43 posts tagged “life's colours & sounds”

My readers know me as many things: some in the Harry Potter fandom call me Diotima Lestrange, RPG friends call me either Murasaki or Saki-chan, online Arashi friends call me Shoko. Who am I? That's a very good question. But if you are looking for a simple or easy answer, I am sorry to say that I haven't one. Since existential angst on 'what' and 'who' I am will likely bore you, I shall say nothing more on that score. If you must call me something, you may either call me Shoko or Lady Strange.

Here be a repository of my Arashi fangirling, fanfics, and other ramblings. Occasionally, there will be some serious talk on life, as well as original fiction and poetry.

To make life easier for my readers, I have created "easy navigation" links if you're looking to read my fics. Do not abuse these links or I will lock down on everything. D'accord?

Life's Colours & Sounds - Omake

‘Take me Faraway’

Once upon a time, in a kingdom whose name time had forgotten, there lived a handsome prince by the name of Jun. His attractiveness was legendary from his finely chiselled brows to his delicately moulded lips, and noble ladies from distant lands came to visit the kingdom he would one day inherit for no other reason than to swoon at his feet. Due to the attentiveness of the ladies, Prince Jun’s habitual aspect was one of coldness and reserve, but sometimes he could smile in a way that not only softened the austerity of his countenance but also lit his eyes with a gleam of purest amusement. It was not the smile he kept for social occasions – for those innumerable occasions – he donned a well-placed glare and a lopsided smirk. Only a few had seen that real smile, among those was his future kingdom’s Premier, who happened to be a close personal family of the royal family. Those who had not seen that smile were inclined to think that he was a proud, disagreeable sort of man, and they would have been utterly correct. He was of a highly disagreeable, unsocial and taciturn disposition.

“Hey, I resent that! I’m handsome, in demand and the heir to this kingdom!” protested the Prince vehemently, shaking a disgruntled fist in the air. “Why am I in a doublet and hose sitting on a terrace wall? And who the hell is narrating this story?”

Unbeknownst to him, a personage of no importance was watching him from the shadows and coughing discreetly to catch his attention. “Psst, your highness, psst! Over here. By the shadows under the turret!”

“What now?” grumbled the prince as he sauntered to the shadows.

“You’re in the wrong scene. The Terrace is for Act II. For Act I, you’re supposed to be in your royal bedchamber,” instructed the English Public School accent of the narrator as it sniggered.

Prince Jun, perceiving that he had been gulled, said with strong feeling, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I hope the servants cleaned the place. It’s always so filthy that I can see the dust crawling towards me!”

The stark reality was however quite far from the stuff of fairytales. Prince Jun was, in actuality, of a highly disagreeable, unsocial and taciturn disposition so much so that he was known as the Dark Prince. Within the palace, he was infamous for his dark character. The servants, particularly, the maid-of-all-works, Sora, despised him so completely that she cussed him under her breath at every available opportunity. The infamy of his temper had led to an underground demand for Dark Prince voodoo dolls within the palace.

Indeed, the day’s work was often made inexorably difficult due to his numerous demands for cleanliness and order. Sora, the maid-of-all-works, did not enjoy being at the receiving end of the Prince’s sharp tongue and frequently came to points with him, much to her own misfortune. Not for the first time, she wished that the Dark Prince voodoo dolls she had ordered via the Commoners’ Mail Order Network actually worked.

Our story opens at the start of the day with Sora scrubbing the floors of the Prince’s bedchamber in the medieval way - by hand.

“Oi, you, slacker!” commanded Prince Jun, authoritatively brandishing a cat-of-nine-tails. “Clean under the bed! I want every surface spotless. Anyone who skives will be pushed down the turret and fed to the moat crocodiles!”

“The King has given orders that execution by moat crocodiles is for the entertainment of the Queen only,” lisped the royal interior designer Kaoru, holding out several swatches in various shades of purple for His Highness’s selection.

Ignoring the reference to his stepmother, whom he disliked with an unhealthy passion, the Prince swept the index finger of his free hand across his dressing table and recoiled in horror when he saw that it had darkened his immaculately royal finger. “Why is it still so dirty here! You, maid, clean it right away! Don’t you know how weak my lungs are? Or how fragile my royal body falls prey to common illnesses? Who will be responsible if I die?”

“Actually, your Highness, your fragile health is because you over-party every night,” Sora snapped, irritably flinging a once pink (now greyish) rag at him.

“Le gasp!” muttered Prince Jun, retreating two steps. “Did you just answer back to me, the Dark Prince?”

“Shall we watch the instant replay?” asked Sora sotto voce.

“I don’t have to take this, ne!” announced Prince Jun as he drew himself to his full height and threw open the French doors of his balcony and tied Sora to one of the ropes already hanging by the balustrades. “You’ll see what it’s like to be this close…” He squeezed his finely manicured thumb and index finger together, “to the royal moat crocodiles!”

“You know, Dark Prince,” replied Sora frankly as she made no attempt to resist the Prince’s attempt to place her on the parapet with the rope tied around her waist. “I won’t die. No one really dies in an omake. FYI, her majesty fed the crocodiles an hour ago. They wouldn’t eat me. Socrates and Plato are very well behaved for crocodiles. And I’m due to appear in another story after this omake as part of my contract.”

Ignoring the reasonable words of the maid-of-all-works, Jun struck a dramatic and suitably princely pose with a hand on his forehead and another at his chest. “This shouting at the servants is ruinous to my perfect complexion. It may give me wrinkles before my time. I’m not like this by nature, ne. Ano, I’m misunderstood and lonely, and loneliness, ne, depresses me. Why, you ask? I will tell you! I’m starved of love. The other guys have their groundbreaking, touching romances and I, ne, I don’t. I feel left out – alone, cold and bereft. Eto…. What will I do? I want a Princess who will rescue me from this drudgery. I need a tall, fair, beautiful princess able to quarrel with me at least once a day. Are my requirements too hard to meet? Ano ne, I may be of royal blood and too handsome for mortal eyes, but even I need love!”

“Eh? You don’t need love!” razzed Sora, poking at him in the chest and giving the royal annoyance a piece of her mind. “You need to fix your screwed up character! No one loves a self-centred bastard Dark Prince. FYI, Highness, from the crappy, prissy way you behave, everyone, and I really mean everyone, has a bone to pick with you. Forget daily quarrels with your princess. You would have to fight duels from dawn to dusk! No one would care if you died….”

“Oops! My hand slipped,” sneered the Prince as he shoved her off the parapet mid-rant. “Of all the impertinence! Good service staff is so hard to find nowadays!” He shook his head and slapped his hands in self-satisfaction. “My job here is done, ne.”

Owing to his good looks, the Prince was well-loved and petted by everyone in the kingdom, however, precisely because of his winning ways, he had incurred the ire and displeasure of his stepmother who was really an evil sorceress plotting to take over the kingdom. It was rumoured that she had enchanted the King by magic because he would deny her nothing. It was also rumoured that her jealousy of the Prince and her personal ambition were so great that she spent her waking hours alternating between dastardly plotting to do away with the weakling king or contemplating the cold-blooded murder of her stepson.

However, that could not be further from the truth. In this kingdom, the King was anything but a weakling and the Queen was anything but jealous of her stepson. The truth was, believe it or not, the King was an uxorious man and his current Queen was deeply attached to him. The commoners may not believe it (and what did plebeians know anyway), but the servants in the palace and the government ministers were fully aware of their Royal Majesties’ mutual affection and trusted their judgement in all fiscal matters of the state.

Even though the Privy Purse was full and the country not in any budgetary deficit, the royal premier was still concerned with the state of the kingdom. So concerned was he that he approached their Royal Majesties in the Privy Chamber with a stack of state papers. From the way the other ministers had crowded around the doors of their Majesties’ Privy Chamber, the Premier, one Sho Sakurai by name, knew something was amiss. He heard all their panicky reports and scowled as he ploughed through all the ministers’ statements, hoping against hope that one of them would pass for good news in their Majesties’ eyes.

“Well?” hissed the King testily as Sho stepped into his chamber in full court dress. His Majesty shot metaphorical daggers at the Premier for daring to intrude when he was assisting with his Queen’s toilette.

“Oh, most great and puissant Majesties, we must do something about the Dark Prince…” began Premier Sho uneasily as he tugged at the lace cravat at his throat, still unused to seeing his Queen en deshabille despite the fact that it was twelve years since her coronation. He could not deny that she had implemented firm political reforms in the kingdom and was the only person alive who could manage the King. However, her habit of letting the King dress her after breakfast while they both attended to matters of state was most disconcerting.

“You should punish the errant Prince. The hoi polloi have heard of His Highness’s wild and sinister personality. He goes partying until five in the morning, sets off firecrackers for the hell of things, shopping for things he doesn’t need and refusing to pay, spewing insults to the traders, and pushing the servants into the moat. Last month alone, we lost five serving boys, two stable hands, three aide-de-camps and one scullery maid.”

A scream and a vituperative shout of “Damn you, Dark Prince! Vengeance will be mine, do you hear me? Mine!” followed by a loud “oof” sound and the very quick downward whizzing of someone past the full-length windows of the Privy Chamber assailed everyone’s hearing.

“My word, what was that?” the Queen asked blandly, pulling on a black fur-lined gown with turned-back sleeves over a dark maroon kirtle.

“Nothing of consequence, my love,” the King assured her as he opened the jewellery casket and picked out a set of earrings for her.

“That is exactly what I’m getting at, your Majesties!” cried Premier Sho in exasperation, pulling at his hair.

“The Dark Prince is getting out of control! That –” He pointed to the rope dangling outside the window. “That is another palace servant. We have to do something about him. A punishment must be meted out so that he will learn the error of his ways, meet a suitable Princess and get married.”

“We know Jun is a little problematic, but he’s my son, what do you expect me to do,” the King said in a clearly bored voice as he curled his lips sardonically, seemingly more interested in caressing his wife’s neck and watching her pin up the hair that she had twisted with a maroon ribbon. “What does my Alys have to say about this?”

“Your Majesty, if you could perhaps persuade His Majesty that disciplinary measures should be taken against Prince Jun,” said the pot-valiant Premier as he struggled to hide his growing discomfiture at being in the presence of his monarchs.

The Queen lifted her brows in bland astonishment as she tilted her head to allow her spouse to dab perfume behind her ears. “Is it even within my jurisdiction to punish Jun as his stepmother?”

“Yes, yes! Of course it is, your Majesty! But there are problems, innumerable problems! At the rate, the Dark Prince is going, the approval rating of the royal family will plummet to rock bottom before long!” explained Premier Sho in a burst of eloquence as he unrolled a parchment and pinned it to the desk her Majesty used for her private study. “You see here?” asked the Premier, indicating somewhere on the pie-chart with a quill.

“More statistics, Sho?” sneered the King as he twitched his lips into a dismissive smirk. “I can’t understand any of the regression models or Chi-squared models you use.”

Her Majesty, possessing a more intellectual turn of mind than her royal spouse glided forward towards the desk and adjusted a pair of prince-nez on her nose. “I’ll interpret for you, Kazu darling,” she turned to smile at the King warmly. “A survey was conducted using a sample of 1000 is drawn from the commoners. A single question was posed, videlicit: Do you think the royal family is superfluous? 35% answered yes, 25% answered in the negative, 15% answered whatever, 10% answered no comment, 5% answered other opinions, 5% answered it depends on the budgetary reforms after the second quarter.”

“Put it in a memo, Sho,” King Kazunari snarled and folded his arms. “You’re too realistic with the opinion polls.”

A veil bulged at the Premier’s forehead and throbbed there as he gritted his teeth to maintain his equanimity. It was a fatal mistake to blow his top before the King and Queen. And as Sho was very much attached to breathing, he tried to contain himself. “Don’t you see, your Majesty, those who claimed to have no comment, other opinions or it depends on the budget are the swingers. If they believe they are unhappy, they could decide that the royal family is redundant.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” The king flicked a wrist and leant nonchalantly on the chair with his cheek resting upon the back of his hand. “What do you expect us to do about it? Jun’s still our son, however problematic.”

The Premier shook his head and waited in patient resignation for his certain fate to descend upon him.

“Your son, darling,” reminded the Queen, balancing on the armrest and placing a hand on his shoulder. “He has none of me.”

“He could have been if you didn’t go off for the Crusades! I didn’t know if you were coming back! I waited a year, then five, then…. For fuck’s sake, I had needs, you know, Alys! I couldn’t wait around for you indefinitely!” he snapped, his eyes flashing at the Queen as she removed the prince-nez emotionlessly.

“I promised to bring you new lands and expanded territories to our marriage! Was I, the daughter of your father’s chancellor of the exchequer too lowly for you? You could have waited for me instead of taking an insipid Princess from a pathetic swampy backwater as your wife. Imagine what it was like for me to find out! Why do you think we sacked Constantinople?” Queen Alys rose and regally strode her way to the bookshelves and ran her fingers along the books’ spines.

“You shouldn’t have left me to begin with!” riposted King Kazunari bitterly. “I said I would give you power, poetry and philosophy. If you said you wanted the neighbouring kingdom, we could have waged a war; you would have had it. You didn’t have to go the Crusades!”

“You didn’t have to marry her!”

“It was politics!” the King reasoned and then curled his lips into a feral smirk. “Besides, I had her poisoned when you came back. What’s-her-name was just the bed warmer! I never gave her a coronation though the Crown could afford it. I did wait in my own way.”

“Oh, my poor darling, I’m sorry,” purred the Queen from the bookshelves, stretching out a conciliatory hand.

“Ah, my cynical little witch,” declared His Majesty, quickly striding to his royal spouse and reverently kissing her hand. “Torture and pillaging aren’t any fun without you!”

Upon slapping his forehead on this display of conjugal bliss, Sho coughed delicately. “Your Majesties, now isn’t the time to be reminiscing about your courtship days. There’s the pressing matter of the Dark Prince.” He paused and executed a low court bow to the Queen. “Does your majesty have anything that might help keep the Prince in check? You are a sorceress after all.”

“Let’s see…” she traced a lip with a tapered finger and pulled out a book from the bookcase, causing the shelf to spin around and reveal a simple square wooden table with four chairs around it and a crystal ball in the centre. “This is the Crystal Ball of Truth. However I bought the generic version to save money, and the generic version, according to the manual has only 85-90% accuracy.”

“85%, 90%. Whatever,” snorted King Kazunari dismissively, plonking himself in a chair by the table. “What I want to know is what it will tell us.”

Queen Alys rolled her eyes at the stupidity of the men and waved her hands above the crystal ball. “Yield thy secrets that thine crystal eynes espy. Who shalt cause the ruin of the Kingdom?”

A brief flash of light flooded the Privy Chamber, and a fairy about the size of a normal human being materialised with a soft pop.

“You already know the answer,” he said, spinning around in a moonwalk. “It’s the Dark Prince. How could someone so self-centred be the heir to the throne? His narcissism is a disgrace to the royal house and a public hazard! It ruins His Royal Majesty’s good name!”

“I like this fairy, Alys!” the King opined with a nod as he rested his chin on his wife’s shoulder. “Can we keep him as a pet?” When the Queen gave her assent, the King proceeded to ask, “What’s your name?”

“Satoshi, the fairy of the budget crystal ball,” he replied, pointing to his own nose.

Premier Sho scratched his chin thoughtfully as their Royal Majesties tried to tempt the fairy with preserved plums and sweets. “I think the spirit may be letting his personal feelings of attachment to the royal family interfere. But in any case, just to confirm – Prince Jun will be the downfall of the kingdom?” When the fairy nodded with a sad pout, Sho thumped a fist in his palm. “Your Majesties, we must do something about Prince Jun before it is too late!”

“Kill him,” ordered the King and Queen simultaneously.

Sho looked at the royal couple and repressed a shudder. “Don’t you think you’re going too far?”

“No,” answered the royal couple in unison.

“Look, Prime Minister,” the Queen elucidated. “Arguing amongst ourselves isn’t going to solve the problem of Jun ruining the kingdom. Let’s just kill him.”

Sho sighed and rubbed his face in resignation for there was no gainsaying the royal couple when they made a joint executive decision. “Fine, okay then. What do you want to do? Write a decree and execute him? Assassination is straightforward.”

“Oh! I see food!” exclaimed Satoshi, the budget crystal ball fairy, as he pirouetted his way to the Queen’s desk where there was a bowl of colourful foil-wrapped chocolate marzipan. He looked at the Queen with puppy dog eyes, pointed at the bowl and then pointed at his nose and smiled almost pitifully. Her Majesty nodded indulgently and flicked her wrist to indicate that the fairy could have the whole bowl.

“No!” King Kazunari insisted, coming to points with his Premier. “Assassination is too last century. I’m more in favour of other methods. We could launch a full frontal assault and hit him where it hurts the most!”

“It tastes like bleh!” Satoshi whined, sticking out his tongue and showing the Queen the confection he had bitten into.

Queen Alys rolled her eyes at the ignorance of the budget crystal ball fairy and peeled off the sticker, stuck it on the sprite’s nose and then unravelled the gold foil. “You have to remove the wrapper first.”

“Oooh! Chocolate marzipan!” cooed Satoshi in delight as he took the unwrapped sweet from the Queen’s palm and popped it into his mouth. “Yum!”

“I say, Satoshi, if we do get Jun killed, why don’t you be our son and the heir to the throne. We could train you in the arts of governance, and you’re genial enough to sway the plebs,” the Queen suggested, a Machiavellian smirk playing in her eyes.

Oblivious to that exchange, the Premier and the King were still dagger drawing at each other. “That’s being cruel!” protested Sho on King Kazunari’s various death scene proposals for Prince Jun.

