[JE] [FAIRY] [WIP] Akanishi Jin and the 5 Idols (of Varying Heights) 1/2
Title: Akanishi Jin and the 5 Idols (of Varying Heights) 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Rating: PG
Genre: Fairytale fluff, angst
Word count: 15,237
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: When an assassination attempt by Jin's wicked stepmother leaves him stranded in Tokyo, he finds help from a most unlikely source: up and coming idol group KAT-TUN.
A/N: This is my Akame version of Snow White that I started writing...oh, years ago. I ran into logistical problems to do with Jin having no legal identity, and couldn't decide if I wanted to go the full-on fantasy route with a magic mirror or simply to have a lawyer named Kagami (of the law firm 'Kagami, Kagami & Kabe'). Consequently I never finished it, and figured since I never will I might as well post the 15k that I had, for entertainment value. Read at your own peril - there is no ending.
Akanishi Jin and the 5 Idols (of Varying Heights) 1/2
A luxurious apartment in Umeda, in the year 2002
Makiko knew how the mirror would answer, of course. Her late husband might not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer but he'd been no fool when it came to magic, and the mirror was easily the most precious part of his legacy. It certainly wasn't that awkward teenage son of his, a leftover from his first marriage, a gangly matchstick with bleached blond hair and the attention span of a gnat. Makiko couldn't wait till he came of age and she could kick him out without harming her reputation. It wouldn't do to have Japan's number one singer toss her stepson out on the street, not when the rest of the country thought she loved children to bits and was heartbroken that she'd never had the opportunity to give birth to any of her own.
The mirror knew her secret self. It couldn't lie, for if it did, its glass would crack. The mirror would tell her the truth she so desperately needed to hear after a day of listening to her manager complain about how her younger rivals were becoming a threat, and how only surgery could save her vaunted good looks.
She stared at her own reflection in the glass until it blurred. Two yellow eyes emerged from the swirling darkness - the mirror was awake.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in Kansai is the fairest of all?" she asked.
A shining slit split the dark oval, suggesting a mouth of wickedly sharp teeth. Makiko didn't know the owner and didn't care, so long as the teeth stayed on the other side of the glass.
"I cannot lie, so I'll tell you true," the mirror rasped, "and your step-son is much fairer than you!"
Makiko blinked and tapped the gold frame with her long, ice blue nails. "I didn't ask for a mirror with a sense of humour. Try again."
The mirror coughed, clearing its non-existent throat and losing the rasp in its voice. "I told you, it's your stepson. I know you try not to look at him if you can help it but every girl in his school's in love with him, along with half the boys in his soccer club, two of his teachers, and your own lawyer."
"Nonsense," Makiko said. "He's only a child. A gawky, feather-headed brat with a mushroom on his head and all the common sense of a newborn puppy. How could he possibly be any competition for a glamourous star of stage and screen like myself?"
"You haven't bothered to notice he got a haircut, have you?" The mirror flickered; eyes and mouth disappeared, replaced by a still image of Jin in his soccer uniform, laughing and joking with his friends. "Take a look at him. Go on, I mean really, really look at him. See if you don't think he's going to be a heartbreaker in a few years."
Reluctantly, Makiko looked. She didn't see much in the way of competition. All right, so maybe Jin had finally dispensed with the hideous mushroom look and found himself a more flattering haircut. Maybe he'd started buying decent skincare products and elevated himself to a cut above his lumpy, spotty friends. Maybe his green and white uniform shirt complemented the silvery blond hair, and maybe his love of the game made his eyes sparkle with fun.
But that didn't make him competition. Not to Makiko, whose fame was such that she'd dispensed with her married surname of 'Akanishi' after her husband's unfortunate death four years ago and had never had need of one since.
"He's starting to become a little cute, I suppose," she said grudgingly. "But you can't tell me he's a threat."
"You haven't heard him sing either, have you?" the mirror said. "I have. I listen to him sing when you're away - he never does any of your songs; I can't imagine why not - and let me tell you: if he tries to make a career out of it, he could knock you from the top like that."
Makiko gasped. "Like that?"
"Like that." The mirror made a fingersnap sound for emphasis. "Once he's had some training, at any rate. Same with his looks. The boy's got a lot of raw potential - more than you've ever had - and if he steps out on the world stage you'll be forgotten in a heartbeat. You'll be a dried-up has-been before you're middle-aged."
Impossible! How could such potential have gone unnoticed all these years? Had Makiko nurtured a future rival in her own home? It was unthinkable.
And yet...the mirror couldn't lie. It had to be the truth.
"If he's still at the raw potential stage, why are you telling me he's fairer than me today?" Makiko asked.
"I haven't been dusted in three weeks and I don't see so good with a veil of grit over my eyes, you know? Consider it an early warning. Go visit that ritzy private school you've got him in and convince one of the students to show you the opinion polls. I think you'll recognise the name of the guy voted 'Most Likely to Be an Idol After Graduation'."
Makiko didn't need to hear any more. It couldn't be allowed to continue. Jin had to be removed as a threat before he could damage her career, and the sooner, the better. She could start a few rumours about how he'd resented her guardianship after his father died - which was probably true - and delicately suggest at his instability. Possibly a drugs rumour or two, maybe some underage drinking. Girl problems. Fights at school. Get enough people talking and no one would be surprised when the poor creature disappeared, presumably run away to find happiness by himself, never to be seen again.
Or more likely, at the bottom of a lake somewhere. Makiko didn't often have occasion to call on her yakuza acquaintances but every star needed a little hired muscle from time to time, and she could hardly kill her own stepson. She might break a nail.
-----
Yamanote Line going from Tokyo Station towards Shinagawa and Shibuya, three days later
Jin slumped in the corner of the carriage, trying to keep from getting squashed as more passengers boarded at Shibuya. He'd forgotten just how busy the line could get, after spending most of his life in Osaka. It felt weird to be back in Tokyo after ten years. He'd been too young to ride the trains by himself then.
And according to his stepmother - or 'Aunt Makiko', as he had to think of her - he was still too young for the shinkansen, which was why she'd sent one of her flunkies with him.
"You don't have to stay with me, you know," Jin said to his travelling companion, who'd given his name only as 'Sasaki'.
Couldn't have been one of Aunt Makiko's boyfriends - the suit was too cheap. A boyfriend's underling, maybe, or one of her agency staff. Some guy Jin had never met, anyway. He had lumpy knuckles and a scar running down from his left earlobe to his chin, and stubble over his lip that Jin thought looked kind of cool in a devil-may-care kind of way. He looked like a bodyguard.
He also looked nervous.
"I'm serious." Jin had to lean back to meet Sasaki's eyes. "I can find Meiji Jingu by myself. It was nice of you to escort me all the way from Osaka so I can complete this assignment, but if you want to go off by yourself, I won't tell Aunt Makiko, I promise. We can meet back at Tokyo Station later to get the train home. What do you think?"
Sasaki gulped so hard it was like watching him trying to swallow a basketball. He didn't wear a scarf, or even gloves, while Jin had wrapped himself up in half-a-dozen layers to deal with the January cold. Not that he needed them on the train, but they'd be getting out at Harajuku and Jin couldn't write notes if his fingers froze. He didn't think taking dictation was part of Sasaki's job description, somehow.
"Fine, don't talk to me," Jin huffed. He hadn't managed to get more than three words out of Sasaki since they'd boarded at Shin-Osaka, and had had to keep up a running monologue of every thought passing through his head at the time. "I can entertain myself."
"Don't."
"Hey, you spoke! This is our sto- What the hell?" Jin let out an indignant squawk as Sasaki grabbed him by the arm, refusing to let him disembark at Harajuku. He watched a swarm of teenage girls rush towards the Takeshita end of the platform till the doors closed and the train resumed its journey. Sasaki's iron grip didn't let up, no matter how much Jin struggled against it.
"Don't," Sasaki said again, low against Jin's ear. "Don't struggle. Don't draw attention to yourself. I don't want to do this."
"Don't want to do what?" Jin hissed. "Is this a kidnapping? Because if you want money out of Aunt Makiko I don't think abducting me is going to help. You might get a hundred yen, and that's if she's looking to get rid of some change."
"Shut up and listen to me!" Sasaki yanked hard on Jin's other arm, twisting it up behind his back, and Jin fell silent before something broke. He wished the other passengers would turn around and notice, but no one saw the skinny teenager hidden behind the hulking older man at the far end of the carriage. "I'll get my money but I'm not doing what she says, all right? Now give me your bag, wallet, keys and cell phone."
"My what?"
"You heard me. Bag, wallet, keys and cell phone. Right now. There's no time left!"
The second Sasaki released his arm Jin scrambled to comply. He didn't have a choice. Sasaki pressed up against his back, breathing down his neck, and Jin felt a hard lump between his shoulderblades.
A gun. Aunt Makiko had sent him out with a mobster and now he was going to die alone and unloved in the middle of Tokyo.
"Here," Jin said shakily, shoving bag, wallet, keys and phone at Sasaki. "Take them. Just don't kill me. Please. I'm only seventeen. I haven't done anything yet."
Sasaki backed off enough to sling the bag over his shoulder and shove the smaller items in his jacket pocket; Jin managed to turn around to get his back against the wall again. He needed it for support. His life, short though it was, flashed before his eyes. First his mother's death, then his father's. The first goal he ever scored. The first time he went to karaoke with his friends and didn't get told to shut up. The taste of ice cream on his tongue on hot summer days. The warmth of his bed on a winter's night.
"Stop daydreaming or you'll miss your stop," Sasaki interrupted. "We'll be at Shinjuku in a second, and you're getting out. If you ever return home, we'll both be dead. Got it?"
"You...I...what?" Jin rubbed a hand across his eyes, dazed. "But what am I supposed to do?"
"Live, which is more than you'll get to do if you ever show your face in Osaka again. You understand, boy?"
