Apple Snapple

100 SuJu Fics Challenge

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:51:27 GMT

100 Challenge

Progress: 1/100

001. Freefall, Eeteuk/Kangin
002. Christmas, Heechul/Ryeowook
003. Blindfolds, Hankyung/Yesung
004. Chocolate, Yesung/Shindong
005. Overworked, Ryeowook/Kibum
006. Burn, Heechul/Yesung
007. Dark, Eeteuk/Sungmin
008. Locket, Heechul/Sungmin
009. Coffee, Eunhyuk/Donghae
010. Shiver, Heechul/Heechul
011. Rooftops, Hankyung/Sungmin
012. Chains, Heechul/Kangin
013. Watermelon, Shiwon/Kyuhyun
014. Home, Heechul/Donghae
015. Lick, Heechul/Hankyung
016. Quiet Places, Yesung/Ryeowook
017. Accidents, Ryeowook/Ryeowook
018. Keys, Eeteuk/Shiwon
019. Clocks, Shindong/Eunhyuk
020. Glow, Donghae/Kibum
021. Park Benches, Yesung/Kyuhyun
022. Diamonds, Sungmin/Kibum
023. Tears, Yesung/Shiwon
024. Spotlight, Sungmin/Kyuhyun
025. Smoke, Eeteuk/Shindong
026. Pressure, Eunhyuk/Ryeowook
027. Replacement, Heechul/Kibum
028. Choking, Eeteuk/Ryeowook
029. Sea, Sungmin/Shiwon
030. Warmth, Kangin/Donghae
031. Midnight Walks, Shiwon/Ryeowook
032. Roses, Shindong/Shindong
033. Flirt, Yesung/Kibum
034. Acceptance, Hankyung/Kibum
035. Blind, Heechul/Shiwon
036. Bathroom Tiles, Hankyung/Shiwon
037. Rotation, Hankyung/Kyuhyun
038. "I want you to stay forever.", Eeteuk/Kibum
039. All the People, Hankyung/Donghae
040. Skin, Shindong/Kyuhyun
041. Dance Practice, Shindong/Kibum
042. Suits, Kibum/Kyuhyun
043. Washing Machines, Donghae/Shiwon
044. Rejection, Eunhyuk/Eunhyuk
045. Smooth, Shindong/Sungmin
046. Stuffed Animals, Kangin/Eunhyuk
047. Stutter, Sungmin/Sunmgin
048. That Girl, Eeteuk/Hankyung
049. "What's the difference?", Hankyung/Hankyung
050. Lost, Heechul/Kyuhyun

051. Aliens, Ryeowook/Kyuhyun
052. Cake, Sungmin/Donghae
053. Puppies, Eeteuk/Heechul
054. Self-Image, Hankyung/Shindong
055. Shatter, Kangin/Kangin
056. Filth, Donghae/Ryeowook
057. Scales, Donghae/Kyuhyun
058. Lies, Shiwon/Shiwon
059. Calendar, Eeteuk/Eeteuk
060. Humid, Heechul/Eunhyuk
061. Disguises, Yesung/Yesung - foundations for a mask
062. God, Hankyung/Kangin
063. Video Games, Yesung/Eunhyuk
064. Balance, Kyuhyun/Kyuhyun
065. Grip, Donghae/Donghae
066. Mice, Eeteuk/Donghae
067. Sunrise, Yesung/Sungmin
068. Degradation, Kibum/Kibum
069. Sailing, Kangin/Shiwon
070. Thunderstorm, Kangin/Sungmin
071. Plays (Theatre), Hankyung/Ryeowook
072. Muscles, Kangin/Kibum
073. Milkshakes, Eeteuk/Eunhyuk
074. Flu Season, Shindong/Ryeowook
075. Wrap, Yesung/Donghae
076. Youth, Shindong/Shiwon
077. Pass, Sungmin/Ryeowook
078. Sickness, Kangin/Kyuhyun
079. The Same Old Thing, Eeteuk/Yesung
080. Crackle, Eunhyuk/Shiwon
081. Noise/Noiseless, Kangin/Shindong
082. Evening, Shiwon/Kibum
083. Fever, Hankyung/Eunhyuk
084. Snowflakes, Eunhyuk/Kyuhyun
085. Ache, Shindong/Donghae
086. Violins, Eunhyuk/Kibum
087. Belief, Sungmin/Eunhyuk
088. Numbers, Eeteuk/Kyuhyun
089. "I like your face.", Kangin/Ryeowook
090. Clean, Heechul/Shindong
091. Stars, Yesung/Kangin
092. Gorgeous, WC *
093. Bubble Baths, WC *
094. Makeup, WC *
095. Drowning, WC *
096. "I like you. I like you. I like you.", WC *
097. Glasses, WC *
098. Soothing, WC *
099. Apples, WC *
100. Regrets, WC *

JE DRABBLE DUMP #03

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:01:02 GMT

Well really it's not a dump or anything, maybe around two or three? Cause I figure when I'm writing a hugeass oneshot I should write drabbles too so the fandom doesn't think I'm like, dead or anything. Sorry flist. :D

01. Paper ~ Ohmiya

Nino doesn't understand why he even bothers doing this, exactly, why he bothers wrestling with countless pieces of paper until he actually gets it right. It's been at least two hours, maybe four, he hasn't really checked since he's too preoccupied by what seems like an easy task but really it's just a pain in the ass.

He could be playing Cooking Mama of all things than doing this, but he persists because he wants to win this battle against pieces of paper and boats and fish and whatever. So he keeps on folding, keeps on starting from scratch even though it's really wearing down on his patience.

Just then Ohno comes into the room and shows off the paper boat and fish that Aiba made for him.

Nino curses and stuffs all the crinkled paper under Sho's mound of newspapers and vows to kill Aiba someday.

02. Gum Wrappers ~ AibaJun

When Aiba starts asking everyone for their gum wrappers he knows something is up. Aiba doesn't usually ask for things unless he's planning a disastrous experiment.

He doesn't really notice it at first, since he doesn't venture in his kitchen all that much as of late unless he's going to the fridge to get a drink, but something sparkly catches his eye and he turns and stares at his kitchen counter in horror as he sees different colored foils plastered onto it.

He immediately calls Aiba, since he can't think of anyone else who would think of something as stupid as this, and waits impatiently for the other man to pick up. He starts bombarding the other man with questions once he hear's a click and Aiba only laughs at him.

"Your kitchen was getting boring, Jun. I just decided to make it prettier!"

He resists the urge to bang his head on his fridge door.

03. Restrictions ~ Sakumiya

Nino really wishes sometimes that communication and language would stop being so restricting. He either has to say things that sound lame and cheesy or end up saying things that make him sound like he doesn't really mean what he feels. He hates it, hates how there's a limit to a number of words in his language, hates how certain phrases are used over and over again until they sound lame and cheesy and it becomes embarassing to say it in front of someone.

He doesn't feel comfortable living a cliche life and saying cliche things to someone else. It's not what he wants, it can't get his point across. He wants it to be something different, something special and unique between the two of them.

He finds out way too late that the other man doesn't really care; he already understands without Nino having to say anything.

04. Why ~ ???-centric

He wonders why people stand up for him, why people assume things. They don't even know him, and he doesn't know where all these assumptions have come from.

Some of the general population assume he has done bad things, and they aren't afraid to voice out their hate. Some others defend him, saying that all these false accusations are unfair and unjust.

No one really knows him; they've never met him behind the stage. So he really wonders why people assume.

---------------------

Yeah not really much of a dump D: I want to try those sentences things but I don't get how they work. LOL.

New Layout

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:06:15 GMT

I spent like, 4 hours+ looking for a new layout before I finally settled on this weird default one from LJ. LOL.

Voila.

Any complaints?

TH1EE

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:43:29 GMT

Pairings: Akame, KoyamaKame, KameRyo
Words: 5,353
Warning: Kame has multiple personality disorder. Ok bye.
Rating: PG-13

For Minty's birthday~ <3 lots of love <3 Not posted to jent cause...well....quite frankly I'm not that good in the KAT-TUN/NEWS fandom. =-=;;

~~~

The first time Jin meets him is at a bar, sitting two stools away from him. The kid can’t be older than twenty, he thinks, but he’s impressed with the kid’s ability to hold down alcohol. He downs drink after drink, only slowing down when he gets to his seventh shot.

He decides to sit there and watch him, only because his friends have ditched him there and there’s nothing better to do. The guy seems to be alone; there’s no one else around him and the only person he’s talked to so far is the bartender. He turns his head away to study his own drink.

He notices that the place is practically empty and casts a glance wearily at the empty chairs and empty glasses. He sighs, and then turns his head when he hears a crash of glass against wood. He sees shattered glass next to the kid’s stool and makes his way to the slumped form on the table.

“Hey, kid,” Jin says, laying a hand on the kid’s shoulder and nudging him a little. “You okay?”

His arm gets slapped away. “Get away from me.”

“Harsh,” Jin remarks.

The movement is too sudden, and he doesn’t even realize he’s being pinned to the counter until he registers that the kid’s face is mere inches away from his. “Don’t fuck with me, you bastard.”

“I’m not,” Jin protests, and he gets a glare before getting shoved again. The man makes his way to the door with a slight swing in his step before he pushes the door and manages to get outside in one piece.

Jin shakes his head and sits back down on his stool, ordering another drink.

“Not in a rush to get home?” the bartender asks him, setting down his drink in front of him. Jin grabs it and takes a gulp before setting it back down on the counter.

“No, not really.” There’s a pause, and Jin decides it should be okay to ask. “Who’s that kid anyway?”

The bartender seems to know who he’s talking about, nodding before replying. “He doesn’t come here often, maybe once or twice a week. Lots of people have asked about him; he’s a real pretty thing. He seems to be real moody though, doesn’t talk much.”

Jin nods too and motions to the shattered glass on the floor. “You gunna make him pay for that?”

The bartender shrugs. “Depends if he’s in the mood to pay or not. I’ll ask him about it the next time he comes around.”

“Ah.”

~~~

He wakes up the next morning with an unbearable headache and groans, rubbing his eyes. He turns off his alarm clock and waits a few moments before getting out of bed and padding towards his bathroom.

His phone rings while he’s in the middle of brushing his teeth and he rinses his mouth quickly before running back to his bedroom to retrieve his phone. He answers it, waiting a few moments before realizing that there’s only silence. He blinks, not understanding why. “Hello?”

“Hello?” a voice on the other end asks.

“…Can you hear me right now?” he asks the man calling him, not sure if his voice is getting through.

“Ah, yeah. Sorry about that, I wasn’t sure if you answered or not.” The man on the other end sounds sheepish, maybe a little bit apologetic. “Kame, I’m outside right now.”

“That’s…good?” Kame answers back, not understanding what the other man means.

“I mean I’m outside your apartment complex,” he clarifies, and Kame almost drops his phone. He runs over to his window and pushes the curtains back, and he sees Koyama who waves at him and smiles.

Kame waves back, not sure what to do until he sees the time and realizing how late it is, closes the curtains and muttering a quick “Hold on” before closing his phone and dressing. He grabs his bag from the chair and slips his phone in before running to the living room and grabbing his keys. He makes sure his door is locked before clambering down the stairs

He slows down when he reaches the place where he thinks Koyama is, but he’s nowhere to be found. He looks around and jumps when he feels something tap his shoulder. He turns around and in his haste he almost steps on Koyama’s shoe.

“Ah, sorry!” he exclaims.

Koyama chuckles a bit before replying. “Did I scare you?”

“A…a little bit, I guess,” Kame admits. He quickly glances at his watch before tugging on Koyama’s sleeve. “We should get going.”

As they make their way out onto the main streets Kame clutches his head, wincing as cars go rumbling past him, an occasional beep or two sounding out from impatient drivers anxiously trying to get through. Koyama notices and pats his shoulder again. “Another headache?” he asks worriedly.

“It’s just a small one,” Kame assures him, though Koyama doesn’t look convinced.

“You should go to a doctor,” Koyama advises. “What if it’s something more serious? Like, a brain tumor or something?”

“It’s fine,” he protests. Koyama looks as if he’s about to argue but drops it, sighing. “You don’t have to worry about me, I can take care of myself just fine.”

“It’s not like I can help it,” Koyama defends himself. He eyes Kame warily. “Have you been eating lately?”

The younger boy laughs at him, punching him in the shoulder. “Yes, mom.”

Koyama rubs his shoulder, wincing, as they make their way towards campus.

~~~

Jin groans as he gets kicked off his futon, wincing and rubbing his elbow when it comes in contact with the hard floor of his room. “What the fuck, that hurt.”

“Get up,” the other man orders, kicking his blankets off the futon as well. “You have to go to work, remember?”

“Since when did you suddenly get so hyped up to go to work?” Jin grumbles, grabbing the blankets and making his way back up onto his futon.

“Stop being such a lazy ass,” Ryo retorts, stealing the blankets again.

“Fuck you. No wait, better yet, go fuck that guy you met at the convenience store.”

“Unlike you, I don’t go to random bars just to meet up with some random guy who throws glasses on the floor.”

Jin suddenly sits up and throws his pillow at the other man, who promptly dodges. “Oh yeah like I’d totally want to be like you, pining over some girl who eats like a pig.”

“Fucker, don’t call him a girl, a pig, or all those other retarded names that shoot out of your brain. You haven’t even met him yet.” Ryo gets up and turns off Jin’s alarm and glaring at him at the same time. “Just because he eats a lot doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a pig.”

Jin blinks at him before flopping back down onto his futon. “That kid fucked with your brains so bad that you’re defending him now.”

Ryo throws a magazine at him. “I think you’re the pig. At least he’s skinnier than you and doesn’t plop his ass down on a stool half the day drinking at some bar.”

“What’s wrong with being at a bar? I meet new people that way,” Jin defends himself, finally sitting up.

Ryo rolls his eyes. “Whatever, fat ass. I’m going to work.”

Jin sticks his tongue out at his roommate. “See you later, pig lover.”

Ryo throws a cushion at Jin this time, which hits the latter on the head. He gives a chuckle before grabbing his coat and closing the door behind him.

Work for him is pretty much uneventful and boring, with coworkers nervously asking him about his day and offering to go out with him for drinks. He declines, because he has other plans and they don’t involve drinking with retarded coworkers who don’t even remember his last name, let alone his first. There’s only a few people that he can freely talk to in the company, and they respect Ryo’s occasional wishes of being alone, know when he has other plans and can’t make it to their gatherings.

It’s not that he doesn’t like gatherings, necessarily; in fact, he likes going out with his friends for drinks. But he doesn’t want to do it everyday, because it wouldn’t be special and it’d somehow start to get boring after a while. He doesn’t know how Jin can manage it, going out everyday without getting tired of it, all the music and the people jumbled up and mashed together.

He makes his way through the crowded streets of Tokyo, bypassing a few homeless people sleeping out on the streets on top of newspapers. There are kids, probably elementary school students, running on the sidewalks, high schoolers walking with phones in their hands. He bumps into people a few times, apologizing before moving on through the sea of people swarming around him.

He finds the store he’s looking for, enters, a nice little chime sounding after him. He looks over to the counter where the cashier sits and is relieved; the man wasn’t here the last time he came. He looks around the aisles before deciding on a pack of gum, walking over to the cashier to pay for it.

The man looks up at him in surprise. “Why are you here? Don’t you have work?” he asks, scanning the item that Ryo has chosen.

Ryo shakes his head. “It’s already six; my shift is over. What about you?”

The man makes a face and shakes his head. “I think I have about a hour left. Until Keisuke comes, then I can leave.”

Ryo nods, leaning on the counter. “You weren’t here the last time I came. Did you get sick?” He doesn’t mean for it to be a rude question, doesn’t mean to be too prying, but the other man stiffens a little when Ryo asks.

He ends up pouting, sitting down on his chair with a sigh. “I probably forgot I had a shift; no wonder my boss was so mad today when I came in. He started lecturing me about not being responsible and stuff.” He leans his arm on the solid surface in front of him and pokes at the magnets set on display. “I’m hungry now.”

Ryo chuckles and stands upright. “I’ll go make a reservation. Have fun working for the next hour.”

Kame smiles at him, flashing him a peace sign. “Sure you won’t miss me?”

Ryo gives him a mock glare and gives him a shove. “As if I would.” As he exits the convenience store, he hears his laugh tinkling in the air over the chimes.

He ignores the feeling in the back of his mind that something is off. He ignores the question that’s burning in the back of his head. He ponders on it before pushing it away.

After all, it shouldn’t be that weird if one forgets the time of their own shift.

~~~

Jin meets the kid again at the same bar a week later. It’s not like he’s waiting for him or anything, but the kid’s pretty interesting and they ended on a bad note the last time they met.

The kid sits on the same stool that he sat on the last time, chatting amiably with the bartender before downing a couple of drinks silently.

Jin takes his opportunity when a guy sitting next to him moves away. He plops himself down on the seat beside the kid, and the kid raises an eyebrow at him before tipping his glass back.

Jin doesn’t say anything, and the kid doesn’t look like he expects him to say anything either. A couple drinks later, the kid finally opens his mouth. “You again?”

Jin gives him a look. “What do you mean ‘me again’?”

“Are you a stalker or something?” the kid asks, ordering another glass. The bartender takes his glass and refills it, giving Jin a smirk before setting the glass back down on the counter. “This is the second time I’ve seen you around here.”

Jin shrugs. “I just felt like coming here. Why? You gunna chase me out of the place?”

This time it’s the kid who shrugs. “I don’t have any intention of making friends, you know. I’d advise you to stop trying.”

“What, is talking to you a crime or something?”

“Nope.” The kid finishes his drink, but this time he doesn’t order another glass. “But things could get pretty ugly if you keep on talking to me. I’m just warning you.”

Jin sucks in a breath and lets out a sigh. “I think I’m ready to take the risk.”

The kid raises his eyebrow again. “Don’t bitch at me if something bad happens in the future.”

Jin watches him as he hands his glass to the bartender, who fills it up again. “What’s your name?”

The other man shrugs. “Depends.”

Jin stares at him. “Ha?” he asks, not understanding.

“As far as I know, I have two names.” The kid raises up two fingers as if to emphasize his point. “You can call me Keiji. Or, you can call me by my alter ego’s name which is confidential.”

Jin clicks his tongue and leans back. “If it was confidential you didn’t have to mention it in the first place. Alter ego my ass.”

The Keiji kid gives him a glare. “I’m warning you, don’t fuck with me. If I say I have an alter ego, then I have one. Got that?”

Jin gives him a are-you-totally-nuts-look. “Yeah, okay, but something’s bothering me.”

“What?” Keiji asks him, frowning.

“Do you have any better comebacks besides ‘don’t fuck with me’? You already said that last time.”

Surprisingly, instead of glaring at him, Keiji lets out a chuckle. He downs another drink and sets his glass down. “You’re a pretty interesting guy.” He slides off his stool and drops some cash down on the counter. “It’s for the broken glass last time too,” he says, and the bartender nods.

“You going already?”

He nods. “I’ll see you around.” He makes his way to the door and pushes it open, disappearing into the night.

Jin stares after his retreating figure and wonders when he’ll see him again.

~~~

That night when he goes back home he sees Ryo sitting on the couch talking with his high school friend. Ryo looks up at him in surprise when he sees Jin walk in through the door. “You’re home early,” he comments, not used to seeing him home before midnight.

“The kid left early,” Jin says, shrugging. He flops onto an armchair and sighs. “How’s it going with the pig girl?”

A pillow gets thrown at him again. “I told you not to call him pig girl!”

Ryo’s high school friend looks at him, interested. “He has a boyfriend?” he asks Jin, pointing at Ryo who’s next to him.

Jin nods. “I forgot his name, not that it really matters.”

“Hey!” Ryo exclaims. “Be nice to him; you haven’t even met him yet!”

“Oh really?” The other man looks more curious now and taps Ryo on the shoulder. “What’s he like?” he asks him, clearly wanting some information. Ryo makes a face, getting into a staring contest with his friend before finally relenting with a sigh.

“He’s nice. Really nice,” Ryo remarks. “He complains sometimes about stuff, but he’s okay most of the time.”

“And he eats like a pig,” Jin adds and this time ducks when another cushion flies towards him. “It’s true!” Jin defends himself, throwing the cushion back at Ryo.

“He just likes eating a lot, okay?” Ryo informs him. “He’s in his growing stage, unlike you. I swear you eat more than him.”

“I do not!” Jin protests. “Make him come here next time and I’ll prove it to you.”

“I don’t need proof,” Ryo scoffs. “And you better remember his name before I let him come anywhere near you.”

“I don’t remember you telling me,” Jin defends, because he seriously doesn’t remember Ryo ever telling him his boyfriend’s name.

“I don’t remember not telling you,” Ryo retorts, getting up off the couch.

“Wait…what?” Jin asks, confused.

“Exactly,” Ryo says, going into the kitchen. “His name is Kame. You better remember it the next time I ask you, or else you won’t get to see him.”

“It’s not like I particularly want to see him.” Jin makes a face and turns toward Ryo’s friend. “Are you staying for the night?” he asks him. The other man shakes his head.

“I’ve got to go back; I have classes tomorrow,” he says, standing up too. “I’ll see you guys around in a bit, okay?” He gives Jin a smile and waves at Ryo who’s in the kitchen before making his way to the door, slipping on his shoes silently. He opens the door and then slips out, waving a final time before closing the door behind him.

Jin sighs and moves from his perch on the armchair to the sofa. “Ryo?”

“Hm?” Ryo asks from the kitchen, chopping up some vegetables.

“Why did Koyama come here today?” Jin asks him, taking a magazine off the table and flipping through it. “Or did he come here just cause?”

“He came here just cause,” Ryo answers him, turning on the burner. “I guess he just wanted to keep in touch.”

“He’s still in school?”

Jin can sense Ryo rolling his eyes even though there’s a wall between them blocking his view. “No shit, he’s doing some weird six-year course or something. Didn’t I tell you that before?”

“Just asking.” Jin tosses the magazine back on the table and sighs, lying his head on the only cushion that’s left on the couch. “Does he have a boyfriend?”

Ryo pauses before answering. “Yeah, actually I think he does. Some person who’s at the top of his class in university or something. I don’t really remember; he’s probably a nerd.”

“Great. You’re dating a pig girl and Koyama’s dating a nerd. Am I the only normal one here?” Jin asks.

Later he regrets calling him pig girl, but only for a few hours because Ryo chases him with a wooden spoon and Jin has no choice but to lock himself in their bedroom for the night, or at least until Ryo calms the fuck down.

~~~

Jin meets Keiji a few more times at the bar and they exchange emails and phone numbers. Keiji asks him what his name is on one occasion, because he deems it’s unfair that Jin knows his name but he doesn’t know Jin’s yet, so he tells him.

One day Jin finally deems it safe to ask Keiji if he wants to drop by his apartment someday, and to his surprise Keiji agrees. The shock is probably written all over his face, since Keiji laughs and tells him that he’s not that antisocial. Jin rolls his eyes.

“Since when were you ever social?” Jin asks him and regrets it when Keiji punches him on the shoulder. Hard.

He thinks it should be against the law for Keiji to have such a good punch, especially since he’s so thin and small looking. He doesn’t voice out his opinions though, since he knows he’ll just get punched again, or maybe cursed at.

~~~

“Where are you going?” Kame asks him, currently in the middle of organizing the mess in his bag that’s piled up over the recent months. Koyama smiles at him and gives him a pat on the head.

“I’m going to get groceries. I’ll come back in a bit, okay?”

“Okay,” Kame answers, nodding. “Are you going to stay over today?”

Koyama is silent for a while, and Kame starts to panic. “Ah, I didn’t mean that you had to stay over or something-”

Koyama shakes his head and smiles again, ruffling the younger boy’s hair before slipping the key Kame gave him into his pocket. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I might stay over, I don’t know yet.” He pauses. “Are you going to be all right if I go out for a while?”

“It’s fine.” Kame makes a face as he pulls out a wad of papers from his bag. “Be safe, okay?”

“Okay,” Koyama answers him and makes his way out, closing the door behind him softly.

When he comes back twenty minutes later, groceries in hand, Kame is nowhere to be found.

~~~

Ryo goes to the convenience store where Kame is working at, but he doesn’t see him. He looks around, deciding maybe he’s organizing the stuff in the aisles, but he can’t find him.

He goes back to the front and asks the cashier where Kame is. The cashier rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “The kid didn’t come in today, so I had to sub in for him.”

“Oh.” Ryo thinks about this for a moment. “Did he say why?”

The cashier shakes his head. “Nope. Just disappeared like last time. He’s probably going to get fired at this rate.”

Ryo takes this information quickly and nods, giving his thanks before heading out.

It’s the second time Kame has forgotten about his shift. He decides to call him, but all he gets is the answering machine. He sighs, snapping his phone shut. The only thing he can do right now is go back home and hope Kame answers his calls and text messages soon.

When he gets home, he’s surprised to see Koyama at his doorway, leaning his back against the wall, eyes closed. Ryo taps him on the shoulder and Koyama opens his eyes, smiling before waving and saying hi.

“You could’ve just called, you know,” Ryo remarks as he opens the door to his apartment.

“I could’ve,” Koyama agrees, looking thoughtful. “But you see, Kame stole my phone so I don’t really have that option anymore.”

Ryo stares at him, the door to his apartment half opened.

~~~

It’s today that Jin finally gets to take Keiji home with him and show him off to Ryo. He’s happy, since he thinks Ryo and Keiji would get along nicely together.

He opens the door to his apartment and sees Ryo and Koyama sitting on the couch.

~~~

Koyama looks up when he hears a click at the door. “Ah, I think Jin’s home.”

~~~

Ryo looks up when his apartment door opens. “I didn’t think Jin would be home so early today,” he mutters.

Jin seems to have brought along a guest, and Ryo sighs. He stands up, ready to confront Jin and ask him to take his friend somewhere else, but the words are stuck in his throat as he sees a familiar figure walk through the door.

~~~

Jin closes the door behind him, motioning for Keiji to move forward. “It’s okay, they won’t bite,” he says, missing the surprised look Ryo gives him.

Keiji mutters a quick greeting before flopping down onto the armchair, and Ryo just stares at him.

“You see?” Jin says, smirking at Ryo. “He’s totally cooler than your stupid pig girl.”

“Jin.” Ryo stares at his friend.

“You should bring your boyfriend over next time,” Jin complains. “I need to prove to you that he eats more than me.”

Koyama coughs a bit.

“Jin,” Ryo says again. “Jin, listen to me.”

“What?” Jin asks, not understanding why Ryo is acting this way, why Koyama’s looking at them with what seems to be a sad expression on his face. “Why are you guys being so gloomy?”

Ryo looks tired, confused. “Jin, he’s the guy you’ve been calling pig girl this whole time.”

Jin stares at him. “Huh?”

“That’s the guy I’ve been seeing,” Ryo tells him, and Jin wonders what the hell his friend is even talking about.

“Is this some sort of test?” Jin asks, crossing his arms. “Not funny. His name’s Keiji, not Kame or whatever.”

“It’s not a test,” Koyama voices out, standing up also. “And it’s not a lie, nor is it a joke. He’s Kame.” He points to the man sitting in the chair. “Ah, I think he fell asleep.”

“What the fuck?” Jin glares at Ryo, but surprisingly the man doesn’t glare back at him. “What’s going on? He can’t be Kame. They’re two totally different people!”

