A/N: ugh! Author nim is in the middle of a computer crisis right now, so I hopefully I can get it fixed before the next chapter comes out T_T This one is coming to you from the school library after recovering the file, so I hope you enjoy!

Rainbow

Yoochun shook Jaejoong awake. “Hyung, we're landing.”

Jaejoong rubbed his eyes, trying to get his bearings. The flight to Japan was a short one, but he'd dozed off anyways after they'd taken off, still worn down from the conclusion of their Korean promotions for Rising Sun. Yunho had fallen asleep as well and was still dozing against Jaejoong's shoulder, though it was a bit hard to tell since his eyes were slightly opened in that unsettling way of sleeping he had. Jaejoong gently shook his shoulder, and his eyes cracked open the rest of the way.

“Are we there?” he mumbled.

“Landing. Better wake yourself up. There might be fans who came to greet us.”

“Yeah...” He sat up straighter and peered out the window. “It doesn't look any different yet. From Korea.”

“It'll hit you when we get out.” Jaejoong switched to Japanese. “Nervous?”

“Eh? Oh--” Yunho shifted his language as well. “I think we'll be fine, if we work hard.”

“That's something that will be just the same as back home. As our leader, you're always working the hardest.”

“I can't always let myself be shown up by the rest of you, can I?”

After they disembarked, the five of them spent awhile in customs getting their papers checked while their staff chattered away on their phones to the label personnel they'd be meeting at the gate. “Sounds like there's some fans waiting for you at Arrivals,” Yongsoo said once he'd hung up.

“How many?” Junsu asked.

“Not as many as there would be in Korea. But enough.”

'Enough' wound up being about sixty. Most were school age girls in plaid skirts and blazers, with a few older women sprinkled here and there. They screamed loudly and waved their uchiwas and posters when they turned the corner, but as excited as they were, they were still too few to replicate the chaos they'd left behind in Korea. Jaejoong didn't mind, in a way. He could see their faces more clearly like this, and just knowing that people cared about them in this place they'd never been before was moving in its own way.

They waved to their small collective of fans, then let security take them out to the van that would take them to their Japanese dorm. The fans followed them out, waving to them through the tinted windows, some of them even starting to cry with over-excitement.

“How well-known are we over here, hyung?” Changmin asked Yongsoo.

“Modestly. Starkiss has never promoted in Japan, so Hyunsoo nim doesn't have all that many connections built up compared to other labels. They'll be much more familiar with the kids over at SM and YG. On the other hand, you should know that your reputation is already very good. You have many fans among your industry sunbaes, and they've put in good words for you several times. Music fans here expect good things, and if they get what they're expecting, you'll make fans of them.” He paused. “Just be sure to pay attention to your Japanese and speak well, too. No one can fault you five on your singing, so make sure you emphasize how you appear on television.”

They had no idea where their van was taking them, so they sat back and watched the scenery pass. Their understanding of kanji was only basic, but they tried reading off the street signs on the highway, and then the placards in front of shops when they delved into the heart of Tokyo. There were so many people in the streets that it made Jaejoong dizzy. How would they ever find their way when they were given free time? Suddenly, the whole prospect of being here made him nervous. Yongsoo assured them that they already had interviews scheduled and wouldn't just be thrown to the sharks, but there was still so much to plan for. Before they'd left, they'd learned Japanese versions of some of their already released songs as a starting point, but they would still have to build enough material to create an album, and generate enough interest to warrant them having their own stage. Could the five of them really do all that? Their Korean varieties were popular, but could they do the same in a language they'd only ever spoken in practical classes before?

Yongsoo must have noticed Jaejoong's uncertain look, since he smiled and shook his head. “Think of it calmly,” he said. “Since you're moving into the dorm today, you have no schedules, so take the time and clear your head, and approach everything strongly tomorrow. Korea didn't just fall in love with your music. They fell in love with you. Don't think that it can't happen again.”

