We ended up sitting in the back of an izakaya with the rest of Guardian that night, sipping beer and eating friend meat and vegetables. Aki had opted for tea over beer, but took a few sips out of my mug just to be a good sport.

"We're in Osaka for the night, so we might as well take advantage of it." Aki said, beginning to lay out his plan. "Put our suits on, get on the streets, meet some fans out here, and play some songs. Win over some hearts. We'll for sure get attention, and it will keep us relevant while we're doing this label tour."

"It's only eight now." Kota said, looking at his phone. "If we get ready we can be on the street before nine. Plenty of time to win some hearts."

Aki lifted his tea cup toward Fuji. "Fuji, you old man, can you handle us for a couple of hours and still perform tomorrow before we travel back to Yokohama?"

Fuji clinked his beer mug against Aki's cup. "For you, Aki, anything." He laughed, but I could see on Aki's face that he knew Fuji's words were genuine. "I don't think we have to seriously perform tomorrow anyway. The label knows us by now."

I put my hand on Aki's arm to try to get his attention quietly. "Didn't you say you didn't want to interact with them?"

It seemed I had caught everyone's attention. "I thought that I wanted to punish them for saying those things about you. And about me." He said. "But I think that ignoring it is more interesting. Those people are not my fans. If they were, they would be my fans no matter who I was with. So I'll let my real fans see how happy I am, and they will end up defending me without having to be asked."

We had grown a lot in the short time we had been a family, Guardian and I. We had navigated a lot of words and accusations thrown at us, a lot of misplaced hate that had come from jealousy. Those things I thought I would never have the opportunity to experience in my life that was so mundane and eventless before I had met Guardian. I was proud of us for learning how to work together. I was proud of myself for trusting them, and for letting them lead me into a life I had always wanted, but was too scared to chase. I was proud of myself for taking the lessons that they had to offer and growing as a person with them, when I could have so easily closed myself off to the criticism and gotten left behind.

Being married was not what I expected it to be. I had to admit that I had very few preconceptions about marriage, since I assumed I would never enter into it, but most of the preconceptions I had involved living in a house that I had to clean, cooking dinner every night after returning home from my office job, and it wasn't very exciting. Maybe I would have been lucky enough to love the person I was married to, even. That was what I had thought about. Being married to a rock star though, found me in the middle of Osaka dressed in a kimono with a metal band, and the frontman happened to be wearing a matching wedding ring to mine. I loved Aki more than I even knew how to identify.

On one side the bridge that crossed the center city's most populated areas, Guardian set up a modest display. They were wearing the same suits they wore in the recently updated artist photos that were forwarded to the label companies, and they looked sleek and professional, but so very like a metal band at the same time with their styled hair and painted nails. Aki plugged his microphone into a small battery powered amplifier and shouted into it both to test the sound and to alert fans in the area that something was about to happen. Any Guardian fan would know Aki's shout instantly.

A crowd formed quickly, the front row comprised of people wearing Guardian tour t-shirts, and as I observed them, I realized how important the fans made the label tour. Even though they were only performing behind closed doors, everyone who supported them in every different city and region made it a point to be present. They treated it like a regular tour, but instead of jumping from livehouse to livehouse, they followed us between hotels and recording studios. Guardian gave back to them in the only way they knew how, sharing the music that had brought them together in the first place.

"If you don't know who we are, guess what?" Aki said into the microphone. He took a deep breath and screamed along with half the crowd, "We are Guardian!" I felt such a swell of emotion as I watched him interact with the fans on the same level with them, reaching for high fives, nodding to their applause. "We're in Osaka just for tonight, and tomorrow we'll be in Yokohama." Aki continued. "We should make some music on the streets there too."

It felt like the first time I had witnessed Aki on stage as I watched him sing. He swayed with the microphone stand, he used his hands to emphasize his words, and all the emotion that went into the lyrics was present on his face. He held nothing back for the crowd on the street in the middle of downtown Osaka as he shouted, screamed, growled, and extended his perfectly smooth tone. For the first time that I could recall, as I watched, I saw Aki as the same Aki who slept beside me, who made me tea, who washed my face for me, who walked with me home in the dark. The same Aki I shared my whole life with.

After three songs, the music paused, and I could see a glisten of sweat on Aki's face. He stepped up to the microphone to address the crowd. "Thank you, from all of us, for traveling with us as we tour visiting record labels. This is a really rare occurrence, and we are humbled by the support our fans have shown us. We're working hard to make sure the music never stops."

There was a roar of applause, and Aki took the moment to turn to me with a motion that looked like he wanted something to drink. I had been holding a water bottle for him, and I quickly made my way toward his outstretched hand. Instead of taking the bottle from me, he grabbed my wrist, pulled me close, and kissed me quickly. I heard gasps of breath and a few high pitched sounds as the fans who managed to see it reacted. He took the water bottle from me and let me retreat, but not without some kind of lasting impression.

"I have introduced her as a few different things over the last couple of years, haven't I?" Aki asked the crowd, motioning to the side where I had tried to hide in the darkness. "Now she's my bride." He clapped his hands together first, beginning a wave of applause that followed. "I won't say any more about that until a magazine asks us for an interview. Let's play one more song, then we're going to bed."

A little past one in the morning, the crowd had cleared, Guardian had shook hands with as many fans as they could, and we were back in the hotel room. It was like a dream had passed, and I was still floating in my head as I played over the moment Aki introduced me as his bride. His suit, along with my kimono, were on the hotel room floor surrounding the bed, and we laid facing each other, still too energized to begin the relax into sleep.

"When we're done, and we finally sign one of the offers, you and I can take a trip to Nagoya, and I want to get a bunch more tattoos." Aki said. I could tell it would be a while before we managed to sleep.

"What do you want to get?" I asked him. "You're kind of running out of room."

"I have one whole leg still." He laughed, sounding embarrassed that he would defend himself. "Is there anywhere you don't want me to get tattooed?"

I reached up between us to cup his face with my hands. "Don't get any on your face."

He nodded once. "I won't. I don't want to anyway." He paused for a beat, looking as though he didn't fully want to admit something. "I already have one on my head though."

"What! You do?"

"You'll never see it, because I'm never going to shave my head again." He laughed at my reaction. "It's behind my right ear. You can probably see some ink if you part my hair to look."

"What is it?"

"It's an omamori to ward off demons, written in old style calligraphy. There used to be a lot of demons in my head, so I guess it actually worked."

Aki surprised me in some way every moment that I knew him.