Whisper in the Darkness - Ch10
WHISPER IN THE DARKNESS - CHAPTER TEN
“Ueda-san, if you could tilt your head just a little to the left - yes! Like that, perfect!”
Ueda had always hated the sudden and continuous bright white flashes during photo shoots. He always tried not to let it get to him, to ignore them and carry on posing as he was instructed, but half the time he ended up looking slightly dazed, his eyes narrower than they should have been, or out of focus, his expression off. And somehow that usually ended up being just what the photographer wanted, apparently it made him look even more mysterious. Like he really needed any more mystery to his personality.
Now that wasn’t a problem.
When their manager had announced the photo shoot they were to attend for Myojo magazine the room had fallen silent, everyone inside frozen, unsure as to what to say until Ueda had sighed, leaning back in his seat, his arms folded, his blinded eyes directed at the ground.
“What excuse are you using to explain why I can’t do it?” he asked, his voice nonchalant. The rest of the group held their breath. True enough Ueda had been doing better the past few days, but emotionally, he was still unstable, and the last thing they want was for something to make him fall back past the progress he’d made.
Which was why they were all shocked and elated by the manager’s next words.
“No need for any excuse Ueda-kun, you’ll be attending the photo shoot too, the theme will accommodate for you,” Ueda’s head snapped up.
“I…how?” was all he managed.
“You’ll all be wearing blindfolds,”
The room was filled with the sound of six simultaneous ‘Hah!?’s.
“Oi, oi, what kind of theme is that? Some kind of fetish theme?” Koki asked, his voice dripping with disbelief. Their manager laughed.
“No, no, I don’t think so, it’s just some interesting new idea the photographer came up with, it’s supposed to create this delicate, vulnerable image,” Kame gave a short laugh, still incredulous but beginning to understand.
“Ah, I see, a new way of saying ‘these guys are human too’?”
“Something like that, besides, apparently teenage girls like the vulnerable look on guys. Anyway, Ueda-kun, this means you can easily take part, everyone, be sure to take care of him,”
So he had said, but until meeting the photographer Ueda had been worried about how exactly he could get around having to take the blindfold off between shots to move around.
Upon arriving at the studio and instantly picking out a higher pitched, insistent and somewhat flamboyant voice, Ueda had paused and Maru, his hand on his shoulder to guide him, turned to look at him in concern.
“Ueda? You okay?” instead of lifting his hand to the bandage usually wound around his head Ueda found his fingers meeting the lenses of the dark glasses he had donned again.
“Is that the photographer?” he asked quietly. Everyone else had turned back by now as well.
“Who, what are you talking about?”
“That voice,” they all looked at each other and strained to hear. After a moment their faces all took on a similar expression of disbelief, half at the sound of the photographer’s voice, and half at Ueda’s ability to hear it already.
Once they were all stood before him, the photographer, having informed them that his name was Kiri, told them in no uncertain terms that they were not to remove their blindfolds once they had put them on as it would ‘destroy the illusion’. They agreed, mentally rolling their eyes as they made their way into the dressing room where a stylist pointed out whose outfits were whose before leaving them to it.
Junno picked up the v-neck t-shirt, jeans, sandals and thin scarf, all in various shades of deep blue, with Ueda’s name pinned to them and handed them over, placing the hangers gently in his hand.
“There you go Uepi, those are yours,” Ueda smiled.
“Thanks Taguchi,”
Each turning to a different section of wall as they changed they kept up the usual lazy flow of directionless conversation until they were all dressed and had drifted back to the middle of the room where they all realised for the first time that, on the table in the middle of the room were six long lengths of dark blue silk.
“Are these…?” Maru left the rest of the sentence unsaid.
Ueda listened to the faint sound of rustling material as Jin picked up the one marked ‘Kamenashi’.
“Here, Kazu, turn around,” Kame ducked away from the silk blindfold.
“Hang on, I can put it on myself!” Jin smirked.
“If you do it yourself the knot won’t be right,” he said, his voice so sadistic Ueda could almost feel it on his skin. Koki rolled his eyes and pretended to smack Jin over the head.
“Oi, Bakanishi, tie Kame-chan up at home when we don’t have work to do!”
“Actually, Jin has a point,” Ueda said quietly, feeling five pairs of eyes turn on him at once.
“That guy, Kiri, he’ll be annoyed if it doesn’t look right won’t he? If we tie each other’s blindfolds they’ll look better,” Jin grinned while Kame rolled his eyes.
“Ok, ok, fine,”
Thus Jin tied Kame’s blindfold perfectly in place, half his hair falling over it elegantly, his fringe brushing over the silk which moulded almost perfectly to the contours of his head, over the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones.
Holding onto each other’s shoulders or hands they shuffled slowly out of the room and back into the studio. It was somewhat surreal, they all found themselves thinking ‘Is this what Ueda feels like all the time?’.