Aunt Makiko really wanted him dead. Jin understood that much, even if he didn't know why. She mostly ignored him when they were alone in the apartment - he didn't see what he could possibly have done to make her so mad that she'd hire someone to kill him.
Except that Sasaki didn't seem to be about to shoot him with that gun.
The doors opened at Shinjuku. Without another word, Sasaki seized Jin's arm again and forced his way through the crowds, off the train and down the stairs on the platform. Jin kept trying to talk himself into screaming, into doing anything that would alert the people around him that here was a boy in trouble and in desperate need of help, but his mouth refused to cooperate. Who knew what Sasaki would do if cornered? In such an enormous station there must've been hundreds of people and not one of them noticed the pale, scared teenager, feeding his ticket into the slot with a trembling hand and being caught immediately by the man behind him to be dragged off to the nearest bathroom.
"Out!" Sasaki growled at the handful of occupants, who fled without protest. He shoved Jin into a stall and stood in the doorway, blocking the light so Jin could see nothing of his face but shadows and scars.
Jin edged as far away from Sasaki as he could, trying to deepen rapid, shallow breaths so he could at least get enough air to speak. Fear had his heart pounding in his ears, had him imagining an army of gunmen waiting in the other stalls, just ready to open fire.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you, boy?" Sasaki said. "Your stepmother wants proof that you're dead and I can't carry a severed head on the train. You're lucky I'm only taking your stuff; it could've been a finger."
"W-why?" Jin clenched his fingers into fists, tucking them protectively against his palms. "Why are you letting me live?"
Sasaki leaned down, allowing some of the light into the stall, and Jin caught a glimpse of a lopsided, resigned smile before the shadows returned. "Because you're only seventeen, and you haven't done anything yet except give me a sore ear by talking all the way from Shin-Osaka.
"When I leave, lock the door and stay here for five minutes. I'll know if you don't. Then you can go wherever you want. If you've got any sense you won't try to contact your stepmother. The next guy might not be as fond of kids as I am, and if she finds out you're still alive we're both dead. Got it?"
Jin took a deep breath and shuddered, feeling like a drowning man struggling for one precious gasp of oxygen. "Got it."
"Good."
Sasaki patted him on the shoulder and walked backwards out of the room, pulling the stall door closed behind him. Jin locked the door as fast as he could, flipped down the lid of the toilet and sank onto it before his knees gave way.
This close. He'd come this close to dying at the tender age of seventeen, and he didn't even know why.
And now he'd been abandoned in the middle of a gigantic station, in a city he hadn't seen in a decade, with no money, no phone, no luggage, and no hope. He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked gently back and forth, trying to force his brain to process all the details and devise a solution that would somehow get him somewhere safe. Somewhere familiar, somewhere he knew.
But he couldn't buy a return ticket. Hell, he couldn't even buy himself a lousy bottle of water. And if he went home...well, now he didn't really have a home to go to. Who would believe him if he said his stepmother, the famous beauty and star of stage and screen, had hired a yakuza to kill him? No one. They'd think he was making up stories for attention, and they'd laugh, and then when no one was looking he'd be removed permanently.
Jin lost himself in a fog of despair, huddled and shaking in the stall, seeing and hearing nothing until a knock came at the door. He jumped, thinking Sasaki had returned, but the scuffed white trainers showing under the door were a far cry from the smart black shoes.
"Y-yes?"
"Uh..." The voice on the other side of the door sounded young, and slightly nasal. Another kid, probably. "Are you okay? You've been in there for ages and your breathing sounds kind of funny."
"I...um..." Jin didn't know what he could possibly say, but the stranger sounded kind, and non-threatening, and Sasaki's five minutes had long since passed. He couldn't stay there all afternoon; someone would eventually get suspicious.
He unlocked the door, peering cautiously through the crack before opening it fully. He found another boy, maybe a year or two younger than he and a fair bit shorter, with spiky, reddish-brown hair under a baseball cap, a gap in his front teeth, and a worried half-smile.
His eyes widened when he saw Jin. "You're only a kid!"
"So are you," Jin mumbled, looking down at the floor.
The other boy grinned. "Sorry, didn't mean anything by it. Are you sick? Should I go get someone?"
Jin kept his eyes on the beaten-up trainers, which had obviously seen a lot of use, but it was hard to ignore the owner's well-meaning concern. "I'm not sick." Though he half-wished he was. Delirium might be a pleasurable alternative to reality right now.
"But your eyes are all red."
"Uh..."
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm...I'm lost."
"Lost." The kid didn't sound convinced, but it was the best word Jin could find to describe how he felt. "I know this station's big, but it's not that big. Come on, I'll help you find the right exit. Where do you want to go?"
The word "home" escaped as a crazy giggle and Jin bit down on his lip to keep the rest inside. He watched the trainers move, didn't realise why till he felt a tentative hand brush his upper arm.
"Hey," the other boy said. "We're starting to get some weird looks. Let's get out of here. It'll be okay. Really."
Jin let himself be led from the bathroom out to the concourse, where a bewildering array of signs pointed to more exits than he thought any single station had a right to have. He thrust his gloved hands deep in his pockets, affecting nonchalance, but that didn't stop the shaking. They came to a halt by a small bagel shop temporarily closed for repairs and therefore free from crowds - the only spot in the station that was.
Jin's new acquaintance regarded him with wary eyes. "So where's home?"
"Somewhere I can never go again," Jin said. To his horror he felt the prickle of tears welling up, just waiting for the right time to fall.
Wariness upgraded to alarm. "You're a runaway?"
Jin shook his head.
Now the poor kid just looked confused. "Can I take you somewhere? Like the hospital or the police or something? Is there someone I could call to come get you?"
"Why are you being so nice to me?" Jin blurted out. "You don't even know me."
The boy gave him a shy smile. "Because you seem like you need it.
"Besides, I'm already late for dance practice and I might as well have a good deed for my excuse."
Jin made a half-hearted attempt at returning the smile. "Dance practice? What, ballet? Tap?"
"Nope! You know Johnnys?"
Of course Jin did. Everyone did. Johnny & Associates had been turning out glamorous idol groups and hit singles for forty years. Everyone knew them, whether they liked them or not.
"You don't look like an idol." Jin eyed his new acquaintance with suspicion. No pretty-boy pop star had eyebrows that thick. "What's your name?"
"Kamenashi Kazuya, but people tend to call me 'Kame'. What's yours?"
"Akanishi Jin," Jin said without thinking about it. He caught himself afterwards. Kame couldn't possibly be working for Aunt Makiko, though. "And I've never heard of you."
"I'm still a Junior," Kame said. "I've only been with the agency for three years. I want to have a CD debut one day, though. When I'm good enough."
Jin's unshed tears had dried up somewhere along the line, evaporated by Kame's frank speech and warm, sympathetic eyes. "Good luck with that. You want to be an idol?"
"I want to be a baseball player."
"You like baseball a lot, huh?" Jin pointed to the Yankees sweatshirt peeking out from beneath Kame's coat. "I'm more into soccer."
"You any good?"
"I do all right." They were on more familiar territory now. Jin could talk about sports and forget for a few minutes how he'd ended up in Shinjuku with no one but a kindly stranger for company. "I'm a striker for my school club."
"I was a world representative when I was younger."
"Impressive," Jin admitted. "So why are you in Johnnys?"
"If I don't get a move on, I won't be for much longer!" Kame checked his watch. "If you can't go home, where will you go? A friend's house?"
"I...I don't know anyone in Tokyo." Jin didn't remember anyone from his childhood, and even if by some miracle he managed to recall a name, he wouldn't know how to find them anyway.
Kame sighed. "It wouldn't be right to just leave you here but I have to go. If you don't have anything better to do, why don't you come with me for a while? At least you'll get out of the station. I'll talk to my parents after dance practice and maybe they can figure out some way to help you."
Jin didn't want to say no. He didn't know anything about Kame, except that he loved baseball and had his eye on a CD debut - but conversely, Kame didn't know anything about him, and yet he was offering to help. That already made him the friendliest person Jin had spoken to all day.
"Okay."
"That's settled, then." Kame jerked his head towards the barriers. "You have a Suica card?"
"Um..."
"Right, then you'll need a ticket. Come on."
Jin hung back, resisting Kame's attempts to steer him towards the ticket machines. "I can't buy one," he muttered. "I guess you'll have to leave me after all."
"Lost your wallet?"
"Something like that."
"Then I'll get it," Kame decided.
"But I can't pay you back!"
"So you can...I don't know, carry my bag or something. Here."
Kame must've been carrying bowling balls in his backpack because it weighed a ton, but Jin slung it over his shoulders anyway and nodded when Kame told him they were even. They weren't even close, he thought.
-----
A dance studio in Shibuya
Jin used to count his life in years, months, weeks and days. Now he counted in hours, minutes and seconds, one beat after another. Without knowing what would happen from one minute to the next, he looked to his heartbeat to keep him going.
His heartbeat...and the finger-clicks of an irate choreographer doing his best to make the Johnny's Junior group KAT-TUN dance in time. He had his work cut out for him.
"5-6-7 and - no, not left! Turn to the right, Kamenashi! Your right, not mine! If you'd turned up on time, you'd know that."
Kame ducked his head apologetically and shot a pained smile at Jin when no one else was looking. Jin might've felt guilty about it, but no one else seemed interested in being cooperative either. He couldn't tell if it was bad relations in the group, dislike for the choreographer, or both. He'd have to ask Kame afterwards.
There hadn't been any time for introductions beforehand. They'd raced from the station to the studio, paused long enough for Kame to mutter a frantic apology and explain that Jin was a friend who was thinking of auditioning so he'd come along to watch some of the Juniors in action. In the chaos, nobody noticed Jin sitting in a free corner, watching with wide eyes and a wider mouth as the group ran through the routine for the tenth time.
