happy belated bday, oppa <3
Title: 30 Shades of Grey
Pairing: KAT-TUN gen, nakame if you squint extra hard
Genre: crackfic
WordCount: 4.4k
A/N: HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, NAKAMARU ♥ My degree of mockery is equivalent to my degree of love for you. A big thank you to Joo who fleshed out this fic prompt with me. <3
Summary: Age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. - Mark Twain. Nakamaru minds.
(Alternate Summary: Forever young, Nakamaru wants to be forever young. ♪)
A flailing fist sluggish with sleep swung through the air and the alarm came to an abrupt demise. A bleary-eyed Nakamaru rolled out of bed, hitching up his pajama bottoms and ignoring his buzzing cell phone as he stumbled to the washroom.
The congratulatory messages had started trickling in soon after midnight.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY <3
Welcome to the world of the ojiisan~
OMG YOU’RE 30! Congrats! …maybe ;P
So you’re a dinosaur now, huh?
Enjoy your 100th, Yucchi!
I’m sorry it’s happening, dude, hope you’re coping well.
Well, they were congratulatory in a way. In any case, the ribbing was expected. Such was the story of Nakamaru’s life and if ever there would be an Olympic contest for the number of eye rolls executed per minute, his name would be on the gold medal.
He had turned a year older as he had every year prior. No big deal. Time flowed and he flowed along and so what if there was a zero tacked onto his age again? He couldn’t deny the new ache in his back that awoke when he bent to grab his house slippers, or how all the sweets he had eaten the other day had taken longer to go down than usual; that would explain his dreams of being glomped by terrifyingly huge cupcakes.
Time, as consistent as its passing was, brought change and Nakamaru was all about change. He had dyed his hair from a conservative black to a daring brown. He had ditched argyle for bowties. He even wore sparkly giant bowties and was able to wink at fans without freezing his facial muscles.
He was a new and improved Nakamaru Yuichi. He could eat change for breakfast along with his regular bowl of cereal and pomegranate juice.
“Cope,” Nakamaru muttered to himself scathingly through a mouthful of toothpaste. He pitied the people who thought such a word even existed in his vocabulary. Nakamaru didn’t cope; he adjusted. Coping implied a crisis and there was no crisis here.
Nakamaru rinsed his mouth in the sink and smirked at himself in the mirror that was framed just above it. He then watched his mouth slowly fold into a frown like a hot air balloon caving in on itself. He inched closer, his breath held as his belly pressed against the edge of the sink.
Brushing at his bangs tenderly as if his hair had been bruised, Nakamaru strained to confirm what he hoped was a trick of the shoddy bathroom lights. Above his gaping round eyes sat an outrageous bed head that fluffed up and gave him the shape of a wild mushroom-which was the usual. Nakamaru’s morning disaster was nothing new to anyone who had seen him at early hours.
What was unusual was the thin streak of white that failed to camouflage itself amidst the disarray of soft brown.
“Oh god,” the breath fled out of him in a single whoosh that left him deflated against the washroom sink, “I’m old.”
Nakamaru Yuichi had entered a crisis.
* * *
As a Johnny’s, Ueda had seen many atrocities in his life: puce coloured vinyl pants, Kame’s perm, teal sequins matched with orange feathers bright enough to blind the eye, Taguchi with horns, dead animal accessories, Koki’s perm, and even Koki purring with said perm. It was fair enough to say that Ueda’s time as an idol had led him to develop a thicker skin than the average 29 year old male, but even he had a limit to how much ridiculous he could handle.
Stepping into the dressing room on a bright and early morning, Ueda froze in the doorway, his hand still clutching the doorknob as he stumbled back from an invisible blow. As jaded as he was, he staunchly believed that some horrors should never be repeated in the history of ever.
“Argh! My eyes! Unless you have breasts can you not.”
From where he was sprawled haphazard on the couch, the flanks of his shirt lying wide and unbuttoned to display the smooth plane of his chest and muscled torso, Nakamaru drawled with a lazy shrug, “So, what, you can wear sandals in the snow and I can’t unbutton my shirt? I’m just trying to express my endless youth.”
This was said so mater-of-factly that Ueda could only blink and try to fit together the voice of reason that was all Nakamaru with the exhibitionist pose that was decidedly… not.
“I wear sandals because I hate shoes… What made you hate clothes? What happened to your love affair with sweater-vests?”
Nakamaru slouched further into the couch, the collar of his shirt beginning to slip off a rounded shoulder. Ueda released a muffled shriek.
“That has nothing to do with it,” Nakamaru answered calmly and Ueda wished that if he was going to insist on looking like a drunk who forgot how buttons worked, he could at least speak with less sense, “Kame loves clothes and he hardly ever wears them.”
At just that moment, a bewildered Kame entered the room wearing jeans fashioned with so many holes there was more skin than fabric, and promptly joined Ueda in dumb disbelief.
Ueda leaned over to whisper helpfully in his ear. “He’s gone senile.”
Kame nodded, a faint pink colouring his cheeks.
* * *
Through the following days it was learned that Nakamaru had no plan to cease and desist in his attempts to reclaim the glory days of his youth. The venture left the entire jimusho in varying states of confusion and unspeakable horror as they mourned the loss of one of their most stalwart idols. The day Nakamaru arrived wearing a black leather vest and nothing underneath was the day sanity was assumed to have left the building.
The sight of Nakamaru’s painted black nails made KAT-TUN’s manager turn and crumple onto Koki’s shoulder, a muffled “Where did I go wrong?” slipping through choked sobs.
Koki himself found it hard to look away from all the skin that had once been buried under sweaters and perfectly ironed collared shirts. He had seen Nakamaru fully naked plenty of times before but this was different; bizarrely, Koki felt as if he was peeping on a nun.
“You look…” Koki paused, trying to find the right word, “…broken.”
That sounded about right. His childhood friend was broken. Koki could have cried if he wasn’t too busy being traumatised.
Nakamaru returned that with a deadpan look and a lofty, “It’s never too late to be young, Koki. Age is but a number in your mind; inconsequential,” before he turned on his heel and sauntered down the hall. He passed a dumbfounded Yamashita who stared at his hip-swaying back before rounding on Koki.
