Life For Rent: Easier Said Than Done - PG-13, KoyamaPi; RyoShige
title: Easier Said Than Done
author: nihongofrancais
genre: RPS, NEWS
pairing: Koyama/YamaPi, Ryo/Shige
word count: 9,531 words
summary: AU Future. Continuation of "Out of Sight, Out of Mind". There is only so much running away Koyama can do when everyone else is running after him.
author's notes: see here.
"Bravo! Bravo! Oiratachi maru de sayaendou..."
Following the strains of the familiar song, Ryo padded out of the bathroom-sweats hanging loosely from his hips, t-shirt messily pulled on, small towel on his head as he rubbed at his damp hair-into the living room of the apartment.
"Shouldn't you be reviewing your briefs for Tuesday?"
Shige glanced back at Ryo, hitting pause on the DVD player remote as he did so; he had been watching an old recording of NEWS concert footage from their final Spring tour. The television screen froze on a shot of a bright and smiling Koyama. "It's not too difficult of a case; I don't need to review too much."
Ryo silently joined Shige on the sofa and took the DVD player remote out of Shige's hands, hitting the play button so that the rest of the performance of "Sayaendou" continued to play. "Which performance is this? It's not Osaka; the stage is a different formation."
"Sendai," Shige clarified. "It's the final concert."
A minute passed wherein the two just sat next to each other, taking in the colors, the dancing, the music and all that they had been five years ago as NEWS. Just as Tegoshi went into the closing of the bridge, changing the lyrics to "minna arigatou! aishiteiru sa", Ryo broke the silence. "We haven't really talked about Koyama…"
Shige arched his eyebrow incredulously at Ryo. "Since when were you the touchy-feely talk type?"
Another shot of a gleeful Koyama waving at the fans appeared momentarily on the screen. "I'm not," Ryo insisted, meeting Shige's gaze. "But clearly this is bothering you if you're pulling out old concerts and watching them."
Shige drew his legs up to his chest, resting his arms across the top of his knees. "Wouldn't it be weird if it didn't bother me though?" He paused after the rhetorical question, watching the very end of DVD as they all bid their fans a final goodbye and left the lights of the stage for the last time. "Koyama was my best friend."
After his run-in with Koyama earlier that week, the first person Ryo had called was YamaPi. The second person?
Shige.
Just as Koyama had lied to get away from his former band-mate, Ryo had told a white lie to Koyama as well. Shige and him, they did go out for drinks whenever Shige had time-but those drinks were usually after a nice, quiet dinner for two, all in the context of a date.
Sometimes when Ryo gave it a good moment of thought, he found himself startled by the idea that Shige and him had been together for over a year-toothbrushes sharing the same holder, shoes side by side in the apartment entrance, law books piled next to Bz' CDs on the coffee table. If anyone had told him five years ago that he would be living a semi-domestic life with the younger NEWS member, Ryo would have laughed in that person's face. The idea of dating the awkward boy, who seemed to be inseparable from Koyama, would have been absurd. Especially when his personal idol at the time was gorgeous and exotic Penelope Cruz; Shige was no Penelope Cruz.
Oh, how time was a funny thing.
Falling out of contact after NEWS's disbandment had not been a conscious effort, but things happened and life moved forward. Ryo ended up working out of Osaka more than Tokyo and upon leaving the jimusho, Shige ended up throwing himself into his college life-studying, socializing, networking. Cell phone numbers were disconnected, e-mail addresses were changed, and reasons for saying hello were lost. Their worlds did not intersect, they led completely separate lives.
A chance encounter almost two years ago at a train station changed all that.
Over drinks (of course, Ryo's treat), the two reconnected. As it turned out, the train station next to Ryo's high-rise apartment building just happened to be the same station that Shige used commute to the law firm he had just joined straight after graduation. Shige was learning all over again that being at the bottom of the food chain was time-consuming and a lot of grunt work, just as his days as a junior had been. Ryo listened to his stories, refreshing coming from a person who knew both sides-the glitz and glamour of the entertainment world and the quiet, hard work of a normal life.
They exchanged new phone numbers, relayed changed emails and promised this time to not fall out of contact. The promise was kept as monthly drinking get-togethers eventually became weekly (barring Shige's schedule, which was more chaotic that even Ryo could have fathomed) and the next thing Ryo knew he was inviting Shige up to his apartment for some late coffee and kissing him into the sofa cushions.
The gradualness of everything with Shige was probably what surprised Ryo the most. He tended to be a man of action-going after things that he wanted, seeing things through fully-and yet, with Shige, things seemed to just fall naturally into place without any movement on his part or Shige's for that matter. It was far from some sappy love affair, hearts set afire with declarations of love. It was comfortable, steady, and reliable-things that the both of them needed to counter their demanding careers.
Ryo watched Shige stare at the blank television screen, resting his elbow against the back of the sofa and propping his head against his arm, towel now draped around his neck. "Whenever I run into Tegoshi, he hardly acknowledges me anymore. Like last month when Kanjani8 was on Music Station and so was TegoMasu? Masuda came by our dressing room and everything to say hello, but Tegoshi never came. Barely even glanced in Kanjani8's direction the entire hour of recording."
Shige slowly turned to look at Ryo. "So? From what you tell me about Tegoshi nowadays, that's normal."
Ryo nodded. "It is. He acts like he had nothing to do with NEWS, like NEWS didn't get him to where he is now." His voice was hardly surprised or angry, but more saddened as none of this was a new revelation to him; it was a lived-in reality.
After NEWS, TegoMasu had managed to create a niche for themselves, singing hit anime theme song after hit anime theme song, to the point where they had even performed abroad at various anime conventions. Whether Tegoshi had let their success get to his head or purposely surrounded himself with his success if only to forget the failures of his past with NEWS, Ryo himself was not sure, though he speculated the latter.
"Koyama was like that," Ryo explained. "He called me 'Nishikido-san'. Spoke formally with a lot of distance. As if he was no one special and we were just strangers."
"Isn't that the way he wanted it though?" Shige returned with the slightest edge in his voice. "To get away from us, to forget NEWS ever existed."
Ryo frowned, sitting up from his leaning position. "I know you know that there's probably more to it than that; of all people, you would know."
Those words seemed to hit a nerve in Shige and suddenly he was shouting, everything he had held pent-up inside spilling out. "I DO! I know that he was trying to erase the failure of everything with a completely new start because otherwise being reminded of it day in and day out would've just broken him! But I can't help but feel like a victim, letting my judgment get completely clouded!" Shige sighed heavily, moving to wrap his arms around his knees and hug them closer to his chest. "I wish I could just hate Koyama and totally wallow in that feeling. But instead, I empathize and understand."
"You should go talk to Koyama then."
Shige arched an eyebrow. "You say that like Koyama lives down the street or something; it's not that easy."
"I didn't say it was," Ryo maintained, reaching for the remote and switching over from the DVD to regular television. A late night rerun of YamaPi's Code Blue was on FujiTV. "I just think that you should."
"What about Yamashita-kun?" While Shige knew of the fallout between Koyama and YamaPi, he had never actually heard it from the horse's mouth - it had come second hand from Ryo. The two were in each other's second circle of friends, connected indirectly through their relationships with Ryo and to an extent, Koyama. Sure, when YamaPi was in Osaka, he would go out drinking with the couple, but beyond that, he and Shige had very little interaction. If anything else, their relationship had changed very little since NEWS's disbanding.
"He went today. Blew off everything and just went." Ryo glanced over at his cell phone, which had been tossed carelessly on the coffee table when he had returned home earlier. "And my cell phone has been ringing off the hook all day because of it."
"It has? I haven't heard it ring once since you got home."
"That's because they probably figured out that I'm not telling them where Pi is." Ryo reached forward and grabbed it, flipping through all his received calls from that day. "Even Jin called me, asking after Pi only because everybody had been calling him." He shook his head with an exhausted sigh. "The world won't end if YamaPi decides to suddenly take a day off, people! Seriously."
"So you haven't heard from him at all?" Shige asked.
"He sent me a message when he got there earlier in the afternoon, but I haven't heard from him since. Pretty sure that's not a good sign. But I'm sure I'll hear the full story from him when he gets back."
Shige watched as Ryo shut his phone and returned his attention to the television where YamaPi with a perm in a helicopter was rescuing people. "If I didn't know you any better, I would think you didn't really care about all this. About Koyama."
"But you do know better." Ryo moved in closer, leaning ever so slightly against Shige. "I can't really do anything about the situation myself, that's the thing. Koyama won't listen to me like I know he'd listen to you and YamaPi; I'm not the one he wants to hear from in the first place. And if he's willing, I think that you should try hearing him out too."
*~*~*
"God, you're an asshole, Pi."
"Well, hello to you too, Sunshine," YamaPi shot back. He pulled open the dressing room door wider, ushering Jin inside. "I thought we agreed that there would be no calling me an asshole anymore."
Jin slipped out of his sandals and walked across the fake tatami flooring. "That was before you achieved the ultimate in asshole status."
YamaPi blinked at his best friend. "There are actual levels of asshole now?"
Jin ignored his question, bypassing it for a clearly more important topic. "I can't believe you went to see him, Pi. After five years, you actually went."
He shrugged at Jin, who was at the opposite end of the dressing room, staring accusingly. YamaPi kneeled down, settling in front of the small table with the newest edits to his drama script all laid out. "You act as if I did something absolutely unspeakable. I just went to see Koyama, to talk to him."
"You're the one who didn't say anything to anyone! You blew off everything just to see him-your responsibilities, your friends, your girlfriend." Jin was now looming over YamaPi.
YamaPi sifted through the pages of sides for the day, hardly moved by Jin's words. "Don't worry about Yui," he dismissed. "She's already forgiven me for Friday."
Jin sighed, giving in. He was used to this, the ambivalence from YamaPi. It disgusted him, but after five years of it, it had become just as a part of YamaPi as his constant chatter about food in his J-web. A front he put up because it was easier than talking about the things that really mattered; somewhere along the way, even Jin had been shut out by YamaPi. "Not before she came over to my place, worried you'd been kidnapped by a mob of fangirls or something."
"What'd you tell her?" YamaPi finally looked up at Jin, concerned. His concern was not for Yui though, that much Jin could tell.
"Shouldn't you know that yourself already?"
"I didn't really bother asking, I just-"
Before YamaPi could say more, he was cut off by a soft knocking and then the entrance of Yui into the small room. "Pi, do you still have my panties…?" She noticed Jin a little too late, only after the words had already left her mouth. "…oh. Hi, Jin-kun." The milky white of her cheeks flushed slightly, appropriately embarrassed.
"Hi, Yui," Jin returned awkwardly as she darted for the vanity, having obviously spotted her lacy blue panties hanging from the back of the chair tucked beneath it. Grabbing them, she stuffed them into the pocket of her white lab coat. "How is drama filming?"
"Good," she replied with a full smile, overcompensating for the awkwardness of the prior exchange. "Working with Kamenashi-san is an experience and after working on Code Blue a few years ago, all the medical terms are much easier this time around."
There was a moment of silence, pregnant with all the words that were unsaid and really a did not need to be. "Yui, don't you have filming?" YamaPi finally spoke, prompting his girlfriend.