Nobody except Kame, who kept looking over to check on him. Unfortunately, the aforementioned checks tended to coincide with a misstep.
"You might as well not have bothered showing up at all," the one Jin thought he'd heard called 'Tanaka' grumbled at Kame when they paused for a water break. "My little brother could do better."
"Then maybe you should go call your brother and get him over here," said a tall, semi-foreign young man who seemed to be a few years older than the rest. The choreographer called him 'Akiyama'. "We could do with the help."
"I'm just having an off-day," Kame said.
"We all get those," said the boy referred to as 'Nakamaru'. He gave Kame an encouraging smile. "Right?"
Watching the others drink from their water bottles made the thirst rise in Jin's own throat. He'd finished his drink on the train; had been planning on replacing it once he reached Harajuku - no longer an option. Maybe there was a water fountain somewhere in the building.
He pushed the nagging irritation away, allowing himself to be distracted watching KAT-TUN. There were six of them, ranging in height from the tiny Kame to the towering Akiyama, and while their individual dance movements flowed well they lacked cohesion as a group. Someone always threw off the timing by being half a step behind, or somebody would turn the wrong way, or throw in a random twirl.
Jin didn't see how it could be so difficult to get six people to move in formation. The steps didn't seem to be that complicated. He began mirroring the group's actions, dancing by himself in the corner as best he could while remaining seated, following along with the music with the natural rhythm and ease of movement he used so well in sports.
He stopped, suddenly self-conscious, when an elderly man took a seat next to him. The old guy must've been the janitor or something. Or maybe he was the grandfather of one of the Juniors. Jin hoped so, because anybody who watched a bunch of boys dancing with such intense focus in his eyes had better be above board.
He shuffled away from him while trying to look like he was doing nothing of the sort, but froze when the old man opened his mouth and, in oddly-accented Japanese (mostly), spoke the words that changed Jin's life forever.
"YOU, go up there and join them."
Jin looked around, just in case the words were meant for someone else, but he was the only person in range. "Me?"
"YOU."
Though his English skills weren't as developed as he'd like, Jin had no trouble understanding that word. He didn't get why, though. "But I'm not even-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his protest. The choreographer swooped down, latched onto his arm and hauled him to his feet, depositing him in the middle of the group whether he liked it or not.
"Since when do we let spectators join in?" Tanaka demanded to know.
"Since the boss says so. He can't do any worse than the six of you have been doing today. Akiyama can play his princess's part and you - what was your name?"
"Akanishi."
"Akanishi, you know that gap in the centre? They've had to imagine that's Domoto Koichi. Akiyama's going to fill in for him, so you substitute for Akiyama and keep up as best you can."
"Domoto Koichi?" Finally, an actual idol, someone even Jin had heard of. "From the KinKi Kids?"
"That's right," Kame said. "We were put together as a group to backdance for him. Did you ever watch Pop Jam?"
"A couple of times, maybe..." The implication sank in. "Oh! You've been on TV!"
Kame beamed at him. The other tall member, Taguchi, smiled and stood a little straighter; Tanaka accused him of preening again.
Jin found himself under close scrutiny from the remaining member, Ueda, and did his best to appear harmless. It wasn't hard. Being scared, thirsty and horribly confused tended not to make one a threat. He held his breath until Ueda nodded and stepped back to let him in.
"Some of us have got places to be," Akiyama said. "Can we get a move on?"
"Um...s-sorry," Jin stammered.
He fell into formation with the others, more from instinct than memory, and took himself through a few quick, nervous warm-ups while he waited for the music to start again. When Nakamaru asked if he was any good at backflips, his stomach gave a much better demonstration than the rest of him could have.
"We'll skip those," the choreographer said. "They're only at the end, anyway."
No time to feel relieved - Jin had his work cut out for him, keeping his long limbs from kicking his neighbours, watching everyone for cues and having to move just that little bit faster to catch up. Akiyama ignored him and sang along while the rest of the group kept at least half an eye on him - a whole eye, in Kame's case, since he tried to cue Jin in with minute finger crooks.
KAT-TUN could dance, Jin decided, but they didn't always manage to do so in unison. At odd moments it became "every man for himself", and suddenly their coordinated movements would diversify into a chaotic explosion of twirls, hip rolls, slides, glides, and hair tosses from those with enough hair to manage it.
Still, he had no grounds for complaint. These guys might've been on the disorganised side but they clearly knew their business, and he just hoped they'd be nice enough not to laugh at his amateur attempts.
"Not too bad," Tanaka admitted when they'd finished and Jin had been allowed to retreat to his pile of discarded outdoor clothing in the corner.
"I think he did very well," Kame said. Jin felt a little warmer for it.
The choreographer, whose name Jin still couldn't catch, finished his murmured discussion with the old man. "Congratulations on passing your audition, Akanishi. If you're still interested, come back tomorrow to sign the paperwork."
"Audition?" Jin squeaked.
"That," Nakamaru waved his hand towards the old man, now disappearing through the door, "was Mr. Johnny Kitagawa himself, and I think you impressed him."
So much for the grandfather theory. Jin didn't know whether to be happy or stupefied, a dilemma the others found most amusing.
"He likes to surprise people," Ueda said. "You get used to it."
"Eventually." Kame grabbed a towel from his bag and dabbed his neck. "I've never seen anyone become a Junior so fast."
"Oh, I couldn't!" Jin said.
Tanaka looked at him like he'd gone mad. "I thought you came to watch to see if you wanted to join?"
"And you definitely enjoyed the dancing," Taguchi chimed in. "Right?"
Jin toyed with his scarf, wrapping and unwrapping it around his hands, twisting it taut as though he could manually reshape the world into something approaching normality. He couldn't come back tomorrow because he had nowhere to come back from, which meant he had nowhere to go when everyone left which they were all about to do because Akiyama already had his coat on and-
"There might be some complications," Kame said. "At home."
It must've been a familiar story because the others made noises of mixed understanding and sympathy as they prepared to leave. Akiyama was first out the door after bidding them a rushed farewell.
"Girlfriend," Nakamaru said knowingly. "Either that or his ferret's ill again."
Jin looked around for the choreographer, didn't spot him. In the absence of anyone even remotely official, he turned to Kame. "Where should I go to say 'Thanks, but no thanks'?"
"Save it till you know for sure," Taguchi said. "You can at least ask at home, right?"
Jin liked his optimistic manner but that was the one thing he couldn't possibly do - and Aunt Makiko, even if she didn't want him dead, was hardly likely to approve of any activity that brought him into her line of work. She'd given him a briefcase for his last birthday, which he took to be a sign she'd like him to end up as a salaryman, buried in an office somewhere for the rest of his existence.
He'd give a lot to have even that unwanted gift with him now.
"I guess."
"Being a Junior's not so bad," Tanaka said. "You've got some height and your moves are okay, so you might do all right for yourself in a few years - sooner, if you've got any special talents."
"Sword-swallowing," Jin said, completely straight-faced. "I won the Nationals last year."
Kame's eyes opened to saucer-size. "Seriously?"
"You can swallow swords and Taguchi can juggle fire and the two of you can go on Shounen Club as a double act," Tanaka said.
"Taguchi juggles fire?"
"While tap-dancing," Taguchi said. "My routines are always hot stuff."
When everyone else groaned - the first genuinely synchronised move they'd managed all evening - Jin realised they'd taken his joke and turned it around to tease him. It didn't feel like they were ganging up on him, though. More like he'd just been invited to a private party, especially when Tanaka grinned and said, "If you swallowed that, maybe you've got potential for swallowing swords after all."
"Kame believed me," Jin defended himself.
Kame flushed pink. "It sounded exciting."
"I wouldn't bother trying to make it as a comedian, Akanishi," Ueda said.
Nakamaru agreed. "You'll have to find some other way to stand out. Just not beat-boxing, please."
"Or rap," Tanaka added. "But you don't look like you could, anyway."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means he's trying to goad you into coming back tomorrow," Kame said.
"I wish I could." Jin meant it, too; his words emerged more wistful than he'd intended. For the first time since his father had died, somebody actually wanted him to be somewhere and he didn't think KAT-TUN would've said it unless they'd meant it. Joking aside, they didn't seem to be the kind of guys who could express anything they didn't genuinely feel.
Nakamaru wished him luck and with that, everyone bar Kame slipped away, wrapped up against the winter chill, bound, no doubt, for warm homes and loving families. Jin had neither to return to. He pulled his gloves on slowly, one careful finger at a time, trying to delay the inevitable. Any second now, Kame would leave too and he'd be left alone. He couldn't stay in the studio indefinitely. Sooner or later the building would be locked for the night and he'd have nowhere to go.
Kame jammed his baseball cap down as low as it would go and reached for the door. "Come on. Time to go home."
"I...I can't."
"Yeah, you can. Here."
With Kame's bag sitting heavy on his shoulders, Jin found he could go home after all.
-----
Another train ride and a short walk later, Jin was chopping onions in the Kamenashi kitchen under the watchful eye of his new friend. He could tell Kame was desperate to take the knife away from him and do it himself; probably would've done so if Jin hadn't been so insistent on helping. He had to do something to erase the second train ticket debt, even if it made his eyes water.
"What else can I do?" he asked when he had a slightly messy mountain of onion on the board.
Kame set down the egg carton. "Can you make up the broth? There's dashi in the cupboard behind you. We'll need enough for three - no, four. Yuya should be home soon too."
"How many brothers have you got?"
"Three. Two older, one younger. The eldest doesn't live here anymore."
Kame's second oldest brother had accepted his explanation that Jin was staying over to work on a school project, being too engrossed in his own studies to pay much attention.
"He's supposed to be in charge right now," Kame said, "but I still do all the cooking. Sorry, I forgot my parents left this morning to visit my grandmother for a few days. You can stay over, though."