Their dorm was in a neatly organized residential area where there were a handful of apartment complexes squeezed up against each other. They took the elevator up to their floor, and Yongsoo punched in their number and opened the door. It was actually slightly bigger than where they stayed in Korea. Though they didn't have their own studio, there were three bedrooms in total, and the common room had plenty of room to move around in. There were no beds in the rooms, only futons, but all in all, is was much better than having all five of them share a single room together, as they were used to.

“Yunho and Yoochun can have a room together, and Jaejoong will share with Changmin,” Yongsoo said. “I'll share with Junsu ah.”

“You're assigning it, even here?” Yunho asked, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Jaejoong.

“You bet I am. You may be a country away, but fans in Korea will still hear of what you do here. I can't have them hearing about certain members sleeping together and then writing fiction about it.”

Jaejoong's ears perked up. “They write fiction? Have you read any of it?”

“Er... no, I haven't. As your manager, there are certain thoughts I would prefer not to have of you.”

They split up for awhile to unpack, and Jaejoong set up his room together with Changmin. Fall was coming, but it was still fiercely hot in Tokyo, so they grew tired quickly and passed out in front of the portable fan in the room when their bags were only half-way empty.

“I want to cry a little,” Jaejoong said, poking Changmin's shoulder.

“Why?” Changmin asked, hitting him back.

“Because it feels real now. We aren't going back for awhile. We can't just grab our bags and go back home now.”

Changmin was silent for awhile. “We don't have a home but DBSK anymore, hyung.”

“Hmm?”

“We're going to go a lot of places from now on, right? The dorm in Korea may be a base, but it isn't home.” He fell silent, leaving the rest of his sentence dangling. Where we're together, that's home.

Jaejoong sat up and looked out the window. Below him was an unfamiliar street with unfamiliar people passing through. It was half a scary thought, half an exciting one. It was an unexplored world, but that didn't mean it was bad. They would probably get lost and feel homesick, but it wasn't as if they were alone when they had each other.

“You're right, Changmin ah.”

“Of course I am.”

Jaejoong grabbed the rest of the clothes from his suitcase and began hanging them up. He wanted to stay and make an impact. He wanted there to be triple the number of fans saying goodbye when they left than there had been fans saying hello when they arrived, and to make that happen, he had to be ready to begin again in this new and unfamiliar place.

0o0

They had afternoon schedules the next day, so Yongsoo made them go to bed early, even though they wanted to go out exploring. They couldn't just leave without him or any of their new foreign staff escorting them, since they had never been to Tokyo before and had absolutely no idea where their dorm was even situated at the moment, so as soon as they were turned down, they were essentially trapped inside the dorm. Changmin went to bed after consuming the supply of natto he'd found in the kitchen, but Junsu and Yoochun stayed up grumbling about all they wanted to do but now weren't allowed to.

Jaejoong wasn't tired, but he slid into his futon beside Changmin anyways for lack of anything better to do. It still felt weird being in this brand new place, and his mind didn't want to shut off immediately. Instead, he ran through all the possibilities of how the trip would go. Their first interview included a performance of the Japanese version of “Hug”-- what if he started singing the lines in Korean, by accident? If just for one day, I want to be the bed in your room...

He wanted to see Yunho, but he was probably already sleeping by now. The thought made him feel a little bit empty. He understood what Yongsoo had said, but he wouldn't have minded misinforming their fans about their sleeping situation if it meant he could fall asleep in Yunho's arms for the night. It didn't matter if they could kiss or touch or not; he just wanted that stable presence at his side to soothe him whenever he wasn't sure what was coming next. He knew he could face anything if he had the person he loved the most at his side, but he liked to feel him there physically just as much as he liked to believe in his presence.

Jaejoong was just about to fall asleep when he heard the door slide open. A few seconds later and Yunho was leaning over him, still dressed in his day clothes from earlier.