“Then we’ll put it to the Queen!” the King announced hotly. “Alys,” he called out, ruffling the chocolate-munching budget crystal ball fairy’s hair affectionately. “I’ve been trying to convince Sho without much success that torture is as viable an option as murder. Which would you have, my love?”

“Torture,” she replied, turning her lips contemptuously at the Premier.

The King’s lips twitched into a smirk but he said with perfect gravity, “That’s just your own preference. Shall we try perforation instead?”

“Sounds wonderful!” beamed her majesty as she seized her lord and master’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “It reminds me of our honeymoon.”

“That’s why I wanted to marry you even before the Crusades, my love. No one is as thorough on the torture rack as you,” he cooed, making sheep’s eyes at her and drawing a blush to her pale cheeks.

“I think I know where Prince Jun gets his evil side from,” groaned Premier Sho as he crouched on the floor, with his hands covering his head.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Satoshi while unwrapping another chocolate and popping it into his mouth.

“He’s in shock. It happens frequently,” the King replied, patting the fairy’s head. “We really should adopt you. You’re adorable and so easy to corrupt.”

“Huh?” Satoshi looked up innocently, his mouth smeared with chocolate.

“Never you mind,” the Queen interjected with a faint curling of her lips as she exchanged a meaningful look with the King.

The Premier groaned again and shook his head at the royal couple, asking aloud, “Why are the two of you so popular with the people if you’re really so evil?”

Their Royal Majesties turned their heads sideways to look at him with their seductive smirks of impending doom. “Because it’s okay to be needy and selfish…” began King Kazunari, settling next to the Premier on his right.

“It’s a matter of not letting it show in public,” continued Queen Alys as she knelt beside the Premier and tried to soothe him. “Pity, Jun lacks this trait. He storms and rages in public. He doesn’t know how to hide it like we do.”

“Not everyone has our largeness of mind, my love,” the King reminded her.

“Quite right, darling,” she smiled at him. “Well, are we still torturing Jun?”

“Hardcore or softcore?” enquired her redoubtable better half as they ignored the whimpers of the Premier and the chocolate-munching fairy.

A sparkle entered her eyes as she grabbed her beloved’s hand almost convulsively in joy. “Softcore, of course! We could have the dungeons refitted. Do you think the budget will allow for it, if we economised on state occasions, Sho?”

The Premier was unfortunately unable to reply to this sally as he was busy groaning and lamenting his fate at being stuck in the most unnatural royal court in his part of the world. Completely accustomed to his Premier’s behaviour, King Kazunari carried his formidable wife’s hand to his lips and replied imperturbably, “We’ll manage it somehow. We could dip Jun in boiling oil….”

“Then scrub him with a metal brush…” responded Queen Alys with relish as she ran her eye over her husband’s handsome person.

“And we’ll flay him…” whispered his Majesty in a silky drawl.

“Enough! For all that’s good and decent, you don’t have to tell me anything!” beseeched the hapless Premier Sho has he clamped his hands over his ears, unmitigated horror etched on his features. “Don’t go into the graphic details!”

The royal couple, however, were deaf to his entreaties and merely giggled at each other as they did when they were in their first bloom before the Crusades and before his Majesty’s first disastrous marriage. Their besetting sin, as many palace insiders will tell you, is their exquisite enjoyment at deriving private enjoyment at the pain of others.

“You’re still a marvel of a woman after all these years,” he articulated with a soft twinkle in his eyes.

“I adore you too,” she replied in a stifled tone when he cupped her cheek. “Dungeons or bedchamber?”

“Both,” he said, pressing the small of his wife’s back as they made their way to the side-door that led to her Majesty’s apartments. “Shall we get started, my love?” he suggested with an eloquent head jerk at the door, growing momentarily more enamoured of the scheme.

Her majesty pursed her lips at him to counsel patience as she considered something briefly. “Prime Minister Sho,” she said decisively at the archway, with his majesty’s arm still around her. “See to it that Satoshi is given a set of apartments in the north wing. You’re dismissed for the next –” She paused and pursed her lips again in uncertainty, looking to the King for assistance. “How long do we need?”

“Oh, at least two hours,” said his majesty with perfect truth as he idly ran a finger down his wife’s neck. “Three if she’s writing in bed.”

Thus, the handsome prince’s evil stepmother plotted to have him murdered in cold blood by bribing one of the indigent swordsmen in the royal military corps. The swordsman was to disguise himself as a hunter and take the Prince hunting. While they were away from the royal parks and hunting grounds, the swordsman was to strike and return with the head of the Prince so that the evil sorceress Queen could mount it on the wall of her secret witch’s lair. The plan was to make the decapitation resemble a hunting accident, which, of course, happened all too frequently in the part of the world where this narrative occurs. The poor Prince, however, knew not of the terrible fate that awaited him the next day…

“Please, ne! Murder by a swordsman? Royal filicide, eh? Ano, ne, this is seriously old-school!” scoffed Prince Jun as he eavesdropped on the conversation outside the Privy Chamber. “They’re not going to kill me so easily, ne!”

*Ahem* As I was saying…
The poor Prince, however, knew not of the terrible fate that awaited him the next day. For come morning, the grooms were putting together the Prince’s train in preparation for the hunt and the swordsman made his way to the Prince’s chamber to request that he join the expedition.

“I am a female, and I am not a swordsperson; I am a maid-of-all-works! Could you make this omake more politically correct?” demanded Sora with her hands on her hips as she stood outside the Prince’s door. “However, I am skilled with various weapons and am a maid because I’m putting myself through the royal military academy.”

*Ahem* As I was saying…
The swordswoman cum maid-of-all-works made her way to the Prince’s chamber at dawn to request that he join the expedition. However, Prince Jun, who was as dark as reputation depicted pounced on the hired hand and captured the unfortunate maiden in a headlock, effectively holding Sora hostage. In capturing this hostage, the Dark Prince successfully threatened everyone who dared approach his royal and supreme handsomeness with perceived evil intent. As the Prince made his way to the gardens and near the southern exit of the palace, an uproar had broken out amongst the service staff as word spread that Prince Jun had gone into ‘dark’ mode again.

It was this scene that Premier Sho stumbled upon on taking his pre-breakfast stroll in Her Royal Majesty’s black rose garden. “Ai-eeee! Jun! Your Highness!” sputtered Sho in fear and disbelief as the Prince held a dagger at Sora’s cheek. “Don’t do anything stupid. Put the dagger down.”

“Don’t come any closer!” growled the Dark Prince with deadly glare at all and sundry around him. “Try stopping me and this cute maid’s face will get it.”

“As long as you don’t injure my brain, I’m fine with it. I don’t need a cute face to graduate from military academy,” said Sora as she yawned. Being in the military academy and a maid-of-all-works was very tiring indeed and if it were not for the extra income this assassination plot would bring, she would not have bothered with Prince Jun’s histrionics.

“What are you trying to do, your Highness?” pleaded Premier Sho as he gingerly approached the Dark Prince.

“Come any closer and I’ll disfigure her so badly that she wouldn’t be able to get married!” cackled Prince Jun.

“Big deal! I still have my brain,” muttered Sora, thoroughly bored by her captor’s antics.

By this time, the whole palace was in such a state of panic that even the King and Queen were roused from their slumber or would have been if they were morning people.

“What time is it, darling?” murmured Her Majesty, lifting up the eye-mask briefly and then falling back on the pillows.

“Dawn. Go back to sleep. I’ll manage this,” His Majesty suggested as he clambered out of bed and pulled on a black robe with a large ‘N’ embroidered in gold on the left breast. Ambling to the French windows and looking down at the assembled servants jumping in panic over something, the King bellowed, “Who’s making this ruckus so early in the morning?! Heads will roll for this!”

“It’s the Prince!” shouted Premier Sho in response as he pointed to the Dark Prince and his hostage.

The corner of His Majesty’s mouth twitched in displeasure. “My love,” he addressed the Queen who had just pottered next to him. “Jun’s playing the bad guy again! Why does he have to be the villain so openly? Doesn’t he know how to hide his villainy?”

“Jun is an arse because,” yawned the still exhausted Queen while nestling her head on his shoulder, “he’s a chip of the old block.”

“Perhaps you should throw a flower pot at them to silence them.”

“It’s before ten o’clock. I’m too tired to be evil before then.”

“Ah, sorry for keeping you up, my love, but the dungeon game went into over time… Oh! they’re going out!” pointed out King Kazunari as the errant Prince and his hostage disappeared out the south gate. “If we’re lucky, they could end up killing each other. Your hands are cold, let’s go back to bed.”

But the Queen didn’t not reply, she had already dozed off in her royal spouse’s arms.

Meanwhile, Prince Jun had already manoeuvred his way to the woods and had tied up his hostage to a very sturdy looking tree. Feeling very pleased with himself for this extemporaneous display of thinking on his feet, he stood up without checking his rope work and declared, “Yes! I’m free from the palace! Free from royal protocol!”

“You’ve never observed it your entire life, your Highness,” retorted Sora as she tested how far she was bound by the ropes.

“Ah, freedom!” the Dark Prince laughed loudly, throwing his arms open widely, pointedly ignoring Sora’s vituperative remarks as to his less than stellar character. “Oi, maid person, someone’s bound to travel through the forest and find you. Stay put and you’ll be fine!”

“Highness,” ventured Sora the maid-of-works and military academy cadet between gritted teeth. “It would be wiser to return to the palace, confess to your wrongdoings and beg the forgiveness of their Majesties.”

“Bah!” dismissed Prince Jun with a delicate wave of his handkerchief. “My ideal princess isn’t showing up, so I am going to look for her myself and have an earth-shattering romance!”

“Ever thought about fixing your rotten personality first before getting someone else to like you, Highness?” Sora mocked, testing the resiliency of the ropes once more. “No one wants a selfish bastard like you.”

“Moi?” laughed the Prince haughtily with a foot on a rock and posing in what could pass for a manly pose if he were not of the lean variety of men. “I don’t sell anything! I’m a prince! I don’t sell things, let alone fish! How dare you insinuate that I sell fish!”

Sora’s eyes narrowed at the royal pain in the behind and wondered how the kingdom was going to sustain itself once the present King and Queen were dead because it was clear to all except those of no brains or those with brains in body parts best left unmentioned that their Majesties were excellent managers of money. “Okay, you’re not just a selfish bastard! You’re an idiot too! They say idiots don’t realise they’re idiots until they’re on their deathbeds. I could put you on your deathbed when I get my hands on you, you pompous arse of a Dark Prince.”

“If I am an idiot,” the Prince responded, running his fingers through his tousled hair. “I’m a damn good looking one, ne. I bet you’ll be the envy of all the girls that you were taken hostage by the Dark Prince. Oh yes, I am devilishly handsome. I will make it through this ordeal and find my own true love!”

“You only love yourself, so go kiss your reflection in a polished farthing and get it over and done with it,” spat Sora as she wriggled a hand free and pretended to restrain it behind he. “This whole world is full of so many idiots running around like they own the place. I can’t believe that you’re so full of yourself that you think you own it all! Even their Royal Majesties know that the kingdom is for the sake of the people, not just their own needs.” She coughed and added in a mutter, “Even if they have some pretty crazy needs of their own.”

“La la la!” sang the Prince, pulling down his eye at Sora and sticking out a tongue at her. “I’m not listening! I’m off to find me a lost Princess or two! Take care now! Buh-bye!”

Owing to the kindness of the swordswoman, the Prince’s life was spared and he fled into the woods, wandering in the wilderness for many days until he came upon a clearing and a charming cottage ornee.

“Eh? What cottage ornee? Eh? It’s a broken down straw hut at twelve o’clock. Who the hell is narrating this story? Is the narrator blind?” complained the Prince as he strode purposefully forward and kicked down the door. “How can something this shabby be still standing! Eek! Rushes on the ground, how unsanitary! The walls are – le gasp – made of wood. And everything looks like it’s covered in soil! How can anyone live in these squalid conditions! And this –” He opened a pot of warm but coarse-looking porridge and dipped in a tentative pinky for a taste. “Bleck! Who can eat this rubbish!” He overturned the pot and plodded to another part of the cottage, stumbling over several potted plants until he came to a bed. Collapsing into it, he harrumphed his displeasure. “This bed is so hard and lumpy. It will bruise my royal back! Who will massage me if I get backaches!”

Despite being unaccustomed to his surroundings, the handsome Prince fell asleep in the cottage from exhaustion. Unbeknownst to him, the cottage belonged to Chiaki, the elven guardian of the woods. A spirit known for her compassion to flora and fauna, Chiaki had returned home after a hard day’s work tending to the district’s vegetation and was looking forward to century-egg porridge when she realised to her dismay that her cottage had been broken into. Her anxiety increased when she found her cottage seemingly disordered as if it had been ransacked. However that anxiety melted away and was replaced by annoyance when she saw Prince Jun sleeping in her bed. Although her first instinct to call the local constabulary, she mastered that desire when she deemed that it was jumping the gun. However, entre nous, she abandoned that scheme because she realised she was in the wrong story for calling the police. Furthermore even if there were a police force in this omake, they would not pay any heed to the complaints of non-human entities. Thus, Chiaki settled for prodding the sleeping (and drooling) Prince Jun with a twig to ascertain if he was still alive.

“Eh? What! Why did you wake me!” shouted Prince Jun sullenly as he sat up abruptly and rubbed his arm.

“I should be the one asking the questions. Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” demanded Chiaki crossly, her arms akimbo and a foot tapping in impatience.

“Shut up, hag! This pathetic shack is a hovel not a home. And this bed is killing me. Who the heck are you!” asked Prince Jun, stretching and rubbing his eyes.

“I am Chiaki, elven protectress of the woods!” she declared in an echoic voice as a flash of lightning darted behind her and a small gust of wind fluttered her cloak behind her. “I will ask you again, mortal – who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

Startled by the sudden intrusion of elemental forces, Prince Jun darted his eyes around in bewilderment. When he was satisfied that he was not going to be struck by lightning, he quickly regained his equanimity by flipping his hair dramatically and flashing a dazzling smile. “I'm a wandering prince, ne, searching for my own true love.”

Chiaki snorted so as to swallow the chortle that was threatening to send her rolling on the floor. She was an elven guardian with an image of austerity and calm poise to live up to; as such, she could not afford to allow herself to look like a fool before an arrogant self-centred idiot of a prince. “Uh-huh,” she sniggered, “I would deeply appreciate it if someone with that kind of a lofty aspiration did not stoop to breaking and entering someone else’s property.”

“I have good reason for that!” protested Prince Jun AKA the Dark Prince with a hand on his forehead. “You do not know the trials and tribulations I have suffered! My stepmother, an evil witch, wants to murder me to usurp the throne. She hires an incompetent noisy swordswoman to kill me because she’s too cheap to hire a real sniper.”

“You mean the damsel tied up by the tree who struggled free and asked the woodland sprites to eat you come nightfall? You know, your Highness, I’ve only joined the story at this point, but I think that girl meets all your requirements,” instructed Chiaki, struggling to overcome her desire to bop him at the back of his head.

“Eh!” exclaimed the Prince, very much aghast. “What! I’m a prince of royal blood! That’s just a scullery maid!”

[Sora in a voice over: To recap, I’m a maid-of-all-works because I’m putting myself through military academy.]

“Even if King Kazunari and Queen Alys are plotting to murder you in cold blood, and I can see why they would want to,” said Chiaki consideringly as she paced the length of the room. “That’s no reason for breaking and entering into my house!”

Wrinkling his nose in disdain, Prince Jun spat out derisively, “This isn’t a house. It’s a hovel! I was forced by circumstances to my pitiable state.” He paused and as he struck a princely pose, shiny roses materialising in the background. “I was too weak because I spent the last few days wandering in the woods. Now I have no choice but to stay here and recover my strength. Thank you, woman with pointy ears, for volunteering to take care of me. I want pancakes for breakfast and make sure they’re more cake than pan!” he continued, turning over on the bed and going back to sleep.

“For the last time, I’m the elven protectress of the woods!” grumbled Chiaki, as a vein pulsed dangerously on her temple. “You have got to be kidding me! Where’s the police when you need them?”

The cottage ornée in which the prince sought shelter and succour belonged to the elven guardian of the woods. Under her protection and his royal largess, the elven lady and the Prince got along very well, living together on a platonic basis for many days in peace and harmony. Never was there a more peaceful coexistence of two beings of different socio-economic backgrounds and species. Indeed, even the Prince and elven lady thought so.

“Oi, Chiaki!” commanded Prince Jun from a chair where he was perusing a copy of Eligible Royal Bachelors Quarterly and feeling just the slightest bit chuffed that the King in exile of the neighbouring kingdom was featured on the cover instead of his fine self. “Go chop some firewood and sell them. Don’t come back if you don’t sell them all.”

“How dare you speak to me this way!” huffed Chiaki as she stuck her head down a Venus flytrap and removed a heavy tome from its gaping mouth. “If this were Lord of the Rings, you would be dead by now! Moreover, I’m an elven guardian. It is not in my job description to chop firewood,” as she said so, she chucked the informative tome entitled ‘Manual for Elven Protectors: Abridged Version’ at the back of his head.

Cussing at the bossiness of the elf, the Dark Prince, opened the book to and pored through it, his brows furrowed in displeasure. “What! You’re right! But what’s this? Ah ha! It says here!” He paused and pointed triumphantly to a passage. “You tend to flowers, birds, trees and stuff! Sell some flowers at the marketplace and some caviar back tonight!”

“Why do you need caviar? This kingdom is situated on a mountainous region!” riposted Chiaki, waving a broom at the Prince.

“Because my royal palate demands it!” announced the Dark Prince matter-of-factly as he shoved Chiaki out the door. “Don’t come back without caviar, ne!”

