Zugzwang, Book II, Chapter 041
Chapter 041 – Inexplicability of the ‘Now’
“While Nino meets his little professor for dinner with the mantrap, I’m all alone, picking at something I ordered from room service,” Sho said into the microphone that was hooked to his ear.
It was 9.20pm and he was still online and still in his Hong Kong hotel room in the Marriot, talking about the day’s happenings to Chiaki. His friends in Arashi may laugh at him for being somewhat ‘hen-pecked’. He liked to think that he had a very open and honest relationship. It was much easier to facilitate discussions when his Chiaki was rational and commonsensical. Unlike Ohno who let Kaoru make the decisions, or Aiba who discussed things with Renée-Caroline before going ahead and doing something impulsive, Sho believed he and Chiaki discussed everything before coming to a satisfactory decision. This was in stark contrast to the Ninomiyas, he mused with a furrowed brow. Nino had just left for Alys’s hotel where she was residing for the duration of her philosophy conference, and was doubtlessly planning to play her against Ichinose Haruyo in a Ni no Arashi that could yield one of three results – (1) a catfight, (2) both women killing Nino, (3) Nino and Alys end up murdering each other and obliterating Hong Kong from the world map. As Sho did not wish to dwell on those frightening and all too real possibilities, he enquired after the news at home.
“Anything new in Jindai Botanic Garden or the labs other than the project to shoot a gene into a new hybrid? How are the others?” he continued.
“Kaoru caught me on MSN earlier. She said Umebayashi Saeko paid her a morning call,” Chiaki stated as she turned on the orbital shaker. She may be conversing with Sho, but that did not mean she could do her own work as well. As the ability to multitask had been ingrained in her since her girlhood, she found it quite easy to talk to Sho over the speaker phone without losing concentration on her laboratory work.
“Did she tell Kaoru-chan to stay away from Ohno like Jun said she would?” Sho asked, his brow clouding over at the nefarious, underhanded methods of J Storm’s shareholder as he recalled how overjoyed she looked at the opening night of Ohno’s play when she saw that Kaoru had not been in attendance
“Not in so many words, but it was intimated,” came the botanist’s even reply. “Kaoru’s understandably upset. Umebayashi is unrelenting when she wants something.”
“She’s a shrewd businesswoman with a head for politics. I know their ilk. My father is one of them. That kind always swoops to conquer. They’re like falcons,” Sho intoned lowly as he rubbed the vein throbbing on his temple. “How is Kaoru? Has anyone told Ohno?”
“There are only two people who can knock sense into Ohno at a time like this and they both do not know,” Chiaki replied. “Ninomiya has to talk to him when the two of you get back. He’s a better choice than roping in Ohno’s mother. I’ve not told Sora yet, so Jun should still be in the dark. Jun would go ballistic and not stop until he’s satisfied with the carnage at his feel. I’m not even going to contemplate who his first victim would be, Umebayashi or Ohno.”
“We might as well send Jun to him! Leader of our band or not, Ohno can’t think he can get away with doing nothing. The matter isn’t going to resolve itself until he makes things clear to Umebayashi! He can’t think that things will blow over! Nothing’s blowing over! If this keeps up, Arashi would be in a real crisis.”
“It would be folly to assume how he thinks, Sho. It would be similarly foolhardy to send Jun to him because Jun’s great concern for the drizzle boys and their welfare would override his reason,” counselled Chiaki thoughtfully as she sat down at her workstation in the Jidai Botanical Garden laboratory. “You’ll be back in another day or two. Send Nino to him to get a feeler as to his stance before deciding your step. There has to be an explanation for Umebayashi’s sudden visit to Kaoru. She was threatened enough to go straight to the source of the threat in an attempt to bully it into submission. That is done. Ohno’s next step would be crucial. A woman fighting for a man as Umebayashi is can never be underestimated, and should be handled with iron gloves.”
“Do you mean kid gloves, wifey?” sighed a clearly troubled Sho as he resisted the urge to have a cigarette. He too was deeply worried, almost as worried as he was shocked by Saeko’s boldness. Things were coming to a head, he could feel it.
“Iye. Kid gloves are for women like Sora and Alys who respond more to the soft approach. Iron gloves are for women who only understand force,” Chiaki stated grimly, her mind wandering to her own recent spate of trouble.
“What sort of gloves should I use with you?” asked Sho suddenly, more to break the unhappy mood that had fallen on them than any real curiosity.
“None. I am a relatively reasonable person,” she declared with an affected laugh. “Though, I confess, I would not have been as civil to Saeko as Kaoru. I would have made a mess of things if your ex demanded I keep away from you.”
“My good, sensible wifey couldn’t make a mess of anything,” Sho reassured her with a chuckle, “I can’t say the same about Nino. I worry he would make a mess of things with the professor.”
