Chapter Text
"Psst...!" Nino peered through the doorway and whispered loudly.
Aiba turned to the direction of the voice and looked at Nino, surprised but happy.
"Nino!" He called. "What's up?"
"Did you get it?" Nino asked without further ado.
"Oh, yeah..." Aiba swayed uncomfortably in his seat and took out an old rusty key from his pocket.
Nino reached out to take the key but Aiba continued to hold it apprehensively.
"Are you sure about that?" He asked.
"Of course I'm sure," Nino said impatiently." I'm just going to look for a video game that was abandoned in the middle of development, what could go wrong?"
"But maybe there's a reason it was abandoned," Aiba continued stubbornly. "And besides, they say there are... ghosts there." He added in a frightened whisper.
"Huh! I knew that was what scared you," Nino said, snatching the key from Aiba.
"But what if Johnny's ghost is wandering there?" Aiba added anxiously.
"Then I’ll send him your regards. I'm just going to look for an old game and get out; no ghost will catch me," Nino said slightly arrogantly.
"Are you sure it's safe?" Aiba asked again apprehensively.
Nino was about to answer him, when a staff entered the room to call Aiba to his show’s filming.
"I'm coming!" Aiba answered him and turned to Nino again. "Why don’t you call Ohno to go with you?"
"He's on vacation, who knows where he's hanging out. I'm going now, I'm starting to get tired of playing only Puzzle and Dragons all the time. I need a new game ASAP."
The staff came again, hurrying Aiba, and Aiba followed him, making a face to Nino.
"Fine, but be careful!"
"Yes, mom," Nino rolled his eyes.
Nino snuck through the corridors of the Johnny’s jimusho building, quietly opening the door at the end of the hall with the key he got from Aiba, and switched the lights on. He looked around at the messy and dusty storage room. There were a variety of overly glittery outfits worn by several generations of Johnny’s, some hanging on hangers, some crammed into plastic boxes, and some tossed in a mess on the floor. There were all sorts of objects that were probably discarded as possible merch, and a lot of CDs and videotapes that no one would ever know what they contain.
Nino walked over to the shelves, careful not to step on costumes on his way, and surveyed the piles of CDs that lay in front of him. He heard a rumor quite some time ago that Johnny’s had been secretly working on developing a video game, but eventually the project was abandoned in the middle and the game was never released. It was rumored that this game was some kind of a spin-off game for another game Johnny’s started developing about a decade ago, called "Pirate Islands", which was also abandoned in the middle of development stages somewhere in the past. He did not understand the idea of making a spin-off game for a game they had never bothered to release officially, but he had long since learned that there was no point in questioning his agency's bizarre decisions.
He didn’t know exactly what the game he was looking for looked like, but he was pretty sure they hadn’t started developing it more than five years ago, so the dusty CDs that looked at least 15 years old didn’t look like particularly promising candidates. Unable to find anything that looked like a video game on the shelves, he looked around, moving piles of old merch, posters of 12-year-old Macchi, pictures and costumes from side to side indiscriminately. The room was so messy, and in some places someone seemed to wipe the dust off a bit, so it looked like someone had visited there relatively recently. It was probably their staff looking for old Arashi footages before they went on hiatus.
He climbed on a stool that was standing there and moved to search the higher shelves. He randomly threw away some clothes and papers that were scattered there, covering the discs and video tapes that were stored there, and looked for something that did not look like it was at least 30 years old.
"Found it!" He announced to the dust around him excitedly.
Beneath a sparkling red cloth that was probably once part of some outfit, he found a disc which seemed rather new. It looked like someone hurriedly pushed it to that shelf in order to hide it. On the cover of the disc, it was written in large pink letters "Kanzai Islands 2" on the background of a blue sea and rainbow coloured islands.
He got off the stool and walked over to the desk, on which stood an old-fashioned large computer screen, an even older video recorder, and another pile of CDs and strange objects, including a strange yellow scanner that looked almost like a weapon. He turned the computer on and while waiting for the computer to load he examined the CD in his hand. A yellow sticky note was stuck on the back of the cover of the disc with unreadable scribble on it that Nino recognized as Johnny's handwriting. He couldn’t read most of it. Something with "Yu"? Or maybe it's "YOU”? He was able to more or less recognize the kanji of "wish" as well, but with Johnny's handwriting you can never know. He allowed himself to enjoy the warm moment of nostalgia and then tossed the note into the nearest bin.
He inserted the CD and started the game. He felt excitement running through his fingers from the thought of a new game. He was about to say something about it to Aiba, when he remembered that Aiba had gone to filming and wasn’t there with him. He was so used to Arashi always being together that it still felt strange that they were all doing things individually now. As if on perfect timing, his phone beeped as he got a new message. He clicked on it and read:
"I asked Sho to go be with you. He's on his way. - Aiba"
Nino rolled his eyes and put the phone back in his pocket.
The graphics of the game were stunning, though a little too colorful, as expected from Johnny’s. He was impatient and skipped the whole prologue video so he only vaguely understood that there was a pair of warriors who had to go on a journey in order to find the "Golden idol" or whatever.
There were two possible characters to choose from, with the unselected character being played by the computer - a pair of warriors named "Kanzai Boya".
One character was Koichi, dressed in white and gold warrior clothes, holding a long, sharp sword in his hand. The second character was Tsuyoshi, dressed in oversized sparkling purple clothes and holding a guitar in his hand. Nino hesitated between the two. He found it amusing to choose Tsuyoshi and fight with a guitar, though Koichi's sword looked much more promising.
At that moment he noticed a small flashing red alert in the corner of the screen: "Virtual reality headset not connected!”.
Nino searched around and found the headset in question connected by a cable to a strange pink device that was lying next to the yellow scanner. It looked like a combination between a game console remote and a scanner. He pressed the button that activates the device, and the alert on screen disappeared. He put on the virtual reality headset, grabbed the remote and looked at the screen again. It was as if KinKi Kids were standing right next to him. The graphics of the beach behind them looked so real he could almost smell the salty scent of the waves. He pushed some buttons randomly and the following message appeared on the screen: "Activate virtual reality?"
Nino pushed the OK button on the pink device, and at the same moment he had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Before he realized what was happening, the pink scanner opened and a beam was fired right at him. He felt weightless and the world spun around him in colours.
Seconds later, Sho knocked on the door.
"Hey Nino, Aiba asked me to come check that ghosts aren't attacking you or something," he came in and looked around the empty room. "Nino?"
No one answered. A large red "ERROR" alert flashed on the computer screen in front of him.