Satellite Hearts (Akame, R) [1/5]

[maayacolabackup]

Part One

“Interview with Kamenashi Kazuya, April 17, 2023,” the interviewer, Kita Hiroshi, says into the camera, and the cameraman nods. “Marking the footage,” he says to Kame conspiratorially, like Kame hasn’t done thousands of interviews before. Like Kame hasn’t been a celebrity since he was fresh out of primary school.

“Right,” Kame says with a straight face, because Kame hasn’t made it so far in show business by being rude to well-meaning people just trying to make him feel at ease. Kame’s an expert at this game. He leans back in the chair and spreads his legs a little, mimicking the stance of the man across from him. He’d read it in a girls’ magazine once, when he was a teenager- that some kinds of imitation made people feel more relaxed.

It was listed under flirting tips, but Kame’s found over the years that giving an interview is a lot like flirting; letting reporters tease the answers out of you with small smiles and positive signals, giving just enough information to wet the throat, not quench the thirst. That’s how everyone leaves happy at the end of it, reporters like cats whose tongues are slick with forbidden cream and Kame with the vestiges of his private life kept carefully concealed.

Kame is nothing if not the consummate professional.

Kita does immediately calm down when he looks at Kame, and Kame keeps the grin off of his face by replacing it with a placid quirk of the lips. “Would you like some water?” Kita asks, and Kame shakes his head in the negative. His hair tickles at his neck, and brushes along his jaw where the collar of his dress shirt catches it and keeps it from falling straight to his shoulders. He’s wearing it long now, like he hasn’t since 2011. It’s for a movie role, and he’d forgotten just how much work it is to keep it out of his face.

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Kame replies, wetting his lips with his tongue instead. The chair he’s in is comfortable. Kame almost wants to sink back into it and let the plush material mold to the shape of his curved back. But his suit will wrinkle if he does that. Kame would feel uncomfortable, then, and it would be… The suit is expensive, and the fabric is a sort of silk hybrid that’s monstrously expensive to get dry-cleaned. It’s worth it because it shows off his broad shoulders, and sometimes Kame wants to feel decadent and lush. Kame sometimes likes to wear expensive, tailored things that no one else will wear. It’s fun, and exciting, and it gives him an edge. He likes the image he’s created for himself.

“Well, first things first,” Kita says, and Kame immediately focuses his eyes on the other man, taking in the interviewer's earnest gaze. Kame likes him. Kame likes almost everyone, really, but he likes people with earnest faces the most. It’s hard to impress Kame with beautiful faces anymore, after years of working with Japan’s top actors and idols, but he still values someone who can look out at the world with no ulterior motives and a sense of optimism. Kame would like to think he was once like that, but he’s older now. Too much has shifted beneath him to expect the best—practicality serves him far better than optimism these days. “Congratulations on your new film. It’s doing very well at the box office.”

“Thank you,” Kame says, and a little prickle of satisfaction tingles in his chest. “I’m very proud of it. Everyone on the team worked very hard.”

“It shows,” Kita says. Kame’s fingers start to tap mindlessly on the arm of the chair. It’s hard to put himself back into the mindset he was in for that film—he’s on a new project now, one where he’s dyed his hair black and wears thick eyeliner and walks around with a split lip playing a has-been rocker picking fights in bars.

“Again, thank you,” Kame says, and there it is—he can remember now, the way the stuffy salary-man suit had felt, too tight around his neck, and that tie he’d never have chosen in a million years because it was so boring. “It’s a project very close to our hearts.” He’d liked the cast, and he’d liked the script.

“It must have been hard to play a character so ordinary,” Kita says, and Kita leans forward a little, like he’s trying to get closer to Kame. Kame smiles, and invites him. “When you’re so, well, extraordinary.”

“Not really,” Kame murmurs humbly. Kame doesn’t really think of himself as anything but normal. Sometimes he wonders how he got this lucky, to be recruited for a job he hadn’t known would be perfect for him at such a young age.

“So it’s been a long time since you’ve consented to an interview. What made you decide to now?” Kita takes a sip of his water, and then folds his hands together, like he’s ready to get down to business. Kame takes note. There are bound to be meatier questions, now that the pleasantries are done.

“Because I love KAT-TUN. This anniversary project, the fact that people want to remember us… Well, that’s really wonderful and amazing to me. I feel honored.” Kame runs a hand through his hair. It feels soft between his fingers. It’s comforting. And maybe Kame is a bit nervous, after all.

He’s given up the idol lifestyle, filled with countless interviews and variety show appearances. He’s enjoyed the solitude more than he thought he would. He’s enjoyed speaking his mind, and spending Christmas with his family, and going home at normal hours and sleeping all night.

He’s enjoyed not talking about things that make him feel like he’s bleeding inside.

“So it’s been two years since KAT-TUN decided to end their musical career,” Kita says, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes,” Kame says, straightening his back and meeting Kita’s gaze evenly. “I think we were all a little tired. It was a group decision. We didn’t make it lightly.”

It had been a long month of discussion. A long month of nostalgia fighting with common sense, and ambition battling reality.

“And you went on to focus on acting. It seems to suit you, Kamenashi.”

“Thank you. I sleep a lot more.”

“A lot more time in saunas?” Kita says, and he raises an eyebrow, and it startles a laugh out of Kame, the same way it always does when things he said years ago pop up to haunt him.

“Yes. And a lot more time with my family. My nieces and nephews.” Kame’s oldest niece goes to college now, has too many boyfriends, and carries a bubblegum pink mobile phone with thirty charms hanging from it. She wears skirts that are too short and is embarrassed to go out shopping with Kame because they always get recognized. She doesn’t play hula hoop or hide and seek with him anymore.

Still, sometimes she comes over unannounced with snacks from the convenience store and makes Kame watch rom-coms with her.

Kame wonders if it’s because she thinks he’s lonely.

