Character Study Drabbles
TITLE: The Ruined Parts of a City
CHARACTER: Chinen Yuuri (Hey!Say!JUMP)
They're happily walking down the street together, just outside of the subway station, carrying their school and gym bags when an arm grabs Chinen around his chest and a cloth is put over his nose and mouth. He screams, but it's muffled. He grabs for Takaki on his left, but Takaki's not there. He's getting shoved into a dumpster. Chinen's vision is starting to blur and he can't breathe well. He hears a grunt and then he sees Yabu on the ground, fighting with some guy, lip split, screaming and hollering.
There's no one else on the street.
Chinen feels himself get picked up and thrown into something cold and hard. A door shuts and he'd surrounded by darkness. A trunk. He shouts and kicks, but his heart is beating to fast and he still can't breathe well. And then he passes out.
He wakes up tied to a chair in a cement block room, there's a small window on one side up by the ceiling. There are three men standing in the corner by a phone. One has his head in his hands. He screams again, but there's a rag shoved in his mouth and all that comes out is a muffled something. They all turn. One looks terrified, the others two are smiling.
"Chinen-kun is awake."
He wants to cry, but somehow, he thinks that's not the best idea right now.
He's tied to the chair for three days. He's only given water. They don't touch him, except for the few times that he's unbound and led to a bathroom that locks from the outside. There are a lot of phone calls and the two other men laugh a lot to themselves and count things on their fingers. The third man - the one who always looks scared and is the one who gives Chinen water and takes him to the bathroom - stands with the other two, but doesn't behave like them.
On the third day, the two counting smilers leave for some reason. The third man was left alone with Chinen. He opens the window, unties Chinen, lifts him up to the window and tells him to run. As fast as he can. As far as he can. Chinen understands, but at the same time, he doesn't. The other two will be angry when they get back and there's no Chinen. But the man just shakes his head and begs Chinen to run. So he does.
They're out in the country side. He has no idea where. He runs across fields, because he thinks that's safer and he eventually finds a middle aged rice farmer.
"You're that little Johnny's that got kidnapped! How'd you get out? C'mon, we'd better go call the police!"
Chinen and his parents all cry when they're re-united. He asks about Takaki and Yabu - they're fine, just banged up. The cops rip apart the countryside and find the basement room Chinen was held in. The third kidnapper who helped Chinen escape is found dead in the room. He hung himself. The other two are caught soon after.
The media has a field day during the trial. Chinen, Takaki and Yabu all testify. They're cheered for their bravery and candor on the stand. Takaki and Yabu, while still children themselves, feel guilty for not having been able to keep Chinen safe, but the police and the lawyers and the judge all tell the pair that they did everything they could, and thank goodness Chinen-kun was found safely, uninjured. The two kidnappers are sentenced to life in prison. Later, the District Attorney admitted to Chinen that he wanted a more severe punishment for the two of them.
Chinen goes back to Johnny's. He's every one's favorite. All the senpai dote on him and Takaki and Yabu become obsessively protective. Slowly, Chinen decides this isn't what he wants to do. He likes singing and dancing just fine, but he wants to do more. He wants to help people. He drops out of the Johnny's. Focuses on building up his strength. Getting into a good college. He takes what happened to him and applies it to tests (written and field) and the real world. He helps people.
And in 15 years, Chinen Yuuri is one the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's youngest, but most highly decorated detectives, specializing in kidnappings and negotiation tactics.
TITLE: Pill Bottle
CHARACTER: Pi (during his skinny phase)
WARNINGS: drug addiction
Every time he picks up the bottle and opens it, he says to himself, This is the last one. This time, it's the last one. He swallows the little white pill without any water - he doesn't need it any more - and sits down, waiting for the calm. For his heart to slow down, for the thirst to retreat for, the ache in his muscles to disappear. Each day is more difficult and he pines for 4TOPS. For his friends who understand him and don't put the stress of leadership on his shoulders. While NEWS was a temporary group, he could handle it, but he was able to look forward for the day when he'd been free of this. But then Moriuchi quit, and then Johnny made the announcement that NEWS would be staying together. Tegoshi, Masuda, Koyama, Katou and Kusano all cheered. Ryo and Uchi worried about whether or not they could keep up this double-band routine in the long time. And Pi, he sat at the table, staring at Johnny, wanting more in that moment than any other for it to be a lie.