“Wrong,” Koyama interrupts, sighing before sitting back down on the couch. He motions for Ryo to sit as well. “It’s two different personalities, not two different people.”

Jin stares. “Personalities?”

Koyama nods. “He actually has three. Keiji is one of them, and the Kame that’s dating Ryo is another one. The Kame that’s dating me is the third one.”

Jin can’t seem to process the information in his head, and blames it on the alcohol. “So…wait. Huh?”

“Basically it means that Kame has multiple personality disorder,” Ryo explains to him. “It explains why he missed his shift today too.”

Jin still can’t process the information that’s suddenly been thrown at him, but he understands a little, if only a little. “Uh, ok.”

Both Ryo and Koyama stare at him. “What do you mean ‘ok’?” Ryo demands.

Jin shrugs. “I don’t see what the big deal is. He has a disorder, ok, so what about it?”

“You’re missing the point,” Ryo insists. “He’s seeing all three of us right now, you know. At the same time.”

“I know that. I don’t see any problem with it.”

All they can do is stare at Jin, and he continues talking.

“If you think about it, there really isn’t much of a difference. Between three people and one person with three personalities, I mean. Well…there is some difference but it’s kind of like three people being stuck in the same body, you know what I mean?” Jin says, proud of his logic. “And it didn’t really make a difference before, so why should it now?”

The room stays quiet for a few moments, and then Koyama speaks up. “I think he has a point.”

“So we should continue dating him without any worries!” Jin exclaims matter-of-factly, happy that the problem has been solved.

“I think he’s stupid,” Ryo protests. “How the hell is it going to work?”

“It won’t be any different,” Jin insists. “I mean, we’ve managed it this far, so why can’t we continue? The only difference is that we know now.” He blinks, suddenly thinking of something. “Wait…how did you find out in the first place?”

Ryo gives out a chuckle and points to Koyama. “This guy, he was following us all along. He’s a total stalker.”

“I am not! His mom told me to take care of him, that’s all.” Koyama takes a look at the sleeping form huddled on the armchair. “She told me everything when I first met him, just to make sure I wouldn’t freak out later if he did anything weird.”

“Total stalker,” Jin remarks. “Although I think Ryo’s still weirder.”

This time he gets hit in the head with a newspaper, and he thinks he much rather prefers the cushions instead.

~~~

After some more talking they finally decide to try Jin’s ‘genius plan’, even though Ryo’s still a bit reluctant to go through with it. But Jin does have a point; just because they know doesn’t mean it should change anything between them and Kame.

Koyama suggests that they introduce themselves to the personalities that they aren’t acquainted with yet in order to avoid any awkward moments. It’s so everyone can feel familiar with each other.

They end up introducing themselves twice each, but in the end it all works out and they aren’t strangers to any of Kame’s personalities.

When Jin introduces Keiji to Ryo and Koyama, he makes a face. “Are these Kame’s friends?” he asks.

Both Ryo and Koyama look shocked that Keiji knows that he shares his body with another personality, but they don’t question it. Mostly because Ryo says, “What the fuck?” and something in Keiji just snaps.

“Jin, I don’t fucking need to know these people. I don’t care who Kame sees; I don’t need to know anymore people.”

“What the fuck is wrong with your attitude?” Ryo snaps at him, and doesn’t seem to be affected by Keiji’s glare. “Jin, how the hell did you meet up with this guy anyway?”

Koyama tries to calm him down. “Now, now.”

“If you have a problem with me then get the fuck out,” Keiji snaps back.

“I’ll have you know this is my apartment,” Ryo says, now mere inches away from the other man. “You can’t tell me to get the fuck out of my own apartment.”

“I own it too!” Jin retorts, but a glare from Ryo shuts him up, at least for the time being. At least, until Keiji and Ryo start bickering more and end up fighting. It’s then that he’s compelled to stop the fight by lifting Keiji up and dragging him away from Ryo while Koyama holds Ryo down. After a few tries they manage to get Ryo and Keiji to talk without killing each other.

With Koyama’s Kame, it’s a bit more difficult. Ryo practically scares the kid to death with his sudden bouts of cursing, and Jin doesn’t seem to help that much either. Koyama manages to get the kid to relax enough so he can properly talk to them, and after a while the kid doesn’t seem to mind the cursing that much either.

Ryo’s Kame is perhaps the easiest to deal with, since he isn’t particularly shy or particularly mean either. He seems to get along with Koyama and Jin easily, although he does complain sometimes.

When Jin asks him if he can call him ‘pig girl’ Ryo promptly smacks him and tackles him to the floor. “I told you not to call him pig girl!” Ryo seethes, giving him a glare. Kame laughs and somehow manages to pull Ryo off, though Jin for the life of him can’t begin to understand how, since the kid looks like he has no muscle.

“No hard feelings, all right?” Kame says, patting Ryo on the back.

All four (well really it’s six) of them manage to get along for a week until an incident occurs.

They’re in the middle of eating, and this time it’s the shy Kame that joins them. Dinner seems to be normal and hazard free since Keiji hasn’t popped out yet randomly to curse at Ryo. At least, it seems to be hazard free until Kame drops his chopsticks and his hands fly towards his mouth. “Fuck,” he says, rubbing his cheek. “That hurt.”

Koyama drops his chopsticks too. “Keiji?” he asks hesitantly, and Kame gives him a confused stare.

“Who’s Keiji?” he asks, blinking up at him, and Koyama puts down his bowl, slowly.

“It’s nothing.” Koyama coughs a bit. “I haven’t heard you curse before, that’s all.”

Kame shrugs a little bit and picks up his chopsticks. “Ryo kept on saying it so I guess it rubbed off on me.” Something in his head clicks place and he puts down his chopsticks again. “If it bothers you I won’t say it anymore,” he tells Koyama, looking scared, but Koyama’s attention isn’t on him anymore.

Ryo swallows down his bite of rice and puts down his bowl too, wary of what Koyama is going to do next. Jin looks up from his plate too and just manages to catch Koyama jumping over the table and onto Ryo. He drops his chopsticks and stares as Koyama fists Ryo’s shirt and starts shaking him.

“You killed his innocence!” Koyama almost wails, and he’s promptly shoved off Ryo and into the wall.

“He’s still innocent!” Ryo protests. “He just said something you thought he wouldn’t say. He’s already an adult; did you expect him to go on with his life without swearing?”

Koyama nods and Ryo rolls his eyes at him before going back to his food. Koyama reluctantly goes back to his spot by Jin, just in time for Kame to swear again and drop his chopsticks.

“Kame? Kame, are you okay?” Koyama asks worriedly.

This time he gets a punch in the face.

Jin tries to calm Keiji down.

Glitter, Gluesticks, and Hairties

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:07:29 GMT

Pairing: KoyaRyo
Word Count: 552
Series: Random Word Series (It's been a while...)

~~~

Ryo’s had a bad day at work today, what with his manager yelling at him every five minutes for fucking up some stupid dance move. He seriously doesn’t want to deal with this, not with surviving on 130 yen lunches bought from convenience stores and having only three hours of sleep. All he wants now is to be in a isolated room where it’s actually quiet so he can nurse his headache and sleep the day away.

He goes home and is welcomed by the familiar smell of cocoa. He takes off his shoes and is about to open his mouth when he steps on something hard and jumps back. “Fuck,” he curses out, rubbing his now sore heel and glaring at what seems to be a gluestick on the floor. He picks it up, wondering where the hell it came from.

“Welcome home!” Ryo wonders where the owner of the voice is and peers around. He walks a few steps towards the right and then slides the door open to his bedroom, where he finds Koyama and a whole shitload of glitter on his floor.

“What are you doing?” Ryo asks him, and Koyama beams at him before going back to work on…whatever he’s doing. He rolls his eyes before crossing his arms and leaning against his door frame. “No, really, I’m being serious.”

“I’m making something!” Koyama announces. “For the member-ai, you know?”

“I don’t care if you’re making it for member-ai or for some mafia group but you’re cleaning up this mess.” Ryo makes a motion towards the glitter and reaches over to whack Koyama’s head with the gluestick he’s found. “I don’t own this, by the way.”

Koyama looks up and his expression brightens. “Hey, you found it!”

Ryo stares at him. “How the hell did it end up outside?”

The other man shrugs, taking it from Ryo’s hands and putting it on the floor beside him. “I don’t know, I had it in my hand the whole time and then I sneezed and it disappeared. I didn’t know where it went but then I realized I didn’t really need it in the first place.”

Ryo groans. “What are you, a fucking fairy or something?”

“Maybe your door malfunctioned in a really bad way,” he says seriously, putting down a bottle of yellow glitter. “It’s done!”

Ryo doesn’t know what he means by ‘being done’ because he doesn’t see anything until the oldest member takes his hand and puts a hairtie with a whole bunch of glitter on it. Some of the glitter slides off and sticks to his skin, and he mutters a sheepish “oops” before taking his hands away and marveling at the creation he’s just made. “Yellow looks good on you,” he says. “I probably should’ve waited a bit longer for it to dry, though.”

Ryo stares at his wrist for a moment. “A hairtie? Seriously?”

“Mm,” Koyama confirms. “I think it’d work better as a bracelet, and I don’t think this really counts as member-ai since I only made two.”

“It doesn’t have to be about the member-ai,” Ryo assures him, and cups his chin to give him a kiss. Koyama leans a little and Ryo loses his footing, stepping on something hard.

He looks down to see a pair of scissors on the floor.

“Fuck.”

Mixture of Colors [6/6]

Fri, 29 May 2009 05:32:35 GMT

Pairing: Ohmiya
Words: 3317
Note: Last chapter! Thanks for reading up till now. :D

~~~

Nino is given a tray of Ohno’s belongings along with his clothes that the nurses have taken. The clothes have been folded already, and when Nino lifts them up to pore over the contents down at the bottom of the tray he only sees a few hundred yen coins and some small, blank pieces of paper. He wonders why Ohno has change with him, and why he has paper of all things stuffed inside his pockets.

He wonders briefly for a moment if the nurses have missed anything, overlooked something important. He grabs Ohno’s jacket once more from the green tray and rummages through the pockets, slowly opening the zippers of the pockets and feeling through them. He can’t find anything, but his fingers brush something hard and he pauses. He feels through the jacket once more, trying to pinpoint the location, and finds out there’s a pocket on the inside. He reaches in, pulling out a small cell phone strap. He takes a closer look, looking at the red and orange glass ornament, and turns it around.

Black eyes stare up at him and he can feel the fins of the fish underneath his fingertips. He can see the tail now, he can identify it, and he has seen it somewhere before. It’s familiar, too familiar, but before he can remember Aiba comes up and hands him a can of orange juice.

Nino mumbles his thanks, putting it aside so he can concentrate fully on the ornament that he has just found in Ohno’s pocket. Aiba looks over his shoulder, cocking his head to one side as if he’s trying to remember something too. There’s a small hitch of breath. “Hey, isn’t that what Ohno gave you on your birthday?”

Nino slowly turns around and stares at him, and then there’s suddenly a flash, a bang in his mind, and he knows what it is now.

He wonders why Ohno still has it, because he’s sure Ohno had thrown it away at some point. There’s a million questions swimming in his head right now, and he’s too confused. He doesn’t understand why Takahiro was sitting in the chair, why Ohno suddenly decided to kill him, why Ohno gave Sho that note. He doesn’t know who Takahiro is anymore, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t know what Ohno’s plans are either.

He doesn’t know anything now; his knowledge has been stripped away from him with one gunshot.

~~~

Sho is confused beyond explanation, and he’s sure his teammates are confused as well. No one knows what’s going on anymore, and there is no order within their squad, nor their company for that matter. Their chief has been killed, and they aren’t sure if he was the leader from the beginning or if he was manipulated by the actual leader.

There are so many questions flying around from person to person, but no one knows the real answers. The only person who probably knows the answers is Ohno, but he’s still unconscious in his room, having had surgery already for his gunshot wound.

He’s not sure if Ohno will be willing to talk after he wakes up. They probably have to force the answers out of him, but from experience he knows Ohno can be stubborn when he wants to be, when he has the will to be stubborn.

He doesn’t know who Ohno is anymore. He doesn’t know what side Ohno is on anymore, who he is working for, what his thoughts are. Everything has been thrown together, mashed together, and turned upside down. He can’t find the truth through all the lies anymore, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to believe right now.

Sometimes he feels like he can’t keep up with time, and sometimes he feels like time has stopped completely. There are times when he feels like he can’t keep up with life, that everything is moving too fast and he can’t catch up. Then there are times when he feels like nothing is happening, that everything has stopped and there’s no way to revive time.

He’s just too confused; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing right now.

Somewhere in his heart, he kind of regrets punching Ohno when he found out about his betrayal.

His thoughts are interrupted when something blue comes across his vision.

~~~

Ohno wakes up without any true knowledge of where he is, or what he’s supposed to be doing. He sees a window, white walls, and he thinks there’s something wrong because his prison cell doesn’t have white walls, or a window for that matter. It’s only when he sees a whole bunch of tubes coming out of his arm that he realizes, slowly, that he’s in a hospital.

He manages to pull the tubes out of his arm so he can move more freely; he doesn’t think he really needs them, but then he sits up and there’s a pain in his side. He winces a bit, before managing to get out of the bed, only to fall over. He uses the wall for his support and slowly opens the door, peeking outside.

He sees Sho sleeping on a chair, head bent in a painful looking angle. He closes the door as quickly as he can and shuffles slowly to the window. He opens it, letting in some fresh air in his cramped up room. He wonders briefly if he can escape through the window if need be, but his room seems a little too high up for him to jump down.

His door opens again, but this time he’s not the one who’s opening it. Jun and Nino come in, taking a look at the empty bed, then at Ohno. Jun’s mouth is set in a firm line, and both of them end up dragging Ohno back to his bed. Nino goes and slams the window shut, then turns around and crosses his arms. “Option rejected. No, you are not escaping until we get answers from you.”

“What answers?” Ohno asks, and he almost regrets even opening his mouth. Jun looks at the tubes and takes one of them, looking at it for a moment. “You are not sticking that in me,” Ohno protests, hiding his right arm under the covers as a means of protection from Jun and his lack of medical abilities.

“I will if you don’t start answering our questions,” Jun says dangerously.

“You already have all of your answers,” Ohno mumbles. “I ended up killing the leader because my interests were different from him. What more do you want?”

“Did you know it was Takahiro from the start?” Nino asks him suddenly, looking at him suspiciously. “Was there some kind of arrangement going on? Who is Takahiro, exactly?”

Ohno can’t answer him, he can’t even lie. He has done so well so far that he can’t just screw it up now, but the words won’t come out of his mouth. They’re right in his mouth, the lies that he has prepared, but they won’t break the barrier.

Jun sighs. “Let’s start with a easier question, shall we? Who do you work for?”

Ohno swallows, and coughs a little to clear his throat. “I work for myself,” he answers slowly. “I don’t work for anyone but myself.” He thinks this is a decent answer; it doesn’t give away too much information, besides the fact that he has no loyalties.

“Then, was there ever a time that you were working for Takahiro?” The second question comes from Nino, who looks at him carefully.

“Yes,” Ohno answers. It seems to be a safe answer, because it’s believable.

“What was Takahiro to you?”

Ohno hesitates. This is a harder question to answer, because he’s afraid he’ll make things inconsistent. “He was a leader to me,” Ohno answers slowly.

“Did you respect him?”

“Yes.” Everything Ohno has answered so far have been half truths, half lies. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing, if he’s being persuasive enough.

Nino looks at him carefully, calculating his every movement. Ohno stares at the palms of his hands, waiting for the next question. He isn’t expecting it.

“Takahiro is still alive, you know,” Nino says, and Ohno stops breathing. He thinks for a moment that he must have misheard, must have misunderstood something. “He’s in the room right across from yours.”

“I shot him,” Ohno says. “He shouldn’t be alive.”

“I shot you and you’re still alive,” Nino points out, and Ohno jumps out of the bed. He needs to see for himself, he needs to see the proof that Takahiro is still alive. He opens the door, wondering why Jun and Nino aren’t trying to stop him yet. He walks a few steps and stops suddenly, confused, because there is no door, no room right across from his. He looks towards his right, trying to see if there is a room, but he sees Sho and Aiba instead, blocking his vision.

Aiba is holding something in his hands, and as Aiba and Sho come closer, Ohno realizes that it’s the blue folder that he has hidden in his cell the whole time. He reaches out and grabs it from him, and Aiba makes no move to take it back.

“It’s useless. We’ve already got a copy of it back at headquarters,” Aiba informs him as Ohno clutches it protectively.

“You’re lucky we haven’t actually read the damned thing yet,” Jun tells him. “There were some people that wanted to respect your privacy.” He gives a pointed glare at Sho, who ignores it.

“It’s now up to you. You can either tell us straight out what you’ve been doing for the past two months, or we can get our own copy of your folder and read it,” Sho says. “You have two options. You have a choice.”

“You don’t know what is actually in his folder. How can you be so sure it contains the answers that you want?” Ohno asks them.

“Because Takahiro told me he gave it to you,” Nino reminds him. “I tried taking it from you, but he stopped me. It has to be something important, right?”

They have effectively trapped Ohno now, and he knows that even if he tries to lie his way out they will find out the actual truth. He has been careless, stupid, reckless. He should have burned the folder the minute he received his last order from Takahiro, but he chose to keep it. It was his greatest weapon against them, and now they have made it a weapon against Ohno.

He’s not ready for this. He can’t just suddenly tell them what he’s been doing, what his reasons are, not in this situation. He tries to get some time by opening the folder, flipping it to the first page where he was given his first mission. It’s where everything started, from the very first page.

His teammates wait for him patiently, for the answers that they have tried searching for. Ohno wants to give them answers, but it’s just too hard to open his mouth. He doesn’t even know where to begin. Something orange comes across his vision, and he blinks.

Nino is holding the fish cell phone strap between his fingers, twirling it in front of Ohno’s face. “This was supposed to have disappeared a long time ago, you know.”

“You can make it disappear now,” Ohno tells him, but Nino shakes his head.

“I can’t make it disappear until I know what’s really going on.”

“You asked me why I could bear working for HKT,” Ohno says, suddenly changing the topic. He closes his eyes. “You told me you’d rather die than work for a terrorist organization.”

They all shift uneasily, not knowing where this is going, but at the same time they’re suspecting something.

“If Sho were in this situation, no, if any of you were in this situation, you would have chosen a different option. I chose my own option because I was too afraid. I put my own emotions and fear before my job. But I can’t say that I completely regret my decisions.” Ohno gives a small smile, shaking his head. “Cowards are okay with cowardly decisions, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” Jun prods on. None of them understand him yet.

Ohno leans on the wall for support, his side aching a bit more than before. “He said he had the power to kill people easily, if he wanted to. He showed me, he said he was going to kill those kids in the boarding school if I didn’t listen to him. The bombs went off because I didn’t agree with him at first.” He takes a big breath, trying to calm himself down. “They all died. They all died because I hesitated, and then he said he had bombs at headquarters too. In your homes. Everywhere.”

There’s a big silence, everyone trying to absorb this information at their own pace. He suddenly has no strength left in his legs and slides down to the floor. He’s too tired, way too tired.

“So what you’re saying is that being a betrayer was just a lie?” Sho asks, looking as if he’s still processing the information in his head.

Ohno can’t answer that. It’s the final confirmation, but he’s suddenly too scared to face them anymore, to see their reactions. “I guess,” he says softly, and Nino crouches down so he can face him properly, but he stays silent. “I’m sorry it happened on your birthday,” Ohno mumbles.

No one responds to him, and he closes his eyes again.

~~~

The blue folder answers the rest of the questions that Ohno doesn’t manage to answer. Things finally start clicking into place, everything starts to make sense now, but they all don’t know what they’re supposed to do. It’s hard to go back to what they once were, a team, a sort of family.

Even though it’s hard to go back in time, to accept Ohno in their squad again, Nino feels relieved that he doesn’t feel suppressed anymore. He feels like he can move on now, that time can move on now that the answers have satisfied all of them. He can feel the tension in the squad easing up, relaxing a bit. They all know they can believe Ohno again, that they can put their trust in their leader because their leader has done so much for them. It’ll take a while to repair their bonds, but Nino is sure they can do it no matter how hard it is.

He joins his other team members as they pore over the blue folder, reading each page, flipping through some drawings before going back to study them. He sees maps, complicated maps drawn out with gold stars etched everywhere. He sees page long descriptions of the effects that the poison gas bombs had, and he sees a full personal record of the politician that was kidnapped.

Sho suddenly flips towards the end, and they are met with images of floor plans, house plans. There are gold stars marked everywhere, and after a closer look Nino realizes one of them is his own house plan.

He has a good guess what those gold stars mean, and then Sho flips to the last page with the broken golden seal. There are more orders, more commands, and Nino manages to read the whole thing before Sho closes it and shoves it away from him, from everyone. They all stare at the folder, the blue folder that Ohno had with him the whole time. He had all the threats and bomb locations hidden in that folder, right in his hands, trying to protect everyone else by hiding it away in his cell.

He suddenly doesn’t want to look inside the folder anymore. There are too many things, too many details hidden inside, and he doesn’t want to read its contents. He feels that the others are also feeling the same way, and eventually Sho picks up the folder, tentatively, only to hand it to another member of their company. Sho tells him to keep it, to store it in their file shelves back at headquarters, and sends him off.

They’ve gotten all the information that they want in that folder; now it can be stored, locked away and forgotten.

Nino goes into Ohno’s hospital room a few moments later when everyone else goes off to finish their jobs, and finds that the man is already awake, staring out the window. Nino quietly sits on the chair next to his bed, thankful that the tubes are still attached into Ohno’s arm.

Ohno seems to read his mind because he tries pulling the tubes out a few seconds later. Nino grabs his arm and stops him, and Ohno struggles for a bit before he stops, because he really can’t fight Nino in his condition.

“Takahiro’s still out there,” Ohno protests, hoping that words rather than physical ability will help him persuade Nino to let him out of the room. But Nino shakes his head and forces Ohno to stay down.

“You lied to us,” Nino states, and he can feel Ohno tensing up as he says those words. “You lied to all of us.”

Ohno doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t seem like he’s able to say anything, not with the pressure that’s being forced upon him. Ninio knows that the words that Ohno wants to say are being lodged up in his throat right now, not being able to come out.

“But we lied too,” Nino whispers as he leans down, so he can whisper the words into Ohno’s ear. “Takahiro is dead, so you don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” He pats Ohno’s shoulder reassuringly. He hesitates, wondering if he should say it, but he does anyway. “You can come back to us now.”

Ohno looks to be the type of person who has a sour look on his face no matter what. That’s what it is to Nino, a face that looks like it’s about to break into tears any moment. Normally, it’s like that, but Nino rarely ever sees Ohno actually crying. It’s rare having Ohno actually succumb to his own feelings, because he has to act leader-like for his team. It’s what part of his job requires, a sure and steady will to keep him going no matter what happens.

It’s like relief pouring down from a suppressed waterfall, a dam crumbling down because it’s just not strong enough to hold against all this pressure. Something has snapped, something that isn’t necessarily negative, but it’s not exactly a positive feeling either.

“You’re not allowed to leave again, okay?” Nino says sternly, almost glad for the fact that Ohno is being true to himself now, and not some crazy psycho terrorist person locked up in a cell. Ohno rolls his eyes around a bit and wipes his face, trying to stop himself from crying too much, because that would be embarrassing.

“I’m kind of…hungry,” Ohno comments after he feels like he can talk again, coherently, and Nino rolls his eyes and gives him a smack on the head before fetching him something to eat. Ohno doesn’t say anything when Nino brings him a tray of food and tells him that he now owes him seven hundred yen, nor does he complain when he finds out that the fruit cup has spilled some juice over his onigiri.

Nino watches him eat, the cellphone charm tucked safely away in his pocket, hiding. He doesn’t know if Ohno assumes he has it or not, but that isn’t what is happening now.

He’ll let time go off on its own, because right now it feels right, not too rushed and not too slow. Everything is once again back in its place, and the colors are still apart from one another.

Not mixed, but apart.

Mixture of Colors [5/6]

Mon, 11 May 2009 06:13:58 GMT

Pairing: Ohmiya
Words: 2461
Note: One more chapter after this! -mad writes-. Sorry for the late update. :( Stuff happened.

~~~

Takahiro takes Ohno to the terrorists’ hideout so Ohno can get a feel for what the environment is. It’s to prepare Ohno for what is to come, so he doesn’t get surprised by any unexpected events. Takahiro shows him where his followers will be hiding; they will hide behind crates and barrels and pipe lines. Takahiro shows Ohno where he himself will sit, on a chair, towards the back of the storage garage.

Ohno spots a small black box with lights on it. It’s a little ways off, at a corner of the storage room, sitting at the side. He squints, and when no one is looking he inches towards it.

He sees wires coming out of it, all different colors. It’s nothing like he’s ever seen before; there’s at least sixty different numbers flashing and blinking at him.

He has found it. This is the connector that connects Takahiro with all the bombs. He makes careful note of where it is hiding, approximating the number of feet it is from Takahiro’s chair. He makes sure he knows where it is because everything depends on that one little box now, as he is lead outside and into the car, back to headquarters.

Once he gets sent back into his prison cell he takes out his folder and rips out a blank piece of paper that Takahiro has left for him. He finds a pencil in the folder as well; Takahiro probably thought it would be nice to let Ohno draw for a little while. He scribbles down something on a quarter sheet of paper and then stuffs it in his pocket, scrambling down off his bed and beckoning to the guard that is standing in front of his cell.

“Do you need anything?” the guard asks him, almost impatiently, as if he has better things to do right now than guard a betrayer of their country.

“I want to negotiate with someone,” Ohno tells him, softly. “Bring Sakurai-san over.”

The guard grudgingly complies to his wishes after a few minutes of persuading on Ohno’s part. He talks to someone on his walkie talkie, asking for Sho to come over, saying that something has come up.

Sho comes over in five minutes, planting himself firmly in front of the glass. Ohno looks back at him, the man that has become his squad’s leader. Sho stands a different way now; his back has a different angle to it now, he looks more authoritative from Ohno’s point of view. “Is there something you need?” Sho asks.

“I would like to negotiate with you,” Ohno says smoothly, and Sho looks surprised. “I still have information, and I’m willing to give it to you.”

“Ohno-san, we do not-”

“I’ll show you where the hideout is,” Ohno interrupts him, and both Sho and the guard give him a surprised look. “Although, you may want to be careful.” He looks at them, surveying each of them. “It is my choice to give you this information, but it is your choice to follow through.”

Sho narrows his eyes, folding his arms and giving him a calculating look. “Why are you doing this? Isn’t this just betraying your organization?”

“My goals differ from my organization’s goals. We’ve agreed from the start, but it’s time to change paths now.” This time, the words that come out from Ohno’s mouth are half truths, things that aren’t quite what Ohno wants to say, but they’re close enough that they aren’t classified as lies. “I will give you the location of the hideout, under one condition.”

Sho hesitates, but only for a brief moment. His job depends on saving people’s lives, that is what he is there for. “What is your condition?”

Ohno motions for him to come forward, and when the guard isn’t looking he quietly slips the piece of paper in Sho’s pocket through the little window. “Don’t read it until we have arrived at the hideout. Do I make myself clear?”

Sho clears his throat and nods. “But I still don’t understand why are you doing this.”

Ohno pauses. “I am a traitor through and through, Sakurai-san. That is what I have become.” He smiles a little. “Don’t worry, if you’re scared I’ll come with you.”

Sho looks at him strangely, as if he’s trying to remember something, but shakes his head. “I’ll decide if you’ll accompany us tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Ohno nods, and he pushes himself back, slips away into the darkness of his cell room. Sho walks away, probably off to tell Takahiro that he has gotten new information from the traitor, the betrayer.

He has become a betrayer to both sides now, but he doesn’t know if he can ever go back to what he once was.

