X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
4. Dattai Chokuzen, hide wa Hitori de Namida o Nagashita
[Just Before My Departure, hide Wept Alone]

My departure from X was inevitable.

When I think about it now, wasn't everyone saying things like that when I wasn't around? Then Yoshiki, being the band's representative, was the one who told me that I had to go.

It was clear in the first half of December 1991. Yoshiki and I sat down in a room, just the two of us, and we had a talk.

And then, January 7, 1992 at Tokyo Dome.

It was the last time I would be on stage as a member of X, and the other members shouted out at the audience until their voices were gone. However, no one said anything to me, not even a word of goodbye. Not even hide. After all, there was a huge crowd of people and many staff members there, so the members couldn't gather in one place, and they all left to drink with their respective friends.

Surely everyone understood my feelings, and yet they said nothing when they saw me.

And then, afterwards, I heard this.

On New Years' Eve in 1991, X participated in NHK's Kouhouku [trans note: Red and White musician "battle"] and then went to the Rokumeido in Meguro for a countdown live. Afterwards, I heard that hide opened a window and stood there alone staring outside, crying.

When I heard this, I felt like everything inside my head went white, and along with that, many of my memories started appearing and disappearing like a revolving lantern.

After I left X, our schedules weren't very compatible anymore, so hide and I started seeing each other considerably less. I was also starting up the activities of my band "Loudness," and we mostly stopped crossing paths.

And yet, I was always concerned about hide.

In particular, after hide stopped X Japan activities and went solo, I thought that was a great period of growth for him. Actually, because hide and I never saw each other, I had no idea of any personal issues that he had, but the new image of "Myself" that he was making for himself was, in my eyes, a great fresh start for him.

Because he wasn't the leader of X, hide certainly had suppressed a small part of himself, and never said "This is what I want to do." However, it wasn't necessary to suppress anything when he went solo.

I looked on hide partly with feelings of envy, saying "He can do whatever he wants to do..."

Because of all of this, he was also artistic fashionably. He had a great fashion sense.

He looked great in old clothes, and he was also able to dress outrageously in new clothes. The only word I can say about him is "great" [lit: "sugoi"]

In this way, hide pressed ahead on the road he himself had chosen, and the next time I saw him again was, ironically, in May of 1998; the place: a funeral home.