Chapter Text
Head bowed, Adachi Kiyoshi gathered paperclips and pins and pens into his hand and dropped them into his desk organizer with slow, metallic plinks, counting down the moments until his coworkers would begin to filter out for the day so he could leave, too. A quick glance at the clock told him that they should be going at any moment, but they all seemed determine to loiter, laughing and chatting away while they made plans for the evening.
Couldn’t they do that somewhere else?
His supervisor, Urabe Kengo, waved at him, mouth twisting into a knowing smirk as he looked at the men and women on either side of him. “Eh, Adachi! We’re getting drinks tonight. Join us, huh?”
Adachi glanced in Urabe’s direction and quickly looked away again. He ought to go, be a team player. It was important that his coworkers know he was reliable, and being friendly would help with that. He had already turned down so many invitations, enough that people were beginning to talk when they could pretend he wasn’t able to overhear them. Eventually, they would entirely write him off. His career would stall. Who knew what would happen then?
His gut churned and a cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck at the thought of talking to any of them. He just wouldn’t know what to say, and he wasn’t good at answering questions either, not even innocuous questions about his hobbies or what he does for fun. Who wants to talk to their coworkers about the things he find interesting? They would just think he was weird… weirder, anyway.
Even if I go, their opinion of me won’t improve, he thought, not morose exactly, but not enthusiastic either. Better not to go.
Besides, he had an important stop to make first. He couldn’t let anyone see. Meeting with coworkers would be too risky.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I have plans tonight.”
“Huh?” Urabe curved his hand around the back of his ear, forming a satellite dish shape with his fingers. “Speak up, Adachi. I can’t hear you.”
Warmth flooded his face. “I have plans tonight”—his voice cracked, unused to being raised—“Sorry.”
“Oh.” Urabe stretched the sound as far as it would go. A disapproving frown settled on his mouth. “I see.”
The group stared at him for a moment, then collectively returned to their own conversation. Finally, they turned almost as one. Urabe, always the ringleader and always the most outgoing, shoved two of their coworkers into the hallway, laughing as he explained to them how they’d be buying the first couple of rounds.
Adachi waited at his desk, frozen in a half hunch above the detritus of his work day that he was still sorting. The seconds passed with agonizing slowness. Silence finally fell as the rambunctious group hit the bank of elevators and descended. Only the sound of the clock and his heart ticking away remained. One breath, two. Then he burst into motion, fighting his backpack onto his shoulders as he, too, made his way toward the elevators.
*
Mr. Hirose grinned at Adachi as Adachi crossed the doorframe. “Wondering when you’d finally show up,” he said, pointing one gnarled finger toward the usual spot in the corner by the window, an enticement to bring girls into Mr. Hirose’s cramped little bookshop. “I almost put one aside for you. I probably would have if you’d been any later. There aren’t many left.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hirose,” Adachi said. His poor face, already flushed twice over from his early embarrassment and the rush of his exertion in getting here as fast as possible, bloomed with fresh heat. For this, he could conquer the humiliation of being seen in this fashion by a man at least twenty years his father’s senior, but it was still a struggle.
He feared it would always be a struggle.
“I hear it’s this guy’s first solo album, am I right?”
Adachi opened his mouth to explain it properly—no, of course it wasn’t; he had many solo albums; he started as a solo artist—but Adachi knew what Mr. Hirose really meant. It was his first solo album as a proper idol, not one of his self-produced, self-released albums, and that did make it special. To the general population, that was the only distinction that might matter.
“Right,” Adachi mumbled.
“Pick a good one!” Mr. Hirose called.
Adachi didn’t know what that meant, but he had a new problem to contend with, couldn’t put any bandwidth into decoding Mr. Hirose’s statement.
Because now there were girls in his way, and he’d never been good at talking to them, not even when he was their age.
Two of them, high schoolers still in their school uniforms, hair hanging straight across their shoulders, were crowded around the display. They giggled and chittered at one another as they picked up and put down various themed knickknacks, debating the merits of a fan versus a keychain versus a light stick versus posters.
Though Adachi might have liked to scope out the merch situation, he didn’t dare try to squeeze his way in next to them. Maybe there would be some left tomorrow or the day after, whenever the initial fervor died down.
“Ah, he’s always so good looking,” one of the girls said dreamily. “His smile is so cute.”
“Yeah,” the other girl replied.
Yea… Adachi couldn’t let himself think such a thing, let alone say it out loud. …no!
Music. It was just about the music. That was all. It wasn’t about cute smiles or merch or anything else. Without even checking, he snaked one arm out, said excuse me, and snatched up the first CD his fingertips skimmed. Of course, he wasn’t lucky enough to keep hold of it, so it clattered to the floor. The girls startled and whirled on him, eyes wide. Stooping to pick it up, he kept his gaze on the floor. “Sorry!”
The plastic cover was cracked. Adachi fought the urge to frown and shove it back onto the rack for some other unlucky fan to find, but that wasn’t fair to them or to Mr. Hirose. He backed away from the girls, still looking at the ground. “Excuse me, sorry.”
Maybe they’d assume he was buying it for someone else.