There were several group shots, a few that had them lying on their backs in a circle that ultimately gave the impression of a big dark blue flower with a deep red centre, as the entire backdrop set was a dark shade of red, almost burgundy.
Once Kiri was done shifting them all around on various different sized boxes draped with burgundy velvet swaths of cloth he had them all pose individually, lying on their backs, sitting on the floor or perching on cloth covered boxes, their heads turned this way and that to catch the blindfolds in all manner of light and angle in contrast with their faces.
Lastly they were split into various combinations of two and three. Ueda sighed as he was told to lie with his head on Maru’s stomach after having been sat back to back with Kame, their heads tipped back against each other. Anything to create ridiculous pairings in the minds of Japan’s female population. Just from looking at these pictures some teenage girl somewhere was probably going to decide that he and Maru were sleeping together, or maybe him and Kame…or maybe they would decided he was so scandalous that he was sleeping with both of them.
He suppressed a smirk at the thought. Jin would boil him in oil if he so much as considered anything like that with Kame. Interesting how Jin and Kame were almost never posed together anymore, and barely interacted with each other on stage or on camera yet they were the only established couple within the band. He had to give them credit; they were masters at hiding it.
As Kiri finally announced with a dramatic wave of the arm not cradling what was probably a very expensive camera that he had all the shots he needed and KAT-TUN were free to go Maru grabbed Ueda’s arm and pulled off his own blindfold, leading Ueda back into the dressing room before anyone else noticed he had made no move to remove the silk blindfold.
Dropping into a seat at the small table in the centre of the room Ueda slowly began to unpick the knot at the back of his head, gingerly checking the tape holding the circles of gauze in place as he let the blindfold fall into his lap.
“That was fun; we should do shoots like that more often!” Jin said happily as he, Kame, Koki and Taguchi filed into the room. Kame rolled his eyes, folding his blindfold neatly and leaving it on the table.
“Seriously though, TV Guide always have people pose with lemons, why not have us pose with blindfolds more often?” Kame shook his head.
“I swear Jin you get more odd by the hour,” Jin feigned a hurt expression and pouted at his boyfriend, who smirked and sat beside Ueda who was listening to his band-mates’ chatter with a small smile as he slid his shades back over the circles of gauze.
“How are you doing Tat-chan?” he asked.
“I’m fine, why?” Kame gave him a look, though he knew he couldn’t see it, he was sure he would be able to tell. Ueda sighed.
“Okay, okay, I get it, you care, you worry, you want me to be okay, but really, I’m fine, honestly,” Kame was quiet for a moment, but then smiled and nodded.
“Okay, I just wanted to check, we keep telling you to let us know if anything’s wrong but you and I both know you’re more likely to pretend everything’s fine whatever problem you end up with,” Ueda frowned.
“I resent that,” he muttered childishly.
“Uh-huh, did you tell us how you were feeling while you were hospitalised?” Ueda was silent, the words ‘I was fine’ sticking in his throat.
“And when you’d only just come back to work? Or over the past couple of days?” Ueda flinched slightly at the mention of the events of the past few days and turned his head away.
“Alright Kame I get it, I’m sorry,” he muttered. Kame bit his lip and sighed, resting his hand on Ueda’s shoulder.
“I just want to be able to do whatever I can for you Uebo, you’re my band-mate and my friend, I care, we all care,” Ueda then realised that the room had gone quiet as the others listened to their conversation. He lowered his head and sighed.
“Alright, I’m sorry, I just want to be able to handle as much as I can on my own, I don’t like depending on people…sorry,” he lowered his head but instantly flinched and snapped his head back up in the direction Koki’s voice came from, rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head where the rapper had just hit him.
“You’re such a moron, sure we want you to be capable of handling shit on your own too, but for God’s sake Uebo, you’re blind! Yeah it’s temporary, but it’s still blindness and no-one expects you to stride about with a smile! To be perfectly honest we wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d wanted to take the month off!” Ueda lowered his head again, his right hand still rubbing his scalp, his fingers brushing over the raised line of surgical glue holding his wound closed.
“I think you guys are stopping this wound from healing properly,” he muttered sulkily.
Junno laughed and soon enough all six of them were laughing. Then, suddenly, Ueda felt two small hands closing around his.
“Hey, Tat-chan,” Kame said. Ueda tuned to face him.
“Yeah?”
“You got through a photo-shoot, all on your own, everything went great,” Ueda smiled softly.
“Yeah, I guess I did,”
“Just like you got through the Utaban filming, you’re not totally helpless, you can do this, you just proved it yourself,” Ueda smiled and squeezed Kame’s hand.
“Thanks Kame,”
They were just getting ready to head out when there was a tentative rap at the open door.
“Hey guys,” Ueda froze in the act of slinging his bag over his shoulder. Ryo?
