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jewelledhourstitle: Until Everything Is Left But The Stars
pairing: Ryo/Shige
author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misticloud
rating: overall NC-17
words: 35,940
summary: They had been two separate points going in different directions when they collided, time and again, even when they didn't want to.
It's like falling into your palm, watching you smile | And yet we're slipping over, my dear love | There's no heaven but the house and the ever-changing sea | Towards the end, we run with words like knives | For things in the world that are worth living for, we live
And yet we're slipping over, my dear love
A year after he entered the Jimusho, Ryo heard through the grapevine that there were two seniors in trouble with the management for being in an illicit relationship. Ryo wasn’t very sure then what an ‘illicit relationship’ meant, but Yamapi, the beloved of the seniors, asked around and found out that it had to do with being in love and doing forbidden things with each other. Both of them listened with fascination and some horror about what had happened to the two nameless seniors – after they were found out by the managers, they had pleaded their case before Johnny-san, saying that they would keep their relationship a secret. Johnny-san, so sympathetic on most things, had ridiculed them outright.
"How do you plan on keeping this from the press?” he’d reportedly asked them. “Do you think that you can be as careful as that?"
In the end he had issued them an ultimatum: break up immediately or be expelled from the Jimusho. They were young and afraid of incurring their families’ wrath, so they chose to break up. For months after that, Ryo observed all his seniors’ faces, wondering who the two of them had been. Nearly ten years later, he still doesn’t know and the management keeps mum about it; it isn’t something to be proud about.
Every idol and idol-hopeful knows of the Jimusho’s policy regarding their freedom. The debut is the most sensitive and politically correct time of an idol’s life; once you’re established and of age, you can pretty much do as you wish as long as you stay out of the media’s sniffing radius. You can party all night, get stinking drunk, play striptease games with girls, have threesomes in hotel rooms; as long as the only thing you harm is yourself and not your reputation nor the quality of your performances, the Jimusho is perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to it and allow you to sow as many wild oats as you please.
But everyone knows that the moment your interest turns towards someone in the company, the Jimusho’s stance changes very drastically. Colleagues are colleagues, Johnny-san likes to emphasise. You can be best friends, non-blood brothers, even date the same girl if you’re so inclined, but you are absolutely forbidden from having a romantic interest in each other. That’s the height of unprofessionalism and if there’s anything Johnny-san can’t stand, it’s romance in the workplace or, as the guys jokingly put it, 'idol-cest'.
Ryo knows all of this perfectly well; he’s one of the veterans in the company, after all. He has been there since he was a kid and he knows how it goes. He’d broken up with his high school boyfriend for the sake of a smooth debut, and he stays away from radical sexual or social activities even though he knows that Johnny-san is more or less forgiving of those. Ryo has built his life around the company, and he toes the line just like (mostly) everyone else. He has seen how the Jimusho’s displeasure mixed with the pressure of the press brought about the abrupt end to Jin’s relationship in 2006, changing the fun-loving, silly, noisy bundle of energy into a party animal who treats girls like disposable underwear.
Ryo knows all of this perfectly well and so he’s very much aware that the moment he realised he was standing on the edge of falling in love with Shige, he called very big trouble upon himself.
But he's not in love yet, not really in love yet, and neither does he intend to be. So he suppresses the feelings, pushes them into the back of his mind whenever he can remember to. When Shige smiles at him, tentatively and tenderly and saturated with the memory of the night they'd shared, Ryo responds with the friendly smile of a fellow group member. When Shige gets the message and his smile loses the fleeting bit of secrecy, the intimacy, some string in Ryo's heart goes cold, but he tells himself that it'll pass. Everything passes if you give it long enough.
... ...
Tegoshi is annoying Shige again. Tegoshi seems to have been born with the innate capability to annoy Shige while endearing himself to everyone else. Or perhaps it's simply life being hard on Shige; the general opinion of NEWS is that he must have offended the universe somehow when he was born.
"Hey A! Kichoumen biriba…Hey B! My pace na banchou…"
Shige is very, very, dangerously close to ramming either his head or Tegoshi's into the nearest wall. He likes 'Koi no ABO' just as much as the next person (that is, if the next person doesn't really adore it), but listening to it ten times in a row in real time Tegoshi is beyond average human endurance.
"Tegoshi, shut…"
"Nantoka naru deshou," Tegoshi trills sweetly and Shige jumps up, already imagining his hands wrapping around Tegoshi's neck, only to be pulled back the next moment by Ryo.
"He's not going to take any notice of you, you know. You could be bashing his head and he still wouldn't notice."
"Thanks for the vote of support," Shige snarls.
Ryo grins, gives him a pacifying pat on the small of his back, then raises his voice casually. "Hey, Tegoshi, give us a break from that song. Shige's about to murder you here."
"Is it a nice murder?"
"No, it's vicious and sadistic and you won't want to go through it."
"Oh. That's not very nice." Tegoshi looks as though he wants to be stubborn, but he's a smart guy who can sense when he's truly unwanted. Shige sighs with relief when Tegoshi drifts off to disturb a staff member playing on his Nintendo Wii, then looks over at Ryo whose hand is still hovering somewhere near his ass. "Whatever power you have to make him obey you like that, I want some of it."
"Like you said, senpai and being a lot better at the entertainment business. And not forgetting more popular, too."
Shige can't keep his features from grimacing and Ryo laughs before retracting his hand. "I'll buy you a drink at Ito's tonight."
They’ve hung out a couple of times at the Ito Nomiya after the first night, just the two of them drinking the night hours away, and Shige is growing to like the place almost as much as Ryo does. Even the appalling furnishing doesn't look half so appalling when the company is as good as it is; Ryo cracking the occasional joke and insisting that Kim Jung Il won't have the balls to fire that rocket at the United States, and Ito the owner's son popping up now and then to grin knowingly at Shige when he needs someone to roll his eyes at. And then there's the company of the riotous salarymen too, some of them not very much older than him, shouting gossip at each other or dissing office politics. Sometimes they're so noisy that Ryo can't make himself heard and they end up drinking silently side by side until the noise level decreases but Shige likes it; it's both foreign and familiar to him.
"God, you're in love with this place," Ryo says that night when he notices Shige gazing at a picture hanging on the opposite wall. "You look like you're staring at your newly found mistress."
"I think that picture is…sad," says Shige solemnly, and so Ryo looks at it too. It's medium-sized and unobtrusive, a Chinese painting with simple brush strokes depicting a range of mountains and a lone figure standing on the edge of a precipice, looking up at the sky. It's a very ordinary picture and Ryo can see why he didn't notice it before. "Some old guy goes to a mountain to hide himself so that he'll inspire himself into writing poems. How is that sad?"
"It's sad whenever you have to hide something from others, isn't it?" Shige says. "Even worse if the thing you have to hide is yourself."
"He made the choice to shut himself away in the mountains and pee in grass so that he'll be able to gain enlightenment about life. I don't see how he should be pitied."
"Only sad and lonely people who don't really get along with others would become recluses to gain enlightenment about life. It's just a defence mechanism. Rationalisation, you know."
"You do talk the most marvellous crap sometimes, Kato," Ryo says, then burps. "It must be your Shige-ota training. Makes you simply…marvellously…crappy."
"You only use such big words when you're drunk."
"Maybe because I am drunk."
"It's sad that you have to try so hard to hide your intellectual supremacy, Nishikido-kun."
"It's my image," Ryo says reproachfully. "Didn't make it to university, not much for book-learning, street smart, young, wild and dangerous. It's much easier pretending to be wild and dangerous than intellectual."
"Young, wild and dangerous," Shige repeats. "You got that from the Hong Kong drama series. Young and dangerous."
"I thought I could get away with that," sighs Ryo.