Kame’s nephew likes baseball, at least, and Kame isn’t lonely, and even though he sometimes wishes he had his own family, it’s not in the cards right now. What he has is enough.

“You have a big family.”

“I do. We’re very close.” Kame smiles, and thinks of family picnics, and how sometimes Koki comes and crashes them, bringing obnoxious toys and shamelessly hitting on all of Kame’s sister-in-laws.

What he has is enough.

“I believe it,” Kita says. “Are you still close to your old band mates?”

“Absolutely,” Kame replies. “We spent half our lives together. We’re all attached to each other. It’s hard not seeing everyone’s face everyday.” It is hard. They’d stuck together through the worst of it. KAT-TUN had saved Kame when Kame was sure he couldn’t be saved. They’d started as strangers, but they’ve become brothers. Kame marvels at the ways of the world

“You’ve all known each other for more than twenty years, right?” Kita asks, and he’s leaning so close to Kame now that their knees brush. Kame lets himself relax back into his chair now, just a little. This is enough. Kita is his now, for all intents and purposes.

“More than that,” Kame says, and he thinks of first cigarettes and first girlfriends and first kisses and stilted handshakes and shared rooms, six boys smushed together in a room meant for two. He thinks of drastic haircuts, and the way they all laugh at Junno’s puns now. “More than that.”

Kita grins encouragingly, and looks dotingly at Kame. “So let’s talk about KAT-TUN.”

“Let’s.” Kame shifts in his seat, and then crosses his legs at the ankle. It feels weird. And maybe it’s just been too long since Kame did an interview, because he’s hot, and he wants to loosen his tie and take off his jacket. Kame prefers his famous jeans and fitted t-shirts. “I love KAT-TUN. I just want to be very clear that we didn’t end because of any problems. We ended because it was time to end. I’m the youngest, and I was starting to feel, well, old. Pop music is a landscape for the young, you know?”

“You’re still young yourself,” Kita says chidingly, and Kame smiles disarmingly at the man, who’s probably also around Kame’s age. “Don’t be so harsh.”

“We didn’t want to hang on until we faded out of relevance. We wanted to go out at our peak.” Kame would like a cigarette. He feels ancient, sometimes, even though his face doesn’t have any more lines than it did ten years ago. Even though he’s barely past his mid-thirties, and that’s far from old. But he’s starting to feel the years in his mind if not in his body, and maybe that makes all the difference.

“With a massive dome tour,” Kita says, and Kame nods.

“Right. We all made that decision together.”

“A strong group of five.”

“We are,” Kame says. “Good coworkers and good friends.” It is hot in the room, Kame realizes, as his button-down sticks to his back a little. The cameraman, when Kame glances quickly to his right, is sweating. He’s right under the lights, too, and Kame feels a bit sorry for him. The quilted texture of Kame’s chair is digging into Kame’s thighs through the thin material of his pants.

“Yes, the group seems very close-knit. That didn’t happen until later, though, am I correct?” Kita’s got that look in his eyes, and even if he’s nice, he’s a journalist for a reason. All journalists like the thrill of the chase. Kame’s a rabbit in Kita’s eyes, and Kita is closing in like a wolf on the things Kame doesn’t want to talk about.

“What do you mean?” Kame asks, even though he knows exactly to what Kita is referring. There’s a tightness that coils in Kame’s belly, a mixture of anger and despair.

“You weren’t known for your friendship in the early years of KAT-TUN.”

“No, I suppose we weren’t,” Kame says, and he’s got to remember even further back, then, to long, pregnant silences and hesitant looks and flinching withdrawals of offered comfort.

“ …It seems like an almost taboo topic at this point, but it’s been seven years now since Akanishi Jin’s decision to leave the spotlight,” Kita says, and the bottom drops out of Kame’s stomach. He tells himself not to stiffen, not to let his face freeze up. He tells himself he knew this would come. He tells himself he can talk about it now.

He tells himself all of these things, but it’s harder than it looks to listen.

“Has it?” Kame asks faintly, and his nails, trimmed short and square and lacquered black, catch on the chair, digging into the upholstery. Kita notices, eyes flitting uncertainly from Kame’s hands to Kame’s still pleasantly smiling face, and he leans back a bit.

“Yes,” Kita says, and he clears his throat. “Yes, it has.”

“I don’t want to talk about Akanishi,” Kame says, and his voice cracks on the name, and that’s stupid, because Kame’d practiced saying it smoothly in the mirror that morning; had clenched his fists and said Akanishi, Akanishi, Akanishi, to himself over and over again until it came out just like any other word.

Kita looks like he regrets asking, but he can’t really go back now. Kame’s avoided interviews because of this, and they both know it, and it would be like an elephant in the room even if Kita pulls back the question.

“You know why people are interested, though, right? A celebrity at the top of his career just…disappearing.” Kita takes a giant gulp of water then, and there’s an apology in his eyes. “Do you know where he is?”

Kame doesn’t.

“It’s been a long time since Akanishi Jin was a part of KAT-TUN,” Kame says, finally, just like he’s practiced. Like he’s been practicing for years, ever since that day in July when it became official. Ever since Jin had graduated and went on to pursue something so different Kame got whiplash. “KAT-TUN is more than ‘that band Akanishi left,’ no matter what his publicity team would have you believe.”

“You mean ‘would have had us believe’,” Kita says, and it burns. Kame’s surprised it burns. Kame’s had seven years to adjust and it stings like it’s been seven days. “He’s not really trying to make anyone believe anything, these days.”

It’s too hot in here. Kame’s button down is completely sticking to his back now, and he feels a bit of perspiration starting to build on his forehead. Kame wants that water now, because his throat is impossibly dry.

