Ohno the Vampire Slayer pt 2
*
The next day, Aiba comes running full speed into the dressing room, flailing wildly and looking a general mad mess.
“Nino-chan is gone! HE’S NOT ANSWERING HIS PHONE!” Aiba is breathlessly trying to force the words out in caps lock.
Sho winces. “Do you suppose he could just have turned it off? Or that he’s ignoring it?”
Aiba only looks mildly placated at that. “He didn’t even respond to the text I sent about having the new Dragon Quest game.”
Jun pales.
“Okay,” Sho exhales shakily. “We need to calm down and focus. He’s supposed to come filming with us all this morning, yeah? Where can he be?”
“If Leader has eaten him I’ll - ” Jun starts, but Sho cuts him off.
“You’ll what? You are physically incapable of hurting Satoshi-kun, seriously.”
Jun deflates. “But what can we do?”
“He’s dangerous,” Aiba says, his voice trembling. “He’ll end up turning us all into vampires.”
“I don’t want to look like Edward Cullen,” Sho says in a small voice. “I don’t want to sparkle.”
“We already went over this,” Jun hisses. “We already sparkle, whether you want it or not.”
Sho looks so heartbreakingly disappointed that Aiba reaches over and pats his back. “We have to do something about it,” he says. “We’ll have to make sure that Oh-chan isn’t walking around in public places where his sparkles will be discovered.”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Jun frowns. “According to Nino, Leader has been spending every single minute of his free time in his room or in the basement.”
“I bet he’s reading Twilight,” Sho mutters. “Kame won’t let me borrow them…”
“ANYWAY,” Aiba says, “We have to do something about this thing.”
“About what?”
They all turn to look at the voice.
Nino grins. “What?”
Aiba is shaking when he steps up to Nino, gingerly reaching for Nino’s neck. “Nino, what’s this?”
Nino squirms out of his hold. “It’s nothing, seriously, don’t sweat it.”
“It’s blood,” Aiba continues, now near hysteria. “Did Oh-chan do this?!”
“No,” Nino snorts and then grins smugly. “It’s cranberry juice. I just thought it’d freak you out.”
He doesn’t even try to get out of the room when three hands reach over to smack him.
*
“Who here has read anything about vampires?” Sho stands at the head of the seminar table in a certain room of the Johnny’s Entertainment.
The room is dark, lit only by scented candles in regular intervals across the table and on the floor.
Aiba’s hand shoots up like a rocket-powered helium balloon, waving madly in the air.
Jun’s hand rises slowly, and Nino is fast to shoot him a glare.
“That is NOT Twilight. Matsumoto, seriously.”
“What do you have against Twilight, huh? You’re just jealous that Stephanie Meyer probably earns more than you, and has more money to put into her bank account on pay-day without having to sing and dance and wear strange costumes!” Jun looks deadly and dangerous and only this close to cutting a bitch.
The room has been stunned into silence. Nino can see that Sho is flapping his hands behind Jun helplessly. Aiba has his hand cradled against his chest uncertainly.
Nino cocks an eyebrow. “Was that your hormones?”
Just then, there is an inhuman wailing that pierces the air. The room freezes.
Aiba whimpers, curling up on himself. Sho turns slowly, as if afraid to find something behind him.
Jun and Nino are still glaring at each other.
“Everybody, did you hear that?” Sho moves into the seat beside Aiba slowly. Aiba’s hand finds Sho’s frantically.
“I’m sure it’s just Oh-chan hunting,” Nino waves away the tension nonchalantly.
“H-hu-hunting?” Sho stutters, and Aiba makes a choked sound at the back of his throat.
“If you read the hand-out, you would know. Sub-point five, remember?” Nino smiles mock-graciously at Jun who hits him on the head. “Plus, you did secure this room, didn’t you, Aiba-chan?”
Sho looks questioningly at Aiba. Aiba nods, looking very much less pale.
“Garlic scented candles,” he confirms. “The latest in security.”
Then, there is what sounds like a stampede outside the room, and little boys screaming.
Jun rubs his hands in glee.
“Ohno-kun must be getting Hey! Say! Jump!,” he snickers.
*
“Sho-chan,” Aiba pulls Sho into a corner during their break. “I think Matsujun got turned.”
Sho hums. “Is it the crabbiness?”
Aiba nods, lips turning down at the edges.
“And the mood swings?”
Aiba nods.
“And the gleeful responses to gore?”
Aiba nods.
“Nah, it’s just because he’s crushing on Edward Cullen too much. The hormones, you know.”
Aiba looks enlightened. “The hormones, right.”
“The hormones, and Matsujun just being himself, really.”
*
“SHHHHH,” Aiba hushes them all loudly.
The room is completely dark and the stench of garlic is close to nauseating. Someone shifts.
