Across A Bridge of Magpies (Akame, R) [2/4]

[maayacolabackup]

-


Honoko is beaten for over an hour, in places no one can see, for the tear in the kimono sleeve, and the blood on the expensive silk. It hurts, but Honoko is still in the clearing.

There's no such thing as love at first sight. There's no such thing as soul mates, either. Honoko knows there is only the here and the now.

But.

Something, in that clearing, in those moments out of time, has connected him to Jin in a way he's never been connected to anyone before. He'd been so disappointed that Jin wasn't anything Honoko had thought he would be, but Jin, it turns out, is so much more than that. Honoko knows nothing about him, and yet he feels like he knows everything, too.

Maybe dreams reveal more of a person than realities, Honoko thinks, because maybe the spirit is more precious than any physical body. Either way, he feels like Jin knows him too. Honoko's hands trace the path of Jin's cloth across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He can still feel the phantom warmth of the tips of Jin's fingers on his skin.

Honoko wants to forget it all, because life was easier before he wondered what else could be, but in the end, his heart has spread out in his chest, unfurling like the tail of the mountain pheasants at the beginning of the winter snows.

When he falls asleep, a short period of time before he must wake up again and prepare to enter the night, he thinks of magpies, building a bridge across the night sky.

-

I have met my love.
When I compare this present
With feelings of the past,
My passion is now as if
I have never loved before.

--Fujiwara no Atsutada, 43

-

Even when Kame takes off his costume, he can still feel the heavy silk across his arms, and he thinks he walks a little straighter, a little more delicately. None of the guys have said anything yet, though, so Kame won't worry about it.

-

When Hiko is seven years old, he is given his first steel blade, a mamorigatana. A blade for protection more than offense. His father puts a heavy hand on his small shoulder, and tells him to use it well.

Hiko practices a lot at first, swinging the sword around haphazardly as if he is dueling a brave enemy or running off the rescue the Lord of his province. These daydreams usually end in a sliced tree branch or flower stalk, and an irate mother, who finds all life precious, and fears the displeasure of the kami who protect their training ground.

Hiko is saving a much older and more famous samurai in his mind one day when he accidentally swings too high and ends up slicing his brother Tetsuya's gi, leaving a tiny cut on his arm. Hiko apologizes profusely, and Tetsuya just looks at it and shrugs, smiling gentle at Hiko and telling him to be more careful.

Hiko has almost forgotten the incident when his father pulls him aside.

"This is only the first step, Hiko," his father says to him, seeming like a tall oak, arching over him and covering him in shadow. "Someday the peasants of our land will become the responsibility of you and your brothers. You must protect them should we be attacked. That is your duty to your Lord, and to our people." It's dark in his father's shadow, and Hiko can't see the sun at all, only his father's figure, outlined in golden light, his features impossible to make out. "That's why you can't wander off, Hiko, into your own head, as pleasant as it may seem. It's not always fun, our work, but that's life. You do what you have to do, because it must be done."

Hiko nods, and licks suddenly dry lips. He looks down at his hands, which have a sloppy grip on his mamorigatana, and adjusts them quickly.

With each swing of his blade, he counts, and thinks of nothing but how the leather rubs terrible against the soft skin of his palm.

-

When Kame is seven years old, he gets his first real baseball bat.

With each swing of the bat, he builds new calluses on his small square hands.

"I'm going to be a baseball player," he says, and his dad pats him on the shoulder.

"You can be whatever you want to be, Kazuya," his dad says.

It's not true, it's just what you're supposed to say to small children, before they know how the world works.

-

Nakamaru shoves a sandwich under Kame's nose. "Eat it," he says. "You haven't eaten anything and lunch is almost over."

Kame stares for a minute before he wraps a hand around the sandwich. He absently takes a bite.

"What's it like?" Koki asks.

"What? The sandwich?" Kame looks at him blankly. He's still caught up in movie-mode, thinking about the scenes they're filming tomorrow, and he's not quite keyed down enough to have normal conversation yet.

"Working with Jin again," Koki replies, and then he lifts an eyebrow. "What's he like on set nowadays?"

