trapped and unable to breathe and holding nothing but an embarrassing piece of costuming as they died.
Even worse, after crouching like that for a good twenty minutes, the junior from the hole is supposed to get up and run across the stage in the dark, so as to be ready and in line with all of the other kids in time for the beginning of the next series of songs.
It is a lot of extra work and trouble and no matter how exciting the staff members are trying to make it sound, even kids ages eight to eleven know a bum deal when they hear one.
The stage director asks for volunteers of course, and Ryo, sitting amongst some kids older and more experienced than him, expects one of them to want to earn points with their sempai and offer to do it.
But no one does.
It actually gets kind of awkward and horrible for a moment, as the older members of V6 stand in a line looking hopeful and kind of goofy in their stage outfits.
Eventually, Ryo sighs and raises his hand. “I’ll do it,” he says, voice still squeaky and high.
This earns him some appreciative looks from the V6 members (and a little squeal from Inohara-san about how cute he is), before he’s handed a couple of ridiculous ribbon and glitter-striped pimp canes and told to join V6 upstairs to rehearse that set.
Ryo clutches the canes and wonders what he’d just gotten himself into.
*****
The little nook underneath the rotating scaffolding is terrifying, and Ryo is pretty sure that there are regulations or labor laws against putting kids in contraptions like this because it will mangle them for life. But he’d volunteered, and he doesn’t want to look like a baby to anyone (or at least, even more like a baby to anyone since he gets mistaken for a five-year-old all the time), and gamely endures the many rehearsals (and pauses in rehearsals) so he can hand his sempai the stuff they need at just the right moments.
It is while he is squished in his tiny child-sized hole thinking about how the heck he’s going to get to the side entrance the juniors are supposed to use for the next set when he looks up and realizes that the way the different levels of the stage are rotating and rising, he can climb up and in-between each piece as it slides by where he’s crouched, kind of like he’s playing a Mario game except while only having one life to use and no magical growth mushrooms to help him along.
If he can make it up the three levels of risers from underneath the home-stage, then everything will be as simple as having to squeeze through a hole in the back curtain, slide along the darkened edge of the stage for a few feet, and from there, emerge at the front of the line of juniors waiting to parade onto stage like human props.
The other kids probably won’t like that very much, but Ryo figures that by then, after the whole crouching in a hole and handing out awful looking objects thing, the stage manager will let him do whatever the heck he wants, including being first in line out onto the platform, ahead of the kids that have been there longer than him. Especially if he just kind of shows up there while the manager is trying to organize them for their big entrance.
And so, during the night of the first show, Ryo finds himself being teased by the other juniors for being dumb enough to volunteer for such an awful job; Ryo hopes they never debut morons like this in his heart but keeps from saying anything too offensive out loud.
Instead Ryo does his job; he crawls into the space between the stage pieces and grasps those stupid canes and Sakamoto-san’s ugly-ass shoes, holding them tight against his chest as he pulls his knees up, ducks his head, and keeps out of the way of the sliding, floating, rising, sinking stage pieces as the members of V6 dance along on top of them. He dutifully hands out the canes to Coming Century when they do their little dance number, and in the meantime, turns to the second level of scaffolding that Sakamoto is crouching from, reaching up to hand the oldest V6 member his stupid shoes.
After that, while the two stages are switching places, he slides into the space between them, managing to slip out before they lock into place and landing lightly on the third stage as it lies in wait for the next song. He climbs up the railing to where the edge of the main-stage’s backdrop curtain touches the ground, slips through the small space between the wall and the curtain, and slides against it for two feet until he emerges right at the edge of the stage entrance, where the rest of the juniors are doing their final costume checks before lining up to go out onto the stage so that they can wave and look cute while confetti rains down from the rafters.
When the stage manager sees him there already, at the very front, he blinks in surprise and asks him how he got there so fast.
“Hard work,” is Ryo’s very vague, very sweet answer, and at the sound of that squeaky voice, the manager smiles, ruffles his hair, and says that hard workers deserve to be the first ones onto the stage. He even hands Ryo the basket full of Inohara-san’s signed balls and shikishi boards, because as the first one out, he’ll likely get his hand taken and paraded around the stage in full view of the audience and the cameras, unlike the other juniors who will just be lining the wings and clapping in time to the beat.
