A treat for rockthecliche (Part 1 of 3)
A treat for: rockthecliche
Cooked up by: A Friendly Chef
Title: Boys, be ambitious and you will go far
Characters/Groups: Massu-centric, primarily You&J groups (NEWS, KAT-TUN, Kanjani8) with cameos from other random J&A dudes
Genre: AU, action, supernatural, mystery, humor
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: light violence, language, weird shit
Author's Notes: I have no idea how this thing mutated into what it did, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same, rockthecliche ♥ I had never written a few of these guys before so I hope this turned out okay. As far as story-related notes, onnagata and wakashuu-gata are male kabuki actors who impersonate females and adolescents (respectively) and you can read more about synesthesia here. Thanks to you-know-who for being so patient and helpful while I working on this behemoth. You are a doll. ♥
---
"Everyone has secrets in Tokyo."
It's a phrase Masuda Takahisa--Massu, to his friends--had heard since he was little; a favorite remark of the chatty housewives in his hometown as they gossiped over afternoon tea. The magic words that could explain away any sort of scandal, rumor, or tale of debauchery. Of course strange things happened--it was Tokyo. Everyone has secrets there.
Massu had always thought it was silly. Despite their attitudes to the contrary, the people of his hometown were a part of the twenty-three special wards making up the Tokyo Metropolis. Given, Nerima was nowhere as bustling as places like Chuo or Shinjuku, and the area where he'd grown up was more farmland and quiet neighborhoods than business centers with an active nightlife. It was still part of Tokyo, though, and had been for quite some time.
Besides, people had secrets everywhere, and not all of them were earth shattering. Massu had been born and raised in Tokyo and he didn't have anything to hide.
Or, at least, he didn't used to.
It all started while he was jogging one abnormally warm autumn day. As vice captain of the school swimming team as well as a senior, he had to set a good example for all his underclassmen. That meant staying in shape, which was why he continued his daily jogging regiment despite the out of season heat wave that was all but melting the town down into goo. Honestly, Massu hated sweating--exerting himself while being surrounded by water was part of why he enjoyed swimming so much--but as much as he'd love to be out from under the punishing afternoon sun, it would still be another ten minutes of jogging before he reached town, and another five minutes after that to get home.
He could still take a break, though, at least to help rehydrate himself. He slowed to a trot, decreasing his speed until his feet stilled and wasted no time in pulling the water bottle from the belt slung across his waist. Massu took a generous swig off the bottle and immediately grimaced; there wasn't much water left, and what was there was well-beyond lukewarm. So much for a reprieve from the heat.
Replacing the bottle, Massu took a moment to prepare his legs to start running again, hopping from one foot to the other and taking in the scenery. That was when he noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway of the Yanagi place. Yanagi Farm was well known for growing some of the best produce in the region, so it wasn't that unusual to see strange cars parked on their property. What was odd was that he recalled his father mentioning that Mr. and Mrs. Yanagi had travelled up to Aomori to visit their newly born granddaughter. A brief glance revealed that the Yanagi's rusty, old Toyota truck was nowhere to be seen on the property.
Massu's common sense said that he should leave it be for now and tell his father when he got back to town. His sense of curiosity, however, was nagging him to go check it out, backed up by his sense of common courtesy. Growing up in a small town where everyone knew everyone only bred nosiness and Massu hadn't escaped this trait. Besides, what if the owners of the car were lost or had something important to deliver to the Yanagis?
Shoving his logic to the side, Massu trotted up the driveway, gravel crunching underfoot. No one was in the little silver sedan when he approached it, and there didn't seem to be anyone loitering around the front of the house or barn either. Only after he had rounded the corner to look at the back of the house did he find the mystery guests.
Two men and a dog; the taller one he didn't recognize, but the one with the dog Massu recognized as someone he had gone to middle school with. He couldn't recall the kid's name, only that he hadn't stayed at the school very long and yet managed to create a name for himself as a troublemaker with a capital T. And the dog, well, the dog just looked mean.
Massu managed to come around the corner just as the taller one had put a crowbar through one of the windows, leaving little room for guesswork as to what the two men were up to. For a brief moment, Massu was too shocked to do anything but stand there dumbly. He had never seen a robbery in process, just in dramas, and his first feeling was one of disbelief. That kind of stuff didn't happen out here in the boonies and he was wholly unprepared with how to deal with it. Should he stop them or should he run?
