[JE] Immortal Wisdom, or Lack Thereof
Title: Immortal Wisdom, or Lack Thereof
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy, fluff
Word count: 3,400
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Jin shares his plans for KAT-TUN to achieve immortality, but doesn't get quite the response he was hoping for.
A/N: For the ficwars theme of 'Immortals' - I did kind of cheat with the interpretation, sorry! ^_^
Immortal Wisdom, or Lack Thereof
"I want us to be immortal."
Kame contemplated taking Jin's beer away from him, since he'd clearly had enough. The glazed eyes and slow, dreamy speech testified to that, not to mention his choice of conversation topics. Good thing nobody else was around to hear them - but then, Kame hadn't gone over to Jin's apartment to do things he wanted other people to hear.
Not that those things were showing any signs of happening, and based on the number of empty beer bottles standing on the table, Kame wasn't sure they were even capable of it anymore.
"Immortal," Kame repeated. "Like...superheroes? Vampires? Gods?"
Jin waved a hand, almost sending the bottles flying. "If you know how to make us gods, I'm listening, but I didn't mean that kind of immortality."
"If you think immortality is the solution to you getting sick all the time-"
"Not like that," Jin interrupted. "Immortal like Elvis Presley, or the Beatles."
"Spotted by cranks at UFO sites long after our deaths?"
"Kind of. I want us to be..." Jin paused to pull himself upright, gripping the couch arm for balance. "Remembered. One hundred years from now I want kids to have our posters up on their walls and think they want to grow up to be like KAT-TUN."
"You want us to be hated by parents for all eternity?"
"Stop making fun of me. You know what I mean, Kame. I want us to be instantly recognisable, like the way SMAP get parodied in anime and everyone knows it's them, but nobody says anything."
Kame grinned. "You know you're in a shoujo manga series, right?"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah." Kame nodded, made sure his voice remained perfectly solemn. "You've got cute curls, delicate ankles and a pretty face - what more could you ask for in a shoujo heroine?"
Jin hit him with a rolled-up copy of AnAn which just happened to be sticking out of his bag, within easy reach in case he had to show it to someone who hadn't seen it yet. "I guess when it comes to shoujo manga, you're the expert."
"Nah, that's Koki. I think he reads them to Sakura every night."
"How do you know what Koki does every night?"
"If you start on one of your jealous tantrums again, I'm rolling over and going to sleep."
"You roll over and you'll fall off the couch," Jin said smugly. "Stay awake and help me make plans for our future."
Kame didn't think Jin was talking about a house in California, a couple of kids and a dog. That, at least, he stood a chance at talking Jin out of. This promised to be something much bigger, something that all of KAT-TUN would live to regret.
-----
Scheme for immortality #1: Break Even More Records
"He's lost it completely, hasn't he?" Nakamaru said. "His weird clubbing friends have given him something that's driven him out of his mind, and that's why he's suggesting something so ridiculous."
"Nobody's given me anything-"
"Except some very strange cigarettes," Kame reminded him.
"-And I don't see what's so ridiculous about it!" Jin said. "Don't we all keep saying we want to surpass our limits?"
"Yeah, but we all know your limits." Koki clearly had no faith in Jin's stamina. "You'd never survive. None of us would. We'd be the first Johnnys group in history to hold concerts in the cemetery."
The sudden gleam in Jin's eyes alarmed Kame. "Don't even think about it," he warned. "No cemeteries. Too many ghosts."
Merely mentioning ghosts sufficed to ensure Jin dropped the subject immediately. "Fine, no cemeteries. But I still think we could do it."
"It doesn't matter whether we could do it or not." Ueda politely didn't mention that he was the only one of them in good enough physical condition that he might be able to pull it off. "We'd never get the time."
Junno looked up from his DS. "And the fans wouldn't have the money. We couldn't ask people to pay our ticket prices, not for so many shows."
Jin looked to Kame for support; none was forthcoming. "Free concerts aren't an option either, Jin. The budget cuts would be so drastic we wouldn't manage a show at all. We at least have to pay the security guards so we don't get mauled too badly by fans."
