All Hellos

by Michael Barnette

  Music flowed from his hands in a glissando of notes that fell like brittle tears on the crowd. Slow. Sad.

  He stepped forward to the microphone, the opening lyrics to their biggest selling single pouring from his lips, “Iku tokoro wa shiranai.

  “Itta toko wa oshienai,”

  Hana, the drummer echoed the words in chorus with Maki the bassist, their voices blending smoothly.

  Over their heads the huge display showed falling rose petals, the English translation of the lyrics in bold lettering. The display provided for the English speaking audience that would later watch the broadcast.

  I don’t know where I’m going.

  I can’t tell you where I’ve been.

  A change in lighting resolved the woman into the familiar figure of their handler— the manager for their band. She standing there in her all her tatter-lace beauty, black mascara artfully streaking her cheeks. Sadness incarnate. Gothic Lolita, her makeup turning her face white as death.

  But he still didn’t know who the man standing there with her might be.

  It didn’t matter. They were no longer fighting and Kita was watching them with adoration in her wide eyes, hands pressed together in front of her breasts.

  He could feel her love even with most of the width of the stage between them.

  Their hard work had paid off. Hers. Theirs. Together.

  Pride and love burned in his chest as his voice soared into the next verses.

  “Namida ga ame no you ni ochite. Hi ga kimi no egao to kieta.”

  Rose petals changing to falling rain on a sere and dead garden, the words streaming across the display as he sang them.

  Tears fall like rain. And the sun is gone with your smile...

  Singing the words to the first hit song they’d ever had, in front of such a huge crowd was more than Kei had ever believed possible. Yet here they were despite all the fighting, the struggles, the hard work finally paying off.

  Kei glanced sideways, trying to see Kita, wanting to make sure the man was leaving her alone. But they’d either moved away or the lights on stage kept him from seeing them. This wasn’t the time to be distracted. They had to be perfect. Nothing less was acceptable to Kei. He focused on the song, fingers sliding and fluttering across the guitar, creating music.

  “Mou koi ni ochitemasu ka.”

  Hana echoed the lyrics alone, and Kei wondered what the hell Maki was doing as the translation rolled over their heads, Can you ever love me again the rose petals falling in an endless rain. He turned his head to look and found the scantily clad bassist was looking back stage, frowning.

  It had to be their relative positions to the lights because when Kei tried to see what was going on, he couldn’t, the area too dark in relation to the pool of light bathing him, lighting him for the adoration of the crowd.

  “Kokoro ni hi wo modoremasu ka,” he sang the words, putting all the hurt and emotion in his voice that he could, letting his voice break slightly the way he’d recorded it the night his last girlfriend had walked out, unable to handle the fact that he wouldn’t put an end to his first love: his band. Overhead the words were emblazoned across the setting sun, Can the sun shine in my heart?

  It was working too, Kei could see a few of the girls right in front of the stage had tears running down their faces. One of them held up a sign that read: I will always love you, Kei.

  He fought the smile, but he couldn’t fight the upwelling of emotion.

  This was what they’d always wanted. Fans. Fame. Notoriety.

  They’d finally arrived as a band, finally had more than just a concept, and good music. They had fans. Adoration. Love. And the notoriety that came from being the sort of band they were: visual kei, their look and sound blending to create what they were.

  Mercykill.

  And this song, Mou Hi wa Nai— No More Sun— had always been their best because it was the one that most deeply touched them, and those who listened to it as any ballad of love lost tended to do. It had even hit the European charts, coming in for one brief, bright week at number fifty-three in the top one hundred before falling off the charts.

  But they’d done it. Mercykill had cracked the top one hundred in Europe.

  Kei kept on signing, Hana’s mellow voice and Maki’s slightly sharper counterpoint backing him up. Whatever had distracted the bassist had only caused a tiny mistake, one Kei could forgive considering how well the night had gone.