“Oh! Ryo-chan! Are you here to take Uebo home?” Ueda felt his heart throb so hard he was sure he fractured a rib or two but strained to keep his face relatively empty, an easier feat, he had found, when half your face was swamped in bandages.
“Yeah, I finished early, so I figured I’d just come get him instead of waiting at the Jimusho for you guys, Ueda, you ready?” Ueda raised his head and managed a nod and a smile, the smirks of his band-mates prickling his skin.
He slung his bag onto his shoulder and was about to slowly navigate his way across the room when he heard brisk footsteps and suddenly his left hand was caught up by, not a small hand this time, but quite a large one, soft, strong and warm, and his heart cracked some more ribbed as it thrashed in his chest.
“Come on princess sometime this side of midnight,” the friendly smirk in Ryo’s voice, instead of irritating him as it was probably supposed to have done, only made his chest throb harder, in fact he was beginning to feel a little light headed.
“V-Very funny Nishikido, did it take you the whole drive over here to come up with that one?” he heard Kame laugh softly to his right, but suddenly Ryo’s grasp on his hand tightened.
“Ueda, are you okay, you look a little pale,” Fuck.
“Maybe Uebo’s heart is giving him trouble,” Jin piped up from across the room and Ueda tightened his hold on the strap of his bag in order to keep himself from hurling the whole thing at his band-mate. Ryo, on the other hand, sounded even more concerned.
“His heart? You don’t have a heart condition do you?”
“No! Jin don’t say weird things like that! I’m fine, let’s go,”
Only partially convinced Ryo led him from the room, their hands still warmly enveloped in each other.
The remaining five members watched them go with fond smiles.
“Ne, Kazu,” Jin said suddenly, his smile wavering.
“Hmmm?”
“Why haven’t they told each other yet?” Kame sighed and shrugged, turning back to grab his bag. They all headed out to the van waiting to take them back to the Jimusho.
“I don’t know Jin, maybe Uebo’s just not ready yet, and to be fair, I think he should concentrate on getting better for the time being, besides, why are you so sure Nihiskido-kun feels the same way? I mean, it would be perfect if he did but…” Jin’s smile widened again.
“I’m one of Ryo-chan’s best friends, I can tell,” Kame smiled warmly at the thought and sighed, shaking his head.
“So they both feel the same way and won’t tell each other, I wonder why,”
“Wouldn’t you feel like you were taking advantage of the situation if you were them?” Maru said suddenly from the seat behind them. Koki, sitting beside him, pushed his headphones off his head to rest around his neck and frowned.
“What do you mean Yucchi?”
“Well, neither of them said anything before the accident, and to suddenly come out with it now would just feel like they were using the heightened emotion of their situation to their advantage, Tat-chan probably feels like he’d look like he was playing on the situation, plus if Nishikido-kun doesn’t feel the same their arrangement, him living with Tat-chan and all, it would end up awkward. And Nishikido-kun probably doesn’t want to confuse or overwhelm Tat-chan with something like that right now,”
For a moment the entire van was silent.
“Jeez Nakamaru, when’d you get so damn insightful?” Jin breathed. Nakamaru gave him a look.
“Tat-chan is one of my best friends, I tend to take notice of these things, besides, it’s not hard to figure out, how would you feel in that situation?” they all found their thoughts rewinding to that afternoon, stumbling around blind, their vision blocked by blue.
Jin sighed and rested his head against Kame’s.
“Still, I wish they could tell each other, they,” Kame smiled fondly and lifted a hand to stroke Jin’s hair.
“It’ll happen Jin, for now let them concentrate on Tat-chan getting better, I think Nishikido-kun is the best medicine for him right now,” Koki grinned from the back seat and sat back, turning his attention to the window.
“The perfect cure for an ailing Ueda Tatsuya,” he said. The other four grinned back at him and chimed in with his next words.
“Nishikido Ryo!”
~~~
“Hime, you ready?” from his seat on the sofa beside Nakamaru Ueda smiled and nodded. He turned back to Nakamaru who was smiling knowingly at him, though he couldn’t see it and failed to notice.
“See you later Yucchi,”
As Ryo approached Ueda, almost without thinking, held out his hand and instantly felt Ryo’s larger, warmer one engulf it and pull him to his feet.
Taguchi glanced up with a grin as they left.
“Has everyone else noticed that?” he asked when he was sure they were out of earshot. Kame looked up from his magazine and smirked.
“What? The hand thing? Yeah, cute isn’t it?”
In fact, more and more, the rest of KAT-TUN and even a few members of NEWS and Kanjani8 were noticing the subtle but significant change in their band-mates behaviour. Whenever Ryo would come to take Ueda home Ueda would, as though it were second nature, hold his hand out for Ryo to take, which Ryo would, guiding him gently from the room.
