Please C&C at lordofmerentha@yahoo.com

Diamond Dust

It's funny how everything ends. You expect it to go out with a bang, big fireworks, explosions, a spreading of lights across the sky before everything is extinguished into darkness. For our fans, maybe it would, watching us one last time upon the stage at the last live, watching as we linked hands one last time. As a band.

But for us, for me, at least, it had ended the day Toshi had come to Yoshiki with his request・o, more like a demand, a demand that was so unexpected that at first I thought Yoshiki was joking.

I want to leave X.

We'd let him go, but it had cost us the band. It had cost us everything. And by the time the last live came around, it was just like the last stop on the end of a long, long train ride, with the five of us stepping onto a deserted platform surrounded with the ghosts of those who had loved us, waving our goodbyes.

Yoshiki was hiding. He was writing something, he said. A farewell song for the fans. I let him hide. I wasn't about to tell him what to do・ut it would have been nice to see his face once in a while. Since that announcement in September he hadn't so much as shown his face around any of us, not even Hide. He would go to LA for a few weeks, then come back to Japan, then go back to LA. We gave up trying to keep track of him.

I got a call in the middle of the night once from him, just once in the two months it had been since we'd made the public announcement. I'd actually been in bed, drifting off to sleep, when the phone rang, and when the phone rang in the middle of the night, it was always either Yoshiki or Hide. No one else would call me at such ungodly hours.

"Hide, it's three o' clock in the morning," I said, picking up the phone. Or attempting to pick it up. I think I actually managed to grab it on the fourth try.

"Pata? It's Yoshiki."

"Oh," I said, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes, feeling myself go into tolerant mode, the mode I sank myself into whenever Yoshiki called. To deal with Yoshiki, one needed to be able to tolerate a great deal. I considered myself a very tolerant man, but even that wasn't enough sometimes.

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, Hide had decided that since I didn't talk much, I must be a very good listener. Which was partly true, I supposed, but there had come a point when I had decided that being the band's resident complaint center was not a fun job. But of course, I kept doing it anyway.

"Should I just cancel the project?"

"What?" I said fuzzily. "What project?"

"The December last live. Are you drunk?" He sounded disapproving. He didn't like my drinking, but no one else seemed to mind it, and Yoshiki wasn't exactly the world's most sober person either.

"Yoshiki, it's three in the morning. People usually sleep at three in the morning? You woke me up."

"I don't think I can do this anymore," he said, ignoring me. Or maybe he hadn't heard. Yoshiki had a knack for either. "It's so・'m so tired, you know?"

"Then don't," I said as gently as I could. "I'm not your shrink・ou need to figure things out on your own."

"Hide said..." he trailed off.

"What did he say?"

A short silence, then, "Never mind. I'm bothering you, aren't I?"

"No you're not," I said, feeling the lie slip off my tongue, but he was upset and I wasn't about to let him hang up on me in this mood.

He did anyway.

Damn Yoshiki.

I went back to bed.

Two weeks went by. None of us saw or heard from him, and if Hide didn't even know what was going on with him, no one would. Once upon a time we would have all gone and pestered Toshi・ut that was once upon a time.

All fairy tales must end someday, I suppose.

I'd been drinking more, if that was possible. My penchant for alcohol was one of the running jokes of the band, but I'd always thought it wasn't a big deal. Hide drank almost as much as I did, perhaps more, but for some reason no one ever focused on that. Maybe it was because Hide was like that・oud, flashy, brilliant, popular, and in the dazzle of his presence, they forgave him for it. I, on the other hand, was the resident drunkard because that was really all they saw of me, because I was simply Hide's shadow, someone hovering and forgotten at the edges of the stage.

I'd always been Hide's shadow, but I didn't mind. As long as Yoshiki left me alone, I didn't mind. If he needed a guitarist, there was always Hide. It wasn't really a question of who was better, because our playing styles were different enough that there was no room to compare, but it was a question as to who loved X Japan more.

I loved the band, but I knew I could never love it as much as Hide did. I loved the band, but it wasn't like I loved my guitar. The guitar defined me. X Japan was just something that I did, not who I was.

With Hide and Yoshiki...they were X Japan. They lived and breathed it, and it was in their blood.