Occasionally, when they have companionable moments like these, Shige lets himself remember the hours they'd spent together in Ryo's room, exploring and exploiting each other's bodies in a way he's sure was completely new to the both of them. Ryo doesn't allude to it, behaves most of the time as though the night didn't happen, but even with the pretence, somehow the physical intimacy they'd shared is bringing them closer as friends. It's odd and Shige, although not having other one-night stand experiences to compare and contrast with, doesn't think that that's the norm, but he doesn’t want to say anything that might upset the balance between him and Ryo.
He doesn't see the glances that Ryo throws him when he isn't looking. Glances so unconscious of themselves that they're frightening in their very unconsciousness. He doesn't have any idea that when Ryo jerks off at home now, the fastest and most intense way he can get off is by picturing Shige as he was that night, eyes closed and hair lying in damp strands on his forehead as he went along with all that Ryo did to him.
Shige doesn’t know, and Ryo doesn't intend that he should. It's better this way, he reasons, to take the safe way out…the 'casual friends' way out. Romantic heroes are all very well in dramas; Johnnies stake most of their acting careers on being romantic heroes, in fact; but in their real dimension, being a hero is the fastest way to get killed without getting the job done.
But the lapses in logic are getting more and more frequent. Days spent joking and teasing Shige during NEWS activities, evenings sitting beside Shige drinking cold beer and talking about things that he doesn't quite remember later, nights whiled away thinking of how familiarly Shige has taken up station in his life; Ryo can feel himself getting in deeper, so deep he can't hit bottom anymore, floundering.
He picks up the jug of beer and refills Shige's glass. "Don't tell me you're done for the night already."
"Almost am," says Shige, yawning. "I'm finishing this up and going home."
Shige devotes himself to the remainder of his beer and Ryo studies the Chinese painting in all its unremarkable glory. Stupid Chinese man standing by himself on the edge of that mountain; how desolate he looks. Does he ever look down to the beauty of the valley below and think about letting his foot slip so that he can reach it? Then again perhaps he does; perhaps he struggles every day not to do just that, to remain safe and precarious on his precipice.
It's true, Ryo thinks, watching Shige yawn and rub his hand across his nose. Having to hide something from others is sad. It's even worse if that something happens to be yourself.
… …
They don't see each other for half a month after that. There're a couple of Eito activities due for him in Osaka, filming and recording and a hundred other little things that accumulate whenever he's in Tokyo, so Ryo misses the next few NEWS rehearsals. The manager keeps him updated on the developments through texting, and he calls Koyama at night because Koyama gives more detailed updates (including what Massu was chomping on during the meeting), but there's no contact between himself and Shige. It's normal and expected. They have their own lives, Shige as a law student in Tokyo, Ryo as an Eito member in Osaka, and Shige has never contacted him before in this situation. That's the way it has always been, the status quo, apparently intact even after Ito Nomiya night-time bonding.
Ryo watches the days going by. Sometimes he thinks the sky is too blue; other times it looks too grey. Grainy and blurred, 1930s film type grey. Everything running in jerky movements, not very real at all. He doesn't have to cook when he's in Osaka since it's always a fare of home-cooked food that his mother's the best at making. No soggy karaage or ruined aglio olio. No bitter heavenly beer at the tiny, ugly nomiya, just pubs that Ohkura and Yoko and him go to after work, joking about the latest joke-able topic. They talk a bit about Can!Jani and the silly things that they have to do. He and Yoko will soon have to go around Japan searching for the loudest waterfalls or something. Ohkura says that Yamapi's birthday is coming up soon and since he'll be in Tokyo around that time, he hopes he'll be able to attend. Tokyo, Ryo thinks.
"I left my haaaa-to in Tooooki-yo," Yoko sings in terribly pronounced English. Ryo and Ohkura laugh.
"I want to be in love," Yoko declares suddenly. "I'm tiiiiiired of singing love songs. They're just, like, songs. Not the real thing."
"What you were singing isn't a love song, you know," Ohkura says. "It's about this guy leaving his heart in San Francisco because he loves the place…"
"Why would his heart be left behind if he isn't in love? Of course it's a love song."
Ohkura looks over at Ryo, eyebrows raised. "Drunk much. Get the juice, Ryo."
Ryo pushes Yoko back upright and replaces the beer with apple juice when he isn't looking. He should really be paying attention to the conversation, he knows; but he wonders just a little whether Shige's thinking of him too.
… …
When Ryo arrives fifteen minutes late for a rehearsal, he can hear his groupmates from the end of the corridor. They're so rowdy that their voices are practically bouncing off the ceiling and walls, and he can't understand all the noise. Koyama and Tegoshi are usually the empty vessels, but he can distinguish Yamapi yelling "Take off more!" and Massu saying, "The belt too! The belt too!" and it sounds suspiciously like the members have taken up strip-tease acts in his absence. Which would not be a bad idea, except that they’ve seen each other's bodies countless times in onsens and dressing rooms and Ryo has long since become desensitised.
Lots of whistles and catcalls follow and when he makes it to the door, he finds Tegoshi standing before the table with his shirt unbuttoned and an exaggeratedly seductive look on his face. Ryo's about to ask if the members are getting pervy over Tegoshi (which would be odd, since everyone except Shige professes to be turned on by boobs only), when Koyama struts up and they pull each other into a bone-crushing hug while making kissy noises. It's a rather unorthodox form of entertainment to say the least; he definitely has members who're going a little insane, and then Shige's weary voice protests, "Stop it already!"
Ryo hadn't realised before how much he'd missed hearing Shige's voice.
"Kato, let's do it now!" Tegoshi proclaims passionately and even Yamapi has to clutch his stomach.
"Oh, Ryo-chan!" Koyama suddenly spots him. "Ryo-chan still doesn't know yet, ne! Shige is going to have a butai and drama SP."
Ryo lights up and immediately turns to congratulate Shige, but he's too busy forcing Tegoshi to button his shirt. He looks at Yamapi for answers. "Why do I feel as though Shige's involved in some porn project?"
Yamapi just giggles and refuses to say a word. Mabudachi-betrayal, Ryo's glare says.
In the end it's Massu who takes on the burden of explanation since nobody else wants to. "Shige's playing a sex addict in his butai," he explains. "He's actually going to have love scenes on stage!"
Ryo doesn't know whether to laugh or not. "Do they involve stripping?"
Shige coughs, looking at him with bright eyes. "What you meant to say was that I'll be taking off some of my clothes for the sake of art."
"Sure," says Ryo, processing the information that Shige is actually going to have love scenes onstage. Shige who had started the life of a full-blown idol with dorky hair, bad teeth, and a huge inferiority complex. Shige who obviously has nothing else on his mind but his butai. He feels the need to be a little cruel, not lovingly so. "The Jimusho must have chosen you to get you to buff up that belly before you start having to wear more concealing clothes."
The members fall silent and Yamapi immediately ruffles up as he does whenever his members are treated unjustly, even by one of themselves. "Ryo-chan! There's nothing fat about Shige at all."
"I appreciate the concern, Nishikido-kun," Shige says, something off about his voice, and for the rest of the day Ryo finds himself gently but most decidedly excluded from the goofing.
It's Shige's loving way of saying go to hell. He knows he deserves it, so he doesn't fight back.
By evening the animosity seems to have abated and Shige goes willingly enough with him to the Ito Nomiya for dinner. They sit at the counter chewing meat skewers and Ito's happy to see them, saying that it's high time that they came back to pour away their idol money into his dad's shop. Smoke from the salarymen's cigarettes makes the air thick and heavy, drifts through the barred windows out into the street. Shige makes a bit of conversation and then falls into preoccupied silence until he says abruptly, "I read in a book that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else."