"Oh… Yeah!" She skittered across the room, making for the door. "Are we still on for tonight, Pi?"
"If it's at your place, then yeah," YamaPi answered with a smile, if only to placate her.
"Okay." She smiled right back, bright and trusting. "Later then. Bye, Jin-kun."
"Bye," Jin called after her, but as soon as the door shut, he turned on YamaPi. "You are the biggest asshole ever. Really."
YamaPi rolled his eyes at Jin as he sat down on the other side of the table opposite him. "Not this again," he muttered.
"Dressing room makeup sex, huh?"
"At least she's not upset anymore."
"She honestly likes you! She trusts you! How do you lie to her, Pi?!"
"I didn't lie to her, okay? There are just some things that I prefer to keep private," YamaPi maintained, focusing on the papers before him as he placed them in order.
"You mean things like having an affair five years ago with one of your band-mates and still being hopelessly in love with him?" Jin spat, knowing his words were harsh, but recognizing that that was the only way to get through to his best friend.
YamaPi stiffened, but did not dare raise his voice. "It wasn't an affair," he bit out tersely.
"Oh? Then what else do you call it when someone cheats on their girlfriend by banging some other guy in his best friend's apartment every chance he can get?"
"Abiru was cheating on me too, you know that." YamaPi looked up at Jin with his narrowed eyes.
"You act as if that justifies and redeems what you did." Jin shook his head. "What you're still doing."
"What am I doing right now? I haven't done anything wrong as far as I know."
"'As far as you know'?" Jin scoffed. "Pi, you've been wrong ever since Koyama left."
Pushing off the table, YamaPi stood up and walked over to the vanity. He examined his reflection for a long time before turning around to face Jin again. "Where the hell is all this coming from? Did you really just come here to lecture me?"
"I didn't come here to lecture you, Pi." Jin's voice dropped a few tones, softer and much more sympathetic. "But with all that's happened with Koyama in the past week, I've been really worried about you; it's been five years. Everything won't go back to the way it was, the way you want it to, so easily."
"I may be an asshole, but I'm not delusional, Jin," YamaPi assured, leaning back against the table. "Koyama is hardly the same person he was five years ago. Neither am I. Hell, none of us are."
Jin nodded, listening to his best friend. At least he was starting to make some sense now. "So what is the plan then?"
"I have absolutely no clue." YamaPi sighed heavily and for the first time in their conversation, Jin could see his exhaustion come through on his otherwise stolid features, his mask falling away. "He was a total shell of who he used to be-cold, angry, bitter. No light in his eyes, that constant smile gone. It was so hard to just talk to him, to get him to talk to me."
"Koyama?" Jin rhetorically asked. He knew himself that YamaPi could only be speaking of Koyama and yet, for a moment there, Jin thought YamaPi might have been describing himself.
Too absorbed in recalling that meeting with Koyama, YamaPi failed to acknowledge Jin's question. "He looked so tired, like just being was exhausting. In that tiny town, in that tiny job…" YamaPi trailed off, and then met Jin's gaze. "Koyama was made for more than that. More than a boring, quiet life in a shoebox of an apartment. He should shine."
Jin frowned. He had not heard YamaPi be so painfully and earnestly honest in such a long time. And of course, it was in regards to his best kept secret: that even after years apart, YamaPi wanted Koyama, practically needed him. Nothing else seemed to suffice. No matter how many relationships he had had, YamaPi seemed to inadvertently sabotage every single one of them-his relationship with Ueno Juri of course being the biggest mess of all, what with YamaPi outing their relationship on national television and then Juri publicly dumping him on the morning news (though the jimusho's PR unit had managed to smooth that one over a bit by claiming that they had already broken up before Juri's statement).
"You need to stop blaming yourself, Pi," Jin quietly urged. "None of this was your fault. Shit just…happens, sometimes."
"Easier said than done. You're not the one who carries around the regret." YamaPi was now looking past Jin, staring at the blank white wall of the dressing room, regressing back into his own thoughts. "If I hadn't let Johnny convince me to go solo during hiatus, if I hadn't pushed Koyama away, if only I had acted instead of waiting so long… These things, they haunt me, Jin. This isn't the way things were supposed to be. NEWS was supposed to come back, bigger than ever. Koyama was supposed to be a rising idol, a talented MC. And now…"
Jin raked his hand through his hair, pushing away the bangs that had fallen into his face. He had forgotten how frustrating talking to YamaPi could be when he was like this. He always talked in circles, refusing to see a way out, strangely dooming himself like some over-the-top drama heroine. "Pi, if you don't do anything, none of this will change. You're going to keep breaking the hearts of all these nice girls, looking for something that you are only going to find in Koyama: forgiveness."
"Short of him coming back to Tokyo, I can't force anything on him." YamaPi gnawed absently on his lower lip, eyes solemn and pensive. "He keeps pushing me away. He's been pushing me away for the past five years."
"I didn't say it would be easy, Pi. I just said that it's something you need to do."
*~*~*
Two weeks had passed since YamaPi had barged back into Koyama's small life and strangely enough, Koyama found himself more miserable than he had ever been before. He had been leading a normal life (albeit, maybe not the most satisfying, but it was normal and he had grown accustomed to it) before the super idol's intrusion and had assumed that everything would return to status quo once he was gone. Out of sight, out of mind after all, right?
Wrong apparently, as Koyama could not seem to shake the deep impression that YamaPi's less-than-twenty-four-hour visit had left on him. YamaPi had been hurting too. Scared, unsure, confused-all the same things Koyama had been at the same time. All these years, Koyama had kept himself going on anger, fueled by the misplaced blame on YamaPi, Japan's beloved super idol. The idol who had chosen himself over his friends and his relationships, thinking only of success.
Turns out that YamaPi had never existed.
Somewhere deep down, Koyama had known that too, but had not been willing to admit it to himself. The mere idea that he had spent the past five years living this life based on irrational, emotionally-driven decisions with little foundation in reality was just ridiculously overwhelming. So, Koyama had kept looking forward. Because looking forward was what he did best.
Except now, everything else seemed to be moving forward, but Koyama was still stuck in that apartment on that Friday night with YamaPi, eating ramen in the dimly lit kitchen while taking in each other's presence.
"Koyama-san!"
Koyama snapped out of his wandering thoughts and turned around to see Miyamoto-san standing behind him, her GUCCI wristlet hanging from her newly manicured fingertips. "Hmm?" He raised his eyebrow in response to her call.
"Want to come to lunch with us?" Miyamoto-san brushed her long, curly hair over her shoulder and motioned to the other girls waiting at the front door in a group, talking amongst themselves in hushed voices as always.
Koyama was surprised that she had not given up on him yet, but that did not mean he was going to reward her persistence by indulging her whims. Just as he went to yet again decline the invitation, another voice did it for him.
"I'm sorry, Miyamoto-kun, but I need to speak with Koyama-kun right now, so perhaps another day?"
The young man watched the spirited girl's face drop into a cute little pout as she looked past Koyama at Oikawa-buchou, who Koyama knew was standing behind his own desk across the office. "Oh, okay," she relented and then winked at Koyama. "Another time, you'll have to come."
Koyama did not acknowledge her future invitation and instead, turned back to face his computer with a heavy sigh once she had skipped off out of earshot and joined the other girls to leave. After a moment, he realized that thanking Oikawa-buchou was in order and quickly made his way over to the older man's desk. "Thank you, Oikawa-buchou," he offered with a polite bow of his head and shoulders.
Oikawa-buchou waved him off. "No need to thank me. I actually really do have something to speak to you about, Koyama-kun. Would you mind joining me in the conference room?"
Frozen, Koyama stared after Oikawa-buchou as the older man walked toward the conference room. Did he do something wrong? Was he going to scold him about YamaPi's visit?! Realizing that standing there was not going to get him the answers that he sought, Koyama answered with a sharp, "Not at all!" and followed his superior into the separate room.
As Oikawa-buchou went around the room shutting the blinds one by one, Koyama seated himself on one side of the long conference table; he had tried to help Oikawa-buchou with the windows, but he had insisted on doing them himself. Once he had finished with that, the older man took the seat across from Koyama, leisurely leaning back in it. "I could beat around the bush about this, but since this is something we have done before, I would rather not. There is an opening in the main branch for a sales coordinator in the business division."
Koyama found himself letting out the breath he had been holding. He was not being scolded. They were just trying to promote and transfer him again. That was easy enough to deal with. After all, it was a situation that he had encountered before. All he had to do was say-
"Before you decide to decline this offer, please at least listen to why I put you up for this, Koyama-kun," Oikawa-buchou gently insisted, meeting Koyama's eyes. Koyama found himself taken in by the genuine tone of his superior's voice and nodded for the other to continue. "The current sales coordinator for the business division is leaving to follow her husband who was transferred abroad. It's a sudden opening that needs to be filled as soon as possible, and I think you would be perfect for it. You would be reporting to the department head directly and have about fifteen agents under you that you would manage.
"But more than believing you are the perfect man for the job, I honestly think that you would benefit from a move to Tokyo. I know you have your reasons for not going back and frankly as your boss, it's none of my business. As someone who has watched you grow into your job and become quite skilled and adept at it over these past five years, I know that you are wasting your time and potential staying here." Oikawa-buchou paused, allowing for his words to sink in. "You are young, and there is still so much you have to offer and so much you have to learn, but you can't do it here. You've already grown beyond what here can offer."
Koyama was strangely moved by the older man's words. Oikawa-buchou had always been encouraging, but Koyama had not realized the degree to which he watched over his employees. It was as if he was invested in their success, even if it was not to his direct benefit. And despite all of Koyama's efforts to isolate himself, Oikawa-buchou had invested in him. The mere thought of that in combination with the idea of YamaPi having actually waited all this time overwhelmed Koyama, rendering him completely speechless.
When he realized Koyama was not going to give him an answer right away, Oikawa-buchou added, "I have until Friday to report to the main branch about this, so you have two days to decide. I know you've rejected these transfers in the past, but just give it some thought, okay?"
With that, Oikawa-buchou stood up and left the room, which only seemed to get increasingly smaller by the minute to Koyama, but he could not bring himself to leave. Koyama simply sat there, staring at the ajar door-his future, his everything waiting just on the other side.
"Excuse me! I'm looking for a Koyama Keiichiro?"
The voice carried into the conference room and Koyama started at the familiar tones. He hastily made for the door, yanking it open and stepping out into the main office again. Koyama's eyes snapped over toward the main entrance.
"Yo," Shige awkwardly called out, an uneasy smile on his lips, hand raised in a hesitant wave. "Long time, no see."
*~*~*
In a magazine article from long ago, Koyama had said that he could not recall what it was like to have not known Shige. He was aware that there had been such a time-after all, he had only joined the jimusho at the late age of sixteen and really only at his sister's urgings-but he honestly could not remember it. Shige has just been that integral to his life as an idol.