Ryo grins back, accepts the basket gracefully, and prepares himself for the spotlight.
END
*****
“So brave!” the other NEWS members marvel when they finish hearing Ryo’s story. Little Yamashita-kun looks impressed as well, sitting perched in Koyama’s lap and sipping on the soda that Masuda-kun had bought for him.
“That was really dangerous, wasn’t it?” the young junior asks after a moment, and can’t imagine what horrible things could have happened if his sempai had been off on his timing, jumping from stage to stage like that.
Ryo shrugs nonchalantly, which earns a chorus of “So cool!” from the other NEWS members. “You do what you have to do to get noticed,” Ryo tells Yamashita-kun. “The more difficult, the more bizarre, the more daring, the more people remember you later. I mean, Inohara-san has never forgotten my name.”
“Ah,” Yamashita-kun murmurs, and gets it. “So doing dangerous things gets you noticed.”
He feels Koyama go tense behind him. “Er, that’s not quite right, Yamashita-kun,” Koyama begins, even as Ryo gets an expression on his face that says that’s exactly what he means. “What Ryo-chan is trying to tell you is that sometimes, if you’re willing to do the more difficult work at the beginning when no one else will, you’ll set yourself apart from the crowd.”
“Or that,” Ryo agrees, on receiving one of Koyama’s significant looks.
Yamashita-kun finishes his soda and nods wisely. “That’s a good lesson,” he says, and makes the rest of the members all exclaim “Cute!” in the meantime.
But then the break is over and the members have to go back to practice, though not before Koyama reaches out to ruffle Yamashita-kun’s hair and say, “If you want to hear more stories about being an idol tomorrow, I think I’ve got one for you. It might not be as exciting as Ryo-chan’s though, since he and I aren’t the same kind of character, ne.”
Yamashita-kun, buoyed by all the attention he’s getting from his sempai, nods enthusiastically and promises that he will.
*****
“This Yamashita-kun character sure sounds adorable,” Koyama sighs, once Shige’s story is over and the remnants of his breakfast have gone cold. The others all agree as they get up to go and meet their manager in the lobby.
Ryo doesn’t look as pleased as everyone else though, and pokes Shige in the ribs. “That was definitely not your best work, man.”
Shige sputters. “I only got three hours of sleep!” he protests, in his defense. “And you were the main character, so why are you complaining?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t like I got a lot of good dialogue. It was more like you were just listing all the stuff I did.”
Shige groans. “Look, there are certain parameters I need to stay within, okay? But I thought the narrative for this story fit you. It’s not like you talk that much in real life anyway.”
Ryo thinks about that. “Okay yeah, but since you’re making it up why don’t you go ahead and make me cooler?”
“Ryo-chan is too cool already!” Koyama pipes up, arm intertwined with Tegoshi’s as they walk side-by-side. “If Shige made him any more cool it would be painful for us normal people to listen to.”
“I think Ryo-kun’s awkwardness is endearing,” Tegoshi adds, unhelpfully. “It makes him feel very lovable to the audience that way, even if the way Shige makes him talk in his stories might make people think that Ryo-kun is kind of mean.”
Shige looks disbelievingly at Tegoshi. “Why would you say that?”
Tegoshi shrugs. “You seem to think Ryo-kun is a little smug, Shige.”
“He is!” Shige blurts, and earns himself a punch in the arm from Ryo.
“He is to me,” Shige amends, rubbing his arm darkly.
Ryo nods. “But I’m always nice to Tegoshi.”
Tegoshi thinks about this. “That’s true. Even when you tease me, I can feel the warmth in it!”
Ryo gets embarrassed. “Okay let’s not talk about this anymore and go to work, okay? Otherwise I’ll get annoyed, and Shige won’t tell us Koyama’s story at lunch.”
Shige blinks. “What makes you say that?”
Ryo smirks and claps him on the shoulder. “Because you only seem to want to tell a story to keep me from yelling at people.”
Shige has the grace to blush a little, while the rest of NEWS suddenly finds the hotel lobby decorations fascinating. Ryo just keeps talking. “Besides, you have to make up for this morning’s story failure. We know you can do better than that.”
“You can do it, Shige!” the others chime in at that moment right on cue, in an automatic, endearingly clueless (and very NEWS-ish) sort of way.
