88 posts tagged “alys teng”

Zugzwang, Book II
Chapter 032 – Check to Cross-check

The war, as it would seem, had afflicted Arashi as well. Although the members did not know of the recent declaration of hostilities between their ladies and Saeko, they had eyes enough to see that their shareholder had become more demanding in the post-production of their latest studio album. They believed this recent crackdown on the business of their new album and their recordings had its roots in Ohno’s silence and inaction.

Their titular leader’s silence and his decision to do absolutely nothing vis-à-vis the Saeko issue infuriated Sho, Nino, Jun, and to some extent, Aiba. While Sho felt that Ohno’s willy-washy behaviour was horribly provoking for the simple reason that it encouraged Saeko to be even bolder in her attempts to isolate him for herself, Nino had a more even assessment of Ohno’s behaviour. Like Jun, Nino had always known Ohno to be hampered by irresoluteness. Because of this, he deemed that his best friend was likely as bewildered by Saeko’s actions and words. But Nino’s patience was beginning to wear thin, and he wished that Ohno would stop vacillating and do something, anything – it mattered not to him what Ohno did, so long as he did something. The inaction of the oldest member was beginning to grate on his nerves. Nino was a man of thought and action. He needed something to respond to, and this was why he enjoyed provoking people. However, Nino’s association with Alys had led him to think on Ohno’s supposed inaction. It was likely that in choosing not to act, Ohno had in fact acted and provoked Saeko to unveil herself to the girls thereby resulting in the ‘universal sign of hypocrisy’ and the corporate raider’s scathing German insult. Things were slowly but surely coming to a head, and if Nino were a chess player like his lady, he would have prophesised that the Saeko-Ohno-Kaoru chess match was approaching the middle game.

Given the outbreak of open hostilities between Saeko and the ladies, the silent foot dragging the Arashi members practised in response to her post-production demands on their album as well as Ohno’s irresoluteness where she was concerned, it was with some relief that Nino and Sho greeted Aiba’s minor problem of what he should do to make Renée-Caroline’s parents feel more at home when they visited Japan. If not for the fact that Ohno had to disappear for a stage play rehearsal and Jun had to shoot the first episode of his new drama series, they would all have participated in figuring out Aiba’s conundrum. After lauding this noble enterprise of Aiba’s to see to the needs of his lady’s Europe-based parents, it was decided that they should adjourn somewhere to brainstorm.

As Nino did not fancy spending money going to an eatery, he dispatched a text message to Alys, asking if she minded company for dinner. She replied that they would have to eat fruit because she had just finished her 6pm lecture and had only purchased ‘three mini pan for 100 yen’ from the student cooperative bakery. To this frank answer, Nino texted back that he would ensure they would have something more substantial because he would ensure Aiba paid for their food. With a final reminder that he would see her at home in half an hour, he firmly invited Sho and Aiba to his residence on condition that Aiba bought food.

It was a scheme that readily gained the agreement of Aiba and Sho, as it meant they would be away from eyes and cameras of the paparazzi. Thus, thither they went. If they had expected Alys would be in her study (where she usually was) or watching one of the BBC channels on the television (a luxury Nino let her have since it made her happy to be watch her period dramas and catch up with British news), they were mistaken. Except for the facts that the living room light was on, the kettle was whistling, and Alys’s flat court shoes were neatly placed on top of the show rack, there were no signs of her anywhere.

Curious but undaunted, Nino shuffled inside once he had changed into his at-home slippers, calling out, “Tadaima.”

Instead of the crisp response of ‘hello, darling’ he usually heard from the professor, his ears and those of his friends were assailed by Alys clipped voice saying in English, “I’m in the kitchen.”

Sensing something amiss in the slight change in timbre in her voice, Nino dumped his plastic bag on the sofa next to Alys’s briefcase before pottering into the kitchen. “Don’t bother cooking. Aiba bought food. He wants to know where he should take Renée-Caroline’s parents when they visit.” Nino paused on seeing her squashed to the wall still clad in a sandstone coloured pants suit with a tie front jacket and a black long sleeved collared shirt. She was staring at the kitchen counter and had a hand protectively over her chest. “Is it your heart? Your lungs? Do you want your pills?” he asked, taking in her ashen expression.

“It’s still there. The horrid thing is still there,” she said shakily in English, convulsively gripping his forearm so much so that it was painful for Nino.

“What is?” Sho enquired, entering the kitchen with Aiba, turning off the stove and putting an end to the kettle’s protracted whistling.

“Cockroach,” she whispered in English, fear apparent in her eyes as she pushed up her glasses.

Heedless of that which had just been said, Aiba bounded up to Alys with a cheery, “Mama! I got Thai food today! You like a bit of spice, deshou?” Putting the things down on the counter next to an overturned bowl, he thought he saw the receptacle move. “I’m taking golf lessons from a beautiful woman sensei so that I can play with Renée’s father. He’s good at golf she says, better than her. I like my golf sensei. She has a nice butt. It goes swish-swish when she walks.”

“That’s nice, dear,” replied Alys in English without really attending to Aiba’s words as she scuttled closer to her partner, her eyes levelled at the overturned bowl on the counter.

“Where’s the cockroach?” Sho asked, moving closer to Alys and Nino to better hide from the accursed insect.

“There.” She pointed to the kitchen counter.

Knowing that she meant underneath the overturned bowl, Nino snorted dismissively and squeezed her hand once. “Oi, Aiba, kill the cockroach under…”

But Aiba wasn’t listening. He was more interested in the incongruity of the overturned bowl in the otherwise neat and clean kitchen. “Why is this here upside down?” That fatal question was accompanied by him lifting up the bowl, setting the trapped insect free and sending it flying down to the floor and crawling furiously towards the woman who had trapped it in its prison earlier.

Alys let out a shrill ‘eek’ and clambered onto the dining table where she flung a pot at the cockroach. “Kill it! Kill it!”

“Daijoubu!” Aiba grinned and caught the insect in his hands.

“Aiba-chan, don’t do what I think you’re going to do,” warned Sho, whose constitutional dislike for insects nearly matched Alys’s phobia of cockroaches.

“Do you want the cockroach down your pants, baka?” threatened Nino as he masked his own fear by looking for insecticide.

“I won’t frighten anyone,” declared Aiba stoutly. Then showing the crawling cockroach in his hands to Alys, he continued, “Mama, look, it’s harmless.”

Quickly backing away and knocking it out his hands, the philosopher let out a yelp when the insect flew to the floor and scurried indeterminately around Sho’s and Aiba’s feet. Now fully affrighted by the prospect of the insect crawling up his jeans, Sho joined Alys on the dining table whereupon she clung to him for dear life, much to Aiba’s and Nino’s amusement.

“Oi, Sakurai! Do something useful for a change!” Nino warned, giving up his search for insecticide and rolling up some newspaper instead, determined to protect his lady. “Aiba, get out of the kitchen!”

“But I was only trying to help!” protested the tall man plaintively with a pout.

Training his eyes on the scurrying cockroach as he swept aside his forelocks, Nino sneered, “Yeah, it must be real enjoyable for you to play with your own kind. You’ve done that already so get lost. Go watch television or something.”

Obeying Nino’s suggestion when the smaller man smacked the cockroach hard with the newspapers, Aiba wondered why women were scared of little things like insects. It greatly surprised him that someone as clever as Alys would shriek at the sight of a little thing like a cockroach. He shrugged to himself and strode to the living room. It didn’t matter whether he helped in the kitchen, Nino looked like he knew what he was doing, so Sho and Alys would be safe. Then a thought occurred to him. Perhaps he could help after all. Hollering a ‘‘chotto itte kuru’, he left the flat for the nearby convenience store where he was sure he could purchase a can of insecticide.

“Is it dead?” Sho asked, peering down uncertainly at Nino, patting Alys’s shaking shoulders.

“Should be,” Nino answered, vaguely amused at the responses of Sho and Alys. He lifted the newspaper and snorted at the overturned creature’s wriggling legs. “Overturned and twitching.”

“That’s dying, not dead!” Alys screeched, clinging desperately to Sho. “Kill it! Kill it!”

Smartly delivering a loud whack to the creature and stomping over it with a sickening ‘crack’ sound, Nino ensured the cockroach’s departure from the mortal world. He smirked at his partner and spread his arms. “There, dead. Poof. Magic.” Turning to Sho, he scowled, “Oi, you, get rid of the carcass.”

“Why me?” complained the rapper of Arashi as he gingerly stepped down from the dining table.

“Make yourself useful,” insisted Nino, coldly handing him some kitchen towels. As Sho scraped the cockroach corpse from the tiled kitchen floor and cleaned up the area, grumbling under his breath, the avid gamer extended a hand to his lady who refused to get down from the table. “Mah! How useless are you! Grown woman frighten of cockroaches! Oi! Kami-sama knows how you whip and torture me.”

“Are there more? If there’s one, there’re more somewhere! There’re bound to be mummies and babies lurking somewhere!” she insisted, the edge of fear still in her voice.

“Well, they’re not here! I killed one of them. They’re scared of me,” said her exasperated partner, rolling his eyes and flicking aside her ridiculous notion with a wave of his wrist. He softened a little when she shrank back, and was moved enough by her genuine phobia of cockroaches to take her trembling hand, which was much colder than it usually was. Realising that she was probably more frightened than she let on, he curled his fingers around her hand. “Why are you so cold? It’s already dead! Don’t be scared!” He paused and leaned in with a devilish smirk as Sho threw the newspapers, kitchen towels and carcass down the rubbish shaft. “If there are other cockroaches, we’ll throw Sho to them and flee.”

“I heard that!” Sho glared at Nino, observing that the diminutive bugger had drawn a rare smile from Alys who was thence hiding it very badly behind pursed lips. “Your floor is clean and cockroach-free again,” he announced, washing his hands at the sink.

However, the couple seemed not to have heard him, so occupied were they with their shared quiet laugh that they would not have cared if a legion of cockroaches had entered and borne Sho away. It did not bother Sho in the least. He had to admit to himself that there was something endearing about the Ninomiyas when they were wrapped up in each other. Slapping his hand on his face, he wondered how long they would remain so before deciding to dine. As much as he was relieved at the cockroach’s demise, he was getting hungry and wished to eat.

To his surprise, Alys jumped off the table not to inform him that he could help himself to the plates and begin eating the food Aiba had brought but to propelled herself at Nino. He was even more shocked – almost as shocked as Nino when she began showering kisses on her partner’s face whilst exclaiming in English, “You vanquished the cockroach! You’re not completely useless after all. Kazu darling, I love you!”

Sho coughed uncomfortably at this extemporaneous display of affection. While the Ninomiyas had a reputation for being affectionate to the point where they would embarrass anyone who chanced upon them, he did not expect such impetuosity from the couple famed for their calculated acts. In his experience, the Ninomiyas avoided verbal expressions of their devotion, and were only overzealous in their physical romantic expressions if they had an audience whom they wished to be rid of. However, it seemed to him that Nino was utterly taken aback by Alys’s sudden declaration. The couple were usually in sync in their little acts for the benefit of Aiba or before the Juniors in Central, were now behaving contrary to everything he knew about them, and Sho was riveted by this new development.

“What did you say?” Nino asked with a faint curling of his lips, when he recovered his wits to hold up Alys and glare at Sho as if to say that he would devise a fate worse than death if the older man dared reveal this to anyone.

“That you’re not useless after all,” she replied in Japanese, still mercilessly assailing his cheeks with kisses. She knew she had given herself away but had no intention of repeating it. In her opinion, it was bad form for the female to care more for the male as it was the first step towards dependency. Since Alys was of an extremely independent turn of mind with great pride in her self-control, she derided herself for so carelessly revealing herself.

Sho knew he should beat a hasty exit, but fear that the Ninomiyas could quarrel made him linger; and linger he did upon helping himself to an apple from the refrigerator.

“After that,” the gamer continued to demand of Alys, completely ignoring Sho. He knew what he had heard. He had never heard such words from his partner, nor did he ever think he would. He himself was not a proponent of verbal expressions which in his experience usually ran false. As he had the wondrous ability to say what he did not mean, he felt that humanity had the same dissembling streak. Therefore, he was surprised that his Alys whom he cherished as much as his game consoles should give voice to something she had never uttered before. He was more interested in finding out whether she meant those words, and to that end, wanted to hear them again because he was certain she would give that declaration an ironic turn if he wrested it from her. He needed to compare how she said it the first time around to how she would say it when forced to.

“Nothing,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder, refusing to have her hand forced.

“That wasn’t nothing,” he challenged, removing her glasses and putting them aside on the dining table behind her.

As far as she was concerned, sentiments that could be easily put into words had little meaning, thus she affected a careless air and curled her upper lip disdainfully. “Memory fails me.”

“Yeah, your head’s like a sieve, sensei. Don’t lie, say it again,” insisted he, pulling her back into his embrace when she made a move for her glasses.

“She said…” Sho attempted to contribute and so end a quarrel that he thought was brewing.

“Keep out of this!” the couple threw out irritably in unison at him.

“You definitely said something,” hissed Nino, extracting the coloured stick in her hair and tossing it on the table.

“It was nothing,” she claimed, meeting his eyes with a disinterested gaze, unsuccessfully pulling away the hands that were tugging at her bun and forcing the coiled braid down. “Stop that, freeloader.”

“Only if you repeat what I thought you said.” He loosened the braids slowly.

“What did you think I said?” she returned, raising an arch brow at him.

Leaning in, he kissed her nose and smirked like a cat that had the mouse in its grasp. “Say it again,” he demanded, kissing her lightly on the mouth.

“No,” she said firmly, curling her lips contemptuously against his to hide her embarrassment at blurting those words. She had meant them of course, but she had no intention of letting him know that for fear that he would laugh at her or worse, tell her off.

“Say it.” He kissed her again, so insistently this time that he pushed her on the table and licked across her lips. In so doing, he disturbed Sho who suddenly wondered whether he should make a hasty egress.

“No, non, iye, nein, nyet,” she breathed, nibbling on his lips with each negative answer, which instead of deterring him only emboldened him to seek out her tongue and roam his hands where they would on her person.

“Say it,” he repeated, caressing her neck and drawing a sighing whimper from her when he gnawed lightly on a spot under her ear lobe.

“No,” she sighed, sliding her hands under his shirt where she scraped the Greek alphabet on his back with her blunt nails.

“Say it again,” he hissed, dragging his kisses down her neck and to her modest bosom where he untied the front of her jacket, undid two buttons of her blouse and feathered his fingers over her clavicle. Whether this was because Alys’s cold fingers were creeping up his ribcage towards his nipples or because her knee was bumping against his crotch or because he wanted more from her, he did not know, and he did not think it mattered. “Just say it, Alys,” he went on. He had come to point where he had undone yet another button of her blouse and was lightly caressing one of her small mounds, well past carrying that Sho was being a voyeur. However, just to be safe, he decided to give his lady prior warning with a speaking look: “Say it now, or I won’t be able to stop.”

“Good,” she said, her voice hitching into a small sigh, “Don’t.”

Realising belatedly that he had likely overstayed his welcome and that there was clearly going to be no quarrel to avert, Sho backed away slowly from the kitchen, into the living room and did not stop until he came to the door. On opening it, he came face to face with Aiba who had returned with insecticide.

“What’s wrong, Sho-chan? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” teased Aiba, entering the flat, narrowly missing Sho’s attempt to grab the scruff of his collar.

“The Ninomiyas are er... passionately at it,” Sho said, darting his eyes to the kitchen and pointing his thumbs to the front door, indicating that they should leave.

“Is that why there’re moans and other kinds of noise coming from over there?” Aiba asked blithely, setting the can of insecticide down on the coffee table. “We should tell them that it’s time to eat.”

“They’re on the dining table with their hands all over each other,” Sho reiterated with a little more of the facts this time so that Aiba would get the idea and leave with him, preferably for a soba place nearby.

“That’s normal. Mama and Nino maul each other all the time.” He grinned, and then stopped when Sho glared at him. It then dawned on him that the Ninomiyas could be past the mauling stage, and he turned a gaze of horrified fascination to Sho. “Eh? They want us to watch while they…”

Face-palming himself, Sho groaned, smacked the back of Aiba’s head and forcibly dragged him out by his collar, informing the younger man that the Ninomiyas though insanely malevolent, were not so hysterically barmy as to want voyeurs intruding into their private indulgences.