The few times they both had a break at the same time they always seemed to end up sitting together, close enough for their legs to touch, and if the others didn’t know any better, they’d say they were deliberately leaning into each other, closing the minute gap as much as they physically could. Possibly, probably, without noticing, but it was there and their band-mates couldn’t help but wonder when the hell they’d end up telling each other, once and for all, how they felt.
Over the last two weeks since the photo shoot Ueda had been growing more confident, little by little each day, his smiling gradually getting brighter and everyone was waiting eagerly for the day it would be back full force.
Though they said nothing the rest of KAT-TUN had noticed the growing closeness between Ueda and Ryo and knew it had the most to do with Ueda’s steady recovery, they were all trying their hardest for their former leader, and he was more than grateful for it, but they knew it was Ryo who was to thank for Ueda’s constant improvement.
In only one more week, Ueda’s bandages would come off and then, his band-mates hoped, he and Ryo could finally be completely honest with each other.
~~~
Over the past fortnight, not only the members of KAT-TUN, NEWS and Kanjani8 had noticed the growing bond between Ryo and Ueda.
On a break in the middle of the day the members of Kis-My-Ft2 and A.B.C-Z sat around waiting for someone to get back to them with the schedule for the next Shounen Club. They had all be absorbed in their own things, texting, playing games, reading magazines until suddenly Fujigaya sat up.
“Am I the only one bored out of his skull?” he said suddenly, looking intently around at his band-mates.
“Yes,” Kitayama said without looking up from his magazine.
“Oh come on, everything’s been so slow recently, we used to have fun, messing around in our breaks, now we’re just sitting around like table mats!” Kitayama finally lowered his magazine to raise an eyebrow at his band-mate.
“Table mats?” he said with a smirk. Fujigaya threw up his hands.
“You know what I mean? When was the last time we pulled a really good prank or something?” Nikaido glanced over, flipping his phone shut. The rest of the members were beginning to pay attention now. At the mention of pranks they couldn’t help but become a little interested.
“Go on then, what are you thinking?” Nikaido asked, standing and slipping his phone into his back pocket. Fujigaya grinned while Kitayama sent Nikaido a look that said ‘Now you’ve done it’.
“Let’s prank Ueda-senpai!” Kitayama whipped round to face him.
“Ueda-senpai? Why?”
“He still can’t see right? Let’s…ah! Let’s pretend to be Nishikido-senpai!”
“But…why would you want to do that? You’d just upset him, especially after what happened a couple of weeks ago,”
“Oh come on, it’d be so funny, especially since you know they both have it bad for each other,” Nikaido looked confused.
“Ueda-senpai and Nishikido-senpai? Really?” Fujigaya rolled his eyes.
“Duh!”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know, ages, anyway, let’s do it, trick Ueda-senpai into thinking he’s with someone else,” Kitayama bit his lip, fiddling nervously with the spine of his magazine.
“I don’t know…”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun, let’s go today, after everyone leaves!”
Unfortunately Kitayama ended up outnumbered, and as his band-mates chatted amongst themselves about how the prank would go he couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t so much a prank as a very cruel joke.
~~~
“You sure you don’t want me to wait with you until Nishikido-kun get’s here Uepi?” Taguchi asked. Ueda smiled and waved him off.
“Don’t worry about it Taguchi, I’m fine, go ahead,” Junno bit his lip.
“But…” Ueda waved him away again, standing and moving slowly to the table where he began sorting through his bag, feeling for his iPod.
“Seriously Taguchi, I’m not going to fall out of a window if you leave me alone for five minutes, go on home, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Taguchi watched Ueda rifle slowly through the bag for a moment before he came up with his iPod, carefully untangling the headphones from each other.
“Okay, if you’re sure, see you tomorrow Uepi,”
Ueda listened to his footfalls fading away down the corridor and was about to turn back to the couch when he heard the door, which Taguchi had pulled to on his way out, swing slowly open and someone take three steps into the room and stop. They didn’t say anything. Frowning Ueda turned slowly towards the direction he had heard the steps from.
“R-Ryo?”
つづく
A/N I will say it clearly, I don’t like this chapter, it was done in bits whenever I had time and as a result it doesn’t flow nearly as well as it should, in fact the lack of flow truly irritates me, plus, I’m not sure I have the names in Kis-My-Ft2 right, those are the only ones I can remember and I think I’ve made a mistake in there somewhere. But I have too many assignments to be worrying about to let this get to me, only one week left to finish my Japanese assignment and two weeks left to finish my English assignment. Hopefully it’s still passable though, and I’ll try harder on the next one. BTW, points to anyone who can tell me the literal translation of the photographer’s name :P
EDIT: So I changed a few things s I could at least call this chapter acceptable. It’s still not very good though. Short of re-writing it completely (which I don’t have the time or patience for right now) this is the best I can do. Hopefully the next chapter I write will be better.
