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The Bishounen Boys

Part 9: "Shining Collection"

By Splash

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Thanks peeps for all your feedback. ^_^ Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites are great, indeed. ~_^

Since this story is alternate universe, the Bishounen Boys will "fictionally own" their songs. In other words, the Bishounen Boys will claim credit for the songs in the fics, but it is only for the plot purpose only. I will give actual credits for the songs they sing in these notes, unless I made the song up myself (probably won't happen anytime soon) or something like that.

Shining Collection

Artist: Iceman

Album: Gate 2

Misc: Used in the 2nd OAV of Gravitation.

Urch, this is also when the somewhat derogatory comments about music bands start coming in ^^;;

Nani-What

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~October 11, 2002~

~Evening~

The school auditorium was in a hustle, people moving in and out of it constantly. Everything was ready... or at least supposedly. The audience was cheerful, anticipating the judging of the performances. The performers were nervous and excited, the equipment was working well... but something was still amiss. SomeONE, in fact. And just that one someone could turn Taichi's night from a horrible one into a beautiful one.

Girls everywhere were admiring this and that, commenting on people's outfits, their makeup, or whatever they used as an excuse for fashion. The boys were all out of sight, but could be caught chatting with their friends that were participating in the contest. A large portion of the competition had immediately claimed they were alternative or hard rock bands or something else along those lines.

On the far, far corner of the long hallway of dressing rooms, one could find a group of four Japanese boys. The three younger ones were talking to each other, but the leftover was glancing at the contest's program in his hand.

" Eventually he got so pissed off he swung his guitar at me and ended up having to buy a new one. No sympathies for that guy, sorry," Ken rattled, laughing with the others. Takeru sensed a quietness behind him where Taichi was standing, and paused.

" Taichi?"

Daisuke and Ken continued on without the young blonde, who went over to the lone one. He was obviously fretting about Yamato's absence. Not only did Taichi suddenly lose the ability to be settled, but the aura he was giving off could be felt by everyone.

Still, there wasn't any room to be worrying like that in Takeru's mind. " We're up after the band that's next finishes. We can pull this off without Yamato, you know that..."

Taichi didn't turn away. He just didn't reply, neither verbally or physically. Takeru wondered if he had heard him at all.

" Taichi, you're our lead vocalist for our song. You wanted to do this specific song, and only you can sing it right. If you're going to pull out on this because Yamato isn't here, you're going to disappoint a LOT of people. Daisuke, Ken, me, the producer, Mrs. Hake, the audience, your mother, the audience... Yamato..."

Taichi wasn't phased at the slightest. But he replied this time.

" Delay our performance. There's a couple groups after us, right? We'll just go after them. By then Yamato should be here."

Takeru sighed, itching his hair in exasperation. " I'm quite sure Yamato would have been here by now if he was going to. It's not like him to be this late."

The brunette sat down on the fold-up chair nearby. He put a hand to his forehead and hugged himself with the other. " I thought an old friend like you would have more faith in Yamato."

" I'm just being practical. We CAN win this contest without him."

The stoic tone in Takeru's voice was really irritating Taichi, but he hid it. Instead, Taichi hugged himself tighter and buried his face in his arms. " I'm not going to sing next."

Takeru looked at him silently for a few seconds, trying to figure out what Taichi meant exactly by his statement. Unable to get Taichi to look up, he sighed again, then walked out of the dressing room, leaving the door open.

The young blonde ruffled his hair some more as he went down the hallway. He tended to do that more often when he wasn't wearing a hat... He saw the contest announcer ahead and prepared to speak to him. " Yamato needs more time... Taichi needs more time..."

****

Yamato glanced outside his room window. He hated being oppressed. The weather outside was beautiful, not too hot, not too cold. He wasn't feeling the slightest bit sick anymore, and his vocal chords were at their peak.

He stood around in his boxers, drying his hair with a blower.

And suddenly, an inspiration came to him. He could hear the phone ringing over the blowing sound hovering in his room. He turned the machine off and heard his mother downstairs pick up the phone. It was an old friend obviously, since she started ranting off in Japanese, happy as ever.

