Title: ... And Everything In Between Remix
Fandom: Johnny's Entertainment
Pairings: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya, Yamashita Tomohisa/Nishikido Ryo. My NEWS and RyoPi bias, totally not showing through, nope. :D
Status: Complete.
Notes: Written for the
The Great JE Fanfiction Remix. Originally posted
here. Beta'ed by
zukkii, who is a lot of love. ♥
The original fic is
The Sky Above, The World Beneath by
acchikocchi. I insist you all read this fic, now, even if you don't know or like Akame, like me. Just. Read the fic. Let your mind get blown away.
This is my first KAT-TUN fic. I'm sorry if I've misinterpreted people; please rest assured that it's entirely by accident, I barely know the KAT-TUN people, I don't know why I got assigned an author who writes primarily KAT-TUN. And all this explains the perspective I chose, really. :D
When his manager called to tell him the news, he was, to say the least, stunned. It wasn’t that he hadn’t heard the rumours; it was more the fact that they were indeed true, and were more horrifying than he ever could have surmised. It had never happened to him, nor to his friends, as far as he knew - he supposed a little cynically (though not enough to not feel a little pang of guilt and sadness) that this might have had something to do with their elevation above the rest even as juniors. He always had been aware in a dim, back-of-the-bar sort of manner of there being sordid happenings in the jimusho. Now that he thought about it, he wondered why nothing had happened sooner.
Being as stunned as he was, it wasn’t until his manager - very much like what the other managers were telling their charges across Tokyo - suggested he think of alternative career plans, that he finally realised how much shit they were all in. And then the thought that came next - Oh, shit. Jin.
Jin had never really snapped out of the funk he’d been since LA. He hung out just enough with him to know that he was fine; that he just wasn’t always feeling up to being as ditzy and crazy as the old Jin had been. However, he always got the feeling that the Jin he now knew (or at least hoped he still knew) was subtly different from the one he had been sure he’d known. Where some jokes would have elicited full-bellied laughter and a whap on the head in the past, this Jin merely chuckled, and didn’t make a move. This Jin felt more seriously, and it only made him worry more about how he would be taking this news.
Ryo told him he was being silly, and told him to call Jin if he was so worried about him. The first five times Jin didn’t pick up his calls, he tried to brush off the niggling suspicions of having been right, but by the end of the second day he knew he hadn’t been wrong. “He’s taking it hard, U-kun,” he said when Shirota called to ask if he’d been able to get Jin. “I can’t get through to him at all.”
“I’ll try to get Reoh,” Shirota promised, and then called him back two hours later to say that, no, Jin hadn’t called home, to the best of his little brother’s knowledge. “He’ll be fine, Pi,” Shirota said at the end of the conversation, but he sounded too worried to fully convince Pi.
Finally, he decided to call Kamenashi.
They weren’t exactly on what one would call speaking terms - had never been, even during that one drama they had done together - but Yamapi figured he was more worried about Jin than about what Kamenashi thought about him.
It took a little time getting Kamenashi’s number, involving asking Masuda for Nakamaru’s and getting the dial tone a few times before finally managing to get him on the line. Nakamaru willingly gave up Kamenashi’s number when he heard what it was for, but just before they hung up, he’d said formally, “Good luck, Yamashita-kun. We haven’t been having any luck, either.”
Yamapi ignored the way his heart sank a little at the news, and instead thanked Nakamaru for his help, and asked him to get some rest.
He was lucky enough to get Kamenashi on the first try; the way he’d picked up the phone on the second ring suggested a vigil by his phone in the hopes of news, any news.
“Kamenashi,” the voice on the other line said quietly, tersely, in a way that suggested that he was bracing himself for bad news.
“Kamenashi-kun, it’s Yamashita,” Yamapi said.
A sigh, one which Yamapi couldn’t tell was one of relief or of annoyance. He pressed on, nonetheless. “I’m sure you’ve heard about Jin.”
“We are in the same group, Yamashita-kun.”
Yamapi ignored the underhand barb, and said, “I was wondering if you know how he is.”
There was another sigh on the other line, but when Kamenashi spoke his voice was audibly softer, more tired. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Right now it’s all just rumours and speculation, but the way Akanishi isn’t picking up the phone has got us all worried.”
