Dreams Do Come True!

[May 2015. New Delhi. India]

*phewwww*

Anu sighed as she stepped out of the university; “thank God the term’s finally over! Now it’s holiday time!”

:D

Anu, short for Anushka, would get a mild-high rank on a level of craziness, if such a thing existed. “A 20-year old who is set out to save the world!” is what she likes to think of herself as. How can a 21-year old Indian girl save the world, you’d think? Not as Wonder Woman, definitely not. But you surely have heard about this world dying out slowly because of all the things that humans happen to be doing to it? Well, Anushka just completed her first degree to become an environmentalist!

*bam* a book hit Anu’s head.

“Holiday time? Are you crazy? You have to look for a JOB, lady!” pointed Anushka’s best friend, Nora, walking towards Anushka.

“Don’t spoil the moment, Nor!” Anu frowned.

Nora rolled her eyes.

“I have a long list of stuff to do before I even begin thinking about working,” Anu said, “I have to go down south to meet my parents. I have to go meet my sis, even my cousins if possible. It’s gonna take a long, long time though, because all of them live in completely opposite corners of the country!”

“Yeah, you do that. I’m gonna go find myself a temporary job for this year.”

“Why do you wanna do temp?” Anu asked.

“I need to make some money. My parents said that they would stop sending me money starting the day I graduate,” Nora replied, clearly pissed.  -_-

“Isn’t that just so very sad?” chuckled Anu.

“It’s not funny!!” screamed Nora >.<

[May 2015: Tokyo, Japan]

*aarrrghhh* Ryosuke winced as he entered the common Hey Say JUMP dorm.

“I am SO bored!” claimed Daiki while yawning really loudly.

“Me too,” Chii agreed.

 “This whole thing has become a routine of complete boringness—”

“—boredom, not boringness” interrupted Inoo.

“Yeah, whatever,” Ryosuke snorted, “Does anyone of you guys remember the last time we actually enjoyed, you know, being us?”

“Point, man,” Keito said.

“Oh come one, Ryo,” Yabu said as he patted Ryosuke’s shoulder, “we’re the JUMPs. If we’re not fun, then who is?”

“I don’t think that that’s what he’s saying,” said Takaki, “He’s not saying that we aren’t fun. He’s just saying that all the stuff that we do is not fun.”

“Boredom, boring, boring, BLAH!” Hikaru interrupted the guys’ rants, “I say we go somewhere far, far away for vacation!”

All the guys’ faces brightened up.

“Hikaru, you genius!” Daiki shot him a high 5.

“Seriously, guys,” Hikaru continued, “we can ask for a combined leave. Something like Hawaii all those years ago!”

“But where would we go this time?” asked Chii.

“Ummm…somewhere far, far, away, eh?” Hikaru thought out loud.

All the boys starting thinking really hard..

“OH!” yelled Ryosuke, “I know!”

All the boys stared at him expectantly.

“Let’s go to China!”

“Dude, what the hell?” Chii gave Ryosuke a look, “China’s like, RIGHT here. Baka.”

“Yeah, but it would make a really cool holiday anyway, right?” Ryosuke tried to defend himself.

All the boys snorted.

“Baaaka.” Chii said again.

“Ne, Yuto,” Keito nudged Yuto, “where do you think we should go?”

“I don’t know, man,” he pulled away, “leave me alone.”

“Don’t ask him. He would tell us to go to Paris to meet that French mystery girl of his,” chuckled Ryosuke.

Keito gave Ryosuke the death stare. Yuto walked out of the dorm with a disgusted look on his face.

“Again, Ryosuke, what the hell?” Chii said, “you know the guy’s in a bad mood. What would you feel like if something happened to your girl?”

“Does it look like I would know?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t have a girl. He just has a girl of his dreams,” joked Inoo.

“Back to the point, you guys!” Yabu yelled, “Where do we go for this big holiday?”

“Somewhere exotic and exciting,” said Daiki.

The boys nodded.

“Some place where the food is really great!” said Keito.

The boys nodded again.

“Some place with hot girls?” Hikaru suggested.

The boys went, “Yeah, right.”

“Hot girls are an essential part of a good vacation!” Hikaru said.

“No, man,” Yabu said, “Japanese girls are the best.”

Hikaru laughed at that, “Yet they’re the last ones to ask you out.”

“Shut up, man,” Yabu hit him on the head.

“Well, you guys decide,” Chii said, “I’m gonna go check on Yuto.”

“Sure,” Inoo said.

-----on the roof-----

Chinen Yuri and Nakajima Yuto are not the best of friends. They used to be really good friends earlier. But for the past couple of months, Yuto seemed to have drifted away from the group. Though still as cheerful as ever, he would come late for rehearsal and recording, sometimes even skip them. All the members knew that there was a girl involved but they didn’t know who she was. They all thought that she must be French because Yuto would constantly listen to French music and talk about how great France must be.

“Yuto?” Chii looked around for Yuto on the roof.

“What do you want?”

“Yuto, we need to talk,” Chii sighed.

Yuto walked out of his little ‘hiding spot’ to face Chii.

“Look, we all know that you’ve been through some tough times over the past few weeks but do you really have to let go of all of us because of whatever it is that’s bothering you?” Chii said, “We’ve been trying to help you, Yuto. And we still are willing to. All you have to do is tell us what’s wrong and we’ll help you work it all out. What are we for?”

Yuto stood silent for a couple of minutes.

“Have you ever been in love, Yuri?” Yuto asked Chii out of the blue.

Chii was surprised by Yuto calling him Yuri. Almost nobody calls him by his first name. ‘This must be really serious,’ he thought.

“What’s your point?” Chii asked Yuto.