“Is he trying to steal my solo concept?” Yamashita squawked. “I called dibs on A-Nude first!”
Koki looked into his angry face and then down at the tight, low-collared shirt he was sporting; it did nothing to hide his muscled cleavage and Koki fiercely hoped that Yamashita wasn’t the inspiration behind all this.
* * *
“This madness must end,” Koki declared with a slam of his fist against the table surface. “We’ve already had one casualty and that’s one casualty too many.”
Three pairs of eyes turned to Ueda who sat curled up protectively in his seat, his shoulders trembling along with his voice.
“H-he wore… he wore,” a gasp and his eyes shut tight, “booty shorts.”
Koki hadn’t witnessed yesterday’s incident himself but he had found Ueda hiding in the janitor’s closet muttering a mantra of thighs and whys and had later learned that Nakamaru had been sent home for being unsuitably dressed.
There had been another witness to the horror but when Koki had questioned him in a sudden burst of masochism, Taguchi had only frowned thoughtfully and answered, “The scary part is that it didn’t look all too bad on him. Nakamaru has surprisingly taut thighs… A little too pale though.”
And that was all Koki needed to hear to fervently wish that they stayed pale and hidden away.
“Kame, do something.”
“What?” Kame replied, blinking awake from a daze. “Why me?”
“You’re our best shot.” Ueda straightened in his chair with renewed vigor flickering in his eyes. “Can’t you like, toss a baseball at his head and make him forget that he’s gone insane?”
When Kame mulled over that option with a hum instead of dismissing it outright, Koki realised with an internal groan that since Nakamaru had checked out, he’d have to take his place as the sensible one. He hated being the sensible one.
“We’re not doing that.” At Ueda’s pained look of betrayal, Koki sighed and explained, “What if he forgets more, like even being a part of KAT-TUN? Look, we have to get him back in his sweater and bowtie before he messes up our images for good. Kame’s the stripper, Nakamaru’s the grandpa, and I’m the rebel. We can’t have two strippers and the rebel playing dad. That’s not how KAT-TUN works.”
“Rebel,” came the poorly muffled snickers and Koki felt his face heat.
“Shut up! I totally am.”
Three heads nodded in indulgent agreement and Taguchi smiled fondly. “You can be whatever you want, Koki.”
His kindness was returned with a blow to his upper arm.
“Now, where was I?” Koki returned to face the rest of the table.
“Nakamaru the stripper.” Kame made a face and added with a scoff, “He wishes he could strip like me.”
“N-Nakamaru… stri…pper…?” Ueda echoed. “Why would you put that thought in my head? Have I not suffered enough?!”
Ueda pushed away from the table with such force that his chair nearly tipped over. Kame petted him soothingly with an apology and, “Koki said it first.”
“I don’t understand why he’s doing this. Where did we go wrong with him?” Ueda turned wide, beseeching eyes on them. “Is this some sort of sick revenge?”
Kame fiddled with his beaded bracelet guiltily. “I guess I did hide his underwear again a couple weeks ago… I may have accidentally enabled him.”
Koki raised a sheepish hand. “Me too, in that case.”
“You stole his red boxers too?
“Nah, they ones I got my hands on were purple. I guess he does change colour. Weird, huh?”
Taguchi slowly lifted his gaze from where he had been scrolling through his smartphone and turned to stare at Koki.
“Those were mine.”
An awkward silence thick as winter fog filled the room before it exploded in barking laughter and a terrifying scream.
“So that’s where they’d gone! I thought I’d forgotten to wear them that day,” Taguchi laughed like a giant puppy rolling in a field of sunny daffodils while Koki had a seizure beside him.
“I have Taguchi cooties-TAGUCHI COOTIES.” Koki frantically grabbed the closest thing to him, which happened to be Kame’s arm, and wiped his hands all over before jumping back with a quick hand gesture. “Taguchi germs, no returns, locked forever.”
Kame looked down at his molested arm and back at Koki and repeated the motion again before giving Koki a look of withering disdain.
“My niece is more mature than you,” he commented scathingly.
A minute later when Ueda was well and distracted by the memory of Nakamaru’s thighs, Kame found his chance to pass on the invisible cooties and sighed in relief.
“I think, for this case, we’ll have to fight fire with fire.” Kame laid his hand palm down in the center of the table. “Are you with me?”
“Going dangerous,” Taguchi grinned, the final addition to the stack of hands.
Kame nodded firmly at each of them. “This is going to be an uphill battle but I have every faith that we can do this. Nakamaru’s denial is thick, his dressing scanty, but we must persevere! Will we let our Nakamaru walk down the road we have all shamefully walked once before and must never walk again? No! We’ll unite him with his beloved clothes-plaid this time, I’m so tired of argyle-and-”
“Kame, my arm is tired.”
“Mine too.”
“That was a thrilling speech, Kazuya! Can it end now?”
Kame pouted; just when he was picking up momentum.
“Fine,” he grumped. “Let’s just bring back our ojiisan.”
* * *
When Nakamaru stepped into the agency building the next day, he figured Koki was being extra friendly to make up for yesterday’s comment when he replied to Nakamaru’s muted ‘good morning’ with a loud, “MORNING, SUNSHINE.”
Same old boisterous Koki, Nakamaru thought with a smile. He waved and missed the cringe that fell across Koki’s face when the sheer material of his shirt lifted to expose a strip of belly.
He met Taguchi and Ueda in the dressing room, fighting over the logic behind one of Taguchi’s pun-Ueda viciously insisted there was none while Taguchi stood his ground. “Just because you don’t get it, Uepi, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“Just because you think you’re funny, Tauguchi, doesn’t mean you actually are,” Ueda threw back with a glare before his eyes landed on Nakamaru and twinkled merrily. “HEY THERE, HOW’S IT HANGING?”
Nakamaru blinked, a tad stunned by the volume of the greeting.
“How much coffee did you have this morning…?” he asked cautiously.
“NONE,” was Ueda’s scream.