Yamapi closed his eyes, feeling as if his last option had shut behind him. “All I can tell you is that he hasn’t called home, either.” A horrible thought came to him, and he took a deep breath before he dared to voice it. “Do you think he’s-“
He heard a sharp intake of breath. “Don’t be stupid, Yamashita-kun,” Kamenashi snapped, upset, and Yamapi didn’t even feel the sting of having been insulted by a junior, because there was a desperate quality in his voice that made him stop and pay closer attention. “Akanishi might be an idiot, but he’s not stupid enough to take his own life.”
Yamapi finally said, quietly, “You care for him more than you let on, don’t you?”
There was a pause, and then Kamenashi abruptly said, “I’ll let you know if I hear anything new,” and hung up.
Ryo wandered out of the next room, looked at the phone in Pi’s hands and the expression on his face, and sat down next to him. “How did it go?” he asked quietly, taking his hand and rubbing gentle circles over the skin on the back of it.
Yamapi just closed his eyes and shook his head.
*
Twenty-four hours later, the news broke. Yamapi had been selectively picking up his phone, only accepting calls from numbers he recognised. The day started with a call from his manager, then his mother, and Jin’s mother, than he had ignored everything else in between until his phone rang in the afternoon with the display showing Kamenashi’s name.
He picked up as soon as he saw it. “This is Yamashita.”
“It’s Kamenashi,” Yamapi heard the terseness in his voice. “Akanishi won’t answer his phone. I’ve been - worried.”
And he did sound worried, but Yamapi was exhausted and slowly going mad with worry for a friend who wouldn’t talk to him. “You’re worried?”
“Yes,” Kamenashi said, “Of course I’m worried, what do you think I -.” He paused. “You haven’t talked to him either?”
Yamapi laughed a bitter laugh. “His mother called to tell me he was all right. So, you know, I would stop thinking he’d crashed into a bus or something. But no, he hasn’t talked to me, or anyone, since he found -“
The topic silenced him, and drew a sharp breath from Kamenashi. There was silence until Kamenashi said, in a voice that sounded like he was afraid to say the words, “They told me he has to testify.”
“They told me the same thing.” Yamapi didn’t want to think about how this would destroy Jin, and his voice came out in a near whisper, nearly cracking with ill-concealed fear.
“So it’s true,” Kamenashi said with disbelief, “That boy, Shinoda-kun, he was -“
“Murdered,” Yamapi said, and in any other situation he would be embarrassed of the way his voice cracked. Now that he’d said the word, the deed became true to him - but that didn’t make it any more believable, or bearable.
“Before this,” he heard Kamenashi say breathlessly, desperately, “I didn’t even know his name.”
“Neither did I,” Yamapi said hollowly, with anguish. “And neither did Jin.”
*
Now that the hearings were on, activities had been suspended and they’d been instructed to go out as little as possible. Subsequently, Yamapi found his days filled with emptiness. This was even worse than the suspension - at least then, his manager had accompanied the news of the hiatus of their activities with updates on his latest and upcoming projects. He half-remembered the pacific tour, when they were closer to each other, and far away enough from the suspension to talk about it; he dimly recalled Koyama and Shige saying, through smiles, that for a few months they’d worked part-time jobs just to get by.
He wished it had never come to this stage. Sure, he’d gone to university to ensure that when he couldn’t be an idol any longer, he could at least do something else. But he’d never expected it to be this way. He didn’t want it to be this way.
He felt an immense sense of guilt, though he knew rationally that any of it was hardly his fault. Like he hadn’t loved NEWS enough, hadn’t protected and treasured them enough, and that’s why they were being torn away from him again. He felt as if they had somehow all been cheated: cheated of great careers, and cheated of each other’s camaraderie and friendship. He missed them all deeply, and wondered if they were feeling the same, or if they had already moved on.
And at the same time, in the back of his head, he wondered what Jin was doing. Wondered exactly what had happened that fateful day, wondered if Jin would ever tell him. Nowadays, their best-friendship seemed to be more in name than in deed, and he regretted this harder than he regretted NEWS. Thick and thin, they’d promised each other - and now Jin was at his thinnest and Pi could do nothing about it. Worst of all, it was hardly for the lack of trying, but instead because he wasn’t letting him in.