The decision was made for him when the dog turned and, taking one look at Massu, started to bark at him. The noise snapped him out of his trance. He didn't wait to see the surprised looks on the would be crooks' faces, turning and running back for the main road and the town.
Normally, Massu could outsprint just about everyone in town, but there was nothing normal about this situation. He was worn out from an hour of jogging in the worst heatwave to hit the town in a decade, and then there was the dog. He didn't hate dogs so much as they freaked him the hell out; ever since the incident with his neighbor's Akita back when Massu was a kid, he had never been the same around canines. When the dog caught up with him, snapping angrily at his heels, Massu panicked and turned sharply, hopping the fence on the goat paddock and running into the barn, hoping that would slow his four-legged pursuer down. He looked over his shoulders just in time to see the dog come sailing over the fence, not at all phased by the obstacle.
Massu may not have hated dogs, but he sure did not like this one.
In a last ditch effort to keep the beast away, Massu slammed the barn doors shut, throwing his weight against the wood and flinching when he heard the dog hit the door a few seconds later. The sound of frenzied barking and nails scrabbling against wood made goosebumps spring up all along his skin, and he had to fight to keep himself from running into the interior of the barn. He knew he could hold the doors fast against the dog, but it would be a drastically different situation when the dog's owners joined their pet. Massu urged his brain to work, to try and think up some way for him to get back to the safety of town, preferably without having to endure grievous bodily harm. Massu swallowed hard between panting breaths. If the two men were willing to commit breaking and entering, they'd probably have no problem beating the tar out of Massu. Or worse. What if a crowbar wasn't the most dangerous instrument they were carrying?
He didn't have long to think on it before could hear voices on the other side of the door. The dog was restrained, and for a split second, everything was chillingly calm, the only sounds in the barn being Massu's own hurried breathing and a curious bleat from the Yanagi's prize goat, Sakurako. And then there was a bang and the sensation of someone kicking the wood hard, causing the doors to crack open just enough to hit Massu hard in the back of the head. Massu tried to plant his feet and push back but he was too disoriented from the blow he had received, and all it took was one more kick and Massu went flying, falling face first to the barn floor. Vaguely he registered the familiar copper taste of blood in his mouth, a raw, burning pain telling him he must have bit down on his tongue when he fell. Still feeling out of sorts, Massu struggled to his feet, trying to create as much distance as possible between him and the burglars.
One of the men said something but Massu couldn't make out more than bits and pieces of from the fog of his mind. He blinked his eyes repeatedly, tried to swallow down his fear along with the taste of blood, and looked for something--anything--that could help him. His eyes fell on a discarded shovel and he immediately reached for it, using it more as a crutch to keep him upright than a tool of defense.
Massu turned his eyes to the two men, trying to keep himself from shaking. The taller man, the one Massu didn't known, had the dog by the collar, the animal barking wildly in Massu's direction. The other man was holding the crowbar, slapping the tool against the palm of his hand like a bad actor in a high school delinquent drama. Massu still couldn't make heads nor tails of what they were saying, but if the dual sneers on their faces were any clue, they did not have Massu's best interest in mind. Massu tightened his grip on the shovel as the guy with the crowbar started to approach him. He didn't want to fight but if it came down to it... well...
The delinquent had barely taken his second step when the world seemed to slow down suddenly and with it came a strange calm the likes of which Massu had not expected; a feeling that he knew exactly what to do. Massu felt his body move on its own, independent from the frantic buzzing in his head. He dug the blade of the shovel into the hay lining the barn floor only to fling it upwards in one smooth movement, spraying hay and dirt in the eyes of his assailants. He then swung the shovel in the direction of the dog. A thud and a yelp had been all Massu needed to know the shovel had connected with its intended target, and with that confirmation, the instrument was discarded in favor of one of the large milk crates propped up against the barn wall. Massu raised the crate up only to smash it across the left temple of the man closest to him, the force of the blow knocking him into his compatriot and sending them both crashing to the barn floor.
Massu didn't stay long enough to check the damage he had wreaked. As soon as the path out of the barn was cleared, he was off and running, his legs instantly launcing into a full sprint. What would've been a fifteen minute run home, Massu made in just under ten, pushing himself on tired legs and forcing himself to ignore the fire in his lungs and the throbbing in his head.