“Ueda-san, if you could tilt your head just a little to the left - yes! Like that, perfect!”
Ueda had always hated the sudden and continuous bright white flashes during photo shoots. He always tried not to let it get to him, to ignore them and carry on posing as he was instructed, but half the time he ended up looking slightly dazed, his eyes narrower than they should have been, or out of focus, his expression off. And somehow that usually ended up being just what the photographer wanted, apparently it made him look even more mysterious. Like he really needed any more mystery to his personality.
Now that wasn’t a problem.
When their manager had announced the photo shoot they were to attend for Myojo magazine the room had fallen silent, everyone inside frozen, unsure as to what to say until Ueda had sighed, leaning back in his seat, his arms folded, his blinded eyes directed at the ground.
“What excuse are you using to explain why I can’t do it?” he asked, his voice nonchalant. The rest of the group held their breath. True enough Ueda had been doing better the past few days, but emotionally, he was still unstable, and the last thing they want was for something to make him fall back past the progress he’d made.
Which was why they were all shocked and elated by the manager’s next words.
“No need for any excuse Ueda-kun, you’ll be attending the photo shoot too, the theme will accommodate for you,” Ueda’s head snapped up.
“I…how?” was all he managed.
“You’ll all be wearing blindfolds,”
The room was filled with the sound of six simultaneous ‘Hah!?’s.
“Oi, oi, what kind of theme is that? Some kind of fetish theme?” Koki asked, his voice dripping with disbelief. Their manager laughed.
“No, no, I don’t think so, it’s just some interesting new idea the photographer came up with, it’s supposed to create this delicate, vulnerable image,” Kame gave a short laugh, still incredulous but beginning to understand.
“Ah, I see, a new way of saying ‘these guys are human too’?”
“Something like that, besides, apparently teenage girls like the vulnerable look on guys. Anyway, Ueda-kun, this means you can easily take part, everyone, be sure to take care of him,”
So he had said, but until meeting the photographer Ueda had been worried about how exactly he could get around having to take the blindfold off between shots to move around.
Upon arriving at the studio and instantly picking out a higher pitched, insistent and somewhat flamboyant voice, Ueda had paused and Maru, his hand on his shoulder to guide him, turned to look at him in concern.
“Ueda? You okay?” instead of lifting his hand to the bandage usually wound around his head Ueda found his fingers meeting the lenses of the dark glasses he had donned again.
“Is that the photographer?” he asked quietly. Everyone else had turned back by now as well.
“Who, what are you talking about?”
“That voice,” they all looked at each other and strained to hear. After a moment their faces all took on a similar expression of disbelief, half at the sound of the photographer’s voice, and half at Ueda’s ability to hear it already.
Once they were all stood before him, the photographer, having informed them that his name was Kiri, told them in no uncertain terms that they were not to remove their blindfolds once they had put them on as it would ‘destroy the illusion’. They agreed, mentally rolling their eyes as they made their way into the dressing room where a stylist pointed out whose outfits were whose before leaving them to it.
Junno picked up the v-neck t-shirt, jeans, sandals and thin scarf, all in various shades of deep blue, with Ueda’s name pinned to them and handed them over, placing the hangers gently in his hand.
“There you go Uepi, those are yours,” Ueda smiled.
“Thanks Taguchi,”
Each turning to a different section of wall as they changed they kept up the usual lazy flow of directionless conversation until they were all dressed and had drifted back to the middle of the room where they all realised for the first time that, on the table in the middle of the room were six long lengths of dark blue silk.
“Are these…?” Maru left the rest of the sentence unsaid.
Ueda listened to the faint sound of rustling material as Jin picked up the one marked ‘Kamenashi’.
“Here, Kazu, turn around,” Kame ducked away from the silk blindfold.
“Hang on, I can put it on myself!” Jin smirked.
“If you do it yourself the knot won’t be right,” he said, his voice so sadistic Ueda could almost feel it on his skin. Koki rolled his eyes and pretended to smack Jin over the head.
“Oi, Bakanishi, tie Kame-chan up at home when we don’t have work to do!”
“Actually, Jin has a point,” Ueda said quietly, feeling five pairs of eyes turn on him at once.
“That guy, Kiri, he’ll be annoyed if it doesn’t look right won’t he? If we tie each other’s blindfolds they’ll look better,” Jin grinned while Kame rolled his eyes.
“Ok, ok, fine,”
Thus Jin tied Kame’s blindfold perfectly in place, half his hair falling over it elegantly, his fringe brushing over the silk which moulded almost perfectly to the contours of his head, over the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones.
Holding onto each other’s shoulders or hands they shuffled slowly out of the room and back into the studio. It was somewhat surreal, they all found themselves thinking ‘Is this what Ueda feels like all the time?’.