The rest of NEWS starts coming into the dressing room. They're a blur and their voices a dull murmur. Pi's eyes are closed - they think he's fallen asleep on the couch. Ryo comes over and pokes his cheek. Pi swats it away and falls down onto the couch. Some one laughs. No one worries about how pale he's looking all of a sudden, or how his breaths are deep and slow.
Pi feels like he's floating, like nothing could ever go wrong. His face feels warm and he imagines he's outside, running around, playing soccer with his friends. Not trapped in a dressing room with a group he doesn't want to lead. With a group he never wanted to lead.
He opens his eyes, groggily, like he just woke up. The pill makes him sleepy, forget how to tell time. When did he last take one? He can't remember. It must have been a long time ago. But when the choreographer sticks his head back into the room and tells them the breaks over, Pi thinks he might be wrong about how long he's been sitting on the couch. Every one files out of the room and he's the last, stumbling up and slowly walking out the door.
TITLE: For When I'm Old
CHARACTER: Jin
He's sitting outside a tiny little cafe run by an old Mexican couple. They barely speak any English and the first time he goes inside, it takes 10 minutes for him to order a cup of coffee because they can't understand him through his accent. This is the only place Jin will go for coffee. When they see him walk through the door, they wave to him and let him sit where ever he wants and the wife brings him a warm cup, filled as high as possible and sometimes a pastry (but they never charge him for the pastry).
It's Saturday night and by all accounts, he should be out partying and only really pretending to be a student. But Jin made a promise to his family, his friends, his band and to his fans - this wasn't just playtime. Instead of partying, he faked a cold when his other student friends called. They believed it, and after gathering up his things, he came down to the cafe to study. His textbook is open to the key in the back and he's checking his answers for the practice test at the end of the chapter.
The instructor tells Jin that his strong point is vocabulary and speaking - Jin isn't afraid of making mistakes in front of others like every one else in the class. And that's because Jin sees it all an opportunity to learn. But conjugation - that's his weak point. And it's going to be all over the test next week. So Jin's planning ahead and studying now. Learning and figuring things out beforehand.
From the inside of the cafe, Jin can hear ballads of something in Spanish - the wife is singing along to them. An Asian couple walks by speaking a mix of English and Korean. There are some drunk Brazilians down the street dancing. Every Saturday, without fail, they're at that corner dancing happily with each other. And when Jin closes his textbook to take a break for a minute, he sees all over the front his name written in various languages - Spanish, Korean, German, Arabic, Thai - one for each distinct groups of people he's met here. Across the top, he's scribbled "Jin Akanishi" in English, but the foreign versions written by others make him smile, broadly. And when he looks up to watch the dancing Brazilians, he's still smiling. When the bids the Mexican couple good-night, he's still smiling. And when he crawls into bed that night, he's still smiling.
TITLE: The Haunting
CHARACTER: Uchi
It follows him around like a bad smell. Juniors whisper about it in the hallways when they think he can't hear, when they want him to hear.
"Why'd he get a comeback when we've been working for years with nothing to show for it?"
"He had his chance. And he blew it."
"It's unprecedented. What'd he do to deserve it?"
He's surrounded at all times. Nowhere is safe. Even when he's with Kanjani8, sitting in their old dressing room with the door closed, he can still hear it.
Alcoholic.
Drunk.
Failure.
When his return and drama is announced, Ryo nearly cries (but he's far too manly for it) and grins like an idiot, talking about how they'll get to do an episode together. Kanjani claps him on the back and says, "It's only a matter of time until Johnny officially gives you back to us!" and NEWS is happy for him too ("We'll understand if you can't come back to both groups. Kanjani8 was together before us anyways. No matter what, we'll cheer you on!"). He puts on a cheerful face and thanks all the people he has to thank and tells interviewers that he'll earn back every one's trust.
But then he walks down the hallways again, or sees old pictures of Kanjani8 or NEWS, and he wonders if they're really willing to trust him again and if he's really deserved that chance.
TITLE: Artificial Limbs
CHARACTER: Kamenashi
Kame wakes up one day and his left hand is missing. He freaks out, runs downstairs. His parents and brother stare and him and look at his hand.
“Kazuya, dear, your hand is fine. Are you feeling alright?”
Kame looks at his wrist and where his arm just ends, but no one else seems to see this. He tells his parents he must have still been half asleep and goes back upstairs to get dressed. It’s hard, with just one hand.
The same thing happens when he gets to work. For every one else, he still has a left hand. He sits on the couch in KAT-TUN’s dressing room and opens his bag. And immediately closes it again. He takes a deep breath and opens it again.