It was a beautiful day, with the weather as good as it had ever been in the middle of November, and it had been a dead week. With Yoshiki and Toshi hiding and Heath off doing whatever he did when we weren't practicing, and Hide busy with Spread Beaver, it had been curiously lonely. Since Toshi's announcement, I hadn't really felt like working either, so PAF was on break. I was used to my phone ringing off the hook during the day, and even though I used to complain about it, I hadn't minded.

I picked up my guitar and plugged it in, idly strumming, just plucking notes to alleviate the dead silence of the apartment. A car passed noisily by outside. The clock beeped four o' clock.

Had I really been awake these past ten years, or was it just one long, blurry dream about to come to an end?

I let my fingers drift across the frets, strumming the chords to Celebration, remembering when Taiji had still been here. He was an odd one, Taiji, but he fit into the group like Heath would never fit. Two bassists, two different incarnations of the same band.

Taiji was gone, but apparently, he was replaceable. And apparently, Toshi wasn't.

I didn't understand that.

I sighed, putting the guitar down, wondering if I should take another nap. There was still another pack of beer in the refrigerator that I had been meaning to drink for the last few days and hadn't・here was a PAF project sitting on the desk that I hadn't finished, and Hide had wanted to ask me something about another tour・p> I decided to go for a walk.

I was about to step out the door when the phone rang, and I heaved a sigh, kicking off my shoes and shuffling to the kitchen.

"Hello?" I said, not wanting to make assumptions about who it was this time.

"It's me."

"I thought so," I said. "Where have you been?"

"Around." Hide's voice was staticky through the line. "Hey, mind if I come over?"

"Now?"

"In about two hours? I need to run some errands."

I didn't like having people over at my apartment, but Hide never asked to come over unless he had something serious to talk about. "I'll be here. Is that all you wanted to say?"

"Yeah, pretty much. See you." The line went dead.

I put on my shoes again and shut the front door behind me, breathing in the cold fall air and listening to the cars rumble along the street. Too bad I lived so far from Ueno Park. It would have been a nice day to take a walk there, even if the sakura wasn't in season. I decided to go for a short walk around the block instead, thankful that I wasn't Hide and that few people ever bothered me while I was out. Another plus side to being Hide's shadow・ didn't have too many crazy fans.

I lit a cigarette, strolling leisurely down the road, letting my thoughts drift. The sun was low in the sky but it was still quite a while still sunset, and the sky was so blue, even through my sunglasses. On the far bank of the horizon there were clouds gathering.

I thought of Yoshiki and Toshi, and Hide and me, and Heath and Taiji. Pairs of people, linked. I supposed that Yoshiki and Hide were linked as well, and Taiji and me, but the only ones that made sense to me were the first pairs. The founders, the guitars, and the bassists. Past and present.

Maybe I was going crazy from cabin fever, but that was absurd, because it wasn't even winter yet.

I reached down to check my cell phone for the time, realized I'd forgotten to bring it, and cast one last look at the sky before retracing my steps. I'd gone farther than I intended to, and as I rounded the last corner before my own street, slightly out of breath, I could see the figure leaning against my door, trying to make himself small and invisible. He'd covered his pink hair with a dark, floppy hat and was wearing sunglasses and a thick coat, but still if any crazy fan happened to spot him, Hide's disguise wasn't going to cut it.

I trotted up the stairs and he started as he saw me, then crossed his arms belligerently.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"I was out taking a walk," I said mildly, inserting my key into the lock. It clicked open.

Hide snorted, following me inside and shedding his shoes. "Damn, Pata, don't tell me you've bought into all that shit about 'being one with nature' that Toshi's been mumbling about for the past couple months."

I looked oddly at him. "What?"

He blinked, then shook his head. "Never mind."

"No, what?"

"Is there beer?" He was already in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, and his voice drifted back into the entry hall. I sighed.

"Of course there is. This is my apartment."

He waited until I had joined him in the kitchen and grabbed another beer out of the refrigerator before taking a seat on the overstuffed couch in front of the television, folding his sunglasses neatly on the coffee table in front of him.

"So?" I said.

"So...I went to visit Yoshiki yesterday."

"I see," I said, taking a drink and waiting.

"And he tried to kick me out of his apartment."

"Big surprise."

He shifted his beer can from one hand to the other, then took off the floppy hat, laid it gently on top of the sunglasses. Rummaged in his pocket for his box of cigarettes.

"Want one?"