  As the last strains of the song died, he glanced at the girl with the sign. She was weeping, her lips still managing to form the refrain with Hana and Maki.

  The last notes faded, lost in the screams of the audience as the lights went out.

  Elation filled Kei as the trio hurried off stage to make way for the main act.

  But they’d had their first taste of the big time and Kei found himself wondering what had happened to Saya the girl whose departure from his life had caused to him writing Mou Hi wa Nai which had been their first real hit and got them their contract with Poisoned Dragon.

  The roar of the crowd as the main act took the stage made Kei shiver. The screaming had been loud for them, but compared to this unbridled adulation, it paled.

  Someday, he told himself. Someday soon.

  They shed their instruments the instant they were off stage, handing them to the people waiting to take them and put them in their cases.

  Maki almost took Kei off his feet as the shorter man jumped on him the instant they were backstage, “We were great!” he said, as the guitarist threw an arm around the bassist and grabbed for the wall trying to steady them both.

  “Damnit, Juro, you’re going to get me killed doing that!” he snapped, but there was no real anger in it. Kei was just too pleased with things tonight to be really angry with the too exuberant behavior of the bassist.

  The firm pressure of something hard against his stomach did raise a darkly red eyebrow. “Happy?” he asked archly.

  Juro blushed, but it was hard to see it under the makeup that turned his face white as that of a geisha, except across his eyes where it was a rich shade of glitter-silvered violet.

  Hana giggled, “Didn’t you notice he was like that for the last three songs? There were two really attractive young men making eyes at our Maki all night.”

  Kei pressed his lips to the bassist’s warm mouth before he put Juro down. “Really? Imagine that? And here I thought it was that group of girls eyeing him that caused this reaction.”

  Juro slipped from his grasp, but not before he got a good grope in on the bassist’s ass.

  Juro laughed, “Girls, guys, you know I’m easy.”

  “But not cheap,” Akira giggled, repeating one of the jokes they’d been playing with for years.

  Juro patted their Hana on the behind, hitting nothing but the heavy satin of the drummer's skirt. “Unlike someone else I could name.”

  “I am not cheap,” Hana insisted.

  “Two hamburgers, fries and a soda? I’d say that was pretty cheap,” Takeshi reminded the younger rocker.

  “First date too,” Juro added. “And you were flirting worse than a fangirl.”

  Giggling, Hana poked Juro in the chest. “You were just too cute to resist.”

  “Cute?” Juro asked sounding offended. “I’ll have you know I’m not cute, I’m sexy.”

  Takeshi looked along the length of Juro’s booted legs. “Yeah, very sexy.”

  “And what am I, a leftover?”

  “Hardly,” Takeshi replied, putting an arm around Hana and hugging the drummer close.

  The three of them were laughing as they walked down the hall, toward their dressing room acknowledging the congratulations and smiles of the people back stage as they made their way to their dressing room to get out of their costumes.

  “Hey, don’t you think we should stay dressed like this, you know, to sign autographs?” Juro asked as he opened the door of their dressing room.

  “Hmm... That might be a good idea,” Kei agreed as Hana moved closer
to the pair. He was looking around for their handler, wondering where she was. He’d expected her to be in the wings waiting for them, but there was no sign of her.

  Maybe she was off planning some nefarious deed, like a celebration party. Or maybe she was off in the bathroom fixing her makeup. He was positive he’d seen tears on her face.

  Either way he really wanted to ask her who the man he'd seen arguing with her was, and, more to the point, find out what the quarrel was about. He knew Kita’s friends, most of their business contacts on sight, and he’d never seen the man in the suit until tonight, he was positive he’d never met the man. He’d have remembered.

  “Don’t I get a kiss too, Kei?” the drummer asked, turning his face up to the taller man.

  Kei obliged, his arms wrapping around the slender form of his other lover.

  “I told you no!”