Shige sighs. “Right, and with Koyama as the lead.”
Ryo’s grin turns a little bit sharp around the edges.
*****
At around lunchtime, Shige sits down to eat the catering bentos that had arrived for the members, scarfing down as much of his food as possible before the others arrive to join him. He also starts to think about how he is going to tell Koyama’s story, because the original third voyage had been kind of heavy on the action and Koyama is more of a talker than anything else; it’s especially hard, he thinks, because there just aren’t a lot of man-eating one-eyed ogres in Japan.
And so he eats as fast as he can and thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and it isn’t until he hears footsteps echoing down the corridor towards the dining room that he comes up with an idea that just might work.
Shige congratulates himself on being kind of a last-minute literary genius when the inspiration strikes, just as the rest of NEWS stumbles into the room and settles down with their lunches in a semi-circle around him.
“You look happy, Shige!” Yamapi declares as he starts to munch on his salad. “Is your story funny?”
“Kind of,” Shige answers, and crosses his legs on his chair. “I mean, it is about Koyama, so...”
*****
The Third Voyage of Sinbad (or Koyama Plans Ahead)
In his junior days, Koyama remembers an incident where he and the rest of the juniors in his experience bracket are told to prepare for an interview for the Johnny’s Junior section of one of the myriad idol magazines that come out every month; the manager in charge of their schedules tells them to be particularly vigilant because the person they are going to get interviewed by is named Sasagawa Ryuuichi-san, and he is a hard-hitting, bitter-looking older reporter who had originally been an on-location reporter during the Gulf War, but who had to stop stressful work like that because of the PTSD he had developed after the soldiers he had been stationed with were attacked on a military convoy from one strange-sounding desert capital to another.
And so now he takes medication to help him sleep and interviews idols because he enjoys scaring the crap out of them by being deliberately cold during his sessions and scaring people by showing them his glass eye and telling the story of how he had been hit and blinded by a stray piece of shrapnel during the attack on his convoy.
The manager tells them to just be professional and try not to look scared; apparently Sasagawa-san can smell fear.
Koyama and the other juniors are already suitably terrified from just hearing that of course, and for the rest of the day, the teenagers have a burning image of a furious one-eyed, man-eating monster in the backs of their minds, a monster that will have the convenience of locking them all in a small room tomorrow afternoon, just before dinner time.
When they leave for the night, most of those other juniors just grimly think that this will be their last night on earth before they end up being eaten alive one at a time by a giant angry Cyclops. They hope that their mothers have prepared something delicious for dinner tonight, if it’s to be their last meal.
Koyama, who very much enjoys life and living and working as an idol, is the only one to go home not thinking about death so much as trying to figure out a way to survive the ordeal. He eats dinner quickly, then goes to turn on his computer and do a Google search on famous former war correspondent Sasagawa Ryuuichi-san.
He ends up staying up a little later than he should doing this research, especially considering that he’s got a math test in first period tomorrow morning, but at the end of the night he has written down a bunch of notes, some phone numbers, and a few very specific instructions on a piece of post-it that make him feel like his hours had been well spent. Then he ends the night by scrounging up all the allowance and pay from odd jobs from the jimusho that he’d managed to save up for the last month and putting it in his wallet for the next day.
In other words, he has a plan that might keep people from getting eaten.
*****
The next afternoon after classes are out, Koyama takes the train to the studio where the interview is being conducted and on the way, makes an important call on his cell phone to one of the few Persian restaurants in Tokyo, asking for delivery at a certain time to a certain room in the studio. He offers to pay by cash and tip generously so long as the delivery comes on time, and by the time all of the particulars are sorted out he finds himself at the station directly in front of the studios.
He takes a deep breath and goes inside, where he finds several of the others already waiting, trying to put on brave, idol-like faces to show Johnny-san and the rest of the staff that they are indeed, debuting-type material and that all the other kids, the ones who had played sick and stayed home today, are not the types the jimusho can count on to be reliable celebrities in the future.
Koyama thinks everyone looks a little bit pale anyway.