His eyes darted toward his outfit on his chair. The school wasn't that far away...

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Taichi was still wearing his performance outfit, the strings on his trench dangling freely. It certainly didn't fit what he was about to do, however...

The producer was ballistic. " What makes you think a huge crowd of teens dying to see hot boys dancing around and singing would rather see you playing Bach on a cello?!?"

" Yamato's not here yet and we can't do this without him..." the brunette's grip on the firm throat of his instrument held strong, knuckles slowly paling, " And if anybody in this crowd is so inappreciative of listening to a two-and-a-half minute melody to the extent that they won't attend the rest of the concert, then we don't want them to attend ANY of our concerts."

Takeru had managed to hold back their performances two places, allowing a couple bands to relieve themselves earlier. Their band was now the final one to participate in the contest. The slightest hint of a delay had already deterred several members of the audience. The producer undoubtedly disliked seeing the publicity die and was now pressuring the band to perform without Yamato.

Mrs. Hake stood silent, no reply coming to her mind. The producer, on the other hand...

" You won't HAVE any concerts if you keep going on like that."

" Nani..."

The little slip of Japanese from Taichi went unnoticed as the buff producer raised a hand of reason. " Personally, I would LOVE to hear your cello, but a huge majority of the crowd out there wouldn't. They're TEENAGERS, for crying out loud. Heck, they wouldn't be interested in hearing a PROFESSIONAL play-"

" Which is the first advantage I've got for a chance to pull this off successfully."

The tall man nearby seemed to lose his balance for a quick moment before standing upright. " What are you saying, kid?"

Taichi snarled deeply at his reference. " I'm saying that we're reaching for a different kind of music band, to put it simply. Not with the hip-hop dancing boy bands, not with the screaming, head-banging punk rockers, not like anything you've seen before. The moment all of us take a single step of the same rhythm, millions of people out there will speculate that we're a wannabe Backstreet Boys or 'N Sync band. The moment that we scream out something completely inappropriate without total meaning, they will speculate that we're wannabe Limp Bizkit. Our chances of making it to the top are automatically charred if that happens."

" Yes, but at least you-"

" I KNOW we will be ridiculed for being radical, but we PREFER to be radical. We're not being violent, it won't kill anyone to do this, and we're not even introducing a new kind of music. It's just... a music genre that it so often ignored by the youths today. So just... let it go. Let's see how many of them out there really have a taste for this."

Nobody tried to stop him after that, but there was a hint of a smirk on the young boys' faces in the background as Taichi casually raised his cello, wandering off toward the crowd...

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He ignored the gapes in the crowd as he stepped out, dressed to kill, yet numbed with the cello in his hand. They waited silently to see what the next band was planning, attention caught by the spontaneous appearance.

Taichi sat down and didn't bother to look at his audience.

Without hesitation, he struck his first note, elongated in exaggeration compared to the following. Beautiful tone and movement was essential... but yet, confusing string crossings were made miniscule. It was quite apparent that this movement of the suite emphasized melodic scale and arpeggio patterns, but it connected so well as Taichi continued to play it...

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He tousled his hair, ignoring the fact that it was still moist from not drying it completely. He zoomed into the dressing room, and his nerves tensed when he noticed it was empty. The next choice was the stage, but most of his hopes had already died by then. He cursed himself for taking so much time to gain the courage to transport himself to the school. And if his mother hadn't become occupied on the phone, he wouldn't have gotten out of the house...

He began to get confused when he heard silence behind the large stage doors. The craziest thoughts that the contest had been cancelled or he was in the wrong building came to him, but he remembered the other bands in the premises.

His impulses refused to relax, so he silently pushed the doors open. As soon as he stepped inside, he could hear the ringing of a cello in the distance...