NOTES

Zugzwang is German for ‘compulsion to move’ and is a chess tactic. It describes a situation where a player is put at a disadvantage because he has no choice but to make a move – even though he would like to pass and make no move. Simply put, zugzwang is a term used in chess where the player has no choice but to make a move to his disadvantage.

The literary significance of the zugzwang in this sequel is that everyone blunders and is forced to make moves which lead to very bad consequences and outcomes. Even those who refuse to move in the sequel are road blocked because others around him/her play the zugzwang and unwittingly put him/her in a bad position.

To highlight this as the overarching theme of this story, I have given it this unusual title.

Please bear this in mind as you read this sequel.

Check, in chess reference, is a threat by one’s opponent to capture the king .

Cross-check, in chess reference is when one is in a position to counter the check imposed on one by issuing a check in response to the opponent.

‘Chotto itte kuru’ is an informal way of saying “I’m going out for a while” in Japanese.

It was mentioned in Ch 43 of Remedy for a Broken Heart (Aiba’s story) that Renee-Caroline’s parents would be visiting after the New Year when she says:
“Maman may be visiting next year. Mon père peut-être would join her. It would be the first time the family from maman’s side would be together.”

Chapter 026 – Thunder and lightning

Renée-Caroline’s introspective mood did not lift when she and Aiba called on Alys at the hospital where the professor was conducting a lecture via teleconferencing. The theme of which struck the thoughtful maestra as particularly germane to the situation that Arashi was facing since Saeko’s unwanted intrusion into the thick of things.

“There is always tension looming overhead threatening to break out into civil war – that seems to be the fate of nations. The Cyropaedia and Oeconomicus highlight this problem by reflecting this threat in households.” Alys’s crisp English and laboured breathing greeted Renée-Caroline’s and Aiba’s ears when they stepped into her hospital room. “Xenophon draws the analogy between the state and the household in a very Socratic manner whereby the state is like a household writ large. The reasoning is simple – one, obviously more people are involved; two, the same principles are involved in running a household and running a state. In short, rulers have the same problems ruling a country just as household managers have problems running their households. This is quite an important and acute observation – it’s almost as if Xenophon is saying that if you want to know about the problems of political life, just look the way people run their households. What Xenophon does not say, and with Xenophon, it is what is not said that’s important is this – most households are in fact not very well run.”

Renée-Caroline cracked a smile as the philosopher held out a hand to pre-empt the boisterous Aiba from crying out for his ‘mama’ as he always did. It never failed to amaze her how much Aiba actually listened to Alys’s injunctions like he was an obedient guard dog, and she had never really understood why the unassuming professor had this power, so to speak over Aiba. At first, Renée-Caroline attributed it to Aiba’s unfortunate infatuation with the older woman; an incident that he readily told her and laughed over. Although initially disturbed by that revelation, the more she saw of Alys’s condescending semi-maternal affection towards Aiba, she realised that Aiba’s blind, child-like devotion to Alys had nothing in it. Now that she was privy to Alys in her natural environment as a philosophy professor and witnessed in close quarters the mode in which the older woman delivered her lectures, Renée-Caroline understood the paradoxical manner in which Alys wielded an unbending will to mentally cow Aiba.

Oblivious to his girlfriend’s private observations, Aiba merely nodded dumbly and meekly, and parked himself by the door. Both he and Renée-Caroline stared in fascination at Alys as she rambled on to the laptop screen with the microphone earpiece hooked to her left ear. It struck them that they had never seen her lecture before, and there must be something in her style that resulted in Nino sneaking away to the Kombama campus of the University of Tokyo at least once a month when the academic semesters were open.

“No, do not apologise Mr Takahashi, it is a good question,” Alys continued, speaking in English, and steepling her fingers before her. “All the problems of management boil down to one thing, videlicit, the management of human beings within a particular unit whether it’s a household or a state. And in the Greek Household, there are of course, slaves, who are usually barbarians, that is, non-Greeks. This is not so very different from the way of life in modern Japan where we have domestic help and foreign workers who tend to the streets, toilets and whatnot are non-Japanese; they are of different nationalities. The government regulates foreigners like me. Look at this in the context of the household, the rationale is that if you cannot manage your servants, then you can’t manage your children and you may not even manage your wife. Xenophon wrote another tract entitled Oeconomicus, from which we get the word, economics and this book is about what else – household management. It’s about the dialogue between Socrates and a household manager who is regarded as a very successful one, but it turns out that he has a problem with his wife - he can’t control his wife. Imagine the implications of this problem when it is expanded to encompass the political philosophy at the level of the government. The picture painted of human beings is not unflattering, but it is true. This is political philosophy and we deal with unpalatable truths, why else do you think we are so reviled? Read up for next week, and if Athena is merciful, I will rejoin you in person then.”

“In English today, Dr Teng?” Renée-Caroline asked, noting with some relief that the liquid in the pleur-evac machine was clearer and that the nurses had reduced Alys’s oxygen intake to 1.5 litres. It really ought not surprise her as the academician had already been hospitalised for close to one and a half weeks.

She folded one arm and cupped her cheek with her other hand in a manner that reminded Aiba eerily of Nino when he was in thought. “All my graduate courses are in English. Xenophon is much more difficult to teach in Japanese,” she replied between coughs.

“Mama! We brought pistachio and chocolate covered marzipan for you!” Aiba flung himself at the foot of the bed and sat down with an impossibly wide grin as Alys dismantled the microphone and closed the teleconference connection on her laptop.

“Enough chocolate, baby-chan, papa would divorce me if I get fat!” joked Alys, reverting to Japanese. “We’ll save this for Kaoru-chan, and say that you got it for her. She’s been feeling low of late.”

“Souka! It would cheer her up!” Aiba chirped, nodding at the sagacity of his own perceived generosity and peering down at her laptop. “What’cha doing now?”

“Emailing my paper to the Ancient World Philosophy Conference panel for dissemination to my discussant,” replied the academic as she lifted her glasses and flicked her wrist to the bed stand. “Can either one of you hand me the organiser?”

“Okay.” Aiba grinned, but try as he might, nothing on the bed stand resembled the black leather organiser Alys favoured. “Oh my God!”

“Yes, my child?” The professor blasphemously replied in English with a long-suffering sigh.

“Mama, it’s not here.” He handed her the slim, black game console instead. “Your DS is here though; you want it?”

“What do you mean it’s not there? It was there yesterday! It couldn’t have sprouted legs and run off!” Alys snapped her head up testily, closed her laptop, and began coughing sharply.

Renée-Caroline patted Alys’s hair bun to soothe her, marvelling that she could not cover the chignon with her hand. “He may have been remiss in bringing it, votre mari…”

“Don’t call him that,” she protested in English, but soon regained her customary acerbic humour when she realised Renée-Caroline was most probably right that her annoying freeloader had chosen to be forgetful. It was also entirely likely that he had mistakenly taken it with him the previous day for they had on several occasions taken each other’s Nintendo DS. When Alys judged that she was sufficiently calm enough, she curled her lips and addressed Aiba. “Are you up for running an errand?”

“Eh? What kind?” he asked with some hesitancy on account of her dangerous smirk.

“Go see the freeloader on set and retrieve my organiser. While you’re at it, bring back Dragon Quest IX for the DS if he’s holding on to it.”

Relief instantly fell upon his features. He had worried that it would be an impossible and harrowing task when it was really a small matter of fetching something from Nino. Aiba could do that, he thought, he had time. Besides, he had a vague inkling it would be fun visiting Sho and Nino in their drama location. “Hai! Will Renée-chan be all right with mama? I’ll bring food back and we can eat together, okay? Oooh! Yoko said there’s a shop selling anime bento. I saw a An-pan man one before. I’ll try to find a Doraemon bento for you!”

“Do they have those?” Renée-Caroline’s eyes shone with excitement at anything to do with the ear-less, robotic blue cat from the future.

He grinned and pinched the conductor on the cheek. “I’ll find it for you! Mama, what do you want to eat?”

“I want the freeloader tied to the bed wearing only a white frilly apron. Failing that, bring me Ohno-kun in an apron,” deadpanned the professor without missing a beat.

As Aiba’s jaw dropped, Renée-Caroline gave her friend a very long, hard and scandalised glare. “Oh la la! With Satoshi’s physique.” She paused and shook her head to steady her thoughts.

“How could you, Renée!” he pouted in dejection.

“Mais c’est vrai,” replied the maestra.

“Mama, are you serious?”

“Always.”

He scratched his head, knowing that he shouldn’t ask such a question. But his desire to know overwhelmed his dim sense of propriety and he asked, “Eh? Why?”

The philosopher’s lips curled sardonically behind the DS she had just started up. “Baby-chan asked, and I answered.”

Aiba who was earnestly pondering Alys’s request and wondering how (fun though it may be) he could arrange for his mama’s freeloader to be tied up in a compromising position, said nothing and simply slipped away to locate Nino. The ladies, now alone, shared a soft laugh as they knew how straightforward Aiba could be. There was no doubt in their minds that he would blurt the whole to Nino and receive a smack to the back of his head for his perceived perversity.

NOTES

The subject of socio-political life mirroring domestic arrangements (i.e. household management) that Alys brings up in her teleconference lecture Renee-Caroline and Aiba overheard at the beginning of the chapter is one of the many themes of this overarching sequel. Please read the story with this theme in mind as well. I hope readers will draw their own conclusions as to the significance of this theme versus the other themes in the plot as they read on.

Votre mari = your husband
Mais, c’est vrai = but, it’s true

Chapter 022 – A provisional countergambit

“Will that be all, Madam Chairwoman?” coughed one of the peons at the main office of the Umebayashi Group in Otemachi as he placed the tray of coffee and scones on the desk of his CEO.

Saeko, head of this august conglomerate, who was still glancing over some papers brought to her by her personal assistant-cum-secretary a few moments before the peon arrived with the breakfast things, said inattentively, “Yes, thank you.”

Her curtness was not due to any rudeness on her part, but owed its existence to Saeko’s constitutional dislike of Mondays. Mondays always depressed her, and she would always seek to rally her flagging spirit with coffee, scones and the weekend’s stock reports. However, that Monday, the papers she perused where not the company’s financial statements. They were information dossiers her private investigator had gathered and her personal secretary had compiled for her over the past four days, on her instructions no less.

She read the first of the dossiers, drumming on the table with restless fingers as she digested the information on Morimoto Kaoru. It was certainly more than she had expected. She quietly put aside the files as she read them, both amused and astonished. A novelist, a painter, a botanist and music director and an academic – how did such a diverse collection of women end up entangled with the members of Arashi. It was mind boggling. There was no accounting for individual taste, it would seem. She had a fair idea who was linked to whom, but she did not care to learn the wherefores and the hows. She was more occupied with thoughts on what she should do with the information. What should she do with Kaoru, she privately mused. Should she move in for the kill directly, or should she bide her time and plot something intricate? That was the dilemma. Faced with this momentary indecision, she settled on a short reconnaissance jaunt. While her staff were very useful at unearthing information, there were some things that she just had to do for herself. Thus, she called for her car as well as an order of flowers to her own specifications prior to departing her office.

The efficiency of her driver ensured that she made good time and arrived at the University of Tokyo Hospital looking as fresh as a daisy in a field. Sweeping into the relevant ward with her chic Chanel suit and an air of someone with a purpose, she entered Alys’s hospital room to find that her flowers had arrived and that the philosophy professor was accompanied by the novelist. Although she was satisfied with the floral arrangement, Saeko was rather displeased that her self-perceived generous gesture was placed aside, away from the other tributes of balloons and flowers. The lackadaisical expression of the invalid and the brief flash of irritability from Sora struck her as droll, and Saeko would have allowed herself to smile had she not remembered her purpose in paying this visit.

“Professor Teng and Kujo-san, I presume.” Saeko executed a flawless bow to both women while closely watching their faces for any change in expression.

Sora bowed slightly from her writing as Alys extended a graceful hand and met her gaze.

“You must be the infamous Umebayashi Saeko,” Sora intoned carelessly, recognising the corporate raider from her pictures in the newspapers and in the television news.

“Well, Umebayashi-san, your opinion has finally been replaced by knowledge,” answered Alys by way of acknowledgement, putting down the cards in her game of patience and giving the woman a once-over in her mind to determine what she came for. Indicating the basket of roses and continuing as if she had not been contemplating the reason for this unexpected visit, she said, “You have my thanks.”

Saeko noted that they had good manners, and that raised them somewhat in her estimation because she liked good manners in other people. But she was more impressed with the steel she saw beneath Sora’s indifferent exterior and the claws lurking beneath Alys’s air of the sickly scholar. There was nothing to disapprove in their behaviour for Saeko prided her success in the business world on possessing similar qualities.

“You do not display it with the others,” pointed out Saeko blandly though she was inwardly offended that her flowers were not given a place of honour.

“Roses disagree with my constitution,” Alys said simply with a flick of her wrist.

“Are you scared of thorns?” questioned the businesswoman.

“No, I take issue that their thorns have been shorn,” came the smooth, carefully modulated voice that did not miss a beat in its reply. It was a tone which Sora knew heralded certain trouble, and accordingly, she cast a lazy speculative glance at Alys.

Feigning a cough to dispel the women’s verbal sparring, Sora quickly added, “Professor Teng is an aesthete who best enjoys the deadly beauty of things unadulterated.”

“It is regrettable that I lack the wit to appreciate the new fangled breakthroughs in scientific developments, but I am an old fogy,” Alys deadpanned without lifting her steady gaze from Saeko’s eyes.

Realising that she had just been given a subtle warning by both women, namely, both Teng Alys and Kujo Sora were not to be trifled with, Saeko put on her social smile. “Imagine the injury it must deal Nakahara-san’s self-esteem if she found out.”

“But her sense of self-worth is already impenetrably stout,” returned the philosopher, raising her glasses as she coughed.

“Are you improved?” enquired the businesswoman politely.

“I am still languishing beautifully, what do you think?”

“You’ve given every indication that you know about us and our other connections. What do you want?” Sora narrowed her eyes at Saeko.

“Please cut to the chase, Umebayashi-san.” Alys flicked an airy wrist once again as she spoke in a clipped and carefully modulated tone. “Is this a sit-down or an ambush?”

“As to be expected from Sakiyama Jewel sensei and Professor Teng,” chuckled Saeko evenly. “I am at a loss over Morimoto Kaoru-san. I had thought I would be able to make her acquaintance today.”

“She isn’t here.” Sora gestured broadly, mentally devising and abandoning schemes of uncovering Saeko’s true motivations.

“I will wait,” she announced coolly, sitting down and looking squarely at Alys, proposed, “A hand of cards while I wait, Professor?”

A hand was extended in silent invitation. “I only play piquet.”

“Alys, no,” hissed Sora in a warning tone while her friend coughed and shuffled the deck.

“I know what I’m doing,” the academic’s defiant eyes seemed to silently declare as she cut the cards with a sharp snap.

Whatever Sora’s reservations, it soon became apparent to her that Alys had some ability in calculating the odds and playing a few feints in her discards. As Sora did not care much for cards, she was only half heeding the play. She was more interested in the veiled three-way conversation between them that seemed to impress on her the seriousness of what was at stake in the game. It was not Alys’s intention to lose the game for Sora knew that a loss would necessitate an introduction between Kaoru and Saeko. It was something both Sora and Alys were keen to avoid in the interests of Kaoru. They were not going to allow Saeko to bully Kaoru into giving her fiancé up. Accordingly, they would do everything in their power to prevent Kaoru and Saeko from meeting.

On her part, Saeko did not enjoy being thwarted. She always had the comfort of getting what she wanted, and now that she was facing a minor roadblock, she was anything but satisfied with the way things were going.

“Do you think my game play contemptible? You act as if you can read how I would play,” she ventured when Alys threw down a card that she herself would not have discarded. In Saeko’s experience, card players who discarded cards with flippancy as she deemed Alys had done thought too little of their opponents.

“Your play is by no means poor. Do not presume to know how I think, I beg of you. There is a fine difference between knowing how the opponent thinks and knowing the opponent’s state of mind,” conceded Alys graciously between coughs as she flickered her eyes above her cards briefly, an act that gave Sora cause to move closer and study the academic’s hand. There was going to be pointed barb somewhere, and Alys did not disappoint because the thrust was duly made as Saeko hovered a finger over her own set of cards. Alys continued with a coy upwards glance at her opponent, “Some people look forward but are held back by personal demons. While they are perfectly capable of thinking abstractly, their work, writing, reading, card play and whatnot are little more than extensions to their psychological frame of mind, an extension of their issues or self-indulgent internal beliefs, an extension of that chip on the shoulder as it were.”

