If there was one thing that Tohma Seguchi loved, it would be his family, that was as clear to me then as it is now. However, if there were two things he loved, surely Nittle Grasper would be included in the list.

If ASK was important to me, even through my revenge fantasies, I knew that Nittle Grasper would be Seguchi's weak point.

I broke into Ryuichi's apartment first. Easy enough. The man was a freak, and apparently didn't think that someone might want to break into his apartment. The doors were all unlocked. Talk about stupid, right? A major star like that... disgraceful. I went in and messed with his stuff. Stole his underwear, a couple of stage outfits.

This time, there were no cameras. Whether I wanted to plant them or not, the consequences for getting them caught while watching Shindou, Yuki and Ryuichi seemed too dangerous. Hell, I already suspected that Seguchi was watching me. I'd picked up a tail to shake earlier in the week. I had to be really careful with that, too, since I didn't want anyone knowing I knew how to do it, or how to recognize it in the first place.

In a war of information, you kept the other guy in the dark as long as you could.

I'll admit I hadn't been too smart the last time around. I hadn't even tried to hide what I was doing. By not saying anything in the previous occasions, Seguchi had given me tacit approval, and I'd taken that approval to mean that I could do what I wanted as long as the police didn't hear about it. Frankly, I was smart enough not to be caught by the cops, which was all I thought I needed.

If it hadn't been Seguchi's brother in law's boyfriend, it probably still wouldn't have mattered.

But back to Nittle Grasper and Ryuichi's apartment. I found his medication hidden under his bed, which struck me as a strange place to put it, until I realized that some of it probably wasn't precisely legal in Japan, what with the english writing and all, some of it probably wasn't legal at all, and there weren't even two bottles prescribed by the same doctor. There was a schedule over his bed, color coded, that roughly corresponded to the pill bottles. I would have thought it was a child's drawing if I hadn't just found the medicine.

I made notes and moved on.

I took a copy of what he was doing on his computer. Notes about new songs. I could publish these. Not under my own name, obviously, but as some deluded fan... It'd set them back months.

Finally, on my last sweep of the apartment, I opened up the door to his bath and was confronted with the oddest sight I could have imagined. No, strike that. I could never have imagined it.

Pictures. Curls of pink hair. Used bottles of hair dye. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles. It was a fucking shrine to Shuichi Shindou of Bad Luck. In Ryuichi's bathroom. I blinked. Several times. Very quickly.

And then I smiled. Nastily.

When I left, my first stop was an internet cafe, bag of Ryuichi's crap set down beside me. I paid for the time, and uploaded Ryuichi's computer to a Yahoo site before going to Ryuichi's biggest fan BBSs and posting the location and information.

And then I started a rumour.

All right, fine, so it wasn't the kind of revenge that was going to make Seguchi wake up screaming at night, but it was something small, and it was something I could do now and it was something that would work against the man, even if it was childish and petty.

Still, I noticed Seguchi put a lot more time into quashing a stupid little sentence (accusation?) than he ought to have, so it did turn out to be a good distraction. Well, I suppose he'd had to, once the media started descending on his precious brother in law to ask about his cheating live-in partner.

It was all a little funny. I had Yasu play the part of paparazzi. I told him how to watch out for Shindou visiting during his tour. Taught him how to recognize the singer-- though, really, if he couldn't recognize a kid with pink hair, he wasn't any good at his job. I had him take photos of Yuki.

I told him to watch out for Seguchi and take pictures of him too. And Seguchi's wife. And anyone else who came around to the writer's apartment, or came in contact with the writer. I got some nice photos of his editor for my trouble.

It was around this time that my work with the band really started picking up, so I didn't have much time to go around dealing with my plans for Seguchi. He seemed to be watching me though. He showed up at one of our concerts. I was so surprised, I missed my cue. The audience didn't notice, but Ma took me aside afterwards.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked me, looking a little bit scared under the anger. "You don't talk to us anymore, me or Ken, you're always off doing that side project, whatever it is... do you even care about ASK, Taki?"

"I saw Seguchi out there," I said, skillfully avoiding the question. I felt like my eyes were haunted. They probably were. "I kept seeing him pushing me..."

It was a lie. I don't even know why I said it. I wasn't that broken up about it anymore. I'd focused on revenge, and that had cleared away all his cloudy, evil promises. But Ma didn't know that. Ma looked like it explained everything.

His shoulders sank, and then his arms were around me.

I stood there back straight for a moment, awkward with his arms around me like that. "It's okay," he murmured into my ear. He thought I was scared. He thought I was upset. "Maybe ASK should take a little break, let you get back on your feet."

That bastard Seguchi.