Every group Koyama had been in-J-Support that became K.K.Kity and then debuting with NEWS-Shige had been in too. Five years of his youth and every day of it, he had spent it with Shige. Sometimes they would be in rehearsal together, both getting yelled at for their inability to dance or their horrible, cracking vocals. Other times, the both of them would be putting themselves out there on live television, acting like complete idiots. More often than enough though, they would just be camped out in the Excelsior down the street from Shige's house, studying together. A day without Shige was strange, completely foreign and even unsettling.
At that time, Koyama had firmly believed in best friends. Shige had been his best friend.
With the hiatus, days without Shige easily became weeks without Shige as the two settled into their new and differing schedules; Shige was completely absorbed in his fascinating new life as a college student and Koyama was rotating through a busy schedule of school, work and YamaPi. Neither seemed able to make time for the other, but they seemed to be perfectly fine with that situation. They were best friends, as if a little distance would hurt them. When NEWS resumed, they would be back to seeing each other day in and day out and probably long for the time when they had that nice, extended break from one another.
Except that day never came because the next thing Koyama knew, NEWS had been disbanded, Shige had announced he was leaving the jimusho (without a single word to Koyama prior to his announcement), and YamaPi was pushing him away. A life that had been oh so familiar suddenly was utterly foreign and Koyama had been free falling with nothing to break his fall, nothing to grasp onto and pull himself back up.
Eventually, Koyama had landed here. In his current life, and not without a few good bruises to constantly remind him of what had come before, what he had plummeted from. Koyama had relearned what life without Shige-without YamaPi-was like and he had become used to it. It was familiar.
So suddenly finding Shige at his side again, walking with him to the local restaurant that he frequented for lunch as if nothing had changed and they always had lunch together, was completely foreign to the person he was now.
Upon reaching the restaurant, Koyama stopped for a moment and glanced at Shige next to him. "Here is okay, right?" He generally gestured toward the display window outside the store with some of their main dishes.
Slightly startled by Koyama's voice as he had been otherwise silent for their short five minute walk, and before that, had barely said ten words to him-"Have you eaten? Let's go to lunch."-Shige simply nodded.
Koyama slid the entrance door open and stepped inside, a rousing round of "WELCOME!" from the friendly owner and chief cook greeting him. Almost directly following, he was greeted by the rather unexpected, "Oh! KOYAMA-SAN!"
He froze in the doorway, eyes darting around the restaurant partly filled with regulars from other businesses in the area until he spotted the girls from his office sitting lined up at the counter, Miyamoto-san at the very end, waving excitedly at Koyama. "Someone you know?" he heard Shige ask from behind.
"Yeah," Koyama grunted. If there had been a way to back out of the restaurant and not look incredibly awkward to the restaurant owner and some of the lunching customers who were staring at the two young men standing in the open doorway, Koyama would have quickly done so, but he knew that the moment he had been noticed by Miyamoto-san that there had been no choice. So instead, he just swallowed his discomfort and picked an empty table in the corner of the restaurant to sit at.
As soon as they were seated and Koyama let the owner know their order, Miyamoto-san bounded up to their table. "Koyama-san! You came after all!"
"I have to eat sometime, right?" he offered with a forced smile.
"Yes, you do!" she chirped right back, and then turned to notice Shige on the opposite side of the table. "And you are?"
"He's my friend," Koyama quickly replied quite ambiguously, hoping that would satisfy the young girl.
Unfortunately, it was not enough for Miyamoto-san as just as Koyama introduced Shige, she seemed to recognize him on her own. "Ohmigod!" she cried out in surprise, eyes wide. "You're Shige! From NEWS! Am I right?!"
Shige exchanged looks with Koyama, and for a moment, it was like nothing had changed-they were just two idols taking some time for themselves, trying to avoid fangirls who only pulled them back into the madness of their lives in the public eye. Except they were no longer idols. "You're right," Shige acknowledged with a small nod of his head.
At that point, a good portion of the other customers in the restaurant with them were watching them, what with all of the commotion Miyamoto-san was making in her excited state. "Koyama and Shige from NEWS! Koyama-san, you should've brought Shige by sooner-"
"Minami-chan!"
The three of them turned back to the counter where the other girls from Koyama's office had finished their lunches and were getting ready to leave; one of the older girls, who had been with the company just as long as Koyama, had been the one to call out to her kouhai. "You should leave Koyama-san and his friend to their lunch; we need to get back to the office."
It was obvious that Miyamoto-san was torn between getting the opportunity to interact with these two former idols together or leaving obediently with her senpai, but she did back away reluctantly. "I have to go, but enjoy your lunch!" she bade, and then added, "See you back at the office, Koyama-san!" before taking off with the group.
"I know girls like her; dated some even," Shige chuckled as his katsudon was set before him by the young part-time waiter. "Desperate to get into your pants to see what a real idol looks like, right?"
"Pretty much," Koyama scoffed, pulling a pair of disposable chopsticks from the jar at the center of the table and breaking them into two. "Every year there's a new batch of girls, and every year, there's at least one who insists of forcing herself on me."
"You give in?"
"Are you kidding me? That's just asking for way too much trouble."
Shige shrugged, taking a bite out of his pork cutlet. "I suppose so," he agreed. "I usually can just tell them I'm seeing someone and they'll back off."
"You're seeing someone?"
"Yeah, I've been with Ryo for the past year. I would've thought you'd have…" Shige trailed off, the realization that they had unconsciously fallen into old patterns painfully sharp. Their rapport was still the same, as were the expectations and oddly enough, the trust. "…there's no reason for you to know that, huh?"
Koyama shook his head, staring down into his bowl of kitsune udon. "No. There really isn't."
There was a long silence, punctuated by Koyama's slurping when he ate his noodles, fat with soup.
"Aren't you even going to ask me why I'm here? How I found you?"
Koyama looked up from his bowl to find Shige staring at him, his food hardly touched aside from the first few initial bites he had taken. "I wasn't," he answered frankly, reaching for a napkin to wipe his mouth with. "I mean, if you're dating Nishikido-san then it's not all that hard to figure out how you found out where I was and why you're here."
Shige wrinkled his nose at Koyama's formality; sure, Ryo had told him about it, but hearing it himself from Koyama of all people was jarring. "'Nishikido-san'?" he repeated.
"It is still Nishikido, right? He hasn't changed his name recently has he?"
"That's not what I meant," Shige insisted. "What happened to 'Ryo-chan'? Or even just 'Ryo' would be better than this fake 'Nishikido' crap."
"If it's still his name, it's not fake."
"You're denying the relationship the two of you had, that you were a part of the same group and you were friends."
"The keyword there is 'were'." Koyama took a long sip from his tall glass of water. "We were part of a group. We were friends. We don't know each other anymore."
"And whose fault is that?" Shige struggled to keep his voice low, as everything he held in for five years threatened to come spilling out. "I certainly didn't drop out of sight without a single word for five years."
Koyama hesitated, biting his lip. First Ryo, then YamaPi, and now Shige? Was he really ready for this? Probably not, but it did not seem like he was being given much of a choice. "You decided to leave the jimusho without even talking to me about it," he retorted. "Is that something a best friend would have done?"
"You were screwing Yamashita-kun and didn't even bother to tell me, Kei," Shige hissed, eyes narrowing. "That's huge."
"Did you expect me to sing it from the rooftops so you could hear the news all the way on the other side of Tokyo?" Koyama scoffed. "You never had time; how was I supposed to tell you?"
"Right back at you," Shige snapped. "I think I called you like four times and at least sent you two messages the day before I turned in my resignation letter."
Koyama quickly opened his mouth to fire back another reply, but then closed it, realizing he had nothing to say. The day before Shige resigned from the jimusho, Koyama had spent the entire day sleeping, hoping that when he woke up that everything that had happened the week prior with NEWS (and YamaPi) would have just been a bad dream; he had received Shige's messages and calls, it just had been too late to say anything. "Did you come out here just to argue with me?" he sighed, eyes dropping back down to his half-unfinished bowl of food.
"I didn't," Shige maintained, his voice a bit calmer and even. "I came to see you."
Koyama nodded, picking up his chopsticks again to poke at the remaining tofu left in his bowl. "…so you're a lawyer now?"
Shige automatically reached up to finger the golden badge pinned to the lapel of his grey suit that indicated his new profession. "Yeah. I was actually working earlier, just two towns over."
"Isn't this a little far from Osaka?"
"It is, but I go where the work takes me; anything to protect my clients. Besides, it was a good excuse to come and see you."
"You needed an excuse?"
"You try gathering the courage to go see your best friend after five years of silence; it's not all that easy," Shige challenged with a lopsided grin. "So, you're a travel agent now?"
It took Koyama a beat to answer, slightly taken aback that Shige seemed to slip comfortably into referring to him as his best friend again. "Yeah, not exactly by choice though. It was so late in the job hunting season when I started looking that it was the only job I was able to scrounge up. And I've kind of been here ever since."
"Didn't you say you never wanted to become a travel agent?"
Koyama chuckled softly, shaking his head. It had been something he had said long ago in a magazine article, a newly debuted idol with NEWS, oblivious to the fact that in a few years he would lose it all. "You actually remember that?"
"Were you hoping I would forget that? Forget you completely?"
"Maybe," Koyama conceded. "It would've made things easier."
"You've never been one for taking the easy way out before. Before you used to be all about hard work and a good sweat because it made the results, the satisfaction, all the sweeter." Shige frowned. "What happened to that Koyama?"
Koyama blinked at the rather loaded question. "Are you really asking me that?"
"If you'll really answer, I'm really asking."
There had been plenty of opportunities to share his story with people over the past few years-girls who had wanted to hear his glorious tale of NEWS's creation and what it was like to have known the YamaPi, fellow colleagues who had wondered what it took for a rising pop idol to fall from grace, and even a sleazy editor from an equally sleazy gossip magazine who had hoped to publish all of NEWS's sordid affairs out of the spotlight in a tell-all book-but Koyama had always remained tight-lipped. Even with YamaPi, he had held back for fear that if he said too much, all his resolve would crumble away. But now, it was Shige who was asking. Shige who had been his best friend (and who, deep down in his heart, he still believed to be his best friend even after all the time and distance) and was just as much a victim as he was, if not more so, having suffered from Koyama's selfishness as well the loss of NEWS.
"I was always a good kid. Worked hard, got good grades, did everything my mother said, never really fought with my sister; I'm sure you know all this stuff since my mom was always bragging about it to your mom." Koyama stabbed at his bowl with his chopsticks, despite there being nothing there to actually stab at. "Being with Pi was the complete opposite of that, and you know, I'm pretty sure that was the initial appeal. He was the group leader, I knew he had a girlfriend, and yet we were still on each other any moment we could get. There was a thrill in breaking that squeaky-clean image everyone had of me, sneaking around, being rash and careless.
"But as the hiatus went on and Ryo-chan got busy with Kanjani8, you got busy with school, Tegoshi and Massu had their own things going on, and even my radio show became a solo project, I got more desperate in my relationship with Pi, more invested. I don't really think he felt the same way, but Pi kind of became the one sane and stabilizing thing for me at that time. We were constants for one another-a safe haven where we could be ourselves with each other, trying to hang on to what we had left.
"And then Johnny told us that NEWS wasn't coming back and everything just fell apart."
