Part Three (a): Tokyo
Back to Part Two: Then
Word count: 5887 (out of ?)
Part Three(a): Tokyo
Hours into the flight, the clouds fell away and there was nothing but blue around them - the azure of the sky and turquoise of the water buoying them up as if they were weightless. Jin opened sleep-encrusted eyes feeling as if he had never been asleep. His neck was sore from sitting upright and his ears were ringing from the residual cry of babies. His hand, the one not clutching the threadbare airplane blanket to his chest, traitorous thing that it was, was wrapped tightly around his ring, fingers threaded through and clenched so hard that he was certain it was going to leave marks.
He’d been dreaming about Kame again. One dream for every night since Kame left Cairo. Amorphous, fleeting dreams. Sometimes, Kame was in somebody else’s skin. Sometimes, it was Jin’s.
It didn’t disturb him as much as it should have. Jin had spent enough years wanting what Kame had, wanting Kame to want what Jin had, that he almost couldn’t separate anything from the jealousy that had started from the very beginning when it was the six of them competing to see who would get to stand upfront. Jin didn’t play second fiddle well. He thought that had been the main problem because Kame didn’t either. Something had to have been the reason they didn’t work out. In his most honest moments, Jin knew a large part had been them.
It was quiet in the cabin. Jin waited until he could make out a green slither in the ocean below before unfurling his hand. He watched, mesmerized, as Japan grew closer.
~
The silence of Narita struck Jin as soon as he stepped off the plane, so sudden and wrong that he stopped in his tracks. Above the joyous sounds of lovers reunited, the bored shuffle of company chauffeurs holding signs that read, “Mr. Smith, Tokyo Tech”, and “McAdams family”, even above the greetings emanating from store fronts, so polite and restrained compared to the roughness and clamor of Egypt, there was a resounding silence. A hole that poked at Jin, daring him to finger it. He couldn’t at first.
Travelers flowed around him in a steady, unstoppable stream, sometimes catching him a glancing blow or stumbling over his luggage. The last time Jin walked down Narita, there had been guards to hold the crowd back. There had been a crowd back then to hold back. So many people had shown up that Jin had been almost afraid of being trampled to death. Somebody had screamed, “Marry me, Jin. I’ll wait for you forever.” Three people fainted - whether from heartbreak or the crush of hundreds of people, he never knew.
That was the life he’d left behind.
Here there were hassled mothers, bored businessmen, blond tourists. People going places. Here, Jin, with his dark sunglasses and hair that wafted about him like a proper model’s, wasn’t worth a second glance.
There were no paparazzi.
Jin realized he was missing the sharp flash of their bulbs. Narita looked different without stars in his eyes, less exciting. The company hadn’t sent anyone and Jin hadn’t told anybody besides Yamapi of his return (the person he wanted to tell most, he couldn’t).
He found a payphone and stuffed a handful of coins into it, looking up at the ads strung out over steel walls as a tiny voice said, "There is...five-minutes-twenty-seconds...left in your call."
There had been a poster of Yamapi last time too. Endorsing Toshiba computers. This time, Jin didn’t know what he was selling. He cocked his head, studying the black tuxedo and rose clenched between Yamapi’s teeth. The ad was twice as large as the one three years ago. Yamapi’s finger was as thick as Jin’s head.
“Sellout,” he said into his phone. “Where are you?”
“The bigger question is where are you?” Yamapi said. “Story of many tabloid articles until they got tired of printing blurry pictures of fat people in camouflage pants.” He spoke slowly, like he was half asleep.
Jin gave Yamapi’s picture the finger. “You’re not here.”
“You told me tomorrow. I believed you.”
“Yes, but.” Jin looked around. “Did you tell the reporters that too?”
Yamapi laughed. “Are you serious?”
Only partly. Jin scratched his head. “How am I supposed to get home?”
“Not hitching a ride with journalists. Hold on. I’ll come get you.”
~
In the end, Ueda picked Jin up in a black sedan with tinted windows - the kind Jin used to believe belonged only to yakuza heads and Johnny. Heads turned then though probably because of the car or Ueda, who never seemed like a normal human being, and Ueda’s one silver earring that reached to his shoulder and swung as he leaned over to unlock the passenger door for Jin.
“Yamashita’s busy,” he said over the edge of his horn-rimmed glasses. His nails, covered with alternating black and red nail polish, drummed against the steering wheel. “He asked me to get you instead.”
“That was two hours ago.”
Ueda raised an eyebrow. “Do you honestly believe I’m the first person Yamashita would call for anything?”
Jin opened his mouth to say yes then shut it again and settled back against the seat. No, he didn’t. Things may have changed over the years but not that. “So who did -”
“Ryo. Shirota. Your brother. Your parents too, but they’re apparently vacationing in Hawaii. Koki.”
Jin choked. “Koki?”
Ueda shrugged and cut in front of another car. “I think he was getting desperate.”
“And all of them were too busy to pick me up?”
“You can’t expect people to drop everything for you,” Ueda said, pulling to a stop at a traffic light. Jin could see the tip of Tokyo Tower in the distance. The skyscraper beside them had the same poster of Yamapi hanging from midlevel. He smoldered at them with that damned rose between his teeth.
“Kame would have come,” Jin said to it.
Ueda sighed. “Then it’s a good thing Kame’s not here.”
~
Jin fell asleep sometime later and woke to find himself alone in the car, parked outside a building with the words ‘Le Ciel’ written in unlit neon bulbs. It had very few windows. The door was solid, worn wood that creaked when Jin pushed it open.
The young man closest to the entrance looked up from polishing the wine glasses and said, “You’ll be wanting the owner then?”
Jin looked past him to the bar and the band setting up on the small stage and nodded.
Ueda was in a backroom, ordering jars of olives on the phone. He seemed oddly comfortable behind the large desk. It reminded Jin of Johnny’s and those years spent before it, answering for the latest fight, the latest scandal, the reason why they hadn’t yet debuted.
He leaned back and propped his feet on the desk, tucking his hands behind his head. Ueda had moved onto peanuts. From the sound of things, he was looking to buy out Japan’s entire supply.
“Helps the beer go down,” Ueda told him as he hung up the phone. “The saltier the better but I’m trying to stay mainly honest here.” More than fifty percent of bars go under their first year, Ueda informed Jin. In that respect, Le Ciel was doing quite well. In its two years of operation, it had never failed to turn a profit though Ueda had just barely managed to scrape by his first four months. “Then I realized the Johnny’s name had always helped my career,” Ueda said, uncorking a bottle of Merlot. “No reason it couldn’t help again. I made a few calls, went to a few meetings, and now Le Ciel’s blooming.” He handed Jin a glass of wine. “This is a place where celebrities can come to relax without having to worry about making the tabloids. And celebrities have a lot of problems to drink away.”
Jin listened to Ueda’s explanation until he couldn’t contain himself anymore and blurted out, “You’re a bar owner now?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“But,” Jin said. He groped for the right words to express his confusion. He spilled some wine trying to gesture it out. “Boxing.”
“I got my license,” Ueda assured him. “It was one of the first things I did after - Well. After.”