There were several group shots, a few that had them lying on their backs in a circle that ultimately gave the impression of a big dark blue flower with a deep red centre, as the entire backdrop set was a dark shade of red, almost burgundy.
Once Kiri was done shifting them all around on various different sized boxes draped with burgundy velvet swaths of cloth he had them all pose individually, lying on their backs, sitting on the floor or perching on cloth covered boxes, their heads turned this way and that to catch the blindfolds in all manner of light and angle in contrast with their faces.
Lastly they were split into various combinations of two and three. Ueda sighed as he was told to lie with his head on Maru’s stomach after having been sat back to back with Kame, their heads tipped back against each other. Anything to create ridiculous pairings in the minds of Japan’s female population. Just from looking at these pictures some teenage girl somewhere was probably going to decide that he and Maru were sleeping together, or maybe him and Kame…or maybe they would decided he was so scandalous that he was sleeping with both of them.
He suppressed a smirk at the thought. Jin would boil him in oil if he so much as considered anything like that with Kame. Interesting how Jin and Kame were almost never posed together anymore, and barely interacted with each other on stage or on camera yet they were the only established couple within the band. He had to give them credit; they were masters at hiding it.
As Kiri finally announced with a dramatic wave of the arm not cradling what was probably a very expensive camera that he had all the shots he needed and KAT-TUN were free to go Maru grabbed Ueda’s arm and pulled off his own blindfold, leading Ueda back into the dressing room before anyone else noticed he had made no move to remove the silk blindfold.
Dropping into a seat at the small table in the centre of the room Ueda slowly began to unpick the knot at the back of his head, gingerly checking the tape holding the circles of gauze in place as he let the blindfold fall into his lap.
“That was fun; we should do shoots like that more often!” Jin said happily as he, Kame, Koki and Taguchi filed into the room. Kame rolled his eyes, folding his blindfold neatly and leaving it on the table.
“Seriously though, TV Guide always have people pose with lemons, why not have us pose with blindfolds more often?” Kame shook his head.
“I swear Jin you get more odd by the hour,” Jin feigned a hurt expression and pouted at his boyfriend, who smirked and sat beside Ueda who was listening to his band-mates’ chatter with a small smile as he slid his shades back over the circles of gauze.
“How are you doing Tat-chan?” he asked.
“I’m fine, why?” Kame gave him a look, though he knew he couldn’t see it, he was sure he would be able to tell. Ueda sighed.
“Okay, okay, I get it, you care, you worry, you want me to be okay, but really, I’m fine, honestly,” Kame was quiet for a moment, but then smiled and nodded.
“Okay, I just wanted to check, we keep telling you to let us know if anything’s wrong but you and I both know you’re more likely to pretend everything’s fine whatever problem you end up with,” Ueda frowned.
“I resent that,” he muttered childishly.
“Uh-huh, did you tell us how you were feeling while you were hospitalised?” Ueda was silent, the words ‘I was fine’ sticking in his throat.
“And when you’d only just come back to work? Or over the past couple of days?” Ueda flinched slightly at the mention of the events of the past few days and turned his head away.
“Alright Kame I get it, I’m sorry,” he muttered. Kame bit his lip and sighed, resting his hand on Ueda’s shoulder.
“I just want to be able to do whatever I can for you Uebo, you’re my band-mate and my friend, I care, we all care,” Ueda then realised that the room had gone quiet as the others listened to their conversation. He lowered his head and sighed.
“Alright, I’m sorry, I just want to be able to handle as much as I can on my own, I don’t like depending on people…sorry,” he lowered his head but instantly flinched and snapped his head back up in the direction Koki’s voice came from, rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head where the rapper had just hit him.
“You’re such a moron, sure we want you to be capable of handling shit on your own too, but for God’s sake Uebo, you’re blind! Yeah it’s temporary, but it’s still blindness and no-one expects you to stride about with a smile! To be perfectly honest we wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d wanted to take the month off!” Ueda lowered his head again, his right hand still rubbing his scalp, his fingers brushing over the raised line of surgical glue holding his wound closed.
“I think you guys are stopping this wound from healing properly,” he muttered sulkily.
Junno laughed and soon enough all six of them were laughing. Then, suddenly, Ueda felt two small hands closing around his.
“Hey, Tat-chan,” Kame said. Ueda tuned to face him.
“Yeah?”
“You got through a photo-shoot, all on your own, everything went great,” Ueda smiled softly.
“Yeah, I guess I did,”
“Just like you got through the Utaban filming, you’re not totally helpless, you can do this, you just proved it yourself,” Ueda smiled and squeezed Kame’s hand.
“Thanks Kame,”
They were just getting ready to head out when there was a tentative rap at the open door.
“Hey guys,” Ueda froze in the act of slinging his bag over his shoulder. Ryo?