There’s a little man. In his bag. That looks exactly like him.
Very calmly, perhaps bordering on shock, Kame stands up with his bag and walks out of the room.
On the bathroom counter, the little-Kame introduces himself as Kamenashi Kazuya, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Big-Kame just wants his hand back, and he feels like this little person might know why he can’t see it or use it, but every one else can see it. Little-Kame says he’s Big-Kame’s id - his primal instincts and desires.
“My id is contained within my left hand?”
Little-Kame glares and tries to spit on him, “You’re the Super Ego, you flaming ass. You never let me have fun.”
Kame is very confused, but he has dance rehearsal soon, so he goes back to the dressing room. No one reacts to the little-Kame, the id, standing on his shoulder, pulling his hair. During rehearsal, the id gets off Kame’s shoulder, but he wreaks havoc while no one is watching. He moves every one’s water bottle, even Kame’s, so when it’s time for a break, they spend all the time looking for their water. While they’re having a discussion, he ties Koki’s shoelaces together. While they’re actually dancing, he runs around under their feet, making Kame worry and mess up the steps. It’s a stressful day and Kame’s happy when he can go to bed and hope this whole thing has been a horrible dream.
But it wasn’t a dream, and he wakes up in the morning without a right hand.
There’s a little-Kame walking around on his desk, looking at everything. Even in the semi-dark and as tired as he is, Kame can tell it’s not id. When it sees that Kame is awake, it waves and introduces itself as Kame’s Ego - the mediator between the id and the Super Ego. Kame has a hard time getting dressed that morning. Ego cheers him on from the desk and id swears at him from the floor.
At work, Ego spends the day controlling id and gently lecturing it on why it can’t make Jin trip and how hiding Taguchi’s cell phone would be mean. At dance rehearsal, id changes the name tags on the water bottles, but Ego changes them back before its break time.
At night, Kame is lying in bed. Still without any hands. Ego is sitting on Kame’s pillow, talking about all the times he’s had to run around inside Kame’s body controlling id.
“It’s a lot harder out here.” It says, “There’s more room, and more stuff for id to mess up.”
“When am I going to get my hands back?”
Ego pats Kame on the head and he barely feels it, “When id has gotten bored and goes back inside you. I’ll go back too then, since I need to keep an eye on it.”
CHARACTER: Chinen Yuuri (Hey!Say!JUMP)
They're happily walking down the street together, just outside of the subway station, carrying their school and gym bags when an arm grabs Chinen around his chest and a cloth is put over his nose and mouth. He screams, but it's muffled. He grabs for Takaki on his left, but Takaki's not there. He's getting shoved into a dumpster. Chinen's vision is starting to blur and he can't breathe well. He hears a grunt and then he sees Yabu on the ground, fighting with some guy, lip split, screaming and hollering.
There's no one else on the street.
Chinen feels himself get picked up and thrown into something cold and hard. A door shuts and he'd surrounded by darkness. A trunk. He shouts and kicks, but his heart is beating to fast and he still can't breathe well. And then he passes out.
He wakes up tied to a chair in a cement block room, there's a small window on one side up by the ceiling. There are three men standing in the corner by a phone. One has his head in his hands. He screams again, but there's a rag shoved in his mouth and all that comes out is a muffled something. They all turn. One looks terrified, the others two are smiling.
"Chinen-kun is awake."
He wants to cry, but somehow, he thinks that's not the best idea right now.
He's tied to the chair for three days. He's only given water. They don't touch him, except for the few times that he's unbound and led to a bathroom that locks from the outside. There are a lot of phone calls and the two other men laugh a lot to themselves and count things on their fingers. The third man - the one who always looks scared and is the one who gives Chinen water and takes him to the bathroom - stands with the other two, but doesn't behave like them.
On the third day, the two counting smilers leave for some reason. The third man was left alone with Chinen. He opens the window, unties Chinen, lifts him up to the window and tells him to run. As fast as he can. As far as he can. Chinen understands, but at the same time, he doesn't. The other two will be angry when they get back and there's no Chinen. But the man just shakes his head and begs Chinen to run. So he does.
They're out in the country side. He has no idea where. He runs across fields, because he thinks that's safer and he eventually finds a middle aged rice farmer.
"You're that little Johnny's that got kidnapped! How'd you get out? C'mon, we'd better go call the police!"
Chinen and his parents all cry when they're re-united. He asks about Takaki and Yabu - they're fine, just banged up. The cops rip apart the countryside and find the basement room Chinen was held in. The third kidnapper who helped Chinen escape is found dead in the room. He hung himself. The other two are caught soon after.