"And there will be blood shed when Jin gets carried off to hospital after the first couple of weeks," Koki said. "All the cosplay in the world won't help when he doesn't have a voice left, no matter how much the fans love it when he comes out in an eyepatch and asks me to-"
"Never mind that." Jin and Koki had a fine history of fanservice together, but playing up for the fans when they were on the stage was much less embarrassing than talking about it afterwards, or so Jin had always found. "Isn't that one of our trademarks? We don't sound perfect, so people don't think we're lipsynching the whole concert?"
"There's not being perfect, and there's being so hoarse you sound like you died six weeks ago."
The glare Ueda received from Jin would've killed a lesser being, but KAT-TUN's 'U' could never be defeated so easily - not outside of a shopping mall, at any rate.
Kame was determined to put an end to the madness. "We're not doing it and that's final."
"But, Kame-"
Just to make sure there were no misunderstandings, Kame said it in English too. "NO."
Even Jin's most appealing pout failed to change Kame's mind, though it did make him wish he didn't already have plans that night. There was no doubting Jin's drive, or courage, or determination, when it came to doing the things he really wanted to do. He had more enthusiasm and energy than ten Juniors when he was sufficiently motivated.
But sadly, there was a limit to human endurance, and Kame didn't think any of them were willing to effectively commit suicide to engrave their names on the hearts and minds of the world for generations to come.
"I'm sorry, Jin, but we're not doing it. There's no way we can hold concerts for fifty consecutive nights at the Tokyo Dome."
-----
Scheme for immortality #2: Going Worldwide
Junno was surprised when the large inflatable ball landed in his lap, but it was sunny outside and now that they'd finished rehearsing, perhaps it was time to play. "Are we going to the beach?" he asked Jin, who'd thrown the ball in the first place.
"It's a globe." Jin retrieved the globe and spun it round on his fingertip, only to have it stolen by Koki. "We're going to pick countries."
Kame had a bad feeling about this, like any minute now he was going to find himself prancing around in feathers and sparkles. "We're doing Summary again?"
"Of course not!"
KT-TUN breathed a collective sigh of relief, which lasted only as long as it took for Jin to steal the globe back from Koki, thrust it under Ueda's nose, and point out France on the map.
"You're learning French," he said.
Ueda batted the globe away so Jin's fingers were no longer dangerously close to his eyes. "Again? Why?"
"It's all part of the plan." Jin sounded extremely proud of himself. "We make an impact on the international market by increasing the number of languages we speak. We'll be able to communicate with our fans all over the world! The more people who've heard of us, the greater our chances of being remembered."
"That's not actually a bad idea," Koki said grudgingly.
Nakamaru agreed. "We could even answer some of that foreign fanmail."
"Not to mention read up about ourselves all over the Internet." Jin liked to look himself up in English communities and find out what was being said about him, but he'd heard the really juicy stuff was on Chinese forums and he wasn't very good at navigating those. "We could attend international film festivals!"
Kame suspected Jin had never quite gotten over Arashi's Ninomiya being in a Clint Eastwood movie. "I like it better than your last idea, but I don't think it'll work."
"Kame, I know learning a new language is never easy," Jin knew that better than any of them, "but don't you think it would be amazing? We could do interviews on foreign TV shows and everything!"
"Like Jerry Springer?" Junno suggested.
Koki glowered at him. "I'm not sure even we're messed up enough for that."
"Oh, we are..." Nakamaru shook his head sorrowfully. "But I don't think we have the time to learn so many languages. Maybe we should all just work on our English?"
"Not good enough," Jin said. "I'm going to work on Spanish, we need someone to do Chinese-"
Kame had to put a stop to this before Jin had them all enrolled in language classes and doing their MC segments in everything except Japanese. "You're missing the point. There's no way we'll ever get to tour outside of Asia, not in this agency. We won't even get to Sweden. We can go shoot photobooks, maybe go film, but we won't be able to hold concerts."
"Why so pessimistic?" Jin set down the globe. "That's not like you at all."
"I'm being realistic. I would love to hold concerts overseas, Jin, but unless Johnny has a radical change of mind, it's not happening."
Jin's enthusiasm didn't falter for long. He rummaged around in Kame's bag until he found a notebook and pen, dropped to the floor, and began scribbling away. The rest of the group waited the requisite five minutes of pretending they weren't interested in the slightest before Kame crept up and peered over Jin's shoulder.
"Is he writing an advert for a hypnotist?" Nakamaru asked.