“Oh! Ryo-chan! Are you here to take Uebo home?” Ueda felt his heart throb so hard he was sure he fractured a rib or two but strained to keep his face relatively empty, an easier feat, he had found, when half your face was swamped in bandages.
“Yeah, I finished early, so I figured I’d just come get him instead of waiting at the Jimusho for you guys, Ueda, you ready?” Ueda raised his head and managed a nod and a smile, the smirks of his band-mates prickling his skin.
He slung his bag onto his shoulder and was about to slowly navigate his way across the room when he heard brisk footsteps and suddenly his left hand was caught up by, not a small hand this time, but quite a large one, soft, strong and warm, and his heart cracked some more ribbed as it thrashed in his chest.
“Come on princess sometime this side of midnight,” the friendly smirk in Ryo’s voice, instead of irritating him as it was probably supposed to have done, only made his chest throb harder, in fact he was beginning to feel a little light headed.
“V-Very funny Nishikido, did it take you the whole drive over here to come up with that one?” he heard Kame laugh softly to his right, but suddenly Ryo’s grasp on his hand tightened.
“Ueda, are you okay, you look a little pale,” Fuck.
“Maybe Uebo’s heart is giving him trouble,” Jin piped up from across the room and Ueda tightened his hold on the strap of his bag in order to keep himself from hurling the whole thing at his band-mate. Ryo, on the other hand, sounded even more concerned.
“His heart? You don’t have a heart condition do you?”
“No! Jin don’t say weird things like that! I’m fine, let’s go,”
Only partially convinced Ryo led him from the room, their hands still warmly enveloped in each other.
The remaining five members watched them go with fond smiles.
“Ne, Kazu,” Jin said suddenly, his smile wavering.
“Hmmm?”
“Why haven’t they told each other yet?” Kame sighed and shrugged, turning back to grab his bag. They all headed out to the van waiting to take them back to the Jimusho.
“I don’t know Jin, maybe Uebo’s just not ready yet, and to be fair, I think he should concentrate on getting better for the time being, besides, why are you so sure Nihiskido-kun feels the same way? I mean, it would be perfect if he did but…” Jin’s smile widened again.
“I’m one of Ryo-chan’s best friends, I can tell,” Kame smiled warmly at the thought and sighed, shaking his head.
“So they both feel the same way and won’t tell each other, I wonder why,”
“Wouldn’t you feel like you were taking advantage of the situation if you were them?” Maru said suddenly from the seat behind them. Koki, sitting beside him, pushed his headphones off his head to rest around his neck and frowned.
“What do you mean Yucchi?”
“Well, neither of them said anything before the accident, and to suddenly come out with it now would just feel like they were using the heightened emotion of their situation to their advantage, Tat-chan probably feels like he’d look like he was playing on the situation, plus if Nishikido-kun doesn’t feel the same their arrangement, him living with Tat-chan and all, it would end up awkward. And Nishikido-kun probably doesn’t want to confuse or overwhelm Tat-chan with something like that right now,”
For a moment the entire van was silent.
“Jeez Nakamaru, when’d you get so damn insightful?” Jin breathed. Nakamaru gave him a look.
“Tat-chan is one of my best friends, I tend to take notice of these things, besides, it’s not hard to figure out, how would you feel in that situation?” they all found their thoughts rewinding to that afternoon, stumbling around blind, their vision blocked by blue.
Jin sighed and rested his head against Kame’s.
“Still, I wish they could tell each other, they,” Kame smiled fondly and lifted a hand to stroke Jin’s hair.
“It’ll happen Jin, for now let them concentrate on Tat-chan getting better, I think Nishikido-kun is the best medicine for him right now,” Koki grinned from the back seat and sat back, turning his attention to the window.
“The perfect cure for an ailing Ueda Tatsuya,” he said. The other four grinned back at him and chimed in with his next words.
“Nishikido Ryo!”
~~~
“Hime, you ready?” from his seat on the sofa beside Nakamaru Ueda smiled and nodded. He turned back to Nakamaru who was smiling knowingly at him, though he couldn’t see it and failed to notice.
“See you later Yucchi,”
As Ryo approached Ueda, almost without thinking, held out his hand and instantly felt Ryo’s larger, warmer one engulf it and pull him to his feet.
Taguchi glanced up with a grin as they left.
“Has everyone else noticed that?” he asked when he was sure they were out of earshot. Kame looked up from his magazine and smirked.
“What? The hand thing? Yeah, cute isn’t it?”
In fact, more and more, the rest of KAT-TUN and even a few members of NEWS and Kanjani8 were noticing the subtle but significant change in their band-mates behaviour. Whenever Ryo would come to take Ueda home Ueda would, as though it were second nature, hold his hand out for Ryo to take, which Ryo would, guiding him gently from the room.