Then, right as the clock chimes four-thirty, Sasagawa-san arrives just in time, and the sight of him is more terrifying in person than it ever could have been in a bunch of teenaged boys’ imaginations. Sasagawa-san is easily over six feet tall and looks as if he had trained with the American army rather than just follow them around and report on them. His face sports several long scars, presumably from the bombs that had been thrown at his Humvee, and as the manager had described yesterday, he has one seeing eye-sharp and cold and intelligent-while his left-eye socket houses a glass eye that rolls awkwardly with each of his movements and makes him look like he’s staring at you no matter what part of the room you’re standing in.
Several brave idol-faces out and out disappear. Some of the younger juniors present even start and try to duck behind the sofa.
Sasagawa-san grins darkly at the thick film of fear that settles in the room, like it’s the appetizer to the feast that Johnny’s jimusho has brought for him today.
The door closes behind him with an ominous click.
And then he reaches out, points to Oyamada-kun to Koyama’s immediate left, before bellowing, in a deep, gravely sort of voice, “Let’s start with you.”
Everyone looks at Oyamada-kun with profound pity as he steps forward on reluctant, shaking legs.
*****
“So you want to become an idol because it will make you popular? Do you really think that’s how it works or do you think that maybe, just maybe, people become idols because they’re already popular? There’s something that Johnny and his team has to see in someone, after all, that makes them believe that this is the type of person who people will willingly follow, who can sell product. The popular kids have already demonstrated this kind of ability, don’t you think?”
Oyamada-kun quavers as he is filleted alive on the spit of Sasagawa-san’s biting commentary. “Maybe?” he answers, knees still knocking together even as he sits on the couch opposite Sasagawa-san.
The reporter rolls his eyes. “Great, a firm and original thinker. You’re going to get eaten alive, kid.”
Everyone in the room gasps.
Sasagawa-san doesn’t seem to notice. “You have this toady-like quality, Oyamada. I feel like the goal of being an idol is beyond you. You’d probably do better to serve in the Diet or something, where mindless ass-kissing is expected from everyone. You ever think about politics?”
“I’m not old enough to vote,“ Oyamada-kun points out, voice tinny and broken.
Sasagawa-san glares as he scribbles in his notepad; the force with which his pen is moving makes the juniors feel sorry for the paper. “Yeah, and that’s an excuse for total ignorance. Have you ever had an original thought in your life?”
“Um…o-once I thought it would be cool if someone invented a robot that could turn trash into butterflies,” he poses, hopefully.
Sasagawa-san growls in annoyance and rips the sheet of paper out of his notebook before crumbling it and tossing it over his shoulder. “I can’t print anything you say. You’re dead to me, Oyamada.” He snaps his fingers and points to the back of the room, towards the corner where the garbage can is. “Go sit over there.”
Oyamada actually looks grateful as he gets up and practically sprints to the exact point in the room that Sasagawa-san’s index finger is indicating, right in-between the trash can and the overflowing blue recycling bin.
And then Sasagawa-san’s eyes go back to the rest of the juniors. And this time, even Koyama shrinks back a little bit. He checks his watch nervously.
Sasagawa-san notices; it must be those hard-hitting reporter instincts. “You got somewhere else you need to be, kid?” he asks, smelling blood in the water.
Koyama takes a deep breath. “No, I just… there’s supposed to be a…”
As if on cue, there is a gentle knock on the door. “Kabob delivery!” it announces, cheerfully.
Sasagawa-san looks confused, and Koyama takes advantage of the reporter’s surprise to rush to the door and open it and basically throw a wad of cash at the delivery guy before grabbing the containers full of what many hours of Google-stalking had revealed as Sasagawa-san’s favorite food.
Koyama takes the bag and hastens back to the couch, where Sasagawa-san now looks slightly less surprised and a little more wary. “You had your dinner delivery scheduled during your interview?” he asks, and sounds like he’s going to go off another scathing lecture about how Koyama will never make it as a professional.
Koyama quickly thrusts the bag at him. “Well, since this interview is supposed to go until dinner time, I thought it might be nice if I bought some food for everyone to share so that it would be a more pleasant experience. I read somewhere that Sasagawa-san likes kabob a lot, and since I’ve never had it-and I’m sure the others haven’t had a lot of it either-you could show us how to eat and appreciate it at the same time.”
Sasagawa-san looks at Koyama thoughtfully. “You read somewhere?”