Kame laughed and resigned himself to the loss of yet another pen. "Nope. He's writing a petition."
-----
Scheme for immortality #3: Affection
Fortunately for Kame's stationery stash, Jin abandoned the petition after he realised he'd have to circulate it on the Internet to get overseas fans to sign it, and he wasn't sure where to start. International appeal was out. Record-breaking concerts were out. Undaunted, Jin continued to dream of immortality, of having new Juniors join the agency because they wanted to be like the members of KAT-TUN, of having beautiful girls make pilgrimages to his grave and lament the loss of his singing voice and hip rolls from the music world.
It wasn't until he was in Mandarake, buying the latest volume of One Piece, that inspiration truly struck. He was, of course, cleverly disguised in a baseball cap and sunglasses (although these made it difficult to read the titles) because the store was always teeming with women, and if he was recognised he risked being mobbed.
And so it was that when he overheard a pair of girls talking about the size of the KAT-TUN doujinshi section, nobody saw the light in his eyes - or the furtive smile that followed when he caught sight of the extensive Akakame section. There was more than one path to immortality.
The rest of KAT-TUN were not quite so enamoured of the idea.
"That's not immortality, that's notoriety," Nakamaru said. "I don't see how creating a massive scandal is going to help."
"What exactly did you have in mind?" Koki said. "Because we'd have to work pretty hard to out-do Arashi's drugs, NEWS and Kanjani8's drinking, and SMAP's 'drunken nudity in the park' scandals."
"Without getting suspended," said Ueda, who was an expert at not getting caught doing anything worthy of the gossip magazines. "Look what happened with Uchi and Kusano."
Everyone agreed that this was a fate to be avoided unless they wanted to return as six solo artists; although they all enjoyed their solo projects, none of them wished to make the situation permanent.
Junno tried to look on the bright side of things. "We might attract a new audience?"
"I'm not sure that's the kind of audience we want to attract." Kame didn't want to scare the children away. Getting caught in a restaurant with a girl was acceptable - expected, even. It happened from time to time. They were only human. Whatever Jin had in mind was bound to be more controversial.
"I wasn't thinking about breaking the law," Jin protested. "I've spent enough time talking to the police, thanks. I just thought we could have a little fun."
Jin's idea of fun ranged from video game marathons to spending the night in crowded clubs, but Kame couldn't see how any of this was going to increase their reputation to levels worthy of worship. "Fun? Doing what?"
"You know that top-secret affair that everyone thinks we're having but no one's allowed to talk about?"
"Would that be the one you really are having and no one wants to talk about?" Ueda asked.
"You knew?"
"How could we not know?" Koki's smirk said it all. "Next time we're on tour, get a hotel room further away from the rest of us, okay?"
"Leaving aside our...uh..." Kame cleared his throat and started again, privately swearing revenge on Jin and that lovely voice of his for taking them down this embarrassing conversational detour. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Simple. We stop covering it up." It was a great plan, as far as Jin was concerned. "Fans like the service so all we do is take it further. There can't be many all-male bands out there with an actual couple, can there? Kame's been half out the closet for ages."
"And you refuse to even stick your nose out of it," Kame said. "I don't believe you're suggesting this."
Jin rubbed a hand across the back of his head. "Most people won't believe it's anything more than a publicity stunt anyway."
"Except the ones who could conceivably fire us."
"I didn't say it wasn't a gamble. But you don't achieve immortality by playing it safe."
"Do you think maybe he's confusing 'immortality' with 'immorality'?" Junno asked Kame.
Kame shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Not that there's anything immoral about it unless he wants us to go at it on-stage, in which case we'll be arrested long before the end of the show."
"Give me credit for having a little decency, will you?" Jin said. Coming from the man who'd written 'LOVEJUICE', simulated oral sex on-stage with a cross-dressing Koki, recently done a nude photoshoot and spoken frequently during MC segments about parts of his anatomy very nearly revealed during said photoshoot, this was enough to start the rest of them laughing at him. He didn't take it well. "I hate you all."
"No, I think that's the image we're already promoting." Kame choked down the giggles. "All right, tell us what you want to do."
"So we can consider it properly before we reject it," Koki added.
Jin's next words were addressed directly to Kame. "We used to be promoted together, right? The kissing pictures, in the bed, those stupid wedding shots?"