  The kiss ended instantly as Kei, Maki and Hana— otherwise known as Suzuki Takeshi, Hideo Juro and Inoue Akira— turned to see their handler Takei Kita and the same man who’d been arguing with her while they were on stage.

  The man was tall, almost a hand-span taller than Takeshi— who was rather tall even without the high-heeled boots he was wearing— which made the man quite tall indeed. Dressed more like a businessman than someone who would be present at a concert like this, he seemed as out of place as they would be in the corporate offices of an investment firm.

  Next to him, Kita looked like a doll. She was so much smaller— she and Akira were able to share their wardrobe. Tonight, in her makeup she seemed delicate. Fragile as a porcelain doll.

  Dressed in a very tiny black velvet mini-skirt that was covered by a floor length layer of tattered lace ruffles. Long black hair had been pulled up into loops and streaked with deep royal blue. The top she wore left most of her upper body bare, only her small breasts covered by a sheen of midnight blue satin, the same fabric forming the gloves that covered her hands from fingertips to biceps.

  The man glowered at her, towering over her in a threatening manner that made Takeshi’s eyes narrow. The slender guitarist took a step forward.

  “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you should leave,” he told the man.

  The man turned. His look was one of sneering contempt, the dark eyes cold, hard as stone. “Mind your own fucking business!” he snarled.

  “Kei, please...”

  The lead singer took a step forward, anger, the desire to protect their handler—one of his lovers—stronger than common sense. He’d been in few fights, but he wasn’t about to stand there and let this man do anything to Kita.

  “This isn’t over!” the man growled, leaning down to menace her.

  “We won’t do it! I won’t do it!” Kita said, her voice shaking with fear.

  “Bitch! You’ll do it! You’ll do it all right, or....” the man snarled and slapped her, knocking Kita to the floor, blood running from a split lip. Eyes wide with shock she stared up at the man.

  The three men stood frozen by shock.

  It was the drummer who reacted first, his hand going to his face as it he’d been the one stuck. “He... hit Kita...” he said, his chocolate brown eyes wide, the pupils huge. Akira stepped forward, the small drummer no bigger than the woman who’d just been hit.

  Juro grabbed his arm. “Akira, don’t.”

  The drummer was ashen, “He’s going to hurt her. Don’t let him hurt Kita!”

  The man grabbed Kita and yanked her back to her feet. “Walk!” He shoved her and she fell again.

  Too stunned at first by what the man was doing to Kita, none of them had reacted with more than horror. But seeing her trying to get away, the panic and terror in her eyes was enough for Kei. A flash of anger dispersed the shock and he crossed the room to grab the guy, shoving him away from their handler, snarling out an enraged, “Stop it!” as the man stumbled and almost fell.

  Kei put himself between the man and Kita. “Leave her the fuck alone, asshole.”

  Hana pulled away from the bassist. “We can’t let him hurt her, Juro.”

  “Shit,” Juro muttered as he hurried to help Akira get Kita out of the way.

  The two men, Kei and the unknown businessman faced one another, the taller man had a smile, cold and contemptuous on his face.

  “You’d have been so much better off if you’d stayed out of this, Kei.” The way he said the rocker’s stage name made it sound like a slur.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Kei snarled, taking a stance, ready to fight.

  The man just laughed at him. “She’s going with me.”

  “Like hell she is!” the guitarist retorted. He glanced to see where Akira was, “Go get security!”

  That was all it took. One second of distraction.

  White points of light, shooting comets in his vision. Kei stumbled, went down to his knees, the world spinning crazily, those little stars filling his eyes, his jaw feeling as if he’d been hit by hammer.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Juro, angry. The sound of scuffling feet, flesh striking flesh, a grunt.

  Kei shook his head, trying to clear his vision.

  Juro hit the floor beside him, as dazed as he was, his mouth bloodied.

  Angry, Kei got to his feet intending to face the man again, give him back as good as he’d gotten.

  The man had Kita by the arm, Akira was sprawled out on the floor, tears in his eyes, scared, bleeding from a split lip.