After was a good way to think about it. After divided Jin’s life neatly in half. He didn’t know if he liked the after but he’d yearned for it before. “Always thinking what you don’t have is better,” Kame said. It had not been an accusation though Jin should have realized that was the beginning of the end. In the end, Kame had stopped trying to fight it. He may have been talking about a lot of things. “My little wanderbug,” Jin’s mother had said. He was starting to understand it meant the same.
“I forgot. I was supposed to hit you.”
Jin startled back. Ueda looked faintly amused, chin tucked above clasped hands. The lazy smile reminded Jin of Kame, of how the corners of his lips curled up, the top flattened like a Cheshire cat. How he smiled like that when he was amused. When, sometimes, he’d look up at Jin from beneath a pile of rumpled sheets, hair sticking in all directions, some still hanging tenaciously onto the curls Kame had styled.
Ueda clucked. “I’m not going to do it now. It would take away from the impact.” Jin felt almost as if he’d failed somehow in not wanting to be hit. It made no sense. Few things in Tokyo ever had.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said.
“Well, I wasn’t the one who stayed away for years using some utterly selfish excuse at -”
“I was backpacking!” Jin sputtered. “Around the world. It was horrible. There were no toiletries.”
“- finding yourself. You found yourself a long time ago and never gave up that death grip. I don’t think you ever lost yourself.”
“I sang,” Jin grumbled. “Spread music and love around the world. Completely selfless.” ‘And gave away your heart,” Paul’s voice said in his head. ‘Left it behind with everything else you’d ever held dear.’ Jin swatted it away.
“Flies,” he explained.
“You picked an awful time to come back.”
(There was never a good time. They’d told him that after his first hiatus in that tiny hotel room in New York. Koki had, at least. Barked it in his general direction because Koki hadn’t even been able to look at Jin. He hadn’t look at Kame either. They’d all known (even Jin) that Kame would let Jin back, that they’d all end up doing what Kame said. It didn’t matter how angry Koki got.
Kame stayed quiet as Koki laid into Jin. He was folded into himself in a corner, studying his horribly plain brown shoes. Those were not Kamenashi Kazuya shoes. Jin couldn’t imagine how they’d convinced Kame to put those on. He wanted to run his hands through Kame’s perfectly styled hair and convince himself that this was the same man who couldn’t have the sauces on his plate mixing and saw lateness as evil as taking the easy way out.
“Never give up,” Kame’d told him once. “It’s the fourth quarter. The bases are loaded, and you’re up to bat. Always.”
Jin had wanted to ask him if he’d lost the Junior World Championships game that way. If he was trying to make up for that. There must have been a reason for Kame’s deep-rooted drive.
“- picked up when we were just topping the charts. Just picked up and left. Like we hadn’t slaved away five years for that year. Like there weren’t five other people who would be affected. I didn’t even have it the hardest.” Koki glanced at Kame. Kame continued studying those horrible shoes.
“Accidentally put on Nakamaru’s?” Jin asked.
Koki’s face grew red.
“I think so,” Kame said before Koki could explode. “The staff must have gotten them mixed up.”
Jin nodded like that was somehow significant.
Kame sighed. Laced his hands together then unlaced them and finally looked up. There were bags beneath his eyes, which was how Jin knew that this was the same Kame. He smelled like perfume. Beneath the smell of sandalwood and cinnamon would be the dust of someone who needed to catch up on a year’s worth of sleep. Part of it was Jin’s fault, Koki had hissed.
It depended on how one looked at it.
It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it had been somebody other than Kame. Nakamaru would have fretted then adjusted. Ueda would have let all his frustrations out in the ring. Jin would have shrugged and continued on the same way as before. It was only Kame who saw that huge soul crushing responsibility and tried to shoulder all of it alone. Nobody said he had to fill in Jin’s shoes while Jin was gone; it was just the way Kame worked.
That couldn’t be Jin’s fault.
“You need better shoe wearing members,” Jin said. “At least you’d get fashionable shoes if you accidentally got mine.”
“And they’d be a size too big.”
“No. We’re the same size. I know your three sizes too,” Jin added to chase the surprise on Kame’s face deeper.
“Maybe not,” Kame said after a minute. “I gained some weight.”
He tried not to look too pleased as Jin tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the automatic joy that rose, the need to fill Kame out ingrained in his psyche. They shared a look, acknowledging.
“Are we going to talk about shoes all afternoon?” Koki asked.
They didn’t. After that, Kame said, “You should come back if you want to”, and they went up to the rooftop to shoot pictures of Jin. His hair was long and unruly. Kame brushed it through with his hands, fingertips just the right amount of firm against Jin’s scalp, before leaving for their (no, KAT-TUN’s) photoshoot. His smile when he left promised things that were best not thought of in the company of other people.)
Jin had made things work back then. He could make them work again.
Ueda shook his head. “You don’t understand, do you? Why they asked you back.”
“I got the memo. They want to put on a reunion tour. You can’t have a reunion with just five people.” Jin frowned, a sudden thought occurring to him. “You are planning on saying yes.”
Ueda settled back into his chair, plucking some invisible lint off his black cashmere jacket before answering. “We’re all still under contract. We have to do it. You’re not. There can’t be a concert if you refuse.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want to? Are you telling me to refuse?” Jin rose from his chair. Another thought occurred to him. “Does Kame know about this?”
“Are you going to say yes if I tell you he does?”
“No.” Jin hesitated, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “Unless that’s been your plan all along.”
“He doesn’t.”
Mollified, Jin sat back down. “Figures. You’re probably afraid you sound like a grandpa after all these years. Hitting thirty can do that to you.”
Ueda frowned. “Stick around and see.”
~
He was kicked out of Ueda’s office afterwards. The bartender, whose personalized jacket helpfully said Takashi, was kind enough to let him mope by the bar, giving him some of Ueda’s beer-enhancing salted nuts, and put him to work drying glasses when the nuts were no longer enough. Except for the lack of sand, it was almost like being back in Cairo.
By the time the first customers showed up, Jin had put on a full serving uniform and was behind the bar, showing Takashi how a real Sex on the Beach was made. “Martini,” the man ordered, and Jin found he didn’t mind serving that to the man either.
Ueda came out when the bar was in full swing. “Maybe I should hire you,” he said in amusement, watching Jin pour three beers.
“Maybe. You weren’t kidding about Le Ciel doing well.” Jin had served in one hour more customers than his previous bar saw in a night. But then, there was no comparing a bar in Cairo to that in the heart of Tokyo, even one that had been graced with the presence of two idols.
Le Ciel saw plenty of idols. It saw plenty of celebrity clientele in general, possibly more than Jin was aware of. There were plenty of people who looked like celebrities there; he’d been away from the entertainment scene for too long to recognize the new faces. Then he saw one that he almost didn’t recognize at first.
“Take over my side,” he told Takashi and, without waiting for a response, slipped out of the bar.
He caught up to the man backstage, his serving outfit letting him walk past the security guard by the door with no problem. Backstage was no more than a small space partitioned from the stage and the main room by a heavy black curtain. It was quaint, like something one of Jin’s characters in one of his movies would use. He could hear the hum of the bar as clearly here as outside.
“Jimmy?” he said. “Jimmy Mackey?” He had to raise his voice to be heard.
Jimmy didn’t look any different from the Jimmy in Jin’s memory. He was still as tall, still as awkward. There was something disconcerting about Jimmy’s face, like he could be handsome if Jin could just reach out and tweak a feature or two. Jin had sometimes wondered what happened to the other man. They’d hung out several times after Jimmy had quit the agency, but it had been years since he’d had any contact.