"Yeah, until someone thought it was going too far and we'd alienate all our hopeful fans." Kame had some fond memories of those days. "And the cameramen kept fainting. So now if we get a single magazine photo together, the issue sells more and everyone's happy milking our "secret affair" for titillation and profit."
"No more wedding dresses," Jin said firmly. "Not unless we're all getting a visual kei makeover, and I don't think anyone wants to go down that route." Even Ueda agreed with this - eventually. "I thought we could...act normally. You know, like going on dates that don't involve grocery shopping at three in the morning."
"Is this Akanishi Jin proposing subtlety?" Nakamaru said.
Kame intervened before Jin could retaliate. Nakamaru had been having a tough week. "You know what will happen the moment someone spots us in a restaurant?"
"Yes. They'll write about it on their blogs, be forced to take it down, and tell all their friends that there's obviously some conspiracy at work. The restaurant will do more business, we'll get a lecture, and you'll actually eat regular meals for a change."
"Okay, so maybe you do know..."
"And if I want to dance with you in a club, I'm going to. When the interviewers ask me which KAT-TUN member I'd want to date, I'll tell them your name and say that I already am."
"You..." Kame thought he might be having an epiphany. Jin's enthusiasm had taken on an earnest quality that spoke volumes about his true motivation. "How much of this is about you wanting to be remembered in a hundred years and how much is about you being sick of keeping secrets?"
"About half and half," Jin admitted. "Once I thought about it a bit, it seemed like a good idea."
"You'll have to break up with all your girlfriends if you go public," Koki said. "I don't think they'll want to share you with Kame."
Having met some of them, Kame begged to disagree. "You'd be surprised. The last time we ran into one of his girls in a conbini, we both got invited back to her place."
Junno was curious. "Did you go?"
"She had a lot of shopping; it was only polite of us to carry it for her." Kame's stern tone did not invite further enquiries along this line.
Ueda raised his hand. "Question. If the two of you go public, does this mean you'll stop molesting the rest of us in concerts? You don't want the fans to think all six of us are having orgies backstage, do you? Arashi already have that angle covered."
Kame wasn't good at keeping his hands to himself. "Uh..."
"In that case, I'm in favour," Nakamaru said. "Can we agree to extend it to bullying too?"
"We can't do that," Koki said. "The fans will think we don't love you anymore."
With years of practice behind him, Jin easily ignored Nakamaru's groans of despair. "If Koki agrees to stop behaving like a jealous girlfriend."
"Look who's talking." Kame still couldn't spend significant periods of time with Kanjani8 without Jin somehow finding out about it and flying off the handle. He suspected Yokoyama of being the leak. "I guess I'll have to leave the Juniors alone too. We might have to deal with a lot of broken hearts next time we tour."
"Break as many hearts as you want - but not mine."
"Do you still need us for this conversation?" Ueda tore his eyes away from the intense staring match Kame and Jin appeared to be having when he noticed his phone was vibrating its way across the table. "Because I'm sure that's someone calling to tell me I'm supposed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else would be an improvement. This isn't really a discussion for six men to be having."
"Some of us aren't having it." Nakamaru pointed to Junno, who'd pulled out his phone and started playing games in an effort to avoid what was becoming an extremely mushy conversation. "Should we take a vote and leave?"
"I vote we leave right now!" Koki grabbed his bag with one hand and pushed Nakamaru towards the door with the other, standing up just in time to avoid Kame's lunge across the table. The silent staring match had evidently been some form of telepathic communication and Kame was about to give Jin's plan his official seal of approval. "I don't think we need to see this."
Ueda nodded, shouldering his own bag. He contemplated tapping Junno on the arm to break the gaming trance long enough for them to escape, but decided to leave him to play with his phone. If he chanced to look up and see something traumatic, it would be his own fault.
Three hours later, Jin's plan to attain immortality started life in an unexpected fashion - a security guard entered the dressing room, found him snuggled up to Kame, both of them in a state of undress and fast asleep, with an unconscious Junno on the floor next to his cracked phone and still bleeding from his nose. Red mingled with white: in his aborted attempt to leave, Junno had accidentally knocked over Kame's talc and the powder had gone everywhere.