Shige nodded, himself recalling the feeling of standing in that large office at the apex of the jimusho building, overlooking the rest of Shibuya and hearing Johnny formally announce NEWS's breakup to the six of them. "You blamed Yamashita-kun, huh?" It was less of a question and more of a confirmation of what Shige already knew.
Koyama laughed hoarsely. "Don't tell me you didn't. I think all of us did at the start. Some of us longer than others."
"Yamashita-kun still blames himself."
"I know," Koyama sighed, staring at the ring of water that his glass had left on the table as he picked it up and drank from it. "I blamed him for a long, long time. That anger was really what kept me going-hating him for going solo, becoming incredibly popular and abandoning NEWS for the money and success."
"You actually believed that?" Shige arched his brow skeptically.
"Anything to delude myself and justify that the decision I had made was right, that leaving Tokyo and restarting here was better than facing the reality that I had nothing in that life."
"And then?"
"And then Pi came here and fucked everything up," Koyama sighed, reaching up to loosen the knot of his tie. "I could've lived a decent life out here."
"Just decent? What kind of life is that?"
"One that I could've lived."
"You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you are miserable here-that you've been miserable here for years-trying to prove to yourself that you can live without Yamashita-kun." Shige's stare was stern, almost scolding. "You haven't been living on anger for these five years, Kei; you've been living on pride. And now that it's finally running thin, you are looking for something else and nothing's there.
"Kei, you did run away. Everything you've ever wanted, everything you've ever had, is back in Tokyo, most of them just waiting for you to come back. It's here where there's nothing for you, and there never has been." Shige paused. "Didn't you notice? When I asked you about how you had become the person you are now, you only told me about Yamashita-kun and NEWS. You didn't say anything about your life here. There is nothing really keeping you here, is there?"
Koyama frowned uneasily at the other's words. Shige had so deftly drawn out Koyama's entire being-his defenses, his reasoning, his feelings. He supposed he should not have been surprised, this was Shige after all, but after so long without his all-knowing presence, Koyama was. "…I have a job here," he lamely retorted, knowing that if Shige knew that he had been offered a transfer even that defense would have been shredded to pieces. "A job that I've grown into and learned to like."
"Travel agents are in demand everywhere, Kei," Shige assured with a slight grin. "More in demand everywhere else other than here, I'd imagine."
"NEWS isn't there anymore," Koyama countered.
To which Shige of course had the perfect reply.
"But Yamashita-kun is."
*~*~*
She really was the last person he wanted to talk to.
After Koyama had returned from lunch with Shige alone, he had been in a much worse mood than when he had left; Shige's words had not changed all that much over the years, still as sharp and biting as ever. Wisely, she had stayed away, keeping to herself at her desk on the other side of the office.
Koyama predictably threw himself into his work, anything to drown out the thoughts swirling around in his head. This was much easier said than done however, as not only was he thinking of YamaPi now, but he was also bouncing between the transfer offer and his conversation with Shige. Everything was telling him to go back, to leave what had become normal and safe and go back to claim what he had run away from.
Because he had been running away.
But he wasn't sure if he was brave enough to go running back.
When he caught himself spacing out in front of the computer-cursor blinking back at him at the top of a blank document ten minutes after he had originally opened it- Koyama finally decided to call it a day and left the office after an hour of overtime. No one gave him grief for cutting out early, and for that he was grateful. That is, until he heard her voice cheerily call out to him as he was about to walk through the train station wickets. Then, he wished that his co-workers had complained and insisted that he stay longer for overtime.
"Koyama-san!" Miyamoto-san repeated once more when he failed to acknowledge her first call.
Again, for the second time that day, Koyama found himself in a situation where he could not avoid the girl, who was growing more and more annoying by the minute. The friendly station attendant exchanged a questioning look with Koyama, obviously wondering if he would answer her.
Reluctantly, and admittedly feeling a little pressure from the station attendant who was supposed to be on his side, Koyama turned to face Miyamoto-san and her bright smile. "Ah, Miyamoto-san!" He half-heartedly faked his surprise.
Happily oblivious to his dislike of her, Miyamoto-san failed to notice his lack of enthusiasm and instead plowed forward. "Are you on your way home, Koyama-san?" She took out her own commuter pass and then headed toward the wickets, essentially herding Koyama through the wickets and onto the train platform.
He almost answered truthfully and then thought better of it. The last thing he needed now was a stalker on top of everything else. "No, I'm going to dinner with a friend."
"Oh?" Her voice immediately perked up (though it was already quite perky to start with). "With Shige?"
Standing on the edge of the platform and leaning out to see if the train was anywhere close to arriving (despite knowing already that he was in for a ten minute wait), Koyama rolled his eyes to himself. Who was she to run around calling Shige by his nickname really? It was none of her business anyway-
"You know, the truth is, I used to be a huge NEWS fan when I was in high school," Miyamoto-san started, sitting demurely on the edge of the bench, staring at Koyama's back. "My older sister had loved YamaPi and I… well, I had always been a fan of yours. We went to the last concert in Sendai and I remember being so completely heart broken when NEWS broke up and you left Johnny's all together.
"The first day I started at the office, walked through those doors and saw you sitting at your desk, cradling the phone with your shoulder and typing on the computer as you talked to your client, I was shocked; I mean I had to ask the other girls at least ten times myself before I finally started to believe it. The idea that Koyama Keiichiro was working at the same office as me in the middle of absolute nowhere was just crazy.
"It was then that I decided I wanted to get close to you, to get to know the Koyama Keiichiro you are now; you must be different now. I didn't get and I still don't get how such a perfect idol like you would just quit. You're so talented and so bright, Kei-chan-"
That was all it took for Koyama to snap. That girlish, loving use of his nickname-what thousands if not millions of girls had called him (what YamaPi still called him)-falling from Miyamoto-san's lips caused him to whirl on her. "You say you want to get to know me, and yet you talk to me like you already know me!" He drew closer, still very aware he was standing in the middle of a very public train station despite the two of them being the only souls there at the time. "What you know is the face of an idol-an idol who was at the whims of his fans trying to please them, desperately holding onto a place in their hearts because otherwise he would be out of a job."
Miyamoto-san was utterly startled by Koyama's outburst, eyes wide, hands fisted in the pleats of her skirt, at a clear loss for words.
"Idols are more than just your playthings. They are human too. They feel pain, they bleed, they love, and you know, sometimes, they wish they weren't idols too. Having fans like you, fans who insist on being so fucking blind and only seeing them for their idol image and only thinking about how their idol affects them is what makes idols long for a life where they can just be normal."
Koyama found himself slightly surprised at his windedness as he finished, having not only let out his momentary frustration with Miyamoto-san and her advances, but his long pent-up confusion and anger over his current life and how it had come to be. He was living a "normal" life, but not even once had he felt normal-whatever normal was supposed to be.
Miyamoto-san did not dare respond to Koyama's tirade, sitting there on the bench quietly, staring up at her idol (he thought it ridiculously ironic that even now, he could still be seen as a idol). She was not in tears and most certainly had not run away; Koyama had half-expected her to. "I'm sorry," she eventually murmured, her voice barely catching his ears above the station announcement that his train was arriving.
Koyama blinked. An apology?
"I'm sorry I didn't realize how hard it was."
As the train pulled up to the train platform, Miyamoto-san stood up and walked past Koyama, straight toward the edge of the platform. His gaze followed her back as she waited until the sliding door decompressed and then stepped into the car, taking a seat with her back still facing him.
Koyama should have gotten on that train too (the next one would not come for at least another thirty minutes if not an hour), but instead he stood there and watched as after a minute of waiting, the train doors shut and it pulled away from the platform, headed for the next station.
After a moment, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and dropped back onto the bench, alone and exhausted. He didn't want to be alone and exhausted anymore. He was over this-this life that had only left him craving more these past five years. He needed to change. He needed to set things right finally.
But these things were always so much easier said than done.
*~*~*
YamaPi slowly blinked the sleep from his eyes, slivers of soft sunlight filtering in through the bedroom's blinds catching him in the face. He shielded his face with the palm of one hand as he sat up in the bed and stretched his other arm over his head with a voiceless yawn.
Turning to his side, he noted that Yui was still sleeping, demurely covered in the tangle of sheets with her back curled against where YamaPi had been sleeping beside her, spooning her slight frame. She was cute when she slept. Like a porcelain doll. A porcelain doll with beautifully pale skin, long lashes, and soft locks of hair. A porcelain doll that he would eventually break, because in his clumsiness (and desperation), they always broke.
YamaPi got out of the bed, scrounging around the floor of Yui's bedroom, looking for his jeans. Once he found them lying in the doorway, he quickly pulled them on, not bothering to buckle the belt and just letting it hang off his hips. Wandering out into the living room, he padded across the cold flooring and then slid open the glass door that led out to the wide private balcony of the high-rise apartment.
Once outside, he dug into his pocket for his cell phone and flipped through the address book until he came upon the entry that was just a ten-digit number, no name or title ascribed to it. He stared at it for a long time, thumb hovering over the "call" button as he did so. Ryo had given him the number (via Shige of course) last week, and yet he still had not been able to drum up the gumption to call. How many times had he tried, he was not even sure anymore, but it was more than he was willing to admit.
Would anyone even answer the phone? It was after eight o'clock, but maybe they didn't open until nine. Even then, would Koyama accept the call? Shige had said that he had seemed hesitant but receptive when they had talked last week, but that didn't mean that Koyama was ready to even open up to him. In his worry, YamaPi could only think of reasons for him to not call rather than taking that needed step and reach out further.
"Pi, if you don't do anything, none of this will change."
With Jin's words in the back of his mind egging him on, YamaPi finally pressed that button and listened as the call connected then rang.
On the third ring, a female voice answered the phone. In his surprise (he had already prepared himself for no one answering), YamaPi only caught the tail end of what she said. "…how may I help you?"
"Um, I would like to speak with Koyama-san?"
"Koyama-san…?"
He could hear the recognition in her voice as she repeated the name. "Yes. Koyama Keiichiro-san? Can I speak with him please?" YamaPi was leaning against the balcony railing now, gazing out at the morning Tokyo horizon.
"…I'm sorry but Koyama-san is no longer at this branch."
YamaPi's fingers tightened around his cell phone. God, he didn't run away again, did he? "Excuse me?"
"Koyama-san is no longer at this branch; he transferred to our main Tokyo branch just last week. I can transfer you to the person who has taken over his accounts if you need-"
"No thank you."
Without a proper goodbye, YamaPi hung up, dumbfounded, now staring at the blinking number on the face of his cell phone before it disappeared to reveal the current wallpaper on his cell phone, a cute shot of Yui when she was off filming at Mount Fuji for one of her commercials. He shut the cell phone and pocketed it.
Resting his fore arms against the balcony railing, YamaPi shook his head in disbelief. He struggled to hold it back, but found that he could not and a grin spread across his lips. Koyama in Tokyo?
He raised his head and looked out at the clear, bright horizon once more. "Here…" he breathed.
After five years of waiting, he could finally see hope. It was small and still kind of out of reach, but he could see it. There was still a ways before it was anything more than a mere glimmer, but he was willing to put in the time and effort.