"He was really goofy even when the cameras weren't rolling, on Yukan," Junno pipes in. "Wasn't he goofy on Gokusen, too, Kame? You used to hiss at him all the time to behave and he'd trot along after you with his tail between his legs, haha."

Kame remembers being so violent during Gokusen filming. He doesn't remember Jin ever following behind him.

"He's...quiet," Kame says. "Very withdrawn, but incredibly professional."

Tatsuya examines perfectly manicured nails. Kame doesn't know why he bothers, since they'll just get broken again the next time Tatsuya goes to the gym and punches the daylights out of a sandbag. Kame wonders whose face Tatsuya is imaging, but figures it probably changes by the day. Most days it's probably Ryo's, he thinks. "Jin, professional? Alert the news, everyone, aliens have invaded and they must be body- snatchers."

Nakamaru frowns. "Hey, we were kids," Nakamaru says. "People grow up. Plus," he adds, "you don't really know what else is going on with people sometimes. Don't be judgmental unless you know the whole story."

Kame looks at Nakamaru contemplatively, while Tatsuya rolls his eyes. "Okay Nelson Mandela, let's all join hands and sing 'Kumbaya'. But it'll have to wait until after this interview."

Koki chuckles and stands up. "Unless Kame wants to call Jin a princess again under the guise of supporting him as a solo artist. I'm totally down with that."

Nakamaru sighs, and stretches. "Let's go," he says, and he rests his hand on Kame's shoulder. "Good luck," he mumbles, and Kame knows he means with Jin.

-

Jin, Takamori, Honoko can tell, lives inside of his dreams. There's an emptiness in his eyes, now, that tells Honoko that Jin is elsewhere. The clouds in Jin's clearing go with him everywhere, it seems.

Dreams, to Honoko, are fleeting illusions that hurt far too much when you wake up. When he was a boy, he'd dreamed of conquering bandits, and of serving the Daimyo. Perhaps of falling in love with a graceful samurai's daughter, and raising a family with three strong samurai sons to carry on the traditions of his line.

Now, Honoko wakes up, and all he has are lacquer stained nails and a loneliness that only abates in those brief snatches of evening, when his eyes meet Jin's across a table in a teahouse, in a crowded room. For a moment, it feels like they are alone, but then the sounds of laughter and shouts and drunken revelry seep back in, and the distance between them becomes vast and insurmountable.

Honoko is choking, all wrapped up in silk and buried under heavy jewelry. The glamorous kimono feels like a leaden weight, and the expensive hair ornaments nothing but chains.

"Honoko." Jin's lips form the shape of his name across the table, and Kazuya can only look at him sadly.

'I'm not for you,' Honoko wants to whisper back. 'And you're not for me.' But instead, Honoko avoids Jin's seeking eyes, turning a false smile on the man to his right.

He's turning to ash under Jin's hot gaze, but it doesn't do to dwell in dreams. There is only the world, and the way things must be, predetermined by fate and reinforced by tradition.

Honoko is disgraced, and it is not for him to grasp happiness with both hands. Honoko can only watch happiness from a distance, like he watches the departing American ships from the harbor.

But when Honoko falls into a deep slumber, Jin's chocolate eyes haunt him, looking through him and seeing all the way inside to the desire that lurks there like a caged dragon spitting and clawing at the walls of his heart.

-

The feeling doesn't stop when the camera stop filming, for Kame.

It's weird.

This year, at Tanabata, it rains again.

-

When sixteen year-old Jin dumps the huge pile of comics into Kame's lap, Kame gapes up at him in shock. "What's all this?"

"It's ‘One Piece’," Jin replies, and then he grins fondly at the well-worn volumes. "It's a prerequisite to being my friend. Don't worry, you'll love it."

Kame wants to tell him that between baseball and Johnny's, he barely has any time to sleep, but Jin is looking at him so hopefully that Kame just nods.

He stays up the whole night reading the comics, and when he's read through them all, he's got huge circles under his eyes and the sun is peaking through his closed curtains.

Jin's right though, he loves it.

