Zugzwang, Book II, Chapter 046
Chapter 046 – Skewering the Middlegame
It had been nearly a week since Nino paid a visit to Ohno at the theatre and demanded that he give Umebayashi Saeko a strongly worded set down. Despite knowing that it would bring about a speedy resolution to the problem at hand, Ohno could not bring himself to do it. On the one hand, he did not like giving trouble to people, and it pained him that he was the source of trouble to his friends and their ladies. On the other, he was equally agonised over the thought of giving pain to another person. He had mulled over the things Nino had related to him, and while he truly did feel for Kaoru and what she was going through, he felt similarly well-disposed towards Saeko and what she was going through.
“Why is life always so complicated? Couldn’t it be like fishing?” he muttered under his breath with a sad pout while pottering to his dressing room. Since Nino called on him at the theatre, he spent most of his non-working time mulling over what he should do and arriving at no resolution. It had been five days and now that it was the closing night of his play, Ohno was still unsure of what he must do. “Was there a nice way of doing things so as not to hurt both women?” he wondered, sighing and falling heavily into a chair. “I don’t know. I can’t think now. I’ll go home and work on clay and go fishing in the morning. That would help me to think.”
Pasting a smile at the reflection of himself in the mirror, he proceeded to remove his stage makeup. His final performance that night was decent, he felt. Kaoru had been there. He saw her in the seat next to his mother, and knowledge that she had come especially to support him despite her hectic personal schedule with art and her own studies. He had been deeply disappointed when she did not attend his opening performance, but he swallowed the disappointment with the reminder that Kaoru owed more to her art than to his, which was fitting in his opinion, because she was the Geidai postgraduate with her own exhibitions, and he was an amateur. Moreover, though her presence was missed on opening night, all his friends and their girlfriends were there to lend him their support. Even Saeko was there. Well, it would have been more accurate to say that she was in her private box every night. That closing night was no exception. Were Ohno a more conceited man he might have thought Saeko was stalking him. However, owing to the simple turn of his mind, he believed that as a sponsor to the theatre, the Umebayashi Group CEO had every right to be at every performance if she wished.
Pushing aside the thoughts of Saeko’s presence at his play, Ohno dwelled on the happy realisation that his mother would undoubtedly chaperone Kaoru backstage to meet him, and he could tell his affianced all about the stage settings, and tell her how delighted he was to perform on the same stage as her backdrop designs. A happy happenstance of a knock sounded on his door. He smiled quickly at his reflection and set down the makeup cleansing cream on the dressing table. “It must be ‘kaachan and Kaoru at the door!” his heart thought as his spirits lifted.
To that end, he cheerfully let a “Come in” escape from his lips. The delight that had earlier surged through him ran abruptly into a cement wall when the person entered his room. He had not expected her to venture to his dressing room alone as she had not done so on any occasion. Thinking that it was perhaps business matters, he attempted a weak half-smile.
“Congratulations on a wonderful play run,” she began as soon as she stepped in. On receiving no answer, she left the door ajar as it was and strode towards him, rubbing the jangling bangles on her forearms. “Your talents will go far. I have an idea to market you in Northeast Asia.”
“Johnny-san wouldn’t like…” he stammered, looking away from her.
“I do not think the Jimusho would object as long as it gets a cut.”
As his mother always managed his money matters, it took a while for Saeko’s comment to sink it. He did not think there were people who openly talked about money, except maybe Nino and Alys. Even then, Nino and the professor never discussed how much who earned or who would get a percentage of how much; they restricted their talks about money to the rising costs of basic necessities, bills and the overall rising standard of living. Saeko’s comment took Ohno by surprise, and it both horrified and disturbed him that his worth was associated with his marketability. Having long been spoiled by his mother and Kaoru who looked at him for himself, and the Arashi members who looked on him as a brother, he was stunned that Saeko could openly speak of him as a commodity to be put on display or an object that companies, influential people and other notable bodies carved up for their own convenience and pleasure. He did not like the implications of Saeko’s words, neither did he like the feeling that Saeko was evoking in him. This wasn’t the Saeko he knew from years ago who could laugh at cloud formations. How could she look at him as an object that she could market for gain and profit and share with Johnny’s Entertainment if she claimed to love him as she did? It was puzzling; more than that, Ohno found it deeply disconcerting.
