103 posts tagged “matsumoto jun”

Chapter 030 – Fears of the Honest

Owing to Sora’s habit of being incommunicado while canning herself on self-imposed writing and transcription deadlines, she only replied to Chiaki’s message two days later with an invitation to dine. She had just completed the first transcription draft of her murder mystery and needed a break from the inevitable editorial process where she would print out the typescript for a check before submitting it to the publishing house’s editor. Chiaki’s request for a meeting and her straightforward message of ‘I need a favour’ piqued Sora’s interest. She liked intrigue for its own sake, and Jun occasionally teased her for it.

The love for intrigue was something Sora personally felt stemmed from the era when her family was in the centre of the socio-political world. She knew she was proud, strong, and self-willed, as were all the descendants of the Sekkan-ke; and like her twin brother and elder sister, she had dreams of grasping political power and extending the influence of her family in all sectors of society. However, unlike her twin whose political ambitions were of a more self-serving nature, Sora possessed a noble and generous spirit as well as a reverence for those who proved themselves to have good characters. Although she was ambitious and hyper vigilant over her own well-being to a fault, she never once withheld her goodwill to those for whom she had some affection. Her gift of observation and insight into the inner workings of the human mind enabled her to look on humanity with some degree of understanding and compassion. Now that Chiaki had need of her, Sora would not hesitate to extend her understanding and compassion to her friend even if she wasn’t sure about the exact nature of the problem.

As Jun was fortuitously in her flat making dinner, Sora put the question to him, “Do you know something I don’t? What’s this favour Chiaki wants?”

“Ask her yourself when she comes later, ne,” Jun responded as he strained the soup stock. While he did have some idea as to the reason for Chiaki’s request for assistance from Sora, he did not know what she thought the novelist and mangaka could do for her. “Eto, she’s worried, ne, about the blackmail. Manager-san talked to her about it, but I don’t know what they decided on.”

“Who would blackmail Chiaki? She is the most honest person I know. What you see is what you get with her!” protested Sora incredulously, reading the back of a packet of half-cream.

“Not like you, ne?” he teased, flashing her a smile.

“Never mind that, Jun-chan.” She dismissed, taking a taste of the mushrooms. “What kind of abysmal idiot blackmails an upright, sensible person like Chiaki?”

“These are crazy times, ne, when a man would blackmail his own niece for money,” he sighed, extending a hand for the milk which he then poured into the soup stock. “She fears that he could out Sho and her, ne. If he has threatened it, it could do it, eh? He sounds desperate enough. He went to Nakahara-san for money first, ne, and when she couldn’t give him any more, he went to Chiaki even though he promised he would not. Goes to show you, ne?”

“Chiaki could have gone to the police. That is what I would have expected someone with her character to do,” she said, seriously considering the steps an upright person should always take in dire situations.

Kiyora, who had been listening to this exchange while rummaging in the refrigerator for a block of cheese she knew was hiding somewhere in its confines, popped her head up and reminded her younger sister, “Verbal threats do not constitute as harassment. The police would only step in if physical threat was meted out. Even so, evidence of physical harm would have to be produced and verified to be anything but self-inflicted by a doctor before the courts would allow it to be admissible.”

“There is psychological fear and trauma, Oneesan, which is as great as physical trauma,” grumbled Sora. “It would be stupid to think that Chiaki could tolerate something like this indefinitely without any strain.”

“Ano ne, we’re her last resorts. Manager-san would only involve himself as long as this remains a matter that would affect the Jimusho, ne,” Jun opined, taking the cream from Sora and pouring it into the pot. “Do you want a poached egg? It’ll be good for you.”

The novelist shook her head and peevishly stated, “How can I think about poached eggs now when I worried about Chiaki?”

“But I’d be worried about you if you don’t eat, ne? You never eat when you’re in the can.”

“I didn’t give you permission to worry.”

“I just do, ne,” he said, cracking a thin smile. “I’ll make the poached egg and you’d be able to think better when you have had something nutritious to eat. Don’t beat yourself too much over this, ne, manager-san would do try to make sure the Jimusho does something if only to safeguard our profitability.”

“I talk about the potential ruination of lives and you answer in profit margins! Do you see a problem here, Jun?”

“I know that, ne, but look at it objectively. Chiaki fears for her mother’s safety as well, more so than her own. Eto, if it comes down to it, will she choose her mother or Sho? It will be her mother, ne, because Sho has Jimusho backing and her mother only has her.”

“All the more reason why we should help her before that choice becomes necessary,” Kiyora pointed out, finding the cheese at last and placing it on the kitchen counter.

“But how?” Sora questioned. There was no immediate answer and even if there was one, it would have been truncated by the doorbell. Completely helpless in the kitchen, Sora sailed out to the living room, opened the door and let Chiaki in with the bracing news that Jun was preparing dinner and a good meal was bound to set anything to rights.

“Oi, I’m not your servant! I should be paid for my labour, ne!” Jun shouted in mock displeasure from the kitchen.

“Cook’s very disgruntled today,” Kiyora pronounced very seriously as she set the table. “We dine in ten minutes.”

“You’re not Ninomiya, so don’t ask for money. Take your dissatisfaction like a man!” Sora retorted loudly.

“While you do nothing, ne? You’re doing the washing up later!” Jun responded, bringing out a pot of something to the dining table. Pausing to favour Chiaki with a smile, he reassured, “Not you, Aki-chan, the disagreeable woman.”