-

The depths of the hearts
Of humankind cannot be known.
But in my birthplace
The plum blossoms smell the same
As in the years gone by.

Ki no Tsurayuki, 35

-

Jin sits next to Kame while Kame twirls the fan in his hands, practicing his catching. Jin has two rice balls in his left hand, and he intercepts the fan, catching it with his right just before Kame can snag it out of the air. He places the fan on his lap, and roughly grabs Kame's hand, putting a rice ball into it before he lets go. "Eat." Jin is concentratedly not looking at him, and he takes a big bite out of his own rice ball. "Maru says you've been forgetting to eat again."

Kame starts. "You talk to Nakamaru?"

Jin looks at him out of the side of his eye. "Yeah, pretty often," Jin answers, and Kame feels strange.

"But..." Why won't you talk to me, he wants to ask, but Jin hasn't talked to him for years, really, and by the time Jin started making feeble overtures Kame was too walled off to accept them. "Okay," he says instead, and takes a bite of the rice. It's warm, and sweet. Inside it's tuna, which is Kame's favorite. Kame is a little touched Jin remembered, because he knows it's not an accident. Jin hates tuna.

"You have to eat," Jin says quietly. "Otherwise you can't do your best."

Kame snorts. "The media would probably be relieved I was losing some weight," Kame says, but there's no feeling behind it, no bitterness. It's his job to be an idol, there's no room for bitterness about the job requirements. Kame's not hurt when they call him fat on the web blogs, it just makes him think he needs to work harder.

"Don't be ridiculous," Jin says gruffly. "There's nothing wrong with you. You're not supposed to look like you did when you were eighteen. You're a grown man now." Jin reaches his hand up and gingerly scratches his own scalp, so he won't mess up his hair, which is elegantly arranged in a high sleek ponytail.

When they were younger, Jin used to scratch with wild abandon, dislodging and ruining the stylists' hard work. Kame almost doesn't recognize Jin now, with his serious face and his delicate fingers, so different from the fumbling puppy Kame grew up with.

Kame takes another bite of rice. "You should do what you want, Kame. Stop worrying so much about what you're supposed to do."

"That doesn't work out for everyone else like it did for you, Jin."

Jin looks at Kame then, for the first time since he sat down. "I worry about other people's expectations all the time, Kame. It's just not the same people as the ones you're worried about. People you don't know." Jin stands up, and slides his hands into the big pocket on the front of his oversized sweatshirt. "I'm going to get into costume," he says. "Eat the whole thing or Maru will have my nuts."

The rice tastes really good. Kame grabs another on the way into make-up.

-

Nakamaru is standing next to him as they watch Koki taunt Tatsuya in front of the camera, the photographer laughing and clicking away as Tatsuya makes scandalized pouting faces, his wide lips tilting in the mildest of grins. Nakamaru is watching with amusement.

"You still talk to Jin," Kame says, and Nakamaru straightens his back.

"That depends. Did he feed you?"

Kame smiles. "Almost shoved a rice ball down my throat," Kame replies, and Nakamaru looks pleased.

"Good, I worry about you, you workaholic. It's like you forget you're a person and not an entertainment robot sometimes."

"Why do you talk to Jin?" Kame asks. "Why didn't I know that you talk to Jin?"

"It's not a secret," Nakamaru says. "I just...don't go out of my way to bring it up."

"Ah," Kame says, and thinks about how Nakamaru was the only person Jin seemed to talk to, even when they were still all a group.

"Jin's my friend," Nakamaru says, a little defensively. "He's a good guy."

"I know," Kame says, and Nakamaru relaxes.

"He's just...confused a lot," Nakamaru says, and then it's his turn to take photos with Junno. "But we still go out for drinks all the time."

Kame wonders how other people have time for lives. Kame never has time to be Kame. He only has time to be Honoko, and KAT-TUN's K, and now KAT-TUN's A, too. Kame only exists when he closes his eyes, but he's usually too tired to dream, so maybe Kame doesn't exist at all.

-

Kame used to have another role, as half of Akakame. That was his favorite role to play.