As Ohno did not answer, Saeko attributed his dumbfounded expression to his inability to grasp that which she had just said and continued, “The South Korean market is ripe for the plucking. You’d be able to make an impact there. The Taiwanese market will embrace your talents as well. Make money while you’re still a hot commodity is my advice. You have to stop being so lackadaisical about things. You’ll be happy when you gain more recognition.”
“I’m happy now just as I am,” Ohno pointed out, avoiding her eyes and idly digging in his bag for an imaginary article.
“Are you?” she asked in a low whisper, placing her hands on either side of his shoulders. Ignoring the telltale stiffening of the muscles there, she bent her head to his ear and slowly kneaded his shoulders, “Are you happy with this? Drifting along with whatever the Jimusho says you should do, going along with what your bandmates want you to do?”
“I am signed to the Jimusho and I am a part of Arashi,” he answered plainly. “It’s just how things are.”
“You can change that,” she drawled into his ear. “We can change that.”
“Saeko, it’s not that…” Ohno began, but the rest of his sentence was truncated. His eyes darted to the door that had been left ajar, widening in an admixture of fear and shock, mirroring the same emotions written on the face of his fiancée who had been on the verge of stepping in.
Rendered speechless by the sight before her, Kaoru did not know what she should think. Indeed, what was a woman, a fiancée deeply attached to her future spouse, to think when another female, one with a known previous history to her intended, massages his shoulder and bends down to place her lips near his ear? Try as she might to put a positive and innocent spin on the scene before her, he following questions came unbidden to her mind: Was Saeko whispering words of love and the untold acts she would do to and with him? Did Saeko stoop that low to kiss him? If it was a kiss, even a peck of the cheek, was it an innocent peck or something more sinister? If it was a kiss that meant something more, did her Satoshi-kun relish it? Did it mean he would through her over for his old flame?
Surely, it could not have been anything innocent if Kaoru were to go by the unmistakeably triumphant gleam in Saeko’s eyes when she followed Ohno’s lead and looked up. Saeko had smiled then – a thin, unpleasant smile that hid the razor edged teeth she had used once against her. Kaoru knew how much that smile concealed and had a very good grasp of what it meant. While she had heard Saeko was cornering Ohno at every opportunity, she had not expected to see Saeko in his dressing room. The thought of asking what was going on had occurred to her, but it would have been pointless. She knew Ohno would not have much to say, trusting his innocence to speak for himself. Saeko would be another matter, and Kaoru was herself uncertain whether she wanted to know what her rival would say, having once experienced the honey-coated words of venom she could spew.
There was nothing else to do than to take a few steps back, bow with as much as dignity as she could muster and leave – which was exactly what she did. She had learnt from reading novels that a lady never enters into a fight with an enemy when she wasn’t calm. And Kaoru was anything but calm upon chancing on Saeko in her fiancé’s dressing room in a position that could easily be construed as mildly compromising. In such a circumstance, Kaoru chose to make a dignified exit as a lady should.
Ohno’s mother who had taken Kaoru backstage had earlier urged the artist to see her son first as she was of the opinion that the young couple needed some time alone to talk. The matriarch had a very real affection for Kaoru and had accepted her readily, embracing her as one of the family, and was looking forward to her son’s eventual union with the artist. She was understanding enough to realise that her son would very likely be closer to his wife than to her in time to come, and she accepted that eventuality with good grace. The way to keep her son near to her was to be welcoming to the woman he chose; to do otherwise would be to alienate her son and she had no desire to take that disastrous turn. Moreover, she had observed, as most mothers close to their children would, that her son had been out of humour lately. Given that her son’s artistic endeavours were giving off a half-hearted sensation, Ohno’s mother felt certain that it was more than work troubles ailing him. The receipt of numerous monosyllabic answers to her questions of whether he was in a tight spot or was upset led her to suppose that her son and his fiancée had a small quarrel. If that were the case, then the couple should be allowed to thrash things out. Although she loved her son dearly, she knew he did not always know how to put things politely. That was, incidentally why he was frequently silent. In general, Kaoru did not seem to mind the cloddish ways of her son, but even she could not be expected to remain calm if Ohno had blurted something he shouldn’t have. She had expected that the couple would be engaged in quiet conversation with shy blushes after they had exchanged their views on why they were respectively unhappy and how they each felt they could make things better. That was how they usually functioned in her observation, and she was confident that was how things would come to pass. However, even she was taken at the speed with which Kaoru shuffled past her, away from Ohno’s dressing room. She was so startled that she had nearly dropped the bottle of plum wine she had been carrying. After staring at the retreating pigtailed figure with bewilderment, the Ohno matriarch swivelled her head in the direction of her son’s dressing room, prepared to pull his ear and give him a stern lecture on being inconsiderate to Kaoru.
