#8sai

See, as soon as I joined the jimusho when I was 15, I suddenly got really busy with stage shows and M-sute and stuff... Each day was hard and I was desperate; I didn't even have time to think about myself, and then when I realized it, I was 18 and had a lead role in a drama. I'd of course never really acted before, you know? There was all kinds of pressure. And then somewhere along the way, I started thinking "What's the real me like?" and I couldn't find an answer; I didn't want work anymore. I should've expected it, but I then started to lose work, and for a year, I almost had no work at all. I thought, "If I'm going to quit anyway, I might as well go back to Osaka once," which was when the offer for ANOTHER came. When the rehearsals started, I saw Yoko and Hina for the first time in a while, and I discovered that they'd come back utterly exhausted... and the moment I recognized this, I identified with them, "Then maybe I'll trying working hard with everyone." Until then, I rarely opened up to anyone, but that moment totally wiped away the feeling of wanting to quit. [...] There's something that I still vividly remember from that ANOTHER. Until then, I was in a pretty good position amongst the Jr.s, one of the main guys, but like I just said, right before ANOTHER, I didn't want to work at all and I stopped being on TV and stuff, right? The moment my pop up platform went up and I was on the stage, the audience in front of me burst into tears; I still remember this really well. I was just a Jr., you know. When I saw with my own eyes that there'd been people waiting for that hard, waiting for someone as insignificat as me, I felt really grateful. And so that's where my sense of identity with the members and my gratefulness for the fans started.