| Back To Fanfics |

Secret Identity
by Black Rainbow

Author's Note: well . . . this could be a little. . . sudden, so I hope you don’t mind. It’s just that just thought of this, and. . . I don’t know, it doesn’t sound convincing to me… + kogure is quite ooc, probably..
Disclaimer: me only own the original characters…

Chapter 11

“Oh, god, what am I going to do?” Hanamichi moaned into his pillow, thinking about the chaste kiss Sendoh gave him the day before. “He thinks I’m a girl. He’ll never want to see me again when he finds out!”

“What do you mean – /when/ he finds out?” his brother asked. Kiminobu was wiping his glasses as he sat at the computer by Hanamichi’s bed. After he put on his glasses again, he went back to typing furiously. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“I don’t know.” Hanamichi turned over and stared at the ceiling. “I hate lying but . . . we’re going to be big. I can’t just ruin everything like that.”

“Telling Sendoh doesn’t mean telling the whole wide world.”

“Same difference.” He glowered at his brother. “Do you think he’ll still want to represent us, represent /me/, after finding out that we lied to him?”

Kiminobu shrugged, still focused on the computer. He had this tense look that worried Hanamichi.

“What’re you doing?” Hanamichi asked curiously. Kiminobu looked up in a startled manner as his younger brother got up to stand behind him, looking at the computer. Hanamichi mouth hung open when he saw what Kiminobu was doing.

“You’re hacking, aren’t you?” he asked loudly. He didn’t really know a lot about computers but he knew that whatever his brother was doing isn’t something ordinary people did. He also knew that this was somehow not something good.

“Shh!” Kiminobu whispered frantically. “I don’t know if ‘tou-chan is downstairs . . .”

Hanamichi said quietly, “what are you doing, ‘niichan?” He scanned through Kiminobu’s work. “Does this have anything to do with Tetsuo?”

Kiminobu sighed softly and turned to his brother. “I can tell you everything.”

For the next few moments, Hanamichi had been sitting down, listening to his brother in shock. Sometime after Mitsui broke up with Kiminobu, his brother was approached by Tetsuo, who said that he knew how he and Mitsui could get back together. One condition – that Kiminobu would ‘help’ Tetsuo with certain things. Kiminobu was asked to go into police files to discover about upcoming drug raids, so that Tetsuo could do business in safety (Hanamichi mouth opened even wider when he discovered that Tetsuo had started dealing drugs). One ‘favor’ after another, Kiminobu was brought deeper and deeper into Tetsuo’s plans – and now he was too scared to back off.

“Don’t you have any sense? You should know that anything to do with that guy would probably be illegal!”

“I know,” Kiminobu said quietly. “But when he said that Hisa-”

“Somehow I knew he’s involved with this,” Hanamichi muttered darkly.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“So you helped Tetsuo out?” Hanamichi roared. His brother winced.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said softly to Hanamichi. “Tetsuo is looking for me now. I told him that I couldn’t take it, that it’s really scaring me – but he wouldn’t let me back off.” He paused. “I don’t think I can go to the Battle of the Bands with you today. He’d know to look for me there.”

“But we need you to set up our levels and stuff!” Hanamichi said. “And you can’t hide forever, you know. We’ll go to the police and tell about him.”

“Not going to work – I’m involved, too, remember?”

“’Niichan, you /know/ we need you today…” Hanamichi stopped talking as an idea popped into his head. “Look, we’ll worry about Tetsuo later, okay? First of all we need to go through the Battle of the Bands, and you’re our sound technician.”

“Hanamichi…”

“You don’t have to go as Kiminobu! You can go in a disguise, like me…” he let his words roll off as it began to sink in his brother’s head.

“You mean . . .” Kiminobu choked on his words. “I should dress up as a girl, too?”

“Why not? Just for this one night,” Hanamichi wheedled. He knew he sounded like he didn’t care about his brother’s well-being (as most people who got involved with Tetsuo usually ended up in the hospital), but he really thought that no one would recognize his brother as a girl, and after the Battle of the Bands, they would have more time to think about what to do next.

“I don’t know…” Kiminobu looked a tad hopeful. “What if he finds out?”

“Don’t worry,” Hanamichi said, smiling determinedly. “I’m the tensai of deception now…” he sighed, thinking of Sendoh. “Fooled You is my theme song now.”

Hana stared at his brother, who was now sitting in front of him in a small restaurant near /Lost Souls?/. Kiminobu was truly unrecognizable in girl’s clothing, some make-up (they called Haruko to help out, again) and a long, wavy black wig. Even his glasses were gone; they decided that Kiminobu would be even harder to recognize if he wore contact lenses. “Kawaii,” Hana muttered cheekily, succeeding in making his brother blush a little.

Fujima was sitting next to Hana, and Rukawa next to Kogure. Mitsui had told them he’d meet them at /Lost Souls?/. Both boys were told about the situation, and had agreed to keep quiet about Kiminobu’s disguise. “I seriously think you’re the weirdest person ever, Hana,” Fujima commented. “I mean, who else would think of this?” He shook his head.

Rukawa, who was quiet all through the evening, suddenly spoke, “do’aho, look out.”

“Nani?” Hana turned, and saw Kiyota walking into the restaurant and towards them. “Oh no…” he muttered. “Definitely not what I want to happen today.”

“Hi!” Kiyota chirped. “I’ve been hoping to bump into you!” He grinned. “Are you guys going to /Lost Souls?/ today or what?”

“Yeah,” Hana answered reluctantly. His brother had developed a sudden interest in a bird flying outside the window, while Fujima was scanning through the menu as if his life depended on it. Only Rukawa looked on at Kiyota as if nothing was happening. “We’re entering the Battle of the Bands,” Hana explained.