“I don’t want to talk about Akanishi,” Kame says, and damned if his voice doesn’t crack again. Kame slumps back in his seat. “Not everything has to be about Jin.” Kame knows his voice sounds sharp, too sharp, and he doesn’t know why. He’s answered questions about Jin before. Blunt and calm and without a flicker of doubt. Only now it’s been years since he’s had to, and maybe Kame’s losing his edge, after all. And it’s too hot, under the lights and under Kita’s inquisitive stare, and Kame doesn’t want to talk about Jin. Kame doesn’t want to talk about things that make him remember the things he’s buried.

Kame feels old.

The silence is deafening. Kame focuses on his own breathing. Kita is looking at him with an apology in his eyes. Kame looks back.

“Alright,” Kita says. “We can-“

“I need a cigarette,” Kame interrupts, and he stands up. His pants are wrinkled. Kame feels like he’s choking. He pulls his jacket off and drapes it over the arm of the chair, and that’s better, at least, as the air hits his back. “Let’s take a break, shall we?” It’s not really a question. Kita knows it.

“Right, of course,” Kita says, and Kame walks out of the room. The hallway is poorly lit and dark, and the air is cool without the glare of the lights. Kame leans back against the wall and pulls himself back together. His hands shake as he pulls out a cigarette. He lights up, and the smoke is warm in his lungs.

He doesn’t usually smoke in front of others. He doesn’t want his nieces and nephews to smoke. He doesn’t like smelling like smoke, either, or letting the scent of ash and tobacco sink into his expensive silks and knitwear and denim.

Kame leans against that wall for five minutes, letting the cool surface chill his back, and he thinks about postcards and eternity and about how he’s not lonely, and how he’s not sad, and it makes it easier.

“Sorry,” he says, after he washes his hands in the bathroom, pushes his hair out of his face, and walks back into the room. He smiles at Kita, slow and warm, and Kita, despite himself, starts to mellow out again. Kame likes this part. He likes that he’s so good at it. It’s something he can do that other people can’t. “Are you ready to continue?” Kame’s own brand of idol magic.

“Yes,” Kita says, and he squirms in his seat a little, and just like that, Kame’s won him back over. “So, one of your band-mates is getting married, right?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and he puts a little extra twinkle in his eyes, just for kicks.

*

Kame has always believed that love is like the sun. It burns too hot, it burns too bright. Love will turn you blind if you stare it directly for too long, even from hundreds of thousands of miles down below, lying on your back and looking up it awe from the green, green Earth.

But the sun is warm, too. The flicker of the sun’s rays in the winter can sink down to Kame’s bones when the chill is harsh. The sun will lovingly caress his face and leave it sun-kissed; golden and dewy in the summer heat. Kame likes the way his skin pulls and tugs across broad shoulders and thick arms in a Tokyo July, and he likes the way he can feel the sun’s strength directly, fluttering across dips and valleys and hidden places and leaving it’s mark in dark spots and freckles; a lingering touch.

The sun gives a lonely asteroid something to revolve around, Kame knows. A focus amidst the chaos of the universe; one that keeps fragments of the universe from spinning off its axis and into the black oblivion of space.

The sun burns away at his skin, and at his sanity, and peels away the layers Kame’s wrapped around everything he will never be able to forget, leaving him red and blistered and trembling. And Kame is a satellite, forever revolving around that sun. Close and far. Fast and slow. But forever circling.

It’s funny, Kame thinks, that no matter how many times he burns, he’s always dragged right back, trapped in love’s gravity and inexorably pulled toward that heat.

The sun is too bright. The sun is too beautiful.

And Kame is a satellite, forever revolving around it.

*

Kame gets a postcard from Vietnam on the fourth of March. On the front of the postcard it just says Can Tho and the photo is of around forty boats with thatched roofs floating across brown-green water, with the people inside the vessels dressed in bright colored clothing of turquoise and red and orange and teal. The image is vivid and festive. Kame wonders if this is a depiction of some festival or holiday. Kame doesn’t know anything about Vietnam.

It’s got nothing written on the back of it, except Kame’s address, in English, scrawled in a familiar loopy handwriting that Kame knows better than his own. Where one usually writes a message is nothing but a simple five-petal flower, drawn in black gel ink, and shaded on one side to look three-dimensional.

Kame exhales, and grabs the rest of his mail. He takes the stairs not the elevator. The rail is cold under his sliding hand. The paint peels underneath his palm, sticking to the lines of it. No one but Kame takes the stairs this high up, not when there’s a bellhop and fifteen floors and a hurried flow to every aspect of life in Tokyo. It’s slower to take the stairs. Kame likes the feeling that, when he reaches his front door, he’s worked for it.

Kame walks into his flat and slips off his shoes. He shuffles over to the large map on the wall of his living room. Nakamaru had given it to him two years ago, on his thirty-fifth birthday, for “keeping track,” and had looked at Kame with serious, no-nonsense eyes, and Kame had hung it up on the wall in his living room that same day, because sometimes he can’t bother to pretend. On the hall tiny table, the one that Kame uses to hold his formidable glasses collection, family photos, and the small knickknacks his mother put there years ago and insists he keep around for decoration, there’s a small bowl of pushpins. Kame selects a brown one. Brown like the boats in the photo, and brown like the people and the water, too. Sun-touched. His finger traces along the map, thick paper smooth against  the tip of it as he searches.

Vietnam is small and difficult for Kame to find, even though he knows, vaguely, where it is. When he locates it, he jams the brown pushpin deep into the wall. He steps back to admire his work, and nods to himself.

The card feels sturdy in his hands. Sometimes they come bent, or torn. Sometimes they come in perfect condition. Once, just once, Kame ripped one into pieces, and it had taken a half an hour to put it back together with clear Scotch tape and shaking wrists.

Sometimes they don’t come at all. Or maybe it’s that they aren’t sent. It’s not like a promise. Kame can’t expect them on regular intervals, or predict when he’ll open his mailbox and find one there, sitting innocently atop his electric bill and a new issue of Popeye that’s got someone on the front that backdanced for KAT-TUN or NEWS when he was twelve.