YamaPi did recognize these things were easier said than done after all.
The end.
<-- back | forward -->
author: nihongofrancais
genre: RPS, NEWS
pairing: Koyama/YamaPi, Ryo/Shige
word count: 9,531 words
summary: AU Future. Continuation of "Out of Sight, Out of Mind". There is only so much running away Koyama can do when everyone else is running after him.
author's notes: see here.
"Bravo! Bravo! Oiratachi maru de sayaendou..."
Following the strains of the familiar song, Ryo padded out of the bathroom-sweats hanging loosely from his hips, t-shirt messily pulled on, small towel on his head as he rubbed at his damp hair-into the living room of the apartment.
"Shouldn't you be reviewing your briefs for Tuesday?"
Shige glanced back at Ryo, hitting pause on the DVD player remote as he did so; he had been watching an old recording of NEWS concert footage from their final Spring tour. The television screen froze on a shot of a bright and smiling Koyama. "It's not too difficult of a case; I don't need to review too much."
Ryo silently joined Shige on the sofa and took the DVD player remote out of Shige's hands, hitting the play button so that the rest of the performance of "Sayaendou" continued to play. "Which performance is this? It's not Osaka; the stage is a different formation."
"Sendai," Shige clarified. "It's the final concert."
A minute passed wherein the two just sat next to each other, taking in the colors, the dancing, the music and all that they had been five years ago as NEWS. Just as Tegoshi went into the closing of the bridge, changing the lyrics to "minna arigatou! aishiteiru sa", Ryo broke the silence. "We haven't really talked about Koyama…"
Shige arched his eyebrow incredulously at Ryo. "Since when were you the touchy-feely talk type?"
Another shot of a gleeful Koyama waving at the fans appeared momentarily on the screen. "I'm not," Ryo insisted, meeting Shige's gaze. "But clearly this is bothering you if you're pulling out old concerts and watching them."
Shige drew his legs up to his chest, resting his arms across the top of his knees. "Wouldn't it be weird if it didn't bother me though?" He paused after the rhetorical question, watching the very end of DVD as they all bid their fans a final goodbye and left the lights of the stage for the last time. "Koyama was my best friend."
After his run-in with Koyama earlier that week, the first person Ryo had called was YamaPi. The second person?
Shige.
Just as Koyama had lied to get away from his former band-mate, Ryo had told a white lie to Koyama as well. Shige and him, they did go out for drinks whenever Shige had time-but those drinks were usually after a nice, quiet dinner for two, all in the context of a date.
Sometimes when Ryo gave it a good moment of thought, he found himself startled by the idea that Shige and him had been together for over a year-toothbrushes sharing the same holder, shoes side by side in the apartment entrance, law books piled next to Bz' CDs on the coffee table. If anyone had told him five years ago that he would be living a semi-domestic life with the younger NEWS member, Ryo would have laughed in that person's face. The idea of dating the awkward boy, who seemed to be inseparable from Koyama, would have been absurd. Especially when his personal idol at the time was gorgeous and exotic Penelope Cruz; Shige was no Penelope Cruz.
Oh, how time was a funny thing.
Falling out of contact after NEWS's disbandment had not been a conscious effort, but things happened and life moved forward. Ryo ended up working out of Osaka more than Tokyo and upon leaving the jimusho, Shige ended up throwing himself into his college life-studying, socializing, networking. Cell phone numbers were disconnected, e-mail addresses were changed, and reasons for saying hello were lost. Their worlds did not intersect, they led completely separate lives.
A chance encounter almost two years ago at a train station changed all that.
Over drinks (of course, Ryo's treat), the two reconnected. As it turned out, the train station next to Ryo's high-rise apartment building just happened to be the same station that Shige used commute to the law firm he had just joined straight after graduation. Shige was learning all over again that being at the bottom of the food chain was time-consuming and a lot of grunt work, just as his days as a junior had been. Ryo listened to his stories, refreshing coming from a person who knew both sides-the glitz and glamour of the entertainment world and the quiet, hard work of a normal life.
They exchanged new phone numbers, relayed changed emails and promised this time to not fall out of contact. The promise was kept as monthly drinking get-togethers eventually became weekly (barring Shige's schedule, which was more chaotic that even Ryo could have fathomed) and the next thing Ryo knew he was inviting Shige up to his apartment for some late coffee and kissing him into the sofa cushions.
The gradualness of everything with Shige was probably what surprised Ryo the most. He tended to be a man of action-going after things that he wanted, seeing things through fully-and yet, with Shige, things seemed to just fall naturally into place without any movement on his part or Shige's for that matter. It was far from some sappy love affair, hearts set afire with declarations of love. It was comfortable, steady, and reliable-things that the both of them needed to counter their demanding careers.
Ryo watched Shige stare at the blank television screen, resting his elbow against the back of the sofa and propping his head against his arm, towel now draped around his neck. "Whenever I run into Tegoshi, he hardly acknowledges me anymore. Like last month when Kanjani8 was on Music Station and so was TegoMasu? Masuda came by our dressing room and everything to say hello, but Tegoshi never came. Barely even glanced in Kanjani8's direction the entire hour of recording."
Shige slowly turned to look at Ryo. "So? From what you tell me about Tegoshi nowadays, that's normal."
Ryo nodded. "It is. He acts like he had nothing to do with NEWS, like NEWS didn't get him to where he is now." His voice was hardly surprised or angry, but more saddened as none of this was a new revelation to him; it was a lived-in reality.
After NEWS, TegoMasu had managed to create a niche for themselves, singing hit anime theme song after hit anime theme song, to the point where they had even performed abroad at various anime conventions. Whether Tegoshi had let their success get to his head or purposely surrounded himself with his success if only to forget the failures of his past with NEWS, Ryo himself was not sure, though he speculated the latter.
"Koyama was like that," Ryo explained. "He called me 'Nishikido-san'. Spoke formally with a lot of distance. As if he was no one special and we were just strangers."
"Isn't that the way he wanted it though?" Shige returned with the slightest edge in his voice. "To get away from us, to forget NEWS ever existed."
Ryo frowned, sitting up from his leaning position. "I know you know that there's probably more to it than that; of all people, you would know."
Those words seemed to hit a nerve in Shige and suddenly he was shouting, everything he had held pent-up inside spilling out. "I DO! I know that he was trying to erase the failure of everything with a completely new start because otherwise being reminded of it day in and day out would've just broken him! But I can't help but feel like a victim, letting my judgment get completely clouded!" Shige sighed heavily, moving to wrap his arms around his knees and hug them closer to his chest. "I wish I could just hate Koyama and totally wallow in that feeling. But instead, I empathize and understand."
"You should go talk to Koyama then."
Shige arched an eyebrow. "You say that like Koyama lives down the street or something; it's not that easy."
"I didn't say it was," Ryo maintained, reaching for the remote and switching over from the DVD to regular television. A late night rerun of YamaPi's Code Blue was on FujiTV. "I just think that you should."
"What about Yamashita-kun?" While Shige knew of the fallout between Koyama and YamaPi, he had never actually heard it from the horse's mouth - it had come second hand from Ryo. The two were in each other's second circle of friends, connected indirectly through their relationships with Ryo and to an extent, Koyama. Sure, when YamaPi was in Osaka, he would go out drinking with the couple, but beyond that, he and Shige had very little interaction. If anything else, their relationship had changed very little since NEWS's disbanding.
"He went today. Blew off everything and just went." Ryo glanced over at his cell phone, which had been tossed carelessly on the coffee table when he had returned home earlier. "And my cell phone has been ringing off the hook all day because of it."
"It has? I haven't heard it ring once since you got home."
"That's because they probably figured out that I'm not telling them where Pi is." Ryo reached forward and grabbed it, flipping through all his received calls from that day. "Even Jin called me, asking after Pi only because everybody had been calling him." He shook his head with an exhausted sigh. "The world won't end if YamaPi decides to suddenly take a day off, people! Seriously."
"So you haven't heard from him at all?" Shige asked.
"He sent me a message when he got there earlier in the afternoon, but I haven't heard from him since. Pretty sure that's not a good sign. But I'm sure I'll hear the full story from him when he gets back."
Shige watched as Ryo shut his phone and returned his attention to the television where YamaPi with a perm in a helicopter was rescuing people. "If I didn't know you any better, I would think you didn't really care about all this. About Koyama."
"But you do know better." Ryo moved in closer, leaning ever so slightly against Shige. "I can't really do anything about the situation myself, that's the thing. Koyama won't listen to me like I know he'd listen to you and YamaPi; I'm not the one he wants to hear from in the first place. And if he's willing, I think that you should try hearing him out too."
*~*~*
"God, you're an asshole, Pi."
"Well, hello to you too, Sunshine," YamaPi shot back. He pulled open the dressing room door wider, ushering Jin inside. "I thought we agreed that there would be no calling me an asshole anymore."
Jin slipped out of his sandals and walked across the fake tatami flooring. "That was before you achieved the ultimate in asshole status."
YamaPi blinked at his best friend. "There are actual levels of asshole now?"
Jin ignored his question, bypassing it for a clearly more important topic. "I can't believe you went to see him, Pi. After five years, you actually went."
He shrugged at Jin, who was at the opposite end of the dressing room, staring accusingly. YamaPi kneeled down, settling in front of the small table with the newest edits to his drama script all laid out. "You act as if I did something absolutely unspeakable. I just went to see Koyama, to talk to him."
"You're the one who didn't say anything to anyone! You blew off everything just to see him-your responsibilities, your friends, your girlfriend." Jin was now looming over YamaPi.
YamaPi sifted through the pages of sides for the day, hardly moved by Jin's words. "Don't worry about Yui," he dismissed. "She's already forgiven me for Friday."
Jin sighed, giving in. He was used to this, the ambivalence from YamaPi. It disgusted him, but after five years of it, it had become just as a part of YamaPi as his constant chatter about food in his J-web. A front he put up because it was easier than talking about the things that really mattered; somewhere along the way, even Jin had been shut out by YamaPi. "Not before she came over to my place, worried you'd been kidnapped by a mob of fangirls or something."
"What'd you tell her?" YamaPi finally looked up at Jin, concerned. His concern was not for Yui though, that much Jin could tell.
"Shouldn't you know that yourself already?"
"I didn't really bother asking, I just-"
Before YamaPi could say more, he was cut off by a soft knocking and then the entrance of Yui into the small room. "Pi, do you still have my panties…?" She noticed Jin a little too late, only after the words had already left her mouth. "…oh. Hi, Jin-kun." The milky white of her cheeks flushed slightly, appropriately embarrassed.
"Hi, Yui," Jin returned awkwardly as she darted for the vanity, having obviously spotted her lacy blue panties hanging from the back of the chair tucked beneath it. Grabbing them, she stuffed them into the pocket of her white lab coat. "How is drama filming?"
"Good," she replied with a full smile, overcompensating for the awkwardness of the prior exchange. "Working with Kamenashi-san is an experience and after working on Code Blue a few years ago, all the medical terms are much easier this time around."
There was a moment of silence, pregnant with all the words that were unsaid and really a did not need to be. "Yui, don't you have filming?" YamaPi finally spoke, prompting his girlfriend.