Jimmy, it seemed, had started a band.
“Just a small thing. Like a hobby, almost. We practice in our free time and play here sometimes. Ueda is good about letting us have the stage. Fosters the feeling of exclusivity, I guess, since we all used to be from the same circle and all.”
Jimmy clasped hands like he was issuing a challenge. Jin almost didn’t feel the pain, still trying to wrap his mind around finding Jimmy there.
“How’s your English?”
“Good,” Jin said. “Fine. I stayed in Australia for a few months when I first started out.”
“Yamapi told me about you backpacking around the world. Wild, but I guess that didn’t last long since you’re here now.” Jimmy studied him with almost sympathy. Jin thought he ought to be the one feeling pity; the agency had never asked Jimmy to come back. “I bet you don’t get much news wherever you were. There’s some tasty gossip floating around. It’s like a shoujo manga around here.”
“Right,” Jin said. He started to say more but stopped, unsure of what ought to be said. Nobody ever talked about the dropouts in the agency. It had been a forbidden topic. One of those superstitious things where if somebody mentioned a dropout, they’d never get to debut.
“How are things?” he settled on finally. He’d meant to inquire after Jimmy’s health, but the other man took it as a sign to fill Jin in. It was the same drivel: who was mad at whom, who was going to debut, resign. Sprinkled among them were private gossip, and Jin remembered his mother’s comment about Jimmy being creepy. He almost wanted to agree with her. Most of the names, Jin didn’t even recognize. He felt his attention start to wander until a word drew him back.
“What?”
Jimmy blinked, thought back. “Koichi’s getting a new bike?”
Jin waved that away. “Before that.”
“Kamenashi has a lover. It wouldn‘t be that scandalous - because who doesn‘t - except word is his lover‘s some executive. And male.
Jimmy said it so matter of fact that Jin almost thought he meant lover in a different sense. Lover as in friend or coworker or person Kame accidentally bumped into while buying broccoli. Not lover. Briefly, Jin wandered if there had been Japanese paparazzi in Cairo.
“I’m not that surprised, really,” Jimmy continued. “The thing is, if it’s somebody higher up in the agency there’s bound to be talk about favoritism and favors in exchange for - you know.” He made a crude gesture with his hand.
Jin stared at it blankly, mind refusing to interpret the signal. They had only ever fucked women and each other. It felt almost like a betrayal for Kame to touch another man, never mind his reasons. Jin had never even thought about another man.
He realized Jimmy was expecting some response.
The chime saved him. Jimmy glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to set up now. Want to catch up later? We’ll grab a few drinks after my set. You can get my autograph.” He winked.
Jin forced himself to laugh.
~
“I perform as well sometimes,” Ueda said. His elbow knocked into Jin’s on the table. The ice in his drink was the size of Jin’s fist. Ueda saw where Jin was looking. “Soda. I’m technically working.”
Jin raised his glass. “I’m not. Haven’t been in a while.”
“I thought you sang and spread love.”
Apparently, not as much as Kame. Jin shrugged. “Odds and ends. Not a real job. I don’t need a real job.”
“The troubles of a rich man?”
Jin snorted. “Not really. It’s been very trouble free until Johnny came and said, ‘Hey, want to have your old job back?’”
Ueda was silent at his side. When he did speak, it was with a deliberate, measured tone. “Akanishi. There has been some talk -”
“Of what? Johnny really asked me back just to laugh in my face?”
Ueda shook his head.
“Then what? Don’t tell me there’s still those pregnancy rumors.”
“No,” Ueda said, looked about to say something before a shout caught his attention. He studied his soda and sighed. “It's nothing. You'll find out soon enough.”
“So why bring it up? Why did Johnny ask me back?”
Ueda shrugged. “Maybe it’s for one last hurrah.” He wasn’t telling the complete truth. Jin knew that as surely as he knew he didn’t want to know why he was back in Japan. Not really.
“I believe that’s Yamapi.” Ueda picked up his glass. “And my babysitting duties are now over. I’ll see you tomorrow, Akanishi.”
~
A red haired man cut in front of Yamapi, and Jin found himself following the sway of the man’s hips to the backroom, taking Yamapi's beer as he passed. Yamapi just shook his head, and Jin shrugged, unapologetic. Those hips drew him like a magnet, the proportion of them perfect against the waist and ass.
Jin wasn’t normally a hips man. He was certainly not normally attracted to men’s hips, preferring the soft curves of women. There was only one man whose hips he’d ever loved, and he’d know those hips anywhere. He’d certainly spent enough time worshipping them in the dark for the memory of their span to be imprinted in his skin, the jaggedness of the bone to leave phantom aches in his spine. If he spread out his hands, Jin could almost feel those hips cradled between them.
Jin hadn’t only made a study of Kame’s hips. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he knew Kame’s three sizes though the knowledge went beyond that - more visceral. It was something borne out of years by the man’s side (at his back), taking in the slight tilt of the head, rigidity of the spine. It was the way Kame carried himself that was the most revealing. Jin knew from the set of his shoulders that Kame knew he was there. From the set of his shoulders, Jin guessed that Kame knew he was slightly drunk as well. He always had a sixth sense for such things.
He nodded to the people they passed, pretending he knew them and they did the same. Jin didn’t care if he left them confused. The women wore short black dresses and chunky gems. Bejeweled nails clutched long wine stems. The men were no different though their black was more muted and little glittered. It was an older crowd than Jin imagined for Ueda’s place.
Kame turned around only after they ducked into the adjoining room, determined, like a good idol, to never start a scene. The room, Jin realized with some regret, was not private enough for a renewal of his knowledge of Kame’s hips. They tilted now to the right as Kame crossed his arms.
“I should have realized when Ueda insisted I come tonight. He always did have a skewed sense of humor.”
“Think he wanted you to see me drunk?”
Kame wrinkled his nose. “He probably wanted me to wipe up your vomit. This is my way of telling you that I’ll kill you if you vomit.”
“It’s ok,” Jin said. “I can hold my liquor.”
Kame remained unconvinced. “I didn’t realize you were back in Japan. I would have -”
“Run away to Cairo?”
Kame shook his head. He set his cup down on the boxes of pickled olives then reached over and took Jin's glass from him. He rearranged the bottles, speaking to the olives instead of Jin. “I didn’t run away. Filming was over, and I had obligations here. I would have told you except there was never a good time.”
“I wanted to show you the pyramids too. We should have done that instead of visiting the lake if I’d known. There are lakes everywhere.”
“But it was a good lake.”
Jin was pleased. “You think so?”
“Yes.” Kame picked at the strands of his shirt. There was a lot to choose from; it ended in tatters centimeters from Kame’s jean clad knees. Jin didn’t understand the fashion but Kame looked good. Kame almost always looked good. Red was a good color for him. “And now you’re here.”
“I am,” Jin said. He couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“The lakes here aren’t as good.”
“No,” Jin agreed. “But the bars are better. I don’t know about the music. I guess you didn’t come here to hear Jimmy Mackey sing.”
“I came here to support Ueda.”
“Because he asked you to come.”
Kame nodded.
“So you’re still in contact with the rest of them? I know Junno’s in your movie and Koki -” it pained Jin to say - “gives you literary recommendations.”