"That's a nice coping strategy," Ryo remarks, putting his meatless sticks together. "Not too sure about the success rate, though."
Shige flaps his hand in front of his face. "I don't mean that I'm getting under anyone. But I've started seeing someone…"
And suddenly Ryo can't breathe.
… …
It's disconcerting sometimes how you think that everyone must notice the look in your face, the irregular breaths, the trembling fingers; and then realising that they didn't notice a thing. Ryo wakes up from his stupor a few moments later…or minutes, or hours, he can't ascertain exactly, but since he's still able to follow the conversation, he figures it couldn't have been too long…to find that Shige is staring fixedly at the Chinese picture. He's talking about this high school classmate he'd run into while playing pool with his friends, and how they'd spent the night reminiscing over old times before deciding that they wanted to see a lot more of each other. His name is Murakami Kenji and he's as friendly and easy-going as Shige remembered him to be in high school; a real good guy, the type that girls would set their caps at except that Murakami doesn't go for girls. Shige had discovered that during their third meeting, entirely accidentally, he says, but there's a sort of twist at the side of his mouth that hints it probably wasn't an accident.
Ryo listens silently as Shige extols his friend's virtues. At any other time with any other person he would be amused at Murakami's seeming perfection, but a sort of numbness is swelling within him, cold and still and blocking out emotion. He thinks maybe this is his body's way of dealing with it, delaying the pain till later when he's alone and it won't matter if he wants to scream.
"We're going to Hakone for a couple of days, right after I'm done with the interview for Duet on Thursday afternoon," Shige chats, fingers fiddling with the handle of his beer glass. "He's a pretty experienced traveller. Can you imagine, he hitchhiked India all by himself with just a map and a guidebook? He said it was one of the best holidays he'd ever had. I'll like to go to India sometime too, not just the Taj Mahal, but places where tourists don't go to."
Why travel so far? Ryo thinks, why do you always want to get away?
"I haven't even thought about Takeshi since meeting Kenji. We have so much fun together that it's hard to dwell. It's too early to really talk about anything happening yet but what do you say, should I try for it?"
Ryo reaches into his pocket and throws some money onto the table. The notes are wrinkled and old and he doesn't care that he's given about 2000 yen more than is necessary. "Do whatever you want. I'm going home."
As he gets off his seat, he doesn't miss the startled look on Shige's face. "So soon?"
"See you at work."
"Nishikido-kun, you should have told me earlier that you were tired…" he doesn't hear the rest of it. He knows that he'll probably have to apologise to Shige the next time they meet, probably buy him a beer to make up for his rudeness, but as he walks down the pavement dodging laughing couples and guys smoking under the streetlamps the only thing he wants is to get away from Shige, put so much distance between them that the hurt won't catch up with him.
He tries, but when he reaches the solitude of his bedroom, the hurt still finds him anyway.
… …
Massu sympathises, because he can. He has been at the receiving end of Nishikido-kun's sharp tongue many times before and he knows how demoralising it is. He doesn't say that the more demoralised you are, the more it means that you care about what he's saying; he has an idea that Shige won't appreciate that bit of wisdom.
Before he entered the Jimusho, Massu never believed that he could be under the thumb of someone so wholly and completely like he is under Nishikido Ryo's. As a junior he'd heard of Ryo before; and when Ryo first entered the studio during NEWS' inaugural photoshoot, Massu practically saw Ryo's intimidating blond-haired aura rolling across the room towards him. Ryo looked at the cameramen and asked why there were cameras; nobody up till then had dared to question what was going on. Massu wondered at Ryo's confidence, admired it, until they were told that henceforth they would be groupmates. And then the confidence quickly turned into dread. And dread became the foundation of overpowering respect and fear when Ryo became their backstage boss, directing them as though he was meant to, telling off Yamapi for not doing anything leader-like for them, insisting that the group adhere to certain levels of performance. Massu knew that Ryo was going to so much trouble not out of any particular affection for them but because he didn't want to be stuck with a mediocre group, and somehow that made him even more daunting. So yes, Massu sympathises because he understands, because the bewilderment he hears in Shige's voice now is the same bewilderment he'd heard in his own voice years ago when he asked his mother how he was supposed to deal with such a scary group member (despite having a height advantage over him).
"It's not fair," Shige says, oblivious to the odd sizzling noises that the phone line is making. "He just walked out like that without telling me what I'd done wrong. If I'd offended him in some way, I would at least like to know what it was. Besides, he's scary when he's being offended."
"Have you messaged him?" Massu asks, though inwardly he's quite surprised to hear that Ryo and Shige have been hanging out with each other regularly after work. He knows that their relationship has improved greatly over the last few years (from strangers to one-sided enemies to an uneasy state of peace, Ryo and Shige embody progress), but he didn't know that they've become close enough to stand seeing each other after hours.
"I did," Shige says. "The very same night. I wrote that all Japanese citizens have the right to justice. I originally put 'everyone', but in the Middle-East the women aren't given any justice. It would be inaccurate."
"Yes, and?"
"He replied saying he was just in a bad mood and that I should forget it."
That doesn't sound too bad. "That doesn't sound too bad, Shige."
"I know, but…" Shige channels his words into a deep outtake of breath. "It didn't seem like a bad mood. I mean, he wasn't in a bad mood when we went out to eat. And frankly, if there was going to be anyone nursing a bad mood it should have been me considering he'd insulted me in front of everyone. This 'bad mood' defence doesn't work. Just like the insanity defence, it doesn't work anymore. They put you through psychiatric treatment first before sending you to jail. Did you know that, Massu? That the insanity defence doesn't work anymore?"
Massu thinks they're going off on a tangent and that Shige is talking really, really fast. "No, but now I do. Slow down a bit, will you? Your words are running into each other."
"In any case," says Shige, slowing down his speed to Massu's relief, "I offered him an olive branch. Said we could go for drinks on Saturday night after I've come back from Hakone. Nobody can say that I didn't try."
"Maybe," Massu suggests jokingly since the crisis is clearly over, "you've been hanging out so much that he's become possessive, so the thought of you dating someone is making him antsy."
"Nishikido-kun, getting possessive over me?" Shige considers that, then laughs. "He's not even possessive of his bullying rights. I'm public property as far as he's concerned. But maybe you're right, maybe he's secretly anguishing over me and thinking of kidnapping me to some island off the Pacific Ocean where we'll be alone with the great whites."
"You would make a nice meal for the sharks," Massu says absently, feeling his stomach rumble a little. It has been four hours since his last meal and sympathising is very tiring work.
"Save some of me for the sharks then," says Shige scathingly. "Half of me should be more than enough for you to sauté, boil, panfry, deep fry, steam. Steamed Shigeaki with Golden Abalone and Spinach. Double-boiled Shigeaki Soup with Crabmeat and Red Dates."
Massu's stomach gives a definite growl. "Let's have Chinese food for dinner."
He decides he'll make Shige pay.
… …
Ryo hits a few clubs when Shige is gone. It's not too hard finding someone to go with him; Jin has developed a taste for wild clubbing ever since coming back from America. Some nights Jin disappears and Ryo takes the cab home alone. Other nights he winds up sitting in a dark corner of whichever club with a girl grinding against him and he should be paying her some attention but he's thinking of countertops and cold beers and cigarette smoke and morning coffee instead. Pleasure and pain mix up headily and it's pain that always takes over and then he's disappearing too, disappearing so fast.
… …
He doesn't know that Shige is back in Tokyo until, as luck would have it, he takes a walk down to the nearest conbini after midnight and bumps into him and Murakami coming out of a taxi. The trials of living in the same neighbourhood. It has been over a week since he saw Shige and he almost wants to turn his head and walk away before they see him, but he hesitates too long and Shige says his name.