“What are you doing?” Jaejoong hissed. “Changmin's right here.”

“I'm not going to do anything like that,” Yunho whispered back. “Get dressed. We're going out.”

“Out? Where?”

“I don't know. Just out.”

He sounded so calm about it that Jaejoong instinctively trusted him. He grabbed his clothes from the floor and pulled them on, following Yunho out into the common area.

“Just the two of us?” he asked.

“Yeah. This is the day we have here when it's pretty much guaranteed that no one will know who we are. So let's go on a date.”

“A date,” Jaejoong echoed. “You know your way around Tokyo?”

“Nope.”

“Then how are we going to go on a date?”

“You'll just have to trust me, won't you?” He leaned forward. “If we get caught running off, I'll take the blame. Just come along for the ride, Boojae.”

“Huh. Come along for the ride? Don't underestimated me. I'll take you on the ride, too.” He took Yunho's hand, and silently the two of them slipped from the dorm and out into the streets.

“Which way?” Yunho asked.

“Does it matter? We won't know where we're going in any direction.”

“Good point. Oh, and we'd better be careful.” Yunho scribbled down the address of their dorm on his hand. “So we'll be able to get back.”

The two of them wandered down the street for awhile, finding nothing more than more apartments for a stretch. Eventually, they managed to find their way to a main street where there were shops up and down the way, some selling designer clothes and others that looked and smelled like bars. They didn't have their IDs on them, so drinking was out, and Jaejoong panicked for a moment, thinking that they hadn't brought any money, either.

“Yongsoo hyung gave me a portion of the money when we exchanged,” Yunho said, patting his pocket. “Should we get food, first? I don't know as much as Changmin about what to order here, but that stand definitely says 'soba'.” He pointed to a little booth further down the street with banners hanging over the squat seating area with the hiragana for soba and udon written on them.

Jaejoong nodded. They'd ordered in for the evening, and Changmin had eaten the majority of it, so he was fairly hungry.

Yunho ordered for them, and they took a seat around the stand, waiting for their noodles to finish cooking. “You boys aren't from here?” the middle aged man behind the stand asked, studying them curiously.

“We're from Seoul,” Jaejoong said.

“Seoul? What brings you all the way out here?”

“...business.”

“Young people like you? Ah, children never look their ages these days. Your pronunciation isn't bad. You must have studied well.”

“Thank you for saying so,” Yunho said.

“Have you been in Tokyo long?”

“This is our first night. Speaking of which, is there anything fun to do nearby? Something romantic, maybe?”

“Romantic?” the man looked back and forth between the two of them. “Well, there's the Rainbow Bridge, and the Ferris Wheel nearby. It's a bit of a walk, but if you take a taxi, it wouldn't be to troublesome for you to go. It's best to see both at night, since they'll be lit up.”

Yunho glanced at Jaejoong, who shrugged. He didn't mind where they ended up going, as long as they went together. A Ferris Wheel sounded nice, though. They'd get a bird's-eye view of the city, and they could be alone for awhile, where no one was watching them.

When the soba was finished, Jaejoong practically inhaled it in one gulp. It was delicious, so delicious that he almost felt guilty that they hadn't asked Changmin or the other members to go with them. He hoped they were all sound asleep, though, and hadn't figured out he and Yunho slipped out.

After they had finished up their meal, Yunho hailed a taxi and they took the trip up to the Rainbow Bridge together. There were a lot of people out, so Yunho didn't hold his hand, though he walked close enough so their shoulders were touching as they made their way to the waterfront to watch the rainbow lights reflecting off the river. Jaejoong shivered as he gazed at the water shifting in the slight breeze, the colors rippling into one another. There were boats floating in the river, too, brightly lit and adding their warm golden lights to the canvas of the water. According to the man back at the noodle stand, you could pay to have dinner out there on the river beside the bridge. It was far beyond anything he or Yunho could afford, but thinking of the couples out there in their own private worlds made him feel envious. He wanted to be there as well, an object of envy for everyone else passing by, a secret romance playing out in front of eyes that watched but still couldn't see them.