"I could be a serial killer who secretly wants to slit your throat and you let me into your house."
"You'd be pretty young for a serial killer," Kame said. "Besides, you can't possibly slit my throat. Not with those knife skills."
Jin had to admit Kame knew his way around a kitchen, experienced even though he was, he'd explained, still a month shy of his sixteenth birthday. It amused him how Kame would pace up and down the kitchen, hands twitching with the itch to snatch the spoon from Jin's hand. Perfectionist. Jin's own cooking experience was limited but he could manage basic things, even if he couldn't crack eggs one-handed like Kame.
"You whisk these," Kame handed him the bowl of eggs and a pair of chopsticks, "and I'll see to the pork."
By the time they'd finished preparing the katsudon, Yuya had arrived home and it was three Kamenashis and an Akanishi who sat down together to eat. Jin relaxed in his chair and listened to the baseball talk fly across the table between the two youngest brothers. He'd never had that at home. It didn't bother him that he couldn't add much to the conversation; eating hot food in a house that was somewhat cramped but bursting at the seams with familial love had him feeling safe and warm, and not at all like a stray puppy who'd been kicked out of his home and now had nowhere to go but the cold city streets.
"I'll clean up," he volunteered afterwards, which immediately earned him an invitation to come back anytime.
Kame hovered in a corner of the kitchen to direct the clean-up process, since Jin didn't know where any of the dishes lived. "If you can't go home, you could always stay here as a live-in maid," he suggested, laughing when Jin gave him as fierce a glare as he could manage while up to his elbows in lemon-scented soap suds. "My brothers would love it. We'd never have to do chores again."
"Your brothers might appreciate it but I don't think your parents would."
"And what about your parents?" Kame asked.
The temperature in the kitchen dropped by ten degrees. "My dad's dead," Jin said quietly, talking more to the plate in his hand than Kame. "Mum too, giving birth to my younger brother."
"I'm sorry." Kame ventured nearer, took the now-clean plate from Jin's soapy hands and started drying it with a teatowel. "I didn't know."
"It's okay. How would you know?" Jin automatically picked up another plate and they fell into routine: Jin washing the dirty dishes and Kame drying them and spiriting them off to the far corners of the kitchen. "It's been years."
"So where have you been living? With relatives? An orphanage? Is that why you've run away?"
"I told you: I'm not a runaway. I..." Jin paused, suddenly conscious of voices in the next room, where Kame's brothers were watching a movie. If he could hear them, they could hear him. "Can we talk about this a bit later?"
-----
"A bit later" turned into "three hours later" because Jin didn't know how to talk about it without sounding paranoid, and he didn't think Kame knew how to ask about it, either. Easier for the two of them to delay by using the time to work out sleeping arrangements.
The two youngest brothers normally shared, but Yuya was persuaded to relinquish his bed for the night so that Jin could stay with his "school friend", on the condition that they set up a futon for him elsewhere. Kame swept all the bedding off the mattress to make it up in his brother's room, leaving Jin with a set of fresh bedding to do the same.
"The sheet's not straight," Kame said when he returned. He tugged at the corners, smiling with satisfaction when he had them where he wanted them.
"And this is why I'd fail as a live-in maid."
"You're doing fine so far. How are you at ironing?"
"I've never tried it," Jin confessed. Aunt Makiko had always sent all the laundry away together to be cleaned, and it came back fresh and neatly pressed.
"Then now's probably not a good time to learn..." Kame straightened the pillow and stood back. "There."
"You're really fussy about this stuff, aren't you?"
Kame shrugged. "Not fussy, exactly. But it's an almost all-male household, so my mum needs all the help she can get. And she keeps telling me it'll all be important when I'm living by myself; that some day I'll have a girlfriend who appreciates it when her man can make her a nice meal, and knows how to keep his own apartment clean."
Jin hadn't given much thought to moving out, himself. He couldn't touch his father's money till he turned twenty - the small monthly allowance he got from Aunt Makiko couldn't take him very far - and he'd always assumed that once he had his inheritance, he'd be leaving home like a shot. That he might not yet have the life skills to do so was, he felt, immaterial - especially in light of the day's events.
"I appreciate it right now," he said, "even if straightening the pillow is kind of overkill."
Kame nudged the pillow to knock it a trifle askew and grinned impishly at Jin. "Better?"
"Perfect."
Not that anything about Kame's room could be described as "perfect", owing to the combined clutter of two teenage boys crammed into a space better suited to one, but it looked lived-in and loved which, as far as Jin was concerned, made it the best place on Earth to be right now.
But also the worst, because it could only be temporary. Tomorrow morning Jin would be on his own again and he had no idea what to do. He couldn't even find a branch of his bank and try to withdraw money - he didn't have his card, he couldn't prove his identity, and Aunt Makiko would probably be keeping an eye on his account to make sure he was really dead. If he phoned any of his friends in Osaka, he risked attracting her attention.
The only way to keep out of her clutches was to stay away from home...but how could he?
"I'm sorry, we don't have a spare toothbrush," Kame said. "There's an AM-PM down the street; we could probably find one-"
Jin waved a hand to assure him this would not be necessary. He owed Kame enough already, having already received more kindness than a perfect stranger had any right to expect. Perhaps it was because they weren't that far apart in age, but Jin had the feeling Kame would be as sympathetic to anyone in need of help, with a maturity that belied his tiny, half-finished appearance.
"If I can just steal a little bit of toothpaste from you, I'll manage," Jin said. "I've already caused you enough trouble, sorry."
"You're the most interesting thing that's happened to me all week. Are you sure you don't want to be a Johnny's Junior?"
"Right now I just want to know what I'm doing tomorrow." Jin had never been able to make concrete plans for the future, despite his dreams - one day at a time was good enough for him, but this one would be the most important because it would be the first day of the rest of his life.
"Breakfast - that's what you're doing tomorrow. I've been feeling like pancakes for a while."
"Brat."
"What, you don't like pancakes?"
"I didn't say that."
"Speaking of things you didn't say," Kame dropped cross-legged onto his bed, leaning back against the pillows, "how about giving me a little more to work with, here? I'd like to have something to tell my parents when they get back."
Jin couldn't avoid it any longer; he just hoped Kame wouldn't think he was crazy and kick him out. He collapsed on his borrowed bed, drawing his knees up to his chest and locking his fingers together around his calves. Nice, comfortable bed. He might never get to take it for a test run.
"I came here today from Osaka," he said, words heavy with reluctance; part of him secretly hoped that if he spoke slow enough, Kame would get fed up and not want to bother with the rest of the explanation. "I was supposed to be doing a school assignment in Harajuku."
"I thought you might've. Not the assignment," Kame hastened to clarify, "but you were speaking Osaka-ben at first. Then when we were at dance practice you switched to Tokyo-ben."
"I lived here as a little kid," Jin said. "My dad owned a jewellery company, and when he moved the head office to Osaka, we went with it. I didn't come back until today, and my stepmother insisted on sending one of her minions with me so I didn't get into trouble."
"Your stepmother has minions?" Based on Kame's awed expression, Jin might as well have said his stepmother was an alien princess - which would've explained a lot, had it been the truth.
"She's...um...she's kind of famous? Do you know Makiko? The singer?"
"Your stepmother sang a duet with Kimura Takuya?" If anything, Kame sounded even more impressed than before; Jin suspected his new friend might be a Kimura fanboy.
"She's sung with everybody." And she liked to remind people of it, too. Jin sighed, remembering how she'd crow whenever she scored another notch on her designer belt.
"Must be weird, living with such a big star," Kame said. "What's she like as a stepmother?"
"Terrible," Jin said flatly. "Today she tried to kill me."
Kame burst out laughing, which Jin would've found quite cute if it hadn't been so horribly inappropriate. Laughter stripped the seriousness from Kame's face; transformed him from riveted listener to gleeful conspirator, someone with whom Jin shared jokes and traded tall tales for amusement. Too bad the situation wasn't remotely funny.
"I'm not joking, Kame. The guy she sent with me today? He had a gun, and I think he was supposed to use it on me - and he would've done if he hadn't felt sorry for me. He said my stepmother wanted proof that I was dead, so he took all my stuff and left me in the station. Told me if I ever went home, we were both dead." Jin's interlocked fingers clenched tight enough he could practically feel the bruises forming. "I know it sounds crazy. I don't expect you to believe me. I...I don't expect anyone to believe me."
"It does sound crazy." Kame's laughter died, all of a sudden. "But you were scared to death when I found you, and you don't seem like the kind of guy who hangs out in station bathrooms for fun."
"I'm still scared to death," Jin confessed. "I can't go home, and I can't stay here, and my only relative in the world thinks I'm dead."
Saying it aloud made it worse, brought it home to Jin exactly how much of a quandary he was in. Missing school on Monday didn't bother him. Missing the rest of his life did.
"Why would your stepmother want you dead, though?" Kame asked. "I thought she loved kids."
"That's what she wants everyone to think. The only reason she didn't kick me out after my father died was because it would ruin her image - and because she gets to take care of my inheritance until I come of age. She likes money a lot more than she ever liked me."
"Doesn't sound like you've got much to go home to."
"It's still...it's still my home. My entire life is there. I don't have anything else." Jin heard his voice crack but couldn't bring himself to care. "I don't have anything."
Kame turned and leaned across the bed, stretching out one foot to knock against Jin's. "Right now you've got a warm bed, and somebody who believes you. Save the rest to worry about in the morning. You're still alive, right? That's a good place to start."
Ten minutes later Jin lay in bed in a borrowed T-shirt and sweatpants that were a little too short for him, after attempting to brush his teeth with a finger tipped with toothpaste, and wondered how he'd ever get to sleep after the day he'd had. He underestimated the effect of exhaustion on his young body.