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Taichi's fingers were moving swiftly across, up the bridge, back down, and then somewhere up in that stratosphere just to reach the highest note of the piece. Most of the viewers would have expected some kind of harsh sound, but instead it was pleasant, sweet like candy to their ears... The milky sensations crawling through them as the piece reached its climax was almost too much. And Taichi's playing also crawled, slowly... slowly up until he nearly slammed the peak note. But the ringing of it was perfect, and he lunged out from there, empathizing the high notes. Over and over again, until the music faded down in the slightest notice and melted, softening into the final chord.

Taichi wasn't worried about the audience's feedback. He didn't notice if there was applause, nor did he care. In fact, his performance seemed to be all in the past for him. He was too occupied staring at the person who had magically appeared next to him. His bow fell on the ground with a soft clatter, his cello was abandoned as he rose. He stood in awe, in delight, in confusion...

" Yamato..."

He rushed up to the new arrival and ignored everything else. Tightly, he threw his arms around the blonde, not ever wishing to let go. Yamato simply melted in them, immersing, loving...

The scenery changed around them, some on a whim but most with purpose. Takeru entered, followed by Daisuke and Ken. Taichi let them pass by to their places, still clutching Yamato possessively. Yamato was his for that moment, his one and only. He needed that sense of security, not the tension from the education system. He needed that sense of warmth, not the cold shoulders he received from the soccer team. Yamato needed it, too, for similar reasons...

All of a sudden, Taichi felt a tap on his shoulder.

" We need to start, Taichi. You're lead vocal, remember?"

He was reluctant to obey Takeru, but then realized he had a much larger audience around him. He released his hold, trying not to dwell on the look on Yamato's face. The microphone was right next to him, practically calling his name in yearning.

Daisuke threw his hand across the keyboard, launching the starting sequence of their song. Of Taichi's song...

"Making love in a bed of glass,

The rules was broken by touches (gropes),

With a soliday tail, gathering a collection of lusty feathers,

I want an innocent night more than screams...

Dancing wearing rags of gloom, breaking through with freedom and lie

Every broken and fragile pieces of puzzles, let's fly from these ashes of death

Kiss shining, with a kiss in the eye

Thorns and flower's petal become a disturbance

Make me shining, in the corner of seduction's net

An illusion that just began is shining

Losing sight of panorama's dimension

The expression is perfect, except for the shiver

The cheap work is -a need of closeness- reaction

I want to see the you that acted cold but lusty

Playing in the rainbow, splashing the sea of pleasure

Protection is an endless gamble, breaking through this world

Kiss shining, in the street where solitude took shape

The twisted regret cut the air

Make me shining, the scattered pieces of heart

In sparked hope that had passed

The expectation has began, in the red and stained fingertips

Flapping butterfly's tear

Everything turns into sand

Shining, make you cry

Kiss shining, with a kiss in the eye

Thorns and flower's petal become a disturbance

Make me shining, in the corner of seduction's net

An illusion that just began is shining

Kiss shining, in the street where solitude took shape

The twisted regret cut the air

Make me shining, the scattered pieces of heart

In sparked hope that had passed"

Taichi rattled off the verses with such fluency; he didn't even need to focus on his singing. Rather, he was staring at Yamato, basking in his presence. Yamato sang the modulations with him, moving toward every pitch. They shared the same microphone, and they could nearly taste each other as they sang... And in the midst of the simple choruses, their eyes never parted.

Taichi's eyes twinkled with some kind of statement that only Yamato understood. ' It's your song, too.'

While the silent communication confused the crowd, they were too stunned at the song itself to contemplate anything else.

The group of five Japanese boys had won the contest without a hitch. Everyone in the audience was hollering in cheers louder than anything else heard that night. The girls in the audience were swooning, excited as they were, they didn't feel comfortable enough to throw themselves on stage. Or at least attempt to. Perhaps it was the sight of Taichi and Yamato refusing to separate from each other's arms...

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Tsuzuku...

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Time after this is going to speed up. Be prepared. ~_^ Please review, since the subjective human part of me tends to herd toward the project that gets the most popularity. I hope that was understandable. XD

Splash

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