Shooting Stars

Chapter Five: Spiraling Upward


Author's notes: Ooh, what a chapter, what a chapter indeed! We get all the way from the group's very first performance as a trio to the infamous Ruido concert, and the chapter is jam-packed full of Grasper-y goodness (yes, by the way, the band name will be officially acquired shortly). As if that weren't enough to excite you, we have the very first appearance of our favorite gun-toting blond… though here he doesn't have a gun, but rather a set of lock picks…

The fragments of the lyrics for the song Ryuichi sings are indeed part of a full song, another one of mine. I picked out some random lines to add to the ambience… I'm not likely to post full song lyrics, like Shooting Star, again unless you guys really want me to… if you do, I can probably be convinced to release a special omake-type chapter with lots of song lyrics.

And Omigod, you owe me a Kumagoro XD

Disclaimer: No one you recognize is mine. If you don't believe me, I'll send Mr. K to your house with a rifle to prove it to you… I mean…


Unlike me, Noriko-san really understood people. Rather, I understood how their minds worked, but she understood the workings of their hearts. It was one of the reasons we were as close as we were; she knew exactly what to say to me to put me at my ease, and she knew just how to broaden the borders of what was comfortable until I was not sure what I would do without her anymore. That was why I always trusted her judgment above my own where people were concerned.

She had been right to pull me down on the piano bench next to her that very first Friday, and she had been right too many times to count since then, mostly when it was my well-trained mind that was wrong.

She was right that night, as she would later gloat, for the moment that Ryuichi-san picked up a real microphone, there was a sort of light in his eyes that was different even from what I had seen before, as though a missing part of himself had just been returned. My fingers cramped, and Noriko-san and I took turns playing after it became obvious at one in the morning that no one was going to leave. We were both exhausted, but Ryuichi-san only had to smile and lift the microphone to his lips, and somehow, we would play again.

He didn't put it down all night.

The fact that at the end of the night, Noriko-san and I found ourselves in the role of bodyguards as every female in the establishment swarmed him was perhaps not surprising. Ryuichi-san had reverted to his cheerful and energetic self once the microphone had been pried forcibly away, and was hugging Kumagoro with an expression that clearly stated that he did not understand why he was being mobbed. By the time we got him into my car it was nearly dawn, and I was beginning to think he must be either entirely simpleminded or a genius somewhere under the childlike veneer.

But I was smiling all the way to his house, and it wasn't an indifferent smile, but the kind that crept up onto my face and stayed there of its own volition. When he bounced out of the car at very nearly dawn, I felt more awake than I could explain away with the numerous cups of coffee I had consumed in the night. "Again!" Ryuichi-san called before entering his building. "I want to do it again! And again and again and again!"

And because he wasn't the only one to feel that way, we did, again and again, Saturday mornings in my apartment and nights in the café, then a local club that Noriko-san had found that was in need of some late night entertainment, then a slightly bigger club with a slightly bigger audience… Again and again, but every time was different, because every time it was almost new.

So Ryuichi-san learned how to read music, and Noriko-san learned how to arrange it… but most importantly of all, I think, I learned how to laugh.


My family chose this magical time in my life to inform me of their displeasure. "You have been neglecting your duties considerably, Tohma," my father told me when I had been called into his office about a month after all of this had started. "I've been lenient because despite your… hobby… you've been keeping up, but clearly that is no longer the case." He glared at me from behind his enormous desk, set on a platform raised a bit above the floor to cleverly give him the appearance of power. He was a powerful-looking man even without it, unlike me. I took heavily after my mother, having inherited only my clear green eyes from my father. At the moment, those eyes were challenging.

"I have simply found my calling, so sitting at a desk giving orders doesn't seem quite so important anymore," I said, feeling oddly detached and not at all nervous. "I haven't been doing anything a well-trained assistant couldn't handle, and you'll be head of the firm for years to come."

Clearly, he wasn't as calm as I was, for he seemed very near to standing and pitching me out of the window. "I will not have insolence from you!" he said through gritted teeth. "You do not need to find your calling, because your calling has been here since the day you were born. You're an adult now; it's time you stopped playing like a child."

It occurred to me that had he said the same things to me five years ago, before Noriko-san, I would have obediently bowed to his will. "I disagree," I said instead. "If I have found something I am better at, it seems only logical to pursue it."

He did stand now, and slammed his fist on his desk. "I have let this go on far too long," he stated. "You will not see these people again, and you will take more hours here to assure you are too busy to think about music. Take responsibility for your life."