By the time Kame returned from the bathroom and switched off the light, Jin had given himself up to dreams of baseball teams dancing in unison and a star batter who hit a home run just for him.
Part 2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Rating: PG
Genre: Fairytale fluff, angst
Word count: 15,237
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: When an assassination attempt by Jin's wicked stepmother leaves him stranded in Tokyo, he finds help from a most unlikely source: up and coming idol group KAT-TUN.
A/N: This is my Akame version of Snow White that I started writing...oh, years ago. I ran into logistical problems to do with Jin having no legal identity, and couldn't decide if I wanted to go the full-on fantasy route with a magic mirror or simply to have a lawyer named Kagami (of the law firm 'Kagami, Kagami & Kabe'). Consequently I never finished it, and figured since I never will I might as well post the 15k that I had, for entertainment value. Read at your own peril - there is no ending.
Akanishi Jin and the 5 Idols (of Varying Heights) 1/2
A luxurious apartment in Umeda, in the year 2002
Makiko knew how the mirror would answer, of course. Her late husband might not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer but he'd been no fool when it came to magic, and the mirror was easily the most precious part of his legacy. It certainly wasn't that awkward teenage son of his, a leftover from his first marriage, a gangly matchstick with bleached blond hair and the attention span of a gnat. Makiko couldn't wait till he came of age and she could kick him out without harming her reputation. It wouldn't do to have Japan's number one singer toss her stepson out on the street, not when the rest of the country thought she loved children to bits and was heartbroken that she'd never had the opportunity to give birth to any of her own.
The mirror knew her secret self. It couldn't lie, for if it did, its glass would crack. The mirror would tell her the truth she so desperately needed to hear after a day of listening to her manager complain about how her younger rivals were becoming a threat, and how only surgery could save her vaunted good looks.
She stared at her own reflection in the glass until it blurred. Two yellow eyes emerged from the swirling darkness - the mirror was awake.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in Kansai is the fairest of all?" she asked.
A shining slit split the dark oval, suggesting a mouth of wickedly sharp teeth. Makiko didn't know the owner and didn't care, so long as the teeth stayed on the other side of the glass.
"I cannot lie, so I'll tell you true," the mirror rasped, "and your step-son is much fairer than you!"
Makiko blinked and tapped the gold frame with her long, ice blue nails. "I didn't ask for a mirror with a sense of humour. Try again."
The mirror coughed, clearing its non-existent throat and losing the rasp in its voice. "I told you, it's your stepson. I know you try not to look at him if you can help it but every girl in his school's in love with him, along with half the boys in his soccer club, two of his teachers, and your own lawyer."
"Nonsense," Makiko said. "He's only a child. A gawky, feather-headed brat with a mushroom on his head and all the common sense of a newborn puppy. How could he possibly be any competition for a glamourous star of stage and screen like myself?"
"You haven't bothered to notice he got a haircut, have you?" The mirror flickered; eyes and mouth disappeared, replaced by a still image of Jin in his soccer uniform, laughing and joking with his friends. "Take a look at him. Go on, I mean really, really look at him. See if you don't think he's going to be a heartbreaker in a few years."
Reluctantly, Makiko looked. She didn't see much in the way of competition. All right, so maybe Jin had finally dispensed with the hideous mushroom look and found himself a more flattering haircut. Maybe he'd started buying decent skincare products and elevated himself to a cut above his lumpy, spotty friends. Maybe his green and white uniform shirt complemented the silvery blond hair, and maybe his love of the game made his eyes sparkle with fun.
But that didn't make him competition. Not to Makiko, whose fame was such that she'd dispensed with her married surname of 'Akanishi' after her husband's unfortunate death four years ago and had never had need of one since.
"He's starting to become a little cute, I suppose," she said grudgingly. "But you can't tell me he's a threat."
"You haven't heard him sing either, have you?" the mirror said. "I have. I listen to him sing when you're away - he never does any of your songs; I can't imagine why not - and let me tell you: if he tries to make a career out of it, he could knock you from the top like that."
Makiko gasped. "Like that?"
"Like that." The mirror made a fingersnap sound for emphasis. "Once he's had some training, at any rate. Same with his looks. The boy's got a lot of raw potential - more than you've ever had - and if he steps out on the world stage you'll be forgotten in a heartbeat. You'll be a dried-up has-been before you're middle-aged."
Impossible! How could such potential have gone unnoticed all these years? Had Makiko nurtured a future rival in her own home? It was unthinkable.
And yet...the mirror couldn't lie. It had to be the truth.
"If he's still at the raw potential stage, why are you telling me he's fairer than me today?" Makiko asked.
"I haven't been dusted in three weeks and I don't see so good with a veil of grit over my eyes, you know? Consider it an early warning. Go visit that ritzy private school you've got him in and convince one of the students to show you the opinion polls. I think you'll recognise the name of the guy voted 'Most Likely to Be an Idol After Graduation'."
Makiko didn't need to hear any more. It couldn't be allowed to continue. Jin had to be removed as a threat before he could damage her career, and the sooner, the better. She could start a few rumours about how he'd resented her guardianship after his father died - which was probably true - and delicately suggest at his instability. Possibly a drugs rumour or two, maybe some underage drinking. Girl problems. Fights at school. Get enough people talking and no one would be surprised when the poor creature disappeared, presumably run away to find happiness by himself, never to be seen again.
Or more likely, at the bottom of a lake somewhere. Makiko didn't often have occasion to call on her yakuza acquaintances but every star needed a little hired muscle from time to time, and she could hardly kill her own stepson. She might break a nail.
-----
Yamanote Line going from Tokyo Station towards Shinagawa and Shibuya, three days later
Jin slumped in the corner of the carriage, trying to keep from getting squashed as more passengers boarded at Shibuya. He'd forgotten just how busy the line could get, after spending most of his life in Osaka. It felt weird to be back in Tokyo after ten years. He'd been too young to ride the trains by himself then.
And according to his stepmother - or 'Aunt Makiko', as he had to think of her - he was still too young for the shinkansen, which was why she'd sent one of her flunkies with him.
"You don't have to stay with me, you know," Jin said to his travelling companion, who'd given his name only as 'Sasaki'.
Couldn't have been one of Aunt Makiko's boyfriends - the suit was too cheap. A boyfriend's underling, maybe, or one of her agency staff. Some guy Jin had never met, anyway. He had lumpy knuckles and a scar running down from his left earlobe to his chin, and stubble over his lip that Jin thought looked kind of cool in a devil-may-care kind of way. He looked like a bodyguard.
He also looked nervous.
"I'm serious." Jin had to lean back to meet Sasaki's eyes. "I can find Meiji Jingu by myself. It was nice of you to escort me all the way from Osaka so I can complete this assignment, but if you want to go off by yourself, I won't tell Aunt Makiko, I promise. We can meet back at Tokyo Station later to get the train home. What do you think?"
Sasaki gulped so hard it was like watching him trying to swallow a basketball. He didn't wear a scarf, or even gloves, while Jin had wrapped himself up in half-a-dozen layers to deal with the January cold. Not that he needed them on the train, but they'd be getting out at Harajuku and Jin couldn't write notes if his fingers froze. He didn't think taking dictation was part of Sasaki's job description, somehow.
"Fine, don't talk to me," Jin huffed. He hadn't managed to get more than three words out of Sasaki since they'd boarded at Shin-Osaka, and had had to keep up a running monologue of every thought passing through his head at the time. "I can entertain myself."
"Don't."
"Hey, you spoke! This is our sto- What the hell?" Jin let out an indignant squawk as Sasaki grabbed him by the arm, refusing to let him disembark at Harajuku. He watched a swarm of teenage girls rush towards the Takeshita end of the platform till the doors closed and the train resumed its journey. Sasaki's iron grip didn't let up, no matter how much Jin struggled against it.
"Don't," Sasaki said again, low against Jin's ear. "Don't struggle. Don't draw attention to yourself. I don't want to do this."
"Don't want to do what?" Jin hissed. "Is this a kidnapping? Because if you want money out of Aunt Makiko I don't think abducting me is going to help. You might get a hundred yen, and that's if she's looking to get rid of some change."
"Shut up and listen to me!" Sasaki yanked hard on Jin's other arm, twisting it up behind his back, and Jin fell silent before something broke. He wished the other passengers would turn around and notice, but no one saw the skinny teenager hidden behind the hulking older man at the far end of the carriage. "I'll get my money but I'm not doing what she says, all right? Now give me your bag, wallet, keys and cell phone."
"My what?"
"You heard me. Bag, wallet, keys and cell phone. Right now. There's no time left!"
The second Sasaki released his arm Jin scrambled to comply. He didn't have a choice. Sasaki pressed up against his back, breathing down his neck, and Jin felt a hard lump between his shoulderblades.
A gun. Aunt Makiko had sent him out with a mobster and now he was going to die alone and unloved in the middle of Tokyo.
"Here," Jin said shakily, shoving bag, wallet, keys and phone at Sasaki. "Take them. Just don't kill me. Please. I'm only seventeen. I haven't done anything yet."
Sasaki backed off enough to sling the bag over his shoulder and shove the smaller items in his jacket pocket; Jin managed to turn around to get his back against the wall again. He needed it for support. His life, short though it was, flashed before his eyes. First his mother's death, then his father's. The first goal he ever scored. The first time he went to karaoke with his friends and didn't get told to shut up. The taste of ice cream on his tongue on hot summer days. The warmth of his bed on a winter's night.
"Stop daydreaming or you'll miss your stop," Sasaki interrupted. "We'll be at Shinjuku in a second, and you're getting out. If you ever return home, we'll both be dead. Got it?"
"You...I...what?" Jin rubbed a hand across his eyes, dazed. "But what am I supposed to do?"
"Live, which is more than you'll get to do if you ever show your face in Osaka again. You understand, boy?"