“HE’S JUST HAPPY TO SEE YOU,” Taguchi explained, equally loud. But Taguchi was always loud. Nakamaru frowned. “AREN’T YOU HAPPY TO SEE US?”
Nakamaru thought that over slowly. “Is this a trick question? Why are we screaming? Wait. No we. You. Why are you screaming?”
“I DON’T KNOW, WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE JOHNNY-SAN? IS IT BECAUSE YOU’RE OLD?”
Nakamaru sputtered and froze in a state of panic before he remembered the mantra he had been repeating to himself all morning. Be your shirt. Own your youth. Be your shirt. In a feat of impressive serenity, Nakamaru raised his head tall and drawled, “I’m not old; I’ve only ripened.”
That was right. Ageing was for stinky cheese; Nakamaru matured like fucking fine wine. Hell yeah.
Nakamaru kept firmly to that thought as he was laughed out of the room, Ueda pointing out to Taguchi “now that’s what a good joke sounds like.” Nakamaru pitied them, really. They were still a raw, sour bunch and had yet to reach the state of enlightenment as Nakamaru had.
“HEY, YUCCHI, ARE YOU OKAY?” Nakamaru turned just in time to see Kame bounding towards him. Kame froze for a moment and did a slow look over before squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. He then opened them to give Nakamaru the same sickly sweet look Ueda had. “I SHOULD GET YOU A SWEATER. YOUR BONES WILL CATCH A CHILL, YOU KNOW. YOU’RE NOT AS YOUNG AS YOU USED TO BE.”
It was hard to take all that in when someone was screaming in his face, complete with water works. Nakamaru made a face and wiped something wet that had landed right under his eye. Kame had yet to learn how to control his spittle.
“Okay. First, ewww. Second, I get why you were yelling at me when you were down the hall but now you’re less than a foot away-which I’ve already told you time again is too close for comfort, yelling or not-and can you please use your indoor voice? I’m getting a headache.”
Kame grinned from ear to ear and bellowed, “BUT THEN HOW WILL YOU HEAR ME? I’M ONLY TRYING TO FACILITATE THE DECLINE OF YOUR HEARING.”
Nakamaru stared and then slowly wiped another stray fleck of spittle.
* * *
“How long until he cracks, do you think?” Koki asked at large.
“Never, hopefully.” Everyone turned to see Ueda smiling gleefully and then watched him shrug. “Torturing Nakamaru is kinda fun.”
“I don’t think it’ll be too long though,” Kame added thoughtfully. “He did go home early to ‘catch a party’ or whatever but I bet you anything he took a painkiller and had a long, toasty nap.”
Ueda frowned. “I almost feel bad about it… but then I remember the booty shorts.”
“Just keep in mind that we’re doing it for the good of the group. And our fans. Think of our precious hyphens.” Koki’s eyes misted over and everyone took a moment to look down and fiddle with their sleeves while waiting for him to recover. The wait didn’t stretch too long. “Half of our fans already think we’re suffering an identity crisis and the last thing we want to do is throw a half-dressed Nakamaru at them, bless their souls.”
“Doesn’t Nakamaru have the most vanilla fans anyway?” Kame asked.
“Probably. I mean, besides that one fan who likes to call him oppai.” Everyone snickered at the memory.
From where he was surfing through paparazzi shots of Nakamaru that had made it onto the web recently, a steady stream of hearts and keysmash and flying panties following underneath each fuzzy photo, Taguchi spoke with restrained awe.
“Huh. Um, guys? I don’t think it’s that bad, actually. The fans seem to love it. Like really love it.”
Perhaps they were so engrossed in laughing that they didn’t hear or perhaps they had a reflexive tendency to tune out Taguchi that they wouldn’t have listened either way, but in any case, Taguchi’s words effectively fell on deaf ears.
* * *
The following week was jam-packed with so much harassment that Nakamaru didn’t know where to begin with his outrage. The constant screaming at his face continued, like the universe had turned up the volume without his consent, and he had taken the habit of wearing earplugs-and then carrying extras when they were somehow pulled out of his ear.
He’d return from his washroom breaks to see all his possessions tacked with neon post-it notes bearing daily reminders such as “remember to wash your hands and close your fly” and “the N in KAT-TUN stands for Nakamaru; that’s you, Mr. Muri Muri man.”
“WE FIGURED YOUR MEMORY ISN’T AS SHARP AS IT ONCE WAS,” Koki had explained sweetly.
“How very helpful,” Nakamaru had gritted out before pausing in thought and then reaching behind him to pull off a sticky note Kame must have placed on his back that morning. It read: Help! I’ve lost my way. Please offer me any assistance you can.
That had explained why everyone he’d passed in the building had stopped him to ask where he was headed and didn’t trust his ability to get from the 3rd floor to the 2nd.
The day Nakamaru had turned up wearing his new pair of vivid red skinny jeans-bought at a bargain price!-he’d been accused of stealing from the costume wardrobe.
“The ones I wore at the concert were pink. PINK. These are RED. These are MINE.”
“Ohgod I can see his junk,” Ueda had cried from where he had buried his face in his hands while Koki demanded receipts and Kame made comments about his pert backside that had Nakamaru feeling increasingly uncomfortable by the second. In the end, Nakamaru’s manager had to escort him home for causing a commotion in the workplace.
Today, however, Nakamaru wore a modest t-shirt that was one size too small and pair of low rise jeans that exposed his hipbones. He was determined to see the day through and he was nearly there until lunch break arrived and his sandwich was ripped away from him and pulverized.
He watched in silent shock as Koki pounded his homemade sandwich on the table with his fists like an ape gone mad. Nakamaru had woken up an extra half hour early to make that sandwich.
“Here,” Koki said when he was done. At Nakamaru’s non-response, Koki apologised. “Oh right! Sorry. I meant: HERE. BETTER, HUH?”
Nakamaru accepted the mushy slab of bread and lettuce weakly. “W-what was that?”
His eyes darted to the window, his mind planning an emergency escape route if Koki went ape shit on him too. The smile Koki sent him looked more condescending than crazed though.