Yunho rested his chin to top of Jaejoong's head. “Jaejoongie. Just being out here with you makes me feel better.”

“Better?”

“I'm anxious. I'm sure you are, too. I'm sure we all are. Everybody's counting on us, and we're doing something that we're not sure will even work. I have faith in us. I'm sure we can do this. But--” He sighed into Jaejoong's ear. “There will be fun times and difficult times, just like there were after we debuted. I don't want to anything bad to happen to the people I care about anymore.”

Jaejoong turned sharply. “What happened with Dami won't happen again. We're going to take care of each other.”

“I know, I know. I just wish there was a way I could be sure all of you would be happy and healthy.” He smiled at Jaejoong. “It feels okay, right now. When I have you right here like this I know everything fine, and nothing else is touching you.”

“I'll be more careful so that even when you're not there-”

“I will be.” Yunho glanced both ways, and after being assured that everyone else was distracted by the bridge or the boats or the water, he leaned down and gave Jaejoong a swift kiss on the lips.

Jaejoong didn't feel a single urge to push him off, and smiled widely when Yunho pulled away. “In front of everyone?”

“Mhm. You had that look on your face, like that was what you wanted.”

“The kiss-me-in-front-of-everyone look?”

“Hey, don't pretend like it doesn't exist. You can't see your own face, now can you?”

Jaejoong tweaked Yunho's nose playfully. “If it makes you feel better, you can do what you like. But just know that whatever does happen to us, good or bad, we have to face it head on. I won't run anymore, and you... you have nothing to fear about not being strong enough to handle anything we go through. You're a good leader. Maybe you don't know it's like that, but that doesn't mean it isn't. You can't always see your own impact, now can you?”

Yunho squeezed his shoulder.  “Thank you. See, this is why I need you, baby.”

“Of course you do.”

The two of them bought tickets to go up on the Ferris Wheel, which like the bridge, was also illuminated by colored lights for the crowds passing by. It was so tall that it made Jaejoong's heart pound to look up at it, but on the plus side, they inched up slowly to accommodate all the passenger cars. They held hands when they were lower on the ground, kissed when they were higher up, and when they approached the top, they pulled apart and admired the view together. Yunho began calling out to the people on the ground in Korean, and even yelled a loud saranghae to Jaejoong, laughing about being able to say it openly with no one punishing them with the implications. He wanted to stay up there forever, high above everyone's line of sight and together with Yunho, wrapped up in him and his words.

Jaejoong's phone buzzed, and he regretfully pulled it out. Where r u, if u don't answer in five minutes, I'm going to have to tell hyung because you're scaring me right now. From Changmin. Jaejoong snapped a picture of the skyline and sent it to him. Sssh, don't tell. Will be back soon.

Yunho took a picture, too, and set it as his phone background. “For a little peace of mind,” he said, smiling. “No matter how things go.”

By time they got off the ride, it was past midnight. They did need to get back and get some sleep, but they hung around for a few minutes and watched cars making their way across the Rainbow Bridge and boats drifting in the river. Their first night in Japan. It felt like something they needed to imprint in their minds, a moment of freedom they wouldn't be able to have often.

Yunho called another taxi and gave him the address he'd written down on his hand. They couldn't really touch each other anymore with an audience, so Jaejoong pretended to fall asleep on Yunho's arm, if only to have those last few moments of being close to him without anyone judging him for it either for better or worse.

Changmin had already fallen back to sleep by time they made it back to the dorms, so Jaejoong tried to slide in quietly beside him and not bother him again. His head had been distracted when he'd tried to sleep before, but now it felt perfectly clear. He fell asleep almost right away, and in his dreams he was in a boat on the river, watching red and orange and yellow green and blue and violet glimmering before him, a strong chest resting comfortably against his back as arms reached to wrap around him and hold him close.