Sometimes Kame wishes they wouldn’t come. But that is… that’s kind of like wishing that gravity doesn’t hold him to earth, and that the press of two adolescent thighs in adjacent chairs, seeking reassurance under an unforgiving spotlight, meant less than it did. It’s like wishing he could rewrite the past, and Kame doesn’t want to do that, not really. Just like he doesn’t really want the postcards not to come.

There are just moments, brief and aching, when Kame feels like he’s earned a small measure of melancholy.

Kame’s got a shoebox under his bed that holds nothing but these postcards. When he pulls it from under the box-spring, pushing aside high thread count sheets and silk blankets to grasp the cardboard container, he counts fourteen of them already there. This is the fifteenth postcard.

Seven years is a long time to wonder. Seven years is a long time to hold your breath.

Kame exhales again, but it’s a waste of time, because the air is still trapped in his lungs.


*


“Hey,” Kame says into the receiver, and Uchi is chirpy on the other end of the line. “Just got out.”

“What took so long, Kame? Out of practice with the whole ‘interview’ thing?”

“I may or may not have had a minor freak out during the interview,” Kame says, and Uchi’s laugh is rich and warm. “But I somehow managed to pull it together in the end.”

“Somehow,” Uchi says sarcastically. “Even after all these years, Kamenashi Kazuya is still the expert. Did he ask you out after the interview?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kame says, and the tightness in his chest starts to unravel at Uchi’s gentle teasing. “I just put people at ease, is all. All part of the job.”

“You flirt shamelessly with your eyes,” Uchi tells him, and Kame’s fingers toy with the strap to his leather bag. “You didn’t used to be so smooth.” Kame holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder, and uses his other hand to root around for his car keys. He finds them easily in the zippered pocket where he always leaves them. Kame likes things organized, because it makes his life easier. “Are we still on for lunch?”

“I’m starving,” Kame says. “I half-expected this interview to turn into some strange attempt by management to feed me, but I forgot it was a big-kid interview and not a variety show. Maybe it has been too long since I’ve done this.”

“Aww, Kame, thirty-seven and finally feeling all grown up?”

“Someone doesn’t want me to buy him lunch. Talking about my age of all things.”

Kame presses the power-lock button and opens the door, slumping into his seat as Uchi keeps laughing. “Kame, I always want you to buy me lunch. How long to do you need me to wait before I pick you up?”

“Can you give me an hour?” Kame asks. “I need to shower and change.” Kame’s pulling off his tie now, and when the knot comes undone he throws it with his bag and his jacket in the passenger seat. He winces at the giant crease along the back of the jacket, but it can’t be helped now. He sighs, and after Uchi agrees, he hangs up. He drives home, at exactly the speed limit, signaling well before he plans to turn.

Kame tries to follow all these types of rules.

But once inside his own flat, he’s allowed to let himself breathe, a little. He leaves his clothes on the floor, letting them make a trail to the shower. His expensive slacks are in a crumpled heap with his underwear at the door to the bathroom, and Kame can’t bring himself to care.

In the shower, Kame leans his head against the ceramic tile of the wall. It’s cool against his forehead, even if the water is so hot it’s boiling.

Thinking about the interview leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Kame’s got a map in his living room and a box under his bed, and little reminders everywhere he goes, and work is supposed to be safe. Kame doesn’t give interviews anymore to ensure that.

But all of the guys had agreed, together, to each meet with Kita. Fuji television is doing some holiday special about KAT-TUN, one of the top selling Japanese boy groups of all time; something to fill airtime during the vacation, Kame is sure, and it had seemed weird to be the only one who turned it down, especially since it’s not like he’s retired from the spotlight, really.

Kame’s just tired. The water feels nice on his back. Kame’s got a super-expensive showerhead he thinks is worth its weight in gold, and it’s massaging out the kinks in his muscles and distracting Kame’s thoughts; the ones that, thanks to one little interview, linger on a softly curled lip and a shared cigarette, and a hat pulled low over chocolate eyes.

Kame feels like himself again, after he’s dressed in a pair of worn-in jeans and an overpriced t-shirt. His hair is wet, so he’ll try to remember to jam a hat over his head, and find a big pair of glasses to cover his face.

Uchi’s punctual, knocking delicately on Kame’s door like he’s afraid he’ll pound the door down, and Kame laughs to himself as he undoes the locks. He opens the door to Uchi’s grinning face, half-obscured by sparkly sunglasses with little pink heart-shaped rhinestones along the temples.

“I have a doorbell,” Kame says, and Uchi’s face takes on a sheepish expression.

“I always forget.”

“Don’t most people have doorbells?” Kame asks, as he reaches over to his shoe rack and pulls out a pair of worn black combat boots. One of the laces is frayed, and he should probably pick up a new set of them before one snaps.

“Ryo-chan doesn’t,” Uchi says, and hooks his thumbs on his pockets. “He tore it out of the wall and said that the only people he wants coming to his place are the people who know where the spare key is already.” Uchi scratches at his stomach. “Everyone else is selling something or a stalker, apparently.”

“It must take so much effort to feign being that grumpy,” Kame says, and he double checks the knots before he stands up and reaches for his hat. It fits snugly over his ears, and he follows it up with his sunglasses.

“You look like Madonna in the eighties,” Uchi says, and Kame shoves at him, lightly, no real force in his arms. Kame might not play baseball every day anymore, but hours with his oldest nephew at the batting cages on the weekends keep his arms strong. “Or just…the nineteen-eighties. Personified.”

“We all do what we must to stay incognito,” Kame replies, and Uchi snorts. “Incognito and vintage.”

“Yes, nothing screams incognito like a Yohji Yamamoto runway sweater and a massive skull ring on your thumb,” Uchi retorts, and Kame just lifts one perfectly manicured brow, eyes critically examining Uchi’s bedazzled eyewear, and Uchi shrugs. “Never said that I was going for incognito. I don’t really have to.”

