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dusk037From:
santa_johnny Title: Yokoo and the Tale of the Cursed Laundry
Pairing/Group: Yokoo
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mild spooky stuff
Notes: I'm not entirely sure how this happened. Happy Holidays!
Summary: The heap of unwashed laundry in Kis-My-Ft2s dressing room has been around long enough to get haunted.
"Waaash meee."
Yokoo whirled around. Where did that eerie voice come from? He was alone in Kis-My-Ft2's dressing room, only the flickering lights, two racks of costumes and a bunch of mirrors keeping him company until the rest of the band turned up.
There! In the corner. Was that...?
Yokoo stepped cautiously closer, his heart beating ridiculously fast. That dark heap, hiding in the flickering shadows...
Yokoo laughed out loud, relief ringing through his voice. It was just a heap of laundry, several pants and socks and at least one pair of boxers all piled up on a folding chair. Nothing spooky about that at all and he wasn't scared. Not one bit. He took a deep breath and then another, trying to slow his frantically beating heart down. It was just the flickering lights and the emptiness of the room getting to him. He'd be fine once his friends arrived and hopefully something would be done about those lights soon.
It was a bit early, but a few people were probably already in other dressing rooms and there were always things to talk about. Yokoo turned and reached for the door knob.
"Waaash meee."
The second time, the voice sounded even more eerie, somehow otherworldly, as if coming from deep under the earth or out of a closet. Yokoo whirled around, ready to give the prankster a stern talking to, but the only thing the flickering lights revealed was the heap of laundry. He noticed a shirt, two towels and what appeared to be a feather boa near the top of the pile. Hadn't there been a lot of socks just a moment ago?
"It's just a joke," he muttered, trying to convince himself as he slowly, slowly backed towards the door without taking his eyes off the abandoned clothes for a moment. He wasn't scared. Or superstitious. He just didn't want to give whoever was behind this the chance to pour soda over his head or whatever they were planning with this stupid prank.
Yokoo reached behind him, fumbling with the door knob for a moment. Getting the door to open took just long enough to let the panic rise inside him, but then he was outside of Kis-My-Ft2's dressing room, in the brightly illuminated hallway. Even this early in the morning, a pleasant buzz of voices was all around, talk and laughter coming from various rooms. He closed the door carefully and thought for a moment.
An unmistakable cackle drifted down the hallway and Yokoo turned, following the sound.
~~~
Kawai eyed the pile of laundry dubiously. "Yeah, okay, the flickering lights are kind of spooky, if you're into that sort of cheap scare, but unless you've got a phobia of pink leoprint boxers, that pile of clothes isn't particularly creepy."
"It talked," Yokoo repeated, still not convinced that Kawai wasn't the one behind this prank. "Never mind." He threw his hands up in the air in defeat and turned towards the door, Kawai following a moment later.
"Waaash meee."
Yokoo whirled around. He caught Kawai doing the same out of the corner of his eye, but most of his attention was focused on the heap of blankets, briefs and socks half-hidden by flickering shadows. This time he was sure the pile wasn't the same as earlier.
"What the...?" Kawai demanded. He grabbed a broom and poked it at the laundry, but his false bravado couldn't hide that his hands were shaking. With the broom's handle, he pushed at the heap, until half of it slid onto the floor.
The lights shut off, plunging the room into darkness. Yokoo couldn't hear any sound, other than Kawai's ragged breathing, both of them too terrified to talk.
The darkness couldn't have lasted more than five seconds, but to the two men trapped in the dark it seemed much longer. When the light turned back on, the pile of laundry was back on the chair, a hanging down pantleg reminiscent of a stuck out tongue.
Carefully, without taking their eyes off the cursed clothes, Yokoo and Kawai backed out of the door.
~~~
"No." Kitayama said, turning over to curl up more comfortably on the breakroom couch. "There's no ghost and I need a nap." He was trying to sound unimpressed, but to anyone who knew him well, the deception was obvious.
Fujigaya threw his magazine at Kitayama. "You're just afraid!" he accused.
"Why don't you go yourself, if it's that important to you?" Kitayama yawned, determined to ignore everything until their manager arrived.
~~~
Their manager hit the light switch. All the lights lit up, illuminating the room brightly, showing a mostly empty room. Nothing in the corner, nothing on the folding chair. The resulting lecture lasted long enough that they were late to dance practice, which earned them a second lecture from the choreographer.
Practice went well, until Fujigaya returned from a water break with his hair standing up straight. "There's something in our dressing room," was as much explanation as he was willing to give, his replies to questions and comments getting progressively bitchier.
~~~
"No way!" Nikaido dug his heels in. "I'm not going into a room with some sort of ghost!"
"There is no ghost," Yokoo said firmly. He dug his fingers into Nikaido's arm and dragged him along. "I'm sure there's some perfectly reasonable explanation, and," he looked sternly at Nikaido, "I'm not convinced it's not one of your pranks."
"I haven't played any pranks in years!" Nikaido argued. They reached the door and Nikaido struggled harder, but without success. "Don't make me go in there, Watta," he whined.
A girlish scream sounded from inside the room. The door slammed open and Tamamori burst through, barreling into them. "The socks talk!" Tamamori clutched at both of them. "Out loud even!"
A wail sounded from their dressing room.
"Kento!" Nikaido gasped, turning white as a sheet.
Nikaido's feet seemed rooted to the floor, so Yokoo had to take action. He threw the door open and stormed inside, only to find Senga and Miyata clinging to each other, staring wide-eyed at the folding chair with the cursed pile of clothing. Taking a hold of both of them, Yokoo backed out of the room, dragging his frozen bandmates along with him.
~~~
Throwing his hands up in despair for the second time that day, Yokoo glared at the stubborn pile of laundry. "Fine, I'll wash you." Ignoring the shiver of fear that went down his spine when he touched the first piece of clothing, Yokoo shoved piece after piece into his laundry bag. The heap didn't seem to get smaller, no matter how many pants and socks and other things he took, but his bag didn't seem to get full either. Growling to himself, he continued, refusing to give up.
It might have been fifteen minutes later that he finally put the last sock into his bag. He swung the bag over his shoulder and went home, carefully ignoring the fact that whatever was filling the bag didn't seem to weight much at all.
Once home, he opened the bag and poured all the clothes onto the floor in front of his washing machine. Haunted or not, clothes needed to be separated by colour and type before washing. The first load he washed consisted entirely of jeans, dark blue and in various sizes. He continued sorting, the gurgling of the washing machine familiar and calming.
The dryer was broken, so Yokoo put the freshly washed clothes into his laundry basket for the moment. He needed to finish sorting these piles first, then he'd rig something up, perhaps find a way to hang the jeans over his heater to dry. He turned to reach for a pair of boxers, turning his back on the basket full of damp clothes.
The room plunged into darkness, freezing him to the spot. When the lights returned a moment later, they were vague and flickering, casting shadows everywhere.
"Dryyy meee."