Ignoring Jun, Sora dragged Chiaki into a chair. “You must tell me everything if I am to be of service to you.”

Not the least bewildered by the banter between Jun and the novelist or the presence of Kiyora, Chiaki bit her lower lip, fearing that she would be too forward. Exhaling very quickly and expelling the words with her, she asked, “Do you have any connections with the higher echelons on the police force? It’s too much to ask but I want something to be done at the official level. The cloak and dagger dealings of Date-san can only go far in hindering Yoshida’s unreasonable demands.”

However, she need not have worried, for her friends knew she was a straight-taking person as Sora’s response attested.

“If you consider me your friend, you won’t say such things,” Sora insisted. “It goes without saying that we would extend whatever assistance we can. One of the Takatsukasa cousins is an assistant to deputy police commissioner.”

“Cousin Takatsukasa Iestsuna would dearly love to be involved in investigations shunned by the lower levels of the force,” Kiyora added. “I’ll give him a call in the morning.”

“It is a good idea, ne,” Jun conceded, flicking aside his hair from eyes. “Sho would approve if you told him.”

Shooting him a speaking look, Chiaki laced her fingers together and firmly intoned, “Telling him would serve no purpose. He would only panic. I have enough on my hands as it is, I can’t deal with his panic attacks on top of everything else.”

“That’s harsh, ne.” Jun eyed her disapprovingly. “Ano ne, the secrecy I would expect from Alys. She has this idea, ne, that she must protect Nino from her imagined demons, ne. It wouldn’t be out of place for Nino either, eh? He hides things from Alys because he doesn’t want to see her upset. However, ne, you and Sho discuss everything.”

“Sorry, Jun-boy, but I think Chiaki-san is right. She is distressed herself and cannot keep Sakurai-san in check. His distress over the matter at this time would further vex her,” counselled Kiyora with an encouraging nod at the botanist.

“Oneesan! He has a right to know,” Sora demurred vehemently, hooking her collar-length hair behind her ears.

“Hai, he has a right, but Chiaki-san has an equal right not to tell him!” stressed the elder Kujo sister with a warning glint in her eyes.

“I would tell him if there were a need for him to be involved,” Chiaki quickly interjected to diffuse the volatile exchange between the sisters. While she was grateful to them for their counsel and assistance, she had no wish to be the cause of a riff between them. “But there isn’t a need as yet. I am doing everything above board, via official channels as dictated by my conscience and the regulations of Sho’s employment agency. Presently, I am secure with the Kujos’ sekkan-ke influence in the police, the Jimusho’s might, and Date-san’s gangster contacts and associates. Between these three forces, the threat of Yoshida’s blackmail endeavour would be contained. I can think of no reason why Sho should be involved when there are other forces already at work.”

“I don’t like it, ne,” Jun said in a slow and deliberate drawl.

“You’re not the only one.” Sora exchanged a significant glance with him to keep watch over Sho just in case.

Inclining his head forward in assent, Jun deftly changed the subject and invited everyone to partake of dinner while he silently mulled over the possible implications this matter of Chiaki’s would have on Arashi.

NOTES

The "in the can" and "being canned" reference.

When the editor/translator/writer/ghostwriter/mangaka of a book/article/paper/manga is ‘canned’, it means that (s)he is locked up in a room so as to write/edit/translate/draw and do nothing but work until the work is completed BY the deadline.

Usually the editor/translator/writer/ghostwriter/mangaka is 'canned' in a hotel room. Sometimes his/her home if his/her manager/literary agent is nice, or if you're an editor and ghostwriter like I am, you get canned in your flat.

Why "canned"? The image is this – the editor, or translator, or writer, or, ghostwriter, or mangaka, or novelist is confined to a small space (of the study/hotel room in front of the computer/typewriter/papers) much like a tin can and obliged to work until the job is completed by the deadline.

It is a reference unique to those of us in the aforementioned professions. It is also the reference used by some Japanese mangaka when they are locked in on a deadline

In case readers have forgotten, Kiyora is Sora’s older sister and also her literary agent/manager. We first met her in Wages of Managing Sense (Sho’s story). She appeared and was mentioned throughout From Cover to Cover (Jun’s story).

Chapter 029 – Qualms of the Uncertain

On his part, Jun was perplexed by Chiaki’s claim to being in trouble. He had always believed Chiaki to be far too cautious to be embroiled in any danger, and it came to him as some surprise that she should ask to meet him. He had thought Chiaki and Sho had a very discursive relationship where everything was talked over. What could be bothering her that she had specifically requested him not to tell Sho? Although he was a tad miffed at being interrupted from the memorisation of his latest drama script, Jun’s nature was such that he would never turn down a friend or family member who needed him. Furthermore, he had to admit to himself that he was curious as to the reason for the ring of despair he discerned in Chiaki’s brief text message. It was quite unlike the Chiaki he knew on whom Sho was dependent for all major decisions outside his career. It even struck him as odd that she would chose to speak to him instead of one of the princesses. He eventually convinced himself that Sho must have said or done something callous and injured Chiaki’s feelings. Despite the image of the well-preened obsessive-compulsive control freak he cultivated, Jun was very sensitive to the feelings of the fairer sex, and generally disapproved of anything that would grieve a woman’s sensibilities. Besides, he needed a break from the convoluted drama script he had hitherto been memorising. Since Sora had put herself in the can for the week so as to transcribe the first draft of her latest novel and Jun was loath to disturb her, listening to Chiaki’s woes on Sho’s deficiencies would be a welcome distraction.