It was only after he arrived home and the police reports had been filed while the town doctor checked his head that Massu realized there had been something off about the way in which he had escaped. He had been reclining in the bathtub, playing the events over in his mind when the realization him him. At the moment when his panic reached its apex, when his mind had "clicked," so to speak, the color of everything around him had shifted, as if all the tint had been sucked from the world except for in a few key spots. The dog and his captives had been a deep red, angry and foreboding, while the open door behind them had been a bright, sky blue. The hay had been electric yellow, the shovel tangerine orange, and the crate green like grass. Everything else had been muted and dull, almost gray, washed out like turn of the century photographs.
Stranger still was that he couldn't remember actively thinking that he should use the shovel in the way that he had, nor that he should pick up the crate and wield it as a weapon. There were no pauses between actions, no hesitation or second guessing. His brain had just gone down the color spectrum from warm to cool and his body had reacted in kind. His body was a musician sight-reading color-coded sheet music, saving himself to the tune of red-orange-yellow-green-blue.
Massu had always considered himself a pacifist. The realization of what he did to the two would be burglars and their dog horrified him. That he fought them off subconsciously, that his mind had shut off and allowed his body to dole out that level of violence sent chills up his spine. What if he freaked out again and hurt someone he cared about? How would he live with himself?
He dunked his head in the rapidly cooling bathwater, trying to physically derail that train of thought. He was tired and stressed out and probably remembering it wrong. He had hit his head just before the color shift. As for the violence, Massu always did have pretty decent reflexes, and he had been scared out of his wits. No one could expect him to act rationally in that sort of situation.
Massu climbed out of the bath, reaching for his towel to dry himself off with. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing to hide.
---
Word traveled fast when the population of your hometown was barely over triple digits and even faster when you'd done something the townspeople considered heroic. Soon enough the whole town was abuzz with tales of Massu's valiant fight to save the Yanagi's farm, though various retellings had the story morphing in strange ways, especially once it hit the local tavern and a little drunk embellishment. By the end of the week, the story had mutated into the robbers being an escaped convict and a Russian mafia cronie, the dog was rabid, and suddenly there was a gun involved, all of which Massu fought off with a concussion and his bare fists. Massu's schoolmates started calling him names like "Macho Massu" and "Masuda the Machine." Massu just laughed it off and assured them that the reality was nothing half as glamorous.
With the adoration came jealousy, and it wasn't long before he found himself on the receiving end of little pranks around school, culminating in Massu getting locked in the sports equipment room at school. It was funny in a really stupid way, a prank straight out of the comic books. However, the humor of the situation started to wear thin with each passing minute he was locked in, and by nightfall he was starting to worry. His family had never sprung for a cell phone for him, so he had no way to call home or ask for help. There was a window, but it was high up and covered by shelving. Not that it would be of much help anyway; by the inky darkness he could see on the other side of the windowpane, he knew that the school was most likely abandoned by now.
Massu started to pace, trying to figure out a way out of this situation and accomplishing little more than working himself up into a panic. He was hungry, his mother was probably worrying about him, and he didn't relish the thought of sleeping in the musty, cold, dirty equipment room. Massu rubbed his hands across the goosebumps prickling up and down his arms. He'd been shoved in the room after swim practice, and his swim trunks and thin cotton t-shirt did little to ward off the autumn chill. It was then that he remembered that along with his uniform, his homework was still in his locker, including the take-home test for his Algebra II class. Massu groaned, hands going to grab his head. He was barely passing that class as it was!
And then it happened again.
World: grey. Shelving: red. Vaulting pole: yellow. Ceiling pipe: orange. Window: green.
Next thing Massu knew, he was climbing up the shelves, allowing his weight to tip the fixture forward. Just as the shelving started to fall, Massu jumped, grabbing onto the steel pipe above his head and wrapping his legs and arms around it. The shelves hit the ground with a magnificent crash, spewing equipment everywhere, but Massu paid it no mind, shimmying along the pipe. Once he had reached the wall, he freed an arm to grab one of the vaulting poles propped up just to the left of the window. He let go with his other hand and allowed his body to swing backwards, relying on leg strength alone to keep him held aloft as he lifted the pole and aimed for the window. One good solid whack on the hinge was all it took and the window pane popped out of the sill, shattering on the ground outside.
