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sevenswellsTitle: Hoshi no Suna
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sevenswells who got back to hiding under her rock
Rating: NC -17 (but still PG -13 for this chapter. I'm sorry, but next one is back to NC -17, just fordiac! ^___~)
(One True) Pairing: Gackt/Miyavi
Warnings: Not safe for work, yaoi, angst, alternate universe.
Word Count: 2188 w but dear me it seemed way longer
Comments: dedicated more than ever tokamexkame !
This chapter was SO FUCKING HARD TO TRANSLATE, it might have been one of the worst, I don't know what I'd have done without her.
So, many thanks, darling, this is for you only. ^.^
Also, I wrote this before I saw any Gackt concert... well, it figures (again, I only took inspiration from my own concert experiences in Paris). I was amazed when I finally saw the DVD of "Sixth Day and Seventh Night" a few months ago and the people from the Japanese audience standing very straight in their spaces, not moving an inch and keeping their distances from one another... O_____O well it didn't look like a concert audience at all (but the show in itself was more than mind-blowing though, it totally rocked my world)
Kyo had obtained the tickets through one of his old friends who was part of the security staff. He was far more excited than I was to go to this concert, so I did my best to appear equally thrilled. I had already seen some clips featuring Gackt on TV, including one where he was dressed like pseudo-French nobility from the 18th century, Versailles no Bara-style, it made me laugh if anything. Maybe the music was okay to listen to, but there was something about visual artists I fundamentally couldn't understand. I thought they obviously had something to compensate if they cosplayed like buffoons, taking themselves seriously all the while. Rock music should be more primal, directly grasped and going straight to the loins; frills were pointless and just another barrier between rock and roll and sex, which is the original energy. Gospel of Miyabi.
That's why, immersed in a crowd of squeeing teenage girls and goths wrapped in leather and steel, waiting for his entrance on stage, I did not feel I belonged there and would have rather been just about anywhere else. It was hard to keep a straight face next to Kyo who was flooding my ear with details about the band, Malice Mizer, and Mana, the doll who played guitar and was prettier than a woman, and Camui Gackt... the man who spoke multiple languages fluently, who'd been playing the piano since age three, who practiced martial arts, who had seven percent body fat, who claimed to be a vampire born in 1540.
Happily, Kyo didn't notice my trying really hard not to laugh. It sounded like that bio had been made up by a team of psycho marketing directors, and forcefully fed to the press - along with some suggestive pictures - with the express aim of making an impact on the tweeny bopper who could then touch herself thinking about her idol, so very wonderful, so very superhuman. Suddenly, I felt extremely irritated. When the human tide started to ripple and rise, my cynicism didn't leave me. When they started to chant his name, I felt nauseated.
Ga-ku-to, Ga-ku-to, Ga-ku-to...
What was so special about him anyway? Granted, the management team might be good, but that couldn't be sufficient to galvanize so many people, could it?
The lights went off and in the darkness, the anticipation and the excitement of the crowd grew suffocating. Kyo had stopped talking. In spite of me, and to my total surprise, my heart started to pound harder. If I had stopped to think, I could have blamed the apprehension on the herding effect, but the little self-control I could muster was troubled by an incongruous feeling: just like everybody there, at the same time, I felt that something important and terrible was about to happen.
The guitarist, Közi, appeared on stage, lit from below by a red spotlight. The crowd purred for joy. He was dressed up as a demon and two red and black wings made of strass were hanging on his back. As serious as a pope despite the tackiness of the costume, he wore it with such naturalness that he could have been born in it. He began with a guitar riff that punched me right in the gut. He was joined by Mana, surrounded by a halo of blue light: his guitar with its melancholy accents vibrating along Közi's flights in polyphony. Then it was Yuuki the bassist and Kami the drummer who came on stage, in an explosion of light. With the rythm and bass, Yuuki and Kami formed the earth and the mountains, whereas Közi painted the sky and Mana, the moon and the stars: Malice Mizer was writing its own cosmogony. During this long intro, the two guitars were seeking for their own harmony while gradually increasing the melody's intensity: they seemed caught in a race towards a culminating point that occurred only when, above our heads, Gackt made his apparition. Amongst us, a scream repeated itself to infinity.
A pair of huge black feathered wings sprang out of his back, but such tricks weren't necessary: his presence alone was terribly moving. He glided over to the front stage and the crowd, as if magnetised, was pressed forward in one single motion, crashing loudly against the security rows. All raised arms were extended towards him. Many girls around me bursted into tears, one of them fell on her knees, another one rolled on the floor, yet another one dropped, half-dead. Unconsciously, my hand went looking for Kyo's, found nothing. Kyo had disappeared, snatched away by the indistinct masses. From then on, I was alone in front of this monster of charisma, and when his voice reached me, what was left of my trembling being was only terror and adoration.