“Jun-kun, I can hear you crossing your arms in indignation,” Aiba says and Jun makes an exasperated noise at the back of his throat.
“This is ridiculous,” Jun hisses back. “We can’t do this!”
“I agree,” Nino says, not bothering to lower his voice even when Aiba hushes loudly again. “This is not productive.”
Aiba sighs as if he’d been waiting for those needless remarks. “We’re doing it for Arashi. For Oh-chan. Tell them that, Sho-chan.”
Sho feels like a deer caught in the headlights despite the fact that the room is, in fact, completely plunged in darkness. “Maybe there could be another way -”
“Sho-chan,” Aiba breathes, shocked. “Are you doubting our noble cause?!”
“No,” Sho says in a small voice. “It’s just… I haven’t really seen him sparkle, you know? OW! WHO JUST HIT ME?!”
“Lower your voice,” Aiba admonishes and Sho splutters.
“Who hit me?! Nino, was that you?”
“I’m hurt, Sho-chan, really, I am. I bet it was Jun.”
“It was not,” Jun says flatly. “I can’t even reach you from here.”
“Then who?” Sho asks, as a sudden cold makes him shiver.
“Me,” Ohno says gently, just by Sho’s ear and Sho yelps and flails violently. His impressive lack of finer motor skills and wild flailing hit Ohno’s head, and Nino almost screams bloody murder when they turn the light back on and they find Ohno passed out on the floor.
Aiba, however, looks gleeful. “Exorcism START!”
*
Nino might have been impressed with Aiba's leadership skills (especially with the darkness and with the overwhelming stench of garlic). That is, if he weren't currently strapping one unconscious Ohno Satoshi to a cheap Jimusho plastic chair, with leather straps and seaweed.
Leather straps with belt buckles. And hijiki from the rocks of Okinawa. No less.
"This is our last chance," Aiba had said earlier, with a glint in his eye that was mixture of determination, the lack of marbles and - Nino thought - perhaps, too much inappropriate morning-sake-drinking. "We can do this, together!"
He had then tried to make everyone wear their colored afros and sparkly costumes from years ago. Thankfully, Jun had recovered mildly by then, and had proceeded to whack Aiba very painfully.
And now, Aiba has (unfortunately) gathered his bearings and reevaluated his options.
"Sho-chan," he reads from the list on his hand, jabbing the air viciously with his other hand. "You are in charge of drawing a garlic-shaped Totoro on Leader's face. Like that one you drew on mine during a Sugoroku. With this - " and Aiba hands Sho a make-up pencil.
Jun's eyes narrows dangerously.
"Aiba Masaki, is that my new pencil?"
"Uh, no! No, of course not!" Nervous laughter. "But if you have a problem with us using a make-up pencil, thatisnotyours, we could always use another - one!"
Sho licks his lips tentatively and kneels by Ohno's chair. Jun looks considerably satisfied, until Aiba consults the palm of his hand and emerges from his bag with a sheepish smile.
"Jun-kun, could you - sprinkle this over Leader?" Aiba holds up a bottle of clear yellowish liquid in a perfume bottle.
"What is that, exactly?"
"Looks very much like pee," chimes Nino, cheerily dumping a huge barrel of oil onto the fire. "I bet it's one of Aiba's concoctions again. Don't you be letting anything unhygienic touch Oh-chan!"
"It's holy garlic water! And it wasn't by me, I bought it off ebay," Aiba is pouting impressively. "A hundred and twenty percent clean! I promise!"
"If any get on my hands, I swear I will dissect you, limb by limb," Jun turns the bottle over in his hands and sets to his job.
"Nino, you have to sing Magical Song while I stuff Captain's pockets with garlic," Aiba wrestles his bag, and comes back up with five ziplock bags of garlic pieces. He opens the first one. The stench in the room intensifies tenfold.
Jun swears very imaginatively.
"Are. You. Serious." Nino deadpans. "Are you fucking serious?"
"And every time you reach the chorus, you have to hit Leader with Sho-chan's hairbrush." Aiba reaches to hand Nino the hairbrush, but Nino doesn't take it.
"Firstly," he says, getting worked up. "What the fuck will I be doing singing your solo. And secondly, hitting Oh-chan. Do you want me to hit you instead?"
Aiba ponders for a moment. "You can scrape the solo and the hitting. What about 'every time you reach the chorus, pinch Leader's butt?'"
Nino is very tempted to agree, then he scowls.
"To show that I am not in the very least supportive of this plan, I will give up even the offer of Oh-chan's posterior." He manages to find an even darker corner and settles to smolder silently in the gloom.
Aiba shrugs, and starts to fill Ohno's right pocket.
Meanwhile, Sho is halfway done with the Totoro.
