Zugzwang, Book II, Chapter 043
Chapter 043 – Accepting the Queen’s Gambit
Ohno’s stomach was a jumble of emotions, or at least, that was what he thought it was. It certainly wasn’t hunger because he had just eaten. Was it nerves, he wondered? Perhaps it was because his energy levels were flagging? That could be it. After all, it was the last week that his play would be running. The play would close in another week and a half. Maybe he was tired. No, it wasn’t the feeling of tiredness. It was the discomfiting feeling rising from his stomach that said something was wrong. “But what was wrong?” he pondered with a pout as pottered backstage after the late morning dry run at the theatre.
It couldn’t be nerves because he had gone through concerts and numerous stage performances and the butterflies in his tummy were never this pronounced. He was excited and overjoyed that Nino and Sho were back in Japan and he would see them again. But that wasn’t the feeling in his stomach. Kaoru’s designs were used for the backdrop of the play and he felt a surge of pride when he looked at them, and that still wasn’t the disquieting feeling swamping him.
Perhaps it was the shadow of Saeko that seemed to dog all his performances. She had a private box at the theatre some distance away in the circle seats where she would scrutinise him intently. While Ohno was accustomed to people gaping at him, he did not like it when someone socially acquainted with him stared freely at him. He felt like one of the fishes for sale at the fish stall of Kaoru’s father, waiting to be de-scaled and gutted. That must be the feeling, he thought, nodding vigorously to himself. Why wouldn’t Saeko let him be? Why couldn’t she let him go? Ohno didn’t think he was anything special or that he was remarkable in any way, so why was Saeko so hard up to get him back? He supposed it must have been something he said to her in the past, or had given her a false impression. If that was true, thought Ohno glumly, then he had brought the whole black business upon himself. But what was it he was supposed to have said or done that resulted in her firm unshakeable decision to win him back? He did not think he could be won back, and he certainly wasn’t going to let Kaoru find out. It would break Kaoru’s heart, he sighed, thrusting out his lower lip despondently. What was he going to do?
These unpleasant, self-reproachful thoughts were temporarily lifted when Ohno stepped into his dressing room to find Nino crouching in the chair before the dressing table playing his DS.
“What kept you?” Nino muttered, lifting his head once and then returning to his game. “I’ve been here for nearly an hour.”
“Kazu-chan, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Ohno uttered as soon as he shut the door.
“So have I,” returned the gamer, taking a discreet and dispassionate peek at his friend from the safety of his DS screen.
Nino did not want to be there that day. He had only just returned to Japan, and it was a rare day off. Even rarer than that was the very tiny but no less important fact that his little philosopher did not have to lecture that day. It had not been his wish to head to the theatre to see Ohno when he could have stayed home with Alys and parked himself on the chaise lounge of her study for a long nap while she prepared lectures and papers or he could have glued himself to the PS3 while she sprawled on the floor and did her research. If Alys had not stressed that Umebayashi Saeko had ‘warned off’ Kaoru from his dear Oh-chan personally, and if Alys had not insisted that he go see Ohno and ‘knock sense into the fellow’, Nino would not have bestirred himself at all. It was Ohno’s problem that he was so spineless as to allow Saeko to jerk his chain. If Ohno were more resolute, he could have put his foot firmly down and protected Kaoru as a man should. That was Nino’s private opinion at least. He did not like it when other men sniffed around his Alys and if someone had been frightening his Alys, he would have called on all the forces of hell to smite that someone. However, he doubted that would happen, given how well he knew his lady. It was more likely that she would frighten her adversary into fleeing, and in his opinion, therein lay her irrefutable allure. Still, these reflections aside, Nino could not deny that the self-interested part of his soul had urged him to speak to Ohno as well. He liked Kaoru and she was something of a baby sister to all of Arashi, and if her boyfriend wasn’t going to wake up and assist the poor girl, he was going to kick the boyfriend into action.
“I think it’s time I told Kaoru, what do…” Ohno began just as Nino said, “What have you been doing to have…”
Both men stared at each other and smiled. Nino then flicked a wrist as his eyes darted back to the DS in tacit permission for Ohno to go ahead and speak first.
“I think I should tell Kaoru about Saeko. Do you think I should? But I don’t want her to think that I want Saeko back because I don’t. I don’t want Kaoru to be upset, but what if she’s upset. I can’t bear it if she’s going to cry in front of me. I mean I know it’s my fault that Saeko…”
“Damn right it’s your fault!” interjected Nino peevishly. “You’ve done something or you may have done nothing, which is just the same where that Saeko bitch is concerned because she thinks she stands a chance with your inability to come to the point with her. That bitch hopes you’d take her back because you don’t tell her point blank to her face that you don’t care if she lives or dies.”