"I'm afraid I can't acquiesce," I told him, still icy calm. "If I have to officially quit instead of talking this out, I will do so, if you would only give me the paperwork." I reached out my hand. "Well?"

We regarded each other with the closest to open hostility that we had ever come in my twenty-three years of life. Finally, he sat, and his voice was as cold as mine. "You're free to quit as you like, of course." Even his smile was cold. "I will warn you that you will have a hard time supporting yourself without the company paying you a far from average stipend. I have been more than generous, but since you seem inclined to toss it all in my face…"

I had thought about it, and done a few calculations. I had enough saved to live at least a year at the same level of comfort I had now. Noriko-san didn't intend our breakthrough to take a year. She said she sensed we were on the verge of something, and because it was her I believed in her. We had come too far not to.

My smile was as frigid as his. "I think I can manage, but I thank you for your concern."

"What am I going to tell Uesugi-san?" he finally said after another moment of staring at me in silence.

"Nothing, of course," I replied immediately. "I don't see any reason to call off the engagement and shame my family, unless you're planning on disowning me, naturally. Are you?"

He only stared at me as though I was someone completely different from the son he knew. Perhaps I was; the biddable child had somehow turned into a man with an iron will, and I was no less surprised than he that it was this easy to stand up to the man in whose shadow I had stood my entire life. "Uesugi-san will not give his only daughter to a pauper."

"Fortunately for Uesugi-san, I don't intend to be a pauper." With a formal bow, I headed towards the door. "I will be out of my office by noon."


"Tohma has lots more free time now," Ryuichi-san said in satisfaction a week later. It was a sunny day just on the brink of fall, and he had talked me into accompanying him and his sisters to the park. "I'm happy I get to see more of you." He beamed at me, all friendly goodwill.

In a move so habitual by now that I didn't even think about it, I snatched up Midori-chan before she could topple over and scrape her knee. I set her back on her feet before replying. "I've enjoyed it," I had to admit. "I've been working on some new music in all of my spare time. I think you'll like it."

"I always like your music, Tohma!" He grinned, then, in typical Ryuichi fashion, switched trains of thought abruptly and ran over to a cart selling hot sweet potatoes. He came back with a paper bag, and handed out the treats to the girls before offering me one. As though he hadn't just vanished for five minutes, he picked up exactly where the conversation had left off. "There's so much emotion in it," he mused. It still surprised me when he turned serious like this, but I had come to expect moments of brilliant insight from him when we were dealing with music. "That's why people listen, Tohma, it's one of the main reasons. There's feeling there, something that reaches out and touches the listener. It's because of you." I was a little taken aback, but then he grinned up at me, looking just like he usually did, and added in a higher pitched voice, "Kumagoro says it's because you're a genius, na no da!"

"Thank you, Kumagoro," I said, remembering just in time that I was to speak to the rabbit as though he was every bit as intelligent as myself. I was rewarded with another bright smile from Ryuichi-san for it.

"I want to try writing words," Ryuichi-san suddenly said. This certainly did take me by surprise, because it had seemed that he was content to have Noriko-san and I hand him finished music to learn. "There are words in my head when I hear your music, and sometimes they're the same as Noriko-chan's, but sometimes they're different. Your music talks to people, and I want to be able to talk to them too, but I can't write music, so I want to write words. Will you let me, Tohma?"

"I… well, of course, Ryuichi-san," I said, thinking it wouldn't hurt to let him have some fun, although I wasn't at all sure his genius extended past performing. But at least he would enjoy himself, and even if the lyrics turned out to be trash, Noriko-san could always touch them up to a performable level; she had a skill for such things. "I'd be glad to hear what you have to say."

"Yatta!" I wasn't quite able to dodge him this time, and by the time I was trying to pry him off, he had a deathgrip around me, and people were staring at us. "You're my number one favorite person in the world!" Ryuichi-san announced, still hanging around my neck, oblivious to the odd (and somewhat disapproving) looks we were getting from the two older ladies on a nearby bench, as well as the fascinated glances of a group of girls about Rie-san's age. "Ryu-chan loves Tohma best of all!"

About this time, his sisters clearly decided we were having too much fun without them and attached themselves to Ryuichi-san and me like barnacles until we were all standing in the middle of the park path wrapped around each other like absolute lunatics. It was so wildly inappropriate, and I felt like I was probably about to run out of air from being hugged by so many people at once, and people were still staring…

And because in the past year I had changed so much, I only laughed. Let them stare.