I shook my head silently, and he shrugged, lit one, stuffed the box back in his pocket. The sun was setting outside the window and the smoke drifted in the half-light. Hide stared out the window moodily, past the flimsy half-drawn curtain over the glass, taking deep drags of his cigarette. I slid down on the couch next to him and placed my beer on the table. It was quiet.

"He said...Yoshiki said・e didn't want Toshi. At the live."

I blinked. "You mean the last one in December?"

"Yeah. That's what he said. When he finally decided to let me in, I mean. There was a lot of me beating on the front door for a while before that. I think he finally got the point that I wasn't going to just walk away."

I took another drink. "Really."

"So I walk into the living room and it's just covered・ mean, covered, literally・ith sheets of music. They were everywhere. He looked like he hadn't slept in days."

"He probably hadn't."

"Probably not. He'll kill himself at this rate. Of overwork. What a way to go."

I stood up. Suddenly the room felt very dim and stuffy, and my stomach hurt. "Hide, get to the point."

He looked at me. The pink hair stood out fierce and rebellious in the dark room. Everything about Hide was like that, a beacon of rebellion, of defiance, in the dark places. "Pata, he didn't want Toshi. He wanted just the four of us, without him. He even said the fans could sing, but not Toshi! He said..." He clenched his hands. "We could just do an instrumental live. As if he actually believed we could!"

I'd rarely seen Hide this upset when he wasn't drunk. I stared at the wall, wondering if a hole would appear if I stared hard enough, wondering what on earth had possessed Yoshiki. I tried to feel angry for Hide's sake, for Toshi's sake, but my mind wandered, drawing faces out of the gloom. Toshi singing. Yoshiki with his arms raised, graceful, poised. Hide laughing. Heath, his face serious, eyes closed in concentration. Taiji, with his crooked grin and devil-may-care cocky strut, turning, walking away, towards the horizon and out of sight.

It was all ending, and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it. Not me, not Heath, not Hide, not Yoshiki.

Maybe for Toshi, it was even too late.

"Pata, you're not listening to me!"

"Yes I am," I said quickly, turning around. He glared at me.

"Fuck this."

I made an expressive gesture with one arm, a formal invitation. "If you want to leave, the door is that way."

He made a noise in his throat, jumping to his feet, crushing the empty beer can in his fist with one violent motion. "Fuck you! Why'd I come here anyway? It's not like you ever listen to me! I'm leaving."

"Sit down, Hide," I said quietly. "No one is going anywhere."

He ground his teeth, but he sat. He wouldn't have walked out the door, anyway. I knew him too well.

When he finally spoke again, his voice trembled. "Yoshiki used to say that・hat I was the most level-headed out of all of us. He used to say that I was the one that kept him on his feet." Looking up at me beseechingly through the ridiculous pink hair that had become a part of him just like my guitar was part of me. "Do you think he meant it?"

The silence of the apartment burned in my ears and I couldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know," I said. "I don't know Yoshiki that well. Only you and-" I choked on the name. "-Toshi did."

"Oh that's a load of shit," he said, getting up, this time not to storm out but to pace around the room, kicking a few empty CD cases out of the way and ending up at the large sliding glass door that led out to the balcony. "You know Yoshiki as well as any of us. You don't say much, Pata, but you know what's going on."

"And your point?"

He whirled, his eyes pained. "Do you think what I did was right?" he demanded. "Telling him like that・i>begging him・o you think what he did was right?" His voice was hoarse. "We're a band・ot a・ don't know what we've become, Pata, but it's not what we wanted to be. Is it?"

"No," I agreed quietly. "It's not." I was about to say something more when what he had just said finally pierced my fogged brain, and I stopped. "Hide?"

"What?"

"What did you say to Yoshiki?"

He heaved a deep sigh, sagging against the window. "I told him・hat he wasn't allowed to do that. To keep Toshi out of the last live. In no uncertain words, I told him that he couldn't."

I looked at him. "Just couldn't. Just like that."

"Right. And I looked at him and I...I pushed him against the wall and I told him he was crazy. I could have punched his face in, I was so mad."

The image of skinny, pale Yoshiki being threatened and pushed against the wall by Hide was bizarre, but Hide was probably the only one in the world who do that and get away with it. I didn't say anything. Hide looked at me, daring me to, but I shook my head. "I see."