“As to be expected from a Todai philosophy professor. Is book knowledge all you have?” Saeko quizzed, returning the volley with much more force than Sora felt was necessary.

“What do you think? You see how it is – I am playing piquet with you! See what I am reduced to?” Alys laughed affectedly before succumbing to a coughing fit that fortunately did not bring up any blood. “We philosophers are as capable of praxis as you are fiddling with the screws and bolts of business. You laugh at me! But let me assure you, until the world ends, we will not know which of us are unable to look to the future. Will it be the woman who challenges the world of change and uses that change to her advantage in building her empire? Or will it be the woman who is forcibly dragged by the chariot wheels to the present whilst trying to live as best she can by the rules she had inculcated in herself through her reading?”

“The first will adapt; the second will die out. It is simple,” Saeko declared, looking scornfully at the philosopher for doubting her abilities.

“Are we speaking of life or the terms of this game?” riposted Alys, curling her lips in disdain. “Do you expect those who are ‘dying out’ to give up, give out and give in?”

Throwing an arch look at Saeko, the perceptive Sora pointed out, “Undoubtedly, she expects you to be impressed and wants you to give in.” As Alys allowed a smirk to grace her lips, Sora leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Careful. You are weak in your discards.”

Thanking her with a quick blink and curt nod, the academic watched Sora draw up a chair and sit astride on it, resting her arms on the back curiously staring at her. Whether it was out of curiosity to view the play or better hear her, Alys do not know. In any case, she returned her attention to Saeko. “There are some of us who just refuse to give out. A lamentably stupid trait, but that’s the way some of us are made.”

“The people the world thinks clever are often stupid at practical things because they only have book smarts.” Saeko tossed a card on the table with unconcern.

Alys raised a brow of condescension and she spoke in quiet vehemence, mindful of her weakened heart and lungs, “We each have chips on our shoulders. How dare we prescribe things to others when we have yet to sort out your own issues? How dare we impose our value systems on others when our own values are not the guiding light of the world? How dare we impose your troubles on others when others have their own matters to discharge?”

“I pity you for not being able to see how foolish you must look, crying to live when it is apparent to all that if you cannot change and adapt, you must die.” Saeko sniffed, assured in her own superiority.

“When pity is crawling around, the other emotions aren’t safe. It is poor taste to feel pity for another in a world full of hate and suffering,” Sora spat, glaring mightily at Saeko.

“It’s even poorer in taste to say things like that when you haven’t won and Professor Teng has just thrown down her quint,” retorted the businesswoman, who had quickly revised her opinion of Sora and Alys as completely disagreeable and insufferably arrogant women who did not know their places.

“That would be a quint, a tierce, two aces, a king and eight cards,” corrected Alys, lifting her glasses.

“Was it?” Saeko asked carelessly.

Sora frowned at Alys and thence at the spray of court cards between the players. She did not need to be told that all hinged on the final card hanging between Alys’s fingers. An imploring glance was cast the philosopher’s way as she tapped a finger on her card. “Are you sure you can do this?” her eyes seemed to say. To which question Alys neither replied verbally nor through her gestures. It seemed to her that Alys did not fully know what she was doing, just as it seemed to her that Saeko was gambling on slim chances by discarding her two of spades on the chance of picking up an ace or a king.

Saeko glanced surreptitiously at Alys and Sora to determine if she could read what the card was and if she could teach the two presumptuous a lesson. Although she was pleasantly surprised to find them knowledgeable in the arts of double-speaking, she could not bear being spoken down to by those she deemed her inferiors. “What do you have that gives you the right to taunt me? A knave or a heart?”

“Taunt you?” Sora giggled and snorted her disbelief at this gross misinterpretation of Alys’s mood and words.

“Heaven forbid!” mocked Alys in English.

“Think you have me subdued? You’re wrong,” she cried, throwing down the rest of her cards in anger at the women’s veiled incivilities.

The philosopher raised a brow, curled her lips and spun the card around her fingers and to exhibit a small club. Sora leaned her head back briefly in relief before scribbling frantically in her notebook between wild mutters.

“My dear, you are piqued, repiqued and capotted. There – you are subdued. Would you like me to subdue you more?” Alys said flatly.

Rising with a huff, Saeko deigned not to take leave of the patient and her guest and stormed out.

“The nouveau riche never have any manners,” Sora commented, replacing the cards back in the box. “She seemed to think we have belittled her.”

“No wonder the dear had her knickers in a twist,” the invalid replied, flipping open her laptop and starting it up for the day.

“Someone looking very much like the bitch just brushed by us and into the lift, would you believe it!” Nino complained, entering the room with Ohno and Kaoru. He was in one of his terrible disguises, and looking utterly slovenly. Due to his visceral dislike for Saeko, he never referred to her by name if he could help it, choosing instead to call her ‘the bitch’. As the other Arashi members and their ladies (especially Jun, Sora and Chiaki) felt this sobriquet was well-suited, it subsequently came to be used in reference to Saeko.

“It was her,” Sora answered blandly.

“She was here?” Ohno whispered, looking around blankly as Nino took the outstretched hand of his professor and whispered something naughty to her so much so that she lightly smacked his arm and smirked.

“We managed to rid ourselves of her,” Sora explained, choosing not to say more out of respect for Kaoru’s feelings, and making private plans of her own to unearth everything she could on Umebayashi Saeko.

“You should have killed her,” Nino insisted, pushing up his lady’s glasses for her.

“In broad daylight with a witness, are you mad?” She rolled her eyes at him.

“We’ll get rid of the witness as well,” he suggested like it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say while chafing her cold hand.

“Tell me more,” answered his lady as she lightly tugged at his fingers.

“Don’t say that! I hope you were civil to her,” Kaoru said, the very soul of generosity and kindness.

“Of course.” Alys smirked, leaving Nino to wonder what happened during Saeko’s visit. More importantly, he wondered what method she used in ridding herself of that overbearing corporate raider bitch and whether he could deploy the same method to rid himself of Ichinose Haruyo’s persistent and shameless act of throwing herself at him on their drama set.

NOTES

Countergambit is a gambit used by the black side in response to a gambit played by white. Alys mentioned once in Between Wit & Sarcasm (Nino’s story), and Remedy for a Broken Heart (Aiba’s story) that she always plays Black in chess. This is significant because white moves first, not black. Her reasons for choosing black is because (a) she can see what White is up to before she makes a move, (b) it is easier to force an endgame while in black. Refer to the main body of Ch 10 of From Cover to Cover (Jun’s story) for definition and understanding of endgame.

Put the idea of gambit and countergambit in your mind as you watch the action and conversation between Saeko and Alys in this chapter and things will become clearer.

Picquet (18th Century French spelling) or Piquet (modern French spelling) is a card game for two players. Piquet is played with a 32 card deck. Start with a standard 52 card deck and remove all of the 2's through the 6's. This leaves all of the 7's through the 10's, the face cards, and the aces. Each game consists of a partie of six deals (partie meaning part in French). The player scoring the most points wins. The player who draws the highest card on the initial cut may choose to deal the first hand. The deal alternates for each hand in the partie. It is preferable to deal first so as not to deal the last hand. Dealing puts a player at a disadvantage. Cards are dealt 12 to each player, with the remaining eight forming the talon, which is placed face-down between the players. The talon may be split by the dealer into two piles of five and three cards, respectively. The dealer is referred to as the Younger hand and the non-dealer, the Elder hand.

After the deal, players sort their cards in their hands. If a player has no face cards in their hand, then they may declare Carte Blanche, which is worth 10 points. This done by quickly showing their hand to the opponent while saying "Carte Blanche". A hand of this type is fairly rare, and often scores poorly, so it is usually advantageous to declare it, despite the tactical disadvantage of giving information to the opponent. Carte Blanche must be declared prior to exchanging cards. Only one player may declare Carte Blanche. The Elder hand exchanges their cards first, so they have the advantage here. The Younger hand must wait until the Elder exchanges their cards. If the Elder has not declared Carte Blanche, then the younger may. The goal of exchanging cards is to improve your hand before the declaration and the play.

The following are the proper names of the cards when used in play. I have given their names and their associated values because Alys mentions “quint” and “tierce”:
3, tierces are worth 3 points
4, quarts are worth 4 points
5, quints are worth 15 points
6, sixieme are worth 16 points
7, septieme are worth 17 points
8, huitieme are worth 18 points

The rules and actual game play are very complicated so I will not explain the how-to-play here.

Just understand the following about piquet:
(1) Trick-taking part of the game. Players must follow suit and there are no trumps. Play starts with the Elder hand placing a card face up and scoring one point. The Younger then scores for their declarations, and plays a card that follows suit, if possible. If not, they may discard anything they choose. The winner of the trick (the player with the highest card in the suit led), takes the trick, placing it face-down (usually--see variations) in front of them. The winner of the trick leads the next. When forced to discard, it is important to choose the right card.
(2) Pique, Repique and Capot = Terms used in scoring various plays in the card game piquet
(3) Pique = If Elder scores 30 points in declarations and play combined, before Younger scores any, then Elder gains a pique and scores an additional 30 points. Note that Younger cannot gain a pique because Elder always scores one point for leading to the first trick.
(4) Repique = If a player scores 30 points in the declaration phase and his opponent scores nothing, including Carte Blanche, and if neither point nor sequence were equal, that player gains a repique, which is worth an additional 60 points.
(5) Capot = the winning of the card game known as piquet/picquet by obtaining all the tricks of the other player.

Readers should think on the significance of the pique, repique and capot of the physical game play as well as the verbal play going on between Alys and Saeko. Bear in mind that card game is about tricking and gaining tricks.

Chapter 021 – Détente

“Are you intimating that Umebayashi Saeko was here?” Sora asked in an angry, disbelieving hiss as she paced the length of the corridor outside Alys’s hospital room.

MatsuJun pressed his lips into a thin line, mentally counting to ten to calm himself. So much had happened in the space of the late afternoon, and if current events were an accurate projection of lay ahead in the future, he feared that this was just the beginning of Saeko’s machinations. He had a strong distaste for the games the very rich and influential played. This distaste coupled with his intense dislike for Saeko had raised the gall level in his body and as it was, he was doing his best to remain calm, cool and collected. “I’m not intimating, ne, I am saying she was here because I think she followed us here to safeguard her interest in our oblivious Riida,” he clarified.

“Bring me the container truckloads of apples, Jun-chan,” she intoned darkly.

“As much as I like to keep informed of your slaughters, poison is drastic, ne.” He worked his jaw into a facsimile of a weak smile.

“Who cares? So long as it works and evaporates without a trace,” replied she, thumping her fist in her hand.

Joining in her pacing with two swift strides, MatsuJun manoeuvred her closer to the wall and steered her carefully towards the stairwell. “Last resort only, ne? Don’t be so rash. Umebayashi hasn’t done anything we can’t stand yet. Act too soon and we get into trouble. Act too late it will be for nothing. We have to find Nino first, ne, Alys asked for him.”

Sora sighed in exasperation both at being unable to do anything against the Saeko menace (as she called it in her mind) and at determining what was actually ailing the unfortunate professor. “She’s actually asked for him? Are you sure she wasn’t delirious? She was asking for her ‘mummy’ earlier, and rambling about Rousseau’s dog.”

“Her words were ‘I want Kazu’. No mistake about it. My memory of them stretches back ne, and she has never once asked for him, never called him by name in front of us.” Jun crossed his arms with a significant glare at the door before the stairwell.

“Is it that serious with her?” Sora enquired softly, darting her eyes out of a subconscious fear that the professor was on her last legs. Although the doctors had ensured her that Alys would recover, Sora was still anxious. This was more so given her hyper-vigilance when people around her reacted in a way contrary to her observations and expectations. Jun had done so, much to her initial infuriation and over time became something she had associated with him. She had not expected Alys to act the slightest bit out of character because she had always perceived the philosopher to be consistent in thought and deed. If Alys was asking for her freeloader when she normally did not, it could be a sign that she was far more ill than the physicians let on. “Will he see her?” Sora asked curtly so as to keep her cool, trusting Jun’s judgement on his band mate and friend’s behaviour

“We’ll force him to.” Jun pressed his lips together and waved an emphatic wrist. Despite the nonchalance he affected, his eyes shone with all the severity of one who knew that he was standing in the eye of the storm. Whether this was a private storm between the two sarcastic, hard headed characters of Nino and Alys or something that would spill over to the whole Saeko-Ohno-Kaoru business remained to be seen, and it was not something that Jun relished. For the moment, he was more concerned with uncovering the reason for Nino’s need to slip into the stairwell unobserved by all save Ohno. Did the smaller man wish to engage in private contemplation? If so, they would be intruding. Or was he so privately disturbed that he required quiet to compose him? In which case, they would have to collect him and present him before his lady.

Sora fixed him with a glare that silently said he had better have a backup plan if Nino refused to move from the safety of the stairs. As she pushed open the door to the stairwell, she dryly informed the man who was there, “No smoking in hospitals.”

“This is a flight of stairs,” Jun corrected her as his fastidious gaze swept the area around Nino disapprovingly before glaring at the back of his head. How could any sane human being stand all the cigarette butts strewn around him? How could he sit with one leg stretched out and the other leg bent up to support his elbow as he played his DS? How could he sit so casually playing his DS with the sound on, acting like nothing was wrong?

Nino did not look up. He did not care to look up. He expended his nervous energy by playing the DS and smoking endlessly. That he was already on more cigarettes than normal was apparent to Jun and Sora, but to Nino, the cigarettes were his way of calming his nerves. He did not like admitting that he was presently torn between panic and fretfulness as well as suffering through the conflicting desires to throttle a few doctors for not easing his lady’s suffering and throttling Alys for making him anxious.

Flicking the cigarette butt to the concrete floor and placing a fresh stick at his dry lips, he asked, “Is she dead?” Although the enquiry was uttered carelessly, Nino had to tense his jaw muscles to mask his worry.

“Eto, how can you stand being in such filth ne? Nee-san wouldn’t like it if you’re a mess, ne,” Jun scolded him, picking up Nino’s scattered cigarette butts and putting them inside an obliging empty coffee can beside the gamer.

“That’s my mess; it’s my business,” he replied with a bitter edge in his voice, taking a long drag from the cigarette.

Making a mouth of disgust at the cigarette butts that Jun had collected, Sora noted that Nino looked suddenly gaunter. Her heart ached in pity for him as he strove to act like all was well. Many people, including Jun, often told her that Nino was heartless, cruel, and poisonous. How could they say such things when agony and torment sat on his brow? Taking away his almost empty packet of cigarettes, she authoritatively said, “No more cancer sticks. You’ll make yourself ill.”

To which expression of concern, he burst out into a hollow, ironic laugh. “Cut the crap! If she’s not dead, she’s dying. Which is it?”

“The doctors assured us she’s going to get well,” Sora told him as he lifted his glazed eyes to hers.

“She asked for you,” Jun added, placing a hand of encouragement on his shoulder.

Given Nino’s cynical sense of amusement, it was not surprising that he snorted dismissively at their words and almost flicked a wrist at them. Indeed, Jun had expected him to do lash out verbally at Alys and dismiss him and Sora for being busybodies. He did not expect Nino’s DS to clatter to the ground. Neither did he expect Nino to throw his arms around his shoulders. Jun could not protest at being so ill-used in a time like this regardless as to how uncomfortable he was. So he patted Nino’s back and attempted to soothe him.

“Alys is a stubborn bitch. She’s not the type to go quietly,” Sora added, stroking his head gently.

“Don’t lie to me; she’s dead, isn’t she?” Nino asked, releasing Jun and throwing his arms around Sora’s knees, clutching her in a frantic clasp that hurt her. He further surprised Jun and Sora by going on, babbling about flowerpots and locked doors.

Jun opted to humour him. “Eto… I understand, ne. Demo…”

“You don’t understand!” Nino snapped his head up sharply and violently threw off Sora’s hands as he turned to Jun with narrowed eyes. “I told her to see a doctor last night. And when she hissed back, you know what I said? I called her a wilful bitch. I told her I didn’t want her. I told the woman I would lie, cheat, and steal for that I didn’t want her.”