The media has a field day during the trial. Chinen, Takaki and Yabu all testify. They're cheered for their bravery and candor on the stand. Takaki and Yabu, while still children themselves, feel guilty for not having been able to keep Chinen safe, but the police and the lawyers and the judge all tell the pair that they did everything they could, and thank goodness Chinen-kun was found safely, uninjured. The two kidnappers are sentenced to life in prison. Later, the District Attorney admitted to Chinen that he wanted a more severe punishment for the two of them.
Chinen goes back to Johnny's. He's every one's favorite. All the senpai dote on him and Takaki and Yabu become obsessively protective. Slowly, Chinen decides this isn't what he wants to do. He likes singing and dancing just fine, but he wants to do more. He wants to help people. He drops out of the Johnny's. Focuses on building up his strength. Getting into a good college. He takes what happened to him and applies it to tests (written and field) and the real world. He helps people.
And in 15 years, Chinen Yuuri is one the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's youngest, but most highly decorated detectives, specializing in kidnappings and negotiation tactics.
TITLE: Pill Bottle
CHARACTER: Pi (during his skinny phase)
WARNINGS: drug addiction
Every time he picks up the bottle and opens it, he says to himself, This is the last one. This time, it's the last one. He swallows the little white pill without any water - he doesn't need it any more - and sits down, waiting for the calm. For his heart to slow down, for the thirst to retreat for, the ache in his muscles to disappear. Each day is more difficult and he pines for 4TOPS. For his friends who understand him and don't put the stress of leadership on his shoulders. While NEWS was a temporary group, he could handle it, but he was able to look forward for the day when he'd been free of this. But then Moriuchi quit, and then Johnny made the announcement that NEWS would be staying together. Tegoshi, Masuda, Koyama, Katou and Kusano all cheered. Ryo and Uchi worried about whether or not they could keep up this double-band routine in the long time. And Pi, he sat at the table, staring at Johnny, wanting more in that moment than any other for it to be a lie.
The rest of NEWS starts coming into the dressing room. They're a blur and their voices a dull murmur. Pi's eyes are closed - they think he's fallen asleep on the couch. Ryo comes over and pokes his cheek. Pi swats it away and falls down onto the couch. Some one laughs. No one worries about how pale he's looking all of a sudden, or how his breaths are deep and slow.
Pi feels like he's floating, like nothing could ever go wrong. His face feels warm and he imagines he's outside, running around, playing soccer with his friends. Not trapped in a dressing room with a group he doesn't want to lead. With a group he never wanted to lead.
He opens his eyes, groggily, like he just woke up. The pill makes him sleepy, forget how to tell time. When did he last take one? He can't remember. It must have been a long time ago. But when the choreographer sticks his head back into the room and tells them the breaks over, Pi thinks he might be wrong about how long he's been sitting on the couch. Every one files out of the room and he's the last, stumbling up and slowly walking out the door.
TITLE: For When I'm Old
CHARACTER: Jin
He's sitting outside a tiny little cafe run by an old Mexican couple. They barely speak any English and the first time he goes inside, it takes 10 minutes for him to order a cup of coffee because they can't understand him through his accent. This is the only place Jin will go for coffee. When they see him walk through the door, they wave to him and let him sit where ever he wants and the wife brings him a warm cup, filled as high as possible and sometimes a pastry (but they never charge him for the pastry).
It's Saturday night and by all accounts, he should be out partying and only really pretending to be a student. But Jin made a promise to his family, his friends, his band and to his fans - this wasn't just playtime. Instead of partying, he faked a cold when his other student friends called. They believed it, and after gathering up his things, he came down to the cafe to study. His textbook is open to the key in the back and he's checking his answers for the practice test at the end of the chapter.
The instructor tells Jin that his strong point is vocabulary and speaking - Jin isn't afraid of making mistakes in front of others like every one else in the class. And that's because Jin sees it all an opportunity to learn. But conjugation - that's his weak point. And it's going to be all over the test next week. So Jin's planning ahead and studying now. Learning and figuring things out beforehand.