"Oh… Yeah!" She skittered across the room, making for the door. "Are we still on for tonight, Pi?"
"If it's at your place, then yeah," YamaPi answered with a smile, if only to placate her.
"Okay." She smiled right back, bright and trusting. "Later then. Bye, Jin-kun."
"Bye," Jin called after her, but as soon as the door shut, he turned on YamaPi. "You are the biggest asshole ever. Really."
YamaPi rolled his eyes at Jin as he sat down on the other side of the table opposite him. "Not this again," he muttered.
"Dressing room makeup sex, huh?"
"At least she's not upset anymore."
"She honestly likes you! She trusts you! How do you lie to her, Pi?!"
"I didn't lie to her, okay? There are just some things that I prefer to keep private," YamaPi maintained, focusing on the papers before him as he placed them in order.
"You mean things like having an affair five years ago with one of your band-mates and still being hopelessly in love with him?" Jin spat, knowing his words were harsh, but recognizing that that was the only way to get through to his best friend.
YamaPi stiffened, but did not dare raise his voice. "It wasn't an affair," he bit out tersely.
"Oh? Then what else do you call it when someone cheats on their girlfriend by banging some other guy in his best friend's apartment every chance he can get?"
"Abiru was cheating on me too, you know that." YamaPi looked up at Jin with his narrowed eyes.
"You act as if that justifies and redeems what you did." Jin shook his head. "What you're still doing."
"What am I doing right now? I haven't done anything wrong as far as I know."
"'As far as you know'?" Jin scoffed. "Pi, you've been wrong ever since Koyama left."
Pushing off the table, YamaPi stood up and walked over to the vanity. He examined his reflection for a long time before turning around to face Jin again. "Where the hell is all this coming from? Did you really just come here to lecture me?"
"I didn't come here to lecture you, Pi." Jin's voice dropped a few tones, softer and much more sympathetic. "But with all that's happened with Koyama in the past week, I've been really worried about you; it's been five years. Everything won't go back to the way it was, the way you want it to, so easily."
"I may be an asshole, but I'm not delusional, Jin," YamaPi assured, leaning back against the table. "Koyama is hardly the same person he was five years ago. Neither am I. Hell, none of us are."
Jin nodded, listening to his best friend. At least he was starting to make some sense now. "So what is the plan then?"
"I have absolutely no clue." YamaPi sighed heavily and for the first time in their conversation, Jin could see his exhaustion come through on his otherwise stolid features, his mask falling away. "He was a total shell of who he used to be-cold, angry, bitter. No light in his eyes, that constant smile gone. It was so hard to just talk to him, to get him to talk to me."
"Koyama?" Jin rhetorically asked. He knew himself that YamaPi could only be speaking of Koyama and yet, for a moment there, Jin thought YamaPi might have been describing himself.
Too absorbed in recalling that meeting with Koyama, YamaPi failed to acknowledge Jin's question. "He looked so tired, like just being was exhausting. In that tiny town, in that tiny job…" YamaPi trailed off, and then met Jin's gaze. "Koyama was made for more than that. More than a boring, quiet life in a shoebox of an apartment. He should shine."
Jin frowned. He had not heard YamaPi be so painfully and earnestly honest in such a long time. And of course, it was in regards to his best kept secret: that even after years apart, YamaPi wanted Koyama, practically needed him. Nothing else seemed to suffice. No matter how many relationships he had had, YamaPi seemed to inadvertently sabotage every single one of them-his relationship with Ueno Juri of course being the biggest mess of all, what with YamaPi outing their relationship on national television and then Juri publicly dumping him on the morning news (though the jimusho's PR unit had managed to smooth that one over a bit by claiming that they had already broken up before Juri's statement).
"You need to stop blaming yourself, Pi," Jin quietly urged. "None of this was your fault. Shit just…happens, sometimes."
"Easier said than done. You're not the one who carries around the regret." YamaPi was now looking past Jin, staring at the blank white wall of the dressing room, regressing back into his own thoughts. "If I hadn't let Johnny convince me to go solo during hiatus, if I hadn't pushed Koyama away, if only I had acted instead of waiting so long… These things, they haunt me, Jin. This isn't the way things were supposed to be. NEWS was supposed to come back, bigger than ever. Koyama was supposed to be a rising idol, a talented MC. And now…"
Jin raked his hand through his hair, pushing away the bangs that had fallen into his face. He had forgotten how frustrating talking to YamaPi could be when he was like this. He always talked in circles, refusing to see a way out, strangely dooming himself like some over-the-top drama heroine. "Pi, if you don't do anything, none of this will change. You're going to keep breaking the hearts of all these nice girls, looking for something that you are only going to find in Koyama: forgiveness."
"Short of him coming back to Tokyo, I can't force anything on him." YamaPi gnawed absently on his lower lip, eyes solemn and pensive. "He keeps pushing me away. He's been pushing me away for the past five years."
"I didn't say it would be easy, Pi. I just said that it's something you need to do."
*~*~*
Two weeks had passed since YamaPi had barged back into Koyama's small life and strangely enough, Koyama found himself more miserable than he had ever been before. He had been leading a normal life (albeit, maybe not the most satisfying, but it was normal and he had grown accustomed to it) before the super idol's intrusion and had assumed that everything would return to status quo once he was gone. Out of sight, out of mind after all, right?
Wrong apparently, as Koyama could not seem to shake the deep impression that YamaPi's less-than-twenty-four-hour visit had left on him. YamaPi had been hurting too. Scared, unsure, confused-all the same things Koyama had been at the same time. All these years, Koyama had kept himself going on anger, fueled by the misplaced blame on YamaPi, Japan's beloved super idol. The idol who had chosen himself over his friends and his relationships, thinking only of success.
Turns out that YamaPi had never existed.
Somewhere deep down, Koyama had known that too, but had not been willing to admit it to himself. The mere idea that he had spent the past five years living this life based on irrational, emotionally-driven decisions with little foundation in reality was just ridiculously overwhelming. So, Koyama had kept looking forward. Because looking forward was what he did best.
Except now, everything else seemed to be moving forward, but Koyama was still stuck in that apartment on that Friday night with YamaPi, eating ramen in the dimly lit kitchen while taking in each other's presence.
"Koyama-san!"
Koyama snapped out of his wandering thoughts and turned around to see Miyamoto-san standing behind him, her GUCCI wristlet hanging from her newly manicured fingertips. "Hmm?" He raised his eyebrow in response to her call.
"Want to come to lunch with us?" Miyamoto-san brushed her long, curly hair over her shoulder and motioned to the other girls waiting at the front door in a group, talking amongst themselves in hushed voices as always.
Koyama was surprised that she had not given up on him yet, but that did not mean he was going to reward her persistence by indulging her whims. Just as he went to yet again decline the invitation, another voice did it for him.
"I'm sorry, Miyamoto-kun, but I need to speak with Koyama-kun right now, so perhaps another day?"
The young man watched the spirited girl's face drop into a cute little pout as she looked past Koyama at Oikawa-buchou, who Koyama knew was standing behind his own desk across the office. "Oh, okay," she relented and then winked at Koyama. "Another time, you'll have to come."
Koyama did not acknowledge her future invitation and instead, turned back to face his computer with a heavy sigh once she had skipped off out of earshot and joined the other girls to leave. After a moment, he realized that thanking Oikawa-buchou was in order and quickly made his way over to the older man's desk. "Thank you, Oikawa-buchou," he offered with a polite bow of his head and shoulders.
Oikawa-buchou waved him off. "No need to thank me. I actually really do have something to speak to you about, Koyama-kun. Would you mind joining me in the conference room?"
Frozen, Koyama stared after Oikawa-buchou as the older man walked toward the conference room. Did he do something wrong? Was he going to scold him about YamaPi's visit?! Realizing that standing there was not going to get him the answers that he sought, Koyama answered with a sharp, "Not at all!" and followed his superior into the separate room.
As Oikawa-buchou went around the room shutting the blinds one by one, Koyama seated himself on one side of the long conference table; he had tried to help Oikawa-buchou with the windows, but he had insisted on doing them himself. Once he had finished with that, the older man took the seat across from Koyama, leisurely leaning back in it. "I could beat around the bush about this, but since this is something we have done before, I would rather not. There is an opening in the main branch for a sales coordinator in the business division."
Koyama found himself letting out the breath he had been holding. He was not being scolded. They were just trying to promote and transfer him again. That was easy enough to deal with. After all, it was a situation that he had encountered before. All he had to do was say-
"Before you decide to decline this offer, please at least listen to why I put you up for this, Koyama-kun," Oikawa-buchou gently insisted, meeting Koyama's eyes. Koyama found himself taken in by the genuine tone of his superior's voice and nodded for the other to continue. "The current sales coordinator for the business division is leaving to follow her husband who was transferred abroad. It's a sudden opening that needs to be filled as soon as possible, and I think you would be perfect for it. You would be reporting to the department head directly and have about fifteen agents under you that you would manage.
"But more than believing you are the perfect man for the job, I honestly think that you would benefit from a move to Tokyo. I know you have your reasons for not going back and frankly as your boss, it's none of my business. As someone who has watched you grow into your job and become quite skilled and adept at it over these past five years, I know that you are wasting your time and potential staying here." Oikawa-buchou paused, allowing for his words to sink in. "You are young, and there is still so much you have to offer and so much you have to learn, but you can't do it here. You've already grown beyond what here can offer."
Koyama was strangely moved by the older man's words. Oikawa-buchou had always been encouraging, but Koyama had not realized the degree to which he watched over his employees. It was as if he was invested in their success, even if it was not to his direct benefit. And despite all of Koyama's efforts to isolate himself, Oikawa-buchou had invested in him. The mere thought of that in combination with the idea of YamaPi having actually waited all this time overwhelmed Koyama, rendering him completely speechless.
When he realized Koyama was not going to give him an answer right away, Oikawa-buchou added, "I have until Friday to report to the main branch about this, so you have two days to decide. I know you've rejected these transfers in the past, but just give it some thought, okay?"
With that, Oikawa-buchou stood up and left the room, which only seemed to get increasingly smaller by the minute to Koyama, but he could not bring himself to leave. Koyama simply sat there, staring at the ajar door-his future, his everything waiting just on the other side.
"Excuse me! I'm looking for a Koyama Keiichiro?"
The voice carried into the conference room and Koyama started at the familiar tones. He hastily made for the door, yanking it open and stepping out into the main office again. Koyama's eyes snapped over toward the main entrance.
"Yo," Shige awkwardly called out, an uneasy smile on his lips, hand raised in a hesitant wave. "Long time, no see."
*~*~*
In a magazine article from long ago, Koyama had said that he could not recall what it was like to have not known Shige. He was aware that there had been such a time-after all, he had only joined the jimusho at the late age of sixteen and really only at his sister's urgings-but he honestly could not remember it. Shige has just been that integral to his life as an idol.
Every group Koyama had been in-J-Support that became K.K.Kity and then debuting with NEWS-Shige had been in too. Five years of his youth and every day of it, he had spent it with Shige. Sometimes they would be in rehearsal together, both getting yelled at for their inability to dance or their horrible, cracking vocals. Other times, the both of them would be putting themselves out there on live television, acting like complete idiots. More often than enough though, they would just be camped out in the Excelsior down the street from Shige's house, studying together. A day without Shige was strange, completely foreign and even unsettling.