As the door slammed behind her, Chiaki balled her fists and looked up at the heavens, muttering sotto voce, “When I get my hands on Lady Strange, I’ll plant her head first into the ground next to the spider lilies for writing this omake.”

Meanwhile, back at the palace, the evil Queen rejoiced in the belief that she had her stepson murdered. She was so gratified with the perceived demise of her good-for-nothing stepson that she imprisoned the weakling King, signed a warrant for his execution, declared herself Empress of the land and nearly emptied the Privy Purse throwing celebratory balls at her seizure of the throne. That would be the story many chroniclers would tell you. However, that could not be further from the truth. Their Royal Majesties, King Kazunari and Queen Alys, along with their trusty Premier Sho, were busy spin-doctoring in a bid to prevent news that Prince Jun AKA the Dark Prince was running amok somewhere potentially draining the kingdom’s finances and gathering an army to raise a rebellion against his father and stepmother. Politics was dirty that way, especially if crowns and thrones are involved, and especially if you were as twisted as the members of the royal family in this particular kingdom.

“Sho, be frank with us. How long can we keep quiet about Jun’s disappearance?,” King Kazunari began, placing a supportive hand on his Queen’s shoulder as she deliberated over the many papers before her on the proposed policy of economic rebates for farmers. “We either find him and kill him or send a pack of mercenaries after him.”

“We already have the foot soldiers going through the fire swamps and the eastern forest with toothcombs for the Prince, your Majesty,” answered a nervous Premier Sho as he swept his hair back and licked his lips anxiously. He would never own it but he was inwardly perturbed when the King and Queen were serious about state matters. The royal couple would do anything for the sake of political power. Sho sighed and frowned as he noted the Queen’s untouched cup of tea and their Majesties’ unfinished chess match. The truth was, they had turned their efforts to the law in a bid to consolidate their hold over the kingdom since their attempt to assassinate Prince Jun met with dismal failure.

“I told you so, papa,” pouted Satoshi, the budget crystal ball fairy, swinging his legs from the table and drawing something in a blank book.

“This proposal will create a deficit in the budget for the first quarter next year if we implement it,” Queen Alys said, placing a hand on her husband’s as she pushed aside the state papers. “The only way to immediate rectify the problem is to find Jun and kill him.”

Oblivious to the gravity of the situation, Satoshi looked down at the table and crawled towards a bowl of fruit that the kitchen maids had brought up but were untouched by the royal couple. “Oh! I see food!”

The King shook his head and patted his consort’s arm so that she scooted over to the side and let him sit on her armrest and they sighed thoughtfully at unvoiced plans as to what they ought to do with the Dark Prince. Suddenly struck by inspiration, the King stroked his chin sagely and said, “Satoshi! You’re the fairy of the budget crystal ball, what do you see with your 85-90% accuracy?”

“Your majesty!” sputtered Premier Sho in disapproval as the budget crystal ball bit into an orange he had picked up from the bowl and stuck out his tongue, whereupon he continued his valiant attack on the citrus fruit. “85-90% accuracy leaves a large margin of error.”

“No, no, my dear.” The Queen rolled her eyes in exasperation, taking the orange from the fairy and tearing its skin off viciously. “You have to peel it first like so.”

“Yay! Orange!” exclaimed Satoshi, clapping his hands when her Majesty showed him the pared fruit. “I love you, mamma!” He kissed her on the cheek when she gave him the orange. And then, looking at the dejected King who was pouting and staring at the orange peels, he proceeded to peck His Majesty on the cheek as well. “I love papa too!”

“He’s a good boy, isn’t he, Alys?” smirked the King while ruffling the fairy’s hair.

“All the better to corrupt, Kazu darling,” replied the Queen as she curled her lip sardonically and pinched the fairy on his cheek.

The Premier slapped his forehead at his monarchs’ wanton display of affection and loudly groaned even though no one paid him any attention. After sighing and moaning for five minutes to no avail, he coughed roughly, “Hey, crystal ball fairy, you were supposed to locate Prince Jun for us.”

“Oh yeah,” smiled Satoshi, sheepishly scratching the back of his head before concentrating his efforts at the crystal ball with furrowed brows and an intense pout. “I found him! He’s alive in the north-northwest woods.”

“Damn boy’s like a cockroach! He just won’t die!” remarked the King with some vehemence.

“Indeed.” The Queen steepled her hands at her lips. “We should hire mercenaries. I know a few from my days at the Crusades.”

The long suffering Premier mumbled to himself as he helped himself to a piece of orange the budget crystal ball fairy offered him, “Villains never die when you want to them to. As diabolical people, your Majesties’ must surely know that.”

“Our villainy isn’t the main turning point of this story. It’s Jun’s,” stated the King imperturbably. “Killing him outright is the best option left to us at the moment.”

Groaning and thumping his head on the table before recollecting himself, the Premier nodded grimly at the wisdom of the King’s words, “Your Majesty is right!” he declared decisively. It’s not about the execution of our plans anymore. It’s like I won’t feel satisfied until I bring Prince Jun down.”

“Welcome to the club, Prime Minister,” remarked the Queen as she pensively removed the prince-nez from her nose and tapped it lightly on the table. “This time, we cannot afford to fail.”

Agreeing with the Queen’s assessment, Premier Sho offered, “With your puissant Majesties’ permission, I propose we send a new assassin after the Prince. We must cover all the bases in…” The rest of his suggestion was truncated by the royal couple holding out their hands in the universal sign to signal that he was to halt in his speech. “No, your Majesties, there will be no torture involved. There can be no torture involved because his Highness is not within the confines of the palace.”

The Queen glowered imperiously at him in a cold and haughty manner calculated to abash him. “But we haven’t…”

“Said anything yet,” the King continued as he threaded his fingers with his Queen’s when he saw that her digits were trembling in barely concealed rage.

“Your Majesties’ auras are too easy to read,” conceded Premier Sho with a low court bow as he strove to hide the chuckle that was threatening to engulf him.

While the evil Queen and her minions were hatching their next diabolically nefarious plot to murder the handsome Prince Jun, his Highness was happily spending his day gambolling about the north-northwest woods with the local woodland creatures, touching all the animals with his bright and outgoing nature. Indeed, he was such an indispensable help to Chiaki, the Elven Guardian of the woods, that she considered taking him as a protégé.

“What delightful weather we’re having!” proclaimed the Dark Prince as he drew aside the curtains of Chiaki’s cottage ornee. “It’s giving me a craving for pinot noir from the Côte de Nuits.”

“I fail to see any real connexion to wine and good weather. You just want expensive wine for your stupid spoilt rich boy palate!” stated Chiaki matter-of-factly as she scrubbed the top of the stove. “If you knew anything, which you don’t, you would know that we are much too far away from the Côte de Nuits.”

The Prince sneered and promptly placed the shopping basket on Chiaki’s arm, manoeuvred her to the door while announcing self-importantly, “I am a Prince. Be thankful that I have chosen to stay in your broken down hovel amongst all the broken down hovels in the kingdom! Go buy me a bottle of Côte de Nuits pinot noir and make sure it’s a good vintage, or don’t even think about coming home!”

“Curse you, Dark Prince!” screeched Chiaki, stomping a petulant foot as Prince Jun slammed the door in her face.

“You wouldn’t be the first female to howl at me!” answered the Prince smugly from behind the door. “Go get some Roquefort to go with the wine while you’re at it!”

When the cussing and thunder cloud following the Elven Protectress of the woods departed, the Dark Prince finally ventured outdoors to enjoy the air and the sunshine and proceeded to make the best of his time by tending to the area immediately surrounding the cottage. However, unknown to him, there was a shadow hiding behind an obliging well-placed tree with a fat tree trunk watching everything that unfolded, waiting for the right moment to strike.

“I’m bored stiff!” cried Prince Jun, glumly cupping his cheeks in his hands as he sat down on the steps of the cottage and stared out in the distance. “Le sigh! I guess I should really get a move on and seek out my one true love soon, ne.”

Deeming that the time was now, the assassin – for that was the true identity of the shadow behind the fat tree trunk – approached.

“Would you like to buy a d’Anjou pear?” lisped a lass of surpassing beauty with smiling eyes that put the stars to shame and a generous mouth made for giggling who moved with such elegance and grace that Prince Jun – himself a connoisseur of beauty – found himself instantly charmed.

“A d’Anjou, my pretty?” he asked, leering openly at the woman who shyly held out a pear to him. “Just who are you and what is a succulent morsel like you doing in a forsaken forest like this?”

“Oh,” giggled the lass. “I’m just your run of the mill itinerant pear seller, Kaoru.”

“You look vaguely familiar somehow. Have I flirted with you before?” he enquired, taking the pear from her with a seductive smile that made the unfortunate maiden cringe ever so slightly.

“I think I would have remembered a distinguished personage such as yourself,” lied Kaoru, whom you may recognise as the interior decorator/designer of the palace. She may look terribly brave for not cowering to the Dark Prince, however, the truth was – she was terrified that the Prince may have realised that the pear was in fact poisoned.

“True, true!” laughed the Prince, flipping his hair dramatically as he rubbed the pear on his doublet. “I am the handsomest man in the land! Anyone would remember flirting with the great ore-sama!” And then, he took a bite of the pear.

There was a brief paused as he chewed, and then, without warning, the Dark Prince fell to the ground in a loud thud.

“Yes, yes, yes!” cheered Kaoru, jumping for joy. “Success at last! What a lucky thing that His Majesty remembered you were an incorrigible flirt!”

Thus it was that poor, innocent, and dazzlingly handsome Prince Jun ate the poisoned pear and fell down, to all intents and purposes, dead. Her duty now done, Kaoru merrily skipped her way back to the palace to report the good tidings to her employers and perhaps sit a little while with their newly adopted son, Satoshi, who was proving to be very artistic and gentle. The elven guardian of the woods, unaware of that which had lately transpired, made her merry way back home to the Prince with the news that she had overheard in the town square.

“Idiot spoilt brat Dark Prince!” muttered Chiaki testily as she dragged a shopping basket behind her. “Because of that royal pain in the behind, I have been working round the clock at botanical gardens, the woods and the hothouses for extra income! Because of that royal pain the behind, I spent all my money on a smelly cheese and expensive wine. If this keeps up, I would have to murder the idiot Prince myself instead of waiting for the King and Queen to do so!”

Those were only words spoken in anger, for when the elven protectress of the woods saw the Prince lying motionless on the ground, she immediately sprang into action. “Are you still alive?” she asked, kicking his side. “Oi! Dark Prince! Wake up!” She aggressively alternated between repeatedly slapping and shaking him. “Go back indoors before you claim that you’ve caught a non-existent chill and demand that I distil chamomile for you again! Oi! Annoying spoilt brat Prince!”

On receiving no response, she released her grasp of his person, allowing him to hit the dry ground with another dull thud. “Well, well, the King and Queen have finally done it! Good for them!”

Chiaki would not have given the matter a second thought had she not caught sight of the shopping basket she had dropped earlier in her haste to tend to the Prince. “Oh no! The cheese and the wine! What am I going to do? I’m lactose and sulphide intolerant! Nooooo!”

Quickly slapping his face and shaking him, she rebuked him stridently, “Damn you, Dark Prince! Come back to life and eat the damn cheese and drink the damn wine! Don’t let them go to waste! The parsimonious King and Queen are not going to reimburse me for your upkeep!”

The elven guardian of the woods was devastated by the death of her young charge and was nearly disconsolate with grief. They had bonded in their short time together and she had been quite sure that her mysterious elven powers were enough to protect the handsome prince from the evil machinations of his power-hungry stepmother. However, her despair was short-lived. Just then, the sounds of expensive hand-made Italian leather shoes crunching on the gravel assailed her ears, and the elven protectress of the woods turned her head to see that a journeying nobleman had passed by.

“Ah…” he sighed, scratching the side of his head in frustration as he closed an eye and peered inside a small box. “First I run out of fried chicken. Now I’m out of cigarettes too! Oh woe! Oh misery! What shall I do!” he groaned in a raspy voice. “What rotten luck! What have I done to deserve this! I’m too cute for this to happen to me, super idol King Masaki, featured on the cover of Eligible Royal Bachelors Quarterly! Why should my people have a coup d’etat thingy and exile me? All I did was say that I spent the state’s monies on building a new palace! I even used the leftovers to buy these shoes! Why did they say I was spendthrift? I didn’t let anything go to waste!”

As he was about to continue on his perambulations, the elven guardian of the woods stopped him. “Hey you! Yes, you with the earring. Yes, you pointing at your nose. The Prince of this realm died suddenly and I don’t know what to do! The Emperor and Empress of Misers aren’t going to reimburse me for these über expensive groceries!”

“Sorry, I can’t help you there.” King Masaki (in exile) from the neighbouring kingdom shrugged. “My pockets are to let. I’m like, totally broke now. If the Prince is dead, you should bury him.”

“But something isn’t right about the manner of death,” stated Chiaki with all the authority of an elf of her stature. She just knew these things. She had powers far beyond the meagre understanding of mortals after all. And there was the fact that a pear with a large bite mark was lying very near to Prince Jun.

“Cremation is kind of cool too if burying is too messy,” suggested the Prince with a smile, genuinely wanting to be useful.

At that point, the King-in-exile cast his eyes over that of his royal kinsmen and his compassion was roused. It had now become a matter of honour to assist Prince Jun and return him in state so as to expose the malevolence of the Queen. Having lost his own kingdom to an internal uprising, the King-in-exile was all the more acutely aware of the injustices wrought on the unfortunate Prince Jun.

“Ano, ne, you’re kind of cute,” he giggled at Chiaki and pulling her forcibly towards him so much so that she dropped Prince Jun’s lifeless body on the ground with the third thud of the day. “You’re an elf, right? You can do magic and stuff, right? You could help me regain my kingdom and I’ll marry you! I’ll make you happy! Come away with me and ditch this useless Prince What’s-his-face.”

“Are you on the rebound, your Majesty?” enquired Chiaki upon punching him in the face and sitting on his back for good measure when he was on the ground. “That’s no way to speak to a lady on first acquaintance! And this narcissistic sleeping beauty here isn’t someone I’ll go for! Not in a million years!”

King Masaki laughed from his position with his cheek in the gravel, “But you’ll help me regain my kingdom, right? I need my kingdom because I’m kind of out of money now and parliament usually gives me money…”

“Idiot! Shut up!” roared the voice of Prince Jun as he jolted up and smacked the back of King Masaki’s head. “You’re noisier than my Royal Father and Stepmother when they engage in their S&M games in the dungeons! You stupid royals in the neighbouring kingdom always make me sick. Stepmother’s right about you guys, ne! We should have waged a war and annexed the lot of you! Your lack of economy and common sense are the causes of your parliament withdrawing their support from you!”

King Masaki’s mind took some time to process this masterful tirade. Then it dawned on him. “You’re Prince Jun, the Dark Prince!” he gasped excitedly, clapping the younger man on the shoulders. “I’ve heard loads about you! I just passed the border outpost and this was this huge poster with….”

“Yes, it is I, ne, the one and only stunningly handsome Prince Jun!” acknowledged His Highness, cutting off the King mid-speech, as he flipped his hair and struck a manly pose. However, he immediately made a face of disgust on eyeing his fellow royal and disparagingly said, “And you’re the idiot King Masaki from yond kingdom who won’t shut up, ne. How did you make it on the cover of Eligible Royal Bachelors magazine two issues in a row! I’m far handsomer than you!”

Chiaki, who had been resting on a rock and observing this scene with a jaundiced eye, threw a pebble at Prince Jun. “Hurrah!” she said dryly, “you’ve managed to revive yourself!”

The Dark Prince ran his fingers through his hair and flashed a winning smile as well as a thumbs-up sign. “Who do you think I am? A bite of a poisoned pear isn’t going to bring me down, ne! And you, King Masaki! What kind of royal are you? You don’t go around propositioning decent women!”

“Heh!” scoffed King Masaki as he drew out a length of rope from his breeches and proceeded to truss Prince Jun up tightly. “I’m still ack… acknowled… recognised as King in exile. What about you? You’re the Dark Prince Jun everyone’s talking about. I’ve seen wanted posters of you everywhere, and there’s a price on your head too. Uwah! Luck must be on my side today because I’ve found an elven woman who will help me regain my kingdom and a goldmine reward at the same time! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Thus, with the assistance of the King of the neighbouring kingdom and the skills of the elven protectress of the woods, the prince was revived. Together, the trio sought to right the wrongs dealt to the kingdom under the mismanagement of the evil sorceress of a usurper Queen. When the commoners saw their prince among them and they got wind of the Queen’s many evil doings, they rallied around the rightful heir to the throne. After gathering a sizeable army, the King from the neighbouring kingdom, the elven protectress of the woods and the Prince returned to the palace to confront the wicked Queen in the audience chamber.

Or not… But the elven protectress and Masaki, King-in-exile, did bring Prince Jun back to the palace.

“Sir, I have brought you your son,” said King Masaki simply with a slight bow at the two enthroned figures before him.

“We can see that, Sir Points-out-the-obvious-a-lot,” answered King Kazunari blandly as he reached over and moved a white rook on the chessboard between his throne and his consort’s. “We are pleased that you have extended us the courtesy of returning the Prince to us. We thank you.” He then flicked a wrist. “Now, begone.”

“I can’t go just yet,” King Masaki objected, taking a few steps closer to the thrones and handing the end of the rope tether to the nearby Premier Sho.

“And why is that?” enquired Queen Alys with chilling hauteur as she moved a pawn on the board.

“I’m out of money for cigarettes and fried chicken, so I brought back your Prince. Now give me my reward.” The indigent King Masaki grinned widely and stretched out his hand, the ends of his fingers making the beckoning motions popular the world over with children asking their parents for pocket money.