Dropping the pole to the ground, Massu returned his hands to the pipe and wiggled the rest of the way to his newly made exit. It was a tight fit but Massu was determined, body squeezing and twisting until he was free and just barely missing landing in the prickly bushes below the window.
Now on solid ground, Massu leaned over, hands on his knees, trying to catch the breath he hadn't known he'd lost. He squinted up at the window he'd come tumbling out of as he gulped down air. He'd been stuck in the room for close to three hours and not once had he thought to escape in the way he had. Honestly, he never thought he could do crazy ninja stuff like that. How the hell did he, average little Masuda Takahisa, manage to do any of that!?
Making a mental note to come to school early the next morning and try and fix the mess he'd made getting out, Massu grabbed his clothes and books from his locker and ran home, hoping his mother had set aside a plate of food for him.
As he lay in bed that night, he couldn't stop thinking about his escape. There was no convenient bump on the head that could explain his actions away a second time. Or maybe the initial bump had something to do with it after all. Maybe he had knocked something loose, or managed to turn on some dormant part of his mind. Humans only used ten percent of their brain, right? Either way, something was messed up in his head, because he was pretty sure normal people did not get the urge to flip out ninja-style every time they saw a rainbow. Then again, normal people probably didn't see rainbows when they were stressed in the first place.
The only way to see exactly what caused this weirdness was to test himself. It might not even happen again--there was still some stubborn part of him saying both instances could have been a fluke. If he couldn't trigger the color change, then he could go back to his normal, boring life without feeling like he was two steps away from crazy.
He mulled over what he remembered from the two times his brain had short circuited. High stress situations seemed to be the key, so it stood to reason that the easiest way to trigger this weird power thing was to place himself in danger. He thought about letting his neighbor's Akita chase him (again) but quickly nixed the idea, not wanting to risk it should he end up getting violent again. Besides, he truly hated that dog.
No, he needed something small and not life threatening, but still enough to send his anxiety levels through the roof. Massu stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, fingers drumming against his thighs. Countless possibilities ran through his mind, Massu discarding them, rolling them around, taking one bit from this idea and melding it with another half-formed thought until finally, at thirteen minutes after four o'clock, he came up with the perfect plan. With his plan solidified in his head, he allowed himself to yawn and attempted to get at least a couple hours of sleep before he had to wake up and make the equipment room at school look like a hurricane hadn't rolled through it.
The following Saturday he woke up early and bought a box full of live crickets from the local pet shop (which had been an ordeal in itself. He was surprised that the color change hadn't happened the minute he walked in and saw the parrot sitting outside of its cage, eyeballing him.) Just holding the box, feeling the tiny little insect bodies jumping against the cardboard made his stomach turn, and it took every ounce of strength not to drop the thing as he trotted out of town.
It was maybe thirty minutes before he was greeted with the familiar sight of the old abandoned building on the edge of the nearby forest. No one really knew what the squat, one-room cement building used to be; some said it was an old weather station, while others swore it had been used as a command post during the war. Whatever it once was, it was long abandoned now, the secrets erased over decades of neglect, the only visitors being curious children and teenagers up to no good. He and his sister used to play there until his parents found out and forbade them from ever going back.
The interior was much as he remembered it, light struggling to filter through the cracks in boarded up windows and remnants of beer cans and bottles littering the floor. Grafitti in a multitude of inks lined the walls, proclaiming charming statements such as Sakaki is a no-good whore and Yoshie + Kenta Forever. He was pretty sure he saw a discarded condom off in one corner. No wonder Massu's parents had threatened to ground them both if they ever found them playing at the abandoned building again. This wasn't exactly a haven for little kids.
Placing the box of crickets down on an upturned crate, Massu took a deep breath and went to seal himself in the room. The door was a hulking piece of steel that took considerable effort to tug out across the threshold, rusted wheels squealing in protest as they made the much neglected trip down the track. Once he had managed to pull the door shut, he paused and then grabbed a wayward steel pipe and jammed it between the door and the wall, effectively quarantining himself.
Feeling adequately trapped, Massu turned back to the box with a grim face. Now for the really hard part: he was going to have to let the crickets out. The box wiggled a little on the crate and Massu shivered, revulsion spreading in waves up and down his body. What the hell had he been thinking when he'd called this the "easy" option?