Aunt Makiko really wanted him dead. Jin understood that much, even if he didn't know why. She mostly ignored him when they were alone in the apartment - he didn't see what he could possibly have done to make her so mad that she'd hire someone to kill him.
Except that Sasaki didn't seem to be about to shoot him with that gun.
The doors opened at Shinjuku. Without another word, Sasaki seized Jin's arm again and forced his way through the crowds, off the train and down the stairs on the platform. Jin kept trying to talk himself into screaming, into doing anything that would alert the people around him that here was a boy in trouble and in desperate need of help, but his mouth refused to cooperate. Who knew what Sasaki would do if cornered? In such an enormous station there must've been hundreds of people and not one of them noticed the pale, scared teenager, feeding his ticket into the slot with a trembling hand and being caught immediately by the man behind him to be dragged off to the nearest bathroom.
"Out!" Sasaki growled at the handful of occupants, who fled without protest. He shoved Jin into a stall and stood in the doorway, blocking the light so Jin could see nothing of his face but shadows and scars.
Jin edged as far away from Sasaki as he could, trying to deepen rapid, shallow breaths so he could at least get enough air to speak. Fear had his heart pounding in his ears, had him imagining an army of gunmen waiting in the other stalls, just ready to open fire.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you, boy?" Sasaki said. "Your stepmother wants proof that you're dead and I can't carry a severed head on the train. You're lucky I'm only taking your stuff; it could've been a finger."
"W-why?" Jin clenched his fingers into fists, tucking them protectively against his palms. "Why are you letting me live?"
Sasaki leaned down, allowing some of the light into the stall, and Jin caught a glimpse of a lopsided, resigned smile before the shadows returned. "Because you're only seventeen, and you haven't done anything yet except give me a sore ear by talking all the way from Shin-Osaka.
"When I leave, lock the door and stay here for five minutes. I'll know if you don't. Then you can go wherever you want. If you've got any sense you won't try to contact your stepmother. The next guy might not be as fond of kids as I am, and if she finds out you're still alive we're both dead. Got it?"
Jin took a deep breath and shuddered, feeling like a drowning man struggling for one precious gasp of oxygen. "Got it."
"Good."
Sasaki patted him on the shoulder and walked backwards out of the room, pulling the stall door closed behind him. Jin locked the door as fast as he could, flipped down the lid of the toilet and sank onto it before his knees gave way.
This close. He'd come this close to dying at the tender age of seventeen, and he didn't even know why.
And now he'd been abandoned in the middle of a gigantic station, in a city he hadn't seen in a decade, with no money, no phone, no luggage, and no hope. He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked gently back and forth, trying to force his brain to process all the details and devise a solution that would somehow get him somewhere safe. Somewhere familiar, somewhere he knew.
But he couldn't buy a return ticket. Hell, he couldn't even buy himself a lousy bottle of water. And if he went home...well, now he didn't really have a home to go to. Who would believe him if he said his stepmother, the famous beauty and star of stage and screen, had hired a yakuza to kill him? No one. They'd think he was making up stories for attention, and they'd laugh, and then when no one was looking he'd be removed permanently.
Jin lost himself in a fog of despair, huddled and shaking in the stall, seeing and hearing nothing until a knock came at the door. He jumped, thinking Sasaki had returned, but the scuffed white trainers showing under the door were a far cry from the smart black shoes.
"Y-yes?"
"Uh..." The voice on the other side of the door sounded young, and slightly nasal. Another kid, probably. "Are you okay? You've been in there for ages and your breathing sounds kind of funny."
"I...um..." Jin didn't know what he could possibly say, but the stranger sounded kind, and non-threatening, and Sasaki's five minutes had long since passed. He couldn't stay there all afternoon; someone would eventually get suspicious.
He unlocked the door, peering cautiously through the crack before opening it fully. He found another boy, maybe a year or two younger than he and a fair bit shorter, with spiky, reddish-brown hair under a baseball cap, a gap in his front teeth, and a worried half-smile.
His eyes widened when he saw Jin. "You're only a kid!"
"So are you," Jin mumbled, looking down at the floor.
The other boy grinned. "Sorry, didn't mean anything by it. Are you sick? Should I go get someone?"
Jin kept his eyes on the beaten-up trainers, which had obviously seen a lot of use, but it was hard to ignore the owner's well-meaning concern. "I'm not sick." Though he half-wished he was. Delirium might be a pleasurable alternative to reality right now.
"But your eyes are all red."
"Uh..."
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm...I'm lost."
"Lost." The kid didn't sound convinced, but it was the best word Jin could find to describe how he felt. "I know this station's big, but it's not that big. Come on, I'll help you find the right exit. Where do you want to go?"
The word "home" escaped as a crazy giggle and Jin bit down on his lip to keep the rest inside. He watched the trainers move, didn't realise why till he felt a tentative hand brush his upper arm.
"Hey," the other boy said. "We're starting to get some weird looks. Let's get out of here. It'll be okay. Really."
Jin let himself be led from the bathroom out to the concourse, where a bewildering array of signs pointed to more exits than he thought any single station had a right to have. He thrust his gloved hands deep in his pockets, affecting nonchalance, but that didn't stop the shaking. They came to a halt by a small bagel shop temporarily closed for repairs and therefore free from crowds - the only spot in the station that was.
Jin's new acquaintance regarded him with wary eyes. "So where's home?"
"Somewhere I can never go again," Jin said. To his horror he felt the prickle of tears welling up, just waiting for the right time to fall.
Wariness upgraded to alarm. "You're a runaway?"
Jin shook his head.
Now the poor kid just looked confused. "Can I take you somewhere? Like the hospital or the police or something? Is there someone I could call to come get you?"
"Why are you being so nice to me?" Jin blurted out. "You don't even know me."
The boy gave him a shy smile. "Because you seem like you need it.
"Besides, I'm already late for dance practice and I might as well have a good deed for my excuse."
Jin made a half-hearted attempt at returning the smile. "Dance practice? What, ballet? Tap?"
"Nope! You know Johnnys?"
Of course Jin did. Everyone did. Johnny & Associates had been turning out glamorous idol groups and hit singles for forty years. Everyone knew them, whether they liked them or not.
"You don't look like an idol." Jin eyed his new acquaintance with suspicion. No pretty-boy pop star had eyebrows that thick. "What's your name?"
"Kamenashi Kazuya, but people tend to call me 'Kame'. What's yours?"
"Akanishi Jin," Jin said without thinking about it. He caught himself afterwards. Kame couldn't possibly be working for Aunt Makiko, though. "And I've never heard of you."
"I'm still a Junior," Kame said. "I've only been with the agency for three years. I want to have a CD debut one day, though. When I'm good enough."
Jin's unshed tears had dried up somewhere along the line, evaporated by Kame's frank speech and warm, sympathetic eyes. "Good luck with that. You want to be an idol?"
"I want to be a baseball player."
"You like baseball a lot, huh?" Jin pointed to the Yankees sweatshirt peeking out from beneath Kame's coat. "I'm more into soccer."
"You any good?"
"I do all right." They were on more familiar territory now. Jin could talk about sports and forget for a few minutes how he'd ended up in Shinjuku with no one but a kindly stranger for company. "I'm a striker for my school club."
"I was a world representative when I was younger."
"Impressive," Jin admitted. "So why are you in Johnnys?"
"If I don't get a move on, I won't be for much longer!" Kame checked his watch. "If you can't go home, where will you go? A friend's house?"
"I...I don't know anyone in Tokyo." Jin didn't remember anyone from his childhood, and even if by some miracle he managed to recall a name, he wouldn't know how to find them anyway.
Kame sighed. "It wouldn't be right to just leave you here but I have to go. If you don't have anything better to do, why don't you come with me for a while? At least you'll get out of the station. I'll talk to my parents after dance practice and maybe they can figure out some way to help you."
Jin didn't want to say no. He didn't know anything about Kame, except that he loved baseball and had his eye on a CD debut - but conversely, Kame didn't know anything about him, and yet he was offering to help. That already made him the friendliest person Jin had spoken to all day.
"Okay."
"That's settled, then." Kame jerked his head towards the barriers. "You have a Suica card?"
"Um..."
"Right, then you'll need a ticket. Come on."
Jin hung back, resisting Kame's attempts to steer him towards the ticket machines. "I can't buy one," he muttered. "I guess you'll have to leave me after all."
"Lost your wallet?"
"Something like that."
"Then I'll get it," Kame decided.
"But I can't pay you back!"
"So you can...I don't know, carry my bag or something. Here."
Kame must've been carrying bowling balls in his backpack because it weighed a ton, but Jin slung it over his shoulders anyway and nodded when Kame told him they were even. They weren't even close, he thought.
-----
A dance studio in Shibuya
Jin used to count his life in years, months, weeks and days. Now he counted in hours, minutes and seconds, one beat after another. Without knowing what would happen from one minute to the next, he looked to his heartbeat to keep him going.
His heartbeat...and the finger-clicks of an irate choreographer doing his best to make the Johnny's Junior group KAT-TUN dance in time. He had his work cut out for him.
"5-6-7 and - no, not left! Turn to the right, Kamenashi! Your right, not mine! If you'd turned up on time, you'd know that."
Kame ducked his head apologetically and shot a pained smile at Jin when no one else was looking. Jin might've felt guilty about it, but no one else seemed interested in being cooperative either. He couldn't tell if it was bad relations in the group, dislike for the choreographer, or both. He'd have to ask Kame afterwards.
There hadn't been any time for introductions beforehand. They'd raced from the station to the studio, paused long enough for Kame to mutter a frantic apology and explain that Jin was a friend who was thinking of auditioning so he'd come along to watch some of the Juniors in action. In the chaos, nobody noticed Jin sitting in a free corner, watching with wide eyes and a wider mouth as the group ran through the routine for the tenth time.
