He suggested we return home after that, expressing that he was anticipating a long work day at the studio recording to catch up with the work the rest of Guardian had done. It was another week of going from school to the studio, staying at the studio late with Aki, walking home together in the dark, sleeping very little, and doing it all over again the day after. We thrived in the atmosphere of vending machine green tea bottles, backpacks tossed without much thought into extra chairs, walking home in the dark sharing headphones plugged into Aki's phone and singing along with the melodies.

Friday night at the studio, I found Aki in the recording booth with this ear buds in, listening to something on his phone with his eyes closed, swaying and letting his hands float through the air as if they were tracing the music. I sat down at the mixing panel with the hot tea I had made and pressed the button to talk to Aki in the booth.

"Aki, tea is ready." I said without any reaction from him. "Aki?" I sat back in the chair to watch him, and realized he couldn't hear me at all. Any communication from the mixing room to the booth was done through the recording headset, and he wasn't using it. I took advantage of the moment to sip my tea and watch the way he moved. He was wearing his Guardian branded tour hooded sweater, and had changed from his signature loose fitting black jeans into the gray track pants he usually wore at home. After it had started to get late and everyone had left for the day, he had wanted to be more comfortable.

Whatever it was he had been listening to ended, and he put his phone down on the sheet music stand, looking over through the window to see me sitting sipping tea and staring at him. He seemed to be only slightly startled, but quickly removed his ear buds and exited the booth to join me in the mixing room.

"How long were you just watching me?" He sat down on the floor, crossing his legs and rubbing his face with the palms of his hands.

"Only a minute." I handed him a second cup of tea. "What were you listening to?"

"A classical piece of instrumental." He said. "If you can believe it. I was taking some inspiration from the composition. Do you want to hear it?"

He unplugged the ear buds and turned up the volume of his phone to play the melody, just a little piano tune that was upbeat and catchy, yet smooth and slow. I sat in the chair, Aki remained comfortable on the floor, and we sipped tea while we listened to the song, content enough to enjoy a small break. It was nearing nine, and the rest of the studio was empty and quiet. We had a lot more work to complete before we would go home, and I was tired of the repetition of the long days and nights. As much as I was at peace just being with Aki in the empty studio, less than half of the lights on, the exhaustion of the lifestyle we adopted during recording seasons caught up with me quickly when it was quiet.

"I think I'd like to be out of the spotlight for a while." I spoke the thought as it entered my mind, not bothering to take the time to fully realize it.

Aki seemed startled. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not being bullied anymore, if that's what you're asking." I said, nodding in response to his question. "People who used to talk to me at school just kind of don't anymore. They seem to want to avoid me rather than making trouble for me. Which I'm fine with. I'm more than happy with you and Guardian."

"How out of the spotlight do you want to be?" To my surprise, he was calm in response to my request. I had expected him to think I was joking, or to be disappointed. I wondered if it was because he understood the desire to sometimes just fade away. "I post pictures together with you on my social media a lot. Do you want me to stop doing that for a while?"

I wasn't completely sure how I felt, or even where the thought came from, but as much as Aki was placing importance on it, I was sure I should as well. I had spoken it aloud, and I knew that must have meant it was important to me in some capacity. "I think it might be a good idea."

"I'm not going to pretend to have broken up with you." He stated his piece flatly.

I shook my head to dismiss his suspicions. "No, I don't want you to make a big deal out of it. I just want to go dark for a while."

"How dark?" He was trying hard to understand, not realizing that I really didn't know what I wanted. I had a track record though, of not being very good at communicating the entirety of what I was thinking and feeling, and Aki was seasoned at identifying times when he needed to ask more questions to draw it all out of me. "Will you still be my technician?"

I nodded in affirmation. "Of course. I think I just don't want to be in the public eye so heavily. But I want to keep working. I just don't want to be so relevant. I'll leave that to you."

"Is this a permanent decision? Or do you just need a break?" His voice sounded as if he was treading so cautiously through the conversation, like he was trying not to scare me away from it.