He stands still and watches Shige getting out of the cab after a tall guy who's dressed in last season's fashion. Ryo's absolutely not being catty about it; it's just true that Murakami's wearing outdated clothes that nobody in JE would even touch. He'd heard from Koyama that Murakami Kenji is pretty nice-looking, but he can't see it at all – this guy is boringly, inconspicuously, yawningly plain.
"I do believe you were going to pretend not to have seen me, Nishikido-kun," Shige says lightly. "Your whole body language says 'Damn it, they've spotted me'. I couldn't give you the pleasure of being ignored."
Ryo shrugs, watching the taxi drive away.
"This is Murakami Kenji. Kenji, my bandmate Nishikido Ryo-kun."
"Nice to meet you, Nishikido-san," Murakami says. He's smiling, but there's no real warmth in his voice.
Ryo stretches his lips in response. "I'm on my way to meet Akanishi and the others."
"Oh yeah, I heard from Yamashita-kun that you've been clubbing recently. Sounds fun." There are well-concealed daggers in Shige's words, not, perhaps, in his language, but in the amount of anger and disillusion that he's fitting into every syllable. Ryo doesn't understand it and it makes him prickly, defensive.
"It is. See you around." He's about to walk off when Shige calls after him, "Nishikido-kun, it's even more fun clubbing on a Saturday night, isn't it?"
"What is your problem…" Ryo stops. Saturday night.
"You might have sent me a message," Shige said. "You didn't even have to write anything. Just a 'no' would have been loud and clear. Still, I guess you got your point across."
He turns and walks away in the direction of his apartment, and Murakami gives Ryo an odd look before following. Ryo sees it, but doesn't process it. The Emperor himself can give him odd looks for all he cares. Shige had waited for him at the Ito Nomiya and he hadn't realised that it was Saturday night. Shige is taking Murakami Kenji home with him. Look, they're getting smaller in the distance now, soon they won't be in sight. Shige had waited for him and he hadn't shown. Ryo could almost smile at the irony if his face didn't feel like it wanted to crack.
He looks up at the sky instead. He vaguely remembers someone else doing the same thing.
Ah yes, the Chinese brushstroke man.
Looking at the sky.
His feet are slipping so surely over the precipice.
He's slipping.
He's looking at the sky, but
soon he'll be in the valley.
There are beautiful things, beautiful things, in the valley, but he won't stay long; he'll get washed away by the rapids.
Just like how everything passes, and few things really do.
They're no longer in sight.
… …
Some nights are so still that it feels as though the entire world has shut down around you.
Ryo counts the ticks of the clock on his desk; listens to the low drone of the air-con. The air-con sounds as though it's going to start leaking soon – it does that occasionally, at the most inconvenient and ungodly times. A few feet away from him, the clock goes tick tock, tick tock, it's loud and clicky and he should really consider going digital. He's not thinking of anything in particular. People and places are chasing each other in his mind, getting all mashed together, Yamapi's doing push-ups in the dressing room and Tegoshi's humming a tune and Subaru is playing the guitar and Yoko is teasing Yasu for being more of a girl than a guy while Ohkura smiles, looking on…and then Shige is sitting in the Ito Nomiya with the dull lighting making his eyes dark and smudgy and he's saying he likes these evenings best, beer somehow tastes best inside here, doesn't it, Nishikido-kun?
When his phone rings, he initially mistakes it for being part of the crazy scene in his head.
"Nishikido-kun," Shige says softly over the line. "I'm sorry I'm calling so late."
Ryo listens to the inflections in his voice, thinking they sound too real to be dreamed.
"Is it okay? Should I hang up?"
"No, I wasn't sleeping. But aren't you with Murakami-san?"
Shige takes a breath. "No, he left a while ago. The thing is…"
"Shige? I'm sorry for not turning up tonight."
"Yeah, I know. Maybe you can make up for it by listening to me now? Don't say anything until I'm done."
Ryo can't hear the ticking of the clock anymore; even that has quieted down. Shige makes a few false starts, still keeping his voice low, and he can't tell if it's because it's an instinctive action due to the time, or that the words are having difficulty in coming out. Shige tries again and this time gets past the first six words. "The thing is, Kenji told me…no, that's too far ahead. What I mean to say is – I'm getting to it, don't get impatient yet – I really wanted to meet you tonight. You know what I mean? I can't make it clearer than that. I was looking forward to seeing you after coming back and all. Maybe that's why I got so upset when you didn't turn up, I felt that it was pretty awful of you, to say that you were coming and then to forget entirely about it…and to attempt avoiding me later. I thought, I needed to make you guilty, get back at you for not turning up. But then – Kenji said you were looking strange, as though you really cared about what I'd said to you." Here Shige stops and laughs a little. "Your silence is beginning to unnerve me."
"I'm listening," is all Ryo manages to say and he is, so hard that everything has narrowed down to Shige and his voice, this one focal point.
Shige "mmm"s and, after a short pause, picks up where he left off. "I didn't think for a minute that you cared…after that night you made it clear that you wanted things to go on as they are. I understand that. It's the only way that it could have turned out. But even so, in Hakone – I thought about it and. God. I'm saying all the wrong things here. I guess what I want to say is, I care for you. A lot. And I want to think that you care for me a little, at least, not in the way that Nishikido Ryo-kun would care for Kato Shigeaki, but in another way…a more…another way."
There's a short silence, then Shige adds, "Everything aside."
Ryo lets out his breath slowly and feels himself beginning to think, beginning to weigh the pros and cons of his answer but before he can begin thinking, he hears someone saying "Yes. I care" and it's himself, in such a firm tone that he's surprised. "I care," he says again, and then again, "I care", "I care."
He hears Shige give a sigh so soft that it falls through the space between them and vanishes. It mirrors all the elation and confusion that they're feeling now, the headiness of being at the edge of something unbelievable with the fear of the unknown.
"I just want us to be happy," Ryo says at last, "but there's no way…"
"No," Shige's voice is warm and intimate and Ryo has never heard him sound like that before. "Let's not think about anything else, just this. Let's be happy thinking this."
"What about Murakami?"
"God, Ryo, and you say I'm the worrywart. He saw how upset I was and when a guy is so unhappy over another guy, it means something, doesn't it?"
"Shige."
"What?"
"Say my name again."
"Ryo," says Shige, "Nishikido Ryo. Ryo. Ryo, did you know, I always wanted to be confessed to, not to confess."
Ryo smiles unconsciously, wondering if hearing his first name in Shige's voice is something of what being in love is like. He'd never thought that an ordinary name like his could sound so beautiful.
Shige says his name again, so tenderly. The star fragment begins to shine out of its hidden heart.
… …
Four years later, a book of photography and poems is published and becomes a bestseller within weeks; people say that it's because the author used to be a famous idol. Never underestimate the power of an undiscerning fanbase, they say, shaking their heads with disbelief at how the Japanese literary world is going down the tubes. These days, it's not what's written inside, it's what's written outside. And I heard that every poem actually ends with 'my dear love'!
They are very disgusted.
And then critics start publishing glowing reviews, prompting notice even from serious-minded readers who live their lives through prose and not poetry.
I knew from the start, they say now, when the book came out, I knew that Japan had such a wonderful budding talent.
On the first page, there's a very ordinary Chinese painting of a man standing on the precipice of a mountain, looking up at the sky. In interviews, the author says that the painting is hung on the wall of a tiny nomiya where he used to spend nights looking at it while drinking. He doesn't disclose the name of the nomiya, saying the owner doesn't want the publicity.
The related poem is printed on the next page.