Koyama looks sheepish. “I read some of your articles about your travels through the Mediterranean and the Middle East,” he explains. “You seemed to mention that you enjoyed the food very much in a couple of them so…”
Sasagawa-san actually grins. “Picked up on that, huh? You one of those? The observant types?”
Koyama can feel all of the other juniors’ eyes on him at Sasagawa-san’s slight mood improvement, the other teens looking at him like he’s going to be the one who manages to save them all. “I just like understanding other people,” Koyama manages, around a small, anxious smile.
Sasagawa-san, for some unknown reason, bursts out laughing as he unknots the delivery bag full of good-smelling meat and pulls out a few sticks, apparently blindsided by Koyama’s honest emotions and even more honest words. “You ever consider becoming a reporter instead, kid?” he asks, and tears onto a fleshy bit of beef from a shish kabob.
Koyama honestly answers that he’s not sure if he’d do well in a warzone, but that he’d like very much to travel and meet people and try new things. “So I guess maybe an idol is a good place to start for someone like me,” he admits, and earns more of Sasagawa-san’s laughter as the reporter pulls out a fresh sheet of paper on his notepad and starts scribbling at it in between the two of them chatting aimlessly and tearing off bites of food from their meat-on-a-stick. Koyama manages to pass the bag around to some of the other juniors to try, and before long, Sasagawa-san is singing the praises of having actual Persian food in the Middle East and how this is close, but not quite the same. Koyama feels like he ends up asking the older man at least as many questions as Sasagawa-san asks him during the interview time, and as the two hours they have scheduled for the appearance start to while by, the atmosphere slowly starts to turn pleasant, even as some of the juniors have to excuse themselves because their parents are here to pick them up, or they have other work or rehearsals scheduled.
Before long it is half-past seven and Koyama and Sasagawa-san are forced to part ways because the room is scheduled for use for another interview, and as they rise to leave, the one-eyed man-eating monster Koyama had had nightmares about the night before reaches out to shake his hand and say, “I hope you make it as an idol, Koyama-kun. You’ve got something bright about you that even makes an old hat like me feel a bit blinded when I see it.”
Koyama, embarrassed, simply bows in respect and thanks Sasagawa-san for having him and the other members of Johnny’s jimusho this afternoon.
They both leave to go home after that, and some months later, in what is supposed to be the “Fresh-Faced Junior ” section of one of the many idol magazines, Koyama finds his picture and his picture only, followed by a surprisingly cheerful profile, lots of quotes with hearts in them, and a personal message caption from Sasagawa-san telling magazine readers to keep an eye on Koyama-kun’s achievements in the future.
Even Johnny takes a moment in the hallway to pause and congratulate Koyama on defeating the Cyclops with nothing but a couple of pieces of roasted flesh on sharp, pointy sticks that day, and as Koyama watches Johnny amble off down the corridor afterwards, he can’t help but think that beyond just saving his life, being prepared for Sasagawa-san might just have gotten him onto Johnny-san’s radar on top of everything else.
Pleased, he pads off to go write Sasagawa-san a thank you note for his kind words.
END
*****
And so Koyama finishes his story with a smile that says despite how scared he’d been and how much extra work he’d had to do, the memory he is sharing is a fond one now, after all these years.
Young Yamashita-kun can’t help but wonder if that means one day, he’ll look back on having to carry a feather boa twice as long as he is while wearing a sequin-covered silver tuxedo and trying to remember the stroke order for the characters on his upcoming kanji test will one day seem less horrible to him.
“I guess what I’m trying to say, Yamashita-kun,” Koyama begins, when he sees the child’s attention start to drift away from them, “is that if you can be prepared ahead of time for something, then it might not be as difficult as you think it is later. So maybe this hard stuff you have to do now can be made easier if you plan to make it easier first.”
Yamashita-kun supposes that makes sense too, though he politely refrains from asking about how one plans ahead for a six-foot purple and gold feather boa.
“I think you lost him, Kei-chan,” Tegoshi’s voice rings in next, sweet and melodic and just shy of childish as well. Tegoshi smiles and crouches down next to where Yamashita-kun is seated in Koyama’s lap. “If you want, I can be the one to tell you a story tomorrow, Yamashita-kun.”