  Rage filled Kei and he went for the man, anger fueling his fist.

  The man let Kita go to meet the wild charge of the leather clad rocker, the pair of them exchanged a flurry of punches while Kita screamed for help, and Juro tried to regain his feet.

  But the roaring of the crowd, the wailing of the guitars on stage muted the sounds of the struggle going on backstage.

  Juro got back to his feet just as Kei went down for the second time, dazed by a right cross to the jaw.

  “Asshole, get the fuck away!” Juro shouted.

  Kei got back to his feet, tried to tackle the man, but was met by a viscous kick to the ribs that laid him out on the floor, gasping for breath.

  He could hear Juro fighting with the man again as he dully wondered why no one was coming to help. There should have been security people, stage helpers, dozens of people around.

  But there was just them.

  And damned if he was going to let anything happen to Kita.

  Especially not after what she’d told him before the concert.

  He wasn’t angry with her anymore. He could never stay mad at any of his friends. His lovers.

  Takeshi forced himself back to his knees, tried to stand again, his legs unsteady, the room spinning around him as Juro hit the floor beside him, the bassist’s face bloody, eyes half closed, dazed.

  “Kita, run!” Akira’s panicked shout.

  “No! Please!” Kita screaming in terror.

  He looked up in time to see the man’s foot heading for him, something dark and menacing in the man’s fist.

  An instant later he was sprawled out on the floor with white sparks dancing in his vision, barely aware a sharp crack of sound, of Kita’s shriek of pain, Hana’s scream of terror. And blood. Spattered like windblown cherry blossoms across the floor.

  So much blood...

  The next day

  An apartment in Tokyo

  Eleven in the morning

  The headlines in the paper made Takeshi fight a renewed war with the tears he’d been fighting all night. He stared at the words emblazoned across the top of the front page, the horror of it a nightmare he was unable to wake from.

  Mercykill Handler, Takei Kita Slain Backstage at Concert:

  Bassist in Stable Condition After Shooting.

  He sighed and gingerly sipped his tea, trying not to get the hot liquid on his swollen lip, worried about their future now that Juro was so badly injured that the doctors were saying he might not be able to perform for several months. That was, of course, if they could save his arm in the first p
lace because last night they weren’t certain they could.

  And then there was Kita...

  He closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath trying not to think about it because that hurt too much, bit so deep that it felt like dying and he just wouldn’t let himself feel it yet. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

  But it was there, a steely thorn shoved into his heart.

  Akira was still rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he walked up behind the other man. He was tired, but he couldn’t sleep anymore, the night at the hospital while they waited for word on Juro had been rough on them both, but he knew that Takeshi blamed himself. He put a gentle hand on Takeshi’s shoulder, leaned down and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “Juro will be fine.”

  “I know. It’s just...” Takeshi shuddered, fighting the upwelling emotions, trying to keep from shattering into a million splintered fragments, but it was no use. “Kita...God, why...why Kita?” His voice broke, and he lay his head on his folded arms, the paper beneath them, a scattering of tears falling, soaking in, the ink running black as death on the paper.

  Akira put his arms around the guitarist, rested his cheek on the man’s dark hair, “You did your best.”

  Kei leaned back into Akira’s embrace, missing Kita’s smile, Juro’s laughter.

  The apartment too silent, lonely despite Akira’s presence.

  “She’s gone.” His voice was a numbed mutter, the beauty of his tones leached by pain, sorrow, the loss of the bright dream that had been his life.

  Their life together.

  So much hardship, ended by two bullets.

  Takeshi wished he’d been the one killed.

  Why Kita? Why her?

  And that bastard had gotten away.

  Takeshi shivered, remembering the man’s cold stare, the feel of his fists as they’d knocked him almost senseless.

  Hard fists driven by powerful shoulders.

  Suit or not, that man had been a fighter. A killer.

  A murderer who’d stolen their dream from them.