Slipping over
hiding ourselves
Slipping over while
looking at the sky
The view from below
will be dazzling
We'll get washed away by
the beauty
the cold
the rapids
And yet we're slipping over
My dear love.
previous: it's like falling into your palm, watching you smile || next: there's no heaven but the house and the ever-changing sea
pairing: Ryo/Shige
author:
misticloudrating: overall NC-17
words: 35,940
summary: They had been two separate points going in different directions when they collided, time and again, even when they didn't want to.
It's like falling into your palm, watching you smile | And yet we're slipping over, my dear love | There's no heaven but the house and the ever-changing sea | Towards the end, we run with words like knives | For things in the world that are worth living for, we live
And yet we're slipping over, my dear love
A year after he entered the Jimusho, Ryo heard through the grapevine that there were two seniors in trouble with the management for being in an illicit relationship. Ryo wasn’t very sure then what an ‘illicit relationship’ meant, but Yamapi, the beloved of the seniors, asked around and found out that it had to do with being in love and doing forbidden things with each other. Both of them listened with fascination and some horror about what had happened to the two nameless seniors – after they were found out by the managers, they had pleaded their case before Johnny-san, saying that they would keep their relationship a secret. Johnny-san, so sympathetic on most things, had ridiculed them outright.
"How do you plan on keeping this from the press?” he’d reportedly asked them. “Do you think that you can be as careful as that?"
In the end he had issued them an ultimatum: break up immediately or be expelled from the Jimusho. They were young and afraid of incurring their families’ wrath, so they chose to break up. For months after that, Ryo observed all his seniors’ faces, wondering who the two of them had been. Nearly ten years later, he still doesn’t know and the management keeps mum about it; it isn’t something to be proud about.
Every idol and idol-hopeful knows of the Jimusho’s policy regarding their freedom. The debut is the most sensitive and politically correct time of an idol’s life; once you’re established and of age, you can pretty much do as you wish as long as you stay out of the media’s sniffing radius. You can party all night, get stinking drunk, play striptease games with girls, have threesomes in hotel rooms; as long as the only thing you harm is yourself and not your reputation nor the quality of your performances, the Jimusho is perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to it and allow you to sow as many wild oats as you please.
But everyone knows that the moment your interest turns towards someone in the company, the Jimusho’s stance changes very drastically. Colleagues are colleagues, Johnny-san likes to emphasise. You can be best friends, non-blood brothers, even date the same girl if you’re so inclined, but you are absolutely forbidden from having a romantic interest in each other. That’s the height of unprofessionalism and if there’s anything Johnny-san can’t stand, it’s romance in the workplace or, as the guys jokingly put it, 'idol-cest'.
Ryo knows all of this perfectly well; he’s one of the veterans in the company, after all. He has been there since he was a kid and he knows how it goes. He’d broken up with his high school boyfriend for the sake of a smooth debut, and he stays away from radical sexual or social activities even though he knows that Johnny-san is more or less forgiving of those. Ryo has built his life around the company, and he toes the line just like (mostly) everyone else. He has seen how the Jimusho’s displeasure mixed with the pressure of the press brought about the abrupt end to Jin’s relationship in 2006, changing the fun-loving, silly, noisy bundle of energy into a party animal who treats girls like disposable underwear.
Ryo knows all of this perfectly well and so he’s very much aware that the moment he realised he was standing on the edge of falling in love with Shige, he called very big trouble upon himself.
But he's not in love yet, not really in love yet, and neither does he intend to be. So he suppresses the feelings, pushes them into the back of his mind whenever he can remember to. When Shige smiles at him, tentatively and tenderly and saturated with the memory of the night they'd shared, Ryo responds with the friendly smile of a fellow group member. When Shige gets the message and his smile loses the fleeting bit of secrecy, the intimacy, some string in Ryo's heart goes cold, but he tells himself that it'll pass. Everything passes if you give it long enough.
... ...
Tegoshi is annoying Shige again. Tegoshi seems to have been born with the innate capability to annoy Shige while endearing himself to everyone else. Or perhaps it's simply life being hard on Shige; the general opinion of NEWS is that he must have offended the universe somehow when he was born.
"Hey A! Kichoumen biriba…Hey B! My pace na banchou…"
Shige is very, very, dangerously close to ramming either his head or Tegoshi's into the nearest wall. He likes 'Koi no ABO' just as much as the next person (that is, if the next person doesn't really adore it), but listening to it ten times in a row in real time Tegoshi is beyond average human endurance.
"Tegoshi, shut…"
"Nantoka naru deshou," Tegoshi trills sweetly and Shige jumps up, already imagining his hands wrapping around Tegoshi's neck, only to be pulled back the next moment by Ryo.
"He's not going to take any notice of you, you know. You could be bashing his head and he still wouldn't notice."
"Thanks for the vote of support," Shige snarls.
Ryo grins, gives him a pacifying pat on the small of his back, then raises his voice casually. "Hey, Tegoshi, give us a break from that song. Shige's about to murder you here."
"Is it a nice murder?"
"No, it's vicious and sadistic and you won't want to go through it."
"Oh. That's not very nice." Tegoshi looks as though he wants to be stubborn, but he's a smart guy who can sense when he's truly unwanted. Shige sighs with relief when Tegoshi drifts off to disturb a staff member playing on his Nintendo Wii, then looks over at Ryo whose hand is still hovering somewhere near his ass. "Whatever power you have to make him obey you like that, I want some of it."
"Like you said, senpai and being a lot better at the entertainment business. And not forgetting more popular, too."
Shige can't keep his features from grimacing and Ryo laughs before retracting his hand. "I'll buy you a drink at Ito's tonight."
They’ve hung out a couple of times at the Ito Nomiya after the first night, just the two of them drinking the night hours away, and Shige is growing to like the place almost as much as Ryo does. Even the appalling furnishing doesn't look half so appalling when the company is as good as it is; Ryo cracking the occasional joke and insisting that Kim Jung Il won't have the balls to fire that rocket at the United States, and Ito the owner's son popping up now and then to grin knowingly at Shige when he needs someone to roll his eyes at. And then there's the company of the riotous salarymen too, some of them not very much older than him, shouting gossip at each other or dissing office politics. Sometimes they're so noisy that Ryo can't make himself heard and they end up drinking silently side by side until the noise level decreases but Shige likes it; it's both foreign and familiar to him.
"God, you're in love with this place," Ryo says that night when he notices Shige gazing at a picture hanging on the opposite wall. "You look like you're staring at your newly found mistress."
"I think that picture is…sad," says Shige solemnly, and so Ryo looks at it too. It's medium-sized and unobtrusive, a Chinese painting with simple brush strokes depicting a range of mountains and a lone figure standing on the edge of a precipice, looking up at the sky. It's a very ordinary picture and Ryo can see why he didn't notice it before. "Some old guy goes to a mountain to hide himself so that he'll inspire himself into writing poems. How is that sad?"
"It's sad whenever you have to hide something from others, isn't it?" Shige says. "Even worse if the thing you have to hide is yourself."
"He made the choice to shut himself away in the mountains and pee in grass so that he'll be able to gain enlightenment about life. I don't see how he should be pitied."
"Only sad and lonely people who don't really get along with others would become recluses to gain enlightenment about life. It's just a defence mechanism. Rationalisation, you know."
"You do talk the most marvellous crap sometimes, Kato," Ryo says, then burps. "It must be your Shige-ota training. Makes you simply…marvellously…crappy."
"You only use such big words when you're drunk."
"Maybe because I am drunk."
"It's sad that you have to try so hard to hide your intellectual supremacy, Nishikido-kun."
"It's my image," Ryo says reproachfully. "Didn't make it to university, not much for book-learning, street smart, young, wild and dangerous. It's much easier pretending to be wild and dangerous than intellectual."
"Young, wild and dangerous," Shige repeats. "You got that from the Hong Kong drama series. Young and dangerous."
"I thought I could get away with that," sighs Ryo.
