"Do you have any children you've kept secret?"

Aki laughed outright. "No." He was absolute in his answer, but he was warming up to the questions since the attention was on me instead of himself. I knew from things that Fuji and Kota had told me that Aki loved talking about me. "My wife is too young to have a baby." He continued laughing at the irony of what he was saying, reflecting on the focus the interviewer had on our age difference.

"Does any Guardian member have secret children?"

Aki looked at the row of Guardian beside us. "No." He said, looking back toward the interviewer. "I'm the only one with a significant other at the moment as well."

"Aki, do you and Natsuko have any plans for children in the future?"

He looked at me quickly, then back to the interviewer. "No, we don't plan on having children. Our opinions on it have been the same, because we think that being musicians, touring, late shows, all encompassing creative work is just not the right environment to try to properly raise children."

"Have there ever been any close calls or scares?"

I didn't quite understand what the question was implying, but Aki shook his head, beginning to answer what he immediately recognized. "No scares." The smile that crossed his face was sly and confident, and I recognized the expression on him enough to clue in to what the question actually was. I tried hard to think of something else so my cheeks wouldn't turn red.

"Aki, you're often portrayed as a playboy, but you've been very open about your relationship with Natsuko. And yet, since Guardian has been in the public eye, we haven't been introduced to any other girlfriends."

Aki wasn't about to give information away. "What's your question?"

He seemed to force the interviewer to think about her words carefully. "Have you preferred shorter periods of company with women in the past?"

He laughed and clapped his hands together once. "That was a very safe way to ask that question." He complimented the interviewer. "The answer is that I've never been a playboy. I've never been interested in one night stands or anything like that. And I don't want to talk about what happened in the past."

She nodded in understanding to let the topic pass, but the expression on her face suggested that she would likely try to think of a way to ask again. "I'm sorry to be asking these kinds of difficult questions in front of Natsuko." She had leaned over to speak directly to Aki, her voice quiet as if to demonstrate that what she said was off the record.

Aki had leaned forward slightly to meet her, understanding that she wanted to speak quietly. He dismissed the comment, relaxing back into his chair. "I don't have any secrets from her." He said.

We returned to Tokyo exhausted, but content with everything we had accomplished. The previous summer had been spent on tour with Guardian while they performed concerts across every city, and it had been eye opening to tour with them in a different way while they chased after whatever dreams each of them had about what recording label they wanted to belong to. They had evolved, they had grown, they had taken chances, and they said yes to every opportunity over the twelve years they had been together. They had earned the freedom to build their lives exactly the way they wanted to. I had learned more from participating in their daily lives than I had in two years of university, but I had learned that the purpose of my life and the opportunity that I had been given would be to pay forward the lessons.

"We're going home to Kamakura."

It was a phrase I had never prepared myself to hear. Before I met Aki, the only thing I wanted for my life was to leave Kamakura, where I had been born and raised, to seek an adventurous existence that I thought the sleepy old city would never provide me. As Aki spoke the words, while we were all half asleep in the studio near midnight. The decision had been made on the travel from Yokohama to Tokyo, and Fuji had called Yamada-san to ask her to meet us at the studio in Tokyo on our way home. Guardian wasted no time making decisions, and as I listened to their banter back and forth on the train, they agreed with each other effortlessly. Each one of them had been aching to return to Kamakura.

We arrived at our Tokyo apartment close to one in the morning, after meeting Yamada-san to sign the contract. The new label was located in Kamakura, but had ties to other major labels in Tokyo and Osaka, which meant more opportunity to reach new demographics of fans. It wasn't the same small, homegrown label they were used to, but somewhere in between major and indie. A comfortable spot where Guardian could continue to grow, but also keep their freedom to become whatever they wanted.

"I guess we move in the fall." Aki said, stripping himself down to his underwear as he staggered to the bed and let himself fall onto it. "Or we can stay here so you can finish school without the commute. I can drive to Kamakura easily enough."

I followed suit, tossing my clothes in a pile on the floor with Aki's and rolling next to him on the bed. "I want to quit school."

He rolled to his side to face me. "Don't." He said. "You're almost there, and you can do so much more with all the credentials completing it will give you. I don't have any other options other than to be a successful musician. I didn't finish high school, I never went to college, I taught myself music, and I have all these tattoos. I'm tied to Guardian. But you don't have to be."

"What would I do without Guardian? You're my whole life." I meant to say that Aki was inclusive of Guardian, but the comment ended up having more than one connotation.

"You can do whatever you want, you know that. If you wanted to continue modeling, you can do it. If you want to continue working with Guardian, you can do it. You know I'll support whatever it is." His expression was somehow conveying sadness, as if he was giving me permission to leave him if I wanted to. He was reluctant in what he said, but he was truthful. He suddenly laughed a little. "If I'm honest, I don't want anything to change." He continued. "I want you to keep singing with me, and mixing my songs. But I want you to have a free life, and do whatever makes you happy and makes you fullfilled."

I thought it was about time to tell him the thoughts that had been in my mind. "School hasn't really been teaching me much about what the music industry is really like. There's nothing straightforward about it, and there's nothing black and white." I said. Aki closed his eyes and nodded to show that he deeply understood what I had come to realize from living it. "I want to be able to offer something to people coming into the industry, just like me, who don't get the chance to see it first hand."

"Sounds like you have to talk to the university about teaching there." He thought for a moment, a look of concentration crossing his face while he put it together. "You could teach anywhere. You could actually bring a music program to schools that don't have one."

I hadn't thought so far ahead, but he was right. It was an idea with a lot of possibilities, all of them flexible enough to keep my life with the band steady. "That's what I want to do." I decided.

"Then you have to finish university. But I have an idea."

"What's your idea?" I was hanging on his every word, but I usually did.

"I'll come to the school with you and we'll have a talk with your program coordinators together." He smiled in a way I knew he had formulated a plan in his mind that couldn't fail. He was going to pull strings with the importance of his name, and he was going to feel no shame in doing so. "If what I'm thinking of works, you won't have anything else to worry about."