Jun and Sora exchanged a look and rolled their eyes at Nino, exasperated that the sarcastic couple could not be honest with each other. “You didn’t mean it,” Sora pointed out impatiently, “Alys knows you better than us; she would know you didn’t mean it.”

“I know she knows.” Nino waved a dismissive wrist at his two companions. “I should have dragged her to a doctor even if she was kicking and screaming. She would have thrown her shoes and flowerpots at me. I didn’t do anything. Pathetic, ne? I did what Oh-chan would do. I pretended not to notice when she locked her door on me. She locked herself in her study to hide it from me. I didn’t know how seriously ill she had let herself become until yesterday. I should have phoned for a doctor to make a house call whether she wanted me to or not. Kami-sama, what wouldn’t I give to have her throw flowerpots at me now!”

Jun sighed and wiped his hands on the back of Nino’s shirt as Sora patted Nino head as if he were a little boy. “Ano ne, she’s alive, kind of okay, and asking for you. She wants to see you,” reassured Jun kindly.

But Nino only laughed bitterly at himself, silently questioning why she did not confide in him. He would have made time to drag her to the doctor. Sure, the medical bills would hurt but he could earn it back with a few CMs. She had always known when he was lying, so didn’t she call his bluff?

“She doesn’t want to see me,” he went on speaking quickly and quietly, not really paying attention; and well past caring that they were condescending towards him. “I hurt her, you know. She didn’t even flinch. Damn it all! Damn her! I only hurt her because she hurt me.”

At this revelation, Sora looked at Jun, paling in horror. Jun too was shocked for he widened his eyes and placed a comforting hand over Sora’s. While Sora was of the mind that Nino had made a quarrel seem more serious than it was, Jun knew that Nino was capable of hurting people emotionally and physically. Jun knew that it was Nino’s way to act defensively when he was insecure. Sora, who decided that the best way of calming the smaller man down was to let him continue his rant, said nothing. Jun, on the other hand, encouraged him to see his professor while she still wanted to see him and perhaps throw flowerpots at him.

Those words did the trick for Nino drew himself up and picked up his beloved DS. Nino knew Jun did not lie about these things; and even if Jun did lie, he wouldn’t have anything to gain. However, just to play safe, he would confirm something. “What did she say exactly?” he asked, a hand poised on the door of the stairwell.

Sora cast Jun a warm and approving glance, and they exchanged triumphant look. As his back was towards them, Nino did not know of this exchange. And even if he did, he would not have cared as his mind was preoccupied.

In spite of the relief and amusement he felt, Jun fixed Nino’s back with a speaking glare. “Eto… ‘I want Kazu. Hop to it.’ Ano ne, your empress has sent for you, most puissant emperor of the misers.”

“For now, that’s enough,” he mentally reminded himself as he exited the stairwell and made his way to her hospital room.

He had caught a glimpse of the room earlier and he was sickened to think that his viciously poisonous Alys was now helpless and at the mercy of the numerous tubes and hospital equipment around her. It was this sight that drove him to retreat somewhere else to collect himself. He gave Sho and Chiaki a brief nod as he entered, and they shot him a look that seemed to say ‘at last’. He cocked a smirk at them and jerked his head towards the door, silently beseeching them for privacy. Although Sho was loath to leave, he was powerless against Chiaki’s determined and insistent tugging at his arm and soon left the Ninomiya-Teng pair alone.

“I was wondering where you were,” she began breathlessly, pausing between words.

“You’re barely alive, I see,” he stated, taking in her paler than usual countenance and the papers she had in front of her. He noted with a pang of pain that one of the tubes around her had a little blood bobbing up and down until it stopped at the blue tap taped to the top of her hand. The colour of her blood looked thin and worn, yet she appeared unfazed by it. It was a fact that made him curl his lips into a smirk. If there was anything he could trust his Alys to have, it was a blasé air to things that would frighten the pants off ordinary mortals.

“You’re not dead yet, I see,” she returned. Though her breathing was laboured, her mind was still agile enough to respond to any of her freeloader’s sallies without hesitation. Weakly patting the side of her bed to indicate that she wanted him nearer, she continued, “You look terrible.”

He let out a sarcastic ‘heh’ and gently ran the back of his hand up her neck. “Oh yeah? You look like shit.”

“Flush me down the toilet then,” she deadpanned before coughing into a trembling hand.

“You’d clot the drainage system.” He affected a casual tone when she checked whether there was blood on her palm.

“That in itself should be impressive.”

He chuckled at her sarcastic humour in spite of himself but frowned when she covered her mouth as she coughed. “Are you okay?”

She wiped her hand on a piece of tissue and pasted on a lopsided artificial smile. “Beyond a little fatigue, I’m perfectly fine.”

“Your hands are shaking,” he pointed out impassively.

“Rubbish,” she dissented in English, attempting to hide her treacherous hands under the blanket.

A flash of anger entered his eyes that he quickly mastered by seizing her hands fiercely and nearly confessing he feared she was growing weary of him. “Damn it, iya, damn you, Alys!”

“That’s why I am for hell,” she whispered between deep breaths, unconsciously leaning towards him. “Ironic, isn’t it, that we should be at cross purposes? You were worried, weren’t you?”

“Not at all!” he protested, but smirked to let her know that she was right.

“Always pretending to play it cool,” she snorted a ragged cough and rested her head back on the pillow. “And I was no different. I did not want to worry you.”

“I know.” He held her hand, pressing it tightly as she removed her glasses and closed her visibly tired eyes. “You need sleep. I’ll be going.”

Upon lightly pressing his lips to the hand that was devoid of tubes, he rose to leave, and he would have left had Alys not stayed him with a firm, “Kazu darling” that almost sounded like she was back to her old self.

He spun around to look at her, somehow finding it within himself not to look pained as he caught the heavy rising and falling of her chest – a testament to the exertion the attempt had taken on her weakened lungs. “What?”

“If…if you’re free.” Her voice faltered as she coughed and flicked her fingers weakly out of fear that he would decline her suggestion. “Would you mind coming to see me again tomorrow or the day after?”

“Mah, mah! Did you have to ask?” He curled his lips almost seductively at her, inwardly bubbling at her request to the point where a lesser man would have broken into delirious shouts of joyous laughter. However, as Nino was a sensible person, he restrained himself admirably, gave her a cheeky two finger salute and purred, “I am like a convenience store; I provide 24 hour service, 7 days a week – for select customers only.”

“You’re bloody incorrigible,” she managed in a wheezing snigger as she reached across to feebly swat at him.

That very act of hitting him and those words she used were as close as she ever got to saying that she loved him, and he knew it. Contrary to the appearance they gave with their frequent touching, they were not a pair who dealt in verbal sentimentality. As those words were all he needed to hear, he raised his teasing and temptingly liquid eyes to meet hers. “Yeah, but I’m your incorrigible freeloader. See you tomorrow, cynical little witch,” he lilted, and left with a smug smirk on his face.

NOTES

Détente is a French term, meaning relaxing or easing. In political usage, it refers to an international situation where previously hostile nations not involved in an open war de-escalate tensions through diplomacy and confidence-building measures.

Cf. to Ch 11 of From Cover to Cover, for an explanation to the ‘truckload of apples’ reference and Jun’s response that ‘poison is drastic’. In Ch 11 of From Cover to Cover, Sora says:
“Prussic acid may be distilled from apple seeds and apricot pits. Evaporates from the body after twenty-four hours. It’s the most effective poison I’ve come across in my research thus far… Not everyone can smell the almond smell of prussic acid.”

Chapter 020 – Hidden hostilities

There is an old adage that states one is best able to determine a person’s true mettle under pressure. Conversely, how one held up under exacting circumstances is determined by one’s disposition and sometimes, one’s character. To the students of human nature, studying the different reactions of people under the same trying circumstances was a fascinating and profitable enterprise. Nino and Jun were two such people who enjoyed observing the evolution and foibles of human nature. Where the first exploited what he gleamed from others’ characters to his private advantage out of the belief that the stupidity of human beings were to be derided, the second used his knowledge as extenuating factors in tempering his behaviour to certain individuals from a belief that others would be civil to him so long as he was civil to them. Thus, when these two men arrived at the University of Tokyo Hospital with the rest of Arashi, they reacted differently when faced with the scene before them.

Neither of them had to instil order, for order was clearly present, due to the good offices of Chiaki who had prevailed on the ladies not to overly distress themselves lest they distract the attending physicians from their work. This tactic of appealing to reason had by and large worked. Kaoru was doing her best to restrain her tears as she clung to Renée-Caroline’s arm; and Renée-Caroline was studying a pattern on the floor with more interest than she felt. The only notable exception to this picture of calm was Sora. Her temper was already very nearly flying off the handle (and aggravated by both Alys’s unfortunate condition and Kaoru’s very apparent distress) so much so that the redoubtable Chiaki was at that moment attempting to calm her by physically holding her back as she lashed out mercilessly at a doctor who had emerged from the room.

“I specifically requested for Shikishima sensei! He’s the best in the field! Where is your head of pulmonology?” asked Sora viciously, desperately wanting to jab the doctor before her in the chest.

The balding doctor cracked a toothpaste advertisement smile as he reasoned with her, “But he’s not available today.”

“Do you know who I am?” she continued waspishly. “Kujo Sora. My family makes sizeable contributions to this wretched hospital!”

“My colleagues and I are doing all we can to see to Teng-san’s needs. We need confirmation from our laboratories on our secondary diagnosis. In the meantime, we have given her antibiotics for the pneumonia,” explained the doctor.

Sora fumed and folded her arms, fixed the physician with a look that would in normal circumstances make grown men whimper and lesser men cry. “Are we going to sit around and wait for you to poke needles in her and run tests when she could have the best pulmonologist in Japan treating her?”

“Sora, please, get a hold of yourself,” Chiaki recommended, valiantly trying to prevent the novelist from drawing any attention to their group, especially since Jun and the rest of the band were there. While it was true that they were in disguise, there was still the off chance that they could be discovered. Being a prudent woman, Chiaki was not prepared to take that risk. She whispered that reservation to Sora and thus managed to calm her down, though it did nothing to abate her colourful and pungent invective against the medical tribe.

As Sora’s disagreeable nature was well-known to Jun (who found this aspect of her charming), he did not bat an eyelid. Judging that Chiaki had things well under control, he went into the hospital room, heavy with the clinical too-sanitised smell of every type of cleaning agent known to man. He had expected there to be two machines hooked up to her, not this vision of a profusion of tubes running around the top of her hand, one of which was attached to a 0.9% sodium chloride and glucose solution bag, an oxygen machine with the ends clipped to her nostrils with the setting at 3 litres, and a small blue tap on the top of her hand standing out above the profusion of tubes around her.

Somehow, she was sitting up somewhat and trying to write. A task which he noted looked more strenuous and painful than it actually was given her trembling hand. He frowned at her laboured breathing as the now pasty academic paused in her writing to look up with a faint lip curl and lifted a finger in salutation. If he was this taken aback by this change in the usually acerbic philosopher, he wondered how Nino would take it. Deciding that he should (out of politeness) ask after her to see if she was any better, he cleared his throat. Before he could speak however, the machine beside the bag of sodium chloride and glucose solution started beeping. It was so loud that Aiba and Sho burst in asking jointly, “What’s that noise?”

“Pleur-evac machine. It drowns Sora’s voice,” Alys replied breathlessly, a brow raised at the sight of two other Arashi members.

“Eh?” Aiba asked, knocking the machine and shaking it for good measure in the hope that it would quieten down. “The words ‘air’ and ‘completion’ are flashing.”

“Don’t,” Sho said sternly, holding out a hand to stop Aiba’s continued assault on the machine. “It drains her lungs. She needs it.”

Aiba let his gaze drift to the woman and he started bawling on Sho’s shoulder.

Running a hand distractedly through, Jun began again, “Ano ne, Nee-san, are you okay?”

“Do I look okay to you?” she snapped weakly, flicking her fingers at him in annoyance, and drawing an almost perceptible smirk from him. Returning to writing on a sheaf of printed papers, she went on, “Are the other two here as well? If Ohno’s here, tell him to take Kaoru home. She’s distraught. Please apologise to everyone for the trouble…” she paused to breathe and to cough. “Sora should be told I’m fine so that she cease her one-woman operation to mass massacre the hospital staff. Sho-kun, take Chiaki home, she looks tired and get her something to eat that’s high in iron, she’s been complaining of having a troublesome period. Baby-chan, take Renée-Caroline to the Opera House; she’s conducting Die Fledermaus… Get her something light to eat. Tell the freeloader to phone my solicitors on the English side…”

“You don’t have to act normal. Rest and recover. Our manager will ensure that you will not be disturbed and…” Sho told her, his frown lines deepening at the professor’s innate sense of responsibility.

“Tosh! I’m not the freeloader; I do not know how to act,” she replied in ragged breaths. “Incidentally, is he here?”

“He’s with Riida somewhere out there,” wailed Aiba, waving a vague hand in the direction of the door while wiping his runny nose on Sho’s sleeve.

She pushed her glasses higher on her nose; her face paler and its expression unreadable. “I want to see him.” She curled her lips disdainfully at the three men staring at each other and then at her, not quite believing that she had said what she just did. “What are you standing here for?” she hissed slowly to minimise the pain in her chest as she spoke, not knowing that it made her accent more distinct and had given her words a serpentine aspect. “Renée-Caroline has an orchestra to conduct. Kaoru needs to go home and sleep, and I want Kazu. Hop to it.”

As Sho and Aiba stood gawking at her (the latter shocked out of his crying in the process), Jun realised that he would take charge or nothing would get done. Why it fell him to him to take up the reins of control in times of crises, he did not know, and even if he did know, he would have taken charge of the situation anyway. Sho could have a panic attack and induce another crying fit in Aiba, which would in turn leave the maestra without swift transportation to the Opera House. This would in turn stress Chiaki who was trying to keep Sora calm, and further agonise Kaoru whose tender heart did not like to see anyone suffer. He gave Alys a quick nod of assent and ushered Sho and Aiba out to the waiting ladies and Ohno. Their leader was, to his credit, sensitive to the apparent distress of his fiancée and comforting her in his arms.

“She’ll be okay; you’d see. She’d be thwacking Nino with books in no time,” Ohno soothed, pouting sadly.

“They suspect lupus in addition to the pneumonia. Lupus!” Sora huffed indignantly. “They’re not even sure! How’s that for efficiency?”

Jun nodded his agreement at the want of proper clarity in this most notable of hospital and attempted a weak half-smile at his novelist. “What she has or hasn’t, ne, is for the doctors to decide, ne? Eto… Alys Nee-san will not rest easy until we follow up on her few instructions, ne. Aiba must take Renée-Caroline to the Opera House ne for work. It’s the right thing to do, eh? And Riida must take Kaoru home to rest, ne.” The others surprisingly acceded fairly easily to the scheme as they nodded. “Chiaki and Sho can keep her company, ne, until Sora and I find...”

He paused abruptly on espying a shadow that quickly darted behind a wall. It was familiar and he had a fair idea of who it was. He clenched a fist and mentally derided Umebayashi Saeko for stooping so low as to follow them. One of these days, she would go too far and he would give her more than an earful. However, he decided that acting now would be too premature, for he was still nowhere close to uncover the gist of Saeko’s greater schema of affairs. Jun swallowed hard and pressed his lips together thereby keeping himself admirably in check by asking, “Chotto, where’s the miserly pustule?”

From her current strategic position behind the wall, Saeko heard Ohno’s reply that Nino was in the stairwell behind the ward they were in. Secure in the belief that she was unnoticed by the party a short distance ahead of her, and secure in the unreasonable belief of her own superiority, she did not pause to consider that she could have been spotted by one of the Arashi members or that she was already spotted by MatsuJun. No, those thoughts were nowhere in her mind as she was too busy seething at Ohno’s very affectionate manner of comforting Kaoru and turning the gears of her mind as she tried to go through the who’s who amongst the Arashi girlfriends. She had overheard everything, having eavesdropped on part of the conversation and discerned enough to know which lady was involved with which member.

“That must be the fiancée,” she muttered to herself, gritting her teeth at the gentle way Ohno draped his arm over Kaoru’s shoulder when the couple as well as Aiba and Renée-Caroline passed her on the way to the lift that would bring them downstairs. Fortunately for her, they were oblivious to her presence, and she could watch the rest of the party to recap the facts she had gathered.