Uchi drives. Uchi always drives, because he thinks Kame drives like someone’s grandmother, and Kame takes the opportunity to close his eyes. “How are things going for Nakamaru’s wedding?”

“Hmmm?” Kame asks, and he blinks his eyes slowly, looking over at Uchi, who has a mildly worried frown on his face.

“Aren’t you helping with Nakamaru’s wedding? You mentioned it in your email last week.”

“Right, yeah,” Kame says. “We’re figuring out the invitations next week? Possibly. Nakamaru doesn’t even know. Meisa probably isn’t letting him do anything. It’s like a KAT-TUN reunion, what with the documentary and the wedding. It’s strange.”

“Are you happy?” Uchi says.

“It’s nice,” Kame answers, and he leans his head against the window, watching the scenery fly by. “We haven’t done a real project together in a couple of years.”

“Awww, I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy,” Uchi says. “When did you guys become a big bunch of saps?”

“We’re all getting old and nostalgic,” Kame jokes, and Uchi snorts again.

“Now who’s talking about your age?”

“Nakamaru is finally getting married,” Kame says, and he looks at his nails. The black polish is chipped, but it’s supposed to be. Kame’s filming in the morning, so he doesn’t even bother to take it off. “That’s the last of us.”

“That still leaves you, Kame,” Uchi says, and Kame pulls at his seatbelt, because it’s digging uncomfortably into his shoulder. “Don’t forget you haven’t settled down. When are you going to find a nice woman in her late fifties to dote on you and share your taste in ladies' handbags?”

“I’m not looking,” Kame says with a laugh, and Uchi’s hands tap distractedly along the wheel. “So I don’t count. Not everyone has to follow a traditional route to happiness.” Kame wraps a piece of his hair around his index finger. “Also, a woman in her late fifties?”

“You always did like them older,” Uchi says. “Ahhh, I miss the days when you had scandals.”

“One scandal,” Kame says. “One. Cut me some slack, Hiroki.” Kame leans his head back against the leather and cuts his eyes at Uchi. “And if you bring up that cab driver incident I swear I’ll—“

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Uchi says, but the twitch of his lips betrays the lie, and Kame isn’t even fazed by it anymore. It’s just another well-trodden joke he’s gotten used to over the years. “After all, that wasn’t a romantic scandal.” Uchi feigns shock. “Or was it? Did that cabbie see something he shouldn’t have? Maybe you and a stately gentleman in his sixties, making eyes at each other on the sidewalk—“

“Shut up,” Kame says, now laughing aloud. “You have to have romance in your life to have romantic scandals.”

“Right,” Uchi says, and Kame can almost see the tension shift through the car. Uchi’s mouth sinks into a frown, and they’ve traveled this ground before, Kame thinks. They’ve traveled it before, and Kame’s still raw from the interview- he doesn’t particularly want to travel it again. “Hey Kame, don’t you think…” He half-turns in his seat, like he needs to look at Kame to say what he wants to say. Kame’s just thankful they’re at a stoplight.

“No,” Kame says, and Uchi sighs, settling back into his seat and staring out over the dash. The atmosphere in the car is suddenly unbearably heavy. It’s weird, Kame thinks, how even with his closest friends, there are so many things that remain taboo. It’s not that Kame doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s just that he can’t. He’s been trying for a long time and he still hasn’t wrapped his head around it.

“Is it-“

“Hiro,” Kame says, and Uchi presses his lips together and quiets. It’s only awkward for a moment, and then Uchi’s pointing at a fashion atrocity out the driver’s side window and they’re both debating the pros and cons of legwarmers over jeans in only moderately cold spring weather, and Kame’s muscles relax one by one until it’s like no one ever mentioned anything out of the ordinary.

Uchi parks, and it’s a little way's walk to one of Kame’s favorite restaurants, this posh French restaurant where they serve sandwiches with ingredients Kame can’t even pronounce. But the taste can’t be beat—Kame loves the way the mustard is slightly sweet and the way no one blinks when he demands that there be absolutely no tomatoes.

“So,” Uchi says, after they’ve placed their orders. “You never really answered me. How did that interview go?”

Kame scratches at his wrist, nails catching on the silver bracelets that clink together, and Kame wonders if everything today will just keep circling back to this.

He wonders if today’s just one of those days where he has to rip the band-aid off. Problem is, when Kame does that, the wound stings for days, not seconds, and Kame’s not too fond of going to bed cloaked in memories and waking up drowning in melancholy.

“They asked about Jin,” Kame says, after he takes a sip of his water, and Uchi pauses, sandwich halfway to his lips. “I should have been expecting it. I was expecting it. But it still…”

“A minor freak out,” Uchi says, and Kame nods.

“Don’t know why I’m not numb to it yet,” Kame says bitterly. “It’s not like he’s ever going to, you know, come back.” To me.

“Kame, there’s still a chance…”

“No there isn’t,” Kame says. “Not really. There’s no reason for him to ever…”

“Yes there is,” Uchi replies, and catches Kame’s gaze. Uchi looks serious, eyebrows drawn together and fluffy hair falling into calm and intent eyes. “You, of all people, know that there’s a chance, Kame.”

“Because of some postcards?” Kame laughs, and it’s an empty sound. Kame’s a better actor than this.

“No,” Uchi says. “Because of the freaky not-friends-best-friends thing that you guys had going on that I still don’t understand.” Uchi coughs. “I mean, Akanishi always said more to you.”

“Said? Not so sure about that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Kame says, and he languidly reaches for a fry, nibbling on it thoughtfully. “But one or two pictures a year is…”

“Did something happen…” Uchi starts to ask, but then he seems to think better of it, and stuffs the last bit of his sandwich into his mouth. “Pretend I didn’t ask,” he says around the bite.

“No,” Kame says. “No, nothing.” It’s almost true. Kame’s not the pining wife of a sailor lost at sea. Kame is more like a sailor with a wounded knee—he’s fine most days, but the joint aches when it’s going to rain, and sometimes it’s hard for him to walk.

