[drabble] Learning from the Best
Title: Learning from the Best (Alternative Title: 5 lessons Hey!Say!JUMP learned from Arashi + 1 that actually worked)
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: None, but slight slight Okajima and Ohmiya if you squint really hard.
Genre: Crack
Rating: PG
Summary: Chinen insists that learning from Arashi's secrets of success will make JUMP equally successful. Everybody else disagrees.
Notes: For the JUMP fic-a-thon, prompt #114: 5 lessons Hey!Say!JUMP learned from Arashi + 1 that actually worked. (Not the original prompt, but slightly modified.)
Timeline may be slightly confusing - this is set in 2010, including the plus-one and epilogue. Only the end part of the fifth lesson is set in 2011.
For reference, in case you might be curious: this is a double parka. (on the left.)
~
lesson one: rainbows. the answer to everything.
Chinen comes in that day bouncing up and down and blubbering something along the lines of ‘concert’ and ‘balloons’ and ‘acapella’.
Yamada and the rest of 7 just stare as he zips around the room, spazzing to everybody about how amazing Arashi’s performance of 5x10 had been at their Kokuritsu concert.
“Apparently Ohno-kun gave him the DVD,” Takaki sighs, coming in after Chinen. “He watched it last night.”
“They turned off the lights and sang that line acapella!” Chinen says, flailing his arms like a windmill. “And then all the balloons came out in their image colours and it was so pretty-”
“I wonder what makes them so popular,” Daiki muses.
Chinen’s screech of “Because they’re perfect!” is ignored, and the rest of BEST contemplates this. After all, if they can crack the secrets of Arashi’s success they might be able to apply the tips to their own group.
“I know!” Hikaru pipes up. “They have image colours! Most of the senpai groups have image colours, maybe that’s why they’re so popular.”
Inoo, sitting in a corner leafing through his Architecture textbook, is tempted to point out the lack of logical connection between image colours and popularity, but Chinen beats him to the punch.
“We should get image colours too!” he cries. “Then we’ll be cool like Arashi!”
JUMP agrees to this idea, but half an hour later Yabu begins to regret it.
“I’m red,” Yamada insists. “There’s no way I can’t be red, it’s the colour of strawberries!”
“I’m blue,” Chinen yells from where he’s making a shopping list of Arashi concert goods to buy. “The same colour as Ohno-kun!”
“Green for me,” Ryutaro calls, never taking his eyes off his DS screen.
Yuto blinks and pouts at the sudden lack of all the manly colours in the rainbow.
“I’m black,” Keito says mildly from beside Yuto.
“That’s not even in the rainbow, Keito!”
“There are only 7 colours in the rainbow anyway,” retorts Keito, and Chinen shuts up.
“I wanted blue!” Hikaru pouts.
Chinen rolls his eyes.
“You can be turquoise or something. But nobody is taking Ohno-kun’s blue except me!”
“I could be a different shade of blue?” Hikaru tries, and Chinen scowls.
“Turquoise,” he insists, and scribbles it down on the notepad where he’s keeping track of everybody’s image colours.
Hikaru sulks, and Yabu sighs.
“I wanted red,” he says dryly. “But you don’t see me throwing a tantrum, do you?”
“Yabu-kun can have orange!” Yamada says, and before Yabu can protest it has been written down.
Yuto finally decides his colour.
“Brown, please.”
“Too late, Takaki already took that,” Chinen informs him, scanning the notepad without a trace of apology in his voice. “You could have pink, if you want.”
“Give that to Inoo-kun, not me!” Yuto makes a face.
Chinen mumbles absentmindedly, scratching out something on his notepad.
“You’re white, then.”
Shrugging, Yuto returns to sleeping on Keito’s shoulder. It’s not like he has much of a choice anyway.
“Alright!” Chinen yells after a while more of confusion. “I’m going to read out the colours now.”
There is a murmur of general assent around the room.
“Yabu-kun, orange. Yama-chan, red. Me, blue. Hikaru-kun, turquoise. Ryutaro, green. Keito, black, Yuto, white. Inoo-kun, pink. Takaki-kun, brown. Dai-chan, gray.”
Daiki splutters.
“Why am I gray?”
Chinen shrugs.
“You were slow.”
~
A couple of hours later the notepad has been misplaced in the voluminous depths of Yamada’s bag, never to be seen again, and everybody except Chinen and Yamada have forgotten their colours.
lesson two: people love great personalities.
“I know another reason why Arashi’s popular,” Chinen pipes up a few days later. “They have really good personalities.”
“That’s true.”
“So, we should get great personalities too!”
Yamada stares at Chinen and the maniacal glint in his eyes, and sighs.