Before she could do so, Saeko emerged from the dressing room with a superbly exultant smile, inclining her head slightly at the older woman. Ohno’s mother narrowed her eyes at the CEO in suspicion, believing that she half-understood the reason for Kaoru’s hurried and very harried departure. Watching the slim figure that was Umebayashi Saeko slink down the corridor away from the dressing room, the Ohno matriarch picked up her mobile and made a call. “Moshi, moshi, son number two? Are you still outside the theatre?” she asked as soon as Nino picked up.
“Okaasama, I’m on the way to a drama shoot with Sakurai-san,” answered Nino from his seat in the JE van, pausing his DS game and half-watching Sho read a book on international political economy.
Nodding her comprehension, the Ohno matriarch continued, “Could you get daughter-in-law number two to go after Kaoru-chan.”
“Alys’s conducting a graduate seminar tonight,” Nino said, checking his watch. “She gets out in ten minutes. She can’t make it in time. What’s the matter with Kaoru-chan?”
“She’s upset because the Umebayashi woman has just been to see my son. Someone must have said something or done something,” was the matriarch’s reply.
“Damn,” swore Nino under his breath, his fingers winding tightly around his DS. “Try Jun. He has the night off. I’ll get Sho to call him,” he added, leaving unsaid his fervent wish to smack his best friend on the back of his head. “We’ll find her and see that she gets home safely,” were his parting words before he hung up and explained things to a bewildered looking Sho.
That assurance soothed the matriarch somewhat and she entered the dressing room with her tongue and mind replete with scoldings and accusations. However, the moment she saw her son cradling his head in his hands in the manner of a wounded animal, all of the would-be accusations dissipated into nothingness.
As the Ohno matriarch shut the door and strove to comfort her son and extort the whole truth of the Umebayashi Saeko and Morimoto Kaoru dimension from him, the visibly shaken artist had just stumbled out the front of the theatre and hailed a taxi. Observing this scene with a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and achievement, Saeko rolled up the tinted window of her car and bade her driver take her home. It had been a very good and profitable evening for her, she mused, chuckling lowly to herself. She had frightened away the pigtailed artist without exchanging words.
“The kitten was so affrighted by the sight that she scampered off. That’ll keep her away and set her thinking on the fidelity of her fiancé. It’s only a matter of time now,” Saeko thought as the nightlights of the Tokyo cityscape whizzed past her windows. Just then, while she was on the cusp of formulating another move in her scheme, her mobile telephone rang. The strains of the Imperial March from Star Wars alerted her to the caller’s identity and she took the call without hesitation. “Shoot me with what you have,” she said into the receiver.
After listening for a brief period, nodding to herself as she digested that which was relayed to her, she hung up and opened her handbag for a sheaf of stapled papers. On finding it, she flipped through the collated sheets until she came to the one she needed. Inputting the number into her mobile, she gave her hair a generous toss and waited for the called party to answer.
No sooner had the female voice on the end utter a ‘moshi moshi’ than Saeko curled her lips into the plastic smile favoured by socialites everywhere and interrupted with a curt, “Nakahara Chiaki-san, this is Umebayashi Saeko. I have some news that might be of interest to you.”
NOTES
The middlegame in chess refers to the portion of the game that happens immediately after the opening and blends somewhat with the endgame where (sometimes) queens are traded. During this time, players will attempt to strengthen their positions while weakening their opponent's, both by careful arrangement of the pieces for prepared attacks and defenses and by whittling away at their opponent's numbers. The middlegame usually involves a good deal of trading; studying how to trade successfully is important.
In chess, a skewer (or thrust) is an attack upon two pieces in a line. In a skewer, the more valuable piece is in front of the piece of lesser or equal value. The opponent is compelled to move the more valuable piece to avoid its capture, thereby exposing the less valuable piece which can then be captured. The long-range pieces of queen, rook/castle and bishop can skewer. Because the skewer is a direct attack upon the more valuable piece, it is generally a powerful and effective tactic. The victim of a skewer often cannot avoid losing material (though it may be possible if, for example, the more valuable piece can give check, thereby forcing the skewering side to move out of check instead of being able to capture the lesser piece, or if it is possible to move a less valuable piece in the way); the only question is which material will be lost. The skewer does not occur very often in game play as it is difficult to execute. However, when it does occur, however, it is often decisive.