The royal couple lifted their heads and eyed King Masaki with undisguised derision. Premier Sho inwardly panicked and would have said something to intervene had not Chiaki, the elven guardian of the woods, stayed his arm by holding him back. She shook her head and darted her eyes to the King and Queen who were doing their best to keep themselves in check before the court.

“We will feed you and then send you on your way,” King Kazunari announced scornfully while mentally calculating on his fingers the expenditure it would take to keep up with King Masaki’s ravenous appetite for fried chicken.

Queen Alys who was as loath to expend finances in this unworthy venture curled her lips contemptuously at the visitor King-in-exile. “Your Grace was the monarch of the neighbouring kingdom who was overthrown in the people’s movement rebellion. What assurance will you give our royal house that you do not come here to seek arms and men in a futile bid to regain your throne?”

“Mah, mah!” smiled King Masaki, winking cheekily at the Queen, much to the displeasure of her spouse. “Just give me fried chicken and enough money for a few packs of cigarettes. That’s why I brought the Dark Prince Jun back. I’m not interested in violence or killing anyone, so you do that yourselves, okay, madam?”

“What?” screeched Prince Jun in disbelief, breaking free from his bonds. “I’m only worth fried chicken and cigarettes! I’m the handsomest thing ever to walk this earth! I’m sick and tired of everyone regarding me as the villain of this omake! I’ve done nothing wrong! I’m just a lonely, handsome Prince looking for romance!”

“He’s making this sound nicer than it actually is,” sniggered Sora, who had been standing next to Chiaki and observing the proceedings like the rest of the court.

“That he is,” agreed Chiaki and Premier Sho in unison as they shared a smile of understanding.

Disregarding these comments and other murmurs around the audience chamber, Prince Jun continued his rant, “I’m just a lonely, handsome Prince looking for romance, and seeking my own true love! Yet, I know love’s not what it is cracked up to be. My Royal Father and Stepmother are depraved in their affections. Most men are uncouth like that idiot King Masaki or perverted like my father; most women are vindictive cows like my stepmother.”

“Please, call us corruptors of youth,” replied King Kazunari and Queen Alys while they continued their chess match.

“No one wants me, so I guess I would have to kill myself and take everyone with me!” cackled Prince Jun wildly as he pulled out a long string of dynamite from somewhere and wrapped them around his waist. Though the court was alarmed, the King and Queen only flicked their wrists limply at him as they continued playing against each other.

“Will you just stop being a pompous arse already!” hollered Sora, the maid-of-all-works and military academy cadet upon throwing her chunky high-heeled shoe at him. The shoe hit him in between the eyes and he was momentarily stunned. “That’s just stupid and dangerous!” she lectured him, wagging the hilt of the rapier she had grabbed from Premier Sho at the Prince. “Where’s your brain, mmm? Don’t you know the more you try to forcefully possess something, you become emptier inside? Guess that’s why you’re a shallow pompous arse! Read the romance novels! They all reveal that true love is something that only comes along unexpectedly! You just have to wait! You might even miss that once in a lifetime chance for love if you don’t pay attention to those around you!”

Something in those words must have touched him because for the first time in his life, Prince Jun wept. It was the first time someone had come to points with him in such a manner, and he did not know if he was weeping from joy at the sudden epiphany that had dawned on him or because his head hurt from being hit by the shoe. It suddenly dawned on him that perhaps his one true love had been hiding under his nose all this while. It seemed that all would be set to rights in the kingdom now that the Prince had been restored to his rightful place in the palace and was now on the path to being more sensitive to others.

Relieved, Premier Sho let out a low whistle, “That went well. What shall we do with the Prince now, your Majesty?”

However, King Kazunari was not attending to his words. He was presently engaged in glowering at King Masaki and tightening his grip over his consort’s hand. The reason for this lay in the King-in-exile’s disconcertingly wide grin as he bent low over Queen Alys’s free hand to bestow a kiss upon it.

“Ne, that’s a scrumptious looking muffin you’ve got there. She must be delectable,” said King Masaki with a wink at an appalled and rapidly paling Queen Alys as he addressed her husband. Then turning to her, he asked, “How about getting a papal dispensation and marrying me instead, you tasty muffin you? I promise to make you happy! You could help me retake my kingdom and I’ll let you run everything!”

Premier Sho groaned and slapped his forehead, attempting to drag King Masaki away. “Does a death wish cause you to speak that way to King Kazunari?! Don’t flirt with Queen Alys, especially not when His Majesty is in tow!”

“I am not a muffin! We are not amused!” hissed Queen Alys, her talons tightening over that of her King in a combination of anger, hurt and fear. “My lord, can’t we execute this imbecile? He’s insulted me!”

“Oi, damn you! Does the honourable head of the Aiba royal house want to lose your manhood, lusting after the consort of the Ninomiya house! There is only one serving of Alys and she’s mine!” King Kazunari retorted, emphatically picking up the black queen from the chessboard and examining it carefully.

“That’s fine with me. I don’t mind leftovers,” said King Masaki with a shrug.

“Screw you, sir! Guards, throw him in the dungeons. Her Majesty and I will devise several interesting new modes of torture for him,” he spat venomously, rising and sweeping his Queen away with him.

And thus, the plan to assassinate Prince Jun was abandoned. That did not mean, however, that he had reformed. From time to time, his dark side showed up, but it appeared that Sora the maid-of-all-works was a moderating influence on the Prince. It is hoped that they will one day make a match of things. However, it is unknown what happened to King Masaki, and it is doubtful that anyone should find out.

“Excellent, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for the good work! That’s a wrap!” boomed the loud English Public School voice of She-who-must-not-be-crossed. “I’ll see the lot of you in From Cover to Cover! Finite incantatem!”

“Jun-chan, do you think this omake gave too much of our story away?” questioned Sora as she removed the French hood from her head and shook out her messy hair.

“Ano ne, I was more worried by the nature of this omake. I think we have highlighted all the things that were already hinted at in the existing stories. There was something, ne, in this omake that disturbed because it smacks of, ne, Remedy for a Broken Heart!” replied MatsuJun seriously while wiping his face with a towel.

“That’s enough. Aiba-chan’s plot comes after yours, and the ending for this hints at the first half of his plot, so it’s best we say nothing for now,” counselled Sho as he peeled off his false sleeves. “I don’t know about you but I didn’t enjoy this omake one bit. What about you guys?”

“We loved it!” chimed the Ninomiyas from behind the screen in the dressing room.

“Look, stop making out already! You’ve already done enough damage to the virtuous eyes of the readers of this omake!”

“We’re not making out!” protested Nino, throwing what looked to be a heavy kirtle over the screen. “We were planning how to torture Aiba in your story, Jun-kun!”

“Don’t you two ever stop?” sighed Sho, shaking his head in open disapproval.

“No. We even torture Lady Strange though she will never admit it,” laughed Nino sardonically.

“I believe we have dropped enough hints as to what could happen in Jun’s story,” confessed Chiaki as she helped Kaoru remove her makeup. “Fights, tea ceremonies, books and chess.”

“Oh! Special guest cameo by another JE artiste!” added Ohno brightly.

“That’s right!” Aiba exclaimed, clapping his hands and feet in excitement.

MatsuJun smacked him at the back of his head before bowing once. “Ano, ne, since we’re all tired from this omake. Let’s say tata for now, ne? Eto…Be sure to continue supporting us and the madwoman who writes about us, ne?”

“See you in From Cover to Cover!” chorused all the characters in a sing-song manner.

NOTES:

Prince-nez are glasses without the earpieces. They sit on the nose bridge.

Chapter 41 – Epilogue

Where does time go? Have you thought about that? I have and I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve tried asking Jun and he snorts that we work so hard that we lose track of time. I’ve tried asking Sho and he says we spend it trying to make something of ourselves. I tried asking Nino and he says time is the only thing we have. No one could give me a good answer that I could understand. I tried asking the ‘princesses’, which is what our manager calls the Arashi girlfriends, and they all gave a different answer. But time had really gone by, even manager-san said so.

What must have been one of my happiest days in autumn when I went to Kaoru’s exhibition at Geidai passed all too quickly and it was almost winter again. It was only one season, so it must have passed quickly. That was it. And it was now somewhere in November. Seasons always pass quickly if you don’t notice them. It made me sad to think that winter was here and I would have less time for clay, drawing, fishing and Kaoru. We had wanted to go fishing in November and have a small party at home with the guys, and the ‘princesses’, an engagement party with cake and royal icing. I thought it would be nice to have a party too because drinking at home was less troublesome than drinking outside. Okaasan wouldn’t get mad or worried if I got drunk at home. I liked that idea, but there was one problem. I couldn’t find the time to have a party. It would be nice to have a party, just the guys, the girls and Okaasan. Everyone in Arashi had already met Kaoru. Everyone except Aiba and manager. Aiba, I could tell him to keep quiet about Kaoru. Manager-san wasn’t someone I wanted to deal with yet.

Our manager is a very funny man. He waves his arms around when he talks because he wants to look fierce and make us pay attention to him, but when the princesses visit, he’s always nice around them, talking a little bit softer than he usually does and making sure that they had everything they wanted. So whenever Chiaki visited, he would make one of the office people buy umeboshi or plum tea for her; whenever Alys visited, he would bring out the finest blend of tea we had in JE Central; whenever Sora visited, he had a ready supply of coffee and bagels for her. Manager-san was a pushover because he had two daughters of his own. Jun says that manager hopes his girls would grow up to be like the princesses.

I wonder if manager would think of Kaoru as a princess if he knew about her. Maybe he would think that she was like a mimosa, shy and cute. Kaoru wasn’t bold and calm and good with planning like Sho’s Chiaki. She wasn’t cynical and passionate like Nino’s Alys. She also wasn’t as sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued like Jun’s Sora. She wasn’t thoughtful and inward looking like Renée-Caroline, Aiba’s music conductor girlfriend who he brought to Central earlier today. She was a cute and shy artist, and engaged to me.

I like being engaged. I don’t know why, but I liked it. Kaoru’s parents didn’t object to the engagement. Morimoto papa threatened to gut me like a fish again if I ‘cried off’ from the engagement. I can understand why he would threaten me. Fathers must protect their daughters, deshou? It can’t be nice to have someone take away your daughter. That’s what Okaasan says, and when she says it like that, I understand. So it’s okay. Morimoto papa’s only being a good father.

I was on my way home from Central and thinking about what else Okaasan would have made for dinner other than the chawanmushi Kaoru liked. Kaoru would be coming for dinner because Okaasan asked her to. Okaasan said that Kaoru needed to rest up before the Omei exhibition. Kaoru was at the Omei Art Museum and Gallery where she was supervising the installation of the pieces the curators borrowed from her, and because she always borrowed the dark room there to develop her photographic pieces. If Kaoru was going to come for dinner, I was thinking that I should ask Nino and Alys for dinner too. They would be meeting Kaoru at Omei because they had to pick up the photos she was developing for them for their new place. Oh! Didn’t you know? They were moving somewhere to stay together because they said it would be cheaper for them. It must be very tiring for them because Nino had taken more CM jobs, and Alys had taken on philosophical consultancy lecture series for a private women’s university in Setagaya to save money for the place. I would invite them for dinner. Okaasan would like that.

I had gotten my keitai out to send a message to Nino but I couldn’t do it because the keitai vibrated in my hands. Oh! It was Nino! Sugoi! He could read my mind that I was going to text him! I didn’t know he could do that! I thought he had gotten a lift from Aiba and his girlfriend to go to Omei. What did he want? Did he want to ask if he could crash at my place for dinner? Okaasan wouldn’t mind. She liked him and Alys. But Nino’s message wasn’t about dinner. It read, “Aiba wants to play matchmaker for you.”

What was Aiba thinking? Matchmaker? Why? I was flummoxed. Why would I need a matchmaker? I had Kaoru. Oh! But he didn’t know about Kaoru, I remembered. I pouted and replied, “I don’t like that idea.”

“That’s what we told him. We’re on the road to Omei. Want to rub Aiba’s face in it?” His message came back.

“Rub what face in what?” I asked.

“Rub his idiocy in his face, of course. Show him that you and Kaoru are together.”

“It’s only Aiba and Renée-Caroline. Okay.”

“Would Kaoru mind if we brought in Aiba and Renée-Caroline with us?”

“I’ll ask,” I replied, and scratched my head in thought. I didn’t want Aiba to play matchmaker for me. If he knew about Kaoru then it was okay because he would lay off the matchmaker idea and all of Arashi would know about Kaoru and I could breathe easier at night because we could work together to keep it quiet. Okaasan always said that more ideas were better than just one, and with five of us in Arashi, that would five ideas instead of just my one. And it was only Aiba and Renée-Caroline, not strangers, so I texted Kaoru with this message: “The Ninomiyas will be going to see you with Aiba and his girlfriend. Is that okay with you? I told Nino that it was okay with me. But if it’s not okay with you, I will tell him to lay off.”

“I didn’t know Aiba-kun had a girlfriend. Is she a big secret too?” she answered.

“No one knew. We all found out today. She’s a conductor with an orchestra. I didn’t pay attention which. Something Renée-Caroline. I didn’t catch her surname properly.”

“A European woman? She must be very pretty.”

I smiled at Kaoru’s innocent questions. She always thought the best of everyone she met or hadn’t met. “Sora and Alys said she’s half French. She’s not too bad. But her ears stick out. She’s very nice though. I think she’s okay. Is it okay with you if you met her with Aiba?”

“Don’t be silly! Of course it’s okay,” she replied.

“Oh! I’ll tell Nino. See you at home!” I sent back as an answer and quickly sent another message. This time, it was one to Nino: “She says okay too. Follow her home afterwards, you and Alys can come to my place for dinner.”

Nino texted back soon after with: “Message received. Mission initiated. Over and out.”

Worried that Kaoru would find Aiba’s hyperactivity would be too much for her, and worried that maybe Aiba and his girlfriend didn’t believe Kaoru was my fiancé and decided to play matchmaker, I went home feeling sick in the stomach. I told Okaasan about the situation and she said things would be fine because Kaoru was patient and gentle to people, and people never said an unkind thing about other people who were patient and gentle. Since Okaasan knew best, I nodded and tried to think that it would okay. After telling Okaasan that Nino and Alys would probably be with us for dinner, I went to my art room in the house and tried to draw something. But nothing came to me, and I ended up staring at the drawing book and at the clay wheel, feeling nervous. The feeling only stopped when Okaasan shouted up that the three people I had been waiting for were finally here.

“Yeah, I’m deliriously depressed that you never tried that on me!” Nino laughed sarcastically when I ran down the stairs. “We’ll have to glue Aiba’s ear back tomorrow.”

“Did he cut it off?” I asked, squeezing Kaoru’s shoulder when she smiled at me from where she was sitting beside Alys.

“Alys Nee-chan taught Renée-Caroline how to twist Aiba-kun’s ear properly,” giggled Kaoru with a hand at her mouth. “He’s very silly. You never told me how silly he is.”

“What ear? What’s going on?” I asked, looking from Kaoru to Nino to Alys in bewilderment.

“Renée-Caroline took action against Aiba’s rather effusive admiration of Kaoru-chan,” coughed Alys into the back of her shaky hand.

“Because this witch here can’t help but be academic about the subject of torture, she had to slip into professor mode.” Nino smirked while drawing circles on Alys’s thigh with his fingers.

“You would know that – how?” Alys challenged in a dead tone, putting a very shaky hand over the hand Nino had been using to draw on her leg.

“Trust the ‘M’ in this depraved relationship to know,” Nino snapped back at her, covering her hands with his and rubbing them.

She must be colder than normal if her fingers were shaking that badly. I knew she was always cold. Nino said that it was her thyroid problem that made her hands shaky. I wonder if that made them cold too. I touched her hand once, and everyone who touched her hand always said that she was unusually cold. Chiaki said that Alys’s body temperature was lower than most of ours, she said she discovered it when she accompanied the professor to the doctor’s once. Maybe that was why she was always so pale. One of the juniors who had bumped into her and who had held her hand when she helped him up ran screaming away to one of Aiba’s friends in JE Central because of her cold hands. The Yuki-onna – that’s what some of the juniors call her in secret. They could call her what they liked even if it wasn’t very nice. She couldn’t help it if she’s cold. These juniors also secretly called Nino, Kitsune. I always laughed when I heard that because it’s interesting and funny. What happened when the Kitsune got together the Yuki-onna? But I couldn’t think of that now. I was still trying to figure out if Aiba and his girlfriend got along with Kaoru.

“Did you like them? Did they like your art?” I asked, crouching on the floor beside Kaoru so that I wouldn’t have to see Alys coughing. It was a bad sounding cough. It sounded painful. I must remember to ask Okaasan if we still have the bottle of herbal cough syrup.

“Aiba-kun’s very funny. He thought some of the paintings were upside down. But he’s very honest. He really only wants people to be happy, and he happily told me that he was very glad I wasn’t an art snob,” she tittered excitedly as she beamed. “Renée-Caroline’s very pretty, like a dolly with Goldilocks dark brown curls. I asked her to sit for me next time. I think Therese Nee-chan would like her. Do you think I could introduce them? I wouldn’t bring Aiba-kun to the Six Petals bakery. He wouldn’t know. I’ll be careful. I want Renée-Caroline to feel more at home, and if she and Therese Nee-chan can talk about France, they would a lot happier, don’t you think?”

I nodded at her because it was a good idea, and because I liked to see my friends’ girlfriends get along with Kaoru.