"All right, Ryuichi-san, let's try your song," I said two weeks later. It was late on Thursday night, but we had only started rehearsal an hour ago when Ryuichi-san had come in from one of his many part-time jobs. He had an odd work schedule to somehow manage to work around his sisters' lives so that either he or Rie-san was home at any given time of day. That meant that often he worked at night, though I hadn't known that when I first met him. It seemed Noriko-san had been serious when she had told me that he had been raising and providing for the girls by himself.

The next night we had another club performance, the biggest we had been able to secure so far, and Ryuichi-san had announced that he wanted to sing the song I had given him to work on. However, when I asked to hear it, his response was unexpected. "No!" Ryuichi-san said cheerfully. "Let's not."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Didn't you say you wanted to write words?"

"I do na no da!"

"Maybe he just didn't finish them," Noriko-san said with a laugh. "It's hard work, isn't it, Ryu-chan?"

"No, I finished them!" he said, still cheerful. "It was fun!"

"Then why don't you want to sing it for us?" I asked patiently. "We want to hear it, too."

"It's a surprise na no da!" he said with a laugh. "You can hear them tomorrow."

"But… we can't do it without rehearsal," Noriko-san said, wide-eyed.

"Yes you can!" Ryuichi-san disagreed. "Noriko and Tohma can do anything!"

"Well, we have run through the music before," I said slowly. "I suppose we-"

"But we don't know if…" Noriko-san trailed off, and I knew she was thinking how to say it without hurting Ryuichi-san's feelings. It was true; the lyrics could very well be awful, and we wouldn't know until we were up on stage and he started singing. But saying so could easily make Ryuichi-san pitch a tantrum (these were never a pleasure to deal with). Eventually, Noriko-san sighed and nodded. "All right, Ryu-chan, it will be a surprise. We can do it last on the program."

"Because the last song is the most important and leaves the biggest impression," I added quickly. I didn't want him upset by this compromise, either. If all else failed, the people in the club would probably be a little drunk and less discriminating at the end of the night.

Ryuichi-san nodded happily. "Thanks, Tohma! Thanks, Noriko-chan!" He hugged Kumagoro, but for a moment he looked more serious than usual. "It's going to be the three of us forever," he said vehemently. "Because Ryu-chan can't sing without Tohma and Noriko-chan. Without Tohma or without Noriko-chan or without Ryu-chan, there wouldn't be magic anymore. It has to be all three of us." He grinned at me. "So all three of us have to be together forever and ever and a day, ne?"

Noriko was clearly struggling not to cry; she was far more emotional than I was, and even I was touched. "Of course it's going to be the three of us forever," she said in a voice that was falsely too bright. "We wouldn't be the best if it wasn't all three of us. And we will be the best, just wait and see."


The club's name was Ruido, and it was a relatively new establishment. "Their current goal seems to be to showcase new local talent," I told Noriko-san and Ryuichi-san as we pulled into the parking lot and began to unpack the considerable amount of equipment we had between the three of us. I was beginning to consider buying a new car, big enough that we wouldn't have to be quite so cramped, what with two keyboards and everything else we were lugging around. "The owner is acquainted with… well, anyway, I had to pull a few strings," I finished. My father would probably be furious if he knew I was using my connections this way. "But once I got through to management, they seemed pleased to hear from me. Apparently, we're acquiring something of a reputation."

"And a fan base," Noriko-san said dryly. "Those girls who follow Ryu-chan around are a little scary to handle, even for me."

"Whereas the young men who have routinely come to see you play since you were fifteen and probably before are far less scary, of course," I said with a laugh.

"I like them!" Ryuichi-san piped up. "Everyone who comes to hear us every time is my friend, because they love our music!"

"How simple it is when you're not the one who has to fight off the fangirls," Noriko-san said with a giggle. "Well, soon we're going to be famous and then someone else can worry about keeping them from ripping Ryu-chan into pieces." She grinned wickedly. "Then I might start liking them too."

"You don't help with them much now," I said. "It's my job, and I won't mind relegating it at all."

"Well then, in order to have someone to relegate it to, we had better get in there and play," Noriko-san pointed out. "Before they decide we're not coming and all of our grandiose plans about bodyguards for Ryu-chan come crashing to the ground."


To our immense satisfaction, the place was still packed with people two hours later. More than once I wondered if Ryuichi-san's vocal chords were made out of steel, as he showed no sign of exhaustion, and had taken all of two water breaks all night. He was still going strong and we had the audience all but eating out of our hands by this point.