~~~

They never hear your cry, no matter how close you are to them.

~~~

During the night Ohno sees Nino looking at his cell for a few moments, only for a few moments. The man turns and walks away after those few moments, not knowing that Ohno has been staring after him this whole time. When all of this is over, he wonders if he can go back to his squad and revert back to what he once was. He wonders if he can make up for the loss of time that he has created between him and his team members, if he can somehow repair a relationship that has been shattered and stomped on repeatedly.

He wonders if he’ll even be alive when all of this is over, and what will happen if he happens to die. But these thoughts disappear completely, because he knows it can’t be possible, not when so much has happened in the past month or so.

Ohno fingers the fish strap in his pocket, taking it out for a few minutes and staring at it before sighing and putting it back. Tomorrow will be a long day, so he needs to get as much sleep as he possibly can.

He knows that even if he makes it out of this mission alive, the mission that he has set for himself, he knows that he won’t have enough courage to tell the truth. If he dies, if he lives, it’s all the same because the truth will always be hidden, secluded into his being, never able to open up again. He will still be looked on as a betrayer, except this time, if he lives, he will be seen as a betrayer and nothing more.

No sides.

~~~

Whisper into their ear, and maybe they will hear you.

~~~

He gets woken up two hours later, a hand shaking his shoulder urgently. Ohno opens his eyes slowly and sees his guard standing over him. “You’re leaving now.”

Ohno casts a glance out his window and sees that it’s still nighttime, but he isn’t able to look for very long before he’s pushed out of his cell and down the hallways. Various people stare at him in surprise, not used to seeing him wandering about headquarters unless he’s going to Takahiro’s office. He gets led to a car, pushed into the back seat.

He is somewhat relieved that his driver is Aiba instead of Nino. Aiba casts a glance at him before turning his attention to Jun, who is receiving orders via phone.

“Sho says we have to be careful,” Jun says, rolling his eyes. “As if we don’t know that already.”

“What else?” Aiba prods on, and Jun listens for a minute, closing his eyes before opening them again.

“Nino and Sho are going to go in first and then give the okay for us to come in. It’s some kind of hardware garage thing.”

“Must be pretty big then,” Aiba murmurs, changing the gear shift and pressing the gas pedal.

“It’s not that big,” Ohno mutters, and he isn’t sure if they’re paying attention to what he’s saying. They make no indication that they have heard him, and he doesn’t dare repeat himself again.

They stay in silence for a few minutes, only a few, before Jun turns around and stares at him. Ohno stares back at him, for the lack of anything better to do. “Why?” Jun asks, clearly not understanding what is happening right now, why Ohno is in the car with them and giving out information that he technically shouldn’t be giving out. He is doing something that no one has expected, because he has been stubborn in giving out his information from the start.

“My goals have become different from what my organization wants to do. That is all,” Ohno answers him, and he can see that Jun still doesn’t understand what he’s saying. He doesn’t expect him to, because if Ohno were in his place he’d be confused too.

They arrive at the garage in ten minutes, and Ohno is surprised at how close it is from headquarters. Aiba turns off the engine and they wait for any movement, any indication that they should go in. Ohno watches Sho and Nino climb out of the first car, the car in front of them, and enter the building cautiously, guns in their hands.

Ohno and the other two wait inside the car, wait until Jun’s cell phone gives a screech and then some rustling. “You guys can come in,” Sho’s voice says, and both Jun and Aiba exit the car, dragging Ohno with them. They see Nino already there, searching around and they meet up with him.

“Where’s Sho?” Aiba asks him, looking around for their missing teammate.

Nino shrugs. “He ran off somewhere over there,” he says, pointing towards the back of the garage. “He said he had something urgent to do or whatever.”

By now Ohno is eighty percent sure that Sho has read his note, and has ran off to dismantle the bombs. He’s glad, because his country can be saved, and he has only one thing left to do. He follows them as they creep deeper and deeper into the garage, carefully checking every corner until they suddenly are forced to turn left, because there is no other way to go. That is where they see the chair, with a dark figure sitting, waiting for them patiently with a cloak on.

Ohno knows who that person is, but no one else knows who he is. He sees at least thirty people lined up in rows, leaving a space for them to enter. They are confident; they do not have weapons with them as far as Ohno can see. They are confident Ohno won’t betray them, that the mission will succeed because this is the last puzzle piece, the last step to their success.

He has never failed them before, not once. He has somehow gained their trust through these missions. But he has to fail them, this one time, because everything that he has done up till now relies on this last moment, where he can finally break free from Takahiro his own way. He can save his friends, the innocent people that are scattered across Japan.

They are surrounded; everyone is watching their movements. It’s obvious that his old squad isn’t prepared for this; they probably didn’t expect this many people to be here. Nino goes forward, slowly, signaling his team members to stay back. He looks at the leader sitting on his chair, poised, before he turns around and points his gun a Ohno. “Do your interests really differ from theirs?” he asks quietly, eyes calculating Ohno’s every breath, every little movement.

Ohno doesn’t answer him. He is waiting for his signal.

“Or was this all planned?” A soft sigh escapes from his lips, as if he has given up. “You have a choice. You can either get away right now and never come back again, or you can go back to them and we can fight you.”

Ohno’s eyes narrow in on movement from the fifth row of people, a jerk and a grab.

“What will it be, Ohno-san?” Nino asks him, pulling the trigger. “Will you run away, or stay back and fight?”

Suddenly, there’s a flash and the throw is there, the bounce of metal against concrete. The gun slides towards him and Ohno quickly bends down and picks it up, pulling the trigger as he comes back up. He aims it towards Nino, who narrows his eyes.

“So it ends up being them,” he says coldly. “It’s three against one.”

Ohno’s only vaguely aware of Aiba and Jun pointing their guns at his back; his main focus now is on Nino. He keeps his hands steady, his eyes on the target, his true target. “It may be three against one, but I’m the one who has the true power. I am a part of them; you aren’t.”

“I would never be a part of them. I’d rather die than become a part of them,” Nino says bitterly. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm when innocent lives are at risk.”

Ohno smiles a little. “I don’t understand it either.” He moves, aims a little to the left and then fires, watching as the bullet hits his chief and takes away his life, snatching it away from him within a few seconds. He hears rather than feels the bullet pierce through his own body, and he goes down more from impulse rather than pain. There are shouts, screams that rebound off the walls as people scurry towards their leader, a few shouting and calling him a traitor.

He feels slightly dizzy, blinking a bit to get the black dots out of his vision. He sees Sho running towards him as he struggles to sit up, and he suddenly feels a body behind him, supporting him. He thinks it’s probably Jun, because he can see Aiba and Nino watching the thirty something people crowding towards the body.

Sho crouches down and Ohno looks up at him. “Did you finish?” he asks him, lifting his head a bit. It takes more effort than it should.

Sho nods. “It’s gone now.”

Ohno can hear backup forces running in now, trying to calm down the crowds of people who are screaming for their lost leader. “It’s over now,” he whispers, and he feels the body behind him tense up. He breathes, but it doesn’t feel like he needs to anymore. He’s too tired to care; he can barely keep his eyes open now. He can feel himself being lowered to the ground, hands pushing against the blood that’s coming out of his wound.

He watches Nino as he bends down to unveil the leader’s cloak, removing the hood. He sees Nino’s eyes widen, he sees Aiba stare at the face unbelievingly.

It’s enough, he thinks as he closes his eyes. It’s enough.

~~~

The small box in the right hand corner contains answers. It’s up to you to find them.

~~~

Mixture of Colors [4/?]

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:57:24 GMT

Pairing: Ohmiya
Words: 2673
Note: Um, the next update might come REALLY late because I have a whole bunch of crap to do for school. D:

~~~

After Ohno has been cast out from their squad, Sho has become the leader. He can’t exactly say that he likes this job; in fact, he doesn’t know how Ohno managed it before. There is so much paperwork to fill out, so many papers to sign. Everyday seems to get busier and busier, and he feels like he’s been running around for the whole day.

It turns out the locations Ohno gives out are correct; they have found at least sixty bombs in five locations. The chief thanks them heartily for their hard work, but reminds them that there is a possibility their job isn’t over yet; they have yet to catch the leader of the terrorist organization, to catch more people who are a part of the group.

Sho has to write a report for each of the five locations, taking note where he has found the bombs, how he has taken care of them, and what he can improve the next time. He doesn’t understand why he has to fill out that last point, because he doesn’t know consciously how he’s supposed to improve. It’s either the job gets done or it doesn’t; if there are any errors it could cost someone’s life. That is when he can think of improvements, what they shouldn’t have done, what they could have done better.

He doesn’t get how Ohno managed to go through with all these stupid things called paperwork, especially for a company he himself didn’t even support. But he has seen Ohno write these things down, fill out all these forms with such efficiency. Sho can’t do it; he doesn’t have the ability to do it, and he sits there on the couch staring at the papers in his hands before he decides to just write down some answer that he doesn’t even believe in.

It’s all just a waste of his time, but he’s the one who has to do it because their leader isn’t there anymore.

~~~

Ohno is glad that his squad has managed to gather up sixty bombs. That means hundreds of peoples’ lives are saved; in a way he has helped the country, but he has poisoned the country as well. The locations he gives out for the terrorists’ hideouts are all wrong, and each day he watches his squad trudge down the hallway, another day gone by with no new leads.

He gets pulled out of his cell a couple of times a day to answer more questions. He doesn’t give them any new information because Takahiro hasn’t ordered him to. It’s all about what Takahiro wants, not what he is willing to give out. Sometimes, though, the interrogators call him a traitor to both sides because he has given out information about HKT as well as betraying his own company.

“The information I give out about HKT is unimportant,” Ohno says quietly each time he is taunted, but they never listen to him. They always boast that they have found at least one hundred bombs and they’re going to be able to dismember the rest of the bombs HKT has hid. But Ohno knows the exact number of bombs they have found; the number has reached to sixty-seven, in six locations. He always tries to give the interrogators hints, that the information he gives out really isn’t important because they haven’t seen the whole picture yet.

In reality, there are seventy-three locations with at least eight hundred bombs. Some of them have been placed in major shopping districts, and some of them are in the company itself. There is one sitting in Ohno’s imprisonment room, at the corner right next to the leg of his bed. He wonders why they haven’t found it yet; Takahiro probably told them it wasn’t necessary to search his room. Whatever the reason, there’s still a lot more of them to be found and he can’t tell anyone about them until Takahiro wants people to know.

They’re all walking right into his trap and Ohno is the only one who knows. He knows the real truth, but he can’t do anything about it except watch from an encased room, hoping that at least one of the company’s members notice. But there is nothing, no hints, no suspicions of Takahiro belonging to the other side. There are no doubts that Takahiro is a good chief; no one would believe Ohno, at least not in these circumstances, if he said that Takahiro was the creator of their enemy. He is the only one who can believe himself, so he needs to do this.

One of Ohno’s top priorities is to find a way to detonate all the bombs. In order to do that, he needs to figure out of Takahiro has a special system for his bombs, and what is connecting all of them together. He’s sure it’s somewhere in Takahiro’s office, so Takahiro can keep a watchful eye on it throughout the day. All he needs now is a chance to get into Takahiro’s office.

His chance comes the next day, when Takahiro calls him into his office for a special interrogation session. In reality, Ohno knows that he’s going to get more orders, more things to do so he can divert his coworkers away from the truth. Takahiro waves the guard away so he and Ohno can talk in private, so they won’t be bothered.

Takahiro motions to the folder Ohno has brought with him, and Ohno puts it on the desk. Takahiro flips it open to the page that he desires and turns it around so it is facing Ohno. “Break the seal, Ohno-san,” he says softly, and Ohno complies, ripping off the silver sticker.

Ohno reads his instructions off the paper, his second set of instructions.

“You will start giving information on what HKT is planning to do. After we have kidnapped a political figure, tell them that we are planning on assassinating politicians from now on.”

“Is this your motive?” Ohno asks him, and Takahiro laughs at him.

“Ohno-san, you still don’t understand, do you?” Ohno is only half listening; the other part of his brain is trying to find out where the connector is, the connector to Takahiro and all the bombs that have been planted. “We are not trying to kill anyone. We want to frighten people, and to do that we must kill someone in order to get media coverage. It will give people fear, and we will slowly become famous before the masses.” He sits back in his chair, twirling his pen in between his fingers. “We are trying to control the population, Ohno-san, not a single person.”

“Are you really going to kill him?” Ohno asks Takahiro.

“Unfortunately, our organization does not believe in unnecessary deaths. We are planning to kidnap him, and then hide him somewhere. The media will be in a frenzy when they find out that one of their beloved politicians has gone missing.” Takahiro motions to the guard that has been stationed outside of his office. “Now go. You have been assigned your mission. Once the politician has been kidnapped you are to reveal that HKT’s intention is to gain political power. That is all.”

Ohno gets led back to his room, but his guard stops to talk to another guard who is situated in the hallways. Ohno looks behind them and he can see Nino in another interview with a government worker.

Nino’s facial expression is solemn; there is no more mordant expression on his face now, only professionalism. He answers the questions with surprising efficiency, no taunts about people not knowing how to use guns, or how to detonate bombs. The interviewer seems surprised, shifting in her chair uncomfortably, not used to Nino’s behavior change.

Ohno has changed him, and even though Nino is actually answer the questions properly for once, Ohno can’t say he’s particularly happy with it.

~~~

The famous politician is kidnapped and reported missing during the evening. The company is in a frenzy; keyboards are clicking and there are various phone calls being made, trying to follow the tracks of the criminal. One call comes in, and it gets broadcasted across the whole company, even through Ohno’s room.

“We have killed your beloved politician. This is HKT, and we have called to let you know that the body has been burned and the ashes are traveling through the waters of the Pacific.”

The line goes dead, and thirty seconds later a guard comes into Ohno’s cell and drags him out, pushing him along the hallway fairly quickly until they reach an interrogation room. Aiba is in there, already situated on the opposite side of the table. Ohno is pushed into a chair, strapped and ready to go in two minutes flat.

Aiba is situated at the machine, staring at the buttons, staring at the white one which he has to press, the dials that he has to change. He looks up, and begins.

“Ohno-san, are you sure there isn’t any more information you can give to us about HKT?” he asks.

Ohno shakes his head.

“You’ve already been through this torture once before. Why not avoid the pain and tell us what you’ve been hiding?”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” Ohno answers, and Aiba presses the button. Ohno bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from screaming, wills himself to put on a straight face. He doesn’t want to seem weak, especially not in front of Aiba. He is his ex-leader, the leader that betrayed all of them, but he still can’t show his weakness.

“It’s useless trying to endure it,” Aiba says softly as he turns the machine off. Ohno slumps forward, head bobbing up and down. “Tell us your information before I have to take extreme measures.”

“You’re so confident that I have more information, but I’ve lost contact with HKT ever since I got locked up in here. There is no way I have more information, it’s impossible.”

“I still don’t get it. Why did you go to the other side?” Aiba asks him.

Don’t go off topic during interrogations. “I was always on this side. It was my choice ever since I graduated from high school, to become a part of this organization.”

“Why?”

Ohno hesitates, because lying about this is kind of hard. He tries to imagine himself in a terrorist’s point of view, but he doesn’t exactly have much experience in this territory, especially since most of the stuff he spouts out are lies. “This world is dirty,” he answers. “I want to purify it.” It’s the most convincing answer he can come up with; it’s just more lies that have come out of his mouth.

“You’re dirtying the world, Ohno-san. The job you had before purified the place we live.”

“If that’s the case there’s no such thing as pure or dirty in our world. You definition differs from mine; our point of views are different. There is no set meaning for these words.” Ohno gets another zap, but he suspects that Aiba pressed the button by accident. Aiba stops the machine after five seconds, and asks Ohno again if he knows anything else.

Ohno tells him he doesn’t, and it’s like a back and forth war between them. It’s a war Ohno wins he’s going to lose; he’s supposed to lose, but in reality he’s the one winning because he’s directing Aiba away from the true purpose of HKT. He loses on the outside, but on the inside he wins. Except he doesn’t want to win.

After what seems like the twelfth or thirteenth zap Ohno starts calmly stating out the information he has been given. The guard next to Aiba takes note of what he’s saying, and they let Ohno out of the chair. He manages to stand up without the guard’s help, and is escorted back to his room while Aiba runs down the hallway towards Takahiro’s office so that he can deliver this new information to him. Unbeknownst to him, Takahiro knows everything that Aiba will found out, because he has the power and influence to do so.

Ohno doesn’t know how much time he has left, but he wants to find that connector between Takahiro and the bombs as fast as possible.

~~~

No matter how many times Ohno goes to Takahiro’s office so he can get a new mission, Ohno can’t find the connector anywhere. He searches on the ceiling, the walls, even behind Takahiro’s desk when he isn’t looking. He’s looked possibly everywhere, but he still can’t find it.

It must be hidden elsewhere, or else Ohno wouldn’t have such a hard time trying to find the device. Takahiro must have a hideout somewhere else where he keeps all his minions safe, away from prying eyes. Therefore Ohno needs to know where Takahiro keeps his organization.

Takahiro sends for him again, for another mission, and Ohno does not expect what will happen next. He never knows what will happen, because Takahiro surprises him with new information, new concepts, new ideas. He wonders how many tricks he has hidden in his sleeve, waiting to be pulled out and flashed out to everyone in the world.

Now, he is standing before Takahiro with the folder in his hands. Now, Takahiro is smiling at him, as if he has just given candy to Ohno. There is a bright light in his eyes, twinkling and Ohno thinks that it shouldn’t be this way. He shouldn’t be making a terrorist leader happy, but he is. He has done everything for him, just so he can save some lives, including the people he cares about.

Takahiro interrupts his train of thought. “Ohno-san, please break the seal.”

Ohno opens up his folder and flips to the last seal. He hopes it is his last mission, and that he can stop lying to everyone after this.

He breaks the seal, the golden seal without truly knowing what his next mission will be like, and he reads. He reads, and then he stops reading, throws the folder onto the table. “I refuse,” he says.

“I’m afraid you’re in no position to be choosing what you can and can not do,” Takahiro answers him, folding his hands. “May I remind you that you are working for me now, and not for your company.”

“This wasn’t a part of the agreement,” Ohno tells him. “I agreed to this so that you wouldn’t kill anyone unnecessarily. I only agreed to this so that human lives could be saved. I am not killing anyone.”

“I’m afraid you have been lying to yourself this whole time, Ohno-san. You in fact care more about your squad members’ lives than you care for the lives of the general population. Therefore, this will be your last mission under me. After that, I will set you free. You may do whatever you want.”

“I will not do this. You said they would be safe if I were to follow your orders.”

Takahiro shakes his head, leaning back in his chair. “I’m afraid your time is up, Ohno-san. You have put too much trust in me.” He twirls his pen in his hand, pursing his lips. “At least be grateful that the general population will be saved, Ohno-san. I will not touch them.”

Ohno gives no inclination that he is grateful, slowly picking up the folder.

“Or will I?” Takahiro smiles, and the guard comes in to take Ohno back to his prison room.

~~~

HKT. Managed by Takahiro.

We are the heroes of the world, and we will save this world from indecisiveness by turning everything black.

Last assignment: Lead your squad members to the real hideout of HKT. Once you have arrived, you are expected to kill each and every one of your squad members. I will report it to the media that HKT is a true threat and that members of your company have died.

Let it be said. Let it be done.

You are free after this.

Mixture of Colors [3/?]

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:20:57 GMT

Words: 2899
Pairing: Ohmiya
Note: Three more chapters after this? I don't know.

~~~

Fortunately none of his own squad members get hurt, and he’s taken to an interrogation room followed by the other two men, his ‘comrades’. Part of his nightmare has past, but Ohno feels like the worst part of it will follow him for the rest of his life.

His birthday present that he has given to Nino is thrown right back at him, red packaging and all. It’s like a last test for Nino; he throws it at Ohno, throws it deliberately in front of him at arm level. Ohno almost makes a move to catch it, but his eyes follow its path to the ground instead. A guard picks it up for him and puts it in a bag along with all his other confiscated items.

Nino looks at him with unforgiving eyes. “Everything was a lie from the start.”

“Everything from now on will be the truth. It is in front of your eyes now,” Ohno tells him, and finally he can see the final string holding them together break. He lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding in, and Nino turns his back on him, slamming the door behind him.

All Ohno wishes now is that Nino will keep himself healthy and he won’t cry too much. He wants Nino to still feel alive, even though he’s not a part of his life anymore. He can disappear without any worries if Nino is able to live by himself without depending on his existence in his life.

As he’s being strapped onto the chair, he wonders if he’ll be the only one dispersing false information to his interrogators. He doesn’t know what the other two terrorists’ roles are. But these thoughts quickly vanish, and he wonders how Takahiro will break up his squad, or if he’ll assign a new leader to take his place. He doesn’t know if the squad will be able to run without him, and he hopes that Takahiro at least will have the incentive to let Sho be leader in Ohno’s place, because Sho is more capable than Ohno ever was.

If it were Sho, if Sho were leader, he wouldn’t have chosen this. He would have blown Takahiro’s brains out with his gun, or he would have thought of a strategy before hurting any of his teammates. Ohno isn’t as strong as him, so he doesn’t have that option, that strength to overcome the situation he is in. In a way, he has become a coward; he hurts his teammates because he has a lack of options, and he’d rather break the bonds he’s shared with his unit members for five years rather than break the bond of a mother and her child through death.

He welcomes the pain along with his interrogation. He forgets, he doesn’t have to think and remind himself of what he has already done, what pain he has caused, what possible pain he will create in the future. He stays in that chair for as long as possible, feeling the pain because he knows the minute he stops them from pushing that button that’s the time when he spills out more lies from his mouth. That’s the time he starts swirling the colors together, that’s the time when the pandemonium will start.

All he can do for now is swirl colors around, hoping he will be able to stop Takahiro before all the paints mix and become black.

~~~

He gives out his false information, saying that there are only a few locations where the poison gas bombs have been planted. He names a few possible shopping malls, some train stations, but in reality he knows they’re planted in other places too. They’re planted in public bathrooms, in magazine companies, in elementary schools. There’s a whole list of them in his blue folder, which is one of the only items he’s allowed to keep with him when he gets sent into the glass room. That, and the birthday present that was thrown back at him. Takahiro gives it to him as a congratulations for a ‘job well done’.

Ohno thinks he’s become more of a criminal. His squad members think so as well, and when Ohno is led to his prison room his four squad members wait for him outside the door.

They try one more time, and one more time Ohno puts them down again. They ask why, they demand an answer, but Ohno says the same thing. Everything to him was a lie, there was never a reality in those last few years. He has become a betrayer in their eyes.

He expects a punch, more specifically from Jun. He knows a fist will connect with his face, or his stomach, somewhere, but he doesn’t expect it to come from Sho.

Sho is the one who ends up punching Ohno, and he doesn’t punch Ohno once, he manages to punch him twice, before the guards restrain him and he can’t throw any more punches at him. Ohno is on the ground, feels the hard marble pressing into his ribs. He feels everything, sees everything, but it’s still too surreal for him. “I can’t believe you,” Sho hisses. “You hurt so many people and yet you’re still standing there like nothing’s happened. You hurt Nino.”

Ohno gives them a small smile, trying to assure them that he will not cry, but they will never understand because he won’t let them understand. “There is only one truth in this world, one truth for each person. My truth is HKT.”

“Is that really your final answer?” Jun asks him, staring him down.

The guards push him towards the door of his prison room, not wanting to wait anymore. Ohno turns his back on them this time, and enters the glass room. He slowly walks towards his bed, his new bed, and his teammates’ eyes follow him. The deafening click of the lock comes and goes, and he watches as four men slowly walk away from him.

He has finally adopted some of Nino’s persuasion skills, the ability to persuade someone something which is a complete and utter lie. It’s odd how he is able to persuade his squad members something that is completely a lie, but he can’t persuade them to try during performance tests. He can’t persuade Nino to take interview seriously, but he can persuade him that he hates him.

The persuasion skills he has adopted from Nino have broken their bonds, their threads that keep to together. His persuasion has broken ties with him and their company, their organization. He is not a defender of the nation anymore, he is a betrayer of a nation, a enemy of the nation who should be locked up. The world sees him as an enemy, the company sees him as an enemy. His teammates see him as a backstabber.

None of them know Ohno has Nino’s birthday present hidden under his shirt.

~~~

Sho tries not to lose control in situations, because from his experience he knows losing his cool will come with deep regrets. He has experienced those regrets before, and he has promised himself to think, to keep his head in place and not make any rash decisions.

That’s the law that he follows, the only rule he keeps to himself that no one else knows about. It’s his secret, something that he knows is true. It has been true, up until now.

Now, he’s not sure if he’s going to face any regrets. He’s just punched his ex-leader, the betrayer of their organization. He has thought with his fists first instead of his head, but he hasn’t seen a immediate reaction, a immediate regret that he must face and remember for the rest of his life.

Everything seems too surreal to him, like it’s not actually happening. Ohno has been with them for years, and it doesn’t make sense for him to betray them. It’s either Ohno never felt anything from the start or he’s a incredible actor.

He doesn’t know what is the actual truth and what has become lies. He doesn’t know if he should follow his personal rule, the personal rule that has been true for all these years, but has failed this one time. Just this one time, there is no rebound of regret, and he’s not sure if he should be relieved by that or not.

He’s too confused; everyone’s confused now.

~~~

In the past two hours Aiba has visited Ohno’s room three times. Surprisingly, he hasn’t seen Nino in any of those times, and he wonders if the boy actually wants to visit Ohno or not. He feels that Nino wants to visit Ohno, that he should at least see how Ohno is doing, even though Ohno has betrayed them. Aiba is still stuck in the past, he still wants to trust Ohno even though Ohno has supposedly broken their trust, their bonds that have held them together for so long.

He still wants to trust the betrayer that hurt their group, the man that hurt Nino.

Aiba sighs as he takes one last look at Ohno, who is sitting rigidly on his bed, figure upright and facing away from him. He walks back to their designated meeting room, knocking on the door before he goes in.

He sees Nino huddled in front of his DS, desperately trying to beat the last level of his game. It’s been a week now, and Nino still hasn’t beaten the last boss yet. It’s been the longest time Nino has stayed on one particular game, Aiba thinks, as he peers over Nino’s shoulder.

To his surprise, Nino isn’t playing his new game. He’s playing a fishing game, trying to catch the biggest fish possible.

Aiba puts a hand on Nino’s shoulder and Nino flinches away, quickly closing his DS and taking the game out. Aiba pats his shoulder a few more times before taking his place on the couch right next to him. “It’s okay to still trust him, you know,” Aiba says gently, and Nino throws his game card at the wall, the suddenness causing Aiba to freeze up.