She had already overheard that the bat eared woman they called Renée-Caroline worked at the Opera House and was with Aiba; that was enough information for a background check. Kujo Sora, she knew by reputation for being a member of the former aristocracy, and twin sister to Kujo Sakihisa, an upcoming politician. That woman looked like she was with Jun, and would be, Saeko reflected, someone she could talk to on an equal footing. However beyond learning the personal names of the tomboyish woman, Ohno’s prettily helpless fiancée, and the rest were Chiaki, Kaoru and Alys respectively, and learning that the patient was a professor and Ohno’s fiancée was with Geidai, she knew nothing more.

It was an information imbalance she immediately sought to rectify by approaching the information desk at that level to enquire after the patient in room 328. The reply provided her with the missing pieces of the puzzle as records indicated that the patient, one Teng Alys, was formally admitted by Nakahara Chiaki, and Morimoto Kaoru has asked for a change in the patient’s antibiotics. As that was all she needed to know, and she went away feeling smug. She had no intention of exposing them. To do so would be folly and bring the wrath of her JE Central, and she had no wish to make an enemy of the company she had just gotten in bed with. No, instead she would make the most of the information she had gathered and put them to work for her like she did with the people in her employ.

Thus, armed with her newly acquired knowledge, she walked away and made her way out, phoning her personal secretary. “Vyrubov, I have something I want you to check up …” As she laid out the details of what she expected to be done, Saeko reflected that it was good to be the head of a conglomerate with various resources at her disposal.

NOTES

Kujo Sakihisa was mentioned very briefly in a blink-and-miss fashion in Ch 12 of From Cover to Cover.

Chapter 019 – Where wisdom listens

“Which of you is the manager?” began Alys without preamble, narrowing her eyes at the sight of just two men in the kitchen and the state it was in. Disordered would be the best way to describe it. Understaffed would be another, for what sort of eatery only had one cook and needed the manager to help out. Alys adjusted her glasses and curled her lips contemptuously at the sight of empty cans of cream of mushroom soup in the rubbish bun. What sort of establishment doesn’t make its own soup! How absurd! Even she, who did not consider herself as capable in the kitchen as her freeloader, could manage to make her own cream of mushroom soup. For the long wait time she and the ladies had to endure, she had expected near gourmet class cuisine, and here the establishment heated things from aluminium and tin cans! Outrageous! She wasn’t going to stand for it.

“I am. How may I help the valued customer?” responded a portly man in a suit that was too tight for him, looking up from the pot of mushroom soup.

The academic’s eyes flitted from the surroundings to the man as she silently appraised him, not bothering to hide her disdain for the way in which the eatery was run. “May I enquire how you run your business? Table 28 waited half an hour for our orders, and your serving boy had the temerity to request we order pastries while waiting. How long more do we have to wait, pray tell?” demanded Alys between ragged coughs as she grabbed the counter to keep the façade of her upright posture from cracking under the painfulness of each heaving breath.

“I am very sorry, madam…”

“Try another tactic, madam is waiting to be impressed.” The professor scowled.

“If madam is unhappy…” the manager gave her a curt bow.

“Points of information: One – madam is displeased with your appalling service; two -- madam is furious with the cavalier manner in which she is treated in this pathetic excuse of an eatery,” corrected she in an artic tone, swivelling her head to the waiter who had just entered with a new order. Without warning, she grabbed him by the elbow and continued to address the manager between coughs, “This impertinent pup suggested we order additional items while the kitchens prepare our order, and then had the audacity to present us with incorrect orders. If this is the height of sophistication in dining, I have a good mind to write a most scathing review of this establishment! First and foremost, we ordered the bisque, not your cream of mushroom soup.”

Perhaps cowed by her evenly modulated tone of her vociferous accusations and the thinly veiled threat, the manager was sufficiently aware that he was not dealing with a customer who could be appeased by any old excuse. “The sous chef is in the toilet doing his er… business and can’t make the bisque.”

“So much so that we waited half an hour for soup from a can? Bah bloody humbug!” She flicked a wrist as she heaved a heavy cough and tried to ignore the excruciating pains in her chest. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that the apprentice has no idea how to make soup or salads? Pray, inform this ignorant critic, how long does it take to prepare food in this establishment? Forty-five minutes? An hour?”

“With our sous chef in the toilet, we do what we can…” shrugged the apprentice chef.

Seeing how he had a death wish, Alys trained her eyes on him and curled her lips contemptuously. “Are you so incompetent that you do not know what to do in the kitchen? You must be a gentleman of leisure to have all the time in the world, but some of us have to work. We are not going to wait indefinitely for our orders in a place with bad service!” She paused to allow her lungs to vent a cough as she struggled to catch her breath. As soon as she had enough breath with which to inhale, she let fly in the coldest possible manner to the manager. “My good man, your staff are incompetent and rude. This boy gave us coffee éclairs instead of chocolate, and he apparently expected five women to share one napkin. I am all for saving the environment, but this place takes the biscuit in going too far!”

The manager turned to the waiter, incredulity stamped clearly on his features. “One napkin for a table of five?”

“You told us to save on serviettes with one per table…” stammered the waiter nervously.

“One per customer, not one per table!” barked the manager.

The academic interrupted with cough and faint smirk of amusement at the increasing discomfiture of both the manager and the waiter, “Then there is the small matter where our orders were ‘mucked up’, shall we say. There are five hungry and very busy women who are waiting on their orders, and have been waiting for…” She paused and checked her watch. “The past forty minutes. I can see from the state of affairs in this domain that future waiting would be an exercise in futility. We will be taking our business elsewhere, just as your sous chef is doing. We will pay the bill for that sludge you call mushroom soup and that alone in acknowledgement that the first oversight on our order was a mistake. The second mistake on the éclairs does not deserve such consideration. I expect the bill at our table in a timely fashion. Good day to you.”

“Matte kudasai!” the manager called out in sudden panic at the customer’s apparent livid coolness as she spun around on her heels. He bowed apologetically to her coughing figure. “There will be no charge. We apologise for the inconvenience and for madam’s dissatisfaction.”

A self-satisfied smirk formed on her lips when Alys heard those words, for that was exactly the outcome she had wished. Turning her head to the side to gaze dispassionately at the manager, she raised a brow, pushed up her glasses, stifled a cough and said nothing. To all observers, she would just be an irate customer disgusted with the service at the eatery, and she made sure by her silence that the manager followed her out of the kitchens still apologising and cancelling their need to pay a single yen.

The other ladies at table 28 heard the portly manager’s profuse apologises, and were torn between amazement and amusement at what had transpired. Kaoru, bless her heart, was stunned that it was possible not to pay for the soup she had consumed. Chiaki and Sora had anticipated this turn of events, and one shook her head with a snigger while the other cracked a smile of approval at the professor as she approached their table. Although Renée-Caroline strongly disapproved of (what she suspected were) the strong arm tactics it took to bring out this outcome, she raised her glass of water at Alys in a silent toast to her incorrigibility.

“You’re despicable,” Chiaki teased, shaking a finger at her.

“You wound me! I’m merely disreputable,” deadpanned the philosopher as she neared the table. “Shall we head elsewhere? Kaoru has to eat. Anywhere would be preferable to this…” However as she was about to say more, she began hacking away again.

This time the coughing jag was so violent that she could not breathe. As she flicked her wrist and dismissed the solicitous concerns of the other women, she realised belatedly in a detached fashion that she very likely had miscalculated and could well be dying from pneumonia before she had made the final corrections to her Hong Kong conference paper. In the same detached manner, she observed that the blood she was coughing up was a bright red and her heart was thrashing wildly with lack of air. She even went so far as to imagine that she could hear her alveoli popping one by one. Perhaps she would die of heart failure or bronchial apoplexy, she mused wryly as she fell forward; after all, she had always held the opinion that one of her chronic ailments would kill her one day. A shame she couldn’t see her mother, grandmother and annoying freeloader before she died, but she hadn’t factored them in either. An oversight, her mind reminded her, and to her credit, she would have smirked self-deprecatorily at herself if she could. But her mind soon wandered again to mundane observations. That the floor of the eatery was moderately clean gave her reason to be vaguely pleased she would not die in dirty surroundings were her last thoughts before specks of stars circled her eyes and she blacked out.

When the shock of seeing one of their own fall at their feet without warning finally died off, Chiaki swept in with cool commanding logic and sought to restore order among her companions while Sora called for an ambulance.

“Alys Nee-chan isn’t…” Kaoru’s voice trembled as she tried her best not to cry.

“Non, she is all bile, hein, far more tenacious than she seems,” assured Renée-Caroline, as she rubbed Alys’s temples with ointment Kaoru had offered.

“I can see one benefit to this,” Chiaki stated with all the calm of a person used to dealing with panic attacks and crises.

“Oh?” Sora replied, disconnecting the call to the hospital and dialling another number.

Chiaki fixed the novelist with a serious look as the latter pressed the mobile phone to her ear. “She’ll finally be treated for pneumonia whether she likes it or not.”

“Aussi, her caro spouso would be glad. Masaki told me Monsieur Ninomiya has been tetchy of late,” Renée-Caroline muttered, her clouded brow clearing as if by magic from the thought that her beau would be much pleasanter if his sarcastic friend were to be himself again.

Whether Nino would be relieved was unknown as he was occupied with the rest of Arashi in the recording studio in JE Central, tetchier than his usual acerbic self, willing himself not to snarl at the Umebayashi Saeko woman who was hawk-eyeing them. He sneezed once and rubbed his nose, wondering if his little professor was thinking of him. Or, he thought with a smirk of delight, she could be insulting him, cursing him under her breath and threatening to do unspeakable horrors to him. Well, so long as she thinking of him and blackening his name (even if no one believed her), he was content. And that thought did make him feel marginally better, for it indicated to him that she still cared enough to cast aspersions on his character. His reverie at being the receiving end of his lady’s harsh tongue was unfortunately broken by a voiceover from the sound mixing booth in the studio complaining that one of them was too shrill and drowning out Ohno’s voice.

The rest of the band members looked at each other, annoyance and impatience etched on their features. They had all been doing very well and were almost done with recording the last bonus track of their new single until Saeko came in to observe them. Officially, she was there on business to oversee the post production process where the music would be recorded on her new line of scratch-proof and copy-proof CDs. However, all of Arashi knew her true motivation was to see Ohno and to hear him sing. She was so transparent that it was almost pitiful, and if the situation were removed from the band, MatsuJun would laugh at the ludicrous near scandalous way in which the head of the Umebayashi Group was making a fool of herself over an oblivious man who was too polite to tell her to go away. However, for the moment, he was struggling to keep a tight lid on his anger. MatsuJun was never one to suffer fools gladly, and presently, Saeko was being both foolish and annoying by interrupting the recording process with her demands. It was a sentiment that was shared by all the members of Arashi, for they were doing extremely well all morning and afternoon, and had only slipped up when she showed up fifteen minutes ago to commandeer the sound booth in the recording studio.

In Jun’s opinion, she had no business being there when she was clearly ignorant of the minutiae of the music business. Moreover, despite his slight sympathy for those who were thwarted in love, he could not bring himself to feel sorry for her when she was so irresponsible as to cut short a meeting with the board of directors of her various subsidiaries just to attend a recording session. His frayed temper had almost all but worn down when she suggested another take. Arashi’s manager had been unable to pre-empt her last order as he was on the mobile and had stormed out the booth with a heavily darkened brow. Seeing that Date-san was occupied, MatsuJun threw down his headphones and was prepared to barge into the sound booth with a sharp reprimand against Saeko’s unwarranted highhandedness – a reprimand that stilled and dissolved when the commanding voice of their manager resounded in the studio.

“Matsumoto, you have a call! Now! Everyone else break!” huffed Date-san gruffly as he barged into the studio proper. Dropping his voice to a low hiss as he clapped Jun on the shoulder and handed him the mobile phone, he continued, “Sora-sama on the line.”

Nodding his thanks, Jun followed his friends out of the studio, relieved to get away from Saeko’s unblinking metallic, predatory eyes as she ranted over the way they sounded on the recording. Now that was a Queen Bitch if there ever was one, snorted Jun inwardly to himself while sauntering out with his friends under their watchful manager’s gaze. As they adjourned to a nearby stairwell where Nino and Ohno could have quick cigarettes and Aiba could regale Sho with the latest developments in the manga he had been following, Jun smiled at his friends (and at Ohno who offered him a cigarette) before speaking into the receiver. “Where’s the fire? Or did you miss the irresistible me?”

Sora laughed nervously over the connection, too nervously in the youngest member’s opinion. “Stop being a pompous arse, Jun-chan, this is an emergency. I’ve explained to Uncle Date. We’ve had a small incident and are at the University of Tokyo Hospital.”

“Were you in a motor accident? I thought your doctors were with the Tokyo Memorial Hospital! Who’s with you? I’ll take off from work now. Do you want me to bring you anything? I’m going to you now, okay?” he enquired anxiously in one breath, puffing very quickly and indecorously on his cigarette.

“It’s not me; it’s Alys. She had a turn for the worse. What is Ninomiya’s mood like today? Renée-Caroline mentioned him being ‘tetchy’ in Aiba’s estimation,” Sora went on; the desultory manner in which she made the conversation, rendering her well-hidden distress apparent to Jun.

“What’s going on, Sora-chan? What’s wrong with Alys Nee-san? Did she finally see the doctor for her cough?” He lowered his voice instinctively so as to calm her.

“Sort of. She had a type of seizure associated with bacterial pneumonia. She’s been warded. Chiaki’s sending Sho the details now.”

It did not take long for the gravity of the situation to sink in, and Jun considered his next step while posing a question and running a nervous hand through his hair, “What did the doctors say?”

“The bungling buffoons refuse to say anything. They’re hooking up machines to her – one to pump the blood and fluids from her lungs, another to help her breathing. Heads are going to roll if the head of the pulmonology department does not arrive soon,” Sora snapped disagreeably, exhaling cigarette smoke from her end of the line as she sat beside a weepy and visibly distraught Kaoru in the open air part of the hospital canteen.

“Keep cool, I’ll be with you soon, ne,” Jun advised, Aiba’s gasp as he read something off Sho’s mobile device not lost upon him. He nodded when Aiba and Sho turned around and showed him the message from Chiaki.

“It’s a miracle we’re not wailing and tearing our hair out. Commandeer Aiba’s car. Someone has to take Renée-Caroline to the Opera House for her performance tonight, and we need transport for Kaoru. She’s beside herself with worry.”

“Hang in there, I’ll try to get clearance for us to leave, or failing that, I’d get clearance for Nino,” he replied and pushed a button to disconnect the call.

“Clearance for what? I don’t need clearance for anything. All I have to do is contrive.” Nino smirked, placing a fresh cigarette at his lips.

“For us to leave now,” Sho answered grimly, patting Aiba whose eyes were already watery. “The professor is with the doctors and…”

“About time,” Nino snorted dismissively, rising and pushing open the door of the stairwell. “What? What are you staring at?”

“What I am staring at? Your stingy empress had difficulty breathing and has been hospitalised. The doctors aren’t saying anything,” Jun bellowed vociferously, following Nino out the door and waving for their manager to approach.

“If they’re not saying anything, maybe she’s dead,” Nino laughed as he lit the cigarette. Although his tone was sarcastic and his air was of careless unconcern, he was inwardly worried. The phrase, ‘Kami-sama, if you take her away, I’ll go to hell and drag her back so that I can kill her for turning me out’ repeated itself like a mantra in his head.

“Mama can’t breathe on her own and you’re saying things like that!” wailed Aiba, giving Nino a look of pure contempt before crying on Sho’s shoulder.

“Mah, that’s enough,” Ohno interjected, tugging at Nino’s elbow in a bid to curb the cutting remark that was on his tongue.

“What are you saying, baby-chan?” sneered Nino, masking his internal anxiety with a carefully blank face.

“She’s on the respirator and the pleur-evac. It could mean her lungs have collapsed,” Sho clarified with a frown, watching Jun return their manager the mobile phone.

Pointedly ignoring the conversations in the background, Jun addressed Date-san, “May we go? Nino, at the very least, should go. The professor is out for the count.”

