“Are those guys less pop?”
He smiled, bright. “They’re lesssafe.”
Wednesday morning, when the guys were whisked off to do a radio show, I went for a long run on the promenade. I returned to the hotel through the riverside entrance, and en route to the elevators I passed Oliver in the airy lounge. Evidently, the guys had finished early. He was seated at a table beside the wall of glass, his back to me, deep in conversation with a woman I did not recognize: Japanese, early thirties, smartly dressed, refined. Her body language read slightly stiff, but Oliver seemed unusually comfortable, and as I rounded the bend I could see his face. He looked, to me, happy.
Thursday found us in Tokyo at the Ritz-Carlton. I watched the band’s press conference from the back of a full room. Yearning to see Hayes as the rest of the world did. In addition to their publicist, whom I had met briefly backstage in Osaka, there were two other women who accompanied them, dressed chicly in head-to-toe black, clinging to their note cards and microphones. And asthe questions began I realized two things: these women were August Moon’s translators, and one of them was the woman from the lounge at the Imperial Hotel.
There was a sense of pride I felt watching the guys. For all their competitive boyishness behind closed doors and boisterous antics onstage, they were surprisingly poised. They were witty and charming and gracious. I tried to remember what impression I had of them that first night at the meet-and-greet. How skilled they were at engaging their fans. How at ease in their bodies. So damn likable. And none of that was lost in translation.
In between the “konnichiwas” and the “o-genki desu kas” and the “arigatos,” there was the adaptable “ganbatte,” which Hayes and Rory had taken a particular liking to, and which, I learned, translated to the sentiment of “do your best, try hard, good luck.” An encouraging greeting, if ever there was one.
Hayes and I ducked out to visit the Mori Art Museum and explore the Roppongi district under Desmond’s watch later that afternoon and returned unscathed. I considered it a blessing.
In the hotel’s sky lobby on the forty-fifth floor, we bumped into Oliver and Reiko, the translator. They appeared to have either just finished cocktails or were meeting up—it was not entirely clear. But whatwasclear was that they were heading out together at the same time. We stood by the elevator bank with them making small talk. I don’t know why I assumed they’d be going down, but when the up elevator arrived, the two of them stepped in behind us, and Hayes and I gave each other looks like teenagers who had happened upon some delicious piece of gossip. We rode together in silence, and when the elevator slowed as we approached the fiftieth floor, Oliver’s stop, Hayes leaned forward, put his hand on Ol’s shoulder, and said loud enough for us all to hear: “Ganbatte.”
“Wow. Is that a thing?” We were giggling once the doors closed.
“Itwillbe in about five minutes.”
“Did you know about this? How long has it been going on?”
“In Ol’s head, about three years. This is the first time she’s responded.”
I was amused. Good for Oliver. “Your friend… is very, very complex.”
“No.” Hayes smiled. “He’s complicated.”
We arrived at the fifty-first floor and acknowledged the security detail on our way to the corner suite. Hayes was futzing with the key card.
“You nervous?”
He smiled, pulling me into him and pressing me up against the door. “Does that feel nervous to you?”
He kissed me, and then he grew serious. “You can’t fucking leave me. You can’t fucking leave me, Solène.”
It jarred me. That he’d been carrying it with him, just below the surface. Beneath all that pop star charm and charisma, he was hurting.
“Let’s go inside,” I said.
But inside was no better. Even with our breathtaking view, the lights coming on all over Tokyo and Mount Fuji on the horizon, we were trapped in some surreal world where everything looked perfect and yet still we could not make it work.
“I don’t want this to end,” he said.
“I don’t want it to end either.”
“You’re letting them win. You’re letting them end us.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I promised myself I would never let them do this. I would never let them dictate my happiness. And you’re allowing them to do this to us…”
“Hayes, it’s not just about us anymore.”
“I know. I know… it’s Isabelle. I’m sorry.” The tears were falling. He wiped his face. “Fuck. I’m fucking crying like a little girl. Okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to have a shower. And you’regoing to join me. And we’re going to have sex. And then I’m going to be okay.”
I smiled at that. Through tears, I smiled. “Okay.”
On Friday night, August Moon played the first of four shows at the Saitama Super Arena to a sold-out audience of thirty thousand. It seemed there was no end to the amount of fans who would fork over all their allowances and babysitting money and Bat Mitzvah loot to see the guys perform over and over again. Hayes had once told me that five hundred dollars was not out of the ordinary for floor seats. It boggled the mind.
