Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tsuyoshi starts his mornings looking at the sky. He sits in the back of manager-san's car, Koichi sometimes beside him. Outside, the sun is not up yet, the skies still dark and hushed. Koichi, too, is quiet in his seat, slumped against the headrest and half-slumbering still. Tsuyoshi leaves him alone and looks out the window. He does not watch the buildings flash past, but fixes his eyes up at the pre-dawn sky: the moon lonely and pale; the stars dimmed by the lights of Tokyo. And the sky—the sky is many forevers of dark, an inky infinity. Tsuyoshi rests his head against the window panes, looking and looking and looking.

Tsuyoshi's mornings begin before sunrise, when it seems as if all the world is still asleep.

—

(koichi's mornings begin at four in the afternoon. he thumbs the alarm off on his cellphone, blinks blearily for a moment out his window at the crimson Tokyo sunset, then rolls over and goes back to sleep.)

—

They don't really talk to each other in the car while being shuttled from studio to studio. Conversation requires mutual participation, and Kinki, they've always told interviewers, have very little in common. On some occasions, though, they do talk at each other.

"Color is a mystical experience," says Tsuyoshi, in his slow rambling way. Koichi makes a vague noise of agreement, focused more on his Nintendo DS in hand. "Color is a beginner's solipsism. Do you see the same yellow as I? Is the color you call yellow the same color I call yellow? What if my red is your blue? How would you ever know? How, you ask yourself eventually, can any of your perceptions be shared? Do my words mean the same to you as they do to me? Perceptions and meanings are by definition private, aren't they? At some point, you're the only one to rely on; your experiences are your only reality. What connection can you extend to other existences, if they're there at all?"

"I'm here," says Koichi, absently. A beat, while Yoshi defeats Bowser on the tiny screen to a fanfare of trumpets. Koichi closes the DS, refocuses on Tsuyoshi. "I'm right here."

Another beat. Tsuyoshi purses his lips and says, "You weren't listening to me at all, were you?"

—

Sometimes, Koichi's MCs go like this:

"Today, I want to convey the absoluteness of 300,000 kilometers per second. Some of you may not understand the significance of that number. It's the speed of light, ne, 300,000 km/s. The speed of light, always. Isn't that amazing? I could be still, and light would be moving at that speed relative to me; I could be traveling at 299,999 km/s and light would still be moving at that speed relative to me. Even if you chased it, light would still be moving away from you at that same speed regardless of your movement. 300,000 km/s is relative to anything and everything. Why—why are you laughing at me? This is really interesting, you know. Let me say it again: 300,000 km is relative to anything and everything—"

Tsuyoshi stands on the side and heckles.

—

Another new single, another round of promotional appearances. "He doesn't listen to me at all," Tsuyoshi complains to Downtown. Hey!Hey!Hey! is always good for raucous bullshitting, and KinKi take gross advantage of that. "This aikata of mine. When I'm talking to him, he's totally focused on something else. I mean, if it was work or something important like that, I'd understand; but—Super Mario 64. He's really troublesome, you know." Beside him on the couch, Koichi smiles vaguely, as if oblivious to the complaints.

"Oh-ho, really?" says Hamada, and shoves Koichi's shoulder. Hamada likes to do that, teasing and shoving and swatting, abusively affectionate especially with Koichi. "No, seriously?" says Hamada, "You don't listen to him—?" and Koichi starts, looks around, as if suddenly paying attention: "E-eh? Are we talking about me?!"

Laughter, a chorus of "EHHH?" from the audience.

"WHO ELSE WOULD HE TALK ABOUT?" Downtown clamor with faux-outrage, as Koichi subsides into the couch with one of his strangely bashful smiles.

"Maa, maa," says Tsuyoshi, magnanimous now. He touches his hair. "It's fine. I don't blame him. After all, I don't listen to him about engine mapping either."

"What?" asks Matsumoto. They are back on familiar grounds. "You two don't talk to each other?" and no, no, Kinki Kids don't have a lot in common: they don't even know each other's phone numbers, but that's all right, they spend all their days together anyways, and besides, Koichi is sort of retarded and doesn't know how to work his cellphone half the time, so—

—

Sometimes, Koichi's MCs go like this:

"Light's very strange, you know. How does it travel? For example, sound—everyone knows how sound travels, don't you? Its medium is air; soundwaves are tiny vibrations through the air. And ocean waves: they're a kind of vibration too, through water. Well, light is a wave too. What is its medium? What does it travel through? But—no, no, this is very interesting, it is—light can travel through vacuums. Which means that light's medium exists in a vacuum. So light's medium—they called it lumineferous aether—is something that we can't measure, we can't mass, something we can't detect at all. Can we? How do you prove the existence of lumineferous aether? So they did this experiment, these two scientists, Michelson and Morley, with these mirrors and—MA, come over here. Musical Academy, everyone, will help with the demonstration today. Yonehana will stand here, and be Mirror One, and—yes, hello, Machida—Macchin will be Mirror Two, over here. And Yara-kun, here, please, in the middle—"

Tsuyoshi says, "If MA wants to stage a rebellion against any tyrant overlords, they would have my full support."