“I’m not going to trust someone who doesn’t even care for me,” Nino spits out, throwing his DS carelessly onto the glass table. “He’s out of my life right now. He’s out of everyone’s lives now.”

“I still trust him,” Aiba tells him quietly. He thinks it’s strange; Nino should be crying right now, something, but all Nino is doing is playing a game and feeling bitter. It’s not right, it’s not the way things should be.

“He’s not worth my trust, nor yours,” Nino informs him.

Aiba grabs him by the shoulders and starts shaking him, trying to get Nino’s brains together. “Stop lying to yourself! You’re still feeling bitter because you’re hurt. You still care.”

“I don’t care.” Nino throws Aiba’s arms off and stands up. “We have a job to do, you know. The criminal gave us some leads, we should be heading out soon.”

Aiba looks at him, the man that’s standing in front of him, unperturbed, trying to keep his cool. He doesn’t understand how Nino can possibly keep calm under so much pressure, no matter how much training or experience he has received in this field of work. “He gave us leads, but according to your logic we shouldn’t trust what he says, right?” Nino doesn’t say anything, and Aiba continues. “You still think of him as our leader.”

“He’s a betrayer.” With that, Nino quickly exits the room, slamming the door behind him, and Aiba is left in the room, confused.

He doesn’t get what’s happening. He still doesn’t get why, and he feels like he can’t even move forward anymore.

~~~

Time has stopped.

That’s what it feels like to Jun. Time has stopped, and it feels like there’s no way to start it back up again. Something has been put out of place, out of order and Jun doesn’t like the feeling that something is unorganized. Like this wasn’t supposed to happen yet, or ever for that matter.

No one has bothered to talk to him after the incident. He decides to go to their room, and he’s surprised to see Aiba and Sho already there, just sitting there and staring at the glass table.

Everyone’s moping around. He wants to put a stop to it, wants to do something because it feels like there is no time anymore, nothing significant anymore.

He tries to catch Aiba and Sho’s attention, but they seem to be deep in thought. Part of him doesn’t want to interrupt their thinking, but part of him wants them to act like they’re alive. But all they do is stare off into space, shifting every once in a while when their position becomes too uncomfortable for them.

He decides he might as well just sit there too, just for the heck of it.

For the lack of anything better to do, because they haven’t gotten orders yet.

~~~

Nino walks around headquarters, but he makes sure to avoid Ohno’s room. At least, he tries to, because he’d rather not look at Ohno in the face right now. He’s been torn apart, hurt, and the other man doesn’t even give any indication that he even cares about what Nino is feeling.

Ohno doesn’t even seem to care about the squad anymore, or anything outside of his terrorist group for that matter.

Finally, after walking around headquarters at least twelve times, he comes to a complete stop and turns around, walking towards the glass room where Ohno is encaged in. He still wants answers, because he still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t think he can ever understand, so he has to bother Ohno to get the answers out of him, the answers that he will never get because Ohno has already told him everything that he is feeling. Ohno has told him the whole truth, everything, how everything had been a lie. But it’s not enough for Nino, because he can’t just go back and erase those last five years and start all over. Part of his life has been taken away from him, and he needs something back, anything.

He goes to the location he has been seeking for, Ohno’s imprisonment room, his supposed cell without any bars. He asks the guard to open the door for him, and the guard complies. The click of the door unlocking signals to Nino that he can enter now, so he does.

He sees Ohno staring out at the wall in front of him, a blue folder in his hands and sitting in his lap. The man dressed in white prison clothes doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard Nino enter the room.

“What are you holding?” Nino asks him in his authoritative voice, and Ohno slowly turns around and looks at him. Then, something snaps.

~~~

Ohno curses himself for being so stupid, for letting his guard down. He should have known someone would be visiting him, he shouldn’t have stared off into space like that. He should have been thinking of plans, of ways to get himself out of this mess and to find a way to stop Takahiro. Instead, he’s chosen to sit there and let his brains rot in his head. He needs all the time he can get, so he shouldn’t be wasting it pondering over actions that he has already committed.

When Nino comes and asks him about it, Ohno closes the folder as quickly as he can. “Takahiro-san gave it to me,” he tells Nino, hoping that will stop him from asking anymore questions.

Nino isn’t convinced, and steps closer. Ohno shrinks back, clutching his folder protectively. “What are you hiding?”

The truth. “It’s something Takahiro gave me,” he repeats, slowly inching away from Nino. He can’t let Nino see this, because that means his plans will be ruined. Nino will find out, call him an idiot, and all the effort Ohno has put in will be in vain. He needs to do this alone, he wants to prevent anyone else from having to shoulder this responsibility.

“Give it to me,” Nino demands, holding out his hand.

“No,” Ohno says firmly, and he watches as Nino almost listens to him. But Nino remembers that Ohno is not his leader anymore, and steps closer. “I won’t give it to you,” Ohno declares. “I’ve already told you all that I know about HKT. There is nothing more to tell, this is unimportant to you.”

Nino stops, but only for a moment. He almost starts again, but Takahiro comes in just then. “Ah, I see you’ve kept the folder I issued out to you. Have you filled all the documents yet?”

“Documents?” Nino repeats, but Takahiro waves a hand.

“I would like to speak with Ohno-san in private, if you please.” Nino reluctantly leaves, casting one last glance at the folder Ohno is holding. Ohno puts it under his bed, and Nino casts his eyes away, step by step walking away from the truth that has been encased in a small little glass room.

Once Nino is completely out of sight Takahiro leans in, breath hot against Ohno’s ear, whispering words, letting them flow into his mind. “You must be much, much more careful from now on. I can’t be expected to save you every time.”

“I’m the one who’s saving you now,” Ohno whispers back. Takahiro smiles, blowing into his ear softly.

“And you have become a hero for it.”

~~~

Even enemies of this world have heroes.

Mixture of Colors [2/?]

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:59:04 GMT

Words: 2428
Pairing: Ohmiya
Chapter 2/?

~~~

Ohno whips out his gun and aims it at his own chief, the man he thought he’d be able to work well with, the man he thought he’d just pissed off a few minutes ago with Nino. Now, he’s not so sure if he can even talk to this man anymore, as the chief smirks at him.

“Ohno-san, I’d advise you put that gun down before I really have to kill Ninomiya-san and his family. I don’t think you’d want that happening, now would you?”

Ohno falters a bit, but he holds his ground. He knows that terrorists can make false statements and give out false information, and he’s not willing to trust someone that sneaked into their company just to control them his own way. “What do you mean?” he asks. “What is your purpose?”

“Hm. I think perhaps I’d like to start out with my purpose first, but I’ve already answered that question. Were you not listening?” Ohno doesn’t answer, and Takahiro chuckles. “Our purpose is to gradually lay our hands over this world and control it, as is with any group wanting to take over the world. The details will come later when I give you your assignments.”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Ohno says coldly.

“You may want to reconsider that option. It may be in your best interests to listen to me, especially since I’ve planted poison gas bombs all over this company and in your squad members’ houses as well. I’m sure you wouldn’t want all of your squad members dying in the middle of the night from poison inhalation, now would you?” The chief motions for Ohno to open his folder that he’s dropped on the ground, but Ohno doesn’t move. “I have the power to have each and every one of your friends and coworkers dead, Ohno-san.”

“If you set off all the bombs right now you’re going to be affected as well,” Ohno says, and the chief laughs at him, mocking his apparent misunderstanding.

“We’re in a sealed room, Ohno-san. You should know by now that this room always has its air ventilation separate from the rest of the building’s.” He walks up to Ohno and picks up the blue folder Ohno has dropped, standing back up, not concerned that Ohno’s gun has been following him this whole time. “I don’t necessarily have to set off the bombs in this company. I can set off the bombs I’ve planted in your old high school. Or, perhaps that boarding school in Hokkaido?”

“You’re bluffing,” Ohno accuses, but the chief just smirks at him.

“If I was bluffing this whole time, how do you explain that?” Takahiro points to the big display screen and the scurry of workers that have gotten out of their chairs. Ohno sees a small indoor playground, children and mothers running towards the exit and away from what seems to be white smoke. “They will be dead within minutes Ohno-san, and if you don’t drop your gun down right now more people will get hurt.”

Ohno is reluctant to drop down his gun because he thinks there may be a chance that this is all coincidence. But then, another report of a attack on a boarding school convinces him that it’s enough, and he lets go of his gun. The chief makes no hesitation to pick it up, and hands him the blue folder.

“From now on you will only be working for me, and for me only. You will be the betrayer, the spy, the one who will start giving everyone false information.”

~~~

HKT. Managed by Takahiro.

We are the heroes of the world, and we will save this world from indecisiveness by turning everything black.

First assignment: You will be given a location, a false location of HKT’s hideout. This is the first step to becoming a betrayer.

~~~

He agrees to it at first only because he needs to find a way to get himself out of this mess without somehow killing innocent people just because Takahiro feels like it. Of course, both options are bad options because the false information he will start giving to everyone will throw them all off and HKT can continue to prosper. But if it can somehow delay deaths, he’s willing to do it. He’s already seen the devastating effects of what happened in the boarding school and the indoor playground; there were no survivors, and HKT has become an actual threat towards the company. His coworkers are all trying to get leads, but he’s the only one who knows the truth.

Somewhere in the middle of this whole mess, he’s not so sure if he wants to go through with it anymore.

The contract with Takahiro is simple. If Ohno listens to him, innocent people won’t be hurt for no good reason, but Takahiro makes sure to mainly aim for Nino and his squad. He knows that’s Ohno’s main weakness, the people that he cherishes and cares about; them and their families. In order to ensure their safety, Ohno must work as a spy under Takahiro.

Takahiro’s concept of being a spy isn’t all that correct. Ohno isn’t literally a spy because he’s doing this against his own will. He isn’t telling the terrorist group what headquarters is doing because Takahiro has taken care of all of that, so Ohno’s main purpose is to fuck with everyone’s brains until they don’t know where the hell their case is going anymore.

His first assignment is to become a betrayer to everyone, and that means surely everyone will hate him after he’s completed the assignment. He will be locked in a special glass room, something they do to anyone who has betrayed their company. It’s then that he’ll get his next assignment.

He dreads the day when they get a ‘new’ lead, when they all go to the supposed hideout of HKT, when he has to point his gun towards one of his own men. He has nightmares about it, terrified that he’ll make a mistake with his gun with all the panic and confusion, scared that he’ll actually shoot one of his men. He knows it’s impossible because he’s experienced, but he can’t help but think that there’s a possibility that it might happen, that there’s always a small chance.

He doesn’t particularly want his teammates to start hating him either, but if they continue trusting him it’s game over for everyone. That means his only option is to taunt them and hurt them until they completely break and despise him for what he is, what he has become. Once he’s in the sealed glass room he can try to think of a plan and maybe find a way to stop HKT before anyone else dies.

He doesn’t want them hating him. He doesn’t want anyone hating him, and he thinks if he were a real spy working under Takahiro maybe it wouldn’t be so painful each time they gather in for a group hug.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so painful to see Nino each day and think that it might be their last day together before everything falls apart.

~~~

It’s been nearly two weeks and there still hasn’t been a new lead. People working at headquarters are trying to get information on HKT, but barely anything comes up on their computer screens. Occasionally something small comes up, but it’s not relevant to the case at hand.

Ohno waits, each day waking up in the morning with a sense of dread. He dreads the day, the hour, the time when they’re sent a new lead. He selfishly wants time to stop, but it’s for the good of the country, and his purpose is to think of the country before his own needs.

But then he thinks that his purpose isn’t to work with terrorists. His purpose is to go against terrorists and put them to justice. Both ways can save the country, but he isn’t sure which one he’s supposed to do. He can either go against Takahiro and have all of his squad members killed along with a few elementary school kids, plus maybe some old people from a senior home. Or, he can agree to Takahiro’s wishes and work for him, fucking with everyone’s brains until they’re running around in a circle.

He chooses the option that he thinks is right, the one that seems to be the safest option.

He hopes he won’t regret it.

~~~

One of Takahiro’s minions sends in a false lead on the seventeenth of June. It’s two hours after Ohno gives Nino his birthday present, a small fish cell phone strap.

It’s the worst possible day to send in that false lead, and Ohno doesn’t want to hurt anyone, especially on Nino’s birthday. But nothing can be helped, nothing else can be done, at least not yet. So for now, Ohno has to stay put, and when all of this is over and he’s imprisoned in the little glass room he’ll think of something else.

The drive to the abandoned supply garage is way too short, and ten minutes to Ohno seems more like two. Ohno doesn’t even realize he’s out of the car until the two terrorists, men this time, come forward from behind the boxes and aim their guns at them.

The scene is all too familiar, the only difference being the gender of the people they are facing. His squad waits for him to try to get the terrorists to put their guns down, to make some kind of action that will set them off so they can capture them and bring them back to headquarters.

The actions and words never come, and his squad looks at him, wondering what is wrong. Some seconds pass before Sho opens his mouth in Ohno’s place, and Ohno has found a leader that can manage the squad after he is gone. “Put down your weapons or you will face serious consequences for your actions.”

Ohno sees his opening, and he walks up to the two terrorists. They look at him suspiciously, not quite trusting him yet, but then he turns a full one hundred eighty degrees and points his weapon directly at Nino. He chooses to point it at him because he has the closest relationship with him among the rest of them, because if he can manage to break this bond first the rest will be easier. He wants to get through the most painful situations first, and then everything will be like aftershocks.

“Happy birthday, Ninomiya-san,” he says quietly, and he tries to ignore the shock on his squad’s faces. The two terrorists open their mouths, and he does too. “We are the heroes, and we will control this world.” They say it word for word in sync, and Ohno almost wants to break the perfection of their phrase, to get out of their rhythm, their cadence that makes all three of them seem so cynical to the opposite side.

Nino lets loose his hold on his gun, lowers his arm and tries to reach out to Ohno. He tries to ask what is wrong, why Ohno is doing this, why he’s all of a sudden acting so different. Ohno silences him by pulling the trigger, and Nino flinches back, almost as if he’s already been shot. “One false move and you’re dead,” Ohno tells him, trying to put as much coldness into his voice as he possibly can. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, it’s enough to convince Nino, at least a little, and he tightens his hold on his gun, aiming it at Ohno this time.

“Why?” Aiba asks him, almost in a whisper. Ohno can barely hear him, and Jun echoes him in a much louder voice. They’re all wondering, and Ohno’s answer is harsh towards them; he has to make it as harsh as possible, or else it won’t work and Takahiro might set off a bomb in an elementary school this time.

“I was never on the good side from the start,” Ohno states, giving them a smirk. “Everything was a lie.” This is a lie, it’s a lie, everything right now is a lie. “These are the first true words I’ve spoken out in years. It feels good to once again be alive, to go back to what I truly am.”

It’s the opposite, don’t believe what I say, it’s not the truth, not this, no. This is not me.

“You’re a spy then. A betrayer.” Nino looks like he’s starting to believe it, starting to trust the lies that have come forth out of Ohno’s throat and through his mouth. “You’re one of them.”

“I am of HKT, of one of us,” Ohno answers him. “You, you’re one of them, you’re our enemy.”

“Leader, what are you saying?” Sho asks, not quite believing it. Ohno can’t quite believe the situation he is in now, no matter how many times he’s rehearsed the words in his brain, waiting for the right time to use them. But he takes a look at Nino, Nino with his small hands tightly clasped on the gun, the fingers that slowly pull the trigger.

“You’re a criminal, Ohno-san,” Nino says softly, narrowing his eyes. Ohno is relieved that his squad hasn’t suddenly burst into tears yet, because it makes his job easier. They are all professionals now, professionals not just at holding a gun but acting as well. Ohno holds his ground, and so does his squad, even though they’re on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Ohno hears the first shot before he sees it, and he wonders if Nino shot at the ground on purpose or if it was a mistake. A series of shots follow it and there’s a scurry of movement before he finds himself being tackled onto the ground by Jun. He can’t see anything from that angle, but he hopes the cries of pain aren’t from his unit members.

Even though his outer appearance has changed sides, his heart will always be rooting for his squad, his own group members, even when they lock him up in that glass room and interrogate him with various amounts of torture devices.

It is then that he will commit his next sin, his next lie, and the truth around them will distort into various shapes and colors until nothing makes sense anymore. That is what he is there for; he is the brush that will mix up the paints and colors until everything becomes black.

~~~

Where is the truth in this sea of darkness?

Mixture of Colors

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:59:55 GMT

Pairing: Ohmiya
Words: 2969
Chapter Fic. [1/5?] Haha, I haven't written a multi-chap in AGES.

~~~

The middle-aged man put his pen down after signing a series of papers, smiling as he picked them up and organized them. The papers were beautiful; such whiteness was to be desired in a world filled with gray.

Eventually, under his own hands, everything would be destroyed and turned into a whirlwind of darkness and chaos.

He would see that it would be done.

~~~

Johnny’s is a renowned group in Japan and around the world, appearing in the media occasionally and getting many praises from the police and detectives and whatnot. It is a government funded organization, striving to protect those civilians who don’t know shit about guns and terrorists and how they work.

At least, that’s how Nino describes it every time he is asked about it in an interview with the government officials.

Ohno thinks Nino isn’t that far off, because they’re really actually trying to protect people from terrorists. But, Ohno thinks maybe Nino sometimes goes a bit too far during the interviews, because he’s there to talk to government workers and it’s a check-up of how they’re doing, but Nino brushes it off as if it doesn’t really mean anything, even though there’s a potential threat of the whole organization shutting down because of the government getting angry at them.

He tries telling Nino this, but during the interview Nino always says the same exact thing and Ohno is sure the people interviewing him are getting bored by now. But all Nino gets are praises and a couple of chuckles and shaking of heads when his vulgarity slips out of his mouth. Nino gets away with anything, and even their chief can’t do anything about it.

Then again, Ohno muses, they just got a new chief two months ago, so he probably can’t do anything about it for the time being. But even Johnny couldn’t do anything about it when he was chief of their organization, so Ohno thinks this new chief of theirs probably doesn’t have that much of a chance either. Nino doesn’t even listen to Ohno, so the chances are pretty much zero.

Their new chief, though, doesn’t seem to have any intentions to keep Nino on a leash, nor any of the other organization members for that matter, so the members are pretty much okay with having him as their new leader no matter how much they were against the transition before. Ohno thinks it’s a miracle their chief can walk around the building without worrying about getting nailed by a gun, because he and his workmates were really close to Johnny and many of them had plans to kill whoever tried to lead them other than their ex-chief. But, the transition has been pretty smooth so far, so Ohno thinks they can continue their work without any internal issues.

Which is good, because Ohno has his gun pointed to a woman with a bomb in her hands and he doesn’t think it’ll bode well if he’s distracted by what’s happening in their company. “Drop that bomb now,” he orders, pulling the trigger. The woman glares at him and hisses.

“Never. I do not negotiate with anyone outside of our organization.”

By now Nino is rolling his eyes and he whips out his own gun, planting it firmly on the back of her head. “If you don’t drop that bomb right now I’m going to blow out your brains and then gather them up, put them into a frying pan and feed it to your daughter. I don’t think you want that to happen, so I think it’s in your best interests to drop it. Now.”

The woman blinks at him. “I don’t have daughter?” She’s barely finished with her sentence when Jun comes up and kicks the bomb out of her hands, and Aiba catches it before it drops onto the ground and hands it to Sho, who starts messing with the wires and trying to find a way to stop the thing from blowing up in their faces.

“Jun, you don’t kick a bomb,” Ohno says exasperatedly as Nino handcuffs the woman. “What if it went off on impact?”

Jun shrugs. “The woman’s too stupid to have a real bomb with her.”

“What do you mean?” Aiba asks, almost too enthusiastically, and three of Ohno’s squad by now are staring at Jun strangely. Not including Sho.

“Ah, he’s right!” Sho exclaims as he cuts off all the wires and Ohno almost yells at him. “This isn’t a real bomb!”

“Yay!” Nino says and claps his hands, removing the handcuffs he just put on the woman two seconds ago and Ohno almost wants to kick all of them in the face for being silly. His squad then decides it’s time for a group hug and they gather around Ohno.

The chief and the woman both blink at them. “I’m assuming they don’t act this way in real situations?” the chief asks the woman, and she just shrugs and leaves the testing room. The chief, Takahiro, sighs and turns back to his ‘number one’ squad. “We’re doing a test, so I’d really appreciate if all of you took the effort to strategically get out of this situation without any silliness added to the equation.”

“These situations are too boring,” Jun complains, and Ohno really wonders how they’ve managed to go through all their other missions without completely fucking up every last minute detail.

Takahiro sighs, rubbing his forehead as if to get rid of a headache. “I’m hoping your squad’s performance will be better in future tests.” He then leaves the room, leaving Ohno and his squad alone.

~~~

In reality, Ohno knows his squad is much more serious when it comes to real life situations. They know how to use their guns properly, when to shoot and when to hold their fire, when to negotiate when necessary. They’re experienced, but Ohno doesn’t understand why they don’t use their ability whenever they have routine tests. They’re supposed to keep the chief from worrying, not make him more stressed out.

His squad’s approach to tests certainly is different, sometimes almost borderline ridiculous, but Ohno knows these kinds of approaches won’t work in real life. Quite frankly they’re all wasting their time, but Ohno can’t help but agree when his squad tells him that tests have nothing to do with the real situations they go through. Each situation is unique, different, and that’s what makes their job so dangerous. Nothing is predictable in their world, so there’s no use to go through tests. It’s not as if it’s training, it’s just check ups.

Ohno suspects that their chief is worried about their performance, but Takahiro still brands them as his best squad in the organization. They still get sent out to missions, and Ohno thinks it’s a miracle they’re still in the organization as it is.

The chief seems to trust them, though, and decides to send them on their mission, their first mission under him. He picks them without hesitation which Ohno thinks is remarkable because all the other squads have done relatively better in their performance tests. They are quickly shown two images on the big display screen in their central meeting center, and then they are immediately escorted towards the back of their building. Ohno opens his mouth to ask why they’re the ones chosen, but the chief holds up a hand and pushes him towards the doors, towards the cars already parked outside and waiting for them.

“It’s HKT, Ohno-san. I’m sending your squad, and that is final. Now go,” he commands.

Ohno hesitates for only another second before heading out with the rest of his squad members, jumping into the passenger seat at the front and pulling out his phone. Nino starts up the car, nodding towards Aiba in the other car to drive first. Nino follows, making a left turn as Ohno gets his set of instructions.

“We have a lead that several HKT members may be inside a high school at this time,” a voice reports to Ohno from his phone. Both Ohno and Nino send each other a surprised look, not understanding what this means.

“Through identification reports and several records we suspect that at least two HKT members are currently employed in the school as teachers,” the voice continues. “Most of the high school students have been dismissed, but there are still a few remaining students inside campus. Your orders are to wait fifty meters from the entrance gates and arrest them once they exit the school.”

Nino makes another left turn onto a slightly inclining road, slowing down his car as they approach the school. Once they completely stop Nino sighs and takes out his DS. Ohno knows it’s a means to keep Nino calm, so he keeps silent and looks out the window. The school, from what he can see, is just like any other school. It’s a normal looking school, with white walls and a accessible roof.

Ohno doesn’t let his mind wander away for too long, because he needs to keep an eye out on whoever is coming out of the gates. Nino seems to think this too, and puts his DS away in the glove compartment. “I really should stop doing that,” Nino mutters. “It’s unprofessional.”

Ohno shrugs. “It’s not that big of a deal, I can watch.”

“It’s going to bite me in the ass one day,” Nino replies, and Ohno is just about to open his mouth and give him his ‘we’re not perfect’ lecture when they both hear a gunshot.

Ohno quickly opens the door and jumps out of the car, just in time to see two people standing in front of Aiba’s car with guns in their hands. He’s only slightly relieved when he finds out that all three of his squad members in the first car have already gotten out, pointing their own guns at the people who just attempted to shoot them.

Ohno and Nino pull out their own guns, approaching the two people they’re after slowly. “What is your aim?” Ohno asks, not breaking eye contact with the two women.

“We are the heroes,” one woman answers, but it doesn’t help with Ohno’s question. It’s the first time they’ve even gotten any contact with members of HKT, and their information on them is very limited. He doesn’t know how dangerous these people are, and whether they really pose a threat or if they’re just amateurs.

“We will not fail,” another woman says.

“This is your last chance to put your guns down,” Ohno says smoothly.

They both smile at this, and Ohno chooses this time to pull his trigger, causing both of the women’s concentration solely on his gun, for only a second. That one second is enough as both Sho and Jun shoot at them, aiming for their shoulders. The women try to react, but it’s too fast for them and within a second they’re both sprawled on the ground, their breathing uneven, trying to reach for their guns. Jun kicks them away, and Nino picks them up.

“We will turn everything in this gray world black,” the first woman says, struggling to sit up.

“You can explain everything to us at headquarters,” Ohno says quietly, handcuffing her as Aiba takes care of the other woman.

~~~

Back at headquarters, the chief nods at them as a appreciation of their hard work and sends two men from another unit to take care of the interrogations. After the interrogations, they can see whether or not HKT poses a serious threat to the country.

Ohno sighs and lies down on the couch, putting his head on Nino’s lap as Nino tries to finish beating the last level of his game. He tries to relax, but something’s been bothering him ever since they caught those two women, like there’s something not right with the whole equation.

Nino can tell Ohno is tense and puts his DS away, saving the last level for another time. He rubs Ohno’s arms and shoulders, trying to help Ohno relax. Ohno closes his eyes, getting used to the sensations of Nino’s childlike hands all over him.

“I feel like something’s wrong,” Ohno confesses, entwining his fingers in Nino’s. “Like that mission we just had was too easy, like it was planned.”

“You say that fifty percent of the time we come back,” Nino comments, playing with Ohno’s ear. “Don’t worry too much about it.”

“I can’t help it, though. I just feel like something’s wrong with everything we’ve been doing today.”

Nino pinches Ohno’s cheek this time, leaning down for a kiss but just then their door suddenly opens. The chief is standing there looking at them expectantly, and Ohno quickly sits up, almost bumping his head into Nino’s.

The chief clears his throat, coughing a little before straightening his suit. “Ohno-san, I’d like you to come into my office for a few minutes, if you please.”

Ohno walks towards him and he can feel Nino’s presence following him, but Takahiro holds up a hand when Nino tries to get through the door. “Only Ohno-san, if you please.” He closes the door in Nino’s face before Nino can even protest and leads Ohno through the various hallways before they reach to the chief’s office door.

The chief’s office is more of like a meeting room, with a big table in the center of the room. Ohno remembers a time when Johnny used to sit at that very same desk, smiling up at him and the others at times when they all completed a missions successfully without any major injuries. Now it’s Takahiro, and Ohno realizes it’s the first time he’s ever been in this room with Takahiro as chief.

“Ohno-san, I’d like to talk to you about HKT. As you already know, we’ve been interrogating the two women you successfully caught today for the past two hours.” The chief seems to get down to business quickly, picking up various papers on his desk and organizing them. After a few minutes of silence he hands a blue folder over to Ohno. “Please don’t open it yet. I’d actually like to talk to you about something else for a few minutes.”

Ohno’s mind immediately goes back to the past ten minutes with Nino and his DS and the massage and the chief walking in on them. “Takahiro-san, if you would let me explain myself-”

The chief holds up a hand, and Ohno stops talking. “Ohno-san, you greatly disappoint me. We’re in the middle of a terrorist organization plot.”