Clutching the CD to his chest, he didn’t dare let himself look at the owner of the cute smile gracing said CD, and scuttled back to the counter.
Because he was truly cursed, he nearly collided with a man a few centimeters taller than him on the way. All he saw of him was a nice pair of caramel suede loafers and the hems of a perfectly tailored pair of dark wash jeans. Adachi almost commented on the shoes, but he caught himself at the last moment. It was bad enough being caught buying an idol’s CD. Talking about said idol’s taste in fashion with a stranger was a step too far, even if this guy was wearing the same ones Adachi’s favorite musician liked.
“Sorry,” Adachi said for good measure.
Before the man could reply, Adachi scurried to safety.
Mr. Hirose rang him up with a surprising amount of discretion, handing over the precious item with no small degree of care and consideration. “Good luck.”
This again. “Eh?”
Mr. Hirose waved his hand in a vague gesture toward the CD. “There’s some kind of giveaway happening. You’ll have to go online to see if you won. That’s what all these girls have been saying.”
“Oh.” Adachi frowned. He hadn’t heard of any such thing happening, but of course, he couldn’t keep up with every development regarding his idol. Still, disappointment surged within him. He should have known, shouldn’t he? He bet those girls back there already knew. That was probably why they spent so long at the display, trying to intuit which of the CDs might contain the key to whatever prize was on offer.
Adachi, grabbing at random and damaging it to boot, wasn’t likely to win. Still, he smiled at Mr. Hirose. “I’m not very lucky anyway.” He raised the CD, twisting it left and right. The wrapping crinkled a bit. The plastic caught the light. The smile gleamed so beautifully. “It’s enough to enjoy his music.”
That, at least, was true. No matter how caught up he might get in the trappings of fandom, it always came back to the music, and in that arena, nobody could beat Kurosawa Yuichi. There was a reason he was the darling of his group, HeartBEAT, but that reason wasn’t why Adachi followed Kurosawa’s career into the cutthroat world of idol performers.
Adachi had been there from the beginning, the very beginning. Some might even say he was there before the beginning, lucky enough to be walking on one particular street on one particular day at the same moment that Kurosawa was playing for office workers trudging toward their daily grind. The first time Adachi heard Kurosawa strumming away at his guitar, he was done for. Back then, Kurosawa played in live houses around Tokyo and shilled self-produced albums—those solo albums Adachi didn’t bother mentioning, the most prized possessions in his collection of Kurosawa’s work. Adachi followed him to so many shows, but their paths only ever crossed on the street, quick, polite greetings exchanged back and forth along with cash and CDs whenever new ones were available, which was with terrifying frequency, like Kurosawa was possessed by a god of music and could only feed that creative touch with album upon album, that god never satisfied
With a face like Kurosawa’s, it was only a matter of time before he got out of that game, but it was never about that for Adachi. He could have been old or unattractive or anything in-between and Adachi would still have fallen for that voice, that musicality, that charm that couldn’t be suppressed even by a world already glutted on idols. Adachi didn’t know music on a technical level, but he didn’t need technical knowledge to know that Kurosawa was special.
Adachi felt so little beyond the barrier of constant awkwardness that surrounded him. Anything that broke through that nearly impenetrable shell of painful isolation could only be classed as precious.
Finished with his purchase, he said goodbye to Mr. Hirose, told Mr. Hirose that he would be back soon, and made his way home in the dwindling twilight, clutching that square beacon of light to his chest as tightly as he dared, fearful of damaging the case further.
*
At home, he sat at the cramped little table that took up far too much space, peeled open the cd, frowned again at the damaged case, and pulled free the booklet and other printed materials within, a scatter of cardstock that he organized carefully before him. None of these items clarified the details of the giveaway Mr. Hirose had mentioned. Perhaps that meant he had lost already.
Adachi refused to be disappointed.
He rifled through the booklet in search of the production credits instead. It was a point of pride among Kurosawa’s fans that all of his songs were written and arranged by him, were performed by him. This was the first time in years that he’d had so much personal control over a project. Adachi loved little more than to see how much control Kurosawa had over his work.
On the last page, he found a QR code and Kurosawa’s signature printed on the page. But as he examined it in more detail, he noticed that the signature had been written in gold ink. Written. Not printed.
There was no way Kurosawa could have signed every copy of the album, could he? Maybe it was an autopen signature? That made sense, he supposed. He’d find out soon enough. HeartBEAT’s fans were always quick to figure things out. Someone will have sussed out the meaning by the time he checked in on the group’s app.
In the meantime, Adachi scanned the QR code.
A website opened on his phone, styled to match the album’s design down to the presence of Kurosawa’s signature, though he noticed immediately that it wasn’t a perfect reproduction of the version in the booklet Adachi still held. So maybe not an autopen?
You have been invited to join Kurosawa for a portrait event on February 2. Please register to secure your spot. See full rules here.
Adachi stared at the message for a full five seconds before he understood what had happened. It took another twenty to realize that it wasn’t a joke, and that nobody was standing behind him ready to mock him for believing something so desperately ridiculous.
He didn’t know what to think or say or do.
And though there was nobody here to laugh at him, there was nobody here with whom he could celebrate either.