[My Enfants Terribles sons beat me up!!!!]
[Aged and ill father seeks out son, but child turns a cold shoulder!]
[Hear Hide's voice threatening to break his father's legs over the phone! Listen now for just $40 per minute!]
[I thought Hide was going to kill me.]
[The night of the nightmare, as revealed by the father of the Enfants Terribles.]
Thursday morning, the day after that night.
All of America was simultaneously plunged into a state of shock.
The family history of Hide, the leader of Enfants Terribles, had never been revealed in detail before. All the public knew about his personal life came from a past appearance on the Japanese variety show [Ume Talk], where it was mentioned that he had a difficult time in school and that his parents were divorced.
Now, Hide's deepest family secrets, unknown to all, were leaking across the United States through the mass media.
[Listen to the reunion of the Enfants Terribles family. A conversation between a father and son meeting after a long time.]
"Son! How are you doing?"
"Doing fine."
"It's Dad."
"And?"
"I wanted to go to the show, but I couldn't get tickets."
"Better stay away. If you catch my eye at the venue, I'm breaking your legs."
"Why?"
[
Beyond the fandom, every citizen in the countries where Enfants Terribles held sway couldn't help but doubt their eyes and ears.
Particularly in white American society, which places great importance on 'family' and 'harmonious parent-child relationships,' Hide's behavior—delivered without any context—came as a massive shock.
Several politicians who had been feeling uncomfortable with the 'September Movement' sparked by Enfants Terribles also saw this as an opportunity. They attempted to use the situation to crush the momentum of the band, the icons of a movement that was threatening their own interest groups.
Like a train with broken brakes, the situation began to race toward an unknown destination at a speed no one could stop.
However, the label behind Enfants Terribles, Strawberry Productions, did not sit idly by. As soon as the articles appeared in the US, Strawberry Productions announced they would take legal action against the man claiming to be Hide's father. To turn the tide, they were already organizing the family history Hide had shared with them the night before.
"Tell Hide I'm sorry."
Saito Ichigo, the president of Strawberry Productions, smoked a cigarette with a face full of guilt, thinking of Hide, who would suffer because of his choice.
They could have let it pass and buried it, but Strawberry Productions made the decision to sacrifice Hide's privacy to protect the brand value of Enfants Terribles—the focal point of the 'September Movement' and an icon of the era. Though it was a situation Hide had agreed to, Ichigo felt a wave of self-loathing at the person he had become.
"What happened to honor and loyalty..."
The reason the beginning of a band is beautiful and dynamic is that the spirit of prioritizing 'music' and 'honor' has not yet been replaced by business. However, as the band grows in size, that spirit quickly vanishes, and 'business' alone fills the void.
And it was no different for Enfants Terribles and Strawberry Productions.
[Can you call someone family just because you share blood?]
Evening in Japanese time, lunchtime in American time. Rebuttal articles written from Hide's perspective began to pour out, fueled by leads leaked by Strawberry Productions.
The only loser in this fight was Hide himself. His tragic family history would follow him forever regardless of his wishes, and the public would use it as entertainment, gossiping about his life for sport.
Saito Ichigo had traded Hide's life for the brand value of Enfants Terribles.
I am the worst kind of man...
It could be said that his father, who likely took a massive payout from the media in exchange for exposing Hide's family secrets and fled, was the only winner in this catastrophe.
.
.
.
.
.
The appearance of Hide's father changed the atmosphere. It would have been a relief if he had remained unaffected, but Hide could not.
As if to prove that worst-case scenarios always come true, Hide made mistakes during the second-day performance at MetLife Stadium. Of course, they were subtle errors that the general public wouldn't easily notice. Hardly anyone would realize if a single chord went astray during a fast guitar shred.
However, Hide was clearly repeating mistakes over and over.
"Musclemon, doesn't the leader seem weird today?"
"We have to make him focus, no matter what."
Tanaka Shuji and Yokishi called out to Hide. They figured that since Hide was still a minor, it was understandable for him to be shaken, and they thought they needed to coax and soothe him back to his senses.
"Hey man, let's just clear our heads first. We're rock stars; we can't let the fans down."
"Leader! I agree!"
Hide quietly nodded at their words, but that was all.
Eventually, unable to bear Hide's hollow, soul-less appearance any longer, Shuji spoke up.
"Leader! If you fall apart, Enfants Terribles is finished! Is that 'father' person really that important? If that guy shows his face again, you just have to beat him to a pulp!! He's just trash who threw you away and then crawled back once you got famous."
"It's not because of that... I just didn't get much sleep last night."
Hide's guitar solo followed that conversation. Shuji and Yokishi watched him with their hearts in their mouths. Hide, stopping his vocals to focus solely on the solo, thankfully performed the part brilliantly.
But that was the end of his luck.
From the latter half of the concert, things began to get shaky again, and by the encore stage, his timing went completely off, causing the harmony to collapse.
One lucky thing was that the crowd, drunk on excitement, didn't demand precision during the encore. Furthermore, Yokishi and Shuji quickly managed the situation with their stage banter.
"Whoa! You guys are the best crowd we've had so far! I feel like I should just put down this bass and all this crap just to jump around with you all!"
"The bald guy's phrasing is a bit weird, but I agree, you guys were the best."
Yokishi and Shuji finished the stage by roughly glossing over the mistakes, but that brief relief didn't last long. Behind Shuji and Yokishi, as they let out sighs of relief while coming down from the stage, a sound like thunder erupted.
"Leader..."
"Hey man..."
There stood Hide, who had just smashed his own guitar in half. Leaving the splintered instrument behind, Hide walked toward the waiting room.
Watching Hide, Miyazaki Makoto approached Shuji and Yokishi and whispered.
"At the Grammys, how about we have Hide put down the guitar? It seems he's fine if he just focuses on one thing at a time."
"We know."