“The rest of them stayed in Japan.”
“I would have,” Jin said. “But I guess it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. There are so many men in Japan.”
Kame didn’t know what Jin meant.
“Nothing,” Jin said, trying to ignore Jimmy Mackey’s voice in his head going, ‘lover, lover, lover’ like some kind of taunt. They never mentioned rumors to each other. Kame may have broken an unspoken rule but Jin wasn’t going to sink to his level. He also didn’t think he wanted to know who Kame was seeing.
“I would have come back without the reunion, you know.”
Kame shook his head.
“I would have.”
“Akanishi,” Kame said. He sounded tired, like he was talking to a stubborn child. “You were talking about America before I was fifteen. We played American games because everything American was cool. You had a Los Angeles tour book you kept by your bedside. I know the best times to visit each state because of you. There was no way you would have stayed.”
“I’m here now,” Jin said. He thought his voice was getting louder but he couldn’t be sure. It was hard to be sure of anything beyond the close proximity of Kame. “Just because I left doesn’t mean I didn’t miss Japan. I would have come back eventually.” He tried not to say he thought he’d been special. That was a foolish thing to believe just like thinking six months in LA had solved everything.
“I never apologized,” he said now. “For the first time, I mean. It must have been hard on you.”
Emotions flickered across Kame’s face, too fast for Jin to recognize. "You're drunk," Kame said finally. "Go home, Akanishi."
~
There is a certain way Jin always imagined things would end:
A few months after Jin’s return press conference - maybe a few years - they have another fight over something stupid like pirates versus gypsies only it turns into one about Junno’s lame jokes, Nakamaru’s distraction, Jin’s selfishness, Nobuta. Someone - Ueda, Jin, Kame - says, “This isn’t working. I can’t go on like this. Not anymore.” And it would be just another one of KAT-TUN’s epic dressing room fights only Johnny hears about it and thinks it’s a good idea.
They are crammed into a small conference room to be given the news. Nakamaru wants to work things out. So does Junno. Jin thinks, “Fuck it. KAT-TUN only exists because of me anyways.”
And that is the only reason (though he wants it to be more. It would have been more, a few years ago) that Kame follows him down to the subway station. It is midday. There is one man seated on the orange plastic chairs. The next train will arrive in four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Kame stops two arms-lengths away from him and says, “We can save this. If you’re with me. We can still save this.”
Then he holds out his hand. Just like in auditions. Just like the day the group is formed. Jin takes it as the train whizzes past.
It would make a great picture.
But reality is sneakier:
Jin puts out a solo for his drama. He doesn’t think much about it; Yamapi had solos and duos and trios and returns every time to NewS. Nakamaru gets another hosting gig with Koki. Jin sees Junno off at Narita as part of Johnny’s ‘Korea and then the world’ campaign, sends Ueda champagne when the songs Ueda writes start climbing the charts. Kame does what Kame always does: work 24-hour days, appear in television programs, musicals, dramas. He is spread so thin Jin thinks he sees Kame everywhere.
There is no definitive break. It is so unlike KAT-TUN’s image that nobody suspects anything because surely a group defined by drama and fights and living on the edge would always end things with a bang. But they don’t.
After ‘Forever Sky’s promotions end, Jin gets a two week break that turns into months. He goes to Australia, which is only a hop away from New Zealand. From there, he goes to China. Not westernized Beijing China but rural China, farmers and donkey-pulled carts China. He is picking tealeaves, straw basket soaking the sweat running down his back, when he gets the call.
They text each other condolences. And Jin. Jin moves onward to Egypt.
~
The subway doors opened to Ginza. Jin was caught for a split second in the outward rush until the second wave of commuters pushed him back inside. It was nearly midnight. The trains were crowded with salarymen in suits, falling and crowding into every recess. Jin’s luggage got underfoot with every stop. He felt grungy: too tan against the pale skinned perfection of the office ladies, too old compared to the little kids with school-issued ties.
He needed a shower. And a hairstylist. And somebody, possibly, to do a double take and say, “Akanishi Jin?”
The train picked up speed as it rounded the corner. They ducked inside a tunnel, momentarily throwing the cabin into darkness until Jin realized the blackness outside only made the fluorescent lights brighter. It was like a camera trick to draw one’s attention. The sign reserving seats for the elderly, disabled, and pregnant was missing a corner. His black Channel suitcase had a gray, over used sheen.
Lights lined the inside of the tunnel as well. They had tried counting them as children though they’d never settled on a number. Kame had gotten up to fifty-two. Jin never made it that far; the lights tended to blur into one long stripe unless one concentrated really hard.
(“There’s a rhythm,” Kame said years ago. “Look for the flashes.”
He had taken Jin’s hand and tapped it out on Jin’s palm. The pattern of lights made it hard to anticipate. Kame tapped out two fasts then a slow then four fasts like he was writing something in Morse code. His hand fit completely in Jin’s. There was something incongruent about the feel and look of Kame’s hands - boy rough with girl elegance - that made it all the more special.
Jin held his hand flat, careful not to disturb the flutter of Kame’s fingers along his palm.
Kame touched people naturally like he didn’t know his hands sought them out. It was just one of Kame’s many quirks. The first time - a clap on the shoulder, so quick Jin might have imagined it - Jin nearly jumped out of his skin. Kame didn’t beg to be touched. Instead, he bestowed it upon others in bits and pieces like they were the lucky ones. All of it, of course, done subconsciously. Jin was sure that if he pointed it out, Kame would stop touching people altogether.
Sp he didn’t and every night for two weeks, they entertained themselves that way.
Kame lived one turn down the fourth street and two vending machines from Jin. Sometimes, when it was very dark, Kame followed Jin home where Jin would charge him a fifty-yen entry fee and use that to buy them a drink from the closest machine. Sometimes, when it was even darker, Kame would stay the night.
Jin remembered the shadow of his silhouette, flanked by Jin’s dresser and desk full of books he never opened. Kame belonged there with the rest of Jin’s possessions, the sharp dip of his waist visible still through mounds of borrowed blankets.
Jin thought that was the first time he’d become aware of Kame. ‘Devilish charm’, Koki had said. Jin didn’t understand until he woke one night and found that he’d rolled right up against Kame. The other boy was sound asleep. One of his hands had worked itself out of the cocoon of blankets and fluttered in the air in time to Kame’s breaths. It stirred Jin’s hair. Kame’s lay in disarray, folded at right angles between his head and the pillow. Kame was going to be upset when he woke up.
Jin wanted to touch him. More than that, he wanted to sink his hands into Kame’s skin, reach down far enough to touch some essential part of Kame and brand him there. He wanted to crush Kame and fuse himself to the pieces.
The impulse came unexpected and unsettling. Jin contented himself with tucking his hands back beneath the covers, tilting his head so that Kame’s palm lay flat against his cheek, nails grazing his lips. It tickled just a bit.)
The train rattled onto a different track. Suddenly, they hurtled out of the tunnel running high above the city. Below them, lights from Tokyo’s infinite buildings, cars, billboards lit the night in neon whites and reds. It promised another world apart from the sun. A better world, perhaps. A kinder world. Like Kame, Tokyo never slept.
Jin stretched out his arms, wanting to gather it all up against him. He felt, suddenly, like shouting he was here. He was finally home.
