Chapter Text
Takumi was woken from his afternoon snooze on the couch to the sound of a door slamming against its doorstop. This was immediately followed by the sound of a familiar shrill voice bouncing off the walls and rattling between his ears.
“Oh my GAWD, Takumi, how are you not freaking the hell out right now!?”
Takumi groaned, pushing himself up onto one elbow while he used his other hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes. His head was still sore from one too many drinks the night before and Darumi’s shrieking was certainly not helping things. He peered over the back of the couch at the manic girl still hovering in the doorway, looking like she was about to explode. A quiet anxiety gnawed at the bottom of his gut.
“What are you talking about?” he grumbled. Darumi’s mouth opened, lips curled, in an expression she referred to as ‘pogging’. She bolted across the few feet separating the door from the couch and vaulted over the back, landing heavily enough to make the frame creak despite how skinny she was. She didn’t bother fixing the way her skirt flipped up to reveal the edge of her panties. When they’d first debuted together, it would have made Takumi blush. Now, it didn’t even make the top ten for the most compromising positions he’d seen her in. This was just another Saturday.
Darumi pulled out her phone from her bra and glued her eyes to the screen, a too-wide grin splitting across her face. The anxiety in Takumi’s belly solidified into something closer to dread. Whatever it was that was making Darumi smile like that, it could not be good.
“Dude. Check Twitter. Doesn’t matter what channel.”
Takumi blinked, still disoriented from the sudden wake up call, then sighed and flopped back down onto his back. He dug around in his back pocket for his phone and held it above his face by the pop socket Tsubasa had given him three screen-cracks ago. The brightness of it compared to the soft red light of the LEDs in their shared living room made him wince, but he couldn’t turn it down any further and he knew Darumi would keep pestering him if he put his phone back down, so he persevered. God, his head hurt.
Takumi’s Twitter timeline was usually filled with barely-funny reposts of memes stolen from other websites and the occasional sketchy link to a tabloid site he hadn’t blocked yet. Today, though, it was awash with sobbing emojis and blurry photographs of the last person he wanted to see.
I’m deadass heartbroken rn he was my oshi… 💔💔💔😭😭
FYM HE ACTUALLY SUCKS DON’T PMO????
lmfao i cant believe so many ppl actually bought his love n peace schitck in the first place like duh obv he was a lying lil bitch, his music was always shit too so this is rly on u if ur surprised <3 try stanning karua next time freaks
Takumi’s eyes widened. All of the drowsiness left in his system made a break for the exit as he bolted upright in his seat, gaping down at his phone. Darumi’s grin hung in the air like a vulture.
“I know, right?” she said, leering over his phone screen until he swatted her away.
“Shut up! I haven’t even figured out what’s going on yet!”
The next post on his timeline just so happened to be one of those lucky tabloids that slipped through the cracks. He tapped on the link with the kind of trepidation he hadn’t felt since he was sneaking onto softcore sites back in middle school.
“TWO-FACED!” shouted the article title between four different sets of ads. “AOTSUKI’S DARK SIDE REVEALED?”
Takumi’s chest squeezed with a dozen different emotions at once.
Takumi had known Aotsuki for nearly three years. He’d debuted as a solo idol when he was eighteen, the same year that Takumi and his group, KILLING/GAME, had finally started getting their first big gigs. Their styles weren’t all that similar, but the overlap in their fanbase was large enough that they often found themselves in the same place at the same time. He’d shared a green room with the guy more than his fair share of times and every single one of them was a goddamn nightmare.
Onstage, Aotsuki was pristine. He’d charm audiences with his blinding grin, his overproduced tracks, his cloying fashion… Takumi never understood how people couldn’t see through his plastic charade, but that was just how this industry was. Playing a polished role to please the crowd was part of an idol’s job description — even KILLING/GAME, with their heavier rock influences and rougher overall aesthetic, couldn’t claim to be fully authentic during a live show.
The difference was that their stage personas were at least based in reality.
It was frustrating to admit, but Aotsuki was popular for a reason. He was a damn good idol. Aotsuki’s crowd-pleasing cheers of “Love & Peace!” were cheesy, sure, but even Takumi couldn’t deny that the weirdo knew how to get a crowd worked up. Despite the clear differences in their sensibilities, even Takumi found himself idly bobbing his head along to most of Aotsuki’s songs. Hell, if his only crime was being sort of obnoxious, then Takumi wouldn’t have had an issue with him.
But Aotsuki wasn’t just annoying. He was an asshole. The repeated green room encounters he’d had with him where Aotsuki would look down his nose at them in disgust, treating every attempt at friendly conversation like it was a personal slight against him, sneering at them like he was so much better than them — he could have dealt with all of that. It sucked, but Aotsuki was far from the first idol to be a self-obsessed dickhead behind the scenes.
No, the thing that really got under Takumi’s skin was how little Aotsuki cared for his fans. Aotsuki, more than nearly anyone else in the industry, would have been nobody if it weren’t for his leagues of adoring followers. He’d started his career as a Vocaloid producer, writing the kinds of songs that were only happy if you didn’t listen to them too hard, and internet denizens ate it all up. Eventually, he started posting covers of his songs using his own voice alongside pictures of himself beyond the avatar he’d been using online. It all netted him the image of a troubled prince smiling through the pain, clinging to his tragic optimism no matter how much he was supposedly suffering. What a load of crap. It was only once he’d already gained significant notoriety online that he was snapped up by a real producer. If it hadn’t been for the support of his fans in his early years before he lucked into going pro, then he would have been a sad NEET venting his depression through vocal synths until the day he died surrounded by body pillows in his bedroom.