“I MADE IT EASIER TO CHEW. IT’S EASIER ON THE DENTURES, SEE?”
Nakamaru looked down at the defeated sandwich lying limp in his lap and could only see a metaphor for his life. He took a deep breath and exhaled.
“I give up.”
“WHAT WAS THAT?”
“I. GIVE. UP.” Nakamaru shouted at the top of his lungs. A stampede of footfalls announced that the entirety of KAT-TUN had spilled into the room. Nakamaru stood before them, heaving in his t-shirt that suddenly felt too tight. “I’m old, okay. I’m old and I know it.”
He was then promptly suffocated by two pairs of arms, Koki and Kame on either side of him like their DreamBoys days. The mushiest sandwich.
“Welcome back.”
“We missed you.”
“Now that’s the Nakamaru we know and love,” Taguchi chirped, waving at Nakamaru as if he hadn’t seen in him in days. Ueda stood on the outskirts of the impromptu glomping session and scratched the nape of his neck awkwardly.
“I would,” a wave of the hand, “you know. But it’d be kinda weird because you’re wearing. That. And the skin. And stuff. I still love you though.”
“Enough to harass me into submission?” Nakamaru asked witheringly, despite his heart wobbling like a bowl of jello in the epicenter of an earthquake.
Kame pulled away and gave a cheeky smirk. “You should be grateful we’d go to such lengths to bring you back to your senses.”
“Yeah, what brought that on anyway?” Koki interrogated. “Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, shaved off your hair? Gotten a tattoo? Why couldn’t you have an early mid-life crisis in a normal way?”
Feeling oddly naked with Kame and Koki peeling away from his sides, Nakamaru gratefully accepted Taguchi’s jacket and huddled into the couch.
“C’mon, I wasn’t that bad. I just loosened my tie… a bit.”
“You wore booty shorts,” everyone chimed.
“…If you really love me, then that never happened okay.”
“Deal!” Ueda shouted in a heartbeat.
Nakamaru sighed. “It’s just… I’m 30, you guys. The big three-o. I should have accomplished something by now.”
A swift punch landed on his left shoulder followed by another on his right.
“You’re such a wuss, ohmygod,” Koki scoffed. “You do realise that you’re the only one among us who’s graduated from university, right? While being a full time idol? Dude, don’t shove it in our faces by pretending it’s nothing. You’re above Taguchi’s ways.”
Taguchi shrugged innocently as Nakamaru gave a small smile. “Yeah, that was pretty awesome, huh?”
“I didn’t understand a word of your thesis, but yeah,” Ueda confirmed.
“And, you’re about the only idol in the agency who can beatbox. And do that humming thing with your nose,” Taguchi added. “Not many thirty-year-olds can say the same.”
“Plus, you’re hot now.” Kame shrugged as everyone redirected their gaze at him. “I mean… hotter? For someone who’s half way through being sixty, you still look like you’re seventeen-even in those stuffy bowties.”
“I like those bowties,” Nakamaru insisted defensively and Kame smiled, reaching forward to stroke the back of his hand affectionately.
“Music to my ears. Trust me, we’re infinitely glad that you do.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure we could handle those walnut-cracking thighs of yours,” Koki added with a snicker, setting Nakamaru’s face instantly ablaze.
“WE MADE A DEAL.”
* * *
“Now that I think about,” Nakamaru mused out loud a few days later, “it was kind of silly of me to panic over a single grey hair.”
The remaining members of KAT-TUN paused in their tasks to shoot Nakamaru an incredulous look. Nakamaru found their synchrony a little creepy.
“Wait. What?” Koki dropped into the silence.
Nakamaru laughed sheepishly. “I was fine with everything until I rolled out of bed on the morning of my birthday and saw a thread of white in my hair. After all your texts and taunts, it kind of broke the ice, so to speak. I haven’t found another since, though, so I may have had a premature reaction.”
“Overreaction.” Koki corrected with a sad shake of his head.
“But wait,” Kame interrupted, face scrunched up in thought, “the way you said it… thread… Nakamaru, aren’t your bed covers white?”
“Yes, but what does that-Oh. Ohhhhhhhh. Well isn’t that funny? It’s downright hilarious if you ask me. AHAHA… ha…”
Never before had Nakamaru empathised with Taguchi more than he did at this moment, surrounded by murderous intent. Once again, he found his eyes being tugged towards the window, his mind a chanting a succession of jumpjumpjump and murimurimuri.
“How does Kazuya know the colour of your bed sheets though?” Taguchi thought out loud but was ignored in favour of the more pressing question.
“So… we went through all that… for nothing?” Ueda asked hollowly. “You subjected us to booty shorts over nothing?”
“Okay, I don’t think you guys understand how our deal works. When we agree that something never happened, IT NEVER HAPPENED.”
Ueda cracked his knuckles threateningly and when it was clear that the logic route did nothing to diffuse the rage coming at him in waves, Nakamaru tried for sympathy.
“You know, Ueda, you’re the last person I expected to turn against me. You’re turning thirty yourself…” Nakamaru slowed to understand the waving arm movements Koki was making behind Ueda’s back, but judging them incomprehensible, he carried on, “…next month and I really thought you’d understand the sensitive period I’m going through but-”
“Oh-ohmygod,” Ueda wailed softly and Koki sent Nakamaru a vicious look of accusation before he went to bang his head against the wall. “Is it really next month…? IT CAN’T BE. I don’t want to be… old.”
“Well, I’m done here,” Kame declared briskly and dragged Taguchi and Koki with him to the door. He shot Nakamaru a you-fix-it look over his shoulder. “You’re the senior here so we’ll leave him in your capable hands.”
The door clicked shut.
Nakamaru looked down at Ueda’s frightful expression and saw his own reflection from a couple days ago peering back. Clearing his throat and gathering the new found wisdom he had gained over the week, Nakamaru spoke.
“Old is gold-but even if you forget, you’ll always have us to remind you of that.”
(Nakamaru paused before adding. “And I won’t judge you if you ever want borrow my shorts.”)