During three hours full, I didn't know who I was anymore. My heart beat along with other hearts, my skin dripped sweat against other skins, my cries mingled with other cries: I was thousands, and the feeling of love that moved my vast body belonged to him alone.
When everything was over, it took me a long time to come back to reality and call me back to myself. I waited for the majority of the audience to go out of the stadium and I could finally find Kyo, whose arms I flung myself into and I shouted in his ear:
-I gotta meet him daddy, now.
-Who is that, cupcake, he shouted back, half-amused, half-concerned.
I didn't answer, he simply understood from the urgency that my look read; his forehead grew wrinkled. He began:
-It's complicated, Miyabi...
I shook my head and interrupted:
-No, Kyo, I know it's possible, and only because of you. I beg you please. I won't ask anything else of you anymore.
His face darkened and he let out a sigh.
I won.
We cut through the crowd, he took me to his friend from security. The latter was being reluctant at first, but as soon as he learned that Kyo and I didn't date, he agreed, to let us through, still a bit reluctantly though, and he gave us access to the dressing rooms, in the name of the old friendship he had with Kyo.
I found myself in front of the room, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, wringing my damp hands.
-Are you sure you're...
-Kyo, I'm sorry I make you worry like that, I really am, but I have to do this no matter what. I've never ever felt this before, and I don't think it's because of the herding effect or what, I mean not just that, there was that thing, I've never felt this before; it's this guy, he's something special. I was at his feet, and there was this energy that crushed me, phwhoaaarr, and...
I chewed up half my words and was smiling nervously at the same time: no wonder he was worried about me, I looked like a complete nutjob. But it was difficult to explain to him that I hadn't been living until that moment: everything had seemed out of place to me, I had been backwards; as if I lived outside of myself. But there were moments that could transcend me, where everything fit perfectly, like a very simple solution, invisible until just then, to a puzzle. It was the only measure I knew for happiness, those snatches of pure existence when everything else seemed morbid and bland.
His shoulders slouched a bit. In order to comfort him, I added:
-It's gonna be okay. You might as well enjoy yourself and go flirt a bit -- at least your friend looks like he's ready to go.
I punctuated with a wink, to ease the atmosphere. He managed a smile, demanded a peck on the cheek and went, turning around every few steps, sheepish and sorry.
My hand reached for the doorknob, but laughter reached me from within, and I stopped on the spot, assailed by doubt. What if I interrupted? If he didn't have the patience to listen to what I had to say? And by the way, did I actually have something I wanted to say, or was this simply to see him and extract happiness from the fact?
I breathed in a brief breath, lowered the knob and pushed the door open.
Inside, conversation ceased and the room's occupants looked at me without surprise. He was there, back to me, removing the make-up from his face before the lit up vanity. From the angle I stood at, I only saw one blue eye appraising me coldly in the mirror.
-Yet another one? It's official, security's inefficient. You won't be getting bored tonight, Kamui.
Közi cackled, leaning as he was against a wall.
I got what meant when I saw others had preceded me : three youngish girls, dressed outrageously, giggled stupidly next to Gackt. He deigned stand up:
-The price of success, Kouji. But I sense jealousy. I wouldn't like for our ties to deteriorate : want some?
He had a vague gesture in our direction, mine and the girls' ; they gave forced laughs. As for me, my mouth was dry. His voice made me think of incense smoke : soft and grave, heady. He enunciated effortlessly, never stopping to search for a word: his diction was as smooth as was his face.
Közi designated me with his chin:
-The little cutie, there, he does it for me. He looks innocent.
In a corner of my mind, I did get that this was me he was talking about, but I couldn't get it to connect. I felt even less involved than usual; the gap which generally existed between myself and my affect had widened further still. My eyes remained fixed upon Gackt: his person ate up the entire space and irradiated sheer arrogance, as though he was prepared to find himself at any given second before crowds of thousands. He didn't intend to adjust his attitude simply because he was no longer onstage. My pheromones, out of all control now, were frying my brain.
-Not so fast, he told Közi with his velvety voice, they have come first and foremost for me: I reserve the first choice. Let us see...
He turned to the girls:
-Whom would you prefer, my dears?
They preened.
-Ga-sama! they answered in cacophony.
He caught one by the chin, amused:
-What do you propose we do with the evening?
-Anything Ga-sama desires!