Keeping that salubrious thought in mind, Jun continued to half-read his script as he kept an eye on the doors for Chiaki. To his good fortune, it did not take long for her to arrive and Jun immediately noticed when she walked into the coffee house looking harried. Rising from his seat and indicating with a swish of the hand that she was to sit, he pre-empted anything she might say by offering to buy her a muffin and a strong of cup of coffee to fortify her nerves.

When the blueberry muffin and vanilla coffee were procured and Chiaki’s nerves much calmer, Jun began seriously, “Is it about Sho?”

“Partly,” she sighed, sweeping the hair away from her face and hollowing her cheeks in thought. Unsure how she could best put into words her current situation; she went with her gut and straightforwardly whispered, “My wastrel maternal uncle, Yoshida Akira is blackmailing me for 20 million yen due to my relationship with Sho. My mother had given him all that she could and he now wants me to be his money tree. The police have a principle of not involving themselves in domestic matters, and Sho would fly into either a panic or rage if I told him.”

Jun’s elegant hand that was in the process of stirring his coffee dropped the spoon as his eyes flew up from behind his glasses. “Yabai,” escaped his throat when the information was digested. “How can I help?”

“Will your employment agency help me with deal with Yoshida-san? Not with the money, but with keeping him away, getting the police to do something about him. I thought of speaking to Date-san, but I worry that… that…” Chiaki suddenly found her throat parched and let the sentence trail off.

“Eto, if manager-san or Johnny-san tells you to break off with Sho for something that isn’t your fault and Sho doesn’t stand by you, ne, I’ll give Sho a dressing down,” said Jun, scowling at the thought that Chiaki’s uncle could be so spineless as to importune her.

“Will Date-san help?”

“He’d need proof.”

“Right here,” she replied grimly, pulling out the cassette tape recorder from her bag. Quickly attaching earphones to it, she continued, “Listen to it.”

MatsuJun did so, and paled in anger and disgust as he listened to the recording. “What kind of man does this thing, ne?” He scowled and returned the device to her. “From what I know, ne, manager-san has something of a past, ne. He didn’t get those tattoos for their artistic merit, eh.”

Astonished, she dropped her voice into a low hiss, “Do you mean to say that he used to be with the yakuza?”

“He’ll help. He knows people, ne,” Jun said, sidestepping the need to answer her question with a tight smile. As Chiaki turned her eyes upwards and shook her head at the perceived underhanded dealings the Arashi manager must make on behalf of the Jimusho, Jun flipped open his mobile and scrolled down to Date-san’s number. Hitting the call button, he gave the phone to the botanist, “Talk to him, Chiaki-chan.” She baulked at taking the mobile but Jun reassured her, “He will help you, ne, I know.”

Taking a deep breath and encouraged but Jun’s gentle insistence, Chiaki took up the proffered mobile and spoke into it, “Uncle Date, don’t say anything until you’ve heard everything.” And she proceeded to tell all to the rock behind Arashi.

Jun’s faith that Arashi’s manager would not leave Chiaki in the lurch was confirmed when Date-san proposed a lunch meeting with the botanist where they would discuss what was to be done. They met during Chiaki’s lunch hour on the following day at a bistro near the Jindai Botanical Garden.

The one day interval had given Chiaki enough time to make a copy of the recording she had so cunningly taken when her blackmailing uncle paid his unexpected call on her at work. She intended to play this copy of the recording for Date-san before entrusting the matter into his hands should he prove amenable to truly assisting her. Although she was filled with uncertain trepidation, not a trace of it could be found on her visage or demeanour. Chiaki carried herself as she always had and met Date-san with composure.

This composure pleased Date-san, for there was nothing he found more irksome than a weeping woman who could not convey the proper facts to him. “Chiaki-sama,” he saluted with a bow on seeing her. “I always said to Sakurai you were a smart one able to tell right from wrong at a glance. I am honoured that you came to the Jimusho with this matter.”

“What else could I have done?” she posed rhetorically, twitching her lips from side to side in nervousness. “Sho wouldn’t be able to do anything if I told him other than panic. The police wouldn’t do anything because they deem this a ‘domestic matter’ and because they have no jurisdiction over verbal harassment. I am led to believe that unless Yoshida-san physically harms either my mother or me, I do not have a case. Under the rules of your employment agency, Sho isn’t supposed to be formally contracted to any female, and if Yoshida-san exposes our relationship, the agency would apportion the blame to me. I am merely negating those worst-case scenarios and coming clean to you and the agency before any of it happens.”

“Johnny-san prizes honesty, Chiaki-sama, he may be a crotchety old man but he values initiative and integrity. You have put your trust in the Jimusho and we will do what we can to protect both you and Sakurai. Off the record,” said Arashi’s redoubtable manager, “even if the Old Man disapproves, you would have me on your side. I’ve seen what good you’ve done for Sakurai, and you’re not noisy like the other boys of the other hands with their high profile romances with other celebrities. The boys have chosen well with you princesses – all low profile, outside the industry and quiet as mice with your couple business. I don’t forget things done as favours to the boys.”

Chiaki smiled weakly at his praise and tugged at the ends of her hair. “Jun encouraged me to get in touch with you. He reassured me you could help.”

“I could if I knew more of the details,” he answered, whilst resting his elbows on the table. “Then I would know which of my… er… contacts I should enlist.”