The reason that I had initially blurted out the thought suddenly came to me, as I listened to his questions. I was living life with a famous musician, who everyone loved and wanted a chance to get to know. The fact that I had been the one to steal his heart away gave them a reason to dislike me. "I want your fans to forget about me, at least just for a while. I just want to be a regular girl for a while, and maybe my friends will start talking to me again." I was embarrassed at the realization, and I was embarrassed to tell him what exactly was in my heart, because I felt so ungrateful.

I covered my face with my hands, not wanting to cry out of frustration with how embarrassed I was. I waited to hear what he would say in response, but I only felt his hands press atop my knees, pushing gently just to make room for himself to move in closer. He guided me with one hand around my back, and the other cradling the back of my neck to place my hands and face against his shoulder. "I get it." He said into my ear. "And I told you to tell me the second this life doesn't make you happy. It may help if you distance yourself from my fans, but your friends won't start talking to you again, and I think you already know that. I'm sorry." He always told me that he would always tell me the truth, and I wondered if there was much of a difference between telling me the truth and telling me what I needed to hear. "You work here still, you work with us still, and if you say to them that you can't hang out because you have to come to work after classes, that still puts a barrier between you. They'll put it together and know that you coming to work means you working with Guardian."

I nodded against him, snaking my hands out to press them into his back. "I know."

"I'm sorry." He said again. "I have to take responsibility for bringing you into this life. But I did tell you at the beginning that my world is difficult. I don't want you to be unhappy."

I breathed a laugh across his shoulder. "You said that to me after we had already done it."

He laughed with me. "I wasn't expecting to get invited in after one kiss. I didn't have time to warn you sooner. Was it that good of a kiss?"

I felt my cheeks turn a few degrees warmer than the rest of me, and I was thankful he couldn't see it happen with my face still against his shoulder. "This is the caliber of embarrassing like that time you asked me if I was having enough orgasms." He continued to laugh, but pushed me away and sat back on his heels. He looked at me as if he was trying to figure out what to say that wouldn't embarrass me further. "What is it?" I asked him.

His hand shot out to take mine. "Hi." He said. "I'm the guy giving you the orgasms in question, and you can talk to me about anything."

I realized that I had segmented Aki in my mind into different categories; Aki in the studio, Aki on stage, at home, in bed, and the list went on. I was learning without being aware of it that each of the different depictions I had of Aki in my head were all the same Aki. I didn't shy away from his comment, and the embarrassment I was feeling was displaced. Aki made my cheeks turn hot, but every version of him did, and it wasn't because of anything he said or did that made me uncomfortable. It was because I had forced myself to consider sharing my life with him as normal, and didn't allow myself to really understand how he showed me love in everything he did. The only time I was fully aware of it was when I was half asleep in his embrace.

"I'm not unhappy." I said. "I wouldn't change anything, I just a had a moment of selfishness that I blurted out." I nodded once firmly to solidify my statement.

"It's not selfishness. You deserve the chance to have anonymity if that's what you want." Aki dismissed me as I tried to dismiss myself. "Being with me shouldn't automatically imply that you have to be in the spotlight. Maybe I should have been more careful in the beginning, when I said I wouldn't deny anything if people asked about you."

I couldn't argue with him, and I didn't have a rebuttal that added any value to the point I was trying to make. The responsibility wasn't his alone as he was trying to make it, but he knew that, and I knew he was trying to make me feel better. "The kiss was that good." I said, before I lost my nerve. "I had been aching for you to kiss me."

"Were you?" He tilted his head to emphasize the question, perking up at my involvement in the conversation. "It kind of felt like I had to act fast before I was friend-zoned."

I shook my head, looking down at my knees, recalling what I had felt about Aki in the first few days of getting to know him. "I just didn't know what to do with you. But I kept wanting to spend more time with you, so I knew I wanted something."

"You did something with me." He said, putting some emphasis on 'something'. "Let me post one more photo together before I let you go dark."