By the next morning there were rumours that Junno had developed a cocaine habit so heavy it was damaging his nose, a habit he was funding through the sale of amateur adult movies of his bandmates, filmed on his phone and distributed by his girlfriend's shady friends.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy, fluff
Word count: 3,400
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Jin shares his plans for KAT-TUN to achieve immortality, but doesn't get quite the response he was hoping for.
A/N: For the ficwars theme of 'Immortals' - I did kind of cheat with the interpretation, sorry! ^_^
Immortal Wisdom, or Lack Thereof
"I want us to be immortal."
Kame contemplated taking Jin's beer away from him, since he'd clearly had enough. The glazed eyes and slow, dreamy speech testified to that, not to mention his choice of conversation topics. Good thing nobody else was around to hear them - but then, Kame hadn't gone over to Jin's apartment to do things he wanted other people to hear.
Not that those things were showing any signs of happening, and based on the number of empty beer bottles standing on the table, Kame wasn't sure they were even capable of it anymore.
"Immortal," Kame repeated. "Like...superheroes? Vampires? Gods?"
Jin waved a hand, almost sending the bottles flying. "If you know how to make us gods, I'm listening, but I didn't mean that kind of immortality."
"If you think immortality is the solution to you getting sick all the time-"
"Not like that," Jin interrupted. "Immortal like Elvis Presley, or the Beatles."
"Spotted by cranks at UFO sites long after our deaths?"
"Kind of. I want us to be..." Jin paused to pull himself upright, gripping the couch arm for balance. "Remembered. One hundred years from now I want kids to have our posters up on their walls and think they want to grow up to be like KAT-TUN."
"You want us to be hated by parents for all eternity?"
"Stop making fun of me. You know what I mean, Kame. I want us to be instantly recognisable, like the way SMAP get parodied in anime and everyone knows it's them, but nobody says anything."
Kame grinned. "You know you're in a shoujo manga series, right?"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah." Kame nodded, made sure his voice remained perfectly solemn. "You've got cute curls, delicate ankles and a pretty face - what more could you ask for in a shoujo heroine?"
Jin hit him with a rolled-up copy of AnAn which just happened to be sticking out of his bag, within easy reach in case he had to show it to someone who hadn't seen it yet. "I guess when it comes to shoujo manga, you're the expert."
"Nah, that's Koki. I think he reads them to Sakura every night."
"How do you know what Koki does every night?"
"If you start on one of your jealous tantrums again, I'm rolling over and going to sleep."
"You roll over and you'll fall off the couch," Jin said smugly. "Stay awake and help me make plans for our future."
Kame didn't think Jin was talking about a house in California, a couple of kids and a dog. That, at least, he stood a chance at talking Jin out of. This promised to be something much bigger, something that all of KAT-TUN would live to regret.
-----
Scheme for immortality #1: Break Even More Records
"He's lost it completely, hasn't he?" Nakamaru said. "His weird clubbing friends have given him something that's driven him out of his mind, and that's why he's suggesting something so ridiculous."
"Nobody's given me anything-"
"Except some very strange cigarettes," Kame reminded him.
"-And I don't see what's so ridiculous about it!" Jin said. "Don't we all keep saying we want to surpass our limits?"
"Yeah, but we all know your limits." Koki clearly had no faith in Jin's stamina. "You'd never survive. None of us would. We'd be the first Johnnys group in history to hold concerts in the cemetery."
The sudden gleam in Jin's eyes alarmed Kame. "Don't even think about it," he warned. "No cemeteries. Too many ghosts."
Merely mentioning ghosts sufficed to ensure Jin dropped the subject immediately. "Fine, no cemeteries. But I still think we could do it."
"It doesn't matter whether we could do it or not." Ueda politely didn't mention that he was the only one of them in good enough physical condition that he might be able to pull it off. "We'd never get the time."
Junno looked up from his DS. "And the fans wouldn't have the money. We couldn't ask people to pay our ticket prices, not for so many shows."
Jin looked to Kame for support; none was forthcoming. "Free concerts aren't an option either, Jin. The budget cuts would be so drastic we wouldn't manage a show at all. We at least have to pay the security guards so we don't get mauled too badly by fans."
"And there will be blood shed when Jin gets carried off to hospital after the first couple of weeks," Koki said. "All the cosplay in the world won't help when he doesn't have a voice left, no matter how much the fans love it when he comes out in an eyepatch and asks me to-"
"Never mind that." Jin and Koki had a fine history of fanservice together, but playing up for the fans when they were on the stage was much less embarrassing than talking about it afterwards, or so Jin had always found. "Isn't that one of our trademarks? We don't sound perfect, so people don't think we're lipsynching the whole concert?"