TBC
Word count: 5887 (out of ?)
Part Three(a): Tokyo
Hours into the flight, the clouds fell away and there was nothing but blue around them - the azure of the sky and turquoise of the water buoying them up as if they were weightless. Jin opened sleep-encrusted eyes feeling as if he had never been asleep. His neck was sore from sitting upright and his ears were ringing from the residual cry of babies. His hand, the one not clutching the threadbare airplane blanket to his chest, traitorous thing that it was, was wrapped tightly around his ring, fingers threaded through and clenched so hard that he was certain it was going to leave marks.
He’d been dreaming about Kame again. One dream for every night since Kame left Cairo. Amorphous, fleeting dreams. Sometimes, Kame was in somebody else’s skin. Sometimes, it was Jin’s.
It didn’t disturb him as much as it should have. Jin had spent enough years wanting what Kame had, wanting Kame to want what Jin had, that he almost couldn’t separate anything from the jealousy that had started from the very beginning when it was the six of them competing to see who would get to stand upfront. Jin didn’t play second fiddle well. He thought that had been the main problem because Kame didn’t either. Something had to have been the reason they didn’t work out. In his most honest moments, Jin knew a large part had been them.
It was quiet in the cabin. Jin waited until he could make out a green slither in the ocean below before unfurling his hand. He watched, mesmerized, as Japan grew closer.
~
The silence of Narita struck Jin as soon as he stepped off the plane, so sudden and wrong that he stopped in his tracks. Above the joyous sounds of lovers reunited, the bored shuffle of company chauffeurs holding signs that read, “Mr. Smith, Tokyo Tech”, and “McAdams family”, even above the greetings emanating from store fronts, so polite and restrained compared to the roughness and clamor of Egypt, there was a resounding silence. A hole that poked at Jin, daring him to finger it. He couldn’t at first.
Travelers flowed around him in a steady, unstoppable stream, sometimes catching him a glancing blow or stumbling over his luggage. The last time Jin walked down Narita, there had been guards to hold the crowd back. There had been a crowd back then to hold back. So many people had shown up that Jin had been almost afraid of being trampled to death. Somebody had screamed, “Marry me, Jin. I’ll wait for you forever.” Three people fainted - whether from heartbreak or the crush of hundreds of people, he never knew.
That was the life he’d left behind.
Here there were hassled mothers, bored businessmen, blond tourists. People going places. Here, Jin, with his dark sunglasses and hair that wafted about him like a proper model’s, wasn’t worth a second glance.
There were no paparazzi.
Jin realized he was missing the sharp flash of their bulbs. Narita looked different without stars in his eyes, less exciting. The company hadn’t sent anyone and Jin hadn’t told anybody besides Yamapi of his return (the person he wanted to tell most, he couldn’t).
He found a payphone and stuffed a handful of coins into it, looking up at the ads strung out over steel walls as a tiny voice said, "There is...five-minutes-twenty-seconds...left in your call."
There had been a poster of Yamapi last time too. Endorsing Toshiba computers. This time, Jin didn’t know what he was selling. He cocked his head, studying the black tuxedo and rose clenched between Yamapi’s teeth. The ad was twice as large as the one three years ago. Yamapi’s finger was as thick as Jin’s head.
“Sellout,” he said into his phone. “Where are you?”
“The bigger question is where are you?” Yamapi said. “Story of many tabloid articles until they got tired of printing blurry pictures of fat people in camouflage pants.” He spoke slowly, like he was half asleep.
Jin gave Yamapi’s picture the finger. “You’re not here.”
“You told me tomorrow. I believed you.”
“Yes, but.” Jin looked around. “Did you tell the reporters that too?”
Yamapi laughed. “Are you serious?”
Only partly. Jin scratched his head. “How am I supposed to get home?”
“Not hitching a ride with journalists. Hold on. I’ll come get you.”
~
In the end, Ueda picked Jin up in a black sedan with tinted windows - the kind Jin used to believe belonged only to yakuza heads and Johnny. Heads turned then though probably because of the car or Ueda, who never seemed like a normal human being, and Ueda’s one silver earring that reached to his shoulder and swung as he leaned over to unlock the passenger door for Jin.
“Yamashita’s busy,” he said over the edge of his horn-rimmed glasses. His nails, covered with alternating black and red nail polish, drummed against the steering wheel. “He asked me to get you instead.”
“That was two hours ago.”
Ueda raised an eyebrow. “Do you honestly believe I’m the first person Yamashita would call for anything?”
Jin opened his mouth to say yes then shut it again and settled back against the seat. No, he didn’t. Things may have changed over the years but not that. “So who did -”
“Ryo. Shirota. Your brother. Your parents too, but they’re apparently vacationing in Hawaii. Koki.”
Jin choked. “Koki?”
Ueda shrugged and cut in front of another car. “I think he was getting desperate.”
“And all of them were too busy to pick me up?”
“You can’t expect people to drop everything for you,” Ueda said, pulling to a stop at a traffic light. Jin could see the tip of Tokyo Tower in the distance. The skyscraper beside them had the same poster of Yamapi hanging from midlevel. He smoldered at them with that damned rose between his teeth.
“Kame would have come,” Jin said to it.
Ueda sighed. “Then it’s a good thing Kame’s not here.”
~
Jin fell asleep sometime later and woke to find himself alone in the car, parked outside a building with the words ‘Le Ciel’ written in unlit neon bulbs. It had very few windows. The door was solid, worn wood that creaked when Jin pushed it open.
The young man closest to the entrance looked up from polishing the wine glasses and said, “You’ll be wanting the owner then?”
Jin looked past him to the bar and the band setting up on the small stage and nodded.
Ueda was in a backroom, ordering jars of olives on the phone. He seemed oddly comfortable behind the large desk. It reminded Jin of Johnny’s and those years spent before it, answering for the latest fight, the latest scandal, the reason why they hadn’t yet debuted.
He leaned back and propped his feet on the desk, tucking his hands behind his head. Ueda had moved onto peanuts. From the sound of things, he was looking to buy out Japan’s entire supply.
“Helps the beer go down,” Ueda told him as he hung up the phone. “The saltier the better but I’m trying to stay mainly honest here.” More than fifty percent of bars go under their first year, Ueda informed Jin. In that respect, Le Ciel was doing quite well. In its two years of operation, it had never failed to turn a profit though Ueda had just barely managed to scrape by his first four months. “Then I realized the Johnny’s name had always helped my career,” Ueda said, uncorking a bottle of Merlot. “No reason it couldn’t help again. I made a few calls, went to a few meetings, and now Le Ciel’s blooming.” He handed Jin a glass of wine. “This is a place where celebrities can come to relax without having to worry about making the tabloids. And celebrities have a lot of problems to drink away.”
Jin listened to Ueda’s explanation until he couldn’t contain himself anymore and blurted out, “You’re a bar owner now?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“But,” Jin said. He groped for the right words to express his confusion. He spilled some wine trying to gesture it out. “Boxing.”
“I got my license,” Ueda assured him. “It was one of the first things I did after - Well. After.”
After was a good way to think about it. After divided Jin’s life neatly in half. He didn’t know if he liked the after but he’d yearned for it before. “Always thinking what you don’t have is better,” Kame said. It had not been an accusation though Jin should have realized that was the beginning of the end. In the end, Kame had stopped trying to fight it. He may have been talking about a lot of things. “My little wanderbug,” Jin’s mother had said. He was starting to understand it meant the same.