Kame still absently goes to twist the pinky ring on his finger sometimes, before he remembers it's been years since it was okay to wear it.

-

"Let's rehearse the scene," says a voice from behind him, and Kame jumps, dropping his script in surprise. "Sorry," Jin says, a little sheepishly, and it's an expression Kame hasn't seen in a long time. "I didn't mean to scare you." Jin is draped along the doorframe like a vine, long arms and legs aligned with the short door. Filming from trailers isn't something Kame is used to, but it's apparently normal, the way Jin leans so familiarly against it. "Are you in the mood to do it now?"

"Alright," Kame says.

Jin scowls at him a little. "Do you want to, or not?" Jin says huffily, and Kame is confused.

"I just said 'Alright,'" Kame answers, and for some reason this makes Jin scowl even more.

"It's like 'Okay,' and 'Alright,' are the only two words you know, Kamenashi. That's weird. What do you want to do?"

"I don't want anything," Kame says, "but we do need to rehearse this scene. We're filming it in just a few days."

Jin sighs. "Maybe later," he says, and then Kame is alone again.

-

When Kame plays Shuuji, he develops an intense need for routine. He has to wake up a certain way, get ready a certain way, live a certain way.

It's hard on the guys sometimes, but they don't realize it's Shuuji, and not Kame, who picks up their clothes and hangs them up or puts them away on tour, or Shuuji cooking breakfast because he can't stand the way they use so many dishes to cook rice and a couple eggs.

It's also the time in his life where he makes the most friends, because Shuuji is the popular type.

Kame is always the character he plays, at least until it's over and he's left with nothing until the next role falls into his lap.

-

There are two memories of Jin that Kame cherishes.

The first memory is of the first time they met. Kame is sitting on the floor, knees curled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, tugging them closer. Kame is watching the other boys play and laugh and he feels woefully out of place. He pulls his baseball cap further down over his eyes, so that no one can see his miserable expression.

He doesn't really know why he's here, only that his dad had dropped him off after baseball practice and said "Do your best," and now he's here, and he already knows it's not where he belongs. It's an audition for some kind of idol factory, and Kame is far from being idol material. His face is weird, and he's short and stubby and the only thing he likes is baseball.

All of a sudden, there's a warm arm pressed against his own, and he looks up, startled, into the warmest eyes he's ever seen. "Why are you sitting here by yourself?" the boy asks, and his voice is too high and perky, like he's had too much sugar.

"I don't belong here," Kame answers, and the boy laughs.

"None of us do, not really. You don't just automatically belong places, Mr. Baseball."

"What do you mean?" Kame asks, feeling his arms loosen their death grip on his knees.

"I mean, you're not going to make any friends sitting over here in the corner. How is anyone going to get to know you if you hide under a hat?" The boy giggles. "What's your name, Baseball?"

"Kame," he answers. "Well, Kamenashi Kazuya. But my...my friends call me Kame."

The boy has a smile that lights up his whole face. He's awkward and long limbed and floppy and wonderful, and Kame wants to be his friend so badly. "I'm Jin," he replies, and then he bounds up, pulling Kame with him. "Let me introduce you to some of the others. Some of us are bound to make it through."

"But what if they don't like me?" Kame whispers, the discomfort suddenly sliding back into place like it never left. He feels anxious and scared, and Jin smiles at him softly and grabs his wrist.

"Doesn't matter. I like you," Jin says, and then he pulls at Kame's wrist, and Kame finds himself standing up. "Just be yourself."

"Myself isn't very cool," Kame mutters, and Jin shoots him a look.

"Do you really want to sit by yourself in the corner hiding under your hat for the rest of the day?" Jin asks, and Kame hesitantly shakes his head in the negative. "Then what do you want, Kame?" Jin asks, and Kame rubs his nose with the flat of his palm.

"I want to be your friend," he blurts out, and if Kame thought Jin's smile was bright before, now it is like the sun, warming Kame all the way down to his bones.

"I want that too," Jin says, and Kame wonders why he feels so full of light.