~♥
Happy Birthday, dearest fan-sa machine <3
Pairing: KAT-TUN gen, nakame if you squint extra hard
Genre: crackfic
WordCount: 4.4k
A/N: HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, NAKAMARU ♥ My degree of mockery is equivalent to my degree of love for you. A big thank you to Joo who fleshed out this fic prompt with me. <3
Summary: Age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. - Mark Twain. Nakamaru minds.
(Alternate Summary: Forever young, Nakamaru wants to be forever young. ♪)
A flailing fist sluggish with sleep swung through the air and the alarm came to an abrupt demise. A bleary-eyed Nakamaru rolled out of bed, hitching up his pajama bottoms and ignoring his buzzing cell phone as he stumbled to the washroom.
The congratulatory messages had started trickling in soon after midnight.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY <3
Welcome to the world of the ojiisan~
OMG YOU’RE 30! Congrats! …maybe ;P
So you’re a dinosaur now, huh?
Enjoy your 100th, Yucchi!
I’m sorry it’s happening, dude, hope you’re coping well.
Well, they were congratulatory in a way. In any case, the ribbing was expected. Such was the story of Nakamaru’s life and if ever there would be an Olympic contest for the number of eye rolls executed per minute, his name would be on the gold medal.
He had turned a year older as he had every year prior. No big deal. Time flowed and he flowed along and so what if there was a zero tacked onto his age again? He couldn’t deny the new ache in his back that awoke when he bent to grab his house slippers, or how all the sweets he had eaten the other day had taken longer to go down than usual; that would explain his dreams of being glomped by terrifyingly huge cupcakes.
Time, as consistent as its passing was, brought change and Nakamaru was all about change. He had dyed his hair from a conservative black to a daring brown. He had ditched argyle for bowties. He even wore sparkly giant bowties and was able to wink at fans without freezing his facial muscles.
He was a new and improved Nakamaru Yuichi. He could eat change for breakfast along with his regular bowl of cereal and pomegranate juice.
“Cope,” Nakamaru muttered to himself scathingly through a mouthful of toothpaste. He pitied the people who thought such a word even existed in his vocabulary. Nakamaru didn’t cope; he adjusted. Coping implied a crisis and there was no crisis here.
Nakamaru rinsed his mouth in the sink and smirked at himself in the mirror that was framed just above it. He then watched his mouth slowly fold into a frown like a hot air balloon caving in on itself. He inched closer, his breath held as his belly pressed against the edge of the sink.
Brushing at his bangs tenderly as if his hair had been bruised, Nakamaru strained to confirm what he hoped was a trick of the shoddy bathroom lights. Above his gaping round eyes sat an outrageous bed head that fluffed up and gave him the shape of a wild mushroom-which was the usual. Nakamaru’s morning disaster was nothing new to anyone who had seen him at early hours.
What was unusual was the thin streak of white that failed to camouflage itself amidst the disarray of soft brown.
“Oh god,” the breath fled out of him in a single whoosh that left him deflated against the washroom sink, “I’m old.”
Nakamaru Yuichi had entered a crisis.
* * *
As a Johnny’s, Ueda had seen many atrocities in his life: puce coloured vinyl pants, Kame’s perm, teal sequins matched with orange feathers bright enough to blind the eye, Taguchi with horns, dead animal accessories, Koki’s perm, and even Koki purring with said perm. It was fair enough to say that Ueda’s time as an idol had led him to develop a thicker skin than the average 29 year old male, but even he had a limit to how much ridiculous he could handle.
Stepping into the dressing room on a bright and early morning, Ueda froze in the doorway, his hand still clutching the doorknob as he stumbled back from an invisible blow. As jaded as he was, he staunchly believed that some horrors should never be repeated in the history of ever.
“Argh! My eyes! Unless you have breasts can you not.”
From where he was sprawled haphazard on the couch, the flanks of his shirt lying wide and unbuttoned to display the smooth plane of his chest and muscled torso, Nakamaru drawled with a lazy shrug, “So, what, you can wear sandals in the snow and I can’t unbutton my shirt? I’m just trying to express my endless youth.”
This was said so mater-of-factly that Ueda could only blink and try to fit together the voice of reason that was all Nakamaru with the exhibitionist pose that was decidedly… not.
“I wear sandals because I hate shoes… What made you hate clothes? What happened to your love affair with sweater-vests?”
Nakamaru slouched further into the couch, the collar of his shirt beginning to slip off a rounded shoulder. Ueda released a muffled shriek.
“That has nothing to do with it,” Nakamaru answered calmly and Ueda wished that if he was going to insist on looking like a drunk who forgot how buttons worked, he could at least speak with less sense, “Kame loves clothes and he hardly ever wears them.”
At just that moment, a bewildered Kame entered the room wearing jeans fashioned with so many holes there was more skin than fabric, and promptly joined Ueda in dumb disbelief.
Ueda leaned over to whisper helpfully in his ear. “He’s gone senile.”
Kame nodded, a faint pink colouring his cheeks.
* * *
Through the following days it was learned that Nakamaru had no plan to cease and desist in his attempts to reclaim the glory days of his youth. The venture left the entire jimusho in varying states of confusion and unspeakable horror as they mourned the loss of one of their most stalwart idols. The day Nakamaru arrived wearing a black leather vest and nothing underneath was the day sanity was assumed to have left the building.
The sight of Nakamaru’s painted black nails made KAT-TUN’s manager turn and crumple onto Koki’s shoulder, a muffled “Where did I go wrong?” slipping through choked sobs.
Koki himself found it hard to look away from all the skin that had once been buried under sweaters and perfectly ironed collared shirts. He had seen Nakamaru fully naked plenty of times before but this was different; bizarrely, Koki felt as if he was peeping on a nun.
“You look…” Koki paused, trying to find the right word, “…broken.”
That sounded about right. His childhood friend was broken. Koki could have cried if he wasn’t too busy being traumatised.
Nakamaru returned that with a deadpan look and a lofty, “It’s never too late to be young, Koki. Age is but a number in your mind; inconsequential,” before he turned on his heel and sauntered down the hall. He passed a dumbfounded Yamashita who stared at his hip-swaying back before rounding on Koki.