Yamashita-kun, beguiled by those eyes-they feel as if they’re telling him all sorts of juicy secrets just for the two of them-finds himself nodding automatically at the youngest NEWS member’s happy invitation.
Pleased, Tegoshi reaches out to ruffle Yamashita-kun’s hair in an entirely familiar way. “It’s a date then!”
Yamashita-kun inexplicably feels himself blush.
*****
Silence.
Shige crosses his arms. “Okay so what are you going to complain about now?” he asks his groupmates accusatorily, after the story is done and out there and he awaits feedback. He already has a bunch of explanations planned for why he’d done things the way he did, because apparently, this whole storytelling shtick makes you paranoid and defensive afterwards. It probably has something to do with taking something new and small and dear to you and being forced to present it to the harsh light of the world or something, where everyone can scrutinize and judge it. He thinks maybe this is the type of thing that can make you as sensitive to other people’s words as being an idol can.
After a moment, his groupmates grin. “That seems like something Koyama would definitely do,” Massu poses first, and looks at Koyama in a way that makes Shige wonder if Massu actually believes that the eldest member had pulled off that kind of genius escape plan.
Koyama blushes. “I don’t think I would have been that bold, ne,” he says, “though it’s nice to know that Shige and you guys seem to think I could.”
Shige relaxes a little. “Well, good. It was kind of hard trying to do the right parallels, given the parameters,” he starts, because he kind of wants to discuss the meta behind the story all the same.
Then Tegoshi says, “I feel it could have used a little more build up to the final action though, all things considered. Kei-chan is a talking hero in it, but it doesn’t feel like there was enough tension accumulating to make it seem like a great feat. Maybe if you’d had more juniors eaten by Sasagawa-san before Kei-chan stepped in instead of just one. Three is the magic number in these types of things, isn’t it?”
Shige frowns again. “Who says?” he demands, slightly touchy.
Tegoshi shrugs and doesn’t seem to notice. “Jung, I think.”
“Okay, shut up, or I’m going to make your story lame,” Shige tells him.
Ryo’s next words make the threat fall flat on its face. “Then he’ll just go to sleep again in the middle of it, stupid.”
“I promise to stay awake,” Tegoshi vows solemnly, and somehow, gets everyone to praise him for being noble like that.
Shige is almost annoyed, but then Tegoshi reaches out, wraps his arms around Shige and says, “And I’ll make sure rehearsal goes smoothly too, so we can hear it, okay?”
It sounds like he really, really wants this story to happen, despite his lukewarm reception to the last installment he’d been the lead in. Though admittedly, Shige might have stretched the characterization that first one a little bit, to get Tegoshi’s narrative to fit within the framework he’d set up.
Shige grudgingly tells himself he’ll do better with the OOC on the next go round.
*****
However, Shige’s planning time is dramatically reduced that night, when the members finish rehearsals hungry and tired and Ryo offers to take them to this yakiniku place he knows.
“Yay, hometown advantage!” the other members cheer when the offer is put out, and hurry to shower and get ready for barbequed meat, beer, and Shige’s next story.
Shige has to come up with an outline in his head while he’s in the shower next to a Koyama and Tegoshi pair that is naked, soapy, and cheerfully chanting, “Yakiniku, yakiniku!” together the entire time they are washing. To Shige’s left, Yamapi scrubs under his arms and joins in the merrymaking by obligingly chanting “Shige!” in-between Koyama and Tegoshi’s cries, like a slightly-off key but considerably enthusiastic sub-chorus.
Shige hurries out of the shower to go and look some things up on his phone.
*****
The sizzling of the grill and the smell of meat continues to waft through the air as five of six NEWS members settle on one side of the room and Massu does his customary clean-up work of finishing off any of the unfinished food from their dinners, while cheerfully talking about dessert in the meantime.
Ryo drinks beer languidly, tells Massu to order whatever he wants, and instead of helping their group’s big-eater decide whether he wants ice cream or cake afterward, turns to Shige and bumps his younger groupmate’s cheek with his Sapporo bottle. “Get talking,” he instructs, and might be a little bit buzzed.
“Story time!” Koyama cheers, and if Ryo is pretty buzzed then Koyama is half-drunk. “Tell us what Yamashita-kun learns next, Shige!”