I nodded to give permission to his request, and he pulled me by my hand out of the chair so he could sit down. Without letting go of my hand, he guided me to sit atop his thighs, and I draped my arm around his shoulders. He held up his phone at arm's length, pressing a few buttons to set a timer. In the photo, the background was apparent, and it was obvious we were in the recording studio. The light was warm toned and dim, but it gave the photo a calm, almost romantic feeling. Aki opened his social media account and set up the photo to post. He read the caption aloud as he typed. "Late nights finishing the new album in the studio with my favourite sound tech."

"Your fans are really going to hate me."

He quickly reached around me and pressed a kiss into my cheek. "My fans are crazy, don't pay any attention to them. Guardian's fans on the other hand really love you. And they are happy for me to have you."

"Does anyone else have crazy fans?"

Aki thought for a moment before answering. "Fuij has a lot of fans, but like Fuji, they are reserved and very polite. Everyone loves a good looking sweaty drummer."

"There are actually so many things about the rest of Guardian that I don't know." I said distantly, trying to picture Fuji in my mind's eye. He was slightly taller than Aki, the oldest of the group separated from Aki, the youngest, by five years. His energy was always grounded, and he fit the roll of the caretaker very well. "He's really Guardian's dad, isn't he?"

Aki laughed, as he seemed to be recalling a memory. "It may surprise you to know that I used to be the dad of Guardian." It didn't surprise me. Aki was relentless in the way he cared for me, from the way he washed my hair in the shower to the way he walked with me under his arm down a busy street. I had also been witness to the way he relinquished control of the caretaker roll to Fuji when he was given silent permission to. "I was suddenly handed the responsibility of taking care of Masami when she got sick." Aki went on to explain. "I was too young when my grandparents passed to understand what it meant to take care of a person, and to be responsible for providing for them, so it was a shock when I was the only one that could do it for her. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew how much she depended on me, so I made sure I gave her everything, and did everything she needed. It was rewarding to see how happy I could make her just by doing something like brushing her hair for her. But it was exhausting."

"I saw the way you surrendered to Fuji in the hospital." I said. "That look on your face that said you realized you could take a break from being strong when he was around."

He nodded, a shy smile on his features. "Fuji paid attention. He saw what I was doing, and he helped me not burn out while I was helping her. He's continued to do that for me since."

"All of you are so humble about your best qualities."

He laughed once loudly. "Spend a day with any of them and then try to tell me that with any truth."

"I've spent plenty of time with Kota. Although he's not humble about anything, really."

"I hope you know that I do my best for you every day." His tone became serious, and he locked his gaze on me. "I know how I come across, but I take providing for you seriously, and I want to be the best man for you."

He came across to me as natural, confident, and in control. I wasn't sure if he was aware that I thought of him that way, or if he was patronizing himself, implying that he came across as immature. Aki had a young, wild side to him that came from living his life as a famous rockstar, in the public eye, being constantly adored. But it was only one side of him, and he was multifaceted. Even watching him on stage, anyone could see how many emotions he portrayed, how much of his heart he wore on his sleeve. From his lyrics that he screamed to the ones that he sang with his smooth fierceness, in only two hours of watching him perform, anyone could identify how deep of a person he was.

"Is there anything I can do to be another Fuji for you?" I asked after some silence. "You do everything for me, but I don't want you to feel like you always have to be on top of things. I want to take care of you too."

"It's different with you." His expression was distant for just a beat of time, as if he was recalling something, but let it go in an instant. He stopped himself from thinking of something, I recognized the look on his face. "I've been learning the ways of you just like you've been learning me. I naturally stepped into the position of caretaker for you, because that's what I knew I could do best for you. But I've learned that you don't need me that way, because you're capable on your own. So I'm learning to be what you need."

I laughed as he so blatantly ignored my question and turned it around on me. "Aki, that's what I'm asking you."

He nodded, smiling, knowing that he had successfully dodged my prying questions. "I'm exhausted for today, we've been at it for a long time. Let's go home."