"And I said, we need to have Toshi, because we're playing X songs. Not some other band's songs, X songs! And he tried to argue with me・e called me a bastard...lots of things." Hide's eyes unfocused for a minute, then he swallowed. "And I said...listen to me, Yoshiki...you wrote all those songs for Toshi's voice...didn't you?"

"And what did he say?" I said softly.

"He didn't say anything. And I said...for Toshi's voice, Yoshiki..." he trailed off. "I left. After that. It's cruel, Pata, that's what it is. Cruel. When I got home he'd left a message on my machine, trying to apologize. As if he could just apologize, for what he did to Toshi!"

"It's partly Toshi's fault, too. It's not all Yoshiki・

"I don't care whose fault it is. It needs to stop, and it needs to stop now!"

"It's too late," I said.

"It's never too late," he retorted, resuming his stalking around the apartment. The cigarette had burned down to a stub between his fingers, unsmoked, and he flung it into the ashtray on top of the stereo. "I refuse to believe it's too late, Pata." His eyes burned into mine and I could feel the frantic fever burning there. It almost made me want to cry. Almost.

The sun sank behind the buildings, behind clouds so fine that they looked like smoke dispersing in the wind before a curtain of fire.

He didn't stay too long after that. He'd been here ranting so often that he knew when his ranting wasn't welcome anymore, and he left without really saying another word, remarking offhandedly that he might see me tomorrow or the next day, that he wanted to get us together for a practice. I heard the unspoken words as he disappeared outside the door. That "us" meant him, me, and Heath. No Yoshiki. No Toshi.

I wasn't sure I wanted to practice like that. It wasn't a band like that. It would just be a bunch of pathetic musicians trying to pretend that we still had something to hold on to.

The days came and went and I found myself sinking deeper into the very act of doing nothing. I pretended to practice. I went for walks. Hide never called. Neither did Yoshiki. Not that it was anything surprising. Both of them were probably out, separately, getting very drunk, while I, the resident drunkard, was not.

Any other time, it would have been funny.

I'd almost gotten used to my self-imposed solitude when he called again.

It was two in the morning this time, not three, but I'd already been asleep for hours when the phone rang, and my voice was groggy as I answered.

"What now?"

"I'll call back tomorrow," he said hastily, but I clapped the receiver to my ear.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"I'm sorry," Yoshiki said, and he sounded genuinely sorry. "I always seem to call when you're asleep, don't I?"

"It is two o clock in the mor - you know what? Never mind."

"I finished it," he said almost conversationally. "Our last song."

At two in the morning, I didn't really care. "That's good."

"Hide said he told you. About what he said to me." A pause. "Thank you."

I sat up, fumbling with the phone, trying to wrap my mind around what he was saying. "For what?"

"For saving my sanity," he said. He sounded faintly self-deprecating. "You and Hide both. Oh...hold on. You want to hear the song?"

I opened my mouth to say that it was two in the morning, closed it again. He'd called to apologize, and though he hadn't actually said he was sorry for what he'd done to the band, this was the closest he would ever get to one, I supposed. The moon was shining through the window, and I started to get up to turn on the light, then stopped, sat back.

"All right," I said.

It was probably some sort of ballad, but it was a good time of night for piano ballads anyway. I could hear him on the other end rattling something. A pause.

"Switch to speakerphone?"

"I don't have speakerphone," I reminded him. It was just like him to assume that everyone had the latest gadgets, but I'd never seen the purpose of buying new technology when it first came out. The price would go down soon anyway, and it was a waste of good money I could be spending on drinks.

"Oh. I forgot. Well, I'm switching. It'll be easier for you to hear the piano this way."

There was another pause, a crackle of static, then silence. I waited.

The piano began and I closed my eyes, seeing the ghost-white of the moonlight seep under my lids, imagining the notes falling like tears from the branches of trees swaying in the wind. I imagined Toshi's voice, the bass, my guitar and Hide's blending together to this in a wild, darkly beautiful dance. One last time.

Somehow, in between everything, I'd forgotten how good of a pianist Yoshiki really was.

I swung my feet out of bed, feeling my bare feet touch the wooden boards but not caring that the floor was freezing. My Stratocaster was leaning against the dresser and I grabbed it, going back to the bed and shifting the phone from my hand to my shoulder.

Closed my eyes and began to play.