A copy of the tape recording was accordingly played and deposited with him. After several strongly worded sentences as to what a scoundrel and coward Yoshida-san was (whereupon the botanist was unable to get a word in edgewise), Arashi’s muscular manager reiterated his personal commitment to assisting her. “No one will touch my boys or threaten them with impunity nor their loved ones either while I’m watching them.”

Chiaki sighed and tried to find Date-san’s eyes behind his sunglasses. “I do not know what you can do. I don’t even know if Yoshida-san is making empty threats. I have thought of breaking up with Sho so as to deprive my mother’s brother of the grounds on which he could make good his threat of an exposé. But it stands to reason with a blackmailer that it would not be an adequate deterrent. Breaking up with Sho does not mean he would cease pestering my mother and me. He could turn around embarrass me at work and make my life and my mother’s completely miserable. But it could be better for you because it would then be solely my problem rather than that of your employment agency; and more importantly, Sho would not be caught up in the potential scandal.”

Thumping a fist on the table in objection to her melancholy, he spoke in his usual rough and resolute manner, “You forget that he could expose your association with Sakurai anyway after your break up and the Jimusho would still be implicated in the matter. It’s better for the Jimusho to be involved in this from the start before the projected trouble comes to pass.”

“So that you may be prepared for every eventuality?” she asked, slightly assuaged by his bracing words, smiling at his firm nod. “I only hope that you would be able to stop Yoshida-san from hounding my mother and me for money.”

“And we will.”

“I wish I shared your confidence.”

“You would if you had many er… contacts and er… associates.” He paused and lowered his voice, “First thing I’ll do is to have someone check up to see if this Yoshida Akira lowlife could carry out his threat, and if he has the photographic evidence to bring your association with Sakurai to light. Then we’d uncover how badly he’s dipped, who he owes money to and why. And then we’d work on ‘persuading’ him to give up his scheme…”

Date-san outlined his plans in such animation that Chiaki suspected he was enjoying himself with the prospect of a good hunt.

“It’s all very interesting, but I suspect the less I know of your methods the better.” she said earnestly.

“Matsumoto’s been talking,” said Date-san gruffly, pocketing the tape as he rose. “Whatever you do, don’t worry. I’m handling this personally.”

Allowing a faint smile to grace her lips, Chiaki smiled her thanks and silently hoped that her plight would be speedily and satisfactorily resolved before it spiralled out of hand. What would the other ladies think or do if they were in her place, she wondered. Given what she knew of them, she believed Renée-Caroline would discuss things with her agent and would likely have a sit-down with Date-san to discuss possible plans; Kaoru would simply break up with her beau and suffer the burden alone; and Alys would devise a diabolical scheme to turn the tables on the blackmailer by hiring someone to stalk and browbeat him instead. Chiaki snorted a smile for she had no doubt that Sora would find the scenario amusing and worthy of a plot in a novel. That thought however lit a part of her mind. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it before!

Sora was still a member of the former Sekkan-ke and had ties to several public service institutions. The Kujo influence could be brought to bear on the law enforcement agencies and perhaps something could be done at the police level. The more she thought on it, the more convinced she was that it was a legitimate plan worth looking into. To that end, she sent a text message to Sora enquiring after the feasibility of such a plan.

Chapter 028 – Caught in a bottleneck

Regardless as to how one tried to escape from the past, its long, bony, icy fingers had the ability to stretch out and touch one whenever and wherever one least expected. It certainly seemed to have touched Chiaki for much of the week as she emerged from the Jindai Botanical Gardens’ biotechnology laboratories with uncharacteristically hunched shoulders. Shunning the pavements overlooking the manmade stream, she walked briskly on the mid sized grass rectangle, the fastest route back to the Tropical Collection Greenhouse. As she did so, the hood of her inner sweater was forcibly thrown back thereby blowing her pageboy cut into disarray, displaying her lined brow of anxiety and tired eyes to all and sundry. Likewise, her winter overcoat billowed furiously around her, protesting at her walking speed. The open-fronted coat would have fallen off her shoulders if her arms were not presently occupied with a large plastic box of plant samples. The staff at Jindai Botanical Gardens, who knew of Chiaki’s no-nonsense and consistently logical reputation quickly scampered away lest they were roped into assisting into helping out at her Greenhouse or her laboratory.

Her past, she had lately discovered, the past of living under the shadow of her father’s debts and never having enough money for the bare necessities of life had reared its ugly head and returned to haunt her in the form of her maternal uncle. It had been four days since her uncle – an uncle she had not had contact with for the past twelve years – went to see her asking for money. She did not know whether she should be more affronted by the fact that she was being blackmailed or that her uncle had been stalking her for some time to uncover her association with Sho. Despite the unsavoury nature of the whole business, the logical portion of her mind acknowledged the planning and research her uncle must have undertaken to successfully be in a position to threaten blackmail. Chiaki smiled wryly at herself, reflecting that she was channelling Sora’s observation of human nature and Alys’s sense of irony. If the ladies knew of her unenviable predicament and offered her some suggestion as to what she ought to do, she could perhaps bear the ordeal with some of her usual equanimity. However, as the police were unable to do anything for her as yet owing to a lack of evidence that she was being physically threatened in this harrassment, Chiaki was left to bear this cross on her own.