“It would be good business for the Six Petals,” Okaasan said in a very practical voice, bringing out two small bowls of soup and frowning at Alys because of her cough. “Have some warm soup. It will help. I’ll give you some syrup to take home later. How is son number two taking care of you, I will never know!”

“He doesn’t,” Alys replied, giving Nino a poisonous look.

“I’m too poor to take care of myself, let alone someone as sickly as Alys-chan,” Nino hissed and pretended to look annoyed with her. But he wasn’t really, because he took the small bowl from her tilted it for her so that she wouldn’t have to take it up with her shaky hands. From the way her hands were shaking, it looked like she would spill the soup.

“Don’t I get some soup too?” I pouted at my mother.

“Later. Guests take priority in this house, and don’t you forget it! It’ll be much warmer near the stove, and I get you some cough syrup. As for you, son number two, you will learn to take better care of her!” Okaasan said firmly, pulling Nino and Alys away with her into the kitchen. “You two run along and play with your paints and clay. I’ll call you down for dinner.”

Nino and Alys smiled at each other in an evil ‘yay-we-did-it’ way like they were hoping for Okaasan to drag them into the kitchen. They each raised a sarcastic brow at me and followed my mother for their free cough syrup and health tips.

I pouted and gave Kaoru an embarrassed shrug.

She only laughed quietly saying, “We should go to your clay and art studio. Let’s see if I can get the border of the jigsaw puzzle done before dinner.”

“Did you really like Aiba and his girlfriend? Were they nice to you?” I asked when we were in the paint room and I had wet my hands for the clay.

Kaoru only giggled and tried to work on the 10,000 piece jigsaw that her sister-in-law had given her for birthday. “They’re very nice. Aiba-kun may look very silly but he’s very sweet and dependable. Renée-Caroline quite depends on him. I think they’re cute, don’t you?”

“Somehow,” I started with the clay on the wheel as she sat on a high stool and smiled at her when swung her legs when she fit a piece into the puzzle, “I think Aiba’s too baka to be dependable. They’re really as mismatched as Nino and Alys. What kind of a boyfriend would Aiba make for a world-class conductor like Renée-Caroline? He’s only good at doing silly things, eating, and playing around. It’s just like what kind of a boyfriend is Nino if all he does is play the strangest kinds of games with his girlfriend??”

“But they are cute together! Renée-Caroline’s seriousness mellows Aiba-kun out, and he helps her to cheer up. They balance each other. She has a lot of energy when it comes to music and she likes golf. They’re going to draw faces on their golf balls. It sounds fun, don’t you think?”

“When you say that, it seems okay and normal,” I honestly replied. “But Nino and Alys are not okay and not normal. They’re scary together. People at work call them the kitsune and yuki-onna. One of the bands spread a joke that they’re really yokai. Does a kitsune ever marry a yuki-onna? What do you think?”

“The kitsune is the only yokai who can melt the yuki-onna’s heart of ice and the yuki-onna is the only yokai who can handle the kitsune, don’t you think? I wish Satoshi-kun wouldn’t say that they’re not normal. They are very much so,” Kaoru stated firmly, as if she knew it for a sure fact. “On the way here, Nino-kun and Alys nee-chan talked quietly about work schedules and their work projects until they both dozed off in the taxi. She only sheds her school-marm professor image when she’s with him; and he’s just a little more serious when he’s with her. Sometimes, I get jealous when I look at them.”

I looked up from the clay and let it slip from my hands for a moment. Eh? Did I hear right? Why would Kaoru would jealous of them? I liked Alys as a person and she was a very good friend to me and Kaoru and the rest of Arashi. But she wasn’t cute or artistically creative like Kaoru. What was there to be jealous about? Was it because Alys was clever? Was it because Nino was more – there was a word Jun used the other day – demonstrative in his affections? I didn’t know, so I asked, “Why? They’re different from us. Everyone’s different; they’re just strange. Strangeness isn’t something to be jealous about, is it?”

She laughed. Then suddenly, she stopped swinging her legs and started chewing on her lower lip instead. “Most people like ‘Kaachan and ‘Touchan are like square tiles we see on the bathroom floor. They can fit anywhere and be with anyone because they have simple and commonplace fears and hopes. Then there are people like Chiaki Nee-chan and Sho-kun, or Alys Nee-chan and Nino-kun, or even Jun-kun and Sora Nee-chan, or even Aiba-kun and Renée-Caroline. People like that are jigsaw pieces.”

“I don’t understand,” I shook my head with a pout and wiped my hands on a towel. “People are people. How can they be jigsaw pieces?”

“Come here and I’ll show you,” she smiled, waving her hand excitedly. When I was finally next to her and staring at the jigsaw box of a wheelbarrow with different flowers in it, she continued by putting two puzzle pieces in front of me. “People like Chiaki Nee-chan and Sho-kun, and Aiba-kun and Renée-Caroline balance each other out. They are like these – normal jigsaw pieces that you can force into most spaces in the puzzle and you wouldn’t notice that they didn’t fit unless you looked at the picture.”

Kaoru stopped and showed me with another similarly shaped piece of a different colour and put them together. I saw what she meant, but I still couldn’t understand what she was trying to say with the jigsaw puzzle and her thing about being jealous of Nino and Alys.

“Then there are people like Alys Nee-chan and Nino-kun or like Jun-kun and Sora Nee-chan,” she smiled sadly and almost enviously that I had to pat her hand to let her know that there was nothing to be jealous about. “They are like special jigsaw pieces, like these ones.”

She pushed two pieces towards me. These were the really, really funnily uneven and irregular pieces and you didn’t know where they fit. Why did the jigsaw makers even make shapes like that? Did they want to make jigsaws more difficult than they were?

“You see, don’t you?” she continued softly with a sigh, her lisp more obvious as she did so. “That is what they are like – irregular and uneven, designed to fit in only one place on the board, and with only the piece next to it. You can fit them somewhere else, but if you want to do something like that, you would have to cut off the little pieces here and here that stick out, or if you ignore the space that should have another interlocking piece in it.”

Oh! I didn’t think like that! That was very clever; and true about Nino and the professor, and even Jun and his sensei when I think real hard about it because they wouldn’t be good with anyone else. “So, you’re saying that they’re like these funnily odd shaped ones that can only be fit together,” I exclaimed, feeling very proud of myself that I finally figured it out.

She nodded and put those pieces where they belonged in the puzzle. “But what about us, Satoshi-kun? We’re not tiles; that means we must be jigsaw pieces. Are we the kinds like Chiaki Nee-chan and Sho-kun, or the kinds like Alys Nee-chan and Nino-kun? The latter kinds are rare. They are two halves of a whole, but people like us – are we like that too?”

“And you’re jealous because of that?” I asked, not sure if it was smart to be jealous of Nino and Alys because I didn’t see anything to be jealous about. They were them. I accepted them for what they are without asking questions. “But we’re good, aren’t we? We’re engaged, so it must mean we’re jigsaw pieces that fit together.”

“They’re not engaged, and yet everyone can see that they’re a near perfect fit. That’s something to be jealous of, I think,” she pouted and then shook her head. “Does that make me as perverse as them, you think?”

Oh! I understood it now. Women did think a lot of nonsense, didn’t they? I think each couple functions differently when they’re put together, so I tried to tell her so. “Ne, ne, Kaoru,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulder to cheer her up, since she looked like she needed it. “Being jealous about the Kitsune and Yuki-onna couple is silly. No one wants to really be like them. I know I don’t. We’re us and they’re them. That’s how it is. Even if we’re the ordinary jigsaw pieces, it’s not so bad. At least, we fit together. That’s the most important thing.”

She laughed softly and continued with the jigsaw, then suddenly paused and looked at me with serious eyes. “Do you really think so?” she asked, biting her lips.

“Hai,” I nodded, smiled and rested my cheek next to hers. I said it as much to her as it was to myself. Things would work out. I was sure of it. She would get her final degree from Geidai, teach full-time at Musashino, and then we will find the time to get married. Maybe we could even let Nino and Alys be godparents of our first child. That was a nice thought. Kaoru would like that, I was sure of it. She did go to church and everything, so she would want godparents for our children. I could do that when the time came, but now, I just wanted to finish her jigsaw puzzle.

NOTES

The yuki-onna vs kitsune reference was hinted at in Sho’s story. A thorough explanation of how these nicknames came about will be revealed in Aiba’s story.

yuki-onna= (lit) snow woman, think of it as a snow demoness
kitsune= fox spirit and something of a trickster.

In France, compound names are read as one name. That's why it's Jean-Paul Satre instead of just Jean Satre.

Chapter 40

I shouldn’t have asked what could go wrong. Okaasan always said that saying things like that tempted fate. And I think I tempted fate inadvertently by thinking that things couldn’t go wrong when they could because I didn’t think things through. I didn’t think that Kaoru’s exhibition would have such a big impact that Jun’s Sora would go see it. We had all returned to the gallery to look for Okaasan and Morimoto mama with Nino smirking happily at something as he swung Alys’s briefcase, Alys and Kaoru holding hands, and Sho, Chiaki and me talking about the pieces that were going on loan to Omei Art Gallery. I didn’t even know Sora was at the exhibition until she called out loudly to Chiaki and Alys. I think it’s amazing how they get along. They waved, beamed, touched each other’s arms and held hands. It’s nice to see our girlfriends like that. Then I remembered that Sora didn’t know Kaoru, and if she knew, then Jun would know. I really should have thought about things.

Nino’s sense of the situation was always spot on and he quickly squeezed between Alys and Kaoru, gave her briefcase back to her, and gave a sarcastic laugh when he said hello to Sora. “Oh! You’ve found me with my beauties, Sora-chan,” he said with that smirk of doom on his face, putting his arm on Alys’s shoulder. “On behalf of my empress,” he paused and grabbed Alys closer to him, “and concubines, yeah, these two others, I thank you for coming to see us. I’m sorry to say we are no longer accepting applications to our harem.”

The girls burst out laughing uncontrollably and Alys smacked him generously on the arm, and Sho shook his head while laughingly covering his mouth.

“When does the new intake begin, your majesty?” Sora joked, playing along. Jun said that Sora has a lot of funny ideas and looked at people like subjects she could use for her books. But I didn’t think so. She had a cute way of talking, I thought, and fun to be around because you didn’t know what she would say and she would always play along with whatever we said.

Nino shrugged and dropped his arm to Alys’s waist, and she moved her arm to his waist too. The two of them needed a lot of touching like that. “Never again, Sora-chan, I’m so sorry. Just last night, my empress and I went through the account books where….”

“We realised that having additional women wrought a severe drain on the Privy Purse,” continued Alys, pushing up her spectacles and curling her lips at Nino while patting his hipbone.

“Yeah, and she has the Machiavellian habit of poisoning my wine whenever I take a new concubine. Her majesty and I are not good at sharing each other,” Nino smirking evilly at Alys. He stopped when everyone stopped laughing and he seriously asked Sora, “How much do you know?”

At the same time, Alys asked, “Which direction do your suspicions tend?”

“The artist and all of you…” Sora said and then stopped.

“Does Jun know?” I asked, suddenly thinking that if Sora knew, Jun would know. And if Jun knew, he would be somewhere around, and if he was somewhere around, Aiba may be somewhere around too.

“Not yet, he’d be here soon,” Sora answered with a kind, thin smile at me. “What is the connection between the artist and all of you?”

“You tell me, Sakiyama sensei,” Nino snorted.

At the same time Alys smirkingly asked, “What do you think?”

It was frightening and eerie to hear them speak at the same time, using the same contemptuous tone like it was a waste of their time to say any more.

Sho gave them a glare and Chiaki explained, “We’re all acquainted. Sakiyama Jewel sensei, may I introduce you to Morimoto Kaoru, the artist, and Ohno-kun’s fiancée. Kaoru-chan, meet the novelist whose real name is Kujo Sora.”

“Ohno’s fiancée? Well, well. What a pretty name, Kaoru-chan…” Sora began to say, but couldn’t continue because Kaoru looked like she wanted to cry.

Kaoru gave a brief start and her eyes sparkled brightly as she beamed, bowed and stretched out her hands to Sora. “I love your books, especially Bleeding Piano and For the Benefit of the Forsaken. You must give me your autograph, Sakiyama sensei,” she gushed with feeling.

“Ah, everything becomes as clear as crystal,” Sora said, nodding and taking Kaoru’s hands with a small smile. “We’re all in the same boat; just call me by name.”

“MatsuJun is going to flip when he finds out Ohno has a secret fiancée,” Sho groaned. And he was right. Jun would freak out and then he could tell Manager-san. That would be bad, very bad.

“Jun’s response doesn’t interest me. It’s not like we weren’t friends with Kaoru-chan and Oh-chan to begin with,” Nino said in a bored way.

“Give him some credit!” Chiaki insisted.

“He will keep it a secret. I will personally make sure of it,” Sora reassured everyone. “May I be among the first to wish the both you much joy,” she continued, patting Kaoru’s hand and nodding at me.

Chiaki nudged Sho in the ribs as we moved on in search of Okaasan and Morimoto mama. “All this would be obviated if your employment agency did not have those ridiculous and cumbersome rules governing your personal lives.”

We all said nothing in answer because I think what Chiaki said was true. It wasn’t fair to the girls, and us, if I really think hard about it. But at this point, there wasn’t anything we can do. To get rid of this heavy feeling that had come to sit on our talk, Nino suggested that we sit in one place when we found Okaasan and Morimoto mama, and wait for Jun. The girls thought it a very sensible idea and we did exactly that. The mothers listened to the news of the engagement and didn’t object, which was good because I was scared they wouldn’t like the idea, because I wasn’t near clever enough for Kaoru. Nino said I was stupid was worrying over nothing and Sho looked strangely thoughtful when I said I thought the mothers wouldn’t like the idea. He then said we should think of something to keep Jun calm when Jun came and found out. Sora told us that we didn’t have to worry because Jun would always see reason.

Before Jun arrived, Sora had the whole story of how and why we wanted to keep everything a secret, and how Chiaki became friends with Kaoru, and how Sho found out, and how the Alys and Chiaki were roped in to sit for Kaoru. It wasn’t as complicated as it sounds. When Jun arrived, none of us knew he was around until he said so. We were really just hanging around and waiting for him. The Sakurais were staring at a sculpture and talking about how to keep Jun calm when he came; the mothers were discussing dinner plans; Sora was talking about getting Kaoru to draw some illustrations for story she would be doing for a book for the Chuo Koronsha publishers; the Ninomiyas were playing against each other on their DSes and softly talking about the cost of housing in one of the neighbourhoods near the part of Todai where Alys taught; and I was staring at a painting thinking about how to keep Kaoru a secret from the management. But they really didn’t have to know about her. It was my life, wasn’t it? The management couldn’t do anything about it. They didn’t care about Sho and Chiaki so long as they weren’t caught; they pretend Jun and Sora don’t know each other in real life as long as it wasn't found out. It was very confusing sometimes, and strange.

“Obaachan, ladies, Riida, Sho-kun, Nino,” Jun said, creeping up on us and I nearly jumped in surprise.

Chiaki laughed and shooke her head when she saw that Sho was surprised and shocked too. “Et tu, Brute?”

I didn’t understand what she said, and I don’t think any of us did, except Sora and Alys who were really very, very, very clever.

Alys pushed her glasses up and said in (I think) English because her accent sounded the most natural whenever she spoke English, “My dear Chiaki, ‘tu quoque’ would be more apropos.”

“Eh! I died? You could have been gentler.” Nino pouted and huddled closer to Alys.

Sho, who, mysteriously seemed to understand explained, “It’s a Shakespearean reference to Julius Caesar. But the philosopher over there had to correct the French.”

“Latin,” Chiaki and Sora said with a disappointed look at Sho like he said something wrong.

Did they say Latin? What has Latin dance got to do with anything with Shakespeare and what Chiaki said to Jun? I really didn’t know and when I didn’t know, I had to ask. And I did ask as I watched Nino keep his white DS, “Latin? Like the dance? Paso doble?”

As Alys passed her black DS to Nino, he laughed mockingly, “The language, Oh-chan! But it’s understandable – my Alys-chan’s brilliance would be too much for you to digest.”

Nino always had to say cutting things. It was just a habit with him. I didn’t mind it, and so I sat down next to Kaoru.

Jun didn’t look like he knew what was going on because he was glaring angrily at everyone when he asked the question I wanted to ask. “Ne, I have a sinking feeling I’m going to regret asking. Why were you using Shakespeare and Latin?”

“Caesar utters ‘Et tu, Brute’ when Brutus stabs him in the play,” Kaoru answered softly. She knew tons of things I didn’t, Kaoru did, and I was proud of her. But I didn’t like Jun’s glare, so I put my hand on her head.

“Eh?” Jun asked, twisting his mouth in confusion.

Chiaki and Alys rolled their eyes, and the Chiaki said, “There is a logical explanation to this. Morimoto-san…”

“Kaoru-chan to us,” Sora continued.

Chiaki went on, “She is Ohno-kun’s fiancée. Save the Ninomiyas…”

“Don’t call us that!” Alys complained, and Nino rubbed his hand over her upper thigh.

“Save the Ninomiyas and the couple’s respective families, no one else knows. Since we found out yesterday when Sho did the news coverage and we learned of the nudes, and Sora found out today upon viewing the same nudes…” Chiaki continued to explain.

As MatsuJun was still staring at Kaoru in shock, I patted her shoulder and said when Chiaki stopped, “And then you came…”

Sho ended the explanation by telling him, “You’re the latest one to hear of it. They used the lines which meant, ‘And you, Brutus’ because it seems that you’re the latest initiate into the great secret.”