Nobody except Kame, who kept looking over to check on him. Unfortunately, the aforementioned checks tended to coincide with a misstep.
"You might as well not have bothered showing up at all," the one Jin thought he'd heard called 'Tanaka' grumbled at Kame when they paused for a water break. "My little brother could do better."
"Then maybe you should go call your brother and get him over here," said a tall, semi-foreign young man who seemed to be a few years older than the rest. The choreographer called him 'Akiyama'. "We could do with the help."
"I'm just having an off-day," Kame said.
"We all get those," said the boy referred to as 'Nakamaru'. He gave Kame an encouraging smile. "Right?"
Watching the others drink from their water bottles made the thirst rise in Jin's own throat. He'd finished his drink on the train; had been planning on replacing it once he reached Harajuku - no longer an option. Maybe there was a water fountain somewhere in the building.
He pushed the nagging irritation away, allowing himself to be distracted watching KAT-TUN. There were six of them, ranging in height from the tiny Kame to the towering Akiyama, and while their individual dance movements flowed well they lacked cohesion as a group. Someone always threw off the timing by being half a step behind, or somebody would turn the wrong way, or throw in a random twirl.
Jin didn't see how it could be so difficult to get six people to move in formation. The steps didn't seem to be that complicated. He began mirroring the group's actions, dancing by himself in the corner as best he could while remaining seated, following along with the music with the natural rhythm and ease of movement he used so well in sports.
He stopped, suddenly self-conscious, when an elderly man took a seat next to him. The old guy must've been the janitor or something. Or maybe he was the grandfather of one of the Juniors. Jin hoped so, because anybody who watched a bunch of boys dancing with such intense focus in his eyes had better be above board.
He shuffled away from him while trying to look like he was doing nothing of the sort, but froze when the old man opened his mouth and, in oddly-accented Japanese (mostly), spoke the words that changed Jin's life forever.
"YOU, go up there and join them."
Jin looked around, just in case the words were meant for someone else, but he was the only person in range. "Me?"
"YOU."
Though his English skills weren't as developed as he'd like, Jin had no trouble understanding that word. He didn't get why, though. "But I'm not even-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his protest. The choreographer swooped down, latched onto his arm and hauled him to his feet, depositing him in the middle of the group whether he liked it or not.
"Since when do we let spectators join in?" Tanaka demanded to know.
"Since the boss says so. He can't do any worse than the six of you have been doing today. Akiyama can play his princess's part and you - what was your name?"
"Akanishi."
"Akanishi, you know that gap in the centre? They've had to imagine that's Domoto Koichi. Akiyama's going to fill in for him, so you substitute for Akiyama and keep up as best you can."
"Domoto Koichi?" Finally, an actual idol, someone even Jin had heard of. "From the KinKi Kids?"
"That's right," Kame said. "We were put together as a group to backdance for him. Did you ever watch Pop Jam?"
"A couple of times, maybe..." The implication sank in. "Oh! You've been on TV!"
Kame beamed at him. The other tall member, Taguchi, smiled and stood a little straighter; Tanaka accused him of preening again.
Jin found himself under close scrutiny from the remaining member, Ueda, and did his best to appear harmless. It wasn't hard. Being scared, thirsty and horribly confused tended not to make one a threat. He held his breath until Ueda nodded and stepped back to let him in.
"Some of us have got places to be," Akiyama said. "Can we get a move on?"
"Um...s-sorry," Jin stammered.
He fell into formation with the others, more from instinct than memory, and took himself through a few quick, nervous warm-ups while he waited for the music to start again. When Nakamaru asked if he was any good at backflips, his stomach gave a much better demonstration than the rest of him could have.
"We'll skip those," the choreographer said. "They're only at the end, anyway."
No time to feel relieved - Jin had his work cut out for him, keeping his long limbs from kicking his neighbours, watching everyone for cues and having to move just that little bit faster to catch up. Akiyama ignored him and sang along while the rest of the group kept at least half an eye on him - a whole eye, in Kame's case, since he tried to cue Jin in with minute finger crooks.
KAT-TUN could dance, Jin decided, but they didn't always manage to do so in unison. At odd moments it became "every man for himself", and suddenly their coordinated movements would diversify into a chaotic explosion of twirls, hip rolls, slides, glides, and hair tosses from those with enough hair to manage it.
Still, he had no grounds for complaint. These guys might've been on the disorganised side but they clearly knew their business, and he just hoped they'd be nice enough not to laugh at his amateur attempts.
"Not too bad," Tanaka admitted when they'd finished and Jin had been allowed to retreat to his pile of discarded outdoor clothing in the corner.
"I think he did very well," Kame said. Jin felt a little warmer for it.
The choreographer, whose name Jin still couldn't catch, finished his murmured discussion with the old man. "Congratulations on passing your audition, Akanishi. If you're still interested, come back tomorrow to sign the paperwork."
"Audition?" Jin squeaked.
"That," Nakamaru waved his hand towards the old man, now disappearing through the door, "was Mr. Johnny Kitagawa himself, and I think you impressed him."
So much for the grandfather theory. Jin didn't know whether to be happy or stupefied, a dilemma the others found most amusing.
"He likes to surprise people," Ueda said. "You get used to it."
"Eventually." Kame grabbed a towel from his bag and dabbed his neck. "I've never seen anyone become a Junior so fast."
"Oh, I couldn't!" Jin said.
Tanaka looked at him like he'd gone mad. "I thought you came to watch to see if you wanted to join?"
"And you definitely enjoyed the dancing," Taguchi chimed in. "Right?"
Jin toyed with his scarf, wrapping and unwrapping it around his hands, twisting it taut as though he could manually reshape the world into something approaching normality. He couldn't come back tomorrow because he had nowhere to come back from, which meant he had nowhere to go when everyone left which they were all about to do because Akiyama already had his coat on and-
"There might be some complications," Kame said. "At home."
It must've been a familiar story because the others made noises of mixed understanding and sympathy as they prepared to leave. Akiyama was first out the door after bidding them a rushed farewell.
"Girlfriend," Nakamaru said knowingly. "Either that or his ferret's ill again."
Jin looked around for the choreographer, didn't spot him. In the absence of anyone even remotely official, he turned to Kame. "Where should I go to say 'Thanks, but no thanks'?"
"Save it till you know for sure," Taguchi said. "You can at least ask at home, right?"
Jin liked his optimistic manner but that was the one thing he couldn't possibly do - and Aunt Makiko, even if she didn't want him dead, was hardly likely to approve of any activity that brought him into her line of work. She'd given him a briefcase for his last birthday, which he took to be a sign she'd like him to end up as a salaryman, buried in an office somewhere for the rest of his existence.
He'd give a lot to have even that unwanted gift with him now.
"I guess."
"Being a Junior's not so bad," Tanaka said. "You've got some height and your moves are okay, so you might do all right for yourself in a few years - sooner, if you've got any special talents."
"Sword-swallowing," Jin said, completely straight-faced. "I won the Nationals last year."
Kame's eyes opened to saucer-size. "Seriously?"
"You can swallow swords and Taguchi can juggle fire and the two of you can go on Shounen Club as a double act," Tanaka said.
"Taguchi juggles fire?"
"While tap-dancing," Taguchi said. "My routines are always hot stuff."
When everyone else groaned - the first genuinely synchronised move they'd managed all evening - Jin realised they'd taken his joke and turned it around to tease him. It didn't feel like they were ganging up on him, though. More like he'd just been invited to a private party, especially when Tanaka grinned and said, "If you swallowed that, maybe you've got potential for swallowing swords after all."
"Kame believed me," Jin defended himself.
Kame flushed pink. "It sounded exciting."
"I wouldn't bother trying to make it as a comedian, Akanishi," Ueda said.
Nakamaru agreed. "You'll have to find some other way to stand out. Just not beat-boxing, please."
"Or rap," Tanaka added. "But you don't look like you could, anyway."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means he's trying to goad you into coming back tomorrow," Kame said.
"I wish I could." Jin meant it, too; his words emerged more wistful than he'd intended. For the first time since his father had died, somebody actually wanted him to be somewhere and he didn't think KAT-TUN would've said it unless they'd meant it. Joking aside, they didn't seem to be the kind of guys who could express anything they didn't genuinely feel.
Nakamaru wished him luck and with that, everyone bar Kame slipped away, wrapped up against the winter chill, bound, no doubt, for warm homes and loving families. Jin had neither to return to. He pulled his gloves on slowly, one careful finger at a time, trying to delay the inevitable. Any second now, Kame would leave too and he'd be left alone. He couldn't stay in the studio indefinitely. Sooner or later the building would be locked for the night and he'd have nowhere to go.
Kame jammed his baseball cap down as low as it would go and reached for the door. "Come on. Time to go home."
"I...I can't."
"Yeah, you can. Here."
With Kame's bag sitting heavy on his shoulders, Jin found he could go home after all.
-----
Another train ride and a short walk later, Jin was chopping onions in the Kamenashi kitchen under the watchful eye of his new friend. He could tell Kame was desperate to take the knife away from him and do it himself; probably would've done so if Jin hadn't been so insistent on helping. He had to do something to erase the second train ticket debt, even if it made his eyes water.
"What else can I do?" he asked when he had a slightly messy mountain of onion on the board.
Kame set down the egg carton. "Can you make up the broth? There's dashi in the cupboard behind you. We'll need enough for three - no, four. Yuya should be home soon too."
"How many brothers have you got?"
"Three. Two older, one younger. The eldest doesn't live here anymore."
Kame's second oldest brother had accepted his explanation that Jin was staying over to work on a school project, being too engrossed in his own studies to pay much attention.
"He's supposed to be in charge right now," Kame said, "but I still do all the cooking. Sorry, I forgot my parents left this morning to visit my grandmother for a few days. You can stay over, though."
"I could be a serial killer who secretly wants to slit your throat and you let me into your house."