-How about I take all of you at once, together?
This threw them off for a moment without any answer, but one of them then had the presence of mind to nod, and the others followed. He began to laugh soflty. He seemed to be getting off on making fun of them this openly. Then he turned to me:
-What about you? What's on offer?
The absurdity of this cattle-like exhibition jolted me out of my apathy: he was having me compete aganst three brainless bobby-soxers who were promising him the moon and the stars, what did he want me to say? I felt as irritated as I had at the start of the concert so without giving it further thought I spat out:
-I wanna do visual kei. Manage me.
This injunction was followed by a deafening silence. Stupefaction appeared upon his face, no doubt it was his only spontaneous emotion of the night. I went on , raising my voice, digging my nails into my palms:
-To begin with, I thought you were fools. To me rock and roll isn't a carnival. No need for costumes as long as you've got guitars, drum and bass, those should be enough to get you high, that's what I thought. I thought your music was all ersatz, disgusting processed goods, substitute sugar for diabetics and the costumes were meant to help the pill slide down.
The girls stared at me with open mouths and round eyes.
-Hey, asshole, Közi grunted, tearing away from the wall and taking a step towards me, where do you think you...?
Gackt stopped him with a gesture. He was looking me straight in the eye now and, soundlessly, he bade me continue.
Feeling self-important, I shrugged:
-But after this concert, I changed my mind. It is real music, and your way of playing it left me reeling, I'll admit. I wanna make visual kei too, just like you: your concert, it moved me. I want to be able to do that to people too. So I'm putting myself in your hands. Manage me.
Közi went to say something but Gackt was quicker:
-Can you play any instrument? He queried calmly.
-No.
-Can you sing?
-Not really, but I did write...
-Do you realize, he cut me off, that if we can sell neither your voice nor your music, then you haven't got much else left to sell?
I took all of two seconds to digest the question, then I smiled:
-There is. There's me.
He seemed to like this answer.
-Sorry, Közi. I'll leave you with the girls for tonight; the little cutie's coming with me.
Author:
sevenswells who got back to hiding under her rockRating: NC -17 (but still PG -13 for this chapter. I'm sorry, but next one is back to NC -17, just for
diac! ^___~)(One True) Pairing: Gackt/Miyavi
Warnings: Not safe for work, yaoi, angst, alternate universe.
Word Count: 2188 w but dear me it seemed way longer
Comments: dedicated more than ever to
kamexkame !This chapter was SO FUCKING HARD TO TRANSLATE, it might have been one of the worst, I don't know what I'd have done without her.
So, many thanks, darling, this is for you only. ^.^
Also, I wrote this before I saw any Gackt concert... well, it figures (again, I only took inspiration from my own concert experiences in Paris). I was amazed when I finally saw the DVD of "Sixth Day and Seventh Night" a few months ago and the people from the Japanese audience standing very straight in their spaces, not moving an inch and keeping their distances from one another... O_____O well it didn't look like a concert audience at all (but the show in itself was more than mind-blowing though, it totally rocked my world)
Kyo had obtained the tickets through one of his old friends who was part of the security staff. He was far more excited than I was to go to this concert, so I did my best to appear equally thrilled. I had already seen some clips featuring Gackt on TV, including one where he was dressed like pseudo-French nobility from the 18th century, Versailles no Bara-style, it made me laugh if anything. Maybe the music was okay to listen to, but there was something about visual artists I fundamentally couldn't understand. I thought they obviously had something to compensate if they cosplayed like buffoons, taking themselves seriously all the while. Rock music should be more primal, directly grasped and going straight to the loins; frills were pointless and just another barrier between rock and roll and sex, which is the original energy. Gospel of Miyabi.
That's why, immersed in a crowd of squeeing teenage girls and goths wrapped in leather and steel, waiting for his entrance on stage, I did not feel I belonged there and would have rather been just about anywhere else. It was hard to keep a straight face next to Kyo who was flooding my ear with details about the band, Malice Mizer, and Mana, the doll who played guitar and was prettier than a woman, and Camui Gackt... the man who spoke multiple languages fluently, who'd been playing the piano since age three, who practiced martial arts, who had seven percent body fat, who claimed to be a vampire born in 1540.
Happily, Kyo didn't notice my trying really hard not to laugh. It sounded like that bio had been made up by a team of psycho marketing directors, and forcefully fed to the press - along with some suggestive pictures - with the express aim of making an impact on the tweeny bopper who could then touch herself thinking about her idol, so very wonderful, so very superhuman. Suddenly, I felt extremely irritated. When the human tide started to ripple and rise, my cynicism didn't leave me. When they started to chant his name, I felt nauseated.