“I’ve been in love. Just once. And only since the end of this winter,” Yuto spoke, “She didn’t know about us, you know. She’s not from here. She liked me for who I really am.”

“That’s really great, Yuto,” Chii said.

“She left without a word,” Yuto’s face drew a blank.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri said sympathetically, “I really am.”

“I don’t even know whether I should get over it, or whether I should wait for her to contact me somehow…I don’t know anything.”

Chii didn’t say anything for a little while. He went to Yuto and put an arm around him.

“She’s here, she’s not here. But all of us? We’re always here, together.”

Yuto smiled a little, “You’re right. I should stop being such a snob.”

“Ah yes, snob would totally be what you’ve been!”

:P

“I’m going back down. Coming?” Chii offered.

Yuto nodded and they went back to the dorm.

“So you guys decided our vaca--?” Chii asked as he and Yuto entered the room.

“No way…” Yuto muttered looking at the site that beheld them upon their entrance to the room.

Keito was being smacked on the head with a magazine over and over again by Takaki. Inoo and Daiki were yelling “YES” and “NO” at each other while strangling each other. Ryosuke and Hikaru were literally wrestling on the carpet while Yabu was going around trying to make them stop killing each other!

“Uh…guys?” Yuto tried to interfere their battles.

Chii rolled his eyes and shouted at the top of his voice, “JOHNNY-SAN IS HERE!!!!!!”

All of the guys froze.

“Get up, weirdoes.”

“Huh?” Hikaru looked around for Johnny-san, who wasn’t there at all.

“What happened over here?” Yuto asked as he grinned at all the priceless faces the guys had when they froze.

“I’ll tell them,” Yabu said, “Daiki wants to go to Canada, Inoo wants to go to Egypt, Keito wants to go to Brazil, Hikaru wants to go to California, Takaki wants to go Australia, Ryo wants to go to Greece and I want to go to India.” And then he took a nice long breath.

“One second,” Chii said as he ran towards the utility room.

“What’s he on about?” Ryosuke asked.

Then Chii came back with a big globe in his hands.

“Here. We’ll blind-fold…” he looked around at everyone’s faces and stopped at Yuto’s face, “Yuto, and turn the globe around. On whichever country his finger stops the globe, will be the country that we’ll visit, okay?”

“Sounds fair to me…” Inoo nodded.

“I’ll blind fold Yuto!” Keito said as he picked up a piece of cloth and tied it around Yuto’s eyes.

“Okay. Ready?” Chii asked.

“Yupp.”

Chii spun the globe and Yuto was guided towards it with a finger pointing out.

*thub*

“Which country? Which country?” All of them asked excitedly.

Chii squinted, “The pacific ocean.”

They all hung their heads in disappointment.

“Do it again,” Takaki said.

They repeated the whole thing again.

*thub*

“Emmm…” Chii looked carefully, “India!”

“YOSHI!” Yabu burst with joy, “Hell yeah!”

All the other guys hung their heads again.

“Isn’t India supposed to be like, a dirty place?” Inoo asked.

“I guess we’re going to have to figure that out for ourselves,” Chii shrugged.

“Goodbye California!” Hikaru said while sobbing foolishly.

“Baka,” Takaki smacked him in the head.

“Well. India, it is,” Ryosuke said.

[1 week later. New Delhi]

“Hello?” Anu said as she picked up her phone.

“Anu?”

“Yes, may I know who’s speaking?” she asked.

“Anu, it’s me, Nora!”

“You changed your number? Why? Where are you?”

“I lent my sim to my brother. I’m still in town. Listen,” Nora said, “I need you to do me a favour.”

“I’m listening…”

“You speak Japanese, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And you love, like, their music and stuff, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“And you’re not on vacation or working or anything, right?”

“Get to the point, Nor. What do you want me to do?”

“Well, I started working at my uncle’s travel agency. It’s just something I wanted to do till I find a good job.”

“Nice.” she said.

“So today, I found out that that Japanese boy band group that you loved is planning to come to India for a month. And we’re their agents.”

“Japanese boy band group that I loved? I loved so many!”

“Haha. True that. Well, they’re called Hey Say…something. I forgot.”

“Hey Say JUMP! Oh wow, they’re visiting India? That is just rad! I never thought that they would come here of all places on the planet!”

“I know, right? Maybe they just wanted to have a nice vacation in a place where people really don’t know them.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s really cool. So you called me just to tell me that they’re visiting?”

“Oh, no, no. I mean, I would call to let you know but this is a tiny bit more complicated...you see, these guys are here to roam around the country for a month, and we’re gonna organize everything for their stay but the only problem we’re having is that we can’t find a tour guide.”

“How come?”

“Well, we need someone Indian who can speak Japanese pretty well. And we haven’t found anyone like that after searching all day. I mean, all the people we’ve found are too busy to take a month off, or they’re just not interested.”

“Not interested? People would die just to have a decent conversation with them!”

“Strange, isn’t it?”

“Extremely!”

“Back to the point though. For my uncle’s sake, I kinda…I kinda said that I know someone who can be their guide.”

“Nor! You told him that I’d be Hey Say JUMP’s guide without asking me first?!”

“I am SO sorry, Anu, I know I should—”

“Nora D’Souza, you are THE BEST! I LOVE YOU!!”

Anu was so darn happy all day. She called up her family immediately to inform them about a ‘slight’ change in plans this season. And then she had her day dreams about what things would be like with them around. She went to the travel agency to find out about their trip. They would be in New Delhi’s I.G. International Airport in exactly one week! She smiled, nah, scratch that, she grinned all day long walking around in her favourite place in the city. ‘Dreams do come true,’ she thought to herself as she remembered how meeting the JUMPs was her biggest dream when she was in school.