It took Massu a few deep breaths before he managed to pick the box up. It was several more before he brought it up to chest level, holding the box away like it was a filthy thing (in his opinion, it really was.) With one last deep, shaky breath, Massu opened the box and threw it against the wall opposite to him.
Crickets flew everywhere, a horde of horrible, six-legged terrors hopping about madly, relishing in their newfound freedom. Massu flinched away, tried to scurry to a safe place, but he was outnumbered one to fifty, and they were much quicker than he was. Massu squealed and jumped up onto the crate just as the world started to go gray.
This time he was ready for the shift, entirely aware when the color change happened. He still couldn't stop his body from moving on its own, but he didn't bother to fight it, watching in fascination as he jumped off the crate, feet crunching a crimson sea of crickets with each step as he backed up against the wall. He kicked the now neon orange crate forward until it was sitting just under the bright yellow window, and then he was off at a sprint, running, stepping onto the crate, and jumping, arms moving to cover his head as he flew through the air.
Massu smashed through the rotted wood covering the window like some sort of action hero, tumbling as he hit the ground and landing in a crouch. He waited patiently for his subconscious to relinquish the reins. For a moment the air around him seemed to shiver like a plate of gelatin, but then there was a noise and a strange release of pressure in his head, almost like he was popping his ears, and the world reverted to normal.
The first thing he did was to stand and move his limbs, testing to see if they were all in working order. (They were.)
The second thing he did was check himself for crickets (he found two on his pants, much to his disgust) and try and wipe the soles of his shoes clean on the grass.
After he was absolutely sure there were no more nasty little invertebrates hiding anywhere on his person, Massu allowed a shaky smile to cross his lips. He was a freaking ninja.
---
As excited as he was about his newfound ninja-ness, the elation soon turned to unease and finally something resembling fear. He'd always been taught to go along with the rest of the populace; to be himself only as long as he could do so without standing out. That was just how things worked in small towns. You lived out your life simply and honestly, making as few waves as you could. Where did his new powers fit into that plan?
He was also deeply disturbed that he had no idea where these powers came from, or what had triggered them in the first place. The blow to the head he received in the Yanagi's barn seemed the most likely of culprits, but all the same, he couldn't help wondering if this hadn't been with him his entire life. Massu had been lucky enough to grow up in a happy, normal-on-the-verge-of-boring life; what if he just hadn't been properly stimulated to have the power kick in before? Worse still, what if it had happened when he was younger and he'd completely forgotten about it? The idea unsettled him deeply.
Whatever the reason, he still didn't have an explanation for the why or how. He was pretty sure he didn't even have the what, and the when was still up in the air. Which left him with the who, and to be honest, he was beginning to wish that was the one question he didn't have an answer for.
The longer the thought on it, the more desperate he became to try and normalize this development. He could remember his friends at school telling him stories of how they'd played video games so long that they could see arrows and markers in the real world. But Massu had never really cared for video games and only played them when he was at his friends' houses. Certainly not enough to warrant the "gamer vision" his friends sometimes boasted about. All the other explanations his mind cooked up were just as easily disproved. He would have to face the facts--he was strange.
The worst part was that he had no one to tell. Sure, he could try, but who admits that they see helpful rainbows in their head? His friends already teased him for having weird tastes and a bizarre sense of humor. They'd probably shun him if they found out about this.
He had thought of sharing his secret with his mother at least, had even played out all the situations on how to tell her in his head, but in the end, he never could work up the courage to say anything. Not that he thought she would try to disown him or anything--he knew his mother loved him unconditionally--but he couldn't help the nagging feeling that finding out something was wrong with her baby boy would break her heart.
That was what hurt the most: that he would be a giant disappointment to his family should his secret get out, a great black stain on the reputation of the otherwise well-liked and normal Masuda line. Months passed with the guilt gnawing away at him steadily until he could come up with no other option than to leave town. He was horribly tempted to call the whole plan off when he told his parents and saw the sad smile on his mother's face, but he reminded himself that he was doing this for them, so they wouldn't have to hurt in the long run. Here he was an abnormality; in Tokyo, he'd just be another weird face in a sea of strange people.
Massu focused all his energy on earning money, even going so far as to quit his beloved swim team so he could pick up extra time at the rice mill where his father worked. He finished high school as per his parents' request, but the rest of his time was devoted to filling the shoe box in his closet with money.