-

"Jin," Kame asks, when Jin is standing nearby, waiting to film. "Do you still read ‘One Piece’?"

Jin looks over at Kame, giving him a brief cursory curious look. "Not since I started doing Hollywood movies. It was hard to keep up."

"Oh," Kame says, and he wonders if he and Jin have anything in common at all anymore.

"It was so good, though," Jin says, kind of wistfully, and Kame feels a tiny twist in his heart.

-

Kame doesn't have very many ambitions in life, or things he does for himself. It's why he identifies so much with Honoko, after all, because he's learned better than to dream.

He used to dream about Jin a lot, when he was younger. About Jin's smiling face sitting across from him, both of them covered in sand and sea water, the Okinawa waves crashing against the shore as they laugh and build sandcastles.

Then Kame woke up and Jin was gone.

Kame likes to think he learned his lesson. Dreams are for other people. Kame just has reality, cold and empty and dark.

It's surprisingly easy to sink into being Honoko. Honoko's world is just as dim as Kame's, and it hurts less when he's pretending to be someone else. It's harder to slip out of being Honoko, and Kame finds himself looking at Jin sometimes as if he is actually Honoko. At those times, he sees a piece of Jin's hair slip loose from his ponytail, and he has to fight the urge to tuck it behind his ear.

-

When Kame plays Kyohei in Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge, he wants to knock taxi drivers out all the time, because Kyohei is so angry, and Kame can't always pull the character back.

Everyone is relieved when Kame suddenly stops feeling violent and aggressive, and they don't realize it's Kyohei, not Kame, that they should have been nervous about.

-

"Great job today, guys," the director says, and he looks absolutely delighted. Kame feels rung out. This role is perfect, he thinks, and so far he and Jin have amazing chemistry together when the camera is rolling.

And Kame's mouth is being unpredictable today. "Let's get dinner," he says to Jin, before he can even think about it.

Jin looks up at him in surprise. "What?"

"I want to eat dinner with you," Kame says, and something in his word choice makes Jin freeze, and stare long and hard at Kame, like Kame is a particularly difficult puzzle, and perhaps Jin thinks a few pieces might be missing. But Kame does want to eat dinner with Jin, really wants to.

He wants to.

Jin smiles, and it's tiny but it makes his face look softer, younger. "It's four am, you idiot," Jin replies, and Kame draws back, feels himself shriveling up like he did around strangers when he was a kid, or like he did when no one picked him for baseball before they knew he was an awesome pitcher. But then Jin's smile gets a little bigger. "We'll just have to get breakfast," Jin says, and Kame feels his own smile tentatively creep onto his face.

Jin fills breakfast conversation with stories about Yamashita and Shirota and their drunken antics, and Kame finds himself laughing in that special, abandoned way he always laughs with Jin. Jin looks at him, every so often with this kind of bemused amazement, and Kame doesn't know what it all means but he feels like something inside of him is healing.

Kame doesn't usually make overtures, doesn't really know how, but somehow knowing that Honoko and Takamori are already friends makes it easy for Kame to play like this isn't something new and difficult.

The next day, Kame drops two years' worth of ‘One Piece’ comics onto Jin's lap, and offers him a small grin. "One Piece," he says, and Jin's eyes are round like five-yen coins. "A prerequisite to being my friend." Kame is nervous, nervous like he hasn't been in years, because he hasn't let himself be. Honoko wants to reach out and touch Jin's raised eyebrows, but Kame doesn't let the character have its way. "Don't worry, you'll like it."

"Idiot," Jin chokes out. "Like I have time to read all of this," he mumbles, and Kame thinks he might be trying not to cry.

The next day Jin comes in looking disheveled and sleepy, and the make-up artists all chide him like mother hens, pampering him once he gives them a drowsy, charming smile.

"Princess Vivi, huh?" he whispers to Kame, when the director yells cut.

There's a warm glow in Kame's chest, and it's easy for Honoko to meet Takamori's eyes across the tea room after that.