I heard a slight hiccup in his rhythm as Yoshiki heard the guitar enter on the speakerphone, but he didn't say anything, just let me play, blending my melody with his. It was odd with only one guitar. Off-balance. No Hide to balance my rhythm. It felt almost lonely.

"I didn't know what to think," I said into the phone, strumming chords softly, feeling the words tumble out of my mouth before I could stop them. "Hide told me everything. I don't know what happened between you and Toshi, but it was cruel of you. It's not just your band. It's not just you who makes the band. It's all of us. What you did...what you wanted to do...wasn't right."

"I know," he said, his voice low and almost inaudible over the piano. "I know."

"Yoshiki...let Toshi sing. Just one last time. It's his band too. It will always be, though he's quit. Though we'll no longer be X Japan after this year. A band isn't something that you can make, or that you can buy・t's something intangible. A dream. Like music...don't you see?"

"I know," he said again. One of his fingers must have slipped, because the next chord sounded sour.

"I won't say this again," I finished softly. "I don't talk much anyway, and no one ever asks me much. I just thought・ would let you know. Since you offered."

He kept playing and I kept strumming chords, wondering what he was up to, when he started to speak. His voice was soft, feathery, as it always was during the spoken parts in our songs, speaking in English.

"Watching the stars.... till they're gone, like an actor all alone. Who never knew the story he was in. Who never knew the story's end..."

"Yoshiki?" I said, not sure if this was part of the song or if he was just talking to himself.

"Like the sky reflecting my heart," he continued, sounding like he was trying not to choke on the words, "all the colors become visible. When the morning begins, I'll read the last line."

And then he began to sing.

He'd always declined Toshi's and Hide's invitations to sing, which were dares, really, when the two of them got in a mischievous mood. Hide had poked fun at him once or twice, but it seemed to be a sore subject with him so it was always quickly dropped. And we'd had a vocalist, so Yoshiki hadn't needed to sing. But for some reason, he did so now. Odd that it should happen at two in the morning on the phone with a guitarist who didn't expect it of him.

He didn't have a bad voice. It was rough, a little unpolished, wavering on the highs as he struggled to sing lyrics he'd written for someone whose range was half an octave higher than his. But it wasn't bad. And for me, it was enough.

"Yoshiki," I said again, then opened my eyes to the moonlit room and let my fingers fly, just me and the guitar, with the piano and Yoshiki fading away to the background, and I heard Hide's voice in my ears, a far away echo.

It's never too late. I refuse to believe it's too late.

I saw Toshi standing, head bowed, hands held out in front of him in supplication. I saw Taiji, still walking away like I had seen him for all these years, saw him turn around suddenly and smile at me.

Don't worry about me. I'm all right.

Yoshiki stopped singing.

I let my fingers still, listening to the piano chords as they slowed and stopped, listening to the silence which now felt strange after the music.

"Pata?"

"I'm still here," I said.

A long pause. "You and Hide were right."

I frowned. "About what?"

He laughed. "About me. I guess since my singing is so bad・'ll just have to let Toshi sing the part."

I almost smiled. "Is that so?"

"I...anyway, it's almost three. Since you need your sleep, I will let you sleep. Thank you."

"Any time," I returned. "So...are we going to practice soon?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I want Hide to see the music first."

Of course, I thought, but didn't say anything, not wanting to ruin the moment with the moonlight and the music and the peaceful silence now that enveloped us. "Well, then, good night."

"Good night."

I put the phone back on the hook, lying back in bed and staring at the ceiling where the shadows splotched the white plaster. I had bought some beer this evening but it was too early an hour in the morning to be getting drunk, even for me. And I didn't even feel like getting drunk, for once. It had been too odd of a night.

Odd, but good. It had definitely been good.

Maybe when we finally stood on that stage, it would still be the five of us, not as five separate musicians: vocalist, guitarists, bassist, and drummer, but as a band. That was what Hide had been trying to say for so long. That was what I had told Yoshiki. That we would always be X Japan, because a legacy wasn't defined in terms so concrete as facts and figures.

We were ended, but we weren't gone. We would end with a bang, an explosion, just like we had come, something that the fans would remember as the last time we ever stood on stage together. But this wasn't the last stop on the train ride, not the extinguishing of a memory. The lights spreading across the sky would not go out for a long while yet.

They would never go out.

10 April 2002
For the ones who have left us:
Taiji, Toshi, and hide