Occasionally, when they have companionable moments like these, Shige lets himself remember the hours they'd spent together in Ryo's room, exploring and exploiting each other's bodies in a way he's sure was completely new to the both of them. Ryo doesn't allude to it, behaves most of the time as though the night didn't happen, but even with the pretence, somehow the physical intimacy they'd shared is bringing them closer as friends. It's odd and Shige, although not having other one-night stand experiences to compare and contrast with, doesn't think that that's the norm, but he doesn’t want to say anything that might upset the balance between him and Ryo.
He doesn't see the glances that Ryo throws him when he isn't looking. Glances so unconscious of themselves that they're frightening in their very unconsciousness. He doesn't have any idea that when Ryo jerks off at home now, the fastest and most intense way he can get off is by picturing Shige as he was that night, eyes closed and hair lying in damp strands on his forehead as he went along with all that Ryo did to him.
Shige doesn’t know, and Ryo doesn't intend that he should. It's better this way, he reasons, to take the safe way out…the 'casual friends' way out. Romantic heroes are all very well in dramas; Johnnies stake most of their acting careers on being romantic heroes, in fact; but in their real dimension, being a hero is the fastest way to get killed without getting the job done.
But the lapses in logic are getting more and more frequent. Days spent joking and teasing Shige during NEWS activities, evenings sitting beside Shige drinking cold beer and talking about things that he doesn't quite remember later, nights whiled away thinking of how familiarly Shige has taken up station in his life; Ryo can feel himself getting in deeper, so deep he can't hit bottom anymore, floundering.
He picks up the jug of beer and refills Shige's glass. "Don't tell me you're done for the night already."
"Almost am," says Shige, yawning. "I'm finishing this up and going home."
Shige devotes himself to the remainder of his beer and Ryo studies the Chinese painting in all its unremarkable glory. Stupid Chinese man standing by himself on the edge of that mountain; how desolate he looks. Does he ever look down to the beauty of the valley below and think about letting his foot slip so that he can reach it? Then again perhaps he does; perhaps he struggles every day not to do just that, to remain safe and precarious on his precipice.
It's true, Ryo thinks, watching Shige yawn and rub his hand across his nose. Having to hide something from others is sad. It's even worse if that something happens to be yourself.
… …
They don't see each other for half a month after that. There're a couple of Eito activities due for him in Osaka, filming and recording and a hundred other little things that accumulate whenever he's in Tokyo, so Ryo misses the next few NEWS rehearsals. The manager keeps him updated on the developments through texting, and he calls Koyama at night because Koyama gives more detailed updates (including what Massu was chomping on during the meeting), but there's no contact between himself and Shige. It's normal and expected. They have their own lives, Shige as a law student in Tokyo, Ryo as an Eito member in Osaka, and Shige has never contacted him before in this situation. That's the way it has always been, the status quo, apparently intact even after Ito Nomiya night-time bonding.
Ryo watches the days going by. Sometimes he thinks the sky is too blue; other times it looks too grey. Grainy and blurred, 1930s film type grey. Everything running in jerky movements, not very real at all. He doesn't have to cook when he's in Osaka since it's always a fare of home-cooked food that his mother's the best at making. No soggy karaage or ruined aglio olio. No bitter heavenly beer at the tiny, ugly nomiya, just pubs that Ohkura and Yoko and him go to after work, joking about the latest joke-able topic. They talk a bit about Can!Jani and the silly things that they have to do. He and Yoko will soon have to go around Japan searching for the loudest waterfalls or something. Ohkura says that Yamapi's birthday is coming up soon and since he'll be in Tokyo around that time, he hopes he'll be able to attend. Tokyo, Ryo thinks.
"I left my haaaa-to in Tooooki-yo," Yoko sings in terribly pronounced English. Ryo and Ohkura laugh.
"I want to be in love," Yoko declares suddenly. "I'm tiiiiiired of singing love songs. They're just, like, songs. Not the real thing."
"What you were singing isn't a love song, you know," Ohkura says. "It's about this guy leaving his heart in San Francisco because he loves the place…"
"Why would his heart be left behind if he isn't in love? Of course it's a love song."
Ohkura looks over at Ryo, eyebrows raised. "Drunk much. Get the juice, Ryo."
Ryo pushes Yoko back upright and replaces the beer with apple juice when he isn't looking. He should really be paying attention to the conversation, he knows; but he wonders just a little whether Shige's thinking of him too.
… …
When Ryo arrives fifteen minutes late for a rehearsal, he can hear his groupmates from the end of the corridor. They're so rowdy that their voices are practically bouncing off the ceiling and walls, and he can't understand all the noise. Koyama and Tegoshi are usually the empty vessels, but he can distinguish Yamapi yelling "Take off more!" and Massu saying, "The belt too! The belt too!" and it sounds suspiciously like the members have taken up strip-tease acts in his absence. Which would not be a bad idea, except that they’ve seen each other's bodies countless times in onsens and dressing rooms and Ryo has long since become desensitised.
Lots of whistles and catcalls follow and when he makes it to the door, he finds Tegoshi standing before the table with his shirt unbuttoned and an exaggeratedly seductive look on his face. Ryo's about to ask if the members are getting pervy over Tegoshi (which would be odd, since everyone except Shige professes to be turned on by boobs only), when Koyama struts up and they pull each other into a bone-crushing hug while making kissy noises. It's a rather unorthodox form of entertainment to say the least; he definitely has members who're going a little insane, and then Shige's weary voice protests, "Stop it already!"
Ryo hadn't realised before how much he'd missed hearing Shige's voice.
"Kato, let's do it now!" Tegoshi proclaims passionately and even Yamapi has to clutch his stomach.
"Oh, Ryo-chan!" Koyama suddenly spots him. "Ryo-chan still doesn't know yet, ne! Shige is going to have a butai and drama SP."
Ryo lights up and immediately turns to congratulate Shige, but he's too busy forcing Tegoshi to button his shirt. He looks at Yamapi for answers. "Why do I feel as though Shige's involved in some porn project?"
Yamapi just giggles and refuses to say a word. Mabudachi-betrayal, Ryo's glare says.
In the end it's Massu who takes on the burden of explanation since nobody else wants to. "Shige's playing a sex addict in his butai," he explains. "He's actually going to have love scenes on stage!"
Ryo doesn't know whether to laugh or not. "Do they involve stripping?"
Shige coughs, looking at him with bright eyes. "What you meant to say was that I'll be taking off some of my clothes for the sake of art."
"Sure," says Ryo, processing the information that Shige is actually going to have love scenes onstage. Shige who had started the life of a full-blown idol with dorky hair, bad teeth, and a huge inferiority complex. Shige who obviously has nothing else on his mind but his butai. He feels the need to be a little cruel, not lovingly so. "The Jimusho must have chosen you to get you to buff up that belly before you start having to wear more concealing clothes."
The members fall silent and Yamapi immediately ruffles up as he does whenever his members are treated unjustly, even by one of themselves. "Ryo-chan! There's nothing fat about Shige at all."
"I appreciate the concern, Nishikido-kun," Shige says, something off about his voice, and for the rest of the day Ryo finds himself gently but most decidedly excluded from the goofing.
It's Shige's loving way of saying go to hell. He knows he deserves it, so he doesn't fight back.
By evening the animosity seems to have abated and Shige goes willingly enough with him to the Ito Nomiya for dinner. They sit at the counter chewing meat skewers and Ito's happy to see them, saying that it's high time that they came back to pour away their idol money into his dad's shop. Smoke from the salarymen's cigarettes makes the air thick and heavy, drifts through the barred windows out into the street. Shige makes a bit of conversation and then falls into preoccupied silence until he says abruptly, "I read in a book that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else."
