[Fanfic] My Everything
Title: My Everything
Author: yutorinislove
Genre: Friendship, Angst
Pairing: Yabu x BEST (Friendship); one-sided Yabu x OC
Rating: G - PG
Summary: Yabu Kouta liked someone. The unfortunate thing was that certain someone didn't like him back.
He was wounded, and everybody in BEST knew that. He has set his eyes on one goal, and being a type A man, he would do everything to achieve that goal. Also, Yabu Kouta wasn't one to just give up on something. Everybody wondered what happened. Everybody wondered what went wrong that their beloved leader just turned up at dance practice one day, forcing smiles, forcing jokes, being more than a mother figure to them than he already was, and ultimately, when he thought that no one was looking, stared out of the window with something on his face that was so forlorn it was almost unhealthy.
Yabu Kouta liked someone; that was the rumor swilling around the Jimusho. They said it was an idol he met during YYJ. They said that Kouta and the girl became a couple shortly after they met. They said that this girl was Yabu Kouta's first kiss, or if not, his first love.
Which, to BEST, at least, was a joke. They knew that this girl was not his first kiss. ("Koppi's actually very good with girls," Hikaru said, pouting upon hearing the rumors. "He's had kissed three girls before I had even kissed my first. And I kissed my first girl when I was thirteen.") They also knew that it wasn't Kouta's first love. ("I was his first love!" Kei declared. Daiki smacked him upside on the head.) They also knew that the girl was not an idol. ("I'd love to see Aki-chan performing onstage," Takaki mused. "She has terrible stage fright, doesn't she?") Kouta didn't meet her on YYJ, he didn't wink at her while grasping the microphone in one hand. ("Yes, YYJ, if singing onstage with a microphone meant standing in front of the crowds in a supermarket, grasping a radish that fell from Aki-chan's basket," Daiki grumbled. "I was there, you know." everybody ignored that last comment.) They weren't boyfriend-girlfriend. Never have been. ("Heck, if they ever have been," Kei sighed, "I would be the happiest guy alive.")
And if there was another thing wrong about the rumors, it was that Kouta didn't just like Yamamoto Aki. He liked the girl very, very, very much. He might even love her.
"Geez, saying Koppi liked Aki-chan is the understatement of the year. No, of the millennia!" Hikaru said as he stood up and exited the dressing room.
The 7 members, who were there, listening to the BEST members clarify the rumors, turned to the remaining three. Daiki sighed and tried to smile at the younger members. "It's actually true," he said. "I've never seen Yabu-kun like somebody that much."
BEST knew that the rumors were ridiculous at best. But that wasn't their concern. Their concern was making sure that Yabu would snap out of the depression that he was suffering. And to achieve that, they have to know what exactly happened.
It took an entire week for them to summon up the courage to ask their friend what's wrong. After dance practice, they crowded up to the tallest member and tried to get the whole issue out from him.
“What happened, Yabu-chan?” he asked. “You’ve been really let down for days… has anything happened?”
Yabu shook his head. “Nothing happened.”
“Something must have happened, Koppi,” Hikaru, usually the least serious among them all, was suddenly so grave and calculating and almost angry, and it was all the others needed to confirm that whatever was happening really was one complicated, grim mess. “What happened with Aki-chan? What did she do?”
Yabu shook his head and stared out of the window, his mouth curving up to form a smile. That weird, mirthless smile that just wasn’t Yabu, and served to make things worse than actually convincing the world that it was all the same, that nothing’s changed.
“Don’t do that, Kouta!” Hikaru yowled in frustration. “What is so wrong that happened? Did you confess? Got turned down? Dude, just tell us!”
A moment of silent eternity passed, until it was broken by Takaki, who laid a comforting hand on their leader’s shoulder. He looked at Yabu with sympathetic eyes of someone who knew pretty well the troubles of the heart. “Go on,” he chided gently. “You can tell us.”
Yabu sighed. “It’s not anything that happened,” he explained. “It’s something that never happened.”
--
After a bit more of chiding and reading between the lines, BEST concludes that Kouta was head over heels in love with Aki, and the other thing was that Aki already had a boyfriend.
“It might not have happened - her getting together with Daichi,” Kouta said as he looked down on his feet. “But I guess I was so stupid to not have realized that she wasn’t mine in the first place to wait for me.”
There wasn’t anything they could do about that, though. Who she chooses to go out with was her choice, and there wasn’t anything left for them to do to appeal for Kouta’s affection to be returned. Kei has it said and pegged to the hilt: they’re going to do Kouta’s rep more harm than good if they continued to volley for Aki to return their friend’s feelings.
It was the first time that they ever felt helpless when it came to advice giving. They always believed that there will be a way to wiggle out of every situation, but this situation has gotten them stuck to the point that they don’t know what to do, but be there as Kouta fakes smile after smile while inside he was just breaking down.
---
“Hi! You’ve reached Aki. I can’t come to the phone this moment, but do leave a message, and I’ll get back to you!”
“Aki… it’s Kouta. I want you to know that I’m still not over you… Please call me back?”
It took him several tries to make that call.
He waited. Nobody phoned back.