“Sora-sama told me. Okay, listen up, boys, you’re done in the studio. We can cut and mix out the imperfections. But I want everyone back in again bright and early tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?” manager-san gruffly acceded, checking his watch.

Everyone save Nino gave signs of assent. Eschewing conventionality, he flicked a wrist and snapped (to appalled gasps of Aiba and Ohno), “Damn witch can’t take care of herself; serves her right. Let her fester, rot and die or whatever. See if I care.” After a judicious pause, he turned around as if he remembered something of minor importance. “Oi, Sho-san, do we have filming today for Resurrected Butterflies?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” came the answer as well as disapproving looks.

“Good,” Nino said decisively, taking a few steps away and then turning back at the gaping men staring at him. “Close your mouths. You want flies to lay their eggs there or something? Will someone with a car take me to the damn hospital to see who or what is trying to kill my woman?”

Date-san nodded at the Arashi members as they collected their things and left, much to the disapproval of Saeko. Having overheard enough of their conversation from her position behind an obliging wall, her interest in the band members’ private lives was piqued. It surprised her that someone as emotionally lacking as Nino (which was how she saw him) could have a crumpet stashed away on the side mildly ridiculous. However, clearer thought brought a question to her mind, and it was on that question that she decided to make her next move.

“Spare the rod and you’ll spoil those boys,” she told him, staring at their retreating figures with a wooden expression as she folded her arms. “I came all this way here after an important meeting to hear them sing and you let them go after they made a mess of the last take.”

“They’ve been at it all day, and were good until a presence began nitpicking. They need a break,” answered Date-san coolly.

She harrumphed and stormed away at his impertinence. As Saeko was not good at not getting what she wanted, she resorted to the only thing she could do under the present circumstances – undertake reconnaissance.

NOTES & Glossary

Non = no

Mais = but/however

Aussi = also

Caro spouso = lit. Italian for dear spouse (used to speak of a male spouse; use cara sposa if spouse is female). In classical music, most things are written in Italian and as Renee-Caroline is a conductor formerly based in Europe, it would not be far-fetched that she should know Italian on top of her native French.

Chapter 018 – Where knowledge speaks

The next day had more promise for the Arashi princesses than it did for their men who were suffering the ignominy of working around a multitude of restrictions in the recording studio as well as the television station. By a stroke of luck, the ladies were mostly free between twelve to three that Friday afternoon. after a dry run with the Tokyo City Metropolitan Opera, Renée-Caroline left each section of the orchestra to conduct its own section rehearsals before the actual performance that night; Sora had nothing planned that day beyond writing at the ABC Coffee House; the Tropical Collections Greenhouse was closed for a pest control check, leaving Chiaki free for the day; Alys, whose last lecture ended at noon, agreed to leave aside the final edit of her paper for the Hong Kong conference so as to meet the ladies for lunch and conversation; and Kaoru only had teaching assistant duties for the day at Geidai which would end at noon. With this fortunate state of affairs, the day did indeed look set to be promising. Rather, the day would have been promising if the weather was not overcast.

Fortunately, Kaoru was not of this depressing mindset as she huddled under her winter coat and cotton crocheted cloche hat, and made her way out of the Geidai (or Tokyo University of the Arts) gates towards the street leading to the nondescript public house favoured by struggling art students. She was meeting the ladies for luncheon at the establishment owing to its proximity to Geidai. Due to the icy early February rain, there were hardly any pedestrians, save for the very dubious, Kaoru thought with a giggle as a group of men walked unhurriedly by and disappeared into the Ueno Park entrance close to the main road.

As the café was further down the road, she quickened her steps until she entered the small but clean establishment, where amongst the numerous customers, two ladies were safely ensconced at a table under a print of Monet’s water lilies. One had reading glasses on and appeared to mumbling to herself as she wrote; the other was perusing a classical music magazine. Not long after Kaoru entered the establishment, a third woman with a pageboy haircut emerged from where the toilets would be and secreted herself at the table with the other, wiping her hands as she did so.

“Are we all here?” Kaoru asked apologetically as she sat down.

“Bonjour, ma chère,” saluted Renée-Caroline, tying up her curls with the scrunchie at her wrist. It immediately became apparent that she was labouring under a strong sense of curiosity and good humour, for hardly had she extended a greeting to Kaoru than she unveiled with the rather disappointing information that Alys had yet to arrive.

Chiaki continued and put aside the napkin that she had been using to dry her hands. “Her lecture ended twenty minutes ago. She’ll be here in five if she caught the densha.”

“She would be faster if she took a cab,” Sora pointed out, tucking her messy hair behind her ears with one hand and spinning a pen around the fingers of the other.

Renée-Caroline snapped her fingers disapprovingly at the novelist. “Alors, she is tight-fisted with money, n’est-ce pas? Why would she spend money on a taxi?”

“Especially when there isn’t one to be hired for love or money in this weather,” deadpanned the newly arrived Alys self-deprecatorily, removing her coat and draping it on the chair.

“Your tongue running into the astringent today?” teased Sora as Alys stripped off her gloves and beret, and placed them in her briefcase.

“Always,” was the professor’s comeback as she patted her hair to check that her bun and hairpick were in place. “Shall we get straight to business?”

“Have you no finesse?” questioned Sora with a smile.

“Try dealing with a lecture hall of imbeciles who fail to see how amour propre is a dangerous construct and then tell me if my finesse is wanting,” returned Alys, who was now beginning to feel annoyed at any slight provocation. She vaguely realised that the irritability could largely be attributed to worsening thyrotoxicosis or worsening pneumonia, very likely both.

“That bad?” Chiaki shot her a sympathetic glance.

“I want to scream bloody murder at their abject stupidity and watch Kazu make good his repeated offers to throw those imbeciles out the window,” hissed Alys in English, momentarily forgetting herself.

“Par Dieu, is she always so violent?”

“This is mild. She gets worse when she’s PMS-ing,” Sora replied, closing her notebook so as to study the profile of Kaoru as the younger woman strove to soothe Alys’s coughs.

Telling Kaoru about Saeko would be the right thing. However, she had not counted on the difficulty of telling the exact nature of Saeko’s demands on Ohno without hurting her feelings. Yet, the deed had to be done and it might as well be done sooner than later when Kaoru found out on her own.

Biding her time until the waiter took their orders, Sora eventually began cautiously, “Have you heard from Ohno-kun lately? About the bids and acquisitions of J Storm stock?”

Significant looks went around the table as the other participants of this would-be revelation silently acknowledged that they had started treading carefully on an issue that could be most upsetting for the artist, who waited for the waiter to leave their table before shaking her head slowly. Although Kaoru had her own suspicions as to what her Satoshi-kun was not telling her, she schooled her features into cheery unconcern and indicated with a sip of water from her glass that the ladies should go on.

“There isn’t a nice way of putting this, really,” Alys continued decisively. “We know for a fact that Umebayashi Saeko is indeed your fiancé’s ex.”

“We also know that she bought over 20% of their music label,” Renée-Caroline added.

“Just as we know she has explicitly declared her intentions to get him back,” Chiaki closed the brief list of what they did know to be true.

While she briefly wondered why her fiancé had remained mum on the subject, she realised intuitively that he forbore to tell her lest the news of his ex-girlfriend upset her. Knowing the truth at last as to why he did not confide in her palliated her somewhat and she was able to smile at her luncheon companions with fair composure. Kaoru was not particularly surprised by the news, for there had been hints enough from the ladies that there had been a connection between Ohno Satoshi and Umebayashi Saeko. However, she would not say that she was distressed by the news. She pinned all the women at her table with a firm stare.

“You are all very good but you are insulting yourselves, Satoshi-kun and me by even thinking what you were thinking,” she said firmly, putting her hand over Alys’s as the professor heaved breathless coughs into a piece of tissue paper.

“Zut alors, ma chère!” exclaimed Renée-Caroline, rubbing her fingers together in thoughtful irritation both at Kaoru’s refusal to see the truth and Alys’s stubborn refusal to do anything about her weakening health. “That woman – she is a schemer, hein? You must do something before she – how you say – reels him in.”

“Men are weak,” Sora threw down matter-of-factly. “They need to know their women are with them in times of trouble if they are not to crumble under pressure. Your support is all that he needs to meet…”

“I don’t want to hear any explanation. Why, I’m ashamed of you thinking idle gossip could come between us!” said Kaoru, laying a finger across Sora’s lips and stilling her words. “Do you think I’d believe that Satoshi-kun would betray me with that…that woman…The idea is… I know him better than you, and I have not forgotten all the wonderful, unselfish things he has done for me and my art! I will not believe such dreadful things about him, and I will not believe such dreadful things about Umebayashi-san either. I don’t want to hear another dreadful word on… on that. Not a word.”

“Quite right too, love,” soothed Alys in English when she caught her breath, giving the other women a quick look to signal that the conversation would have to be handled with kid gloves from that point on.

In light of Kaoru’s dark eyes flashing with love for her fiancé and her friends as well as anger at the mention of her fiancé’s future probable ignoble behaviour, it wasn’t difficult to see why Alys had given the silent warning. Kaoru’s nature was a trusting one; so trusting that she could never conceive of dishonour in anyone she knew and loved be they friends or family. Similarly, she followed her father’s maxim of giving those she did not know the benefit of the doubt, for she was one of those people who believed that there was a little good in everyone. Because of this, all the women at the table knew of Kaoru’s gentleness. She was the very soul of goodness, who chose not to utter an unkind word about anyone. She had lapses when she became cross like most of humanity, but she dealt with anger through art by throwing paint. While she may not scream at the duplicity and knavishness of men aloud like Sora, or mete out her blood-curdling threats like Alys, or knit her brows and lash out at the orchestra like Renée-Caroline or confront the accused directly like Chiaki, Kaoru was capable of silent rages much more than her friends.

“We don’t know Umebayashi-san, and I think it is wrong to criticise others. Umebayashi-san is successful and smart and heads her own company. Her smartness and success does not give you to right to say that she and Satoshi-kun are… Satoshi-kun would not…he could not have…not without telling me,” she stated with quiet vehemence.

“Have you asked him?” Renée-Caroline enquired, taking up the last of the bread rolls and eating it, consulting her watch and wondering whether it possible for a reputable eatery to leave customers starving for the better part of twenty minutes.

“He has not said anything. I trust him,” the artist stated firmly.

“Isn’t he the honest one of the group?” Sora asked.

“Good Lord! What is the freeloader teaching him that he uses poor Kaoru in this way?” hissed the academic, calling for the waiter and demanding to know how long it would take for their orders to arrive.

“Your orders are being delayed. Please order some other things to have while you wait,” suggested the waiter.

“Alors, five mini chocolate éclairs,” interposed Renée-Caroline. Waiting until they were out of his earshot, she continued, “Mais, we are jumping to conclusions, n’est-ce pas? That relationship has long been over.”

Sora twitched her lips into a grim line. “It was never really over because there was no real break up. It was, if I understood Jun correctly, an estrangement. If this were marriage, it would be bigamy. He should have come clean with Kaoru.”

As Alys rolled a satirical eye and covered Kaoru’s hand with her own, Chiaki shook her head at Sora’s imagination. “While I too am for Ohno coming clean, the bigamy nonsense doesn’t hold water.”

“Is he married to her? Is that what you’re saying?” Kaoru gasped in horrified accents, her marble eyes widened as her hands flew to her cheeks.

“Of course not, my lovely,” assured Alys in English, unsuccessfully choking back a cough and staining the tissue paper at her mouth. “Chiaki is right. More observation is needed, especially in light of Ohno’s vacillation.”

Kaoru sighed and rubbed her hands together as if cold. “I still don’t wish to believe in everything you’re saying.”

“Are you chilly?” enquired the philosopher as she dumped her faux sable muff on Kaoru. “Stuff your hands in and you’ll be warmer. Keep it, I have a spare somewhere at home.” She paused and finished the dregs of her tea. “Where are our orders? It has been half an hour. Boy!” she called out to a waiter.

“Ah, allow me,” offered Renée-Caroline, pouring out the tea so as not to further agitate Alys.

However, she could not intercept Alys who had already requested for a customer survey form in chilling hauteur that much amused Sora and Chiaki.

“We do not have one, honoured customer,” answered the waiter with overly greased hair. That response made Kaoru shrink back in fear at the thought of what Alys would do. At the very least, she could write to the newspapers; or she could stir up a scene, and Kaoru did not know which was likelier.

“Not have one! What sort of establishment is this!” Alys hissed as her eyes narrowed in dissatisfaction, as another waiter, the one who took their orders, returned and set the table for them with the soup and the éclairs. She flicked a wrist, prepared to dismiss the incident, but that was before she saw the soup. “We ordered bisque. Why do we have cream of mushroom?” She glared at the stuttering waiter waiting for a coherent and audible explanation as she bit into the éclair and promptly spat it out again. “Bah bloody humbug! Coffee! We said chocolate éclairs!”

“What’s wrong, madam?” asked the waiter, holding the tray close to himself as a page would hold a shield in olden times.

“Alys Nee-chan doesn’t touch coffee,” Kaoru contributed helpfully, saying it in such an artless manner that the waiter almost supposed that it meant something.

“Never mind that,” snapped Alys, glaring daggers at the waiter as she patted Kaoru’s hand. “Your stomach doesn’t settle easily. You are not going to consume that sludge passing for soup. The pastry for the éclairs look stiff and hard will likely disagree with Renée-Caroline. There aren’t even any ashtrays for Sora. I will not stand for it! Listen, boy, you can’t treat customers in this fashion.”

“Nee-chan,” protested the artist, “he’s just the serving staff. You’re being too harsh.”

While Chiaki and Renée-Caroline looked at the hapless teenaged waiter pityingly for being the recipient of Kaoru’s kindness, Sora looked amusedly at the scenario that was threatening to unfold.

“Why is there only one paper napkin?” Alys questioned, her voice dangerously low and quiet. “Well? Answer me, boy!” She pursed her lips and withdrew her hand from the small rectangular cutlery basket on the table. “Do you expect us to tear that napkin into five pieces and share it?”

Sora with all her observational skills foretold an interesting scene, for the waiter was now stuttering and shaking visibly. However, in light of the professor’s temper, she darted her eyes over to the bloodied tissue papers on the table and decided that she would have restrain Alys before she lost her temper. “Don’t you think you should…”

Putting out a hand to cut Sora off, Alys demanded, “Utter outrage! I demand to see your manager.”

“But he’s in the kitchen!”

“Good, so much the better. I will see him there!” declared she as she rose and glided in the general direction indicated by the waiter’s jerk of the head. “Excuse me, my dears.”

“Oh la la!” Renée-Caroline exclaimed with a faint chuckle. “Not satisfied with making the garcon pee in his pants, maintenant, she wants to torment the manager.”

“She’s quite a character,” laughed Sora, replacing her reading glasses on her face and making notes. “I would love to be a fly on the wall in that showdown. What wouldn’t her freeloader do to see her in action!”

Tickled by this statement, Chiaki threw her head back in a hearty laugh. “We’ll get away without paying today if she has her way.”

“What’s so funny?” asked Kaoru, watching the nervous waiter feebly protest as Alys purposefully made her way to the kitchen. “She could frighten the manager!”

“For the service we have received, it would not be anything less than they deserve,” Renée-Caroline opined, dipping her soup tentatively into the mushroom soup, testing its somewhat dubious looking consistency.

“But she’s sick! She could…” objected Kaoru with all the sensitivity in her tender heart as she swept her eyes down to the bloodied tissue paper balls around Alys’s area on the table.

The other women patted her shoulder and her hands to calm her fears, with Chiaki speaking for them all with the inviolable truth of that she knew to be Alys’s character, “Let her have her verbal brawl, she needs it. Don’t fret, Kaoru-chan, she doesn’t pick a fight she can’t win.”

“But that’s not what I’m worried about,” Kaoru murmured unheard by the others as her eyes followed the swinging the doors of the kitchen as they shut and hid Alys from the purview of her vision.

NOTES

Amour propre (often translated as vanity) was propounded by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (late 18th Century). Rousseau believed in self-love (amour de soi) is preferable to vanity (amour propre). This is because amour de soi is able to transform from a feeling that ‘is contented when our true needs are satisfied’, whereas amour propre prefers the self to others and demands that others prefer us to themselves.’ Cf. Rousseau’s Emile, IV, 213-4.