"There's not being perfect, and there's being so hoarse you sound like you died six weeks ago."
The glare Ueda received from Jin would've killed a lesser being, but KAT-TUN's 'U' could never be defeated so easily - not outside of a shopping mall, at any rate.
Kame was determined to put an end to the madness. "We're not doing it and that's final."
"But, Kame-"
Just to make sure there were no misunderstandings, Kame said it in English too. "NO."
Even Jin's most appealing pout failed to change Kame's mind, though it did make him wish he didn't already have plans that night. There was no doubting Jin's drive, or courage, or determination, when it came to doing the things he really wanted to do. He had more enthusiasm and energy than ten Juniors when he was sufficiently motivated.
But sadly, there was a limit to human endurance, and Kame didn't think any of them were willing to effectively commit suicide to engrave their names on the hearts and minds of the world for generations to come.
"I'm sorry, Jin, but we're not doing it. There's no way we can hold concerts for fifty consecutive nights at the Tokyo Dome."
-----
Scheme for immortality #2: Going Worldwide
Junno was surprised when the large inflatable ball landed in his lap, but it was sunny outside and now that they'd finished rehearsing, perhaps it was time to play. "Are we going to the beach?" he asked Jin, who'd thrown the ball in the first place.
"It's a globe." Jin retrieved the globe and spun it round on his fingertip, only to have it stolen by Koki. "We're going to pick countries."
Kame had a bad feeling about this, like any minute now he was going to find himself prancing around in feathers and sparkles. "We're doing Summary again?"
"Of course not!"
KT-TUN breathed a collective sigh of relief, which lasted only as long as it took for Jin to steal the globe back from Koki, thrust it under Ueda's nose, and point out France on the map.
"You're learning French," he said.
Ueda batted the globe away so Jin's fingers were no longer dangerously close to his eyes. "Again? Why?"
"It's all part of the plan." Jin sounded extremely proud of himself. "We make an impact on the international market by increasing the number of languages we speak. We'll be able to communicate with our fans all over the world! The more people who've heard of us, the greater our chances of being remembered."
"That's not actually a bad idea," Koki said grudgingly.
Nakamaru agreed. "We could even answer some of that foreign fanmail."
"Not to mention read up about ourselves all over the Internet." Jin liked to look himself up in English communities and find out what was being said about him, but he'd heard the really juicy stuff was on Chinese forums and he wasn't very good at navigating those. "We could attend international film festivals!"
Kame suspected Jin had never quite gotten over Arashi's Ninomiya being in a Clint Eastwood movie. "I like it better than your last idea, but I don't think it'll work."
"Kame, I know learning a new language is never easy," Jin knew that better than any of them, "but don't you think it would be amazing? We could do interviews on foreign TV shows and everything!"
"Like Jerry Springer?" Junno suggested.
Koki glowered at him. "I'm not sure even we're messed up enough for that."
"Oh, we are..." Nakamaru shook his head sorrowfully. "But I don't think we have the time to learn so many languages. Maybe we should all just work on our English?"
"Not good enough," Jin said. "I'm going to work on Spanish, we need someone to do Chinese-"
Kame had to put a stop to this before Jin had them all enrolled in language classes and doing their MC segments in everything except Japanese. "You're missing the point. There's no way we'll ever get to tour outside of Asia, not in this agency. We won't even get to Sweden. We can go shoot photobooks, maybe go film, but we won't be able to hold concerts."
"Why so pessimistic?" Jin set down the globe. "That's not like you at all."
"I'm being realistic. I would love to hold concerts overseas, Jin, but unless Johnny has a radical change of mind, it's not happening."
Jin's enthusiasm didn't falter for long. He rummaged around in Kame's bag until he found a notebook and pen, dropped to the floor, and began scribbling away. The rest of the group waited the requisite five minutes of pretending they weren't interested in the slightest before Kame crept up and peered over Jin's shoulder.
"Is he writing an advert for a hypnotist?" Nakamaru asked.
Kame laughed and resigned himself to the loss of yet another pen. "Nope. He's writing a petition."