Ohno is surprised at the chief’s harshness, and tries to open his mouth but the chief once again puts up his hand as a means of stopping the words that are trying to jump out of Ohno’s throat. “I do not need you to explain to me what goes on in your personal life, Ohno-san,” he says. “Rather, I’d like you to let me explain myself for a few minutes. I will allow you to talk after I’m done.”

Ohno nods, in his mind trying to find a excuse, a plan to get himself out of this one. Obviously his chief does not like relationships inside of headquarters, but maybe if he tries to adopt some of Nino’s persuasion skills he can get himself out of this. The last thing he wants to happen is to be in a separate unit from Nino, or even worse having his whole squad kicked out of the company.

The chief opens his mouth again, capping his pen that he used a few minutes ago. “Ohno-san, I do not approve of relationships with one another because I believe it is distracting and not a good thing for work environments, especially in such work environments that require quick thinking. We do not need distractions in our line of work because it poses potential threats and dangers, do I make myself clear?”

Ohno nods again, but the chief obviously is not finished with lecturing him.

“However,” the chief says and pauses, and Ohno thinks he may be able to see a fine line of hope. “However, the two of you in a relationship greatly enhances the chances of my plans to work. Although I am disappointed you allowed me to find out about your relationship with Ninomiya-san so quickly, I feel that this is a valuable asset, and I’d like to thank you for your obliviousness and naivety.”

“Naivety?” Ohno echoes, not quite understanding what his chief is trying to say.

“I thought all of you would be more careful in front of your leader, but I suppose that is not the case. Maybe, when I’m done with you, all of you will be more careful in the near future.” The chief stands up at this and looks out his window at the hundreds of people in the center of the building, answering calls and working with computers and displaying images on the big television screen.

He turns to Ohno and smiles. “Distractions are good when you’re working for the opposite side, no?”

With years of training and experience, Ohno quickly tunes in to the change in expression and voice. “Takahiro-san?”

“Ah,” the chief says as if he’s just remembered something. “I forgot to explain myself. My name is Takahiro, and I am your chief, the one you look up to in your line of work.” He smiles again. “However, the one you look up to is the leader of HKT, the terrorist organization that will turn this gray world into black, because we are the heroes, the future of this world.” He laughs.

“To have a spy successfully become the leader of the world’s largest anti-terrorist organization, that is something to be proud of, no?”

~~~

His fine line of hope has become his one true nightmare.

~~~~

Artificial Happiness Machine

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:55:07 GMT

Title: Artificial Happiness Machine
Rating: PG-13, Sci-Fi AU
Pairing: Ohmiya. [I am addicted. Or something.]
Words: A monster. 6700 words.

------------------------

He will never forget, because the memories are somewhere in the back of his head, waiting to be fished out, to be wanted.

But for now, he will forget, because you chose to make him forget.

------------------------

Ninomiya Kazunari doesn't like his job, no matter how sinecure it is, no matter how easy it is. He does it because no one else wants to do it, and admittedly he only pays attention to the income he receives. It's a high paying job, because no one wants to be under that kind of work all day, and he's one of the few people who is willing to actually do it.

The income is good; it keeps him fed, healthy, and it gives him a nice place to live in.

He does it because he has no other ability; he can't sing like Ohno can, he can't act, and being in the entertainment industry is too stressful for him. He isn't very good at math; actually, his academics suck in general, so the most he can do is mop the floors in some internet cafe.

He does it because there's bound to be depressed people out there in the world. And when there are depressed people out there in the world, there are also people who care about them, who want them to be happy.

He does it, because at first he thought it was a good thing.

The machine he operates is called the Artificial Happiness Machine.

------------------------

He should have known. The name was a clear give away; he just didn't think about it during his high school years. He wished for too much, he was too naive, and now he pays the price.

The machine is a little silver pod, and behind the walls there is a black armchair with black cushions. The inside walls are also silver, a metallic color that Nino doesn't like. It's too shiny, too gray, too professional for something so eerie and cruel.

He wants as couch to be put in there someday, instead of armchairs. These people are all dying for happiness after all, and they should at least feel comfortable when they're only mere seconds away from nothingness. They are all brave people, and Nino thinks he can never be like them, not for his mother, not for his sister, not even for Ohno. He's too scared to, he values his own life too much to give it to someone else.

It's the Artificial Happiness Machine's concept that makes Nino uncomfortable. The machine is decided to cure a person's depression. The machine's purpose is to kill someone who cares, who actually cares, and it transfers a feeling of happiness to the depressed person. The depressed person is then happy for the rest of their life, and feels motivated, doing good for society and actually trying their best.

The person who cares is forgotten. The depressed person has no memory of him or her, and will never remember again.

That's the scariest part of the Artificial Happiness Machine.

The person you care about never remembers.

------------------------

Nino only has about a handful of people that he really cares about. He cares about his family, obviously.

He also cares about Ohno, strangely enough. He first meets the singer when Ohno is wandering around his company, taking a look at the machine, hands stuffed into his pockets and eyes absorbing the pretty designs the silver pod has around it.

Ohno notices him, and opens his mouth, pointing at the machine Nino operates every day. "What is that for?"

This question is directed to Nino many times a day. At first, he'd try to be cool and wave a hand in the air, describing it in detail and acting as if it were no big deal. Now, Nino knows better. He knows that his job isn't cool at all, and the happiness is only fake, and everyone knows it except for the person who receives the happiness. "It's a machine for people who care. They get killed in this, and their death turns into happiness for the person they are dying for."

Ohno looks shocked. "Haven't people tried to ban this thing?" He takes another look at it, bites his lower lip. "It's too cruel. The intentions are understandable, but it's just...too cruel."

Nino decides he likes this guy, and smiles ruefully, wondering if he'll ever have a chance of being friends with Ohno after he has disclosed this information. "I'm the one who operates this machine." He takes a deep breath, averting his gaze away from Ohno's face. "I see people walk into that silver pod and disappear into thin air. Technology is really strange these days, isn't it? First it was video games, then there was the concept of improved medicine and now this." He knows most people walk away from him after he's said this, thinking that he's some monster who takes lives. Only the most desperate people talk to him, and they're dead within a few hours. He assumes this man will be the same as all the other people he's met; there's no such thing as gray in this picture, only black and white.

He doesn't expect it when Ohno walks up to him and hugs him, almost too tight for comfort. "I'm sorry," he mumbles into Nino's shoulder, and Nino thinks maybe they can still be friends, even though Nino is technically a murderer. He feels hope surge through him, that maybe there really is something gray in a picture completely void of color.

------------------------

Sometimes Ohno likes to invite Nino out for ramen. The boy absolutely loves ramen, and has it almost every day. Nino can't even begin to think why Ohno even likes such a thing so much that he'd eat it everyday, but he goes along with it because it's a free meal and he doesn't have to get out his wallet.

Instead of buying two bowls of ramen like any other normal person would under their circumstances, Ohno insists on buying a big bowl of ramen, because he claims it saves more money that way. Nino knows better, because he actually has studied the menu and made the calculations, and it'd be better if they just ordered two separate bowls, but he isn't complaining because he gets to share that big jumbo bowl of ramen with Ohno.

It's a nice way of eating, because Nino doesn't have to worry that he's going to waste food if he can't finish it; Ohno always finishes it for him.

------------------------

They all scream.

Nino wonders if it's painful, to walk into that machine. He wonders if it's painful when he pushes the power button, when the silver pod shoots out blue light.

He wonders if it's painful when the people get killed and disappear into thin air.

It's one more reason why Nino hates his job. He hates the earsplitting screams that go along with it, hates the agonizing cries minutes before their deaths. They always scream so loudly, and it pierces through his heart.

He always sends Ohno off when he's in the middle of the process. He doesn't want Ohno to hear it, he wants to protect Ohno from it. As much as Ohno wants to stay by his side when he does this, he can't let Ohno go through this, so he always locks the door behind him to keep Ohno out. Ohno is too precious of a friend, and Nino wants to protect him just like how he protects his mother and his sister.

He does it all by himself, alone, wanting to run away from the screams that follow him to his dreams.

But he doesn't.

------------------------

Just like Nino has lots of people that he cares about, Ohno has a lot of people that he cares about too. Ohno cares for his mother the most, living with her still even though he's a grown man already.

Ohno's mother is a nice woman; she's the perfect role-model for new mothers. She's one of the few mothers that still does all the housework by hand, instead of letting machines do it. She sits on the couch actually folding the laundry by hand rather than feeding it through a machine folder. She even cooks for Ohno, and Nino thinks her food is the best he has ever tasted.

She claims that a mother's love does not show through the use of a machine, but by doing the chores by hand. Nino doesn't quite understand, because his own mother has used machines to do her chores, and he doesn't feel unloved or anything. But he respects her nevertheless, because she's willing to work so hard for her child.

Ohno talks about her often, on and off camera. Nino thinks it's funny every time he sees Ohno on the TV; he sees the older boy in real life as well, and yet here he is, watching him on TV in his own living room. Wherever he goes he sees Ohno, and it doesn't matter if the boy is physically present with him at the time. He always talks about the same thing.

NIno thinks it's nice to have such a strong bond with a mother.

------------------------

But then there comes a time when Ohno stops talking about her.

Nino wonders what is wrong.

Ohno doesn't talk much during the week. Nino asks, but Ohno brushes it off, saying that he's too tired and his work is too stressful.

Nino's job is moved to a little glass room, and he sees Ohno standing out there. He tries to push him away, somewhere where Ohno can't see, because he doesn't want to show him what he does. Ohno retaliates, saying that it's all right and Nino threatens to stop working if Ohno doesn't listen to what he says.

It's not a very good threat, and Ohno shocks him by saying, "What else can you do?" The tone is cold, unforgiving, and Nino can do nothing but stare at his friend.

Ohno turns his head to the side, his vision directed at the silver pod sitting on the tiled white marble. "Just go. It's your job, isn't it?"

So Nino turns around and goes back into the little glass room, locking the door behind him. He hopes this room is soundproof at least, so Ohno doesn't have to hear the shrieks that resonate through the room.

Ohno watches him through the glass, hands pressed against the cool surface as Nino kills his first customer. Nino looks back, and Ohno keeps on staring at him, at the machine, unmoving.

Ohno doesn't say anything when Nino is finished and outside of the room. He doesn't say anything about it, ever, and Nino doesn't know whether he should be glad about that. He just follows Nino around while Nino files his paperwork to their appropriate cabinets.

Nino thinks it's stupid how he's filing paperwork for dead people that he himself killed.

------------------------

Nino finds out a month later, after the funeral's over. Ohno sends him a text message, and for a moment Nino thinks it's just a prank until the gears in brain start clicking in place.

He wonders why the hell didn't Ohno tell him sooner.

Ohno's still depressed and following him around everywhere, and Nino tells him to go home and get some rest.

When he himself is home, he closes the front door behind him and slides until he's sitting down, hugging his knees to his chest.

The cold look Ohno has in his eyes every day is scary, and he can't bring himself to look at Ohno in the eyes anymore. He can't help but think that there is no gray anymore; there was never gray in the first place.

------------------------

A week after Nino finds out, Ohno gets fired fom his job. His manager is too fed up with Ohno walking around depressed all the time, and immediately sends Ohno a letter along with a check for a thousand yen.

The thousand yen is basically worthless, and Nino knows that. It can barely buy a small bowl of ramen, and he thinks his manager is too cruel to have fired Ohno that way, especially after all that Ohno has been through. He tries to talk to his manager, but Ohno stops him and tells him that it's all right, that he doesn't need his job anymore.

Nino tries to talk some sense into his friend, but Ohno ignores him, saying that he doesn't need the money. He doesn't have to work, not anymore, because he doesn't have any reason to live anymore.

Nino is hurt by this, more than anything else, because he isn't seen as a reason for Ohno to live. He feels a small coil of jealousy wound up in his stomach, coiling tighter and tighter, knowing that he isn't important to Ohno, not as much as his mother is.

------------------------

He doesn't know what possesses him to do it, but he does it anyway. He sends in an application for himself, and the lady in glasses looks at him strangely, then assumes that there is another man in this world named Ninomiya Kazunari.

She's wrong, and scans it through the computer without any understanding of what really is going on and gives him the stamp.

He is now officially a dead person, a disappeared person. He does not exist in this world anymore, and the memories of him will slowly fade away. He has lost his identity along with his future, but he doesn't really mind, not now.

------------------------

Nino doesn't know if it's out of jealousy or if it's out of caring emotions. He thinks it might be a mix of both, because he doesn't want Ohno walking around like a dead man for the rest of his life. It's probably just purely based on selfish reasons, because he doesn't give a damn about what Ohno thinks at this point.

He doesn't think he is important to Ohno, because if were even just a bit important to the man Ohno wouldn't have completely given up on life. It's his own reasoning, and he thinks it's perfectly logical, so after he's done with his work for the day he scans his ID and the pod opens, letting him in.

Nino doesn't really care if Ohno is watching him through the glass windows or not. It's too late to turn back now, and even if Ohno is there he probably won't notice nor care. He wills himself not to look back through the glass window to see if Ohno is really there, walking across the halls, and walks into the machine. The doors close behind him and he sits on the couch which is surprisingly comfortable despite its appearance.

He is now mere seconds away from death, and wills himself not to scream. He can't scream, because that would be a hypocritical act. He turns to the black machine with numbers and letters imprinted on it, pressing Ohno's ID number and his name without any hesitation, and then presses the submit button.

White light shoots into his eyes and he doesn't remember if he screamed or not.

------------------------

You see.

You chose to make him forget. Don't you dare have any regrets.

Because no one will save you, you can only save yourself.

So don't look back now until you're absolutely sure.

------------------------

Nino opens his eyes, grimacing as he squints against the bright sunlight poring through the windows into the room. He turns his head and sees an alarm clock placed onto a green table, red font telling him that it's one o'clock.

"Ah, so you're finally awake now!" a bright voice chirps, and Nino turns his head back, seeing a tall, lanky man with brown hair. He flashes a smile to Nino and helps him sit up, placing a pillow behind his back so he can lean on it.

"Where am I?" Nino asks, and the man gives him a surprised look.

"Where else? Australia, of course!"

Nino wonders why in the hell he's been plopped into the middle of Australia for a brief moment, but then that thought goes away and his brain is left in a jumbled mess.

Where else would he be?

------------------------

Nino doesn't know where he came from, and whenever he tries to remember something it runs away from his grasp. He can only remember his name, and it seems absurd because he's supposed to have memories, but he doesn't. Aiba seems to understand though, for some strange reason, and shows him through the shop that Aiba owns.

It's a small Chinese restaurant, and Aiba is quite proud of it considering there are only maybe seven tables, and half of them are rarely full, even on the weekends. Aiba tells him he can stay here for as long as he want, and Nino seems this is really strange and kind of off, but he agrees anyway because he has nowhere else to go.

He ends up cleaning the tables and collecting the glasses and plates after the customers. They all speak in a language that he doesn't know, and Aiba talks to them in this strange language of slow syllables and peculiar accents. He might recognize a few words, but he's not sure, and he decides that it doesn't really matter.

He asks Aiba one day what language they're speaking in, and Aiba hesitates before telling him. "English," he says, and then Nino asks him what language he himself speaks in.

"Japanese, you silly!" Aiba exclaims, whacking him on the head. "You came from Japan, what other language would you know?"

Something in Nino's head clicks, and now he knows where he came from. He's excited and tries to tell Aiba that he remembers something, but Aiba's expression has changed from a sort of childish happiness to a solmen stare at the tables, as if he has said something he shouldn't have.

Nino is left confused once again as Aiba hurriedly greets the customers that come through the door.

Today, the tables are all full.

------------------------

Nino sometimes has dreams about a silver sphere with legs that rest on the ground. He doesn't know why, but for some reason he wants to get away from it every time he sees it. It's just a harmless silver sphere, but every time he runs away from it and wakes up, bed sheets curling around him at odd angles.

He tells Aiba about it one day while Aiba is pouring out iced tea for the customers, and Aiba almost drops the jug onto the floor.

Nino asks him what's wrong, because normally Aiba doesn't even come close to dropping things, but Aiba waves it off and says he thought he just saw a kangaroo outside the window. Nino laughs at him and this time he's the one whacking Aiba on the head.

"Hey, it's true!" Aiba protests. "I actually saw one outside my window. We do live in Australia, you know."

Nino is silent for a moment, then opens his mouth, and afterwards he wishes he hadn't. "Why am I here, exactly?"

Aiba's smile falls off his face like a droplet of water off a leaf, and the solemn expression is back. He gives a half-smile and tries talking about how he must have spilled some tea onto the floor because it's grown sticky, but Nino presses on, because he just has to know.

"I don't know, Nino," Aiba answers exasperatedly, finally putting the jug down. "I really don't know. No one knows."

------------------------

Nino doesn't know either, and he's dying to find out. All he knows is that he's from Japan, but even that is shady and he doesn't know if he even has a past there or not.

He tries to remember, but he can't come up with anything, even though he knows there's something there. It's all quite frustrating because he's only a few brain cells away from remembering something. There are no clues, no stimulation to help him remember. Aiba doesn't know anything either, and he doesn't know how Nino got here in the first place, or if Nino was living here before Aiba found him.

Aiba doesn't really tell Nino how he found him in the first place, either. Whenever Nino tries asking him about it Aiba laughs and tells him that he flew from the sky, but that's hard to believe because people don't just fly from the sky and land in someone's house. At least, that's what Nino thinks, but technology is so strange these days that he doesn't know what can happen and what can't.

He feels it's ironic that he's the one asking all the questions, and Aiba hasn't even asked him if he remembers anything yet.

------------------------

AIba's Chinese restaurant sells ramen for some strange reason, and Nino finds it odd because he thinks ramen is more of a Japanese type of food. Then again, Aiba may have his Japanese bias when it comes to cooking, so he doesn't complain when he sets the bowls down for the customers.

Aiba doesn't serve him ramen; it's always rice or bread for meals, and Nino doesn't know why. He doesn't know if it's just purely coincidence or if Aiba thinks that Nino is allergic to noodle type stuff. Whatever the reason, he always gets rice, or bread, or some other type of food to eat.

He can't exactly complain because Aiba is the one paying for his food and Nino is basically mooching off of him, but he wants to try out ramen at least once. He feels like he's eaten it before, and he wouldn't be surprised if he actually has eaten it before in Japan. He feels like if he can eat ramen, he can remember something from his past.

So he asks Aiba for a bowl of ramen, hoping that Aiba won't get mad at him for being picky about his food.

Aiba just puts down the jug of ice cold lemonade and stares at him. "Ramen?"

Nino points to the pot that's sitting on the stove. "That stuff," he says, and Aiba stares at him as if he doesn't know what ramen is. "You know what, never mind I said anything," Nino mutters, throwing his rag down onto the table and going to the back room to look at some magazines.

Right before he goes to sleep, he tells himself that if it were Ohno, he would treat Nino to ramen any day.

------------------------

Nino wakes up the next morning hearing voices in the living room; loud, harsh voices bounce off the walls and it seems like an argument is going on. He can hear Aiba's voice, raspy and loud over another man's voice which is much lower.

"Are you even listening?! You need to bring him back; you can't just keep him from his life forever!"

"He doesn't remember!" Aiba's voice cuts in before the other man can say anymore. He seems upset, Nino thinks, as he rubs his eyes.

"He will eventually!" the other man counters. "He's going to remember eventually, and you can't keep him away from that! And you don't have to stay here, Aiba, you can come back with me!"

"I don't want to go back! And who says he's going to remember?"

Nino gives up trying to fall back asleep, not with the argument that's going on. He shuffles out of his bedroom and makes his way into the living room. "Morning," he mumbles, and he sees the man who is arguing with Aiba.

He blinks. "Sho?" He can remember him faintly, somewhere in the back of his mind. It's hazy and foggy and he can't grasp it yet, but he knows the man's name is Sho. He just doesn't know how he knows.

Aiba's mouth drops open, and Sho gives a big grin. "You see, he remembers me!" he says triumphantly, and Aiba proceeds to kick him in the shin.

"That's nothing to be proud of!" Aiba snaps. "You're the one who let him in that machine in the first place and now he doesn't remember anything!"

"It was his choice, and it's against the law for me to refuse him access to it. And besides, I already told him it wasn't finished yet but no, he just had to be a total idiot and use it without my premission."

"You could have been more careful!" Aiba protests. "It's your fault, you know, not his."

"I never said it wasn't," Sho grumbles, rubbing his leg. "I'm just saying I want to bring him back. He actually has a past there, you know."

"He doesn't remember it!"

"He remembers me."

"Does not."

"Does too."

"Does not."

"Does too. He knows my name."

"Oh great, he knows my name too."

"I bet he's going through ramen withdrawal," Sho accuses, and Aiba makes a point of crossing his arms to make himself look more terrifying. "I bet he's going through Ohno withdrawal."

"Ohno eats too much ramen," Nino says, connecting the two ideas together because in his mind, they obviously go together. What he doesn't know is that he's not supposed to know this kind of information, and he immediately wonders who the hell this Ohno person even is.

Aiba looks at him with wide eyes and Sho gives him another triumphant grin. Aiba shakes his head. "Take him, I'm moving to Canada."

"Hey!" Sho protests.

------------------------

Three hours later, without knowing half of what is actually going on, Nino is squished between Aiba and Sho in a plane heading for Japan. A nice lady on the plane gives him a pack of peanuts and a cup of orange juice, but he's too confused and anxious to finish even half of it.

Eight hours later, he's stuck in some kind of taxi, and Aiba asks where they are going.

"To the company," Sho replies simply. "He needs to remember what his occupation was first. At least, that's what I think."

"Does he have to remember where he almost died?!" Aiba says, freaking out, and Nino seriously has no idea what the hell is going on anymore.

Thirty minutes after that, they both push Nino out of the taxi and into a black, scary looking building. Nino still has no idea what is going on, even after all the questions he has been asking, and all he gets is "You'll see" answers that make no sense.

He's led through several hallways until Sho stops him in front of a glass window. Nino peers in and sees a small, silver pod sitting on the marble floor with a keypad a few feet away from it. Aiba presses his face against the glass too, looking at it for a good long while before stepping back. "It's smaller than I thought it would be."

"The gold one is a little bigger," Sho confirms. "Just a tad bit though, it's about the same size."

"Which?" Aiba asks him, and Nino once again doesn't know where their conversation is going anymore.

"Gold," Sho answers him. "That's the one I used to work for."

"And so then he was operating the silver one," Aiba confirms, and Sho nods. They both have serious looks on their faces and Nino can't comprehend why.

He turns his head to get a better view of the silver pod, looking at it perched on the white marble floor.

"Nino, do you remember that?" Aiba asks him, kneeling a bit until he's level with Nino's height and pointing at the machine that they're looking at.

Nino shakes his head. He can't remember it.

The only other place he's ever seen this pod is in his dreams, but that never counts.

------------------------

Nino goes out by himself,. He actually sneaks out, because he doesn't want anyone else to follow him. He wants to be alone, even for a little while so he can clear his mind.

He goes out during the night, when everyone is hanging out in various spots, getting a quick bite to eat, maybe talk amongst themselves for hours before they decide to go home.

He spots a small stand that's deserted, empty of people save for one person who's eating something with chopsticks. He comes nearer, tries to take a closer look at what he's eating, but he ends up tripping over the stool that's standing right in front of him.

The man in question raises his head, slowly, as if he's not surprised by the sudden intrusion. His cheek twitches a little as he picks up his chopsticks again. "Are you all right?" he asks, and Nino almost forgets to answer him.

"Ah, I'm fine," Nino assures him, and looks around, searching in his brain for a possible way out of this embarrassing mess.

"Aren't you going to sit down?" the man asks him, motioning to the stool that Nino almost knocked over a few moments before.

Nino wordlessly sits down, because it's the only escape plan his mind can come up with right now besides just running away and making himself look like a complete dork. He looks at the menu that's placed in front of him and he feels like he's eaten some of this stuff that's been listed before, but he can't remember where.

"Have you decided what to order yet?" Nino looks up and sees a man wearing an apron lifting noodles out of boiling water before dipping them back in. It's then that Nino realizes he doesn't have any money on him, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't know how to react in this type of situation, and he isn't sure if he should leave or not.

The man sitting next to him casts him a glance before putting his chopsticks down and reaching over to slide the menu a little towards himself. He looks at the menu in deep thought before looking up at Nino and pointing at one of the choices. "Do you want to have this?" he asks.

Nino knows that by now he's approaching the danger line. "I don't...I don't have any money with me."

"Ah, don't worry about it," the ramen stand owner says, flapping one if his hands in the air. "It's on the house."

"...House?" Nino repeats, and the ramen stand owner person rolls his eyes at him.

"It means you get to have a bowl of ramen for free, stupid," the owner answers him. "Yo, Ohno, which one did you pick?"

"It's not my decision on what he gets," the man named Ohno says immediately. "I just asked him if he wanted that one."

"He seems too stupid to know what it is anyway," the owner says, shrugging. "I'll just give him that one." He promptly begins to ladle out soup into a bowl and then starts taking out noodles from his big pot of boiling water.

"Don't call him stupid," Ohno reprimands him, standing up and giving the owner a whack on the head.

"..." The owner sets the bowl of ramen down in front of Nino. "Matsumoto Jun."

"Is that the name of this?" Nino asks him, gesturing to the bowl of ramen that he's been given and the owner glares at him before handing him a pair of chopsticks.

"It's my name," the owner growls.

The man named Ohno who's sitting next to him gives him a smile before digging into his own bowl of ramen once more.

Nino gingerly takes a small sip of the soup. It tastes familiar, but he can't remember where he's eaten this before. He doesn't remember ever eating ramen in Australia, and he notes to whine to Aiba someday for not giving him a chance to eat ramen over there. Ohno finishes before him and watches him as he empties his bowl.

Matsumoto's leaning over the counter, and Nino stares at him. "Was it good?" the owner asks him, giving him a smirk.

Nino smiles at him and nods. "Thank you."

Matsumoto gives him a salute before leaning back and stirring the pot of boiling water again.

Nino doesn't quite know where he should go next as he slides off the stool. The Ohno man is still watching him as he takes a sip of his cup of tea, and Nino sits back down.

"What's your name?" Ohno asks him, setting his cup down on the table.

"Ninomiya Kazunari," Nino answers quietly.

Ohno nods. "Ohno Satoshi. Nice to meet you."

------------------------

Have you ever heard of the story?

Two people.

Destiny.

Will it ever happen? Will you ever be pulled back?

------------------------

That night he dreams about strings of noodles pulling a gold pod away from him, soup pooling onto the ground, small trails flowing towards the door. He thinks it is quite possibly the weirdest dream he has ever had, because animate noodles isn't all that normal in the first place and he could've sworn he's seen that gold pod before.

He wakes up tangled in his bed sheets, thinking of the noodles and the gold pod and Ohno, the man he just met a few hours ago. Images start flowing into his head; TV sets, marble floors, the lady sitting in the desk at his workplace, the silver pod he's operated before, the gold pod Sho is working on and hasn't quite finished yet. The weird look the lady gives him as she signs the paper, not even bothering to read the heading. The white light, the pretty designs, the glass room, the black doors, a living room floods his vision. It's like an unorganized movie playing out, a extremely detailed picture with only a few colors and many shapes that pop out at various different times, with more to find.