And yet, despite the fact that Aotsuki owed his entire career to the people who loved his music, he treated them like they didn’t even exist. His cries of how much he loved everyone onstage were enough to fool his delusional fangirls who would believe anything if it came from the mouth of a guy with a face as sweet as his, but they weren’t enough to fool Takumi. He knew damn well that he looked down on his fans the same way he looked down on other idols.
Aotsuki never did interviews. He never did meet-and-greets, he never did signing events, he never accepted fanmail, he never did backstage passes for the whales willing to shell out for them — hell, he never even did encores. Every interaction he had with a fan was purely incidental, clearly against his will, and he would always do whatever it took to worm his way out of it as soon as possible. His fans were allowed to see him from dozens-to-hundreds of meters away, always through the barrier of his ridiculous DJ setup he worked from onstage, and nowhere else. It was like he didn’t want anything to do with them.
It made Takumi’s blood boil. What the hell was the point in being an idol if he didn’t enjoy making people happy? Why be a live musician if he didn’t care about connecting with people through his music? Takumi wasn’t exactly the most sociable person on the planet, but even he cherished every interaction he was lucky enough to have with someone who loved his music. It was what made all the long nights of practicing new songs and early mornings rehearsing choreography worth it, and there sat Aotsuki atop his stupid, pompous throne, taking all of it for granted.
Seeing all of this in text was the most vindicated he’d ever felt. He fumbled with the ads blocking the majority of the screen and skimmed through the article like he was scarfing down his first meal in weeks. Tension mounted in his shoulders, winding him tighter and tighter with each word he read until he was practically vibrating with excitement.
“See!?” Takumi shouted through the constant stream of Darumi’s cackling. “I knew it! I fucking knew it! God, finally!”
It all started the day prior — not even twenty-four hours ago, as was the usual for these drama cycles. Aotsuki had just finished a live show and was heading back to his trailer when he was approached by a fan who had managed to sneak past all the yellow tape, tailed by a friend who was already recording, no doubt hoping to capture this once-in-a-lifetime magical encounter with Aotsuki Eito. The entire thing was on tape; he recognized pieces of the scene from the blurry screenshots that had just been flooding his timeline.
The girls couldn’t have been older than fifteen, all decked out in clumsy low-budget decora kei, squealing with delight as they ran up to their idol. The one in front of the camera shouted out his name and lunged forward to take him by the wrist, clamoring for an autograph. It was a normal enough situation for any idol to find themselves in, as annoying as it may have been to be accosted backstage. Any performer worth their salt would have played along and thrown the poor kids a bone, let them have their little story that they could go brag about at school and gotten on with loading up the van.
But that’s not what Aotsuki did. Aotsuki jumped as soon as he heard them, shoulders racing to sit stiffly by his ears. The girl grabbed him by the wrist and that’s when it happened. Aotsuki whipped around, yanking his arm roughly away and pushing the stunned girl back by the shoulder, knocking her square on her butt. Through the gasping and crying, the camera fixed on Aotsuki’s face. There it was: the proof that Takumi had been right about that creep all along.
Aotsuki was glaring down at the girl with an expression of utter disgust, like he was staring at a puddle of vomit under his shoe. Then he turned away, and the video was over.
Darumi was attacking him, jabbing her fingers into his arm. “What did I tell ya?” she said, her face contorted with her sick glee. “Keep reading. That’s not even the best part!”
Overnight, a chain of events took place that lit the internet on fire. The video posted by the girls went viral online. Within mere hours, as forums and social media were blowing up, a post was made from a throwaway account: a post exposing the medical records of one Aotsuki Eito. As it turned out, he had a rare cognitive disorder colloquially known as Human Repulsion Syndrome which made him perceive other people as horrible monsters. Aotsuki had the most severe form of HRS, meaning that unlike some other patients whose symptoms were limited to sight or touch or smell, all of Aotsuki’s senses were distorted by his disorder. Moreover, he had been in and out of psychiatric facilities as a child due to severe antisocial behavioral issues that only partially resolved in young adulthood.
Part of Takumi felt a little slimy for snooping on his personal history like this, but that feeling was easy to shove aside in favor of basking in the glory of his feelings of disdain finally being justified. Aotsuki hadn’t liked people from the very start! He didn’t care about his fans! He was just some sellout who’d turned his hobby into a cash cow with no regard for whose feelings he had to step on in order to get what he wanted. Takumi didn’t know if Aotsuki was in it for the money or the ego, but he didn’t care. Either way was a good enough reason to keep feeding his petty hate-boner for his longtime one-sided rival.
“No wonder he was so insistent on maintaining a solo career,” he said, tossing his phone face-down on the couch. “It was never about connecting with people in the first place! You know, the whole point of making music? He’s just some asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else! God, I knew it. I knew it!”
It was at that moment that Yugamu and Tsubasa both walked through the door, catching Takumi in the middle of his self-congratulatory tirade. He didn’t stop rambling. He’d been carrying this grudge against that blue bastard for years and now no one could call him a jealous weirdo for hating the guy. He was going to celebrate, damn it!
“I take it he heard the news?” Yugamu said wryly, hanging his leather jacket on the hook by the door. Darumi turned around to fix them with her shit-eating grin, dangling Takumi’s phone precariously between her fingers.
“Literally right this second,” she said. “Look, he’s totally gonna blow his load!”
Tsubasa was the next to stifle a giggle behind her hand. She was probably the least raunchy of their little group, the least likely to make fun of him for “blowing his load,” as Darumi put it, but even she got a kick out of Takumi’s excessive enthusiasm. Takumi couldn’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed by the teasing.
He was going to be riding this high for weeks.