-----
Scheme for immortality #3: Affection
Fortunately for Kame's stationery stash, Jin abandoned the petition after he realised he'd have to circulate it on the Internet to get overseas fans to sign it, and he wasn't sure where to start. International appeal was out. Record-breaking concerts were out. Undaunted, Jin continued to dream of immortality, of having new Juniors join the agency because they wanted to be like the members of KAT-TUN, of having beautiful girls make pilgrimages to his grave and lament the loss of his singing voice and hip rolls from the music world.
It wasn't until he was in Mandarake, buying the latest volume of One Piece, that inspiration truly struck. He was, of course, cleverly disguised in a baseball cap and sunglasses (although these made it difficult to read the titles) because the store was always teeming with women, and if he was recognised he risked being mobbed.
And so it was that when he overheard a pair of girls talking about the size of the KAT-TUN doujinshi section, nobody saw the light in his eyes - or the furtive smile that followed when he caught sight of the extensive Akakame section. There was more than one path to immortality.
The rest of KAT-TUN were not quite so enamoured of the idea.
"That's not immortality, that's notoriety," Nakamaru said. "I don't see how creating a massive scandal is going to help."
"What exactly did you have in mind?" Koki said. "Because we'd have to work pretty hard to out-do Arashi's drugs, NEWS and Kanjani8's drinking, and SMAP's 'drunken nudity in the park' scandals."
"Without getting suspended," said Ueda, who was an expert at not getting caught doing anything worthy of the gossip magazines. "Look what happened with Uchi and Kusano."
Everyone agreed that this was a fate to be avoided unless they wanted to return as six solo artists; although they all enjoyed their solo projects, none of them wished to make the situation permanent.
Junno tried to look on the bright side of things. "We might attract a new audience?"
"I'm not sure that's the kind of audience we want to attract." Kame didn't want to scare the children away. Getting caught in a restaurant with a girl was acceptable - expected, even. It happened from time to time. They were only human. Whatever Jin had in mind was bound to be more controversial.
"I wasn't thinking about breaking the law," Jin protested. "I've spent enough time talking to the police, thanks. I just thought we could have a little fun."
Jin's idea of fun ranged from video game marathons to spending the night in crowded clubs, but Kame couldn't see how any of this was going to increase their reputation to levels worthy of worship. "Fun? Doing what?"
"You know that top-secret affair that everyone thinks we're having but no one's allowed to talk about?"
"Would that be the one you really are having and no one wants to talk about?" Ueda asked.
"You knew?"
"How could we not know?" Koki's smirk said it all. "Next time we're on tour, get a hotel room further away from the rest of us, okay?"
"Leaving aside our...uh..." Kame cleared his throat and started again, privately swearing revenge on Jin and that lovely voice of his for taking them down this embarrassing conversational detour. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Simple. We stop covering it up." It was a great plan, as far as Jin was concerned. "Fans like the service so all we do is take it further. There can't be many all-male bands out there with an actual couple, can there? Kame's been half out the closet for ages."
"And you refuse to even stick your nose out of it," Kame said. "I don't believe you're suggesting this."
Jin rubbed a hand across the back of his head. "Most people won't believe it's anything more than a publicity stunt anyway."
"Except the ones who could conceivably fire us."
"I didn't say it wasn't a gamble. But you don't achieve immortality by playing it safe."
"Do you think maybe he's confusing 'immortality' with 'immorality'?" Junno asked Kame.
Kame shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Not that there's anything immoral about it unless he wants us to go at it on-stage, in which case we'll be arrested long before the end of the show."
"Give me credit for having a little decency, will you?" Jin said. Coming from the man who'd written 'LOVEJUICE', simulated oral sex on-stage with a cross-dressing Koki, recently done a nude photoshoot and spoken frequently during MC segments about parts of his anatomy very nearly revealed during said photoshoot, this was enough to start the rest of them laughing at him. He didn't take it well. "I hate you all."
"No, I think that's the image we're already promoting." Kame choked down the giggles. "All right, tell us what you want to do."
"So we can consider it properly before we reject it," Koki added.
Jin's next words were addressed directly to Kame. "We used to be promoted together, right? The kissing pictures, in the bed, those stupid wedding shots?"