“Is he trying to steal my solo concept?” Yamashita squawked. “I called dibs on A-Nude first!”
Koki looked into his angry face and then down at the tight, low-collared shirt he was sporting; it did nothing to hide his muscled cleavage and Koki fiercely hoped that Yamashita wasn’t the inspiration behind all this.
* * *
“This madness must end,” Koki declared with a slam of his fist against the table surface. “We’ve already had one casualty and that’s one casualty too many.”
Three pairs of eyes turned to Ueda who sat curled up protectively in his seat, his shoulders trembling along with his voice.
“H-he wore… he wore,” a gasp and his eyes shut tight, “booty shorts.”
Koki hadn’t witnessed yesterday’s incident himself but he had found Ueda hiding in the janitor’s closet muttering a mantra of thighs and whys and had later learned that Nakamaru had been sent home for being unsuitably dressed.
There had been another witness to the horror but when Koki had questioned him in a sudden burst of masochism, Taguchi had only frowned thoughtfully and answered, “The scary part is that it didn’t look all too bad on him. Nakamaru has surprisingly taut thighs… A little too pale though.”
And that was all Koki needed to hear to fervently wish that they stayed pale and hidden away.
“Kame, do something.”
“What?” Kame replied, blinking awake from a daze. “Why me?”
“You’re our best shot.” Ueda straightened in his chair with renewed vigor flickering in his eyes. “Can’t you like, toss a baseball at his head and make him forget that he’s gone insane?”
When Kame mulled over that option with a hum instead of dismissing it outright, Koki realised with an internal groan that since Nakamaru had checked out, he’d have to take his place as the sensible one. He hated being the sensible one.
“We’re not doing that.” At Ueda’s pained look of betrayal, Koki sighed and explained, “What if he forgets more, like even being a part of KAT-TUN? Look, we have to get him back in his sweater and bowtie before he messes up our images for good. Kame’s the stripper, Nakamaru’s the grandpa, and I’m the rebel. We can’t have two strippers and the rebel playing dad. That’s not how KAT-TUN works.”
“Rebel,” came the poorly muffled snickers and Koki felt his face heat.
“Shut up! I totally am.”
Three heads nodded in indulgent agreement and Taguchi smiled fondly. “You can be whatever you want, Koki.”
His kindness was returned with a blow to his upper arm.
“Now, where was I?” Koki returned to face the rest of the table.
“Nakamaru the stripper.” Kame made a face and added with a scoff, “He wishes he could strip like me.”
“N-Nakamaru… stri…pper…?” Ueda echoed. “Why would you put that thought in my head? Have I not suffered enough?!”
Ueda pushed away from the table with such force that his chair nearly tipped over. Kame petted him soothingly with an apology and, “Koki said it first.”
“I don’t understand why he’s doing this. Where did we go wrong with him?” Ueda turned wide, beseeching eyes on them. “Is this some sort of sick revenge?”
Kame fiddled with his beaded bracelet guiltily. “I guess I did hide his underwear again a couple weeks ago… I may have accidentally enabled him.”
Koki raised a sheepish hand. “Me too, in that case.”
“You stole his red boxers too?
“Nah, they ones I got my hands on were purple. I guess he does change colour. Weird, huh?”
Taguchi slowly lifted his gaze from where he had been scrolling through his smartphone and turned to stare at Koki.
“Those were mine.”
An awkward silence thick as winter fog filled the room before it exploded in barking laughter and a terrifying scream.
“So that’s where they’d gone! I thought I’d forgotten to wear them that day,” Taguchi laughed like a giant puppy rolling in a field of sunny daffodils while Koki had a seizure beside him.
“I have Taguchi cooties-TAGUCHI COOTIES.” Koki frantically grabbed the closest thing to him, which happened to be Kame’s arm, and wiped his hands all over before jumping back with a quick hand gesture. “Taguchi germs, no returns, locked forever.”
Kame looked down at his molested arm and back at Koki and repeated the motion again before giving Koki a look of withering disdain.
“My niece is more mature than you,” he commented scathingly.
A minute later when Ueda was well and distracted by the memory of Nakamaru’s thighs, Kame found his chance to pass on the invisible cooties and sighed in relief.
“I think, for this case, we’ll have to fight fire with fire.” Kame laid his hand palm down in the center of the table. “Are you with me?”
“Going dangerous,” Taguchi grinned, the final addition to the stack of hands.
Kame nodded firmly at each of them. “This is going to be an uphill battle but I have every faith that we can do this. Nakamaru’s denial is thick, his dressing scanty, but we must persevere! Will we let our Nakamaru walk down the road we have all shamefully walked once before and must never walk again? No! We’ll unite him with his beloved clothes-plaid this time, I’m so tired of argyle-and-”
“Kame, my arm is tired.”
“Mine too.”
“That was a thrilling speech, Kazuya! Can it end now?”
Kame pouted; just when he was picking up momentum.
“Fine,” he grumped. “Let’s just bring back our ojiisan.”
* * *
When Nakamaru stepped into the agency building the next day, he figured Koki was being extra friendly to make up for yesterday’s comment when he replied to Nakamaru’s muted ‘good morning’ with a loud, “MORNING, SUNSHINE.”
Same old boisterous Koki, Nakamaru thought with a smile. He waved and missed the cringe that fell across Koki’s face when the sheer material of his shirt lifted to expose a strip of belly.
He met Taguchi and Ueda in the dressing room, fighting over the logic behind one of Taguchi’s pun-Ueda viciously insisted there was none while Taguchi stood his ground. “Just because you don’t get it, Uepi, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“Just because you think you’re funny, Tauguchi, doesn’t mean you actually are,” Ueda threw back with a glare before his eyes landed on Nakamaru and twinkled merrily. “HEY THERE, HOW’S IT HANGING?”
Nakamaru blinked, a tad stunned by the volume of the greeting.
“How much coffee did you have this morning…?” he asked cautiously.
“NONE,” was Ueda’s scream.