It’s just enough to remind Kame, in the winter, of warm fingers along his jaw, of the spill of hot ash-scented breath along his cheek as the wet snow’s chill seeped in through his boots and froze his toes.

When that happens, Kame finds it hard to even stand, let alone walk.

So maybe there was something. Kame’s not sure. Kame’s always been good at understanding where he stands with everyone except Jin. And even after twenty years, sometimes he thinks he’s further from figuring it out than ever.

“Oh,” Uchi says, and then he picks up his water glass and chugs.



*



Jin, Kame can see from the very beginning, loves to sing and dance. There’s a fire inside of him that burns a little fiercer when the music starts; he lights up brighter than the baseball diamond on the nights when Kame’s favorite team has to play an extra inning. Jin has a passion for what they do that drives him forward in ways that Kame doesn’t really understand, muscles clenched in effort and singing even when his voice has long gone raw.

Kame is different. Kame loves to entertain. Singing and dancing, for Kame, is a means to an end—he loves the roar of the crowd, the way they yell his name in shrill voices when he rolls his hips in a way that’s barely acceptable outside the bedroom, licking an adventurous tongue over chapped lips. Kame likes making other people happy, likes that a wink from him can make some teenage girl’s day, likes that he’s got all this influence. He likes that he’s good at it, too. Good at it like he was good at baseball. Kame didn’t want to be an idol at first; he was never a good-looking child, and he’s a little better than mediocre singer, and dancing is more fun when he can break the choreography and just move to the beat. It’s more about other people’s reactions than about what he actually does to get it.

But Jin loves the act. He loves the sheen of sweat, the beauty of a perfect muscle isolation, the echo of his own pure voice ringing loud and clear across a spellbound audience. Jin likes making up melodies in his head, and figuring out the song lyrics and singing them under his breath, long after the rest of the world has gone to sleep. Kame can see the unadulterated joy in Jin’s eyes when he has a rapt audience, eyes closed, just enjoying the soaring verses of something he’s made all alone. Jin wants to share his art, not himself.

Years later, over a lonely cup of espresso with no sugar added, Kame wonders if that makes all the difference. Kame wonders if it explains why Kame became a perfect idol, and Jin started showing all these cracks; fissures so large that Jin started fracturing into pieces.

Maybe it’s why that fire grew so dim.


*

“Hey, hello? Kame, are you here?” Sakamoto asks, and Kame, who is running his fingers aimlessly across the stitches on his glove, jerks out of his thoughts.

“What?” Kame asks, looking up sharply, eyes focusing in on the other man.

“You look like you’re lost somewhere else, right now. Not get enough sleep last night?” He winks. “If you want to hang out next week instead, that-“

“No, no,” Kame says. “Sorry. I do that sometimes. You know, thinking about my exciting sex life.”

Sakamoto laughs, loudly, at the sarcasm in Kame’s tone. “Oh yes, Kamenashi. The newspapers never stop going on about your sexual exploits, do they?”

“No, never,” Kame says. “Must be all my thrilling nights at the Lex or out soliciting prostitutes.”

Sakamoto grins at Kame’s playful smile. “You should fall in love,” Sakamoto says. “It would suit you.”

“So does acting, and hanging out with my friends,” Kame says. “And hanging out with you, too, I guess.”

“Fine, fine, avoid if it you want,” Sakamoto says. “But think about it.”

“I’ve dated,” Kame says, and remembers the way Anne was taller than him, and how her hand had still felt so small in his own.

“Dating is not falling in love. Especially if you don’t really give the person you’re dating a fair shot.”

“You don’t just choose to fall in love,” Kame says, tossing the ball up and down in the glove. “It’s not that simple.”

“You can let yourself, though,” Sakamoto says, and holds his hand up, because he wants Kame to pass him the ball. Kame complies. “Play ball.”


*


They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:—
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

--When We Two Parted, Robert Browning


*


Making a drama together is more fun than it has any right to be. Jin’s hair is too long, and he’s got one blonde piece in it that Kame thinks is hilarious, and he can’t keep his hands off of it, constantly tugging at it. Jin doesn’t mind. Jin likes to be touched, at least by Kame, and Jin’s got a smile he saves for just the moment when it’ll take Kame’s breath away.

Kame wonders if Jin just knows, or if maybe that moment doesn’t really exist, and Jin’s smile creates it; Maybe Kame’s breath will always stop in his chest at Jin’s smile.

“We need Hayato on set, Akanishi!” the director calls, and Jin disappears, disentangling himself from Kame. Kame is sure neither of them know how they’d gotten tangled in the first place. “Koike, you too!”

“Right!” Teppei calls, and he bounds over to Jin and shoves him, and Jin laughs, and the sound, clear and loud and joyous, makes it hard for Kame to turn away from him.

“You guys are really close, huh?” Nakama says, and her arms are crossed, her famous Yankumi track suit looking almost out place with Kame’s school uniform.

“Yeah,” Kame says. “Jin’s my best friend.”

“That’s nice,” Nakama says, and there’s a weird glint in her eyes. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“What are you talking about?” Kame asks, and Nakama looks surprised, and then chagrined. She ruffles Kame’s hair.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing, Kame knows, but Kame can play obtuse. It’s definitely not nothing. It’s those sly whispers from senpai, or the way the girls scream their name together at shows like it’s one name. It’s the way a photo of Kame clinging to Jin’s hand looks up at him from a sold out magazine. It’s the way people write faggots on message boards and Kame prays that Jin won’t see it.

It’s something, and it makes nervousness churn in Kame’s gut, and he can ignore it and ignore it, but Kame knows one day, he’ll be too old to do that.

But then Jin screams at him, “Kame!” and it’s squeaky and high-pitched, and Kame just wets his lips and goes over to join him, toying with a silver band on his smallest finger and wondering if it’s going to rust.