The purple sometimes mixes in with the red, and then the black goes in and completely shuts out the blue, until the images finally start to make sense. It's not a confusing picture with messed up lines and curves; it's actually something Nino can make sense of. The pictures finally start coming together.

He remembers. He finally remembers, and he doesn't understand why he's still alive and breathing. He should be dead and gone, because he knows for sure he entered that machine, he knows for sure he scanned his card. But then something odd hits him, and Nino almost kicks himself for being stupid.

He jumps out of the bed and runs outside to the living room, where Aiba and Sho are sleeping. He quickly turns on the light, running over to the couch shaking Sho awake who groans and blinks his eyes a few times to get used to the light that's suddenly flooded his vision.

"Did you finish it yet?" Nino demands him, still shaking Sho's shoulder. "Is it done yet?"

"No!" Sho groans, voice still a bit groggy from sleep. "For the last fucking time, no, it is not done and no, I will never ever finish it because I fucking bombed the thing and it exploded into a billion pieces and I'm going to bomb your machine too so let me sleep."

Nino pauses. "Why did you bomb it?"

"Because idiots like you don't know when to mind their own business. I told you already the machine wasn't done but you went in anyway. Do you know how lucky you are just to be alive?" Sho snaps, and by now Aiba is awake, or at least more awake than Sho is.

"Um, Sho?" Aiba says, prodding him with his foot. "I think we need to find Ohno now."

"Why?" Sho almost whines, trying to hide himself in his covers. "It's like, three."

"Sho, where's Ohno's mom now?" Nino asks, prodding Sho's shoulder again. "Is she back? She's back, isn't she?"

Sho suddenly sits up and gives Nino a surprised look, and opens his mouth. "Oh shit."

Aiba nods. "Yeah."

------------------------

While Aiba is phoning Ohno and asking him to come over Sho's apartment, Sho explains to Nino that the machine didn't work as was planned and Nino ended up getting transferred to Aiba's restaurant. He tells Nino that Ohno's mother did not come back to life; rather, the machine didn't work as his coworkers thought it would and they immediately scrapped the idea.

"It would've been better than my machine," Nino mutters under his breath. "You actually get to exchange a live person with a dead person."

Sho squeezes his arm almost hard enough to hurt and gives him a serious look. "We all thought we could bring someone back to life, but you can't Nino. Once they're dead, they're dead. All you can do is live on and remember them for what they were." He sits back, leaning his head on the back of his couch. "I'm actually kind of glad my machine didn't work, because if it had you'd be dead and we'd have Ohno's mother here. She'd be different, you know. Not quite the same, because she wasn't meant to be alive in the first place."

"Was I supposed to end up at Aiba's place?" Nino asks him, and Sho shakes his head.

"That was completely a coincidence. He freaked out when he saw you right smack in the middle of his living room floor and phoned me, and I found out that you were the one who used the machine." Sho laughs dryly. "I guess that's what a miracle is. You ended up being alive and on the other side of the hemisphere, where I could actually find you."

There's another question that's been bothering Nino, but he doesn't want to ask it. Not yet, but Sho probably knows the answer already. Aiba comes over and sits on the couch too, just finished phoning Ohno. "He's coming over," Aiba says assuringly, patting Nino's head.

"And I swear once all of this is over I'm blowing up your machine. No, wait, I'm blowing up the whole company overnight," Sho announces, and Nino punches him in the arm.

"If you do that you'll get arrested in ten seconds."

"I'm betting seven," Aiba chirps up.

"It's going to take longer than that," Sho disagrees. "By the time they go from the police station to the company it's going to be five minutes already. Plenty of time to run away."

"You'll get caught," Aiba points out.

Sho shrugs. "Not if I'm careful."

------------------------

Nino thinks he knows the answer to his question already, the question that's been bugging him for the past thirty something minutes. He knows the answer to his question already because he's seen Ohno already once before after the whole incident with the machine, and Ohno didn't give any hint that he remembered Nino. He's ready to accept the fact that Ohno has forgotten him, because it was his choice in the beginning to step into that machine, the beta machine that should have worked but didn't. He considers himself lucky that he can even get a chance to see Ohno now.

When Aiba lets Ohno through the door Nino is pretty sure Ohno's going to recognize him from the ramen stand and they'll produce some sort of small talk. The scene plays out perfectly in Nino's mind, and it's what he thinks is going to happen. It is what should happen, but his imagination isn't quite the same as reality.

Instead, Ohno surprises him by staring at him, staring at him for so long Nino wonders if he has something on his face. He tries to break the awkwardness by reaching for his wallet on the living room table and producing a few coins that he hands to the man. "Thanks for the ramen," he says.

When Nino tries to give back the money he owes, it's then that something in Ohno finally snaps. He pushes the money away, drops down so he's eye level with Nino and embraces him, sighing as if a great burden has finally been taken off his shoulders. They stay like that for a few moments until Nino decides he needs to break the awkwardness again and tries to give back Ohno his money.

"Keep it," Ohno whispers into his ear. "You're the stingy one, not me."

Nino relaxes too, because his question has finally been answered. His identity has not been lost completely, and he feels like he can have a second chance. He pulls away from the hug and pulls on Ohno's ear, and the latter swats his hand away and tackles him to the floor, poking him in the ribs. Nino laughs, and they all laugh with him because all the pictures have been put back to place. All the bits and pieces of his life have gathered around and they've been completed and organized.

He's organized them just the way he wants them to be organized, and he finally can go on without anything holding him back.

------------------------

A/N: This. Was. A MONSTER of a fic to write, but I finally finished after two months. :D I'm not sure on some parts if it's clear or not, but I was trying to go for the subtle hint style rather than saying everything clearly.

And I hope the ending was satisfying. I'm actually thinking maybe I should create a sequel, or something. XD

HAPPI BASUDEI DESUYO~

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:01:32 GMT

Happy Birthday Rea!! <3

...

Okay for ONCE I'm actually on the right day. :D

...For some reason I was typing in Japanese for like, two-thirds of this post and then I was like "...Wait."

XD

ANYWAYS.

You're 15 now!! Congratulations! YOU'RE ALL GROWN UP NOW YAY. \:D/

Meme~

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:25:29 GMT

From rea_irixyu . XDDD

1. Yogurt

...Pfft. What. XD

Yeah, okay, I admit, I went crazy and was eating peach yogurt and yeah...now yogurt has a perverted connotation.

HM. I WONDER WHO'S FAULT IT IS.

Kidding. XD

But seriously, I love my peach yogurt. It's so yummy~

Actually I just like peaches in general, but yogurt is satisfying. :D

2. Stitching

HELL YUS. Like, peach colored thread with yellow thread, anyone? XD

Seven bears. It's going to take a while. XDDDD AND AIYAAAAA. DD:

3. Fellow fangirl

I AM REA'S FELLOW FANGIRL YES. XD A crazy one at that, but I don't corrupt minds as well. Yay~

4. Fruits

Fruits. Fruits as in, perverted looking ones or the normal ones?

...

If every fruit is going to have a perverted connotation from now on I'm basically going to shoot something. I have a bowl of fruit everyday...so...XD

AND YES I EAT BANANAS AT SCHOOL. WHAT ABOUT THEM.

5. Babies

...

Um.

Should I just like, become a mom or something? XD

HALF-EATEN BABIES. YUM. XDDDDDDDDD

Okay just ass-babies in general. -shot-

Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

XDDDDDD

Well then...I'm pretty much late and shit

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:46:22 GMT

DRUGGED UP POST. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

...Kidding, I'm not actually drugged up, but I'm tired. XD

Okay, well, I knew Nishiyama Maki and Akanishi Jin were dating. Like, I dunno, ever since...I dunno. January?

Well. Alleged dating with evidence. LOL. I dunno.

Anyway, I find it funny how they were dating even though Jin was all like "Ah, sorry, I can't date you." because of something Nishiyama said about like, what? Supernatural stuff? In cKT episode like, 21. XD

....THE FUCK WHY AM I POSTING ABOUT THIS ANYWAY.

Anyway. I have NO idea what this post is supposed to be about. But they're dating. Yay. Okay. I just remembered that one line from cKT and I find it odd and funny at the same time. I don't know why.

....DUDE OKAY I SHOULD CHANGE THE SUBJECT OF THIS POST SO I DON'T WASTE SPACE. XD

So basically I sat in the car for 9 hours. And yes, I'm up at 2:42 AM. Woots.

I have finished two out of three fics. It's funny how Wagahai was the first fic request I got from Rea, but it's become the last one to finish.

I don't know why I'm even writing other stuff. XD But this Ohmiya fic I've ben working on is like "yay!"

I've lately been getting addicted to Norwegian Recycling remixes. It's awesome and epic and the best remixes I've ever listened to. Ever.

Even though it's like, all English songs, but it's still BEAST. XD

Someday. I want to write like, one of those "looking back at your year" posts. Which is really weird, because during New Years I was like "psh, writing those things is just wasting my time." But for some reason, I want to write one. There's been so much going on lately and I've been thinking back on things a lot.

It'd be kind of weird to write that kind of post in the middle of February, though. XD

Look at Me [oneshot {ohmiya}]

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:57:51 GMT

Title: Look at Me
Pairing: Ohmiya
Words: 4443
Rating: PG-13

----------------------------------

Way before he decided to join Johnny's Entertainment, five year old Nino decided that school was fun. He had many friends at school, and he had a nice and beautiful English teacher.

This nice and beautiful English teacher had pearly white teeth, and she always wore pink lip gloss. Sometimes she'd change to orange if it was a special occasion for her, but for the most part she stuck to pink. She liked wearing loose, frilly shirts and white skirts that seemed to flow down her pale legs. At times she'd put her long, black hair in a ponytail, and at times she would curl it.

Her favorite shoes were the pink sandals. She never wore heels, and Nino didn't know if she just didn't like them or if she thought they were impractical while she was teaching. She didn't use nail polish either, preferring to keep her nails a normal color.

Five year old Nino reckoned that his English teacher's favorite color was pink, and decided to get her a pink bracelet one day, as a gift. He decided to take one of his sister's, since she had so many and he was sure his sister wouldn't notice if one bracelet went missing.

The bracelet he chose had been the one with butterfly charms.

----------------------------------

When five year old Nino presented the bracelet to his English teacher, his teacher had hesitated. He wondered briefly what was wrong, but she took it from his small, chubby hands and thanked him warmly, giving him one of her bright smiles. He smiled back and skipped back to his seat, waiting impatiently to see what would happen in school that day, gazing at the yellow stars that had been drawn on the chalkboard.

After school had finished he had walked home like any other day. He went through the first light, then the second light, and then the third light until he was in his neighborhood.

When he arrived home, he put his shoes next to the doorway and shuffled into his mother's bedroom, thinking that he'd find his sister and mother reading again.

They weren't there.

Shuffling back out, he decided that they must be in the kitchen cooking curry, if they weren't in the bedroom. He checked the kitchen, but didn't find them there either.

"Mama?" he called out faintly, wondering where his family had gone off to.

Frowning, slid open the door to the living room and with a start realized that his English teacher was sitting in front of the table, in front of his mother and crying sister. The older women turned their heads towards his direction.

"Mama?" he asked again, confused as to what was going on. Had someone died? Did his sister hurt herself?

"Sit down," his mother ordered, strict but gentle as she patted the cushion on her left.

Nino sat down, looking at the table before him and realizing with a start that the bracelet that he had given to his teacher was sitting in the middle of the table, a little towards the right.

"I'm sorry to have caused so much trouble," his teacher said, bowing her head. "I really was only going to thank you for the beautiful bracelet. I didn't think this would come up."

"No, no, it's fine," his mother said, shaking her head. She turned her gaze towards Nino. "Nino, you mustn't take your sister's things from her ever again, do you hear? If you wanted to give a bracelet to your teacher I would have bought one for you."

"But she has so many," Nino protested. "And you always say our house has too much stuff, and that you wouldn't buy anything else for us."

"But stealing your sister's bracelet was wrong," his mother insisted. "You must promise to never do it again, and apologize to your sister and your teacher as well."

When Nino looks back on it, he remembers turning to his sister, facing her and her wet face. He remembers apologizing to her, before turning to his teacher and opening his mouth.

He remembers how coldly his teacher looked at him before averting her gaze. "I'm sure you will discipline your child thoroughly, yes?" she asks, facing his mother. "Children these days are so troublesome."

His mother is slightly taken aback. "Ah, yes, I will," she stutters, and falls silent, having nothing more to say.

He remembers how scary the coldness was in his teacher's eyes. How chilling, how empty her gaze was as she directed it to him one last time before standing up, and walking out.

As he stared at his teacher's retreating figure, he realized he had forgotten one important thing, one thing that probably had ruined it all for him.

He had forgotten it was his sister's favorite bracelet.

----------------------------------

Nino had butterflies in his stomach the next day, a sort of queasy nervousness that jumbled through his body. He wondered what school would be like for him that day, and he wondered if his teacher had forgiven him for causing her so much trouble.

He arrived at school fairly early and sat in his seat quietly, refusing to talk to the others who were prodding at him. He watched as his teacher arrived into the classroom and asked all of the kids to take their seats.

"Now, class, we've had an incident of lying and stealing recently in this classroom," she said, putting her books down. "Lying and stealing are two very awful things, and you must not commit these crimes. They can potentially ruin your future."

Five year old Nino sat in his seat, not knowing what was going to happen next.

"I'd like all of you to know that Ninomiya Kazunari stole a bracelet from his sister. He has done a horrible thing, and therefore he will not be joining the rest of you for break today."

All of a sudden, at that moment, Nino's teacher wasn't pretty anymore. Her long, straight black hair looked menacing to his eyes, the pink lip gloss a mask for ugliness and betrayal.

There were no more friends to talk to after that. No more smiles, no more hugs, just loneliness for his elementary school days. He had become an outcast with a few words that his teacher had spoken to the class.

Thief. Thief. Liar.

The beautiful teacher. The teacher he had always liked.

Gone.

His teacher wasn't beautiful anymore.

----------------------------------

There had been a second woman in Nino's life, another woman that he might've been able to get along with if she hadn't started dating Ohno.

She had pearly white teeth, just like his English teacher, and liked peach-colored lip gloss. She'd come to their dressing room randomly, sometimes giving Ohno a homemade bento if it was lunchtime, watching in delight as Ohno took a bite of her omelet.

Ohno's attention was mainly on her whenever she came as the rest of Arashi snickered and talked behind his back. He didn't pay attention to the snickers, nor did he care, and Nino could feel the pang of jealousy rising up into his chest as Ohno and his girlfriend got closer.

At first, he had thought he was jealous of Ohno. Jealous of him, because Ohno had such a pretty girl for a girlfriend, and Nino was left with only memories of his childhood with his beautiful English teacher.

He had walked in on them once in their dressing room making out, Ohno's arms circling in around her waist as she gripped his shoulders, her little red nails reflecting light from the ceiling.

He closed the door quickly, hoping they hadn't noticed him barging in like that, and decided to play some video games to get that very disturbing image out of his brain.

That night Nino dreamed of pink sandals chasing after him and biting him, mocking him until he fell through the pit of darkness and woke up.

----------------------------------

Nino decides to get himself a girlfriend, so he can stop being jealous of Ohno. He puts on a cap, wears ugly brown cargo pants that he finds in his closet, and gets a notepad from his desk.

He wants to pretend to be a reporter first, conduct a survey and get a pretty girl's phone number. He doesn't want to go out on the streets and ask some girl straight out, because he doesn't want to choose someone weird and he has to be on his guard. He is an idol, after all, and idols have to always be on their guard.

He walks around the streets of Tokyo, walks and walks until he sees a pretty girl wearing a green dress and little white shoes. He walks up to her, pen and notepad ready, and stops in front of her.

The girl seems surprised to be confronted like this, and gives him a questioning look.

"I'm from a magazine company and we're conducting a survey. I hope you won't mind answering a few questions," Nino says, and the girl visibly relaxes and nods.

Nino leads her to a bench, motions for her to sit down, and clears his throat. "First off, do you know who Arashi is?"

The girl nods excitedly. "My favorite member from Arashi is Ohno Satoshi."

Nino almost drops his pen at the sudden answer and almost drops it again when the actual answer is processed through his brain. He feels that pang of jealousy rising to his chest again, and he feels slightly angry at himself for thinking of such a stupid plan. He asks the girl a few questions, getting more answers than he asked for and a few giggles here and there. He sends her off after the fifth question, and sits on the bench alone for the rest of the day.

When he finally goes back home, he has a surprise waiting for him. Ohno's girlfriend is waiting outside his apartment, and Nino wonders briefly how the hell she even got his address in the first place. He asks her what her business is, if there's anything wrong, but she just shakes her head. "I just wanted to talk to you for a bit," she says.

It's just to talk, Nino assures himself as he inserts his key through the door knob. He opens the door and lets Ohno's girlfriend go in first before following after her and closing the door behind him.

He takes off his shoes and motions for her to sit down on the couch while he goes into the kitchen, making a pot of tea. He comes back with two cups of green tea and sets one down in front of her, putting his own cup on the table beside it.

She says a small thank you before reaching out for the cup, taking a sip, and then putting the cup back down on the table, smiling. "You make tea better than Satoshi-kun can," she says.

Nino blinks. "Oh. Um, thanks." Then a pause. "So what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Us," she says simply.

Nino can't really process it in his mind; he must have misunderstood, or she must have said something wrong. She must have meant something else; maybe she's worrying about her relationship. "I think you and Ohno get along with each other fine. There's nothing to worry about; he's a good guy." He is satisfied with his answer; they'll talk for a while and then Ohno's girlfriend can leave and Nino can be left alone.

"That's not what I meant," she says, almost impatiently, and Nino is once again left in a state of confusion. "I'm talking about us."

"Us?" Nino echoes faintly, and all of a sudden Ohno's girlfriend is sitting in his lap. She gives a small smile and latches her arms around his neck, leans forward and presses her face against his cheek.

"Us," she repeats in his ear, very softly. "Do you like me?"

Nino doesn't answer. He can't answer; he doesn't know how to.

"Do you?" she asks again, and all of a sudden Nino is pushing her off, pushing her away, trying to get away from her and her floral perfume. He feels his throat constrict, tries to clear his throat and swallow, but he can't and almost chokes.

"Get out," he manages to say, and she looks surprised, maybe even a little confused. "Get out," he repeats, pointing to his front door, and the woman in front of him scrambles up from the ground, grabs her little purse and heads out, walking rather quickly out the door and slamming it behind her.

Nino can still feel the touches on his arms and neck, and he tries to block them out, but they keep on coming back. He tries to brush them off, tries to block out the smell of her perfume from his mind, but he can't, so he tries to take a shower.

He thinks it's all over, that he can talk to Ohno comfortably now without any worries. He doesn't like Ohno's girlfriend, and he's okay with that. He isn't jealous anymore, because he knows now that Ohno's girlfriend isn't a very pretty person underneath, so he can relax now and continue on with his life without thinking about his English teacher.

The next day, he can feel that pit of jealousy rising up to his chest again and he once again avoids them.

----------------------------------

Nino doesn't know what the hell is happening, exactly, because he should be over Ohno's girlfriend now, but his jealousy keeps on returning and he doesn't know how to stop it.

He decides to try his brilliant idea again; conduct a survey, and get a girlfriend for himself. Maybe then, it'll be all over and he can relax.

So he tries it again. This time he pulls a girl with brown hair tied in pigtails off the streets, gets her name and her phone number, and asks her who is her favorite member of Arashi.

She immediately replies Ohno, and for a brief moment Nino almost throws his notepad at her, but doesn't. He wants to throw a temper tantrum now like a little five year old; stamp his foot on the ground and tell her that Ohno is all his and she has no right to even think about him, but he stops himself and sends her off.

It's only two hours later, when he's making a bowl of ramen, that he finally realizes what he's been thinking all along, and the reality of it sinks in and he drops his bowl.

That night, he curls himself into a ball on his bed and cries himself to sleep.

----------------------------------

He cries, because he knows he can't have Ohno, because Ohno already has a girlfriend. A pretty girlfriend, and possibly a two-timing one at that. Plus, he doesn't seem to be the type to like other guys, and Ohno has only gone out with girls.

He tells himself that it'll be okay; Ohno's girlfriend will settle down sooner or later, they'll both marry and have children and become one big happy family. Nino can be the uncle who brings treats to the kids even though he's a really stingy person at heart. They'll all be happy, and they'll all eventually die sooner or later and Nino wil cry again because no one knows what he's really thinking.

It's either that, or Ohno and his girlfriend eventually break up and Ohno goes find another girl to go out with. Hopefully not a pretty one, because Nino has finally deduced that all, or at least most pretty girls are inherently evil.

He also deduces that he wants to keep away from Ohno's girlfriend, because Ohno's girlfriend is as evil as his English teacher was and she's just plain mean.

----------------------------------

For the next few weeks Nino declines all invitations from his band members to go out for drinks, simply because he knows Ohno is going to be there with them and if Ohno is there, that means his girlfriend will probably tag along.

Nino doesn't want to be anywhere near her, because lately she's been giving him looks that creep him out, and he wonders why she can't just settle for Ohno and be done with it. But she keeps on coming back to him, sometimes trying to approach him, but Nino always walks away from her, hoping that she won't follow him. More often than not he runs to the men's bathroom, waiting for a good twenty minutes before poking his head out and making his way back to wherever the hell he's supposed to go.

Once in a while Nino can still smell the perfume lingering in his house, and whenever that happens he tries to shut it out and buries his head in his pillow, breathing in the scent of cloth and relaxing until he falls asleep. He doesn't like it, and he hopes the scent will go away, and the sooner Ohno's girlfriend leaves him alone, the better.

He wonders if karma is just biting him in the ass.

----------------------------------

He sees them walking together again, hand in hand, immediately turns around and almost walks into Ryo.

Ryo gives him an irritated glance before looking up and seeing Ohno and his girlfriend walking. He looks back down at Nino, and for a brief moment Nino wants to run away from the man staring down at him, but he's supposed to look professional, so he stands his ground.

Ryo opens his mouth. "You need to get laid."

Nino relaxes a bit, because it's just Ryo and he hasn't noticed anything. Ryo is about to open his mouth again and say something rude and mordant but he stops himself, looking behind Nino and giving a nod. Nino tenses up again as a hand lands on his shoulder, turns around and almost bumps into Ohno.

"We need to talk," Ohno says, and Nino has noticed that Ohno's girlfriend is nowhere in sight. Nino nods and follows Ohno blindingly into their dressing room, because he just wants to get this over with. He doesn't want to talk to Ohno until all his hope has been squeezed out of him, and until then he can't help but feel like he might have a chance.

Ohno plants himself firmly in front of Nino. "Stop avoiding me," he complains, and Nino blinks at him, confused because he doesn't know how in the hell Ohno found out.

"Huh?" Nino asks faintly, his brain trying to keep up with what's happening.

Ohno stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks at the ground next to Nino's shoes. "You've been distant during filming. And we haven't talked in weeks."

Suddenly Nino can't take it anymore.

He wants to be selfish, at least once, so he grabs the coffee pot from the table next to him and throws it on the ground, glass shattering everywhere and black liquid spurting out in all directions. The liquid pools around his shoes and he stares at it, missing the shocked look Ohno gives him.

"Nino?" He looks up and finds Ohno looking at him worriedly. "Nino, what's wrong?" Ohno reaches out to grab his arm but Nino shuffles back a few steps, away from him, and he can see Ohno pause, can see the hurt and despair in his eyes.

He wonders if he should tell him; it's as good a time as any, but the girlfriend runs in a few seconds later and Nino wonders how the hell she even came back.

"Satoshi-kun!" she almost shrieks out, running over and staring at the broken glass and the puddle of brown liquid.

For once, Ohno doesn't pay attention to her and reaches out again, this time successfully latching onto Nino's arm. "Nino?" he asks again. Ohno's hands are warm, almost too warm.

Nino tries to breathe and almost chokes, and he wonders how he can possibly choke on air. He tries to inhale again but the constricting feeling inside his chest is too much for him and in the midst of trying to swallow he lets out a choking sound.

Ohno can sense the danger and manages to push his girlfriend out the door, muttering his apologies before closing and locking it behind him. He pulls Nino to the couch and lets him sit on it, and Nino lets out a whimper before burying his head in Ohno's shoulder, gasping and trying calm down his breathing, tears streaming down his cheeks and onto the cloth of Ohno's shirt.

He tries to breathe in as much of Ohno's scent as he can, but all he ends up doing is sniffling and Ohno reaches into his pocket for a few tissues and hands them to Nino. He takes them gratefully, crumpling a few into his hand and using one to dry his face. "I hate your girlfriend," he manages to choke out.

He can feel Ohno tense up, but it's too late to take back his words.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Ohno says softly, patting his head, and Nino thinks it's maybe all right now; that he's forgiven.

----------------------------------

Turns out, Nino is more than just forgiven; Ohno actually breaks up with his girlfriend the very next day and loudly proclaims it in his corner of the jimusho.

Nino hears about it when he's filming for his new drama, and once the rumor has reached into his ears he immediately goes and storms into Arashi's dressing room, stomping in and slamming the door behind him, four heads turning around and looking at him in surprise.

"What the hell," Nino manages, panting, trying to calm down his breathing.

They look a bit surprised at the profanity, and Aiba immediately chirps up with a, "So you've heard about it already!" but Nino isn't listening and practically stomps his way to Ohno who is perched on his chair and holding a newspaper.

Before Nino can open his mouth Ohno beats him to it. "She started saying bad stuff about you, so I got pissed and told her to go away and never talk to me ever again."

Nino blinks. "That's...nice." A pause. "Wait...what?"

"I don't want to go into the details," Ohno mutters, throwing his newspaper on a nearby chair.

"You're not supposed to act this way!" Nino protests, and Ohno looks at him in surprise. "You're supposed to be sad and heartbroken that you broke up with your girlfriend, not pissed."

Ohno sighs wearily. "It was bound to happen sooner or later." He shrugs. "She was being annoying."

Nino has nothing to say after that.

Ohno looks like he's about to throw his hands up and start ranting, but instead he shakes his head. All of a sudden he has his car keys in hand and pulls on Nino's arm. "We're going for a drink. Now."

----------------------------------

Several hours later, Nino thinks maybe, just maybe, something might be wrong with Ohno.

It's been several hours and all Ohno has done is stare at his drink. He hasn't even drank it yet, and Nino wonders why they're even there in the first place if Ohno isn't going to drink until he's drunk and then some.

Ohno finally gives up twenty minutes later, leaves his untouched drink on the table and pays. He drags Nino with him to his car, and Nino wonders where they're going to go next.

He's surprised when a few minutes later, Ohno stops at his apartment complex and turns off the engine, sighing and leaning his head back on the headrest of his seat.

Nino wonders if he's supposed to invite Ohno over or something, but before he can do that Ohno is out of the car and helping Nino out too.

Nino climbs the stairs after Ohno, noting how weary the older one is, and almost runs into him when Ohno suddenly stops a few feet away from his apartment door.

He leans to the side and he can see blue high heels. He looks up and he sees Ohno's ex-girlfriend waiting for him outside his apartment door, patiently.

Nino sighs and walks over to her, leaving Ohno standing there and takes out his keys. The woman before him looks at Ohno, obviously surprised that Ohno tagged along with him, before settling her eyes on his face. "I hope you haven't forgotten what I've said a few weeks back," she says softly.