0o0

Changmin was annoyed with him in the morning, more about the soba and late night scare more than anything else, but he didn't tell Yongsoo or even Yoochun or Junsu when Jaejoong asked him not to. There wasn't much time to think about it with their first Japanese schedule ahead of them, in any case. They met their international staff and went through hair and make up just as they were used to doing, and as they sat in their chairs, they flipped through their basic script, written out in simple hiragana for them with liner notes in hangul to help them read. Jaejoong read aloud through the premise of the show and the outline of what the hosts would be doing and asking, pleasantly pleased by how well the foreign words rolled off his tongue. It would be a challenge to try not to slip back into Korean, but it was possible to do well. He had a feeling he would be just fine.

Their hosts led them to the stage and did a sample run through with them to prepare them, and then it was on to the real thing. Luckily, the concept of the show was to introduce them to Japanese cuisine, so Changmin, the best speaker, could lead off, even though he usually didn't prefer to take on the biggest speaking role. The five of them got to try takoyaki and katsudon and even shabu shabu, and easily were able to respond back with all the words that they'd picked up from Changmin and his food lessons. Junsu even had the chance to sneak in some of his gags, which their hosts found particularly amusing since he was better at telling jokes than speaking standard Japanese.

“You've been watching Tohoshinki, the current trending boy group from South Korea,” one of the hosts said, turning to the camera. “We've introduced them to a part of our culture, and now they want to introduce us to their group with their first performance in Japan. I'm sure many of their fans are familiar with their debut single Hug, and now they will be singing it for us in Japanese the very first time. Please welcome Tohoshinki!”

The choreography was like second nature, so Jaejoong focused on the Japanese words his song had been translated to. Just like during their debut stage, he was leading off and setting the tone, so he shook every other thought off and focused on the sentiment of what he was singing. He remember that first time together with Yunho and the sweetness that had filled him in that moment, and sang with all the love in his heart, for both s and the Japanese fans they had, as well as the ones they had yet to meet.

After the filming had wrapped up, the host pulled them aside and showed them the social page for the program from when they had announced Tohoshinki as their guests.

I don't think many Japanese fans know Tohoshinki yet, but my penpal in Korea has been sending me videos of them ever since they debuted, one person wrote. Their music has touched me very much, so I will work hard to promote them so they become popular in Japan, too.

I am sorry to Yunho-san, my favorite member, that they are not as known in Japan as they are in Korea, and that they will have to fight all over again to win the nation's heart. But I know they will, because Tohoshinki has the best members and best vocals. Tohoshinki faito!

I hope many Japanese will be able to watch them on your show and fall in love with them, too. I want Junsu-san to smile and be happy in Japan!

Jaejoong-san is very popular with my friends. I hope everyone in Japan will come to love him, too!

I want to see Yunho-san, Jaejoong-san, Junsu-san, Yoochun-san, and Changmin-san standing onstage very soon! Please keep promoting them so I can tell them how much I love them in person.

“That's what everyone is saying?” Yoochun asked, smiling shakily. “We'll really have to do it, then. What's our next schedule?”

“A fan sign,” Yunho answered.

“So we'll do that. And the next schedule and the next schedule until all our fans' dreams come true.”

“Tohoshinki faito!” Junsu said, throwing his arms around all of them. “I want to smile and be happy in Japan, too!”

“And have Japan fall in love with me,” Jaejoong joked.

“And eat shabu shabu,” Changmin contributed.

Their hosts simply chuckled. “With spirit like that, you boys will do just fine. Just show your fans your honest side, and they'll fall in love with the warm people you genuinely are.”  

After the rain, everyone watches the rainbow with smiles
At that moment when time froze, baby, I feel like holding you in my arms
The rainbow that carries wishes, keep shining smile
My dream is your rainbow
I'll just sing for you