The few times they both had a break at the same time they always seemed to end up sitting together, close enough for their legs to touch, and if the others didn’t know any better, they’d say they were deliberately leaning into each other, closing the minute gap as much as they physically could. Possibly, probably, without noticing, but it was there and their band-mates couldn’t help but wonder when the hell they’d end up telling each other, once and for all, how they felt.
Over the last two weeks since the photo shoot Ueda had been growing more confident, little by little each day, his smiling gradually getting brighter and everyone was waiting eagerly for the day it would be back full force.
Though they said nothing the rest of KAT-TUN had noticed the growing closeness between Ueda and Ryo and knew it had the most to do with Ueda’s steady recovery, they were all trying their hardest for their former leader, and he was more than grateful for it, but they knew it was Ryo who was to thank for Ueda’s constant improvement.
In only one more week, Ueda’s bandages would come off and then, his band-mates hoped, he and Ryo could finally be completely honest with each other.
~~~
Over the past fortnight, not only the members of KAT-TUN, NEWS and Kanjani8 had noticed the growing bond between Ryo and Ueda.
On a break in the middle of the day the members of Kis-My-Ft2 and A.B.C-Z sat around waiting for someone to get back to them with the schedule for the next Shounen Club. They had all be absorbed in their own things, texting, playing games, reading magazines until suddenly Fujigaya sat up.
“Am I the only one bored out of his skull?” he said suddenly, looking intently around at his band-mates.
“Yes,” Kitayama said without looking up from his magazine.
“Oh come on, everything’s been so slow recently, we used to have fun, messing around in our breaks, now we’re just sitting around like table mats!” Kitayama finally lowered his magazine to raise an eyebrow at his band-mate.
“Table mats?” he said with a smirk. Fujigaya threw up his hands.
“You know what I mean? When was the last time we pulled a really good prank or something?” Nikaido glanced over, flipping his phone shut. The rest of the members were beginning to pay attention now. At the mention of pranks they couldn’t help but become a little interested.
“Go on then, what are you thinking?” Nikaido asked, standing and slipping his phone into his back pocket. Fujigaya grinned while Kitayama sent Nikaido a look that said ‘Now you’ve done it’.
“Let’s prank Ueda-senpai!” Kitayama whipped round to face him.
“Ueda-senpai? Why?”
“He still can’t see right? Let’s…ah! Let’s pretend to be Nishikido-senpai!”
“But…why would you want to do that? You’d just upset him, especially after what happened a couple of weeks ago,”
“Oh come on, it’d be so funny, especially since you know they both have it bad for each other,” Nikaido looked confused.
“Ueda-senpai and Nishikido-senpai? Really?” Fujigaya rolled his eyes.
“Duh!”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know, ages, anyway, let’s do it, trick Ueda-senpai into thinking he’s with someone else,” Kitayama bit his lip, fiddling nervously with the spine of his magazine.
“I don’t know…”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun, let’s go today, after everyone leaves!”
Unfortunately Kitayama ended up outnumbered, and as his band-mates chatted amongst themselves about how the prank would go he couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t so much a prank as a very cruel joke.
~~~
“You sure you don’t want me to wait with you until Nishikido-kun get’s here Uepi?” Taguchi asked. Ueda smiled and waved him off.
“Don’t worry about it Taguchi, I’m fine, go ahead,” Junno bit his lip.
“But…” Ueda waved him away again, standing and moving slowly to the table where he began sorting through his bag, feeling for his iPod.
“Seriously Taguchi, I’m not going to fall out of a window if you leave me alone for five minutes, go on home, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Taguchi watched Ueda rifle slowly through the bag for a moment before he came up with his iPod, carefully untangling the headphones from each other.
“Okay, if you’re sure, see you tomorrow Uepi,”
Ueda listened to his footfalls fading away down the corridor and was about to turn back to the couch when he heard the door, which Taguchi had pulled to on his way out, swing slowly open and someone take three steps into the room and stop. They didn’t say anything. Frowning Ueda turned slowly towards the direction he had heard the steps from.
“R-Ryo?”
つづく
A/N I will say it clearly, I don’t like this chapter, it was done in bits whenever I had time and as a result it doesn’t flow nearly as well as it should, in fact the lack of flow truly irritates me, plus, I’m not sure I have the names in Kis-My-Ft2 right, those are the only ones I can remember and I think I’ve made a mistake in there somewhere. But I have too many assignments to be worrying about to let this get to me, only one week left to finish my Japanese assignment and two weeks left to finish my English assignment. Hopefully it’s still passable though, and I’ll try harder on the next one. BTW, points to anyone who can tell me the literal translation of the photographer’s name :P
EDIT: So I changed a few things s I could at least call this chapter acceptable. It’s still not very good though. Short of re-writing it completely (which I don’t have the time or patience for right now) this is the best I can do. Hopefully the next chapter I write will be better.