He can't help but think it's all his fault; if she hadn't said anything bad about him, if he hadn't talked to her that one time, if he hadn't told Ohno how much he hated his girlfriend, everything would be all right and Ohno wouldn't have broken up with her. If he hadn't said anything at all, if he hadn't existed, the woman standing before him would have been going out with Ohno for drinks, and Ohno might have actually touched his glass.

"Leave me alone," Nino whispers back. "Leave me alone."

Her eyes harden for a moment in fury. "I don't understand! Obviously you like me, but you just keep on avoiding us and-"

"It's not you," Nino interrupts, and his hands are shaking. "It was never you."

Her eyes this time widen in surprise. She looks back at Ohno, then at him. "Then..."

Nino feels that constricting force inside his chest again, and he feels stupid because he's supposed to act more like a man and not like a whiny teenage girl. "I'm sorry," he whispers. He turns and faces his door, and he can feel her drifting away from him, away and away until he can't feel her presence anymore. She is replaced by another presence, and Nino pushes his key into the lock, turns it and the door clicks open.

Ohno follows him, shuffling just a few steps behind him and closes the door, softly. Nino flicks on the lights, steps out of his shoes and into the living room, sighing and throwing his keys on the table. Ohno throws his car keys next to them and joins him on the couch.

"Maybe I don't hate her as much anymore," Nino voices out. He's still shaking, trying to stop the tremors through his body.

Ohno reaches out and takes Nino's face with his own two hands. "It doesn't matter," he says softly, looking into his eyes and the next thing Nino knows Ohno is kissing him, gently, as if afraid he's going to break.

They break apart and Ohno pulls him onto his lap, and Nino feels like everything is all right with the world. Somehow, Ohno knows, and he understands, and everything seems beautiful.

Nino feels like once again, he can breathe.

Hard Choices

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:15:13 GMT

Second installment to the Crack!Hospital AU series. However, I don't think this installment is very cracky, more on the depressing side. So if you don't like depressing stuff, please don't read. XD

Title: Hard Choices
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13
Series: Crack!Hospital AU
Words: 1657

---------------------------------------

Jin is thankful when Kame allows him to keep his job at the hospital as Kame's secretary. He knows he's made the hospital chaotic the first day that he was here, that he hasn't done his job correctly. It's not exactly his fault; he never signed up to be a doctor in the first place, but he knows he should have been responsible and said something about the error.

He wonders sometimes if Kame only let him stay purely based on guilt. Guilt, because the latter made a mistake in reading his job application form. Part of him doesn't want to be this true; he wants to be able to say because Kame really wants him to stay, not because Kame feels inclined to include him into the hospital because of a mistake on his part.

Part of him says that it's okay, that he can handle it and go on from there. Even if Kame only let hims stay because of the guilt, he'll become a reliable secretary and become a person who Kame doesn't want to let go.

---------------------------------------

Being a secretary is sometimes a challenging task. Jin has to go through a bunch of paperwork and even one mistake can ruin it for him. He always triple checks to see if he hasn't left anything out, and every time he sends the paperwork through he hopes he didn't leave anything out.

He's been lucky so far when it comes to paperwork, but he knows he'll make a mistake one day; it's inevitable, but for now, when he's trying to establish a stable position in the hospital, he doesn't want to ruin it just because he forgot to fill out one form.

Paperwork isn't the only challenging task he has to face. Anything can happen in the hospital, whether it's someone suing Kame for the death of a loved one, or filing patient's folders for the hundreds of people that get admitted into the hospital at once.

Yamapi asks him why he even chose such a stressful job in the first place.

"Why did you choose to become a doctor?" Jin asks.

Yamapi falls silent, and Ryo looks up from his cup of coffee. "That's a stupid question. We're working as doctors to save people, aren't we?"

Jin smiles. "I chose to become secretary because it was the closest thing to what was important to me."

Ryo scoffs and shakes his head, saying that's the most stupidest thing he's head in his life, but Jin just gives a small smile again.

---------------------------------------

If one seriously asks Jin what he thinks of as an important thing, Jin won't be able to answer seriously, because there's too many to list. A lot of them don't make too much sense, and Jin is able to ramble about important things for a good half an hour before he starts running out of things to say.

But if Jin really thinks about it, there aren't that many things that are important to him. Sure, he likes his dog, and he likes his collection of CDs, but he figures he can live without them if he really had to.

He thinks his job is important, because it's the only way he can indirectly save people from danger. He can take work off Kame's shoulders if Kame needs to operate because there's not enough doctors. He doesn't trust himself to be a doctor; if he can't properly file paperwork, how is he expected to perform surgery? So he does errands, because he feels like he can contribute to the hospital without messing everything up.

No matter how much work Jin takes on, Kame always takes on twice as more. Jin wishes Kame would relax a bit and stop being so tense all the time, but he knows it's an impossible feat. Being the president of a major hospital is everything but a relaxing job. Jin takes as much of Kame's paperwork and files as he can, but he feels like he's chasing peace that can't be obtained.

Jin wonders what will happen twenty years from now. He wonders if Kame will continue to work this hard, without a care about his own health. Jin wonders if he'll even been employed in this hospital twenty years later, or if he'll be thrown out of the hospital, working a useless job at some conveniece store.

He thinks it's kind of ironic and frustrating at the same time. Kame, who manages a major hospital and has a doctors degree in medicine, doesn't give a damn about his own health and only worries about others.

---------------------------------------

Jin doesn't like it when he's being sent out on errands, especially when they involve him leaving Kame's office. He finds out that anything unexpected can happen when he's not there.

When the city experiences an earthquake, the whole hospital is in a frenzy. Machines have toppled and equipment is scattered everywhere on the floor. Jin runs up the stairs to where Kame's office is and finds the entrance blocked by a pile of concrete that has fallen from the ceiling.

Jin looks up at the ceiling to find metal pipes, and his eyes drift downwards to the pile of concrete that's blocking the doorway.

A rescue team member prevents him from going further. "This are needs to be cleared. Until then, I can't allow anyone within this area," he explains.

Jin's about to protest, but he decides against it. If Kame were to see him like this, he'd most likely yell at Jin for slacking off and send him off to help Yamapi evacuate the patients.

With one last look at the wreck of concrete and lost hope, he turns away from it and leaves one of the few important things to him behind.

He bumps into Ryo while running down the stairs. "Jeez, where were you?" Ryo complains. "We need to evacuate the third floor patients in the left wing."

Jin doesn't answer, just nods.

He misses the worried look Ryo gives him as they run down to the third floor.

---------------------------------------

It's been two hours and they've successfully moved most of the patients from the third floor to other wards.

It's been two hours, and the area near Kame's office still hasn't been cleared yet.

In the past two hours Jin has gone back to the floor where Kame's office is about five times now, but the result is always the same. The area hasn't been cleared yet; no one is allowed near it except for the rescue team.

The sixth time he's going back up he's surprised to find Ryo there as well.

He's even more surprised when he sees the area around Kame's office cleared, and the door thrown wide open. He runs up to the man in the pink uniform, unable to form any coherent words. He is unable to ask, but Ryo seems to understand what his question is.

"He's all right," Ryo assures him, and Jin relaxes. "He's getting stitches for the cut on his leg. I think that's about it."

"Cut?" Jin asks, confused.

Ryo shrugs. "I don't know much about it. All I heard was him grumbling about your stupid ornament you left on his desk. I guess he was playing with it and then it dropped and crashed onto the ground. If you really want to see him he's in Room 207."

Jin runs down to the second floor before Ryo can say another word, and crosses several corridors before he arrives at the right room number. He sees Kame's name written on a card and tacked onto the door, and finds it ironic that Kame's being treated in the hospital that he himself owns.

He opens the door and is immediately greeted with Yamapi's face. "Um...hi?"

Yamapi sighs. "Patients from rooms 305 to 391 have been moved, right?"

"Yeah. Asako-san was a pain to move, though. She started ranting about how pretty the windows were and I couldn't get her to move for about fives minutes."

"That's great, Jin," Yamapi says, sighing again. "Call me if you need anything, although I'd prefer that didn't happen until the next century." He shuffles out, slamming the door behind him.

"He must be tired," Kame remarks, sighing. "I'm tired, and I haven't done anything today besides sitting in my office with a bleeding leg."

Jin wordlessly sits on the chair that's been placed next to Kame's bed. "You work too much."

"Can't help it," Kame grumbles. "I manage a hospital, so relaxing is basically out of the question for me."

"You'll at least rest for today, right?"

"Paperwork."

"I'll do it for you."

"Phone calls to make."

"I'll do it."

Kame eyes him suspiciously. "I need to be at a meeting in ten minutes."

"Great. Give me one of your lab coats."

"I am so not letting you into the meeting room. You'd break half of the chairs just trying to get to your seat."

Jin pouts. "Are you doubting my walking abilities?"

Kame pauses for a moment. "Yes."

Jin pouts again. "Will you promise to rest after the meeting? I'll do your paperwork and make your phone calls."

Kame consents after five minutes of arguing. "Sometimes I wonder why I even let you work here in the first place," he says, sighing.

It's the question. It's the question of why Jin's even staying here, doing Kame's paperwork even though there's a good chance he might mess up. "Why do you let me stay here, then?"

Kame looks at him for a good minute, and four minutes are left before his meeting starts. "I don't know Jin. I really don't know."

Somehow, Jin's satisfied with that answer. As he watches Kame picks himself up and reach for the crutches next to his bed, he knows now that Kame hasn't kept him because of the guilt.

He knows, and even though Kame doesn't know why he's keeping Jin in the hospital, it's enough for now.

--------------------------

...EDITS PLZ XD

Allergies Suck [oneshot]

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:37:18 GMT

For Rea's birthday. Again. XD

And yeah. Like I've said in the previous two entries, thanks to sidevocalist for betaing. She's the awesome yo. XD

Title: Allergies Suck
Pairing: NishiKato
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1022

Shige thinks Ryo either is just insanely stupid, or that Ryo has an insanely stupid nose. He wishes Ryo wasn't allergic to cats, because it'd save him from one more bitching and he might actually get something done during their days off.

Obviously, his wishes never come true because the Gods of the world just hate him that much, so during their day off all he can do is sit on his couch and watch as Ryo reaches out for another tissue, wiping his nose and throwing his head back against the cushions.

"I'm telling you, there are no cats in this building!" Shige says, and Ryo sneezes again, sniffing a bit. "No one is allowed to own pets in this complex. You're probably just reacting to something else."

"I am not," Ryo protests. "And you're totally breaking all the rules. Don't forget about your cat."

Shige is about to open his mouth and kindly remind Ryo that he doesn't have a cat either when he remembers something. "Leave him out of this," he hisses.

"Why? He's your cat!"

"He doesn't actually exist," Shige points out. "Wagahai is imaginary." He emphasizes the word imaginary, hoping that Ryo will understand and just shut up about the whole thing.

"I'm allergic to imaginary cats too," the other boy says and Shige resists the urge to smack him right then and there. He thinks that Ryo is definitely allergic to something else besides cats.

He looks at the flower pot that's beside his window sill and suddenly has an idea. He gets up and grabs it, sits back down and shoves the pot in front of Ryo's nose.

"Hey! What the fuck?!" Ryo yelps, flinching away and swatting Shige's arm. "I'm telling you it's your stupid cat."

Something brushes up Shige's leg and he can feel something wet at the same moment Ryo gives another sneeze. He sees Wagahai sifting under the table, under the newspapers until he finds Shige's laptop and opens it up, pressing the power button and waiting for the computer to load.

Ryo sneezes again and coughs a little. "I really hate your cat."

"Idiot." Wagahai is pressing on the keys now, typing up something Shige can't see. "Being allergic to imaginary cats is stupid."

"Uh...I think Waghai's might be pissed at you now," Shige starts, but is cut off by Ryo blowing his nose.

"I think I might be pissed at Wagahai. Just a tad bit, you know, because Wagahai just had to be a cat and not some furry orange dog."

The cat just gives a yawn and pads away, almost elegantly until it slips out of the apartment. "I think you should try allergy medicine, you know? Because allergy medicine is for allergies."

"Shut up," Ryo moans. "I'm already taking allergy medicine and it isn't working. Your cat must have god-like cat qualities."

"It's imaginary," Shige repeats. "I don't understand how you are allergic to imaginary things."

"I don't understand why you couldn't have just imagined a dog. Then it could have dog babies with, I dunno, Jin's dog or something," Ryo retorts. taking the last tissue from the tissue box.

Shige eyes the empty box. "You're paying for those."

"You're the one who decided to own a cat," Ryo grumbles. "Why is it my fault?"

"You're the one with the stupid allergies."

"It's not like I asked for them!"

Shige rols his eyes. "I don't understand why you're even complaining about your allergies. It's not like you're the only person in the world who's allergic to cats."

Ryo sniffs. "That may be true, but I'm the only person in this world who's allergic to an imaginary cat that is loved more than me."

Shige blinks. "Is that what this really is about?"

Ryo raises an eyebrow.

"...I like you both."

"...I can't believe I'm competing with an imaginary cat."

"I still can't believe you're allergic to something imaginary," Shige shoots back.

Ryo still protests and blames it on his cat, and Shige wonders if he'll ever get anything done during his days off.

Maybe he should just bring all his chores with him to Ryo's apartment the next time they have a free day.

---------------------------------

"...What the fuck?" Ryo says, eying as Shige picks up his basket and dumps his stuff all over Ryo's living room floor.

"You're allergic to cats, so I brought my stuff over here instead," Shige explains. "That way you can stop bitching at me about your allergies."

Shige is busy rummaging through his laundry when he hears Ryo sneeze again.

He resists the urge to throw his boxers at the Osaka man and wishes his death would come sooner.

Ryo sniffles a little, pauses, and looks confused. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"I didn't bring my cat over, if that's what you were thinking," Shige grumbles, throwing his T-shirt at the basket rather forcefully. "So either you have a imaginary cat of your own or you're allergic to something else."

"I don't have allergies right now," Ryo protests. "I just sneezed. Sneezing doesn't mean I'm having allergies right now. I could be choking on dust for all you know."

Shige throws another T-shirt, a orange one this time, into his basket. "Go to your doctor and check to see if you're really allergic to cats. And check to see if you're allergic to imaginary ones too. Until then, don't talk to me."

Ryo hesitates a little before grabbing the keys off his coffee table and storming out of his apartment, slamming the door behind him.

---------------------------------

Ryo comes back twenty minutes later and shoves a paper into his face. Shige looks up from his laundry in surprise before he slowly takes the paper into his hands and reads what's written on there.

"Nishikido Ryo. Allergic to bees, cats, and imaginary cats as well. This has been approved by Kagashima Hospital, Doctor Asako Maki," he reads. "...You actually went to the hospital?"

"Now will you believe me?" Ryo asks him, flopping down onto his couch. "I've got my doctor's signature and everything on there, so it's proof enough, right?"

Shige thinks the whole world has gone insane and buries his head in his laundry basket.

---------------------------------

...
This totally died. D: Definitely not one of my best. I'm sorry Rea. -cries-

Bah~

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:11:49 GMT

I hella wish I lived in NYC now. BECAUSE SAKURAI WENT THERE AND OMFGAH.

=-=;; It seems he was really surprised that a ton of people showed up. Haha. XD

I'm really tired. Which doesn't make any sense because I slept all the way to like, 2:47 today and I've only been awake for about an hour. =-=;;

I've just basically been lazy this year. Like, really lazy. DDD: If I'm really going to be lazy I probably am going to consider dropping down a math lane next year, just because we get the same number of credits anyway and it doesn't really make sense to be in a math lane where I can't do well in.

Yeah okay so it seems like I haven't really been posting much on this LJ this month but that's only because I have like, three entires on private entry lock from EVERYONE because they're stories (unfinished ones) and I'm too lazy to use Word and LJ works just fine because...well...yeah. :D I don't want to save them on my computer for fear someone goes through my Microsoft Word documents.

I'm really getting worried for Kame D:

It sucks how his drama has been getting such low ratings. Well, technically, if you think about it, five percent of the Kanto region is...seriously a SHITLOAD of people. But I guess compared to other dramas it's been doing really badly.

I don't get how they can make a whole drama about wine though. I really think he's just been given weird crap to work with. I haven't exactly been watching it either because I'm too busy and school sucks and I really need to start writing more. Maybe I'll start it up again. XD

I've been having depressing and weird thoughts about life lately. It's really weird. I THINK IT'S JUST A PHASE BUT CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG.

I feel like I'm writing this entry like a drugged up person, but maybe that's because I'm just tired. XD

Math ruins my life. And I feel like my teacher's been giving me these "you don't belong in this math class" looks every time he hands back a quiz or a test. No, scratch that, I think he's just been doing that every day ever since I got like, a 67 on the final.

This year sucks.

XD

SUCH A DEPRESSING LJ ENTRY. Rawr. I really need to get my act back together~

Hospitals are Kinky Places

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:23:44 GMT

Another fic for Rea's birthday. XD

Again, thanks to sidevocalist for beta-ing. <3333

Title: Hospitals are Kinky Places
Series: Crack!Hospital AU
Pairing: Akame, KoyaPi
Words: 3002
Rating: PG-15
Warnings: Crossdressing!Ryo, and um...basically....Naive!Jin? XD

------------------------

Kamenashi Kazuya looks at the new doctor in distaste as he bounces around the room.

"Cool! What's this?" Akanishi Jin asks him, poking a finger at a plaque that's hanging on the wall.

Kame sighs. "I'd really appreciate if you'd refrain from touching that, please. So today you will be assisting Yamashita-sensei. You're to help him out, all right?"

Jin looks at him. "Okay. Do I get a cool pen?"

"...A cool pen?"

"Yeah, a cool pen so I can write with it," Jin says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

Kame sighs and takes a pen from the cup that's on his desk. He hands it to Jin, who takes it happily. "Yay! Secretary pen!"

"You're going to be a doctor, not a secretary, so I'd advise you to be more serious about the task at hand," Kame says before he walks out of the door, leaving a very confused Jin in his office.

Jin looks at all the awards this hospital has been given, and notes that Kame has a huge stack of paperwork lying on his desk. This job seems to be very stressful for his boss, and he decides it's up to him to make Kame feel relaxed.

------------------------

Jin ends up wandering into a room filled with little test tubes of liquid and he looks around, eying the reds and the blues and the yellows. He finds Kame in there and smiles, waves, and his boss eyes him warily.

The lean figure of his boss worries him. He can see the bags under Kame's eyes, the sunken cheeks in his face.

Kame looks at him in surprise, as if he doesn't expect Jin to be there. "Please find Yamashita-sensei and assist him immediately," he says, turning around and heading back to his office. Jin watches his retreating figure and suddenly comes up with a brilliant plan.

Jin looks around and takes out a test tube with a yellowish liquid. He takes a syringe from a plastic box and sucks in some of the yellow liquid with the syringe.

Satisfied, he puts the test tube back where it came from. He's pretty sure this will get Kame to relax for at least a day, since it's a drug.

At least, he thinks so.

------------------------

Jin ends up following Kame only a few minutes later because he has no idea in hell who this 'Yamashita' is. Plus, Kame is his main target right now, and there's something he's been meaning to give to the smaller man.

He looks around and finally finds him among a throng of people, and rushes towards him. He taps Kame on the shoulder and the latter looks back at him in surprise. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"I don't know who Yamashita is," Jin says, pouting. In his hand he's holding a syringe with something that looks like a yellow liquid and Kame eyes it warily.

"Akanishi-san, I'd rather prefer you to not walk around with syringes in your ha-" Kame is immediately cut short when he feels a tug on his arm and all of a sudden he's being dragged into a room. Jin right now has a very determined look on his face and Kame is a bit wary of what the new doctor is going to try to do.

Jin pushes Kame onto the bed, then flips him onto his stomach. Right about now Kame is pretty sure the new doctor he's just hired is crazy and is about to ask him what the fuck he's trying to do now when Jin promptly starts undoing his pants.

"You need to be more relaxed. You're already having stress lines," Jin points out as he's pulling the pants down to Kame's knees, and Kame tries to fight him away but the new doctor is too strong for him. Jin takes the needle and promptly sticks it somewhere on his thigh.

"Can you please stop?!" Kame said, trying to get away from the new doctor that's currently harassing him. "The worst thing you can do that pisses me off is to stick a needle in me on your first day over here!"

By that time Jin's pretty much done and tosses the empty syringe in the trash can, much to Kame's annoyance. "Oh, so have people done this to you before?" he asks, curious.

Kame shakes his head.

"Good, because they aren't allowed to as long as I'm here," he says matter-of-factly, as if he hasn't just taken his boss's pants off. "Take a day off today," he orders, exiting the room.

It takes Kame a few moments to recollect his thoughts and realize that a trainee just stuck a needle into his thigh and inserted a fucking drug into him.

He is so going to fire him, once the pain in his leg stops and he can move freely.

------------------------

Yamapi looks at his assistant up and down and wonders why in the hell did Kame chose this doctor out of all the applicants the hospital has received.

"This kid's Akanishi Jin?" Ryo asks in disbelief, leaning against the wall. "This hospital's hiring weirder and weirder people every day."

The Jin kid pouts at them. "I am not weird. Wanna see my cool pen?" He takes out a silver pen from his pocket.

Ryo squints at it. "That looks like Kame's pen. You didn't steal it, did you?"

"Of course not!" The Jin kid pouts at them again. "He gave it to me!"

Ryo sighs and shakes his head, giving Yamapi a pat on the shoulder. "Good luck, Pi. You're going to need it."

Yamapi resists the urge to kick the nurse that's snickering at him and forces himself to face his new assistant. "Nice to meet you, I'm Yamashita Tomohisa," he says, extending a hand forward.

Jin, however, completely ignores his hand. "Can I call you Pi too?"

"..."

"Hey, hey, why was that Ryo person wearing a pink uniform?"

"...Don't ask me that. Please."

"..."

------------------------

Yamapi thinks he's going to kill his new assistant.

Not only has he come unprepared, but he fools around during the most crucial times as well.

When they're treating a young male who's just fallen off a three-story building twenty minutes ago, Jin pokes at the new patient in interest. "Hey, what's your name?"

The patient blinks up at him. "Koyama....Keiichiro," he says hoarsely, wincing as Ryo sticks in some kind of tube into his arm. "Am I in the hospital?"

"Jin, at least help," Yamapi says. "And yes, you're in the hospital, Koyama-san. Do you know what day it is today?"

Jin scoffs. "It's the twenty-fourth, duhh."

"Don't mess around," Ryo snaps. He stands up. "Pi, I'm going to see if there's any information sent in about this kid yet."

Yamapi nods, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and Ryo runs out of the room. "Koyama-san, do you know where you fell off from?"

No answer.

"Koyama-san?"

"Pi!" Jin shouts and points to the pulse meter and Yamapi looks up just in time to see the reading drop to zero.

"Shit," Yamapi breathes, and opens the patient's mouth, taking in a deep breath and lowering his head.

------------------------

Jin blinks at the scene before him, and wonders if Yamapi is having any problems. "Um, Pi?"

Yamapi isn't very fond of someone talking to him when he's in the middle of performing CPR. He tries to remember to count to thirty before lowering his head again, and then thirty more when he comes back up. "Jin, just so you know, I'm kind of busy right now."

"...Pi?"

"Yes, Jin?"

"The patient's breathing."

Yamapi stops for a moment and checks the pulse readings to see that in fact, Koyama Keiichiro's heartbeat has started up again. He sighs in relief just as the patient gives out a low moan, squirming a bit and gripping onto the bed sheets.

"...Pi, is that patient normal?" Jin asks him, and a stethoscope flies towards his face.

"Yes, Jin, he's perfectly normal considering his heart just stopped a few minutes ago from shock. Now if you would please do something productive I'd be very happy." Yamapi tries to get the patient's clothes off so he can give him hospital clothes to wear, but before he even manages to get the suit off the patient's moaning again.

"Pi, are you doing this correctly?" Jin asks him.

"Just tell me who he is and what his condition is, Jin," Yamapi tells him.

"Um. Koyama Keiichiro, twenty-four years old, employee at a car store."

Koyama gives out another low moan and Yamapi gives up, throwing his hands up in the air with a huff. He scratches his head and turns to Jin. "Call Kame over. Tell him we have a problem over here."

"Aha!" JIn points at Yamapi triumphantly and all but drops the clipboard with the patient's information on it. "You see, you do have a problem! Now, I'm totally okay with this and I appreciate you acting like a responsible adult and all because a pregnant lady falling off a building is really dangerous and-"

"...Jin. Get Kame. Over here. Now."

"But I really think you should have a good conversation with your pregnant wife over there. I mean, she's probably dying right now because she just fell off a building, being pregnant of all things."

Yamapi can't believe what's happening to him right now. "Okay. Jin. Listen very carefully. Koyama Keiichiro is a male, unpregnant employee who just fell off a building."

"Yeah, that's what I said before-" Jin blinks. "Wait. Male? Unpregnant?"

"Males don't usually get pregnant, Jin," Yamapi tells him. "I thought eight years trying to get a medical degree would at least teach you that much."

"THAT KID'S A GUY?!" Jin shouts, pointing at the man on the bed who's still clenching the bed sheets beneath him. "Oh. Well. That changes things. So you're gay?"

"JIN, I AM NOT RELATED TO THIS PERSON AT ALL, HE'S JUST A PATIENT WHO FELL OFF THE BUILDING AND I MET HIM JUST NOW," Yamapi shouts back. He takes a deep breath to calm down. "Jin, call Kame and tell him we have a problem. We have a very turned on man on a hospital bed and I have no way of undressing him right now."

Jin doesn't really get it, but tells Kame anyway. Kame explains to him very carefully that he can't come out of his office right now. "It's your fault for injecting that drug into me, Jin. Now I can't work properly. You better be sorry for this," Kame's voice says before the phone line drops dead.

"Pi?"

"Yes, Jin?"

"Kame says he can't come out right now because he's horny and he's telling you to deal with it because you're a responsible doctor," Jin says. "Just tell him to change by himself, he's not that bad off."

Jin has a point, Yamapi thinks. The man has no serious injuries aside from a few cuts and bruises, which is miraculous considering he just fell off a three-story building. "Jin, I can't do that, his heart just stopped ten minutes ago. His condition may not be stable."

Jin shrugs. "He looks fine to me."

Then the thought suddenly hits him. "Wait, Jin, why is Kame horny?!'

"He says it's my fault because I injected a drug into him and now he says he's become horny because of it," Jin states in a tone as if he's talking about the weather.

Yamapi opens his mouth to scold Jin again for being stupid but before he can do that he can feel the hospital clothes in his arms being wrenched away from his grasp, and he turns around, surprised to find his patient shuffling out the door with the hospital clothes in his arms.

Jin looks after the disappearing figure. "Well, problem solved."

Yamapi resists the urge to bang himself on the head against the wall. He is soooo going to kill Kame after this day is over.

------------------------

"Yamashita-sensei, you're a professional doctor," Kame says exasperatedly, throwing his hands up in the air. The day's almost over, and now Ryo, Yamapi and Jin are all in his office. "How can you not deal with such a simple situation as that? The patient's turned on, so what, just change him for crying out loud!"

"Because Koyama-san is some hot stuff and Yamapi can't take his eyes off him," Jin pipes up, and earns a smack on the head from Ryo. "Hey, it's true," he protests, and then gets another smack on the head from Yamapi himself.