At that time, Koyama had firmly believed in best friends. Shige had been his best friend.
With the hiatus, days without Shige easily became weeks without Shige as the two settled into their new and differing schedules; Shige was completely absorbed in his fascinating new life as a college student and Koyama was rotating through a busy schedule of school, work and YamaPi. Neither seemed able to make time for the other, but they seemed to be perfectly fine with that situation. They were best friends, as if a little distance would hurt them. When NEWS resumed, they would be back to seeing each other day in and day out and probably long for the time when they had that nice, extended break from one another.
Except that day never came because the next thing Koyama knew, NEWS had been disbanded, Shige had announced he was leaving the jimusho (without a single word to Koyama prior to his announcement), and YamaPi was pushing him away. A life that had been oh so familiar suddenly was utterly foreign and Koyama had been free falling with nothing to break his fall, nothing to grasp onto and pull himself back up.
Eventually, Koyama had landed here. In his current life, and not without a few good bruises to constantly remind him of what had come before, what he had plummeted from. Koyama had relearned what life without Shige-without YamaPi-was like and he had become used to it. It was familiar.
So suddenly finding Shige at his side again, walking with him to the local restaurant that he frequented for lunch as if nothing had changed and they always had lunch together, was completely foreign to the person he was now.
Upon reaching the restaurant, Koyama stopped for a moment and glanced at Shige next to him. "Here is okay, right?" He generally gestured toward the display window outside the store with some of their main dishes.
Slightly startled by Koyama's voice as he had been otherwise silent for their short five minute walk, and before that, had barely said ten words to him-"Have you eaten? Let's go to lunch."-Shige simply nodded.
Koyama slid the entrance door open and stepped inside, a rousing round of "WELCOME!" from the friendly owner and chief cook greeting him. Almost directly following, he was greeted by the rather unexpected, "Oh! KOYAMA-SAN!"
He froze in the doorway, eyes darting around the restaurant partly filled with regulars from other businesses in the area until he spotted the girls from his office sitting lined up at the counter, Miyamoto-san at the very end, waving excitedly at Koyama. "Someone you know?" he heard Shige ask from behind.
"Yeah," Koyama grunted. If there had been a way to back out of the restaurant and not look incredibly awkward to the restaurant owner and some of the lunching customers who were staring at the two young men standing in the open doorway, Koyama would have quickly done so, but he knew that the moment he had been noticed by Miyamoto-san that there had been no choice. So instead, he just swallowed his discomfort and picked an empty table in the corner of the restaurant to sit at.
As soon as they were seated and Koyama let the owner know their order, Miyamoto-san bounded up to their table. "Koyama-san! You came after all!"
"I have to eat sometime, right?" he offered with a forced smile.
"Yes, you do!" she chirped right back, and then turned to notice Shige on the opposite side of the table. "And you are?"
"He's my friend," Koyama quickly replied quite ambiguously, hoping that would satisfy the young girl.
Unfortunately, it was not enough for Miyamoto-san as just as Koyama introduced Shige, she seemed to recognize him on her own. "Ohmigod!" she cried out in surprise, eyes wide. "You're Shige! From NEWS! Am I right?!"
Shige exchanged looks with Koyama, and for a moment, it was like nothing had changed-they were just two idols taking some time for themselves, trying to avoid fangirls who only pulled them back into the madness of their lives in the public eye. Except they were no longer idols. "You're right," Shige acknowledged with a small nod of his head.
At that point, a good portion of the other customers in the restaurant with them were watching them, what with all of the commotion Miyamoto-san was making in her excited state. "Koyama and Shige from NEWS! Koyama-san, you should've brought Shige by sooner-"
"Minami-chan!"
The three of them turned back to the counter where the other girls from Koyama's office had finished their lunches and were getting ready to leave; one of the older girls, who had been with the company just as long as Koyama, had been the one to call out to her kouhai. "You should leave Koyama-san and his friend to their lunch; we need to get back to the office."
It was obvious that Miyamoto-san was torn between getting the opportunity to interact with these two former idols together or leaving obediently with her senpai, but she did back away reluctantly. "I have to go, but enjoy your lunch!" she bade, and then added, "See you back at the office, Koyama-san!" before taking off with the group.
"I know girls like her; dated some even," Shige chuckled as his katsudon was set before him by the young part-time waiter. "Desperate to get into your pants to see what a real idol looks like, right?"
"Pretty much," Koyama scoffed, pulling a pair of disposable chopsticks from the jar at the center of the table and breaking them into two. "Every year there's a new batch of girls, and every year, there's at least one who insists of forcing herself on me."
"You give in?"
"Are you kidding me? That's just asking for way too much trouble."
Shige shrugged, taking a bite out of his pork cutlet. "I suppose so," he agreed. "I usually can just tell them I'm seeing someone and they'll back off."
"You're seeing someone?"
"Yeah, I've been with Ryo for the past year. I would've thought you'd have…" Shige trailed off, the realization that they had unconsciously fallen into old patterns painfully sharp. Their rapport was still the same, as were the expectations and oddly enough, the trust. "…there's no reason for you to know that, huh?"
Koyama shook his head, staring down into his bowl of kitsune udon. "No. There really isn't."
There was a long silence, punctuated by Koyama's slurping when he ate his noodles, fat with soup.
"Aren't you even going to ask me why I'm here? How I found you?"
Koyama looked up from his bowl to find Shige staring at him, his food hardly touched aside from the first few initial bites he had taken. "I wasn't," he answered frankly, reaching for a napkin to wipe his mouth with. "I mean, if you're dating Nishikido-san then it's not all that hard to figure out how you found out where I was and why you're here."
Shige wrinkled his nose at Koyama's formality; sure, Ryo had told him about it, but hearing it himself from Koyama of all people was jarring. "'Nishikido-san'?" he repeated.
"It is still Nishikido, right? He hasn't changed his name recently has he?"
"That's not what I meant," Shige insisted. "What happened to 'Ryo-chan'? Or even just 'Ryo' would be better than this fake 'Nishikido' crap."
"If it's still his name, it's not fake."
"You're denying the relationship the two of you had, that you were a part of the same group and you were friends."
"The keyword there is 'were'." Koyama took a long sip from his tall glass of water. "We were part of a group. We were friends. We don't know each other anymore."
"And whose fault is that?" Shige struggled to keep his voice low, as everything he held in for five years threatened to come spilling out. "I certainly didn't drop out of sight without a single word for five years."
Koyama hesitated, biting his lip. First Ryo, then YamaPi, and now Shige? Was he really ready for this? Probably not, but it did not seem like he was being given much of a choice. "You decided to leave the jimusho without even talking to me about it," he retorted. "Is that something a best friend would have done?"
"You were screwing Yamashita-kun and didn't even bother to tell me, Kei," Shige hissed, eyes narrowing. "That's huge."
"Did you expect me to sing it from the rooftops so you could hear the news all the way on the other side of Tokyo?" Koyama scoffed. "You never had time; how was I supposed to tell you?"
"Right back at you," Shige snapped. "I think I called you like four times and at least sent you two messages the day before I turned in my resignation letter."
Koyama quickly opened his mouth to fire back another reply, but then closed it, realizing he had nothing to say. The day before Shige resigned from the jimusho, Koyama had spent the entire day sleeping, hoping that when he woke up that everything that had happened the week prior with NEWS (and YamaPi) would have just been a bad dream; he had received Shige's messages and calls, it just had been too late to say anything. "Did you come out here just to argue with me?" he sighed, eyes dropping back down to his half-unfinished bowl of food.
"I didn't," Shige maintained, his voice a bit calmer and even. "I came to see you."
Koyama nodded, picking up his chopsticks again to poke at the remaining tofu left in his bowl. "…so you're a lawyer now?"
Shige automatically reached up to finger the golden badge pinned to the lapel of his grey suit that indicated his new profession. "Yeah. I was actually working earlier, just two towns over."
"Isn't this a little far from Osaka?"
"It is, but I go where the work takes me; anything to protect my clients. Besides, it was a good excuse to come and see you."
"You needed an excuse?"
"You try gathering the courage to go see your best friend after five years of silence; it's not all that easy," Shige challenged with a lopsided grin. "So, you're a travel agent now?"
It took Koyama a beat to answer, slightly taken aback that Shige seemed to slip comfortably into referring to him as his best friend again. "Yeah, not exactly by choice though. It was so late in the job hunting season when I started looking that it was the only job I was able to scrounge up. And I've kind of been here ever since."
"Didn't you say you never wanted to become a travel agent?"
Koyama chuckled softly, shaking his head. It had been something he had said long ago in a magazine article, a newly debuted idol with NEWS, oblivious to the fact that in a few years he would lose it all. "You actually remember that?"
"Were you hoping I would forget that? Forget you completely?"
"Maybe," Koyama conceded. "It would've made things easier."
"You've never been one for taking the easy way out before. Before you used to be all about hard work and a good sweat because it made the results, the satisfaction, all the sweeter." Shige frowned. "What happened to that Koyama?"
Koyama blinked at the rather loaded question. "Are you really asking me that?"
"If you'll really answer, I'm really asking."
There had been plenty of opportunities to share his story with people over the past few years-girls who had wanted to hear his glorious tale of NEWS's creation and what it was like to have known the YamaPi, fellow colleagues who had wondered what it took for a rising pop idol to fall from grace, and even a sleazy editor from an equally sleazy gossip magazine who had hoped to publish all of NEWS's sordid affairs out of the spotlight in a tell-all book-but Koyama had always remained tight-lipped. Even with YamaPi, he had held back for fear that if he said too much, all his resolve would crumble away. But now, it was Shige who was asking. Shige who had been his best friend (and who, deep down in his heart, he still believed to be his best friend even after all the time and distance) and was just as much a victim as he was, if not more so, having suffered from Koyama's selfishness as well the loss of NEWS.
"I was always a good kid. Worked hard, got good grades, did everything my mother said, never really fought with my sister; I'm sure you know all this stuff since my mom was always bragging about it to your mom." Koyama stabbed at his bowl with his chopsticks, despite there being nothing there to actually stab at. "Being with Pi was the complete opposite of that, and you know, I'm pretty sure that was the initial appeal. He was the group leader, I knew he had a girlfriend, and yet we were still on each other any moment we could get. There was a thrill in breaking that squeaky-clean image everyone had of me, sneaking around, being rash and careless.
"But as the hiatus went on and Ryo-chan got busy with Kanjani8, you got busy with school, Tegoshi and Massu had their own things going on, and even my radio show became a solo project, I got more desperate in my relationship with Pi, more invested. I don't really think he felt the same way, but Pi kind of became the one sane and stabilizing thing for me at that time. We were constants for one another-a safe haven where we could be ourselves with each other, trying to hang on to what we had left.
"And then Johnny told us that NEWS wasn't coming back and everything just fell apart."