I put my arms around Ma, hesitantly. "I'm okay." Ma seemed like he was waiting for something. "I was just surprised, that's all."

He nodded, but his hug tightened around me. "It's alright if you cry, you know."

It was getting a little bit surreal. I didn't quite know what to say. It's one thing to lie to a man like Seguchi, to put on an act in front of a criminal like Yuki... but to Ma? He wanted me to cry, though. So...

So I did.

It's not that hard to summon tears, after all. It wasn't cathartic or powerful for me, but Ma seemed to think it was helping, and that wasn't all that bad. I guess I've got a bit of a soft spot for the guy.

It was a soft spot they'd use, Seguchi and Yuki. That man already had threatened him. Take care of yourself, Ma? Who was he to tell that to a guy he'd almost killed?

I had to step up to the plate and start knocking them down. This was getting serious.

But for now, Ma held me, and that felt nice. It almost made me feel like Seguchi hadn't pushed me in front of a damned car, like I hadn't been in the hospital for weeks trying to recover. It made me feel a bit like Seguchi was only a ghost moving through his own private little insubstantial world. So I stayed in Ma's arms, and he in mine, and for just a moment, I didn't care that none of that was true.

I managed to convince Ma and Ken that I was fine. It was a trick in and of itself, but I finally managed to get them to believe that, as long as Seguchi wasn't in the picture, I'd be fine. Still, the pair of them watched me like nothing I'd ever seen before.

I liked that they were concerned about me, but it was just... too much. Too much care, too many "Are you all right, Tacchi"s from Ma and "You're going to be okay for the live tonight, right"s from Ken. They even got the manager in on it. It was getting embarrassing.

We released another single, and I swear, if the two of them didn't manage to get security for the building just to keep Seguchi away, I don't know what happened. Every door had a guy on it, checking IDs and press passes. After that, luckily, the overwhelming concern from Ma and Ken seemed to lessen, until it was barely affecting anyone.

That's when I had the urge to do it again. To make them hurt. Seguchi and his friends. I didn't have much to work with, or so I thought: having the police raid Sakuma's apartment wouldn't have done much good, for the same reason that it wouldn't have worked much against Yuki. Messing with Sakuma's medication seemed rather pointless, when half of it was illegal. He'd just learn to start locking his doors.

What I did have, though, was the tape I'd made of Yuki and Shindou going at it like sex starved priests. Sure, everyone knew they were gay, but would their fans stick by them when they understood what gay really meant? When they saw the... ins and outs of it all?

There's a video store near their house. I saw them rent something there once during my tapings. Let's just say the two of them don't rent Disney. I went in, found the section with the lewdest porn imaginable, and switched tapes.

You know how long it took before that shit hit the fan? About nine hours. I was pretty impressed with that store.

But the people I really wanted to hurt didn't seem to care about the tape at all. And that just wouldn't do.

I had to get serious.

My revenge against them entered its final stage musically. Against Tohma Seguchi, there is only one kind of revenge, and it will always be musical.

It had been trivial, really.

I knew how to do it. That man with his killer's eyes. Tohma loved him most in the world? I'd bring him down first. I did some more digging on what caused him to become a murderer. Imagine my surprise when I found it had all been a case of self-defense... but it hadn't quite been, had it, what with said self-defense occurring more than three hours after the young boy's rape.

I knew the ideal plan: have Shindou rape him, let him kill his young lover. But I wasn't going to manage that. Eiri Yuki would have to be unconscious for a tiny thing like that Bad Luck singer to manage to rape him, and I suspected he wouldn't much care.

So I chose a different route.

My "visit" to Ryuichi Sakuma's apartment had given me a lot of information. There was a big upset about someone getting in there. Cops weren't able to get enough evidence to figure out who did it. I smile when I think about how incompetent they were. I wonder if I was even a suspect? They seemed to focus on stalkers and paparazzi, at least from what the newspapers and music magazines reported, and I was neither.

Ah, but that Ryuichi Sakuma. The man was a mess. I'd researched them, all fifteen different mood altering medications, all those prescriptions in pretty, neat handwriting, all in pretty child-like packages, all these pretty, colorful pills lined up beside a schedule.

The next step took a lot of research on topics I'd never considered studying before, but I did it. I knew what I wanted out of it, so it was just a matter of answering all those questions that came up. What drug interactions would work? How should they be given? What dosage? How long would it take?

The pill I got out of that wasn't so pretty, but it would dissolve easily. Almost instantly. It didn't even have a taste-- I tested it to make sure, since it really wasn't going to affect me the way it would affect Sakuma. Thank god for the expertise of the dirty drug dealers and the rotten pharmacists of the world, right?