“I forgot. I was supposed to hit you.”
Jin startled back. Ueda looked faintly amused, chin tucked above clasped hands. The lazy smile reminded Jin of Kame, of how the corners of his lips curled up, the top flattened like a Cheshire cat. How he smiled like that when he was amused. When, sometimes, he’d look up at Jin from beneath a pile of rumpled sheets, hair sticking in all directions, some still hanging tenaciously onto the curls Kame had styled.
Ueda clucked. “I’m not going to do it now. It would take away from the impact.” Jin felt almost as if he’d failed somehow in not wanting to be hit. It made no sense. Few things in Tokyo ever had.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said.
“Well, I wasn’t the one who stayed away for years using some utterly selfish excuse at -”
“I was backpacking!” Jin sputtered. “Around the world. It was horrible. There were no toiletries.”
“- finding yourself. You found yourself a long time ago and never gave up that death grip. I don’t think you ever lost yourself.”
“I sang,” Jin grumbled. “Spread music and love around the world. Completely selfless.” ‘And gave away your heart,” Paul’s voice said in his head. ‘Left it behind with everything else you’d ever held dear.’ Jin swatted it away.
“Flies,” he explained.
“You picked an awful time to come back.”
(There was never a good time. They’d told him that after his first hiatus in that tiny hotel room in New York. Koki had, at least. Barked it in his general direction because Koki hadn’t even been able to look at Jin. He hadn’t look at Kame either. They’d all known (even Jin) that Kame would let Jin back, that they’d all end up doing what Kame said. It didn’t matter how angry Koki got.
Kame stayed quiet as Koki laid into Jin. He was folded into himself in a corner, studying his horribly plain brown shoes. Those were not Kamenashi Kazuya shoes. Jin couldn’t imagine how they’d convinced Kame to put those on. He wanted to run his hands through Kame’s perfectly styled hair and convince himself that this was the same man who couldn’t have the sauces on his plate mixing and saw lateness as evil as taking the easy way out.
“Never give up,” Kame’d told him once. “It’s the fourth quarter. The bases are loaded, and you’re up to bat. Always.”
Jin had wanted to ask him if he’d lost the Junior World Championships game that way. If he was trying to make up for that. There must have been a reason for Kame’s deep-rooted drive.
“- picked up when we were just topping the charts. Just picked up and left. Like we hadn’t slaved away five years for that year. Like there weren’t five other people who would be affected. I didn’t even have it the hardest.” Koki glanced at Kame. Kame continued studying those horrible shoes.
“Accidentally put on Nakamaru’s?” Jin asked.
Koki’s face grew red.
“I think so,” Kame said before Koki could explode. “The staff must have gotten them mixed up.”
Jin nodded like that was somehow significant.
Kame sighed. Laced his hands together then unlaced them and finally looked up. There were bags beneath his eyes, which was how Jin knew that this was the same Kame. He smelled like perfume. Beneath the smell of sandalwood and cinnamon would be the dust of someone who needed to catch up on a year’s worth of sleep. Part of it was Jin’s fault, Koki had hissed.
It depended on how one looked at it.
It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it had been somebody other than Kame. Nakamaru would have fretted then adjusted. Ueda would have let all his frustrations out in the ring. Jin would have shrugged and continued on the same way as before. It was only Kame who saw that huge soul crushing responsibility and tried to shoulder all of it alone. Nobody said he had to fill in Jin’s shoes while Jin was gone; it was just the way Kame worked.
That couldn’t be Jin’s fault.
“You need better shoe wearing members,” Jin said. “At least you’d get fashionable shoes if you accidentally got mine.”
“And they’d be a size too big.”
“No. We’re the same size. I know your three sizes too,” Jin added to chase the surprise on Kame’s face deeper.
“Maybe not,” Kame said after a minute. “I gained some weight.”
He tried not to look too pleased as Jin tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the automatic joy that rose, the need to fill Kame out ingrained in his psyche. They shared a look, acknowledging.
“Are we going to talk about shoes all afternoon?” Koki asked.
They didn’t. After that, Kame said, “You should come back if you want to”, and they went up to the rooftop to shoot pictures of Jin. His hair was long and unruly. Kame brushed it through with his hands, fingertips just the right amount of firm against Jin’s scalp, before leaving for their (no, KAT-TUN’s) photoshoot. His smile when he left promised things that were best not thought of in the company of other people.)
Jin had made things work back then. He could make them work again.
Ueda shook his head. “You don’t understand, do you? Why they asked you back.”
“I got the memo. They want to put on a reunion tour. You can’t have a reunion with just five people.” Jin frowned, a sudden thought occurring to him. “You are planning on saying yes.”
Ueda settled back into his chair, plucking some invisible lint off his black cashmere jacket before answering. “We’re all still under contract. We have to do it. You’re not. There can’t be a concert if you refuse.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want to? Are you telling me to refuse?” Jin rose from his chair. Another thought occurred to him. “Does Kame know about this?”
“Are you going to say yes if I tell you he does?”
“No.” Jin hesitated, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “Unless that’s been your plan all along.”
“He doesn’t.”
Mollified, Jin sat back down. “Figures. You’re probably afraid you sound like a grandpa after all these years. Hitting thirty can do that to you.”
Ueda frowned. “Stick around and see.”
~
He was kicked out of Ueda’s office afterwards. The bartender, whose personalized jacket helpfully said Takashi, was kind enough to let him mope by the bar, giving him some of Ueda’s beer-enhancing salted nuts, and put him to work drying glasses when the nuts were no longer enough. Except for the lack of sand, it was almost like being back in Cairo.
By the time the first customers showed up, Jin had put on a full serving uniform and was behind the bar, showing Takashi how a real Sex on the Beach was made. “Martini,” the man ordered, and Jin found he didn’t mind serving that to the man either.
Ueda came out when the bar was in full swing. “Maybe I should hire you,” he said in amusement, watching Jin pour three beers.
“Maybe. You weren’t kidding about Le Ciel doing well.” Jin had served in one hour more customers than his previous bar saw in a night. But then, there was no comparing a bar in Cairo to that in the heart of Tokyo, even one that had been graced with the presence of two idols.
Le Ciel saw plenty of idols. It saw plenty of celebrity clientele in general, possibly more than Jin was aware of. There were plenty of people who looked like celebrities there; he’d been away from the entertainment scene for too long to recognize the new faces. Then he saw one that he almost didn’t recognize at first.
“Take over my side,” he told Takashi and, without waiting for a response, slipped out of the bar.
He caught up to the man backstage, his serving outfit letting him walk past the security guard by the door with no problem. Backstage was no more than a small space partitioned from the stage and the main room by a heavy black curtain. It was quaint, like something one of Jin’s characters in one of his movies would use. He could hear the hum of the bar as clearly here as outside.
“Jimmy?” he said. “Jimmy Mackey?” He had to raise his voice to be heard.
Jimmy didn’t look any different from the Jimmy in Jin’s memory. He was still as tall, still as awkward. There was something disconcerting about Jimmy’s face, like he could be handsome if Jin could just reach out and tweak a feature or two. Jin had sometimes wondered what happened to the other man. They’d hung out several times after Jimmy had quit the agency, but it had been years since he’d had any contact.
