Chapter Text
It was an idle interest at first. His face was plastered everywhere— on billboards, advertisements. His lidded gaze peered out from shopfronts and cardboard cutouts, advertising everything from teas to toilet paper.
“Did you watch his livestream last night?”
“Fxxing scalpers got all his one-man live tickets I swear to god.”
Reo sighs from his seat. Even in class, during lunch… it was always about him. Nagi Seishiro.
What was so interesting about him anyway? His concept was odd— bored disinterest, a vacant gaze, an expression that screamed that he’d rather be anywhere else. Even the way he spoke was lazy, ending in a slight drawl that… well. It wasn’t too bad. Messy hair aside, even Reo could admit that the idol was blessed in the looks department, not that it was somehow a good idea to put him on every goddamn surface downtown.
I wonder if he’s actually any good.
“When is it?” From the peripheral of his gaze still fixed on his phone, the little circle of girls just beside him merely stare at him. “The concert. Live. Whatever you call it.”
They glanced at each other in that odd telepathic communication girls had, where one look somehow means something different from another, until one finally speaks up.
“... It’s this Friday, at the Blue Room. But all the tickets are gone, so—”
“Doesn’t seem so gone to me,” Reo shrugs, and after a few brief swipes, flips his phone around at his classmates.
Four hundred dollars into the pocket of a scalper, a drop in the bucket to satiate his curiosity.
The Blue Room was a… place. Reo expected half as much from a cursory look online. A clean, somewhat out of the way location that saw its heyday thirty years ago… according to Seishiro’s fans, exactly the type of place he enjoyed holding surprise lives at.
“Come back in three hours.”
With that cursory instruction to his driver, he pulls his hoodie lower, and shoulders through the crowd of fans taking selfies and buying merch in the lobby.
He finds his seat, D13. It was comfortable enough, worn red velvet faded to maroon over the years. Not that it mattered, he realises belatedly, when everyone around him was standing. They were mostly girls too, and the thought has him fidgeting with his hood. It wasn’t like him to care about such petty things, but here wasn’t a place he could push through with brash confidence. Here, everything simply… flowed. From the lobby to the hall, every audience member was in lockstep in their little dance of fandom which he fumbled just a step behind.
He first regrets when near everyone pulls lightsticks from their bags— he should have listened to the driver to stop by a store and blend in a little. He second regrets when Seishiro takes to the stage, hands in his pockets, still a dark silhouette against the stage’s light— he should have brought earplugs, anything to muffle the screaming.
He third regrets when the spotlight comes down and the opening bars of the first song carry Seishiro’s voice through the small space, clear as a glass struck by a fork.
Why do humans carve sculptures of gods and angels, knowing that the divine cannot be captured by mortal hands? In between Seishiro’s breaths, Reo could almost understand. Even if recordings, reproductions, hell anything at all could never capture that sound, at least it would stir the memory of the moment.
He was a small figure, up on that stage, but seemed to capture it without trying. No, that indifferent slouch almost demanded the space, his empty gaze commanded the attention of every soul in the room simply because he did not desire it. Everything around him clamoured for a piece of him that didn’t care for them.
I want him.
Reo, motionless in the jumping, singing crowd, stares at the dull person on stage whose voice sparkled with every beautiful thing. His interest, usually ignited in a little flame, was fully born a raging fire that consumed him where he stood.
He wanted him, wanted to hold him in his hands and touch that porcelain white skin, brush the fluffy cloud-like hair from his eyes and open him up, take him apart and discover what exactly made him tick. Then perhaps tear him down to nothing and build him up again, understand every expression that blank face must be able to make.
He wanted to have all of him, that dangerous voice and vacuous existence that refused to be owned.
Two hours passed in a blink, and he was out on the pavement again, squinting at too bright afternoon sun. As if on cue, his driver pulls up to whisk him away from the peeling paint signs and gum studded sidewalk.
“Enjoy the show?” The driver, Taro or Tanaka or something, eyes the plastic bag slung carelessly on the backseat, vinyls and postcards peeking from the top but wisely does not mention it.
“It was fine.” Reo sighs and pulls the hood down. “Just bring me home.”
Seishiro. He ruminates on the name, turns every syllable over in his mouth as if they’d tell him something about the man. His lackadaisical disdain for the world, even his own fans only made Reo want something more. What would it be like, he wonders, to stand close enough that Seishiro would have no choice but to make eye contact?
A shiver creeps up his spine, his gaze meets the dead, cardboard eyes of a Seishiro poster by the stop light they were halted at. He was shilling contact lenses this time. Ironic.
Should I take control of his agency?
A majority stake would do the trick easily, and it would be almost too easy to demand a talent meeting.
Too easy. It would be too easy.
Reo shakes his head, dismissing the thought. He would savour this differently, he decides. Instant gratification was sweet, but would ruin the flavour. Better to slowly close his hands around his little bird and find out, little by little, what makes the canary sing.
All he needed now, was a little work from his assistant…
>> reo: get me nagi seishiro meet and greet tickets
>> assistant: ???
>>reo: and show tickets
>>assistant: ???
>>reo: and earplugs
>>assistant: … ok.
Reo tosses his phone aside and leans back.
I wonder if his hands will be warm.