When he wasn't working, Massu spent his free time exploring his power, seeing what made it tick and trying his hand at mastering it. His secret abilities may have made him feel like an outsider in his hometown, but he couldn't help but enjoy the way his body responded to danger, the strange grace he felt as he moved, the way no action was ever wasted. It all boiled down to adrenaline and power. Once he got over his initial fear of being different, he learned to embrace his ability, to revel in it. By the end of the following fall he no longer had to rely on the boost of adrenaline, instinctively knowing what objects to look out for and checking every exit every time he entered a room. His mind was training him to think like an escape artist and he accepted the instruction gladly.
It was a few weeks after his nineteenth birthday when he realized he finally had enough money for what he hoped would be three month's rent and enough to start himself off in his new life. After a somber few days in the Masuda home and a lot of tearful goodbyes, Massu embarked for the inner city. Within the first week he got a job at 7-Eleven, bought his first cell phone, and had moved into a tiny apartment over a little pâtisserie in Shinbashi. Not exactly glamorous, but Massu had never been one to splurge on all the bells and whistles. 'Simple is best' was what he had been raised on and he had no qualms living out his life according to that philosophy.
Still, the apartment situation was less than ideal, even by Massu's low standards. To say the place was cramped would be a vast understatement, and the walls provided little respite from the noise of the street level. The situation wasn't helped at all by his sole neighbor who, while pleasant enough, kept very strange hours, playing music and singing and just generally making noise until the sun started to rise. After three days on less than ten hours of sleep, Massu's fingers were itching to pack up all his belongings and go home. If it weren't for his stubborn refusal to bring his family into the general weirdness that had become his life, he would've done it, too.
He either had to scour for a new place to live that he could afford with his meager funds, or learn to love the craziness that surrounded him. And since his bank account wasn't exactly bursting at the seams with funds, sticking it out seemed like the best option.
The street noise was the easiest to handle, requiring little more than buying ear plugs. The neighbor problem was surprisingly easy to adapt to as well. As loud as his neighbor could be, at least he wasn't tone deaf. To honest, some of his songs were actually quite pleasant; Massu had found himself nodding his head and tapping his feet along with the beat on several occasions. He'd almost come to expect the soft strains of the guitar and muffled lyrics on heartache that seeped through the cracks in the walls. Best of all, living above a sweets shop meant his apartment always smelled of freshed baked bread and sugar, and while it made him hungry, it was also strangely comforting. By the end of the first month, Massu had already made his peace with his crazy little corner of the world.
Just as he grew to like his noisy, sugary home, he came to know the people who worked in the shop under him as well. The head chef was kooky, to put it nicely; a patissier intent on melding the art of French pastry with the traditional flavors of Japan. Many afternoons had been spent listening to Chef Maruyama expound on the wide variety of taste profiles inherent in Japanese sweets and how they perfectly complimented or contrasted certain French flavors. Best of all, he would usually foist his creations off on Massu, along with any bread that they hadn't been able to sell during the day. Technically they were supposed to throw it out, but Maruyama would always sneak him a bag or two of goodies, accompanying the smuggled goods with an over exaggerated wink. Massu could only wish his boss at the convenience store was half as warm and kind-hearted.
He had let that idle thought slip one day, a passing comment made while bread exchanged hands, but hadn't really expected it to go anywhere. He had entirely forgotten about it when Maruyama approached him with a job offer a week and a half later. His company was about to start a campaign promoting "pampering" their customers as a way to draw in more business, and thus were starting a new delivery service. The job was experimental--temporary at best--and it would mean Massu going from one service industry job to another. At the same time, a delivery job was much freer than being stuck behind a counter, heating up noodles for stressed college students at all hours of the morning; he would have more time to learn the layout of the city. Not to mention the morning commute was almost nonexistent. Massu didn't even think on it a day before accepting.
A typical shift for Massu was six to three, Monday through Friday, with the period from ten to two being the busiest as far as deliveries went. When Massu wasn't dashing all over town to drop off confections for overworked office workers and dolled up shop girls, he helped around the bakery, mostly doing grunt work in the back with Maru or relieving his co-workers for smoke or meal breaks. What parts of his job he didn't grasp immediately he worked hard at until he had a passable understanding, and his habit of hanging around the shop prior to working there meant he was integrated quickly and easily into the ranks. The people of the bakery weren't a complete replacement for all the people he'd left behind in Nerima, but his new friends did help fill the family-shaped hole in his heart, if only a little.