Jimmy, it seemed, had started a band.
“Just a small thing. Like a hobby, almost. We practice in our free time and play here sometimes. Ueda is good about letting us have the stage. Fosters the feeling of exclusivity, I guess, since we all used to be from the same circle and all.”
Jimmy clasped hands like he was issuing a challenge. Jin almost didn’t feel the pain, still trying to wrap his mind around finding Jimmy there.
“How’s your English?”
“Good,” Jin said. “Fine. I stayed in Australia for a few months when I first started out.”
“Yamapi told me about you backpacking around the world. Wild, but I guess that didn’t last long since you’re here now.” Jimmy studied him with almost sympathy. Jin thought he ought to be the one feeling pity; the agency had never asked Jimmy to come back. “I bet you don’t get much news wherever you were. There’s some tasty gossip floating around. It’s like a shoujo manga around here.”
“Right,” Jin said. He started to say more but stopped, unsure of what ought to be said. Nobody ever talked about the dropouts in the agency. It had been a forbidden topic. One of those superstitious things where if somebody mentioned a dropout, they’d never get to debut.
“How are things?” he settled on finally. He’d meant to inquire after Jimmy’s health, but the other man took it as a sign to fill Jin in. It was the same drivel: who was mad at whom, who was going to debut, resign. Sprinkled among them were private gossip, and Jin remembered his mother’s comment about Jimmy being creepy. He almost wanted to agree with her. Most of the names, Jin didn’t even recognize. He felt his attention start to wander until a word drew him back.
“What?”
Jimmy blinked, thought back. “Koichi’s getting a new bike?”
Jin waved that away. “Before that.”
“Kamenashi has a lover. It wouldn‘t be that scandalous - because who doesn‘t - except word is his lover‘s some executive. And male.
Jimmy said it so matter of fact that Jin almost thought he meant lover in a different sense. Lover as in friend or coworker or person Kame accidentally bumped into while buying broccoli. Not lover. Briefly, Jin wandered if there had been Japanese paparazzi in Cairo.
“I’m not that surprised, really,” Jimmy continued. “The thing is, if it’s somebody higher up in the agency there’s bound to be talk about favoritism and favors in exchange for - you know.” He made a crude gesture with his hand.
Jin stared at it blankly, mind refusing to interpret the signal. They had only ever fucked women and each other. It felt almost like a betrayal for Kame to touch another man, never mind his reasons. Jin had never even thought about another man.
He realized Jimmy was expecting some response.
The chime saved him. Jimmy glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to set up now. Want to catch up later? We’ll grab a few drinks after my set. You can get my autograph.” He winked.
Jin forced himself to laugh.
~
“I perform as well sometimes,” Ueda said. His elbow knocked into Jin’s on the table. The ice in his drink was the size of Jin’s fist. Ueda saw where Jin was looking. “Soda. I’m technically working.”
Jin raised his glass. “I’m not. Haven’t been in a while.”
“I thought you sang and spread love.”
Apparently, not as much as Kame. Jin shrugged. “Odds and ends. Not a real job. I don’t need a real job.”
“The troubles of a rich man?”
Jin snorted. “Not really. It’s been very trouble free until Johnny came and said, ‘Hey, want to have your old job back?’”
Ueda was silent at his side. When he did speak, it was with a deliberate, measured tone. “Akanishi. There has been some talk -”
“Of what? Johnny really asked me back just to laugh in my face?”
Ueda shook his head.
“Then what? Don’t tell me there’s still those pregnancy rumors.”
“No,” Ueda said, looked about to say something before a shout caught his attention. He studied his soda and sighed. “It's nothing. You'll find out soon enough.”
“So why bring it up? Why did Johnny ask me back?”
Ueda shrugged. “Maybe it’s for one last hurrah.” He wasn’t telling the complete truth. Jin knew that as surely as he knew he didn’t want to know why he was back in Japan. Not really.
“I believe that’s Yamapi.” Ueda picked up his glass. “And my babysitting duties are now over. I’ll see you tomorrow, Akanishi.”
~
A red haired man cut in front of Yamapi, and Jin found himself following the sway of the man’s hips to the backroom, taking Yamapi's beer as he passed. Yamapi just shook his head, and Jin shrugged, unapologetic. Those hips drew him like a magnet, the proportion of them perfect against the waist and ass.
Jin wasn’t normally a hips man. He was certainly not normally attracted to men’s hips, preferring the soft curves of women. There was only one man whose hips he’d ever loved, and he’d know those hips anywhere. He’d certainly spent enough time worshipping them in the dark for the memory of their span to be imprinted in his skin, the jaggedness of the bone to leave phantom aches in his spine. If he spread out his hands, Jin could almost feel those hips cradled between them.
Jin hadn’t only made a study of Kame’s hips. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he knew Kame’s three sizes though the knowledge went beyond that - more visceral. It was something borne out of years by the man’s side (at his back), taking in the slight tilt of the head, rigidity of the spine. It was the way Kame carried himself that was the most revealing. Jin knew from the set of his shoulders that Kame knew he was there. From the set of his shoulders, Jin guessed that Kame knew he was slightly drunk as well. He always had a sixth sense for such things.
He nodded to the people they passed, pretending he knew them and they did the same. Jin didn’t care if he left them confused. The women wore short black dresses and chunky gems. Bejeweled nails clutched long wine stems. The men were no different though their black was more muted and little glittered. It was an older crowd than Jin imagined for Ueda’s place.
Kame turned around only after they ducked into the adjoining room, determined, like a good idol, to never start a scene. The room, Jin realized with some regret, was not private enough for a renewal of his knowledge of Kame’s hips. They tilted now to the right as Kame crossed his arms.
“I should have realized when Ueda insisted I come tonight. He always did have a skewed sense of humor.”
“Think he wanted you to see me drunk?”
Kame wrinkled his nose. “He probably wanted me to wipe up your vomit. This is my way of telling you that I’ll kill you if you vomit.”
“It’s ok,” Jin said. “I can hold my liquor.”
Kame remained unconvinced. “I didn’t realize you were back in Japan. I would have -”
“Run away to Cairo?”
Kame shook his head. He set his cup down on the boxes of pickled olives then reached over and took Jin's glass from him. He rearranged the bottles, speaking to the olives instead of Jin. “I didn’t run away. Filming was over, and I had obligations here. I would have told you except there was never a good time.”
“I wanted to show you the pyramids too. We should have done that instead of visiting the lake if I’d known. There are lakes everywhere.”
“But it was a good lake.”
Jin was pleased. “You think so?”
“Yes.” Kame picked at the strands of his shirt. There was a lot to choose from; it ended in tatters centimeters from Kame’s jean clad knees. Jin didn’t understand the fashion but Kame looked good. Kame almost always looked good. Red was a good color for him. “And now you’re here.”
“I am,” Jin said. He couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“The lakes here aren’t as good.”
“No,” Jin agreed. “But the bars are better. I don’t know about the music. I guess you didn’t come here to hear Jimmy Mackey sing.”
“I came here to support Ueda.”
“Because he asked you to come.”
Kame nodded.
“So you’re still in contact with the rest of them? I know Junno’s in your movie and Koki -” it pained Jin to say - “gives you literary recommendations.”