Massu keeps cooking but perks an ear in their direction, Tegoshi looks half-asleep but gamely willing to listen, and Shige, by no means still sober himself, feels a rush of confidence when he sees how attentive his group is, even after imbibing too much alcohol and eating too much meat.
“Okay,” he begins, around a small belch that sends Koyama and Yamapi into a string of inexplicable giggles, “So the next day, when Yamashita-kun comes back during the break, he sits in Koyama’s lap just like always, and Tegoshi sits on the staircase, looking down at everyone gathered around him. He smiles, takes a deep breath and says…
*****
The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad (or Tegoshi Shows Some Discipline)
This is a story that happens when Tegoshi is nineteen, which, in comparison to the others’ stories, is far removed from his junior days. But even as a debuted idol he is considerably lacking in terms of worldliness and experience compared to some people who are still juniors. He is good at making friends and getting older women to compliment him, but in regards with how to act in the entertainment networking industry he often finds himself at a loss and in his attempts to make contacts in the celebrity world he is sometimes overly obliging, especially when it comes to those who are much older than him and whom he admires very much.
And so, on one night after the filming for a music show with Tegomassu, Tegoshi finds himself being invited out by some of the other guests on the show, people who he knows a little bit and whose fan he has been ever since he’d been in primary school. And so he agrees readily, even as Massu politely declines in order to make it home in time for his mother’s home-cooked dinner.
Thus it’s only Tegoshi out with these glamorous rock stars for the night, and they take him to dinner and to karaoke and then later to the club, where the bouncers don’t check his ID because he’s coming in with the band, and celebrities are often held to different standards than your everyday Joe off the street.
Tegoshi likes dinner and karaoke well enough, and the club has an exciting atmosphere and everyone inside is pleasant to look at. His industry sempai even book a private series of rooms in the back of the club’s vast and maze-like VIP section so that they can sit and talk and do even more karaoke while cute waitresses fall into their laps for big tips or autographs and the rooms’ private bartenders just keep the most expensive drinks they have coming, like they’re on tap or something and not two-hundred USD a bottle.
Something that costs 4,000 yen a shot gets pushed into Tegoshi’s hands in the melee and no matter how much he protests (or declares that he’s underage), no one seems to listen, as if they’ve already had far too much and are walking through the evening in a pleasant, drunken haze. Some of the other underage performers from the show helplessly begin to imbibe upon the rockers’ encouragement, and before long those kids seem to be even worse off than the seasoned drinkers, grinning and red-faced and laughing merrily along like nothing is wrong.
Tegoshi waits until he is certain no one is looking before sliding the still-full shot glass onto the tray of a passing waitress.
But the faster he disposes of the drinks the quicker the refills seem to come, and before long it is after midnight and Tegoshi is fairly certain that being here is dangerous, no matter how much he admires this group and no matter how fun it is to hear them praise his singing skills when he does covers of their songs on the machine. Part of him wants to stay and trade cell phone numbers with everyone and stumble home together, while the other part of him knows from past experiences that this is the sort of thing that can kill burgeoning careers even at their height.
He decides to leave just after 12:30, but the problem is, he’s pretty sure the person who had offered to drive him home afterwards is stinking drunk right now, and currently trying to belt out an awful Engrish version of Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and failing to keep the beat miserably.
He waits until the waitress comes back with fried squid and pizza for the table before dropping all the cash he has in his wallet into one of the band members’ pockets and sneaking out of the door while the others are too preoccupied with amazing food that will make them fat to notice.
But when he gets back out into the hallway he can’t, for the life of him, remember how to get back out again, because this place is huge and he hadn’t exactly been paying attention while basking under the praise of his sempai on the way in.
So he crouches outside the door to their room and waits.
A few minutes later the waitress emerges again and Tegoshi secretly follows her, doing his best to keep out of her line of sight so that she won’t be able to talk about him sneaking out of the club before the rest of his party like an ungrateful brat, and before long, he’s back on the main floor and lost in the crush of people dancing their brains out to European techno-music that’s so loud it makes the walls throb. He knows because he’s sliding along the perimeter of the club with his back against the wall like some sort of creeper, trying to keep his eyes down and his jacket zipped up so that no one will notice him. It’s one of the few times he’s happy to be less well-known than Yamapi and Ryo; he manages to make it out the side door in about fifteen minutes without anyone noticing or caring.