Ga-ku-to, Ga-ku-to, Ga-ku-to...
What was so special about him anyway? Granted, the management team might be good, but that couldn't be sufficient to galvanize so many people, could it?
The lights went off and in the darkness, the anticipation and the excitement of the crowd grew suffocating. Kyo had stopped talking. In spite of me, and to my total surprise, my heart started to pound harder. If I had stopped to think, I could have blamed the apprehension on the herding effect, but the little self-control I could muster was troubled by an incongruous feeling: just like everybody there, at the same time, I felt that something important and terrible was about to happen.
The guitarist, Közi, appeared on stage, lit from below by a red spotlight. The crowd purred for joy. He was dressed up as a demon and two red and black wings made of strass were hanging on his back. As serious as a pope despite the tackiness of the costume, he wore it with such naturalness that he could have been born in it. He began with a guitar riff that punched me right in the gut. He was joined by Mana, surrounded by a halo of blue light: his guitar with its melancholy accents vibrating along Közi's flights in polyphony. Then it was Yuuki the bassist and Kami the drummer who came on stage, in an explosion of light. With the rythm and bass, Yuuki and Kami formed the earth and the mountains, whereas Közi painted the sky and Mana, the moon and the stars: Malice Mizer was writing its own cosmogony. During this long intro, the two guitars were seeking for their own harmony while gradually increasing the melody's intensity: they seemed caught in a race towards a culminating point that occurred only when, above our heads, Gackt made his apparition. Amongst us, a scream repeated itself to infinity.
A pair of huge black feathered wings sprang out of his back, but such tricks weren't necessary: his presence alone was terribly moving. He glided over to the front stage and the crowd, as if magnetised, was pressed forward in one single motion, crashing loudly against the security rows. All raised arms were extended towards him. Many girls around me bursted into tears, one of them fell on her knees, another one rolled on the floor, yet another one dropped, half-dead. Unconsciously, my hand went looking for Kyo's, found nothing. Kyo had disappeared, snatched away by the indistinct masses. From then on, I was alone in front of this monster of charisma, and when his voice reached me, what was left of my trembling being was only terror and adoration.
During three hours full, I didn't know who I was anymore. My heart beat along with other hearts, my skin dripped sweat against other skins, my cries mingled with other cries: I was thousands, and the feeling of love that moved my vast body belonged to him alone.
When everything was over, it took me a long time to come back to reality and call me back to myself. I waited for the majority of the audience to go out of the stadium and I could finally find Kyo, whose arms I flung myself into and I shouted in his ear:
-I gotta meet him daddy, now.
-Who is that, cupcake, he shouted back, half-amused, half-concerned.
I didn't answer, he simply understood from the urgency that my look read; his forehead grew wrinkled. He began:
-It's complicated, Miyabi...
I shook my head and interrupted:
-No, Kyo, I know it's possible, and only because of you. I beg you please. I won't ask anything else of you anymore.
His face darkened and he let out a sigh.
I won.
We cut through the crowd, he took me to his friend from security. The latter was being reluctant at first, but as soon as he learned that Kyo and I didn't date, he agreed, to let us through, still a bit reluctantly though, and he gave us access to the dressing rooms, in the name of the old friendship he had with Kyo.
I found myself in front of the room, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, wringing my damp hands.
-Are you sure you're...
-Kyo, I'm sorry I make you worry like that, I really am, but I have to do this no matter what. I've never ever felt this before, and I don't think it's because of the herding effect or what, I mean not just that, there was that thing, I've never felt this before; it's this guy, he's something special. I was at his feet, and there was this energy that crushed me, phwhoaaarr, and...
I chewed up half my words and was smiling nervously at the same time: no wonder he was worried about me, I looked like a complete nutjob. But it was difficult to explain to him that I hadn't been living until that moment: everything had seemed out of place to me, I had been backwards; as if I lived outside of myself. But there were moments that could transcend me, where everything fit perfectly, like a very simple solution, invisible until just then, to a puzzle. It was the only measure I knew for happiness, those snatches of pure existence when everything else seemed morbid and bland.
His shoulders slouched a bit. In order to comfort him, I added:
-It's gonna be okay. You might as well enjoy yourself and go flirt a bit -- at least your friend looks like he's ready to go.
I punctuated with a wink, to ease the atmosphere. He managed a smile, demanded a peck on the cheek and went, turning around every few steps, sheepish and sorry.