“HE’S JUST HAPPY TO SEE YOU,” Taguchi explained, equally loud. But Taguchi was always loud. Nakamaru frowned. “AREN’T YOU HAPPY TO SEE US?”
Nakamaru thought that over slowly. “Is this a trick question? Why are we screaming? Wait. No we. You. Why are you screaming?”
“I DON’T KNOW, WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE JOHNNY-SAN? IS IT BECAUSE YOU’RE OLD?”
Nakamaru sputtered and froze in a state of panic before he remembered the mantra he had been repeating to himself all morning. Be your shirt. Own your youth. Be your shirt. In a feat of impressive serenity, Nakamaru raised his head tall and drawled, “I’m not old; I’ve only ripened.”
That was right. Ageing was for stinky cheese; Nakamaru matured like fucking fine wine. Hell yeah.
Nakamaru kept firmly to that thought as he was laughed out of the room, Ueda pointing out to Taguchi “now that’s what a good joke sounds like.” Nakamaru pitied them, really. They were still a raw, sour bunch and had yet to reach the state of enlightenment as Nakamaru had.
“HEY, YUCCHI, ARE YOU OKAY?” Nakamaru turned just in time to see Kame bounding towards him. Kame froze for a moment and did a slow look over before squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. He then opened them to give Nakamaru the same sickly sweet look Ueda had. “I SHOULD GET YOU A SWEATER. YOUR BONES WILL CATCH A CHILL, YOU KNOW. YOU’RE NOT AS YOUNG AS YOU USED TO BE.”
It was hard to take all that in when someone was screaming in his face, complete with water works. Nakamaru made a face and wiped something wet that had landed right under his eye. Kame had yet to learn how to control his spittle.
“Okay. First, ewww. Second, I get why you were yelling at me when you were down the hall but now you’re less than a foot away-which I’ve already told you time again is too close for comfort, yelling or not-and can you please use your indoor voice? I’m getting a headache.”
Kame grinned from ear to ear and bellowed, “BUT THEN HOW WILL YOU HEAR ME? I’M ONLY TRYING TO FACILITATE THE DECLINE OF YOUR HEARING.”
Nakamaru stared and then slowly wiped another stray fleck of spittle.
* * *
“How long until he cracks, do you think?” Koki asked at large.
“Never, hopefully.” Everyone turned to see Ueda smiling gleefully and then watched him shrug. “Torturing Nakamaru is kinda fun.”
“I don’t think it’ll be too long though,” Kame added thoughtfully. “He did go home early to ‘catch a party’ or whatever but I bet you anything he took a painkiller and had a long, toasty nap.”
Ueda frowned. “I almost feel bad about it… but then I remember the booty shorts.”
“Just keep in mind that we’re doing it for the good of the group. And our fans. Think of our precious hyphens.” Koki’s eyes misted over and everyone took a moment to look down and fiddle with their sleeves while waiting for him to recover. The wait didn’t stretch too long. “Half of our fans already think we’re suffering an identity crisis and the last thing we want to do is throw a half-dressed Nakamaru at them, bless their souls.”
“Doesn’t Nakamaru have the most vanilla fans anyway?” Kame asked.
“Probably. I mean, besides that one fan who likes to call him oppai.” Everyone snickered at the memory.
From where he was surfing through paparazzi shots of Nakamaru that had made it onto the web recently, a steady stream of hearts and keysmash and flying panties following underneath each fuzzy photo, Taguchi spoke with restrained awe.
“Huh. Um, guys? I don’t think it’s that bad, actually. The fans seem to love it. Like really love it.”
Perhaps they were so engrossed in laughing that they didn’t hear or perhaps they had a reflexive tendency to tune out Taguchi that they wouldn’t have listened either way, but in any case, Taguchi’s words effectively fell on deaf ears.
* * *
The following week was jam-packed with so much harassment that Nakamaru didn’t know where to begin with his outrage. The constant screaming at his face continued, like the universe had turned up the volume without his consent, and he had taken the habit of wearing earplugs-and then carrying extras when they were somehow pulled out of his ear.
He’d return from his washroom breaks to see all his possessions tacked with neon post-it notes bearing daily reminders such as “remember to wash your hands and close your fly” and “the N in KAT-TUN stands for Nakamaru; that’s you, Mr. Muri Muri man.”
“WE FIGURED YOUR MEMORY ISN’T AS SHARP AS IT ONCE WAS,” Koki had explained sweetly.
“How very helpful,” Nakamaru had gritted out before pausing in thought and then reaching behind him to pull off a sticky note Kame must have placed on his back that morning. It read: Help! I’ve lost my way. Please offer me any assistance you can.
That had explained why everyone he’d passed in the building had stopped him to ask where he was headed and didn’t trust his ability to get from the 3rd floor to the 2nd.
The day Nakamaru had turned up wearing his new pair of vivid red skinny jeans-bought at a bargain price!-he’d been accused of stealing from the costume wardrobe.
“The ones I wore at the concert were pink. PINK. These are RED. These are MINE.”
“Ohgod I can see his junk,” Ueda had cried from where he had buried his face in his hands while Koki demanded receipts and Kame made comments about his pert backside that had Nakamaru feeling increasingly uncomfortable by the second. In the end, Nakamaru’s manager had to escort him home for causing a commotion in the workplace.
Today, however, Nakamaru wore a modest t-shirt that was one size too small and pair of low rise jeans that exposed his hipbones. He was determined to see the day through and he was nearly there until lunch break arrived and his sandwich was ripped away from him and pulverized.
He watched in silent shock as Koki pounded his homemade sandwich on the table with his fists like an ape gone mad. Nakamaru had woken up an extra half hour early to make that sandwich.
“Here,” Koki said when he was done. At Nakamaru’s non-response, Koki apologised. “Oh right! Sorry. I meant: HERE. BETTER, HUH?”
Nakamaru accepted the mushy slab of bread and lettuce weakly. “W-what was that?”
His eyes darted to the window, his mind planning an emergency escape route if Koki went ape shit on him too. The smile Koki sent him looked more condescending than crazed though.