Ohno pouted and shook his head in an attempt to clear his head. “I know it’s my fault because it wasn’t clean break as Jun says it should be, but I can’t tell her directly. It would hurt her feelings. And Kaoru…”
“Well, yeah, about that,” Nino ejaculated sneeringly. “She already knows about Saeko. She’s known about it for a while. All our women know about it. It seemed that your bitchy ex paid a morning call on Kaoru at her Geidai studio to tell your fiancée to give you up.”
“Eh! No!” protested Ohno, hands flying to the sides of his cheeks.
“We, and by we, I mean the rest of the guys and our women, know about this,” Nino explained slowly and in such a bored manner that Ohno almost presumed his best friend was describing a commonplace natural occurrence. “What I want to know is – why did you let this happen to your fiancée, who, forgive me if I am wrong, you love very much? If you want to get rid of Kaoru, it would be an excellent plan, worthy of me, even if I do say so myself. But if you don’t, why the hell did you let it happen!”
“I didn’t know Saeko would… She went that far? How? Why? Kaoru didn’t tell me,” Ohno’s voice faltered as he tried to understand what was going on. His mind swirled in images of how he pictured the scene would have played out and he was horrified that the gentle Kaoru should be spoken unkindly to.
“Why would she confide in a fiancé who failed in his duty to protect her?” spat Nino, snapping his DS shut and glaring accusingly at his best friend.
Ohno sank down on the chair beside Nino and put his head despairingly on the thinner man’s shoulders. “What would you do? What should I do?”
“How the hell do I know?” Nino bit back cuttingly as he laced his fingers with Ohno’s to comfort the older man. “Kaoru’s your fiancée not mine! Just tell the Saeko bitch to lay off your woman or you’d do something terrible, and mean it.”
“Is that what you would do?”
“This is your game, Oh-chan! You play it!” cried an exasperated Nino as he screwed his eyes shut to think. As soon as he had his temper under control, he squeezed his friend’s hand and said in a conciliatory tone, “If it were me playing this game, I would watch the women go picnicking on each other’s vitals. What could be grander – two women fighting over me! Believe me when I say this, Riida, you wouldn’t be able to handle how I would play it.”
“If it were Alys instead of Kaoru?”
“I’d love to watch her tear that bitch to pieces.” Nino smirked and stroked Ohno’s hair. “But your Kaoru wouldn’t. She held her ground with Saeko once and nearly fell to pieces, she can’t do it again alone.”
“What should I do then? Tell Saeko that I don’t like when she confronts Kaoru and upsets her?” blustered Ohno, pouting in frustration as he realised he was being forced to act against his will.
“That would be a start!” snapped the gamer as he rose to leave.
“Where are you going?” whinged the older man whose inner turmoil was now so great that he wanted to go off with Nino for some air.
“Somewhere I should be!” snapped the younger man.
“Where?” pouted Ohno, rising and making a gesture that he would follow.
“Damn it! If you knew where you should be, you wouldn’t have gotten Kaoru involved in this in the very first place!”
“Where are you going? A walk? Can I come too? My head feels heavy and my stomach is making me sick,” pouted Ohno, shaking his head and taking Nino’s hand.
“Yeah, that serves you right!” hissed his best friend, flinging aside the hand.
“Eh? What do you mean?” exclaimed a bewildered Ohno. “Why can’t I go for a walk with you? Where are you going?”
“Home to my Alys,” came the irascible reply as he left. “Tell that Umebayashi bitch off, and do it soon, Satoshi. Do it for Kaoru. Do it for yourself if nothing else. We’re all losing our patience with the bitch and with you.”
Date-san, Arashi’s muscular and dodgy-looking manager, who was lurking in the shadows placing a discreet call to one of his underworld contacts heard the last part of this illuminating exchange as Nino swung open the door of Ohno’s dressing room. Watching Nino shuffle away, Date-san frowned, consternation squatting heavily on his brow. He had long suspected that Ohno had a secret wife or fiancée, and he finally had confirmation of it at last. What convoluted lives those boys led, mused Date-san as he went out the back of the theatre and lit his cigarette.
That proved to be a mistake because it was raining. Date swore under his breath. He hated March, early March especially. It always rained in March, and in this first week of March, the rain was relentlessly pouring.