So we may assume that prior to meeting the ladies, Alys had been giving a lecture on Rousseau.

Glossary – French

Par Dieu = By God (an exclamation equivalent to ‘My goodness’ or ‘By Jove’).
Ma chère = my dear (used when subject is female)
Mais = but/however
Quoi = what
Mesdames = ladies
Maintenant = now

Alors = Well then. *Please note ‘Alors’ has no real English equivalent.

N’est-ce pas = don’t you agree / don’t you think. *Please note this also has no real English equivalent. It is used in the same place as the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the examples below:
(a) Time is of the essence, no?
(b) You speak Polish, yes?
Bear this in mind when you next encounter “n’est-ce pas”

Hein = an expression of disagreement or agreement (depends on context). Think of it like a snort of agreement or disagreement.

Chapter 017 – Playing a Closed Game

It was not a difficult matter for Sho to tell Nino of his stingy empress’s illness. As both were committed to the same drama series, they met the next day on the set where Sho told Nino everything Chiaki had revealed about Alys’s latest bout of illness. Though the smaller man had suspected something of this nature plaguing his beloved, he was flummoxed to discover that her illness had progressed so far and she still persisted in tending to her work before herself. The revelation of which darkened his mood considerably.

Nino had not been in a good mood that day. It wasn’t because he had woken up on the wrong side of bed or because he had a slight headache. Rather, he had his knickers in a twist because the false ingénue and presently his co-star and Sho’s on the Resurrected Butterflies set, Ichinose Haruyo, had been subtly throwing herself at him. Where most men would find such instances flattering or frightening, Nino was only plainly annoyed. He hated it when people fawned on him, offering to tend to his every need. His character was such that he would allow the person (in this case, Haruyo) to do so because she had offered, but he only allowed it because it would demean her. And because the person doing so was demeaning herself deliberately for his benefit, his opinion of that person immediately dropped. He reflected with a touch of pride that his Alys never fawned on him; instead, she opted to challenge him and his oftentimes ironically grand notions of himself, and would leave him to his own devices. Although he was polite to Haruyo when she busied herself fetching him tea, lighting his cigarettes, and sitting next to him and watching him game away his time on his DS, he found her an irritant and strove to ignore her. The last was a near impossible task as she kept brushing parts of her anatomy against him, much to his growing irritation. He knew Sho watched everything with amusement and tried to intervene badly by getting the girl away for a few minutes, but none of Sho’s means of prying her away worked. In the end, Sho decided to leave things be because Nino’s coldness and disdain for those who immolated themselves before him was extremely off-putting.

Regardless as to what Nino chose not to do (and he certainly ignored her presence when they were off the set), he could not shake aside Ichinose Haruyo. This was so much so that Sho teased him for picking up a new admirer. In so doing, he received the sharp end of Nino’s sarcastic tongue. The attentions lavished on him by Haruyo, coupled with Sho’s teasing, as well as a blister on his foot put Nino in a foul mood. Thus, by the time he arrived home, his mood was so black that it would be a gross understatement to say that he was royally put out. The truth was, Ninomiya Kazunari was livid, and when he was livid, he kept a straight and professional face at work but became dangerously poisonous in private to those he loved best, such as his mother, sister, Ohno, and Alys. As he was within the confines of the flat he shared with Alys and he had a genuine bone to pick with her over her illness, it seemed certain that she would receive the full brunt of his ire.

Therefore, despite it being very late at almost two o’clock in the morning, the very first thing Nino did on arriving home was to try the door to Alys’s study, which to his dismay was locked. He knew she was in; he knew because he could hear the strains of baroque music that she favoured whilst writing or revising papers, and he could hear her coughing. The past few years with her had acquainted him with many of her habits, and from what he could hear, he was certain that she was revising her paper for the conference in Hong Kong. Well, she could lock him out one door, but she wouldn’t lock him out the other one, he thought, storming into their bedroom. However, something arrested his attention and he stopped short of making his way to the adjoining door in the side corner beside her half of the built-in wardrobe.

Closer investigation revealed that the ‘something’ was a box of his preferred brand of briefs – lying innocently on the neatly made bed with a note stuck on it:
They were on sale, and just your size. Spare box in your underwear drawer.

Snorting in faint amusement in spite of himself, Nino tapped the side of the box to his lips in thought. As it dawned on him that she had deliberately locked the study door and contrived the entire scenario, a devilish thought occurred to him and he curled his lips into the smirk Arashi dubbed ‘the smirk of impending doom,’ his earlier moody anger now almost forgotten as he put aside the new undergarments in the laundry basket. Then, he partook of a quick shower, dressed in his pyjamas and made his way to the adjoining door that connected the bedroom to the study.

From the moment he stepped through the door and into the threshold of Alys’s study, he found her dressed in her nightgown and going through the conference paper orally whilst timing herself on the digital watch. Her engrossment in her work meant that she had not noticed Nino’s presence. She remained seated, with a hand supporting her head and her shoulders hunched when Nino shut the door behind him with a soft click. The sight of her thus presented a picture of unspoken anxiety and would have given a lesser human being a reason to retreat, but as Nino was not one of those specimens of humanity, he slid forward, sat down on the armrest of Alys’s chair and began massaging her shoulders.

“Tired, Teng sensei?” he asked, holding his tongue on the pieces of bloodstained tissue papers and kitchen towels littering her desk.

“Enervated more likely. I could ask you the same thing,” she smiled thinly, putting aside the watch and patting one of his hands. “There’s a kettle of buckwheat tea on the stove if you want some. Before you go to work tomorrow, take the chrysanthemum tea from the fridge. I bought a small cup of vanilla ice-cream for you. It’s in the freezer. It was going cheap because it expires next week. How was work?”

“Torture. New drama called ‘Resurrected Butterflies’. I’m expected to cry buckets.” He smirked, watching her push up her glasses.

“Excuse me while my heart goes ‘crack’ from your tears,” she deadpanned. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked askance at him, her glasses sliding down her nose. “Your footsteps sounded different when you came in. Did you honestly think you could catch me off-guard?”

“Damn shoe bit me. I have a blister on my foot.”

“Can you think of a better place to have a blister?”

“Yes, on your foot,” he rejoined smoothly, making her roll her eyes and snigger.

“There’s acriflavine on the dressing table behind the calamine lotion. Use it later if you don’t want me to sell your corpse. What kind of shoes did they make you wear to induce a blister? Bloody fiends!” she cussed gently and dropped a light kiss on his hand.

He laughed at the indignation she expressed on his behalf and concentrated on massaging her shoulders. “How about your work? Was it a good day?”

“Productive. All my lecture notes for the third year classes are complete; it’s just this paper left, and a review for Hypatia.” She paused when he yawned, and she exhaled slowly. “You’re tired. I have to finish this,” she coughed, returning to her papers.

Masking his anxiety at how bad her cough sounded and forbearing to comment on how cold her hands were, he concentrated on pressing her shoulders. “Come to bed. You’ve not slept in it since we moved in last month. I’ll sleep and you’ll do what you want. You’d be warmer. ”

“Swine! I have to redraft the conclusion!” she replied, slapping his arm before caving in to a hacking cough.

“Yeah, maybe it’s a sign for you to stop hitting me,” he teased.

“That would make life meaningless,” she wheezed, clinging to him with one hand and pressing a kitchen towel to her mouth.

“Alys, how sick are you?” he enquired sternly with a furrowed brow, pointing to the bloodied towel in her hand.

“Mentally, I am as sick as can be, almost as sick as you,” she replied, clutching the front of her nightgown closest to the throat as she felt the liquid from her lungs rising to her throat, constricting her breathing and making her nauseous. Cursing her lungs as she turned aside and coughed, she silently railed against those lungs for betraying her when she wanted to appear as healthy as possible. However, her lungs were as uncooperative as she was in one of her dark moods, and issued an open invitation to every organ in the chest cavity to be troublesome. Heaving for breath heavily as the creeping sensations of dysrhythmia affected her and her heart palpitated wildly before missing several beats, she noted with detachment that if her heart continued to pump that quickly, she could die before finishing her conference paper and that would be very irresponsible of her. Damn this heart! Bah bloody humbug, she cussed herself in her head as the chest pains led to spasms and trembling hands. “Enalapril,” she breathed unevenly in a voice cracked from coughing as her shaky hands fluttered across the desk for her pill bottles.

Instead of leaving her to flounder as she half expected Nino to do, he leapt into action and procured a pill for her heart and one for epilepsy for good measure as well some water from the carafe she always had in her study. She flicked a wrist at him on consuming the pill and slumped back into the chair, tucking her knees close to her chest in a bid to still the pain, but he was not to be brushed off so easily. His earlier anger had now resurfaced and he wanted her to know exactly how foolish she had made him feel by keeping her illness a secret from him.

“Cut the crap, Alys!” he demanded, seizing her cold, clammy and unsteady hand as she sought to take up a pen. “I know about the pneumonia.”

“Since you are so knowledgeable as to my ailments, you needn’t have asked,” she hissed out of the paroxysm of pain in her chest and misplaced malice.

“I don’t give a rat’s arse if you die, but I will not have you dying under my roof. My flat, my rules!” he spat, pressing a clean piece of tissue paper to her mouth as she coughed.

“Don’t patronise me! I have a share in this flat as well, bloody freeloader! You don’t have to know more than what I choose to tell you. I can look after myself!” she snapped chokingly, stifling the coughs while slapping aside his hands.

“Fine job you’ve done taking care of yourself, damn wilful bitch!”

“Oh, you think you can do better? I am not a pet you can take care – bitch or otherwise! Even if, hypothetically, I were one, I would still have my own brain, I would rather die than have your condescension!” she rejoined in ragged heaves, glaring at him as his fingers closed around her wrist tightly.

Nino returned her glower, his hand still clamped around her wrist. “Heh! I don’t want you! Don’t you ever think for one moment that I want you! You’re a habit I can break like smoking,” he hissed lowly, tightening his grip and exerting enough pressure that it would painful for her. He had come to point where the words came out as soon as he had thought of them and though a small part of his mind regretted it, he was much too angry to retract them. “How long did you think you could hide it when I’ve had suspicions that you were sick since Christmas? If you weren’t sick, I would crush you for lying and telling me you’re fine.”

“Is that a threat? Strike me. Go on. You know you want to. However, I warn you – hit me and God help me, there’s no telling what I would do,” she returned, her hateful eyes belying her calm tone. As much as she wanted to tell him that she believed treatment would impede progress on her conference paper and work, and as much as she wanted to tell him that she kept him at arm’s length for the greater part of their time in their new place to keep him in the pink of health, she did not. It would be unseemly to reveal that much to him, and there was no telling how he might twist that information to his advantage. Instead, she glared at him.

It surprised Nino that instead of attempting to fling his hand away, she gave him a cold, pitying look. He was surprised that he was more worried than angry, and was almost wryly disappointed in himself for using her as an outlet for his work frustrations. He was even amused that she wasn’t the least concerned that she was cornered, and continued to fight him on his level. “I hate that you kept it from me. I hate you for thinking I’m so stupid you can hide pneumonia from me. Kami-sama, I hate you for putting me on the spot where I’m forced to hurt you and you don’t even flinch.”

“How touching. I could listen to you lie for hours,” she wheezed, badly stifling a cough. She knew he was goading her on, but she was determined not to give him the satisfaction of any response he anticipated.

He gave her a final glare before releasing her wrist, and noticed that she did not seek to cover or tend to her slender wrist even though the marks of his fingers were angrily visible. He suppressed a snort. He should have known – his little professor was a proud woman, and she never allowed anyone to see her cower. “This is my flat and you will do as I say. You will see a doctor, and you will stay in bed until you are fully recovered. Damn you, Alys, you will let me take care of you.”

“Listen to the mad dog bark,” she intoned sharply, rolling her eyes, evidently unimpressed with his bravado. “How dare you! I am not Ohno whom you can tell what to do and what not to do. Think you can manipulate me like you do him? Think again, freeloader! Do you think I am unaware you pushed him into a political game with Umebayashi Saeko? The first lesson in playing politics is never to enter the battle unless victory is already assured. He can’t win. You know he can’t, and yet you pushed him in it!”

“Oh yeah? What would you have me do? It’s as much for Kaoru’s sake as it for Arashi’s!” he snarled.

“You’re only doing it because you think it would be amusing! He may allow you to lead him by the nose, but you will not be able to find me so docile!” she retorted, before succumbing to a cough and roughly flicked aside his hands as he tried to assist her.

Undeterred, Nino came round the corner of the desk and took her free hand in his. If he was pleased (which he was) that she did not resist, he said nothing. He let her dig her cold fingers into his palm as she heaved violent coughs into a fresh piece of tissue paper. With that one touch, they understood that he missed her company and she was contrite for hurting him with her words. Truth be told, Nino was amused by this exchange as much as he was enraged by it. Her last remark, especially, touched a chord in him. No one would accuse his Alys of being docile, certainly not him. If he wanted docility, he would have settled for a lesser female or a simpering miss like that Haruyo woman. No, his Alys was unmatched in dry humour and her ability to read him.

“Damn it, what you would have me do? I can’t play the game for him,” he retorted.

“All of you could play her at once. You have a common cause against her. I could have told you that had you come clean with me instead of hiding the Ohno-Kaoru factor in the Umebayashi Group’s stake in J Storm,” she snapped between coughs as she pushed up her glasses.

“You can’t even be open with me on your pneumonia; how could you expect me to be open with you about this?” he hissed, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth, simultaneously marvelling at her brilliant suggestion and wondering what they were doing fighting over something so trivial. The irony that they were giving each other contradictory signals was not lost on him – on the one hand, they were throwing barbed words at each other; on the other, they were as physically needy as ever.

Neither was it lost on Alys, for she smirked on meeting his gaze and reading the thought in his eyes. “Touché,” she attempted to snigger, but only managed a weak rumbling choking sound as she dug her fingers into his palm.

An arm of support was placed promptly placed around her shoulder to assuage the physical pain he could see on her face. “It’s not too late for us to contrive a plot together. We could beat any game,” he threw out with a devilish smirk, gripping her in such a way that she had to rest against his shoulder.

Snuggling closer to him, she pursed her lips before curling them. “Not bloody likely….”

He did not wait to hear the rest of the response that would have escaped her for he bent his head towards her with a smirk. “With your brains and my skill, the world can be ours for the taking when we’re done crushing the Saeko bitch – power, money, everything, whatever – we will have it.”

“I am not impressed,” intoned the professor with an indignant cough.

“I will have you know that kind of proposition is the attractive type,” he responded with a deceptively caressing air.

“What is it supposed to attract? Lifeforms lower than pond scum?” came the ready sarcastic retort.

“Witches and Yuki-onna – if those kinds of beings count as creatures lower than pond scum. I always think of you of the fish that eats microscopic plankton,” he smiled and stroked her hair.

“Am I really?” the ironic edge more evident in her voice this time. “I thought I was getting away with the appellation of microbe.”

“Which means I’m the thing lower than pond scum.” He burst into a low throaty chuckle at her sharp riposte and whispered in her ear, “I always love it when you’re determined to be cruel.”

“Not as cruel as you when you make me read to you while you lick and goodness-knows-what and stop when I stop reading. Now that should be a legitimated form of torture,” she said sharply.

“All you had to do was tell me to stop.” His lips curled and acquired an almost evil aspect.

“Like you would?” She raised her eyes challengingly to his.

“I might,” his voice lilted. “Then again, I might not.”

Alys knew him well enough to know what was to follow and accordingly put out her hand in a murmur of agitation. The hand was seized in a firm clasp and carried to his lips. While she accepted the conciliatory gesture, she withdrew her hand when she felt a tongue running over her knuckles. “I am not in the mood for that,” she said coldly.

“Come to bed anyway. Nothing will happen if you don’t want it to,” he tossed out carelessly, his pleading eyes following her as she made her way to the window. He only wanted her to be near him where he could guard her rest. Pride however, forbade him from telling her so.

“I know,” she choked back a badly swallowed cough, turning her head slightly and looking tiredly at him, holding back her desire to take him up on his offer. However, she would not be so irresponsible as to possibly infect him with bacterial pneumonia. She could not bring herself to accept the offer, not when she saw that there was only gravity in his face and no anger. She curled her lips and looked out at the darkness.

“Come to bed and we’ll bitch about my baka co-stars and your imbecilic students,” he suggested, curling his lips into an evil smirk of delight at this salubrious thought.