“Oh god, no,” Ryutaro groans, but it’s too late. Chinen has already whipped out an outfit with a director’s hat and a toothbrush moustache, and has put them on. Ryutaro realizes with a jolt that it’s scarily similar to what he remembers seeing Ohno Satoshi wearing on Chinen’s D no Arashi DVD while directing the new opening of D no Arashi at a live event.
“We can confine this project within 7 for the time being,” Chinen says, attempting to sound authoritative. “So if it fails BEST doesn’t scold us.”
Yuto opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again.
“I will be Ohno-kun, of course.”
“Wait,” Ryutaro interrupts. “Are we getting ‘great personalities’ or just ripping off Arashi?”
Chine rolls his eyes.
“Obviously we’re learning from their great personalities, duh. You can be Matsumoto-kun.”
Ryutaro’s mouth falls open.
“But why?” he wails.
“You’re the youngest,” Chinen snipes back, before Ryutaro can start protesting that he fits Ninomiya-kun’s personality and all.
“Chinen, shouldn’t Yamada be Ohno-kun? They really resemble each other…”
Chinen pouts, but gives this idea further thought.
“We~ll,” he says at last. “Yama-chan can be Ohno-kun, because I love Ohno-kun and I love Yama-chan. Then I’ll be Ninomiya-kun because he clings to Ohno-kun all the time.”
Yamada doesn’t say anything, but just continues chewing away at his strawberry Hi-Chew.
“Yuto-kun can be Aiba-kun.”
Yuto blinks.
“Me? Aiba-kun?”
“You’re both crazy,” shrugs Chinen. “And Keito can be Sakurai-kun because he’s your best friend that keeps you in line.”
Yuto isn’t even given the opportunity to protest against being labeled ‘crazy’, and in the end he just gives up.
This plan works well, until it is revealed how well Chinen actually knows Ninomiya’s personality and habits, despite being an Ohno freak.
“Yabu! Do something!” Takaki shrieks, stomping into the dressing room the next morning.
Yabu blinks up at Takaki sleepily.
“Wha’ppened?”
“Chinen!” Takaki almost screeches like a vulture, startling Inoo from where he is fast asleep on the sofa. “I put in money to get my morning coffee but before I could press the button he just waltzed in and pressed another button! For his drink! He stole my money!”
“Eh, coffee isn’t that expensive,” Hikaru grumbles, annoyed by the loud volume of Takaki’s voice.
“He stole it!”
The rest of BEST doesn’t reply, because they’re fast asleep again - 5 in the morning is a cruel time to wake up for PV shooting - so Takaki decides to take it upon himself to deliver revenge.
Chinen later finds his bag full of sticky hair gel, along with a note.
Drop the brat act, or next time it will be your secret stash of Arashi magazines drowning in hair gel.
By afternoon Plan Super-Personality has been called off.
lesson three: fanservice is the key.
“Arashi all love each other,” Chinen says. “That’s why the fans all love them too. Maybe if we show some member-ai we’ll get more fans.”
JUMP is not convinced, even after Chinen shows them various evidences of member-ai, ranging from Sakurai-kun’s confession to Aiba-kun in D no Arashi to Matsumoto-kun and Ninomiya-kun sharing mics, and even the infamous Ohmiya SK skits and Ninomiya-kun kissing Ohno-kun - on the lips! - at the end of Hero during the Time summer concert.
“Fine,” Chinen huffs.
JUMP thinks he’s dropped the subject - because honestly, while Arashi members love each other enough to kiss each other the JUMP members feel weird even thinking about kissing another guy - but they’ve forgotten Yamada crumbles easily under Chinen’s puppy eyes.
Everybody freaks out when Yamada and Chinen nearly kiss at the TEN JUMP concert, and Yabu later scolds Chinen for making the band go deaf with the screams of fangirls.
lesson four: you need a strong debut song.
“Maybe it’s their debut song,” Chinen muses.
Keito blinks.
“Eh?”
“You know, Arashi’s debut song? You are my soul, soul?”
Keito nods slowly, not looking forward to another Chinen-idea.
“Well,” Chinen says. “It pretty much sounds like We own your soul, soul, doesn’t it? That’s how they got so many fans, by proclaiming ownership over their souls.”
Not having the heart to tell Chinen that the two phrases do not in fact sound alike in the slightest, Keito just shrugs.
“So why don’t we modify our debut song to make it suck in fans?”
~
Yabu looks at the modified lyrics of Ultra Music Power, growing more and more horrified as he reaches the chorus.
“Humping to my dream?!” he explodes, the tips of his ears red.
“Fangirls would like it,” Chinen replies, and Yabu can only sigh.
“No, Chinen,” he says firmly.
“But-”
“No.”
