In the hotel room, I flipped on the dim entryway light just in time to catch a glimpse of Aki throwing his sweaty stage clothes onto the floor and retreating to the bathroom in just his underwear. I found a hot water dispenser already set out on the desk, along with two cups and some packaged tea bags. When I heard the water in the shower begin to run, I occupied myself dropping a tea bag into each cup and filling them with water. "Come on." Aki's voice appeared behind me as his fingers curled into the hem of the tour t-shirt I was still wearing. He lifted it over my head, tossing it into the pile with his clothes, and leaned his body against my back to reach around me for a cup of tea. He hooked a finger into the waistband of my skirt and guided me to the bathroom where the shower was running.

I held my tea cup with both hands, standing with Aki half under the stream of water, content to let him lather the soap and wash my skin. His hands were gentle, and sent tingles down my body as he washed my hair, yet he seemed to be straight to the point. Get clean. Nothing more. His fingertips didn't linger over me like usual, and he was quiet. I expected he was tired from performing and just wanted to be in bed.

"Aki." I said. He made a sound like a hum in the form of a question, acknowledging that I spoke his name, and that he was listening to what would follow. "I got a phone call from Ayane after the show tonight. She said she was in the audience."

"Was she? It's good of her to support us like that. She's been a fan of Guardian for a long time."

"She sounded like she was jealous, or angry. Her tone of voice was different." He made another humming sound, telling me he was still listening, but giving me room to collect my thoughts. I could tell he understood that I had something to say about the topic. "It seems like I can call her a friend when we're in the university together, but outside of that, she doesn't want much to do with me."

He stayed quiet a moment longer, it seemed to make sure I had fully expressed my thought. "You think it has to do with your association to Guardian?" He sounded cautious as he asked.

"I think it's the same reason why Hina doesn't want much to do with me." Aki sighed heavily from behind me as he finished washing my hair and ran a loofah over my back. "It feels like they both resent me. Do you think it's jealousy?"

"No, love, I think it's resentment." He echoed my sentiment as if he recognized the way I felt. "It's the same reason people like Rinna or Aya Sato create such problems for me. Once the fantasy is over, and they realize the situation is reality, they get angry because they no longer have control." He turned me slowly to face him, using his fingertips to comb my hair back off of my face. He took my tea cup from my hands and took a sip before giving it back to me. "Ayane has been a fan of Guardian since we started, more than ten years ago. She probably feels a bit of entitlement towards us. But it's you who I take home at the end of the day instead of her, and she probably thinks that she earned it more than you did."

"You talk about this like you have a lot of experience."

He nodded, but his expression was solemn, as if to express regret of his past experiences. "Unfortunately being famous, you are already realizing, is full of situations like this." He quickly washed his face to dissolve the remaining black makeup smeared around his eyes, and turned the shower off. He wrapped a towel around my shoulders first, then one around his hips. "Why do you think the four of us don't really have any friends outside of the four of us?"

He took up his tea cup from the counter, turning his back to it and leaning back to take some weight off of his legs. I closed in on him, taking a makeup removing wipe from his toiletry bag left by the sink, and reached up to wipe away the remaining black smudges. He closed his eyes and surrendered. "You guys all seem well adjusted to it. But doesn't it bother you that you had friends from your past who maybe you miss?"

"Guardian were my friends back then too. The four of us have always been a family. The people who are no longer in my life always just wanted something from me, to share my success." He grabbed my wrist to take my hand away from his face so he could open his eyes to look at me. His gaze felt important upon me, and I turned off every other thought in my mind to listen to what he would say next. "I lost a lot of people one way or another. And I dealt with it by just being alone. I didn't think I was ready to let anyone else into my life when I met you. I didn't think I had the capacity to make room. And I was okay with that."

I wondered what he wanted me to catch on to as he explained himself. "Sorry I put a dent in your plan to be alone." I said, offering to lighten the mood of the conversation.

He laughed, and I realized how close I had gotten to him as I felt the lower part of his abdomen contract with the effort. "You told me a story back when we first got together about how your friends abandoned you in Kabukicho with some strange Host guy." I nodded to confirm that I remembered telling him the story. "It's made me wonder all this time just how hurt you've been in the past by people betraying you. I thought the story would come out along the way, so I gave you time and space to tell it if you wanted."

"But I didn't." I said, understanding his point.

He nodded, smiling. "You didn't."

"So now you're asking."

He tilted his head as if in deep thought, gazing at me over his cup of tea. "You know about my whole life." He said. "And as I thought about it, I know very little about your life before we met."

Although I felt like my life before I met Aki was mundane, and uninteresting, I couldn't deny that there were events in my past that shaped the person I had become. Just like the desire I had to become a person worthy of my place beside Aki, who stood in the light of the whole world, I had and equally strong desire to allow past events to shadow me. "I'll tell you." I said finally.

The night had crept on as we lingered in the shower with the discussion, and Aki left the bathroom to turn down the bed as I finished brushing my teeth and hair. By the time I joined him, only a few minutes later, he had already fallen asleep halfway propped up against the pillows. He had worked hard on stage to deliver a performance that Guardian was known for, it was late, and I couldn't blame him. I laid myself gently next to him, cautious not to jar him. Telling my story could wait until morning.