"This may be my best one yet." He mumbles, and suddenly, struck with the seriousness of the whole situation, pauses for a few long moments. "Aiba-chan, how do we know if all these are taking effect? "
"According to my hypothesis, Leader should awaken and proceed to dance to Monster." Aiba stands to cross over to Ohno's left - and still very empty - pocket.
"Your hypothesis is taken from where, exactly?" Sho's brows cross in concentration as he reaches Totoro's fur.
"From that Wikipedia page that Nino-chan showed u - AH!" Aiba trips over Jun's shoes in the darkness.
There is a loud sound of scrambling and then Sho is saying "Masaki, will you be more careful you might knock into - AHHH!"
Sho's pen - thankfully - doesn't end up stabbing Ohno in the eye, but travels in an upward trajectory and they all watch as it - very unfortunately - hits the light.
The light shatters into a million sparks. Nino is shouting. Jun is swearing. Aiba scrambles to his feet, and Sho, in his haste to get up, knocks into Aiba, who knocks back into him.
A siren sounds very loudly and then the sprinklers are whirring.
"OH MAI GAWD," Sho exclaims, wide-eyed and shocked as his shoulders hit into Ohno's chair. It teeters precariously. Aiba reaches out to steady it, but only succeeds to push it backwards.
They all hear the sickening crack of scalp against the floor.
There are only hurried breaths in the darkness.
"OH. MAI. GAWD." The words rupture in small bubbles of shock. "OH - MAI - " and then Nino is swearing really really loudly beside Ohno.
The siren is deafening. Jun looks murderous.
The sprinklers are drenching them all and they hear people running outside in the corridors.
Aiba looks at Ohno lying on the floor, knocked out cold. Aiba bites his lips and looks up to face the other three. He grins sheepishly. “Oops?”
("At least he pronounced 'start' correctly this time," remarks Sho weakly afterwards. Especially when their manager demands (quite unreasonably) to know how Aiba was allowed to carry things so far. He really can't see how it was his fault.
He had only been in charge of drawing the garlic-shaped Totoro.)
*
“What a mess,” Nino sighs, drenched, huddled in a huge blanket and looking up at the building that has been evacuated.
“I only set the sprinklers off,” Aiba sniffs pitifully. “There really isn’t a fire anywhere.”
Jun looks murderous. It might be because of the entire situation or because his hair got ruined by the sprinklers. Nino is willing to bet the latter, but he values his life.
“How were they supposed to know that?!”
“Calm down,” Sho tries, but his gaze is on the ambulance where Ohno is.
“How was I supposed to know that he really wasn’t a vampire?” Aiba wails. “He should’ve said something!”
Nino rolls his eyes. “Seriously, he thought that you’d know better. I did, too.”
“I can’t believe you’d fool us,” Aiba continues and looks for support, but Jun is still lamenting his hair, and Sho is still looking at the ambulance.
“Come on,” Nino raises an eyebrow. “Seriously. You can’t really believe that Oh-chan is a vampire. Not even after you’ve read that Twilight shit. Especially after you’ve read that Twilight shit. And even if he was, he wouldn’t eat us.”
Aiba sniffs again. “But he would have to eat, right? He wouldn’t be able to survive on cranberry juice?”
“That’s why Hey Say Jump has so many members,” Sho adds. “Easy to replace, too.”
Nino rubs his hands in glee. “Could he start with Chinen?”
“Guys,” Jun says, “Leader is not a vampire. Why are you even talking about it, still?”
“Think about it,” Aiba says, wiping his eyes. “It would be really cool!”
“If you think it’s cool, why did we have to do all these ridiculous things in the first place?”
Aiba looks massively offended. And hurt. “It wasn’t ridiculous!”
Nino sighs, apparently following Jun’s line of thought. “Exorcism?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Aiba says in a small voice. “Really.”
They all fall silent when Ohno steps out of the ambulance, a huge blanket around his shoulders.
Nino steps over to him and slings an arm around his shoulders.
“They say I’m fine,” he mumbles when they get close to the others. “But they say I stink.”
Aiba has the decency to look ashamed. And then tears well up in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Leader, really, if I knew how to make it up - ”
“It’s fine,” Ohno murmurs even if Nino looks disappointed at the lack of repercussions. “I’ll have Nino nursing me back to health.”
Nino nods and Jun frowns. “What about us?”
“You don’t think you’ve done enough?” Nino snaps just as Ohno clears his throat.
“You know, there is something you can do for something for me.”
*
“Oh-chan, seriously,” Nino tries to stay stern, but he can’t stop the giggles that escape from his lips.
Ohno leans back serenely on the couch, all snuggled up, and he opens the book in his hands.
“Remember to return them to Kame when you’re done,” Nino reminds him, and just for a split second, Ohno grins, and Nino swears he can see fangs.
*
THE END