—

—

Tsuyoshi writes:

It is raining. The rain is nice, I think. I would like to go out in it.

and

I want a piano. Some day, I want a house where I can play the piano with a lot of space.

and

I will know my true self.

Koichi writes:

Has everyone bought a copy of the SHOCK DVD? I bought serial #001 myself. (smile)

—

The television recordings for the promotion wave ends a little before SHOCK begins. Koichi starts to look gray and hassled around the edges, exhausted between studio work and musical rehearsals and year-end concert planning. His cheekbones grow sharp, skin stretching tight over his face, brittle and thin like ashen paper. "You're not scheduling naptime into his schedule?" Tsuyoshi asks their manager, but it is not really a question. Domoto Tsuyoshi never demands, because he's never been that sort of straightforward; still, there's something implicit in his wording, in his tone. Something implicit in the displeased set of his jaw.

"Ah," says manager-san and, the next day, herds Koichi into a car after lunch, taking the long, detouring, hour-and-half route from the jimusho to Teigeki.

Kinki aren't close like the other groups, don't believe in that sort of member-ai. They don't get naked together like TOKIO and don't draw on each other like V6 and don't throw each other birthday parties like Tackey&Tsubasa. They don't call each other on the phone or send each other messages, they don't go out for meals together and they're not really friends.

Still—

(it used to be that every weekend, koichi took the bus from ashiya to nara and found tsuyoshi at the train station. they sat next to each other on the long ride down to tokyo, domoto and domoto, and amused themselves with ridiculous games like who could pull more hair from their nostril in one go.)

—they look after their own.

Sometimes, Koichi's MCs go like this:

"If everyone would please imagine a box, please. And imagine that there are two slits in the front of the box. All right? And say that you're standing in front of the box, holding a laser, which shoots out one photon of light at a time. And say we taped x-ray film to the inside back of the box, so that each photon of light is exposing the film. Does everyone have this image in mind? You too, Tsuyoshi. Now, we're exposing that film with the laser, one photon at a time, and you'd think that after a while, when we took the film out of the box—there would be two bright stripes on the film, right? Where the slits were on the box. That's how the photons got in and that's how the film got exposed, right? Right? Tsuyoshi-kun is nodding. Tsuyoshi-kun is....wrong. What you would see, actually, is a ripple pattern on the film—lots of stripes, along the entire film—brighter here and darker there, but the entire film is exposed. This—this is because light's a wave. So, all right—but then, let's pretend we put a photon detector next to one of the slits. So when we fire the laser, we know which slit the photon went through. What do you think happens then? Tsuyoshi?”

Tsuyoshi answers: "I think I preferred it when you thought budou o hitotsubu dou? was the best thing ever."

Donnamonya recording in the dressing room, the two of them today, Tsuyoshi still in his street clothes and Koichi sleepy and unshaven. On the table are postcards and script papers, unread yet. They sit crosslegged on cushions on the tatami mats, a casual informality.

"—since the audience has heard me say this before, but you really are the worst." Tsuyoshi wonders if he's nagging. If he's becoming his mother, these days.

"Mmm?" says Koichi, not really a reply but for the question mark tacked audibly on the end.

"You didn't send me any flowers," says Tsuyoshi, and thinks there was probably a better way to have worded that. "On Waratte Iitomo. I sent you flowers."

"What are you talking about?" a laughing protest, low and drawling. Koichi stretches, and—elbows braced on the tabletop—rests his chin on folded arms. He peers up at Tsuyoshi from under the brim of his hat. "You wrote, from Domoto Koichi to Domoto Tsuyoshi, on my flowers. How is that sending me flowers at all, if they were from me to you?"

"There were flowers that I bought, in the studio with you," Tsuyoshi persists, and he will win this argument like he wins countless other ones. He will win because that is the pattern now, that is the expectation. "There were no flowers that you bought in the studio with me. You know who sent me flowers? Shinohara sent me flowers. But my own partner couldn't bother—"

"Sorry, sorry," says Koichi, still with complacent laughter in his tone. He accepts the blame with an ease of long practice. "I'll do better next time."