"Yeah, until someone thought it was going too far and we'd alienate all our hopeful fans." Kame had some fond memories of those days. "And the cameramen kept fainting. So now if we get a single magazine photo together, the issue sells more and everyone's happy milking our "secret affair" for titillation and profit."
"No more wedding dresses," Jin said firmly. "Not unless we're all getting a visual kei makeover, and I don't think anyone wants to go down that route." Even Ueda agreed with this - eventually. "I thought we could...act normally. You know, like going on dates that don't involve grocery shopping at three in the morning."
"Is this Akanishi Jin proposing subtlety?" Nakamaru said.
Kame intervened before Jin could retaliate. Nakamaru had been having a tough week. "You know what will happen the moment someone spots us in a restaurant?"
"Yes. They'll write about it on their blogs, be forced to take it down, and tell all their friends that there's obviously some conspiracy at work. The restaurant will do more business, we'll get a lecture, and you'll actually eat regular meals for a change."
"Okay, so maybe you do know..."
"And if I want to dance with you in a club, I'm going to. When the interviewers ask me which KAT-TUN member I'd want to date, I'll tell them your name and say that I already am."
"You..." Kame thought he might be having an epiphany. Jin's enthusiasm had taken on an earnest quality that spoke volumes about his true motivation. "How much of this is about you wanting to be remembered in a hundred years and how much is about you being sick of keeping secrets?"
"About half and half," Jin admitted. "Once I thought about it a bit, it seemed like a good idea."
"You'll have to break up with all your girlfriends if you go public," Koki said. "I don't think they'll want to share you with Kame."
Having met some of them, Kame begged to disagree. "You'd be surprised. The last time we ran into one of his girls in a conbini, we both got invited back to her place."
Junno was curious. "Did you go?"
"She had a lot of shopping; it was only polite of us to carry it for her." Kame's stern tone did not invite further enquiries along this line.
Ueda raised his hand. "Question. If the two of you go public, does this mean you'll stop molesting the rest of us in concerts? You don't want the fans to think all six of us are having orgies backstage, do you? Arashi already have that angle covered."
Kame wasn't good at keeping his hands to himself. "Uh..."
"In that case, I'm in favour," Nakamaru said. "Can we agree to extend it to bullying too?"
"We can't do that," Koki said. "The fans will think we don't love you anymore."
With years of practice behind him, Jin easily ignored Nakamaru's groans of despair. "If Koki agrees to stop behaving like a jealous girlfriend."
"Look who's talking." Kame still couldn't spend significant periods of time with Kanjani8 without Jin somehow finding out about it and flying off the handle. He suspected Yokoyama of being the leak. "I guess I'll have to leave the Juniors alone too. We might have to deal with a lot of broken hearts next time we tour."
"Break as many hearts as you want - but not mine."
"Do you still need us for this conversation?" Ueda tore his eyes away from the intense staring match Kame and Jin appeared to be having when he noticed his phone was vibrating its way across the table. "Because I'm sure that's someone calling to tell me I'm supposed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else would be an improvement. This isn't really a discussion for six men to be having."
"Some of us aren't having it." Nakamaru pointed to Junno, who'd pulled out his phone and started playing games in an effort to avoid what was becoming an extremely mushy conversation. "Should we take a vote and leave?"
"I vote we leave right now!" Koki grabbed his bag with one hand and pushed Nakamaru towards the door with the other, standing up just in time to avoid Kame's lunge across the table. The silent staring match had evidently been some form of telepathic communication and Kame was about to give Jin's plan his official seal of approval. "I don't think we need to see this."
Ueda nodded, shouldering his own bag. He contemplated tapping Junno on the arm to break the gaming trance long enough for them to escape, but decided to leave him to play with his phone. If he chanced to look up and see something traumatic, it would be his own fault.
Three hours later, Jin's plan to attain immortality started life in an unexpected fashion - a security guard entered the dressing room, found him snuggled up to Kame, both of them in a state of undress and fast asleep, with an unconscious Junno on the floor next to his cracked phone and still bleeding from his nose. Red mingled with white: in his aborted attempt to leave, Junno had accidentally knocked over Kame's talc and the powder had gone everywhere.
By the next morning there were rumours that Junno had developed a cocaine habit so heavy it was damaging his nose, a habit he was funding through the sale of amateur adult movies of his bandmates, filmed on his phone and distributed by his girlfriend's shady friends.