Maybe this is love.



*



The first postcard comes on January third, 2016. It’s just got Kame’s address printed in sloppy kanji and hiragana. It makes Kame’s heart freeze in his chest. His hands pull it out of the mailbox. His fingers are shaking as he flips it in his palm.

It’s the Great Wall. China, it says along the bottom, in cursive English script. It takes Kame a minute to sound it out. He’s not used to speaking any English that’s not in one of KAT-TUN’s songs, and he hasn’t sung those in a while either.

Wish you were here, is written in hesitant looking Japanese in the message box, and Kame has to make himself breathe. He quickly grabs the rest of his mail and doesn’t let himself look again until late at night, after he’s tucked himself into bed and turned out all the lights.

He walks in the dark to the kitchen, where the mail remains stacked on the counter, and turns on a single fluorescent light, lighting the tiny corner of the kitchen a dull orange. The postcard is still there. Kame’s been thinking, all day, that he’s imagined it, but it’s real, cardstock thick between his trembling fingers. He drags his fingers along Jin’s characters, trying to imagine Jin writing them. The ink is thick, like maybe Jin’s hands were shaking when he wrote it, and Kame licks his lips.

China.

It’s the first clue in months; the only clue since Jin had disappeared without a word to anyone, only a note left in his parents' mailbox that he was done and that he loved them, and his missing name from the Johnny’s web artist page.

Kame likes the picture. He likes the fading red and purple of the sunset, and the way the wall seems to go on forever into the distance. He bets Jin likes it. He can imagine Jin sitting there with a receipt from a laundromat or something, scribbling cheesy lyrics down on the back of it.

Kame holds the postcard up to his cheek, and it’s like he can feel Jin’s warmth, like maybe a little of Jin has sunk into the paper and traveled here to Kame through the postal service.

Kame wonders if Jin is happy now. Kame wonders if Jin’s found some kind of peace.


*


“Uncle Kazu, seriously?” Kota asks, and he’s only ten but Kame can see the beginnings of the Kamenashi stubborn streak in him already. “You need to be more careful!”

Kota’s dressed in casual clothes, having ditched his school uniform at his house, and he’s got a Tokyo Giants cap sitting on his head; one Kame’d given him months and months ago, and Koji had told Kame that Kota wore it to bed most nights. Saitoh had given it to him on a lark, saying he’d thought one of the many Kamenashi nephews might like it, and Kame’d immediately thought of Kota, the youngest boy in the family.

“What do you mean?” Kame adjusts Kota’s grip on the bat. “Hold it like this,” he instructs.

“Your picture in the gossip newspaper again,” Kota says, disgruntled, even as he leans happily back against Kame’s chest, as Kame’s arms wrap around him, adjusting his form. “It’s bad enough the kids tease me at school because their moms are all in love with you.”

Kota’s got this way of scrunching his brow that reminds Kame of Nakamaru, and it’s weird to see such a Maru expression on a Kamenashi face.

“I didn’t mean to get caught,” Kame says with a laugh. “I was just having lunch with a friend.” He and Uchi’d never noticed the sly photographer, but Kame still thinks it’s because Uchi was wearing those rhinestone studded sunglasses.

“A boyfriend?” Kota asks, and Kame almost drops his arms. “It was a guy, right?”

“What?” Kame asks, and then he draws in a shaky breath. “No, Kota. Just a friend.”

“Don’t you want to get married?” Kota’s trousers, Kame notices, have a hole in the knee. Just a tiny one. He wonders if Kota’s mom has noticed yet. He’ll mention it when he walks Kota home from the batting range. “To a boy or a girl? My dad is worried about you.”

“Is he?” Kame asks, and then Kame runs a hand through his hair and pushes Kota’s cap down further on his head. “He doesn’t need to be.” Kame smiles, and Kota grins back. He’s missing a tooth, and Kame remembers the way it feels, to run your tongue over a gap. “Neither do you, kiddo. I’m happy. I’ve got an awesome family and an awesome job.”

“I know you’re happy,” Kota says. “It’s just you’ve got that map. And sometimes I wonder if you could be happier? Are those places you’ve visited?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Kame says, and pulls back from Kota, walking over to the coin machine. He rattles around in his pocket for hundred-yen coins, and when he finds a few, he pulls them out. “Ready to swing?” Kota nods, and Kame feeds the coins into the machine. He presses the start button.

Kota hits the first ball, and shouts with joy, and Kame thinks today, the sunlight is warm enough.


*


Maybe Kame is on Earth. He likes to think he is, most days, going through every day with a smile that he genuinely means at least eighty percent of the time. He keeps his feet planted there, and tries not to float off into space.

The sun is one-hundred and forty-nine point six million kilometers from the sun. Sometimes Kame feels secure that that distance is far enough away that he’s safe, and that it’s okay that nothing’s worked out the way it should have. The rest of the time, well… It only takes light about eight minutes to travel across all that distance to shine down on them all, so maybe it isn’t as far as one would think.

And it only takes about a minute, the other days, for Kame to feel all the memories rush back after he hears Jin’s name. That’s how he knows he’s not on Earth.

On those days, Kame knows he is a satellite, orbiting the sun.



*


“I can’t do this anymore,” Jin says, arms behind his head as he stares up at the unremarkable ceiling. Kame is sitting across the room, legs crossed at the ankle, just watching.

Jin’s t-shirt rides up his stomach, revealing soft belly where there used to be nothing but the slim beginnings of muscles and a silver navel ring. His voice is casual, like he’s talking about the weather, or maybe the results of a soccer match where he has no personal investment in either team.

“Do what?” Kame asks, his voice hoarse. He and Yamashita have been constantly promoting Nobuta wo Produce, and Kame feels run ragged; like he’s nothing but tatters now, bones in his wrist sharp and prominent, especially under the harsh lights in this mirrored room. He can see his veins.