“The rest of them stayed in Japan.”
“I would have,” Jin said. “But I guess it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. There are so many men in Japan.”
Kame didn’t know what Jin meant.
“Nothing,” Jin said, trying to ignore Jimmy Mackey’s voice in his head going, ‘lover, lover, lover’ like some kind of taunt. They never mentioned rumors to each other. Kame may have broken an unspoken rule but Jin wasn’t going to sink to his level. He also didn’t think he wanted to know who Kame was seeing.
“I would have come back without the reunion, you know.”
Kame shook his head.
“I would have.”
“Akanishi,” Kame said. He sounded tired, like he was talking to a stubborn child. “You were talking about America before I was fifteen. We played American games because everything American was cool. You had a Los Angeles tour book you kept by your bedside. I know the best times to visit each state because of you. There was no way you would have stayed.”
“I’m here now,” Jin said. He thought his voice was getting louder but he couldn’t be sure. It was hard to be sure of anything beyond the close proximity of Kame. “Just because I left doesn’t mean I didn’t miss Japan. I would have come back eventually.” He tried not to say he thought he’d been special. That was a foolish thing to believe just like thinking six months in LA had solved everything.
“I never apologized,” he said now. “For the first time, I mean. It must have been hard on you.”
Emotions flickered across Kame’s face, too fast for Jin to recognize. "You're drunk," Kame said finally. "Go home, Akanishi."
~
There is a certain way Jin always imagined things would end:
A few months after Jin’s return press conference - maybe a few years - they have another fight over something stupid like pirates versus gypsies only it turns into one about Junno’s lame jokes, Nakamaru’s distraction, Jin’s selfishness, Nobuta. Someone - Ueda, Jin, Kame - says, “This isn’t working. I can’t go on like this. Not anymore.” And it would be just another one of KAT-TUN’s epic dressing room fights only Johnny hears about it and thinks it’s a good idea.
They are crammed into a small conference room to be given the news. Nakamaru wants to work things out. So does Junno. Jin thinks, “Fuck it. KAT-TUN only exists because of me anyways.”
And that is the only reason (though he wants it to be more. It would have been more, a few years ago) that Kame follows him down to the subway station. It is midday. There is one man seated on the orange plastic chairs. The next train will arrive in four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Kame stops two arms-lengths away from him and says, “We can save this. If you’re with me. We can still save this.”
Then he holds out his hand. Just like in auditions. Just like the day the group is formed. Jin takes it as the train whizzes past.
It would make a great picture.
But reality is sneakier:
Jin puts out a solo for his drama. He doesn’t think much about it; Yamapi had solos and duos and trios and returns every time to NewS. Nakamaru gets another hosting gig with Koki. Jin sees Junno off at Narita as part of Johnny’s ‘Korea and then the world’ campaign, sends Ueda champagne when the songs Ueda writes start climbing the charts. Kame does what Kame always does: work 24-hour days, appear in television programs, musicals, dramas. He is spread so thin Jin thinks he sees Kame everywhere.
There is no definitive break. It is so unlike KAT-TUN’s image that nobody suspects anything because surely a group defined by drama and fights and living on the edge would always end things with a bang. But they don’t.
After ‘Forever Sky’s promotions end, Jin gets a two week break that turns into months. He goes to Australia, which is only a hop away from New Zealand. From there, he goes to China. Not westernized Beijing China but rural China, farmers and donkey-pulled carts China. He is picking tealeaves, straw basket soaking the sweat running down his back, when he gets the call.
They text each other condolences. And Jin. Jin moves onward to Egypt.
~
The subway doors opened to Ginza. Jin was caught for a split second in the outward rush until the second wave of commuters pushed him back inside. It was nearly midnight. The trains were crowded with salarymen in suits, falling and crowding into every recess. Jin’s luggage got underfoot with every stop. He felt grungy: too tan against the pale skinned perfection of the office ladies, too old compared to the little kids with school-issued ties.
He needed a shower. And a hairstylist. And somebody, possibly, to do a double take and say, “Akanishi Jin?”
The train picked up speed as it rounded the corner. They ducked inside a tunnel, momentarily throwing the cabin into darkness until Jin realized the blackness outside only made the fluorescent lights brighter. It was like a camera trick to draw one’s attention. The sign reserving seats for the elderly, disabled, and pregnant was missing a corner. His black Channel suitcase had a gray, over used sheen.
Lights lined the inside of the tunnel as well. They had tried counting them as children though they’d never settled on a number. Kame had gotten up to fifty-two. Jin never made it that far; the lights tended to blur into one long stripe unless one concentrated really hard.
(“There’s a rhythm,” Kame said years ago. “Look for the flashes.”
He had taken Jin’s hand and tapped it out on Jin’s palm. The pattern of lights made it hard to anticipate. Kame tapped out two fasts then a slow then four fasts like he was writing something in Morse code. His hand fit completely in Jin’s. There was something incongruent about the feel and look of Kame’s hands - boy rough with girl elegance - that made it all the more special.
Jin held his hand flat, careful not to disturb the flutter of Kame’s fingers along his palm.
Kame touched people naturally like he didn’t know his hands sought them out. It was just one of Kame’s many quirks. The first time - a clap on the shoulder, so quick Jin might have imagined it - Jin nearly jumped out of his skin. Kame didn’t beg to be touched. Instead, he bestowed it upon others in bits and pieces like they were the lucky ones. All of it, of course, done subconsciously. Jin was sure that if he pointed it out, Kame would stop touching people altogether.
Sp he didn’t and every night for two weeks, they entertained themselves that way.
Kame lived one turn down the fourth street and two vending machines from Jin. Sometimes, when it was very dark, Kame followed Jin home where Jin would charge him a fifty-yen entry fee and use that to buy them a drink from the closest machine. Sometimes, when it was even darker, Kame would stay the night.
Jin remembered the shadow of his silhouette, flanked by Jin’s dresser and desk full of books he never opened. Kame belonged there with the rest of Jin’s possessions, the sharp dip of his waist visible still through mounds of borrowed blankets.
Jin thought that was the first time he’d become aware of Kame. ‘Devilish charm’, Koki had said. Jin didn’t understand until he woke one night and found that he’d rolled right up against Kame. The other boy was sound asleep. One of his hands had worked itself out of the cocoon of blankets and fluttered in the air in time to Kame’s breaths. It stirred Jin’s hair. Kame’s lay in disarray, folded at right angles between his head and the pillow. Kame was going to be upset when he woke up.
Jin wanted to touch him. More than that, he wanted to sink his hands into Kame’s skin, reach down far enough to touch some essential part of Kame and brand him there. He wanted to crush Kame and fuse himself to the pieces.
The impulse came unexpected and unsettling. Jin contented himself with tucking his hands back beneath the covers, tilting his head so that Kame’s palm lay flat against his cheek, nails grazing his lips. It tickled just a bit.)
The train rattled onto a different track. Suddenly, they hurtled out of the tunnel running high above the city. Below them, lights from Tokyo’s infinite buildings, cars, billboards lit the night in neon whites and reds. It promised another world apart from the sun. A better world, perhaps. A kinder world. Like Kame, Tokyo never slept.
Jin stretched out his arms, wanting to gather it all up against him. He felt, suddenly, like shouting he was here. He was finally home.
TBC