“I MADE IT EASIER TO CHEW. IT’S EASIER ON THE DENTURES, SEE?”
Nakamaru looked down at the defeated sandwich lying limp in his lap and could only see a metaphor for his life. He took a deep breath and exhaled.
“I give up.”
“WHAT WAS THAT?”
“I. GIVE. UP.” Nakamaru shouted at the top of his lungs. A stampede of footfalls announced that the entirety of KAT-TUN had spilled into the room. Nakamaru stood before them, heaving in his t-shirt that suddenly felt too tight. “I’m old, okay. I’m old and I know it.”
He was then promptly suffocated by two pairs of arms, Koki and Kame on either side of him like their DreamBoys days. The mushiest sandwich.
“Welcome back.”
“We missed you.”
“Now that’s the Nakamaru we know and love,” Taguchi chirped, waving at Nakamaru as if he hadn’t seen in him in days. Ueda stood on the outskirts of the impromptu glomping session and scratched the nape of his neck awkwardly.
“I would,” a wave of the hand, “you know. But it’d be kinda weird because you’re wearing. That. And the skin. And stuff. I still love you though.”
“Enough to harass me into submission?” Nakamaru asked witheringly, despite his heart wobbling like a bowl of jello in the epicenter of an earthquake.
Kame pulled away and gave a cheeky smirk. “You should be grateful we’d go to such lengths to bring you back to your senses.”
“Yeah, what brought that on anyway?” Koki interrogated. “Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, shaved off your hair? Gotten a tattoo? Why couldn’t you have an early mid-life crisis in a normal way?”
Feeling oddly naked with Kame and Koki peeling away from his sides, Nakamaru gratefully accepted Taguchi’s jacket and huddled into the couch.
“C’mon, I wasn’t that bad. I just loosened my tie… a bit.”
“You wore booty shorts,” everyone chimed.
“…If you really love me, then that never happened okay.”
“Deal!” Ueda shouted in a heartbeat.
Nakamaru sighed. “It’s just… I’m 30, you guys. The big three-o. I should have accomplished something by now.”
A swift punch landed on his left shoulder followed by another on his right.
“You’re such a wuss, ohmygod,” Koki scoffed. “You do realise that you’re the only one among us who’s graduated from university, right? While being a full time idol? Dude, don’t shove it in our faces by pretending it’s nothing. You’re above Taguchi’s ways.”
Taguchi shrugged innocently as Nakamaru gave a small smile. “Yeah, that was pretty awesome, huh?”
“I didn’t understand a word of your thesis, but yeah,” Ueda confirmed.
“And, you’re about the only idol in the agency who can beatbox. And do that humming thing with your nose,” Taguchi added. “Not many thirty-year-olds can say the same.”
“Plus, you’re hot now.” Kame shrugged as everyone redirected their gaze at him. “I mean… hotter? For someone who’s half way through being sixty, you still look like you’re seventeen-even in those stuffy bowties.”
“I like those bowties,” Nakamaru insisted defensively and Kame smiled, reaching forward to stroke the back of his hand affectionately.
“Music to my ears. Trust me, we’re infinitely glad that you do.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure we could handle those walnut-cracking thighs of yours,” Koki added with a snicker, setting Nakamaru’s face instantly ablaze.
“WE MADE A DEAL.”
* * *
“Now that I think about,” Nakamaru mused out loud a few days later, “it was kind of silly of me to panic over a single grey hair.”
The remaining members of KAT-TUN paused in their tasks to shoot Nakamaru an incredulous look. Nakamaru found their synchrony a little creepy.
“Wait. What?” Koki dropped into the silence.
Nakamaru laughed sheepishly. “I was fine with everything until I rolled out of bed on the morning of my birthday and saw a thread of white in my hair. After all your texts and taunts, it kind of broke the ice, so to speak. I haven’t found another since, though, so I may have had a premature reaction.”
“Overreaction.” Koki corrected with a sad shake of his head.
“But wait,” Kame interrupted, face scrunched up in thought, “the way you said it… thread… Nakamaru, aren’t your bed covers white?”
“Yes, but what does that-Oh. Ohhhhhhhh. Well isn’t that funny? It’s downright hilarious if you ask me. AHAHA… ha…”
Never before had Nakamaru empathised with Taguchi more than he did at this moment, surrounded by murderous intent. Once again, he found his eyes being tugged towards the window, his mind a chanting a succession of jumpjumpjump and murimurimuri.
“How does Kazuya know the colour of your bed sheets though?” Taguchi thought out loud but was ignored in favour of the more pressing question.
“So… we went through all that… for nothing?” Ueda asked hollowly. “You subjected us to booty shorts over nothing?”
“Okay, I don’t think you guys understand how our deal works. When we agree that something never happened, IT NEVER HAPPENED.”
Ueda cracked his knuckles threateningly and when it was clear that the logic route did nothing to diffuse the rage coming at him in waves, Nakamaru tried for sympathy.
“You know, Ueda, you’re the last person I expected to turn against me. You’re turning thirty yourself…” Nakamaru slowed to understand the waving arm movements Koki was making behind Ueda’s back, but judging them incomprehensible, he carried on, “…next month and I really thought you’d understand the sensitive period I’m going through but-”
“Oh-ohmygod,” Ueda wailed softly and Koki sent Nakamaru a vicious look of accusation before he went to bang his head against the wall. “Is it really next month…? IT CAN’T BE. I don’t want to be… old.”
“Well, I’m done here,” Kame declared briskly and dragged Taguchi and Koki with him to the door. He shot Nakamaru a you-fix-it look over his shoulder. “You’re the senior here so we’ll leave him in your capable hands.”
The door clicked shut.
Nakamaru looked down at Ueda’s frightful expression and saw his own reflection from a couple days ago peering back. Clearing his throat and gathering the new found wisdom he had gained over the week, Nakamaru spoke.
“Old is gold-but even if you forget, you’ll always have us to remind you of that.”
(Nakamaru paused before adding. “And I won’t judge you if you ever want borrow my shorts.”)
~♥
Happy Birthday, dearest fan-sa machine <3