After that, it was just a matter of finding the right opportunity.

I knew how to tail people discreetly-- it was how I'd gotten my victims in the music industry before Seguchi destroyed my band-- so I followed Sakuma around as he went here and there, cap on his head, cap off his head, in costume to keep the fans away, always carrying around his stupid pink toy. How the girls can lust after a man who needs to keep a pink bunny around I will probably never know...

It wasn't long before I saw them together, after only a few days of waiting. It started as a normal night, Sakuma drinking Shirley Temples at the bar. Shindou came in not too long after, and the pair of them took seats in a booth. Shindou looked upset. Close to breaking down in tears. No brave little smile this time, I noted, and then I smiled.

I was going to make things infinitely worse.

Sakuma ordered him a martini that Shindou tried politely before he pushed the glass to the side. They started talking. Whatever Sakuma was saying, clearly it was making Shindou feel better. I walked over to the bar and ordered. Shirley Temple and... I smiled briefly. Sex on the Beach. A girls' drink would be a good choice for someone like Shindou. And a third for myself, just a single of whiskey, on the rocks.

I slipped the pill into the drinks, my custom cocktail of drugs for the virgin and a nice drip of ecstacy and acid for the other, waited five seconds for it to all fizz and dissolve, then walked over to their table.

"Shindou." I put the drinks down. The vocalists looked up at me, one curious, and the other a bit... defiant for a second. "Look, I--"

"Uh... Who are you?" asked Shindou.

My hand tightened around the whisky glass still in my hand. "Taki Aizawa." He stared at me blankly. "From ASK," I said through my suddenly clenched teeth.

He took a fast drink from his martini glass, making a face. "Lazy eyes. What do you want?"

I took a breath and a slug of whisky. If my act didn't work, people would know. And if people knew, Seguchi knew. And if Seguchi knew... this time, maybe he'd decide that a truck would work better than a car, and I wouldn't find myself in a hospital but in an urn instead. "I did some... bad shit back then. Well. I, uh..." I drank the rest of the whisky, put it down and bowed low. Not like I was going to kneel in front of the little prick in a crowded room. "I'm sorry," I said. "I know you probably can't forgive me for what I did to you, but--"

"And Yuki," he interjected.

"Yeah, and him too," I said, undeterred. "I'm sorry."

Sakuma shrugged and started on the new Shirley Temple I'd brought him.

Success on one side.

I couldn't afford to let up the act, though. Shindou still hadn't touched his. "Please accept my apology."

"Why are you... why now?" I opened my mouth to answer, but he just kept on speaking. "Look, it doesn't matter. I can't deal with you right now. Please leave."

I stiffened, then relaxed visibly. "I understand," I said, straightening. "Maybe you can forgive me one day in the future for the wrongs I did you. Sorry to disturb you both, Shindou. Sakuma."

Shindou nodded and took a drink from my glass.

Have I mentioned I'm a consummate actor? Yet another reason why I should have been kept on the NG label. Before I left them, I dropped a bug on the bunny. I had to know. I had to know if I'd won. I really wanted to drop it on Shindou, of course, but that wasn't possible. The trick to it all is knowing how far you can go.

I went over to the bar and ordered myself something non-alcoholic-- a virgin martini, as I recall-- and put the listening device in my ear. Then I waited and listened.

The conversation wasn't all that interesting. They started off talking about me. Shindou-- Shuichi-- he turned the conversation away. I could hear the concern in Sakuma-- Ryuichi's voice when Shuichi refused to say what I was apologizing for, but eventually he dropped the subject and they moved on to other matters.

Eiri Yuki. He'd kicked Shuichi out of the house.

My eyes narrowed at that. I'd gone through all that work, and it looked like it was going to be wasted. Yuki had kicked the boy out? I was furious, though I kept nursing my drink as though nothing was wrong.

I was soon relieved to hear that Yuki had a habit of doing it. "It doesn't mean he doesn't love you, you know that," said Ryuichi. "You can stay at my apartment if you'd like." He laughed. I didn't like his laugh. It was really more of a mad child-like giggle. "Maybe you should get your own place. You can afford it. Then you'll have somewhere to go when he kicks you out."

"Ryuichi, that's not helpful," whined Shuichi.

"Kick him out, let him see how it feels," said Ryuichi thoughtfully. His voice seemed to be deepening. "Ah! Shuichi, don't drink so quickly!" His voice turned back to his general light tone.

It had to be setting in right now. Had to be. It had been almost twenty minutes. Yet the man seemed... in the same mode of insanity as ever. He'd ordered another drink or two for himself, forced a bit more alcohol into Shuichi-- a chuhai, some sort of vodka sour... who was he to be telling the boy to slow down?