Shige nodded, himself recalling the feeling of standing in that large office at the apex of the jimusho building, overlooking the rest of Shibuya and hearing Johnny formally announce NEWS's breakup to the six of them. "You blamed Yamashita-kun, huh?" It was less of a question and more of a confirmation of what Shige already knew.
Koyama laughed hoarsely. "Don't tell me you didn't. I think all of us did at the start. Some of us longer than others."
"Yamashita-kun still blames himself."
"I know," Koyama sighed, staring at the ring of water that his glass had left on the table as he picked it up and drank from it. "I blamed him for a long, long time. That anger was really what kept me going-hating him for going solo, becoming incredibly popular and abandoning NEWS for the money and success."
"You actually believed that?" Shige arched his brow skeptically.
"Anything to delude myself and justify that the decision I had made was right, that leaving Tokyo and restarting here was better than facing the reality that I had nothing in that life."
"And then?"
"And then Pi came here and fucked everything up," Koyama sighed, reaching up to loosen the knot of his tie. "I could've lived a decent life out here."
"Just decent? What kind of life is that?"
"One that I could've lived."
"You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you are miserable here-that you've been miserable here for years-trying to prove to yourself that you can live without Yamashita-kun." Shige's stare was stern, almost scolding. "You haven't been living on anger for these five years, Kei; you've been living on pride. And now that it's finally running thin, you are looking for something else and nothing's there.
"Kei, you did run away. Everything you've ever wanted, everything you've ever had, is back in Tokyo, most of them just waiting for you to come back. It's here where there's nothing for you, and there never has been." Shige paused. "Didn't you notice? When I asked you about how you had become the person you are now, you only told me about Yamashita-kun and NEWS. You didn't say anything about your life here. There is nothing really keeping you here, is there?"
Koyama frowned uneasily at the other's words. Shige had so deftly drawn out Koyama's entire being-his defenses, his reasoning, his feelings. He supposed he should not have been surprised, this was Shige after all, but after so long without his all-knowing presence, Koyama was. "…I have a job here," he lamely retorted, knowing that if Shige knew that he had been offered a transfer even that defense would have been shredded to pieces. "A job that I've grown into and learned to like."
"Travel agents are in demand everywhere, Kei," Shige assured with a slight grin. "More in demand everywhere else other than here, I'd imagine."
"NEWS isn't there anymore," Koyama countered.
To which Shige of course had the perfect reply.
"But Yamashita-kun is."
*~*~*
She really was the last person he wanted to talk to.
After Koyama had returned from lunch with Shige alone, he had been in a much worse mood than when he had left; Shige's words had not changed all that much over the years, still as sharp and biting as ever. Wisely, she had stayed away, keeping to herself at her desk on the other side of the office.
Koyama predictably threw himself into his work, anything to drown out the thoughts swirling around in his head. This was much easier said than done however, as not only was he thinking of YamaPi now, but he was also bouncing between the transfer offer and his conversation with Shige. Everything was telling him to go back, to leave what had become normal and safe and go back to claim what he had run away from.
Because he had been running away.
But he wasn't sure if he was brave enough to go running back.
When he caught himself spacing out in front of the computer-cursor blinking back at him at the top of a blank document ten minutes after he had originally opened it- Koyama finally decided to call it a day and left the office after an hour of overtime. No one gave him grief for cutting out early, and for that he was grateful. That is, until he heard her voice cheerily call out to him as he was about to walk through the train station wickets. Then, he wished that his co-workers had complained and insisted that he stay longer for overtime.
"Koyama-san!" Miyamoto-san repeated once more when he failed to acknowledge her first call.
Again, for the second time that day, Koyama found himself in a situation where he could not avoid the girl, who was growing more and more annoying by the minute. The friendly station attendant exchanged a questioning look with Koyama, obviously wondering if he would answer her.
Reluctantly, and admittedly feeling a little pressure from the station attendant who was supposed to be on his side, Koyama turned to face Miyamoto-san and her bright smile. "Ah, Miyamoto-san!" He half-heartedly faked his surprise.
Happily oblivious to his dislike of her, Miyamoto-san failed to notice his lack of enthusiasm and instead plowed forward. "Are you on your way home, Koyama-san?" She took out her own commuter pass and then headed toward the wickets, essentially herding Koyama through the wickets and onto the train platform.
He almost answered truthfully and then thought better of it. The last thing he needed now was a stalker on top of everything else. "No, I'm going to dinner with a friend."
"Oh?" Her voice immediately perked up (though it was already quite perky to start with). "With Shige?"
Standing on the edge of the platform and leaning out to see if the train was anywhere close to arriving (despite knowing already that he was in for a ten minute wait), Koyama rolled his eyes to himself. Who was she to run around calling Shige by his nickname really? It was none of her business anyway-
"You know, the truth is, I used to be a huge NEWS fan when I was in high school," Miyamoto-san started, sitting demurely on the edge of the bench, staring at Koyama's back. "My older sister had loved YamaPi and I… well, I had always been a fan of yours. We went to the last concert in Sendai and I remember being so completely heart broken when NEWS broke up and you left Johnny's all together.
"The first day I started at the office, walked through those doors and saw you sitting at your desk, cradling the phone with your shoulder and typing on the computer as you talked to your client, I was shocked; I mean I had to ask the other girls at least ten times myself before I finally started to believe it. The idea that Koyama Keiichiro was working at the same office as me in the middle of absolute nowhere was just crazy.
"It was then that I decided I wanted to get close to you, to get to know the Koyama Keiichiro you are now; you must be different now. I didn't get and I still don't get how such a perfect idol like you would just quit. You're so talented and so bright, Kei-chan-"
That was all it took for Koyama to snap. That girlish, loving use of his nickname-what thousands if not millions of girls had called him (what YamaPi still called him)-falling from Miyamoto-san's lips caused him to whirl on her. "You say you want to get to know me, and yet you talk to me like you already know me!" He drew closer, still very aware he was standing in the middle of a very public train station despite the two of them being the only souls there at the time. "What you know is the face of an idol-an idol who was at the whims of his fans trying to please them, desperately holding onto a place in their hearts because otherwise he would be out of a job."
Miyamoto-san was utterly startled by Koyama's outburst, eyes wide, hands fisted in the pleats of her skirt, at a clear loss for words.
"Idols are more than just your playthings. They are human too. They feel pain, they bleed, they love, and you know, sometimes, they wish they weren't idols too. Having fans like you, fans who insist on being so fucking blind and only seeing them for their idol image and only thinking about how their idol affects them is what makes idols long for a life where they can just be normal."
Koyama found himself slightly surprised at his windedness as he finished, having not only let out his momentary frustration with Miyamoto-san and her advances, but his long pent-up confusion and anger over his current life and how it had come to be. He was living a "normal" life, but not even once had he felt normal-whatever normal was supposed to be.
Miyamoto-san did not dare respond to Koyama's tirade, sitting there on the bench quietly, staring up at her idol (he thought it ridiculously ironic that even now, he could still be seen as a idol). She was not in tears and most certainly had not run away; Koyama had half-expected her to. "I'm sorry," she eventually murmured, her voice barely catching his ears above the station announcement that his train was arriving.
Koyama blinked. An apology?
"I'm sorry I didn't realize how hard it was."
As the train pulled up to the train platform, Miyamoto-san stood up and walked past Koyama, straight toward the edge of the platform. His gaze followed her back as she waited until the sliding door decompressed and then stepped into the car, taking a seat with her back still facing him.
Koyama should have gotten on that train too (the next one would not come for at least another thirty minutes if not an hour), but instead he stood there and watched as after a minute of waiting, the train doors shut and it pulled away from the platform, headed for the next station.
After a moment, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and dropped back onto the bench, alone and exhausted. He didn't want to be alone and exhausted anymore. He was over this-this life that had only left him craving more these past five years. He needed to change. He needed to set things right finally.
But these things were always so much easier said than done.
*~*~*
YamaPi slowly blinked the sleep from his eyes, slivers of soft sunlight filtering in through the bedroom's blinds catching him in the face. He shielded his face with the palm of one hand as he sat up in the bed and stretched his other arm over his head with a voiceless yawn.
Turning to his side, he noted that Yui was still sleeping, demurely covered in the tangle of sheets with her back curled against where YamaPi had been sleeping beside her, spooning her slight frame. She was cute when she slept. Like a porcelain doll. A porcelain doll with beautifully pale skin, long lashes, and soft locks of hair. A porcelain doll that he would eventually break, because in his clumsiness (and desperation), they always broke.
YamaPi got out of the bed, scrounging around the floor of Yui's bedroom, looking for his jeans. Once he found them lying in the doorway, he quickly pulled them on, not bothering to buckle the belt and just letting it hang off his hips. Wandering out into the living room, he padded across the cold flooring and then slid open the glass door that led out to the wide private balcony of the high-rise apartment.
Once outside, he dug into his pocket for his cell phone and flipped through the address book until he came upon the entry that was just a ten-digit number, no name or title ascribed to it. He stared at it for a long time, thumb hovering over the "call" button as he did so. Ryo had given him the number (via Shige of course) last week, and yet he still had not been able to drum up the gumption to call. How many times had he tried, he was not even sure anymore, but it was more than he was willing to admit.
Would anyone even answer the phone? It was after eight o'clock, but maybe they didn't open until nine. Even then, would Koyama accept the call? Shige had said that he had seemed hesitant but receptive when they had talked last week, but that didn't mean that Koyama was ready to even open up to him. In his worry, YamaPi could only think of reasons for him to not call rather than taking that needed step and reach out further.
"Pi, if you don't do anything, none of this will change."
With Jin's words in the back of his mind egging him on, YamaPi finally pressed that button and listened as the call connected then rang.
On the third ring, a female voice answered the phone. In his surprise (he had already prepared himself for no one answering), YamaPi only caught the tail end of what she said. "…how may I help you?"
"Um, I would like to speak with Koyama-san?"
"Koyama-san…?"
He could hear the recognition in her voice as she repeated the name. "Yes. Koyama Keiichiro-san? Can I speak with him please?" YamaPi was leaning against the balcony railing now, gazing out at the morning Tokyo horizon.
"…I'm sorry but Koyama-san is no longer at this branch."
YamaPi's fingers tightened around his cell phone. God, he didn't run away again, did he? "Excuse me?"
"Koyama-san is no longer at this branch; he transferred to our main Tokyo branch just last week. I can transfer you to the person who has taken over his accounts if you need-"
"No thank you."
Without a proper goodbye, YamaPi hung up, dumbfounded, now staring at the blinking number on the face of his cell phone before it disappeared to reveal the current wallpaper on his cell phone, a cute shot of Yui when she was off filming at Mount Fuji for one of her commercials. He shut the cell phone and pocketed it.
Resting his fore arms against the balcony railing, YamaPi shook his head in disbelief. He struggled to hold it back, but found that he could not and a grin spread across his lips. Koyama in Tokyo?
He raised his head and looked out at the clear, bright horizon once more. "Here…" he breathed.
After five years of waiting, he could finally see hope. It was small and still kind of out of reach, but he could see it. There was still a ways before it was anything more than a mere glimmer, but he was willing to put in the time and effort.
YamaPi did recognize these things were easier said than done after all.
The end.
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