He shook his head at the Ninomiyas, as he had long come to think of Nino and his little professor, in more anxiety than disapproval. They were a couple beyond the bounds of what he thought was acceptable. They were like an old married couple when they thought they were unobserved – doing their own thing but still concerned for each other in an absentminded manner. Yet, the moment they were in company, they either went overboard with extravagant gestures of grand affection that bordered onto farce or snarled at each other as if their lives depended on it. While they compromised in most matters as most couples in old married couple mode do, the compromise was only wrought after several snappy remarks about each other’s insufferable foolishness. It seemed to Sho that they fought out of habit than over any real need to fight. Indeed, he believed they fought over everything except in money matters, which was the only thing drawing their perfect agreement. Yet, Aiba had contradicted this view of them by claiming that the Ninomiyas were actually considerate of each other’s personal space and feelings at home. Perhaps that was possible, mused Sho. The professor had a thoughtful turn of mind, and Nino was melancholic at times. On the one hand, it was easy to see why Nino and Alys got along. They were both rascals and scoundrels, completely hard, unscrupulous and stubborn. On the other, it was just as easy to see the volatility of the Ninomiya-Teng combination. No where was it more apparent than in the present situation between Nino and Alys. Sho sighed and shook his head. What was he going to do with them?
Chiaki, made of sterner stuff and a less meddlesome disposition, chided him gently, “He hasn’t yet. It stands to reason he wouldn’t. He knows every twist and bend of her mind; he reads her moods better than anyone of us can. We can trust him not to go too far.”
“This is Nino we’re talking about,” Sho said, typing an email reply to his younger sister as he spoke to Chiaki. “He wants to provoke a reaction from others. He becomes more perverted when it comes to those he cares for. Nino is as reliable as clockwork in that he could be trusted to do everything to push all her wrong buttons.”
“While I share your opinion that he should not go ahead with his scheme, your outlook on the matter is unnecessarily bleak,” cautioned the botanist as she weighed the possible consequences of Nino’s current deviousness plan.
Sho groaned and placed an arm behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “The prognostication is bleak because Nino and Alys share the same insanely malevolent streak. This is petty revenge, wifey. He’s dragging the mantrap with breasts in the plot.”
“Ninomiya isn’t that poor spirited to use a woman who had been throwing herself at his head against Alys. What kind of a man exacts revenge on his beloved through another woman!” pooh-poohed Chiaki as she tinkered with the test-tubes in her laboratory.
“You did not see him when I confronted him,” stated Sho, firm in his belief that something was going to go awry between the Ninomiyas. “When he saw Alys’s old flame kiss her and offer marriage pending his divorce, his face puckered in abhorrence, anguish, admonishment, rage and indifference under one minute. He wants her pride in the dust.”
Chiaki threw her head back in a laugh at this melodramatic turn of Sho’s mind. “Call Sora and tell her that. She’ll use it in a book.”
“I am serious. The Ninomiyas are a tragedy in the making. He’s only using young Ichinose to make Alys jealous because he’s jealous and threatened by the thought that she would get back with her former professor.”
“Why?” asked Chiaki emphatically in undisguised surprise, incredulity evident in the raised pitch of her voice. “Anyone who knows Alys knows that she does not bestir herself for anything but her ambitions, her mother and her freeloader. Anyone who knows Ninomiya can see that next to his mother’s comfort comes Alys’s. It’s obvious that he plans and schemes with her in mind!”
“Everyone knows that but them!” groaned Sho, knocking a fist lightly on his forehead. “I really think locking them in a cupboard would allow them to better communicate.”
“Your fixation on locking them in small and cramped spaces not withstanding, I advise you to stay out of their way. I don’t trust you to dodge when they let loose their missiles,” Chiaki chuckled to hide her own anxieties surrounding the problem of her blackmailing uncle.
While she trusted Date-san would settle the matter in a timely and expedient fashion, she was concerned with recent developments as revealed to her by Arashi’s manager. Date-san had informed her that he had been unable to track down her uncle, and has left the task of locating the blackmailer to his yakuza contacts. It appeared that things were getting difficult, especially since she had not heard from or seen their sorry specimen of a gambler for an extended period of time. With so many obstacles in her way and the fear that her uncle could sell the story of her and Sho to the tabloids at any day, Chiaki wondered whether it would be fairer to Sho if she broke up with him. It wouldn’t serve to get her uncle to desist from his pestering demands for money, it would at least give less credence to the tabloids if her uncle sold the story to them.
However, that would be her very last resort, whereupon she would put things clearly and concisely to Sho. He would then see her point of view and naturally see the wisdom of their enforced break up. As it was a last resort method only, Chiaki did not see the necessity in alerting Sho to her current plight. She would trust Date-san for the time being and let Sora’s cousin in the police force do what he must. Those would be the safest and most prudent thing to do in her current circumstances. Tempted as she was to tell all to Sho, she held her tongue. She did not want to foist an additional burden on him when he was already worried for his friends and fearing for the very existence of Arashi now that Umebayashi Saeko had made another move against Kaoru and Ohno. Keeping mum was the right thing to do, she convinced herself.
Shaking her head to dispel the notion from her mind, she laughed at Sho’s protests that he was not as incompetent at dodging the verbal volleys of the Ninomiyas as she supposed. Expertly seizing that comment as a means to turn her mind away from the weighty matter troubling her, she asked, “Has Ninomiya returned? Any tremors in Hong Kong from Alys’s rampage?”
“Iya, iya, not yet. But there will be,” Sho sighed and propped his back up with a pillow. “He’s not back yet. If he doesn’t get back by midnight, I’ll call him.”