“This,” Jin says, with a fierce exhale. “Just…this.” Jin doesn’t turn to look at Kame, just sucks his lower lip into his mouth. He’s not wearing socks, and his toes flex back toward him. Jin looks like something between man and boy, with his worn-out sweatpants that are two sizes too large pooling on either side of him. He looks so young, but something in the set of his mouth looks far too old. There’s something in his eyes too. Kame doesn’t understand it, not really. Jin’s been fading away from him, from everyone, slowly but surely for a while now, and Kame doesn’t quite get why.

Jin used to smile rich and bright, but now, more often than not, he’s pulled inside himself so deep that Kame doesn’t have any idea what he’s thinking, or feeling. He doesn’t have any idea what Jin wants.

“The floor is dirty,” Kame says, because words don’t come easy, with Jin. “And your shirt is white.”

“So?” Jin says, and he rolls onto his stomach, resting his head on folded arms and facing Kame. There’s dirt across his back, just like Kame had known there would be, and Jin’s hair is matted, tangled from lying on it wet. “Who cares?”

“You care,” Kame says, because Jin’s the kind of guy who does his own hair and scratches at his scalp with a single finger so he doesn’t mess up the sculpture of it. Jin’s the kind of guy that always checks the clasps on his necklaces to make sure they’re in the back. “You’ve always cared.”

“Not right now,” Jin says. “I don’t care at all right now. Someone could take my picture just like this, and I don’t care.”

“You’re an idol,” Kame says, and he can hear it in his voice; the subtle, curling disapproval that snakes its way around his words of late, when he talks to Jin. Kame doesn’t mean to sound like that, but he’s frustrated. KAT-TUN is so close he can taste it. This, Nobuta, is the last hurdle, he knows it is. After this. After this, they’ll get their chance. The way that Jin is slowly withdrawing… it’s not the time for that. Kame thinks that maybe Jin’s detachment makes him so angry because he can’t fix it.

Jin can hear it too; all the feelings that Kame can’t hold in. “I don’t know if I want to be,” Jin whispers, and his voice is muffled because his mouth is pressed to the flesh of his arm, but Kame makes out every word. Jin’s eyes are looking at him, looking into him, and Kame feels like crumbling. “An idol, I mean.”

“Oh,” Kame says, and his palms feel sweaty, and Kame’s hungry, and tired, and there’s nothing... Kame thinks about Nobuta, about backhanded compliments and implied promises, about KAT-TUN finally debuting. Kame thinks about watching himself waste away into nothing just so they can all become something. Together.

Kame closes his eyes, and it's like there’s no air in the room, because his lungs feel tight, and there’s no consolation to be found in taking deeper breaths.

“Kame,” Jin says, and Kame forces himself to look at Jin, whose eyes now regard the tiled floor like it holds the answer to whatever it is that Jin can’t find. “All I want is to sing. I can’t be perfect all the time. I’m not you,” and Jin’s always had this way of making his words sound like a caress, even if the words themselves are often actually far more like daggers. “I’m tired, Kame. Of this.”

“A little early to be getting tired,” Kame says. “You used to have a lot more optimism than this.”

“I used to be a lot of things,” Jin says. “I’m not quite sure who I am now.”

“You’re Jin,” Kame says, and his ring digs into his palm as he clenches his hands. His hair is too long in the back. It’s irritating him as it brushes along the collar of his shirt, a plaid thing that had been the closest in reach when he’d stumbled out of bed this morning, skin sticky with sleep and eyes still heavy. “You’ll always be Jin.”

“I know,” Jin says, and his words are hollow. “I still know what I want. But it’s almost funny. “ Jin sighs, and a dark strand of hair blows to the side. “Because it feels like everyone is trying to tell me to be something else. Something I don’t know if I can be.” The whimsical curve of that lock draws Kame’s attention. “I’m lost in the dark.”

Kame wants to crawl toward Jin, sit next to him on the dirty floor and feel Jin’s heavy, lazy limbs curl up around him, to feel the beat of Jin’s heart against Kame’s own protruding ribs, and to cling to the last vestiges of a Jin that had picked him up and dusted him off all those years ago. A Jin that had held Kame together.

Jin can’t even hold himself together now, and Kame’s too practical to live in yesterdays.

“You should figure it out soon,” Kame says, and his teeth feel fuzzy. He wonders if he’d forgotten to brush them this morning in the rush. “You’re running out of time.”

Jin laughs, and it’s a sharp and bitter sound. “I know,” Jin says. “I know that already.” Jin’s gaze flickers over, and catches Kame’s, stripping Kame bare with the hollowness in his eyes that contrasts with the wide, forced smile on his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”

“Don’t leave me,” Kame says in a rush, and he hates himself for letting that wobble into his voice, for showing the strain of a hundred sleepless nights and a thousand words unsaid.

It’s Jin who comes to Kame, pulling himself up from the floor and collapsing next to Kame in a soft languid heap, breath scented of mint hissing warm across Kame’s jaw. It’s Jin who bridges the three meters that sometimes feel like kilometers to tangle his fingers with Kame’s, and to press his bare feet to Kame’s calf that makes Kame feel both wide awake and like he could slip into slumber at any moment, wrapped up in Jin’s unusual embrace, dirty t-shirt pressed to Kame’s clean skin.

Kizuna, Kame thinks. This, this, is what that word means. That word stands for everything between them, even now. It stands for Jin’s palm flush against his own, and a moment where they both pretend everything is okay, and that nothing’s changed, and draw comfort from each other that’s more powerful than Kame’s perfectionism and Jin’s slow fade into silence.

“You’re strong,” Jin says. “Stronger than me.”

“Am I strong enough to pull you back?” Kame asks, and he’s not sure what he’s asking: strong enough to pull Jin back to Kame, or strong enough to pull Jin back to Jin.

“I hope so,” Jin says, and he says it into the skin of Kame’s neck, like a prayer. “Otherwise I’m not sure where I’ll end up.”

Two