My hand reached for the doorknob, but laughter reached me from within, and I stopped on the spot, assailed by doubt. What if I interrupted? If he didn't have the patience to listen to what I had to say? And by the way, did I actually have something I wanted to say, or was this simply to see him and extract happiness from the fact?
I breathed in a brief breath, lowered the knob and pushed the door open.
Inside, conversation ceased and the room's occupants looked at me without surprise. He was there, back to me, removing the make-up from his face before the lit up vanity. From the angle I stood at, I only saw one blue eye appraising me coldly in the mirror.
-Yet another one? It's official, security's inefficient. You won't be getting bored tonight, Kamui.
Közi cackled, leaning as he was against a wall.
I got what meant when I saw others had preceded me : three youngish girls, dressed outrageously, giggled stupidly next to Gackt. He deigned stand up:
-The price of success, Kouji. But I sense jealousy. I wouldn't like for our ties to deteriorate : want some?
He had a vague gesture in our direction, mine and the girls' ; they gave forced laughs. As for me, my mouth was dry. His voice made me think of incense smoke : soft and grave, heady. He enunciated effortlessly, never stopping to search for a word: his diction was as smooth as was his face.
Közi designated me with his chin:
-The little cutie, there, he does it for me. He looks innocent.
In a corner of my mind, I did get that this was me he was talking about, but I couldn't get it to connect. I felt even less involved than usual; the gap which generally existed between myself and my affect had widened further still. My eyes remained fixed upon Gackt: his person ate up the entire space and irradiated sheer arrogance, as though he was prepared to find himself at any given second before crowds of thousands. He didn't intend to adjust his attitude simply because he was no longer onstage. My pheromones, out of all control now, were frying my brain.
-Not so fast, he told Közi with his velvety voice, they have come first and foremost for me: I reserve the first choice. Let us see...
He turned to the girls:
-Whom would you prefer, my dears?
They preened.
-Ga-sama! they answered in cacophony.
He caught one by the chin, amused:
-What do you propose we do with the evening?
-Anything Ga-sama desires!
-How about I take all of you at once, together?
This threw them off for a moment without any answer, but one of them then had the presence of mind to nod, and the others followed. He began to laugh soflty. He seemed to be getting off on making fun of them this openly. Then he turned to me:
-What about you? What's on offer?
The absurdity of this cattle-like exhibition jolted me out of my apathy: he was having me compete aganst three brainless bobby-soxers who were promising him the moon and the stars, what did he want me to say? I felt as irritated as I had at the start of the concert so without giving it further thought I spat out:
-I wanna do visual kei. Manage me.
This injunction was followed by a deafening silence. Stupefaction appeared upon his face, no doubt it was his only spontaneous emotion of the night. I went on , raising my voice, digging my nails into my palms:
-To begin with, I thought you were fools. To me rock and roll isn't a carnival. No need for costumes as long as you've got guitars, drum and bass, those should be enough to get you high, that's what I thought. I thought your music was all ersatz, disgusting processed goods, substitute sugar for diabetics and the costumes were meant to help the pill slide down.
The girls stared at me with open mouths and round eyes.
-Hey, asshole, Közi grunted, tearing away from the wall and taking a step towards me, where do you think you...?
Gackt stopped him with a gesture. He was looking me straight in the eye now and, soundlessly, he bade me continue.
Feeling self-important, I shrugged:
-But after this concert, I changed my mind. It is real music, and your way of playing it left me reeling, I'll admit. I wanna make visual kei too, just like you: your concert, it moved me. I want to be able to do that to people too. So I'm putting myself in your hands. Manage me.
Közi went to say something but Gackt was quicker:
-Can you play any instrument? He queried calmly.
-No.
-Can you sing?
-Not really, but I did write...
-Do you realize, he cut me off, that if we can sell neither your voice nor your music, then you haven't got much else left to sell?
I took all of two seconds to digest the question, then I smiled:
-There is. There's me.
He seemed to like this answer.
-Sorry, Közi. I'll leave you with the girls for tonight; the little cutie's coming with me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 07:17 pm (UTC)Hah, about Gackt's attributes and the critique of visual kei, I was also expressing my (original) views on the subjects through Mimi's mind. Yeah, it's shocking to remember I used to be like that, when I look at how much of a fangirl I am now...
but in the end, you always realize that you can't fight Gackt, 'cos he kinda created the whole Universe and stuff like that -- he really is God, you know, and Kitagawa's true identity too, so, there was nothing I could do about it.
Gackt pwns the world.
AND the world is grateful to be pwned by Gackt.
You're such a thorough reader, it's extemely flattering! And as usual, your enthusiasm is galvanizing me!!
You are loved! *glompage massacre*