Entering the greenhouse and shaking her head to dispel the sense of foreboding hovering above her, Chiaki closed her eyes for a moment to savour the smells of the plants, the sounds of the crickets and the warmth of enclosure. Her repose however was soon interrupted by a coarse, haughty laugh. The sound, she soon discovered came from the low row of Equatorial Guinea shrubs outside her office where the figure of her unshaven and unkempt uncle sat in his ratty clothes and tatty hat.

“What do you want?” she asked, her eyes scanning the area for further intruders

“Is that any way to greet your dear old uncle? We be all alone, missy. No tricks up these holey sleeves,” he laughed again, unpleasantly baring his teeth in the process and thumbing at the door. “Think we can go in and have a talk? Let old Uncle Akira have a look at you and we’ll catch up on old times.”

“There were no old times. You made mother unhappy,” she stated matter-of-factly, moving to unlock the office door and showing him inside. That decision to hear him out was more borne out of her personal wish for this matter to remain private. If they continued to talk in the greenhouse, they might be seen by some of the other employees in the Botanical Gardens. Indeed, it could make her job very difficult if word got out that a relative of hers was hounding her at her and disrupting the operation and research of the Jindai Botanical Gardens.

“That’s what sickens me about her,” he complained, sitting down on a chair facing her desk. “She never thinks that she can do anything wrong.”

Slipping her hand into her drawer, ostensibly for some writing paper and the reports on the latest specimens that the greenhouse hoped to stock and transfer to other botanical gardens throughout the country, Chiaki’s groping hand soon found that which she had been searching for. She had used it frequently to take notes while tinkering about her small laboratory in her office or whenever she was out and about in the greenhouse and the grounds. It had served her very well, and had often take records of things she would have quite forgotten otherwise because she had been so caught up in noting down the changes to the plant samples. The police had stated that they would like evidence before they could decide if they should act, and if concrete proof was what they wanted, she would give them just that. Pressing her thumb over the button closest to the very top of the device, she glowered at the old man.

“Unlike thieves and gamblers who think they do everything right,” she retorted, keeping the drawer slightly open as she made a great show of reading some of the official paperwork on the import of a new strain of African violets.

“Our luck will turn because we’re flexible. You and your mother don’t know how to bend back will find yourselves to the wall. But I’m different. I take my chances and if the bad comes first, it makes sure the good coming later will be damn good. That’s why I’m here, girly. Me luck’s about to change and you’re going to bring it about by giving me the capital to start me up in business again,” said the man with all the assurance of a gambler who was desperately down on his luck.

“Business? It’s speculation! It’s gambling!”

“It’s me job.” He shrugged carelessly, trying his best not to quake in rage at the insult that had been dealt to his dignity.

“You’re a stalker, a blackmailer and a reprehensible human being,” she retorted, forcibly calming herself with a recitation of facts she knew to be true.

“I come to talk business and you call me names. The younger generation has no respect for the wisdom of its elders.”

“You are not getting anything from me.”

“I ask for a small sum to tide me over and that’s how your treat me? I come here to have a chat, friendly-like chat with my niece to talk a little business.” His smooth voice and ingratiating smile unable to hide that he was turning red from anger.

Chiaki tossed her head defiantly back and burst into a laugh cutting with contempt. “Business? How much do you pay in taxes for your profession as blackmailer?”

“20 million yen is a small sum compared to what your boyfriend makes,” grinned her uncle in a wolfish manner that would give any sane heterosexual woman an instant desire to hitch up her skirts and flee in terror.

However, as Chiaki was a woman who stuck to her guns and saw situations to their logical conclusions whatever those conclusions may be, she drew herself up to her full height and commandingly informed him, “Get out!”

“What did you say, girly?” he cocked a haughty brow of disbelief that his niece had just spoken down to him.

“Get out!” she emphasised in a louder voice. “Get out of my greenhouse!”

“You’ll regret this, missy! Pay me and me debts or I’ll sell your story about your celeb big name boyfriend and you can’t ever show your face here anymore!” he bellowed.

“It’ll be much better than skulking in shadows,” said Chiaki determinedly without any fear or visible agitation.

“One more chance is all I’ll give you to change your mind!” he huffed before loping off, slamming the door of her office behind him so dramatically that it made her test tubes and potted plant samples vibrate.

The moment they stopped shaking, Chiaki closed her eyes and let out the breath she did not know she had been holding and pulled out the cassette tape recorder from her drawer. Rewinding the device and hitting the play button, she leaned forward on her desk and rested her chin on the desk in dejection as the late conversation between her uncle and herself echoed once again in her office. Upon stopping the tape and rewinding it, she tugged at the ends of her hair behind her ears in thought.

“What’s my next step? What should I do now?” she muttered, a deep frown etching itself on her brow. She could go to the police with this, but she would have to make a copy of the tape first. While going to the police with this evidence would be prudent, her recent experience with members of the force had demonstrated that there was a real chance they would not be able to do anything. She could tell Sho, but that would only induce a panic attack and it would encourage him to be rash. It would be unconscionable for her to alarm him when she knew his character so well. There was also the option of telling the Arashi ladies and seeking their opinion. Chiaki had no doubt that they would enter into her feelings of uncertainty and anxiety for they were each keen observers of human nature in their own way and would not hesitate to offer her some sensible advice. Yes, she nodded to herself in sudden decision. She would tell the ladies when Alys was discharged from hospital and more her mordant self.