“Please do not tempt me when I’m tired of...” She wanted to say she was tired of pretending to be fine when she really wanted to hear him consign her dunderheads to the devil and nod to sleep hearing him complain about his work. Knowledge that he would pooh-pooh her claims that she would keep him up with her coughing or that she was too sick not to be infectious kept her silent on the issue. Instead, she firmly insisted, “Leave me alone… please.”

“If that’s what you want,” he said, remaining where he was, staring at the anxiety weighing down her shoulders.

“Good night,” she replied in English, effectively dismissing him. Clutching the front of her nightgown to still the pain from her palpitations and the sharp pains in her lungs, she silently prayed that he would leave before her self-control unwound and she gave in to the need to tell him about the latest forms of student idiocy.

Before he left her study, Nino turned back and caught her coughing desperately again, paler and weaker than he had ever remembered her. He cringed when he realised she had pushed him away without supplying him with a reason. However much he wanted to scold her lovingly for foolishly refusing to see a doctor until she finished her work, he did nothing, choosing to respect her decision. As he sat on the bed, plucking out a single strand of her hair that had adhered itself to his pyjama top and winding it around his finger, he pondered on the meaning hidden in her claim that she should not be tempted because she was tired. “Is she tired of me?” he sneered at himself. “Kami-sama, what if she’s tired of me?”

On realising that there was no answer to the riddle, he placed the strand of hair carefully on her pillow. Then, with a final snort at himself, he removed his glasses and tried to tune out the coughs he could still hear in the next room.

NOTES

A Closed Game, also called a Double Queen Pawn Opening, is a chess opening where both players move the pawn in front of their queens forward, leaving their queen’s open at the very beginning. In short, a closed game is where d4 and d5 are played. The closed game is a move that belongs under the umbrella of the Queen’s Gambit which was explained in the notes of Ch 11.

Readers should think what this means in terms of the conversation here as well as the significance of what is to come of the two characters (i.e. Kaoru and Saeko) mentioned in the conversation of this chapter.

Hypatia is a feminist academic journal of ancient political philosophy.

Chapter 014 – Risk charting liquidity

In quite another quarter, though topographically hardly five underground stations away from the location of JE Central, the news of the Umebayashi Group’s acquisition of 20% of J Storm shares created different sensations in the three women who were gathered at a small café. It was the lower storey of a restored pre-war shop house, and most certainly not the kind of establishment Sora usually visited. However, as it was three votes against her one, she found herself seated at the nondescript café, poking at her scrambled eggs and reading the newspaper article Chiaki had indicated.

“Par Dieu!” Renée-Caroline exclaimed, reading the newspaper over Sora’s shoulder and looking up briefly at the harried looking and coughing fourth woman who had just entered the establishment. “Alys, ma chère! Have you read the financial headlines?”

“I got you tea and a bagel,” Chiaki addressed the bespectacled academic as Alys joined them at the table and dumped her briefcase on a chair.

“20% of their label!” hissed Sora lowly in disbelief as the newcomer slapped the newspaper that had been under her arm on the table. At the same time, Chiaki’s mobile phone chimed with an incoming text message.

Pushing up her glasses, Alys choked the rest of her cough in a tissue paper before flicking her wrist airily to signal her knowledge of that fact. “The point being?” she asked dispassionately, adding half a sachet of sugar to her tea.

“The point being we’ve underestimated her,” Chiaki said calmly, placing her mobile on the table. “She’s made her move.”

Sora seized the phone before Alys could read the message. “I could have anticipated that! The bitch!” declared the novelist and mangaka in a hot, accusatory tone.

Renée-Caroline gasped when Sora showed her mobile. “Non! She did not! She could not!”

“Forgive me for being so dull-witted, but would you believe it – I am still in the dark as to how becoming a shareholder in a record label constitutes as anything other than a business deal,” commented Alys from the rim of her teacup.

Promptly flipping the mobile phone screen towards her, Sora calmly said, “From Sho.”

The philosophy professor pursed her lips into a bloodless line after reading the message. “King’s gambit with her first two moves. She buys enough of their stock to potentially be on the J Storm shareholders board, and she declares her intention to win him back. Very clever and well done. She’s gambling everything on this. Very amusing, or would be, save for the fact that Ohno can’t play at her level and win.”

“Mais Alys, this is not a chess match. This is real!” Renée-Caroline reminded her.

“As apt as your chess metaphor is, we’re talking about a woman who could break up Kaoru and Ohno, and you’re talking about it like a game. Is there any shred of humanity in you?” chided Sora, watching with some fascination as Alys twisted off bite size pieces from her bagel.

“There is only ice in my veins,” deadpanned the academic, popping a bit of bagel into her mouth. “Yet joking aside, I am afraid this is the stark reality. Ohno can’t hope to win playing the game at her level. He would most likely respond to the gambit rather than decline it. She wants him to respond. The only way to thwart her is to put a foot down and not respond to this feint.”

“Why aren’t you’re not the least surprised?” Chiaki asked, anxiously eyeing her shaking hands and the bloodstained tissue paper on the table.

“Are you not disturbed? Did you know? Did Monsieur Ninomiya tell you like Masaki told me?” enquired Renée-Caroline, patting Alys’s hand as she coughed.

“I know what you tell me. The freeloader did not say anything. It is too sensitive a work-related topic for him to broach with me. However, I have had my suspicions from the questions Ohno had been posing on power politics,” was the calm reply as the philosopher read the English version of the Nikkei Financial Times for a more in-depth analysis on the stock purchase. “It appears the Umebayashi Group is restructuring divisions in the technology wing to deal with cash drains. A most interesting development raising a most interesting question.”

“The ‘why’ question.” Sora nodded, finishing the rest of her eggs.

“Precisely,” Alys said between coughs. “Why invest so largely in an industry she has no experience in if it would lead to potential cash drains? Unless, of course, it meant that the cash drains were already existent prior to the stock purchases. The 20% stake in the J Storm label is a sure-fire means of turning a profit, serving to bring in the dividends to cover the cash drains with near immediacy, aid the restructuring of the Umebayashi Tech wing and boost investor confidence in Umebayashi’s technology stocks. However, like any good analyst, I have two residual questions, videlicit: one – what necessitated the restructuring of a sound corporation; two – what brought about the cash drains of the technological face of the company?”

“Indeed.” Chiaki frowned and nodded. “It would be too simple to say she bought the shares to make a play for Ohno, or because of the profit of the record label.”

“Alors, why does she need so much money now when she has a multimillion dollar business firm?” was Renée-Caroline’s realistic question.

“Exactly, there isn’t a liability in J Storm because it’s blue chip stocks. She would continue to receive regular dividends even if, blessed Athena forbid, the boys’ management company isn’t doing well. Inversely, her need for security in dividend payouts suggests, as my sainted grandmother would say, she is covering ten pots with nine pot covers,” Alys intoned animatedly between coughs while pushing up her glasses and perusing the newspapers.

“It still doesn’t explain why something’s rotten in the state of the Umebayashi Group.” Chiaki shook her head and her friend’s habit of reducing everything to either a game or an academic exercise.

Renée-Caroline lit a cigarette and shook her head as she had no explanation to offer.

Sora leaned forward, pulled down the newspaper covering Alys’s face and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I have it.”

“Quoi?” The maestra snapped her fingers to encourage the novelist to speak.

“How did you manage to…” The botanist turned to look sharply at her.

“As a former member of the kazoku, I am still able to pull a few strings.” Sora smiled smugly and leaned in closer to the table, much amused by the startled expression on Chiaki’s usually no-nonsense mien and the studied blasé air about Alys. “The Group has been profit warned. It is expected to make a slump in the first fiscal quarter.” She paused when Chiaki blinked blankly at her and Alys curled her lips into a faint smirk of interest. “Umebayashi Engineering has been selling some of its R&D investments for a more liquid stake in the service industry. My Nijo and Konoe cousins inform me that they suspect scalping.”

“Scalping?” Chiaki and Renée-Caroline questioned simultaneously, not following the train of thought of their two companions.

“A form of market manipulation.” The professor flicked her wrist and explained, “It occurs when price gaps are arbitrarily created when trading securities, currency and commodities. The rule there is to play hard, play large, play fast, pull out even faster. Dangerous stuff, even the freeloader and I don’t play games of that nature.”

Chiaki with her usual logic and sense and immediately grasped the concept and was appalled by what was suggested. “Why does a large conglomerate have to provide a false impression to the market by playing around with the asking price?”

“Dites moi, what would bluffing the trader or seller do?” Renée-Caroline added.

“By fiddling with the bids, there is a tremendous amount of capital to be had if you play it right. The rationale for this stems from the avaricious desire to obtain a large profit per share by going large with the buying and selling. Precisely because they are playing hard and fast, the second cardinal rule is to never hold stocks for long periods of time,” said Alys propping up her cheek on a hand as she coughed into another piece of tissue paper. When the coughs subsided, she turned back to the novelist and the gestured for her to continue. “The company held volatile stock overnight? Imbecilic!”

“Whose doing was it? The new CEO or the former CEOs?” Chiaki asked.

Sora cracked a crooked smile. If someone had told her two years ago that she would be friends with a botanist-biotechnologist, the maestra of an orchestra and a Todai philosophy professor she would have consigned the person to the lunatic asylum. She was amazed at how they got along and were able to meet on a level of intellectual equality. For most of her life, she had held the erroneous view that most people were helplessly stupid and not worth her time getting to know. However, extended acquaintance with her present company had overturned that notion with their quick minds and humanity.

“When the late Umebayashi husband and wife bought and sold chunks of the Konoe family owned Kujaku hotel and resorts stocks in after-hours trading, the Nijos in the stock exchange suspected swing trading,” the novelist-mangaka elucidated. “The Konoes responded by pulling out capital from the hotel stocks. The resultant sudden price change killed the Umebayashi Group’s capital in play by catching them unprepared. Their sudden deaths meant they couldn’t sell to recoup their losses. Given Umebayashi Saeko’s response for quick liquidation and her investment in the blue chip stock of J Storm, she had not been aware of the scalping.”

“Until recently,” Renée-Caroline sighed, knitting her brows at the complicated mess that they had uncovered. “Alors, what would it mean if she purchased more J Storm shares?”

“Which means she would be doing all she can to keep her conglomerate afloat,” Chiaki said with a generous shake of her head at the unseemly dirtiness of the business and corporate world.

“Is there any current danger of flight-to-liquidity?” asked Alys, coughing and surreptitiously checking her watch for the time, for she had a lecture to deliver at 10am.

“Or panic selling? Is there a danger of that?” Renée-Caroline whispered while patting the professor’s hand again, frowning at the bloody tissue papers tucked besides the older woman’s plate.

“Not if Umebayashi covers her losses,” Sora intoned gravely.

“What about Kaoru?” Chiaki asked, handling a fresh packet of tissue to the violently hacking professor.

The novelist thumped the table in self-annoyance at forgetting the unfortunate fiancée who was likely to be caught in the crossfire between Saeko and Ohno. “Kaoru-chan isn’t going to throw up her hands and say that it’s Ohno’s loss like Chiaki, or channel it through writing like I would, or carry out elaborate revenge plots like Alys, or stick a baton up his arse like Renée-Caroline. Should we tell her?”

“Mesdames, she is not chinaware. She will not break,” Renée-Caroline firmly interjected. “We should tell her.”

“Confound it!” Alys exclaimed in English, rolling her eyes. “Just tell her and get over and done with it! Vacillating between telling and not telling borders on Ohno-esque indecision. Come what may, we are going to screw our courage to the sticking-plate and tell her, damn the consequences!” she continued, coughing desperately and raggedly into her hand.

“She deserves to know, if she hasn’t already suspected,” Chiaki reminded her present company, giving Alys a suspicious look as if she knew that the academic was hiding something from everyone.

“Of course she suspects; we suspected!” Alys rolled her eyes to highlight her belief that it should be plainly obvious to all. It was a comment that drew the agreement of all the ladies present as they discussed the best way of approaching Kaoru with this disagreeable development in the fabric of her relationship with her fiancé.

NOTES

Risk is used in the economic and financial sense in the chapter title where Risk = (probability of event occurring) X (impact of event occurring). In finance, risk is the probability that an investment's actual return will be different than expected. This includes the possibility of losing some or all of the original investment. A fundamental idea in finance is the relationship between risk and return. The greater the potential return one might seek, the greater the risk that one generally assumes.

Liquidity refers both to that quality of a business which enables it to meet its payment obligations, in terms of possessing sufficient liquid assets; and to such assets themselves. Liquid assets can be sold rapidly, with minimal loss of value, anytime within market hours. The essential characteristic of a liquid market is that there are ready and willing buyers and sellers at all times. This is based on the probability that the next trade is executed at a price equal to the last one. A market is liquid if there are ready and willing buyers and sellers in large quantities. In contrast, an illiquid asset is an asset which is not readily salable due to uncertainty about its value or lacking a market in which it is regularly traded. A product’s liquidity of a product is dependent on how often it is bought and sold. Traditionally, investors look at the stock exchange and future markets as liquid markets because the shares in the stock exchange can be converted quickly. Speculators may affect the liquidity of the market by taking advantage of the fact that some market makers are willing to pay a higher price for the asset in a liquid market than for comparable assets without a liquid secondary market. This in turn brings us to liquidity risk.

Liquidity risk is the risk that a given security or asset cannot be traded quickly enough in the market to prevent a loss (or make the required profit).

In light of what readers now know by liquidity and risk, readers are expected to see the significance of liquid investments, understand Saeko’s business model and worldview, and read behind the lines whenever the ladies talk economics and business like they do in this chapter.

This story also has investments and liquidity and risk management as themes. I leave it to the readers to interpret these two issues vis-à-vis the story.

Alys mentions Saeko making a King’s Gambit in paragraph 11. The King's Gambit is one of the oldest documented openings in chess. Although now rarely seen at Master level, it is used frequently in amateur games in order for Black to maintain the one pawn advantage, moves must be made that seriously weaken the position of the White pieces. Black can obtain a reasonable position by relinquishing the extra pawn at a later time and consolidating defensively. Ideally, King's Gambit should end in a draw with best play by both sides as the forcefulness of the opening moves is a gambit equally well attacked and defended is never a decisive game, either on one side or the other. However, because of the difficulty of White players responding/accepting the Gambit and surviving, some grandmasters have called the King’s Gambit a “decisive mistake” and that “it is almost madness to play the King's Gambit”.

The way Alys talks about the King’s Gambit indicates she places herself in the black player’s position. This time, she does not do so out of choice (even though she prefers to play black herself). She puts herself in the Black’s position because she observes Saeko has made the first move. In chess, White traditionally makes the first move. In the King’s Gambit, White opens with e4 and then e5 (yes, white opens with 2 moves in the opening in this gambit and this gambit alone). Black, if he/she chooses to accept the gambit will have to play f4.

Although one of the early chapter titles is ‘Queen’s Gambit’, I mean that metaphorically because a ‘would-be queen’ starts the game and besides, only 1 move occurs in that chapter. When Alys says ‘King’s Gambit’, she refers to the specific fact that Saeko makes 2 moves when she opens (cf. para above).

When Sora mentions “As a former member of the Kazoku…”, she is referring to her links to the former aristocracy. Kazoku literally means flowery lineage was the peerage system in Japan used between 1869-1947. Under this system, the heirs of the five regent houses (go-seike) of the Fujiwara clan (namely the Konoe, Takatsukasa, Kujo, Ichijo and Nijo all became princes.

Glossary – French

Par Dieu = By God (an exclamation equivalent to ‘My goodness’ or ‘By Jove’).
Ma chère = my dear (used when subject is female)
Alys, ma chère = Alys, my dear
Bonjour ma chère Chiaki = good morning, my dear
Mais = but/however
Quoi = what
Dites moi = tell me
Mesdames = ladies
Alors = Well then. *Please note ‘Alors’ has no real English equivalent.

Glossary – Miscellaneous

Videlicit = namely, or that is to say
If you recall from Ch 36.5 Between Wit & Sarcasm, Alys finds acronyms and shortening terminology vulgar. Hence she calls ‘pub’ by its proper name ‘public house’. Where possible, she uses the actual term. Here, she uses the actual Latin form of the phrase“that is to say.” In scholarly articles, videlicit is shortened to “viz.”