“We need to control the fangirls’ souls-”
“Johnny will have our souls if this ever gets leaked out of this room. Are we clear?”
Chinen scowls.
“Fine.”
lesson five: television shows are essential.
Chinen is running out of ideas, but he isn’t giving up anytime soon.
“I think perhaps it’s because they have so many TV shows!” he says one day in the dressing room. “They can spread their influence on the TV waves.”
Inoo just sighs.
“So what, we should get one?”
Chinen nods like a bobblehead.
“Arashi just asked for a TV show and they got one! We should do that too!”
“In case you’ve forgotten, they got a show investigating peoples’ claims-”
“Which led to stuff like Shiyagare and VS Arashi of today!” Chinen shoots back, adamant.
Grumbling, Inoo turns to look for Yabu to try and persuade Chinen not to beg for a show, but the second his back is turned Chinen has scampered off.
~
He comes back a while later, after being reprimanded for ‘whining’ to Johnny-san about wanting a variety show. He is sulky and inconsolable until a year later when their manager informs them JUMP will band together with the Johnny’s Jr. and have a new show called ‘Yan Yan JUMP’.
Everyone is surprised, and Chinen goes around being superior and smug about his victory (that nobody remembers), until they film a few episodes and all get sick of playing the handball game.
“At least C no Arashi was interesting,” Inoo grumbles. “Who wants to watch us play handball week after week? Such a brilliant idea this was.”
Chinen ignores the heavy sarcasm, choosing to nick a couple of Pocky boxes from Daiki’s bag instead.
plus one lesson: music is all about soul.
“Arashi write songs,” Chinen tries in a last-ditch attempt to convince the JUMP members that learning from Arashi is a sure-fire way to boost popularity.
After Inoo had complained to Yabu about Chinen running off and whining at Johnny-san for a new show a couple of weeks back nobody would listen to him, but Chinen just felt that this one might work.
“Enough of your ideas, Chinen,” Takaki sighs, filing his nails. “They work for Arashi but not for us.”
“But it’s not only Arashi that writes songs!” Chinen insists. “They have stuff like Sketch and 5x10, NEWS has Share, and Ueda-kun and Ninomiya-kun practically write and compose most of their solos! Why shouldn’t we?”
“Yabu writes songs,” Hikaru says helpfully, and Chinen chucks a chocolate box at his head.
“It’s not the same! Why can’t all of us try writing songs?”
Inoo and Yabu shrug and give in - Yabu doesn’t mind writing songs and Inoo just plans to compose a melody for something. Seeing their leader give in, it doesn’t take long before the rest of JUMP crumble under Chinen’s eyeballing.
“Just this once. If this idea of yours fails we’re never listening to you again.”
A month later Chinen has collected a nice fat pile of songs, which the manager finds one day sitting innocently on the dressing-room table.
“You wrote all of these?” he asks, shocked, and Chinen grins.
“We did.”
The manager blusters something along the lines of ‘Amazing!’ and runs off, the stack of songs in hand.
When Johnny-san informs them that they’ll be releasing their first ever album, using many of the songs they’ve written, Chinen grins and feels all warm and victorious inside.
“I told you learning from Arashi would work,” he says happily when they’ve gone back to the dressing room.
Yuto sighs.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“So, shall we try the member-ai thing again?” Chinen asks, sounding hopeful.
“Not a chance,” Yabu says quickly, at the same time that Daiki says “Never again.”
Chinen pouts.
plus plus an epilogue: in which there is a little bird.
Somehow or other the news of Chinen Yuri’s attempts to be like Arashi reach the ears of the group themselves.
“Poor kid,” Aiba laughs. “Trying to come up with image colours for ten people?”
Nino is stumped by how Chinen knows about his method of freeloading off the members’ money at the vending machines, and he complains to Ohno about how ‘Oh-chan’s stalker is stalking me now, tell him not to’.
Ohno sighs and pats Nino’s head, letting the younger man whine and curl up against him on the sofa.
“Arashi’s unique,” Jun says. “Even if they try copying us it won’t have the same effect.”
“True.”
“Besides, if they want to be like us they’ll need someone as fail as Sho-kun first,” Nino says cheekily.
“I’m not fail!” Sho yells indignantly, sticking his head out over the morning newspaper.
“Double parka!” Nino yells back, pulling a face, and Sho sinks back behind his newspaper with a scowl.
“They will be in fashion,” he insists. “Someday.”
“Keep deluding yourself.”
Nobody notices a small shadow tiptoeing away from the door of the Arashi dressing room, muttering about getting Inoo-kun to wear double parkas.
~
Inoo cries in horror when he finds his entire closet’s been replaced by parkas, parkas, and more parkas.
Chinen snickers - this is the best idea yet, he thinks to himself.
fin.