However, that still did not resolve the problem as to what she ought to do in the short term. She briefly contemplated calling up the Date-san, the formidable stolid manager behind Arashi, but wondered how he might take the news. Would he believe her? Would be help her? Would he and the Jimusho want to help her? It was just as likely for the Jimusho to close its doors to her and disavow any knowledge of her association to Sho as it was for Johnny’s Entertainment to demand that she and Sho dissolve their relationship. She snorted at the thought – she had always suspected that there was something unpalatable in the band’s management agency and now she was staring at it in the face. It was unpleasant not knowing whether Sho’s manager or indeed his Jimusho would be inclined to help in this matter, but as things stood, it seemed the most prudent option.

The whole matter of blackmail should be treated with utmost circumspection, and since she was uncertain as to whether speaking to Date-san would be a good idea, Chiaki picked up her mobile phone and sent a message to the most level-headed person in Arashi:
Jun-kun, I am in a bad pickle. Do not tell Sho. Call me back.

Scarcely fifteen minutes later when she had checked on the gene samples of the hybrid she was creating, her mobile vibrated with this reply: How bad is bad?

“I’ll tell you in person,” she input and sent.

“ABC Coffee House in Shibuya. I’m there now,” he responded.

With that assurance, Chiaki speedily threw the tape recorder into her bag, locked the greenhouse and made her way to the appointed meeting place. It was a well-known fact amongst the Arashi members and their respective partners that Jun visited the ABC Coffee House when he was reading and studying the script of a new drama or movie just as it was well-known to them that Sora always wrote the preliminary drafts of her novels and manga there. Every feeling she had revolted against unburdening herself to MatsuJun while he was occupied with thoughts of work, but there seemed little choice in the matter. She could not consult with Nino for he wouldn’t lift a finger to help, Aiba was too much a child to understand the politics behind blackmail, and Ohno had his own troubles. By elimination, that left Jun. It was not a thought that cheered her, but as it was the most sensible step she could devise, she pushed further negative thoughts out of her mind and headed to Shibuya.

NOTES

The neck of a bottle (think of old-fashioned glass bottles) limits the flow speed of the liquid coming out. In engineering, bottleneck refers to a scenario where the performance or capacity of an entire system is severely limited by a single component.

Readers should think about the significance of this explanation vis-à-vis the chapter and the story.

Chapter 021 – Détente

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That in itself should be impressive.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

Chapter 020 – Hidden hostilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

Chapter 019 – Where wisdom listens

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

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

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

“I am very sorry, madam…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES & Glossary

Non = no

Mais = but/however

Aussi = also

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

Chapter 016 – Risking arbitrage

The voices of five men in near pitch-perfect harmony were marred by someone going a little off-key with too nasal a drawl towards the end of the chorus. The technicians in the recording studio were not bothered by it, knowing full well that they could digitally remove it or cover it up with clever remixing and synthesising. Everyone in the sound round observing Arashi pressing large headphones to their ears, closing their eyes (and in one case, a wrinkling of the nose) while singing into large microphones felt that the current outtake the band was singing was one of the better versions. It was a well-known fact that each member had been occupied with band responsibilities as well as his own private commitments and was, in effect, working nearly around the clock, functioning on a little food and even less sleep. Each member had his respective set of advertisements and endorsements to record. On top of that, Aiba was busy with on location shoots for his Tensai Shimura Doubutsen show; Ohno was tied up with rehearsals for his new stage play; Nino and Sho had their new drama script to memorise, and would have to shoot for the series soon, and MatsuJun had accepted a new movie script. Then there were their various television programmes to record – Arashi no Shukudai-kun, Himitsu no Arashi-chan, and VS Arashi. Yet despite these numerous claims on their time, they were still expected to show up for work at JE Central, record songs for the new album, conceptualise a theme for a new single, and make plans for the tour that would inevitably follow in summer later in the year. Given the tremendous pressure on Arashi, nearly everyone on the control panel side of the recording studio (including the incredibly muscular and yakuza chief-like manager) cut the artistes some slack if they sounded a tad hoarse or off-key that day. That is to say, everyone save the newest shareholder of the J Storm label.

The side of Saeko’s face twitched when Matsumoto Jun hit a raw note. She went so far as to physically flinch when she heard the low raspy rumble of Aiba’s voice.

“How can you allow it? This is a bad take. The rest of them are ruining the main balladeer’s vocals,” Saeko said, no doubt thinking she had raised a valid point. She was, after all, a shareholder of J Storm. As a shareholder with more than 10% of the label, she had a right to audit their recording sessions to ensure that her investment in the label’s biggest names was exacting the returns she thought she and her company deserved.

The sound technician rubbed his hands nervously and replied unctuously in a manner that would be worthy of Dickens’ Uriah Heep, “I can edit it out. This fourth take of the song is the best so far. Studio recordings have the…”

“Is that what you are promoting? A second-rate band with singers who mess up in the studio? They will do it until they get it right!” demanded Saeko, shaking her foot angrily.