"Everyone, do you hear that?" Tsuyoshi leans closer to the microphone. "He promised. You all heard."

Koichi rolls his eyes at Tsuyoshi, then sits up straight. He gives a slight nod, one—two—, and then in proper MC voice, "Saa, this is Domoto Koichi—"

"—and this is Domoto Tsuyoshi."

"Donnamonya! is starting now."

—

The self, solipsism states, is the only verifiable existence. Everything else is unjustified. Others, people and materials and experiences, cannot be known, cannot be proven to exist. Oneself is the only reality.

It is a skeptical philosophy, and it is a lonely philosophy.

—

And once (only once), Koichi's MC goes like this:

“Let's talk about water, today. Tsuyoshi thinks I'm getting too self-absorbed, talking about light all the time. So let's talk about water. Let's talk about water. And light. And rainbows. Refraction of light and—w-what are you doing? I don't need background music for this—I—no, stop—”

(you're so longwinded, interrupts tsuyoshi, fingering b minor triads on the keyboard. no, no, says koichi, i'm just getting to the good part, listen; and he goes about water droplets and rainbows and light refraction—)

“—but light refracts dependent on the viewer. Does that make sense? If you stand in different places, your angle of sight is different; so light refracts differently. So—so no two people can see the same rainbow. No one, because no two people can stand in the exact same spot at the same time. You understand? Your rainbow is not my rainbow—”

(pause)

“Rainbows cannot be shared.”

(the keyboard falls silent. koichi stops again, head tilted thoughtfully. he is hearing something, a melancholy echo of memory. but koichi smiles, oddly sweet for so unsentimental a person.)

“Or—no. Rather, what I mean is: rainbows are personal.”

"You know, birds see color four-dimensionally," says Koichi, one day, apropos of nothing. There is a newspaper on the table in front of him, but he's not reading it. Tsuyoshi looks up from pulling on his socks. "They're tetrachromats. So are zebrafish. Their cone cells can differentiate between red, blue, green, and ultraviolet; so they see 100 times more colors than we do."

Tsuyoshi pulls on his other sock, then starts work on painting his nails.

"Butterflies are pentachromats—two more cones than humans, and they can see ten billion different colors. Did we devolve?" Koichi plays with the edge of a newspage, folds it and smooths it out again. "There're some human tetrachromats. They see colors that don't exist for us. Most of us, we have red and blue and green cones. The color yellow is a mysterious experience."

Tsuyoshi lets him ramble about wavelengths and light frequencies, about optic nerves and color sensory; paints one coat, then two, of polish on his nails until their manager bustles in, ready to brief them on that afternoon's agenda.

(he thinks about the color yellow for a long time, though. zebrafish and primary colors and the mystery of yellow: how kinki kids was once upon a time supposed to be a three-person group)

—

Shin Domoto Kyoudai, and not a love confession: “I thought it was fate that I met you, since Domoto is such a rare last name.”

“Oh,” the reply, “Me—I thought your last name was Tanaka or something for the first three months.”

MA are Koichi's in a fairy tale kind of way, brave knights loyal to their shining prince; but they're fond of Tsuyoshi too. They visit him at his Endlicheri lives and bring flowers. “You shouldn't have,” Tsuyoshi demurs, but he's smiling bright and pleased.

“What? Oh, these? Oh, no, no—they're from Koichi-kun,” says Yone, offering them forward as the audience shrieks their throats hoarse in approval.
Tsuyoshi accepts the bouquet, something wry and ironic in the set of his mouth, and digs through it for the card. “For—” he reads, and then stops, expression souring. There's a pause, before Tsuyoshi reads: “For Tandoorichicken☆Tandoorichicken.”

“EHHHHH?” ask the audience, and “Koichi-kun?!” says MA, and “That idiot,” says Tsuyoshi. And he doesn't take out the photograph that had been in the envelope with the card, doesn't show that to the camera; keeps that tucked away, his, private—

(what i mean is: rainbows are—)

—

Koichi never says, I do listen to you.

—

(the sun rises in a wash of gold, staining the horizon vermilion. there is coffee at the jimusho, bitter and hot. out of the van, koichi rubs his eyes and stretches, blinking with somewhat unfocused eyes at tsuyoshi. he mumbles an incoherent, "'morning," before slouching off to let the stylists have their way with him. and tsuyoshi puts away poetry and contemplation; thinks instead about music and acting and perfect smiles for the camera.

kinki kids' mornings begin in the fluorescence of the jimusho hallways, when it seems as if the eyes of an entire nation are watching.)