"I'm really sorry about this, Ryuichi." I could hear the weary smile in his voice. "I wouldn't want to be any trouble for you..."

"How can my good friend Shuichi be trouble for me?" The sound of the bug cut out for a half a second as Ryuichi picked the doll up. "You and Kumagorou aren't any trouble for me!" he declared. "Let's go home. Kumagorou's tired."

"Thanks," said Shuichi, his voice grateful.

I scowled. The drugs hadn't done a damned thing yet. Perhaps Ryuichi was in the habit of missing his medications? I wouldn't put it past him, carrying around his stuffed animal all the time as though he was some little girl. If that were the case, none of my planned interactions would do anything to him. As far as Shuichi... well, I'd give it more time. No one was immune to LSD.

I followed them to Ryuichi's apartment. Something could still happen. Even if it didn't happen in front of a hundred people, it could still happen, right?

When they got into Ryuichi's apartment, he offered a shower to Shuichi. I could hear him muttering to himself. I couldn't make out the words, but they were soft mutterings and sometimes the sound would cut out. He was holding himself back.

I smiled and sat back into the shadows on the stoop of the building across the street.

"Shuichi," said Ryuichi suddenly, his voice hushed. No, not hushed. Hoarse with desire.

"Ryu... I don't feel very good." I wondered if he'd dressed.

"Lie down on the bed," suggested Ryuichi. "I'll come with you."

"Don't you need a shower?"

"Oh." Ryuichi sounded suddenly confused. "Yes. Will you hold Kumagorou?"

What the hell. I wished they'd just do something already. I had it all planned out, I'd bring it to the media, Eiri Yuki'd find out all about his lover's affair, he'd off himself-- maybe toss himself out the window or something-- and then, Tohma Seguchi would be so crippled with grief that he wouldn't see me coming.

It didn't take long after that. Shuichi was saying something, then suddenly he gasped. "It moved," he said, sounding afraid. "Kumagorou, you shouldn't be moving without Ryuichi. Don't move any more." He started breathing heavily.

I smiled, wishing I had cameras in the place.

"Kumagorou, stop moving, or I'll call Yuki..." I could hear something snap open, and then clicking sounds. "Yuki?"

If only that phone was still bugged...

"Yuki, it's Kumagorou. He's moving, and, and Ryu isn't here..." His breathing was getting faster. "Ryuichi's toy, Kumagorou. He must have must have introduced you before? He's moving, Yuki," he said in response to the disbelieving question that must have been asked. "Don't hang up, Yuki! I'm sorry, I'll make more sense..."

His breathing was slowing. Presumably his boyfriend was saying something comforting to him. Or maybe just the familiar of calling him names? If Shuichi was thinking about make-up sex, it'd be easy for Ryuichi.

"What do you mean, take something? I-- he's moving again. Kumagorou, stop!" The toy was hit, that was the only explanation for the sound going out. "I... I'm sorry, Yuki. I'll calm down, I promise. Okay, I'm looking at the wall."

He sniffed. "I don't want to..." He sniffed again. "Fine. See you soon, Yuki."

Look at the wall? Hmph. Well, it looked like that ruined my fun.

I was just about to take the earphone off when I heard it.

"Shuichi?" It wasn't a word so much as a short, yet somehow drawn-out chorus of a song.

"Yuki?"

Oh. And Yuki was coming over. Oh. I smiled.

Ryuichi must have touched Shuichi then, because they both moaned. Then came wet, soft sounds of kisses. "Oh Shuichi, you're so shiny..."

And then, Shuichi. "Yu... Ryu..."

And then nothing but soft moaning and the slap of flesh on flesh. They sounded like they were singing with drums for accompaniment, almost. If singing were composed of moans harmonizing with each other.

I tapped a finger against my watch after about five minutes. For two guys in the throes of powerful drugs, they certainly were taking their time.

I was happier when the black car nearly crashed into the building. I could see Eiri Yuki's eyes through the glass, bright and angry and half-afraid. I shrank into the shadows and kept listening to the grunting. Yuki must have taken the stairs five at a time, because the sound of the door slamming open came through my headpiece less than thirty seconds later.

Eiri Yuki was a killer. I knew that. I knew it the instant I saw those eyes, I knew he wasn't just some novelist. Those were the kind of eyes my uncle warned me about, the kind of eyes that showed a man not only knew how to kill, but also how to bring someone to the edge of pain itself before sliding him onto a razor's edge between life and death. The sounds I heard now... were...