Date-san, Arashi’s manager observed the masculine way in which she sat with her legs crossed and her foot shaking and narrowed his eyes under his sunglasses (that never left his face save when he was in the bath or sleeping). He could respect her ideals and her perfectionist streak in demanding the best from her investment, but he could not respect her highhanded way of doing things. The Arashi boys were tired and allowances would have to be made. That was why they had sound technicians and engineers to fix wonky vocalisations on the recordings. The boys did their part; and the sound crew should do theirs. To his well-ordered mind, Umebayashi Saeko had no business demanding changes to the way things were done, especially since the sound crew were paid to make the necessary corrections and buffering in the tracks. However, he had also been in the music business long enough to know that Saeko was not an easy adversary. Speaking to her would yield no changes to her attitude. He would have to resolve matters himself by giving bending down and informing the producer to remix and buffer the recordings they had so far, and send the boys away for a day’s rest. It was clear from the way Arashi looked askance at Saeko that they resented her presence in the recording studio. And if he did not do something, Arashi could quickly tire themselves out before the day was out.

Stepping out of the sound mixing booth, Date-san growled gruffly at the band members, “We’ll wrap the recording here today and remix the first two tracks. Head out and get some sleep.”

All the members, save one, were about to heed that excellent advice for they had to record one of their television shows in the evening. Sho, however, opted for another mode of releasing his pent up frustration. He disguised himself and went for a drive.

There was a lot of good work he had done that he should be thankful for. But Sho was presently dissatisfied with the way things were done in the J Storm now that it was no longer fully under the control of Johnny’s Entertainment umbrella. The sense of accomplishment he felt two days ago on closing the drama deal with Nino for the tragic story of ‘Resurrected Butterflies’ was gone, and in its place was a gnawing sense of disquietude. Despite being given permission to enjoy a rare half-day off, Sho could not find in it himself to rest. The reason for which, he wryly reflected, lay in their new shareholder, Umebayashi-san. With the whole of the mid-afternoon and the rest of the day yawning before him, and his frayed temper on the verge of exasperation, Sho decided to make an unannounced call to the most rational person in his acquaintance in the quest of tempering his growing sense of unease. It was this unease that led him to subconsciously drive to Jindai Botanical Garden in search of the director of the Tropical Greenhouse Collection.

It did not take him long to find her unmistakeable figure in the botanical gardens’ winter overall with a faux fur hat carrying a large toolbox and a large clipboard. Stopping the car next to her, he rolled down the window and grinned. “Yo, wifey! Got a moment?” he greeted with a two-fingered salute at Chiaki.

“I’m working if you haven’t noticed,” she said without malice. Although Chiaki’s strong work ethics shunned the notion of malingering, she knew from her long association with Sho that he would not call on her announced during working hours unless it was something important.

“I’ll help,” Sho offered, nodding his thanks to her as she got in the car.

“Get us back to the Greenhouse, get changed and you’d be more help to me,” chided Chiaki in the firm non-nonsense way Sho had come to adore. When he grinned his assent, she tilted her head to the side to better look at him and asked directly, as was in line with her character, “Did you shirk off your work?”

“Manager-san gave us a half-day,” he explained, still trying to make light of things. “I thought I’d see two of my favourite girls.”

“The bougainvillea is doing fine and I’m in the pink of health,” she answered, folding her arms and resting her elbows on the toolbox. “What’s the trouble? Umebayashi Saeko again?”

“How did you guess?” Sho asked incredulously when they stopped outside the greenhouse and emerged from the vehicle.

Shaking her head as she led him to her office within the greenhouse and foisted a pair of overalls on him, she answered, “Going from buying shares in your record label and propositioning Ohno-kun, it logically follows that she would antagonise the drizzle boys next.”

Sho sighed at being transparent in front of Chiaki. However, he did not allow himself to dwell too long on the thoughts of being an open book to his girlfriend. He knew that he was often helpless at keeping secrets and was prone to either angry bursts of temper or panic attacks, and to negate those incidences, he made it a point to discuss everything with his level-headed Chiaki.

“That Saeko woman has been hawk-eyeing us in the recording studio all morning! She behaved like she owned us, calling for take after take of a song. She stared reproachfully at Aiba who was sneezing badly. It’s bad enough she controls a sizeable minority stake in J Storm stocks, now it seems we can’t do anything without her hawk-eyeing us. This is beginning to wear on Jun’s nerves, put a dent on Aiba’s spirit and weigh down Ohno-kun. Nino suggested that we couldn’t even sneeze without her permission next. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came to that. Yesterday, she said we were holding Ohno-kun’s vocal talents back!” the resident rapper of the band let out in full steam without pause as soon as he had emerged in the standard wear of the Jindai Botanical Gardens.

“So it has begun.” Chiaki’s face undertook a dour expression, taking up the toolbox and placing several test-tubes into it before laughing dryly. “Sora predicted it with the deadly accuracy of an archer. Her skill at reading people far surpasses Ninomiya’s. She has never met Umebayashi-san and already she could foresee something like this occurring.”

Although Sho was aware of Sora’s habit of observing other people not in her immediate circle of friends and family and thence drawing her conclusions on them, he never failed to be completely amazed by how quickly she could grasp the true nature of anyone she analysed. The only exception to this rule, as everyone in Arashi knew, was Jun, whom she had dubbed ‘the Original’. Kujo Sora’s perspicuity surpassed that of even the deceptively languid Renée-Caroline and the carefully veiled eyes of Alys. It was remarkable, Sho thought, the Arashi men should have plucked these outstanding specimens of womanhood, and he made free to say so.

“How did we ever get women like you and the other princesses?” he enquired aloud, following her out of the greenhouse with a wheelbarrow of everything Chiaki needed to check up on the plants in her sector of the botanical gardens.

“You must have done something good in your youth or childhood. Except Ohno-kun, not one of you deserves your girlfriends, if you want my honest opinion,” Chiaki replied, pushing the wheelbarrow with him, glad that she would not have to conduct the task of seeing to the trees on her own.