“Oh, really? That’s so cool! Can I hang out with you guys? Then when you guys get famous and all I can tell everyone how I used to know you before you were big…” Without an invitation, Kiyota slid into the seat next to Hana. Hana slid closer to Fujima, his eyes darting about in search of escape.

“I bet you’d win,” Kiyota continued. “You’re so good.” At that, they all tried to smile at him, but all of them were too worried about different things to look sincere. “Is your brother going to run the sound board again? He’s quite good.”

“Uhm…” Hana started, glancing at his brother. “Actually, he’s taking a break at the moment. This is …” he searched for a name, “Haruko; she’s going to run our sound board today.”

“Hi, Haruko,” Kiyota greeted Kiminobu politely, as the latter tried to give him a smile. To Hana, he said, “too bad your brother isn’t here. I love the way he mixed the sound for Illusion Lightning.” He turned to Kiminobu. “Not that I don’t think you can be as good, of course, but I like his style…”

“Yeah, he’s really unique, isn’t he?” Hana said, beginning to feel like he couldn’t take all these questions anymore. Anyway, wasn’t this person ‘stalking’ /him/? Why was he asking so many questions about his brother?

“Your brother’s good at computers, isn’t he?” Hana clenched his jaws when he heard the question. How did Kiyota know that?

“Well… I don’t know if you can say that, I mean, I guess he’s pretty good –”

“Excuse me.”

Hana looked up with relief at Mitsui, who just arrived at the table. The older boy was frowning as he scanned at the occupants of the table. “Where’s your brother?” he asked.

“Er… he’s taking a break,” Hana said. He wanted to tell Mitsui the truth, but he couldn’t do that in front of Kiyota. “Haruko here is taking over for today.”

“Haruko? Isn’t she –”

“-one of the best sound technicians around? Yeah, we’re lucky to get her,” Fujima interrupted. They all turned to him. “What is it you wanted, Mitsui?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Mitsui glanced at his watch. “I just feel that I need to come over here and point out that you’re supposed to be at the club /30 minutes ago/,” he said, stressing the last words.

“Oh, yeah! I completely forgot!” Hana got up quickly, apologizing to Kiyota. “Er, sorry and all, but we have to go..” He gestured sharply. “Come on, guys!”

His brother and the rest of the band followed – Fujima, Kiminobu, and Rukawa in undisguised relief, Mitsui in confusion.

As they neared the club, they could hear the loud wails from inside. The Battle of the Bands have started, and the crowd at /Lost Souls?/ was big. From the corner of his eye, Hana saw Tetsuo lounging about on his motorcycle around the club. He walked on with his friends, pretending not to notice Tetsuo, and that he didn’t know anything about what was going on. Mitsui gave Tetsuo a long look, demanding to know what was going on, when they were interrupted.

“It’s them! Androgynous Zone!” Before he could do anything, the band were mobbed by fans, screaming with mass adoration. Hands and arms reached out to touch anything they could of the band – whether to grab at one of the band members’ hands, or to tug on their clothes. Mitsui, who was walking up the stairs to the club backdoor, almost fell down. Hana found himself thrust to a wall.

“Help!” he shouted, not knowing what to do. He gasped as a pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him into the backdoor of the club. Fujima kept the door open long enough for Rukawa, Mitsui and Kiminobu to rush in, and then slammed it shut and latched it. Hana leaned against a counter, breathing deeply.

“The price of fame,” a voice said gently in his ear.

Hana turned and gaped at Sendoh, not knowing how to react. In the end he smiled with relief, looking beyond Sendoh where a couple of other bands were tuning up their instruments, and sound technicians were rushing about or just talking to each other. Some were staring at Androgynous Zone. “A small price,” he said quietly to Sendoh. It was true. He thought that his music meant so much to him now, and even if he had to go through that forever, even if he had to pretend . . . it was a small price to pay.

/What about Sendoh?/ a part of his mind asked. /Can you give him up as well?/

/I never had him to begin with/, he told himself sharply. He took slow, deep breaths in order to calm down. In the background he could hear the announcer saying, “That was our very own JOY, from Ryonan!”

The screams and whistles from the crowd were deafening. Hana looked apprehensive as he looked blindly around the backstage. It was obvious that JOY was a good band, from the way the crowd reacted.

“Don’t worry,” Sendoh said, smiling softly. “They were just being polite.”

Swallowing, Hana replied, “I hope they’re as polite to us.”

“Are you kidding? Androgynous Zone is the best around Kanagawa! And we’re going to make sure the rest of Japan gets crazy about you, too!” Sendoh laid a hand on Hana’s shoulders. “The crowd will be more than polite for you.”

Sendoh suddenly caught attention of Kiminobu. “Uhm…”

“Oh! This is Haruko; she’s going to be our sound technician for tonight, is that okay?”

“Sure!” Sendoh smiled at Kiminobu, as Hana’s attention turned to a tanned, well-built man in a suit walking about the backstage, looking back at Hana strangely.

“That’s Maki Shinichi; he’s from the Japanese branch of EMI records,” Sendoh said quietly. Hana nodded, mentally trying to sooth the forming knot in his stomach. There was just too much excitement for one day, and now he had to feel even more nervous about the band’s performance. Kiminobu had set to work on the levels, while earning strange looks from Mitsui (who still had no idea who he was). Fujima and Rukawa sat pensively next to each other, both too nervous to pretend otherwise.

The loudspeaker boomed suddenly.

“We are having some technical difficulties, but don’t go away! The next entry in the Battle of the Bands is a hot new band from Shohoku – ANDROGYNOUS ZONE!”

-TBC-

| Back To Fanfics |