“Will you just let me finish!” Chiaki laughed with her arms at her hips, pretending to scold us. When Nino and Alys made a ‘pftt’ sound and dismissed her with a wave of their hands, she laughed again and continued, “Our charming Alys’s overriding flaw is her need to play the perfect academic…”

Nino’s eyes came up from the DS and he stated with strong feeling, “My Alys-chan’s perfectionism isn’t a flaw. The way she holds her chopsticks however is criminal.”

As Alys started hitting Nino’s arm and he started laughing, Chiaki ignored them and went on, “As I was saying, Alys had the need to correct the Latin.”

“Point of information – I wasn’t correcting, I was quoting from De Viris Illustribus,” Alys said in her professor voice.

Jun was looking more confused, like he wanted to sit down, cross his legs and think. “Matte, matte. Ano, ne, Riida is secretly engaged to be married to Morimoto Kaoru-san?”

Kaoru and I nodded at him and shifted over so that he would have somewhere to sit.

But he didn’t want to sit. He only wanted to continue his questions. “Nino and Alys, ne, know of this?”

“You think?” the Ninomiya couple sarcastically spat.

“Ano, Sho and Chiaki know of this, ne, but not the rest of the upper management?” Jun asked, finally understanding a little, or it looked that way to me. I was more worried that he would freak out and start scolding us about procedure at Central if we had things that the management should know about in our private lives.

Sho answered with a small grin, “It would appear so.”

“And then, ne, I’m lost. What happened that resulted in the rest of you knowing?” Jun glared at the Arashi members present, silently demanding an answer.

Kaoru didn’t like people glaring. She was very gentle. So she interrupted, “Please do not be angry, Matsumoto-san. If I had known the trouble it would have caused, I wouldn’t have asked Chiaki Nee-chan and Alys Nee-chan to sit for me.”

“Sheer genius! You’ve now upset her. Very smooth, Jun,” Nino cuttingly said.

Jun was sensitive to treating girls properly and he didn’t like it when girls were upset. None of us did, unless you were Nino, because he didn’t care about the feelings about other people. Nino only cared for himself, sometimes for Alys and sometimes for me. But Jun never liked it when girls when girls were upset, so he quickly and quietly tried to apologise, “Ano, I didn’t mean to…”

Kaoru smiled at him to tell him that it was all right and shook her head. “Mmm-mmm. Daijoubu. Nino-kun always talks like that. I must admit that I knew who Chiaki Nee-chan was to the group when Alys Nee-chan introduced us. Chiaki Nee-chan saw us while performing her tree surgeon duties at Ueno Park and called out to Alys Nee-chan. I was just claimed to be a friend and not a word was ever breathed about Satoshi-kun. Then when Sho-kun came down to cover the exhibition, he saw some parts of the collection and called Satoshi-kun…”

“Whereupon, they learned of Kaoru-chan’s connection to Ohno-kun. When I called you, I was before the two oils. As I sought to give voice to my disjointed impressions, I caught sight of Alys and Kaoru-chan holding hands and talking to an older gentleman whom I later learnt was the renowned Toyomi Hoshino sensei. At which point, Chiaki loaned her arm to Kaoru-chan. I hung up on you because I was struggling to regain mastery over myself and when I did so, I called out to them,” Sora continued, telling it like it was a story she had written. She was very dramatic, kind of like Jun in a way. But that’s just what I think.

“The necessary introductions were made, greetings were exchanged and the basic facts exchanged,” Alys added when Sora stopped to catch her breath.

Jun twisted his lips like he wanted to laugh but dared not because he was scared that we would laugh at him for laughing at us. “Then why didn’t anyone say so at the beginning, ne!”

Chiaki, Alys, Sora and Kaoru exchanged looks like they couldn’t believe Jun could be so exasperated and they said in almost perfect timing, “Because you did not ask.”

After we spent some time talking about the exhibition and what this meant for us now that we were all getting kind of settled down, Jun promised that he wouldn’t tell anyone if I continued to keep everything wrapped up airtight and continued to keep Okaasan in the know about things. He also said that we couldn’t keep it from Aiba for long because Aiba could react badly from the shock if he found out on his own. That was true. But it wasn’t right to tell Aiba about Kaoru now because I was worried about him and his sudden interest in what he called ‘high culture’ and his habit of calling Alys and asking her about everything to do with ‘high culture’. I didn’t want to rub Kaoru in his face when he could be still getting over his crush on Alys. I would have to talk to Okaasan and Kaoru about this and see what we could do to gently let Aiba be in the know. Maybe when we had the engagement party with the rest of the guys, he could be told then. He was much easier to handle when he had his favourite karaage around.

“Hai, karaage would do it,” I mumbled to myself with a smile when Kaoru pulled my hand to let me know that Morimoto aniki had come in the Six Petals bakery van to take us home and that the Ninomiyas were having dinner at my place.

I could think about handling Aiba and telling him later. I had to see Morimoto papa first and hope that I didn’t end up gutted like a fish. Although that fear kept me worried on the journey home, I didn’t really let it show. Kaoru repeatedly told me that everything would be okay. And it would be, I think, as long as she was beside me.

Chapter 39

I didn’t know who it was that told us to enter, but it seemed like Chiaki and Sho knew because they grinned at each other. Chiaki then opened the door and we saw a slightly messy, airy room with sofas, a few book shelves, a table with art books. Ah, so it was Alys who told us to come in. So that’s where Nino and Alys had disappeared to. Kaoru lying on a sofa with a blanket over her and her head on Alys’s lap, looking pale, but still trying to be cheerful. Alys seemed to have a foot curled under her where she sat because I could only see one of her legs dangling down, either that or maybe Nino was blocking the other one because he was at her foot or feet, with an elbow on her knee as he crouched on the floor playing on his Nintendo DS.

“The Ninomiyas try to win over support for their cause to take over the world again,” Chiaki teased, waving at how we saw the three of them.

Alys closed the book she had been reading aloud to Kaoru, raised and eyebrow and pushed up her glasses. “Please refrain from calling us that. It will give the freeloading worm ideas.” But as she said that, she rested a hand on his elbow and he snuggled closer to her. Mah, the two of them were always like that.

“About time you got here, Riida,” he said without looking up from his game. “We were almost done corrupting your girlfriend, isn’t that right, Alys-chan?”

“Corrupting is such a strong word – I prefer re-educating,” she laughed, stroking Kaoru’s hair. “She’s an exceptionally bright student.”

“Lise Nee-chan! You’re only embarrassing me.” Kaoru blushed and stretched out her hands to me. “Chiaki Nee-chan, Sakurai-san, I figured you would have known by now. Alys Nee-chan had explained that you would have thought out all the connections in a matter of hours. Thank you for attending the exhibition. I’m sorry for greeting you like this but the pain…”

“Shush,” Chiaki scolded when Alys and Nino went away from the sofa to share a seat on a single-seater where he continued to play his game and she watched with her head on his shoulder. “I know what ails you. The success of your exhibitions is already assured. There was widespread praise for you work.”

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to ask whether you would consider selling ‘the birth of Nature’s Protectress’ to me,” Sho asked, nudging me forward. I wasn’t used to talking to Kaoru in front of so many people even if the people were my friends.

“I’ll give it to you, Sakurai-san. I’m giving ‘the philosopher’s secret’ to the Alys Nee-chan as well. But only after the Omei museum stint. It is important the nudes are displayed as a set,” she explained, moving her fingers as she let go of Chiaki’s hand and stretched her hands out to me.

“Sakurai-san makes me sound like my father! I’m nowhere as important. Just Sho, please. Even the Ninomiyas call me that, among a host of less flattering names,” he laughed, sitting on the edge of the table and folding his arms.

Kaoru smiled sweetly at him and squeezed my hands tight when I took hold of hers. “Satoshi-kun, have you seen the whole corpus? Is Okaasama here? I think it’s not so bad now. I should go pay my respects to Okaassama.” She then sneezed and made a face, squeezing my hand hard as she did so.

Alys and Chiaki seemed to make the same face too and they both shook their heads.

“You’re staying where you are, young lady,” Alys insisted as she tried to balance herself on the armrest and lean on Nino with an arm over his shoulder at the same time. “One of us with fetch her for you if you so wish. An able bodied man should volunteer.”

“Not me, I’ve almost cleared this level!” Nino loudly said as he moved closer to Alys and rubbed his head on her arm.

“The freeloader’s out. Well then, we would have to borrow your hubby then, Chiaki,” Alys smirked and then turned to Kaoru, “that is, if you so desire it.”

“Hmm-mmm,” Kaoru murmured her objection that there was no need to do so. “Satoshi-kun’s here so that’s already very good. Did you like it?”

“Everything was good! The colours, the expression, the mood – everything! And I think I know what you thought when you painted each single one, and even the photographs were good with the light and the dark and the shadows and everything! They’re all heaps better than my work. But that’s why you’re the artist between us. I know just by looking at each piece that you were very serious about them and wante them to have special meaning for the people looking at them. It’s very different from my art which I just do for fun. Your work is serious and you try to reach out to people. My work only mirrors what I think on my own. That doesn’t make me very clever, ne? But that’s okay because you’re clever, not clever in the same way as Chiaki or Alys, but clever to see everything and rearrange everything. You can see everything and in the one you called ‘Satoshi’, I could see what you wanted me to see and it was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. No one but Okaasan told me that I was like that, but you did. That’s why I think I want to marry you. I think we should get engaged,” I blurted out in one breath.

Everyone in the room became silent after that, and I didn’t know why. Did I say something wrong? I didn’t think so. Kaoru was still smiling even if I think she didn’t hear everything I said, but she usually managed to know what I was saying even if her hearing aid wasn’t on. Eeyah! I forgot something! Maybe that’s why they were all staring at me with blank looks.

“Yeah,” I mumbled because I was ashamed at being so forgetful and searched the pocket of my jacket for something. “I forgot something. Very embarrassing, I know but I don’t think you’d mind because you know what I mean all the time. Here.” I shoved the box containing the earrings and ring set that I designed for her. “Engagement present. You’ll say yes, ne?”

“Why do I get the sudden feeling that this scene should have taken place in private?” Alys asked in a flat almost dead tone. “Freeloader, we’re being lampposts; we’re going outside. Sho-kun, Chiaki, we should leave the lovebirds alone.”

“You don’t have to,” Kaoru insisted. “Everyone here is a friend and friends should share things like joy and sorrow. I think Satoshi-kun didn’t mean to say it out like that.”

I pouted and shook my head, wondering why she wouldn’t take the box or open it. Maybe she didn’t want to be engaged to me. Maybe it was too soon to ask her something like that after only a little over two years.

Nino only laughed sarcastically. “Highly unorthodox proposal, Oh-chan; if she says no, we would all know why.”

Sho gave him a look that told him to be quiet as Alys smacked his arm loudly with her handbag while hissing, “It’s not like you’d do any better. The woman you marry would have to put up with you asking in a far stupider fashion.”

“It’s not like I want to marry you,” he scoffed with a smirk.

“Good. I don’t want to marry you either,” she answered, kicking his foot.

“Oi, you two turtledoves,” Chiaki warned the Ninomiyas sternly. “We’re trying not to spoil the mood for them here.”

“Er… Kaoru, don’t you want to see what’s inside?” I asked, pouting in worry that she didn’t want the set, that she would think the designs weren’t pretty, or some other reason.

She giggled apologetically. “Oh! You want me to open it? You could have said so, silly!” A quick click of the box’s spring and it was open. Sho and Chiaki went behind Kaoru’s sofa and leaned forward to get a look at the earrings and ring. Nino and Alys were unconcerned by it and only continued to stare at the Nintendo game he was playing.

“I knew rubies wouldn’t suit your mother!” Sho exclaimed with a big stupid grin. “There, that is proof of my intelligence!”

“I very much doubt that,” Alys said in the same flat tone earlier at the same that Nino sarcastically said, “Like you have any real intelligence, Sho.”

”My sentiments exactly,” Chiaki huffed in agreement with Nino and Alys. “So Kaoru-chan,” she continued, ignoring Sho who had started pouting because he was sad no one said he was smart. “This does make up for the awkward proposition.”

“Don’t do it, Kaoru-chan,” Nino sneered as he and Alys looked over with evil smirks of doom. “You’ll be throwing yourself away if you consent to the engagement.”

“Shut up! No one can be dafter than you,” Alys said flatly, kicking Nino’s foot again.

Sho groaned and rolled his eyes at the Ninomiyas for their insults at each other again. I didn’t mind. I was used to it. It was normal for them to be like that. I wasn’t paying them much attention anyway. I only wanted to know what Kaoru thought and what she would say. Up to now, she hadn’t said very much.

“Do you like them?” I asked, pouting in fear that she wouldn’t want the jewellery set. “I can get another made if you don’t like this one. I know I should have asked you but I didn’t think to because at the time I thought it would be a surprise but I didn’t know what it would be for, so I just drew a whole bunch and thought to choose…”

“I know, I know,” Kaoru smiled the big bright smile that made the sun brighter and the grass greener. “They’re very pretty.” She took up the ring from the box and turned it around between her fingers. “But I can’t wear this when I paint though. I’ll put it on my chain and wear it with my cross. Will that be okay with you?”

“Eh?” I gasped, “Was that a yes or a no?” When I said that, everyone in the room was quiet for a short while. I really didn’t know whether that was a yes or no, but it seemed that my friends did because Sho had smacked his own forehead, Chiaki had rolled her eyes and the Ninomiyas were making ‘pfft’ sounds of annoyance. Hey, I suddenly reaslied I could get used to calling Nino and Alys the Ninomiyas. It made life a lot easier to call them that.

Kaoru giggled, put the ring back in the box, and then took the box in her hands. “I should like it very much if I were engaged to Satoshi-kun. That means we can work on art together a lot more, don’t you think?”

Ah! So that was a yes! I was so happy I could burst, so I couldn’t help grinning and holding her hand. Oh, joy! Oh, happiness! Oh, love! Oh, no! What was I going to tell Morimoto papa and mama? I could tell Okaasan and she would understand. We weren’t going to get married right away. Kaoru had to finish her doctoral thingy with Toyomi sensei first and I had work. But I hadn’t thought about Morimoto papa and mama. What if Morimoto papa didn’t like it and threatened to gut me like a fish? That would be horrible.

“What if your father says no?” I asked suddenly when I realised that I could really end up like a gutted fish.

“Then you should ask him yourself. You and Okaasama should come home with Okaachan and me today to explain things, I’m sure he would understand,” Kaoru beamed, playing with the box in her hands.

Her answer only made everyone else in the room laugh. I didn’t see why though. It was a very good and sensible answer. Why couldn’t I have thought of that? I could always tell Okaasan anything, and she would know what to do.

“Thus order prevails with the good sense of a woman,” Sho announced with a stupid grin.

“Which is the same as saying poor Ohno Satoshi is forever doomed to be ruled by women,” Nino snorted, trying not to laugh anymore but failing.

Sho shook his head and chuckled, “Looks like I had always been right – Ohno-kun would be the first to get married secretly and no one would be the wiser.”

“You could beat him at it if you eloped,” Nino suggested sarcastically. “Maybe Alys and I should disappear for a few days to make it look like an elopement to take the heat off you. Ne, cynical witch, want to elope? We could copy those books you read – elope on a one horse gig. It could be fun. You could whip something else instead of me.”

“Who are you again? Ah, the footman! How dare you speak to me! Go harness yourself to the carriage,” Alys threatened with an evil smirk as she hit his arm in loud smacks.

Since we were already used to the Ninomiyas’ way of talking to each other, we all just laughed. It seemed that everything was good and right and bright with the world and nothing could wrong. After all, how could everything so good and right and happy, go wrong, right?

Chapter 38

Satoshi – that was the title. Simple and clear – that was easily understood. But why call it Satoshi if there wasn’t a person in the painting? It was just a baseball cap – a very silly one with flowers all over that I wore when I was in the neighbourhood near my house. It was a baseball cap, but not quite a baseball cap. It was dirty on the outside, covered with mud, and streaks of paint and charcoal smudges and clay. But the cap was twisted in an unnatural way, like the way you would squeeze water from a handkerchief from your hands? It looked like it had been twisted that and then left to uncurl a little. The inside of the cap was new, so new you could see the tag, label and washing instructions. That was very confusing. It was so inside out and outside in. Was that how she saw me? Was it something good to be inside out and outside in like that? Oh! Then I saw how it should be looked at. It meant to say that no matter what the outside of the cap was like, the inside would remain the same and almost new condition as the cap was first found. It was a compliment! I see it now. The cap looked like it was growing from the grass like something that was part of nature when t actually wasn’t. It was Kaoru’s style to put things that didn’t seem like they connection together and when you looked at the whole picture, you realised that they did go together. It was a very good piece. I liked it. It had a lot of meaning for me. It meant Kaoru saw my art as natural, that no matter how much the outside world tries to throw paint, mud and whatever at me, I’ll always be the same and untouched on the inside to her. That was very, very nice; even more beautiful than the abstract photographs and the nudes and the other paintings at her exhibition. I needed to find her, and Okaasan too. I knew what I had to do.

Then, I took a step back to see if I could find a view to confirm what I thought it meant. Sho and Chiaki were waving at me when I stepped back and I waved back. I wasn’t going away. They didn’t have to wave. I was only taking a step backwards.

Ah! I hit something and stepped on something. Eek! I turned around to see what I had hit and stepped on and saw Kaoru’s Toyomi sensei. Instead of being angry with me or shouting at me like I thought he would, he only coughed once so that I would jump away from his foot.

“I’ve heard of suffering for art, but this is ridiculous,” he said dryly in a tone similar to the one that Alys liked to use on Nino when she didn’t want to call him names. It also sounded like the tone Chiaki would use on Sho if she thought was being stupider than usual. I mumbled an apology but he only waved it aside like it didn’t mean much. “We meet again, honoured patron and admirer of Morimoto-kun’s work.”