-

Kame's second cherished memory of Jin isn't really of a special moment, or a first, or a last. He can't really even remember exactly when it happened. What he can remember is the way the snow bleeds through his coat and sweater, chilling his spine, and the way Jin playfully straddles him and sprinkles snowflakes on his face.

Kame frowns up at Jin, and as he looks up he can see the snow on his own eyelashes, heavy and wet. "It's cold, Jin," he says, and Jin chuckles.

"Duh," Jin says, and Jin's face is ruddy from the harsh winter wind, and his eyes are sparkling brighter than the sunlight on the snow. "It's snowing, and it's winter."

"Get off of me, Jin. You're way too fat for this."

Jin retaliates with a big clump of snow on Kame's neck, which makes Kame yelp and Jin laugh and lean forward, blowing warm air onto the wet skin. Kame shivers at the weird sensation, and Jin laces their fingers together, barely managing because of their thick gloves.

Jin is surprisingly still, and his breath sort of stutters as he breathes in, pressing his nose to Kame's neck. Kame can't feel the snow anymore, only the press of Jin warm against him. "Kame, do you ever wish you could stop time?"

Kame doesn't move. "What?"

"Stop time," Jin whispers, and now his mouth is near Kame's ear, and Kame feels like he's floating for some reason, and a little like it's summer even though moments ago he'd been complaining about winter's chill. "Sometimes I feel like a moment is so perfect it's just like a dream," Jin says. "A dream I want to just stay in, so I can forget that later, the real world is going to come rushing back, and I'll have to pretend again. Don’t you ever wish you could just stay in a moment?"

Kame does. But he knows that's not how it works. "Life isn't dreams, Jin. It's easy to get caught up in things you wish, and then it hurts even more when it turns out not to be. I try not to hope for things like that."

Jin lifts himself up so he can look Kame in the eyes. "That's a sad way to live, with no hopes," Jin informs him, his face serious. Kame smiles at him gently, and Jin's eyes widen and he swallows. Jin rolls off Kame, landing beside him in the snow with a thump. "Ne, Kame, what do you want? Is there anything...you really, really want?" Jin's voice is uncharacteristically quiet, and it sounds strange, and when he looks over at Jin, Jin has a strange expression on his face, too.

"Right now? Some hot chocolate." Jin laughs, and heaves himself off the ground. Kame looks up at Jin, who looms above him covered in snow, and thinks he might be glowing.

"It is pretty cold, huh?" Jin has snowflakes in his hair, and he's still all red and his lips are chapped. Kame thinks he looks...Kame's heart is beating faster, and he doesn't really know why. "Well that's one dream I can make come true," Jin says, and he wraps his fingers around Kame's wrist, just like he did the first time they met. Kame can feel the heat of his fingers against the cold sliver of exposed skin, and it's nice.

When Kame thinks back to that day, wrapped up in a quilt in Jin's bedroom watching TV while Jin lies next to him rolled up in another quilt, pressing his cold toes against Kame's ankle, drinking hot chocolate and laughing, laughing so much...Well, Kame wishes he could have stopped time right then.

Because somehow, later, he lost Jin, and he doesn't know why, but he does know that whenever it snows, he always rushes inside, because the snow makes him feel painfully lonely.

-

Kame drank over ten bottles of wine a week while he was filming Kami no Shizuku.

Kame hates wine, but for a while, he enjoyed tasting the different ones, and inhaling their bouquets. Unexpectedly, for that short period of time, the vino tasted sweet on his lips.

The bottle of wine Koki gives him two weeks after filming on the drama ends still sits unopened in his cabinet, behind two ancient bags of shrimp crackers and a container of protein shake mix.

-

"Do you still have the same cell phone number?" Jin asks him, and Kame looks up in surprise.

"No, I had to change it because it leaked," Kame replies, and Jin sighs with relief.

"Oh, okay," Jin says, and Kame lifts an eyebrow. "Don't look at me like that," Jin mumbles. "It makes me feel inexplicably guilty."

Kame laughs. "Inexplicably? Or did you do something you need to feel guilty about?" Kame asks, mostly teasing. He likes that he can tease Jin. It makes it seem like someday the bridge between them can be rebuilt.