How did it get this way? Pi wondered. How did it get this way.
He lay out on his couch and stared up at the ceiling. His restless, workaholic nature screamed out at him to get up and get moving, but he quelled it down with the singularly desolate thought that there simply wasn’t anywhere to go, anything to do. He listened to the clock ticking, to the scuffling of Pi-chan’s paws in another room; he felt, intensely, the moments go thickly by.
His body felt heavy, yet as if it were suspended in mid-air. He closed his eyes and let the tears prick the back of his eyelids.
*
There was no way to get any news on the proceedings except through his manager, who was keeping extraordinarily tight-lipped about it, claiming that he didn’t need to know, that it was better if he didn’t know. The few official news reports were largely disinterested and vaguely sneering, as if it wasn’t news that surprised them, but they provided the fuel for the vociferous gossip mags and the entertainment programmes, which embellished and made up details to the point of being ludicrous. It was as if they were taking their revenge on the media control of the jimusho, and were being extra vicious in return.
The verdict was eventually released, but Yamapi only half-registered it. Still nobody knew anything about Jin; only the occasional text message from Akanishi-mama-chan gave him the briefest of ideas of Jin’s physical status, but what he really wanted to know was his current state of mind.
Finally, in the afternoon, Shirota provided him with reliable news.
“I think he’s left the country,” he said, stepping into Yamapi’s apartment, a bag of things in his hand. “He called me up and asked for my mother, and I heard her discussing the details of putting him on one of her volunteer trips.”
It wasn’t bad news, but it wasn’t exactly sending Yamapi over the moon, either. Yamapi felt drained, empty after days of uncertainty and fitful sleep. He wanted to see Jin, wanted to ascertain for himself how he was. Instead he tried to content himself by asking, “Do you know how long he’ll be gone for?”
Shirota sighed and said, “Knowing my mother, it could be anything between three months and two years.”
Frustrated and feeling helpless and guilty that he could do nothing for Jin, Yamapi turned on him and demanded, “Why does he do this? Why does he keep running away when things happen, like it would make things better?”
“Jin’s spirit has always been a little vulnerable. That image he’s felt he’s needed to upkeep has been eating away at him, bit by bit, making him entirely unlike the boy we went to school with,” Shirota finally said. He’d always had slightly more insight into Jin than Pi ever did. “But this time, whatever happened really destroyed him. After she hung up the phone, my mother told me that he sounded weaker, hoarser, like something essential in him had been ripped out. She asked him, how far did he want to go? The best she could do for him is to send him somewhere undefiled where he can just be himself again, without the pressure of keeping up appearances and a public image. And that probably is nowhere in this country.”
They fell silent, and Yamapi reflected on the truth in that statement.
“Get some rest, Pi-kun,” Shirota continued, looking him over critically. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“Very little,” Yamapi admitted, wiping at his eyes.
Shirota gave him a wry, sad smile, and said, “Jin will be fine, Pi. This time I’m sure of it.” He looked in his face briefly, then patted his shoulder and said, “Go to bed. I’ll put this stuff away in your fridge and let myself out.”
Pi tried to smile for him, but it was wobbly, and he was grateful when Shirota smiled in return. He padded to his room and closed the door, but instead of stripping his clothes off, he made a phone call. Another person deserved the right to know.
When Kamenashi picked up on the second ring, he said without preamble, “He left.”
“What?”
“He left,” Yamapi said, and closed his eyes. This wasn’t easy. “I think the country. I don’t know.”
“He -“
“I just thought you should know.” And he hung up, not trusting himself to say anymore, pulled his clothes off, and got under the covers before he could think of anything else.
When he heard the click of the front door closing, he finally let himself cry himself to exhausted, dreamless sleep.
*
Yamapi woke up when his manager called a few hours later, instantly awake. He was ravenously hungry, and as he moved around making dinner he mulled over the jobs he had just been offered by his manager.