“Er… yeah. Ano, Toyomi sensei, I don’t know about that… It’s inside out and outside in. I know what she’s trying to say, but I don’t know where she is. She’s not here and my mother seems to have gone missing too,” I said, waving and pointing at the baseball cap painting. “My friends like her work too and want to see her.”

Toyomi sensei bowed slightly at Sho and Chiaki. “The painter is unfortunate indisposed today and is resting in the postgraduate teaching assistants’ lounge next to the studio. Let me take you to the artist’s mother, I’m sure she would appreciate the sentiment and extend your collective well-wishes to the artist.”

“Eh? Morimoto mama’s here?” I asked not knowing that I had said it aloud.

“I left your mother at the regular exhibition of the Japanese 18th century oil pieces with Morimoto-kun’s mother,” Toyomi sensei explained with a smile as he looked up at the painting that had been named after me. “Omei Art Museum requested that one to be on loan to them for their next change along with the series of female nudes.”

“They’re buying it?” I asked, still very confused by what was going on.

“It only means they’re borrowing it,” Sho interrupted apologetically and made a half-arsed kind of explanation. “He’s not himself if he hasn’t had enough to eat, please forgive him. He does havethe tendency to speak as he feels without thinking beforehand.”

“The hallmarks of a true artist,” Toyomi sensei nodded in understanding, “to always jump into the thick of things for the sake of passion. Only a true artist would disregard the odds and believe that passion is the only impetus. Morimoto-kun is blessed to have such friends who can so readily enter into the feelings of her art and so, admire them. If you care to look around, I can show you and your party a few of Morimoto-kun’s thematically darker pieces, which I am sure will enchant you as much as this. For instance, ‘the Waxed Ribbon’ hanging on that wall depicts…”

Chiaki coughed gently to interrupt him. “We’ve already seen most of the displays, thank you. We are presently desirous of paying our respects to the artist herself. She is a most particular friend of ours.”

Toyomi sensei waved a hand to emphasise the point he made earlier. “She is indisposed in the postgraduate teaching assistants’ lounge, and will be unavailable for comment or interviews.” He shot a very meaningful look to Sho like he knew something we didn’t.

“It’s important that I see her,” I said with a disappointed pout, still not quite understanding why she was indisposed to walk around her own exhibition and meet the guests. I know not many people look at art seriously, and I understand the people who went to my exhibition were mainly fans who knew nothing about art, but that didn’t mean she had to be disappointed. Art galleries – real art museums wanted her work, and everyone who came to Kaoru’s exhibition were either art teachers or students. You could really see some people sitting down and drawing her stuff. That was really good. Even I didn’t get that at my exhibition.

He seemed to think about it for a while and Sho, Chiaki and me only stared at him, waiting for him to say something. Sho, I knew wanted to meet her properly not as a guest he had to interview for News Zero but as a friend of Chiaki’s and my girlfriend. Chiaki was getting worried about Kaoru because she started frowning at the words ‘indisposed’ so much so that her two eyebrows looked like one long line of worry. And I wanted to see her because I just wanted to. Okaasan could take care of herself and Morimoto mama for a while and I could text her if I wanted to go home or she could text me if she wanted to go home and we could go together. But now, all I wanted to do was see Kaoru. It didn’t seem complete to me to just see her works without seeing her. It was not a nice feeling. It made my stomach feel sick and I didn’t like it when my stomach felt sick.

At last, he walked us to exit of the Geidai University Art Museum. “You could try the painting department two buildings down. Some of her contemporaries may offer you their opinions on the pieces you have seen here. If she is well enough in the postgrad lounge, she may be inclined to receive visitors.”

“Well enough?” I repeated to myself. What did that mean? Why should she be well enough? Kaoru’s only problem was that she couldn’t hear very well, and I didn’t see that as a problem. Why didn’t she want to see who visited her exhibition? It was only the first day and the guest book had the first two pages nearly full. I thought it was great. “Does that mean she’s sick?” I pouted and let Chiaki and Sho comfort me with their arms on my shoulder.

Chiaki only threw her head back in a laugh as we walked towards the painting department. “The only reason I can think of is the fact that Kaoru’s having a tricky time because it’s her period. She’s out of commission on the first day no matter how she tries to hide it.”

“Eh?” I gasped, not really sure I heard right. Chiaki just said something like that, like it was normal and she didn’t seem embarrassed or anything. It didn’t look like Sho was bothered either, but Sho never shyed away from talk of this kind.

“Consider yourself lucky that your girl doesn’t throw dishes at you when she’s having her period, Ohno-kun,” Sho chuckled in a low voice.

“Hey, don’t say that about me!” Chiaki shot him a look to shut up or she would do something horrible to him. “I’m mild compared to Alys. When it’s her time of the month, even a misplaced muffin would bring on both her temper and tears. You just have dodge dishes, the unfortunate Nino has to put up with a lot more.”

“Women are complicated, ne?” I commented to Sho, hoping that Chiaki wouldn’t be able to hear me. Somehow I didn’t think I succeeded because she gave us a funny look. Luckily for us we came to the painting department’s postgraduate lounge or whatever it was called. Kaoru sometimes read there if she didn’t have to paint in the studio next door. I would have just opened the door if Chiaki had not stopped me and knocked.

“Enter,” a woman’s voice said in English. That was definitely not Kaoru’s voice. Maybe one of her classmates or friends or even her kohai – those choices were possible. Who it was wasn’t important. What’s important is that I would finally see Kaoru.

Chapter 36

The next morning, I woke up fresh and excited to go to the gallery for Kaoru’s works. I would have gone straight after waking up if Okaasan didn’t shout for me to remind me that I was still in pyjamas.

“Satoshi! Do not think of going out of the house like that! You’re not even wearing underwear under your pyjamas!” Okaasan yelled from the kitchen. I looked down at my pyjama pants and felt my butt. Hey, she was right! Oh yeah, I never wear underwear to sleep anyway.

Dragging my feet back in the house, I sat down at the table and grinned at my mother. “It’s still too early, ne? The gallery only opens at eleven.”

Okaasan shook her head at me and put down breakfast in front of me. “Eat, brush your teeth, shower, and wear the suit I pressed for you. When you’re ready, tell me and we’ll go pick up son and daughter-in-law number two.”

“Why are we going to pick up Nino and Alys? Aren’t they coming here?” I asked while eating. “Nino doesn’t have to work today either. We all have the day off.”

Okaasan removed her apron and lightly smacked the back of my head. “Daughter-in-law number two has work! She teaches until noon today. We’re going to pick her up with Kazunari-kun. Have some consideration! Not everyone has the same schedule you do!”

Oh yeah! I forgot that Nino wanted to go to the exhibition with Alys, and I forgot that she had to work too. I forget things like that a lot of the times. Never mind. Okaasan knows what to do. If she says we go later, then we go later. But first, I need to finish breakfast, wash up and then pick Nino and Alys up from where they are.

It didn’t take me long to get ready, and I even checked that I had sunglasses on and everything I needed in my pockets. By time I was okay, Okaasan was waiting with the taxi. She kept reminding me to behave myself because Kaoru’s exhibition meant a lot to her and all her professors would be there and it wouldn’t be nice if I said something silly or played a joke there while with Nino. I just nodded at everything she said until we came to the Todai building where Okaasan said Alys’s office was. As I couldn’t see them anywhere, I thought it would be better if I called Nino’s keitai.

Two rings later, he answered sounding like he was annoyed, “What is it, old man?”

“Okaasan and me – we’re downstairs Alys’s office in the taxi,” I explained, wondering where he and his girlfriend were.

“She’s trying to tabulate the student scores for a test before she leaves,” he said like that was something I should understand. The marks were already there on the test, deshou? Why should they be tabulated?

“Eh? Does that mean you’re not coming with us?” I asked, just to make sure.

“Don’t be facetious!” Nino snapped and then laughed because Alys said something like ‘less jabbering or I’ll throw you out’ in the background. “Come up to her office. She won’t take much longer. Follow the signs and take the lift up. Philosophy department. You can’t miss it. It’s so idiot-proof that even Aiba would succeed.”

“Okay then,” I said and hung up.

Thinking that maybe Alys needed help with tabulating her students’ marks, I told Okaasan I was going up to fetch Nino and Alys and followed the signs until I came to the Philosophy department. The door with her name was easy enough to find and I just thought they would be in there because I could hear them talking sarcastically to each other about numbers, so I just turned the handle and went in. The door didn’t make much noise and she didn’t seem to notice or care.

“74,” Nino said, looking up at me to close the door and take a seat.

“Next, 34, 0, 45.5. The mean stays the same,” she said, without looking up at me as I sat down and tried to smile at them.

Her office was cramped with books on shelves nearly everywhere. Not all the shelves had books, some had books and CDs and photographs with her and two other older women in them. Alys’s desk was rather messy with a computer to one side, stacks of papers bending this way and that, three files of different colours labelled with a combination of alphabets and numbers, and a penholder. She was seated facing the door, looking down at something at her desk and tapping her pen at something there and looked like she was mumbling something. Nino was seated by the side armrest of her chair, with a calculator in one hand and his other hand resting at the top of her chair. They seemed to be working on something to do with money, I think, seeing how Nino had a calculator in hand. They were usually talking about money. I once heard them say that houses in a certain district were too expensive to buy. I didn’t see why they were talking about houses, but I could never really keep up with their talk about money anyway.

“81.3. Round it down to 81,” he answered, looking down at the something she was writing on and running a finger down her neck. Ah, that was normal for them. I was used to that. But there was something strange. So, while they were like that, I took a closer look at them.

It wasn’t surprising to see them like that with him almost leaning over in her chair and she busy at work. That was normal for them. Sho always said that for all their insults, Nino and Alys respected each other’s work. I was more surprised that they had decided to dress kind of alike. I didn’t know whether it was Nino’s idea or her idea. But they were dressed alike – they were both in black jeans, boots and long sleeved white shirts – his had no collar, but hers did, and that was not really surprising because Alys liked collars and she liked to teach in pants although she sometimes wore long skirts, and she liked wearing low heel boots sometimes because she said it was easier to kick Nino that way. What I found unsual was that they were dressed like how Nino liked to dress when we went for shows on television. Strange, ne? She had a kind of longish dark grey cardigan-ish thing on with a long, thin black scarf loosely hanging around her neck. Nino had a purplish-greyish cardigan long-ish cardigan on (with pockets, I saw) over his white shirt and a light grey long, thin scarf thing around his neck.

“51 for Ueda,” he said, giving me a quick smirk as she wrote something at her desk. Ah! So it wasn’t money. It was student marks. Nino was helping her with it. No wonder he sounded annoyed just now.

“How did he do that well?” Alys sneered, her voice sounding very cross. “He doesn’t come for class, and dares to sit for the test without studying. I thought I failed him.”

“You did,” Nino said, putting down the calculator and pointing at something on the paper. “But he passed here – barely, but still a pass.”

She made a ‘pfft’ sound of dislike and flicked her hand in front of her. “I hope he never takes my courses again. He’s pulling down the curve for my students.”

Nino gave a sarcastic laugh and pushed the stick in her hairbun. “Everyone wants to be in Teng sensei’s class because she’s good. The philosopher’s philosopher, ne?”

“Whoever coined that sobriquet should be drug out into the streets and clubbed to death with a heavy bottom saucepan. The pressure on my head because of that is driving me mad,” she complained, tapping her pen on the paper.

“No one will say bad things about you, Manager-san promised, ne? No one can possibly despise you as much as I do.”

“Not if I grind your bones first, freeloader. Next name?”

“Okay, Yamada – last one – 74,” Nino said, and chucked aside the calculator on the desk. “Oh-chan’s here, by the way.”

“I heard the door, freeloader. Hey there, Ohno-kun, sorry to keep you waiting. However, this thing couldn’t wait,” Alys smiled at me in apology as she got up and waved the sheet she had been writing on.

Nino put on a beanie and sunglasses, took her briefcase and passed her the handbag. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

“If you’re not there, I’ll hunt you down and kill you,” she warned with a smirk, pushing up her glasses as we stepped out of her office. “Lock up and wait,” she told Nino, giving him the keys as she walked quickly down the passageway and into the main office.

“It’s my chance to flee from you, cynical little witch. You’ll never see me again!” he called after her.

“Good riddance!” she hissed with a flick of her wrist without looking back.

“Don’t fight with her. I don’t like it,” I pouted.

“Nah, this is normal for us. It only means she’ll meet us at the lift,” Nino explained as he locked the door.

“Why are you and Alys dressed alike today?” I asked when we walked towards the lift with our arms on each other’s shoulder and Nino swinging her briefcase lightly.

“I lent her my clothes. The only things belonging to her on her person today are her underwear and trousers,” Nino shrugged and pressed the button for the lift.

“Eh? I thought you leave clothes at each other’s place.”

“The only things she’s left at my place are clean underwear, pyjamas, stockings, and that half bottle of her eau de toilette.” He shrugged again and then smirked when we saw her come out of the main office. “Besides, I like dressing her. Kami-sama must have a sick mind – why do women look better in men’s shirts than we do?”

“Eh? But Alys in your clothes? Okay, nevermind that. Why did she stay over? It’s not nice to tell your girlfriend to stay with you when she has work and you don’t,” I pointed out with a pout, shaking my head at his treatment of Alys.

Nino snorted to swallow a laugh. “Matter of honour, Ojisan. She stayed over last night to play latest Warhammer expansion pack on the PS2. Would you believe, she believes her drow was better than my dwarf! Elves are overrated for these kinds of games I tell you.”

“That’s because you prefer melee weapons over long range ones,” Alys scoffed as she stepped into the lift with us and tried to roll up the sleeve of the cardigan thing she had on.

“Like you did any better with your chaotic good character,” Nino returned when the lift went down, and folded one side of the sleeves for her.

She tucked the rest of his hair under his beanie and shook her head with an evil smirk. “Your true neutral dwarf wasn’t making headway in the quest last time I checked.”

“Yeah, we’ll see who completes that side quest first,” Nino smirked back as we got out of the lift and dashed into the taxi where Okaasan was waiting.

“Sincere apologies, Obaasama,” Alys said with a thin smile and a very, very faint blush. “The department wanted the scores in by the end of the day, so I figured that…”

“Since she was taking off for the day anyway, she might as well do everything she was supposed to do before leaving,” Nino continued for her and dragged her hand over to Okaasan. “Could you please help with this sleeve? I couldn’t get it to fold right.”

Okaasan threw her hands up with a small sigh when the taxi drove in the direction of Geidai. I knew what that sigh meant. Okaasan was probably wondering what’s wrong with Nino and Alys. The guys all did – I didn’t though. They were very normal to me, or maybe that was because I was used to Nino. I couldn’t and didn’t pay much attention to Okaasan gently chiding Nino for spoiling his eyesight by playing his game in the taxi or nagging at Alys to have a plastic bag on standby in case she got carsick (and she did – she had what Sho called motion sickness). I was thinking about the exhibition and whether Kaoru would be as proud of her work as I was already proud of her.

Chapter 35

Mejiro was a nice restaurant with piano music and everyone there seemed to be there to enjoy themselves and mind their own business. I found Sho and Chiaki already there when I reached the place and they waved to me to ask me to sit with them. After we all placed our order for pasta and other things that I weren’t sure of (because Sho let Chiaki did the ordering for the drinks and the other things), we fell quiet like we didn’t know what to say. I did know what I want to ask, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to say it.

Sho seemed to know that because he immediately rested his elbows on the table and began with what he did know. “Between the three of us, I am confident of piecing together this story. Let us start with what we know. You two know what I have learned about Morimoto Kaoru-san in the course of the research for tonight News Zero’s report. Chiaki revealed on the way here that she is acquainted with Morimoto-san. She wouldn’t tell me more. Now, would someone be so kind as to tell me what’s going on?”

“I want to know that too,” I said, drinking the glass of water in front of me. “How did Chiaki know Kaoru? I know how Kaoru knows Alys because Nino knows about Kaoru too and we let them meet and everything, and they get along really great because Alys likes art too.”

“Let’s rewind for a bit,” Chiaki breathed out a sigh and rubbed the corner of her mouth. “You mean to tell me that: one – you and Kaoru-chan are actually a couple, and two – the Ninomiya-Teng pair is privy to that information?”

I nodded slowly and looked about the decoration of the restaurant to get a sense of the air in there. I didn’t see what was so surprising about that. I knew Kaoru and me were together, and Nino and Alys knew it too. Why was Chiaki so surprised? Ooh! I could smell bread and pizza and some kind of sauce. Smells delicious, I wonder if they will put bonito flakes on my pasta.

“Eh?” Sho cried out, blinking twice very quickly like he didn’t believe it. “Why I haven’t figured it out? Wifey, how did you know?”

Chiaki put a hand over his to tell him to be quieter and patted it softly to calm him. “Elementary, Sho. Ohno-kun just mentioned that Nino is acquainted with Kaoru because he had introduced them. It follows that if Ohno-kun made the introduction to Nino-kun, he would have also done the same by Alys. Those two ladies are sly things. They didn’t breathe a word about it. To think that I had been consorting with them because I thought Kaoru-chan was Alys’s friend.”

“They didn’t tell you?” I asked when the pasta came. I was really surprised. Alys was really good at keeping secrets, and she never told anything I told her about Kaoru to anyone, and I always thought Kaoru was too shy to tell anyone else. But I didn’t know that they would actually not tell anyone. They were really great women, ne? I was really impressed with them.

Sho gave a low whistle and passed Chiaki a napkin. “Just how long have Nino and his better half known?”