Then he walks briskly for a quarter mile until he’s in front of a reputable late-night tea house, buys a milk tea on credit, and calls a cab.
He gets home well after two, stumbles into bed, and decides that as much as he might respect rock stars, he definitely wouldn’t be able to live like one.
The next morning, he wakes up and goes to work, only to get an earful from his manager upon arriving for hanging out with “unsavory types” after yesterday’s filming.
“What happened?” Tegoshi asks, blinking blearily as he fights off a yawn from his late night antics.
His manager waves a gossip magazine in his face with a picture of the party he’d been with last night, as those underage performers are caught red-handed by the police and being ripped apart by the writers for irresponsible celebrity behavior. Tegoshi winces. “That sucks,” he says.
“Well, don’t hang out with them again,” his manager grouses. “Good thing you left before it got to this, right?”
Tegoshi coughs and suddenly doesn’t feel sleepy anymore. “Right. Can we go work now?”
His manager, thrilled at the teenager’s rare early-morning enthusiasm, agrees that that’s a good idea and hustles Tegoshi along.
END
*****
When Tegosh finishes his harrowing story, Yamashita-kun looks at him with wide-eyes and asks, “Pop stars are allowed to hang out with rock stars?”
Tegoshi shrugs. “Yup.”
“Not the point at all,” Shige reminds them, sounding a bit like a schoolmaster or something. “That was not the point at all, Yamashita-kun.”
The youngster looks properly chastised when Shige uses that tone. “Er, then what was the point?”
Everyone looks at Tegoshi, but Tegoshi is checking messages on his phone and exclaiming excitedly to Massu that Hyde-san is asking if he wants to play golf tomorrow.
Shige sighs. “I think the point was that sometimes there are fun things that you want to do or that you feel entitled to do that you know are bad. If you’re going to live in the public eye, you have to avoid these types of things and discipline yourself.”
“That’s it exactly, Shige!” Tegoshi exclaims, while putting his phone back into the pocket.
Yamashita-kun looks like he understands. “Oh! Well, thank you for telling me that, Tegoshi-kun!”
Tegoshi beams. “No problem!”
“Don’t take all the good parts!” Shige complains, and earns a round of laughter from the rest of his group.
But then Massu interrupts, looking hopeful. “Eh, if we’re taking turns then it means my turn is up next, right?”
“Or mine,” Shige says, “But part of me feels like maybe we should end strong.”
Massu gives him a strange look. Shige reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. “That means it’s cool for you to go next.”
Massu beams. “Neat!” He turns to Yamashita-kun. “So if you want, tomorrow I’ll tell you another story that’s important to me, ne.”
Yamashita-kun nods eagerly. “Of course!”
And so the break ends again for the day, and NEWS and the juniors all return to work, looking forward to what absurdities Massu might have in store for them the following afternoon.
*****
Shige finishes the story of the Fourth Voyage and looks around expectantly. Tegoshi is not asleep this time at least, so Shige counts it as a victory, even at the slightly awkward expressions on everyone’s faces.
“What?” he asks, when even Koyama kind of gives him a shifty look.
Koyama coughs. “You know how all the members feel about,” he begins, lowering his voice awkwardly, “under-aged drinking.”
Shige stares. “You can’t be serious.”
Koyama continues to look shifty, as does everyone else. Massu even puts down his spoonful of ice-cream covered cake.
“Oh c’mon. It is not too soon to be talking about that!” Shige shouts. “It’s been years.”
The others seem to disagree. “Too soon,” they say, and under their pouty, slightly disapproving looks, Shige sighs and gives up; he promises that the next story won’t have any touchy subject matter like that if it really bothers them so much.
He secretly thinks censorship for fanfiction is kind of stupid, though.
*****
The following morning the cycle repeats itself; they wake up early and meet for breakfast, and as Massu stocks up on everyone’s leftover bacon and scrambled eggs after they’ve finished eating, attentions drift towards Shige around the table and Shige, after working into the later hours preparing his next story, clears his throat, sits up a little straighter, and begins his story with an air of confidence that can only come from having done this so many times before.
“And so the next day, Yamashita-kun came back to their special spot under the main stage and waited for NEWS to join him again, curious as to what kind of story a cheerful guy like Masuda-kun would tell him…”
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