We had started with our own songs, but as the night grew later began taking cover requests when we started to run out of music. Anything we touched seemed to turn golden immediately, whether it was our own or someone else's, and the night was flying by. I didn't want it to end, and I could tell Noriko-san and Ryuichi-san felt the same way. I felt almost melancholy when the clock showed five minutes to midnight and Ryuichi-san thanked the audience exuberantly before announcing the last song of the night. Now I was more than a little worried on top of being rather melancholy, but the rest of the night had gone so marvelously well that I was fairly sure that whatever happened now, the impression we had made could not be erased.

We played the introduction to the cheering, laughing crowd. It was a little heavier than most of the music we wrote, faster and more energetic, and Ryuichi-san had asked when I offered him a few choices of what to set to words. I couldn't see his face because his back was to me, but just by his posture I could tell he was back in that intense, personal world that music created for him.

Ryuichi-san had surprised me before, and often, but he still managed to do so every time I though I had categorized him neatly. This was one of the many times when he wildly surpassed my expectations, and the first time I became fully convinced a genius was hiding under the innocent smile and wide eyes.

"Hide your scars behind your eyes…"

Dark, was the first thing that came to mind. The words were distinctly different from Noriko-san's. Those always had a bit of a cheerful energy around them, they were hopeful even when they were sad… These words were different. Their power came from their darkness, from a sense of complete abandon bordering on insanity.

"Let the glass dreams shatter
Behind the red horizon…"

The audience was as entranced as I was. They had gone eerily silent, and the music was pounding out of the speakers and echoing through the room. I couldn't see Noriko-san, but I was grateful she had kept enough self-control to keep playing when Ryuichi had thrown us this curve, though I was beginning to realize he would always have the power to surprise me.

"Start to see it never mattered,
You can't stop when you're this far…"

The song seemed to last forever, though I knew intellectually that the backing track was only four and a half minutes long. Time seemed fluid, jumping in starts between Ryuichi-san's voice and instrumental breaks. The lighting technician had turned the lights down when this had started, and now there was a single white spotlight on Ryuichi-san, but it was all he needed as he performed for the spellbound audience.

This was the last, missing piece.

The last note lasted an eternity, and complete silence greeted the end of the song as Ryuichi-san lowered his head and let his hair hide his face. The silence stretched into long moments, and we stood there, frozen. I began to think time really had stopped.

Then there was a roar, almost loud enough to knock me off my feet, and Ryuichi-san was jumping up and down and shouting something to the audience, but even with a microphone, I couldn't hear him over their cheering. Suddenly, reality came crashing back, and I was sweaty and hot under the lights, and my feet hurt almost as badly as my hands. Then there were people swarming the stage, and the employees of the club were hard-pressed to keep them back. Noriko-san jumped up, and I saw her now, with tears in her eyes, as she launched herself at Ryuichi-san with something between a laugh and a sob, and everything was chaotic and loud and absolutely beautiful.

There was no experience to compare with that night. I felt giddy and lightheaded and not at all like my usual self as we were ushered to the dressing room and the audience was being forcibly dispersed. There were people screaming our names, not just Ryuichi-san's, but Noriko-san's and even mine, and we could hear them even through the closed dressing room door where we collapsed like rag dolls to the chairs, the couch, and the floor. There didn't seem to be anything at all to say.

Suddenly, the door I had carefully locked was swinging open, and a man strode in. He wasn't anyone I had ever seen before, I was sure. He was very clearly Western, with his long blond hair gathered into a ponytail and eyes that were wide and blue even while they were narrowed and measuring us. He cast a glance at us around the room and spoke, his American accent immediately recognizable. "So, he was dead on about you three."

"I locked the door," was the first thing that came to mind. I felt immediately stupid, but now that the adrenaline rush of performing was gone, I was too tired to even lift my head.

"Of course you did, or you may have found yourself torn limb from limb by rabid fans. That will take some getting used to."

"How did you get in?" I asked.

He grinned. "I picked the lock, of course. It would have taken too long to find the building manager and have him admit me. He's busy trying to keep the people out."

"Who are you?" Ryuichi-san said, finally lifting his head from the floor where he lay, having grabbed Kumagoro before collapsing there. "A new friend?"

"I'm sure we're going to be wonderful friends," the American said with a chuckle. "My name is K."

"Who are you exactly, K-san?" Noriko-san piped up from where she was sprawled across three chairs. "Your name tells us nothing, and I'm not at all sure I trust a man who can pick a lock."

To my great surprise, he laughed long and heartily before answering. "K of Shinjin Records, at your service," he finally answered. "Our agents have had our eye on you for a few weeks, but tonight was the first time I saw you live, and that closes the deal." Noriko-san was gaping. Even Ryuichi-san looked shocked. I certainly felt as though I had just been hit head-on by a car. "Well, children?" he said in English. "How would you like to make a record?"