“Since the time Jun wanted to follow Nino to Todai to see his mysterious girlfriend,” I answered, biting into the pasta. “Umai! I should bring Okaasan and Kaoru here!”

“And how long as this thing between you and Morimoto-san been going on?’ Sho asked, poking at something on his plate.

“Since we got back from the ‘Time’ summer tour.” I looked up at him. Why was he asking so many questions? Couldn’t I ask a few too? I was about to when Sho burst out laughing very hard.

“You’re truly superb!” he laughed so hard that Chiaki had to wipe the corner of his eyes and poke his arm to get him to stop. “You’ve kept your girlfriend under wraps for so long with none of us the wiser. To think that Nino and Alys would be privy to this too. I’ve always guessed that you would have a wife stashed away someway, but this is too hilarious.”

“But I’m not married – not yet!” I said, taking another bite from my plate.

“And you got together with the woman who designed the set for your butai?” Sho asked like he was hurt. “That was unexpected. Does manager-san know?”

“No one else knows – just Okaasan, Otousan, Nino and Alys,” I said. “She’s not the set designer. She’s really just a postgraduate student or something like that at Geidai.”

“Toyomi Hoshina’s doctoral student in oil painting to be precise,” Sho pointed out. “The dazzling deaf beauty of the Japan’s Art Circuit – that’s what a few art galleries have christened her. And she’s your girlfriend? I’m still flabbergasted by that connection.”

“There are always wheels within wheels in anything to do with the drizzling boys,” Chiaki commented, shaking her head. “I didn’t suspect anything throughout the time I’ve known Kaoru-chan. I saw them on the train one day while going to Ueno Park for sap samples and Alys introduced her as a friend from Geidai. We got off at the Ueno stop where Alys was accompanying Kaoru-chan for an afternoon stroll and sketching session, and we started talking. It was incredible how we just clicked, and before long we were going out for tea and to Butler cafés and whatnot. Ohno-kun, you weren’t mentioned at all, not once.”

Sho used his thumb to wipe the corner of Chiaki’s mouth where the sauce had flicked up on. “I did tell you Alys is discreet. I just didn’t know she could be as silent as the grave. Morimoto-san’s pretty circumspect too. Ohno-kun has chosen well.”

“I think so too!” I grinned. “But what I don’t understand is why Chiaki is modelling for Kaoru. I know Alys did so because Kaoru asked her too”

“That’s simple,” Chiaki explained, putting her straw in with Sho’s drink. “Part of the ‘Reflections’ series encompasses reflections of the ordinary modern woman. Kaoru-chan spoke of wanting to demonstrate that modern women had a lot more going for us than we thought. Her vision of the modern female embraces both the nurturing aspect traditionally associated with womanhood as well as the masculine aspects of the modern woman’s mind. So in the ‘Reflections of Women’ sub-series, all the works therein sought to emphasise the new Athena-Aphrodite hybrid or the new Hera-Artemis hybrid that she thought women should be. Just because we work hard at our careers and can out-think men with our superior intellectual capability doesn’t mean we’re de-sexualised. It was a novel concept and I supported it by agreeing to be her model when she asked me a little before the summer. While you drizzling boys were away cavorting with fangirls, I helped with ‘The Birth of Nature’s Protectress’ piece. I’m very proud of how that turned out.”

Sho smiled tenderly at her and sipped at his drink. “Very entrancing, very tasteful,” he agreed with a nod. “Instead of the birth of Venus from the sea, we have the birth of nature’s protectress from a Sakura tree crushing a tractor with a foot and dissolving half-constructed buildings with a glare. I’m buying that painting as soon as the exhibition allows bids. When you told me you were posing for an artist who was Alys’s friend, I didn’t think that the world would be this small.”

“Kaoru-chan’s work is deeply symbolic and powerful. I enjoyed working with her,” Chiaki added, wiping Sho’s mouth with a roll of her eyes. “As previously mentioned, I did not know she was your girlfriend. If I had known, I would have likely not posed for her. Imagine if word gets out, and the drizzle boys are discovered to have girlfriends tucked away in a corner. Alys is another story altogether. She has strong feelings and would do anything to help a friend and weather all consequences as they came.”

“There’s no need to fear on that account,” Sho declared confidently. “There will be no mention of Ohno-kun in the news report tonight because Morimoto-san made no mention of him in the interview. I will not be so indiscreet as to bring embarrassment to my friend by making a tactless remark on his private life. This is a purely artistic venture that will be frequented, I have no doubt, by the true artists and not the motley crew of plebs who know nothing about the value of art. There will be no censure on either the artist or her models, and there is next to no chance of anyone discovering that two of the models are intimately acquainted with us.”

“Then it’s okay then!” I beamed cheerfully glad that things were all cleared up. Almost everything was cleared up. I was still curious about the painting of the baseball cap entitled ‘Satoshi’. I wanted to ask Sho, but that would only spoil the surprise. I think Kaoru would prefer it if I saw it for myself. It wasn’t so bad now that Sho and Chiaki knew. They wouldn’t go around telling other people about Kaoru and me either.

“While all that’s going swimmingly, I don’t think it’s fair for Morimoto-san that you’re keeping her away from your friends. She might get the impression that you’re ashamed of her because she’s almost deaf,” Sho warned me, just as Chiaki gave him a glance that seemed to say ‘mind-your-own-business’.

I shook my head and smiled while looking at the poster at the back of the restaurant with strange English words with even stranger markings on top of them. “I don’t want anyone to know. It’s just between Kaoru and me. Why should people know? I trust Nino and his sensei; I trust Okaasan and Otousan; I trust Morimoto papa and mama; I trust you and Chiaki. It stops there. I’m not ashamed of her. I just don’t want her to go through what we go through where people look at us like animals in a zoo wondering what we’re like. Kaoru doesn’t need that kind of looks. No one does. I think I can keep everything quiet. I think Kaoru likes it like that too because if there were people looking at her like they look at Arashi then she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her art anymore. I won’t do anything to take that part of her away from her. So I’m not going to say anything about her. She has her friends too in Geidai and. I’ve seen some of them but never talked to them. They look like nice people. Even Toyomi sensei’s pretty nice. Kaoru has Chiaki and Alys as friends too, so that’s okay. Chiaki and Alys can look after her too.”

Sho looked like he wanted to say something but he didn’t make a sound. He chose instead to wave the waiter for the bill. That only made Chiaki laugh out loud as she poked his arm. “Thank you for shutting him up!” she laughed in approval. “He deserved that. I perfectly understand your admirable sentiments and applaud you for them. There is, however, one residual question I have left.”

“Which is?” Sho asked, suddenly finding his voice again after he paid for the meal.

“The question’s not directed at you,” she waved a hand at him, pretending not to care. “Does Nino know about Alys’s nude?”

“He does.” I firmly nodded. “He wants to see it. Is it good? I’ve not seen it.”

“Neither have I,” Chiaki said, and we both stared hard at Sho who was the only person among us who had seen it.

“What?” Sho opened his eyes widely and backed into his seat. “It’s as tastefully done as Chiaki’s, only a little darker thematically. Nino would appreciate it precisely because it is contrary to the image that we usually have of Alys as a proper no-nonsense professor. You’ll see it when you do,” he grinned when Chiaki lightly pulled on his earring in gentle scolding for not telling her more about the painting. “Anyhow, I must be off. The News Zero studio awaits. Well, Ohno-kun, Chiaki and I will be at the launch tomorrow to loan my support to your girl on our day off. Is Nino going?”

“I’m going with him tomorrow,” I said, not quite sure why Sho was asking so many questions.

“Excellent! Then wifey and I will see you tomorrow.” Sho then hooked Chiaki’s hand on his arm and they both waved goodbye to me.

Now I was really curious as to what else was at Kaoru’s exhibition. I really couldn’t wait for it.

Chapter 34

I did text Kaoru when I found the time after the performance that night, but she didn’t tell me anything other than the sketch Alys sent was only the first draft, and the revised sketch and the actual painting were more substantial. According to Kaoru, Okaasan had seen the painting and said that it was a very different view of daughter-in-law number two, comparing it to the photograph of Kaoru that we saw at Toyomi sensei’s exhibition some time back. I don’t know whether they deserved to be compared as I hadn’t seen them side by side, but I knew whatever it looked like, Kaoru’s painting would be wonderful. After getting me to promise that Nino would go to the exhibition, and that she was glad Nino liked the preliminary sketch, she told me not to worry. If Okaasan had seen the painting and found nothing wrong with it, then it should be okay, ne?

When the tour was over, we didn’t have much of a break because the management wanted us to go back in the studio to record a new single. I didn’t see why we needed to hurry but they said it was for a Christmas release. So right after we got back to Tokyo, we had to record the new single and shoot the new PV. Sho wasn’t too happy with it because he had planned to take Chiaki away on a short holiday. Nino didn’t complain but I knew he wasn’t too happy with it because Alys would be back to start the new teaching year at Todai and he wanted to see her. I knew Kaoru would be having dinner at my place because Okaasan said she must eat something while her parents went on a fishing holiday. So I thought that I could invite Alys and Nino over because Okaasan had been asking why she hadn’t seen son number two and daughter-in-law number two.

Yosh! I would bring Nino and Alys home and Okaasan will be happy that she has more people to feed. “Oi, Nino, dinner? Supper?” I asked when we got out of the showers. Nino and I always shared one because it was just something that we did. It was much easier to coordinate and say naughty things to Sho if we were in the same shower.

Nino only looked at the clock in our room at JE Central and made a face like he was cross. “Not today. I’m running late,” he said, trying to fix his hair and then he whispered to me. “I thought it would be nice to take her out today, but she hasn’t called or mailed since she landed. You think she’s ill?”

“She knows you’re busy, deshou?” I whispered back, handing him his shirt.

“Doesn’t stop me from worrying,” he whispered.

Jun seemed to think that it was funny that Nino was trying to get himself dressed in a hurry. “Afraid she’ll really dump you this time, ne? Shirt before hair, Nino. You’re messing it up again. Here, let me help.” he smirked, batting his eyelashes.

Nino gave a sarcastic ‘heh’ laugh, “Even if we break up, there’s no chance she’ll go for a skinny butt-less baka with nicer clothes than she does and who thinks romance novelists are far prettier than her. Alys-chan may not be beautiful in your eyes, but at least she doesn’t have more hair than wit like you do.”

Jun didn’t like the mention of Sora because he shot Nino a warning glare before calming himself down. “At least she doesn’t call me freeloader.”

“Don’t say bad things about mama, Jun-chan. Ne, what does Sora-chan call Nino?” Aiba asked, looking up at everyone.

Jun rolled his eyes and tried to decide between two sets of clothes. From the way he was choosing, I think he was about to go see Sora. “The same thing everyone but your mama calls him. Pants, Nino. Don’t forget the pants. Alys’s not going to see you if you’re not properly dressed.”

Aiba jumped up on hearing that and bounced around Nino with a bright smile. “Eh? You’re meeting mama? Mama’s back? Will she bring back the wife biscuits from Hong Kong for me, you think? I want to go too!”

I didn’t think that was a good idea since I knew exactly how he thought of Alys, and I wasn’t sure that he was over her just yet. I couldn’t really see what was it about Alys that he liked because she seemed perfect for Nino but not for Aiba. Jun seemed to think that Aiba was annoying for jumping about and asking if he could go with Nino to see Alys, and he hit Aiba with the towel.

“Ow! What was that for?” Aiba complained, running over to Sho for help.

Sho only laughed at him and tried to reason with Nino, “Has it occurred to you that she may not be there? She would have only touched down at the airport early this morning after a twenty hours flight.”

“I thought she went to Hong Kong!” Aiba loudly said, sounding like he was confused. Sometimes he was completely out of things. Even I knew that although Alys had extended family in Hong Kong, her home was in England with her mother and grandmother.

I patted Nino’s back to tell him that he shouldn’t get angry with Aiba because Aiba was usually confused anyway. And I had to let Nino that I had to go because I didn’t want to keep Kaoru and Okaasan waiting. I always told them to eat first if I wasn’t home by a certain time, but Okaasan would wait up for me and whenever Kaoru knew I would be home for dinner, she would wait until I was home so that we could eat together. “If we’re going to Hong Kong, tell my Okaasan!” I said to no one in special, and patted Nino’s back to wish him good luck when he saw Alys because he would need it if she had just come back from a flight and wasn’t in a good mood especially if she was air sick. “See you tomorrow.”

When I went home, Okaasan, Otousan and Kaoru were talking about her exhibition and some of the pieces that she would have up. I heard something about set pieces with thematic relevance and individual dedicatory pieces and something else that I didn’t catch. The moment they saw me, they became quiet. I didn’t like how they all suddenly kept quiet when I went into the dining room. I didn’t know what was going on there. Only that it was something they didn’t want me to know. I wanted to ask but I didn’t because Okaasan once told me that it wasn’t nice to get people to tell you things that they didn’t want you to know. I thought that I would figure it out eventually. Besides, I was hungry and couldn’t think very well when I was hungry.

They tried to talk normally throughout dinner and said something about Kaoru’s exhibition being quite different from mine, but I knew there was something up. I just didn’t know what. I didn’t think much of it until a week later when I finally thought I got it.

It wasn’t that I had been thinking about it. I had been thinking of whether I could find time from song recording to go to Kaoru’s exhibition, but I didn’t really think about what my parents and Kaoru were saying the other day when they became quiet at my arrival. Things more or less made clicked together when I drank what remained of the lemon barley water Alys had brought that morning and my keitai rang.

So, where was I? Oh yes!

A week later, my keitai rang just as I had stepped out of the shop that Nino and I had gone to for the jewellery pieces. The brooch for Okaasan was very well done and very pretty I think. The earrings and ring set for Kaoru was as pretty as she was, and I couldn’t wait to give it to her at her exhibition the next day when all of Arashi had a day off. I was on my way to Vincy Art Supplies because I needed to get painting stuff and also because I wanted to get Kaoru new paint brushes as hers were getting worn when we washed them last week after the dinner with my parents when they all kept quiet. Eh? It was Sho. That was sudden. I thought he would be preparing for his News Zero thing and going to spend his day off tomorrow with Chiaki.

“Ohno-kun, I have a tension headache, so I am going to be blunt. Would you care to enlighten me on the nature of your relationship or Alys-san’s relationship or even Chiaki’s relationship to the painter, Morimoto Kaoru?” he asked, sounding very serious when I picked up the keitai.

That was surprising. I was sure Nino and Alys didn’t tell anyone about Kaoru and me. I trusted them and knew that they wouldn’t tell anyone. Even manager-san didn’t know because Okaasan and me – we didn’t tell him. So I didn’t see how he could know about her. “Eh? How did you know about Kaoru?”

“You call her Kaoru? Just who is she to you?”

“Er… I just know her. You’re doing something for her exhibition? Why? How?”

“Tonight, News Zero will be broadcasting a segment tonight on the Toyomi Hoshina sensei’s launch of his protégée’s work. I was asked to cover it. I had a sneak peek at the gallery. Very impressive stuff. The research undertaken revealed that this protégée, one Morimoto Kaoru by name, had her formal artistic debut designing the background sets for the second act of Amatsukaze – your butai project last year. I dug deeper and visited the Gedai Founder’s Memorial Gallery today for a sneak preview of Morimoto Kaoru’s ‘Reflections’. Guess what I found?” Sho spoke in a disbelieving voice. “Nudes of Alys and Chiaki entitled ‘The Philosopher’s Secret’ and ‘The Birth of Nature’s Protectress’ respectively. I’ve nothing against nudes. Those were very artistic and well executed. However, I am struck by the coincidences. How did Toyomi Hoshina’s protégée come to be acquainted with two Arashi girlfriends?”

“Err… They were already friends from long ago?” I suggested, trying to wrap my mind around everything Sho said. Alys modelling for Kaoru was something that I already knew. I had seen the basic sketch that Alys sent Nino for his birthday. But I didn’t know that Chiaki had been roped in to model as well. Just what was going on? Whose idea was it?

“That was my initial thought given the little Chiaki told me about the artist friend she met with Alys. That was my exact thought until I learnt that Morimoto-san had been the background set designer for Act Two of Amatsukaze and then saw a painting of a very familiar baseball cap entitled ‘Satoshi’. Two coincidences, I can stomach. Three is where I begin to suspect something; four is when it stops being a coincidence,” Sho’s voice sounded curious but not angry, so I wasn’t scared. I think he was as curious as I was about everything.

“Eh? Nani?” I stammered, not really sure that I heard what I just did. I didn’t know there was a piece she named after me. While I was really happy that she did so, I didn’t see why it was a picture of a baseball cap. I had to see it for myself before I could understand it. Hey! Maybe that was what my parents and Kaoru were talking about when I went home the other day to find them suddenly quiet.

Sho sighed on the line. “You’re as much in the dark as I am then.”

“I know about Kaoru and Alys, but even then I’ve not see the piece. I thought of just going to the exhibition tomorrow when it opens to see the pieces. I didn’t know about the rest,” I said before I realised that I had blurted it out and covered my mouth. Argh! Why did I just say that? Maybe Nino was right that I was incurably honest.

“Okay, Ohno-kun, this is getting weird. Chiaki and I are headed for dinner. I would greatly appreciate it if you joined us, and we’ll have a parlay at Mejiro two shops down the sushi place manager-san always takes us to”

“I’ll go,” I replied, wanting to know what Chiaki knew.

“I’ll see you in half an hour,” Sho said in a tone that insisted that I be there.

I would be there. I wanted to know to. Just want had Sho seen when he saw the paintings? Just how did he make the connections between Kaoru and me? What have Alys and Chiaki got to do with this? There were just too many questions, and I like to think it was a little fun because I didn’t know what was going on.