Jin looks at him shiftily, and dodges the question. "What's your new number?"

Kame takes his phone and types it in. He saves it with an emoticon next to it.

Jin takes it from him and laughs. "It's the same one," Jin says, and locks the screen of the phone, slipping it back into his pocket. "The emoji, I mean. It's the same one you used when we were kids. I thought it was crazy when you first did it, because what teenage boy does that?"

Jin looks away, and out into the distance at something Kame can't see. "It's just me," Kame says, feeling uncomfortable.

"Yeah," Jin says. "It's just you." He says it with a big smile, and so Kame thinks being just himself is good enough today.

-

Though we are parted,
If on Mount Inaba's peak
I should hear the sound
Of the pine trees growing there,
I'll come back again to you.

-- Ariwara no Yukihira, 16

-

"Kamenashi, can you go get Akanishi?" the director asks, and Kame nods. "Thanks. Try and catch him before he changes clothes, I want to film him one more time doing that last scene. I don't like the camera angle."

Kame knocks on Jin's dressing room door, and hears a muffled response he assumes is permission to enter.

Jin is sitting on the counter, texting someone on his phone. He's still wearing his hakama, but his gi hangs open on his chest, revealing smooth, tanned skin that looks butter soft to Kame.

Kame shifts nervously, feeling the weight of the kimono heavily on his shoulders. He notices something on Jin's chest.

"What's this?" Kame says, and he forgets that he's not Honoko, and that Jin isn't Takamori, and he reaches out and runs his index finger along the small thin scar on Jin's left side. Jin's abdominal muscles tighten immediately, and Kame jerks his hand back quickly, remembering himself.

Jin's quivering a little, and his voice, when he answers, is shaking as well. "From Ronin," he says. "During training. A sword slip."

"Oh," Kame says, and then he clears his throat. "Director wants you."

Jin slides down off the counter and gathers his gi closed, fastening the inner laces and then tying the outer one. "He probably wants to re-film that last scene," Jin says, and it sounds like the icebreaker it is.

"From another angle," Kame replies, and Jin nods.

"Alright then," Jin says, as he slips out the door. "See you, Kame."

Kame looks down at his right hand, remembering the smooth feel of Jin's warm flesh beneath it.

The movie is getting to him, is all. He needs to be more careful to not be Honoko when he isn't filming, because the feelings of the character, as Kame sees them, are overlapping onto his own feelings, making it hard for him to judge his actions. Kame remembers when he filmed One Pound, how hard he found it to stop eating and eating and eating, and he doesn't want it to be like that, only with touching Jin.

It's just the movie. He can control it.

-

Kame recalls a day later in his time as a junior, when Johnny called him into his office and told him it was time to quit serious baseball.

Kame knows that it was bound to happen eventually, but it still hurts. Jin rages about it for hours, until Kame calmly tells him it's okay.

"But you love baseball!" Jin shouts. "It's like, the only thing you care about, and now he's taking that away, too."

"I'm an idol now, Jin. This is my job. I signed that contract, and I chose this life. He's not taking it away; I'm giving it up. I’ll still get to play at Johnny’s tournaments, and…"

"Choosing to be an idol doesn't mean forgetting you're a person, too." Jin sounds stubborn, and serious. "You're a person, first."

"No, I'm an idol before everything. This is my job," Kame says, and Jin doesn't surrender.

"Doesn't it kill you not to do anything you want? Don't you want anything for yourself anymore?"

"Not really," Kame says, and later that night Kame puts his favorite pitching glove in a box underneath his bed.

When Jin goes to Los Angeles, a while later, the only thing he tells Kame is that he's a person before he's an idol, and he can't just push his dreams into the bottom of his heart, or the bottom of a box, and lock them away like Kame can. It's probably the last real conversation they have, until the movie happens.

Kame thinks it's hard for something to kill you when you're already mostly dead inside, and doesn't think about baseball or Jin at all.

-

The year Jin leaves for Los Angeles, it rains so hard on Tanabata that there’s minor flooding in Yokohama, swamping the harbors and filling the streets.

Part Three