The next day he came to work with bags under his red, swollen eyes, his mouth parted in a grin that wasn’t his own.
---
The backstage at every Shokura practice was a chaotic mess. The Juniors were milling practically everywhere. Performing groups were holding a run-through of their performances onstage. The host group, this time, JUMP, was reviewing scripts in one of the dressing rooms of NHK Hall. The theme for that particular Shokura episode they were practicing for was “unrequited.” It had been quite uproar among the jimusho, because this was the first time that the theme of Shokura would touch upon the issues of love. Idols were supposed to be pure and untainted by such issues, and they were prevented from divulging information about their love lives by preventing them from talking about stuff like these.
Whoever thought of the concept was a timing-impaired bastard, Hikaru thought as he looked over at his eldest friend who was busy reviewing his lines for the MC part. He knew that in an exchange between him and Kouta in the script, he had to tease Kouta for an unrequited love he had. He didn’t want to hurt his friend, but he had to do it. It was his job.
Hikaru sighed as he went back to reviewing his own script. If this was what he was feeling right now, he could only begin to imagine what Kouta was going through right now.
---
“Do you want to play football?” Daiki asked Kouta as he ran outside of the studio, finally relieved to get off the stressful timetable that their manager was keeping. Also, he knew that their eldest could use it.
Kouta grinned at him, although, Daiki noted in frustration, they never reached his eyes. “I’m good.”
“Really? Come on!”
Daiki wondered if Kouta was really okay, but just looking at him like this, actively participating in a sport that he was so vocally passionate about, laughing and being the old cheerful Yabu Kouta that he has once been. Only it wasn’t the same.
“Dai-chan, it’s your turn for the free kick!” Kouta called him over, grinning at him with that eye-disappearing way that was so Yabu Kouta. If Daiki was a girl, he’d totally fall in love with Kouta. Kouta was considerate and understanding, and he always, always puts other people before himself. He was very sweet and kind, too much so, and he was perfectly capable of taking care of others. He was a perfect lover, Daiki thought, wondering why only a few people appreciated that. His smile alone was enough to inspire Daiki to try a little bit harder in everything.
If Daiki was a girl, and actually, even if he is not, he’d love waking up to Kouta’s smiles because they were beautiful and genuine. Unfortunately, someone had to take that smile away.
Aki-chan is stupid for dumping him. “Coming!”
---
“I’ll do anything you want me to do, just please, smile for real again!” Kei sobbed into the curve of Kouta’s neck. He didn’t know what triggered it. Kouta just walked into the room and Kei just couldn’t help himself. He flung his arms around the taller guy’s neck and just cried. “I mean, I’ll let you have me cross dress as anyone as anything, I’ll let you carry on with the ‘Kei-is-a-woman’ joke forever, just please, let me have our old Yabu back!”
“Kei,” Kouta said as he patted the younger between the shoulder blades. “Kei, he’ll be back soon.”
Soon, Kei said as he tightened his arms around his friend’s neck. It’s been nearly a year, Kou-chan. Why aren’t you back yet?
---
“Hi, Yabu-kun.”
“Yo, Ryutaro. How’s school?”
“It was fine. Say, I was hearing things from Chinen saying that you’ve been pining for one girl over the course of the last few months. Should I believe him? Because Chinen can be quite a liar at times.”
“…what Chinen told you was true, Ryutaro.”
Silence.
“Are you just giving up like that?”
“She didn’t want me. Never have.”
“How do you know?”
“I… I don’t know. I just… She likes someone else.”
“Well, at least you just tell her how you feel. The Yabu-kun I know never goes down without a fight, does he?”
“…thanks, Ryutaro.”
“You’re welcome.”
---
“Hi! You’ve reached Aki. I can’t come to the phone this moment, but do leave a message, and I’ll get back to you!”
“Aki-chan? This is Yabu Kouta. I’m sorry for flooding your inbox with useless messages the past few months. Anyway. I just sent you a couple of tickets for this week’s Shokura. I was hoping if you could drop by, you know? I’m really hoping if you could come. So… see you?”
---
“My Everything?” Yamada asked in wonderment. “But you haven’t sung that song in years, and you said you have trouble singing that song.”
Kouta shrugged as he held the lyrics on eye level. “Well, let’s just say it’s a special performance?”
The four members of BEST looked up. Kei was the first to speak. “You didn’t…?”
Kouta gave them a half-smile. “I told you the old Kouta would be back, didn’t I?”
---
“Hanasanai yo. You are my everything
And you’ve got to listen to my heart
I can be the one for you.
Until the end of time, my everything
My everything…”
---
He looked down the moment he finished singing. This was the end. He just had to get his message across, that he would still fight until she gave him a proper answer of acceptance or rejection. Because that was Yabu Kouta in a nutshell. He fought.
Amidst all the applause and the cheers for a job well done, he looked up, over to the place where he knew that she was. But she wasn’t.
That was answer enough.
He gulped in a big sigh and mouthed to the empty seat: “Daisuki datta.”
Then he smiled, a genuine, happy smile, and exited the stage.
-----
Emo!Yabu is emo. <3 D'aww. Comments are love! <3