"And you!" Kame says, pointing at Jin who's staring back at him innocently. "Why did you diagnose the guy as a female patient who's pregnant?"

"Well how was I supposed to know? I thought the patient was moaning from pain!" Jin protests again, and gets another smack on the head from Ryo. "Hey, stop that!" he says, glaring at the Osaka man in pink.

Kame sighs, rubbing his foreheard. "Akanishi-sensei, you're a doctor. You're supposed to distinguish things like this."

"Well I don't think at school you guys were taught about distinguishing between a pleasured moan and a pained moan," Jin retorts, crossing his arms.

Kame thinks back, and his mind goes blank. He turns to Yamapi. "Did we?"

Yamapi shrugs.

"You know, the kid has a good point there," Ryo says. "And I can't believe he just won an argument against you."

Jin seems happy with the fact that he's just won an argument. "So, when can I start officially being a secretary?"

Kame stares at him.

Yamapi and Ryo stare at him.

"I'm sorry, could you say that again?" Kame asks, trying to process the information in his brain.

"I signed up to be a secretary!" Jin says, pouting. "And instead I have to do all this stupid doctor shit and I'm tired and I want to go home now. When can I start working in this office?"

Both Yamapi and Ryo blink. Yamapi turns towards Kame.

"Kame, what the fuck is going on?!"

------------------------

Ryo looks about ready to punch him, and Kame can't really blame him.

"So you're telling me you misread the form and thought he was applying for a job at a hospital as another doctor?!" Ryo snaps, slamming his hands down on Kame's desk. "Wow. Okay. Let me have a few minutes to think about this thoroughly. So you're saying a freaking doctor who runs this hospital with a Ph.D made a mistake in reading the form."

Kame nods weakly. He knows he's made a big mistake on his part, and Ryo has every right to be angry at him.

Ryo stares at him for a good twenty seconds before he covers his face with a hand.

Yamapi sighs, and Jin is staring at the three of them confusedly, eyes flitting back and forth as if he's watching a tennis game. With three players.

"I signed up to be Kame's secretary," Jin says, raising a hand, hoping his comment helps.

"Not helping," Yamapi snaps, and Jin quickly puts his hand down. "We know you signed up to be his secretary. The problem is, we just let you run around thinking you were a doctor for a day. Do you have any medical experience?"

Jin shook his head

Yamapi is right now rueing over the fact that he's let Jin even touch the machines. He tries to remember what he told Jin to do. "Jin, did you do anything that you didn't know how to do?"

Jin blinks at him. "What do you mean?"

"Like, did you handle any machines you didn't know how to use? Like, pressing random buttons, for example."

"Uh, yeah," Jin answers.

Ryo still has a hand over his face, as if it's the worst nightmare in his life. "This is even worse than me cross-dressing."

Jin's mouth drops at this. "Wait. You're a guy?!"

"Didn't you know?!" Yamapi asks, resting his head back on the couch. "I hope none of the patients are dying because you pushed those random buttons."

"They should be fine," Jin says, waving a hand in the air. "I didn't know Ryo was a guy!"

"Then why did you ask me why he was wearing a pink uniform?!"

"...Everyone else is wearing blue or gray ones," Jin points out.

"I'd like to kindly point out that my choice in clothing has nothing to do witih the fact that we basically let an inexperienced man in here bullshitting with the machines and the tools for a day," Ryo says, gritting his teeth.

"Okay, okay," Kame says quickly, raising his hands up in a gesture of defense. "I admit it was a big error on my part that could have caused many casualties in this hospital, but fortunately I haven't had any reports of people dying yet. I guess we can count ourselves lucky."

"Um."

"Yes, Yamashita-sensei."

"He injected a drug into you, right?" Yamapi points out, and Jin suddenly remembers something.

"Oh yeah! That yellow thing that said 'test' on the tube!"

Kame stares at all three of the men in his office.

"...Shit."

------------------------

"...So does that mean I get to be Kame's secretary from now on?" Jin asks, his eyes taking on a hopeful glaze.

"Yes, for the third and last time, you're officially Kame's secretary and you get to play with his pen all you want," Yamapi says, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to check on my patient."

"Oh, right, the turned on one!" Jin says, and Yamapi resists the urge to smack him, because he knows Kame will kill him if he even thinks of laying a hand on his assistant.

Yamapi thinks it's a happy end to the day for everyone.

Everyone except him.

------------------------

EDITZ PLZ.

Stranger than Strangers [part 5]

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:15:50 GMT

One of the many fics for Rea's birthday. :D Happy 15th, just for you!!

Mucho love to sidevocalist for betaing. <3

Title: Stranger than Strangers
Pairing: TegoDa
Series: Rea!verse
Words: 1022
Rating: PG-13

-----------------------

Tegoshi doesn't know how it happened; how he's outside of Ueda's apartment at midnight, one fist pounding at the door, the other hand pushing against it. He shouts out Ueda's name, tells him to open up, but the man inside the apartment ignores him.

He tries to get the other man to open up for another twenty minutes before he finally gives up and trudges home through the snow. Maybe he can try again tomorrow, when they're both at the company. He'll get Ueda to talk to him, ask him what he did wrong.

-----------------------

Now that Tegoshi thinks about it, he and Ueda haven't had that many fights.

No, scratch that, they haven't fought ever since they started going out.

Tegoshi isn't even sure if they're technically "fighting" or not. All Ueda has been doing is ignoring him for a few days, so he isn't sure if he can even call this a fight.

He tries to talk to Ueda in the morning, but once the other boy sees him he promptly turns the other way, avoiding him completely. Tegoshi tries to catch him during lunch but Ueda is nowhere to be found.

All the text messages he has sent in the past two days have been ignored.

-----------------------

It's been the third day and Tegoshi right now feels a bit frustrated with the whole situation. It seems no matter what he does he can't get the older boy's attention.

It's like he's been shut out from the other boy's life completely, like a worn out book thrown into a dumpster.

Tegoshi decides that the only way that he'll get Ueda's attention is if he does something that catches everyone's attention.

To do this, he has several options. He can cross dress and walk around pretending he's a girl, but he's already done that once for work and he doesn't think that'll attract very much attention. He also has the option to slit his wrists in front of everyone with a knife, but that's too messy and bringing a knife into the company might be a bit too chaotic.

Then his brain thinks up of a brilliant plan. He can just jump off the company's building, or at least pretend to.

Or as Ryo would say, he should just 'jump off the damned building and get it over with'.

-----------------------

Tegoshi is on top of the building, standing on the ledge, and no one has come yet. Thirty of minutes have passed, and he thinks someone should have noticed that he was three inches away from his death. But no one comes, no one even notices, and he feels a bit hurt.

He's about to give up when he hears the slam of the door being open and he turns around, seeing Ryo run towards him at an alarming pace.

"You fucking crazy piece of frog shit, you get down from there right now before I have to haul your ass back to the twentieth century!" he shouts at him, stopping a few feet away from the ledge where Tegoshi is standing. "Did this guy fuck all of your brain cells out?!" He motions to Ueda, who comes running up a few seconds later, panting and holding one hand to his chest. Ryo looks at him with distaste. "Aren't you supposed to be like, a pro boxer or whatever?"

"Shut up," Ueda snaps. "You were running too fast."

Ryo ignores him and is about to reprimand Tegoshi for trying to jump off a building but Ueda beats him to it.

He runs up, grabs Tegoshi's hand, and pulls, causing both of them to topple back to the cold, rough surface of the roof.

Tegoshi hasn't even had time to react yet before a punch to the face has him toppling backward again. He rubs his left cheek, wincing, and looks up at Ueda who's glaring at him.

"Are you crazy?!" Ueda hisses.

"I wasn't going to actually jump off," Tegoshi mumbles, sitting up and staring at the ground, opting not to look at Ueda's face.

"I know you weren't going to actually jump off," Ueda says, and Tegoshi wonders for a brief moment how Ueda even knows before Ueda moves on. "But what if you had slipped? Have you gone nuts?!"

"It'll be all your fault of you actually fucked his brain cells out of his head," Ryo says, crossing his arms.

"And you!" Ueda shouts, pointing an accusing finger at the man who's standing before them all. "You come up with the stupidest dares ever! I'm not talking to you for a week!"

Tegoshi wants to kindly point out that Ueda is in fact talking to Ryo right now, but he thinks he should keep his mouth shut. Then he thinks. "Dare?"

Ryo shrugs. "He only lasted for three days without talking to you. Well, two and a half, but it doesn't really matter, I told him a week."

"Fuck your one week bullshit." Ryo seems slightly taken aback by the obscenities that have been thrown into the air by Ueda, but just as he opens his mouth Ueda is dragging Tegoshi up to his feet and through the door, slamming it behind him.

-----------------------

Tegoshi laughs at him and Ueda glares. "It's not that funny," he grumbles, dabbing a wet cloth at the bruise that's forming on Tegoshi's face.

"It's a stupid dare," Tegoshi admits, and winces as Ueda dabs particularly hard at his bruise.

"Not at stupid as what you thought of doing," Ueda says, and for a moment Tegoshi wonders if Ueda's mad at him again. Instead, Ueda puts down the cloth and clasps onto Tegoshi's hand. "Sorry," he mumbles. "For punching you like that. And for being stupid and ignoring you for three days."

"Don't do it again," Tegoshi says with a serious look on his face and Ueda bursts out laughing.

"Okay," Ueda promises, reaching out to ruffle Tegoshi's hair.

Tegoshi figures that in their relationship, they're probably going to be doing a lot of stupid things and have stupid arguments and stupid misunderstandings.

He thinks it's fine, because it's how they've come to be.

----------------------------

-wibble- Edits? D:

The Code to Make a Rainbow [oneshot]

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:27:02 GMT

A quick note: Orange is for Niji. Red is for Code.

It makes me want to cry.

I'll take away every little thing that saddens you.

---------------------------

Ryo knows it takes a lot to make Nino cry. He's seen from experience; even when Nino is being lectured by Johnny-san himself, Nino doesn't automatically burst into tears like some of the juniors. Nino can hold his ground, he can pick himself up whenever he's been forced down.

He's heard rumors around the jimusho, like how Nino hasn't cried ever since that one TV program a few years back. Ryo has seen that TV program before; he can remember it clearly as if he had just seen it yesterday.

He hates that stupid video that Nino and the rest of the Arashi members were forced to watch. He hates how the video made Nino cry like that, in front of millions of people in Japan; in front of hundreds of millions of people in the world. He hates the TV program itself for showing such a video like that.

Ryo decides to take him to the movies. He wants Nino to watch a funny movie, to make him laugh and make that sadness inside the older boy disappear.

---------------------------

I will be by your side no matter what.

You said it was too annoying.

---------------------------

When Nino and Ryo are filming for their new drama, Ryo finds out he has to follow the older boy around a lot.

It's partly his fault since he's always late to the set, especially if they're meeting in the mornings. Ryo looks around and tries to call a staff member, asking them where the hell they're supposed to go but the staff member just shakes his head, points at Nino, and says, "Just follow him. He knows where to go."

Ryo always feels like he has to rely on Nino, especially for work. He feels annoyed each time the staff members send him over to Nino's side, as if they think he has to rely on the boy for everything. Ryo is an adult right now, and he knows that he can deal with his own things and just because he's late doesn't mean the staff members have to look down on him like that.

The next time he's sent to Nino he promptly turns the other way and stomps away from him, away from the set and the staff member that's shouting at him. He knows he will hate himself for it later, acting like such a drama queen, but for now all Ryo can do is get away from the stupid employees and his stupid life, even if it's only for a moment.

He ends up coming back three minutes later to a slightly pissed off Nino yelling at the staff member that was talking to Ryo only moments before. Ryo isn't completely sure of why Nino's yelling at him, and runs over. "Oi, stop it. He looks like he's about to piss his pants."

Nino gives another glare at the man he's yelling at before he turns around and promptly starts dragging Ryo into the dressing room.

Ryo isn't sure why he's being dragged into the dressing room. He hopes he doesn't have to deal with Nino being pissed off at him, because he doesn't want that at seven in the morning.

Nino closes the door behind them and makes a point of crossing his arms, in the same stance he was in only moments before. Ryo blinks and then crosses his own arms, not quite sure what he's supposed to be doing. Nino glares at him and Ryo blinks again.

They stay like that for about a minute before Nino gives up, throws his arms up in the air and rolls his eyes, turning around so that his back is now facing Ryo. "You could've just asked me where we were going. I would've told you." He turns around again, waiting for a response.

Ryo blinks at him for a third time, although this time it's more out of surprise than anything.

"You don't need to follow me around all the time."

Ryo just shrugs. "It's not your problem."

Nino gives him a skeptical look before the both of them are interrupted by a knock on the door. A small woman opens it and tells them that they should hurry up, motioning them to get out of the dressing room.

Ryo realizes that he still doesn't know why Nino was yelling at that particular staff member.

---------------------------

I hide the things that are important to me.

I built up the courage and said the words I could no longer hold in.

---------------------------

When they're having breaks between their shoots for Ryusei, Ryo sometimes trips over things that are randomly lying on the ground.

Sometimes it's a random DS, and sometimes it's a laptop, and Ryo curses at whoever leaves these things on the ground for him to trip over. This time, he trips over a MP3 player and picks it up, putting it on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

After they're done for the day Ryo thinks it's all over and that he can go home peacefully, but Nino runs up to him ten minutes later and asks him if he's seen a MP3 player.

Ryo almost tells him no, he hasn't seen any kind of shit like that ever since iPods were invented, until he remembers the ground, the coffee table, and his sore toe. "Don't leave those things on the ground," Ryo complains while he's dragging Nino to the dressing room where he's left Nino's MP3. "Can't you put them back properly?"

"I have to hide them," Nino replies promptly, and Ryo immediately stops walking, turns and stares at Nino for a good thirty seconds.

"You have got to be kidding me." Ryo's eyes bore into Nino's, and the latter blinks back at him. "How is leaving them on the ground for people to trip over called 'hiding'?"

Ryo doesn't get an answer, just a smack in the face, a glare, and then he's the one who's being dragged around. The next thing he knows he's being pushed into a taxi and Nino tells the driver where to go, settling down onto the seat comfortably next to his kouhai, as if there's nothing wrong with kidnapping a fellow workmate.

"Where exactly are we going?" Ryo asks him.

"Home," Nino replies. "I have to hide you."

Ryo thinks the world has gone officially insane.

---------------------------

I wonder why I can't say it? "I love you....."

One day, will I be able to tell you my feelings with confidence?

---------------------------

Okay, so maybe the world isn't insane yet, but Nino sure is.

Ryo asks Nino for the third time if he can go home and Nino glares at him, crossing his arms in that childish manner of his. "Like I said, I'm hiding you."

"From what?" Ryo snaps at him. "If rabid fangirls are going to start biting at my head, that's one thing, but I think I have the normal ones. Unlike you."

Nino kicks him in the shin. "I have normal fangirls too, thank you very much."

"So can I go home now?"

"No." Nino jumps up and grabs the TV remote from his table before settling back down on the couch. "So, what will it be? Should we watch some news? Or should we watch the first episode of our drama?" He flips through a few channels before settling down for a American movie with Japanese subtitles.

"Oi," Ryo tries again.

"Hm?"

"Can you untie me now?"

"No."

Ryo thinks he might just want to die today.

---------------------------

You're the most precious thing.

So let this love last a little longer...this love...this love...

---------------------------

Nino checks the clock and notes that it's already ten. Two more hours, he thinks. Two more hours, and then he will untie the ropes that are secured around Ryo's arms and legs. Two more hours, and he thinks he will be able to let him go.

He knows he's being selfish, keeping Ryo over here when Ryo could be doing other things, like hanging out with his friends. But it's only for today. Only today, and he'll force himself to let go, to forget about everything and just move on.

"It's ten," Ryo says, looking at the clock too. Nino nods, and he closes his eyes. Two more hours. Two more hours.

"I'm hungry," Ryo tells him, and Nino decides that he might as well give Ryo something to eat, since he'd be a bad person not to give the guest something to snack on. He comes back with a bowl of soup and is stumped on how to give it to Ryo. He thinks the best option would be to just feed him, but that would be a bit too weird.

He realizes too late that he's said the last part out loud and Ryo rolls his eyes at him. "Let me think. I'm stuck at a friend's house on his sofa tied up. How is that not weird?" He thinks for a moment. "Oh, and did I mention the part about being kidnapped too?"

Nino thinks Ryo has a good point there and starts spooning soup into Ryo's mouth. He tries not to stare at Ryo's face too much and opts for staring at the bowl in his hands intently when he's not trying to put the spoon in Ryo's mouth. At the third spoonful Nino tries to get the spoon out so he can dip it into the bowl again but the spoon won't budge.

He looks up and he realizes the spoon is stuck in Ryo's mouth and proceeds to try to pull it out, but Ryo won't let it go.

"I thought you said you were hungry."

Ryo just glares at him.

Nino sighs and lets go of the spoon momentarily, putting the bowl down on the table. He turns around and Ryo's still got the spoon in his mouth, except he's now shifted his position so he can lean on the arm of the couch. Nino sits on the couch and tries to take the spoon out again and it comes out pretty easily.

Nino blinks, not really understanding where this is going. He stares at the spoon and hopes it isn't haunted or anything and leans over to put it back into the bowl. "Aren't you hungry?" he asks.

"Yeah," is all the reply that he gets.

Nino sighs, and decides that he probably should untie Ryo right now, even though he still has more than an hour left. The latter clearly isn't appreciating being tied up like this, so he kneels on the couch and reaches around Ryo to feel for the ropes that are holding his arms together.

Ryo sighs and finally relaxes, leaning into the embrace and Nino freezes up.

"Move away and your ass is going to be fried so badly you won't be able to sit on it again until you turn thirty," Ryo mumbles.

Nino leans his head on Ryo's shoulder hesitatingly, but Ryo makes no complaint. The younger boy even nudges his head over a little so he can peck him on the cheek.

---------------------------

I feel like anything is possible.

The day our love sprouted.

---------------------------

Ryo thinks Nino is being stupid, oh so very stupid, and he hopes Nino will untie him soon because all Ryo wants to do right now is to tackle the older boy and just cuddle. But Nino isn't letting up, and Ryo's hands are still working at getting that stupid rope untied.

"At twelve," Nino promises him. "That was my plan."

Ryo manages to get the first knot undone. "That was your stupid plan before this all happened, so there's no point anymore."

"But you only have to wait two minutes!" Nino protests.

Second knot. "That's the stupidest thing I've heard in my life. How many knots did you put on here?!" Ryo manages to get the third knot undone and wrenches his hand out of the rope.

"You cheated!" Nino stares at Ryo's arms that are now free and then gives up.

"I'm being kidnapped and you call trying to untie myself cheating?! What is this, some sort of game?"

They both manage to get the knots out and Ryo finally gets to tackle Nino onto the ground.

"Besides," Ryo whispers in his ear. "You were going to untie me early anyway, right?"

---------------------------

Please note: I do not own these lyrics. They're from Ninomiya Kazunari's Niji and Nishikido Ryo's Code. All I did was put a few lines into the story.

Stranger than Strangers [Part 4]

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:35:19 GMT

Again, as a reminder, this is just a series, and each part can act as a standalone, or can be read as a series.

Sometimes, in their relationship, neither Tegoshi nor Ueda know who's supposed to make the first move. No one knows who's supposed to take charge and move their relationship forward. It may all seem really easy at first, just going out for lunch, watching a few movies together, sometimes go to each others' house. But there are uncertainties; sometimes, Ueda doesn't know if he's supposed to push the relationship forward. He doesn't know if he's expected to make a move, to keep their relationship from going too stale. He doesn't know if Tegoshi's waiting for him to do something, and it gives him a certain feeling of nervousness.

Ueda wonders if he'll ever be able to be truly comfortable around Tegoshi, to just act without thinking too much on one subject. Sometimes, Ueda wonders about things for days, even weeks, and it's hard to forget it, hard to stop thinking if he should have done something different. He knows he's the older one in this relationship, so maybe he should be making the first moves and everything, but Tegoshi was the one who approached him first. Tegoshi was the one who started this whole ordeal.

Days go by with feelings of uncertainty. Ueda wonders if Tegoshi feels the same way. If he does, he doesn't show it, smiling in that light way of his, as if everything in the world is all right and they can take things slowly.

-----------------------------

Many words are exchanged between them through their times together. They literally can talk about anything, whether it be from peanut butter to digital cameras.

There's a time when Tegoshi gets sick, and Ueda ends up going to Tegoshi's house more than usual to take care of him. Tegoshi sniffs a bit and pulls the covers up closer to his chin, his forehead burning, his eyes droopy with drowsiness.

Ueda takes a small towel and wipes off the sweat that has accumulated around Tegoshi's face. Tegoshi gives a pout at the coldness of the wet towel and buries his face in his pillow, only to bring it back up a few seconds later. He reaches out and takes Ueda's hand, shivering a little as the cold air touches his arm.

Ueda leans down and the next thing he knows his lips are on Tegoshi's. He just gives him a quick peck, and as Ueda pulls back Tegoshi smiles that smile of his again before drifting off into dreamland.

Ueda wonders if Tegoshi will ever remember the next day in his drowsy state, but for now, this is enough.

Cocoa and Scarves

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:08:26 GMT

Request Made? Well, it wasn't really a request, since like....LOL she just randomly shouted the words out to me and I was like "OKAY. FINE."

Oh, by the way, feel free to make requests if you want to. For any pairing. Um, at least, I hope for any pairing. XD

Pairing: KoyaRyo

Prompts: Snow, Fire, Hot Cocoa, Scarves, Snuggling

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Ryo hates when it snows. The first few days of the snow season he's okay with it, since it's a huge change from leaves falling everywhere around him, but after a week he gets tired of it. The snow always gets stuck to the bottom of his shoes, and his manager always bitches at him for leaving wet puddles around the jimusho.

He doesn't like the stinging cold that comes with winter either, and he'd much rather stay in his home with his heater on. He'd even sit by a fireplace if he could, but the problem is his apartment doesn't exactly have a fireplace, so all he can do is curl on his sofa with a bundle of blankets around him, huddled against a pillow and watching movies, dreading the next day he has to go to work and go out into the biting cold again.

He doesn't like making hot cocoa either, since he always buys the wrong kind and makes it the wrong way. He's given up hot cocoa a long time ago, much preferring his tea, since he knows he can't possibly mess up making tea with tea leaves. He'd much rather prefer Koyama's hot cocoa, because Koyama can make it just right with just the right amount of milk and sugar. The problem is, Koyama doesn't really come over much, and he doesn't really go to Koyama's place that much either.

So he settles down on his sofa every night, with his stupid cup of green tea and watches cheesy movies rather than memorizing his lines for his upcoming drama.

He's like this every night. Sometimes the door bell rings, but he ignores it, thinking that it's not important. He doesn't want to move away from the space he's made on the couch with his blankets.

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One night his doorbell keeps on ringing and ringing and ringing, and Ryo just can't stand it anymore. He gets up from his couch and opens his front door, opening his mouth to swear at whoever's at his door this late in the night but he stops and just stares.

"Yo!" Koyama says happily, waving. "You finally opened your door!"

Ryo's in nothing but his pajamas, looking at his bandmate warily before letting him in. Koyama's carrying a suspicious looking bag, smiling happily at being let in, and Ryo wonders if it's always been him who's been ringing his door every so often at night. He feels a little guilty, and he hopes that's not the case, although he has a nagging suspicion that Koyama's been at his door before.

Koyama goes straight for his kitchen and starts his work, taking cups out from Ryo's cupboard and taking out the materials he has brought with him. Ryo watches as Koyama takes out cocoa mix from his bag pours it into the cups, then filling them with hot milk and a whole bunch of ingredients from his bag. Ryo can smell the cocoa and closes his eyes, not noticing Koyama with a cup right smack in front of his face until his face starts getting hot from the steam. He takes the cup gratefully and takes a sip, following Koyama and they both sit down on his couch.

He feels like a kid, resting his head on Koyama's shoulder, sipping the cocoa that the older boy has made for him. He feels even more like a kid when Koyama lets him rest his head in his lap, playing with the scarf Koyama has brought with him. Ryo breathes in Koyama's scent through that scarf, and thinks he might not hate winters that much if Koyama's here with him.

FIN.

Okay. Fluffy, kinda?

Truth [part 2]

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:03:21 GMT

To tie up any loose ends I left in the previous part. ;) And to go on with the story and...yeah. Basically that's about it. And it's a slightly different style, so it may not make sense.

PAUSE

REWIND

PLAY

Jin looks at his present from his manager in disgust, the latter wringing his hands, suddenly realizing his mistake.

"It was Tanaka-san's idea as well!" the manager insists, knowing all too well that it won't help the situation one bit, that the damage has already been done.

The present is a jolting reminder of what Jin has to face the next few months. He wills himself not to use it. He wants to prove that he can get through all of this without any help.

PAUSE

FASTFORWARD

PLAY

Kame calls him during his visit in L.A., telling him that he will be coming.

Jin looks at that present that his manager has given him, stashed in the back corner of his drawer along with all his T-shirts and sighs. He takes it out and puts it over his head, and laughs at himself in front of the mirror. With this, his hair hasn't changed one bit. He looks like his old self, except with a bags under his eyes, but he reckons he can fix that with a bit of makeup.

He'll thank his manager later, once this is all over.

He tells his doctor he'll be out around town a few days, and his doctor okays him, saying that his white blood cell count is high enough for him to be walking around.

Jin thinks he's all set, and all he has to do is look like his old self. Young, hopeful, maybe even a little excited that Kame is visiting him.

PAUSE

REWIND

PLAY

Kame looks at the door that he's facing right now. He can't believe what he's heard just now, and from Johnny-san's mouth no less.

He tells himself that he heard wrong; he'll be visiting Jin soon and he can see for himself.

He finds out his ears weren't lying to him after all, and Jin looks horrible. The older boy in front of him still keeps on smiling though, waving to him and babbling English all over the place. Kame punches his arm, glaring at him.

Jin laughs, then hesitates and grabs onto Kame's arm, blinking furiously, eyes going hazy for a moment. Kame realizes his mistake; he probably shouldn't have punched Jin like that, and tries to open his mouth but Jin waves a hand, saying that it's all okay and that he's probably only caught a small cold. Jin leads him to his car and takes Kame back to his apartment.

From his visit Kame can see that Jin is actually trying, and that he's trying hard to come back to Japan, to be with everyone else and be a part KAT-TUN again.

PAUSE

FASTFORWARD

PLAY

Kame asks Jin properly when Jin comes back from L.A. He asks him what he really thought of America, with the emptiness on the roads and the food over there, everything.

Jin at firsts tells him that everything was cool, and that he'd like to go back one day, and have fun again. But Kame keeps on asking, and asking, and asking, and all of a sudden, he blows up, and tells Kame everything. Well, almost everything; he leaves out the part about having cancer and staying at home all day, but he tells him everything else. How he hates the sushi over there, how he hated his apartment, how he hated how empty the city was at night.

To his surprise, Kame nods and takes his hand in is, the small hands barely able to envelope his. "I know. I knew," he says, leaning his forehead on Jin's.

Jin thinks that he's the luckiest person on earth to have Kame by his side every day, to be able to look through all the lies he's come up with and only see the truth.

FIN.