Which was why it was such a shock when a few months later, Maru told them he was leaving. He'd received an invitation for a job as head patissier at a high end hotel in Kyoto and he would have to be an idiot not to take it. Massu was sad to see him go, but everyone knew how much he loved and missed his hometown as well as his family, a sentiment Massu could wholly identify with.
Maru's replacement was supposed to be there for a month at tops, a temporary gig until they could find a suitable, more permanent replacement, and he took every opportunity to reminds them of this. But much like Massu's 'temporary' job position, one month stretched into several, and before he knew it, two years had passed and he was still stationed at the little eatery in Tokyo. Still complaining about how the shop would never live up to the head branch in Osaka and still insisting that he would be gone by the end of the week.
Complain though he did, Nishikido Ryo was a hard worker and a fair boss, so Massu couldn't help but grow to respect him. They didn't talk nearly as much as he and Maru had, partially due to Ryo's attitude but mostly because they just didn't have anything to say to each other. Massu had always been more interested in the eating than the making of bread, and Ryo did not care much for television or the street fashion Massu seemed so taken with, but they got along reasonably well.
As for the reason Massu had moved out to Shinbashi in the first place, he made a habit of keeping his evasion skills up, even going so far as to use his delivery runs as training. There wasn't much need for them--something Massu was very glad for--but it seemed wasteful to have a skill and not use it. If nothing else, it was good exercise.
And so Massu adjusted to inner-Tokyo life as he did all things: slowly and stubbornly working until he'd managed to find his stride, trying to roll with the proverbial punches as well as he could. He missed his hometown, the people, the little things like being able to see the sky littered with stars at night or the way his family would gather around the kotatsu and eat nabe when the winter chill was at its worst. But as busy and impersonal as Tokyo could be, there was also a certain charm to the bustling metropolis. Even after two years he was still discovering new places to explore, new people to meet. Every day felt like a chance to discover something new.
It still wasn't home, but it was a good start.
---
Massu didn't stop to weigh the consequences before revealing his power before Ryo. There hadn't been enough time.
The mugger had seemingly appeared out of thin air just as he and Ryo were closing up shop for the night (well, Ryo was closing. Massu had just come downstairs for the free bread.) His power kicked in as soon as he saw the gleam of the knife blade and before anyone knew what was going on, Massu was tugging Ryo up the stairs to his apartment, leaving a dazed mugger folded over the rim of the dumpster, legs hanging limply against the side of the metal the only evidence that he was there.
When Massu came back to himself, they were standing in the entrance of his apartment, Ryo demanding an answer to what the hell had just happened and sounding more than a little freaked out.
So Massu told him.
He hadn't planned on it, but once the first few words had come tumbling out of his mouth he couldn't stop them, spilling the truth behind his ability to get out of sticky situations in a tangle of half-formed thoughts and nerves. Sharing his secret was scary but also sort of exhilarating. In the three and a half years since he'd made this discovery he'd never told a single soul about any of it. He couldn't help the little bubble of hope expanding in his stomach, trying to get out all the right words before it popped and he lost his nerve.
Nevertheless, he wasn't surprised when Ryo didn't believe him. Magical mental rainbows that triggered his inner Jackie Chan was a hard concept to sell. Massu proposed Ryo try testing him, trying to sound more nonchalant about it than he felt. Now that he had finally shared his secret, he wanted desperately for Ryo to believe him.
For the next week, Massu ended up locked in various places around the shop, from the walk in refrigerator to the employee bathroom and even the closet in Massu's own apartment (luckily, he managed to evade Ryo the one time he tried to shove Massu into the dumpster out back. He'd been wearing his favorite pair of sneakers that day and probably wouldn't have forgiven Ryo easily if he got dumpster goo on them.) With each successful escape, he saw Ryo's demeanor change from challenging smartass to skeptical but curious until he finally admitted that he believed Massu, though not before Ryo almost ended up with a black eye after jumping out from behind a door with a rolling pin held aloft. Luckily Massu managed to stop his fist just short of his boss' face, but for a long while afterward, Ryo was very cautious of sneaking up on Massu.