From the inside of the cafe, Jin can hear ballads of something in Spanish - the wife is singing along to them. An Asian couple walks by speaking a mix of English and Korean. There are some drunk Brazilians down the street dancing. Every Saturday, without fail, they're at that corner dancing happily with each other. And when Jin closes his textbook to take a break for a minute, he sees all over the front his name written in various languages - Spanish, Korean, German, Arabic, Thai - one for each distinct groups of people he's met here. Across the top, he's scribbled "Jin Akanishi" in English, but the foreign versions written by others make him smile, broadly. And when he looks up to watch the dancing Brazilians, he's still smiling. When the bids the Mexican couple good-night, he's still smiling. And when he crawls into bed that night, he's still smiling.
TITLE: The Haunting
CHARACTER: Uchi
It follows him around like a bad smell. Juniors whisper about it in the hallways when they think he can't hear, when they want him to hear.
"Why'd he get a comeback when we've been working for years with nothing to show for it?"
"He had his chance. And he blew it."
"It's unprecedented. What'd he do to deserve it?"
He's surrounded at all times. Nowhere is safe. Even when he's with Kanjani8, sitting in their old dressing room with the door closed, he can still hear it.
Alcoholic.
Drunk.
Failure.
When his return and drama is announced, Ryo nearly cries (but he's far too manly for it) and grins like an idiot, talking about how they'll get to do an episode together. Kanjani claps him on the back and says, "It's only a matter of time until Johnny officially gives you back to us!" and NEWS is happy for him too ("We'll understand if you can't come back to both groups. Kanjani8 was together before us anyways. No matter what, we'll cheer you on!"). He puts on a cheerful face and thanks all the people he has to thank and tells interviewers that he'll earn back every one's trust.
But then he walks down the hallways again, or sees old pictures of Kanjani8 or NEWS, and he wonders if they're really willing to trust him again and if he's really deserved that chance.
TITLE: Artificial Limbs
CHARACTER: Kamenashi
Kame wakes up one day and his left hand is missing. He freaks out, runs downstairs. His parents and brother stare and him and look at his hand.
“Kazuya, dear, your hand is fine. Are you feeling alright?”
Kame looks at his wrist and where his arm just ends, but no one else seems to see this. He tells his parents he must have still been half asleep and goes back upstairs to get dressed. It’s hard, with just one hand.
The same thing happens when he gets to work. For every one else, he still has a left hand. He sits on the couch in KAT-TUN’s dressing room and opens his bag. And immediately closes it again. He takes a deep breath and opens it again.
There’s a little man. In his bag. That looks exactly like him.
Very calmly, perhaps bordering on shock, Kame stands up with his bag and walks out of the room.
On the bathroom counter, the little-Kame introduces himself as Kamenashi Kazuya, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Big-Kame just wants his hand back, and he feels like this little person might know why he can’t see it or use it, but every one else can see it. Little-Kame says he’s Big-Kame’s id - his primal instincts and desires.
“My id is contained within my left hand?”
Little-Kame glares and tries to spit on him, “You’re the Super Ego, you flaming ass. You never let me have fun.”
Kame is very confused, but he has dance rehearsal soon, so he goes back to the dressing room. No one reacts to the little-Kame, the id, standing on his shoulder, pulling his hair. During rehearsal, the id gets off Kame’s shoulder, but he wreaks havoc while no one is watching. He moves every one’s water bottle, even Kame’s, so when it’s time for a break, they spend all the time looking for their water. While they’re having a discussion, he ties Koki’s shoelaces together. While they’re actually dancing, he runs around under their feet, making Kame worry and mess up the steps. It’s a stressful day and Kame’s happy when he can go to bed and hope this whole thing has been a horrible dream.
But it wasn’t a dream, and he wakes up in the morning without a right hand.
There’s a little-Kame walking around on his desk, looking at everything. Even in the semi-dark and as tired as he is, Kame can tell it’s not id. When it sees that Kame is awake, it waves and introduces itself as Kame’s Ego - the mediator between the id and the Super Ego. Kame has a hard time getting dressed that morning. Ego cheers him on from the desk and id swears at him from the floor.
At work, Ego spends the day controlling id and gently lecturing it on why it can’t make Jin trip and how hiding Taguchi’s cell phone would be mean. At dance rehearsal, id changes the name tags on the water bottles, but Ego changes them back before its break time.
At night, Kame is lying in bed. Still without any hands. Ego is sitting on Kame’s pillow, talking about all the times he’s had to run around inside Kame’s body controlling id.
“It’s a lot harder out here.” It says, “There’s more room, and more stuff for id to mess up.”
“When am I going to get my hands back?”
Ego pats Kame on the head and he barely feels it, “When id has gotten bored and goes back inside you. I’ll go back too then, since I need to keep an eye on it.”