Life moved so quickly, so inexorably, so unforgivably quick in the face of disaster. He felt as if his whole life had just been turned upside down, yet all life had done was to slap him in the face and then pretend as if nothing had happened.
He wondered if it was the same for Jin.
*
Days passed, turned into weeks. Shirota-san kept them all updated about Jin, though she kept mum about the details, including the exact date, time, location and destination of his departure. “His requests,” she said in her accented Japanese, when Yamapi went to pay Shirota a return visit, and her eyes dared him to go further.
“Then please,” Yamapi begged, “Make sure he has our addresses. And tell us when he comes home again.”
Shirota-san’s eyes softened. “I will.”
Weeks turned into months, and Yamapi had fully thrown himself back into his life. It was pretty much the same as life in NEWS had been, just without the group activities, and with a lot less singing. But he enjoyed it. He found that he had the time to spend time with the people he’d always regretted not having enough time for, found he had the time to invest his energy into projects he’d always wanted to do, but never had the chance to. He gave his sister away at her wedding. He opened his own line of casual wear, a mild success. He made sure he kept himself as updated as possible with the movements of the other ex-Johnny’s, though sometimes it got difficult. He found love.
Months turned to years. The spotlight on him still shone, but without the backing of Johnny’s; his was still a big name, though the fame was less intense, more breathable. He found himself living life more, indulging his need for serenity and quiet by buying a small house on the outskirts of Tokyo. Ryo eventually moved in.
And one day, Jin came home.
*
He looked different, was the first thing Yamapi thought. His hair was black, a colour Pi hadn’t seen in his hair for a long time; his skin was tan, and while he still wore jewellery, none of it caught light and glittered. He looked taller, somehow, healthier, calmer.
“Hisashiburi,” Jin said, stepping over the threshold and into his home.
“Hisashiburi,” Yamapi said, and led him quietly to the living room.
“It’s really been a long time,” Yamapi said when they were settled opposite each other. It was so good to see Jin but at the same time entirely unnerving - he’d been away for so long that he didn’t know who he was anymore.
“It has been,” Jin agreed. Then he seemed to gather himself as he looked up in Yamapi’s eyes, and said, “I’m sorry.”
Pi said nothing, waiting for Jin to continue.
“Shirota-san told me everything, when I was - when I was feeling better,” he said softly. “I’ve been unfair to you, haven’t I?”
It would have been easy to say yes, to have refused to forgive, but when Yamapi looked into his eyes he saw something strange in them. This was the same Jin as the one that he’d known, the little boy with the gangly limbs and uncontrollable mop, the teenage boy with the awkward grin and his love for his friends. Yet, there was something like an old soul in his eyes, a depth that spoke of experience that had been meaningful and had touched his life. It was as if he had been stripped clean and rebuilt again.
Yamapi felt a rush of relief and the feeling was one of a heavy weight having been lifted from his back after having been borne for years. He broke into a smile, the first of the evening. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said, shaking his head, and Jin smiled, that real smile, and soon they were laughing, and it was catharsis.
The rest of the evening passed easier. Jin never said anything about where he’d gone and what he’d done and seen, and neither did he talk about the thing that had catalysed his departure, and Pi didn’t ask. It didn’t matter anymore. He knew Jin would tell him in good time.
At the end of the evening, when Jin stood on the other side of the door again, Yamapi asked, “Where are you going from here?”
Jin shrugged. “Maybe back home for a while.” He adjusted the straps of his rucksack, shifting them across his shoulders. “I’m a free spirit now,” and he grinned a lopsided grin.
Yamapi looked at him, and said, “Why don’t you stay with Kamenashi awhile?”
Jin was silent, but his expression was attentive, so Yamapi continued, “I hear he’s got a beautiful place somewhere even further out from here, where you can really see the mountains.”
Jin smiled slightly, a wistful kind of smile, a faraway look in his eyes.
“And I’m sure he misses you, too,” Yamapi quietly said, hoping to nudge him in the right direction.
Jin had a look of distant thinking on his face, as if he were remembering something, hearing something call from far, far away, or long, long ago. Yamapi waited.
Finally, Jin’s eyes refocused on him. “Mountains,” he murmured, with a sort of sigh. “Yeah. That would be nice.”