"That's a nice coping strategy," Ryo remarks, putting his meatless sticks together. "Not too sure about the success rate, though."
Shige flaps his hand in front of his face. "I don't mean that I'm getting under anyone. But I've started seeing someone…"
And suddenly Ryo can't breathe.
… …
It's disconcerting sometimes how you think that everyone must notice the look in your face, the irregular breaths, the trembling fingers; and then realising that they didn't notice a thing. Ryo wakes up from his stupor a few moments later…or minutes, or hours, he can't ascertain exactly, but since he's still able to follow the conversation, he figures it couldn't have been too long…to find that Shige is staring fixedly at the Chinese picture. He's talking about this high school classmate he'd run into while playing pool with his friends, and how they'd spent the night reminiscing over old times before deciding that they wanted to see a lot more of each other. His name is Murakami Kenji and he's as friendly and easy-going as Shige remembered him to be in high school; a real good guy, the type that girls would set their caps at except that Murakami doesn't go for girls. Shige had discovered that during their third meeting, entirely accidentally, he says, but there's a sort of twist at the side of his mouth that hints it probably wasn't an accident.
Ryo listens silently as Shige extols his friend's virtues. At any other time with any other person he would be amused at Murakami's seeming perfection, but a sort of numbness is swelling within him, cold and still and blocking out emotion. He thinks maybe this is his body's way of dealing with it, delaying the pain till later when he's alone and it won't matter if he wants to scream.
"We're going to Hakone for a couple of days, right after I'm done with the interview for Duet on Thursday afternoon," Shige chats, fingers fiddling with the handle of his beer glass. "He's a pretty experienced traveller. Can you imagine, he hitchhiked India all by himself with just a map and a guidebook? He said it was one of the best holidays he'd ever had. I'll like to go to India sometime too, not just the Taj Mahal, but places where tourists don't go to."
Why travel so far? Ryo thinks, why do you always want to get away?
"I haven't even thought about Takeshi since meeting Kenji. We have so much fun together that it's hard to dwell. It's too early to really talk about anything happening yet but what do you say, should I try for it?"
Ryo reaches into his pocket and throws some money onto the table. The notes are wrinkled and old and he doesn't care that he's given about 2000 yen more than is necessary. "Do whatever you want. I'm going home."
As he gets off his seat, he doesn't miss the startled look on Shige's face. "So soon?"
"See you at work."
"Nishikido-kun, you should have told me earlier that you were tired…" he doesn't hear the rest of it. He knows that he'll probably have to apologise to Shige the next time they meet, probably buy him a beer to make up for his rudeness, but as he walks down the pavement dodging laughing couples and guys smoking under the streetlamps the only thing he wants is to get away from Shige, put so much distance between them that the hurt won't catch up with him.
He tries, but when he reaches the solitude of his bedroom, the hurt still finds him anyway.
… …
Massu sympathises, because he can. He has been at the receiving end of Nishikido-kun's sharp tongue many times before and he knows how demoralising it is. He doesn't say that the more demoralised you are, the more it means that you care about what he's saying; he has an idea that Shige won't appreciate that bit of wisdom.
Before he entered the Jimusho, Massu never believed that he could be under the thumb of someone so wholly and completely like he is under Nishikido Ryo's. As a junior he'd heard of Ryo before; and when Ryo first entered the studio during NEWS' inaugural photoshoot, Massu practically saw Ryo's intimidating blond-haired aura rolling across the room towards him. Ryo looked at the cameramen and asked why there were cameras; nobody up till then had dared to question what was going on. Massu wondered at Ryo's confidence, admired it, until they were told that henceforth they would be groupmates. And then the confidence quickly turned into dread. And dread became the foundation of overpowering respect and fear when Ryo became their backstage boss, directing them as though he was meant to, telling off Yamapi for not doing anything leader-like for them, insisting that the group adhere to certain levels of performance. Massu knew that Ryo was going to so much trouble not out of any particular affection for them but because he didn't want to be stuck with a mediocre group, and somehow that made him even more daunting. So yes, Massu sympathises because he understands, because the bewilderment he hears in Shige's voice now is the same bewilderment he'd heard in his own voice years ago when he asked his mother how he was supposed to deal with such a scary group member (despite having a height advantage over him).
"It's not fair," Shige says, oblivious to the odd sizzling noises that the phone line is making. "He just walked out like that without telling me what I'd done wrong. If I'd offended him in some way, I would at least like to know what it was. Besides, he's scary when he's being offended."
"Have you messaged him?" Massu asks, though inwardly he's quite surprised to hear that Ryo and Shige have been hanging out with each other regularly after work. He knows that their relationship has improved greatly over the last few years (from strangers to one-sided enemies to an uneasy state of peace, Ryo and Shige embody progress), but he didn't know that they've become close enough to stand seeing each other after hours.
"I did," Shige says. "The very same night. I wrote that all Japanese citizens have the right to justice. I originally put 'everyone', but in the Middle-East the women aren't given any justice. It would be inaccurate."
"Yes, and?"
"He replied saying he was just in a bad mood and that I should forget it."
That doesn't sound too bad. "That doesn't sound too bad, Shige."
"I know, but…" Shige channels his words into a deep outtake of breath. "It didn't seem like a bad mood. I mean, he wasn't in a bad mood when we went out to eat. And frankly, if there was going to be anyone nursing a bad mood it should have been me considering he'd insulted me in front of everyone. This 'bad mood' defence doesn't work. Just like the insanity defence, it doesn't work anymore. They put you through psychiatric treatment first before sending you to jail. Did you know that, Massu? That the insanity defence doesn't work anymore?"
Massu thinks they're going off on a tangent and that Shige is talking really, really fast. "No, but now I do. Slow down a bit, will you? Your words are running into each other."
"In any case," says Shige, slowing down his speed to Massu's relief, "I offered him an olive branch. Said we could go for drinks on Saturday night after I've come back from Hakone. Nobody can say that I didn't try."
"Maybe," Massu suggests jokingly since the crisis is clearly over, "you've been hanging out so much that he's become possessive, so the thought of you dating someone is making him antsy."
"Nishikido-kun, getting possessive over me?" Shige considers that, then laughs. "He's not even possessive of his bullying rights. I'm public property as far as he's concerned. But maybe you're right, maybe he's secretly anguishing over me and thinking of kidnapping me to some island off the Pacific Ocean where we'll be alone with the great whites."
"You would make a nice meal for the sharks," Massu says absently, feeling his stomach rumble a little. It has been four hours since his last meal and sympathising is very tiring work.
"Save some of me for the sharks then," says Shige scathingly. "Half of me should be more than enough for you to sauté, boil, panfry, deep fry, steam. Steamed Shigeaki with Golden Abalone and Spinach. Double-boiled Shigeaki Soup with Crabmeat and Red Dates."
Massu's stomach gives a definite growl. "Let's have Chinese food for dinner."
He decides he'll make Shige pay.
… …
Ryo hits a few clubs when Shige is gone. It's not too hard finding someone to go with him; Jin has developed a taste for wild clubbing ever since coming back from America. Some nights Jin disappears and Ryo takes the cab home alone. Other nights he winds up sitting in a dark corner of whichever club with a girl grinding against him and he should be paying her some attention but he's thinking of countertops and cold beers and cigarette smoke and morning coffee instead. Pleasure and pain mix up headily and it's pain that always takes over and then he's disappearing too, disappearing so fast.
… …
He doesn't know that Shige is back in Tokyo until, as luck would have it, he takes a walk down to the nearest conbini after midnight and bumps into him and Murakami coming out of a taxi. The trials of living in the same neighbourhood. It has been over a week since he saw Shige and he almost wants to turn his head and walk away before they see him, but he hesitates too long and Shige says his name.