After the demonstrations came the questions. What caused the shift? (Adrenaline.) Was it just negative emotions that triggered it or did being highly excited work too? (He wasn't sure, but most of his experience was with negative situations.) Could he control what he did when he was in his trance? (He couldn't at first, but he was slowly gaining more and more control.) How long did a bout usually last? (As long as it took to get away.) Massu did his best to answer them all, happy to finally have someone he could talk about this with.
A little more than a week after the failed mugging attempt, Massu woke up to frantic banging on his door at three a.m. Afraid that Yasu was in trouble or the bakery was on fire, Massu launched off his futon and opened his door but found Ryo on the other side, looking sleep deprived but excited, all but bouncing on his feet as he let himself into Massu's apartment. Apparently he'd been up all night researching on the internet and thought he finally had an explanation for Massu's "condition," as Ryo put it.
Ryo seated himself at the living room table and laid out three pages of handwritten notes, pointing to a blurb with the word synesthesia circled in bright red pen. From what Massu could decipher from Ryo's garbled handwriting as well as what Ryo was excitedly babbling it was some sort of disorder in the brain that caused people to associate certain senses with abnormal things. Some people saw numbers as having specific colors or associated letters with feelings, musical notes with tastes. It didn't explain away Massu's abilities entirely and Ryo could find no recorded instances of anyone with a form of the condition that resembled Massu's own, but it was a definite possibility.
Massu ran his fingers back and forth over the word. Synesthesia--it felt strange to have a name for the secret that he'd been harboring since high school. Like giving it a title took away some of the magic.
"Does there have to be an explanation?"
Ryo stopped mid-sentence, starting at Massu as if he couldn't really grasp the question. As far as Massu was concerned, it didn't really matter what it was called. If he had known of synesthesia back when his power first flared up, back when he was terrified of being different and confused, it probably would have comforted him. Now it just seemed like an unnecessary explanation for something that was as much a part of him as his legs or hair or bones were.
They sat in silence until Massu noted the time and reminded Ryo that his shift started in ten minutes. Massu was too awake to go back to bed so he threw on his work clothes and followed Ryo downstairs into the shop. He didn't see the point in going back to bed when he'd have to be at work in two hours anyway. The mood was somber as Ryo went to work preparing the dough for the day, Massu helping him with grunt work and other simple tasks. He was in the middle of stirring a giant batch of pâte à choux when Ryo finally spoke. "Why don't you do something with your power?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know," Ryo shrugged. "Fight crime or something."
Massu's hands stilled. The idea had never occurred to him. Growing up on sentai shows as a child, he had spent countless afternoons pretending he was a galactic space ranger sent to rid the universe of evil, but a child's ambition is often weathered by age and by the time Massu had the means to fight evil he had already written it off as impossible. Honestly, he still didn't think he could do it; being skilled at running away was better suited to crooks, not the people who caught them.
Remembering the dough he was working with required more attention than he was currently giving it, he started to move the spoon around again, thinking while he stirred. Now that the idea had been planted, he couldn't help but inspect it from all sides, wondering if maybe it couldn't grow into something spectacular. It was another thirty minutes before inspiration hit him. An idea so simple that he was surprised he hadn't thought it up sooner. "What if I delivered stuff to people?
Ryo looked up from where he was kneading away, flour dusted across his left cheek. "You already do that," he deadpanned.
"I know, but, I mean... more than just candy and cake." Massu paused in his work again to gesture as he spoke, motioning with his hands what he couldn't quite put into words. "Important stuff. Stuff that they need protected or can't ask anyone else to deliver."
"Like some kind of super powered courier?"
"Something like that," Massu said with a nod.
Ryo continued kneading, staring off into nothing with his eyebrows knit together and his lips thinning. "That could work. It'll probably take a while to drum up business, but we can probably make some pretty good money once the jobs start rolling in."
"Eh?" Massu nearly dropped the spoon he was holding. "You'll help me?"
Nishikido shrugged, eyes back on the dough between his fingers. "Someone has to be the brains to your brawn, piggy. 'Sides," Ryo said, voice dropping to a mumble that Massu had to strain to hear, "you saved my life. I don't like owing people things." When there was no immediate response, Ryo flicked his eyes up to Massu and frowned. "Close your mouth, you look like an idiot."
Massu did as he was ordered, shutting his mouth only to have his lips spread into a slow, ear to ear smile. Not only had he gained a confidant, but a partner in crime, too. Telling Ryo had been the right choice after all. "Well then, please take good care of me."
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On to Part 2