Lighting a cigarette anyway, Date considered his duties for the week as he watched the freezing rain pelt down on the pavement and watched Ninomiya turn up his collar, open a large Todai umbrella and run off in the direction of the bullet train station. For that first week of March, he had to see that Ohno’s stage play went smoothly, ensure that Arashi were chaperoned to the various television shows they hosted and invited to attend, keep Arashi in line in the recording studio for another single, make sure that there were no complaints on Sho or Nino from their drama crew, rearrange Jun’s schedule to accommodate all the band’s engagements as well as his drama and movie commitments, and arrange for Aiba to do something with some carnivores on his Tensai programme.
Well, now there seemed to be a new development. If he had heard correctly, Umebayashi Saeko had made a play for Ohno, and Ohno’s failure to keep her in check had alarmed his secret girlfriend named Kaoru. Very interesting, he mused. There must be something wrong with the boys he managed if they kept something like that from him. They weren’t boys anymore in age, but he still thought of them as such. It was fine if they didn’t want to tell him about Ohno’s secret girlfriend. All he had to keep the peace was keep the boys in order so that they didn’t fly wild at Umebayashi Saeko who was still a shareholder of their record label. He would even do one better for them – he would keep an eye on Umebayashi Saeko and step in if she got too much. That could be easily done for he could always use the excuse that she could not interfere in Jimusho business.
While pondering on the vested interest Saeko seemed to have in Arashi or more specifically its leader, Date’s mobile phone vibrated. Fishing it out of his pocket, he grinned when he saw the name flashing across the screen. “About time,” he snarled as he picked up the call. “I’m five minutes away. I’ll meet you there.”
It took him less than five minutes to arrive at the appointed place, which was a small book and stationery store. Walking briskly into the premises and brushing the rainwater away from his mackintosh, he promptly wound his way to the magazine section at the back, picked up a digest on cars and stood next to the man who was already there and perusing a similar digest.
“The weather is thawing early,” began Arashi’s manager, his face obscured behind the magazine.
“To the detriments of the spring buds,” answered the man at the stand.
“Takatsukasa-san.”
“Date-san,” acknowledged the man who had now revealed himself to be Sora’s cousin in the police force. “What do you have for me?”
“My sources indicate that the silver beetle gang is involved. Yoshida Akira owes them money from underground mahjong. The last known den is the slums of in the outskirts of town. They’ve since moved to an unknown location. The private investigations have revealed that Yoshida had successfully extorted various sums from Mother Nakahara,” said Date-san, idly flipping through the magazine.
“We’ve been watching the silver beetles for the past few years, but we haven’t enough to nail them. If we can get Yoshida skulking around the beetles, we can catch them in the same net. Any leads on location?”
“That’s my question for you,” responded Date-san without changing the tone of his voice.
“You’re the one with the underworld contacts. I’m in the light and unaware of the dark,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Takatsukasa.
“You have the right to scope out the dodgy ends of town where my associates would mess up things up. Plus, the Jimusho cannot be seen having a hand in this. The Old Man wouldn’t like it. The parties involved also cannot have their names mentioned. You have the means to do that.”
“We need time and a good lead.”
“Yoshida Akira as a blackmailer in monetary debt to the Silver Beetle gang is a good a lead as any other.”
“You sound like you think we would be able to apprehend him and the gang,” commented Takatsukasa-san as he pretended to study something in the magazine.
“I have every confidence of resolving this before mid-year. I’ll call if I have something,” said Date-san on replacing the digest on the rack.
“I’ll do the same. Tell the lady to hang in there,” replied Takatsukasa-san with a miniscule forward inclination of his head.
Returning the tacit acknowledgement, Date-san left for the theatre so as to keep a closer eye on Ohno around whom he knew some trouble seemed to be brewing.
NOTES
The Queen’s Gambit in the chapter title refers to one of the oldest known chess openings and though currently ‘unfashionable’ amongst amateur chess players, is often the opening moves of chess grandmasters.
In Queen’s Gambit Accepted (QGA) Black typically gives up control of the centre to obtain freer development.
I shall leave it to the reader to decide what the QGA entails for the characters in this chapter and in the rest of the story.
In the UK, Mackintosh is a kind of coat worn to keep one dry from the rain. It is like a raincoat that looks like a trench coat. In the Beatles’ song ‘Penny Lane’, they referred obliquely to the mackintosh as the ‘mac’ in the lyrics.