"You'd be pretty young for a serial killer," Kame said. "Besides, you can't possibly slit my throat. Not with those knife skills."
Jin had to admit Kame knew his way around a kitchen, experienced even though he was, he'd explained, still a month shy of his sixteenth birthday. It amused him how Kame would pace up and down the kitchen, hands twitching with the itch to snatch the spoon from Jin's hand. Perfectionist. Jin's own cooking experience was limited but he could manage basic things, even if he couldn't crack eggs one-handed like Kame.
"You whisk these," Kame handed him the bowl of eggs and a pair of chopsticks, "and I'll see to the pork."
By the time they'd finished preparing the katsudon, Yuya had arrived home and it was three Kamenashis and an Akanishi who sat down together to eat. Jin relaxed in his chair and listened to the baseball talk fly across the table between the two youngest brothers. He'd never had that at home. It didn't bother him that he couldn't add much to the conversation; eating hot food in a house that was somewhat cramped but bursting at the seams with familial love had him feeling safe and warm, and not at all like a stray puppy who'd been kicked out of his home and now had nowhere to go but the cold city streets.
"I'll clean up," he volunteered afterwards, which immediately earned him an invitation to come back anytime.
Kame hovered in a corner of the kitchen to direct the clean-up process, since Jin didn't know where any of the dishes lived. "If you can't go home, you could always stay here as a live-in maid," he suggested, laughing when Jin gave him as fierce a glare as he could manage while up to his elbows in lemon-scented soap suds. "My brothers would love it. We'd never have to do chores again."
"Your brothers might appreciate it but I don't think your parents would."
"And what about your parents?" Kame asked.
The temperature in the kitchen dropped by ten degrees. "My dad's dead," Jin said quietly, talking more to the plate in his hand than Kame. "Mum too, giving birth to my younger brother."
"I'm sorry." Kame ventured nearer, took the now-clean plate from Jin's soapy hands and started drying it with a teatowel. "I didn't know."
"It's okay. How would you know?" Jin automatically picked up another plate and they fell into routine: Jin washing the dirty dishes and Kame drying them and spiriting them off to the far corners of the kitchen. "It's been years."
"So where have you been living? With relatives? An orphanage? Is that why you've run away?"
"I told you: I'm not a runaway. I..." Jin paused, suddenly conscious of voices in the next room, where Kame's brothers were watching a movie. If he could hear them, they could hear him. "Can we talk about this a bit later?"
-----
"A bit later" turned into "three hours later" because Jin didn't know how to talk about it without sounding paranoid, and he didn't think Kame knew how to ask about it, either. Easier for the two of them to delay by using the time to work out sleeping arrangements.
The two youngest brothers normally shared, but Yuya was persuaded to relinquish his bed for the night so that Jin could stay with his "school friend", on the condition that they set up a futon for him elsewhere. Kame swept all the bedding off the mattress to make it up in his brother's room, leaving Jin with a set of fresh bedding to do the same.
"The sheet's not straight," Kame said when he returned. He tugged at the corners, smiling with satisfaction when he had them where he wanted them.
"And this is why I'd fail as a live-in maid."
"You're doing fine so far. How are you at ironing?"
"I've never tried it," Jin confessed. Aunt Makiko had always sent all the laundry away together to be cleaned, and it came back fresh and neatly pressed.
"Then now's probably not a good time to learn..." Kame straightened the pillow and stood back. "There."
"You're really fussy about this stuff, aren't you?"
Kame shrugged. "Not fussy, exactly. But it's an almost all-male household, so my mum needs all the help she can get. And she keeps telling me it'll all be important when I'm living by myself; that some day I'll have a girlfriend who appreciates it when her man can make her a nice meal, and knows how to keep his own apartment clean."
Jin hadn't given much thought to moving out, himself. He couldn't touch his father's money till he turned twenty - the small monthly allowance he got from Aunt Makiko couldn't take him very far - and he'd always assumed that once he had his inheritance, he'd be leaving home like a shot. That he might not yet have the life skills to do so was, he felt, immaterial - especially in light of the day's events.
"I appreciate it right now," he said, "even if straightening the pillow is kind of overkill."
Kame nudged the pillow to knock it a trifle askew and grinned impishly at Jin. "Better?"
"Perfect."
Not that anything about Kame's room could be described as "perfect", owing to the combined clutter of two teenage boys crammed into a space better suited to one, but it looked lived-in and loved which, as far as Jin was concerned, made it the best place on Earth to be right now.
But also the worst, because it could only be temporary. Tomorrow morning Jin would be on his own again and he had no idea what to do. He couldn't even find a branch of his bank and try to withdraw money - he didn't have his card, he couldn't prove his identity, and Aunt Makiko would probably be keeping an eye on his account to make sure he was really dead. If he phoned any of his friends in Osaka, he risked attracting her attention.
The only way to keep out of her clutches was to stay away from home...but how could he?
"I'm sorry, we don't have a spare toothbrush," Kame said. "There's an AM-PM down the street; we could probably find one-"
Jin waved a hand to assure him this would not be necessary. He owed Kame enough already, having already received more kindness than a perfect stranger had any right to expect. Perhaps it was because they weren't that far apart in age, but Jin had the feeling Kame would be as sympathetic to anyone in need of help, with a maturity that belied his tiny, half-finished appearance.
"If I can just steal a little bit of toothpaste from you, I'll manage," Jin said. "I've already caused you enough trouble, sorry."
"You're the most interesting thing that's happened to me all week. Are you sure you don't want to be a Johnny's Junior?"
"Right now I just want to know what I'm doing tomorrow." Jin had never been able to make concrete plans for the future, despite his dreams - one day at a time was good enough for him, but this one would be the most important because it would be the first day of the rest of his life.
"Breakfast - that's what you're doing tomorrow. I've been feeling like pancakes for a while."
"Brat."
"What, you don't like pancakes?"
"I didn't say that."
"Speaking of things you didn't say," Kame dropped cross-legged onto his bed, leaning back against the pillows, "how about giving me a little more to work with, here? I'd like to have something to tell my parents when they get back."
Jin couldn't avoid it any longer; he just hoped Kame wouldn't think he was crazy and kick him out. He collapsed on his borrowed bed, drawing his knees up to his chest and locking his fingers together around his calves. Nice, comfortable bed. He might never get to take it for a test run.
"I came here today from Osaka," he said, words heavy with reluctance; part of him secretly hoped that if he spoke slow enough, Kame would get fed up and not want to bother with the rest of the explanation. "I was supposed to be doing a school assignment in Harajuku."
"I thought you might've. Not the assignment," Kame hastened to clarify, "but you were speaking Osaka-ben at first. Then when we were at dance practice you switched to Tokyo-ben."
"I lived here as a little kid," Jin said. "My dad owned a jewellery company, and when he moved the head office to Osaka, we went with it. I didn't come back until today, and my stepmother insisted on sending one of her minions with me so I didn't get into trouble."
"Your stepmother has minions?" Based on Kame's awed expression, Jin might as well have said his stepmother was an alien princess - which would've explained a lot, had it been the truth.
"She's...um...she's kind of famous? Do you know Makiko? The singer?"
"Your stepmother sang a duet with Kimura Takuya?" If anything, Kame sounded even more impressed than before; Jin suspected his new friend might be a Kimura fanboy.
"She's sung with everybody." And she liked to remind people of it, too. Jin sighed, remembering how she'd crow whenever she scored another notch on her designer belt.
"Must be weird, living with such a big star," Kame said. "What's she like as a stepmother?"
"Terrible," Jin said flatly. "Today she tried to kill me."
Kame burst out laughing, which Jin would've found quite cute if it hadn't been so horribly inappropriate. Laughter stripped the seriousness from Kame's face; transformed him from riveted listener to gleeful conspirator, someone with whom Jin shared jokes and traded tall tales for amusement. Too bad the situation wasn't remotely funny.
"I'm not joking, Kame. The guy she sent with me today? He had a gun, and I think he was supposed to use it on me - and he would've done if he hadn't felt sorry for me. He said my stepmother wanted proof that I was dead, so he took all my stuff and left me in the station. Told me if I ever went home, we were both dead." Jin's interlocked fingers clenched tight enough he could practically feel the bruises forming. "I know it sounds crazy. I don't expect you to believe me. I...I don't expect anyone to believe me."
"It does sound crazy." Kame's laughter died, all of a sudden. "But you were scared to death when I found you, and you don't seem like the kind of guy who hangs out in station bathrooms for fun."
"I'm still scared to death," Jin confessed. "I can't go home, and I can't stay here, and my only relative in the world thinks I'm dead."
Saying it aloud made it worse, brought it home to Jin exactly how much of a quandary he was in. Missing school on Monday didn't bother him. Missing the rest of his life did.
"Why would your stepmother want you dead, though?" Kame asked. "I thought she loved kids."
"That's what she wants everyone to think. The only reason she didn't kick me out after my father died was because it would ruin her image - and because she gets to take care of my inheritance until I come of age. She likes money a lot more than she ever liked me."
"Doesn't sound like you've got much to go home to."
"It's still...it's still my home. My entire life is there. I don't have anything else." Jin heard his voice crack but couldn't bring himself to care. "I don't have anything."
Kame turned and leaned across the bed, stretching out one foot to knock against Jin's. "Right now you've got a warm bed, and somebody who believes you. Save the rest to worry about in the morning. You're still alive, right? That's a good place to start."
Ten minutes later Jin lay in bed in a borrowed T-shirt and sweatpants that were a little too short for him, after attempting to brush his teeth with a finger tipped with toothpaste, and wondered how he'd ever get to sleep after the day he'd had. He underestimated the effect of exhaustion on his young body.
By the time Kame returned from the bathroom and switched off the light, Jin had given himself up to dreams of baseball teams dancing in unison and a star batter who hit a home run just for him.
Part 2