He stands still and watches Shige getting out of the cab after a tall guy who's dressed in last season's fashion. Ryo's absolutely not being catty about it; it's just true that Murakami's wearing outdated clothes that nobody in JE would even touch. He'd heard from Koyama that Murakami Kenji is pretty nice-looking, but he can't see it at all – this guy is boringly, inconspicuously, yawningly plain.
"I do believe you were going to pretend not to have seen me, Nishikido-kun," Shige says lightly. "Your whole body language says 'Damn it, they've spotted me'. I couldn't give you the pleasure of being ignored."
Ryo shrugs, watching the taxi drive away.
"This is Murakami Kenji. Kenji, my bandmate Nishikido Ryo-kun."
"Nice to meet you, Nishikido-san," Murakami says. He's smiling, but there's no real warmth in his voice.
Ryo stretches his lips in response. "I'm on my way to meet Akanishi and the others."
"Oh yeah, I heard from Yamashita-kun that you've been clubbing recently. Sounds fun." There are well-concealed daggers in Shige's words, not, perhaps, in his language, but in the amount of anger and disillusion that he's fitting into every syllable. Ryo doesn't understand it and it makes him prickly, defensive.
"It is. See you around." He's about to walk off when Shige calls after him, "Nishikido-kun, it's even more fun clubbing on a Saturday night, isn't it?"
"What is your problem…" Ryo stops. Saturday night.
"You might have sent me a message," Shige said. "You didn't even have to write anything. Just a 'no' would have been loud and clear. Still, I guess you got your point across."
He turns and walks away in the direction of his apartment, and Murakami gives Ryo an odd look before following. Ryo sees it, but doesn't process it. The Emperor himself can give him odd looks for all he cares. Shige had waited for him at the Ito Nomiya and he hadn't realised that it was Saturday night. Shige is taking Murakami Kenji home with him. Look, they're getting smaller in the distance now, soon they won't be in sight. Shige had waited for him and he hadn't shown. Ryo could almost smile at the irony if his face didn't feel like it wanted to crack.
He looks up at the sky instead. He vaguely remembers someone else doing the same thing.
Ah yes, the Chinese brushstroke man.
Looking at the sky.
His feet are slipping so surely over the precipice.
He's slipping.
He's looking at the sky, but
soon he'll be in the valley.
There are beautiful things, beautiful things, in the valley, but he won't stay long; he'll get washed away by the rapids.
Just like how everything passes, and few things really do.
They're no longer in sight.
… …
Some nights are so still that it feels as though the entire world has shut down around you.
Ryo counts the ticks of the clock on his desk; listens to the low drone of the air-con. The air-con sounds as though it's going to start leaking soon – it does that occasionally, at the most inconvenient and ungodly times. A few feet away from him, the clock goes tick tock, tick tock, it's loud and clicky and he should really consider going digital. He's not thinking of anything in particular. People and places are chasing each other in his mind, getting all mashed together, Yamapi's doing push-ups in the dressing room and Tegoshi's humming a tune and Subaru is playing the guitar and Yoko is teasing Yasu for being more of a girl than a guy while Ohkura smiles, looking on…and then Shige is sitting in the Ito Nomiya with the dull lighting making his eyes dark and smudgy and he's saying he likes these evenings best, beer somehow tastes best inside here, doesn't it, Nishikido-kun?
When his phone rings, he initially mistakes it for being part of the crazy scene in his head.
"Nishikido-kun," Shige says softly over the line. "I'm sorry I'm calling so late."
Ryo listens to the inflections in his voice, thinking they sound too real to be dreamed.
"Is it okay? Should I hang up?"
"No, I wasn't sleeping. But aren't you with Murakami-san?"
Shige takes a breath. "No, he left a while ago. The thing is…"
"Shige? I'm sorry for not turning up tonight."
"Yeah, I know. Maybe you can make up for it by listening to me now? Don't say anything until I'm done."
Ryo can't hear the ticking of the clock anymore; even that has quieted down. Shige makes a few false starts, still keeping his voice low, and he can't tell if it's because it's an instinctive action due to the time, or that the words are having difficulty in coming out. Shige tries again and this time gets past the first six words. "The thing is, Kenji told me…no, that's too far ahead. What I mean to say is – I'm getting to it, don't get impatient yet – I really wanted to meet you tonight. You know what I mean? I can't make it clearer than that. I was looking forward to seeing you after coming back and all. Maybe that's why I got so upset when you didn't turn up, I felt that it was pretty awful of you, to say that you were coming and then to forget entirely about it…and to attempt avoiding me later. I thought, I needed to make you guilty, get back at you for not turning up. But then – Kenji said you were looking strange, as though you really cared about what I'd said to you." Here Shige stops and laughs a little. "Your silence is beginning to unnerve me."
"I'm listening," is all Ryo manages to say and he is, so hard that everything has narrowed down to Shige and his voice, this one focal point.
Shige "mmm"s and, after a short pause, picks up where he left off. "I didn't think for a minute that you cared…after that night you made it clear that you wanted things to go on as they are. I understand that. It's the only way that it could have turned out. But even so, in Hakone – I thought about it and. God. I'm saying all the wrong things here. I guess what I want to say is, I care for you. A lot. And I want to think that you care for me a little, at least, not in the way that Nishikido Ryo-kun would care for Kato Shigeaki, but in another way…a more…another way."
There's a short silence, then Shige adds, "Everything aside."
Ryo lets out his breath slowly and feels himself beginning to think, beginning to weigh the pros and cons of his answer but before he can begin thinking, he hears someone saying "Yes. I care" and it's himself, in such a firm tone that he's surprised. "I care," he says again, and then again, "I care", "I care."
He hears Shige give a sigh so soft that it falls through the space between them and vanishes. It mirrors all the elation and confusion that they're feeling now, the headiness of being at the edge of something unbelievable with the fear of the unknown.
"I just want us to be happy," Ryo says at last, "but there's no way…"
"No," Shige's voice is warm and intimate and Ryo has never heard him sound like that before. "Let's not think about anything else, just this. Let's be happy thinking this."
"What about Murakami?"
"God, Ryo, and you say I'm the worrywart. He saw how upset I was and when a guy is so unhappy over another guy, it means something, doesn't it?"
"Shige."
"What?"
"Say my name again."
"Ryo," says Shige, "Nishikido Ryo. Ryo. Ryo, did you know, I always wanted to be confessed to, not to confess."
Ryo smiles unconsciously, wondering if hearing his first name in Shige's voice is something of what being in love is like. He'd never thought that an ordinary name like his could sound so beautiful.
Shige says his name again, so tenderly. The star fragment begins to shine out of its hidden heart.
… …
Four years later, a book of photography and poems is published and becomes a bestseller within weeks; people say that it's because the author used to be a famous idol. Never underestimate the power of an undiscerning fanbase, they say, shaking their heads with disbelief at how the Japanese literary world is going down the tubes. These days, it's not what's written inside, it's what's written outside. And I heard that every poem actually ends with 'my dear love'!
They are very disgusted.
And then critics start publishing glowing reviews, prompting notice even from serious-minded readers who live their lives through prose and not poetry.
I knew from the start, they say now, when the book came out, I knew that Japan had such a wonderful budding talent.
On the first page, there's a very ordinary Chinese painting of a man standing on the precipice of a mountain, looking up at the sky. In interviews, the author says that the painting is hung on the wall of a tiny nomiya where he used to spend nights looking at it while drinking. He doesn't disclose the name of the nomiya, saying the owner doesn't want the publicity.
The related poem is printed on the next page.
Slipping over
hiding ourselves
Slipping over while
looking at the sky
The view from below
will be dazzling
We'll get washed away by
the beauty
the cold
the rapids
And yet we're slipping over
My dear love.
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