Ah, Ryuichi's cries were exquisite. It was an orchestrated masterpiece of pain. Timed to the beating, louder and more desperate than anything I'd ever heard, yet somehow confident-- how the hell did someone's voice remain confident while receiving such a beating as the amber-eyed killer had to be giving?

"Stop," croaked out the pink-haired vocalist. The beating continued. "Stop, Yuki," he said again after clearing his throat. It kept on.

And suddenly, it wasn't just Ryuichi's cries. It was Shuichi too, screaming like he'd never screamed for me. I can still remember every little cry. "The walls are falling in, Yuki, stop!" and "Yuki, it's all purple! It hurts, stop!"

I smiled. He was going to kill Ryuichi. This was better than I'd planned. This could be leaked to the police, to the press... Seguchi wouldn't be able to stop it.

When the cries stopped, so did the beating.

I could imagine this. How Yuki was looking around the room right now, realizing he'd just beaten Ryuichi to death. Or half to death, I wasn't quite sure, and I didn't think it really mattered.

"Where's your phone?" his cold voice asked, grating through the room.

I would have known he wasn't a singer without ever looking at his eyes. He could keep a beat well enough to be a drummer, though. I wondered if he'd ever played those silly games in the arcades, drumsticks flying to the tunes...

I could imagine Shuichi curling himself in on himself now, as the truly sick often do, rocking himself gently. "Things in the air, Yuki... Make them go away..." Pathetic, truly pathetic. It was like he'd never taken a drug in his life.

I felt almost guilty at that thought. Then I remembered that I didn't give a damn and smiled instead.

"Hey." There was a brief pause. "Fuck the 'big brother' thing. Did you put him up to this?" Oh, so suspicious. It had to be Seguchi on the other end, had to be. "My Shuichi. His fucking idol Ryuichi. Together tonight." He sounded like nothing less than a dog who'd had his food bowl taken away with his favorite treat in it, angry and protective of things that were his. The pause was longer this time. Ah, to be a fly on Seguchi's wall right now... "No, I don't expect you to control everyone. But you might want to send a doctor for your drug-dealing son of a bitch rapist of a singer here. I'm taking my vocalist home." The pause this time was even longer. "I did it. His house. They're both hurt. And I'm hanging up now."

"Y-Yuki... I..." Shindou's voice sounded like sugar glass as he whimpered about the colors.

Finally, I thought. After so many times, when he'd pulled his voice out of nowhere, he was finally in a situation where he couldn't sing. He'd finally sung the song I'd wanted him to sing back when Bad Luck was nothing more than a second stringer for ASK, and it had left him breathless. And Ryuichi was a bonus. Nittle Grasper and Bad Luck, neither of them would stand in my way from this day forward. They'd sung themselves raw at my call.

"Put your clothes on," he said. The minute difference in tone said it all. I'm a trained singer, I've learned to recognize tone. He was deathly afraid, and he was trying to hide it.

What was he so afraid of, I wondered. Was he unsure he'd done the right thing?

There was silence for a few moments. "What are you doing with Kumagorou?" asked Shuichi. The men stayed silent, and then there was the sound of ripping threads. "He's still alive, he's still alive, Yuki! He's still breathing, don't... don't..." And then he was crying, soft sobbing that hung in the room like poisonous gas.

I could imagine the tall blonde shaking his head. "Do you need help walking?" Yuki asked quietly. No, no. Gruffly, that was it.

There was no response, but a few minutes later, the pair of them had walked out of the building. Shindou was helped into the car, head hanging, eyes lost. Eiri Yuki drove away like it was the scene of a crime. Which, come to think of it, it was.

Moments later, another car pulled up to the building. Two men walked out; one was Tohma Seguchi. They didn't rush up the stairs quite as quickly as Yuki had, but when they arrived, the commotion was greater. It took almost thirty minutes before Seguchi asked the question that I'd been waiting to hear: "Will he be all right?"

The other man, clearly the doctor Yuki had told Seguchi to bring, said, "He'll live. But the attacker's last blow hit the throat here. It looks like his larynx may have collapsed. I've had to do an emergency tracheotomy. I don't think he'll be singing any time soon. If ever. He's just lucky he lived."

"Do what you can," said Seguchi. "I'll have to try to cover this up." He said to himself. "Oh, Eiri..." he sighed. He must have left the room after that and run down the stairs, because he came out of the building far too quickly for my tastes, his face and body devoid of any expression of emotion.

No emotion? Wasn't it enough, what I'd done? Did I have to hit him closer to home?

He got in his car and put his head in his hands briefly before his shoulders began to shake.

It was the first time I had seen a man like Seguchi cry.

I certainly hoped it wouldn't be the last.