“Umebayashi could throw Ohno-kun’s happiness into disarray if this goes on. Our diminutive bastard constantly reminds us that it is a game; our OCD princess Jun counsels that we bide our time, but we are no closer to uncovering the bigger picture or deciphering her plans. While we do nothing, time is slowly trickling away. Our inaction versus her action could be interpreted as weaknesses,” Sho vented, stopping to hand her a measuring implement from the toolbox as she indicated.

“The way I see it, Umebayashi-san wants to isolate Ohno-kun for herself by trapping him and inducing the Stockholm syndrome. The signs are there, Sho. She began by pushing him closer to the edge, then working to alienate the drizzle boys,” said Chiaki in a tone that suggested she had expended great thought on the issue. “She intends to force him into a corner so that he would be as Jun once said, ‘high and dry and bereft’ with no one to turn to but her. Alys fears that it may work because according to our know-it-all professor, he lacks the skill to avoid the feint in this King’s gambit.”

“Eh? Seriously?”

“Hai, seriously.” The botanist turned back to the tree and shrugged. “Her words not mine.”

“Her too? She and Nino are really two halves of a whole to think in games!” he exclaimed, wiggling his brows suggestively. “If they can see it for what it is, why don’t they guide Ohno-kun through it?”

“Because, husband,” Chiaki stressed the word to soothe his growing exasperation, “even they have no confidence of winning this game. If Umebayashi persists in isolating Ohno and alienating the rest of you, this would place a burden on you and Jun to keep the drizzle boys in tact.”

“Well, Jun and I are the parents minding this motley crew.” Sho allowed a rueful smile to grace his lips.

Chiaki turned around and pinched his cheeks lightly “That’s my Sho, a responsible husband and father to the bitter end.”

“What are we going to do?”

“As Renée-Caroline observed, Ohno-kun is too good natured to say no directly to Umebayashi-san. So, the girls and I are going to tell Kaoru. You should keep an eye on Ohno and have all the drizzle boys watch Umebayashi-san closer than she watches you,” she recommended.

“You’re sensible as always, wifey. Now, for the other breaking news stories…”

“There’s more?”

“You wouldn’t guess what happened two days ago,” Sho said as he held the toolbox for Chiaki while she checked the tree before for parasites.

“Made fools of yourselves on television again?

“Nino and I have a new drama series entitled Resurrected Butterflies, a tragic drama-romance, the kind MatsuJun would lap up and shed tears at the end. Ichinose Haruyo would be in it with us, smart girl – reminds me of myself when I was managing Keio and work simultaneously. But that isn’t the interesting portion, this is – in spite of his dislike for the script and the meagre increase of 5% more than his usual going rate, Nino accepted the role citing Hong Kong, where we would be for some of the shoots, as his reason. What do you make of that?”

“The kitsune is up to his old tricks,” Chiaki smiled knowingly and laughed. “Associate Professor Teng will be attending the Ancient World Philosophy Conference held in Hong Kong in late February.”

“The penny drops,” Sho whistled lowly. “Is he trying to rekindle the flames or torture her? They may claim they’re both sadistic, but he’s likely to keep her on an emotional yoyo if she continues to hold him at arm’s length.”

“This is their affair, Sho. Do not interfere,” she warned.

“But wifey! He’s not been happy of late. He complains that she’s been cold to him.”

“She is under a lot of strain at work and is ill. If he had any ounce of sense, which he doesn’t, he would know that she is looking out for his health by isolating herself from him. She knows how important it is for him to be physically well for his work.” Chiaki paused and threw a quick dismissive look at the air. “Though how she thinks she can delay treatment until the Hong Kong conference ends is beyond me.”

“Can’t those two be honest with each other? Do we have to lock them in a cupboard for them to bring that about? What happened to ‘Dear, I am worried about your condition’ and ‘Darling, I don’t want you to catch my germs’? Argh!” Sho cried with notable irritation in his voice.

“The way I see it, they are dissembling because they are afraid of what it would mean to lose each other,” Chiaki explained, patting Sho on the arm and mentally disapproving the Ninomiya-Teng pair’s pointless acts. “The professor self-diagnosed herself with pneumonia. She suspects it’s bacterial rather than viral, and believes that treatment now would delay her preparations for the Hong Kong conference. She claims as long as she seeks treatment no later than mid-March, she would be able to recover. I disapprove on principle and she jokes that a ‘touch of pneumonia’ wouldn’t kill her.”

Sho shook his head and draped a comforting arm over his girlfriend to soothe her obvious worry. “Tell you what, wifey, I’d let Nino in on this and leave him to deal with her.”

“You had better. Pneumonia is no joking matter,” Chiaki harrumphed.

While Sho assured Chiaki that Alys would be all right once Nino had confronted her and coerced her into consulting a medical doctor, the couple in the Jindai Botanical Garden was unaware that they were being observed by a shadowy figure secreted in the grove of trees some distance ahead of them.

NOTES

Arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets where one strikes a combination of matching deals that capitalise upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. Simply put, arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state. In other words, arbitrage is a risk-free profit. A person who engages in arbitrage is called an arbitrageur such as a bank or brokerage firm.

To take the risk of arbitrage however is an investment strategy that very often backfires because the arbitrageur can buy the stock of the target and make a gain if the acquirer ultimately buys the stock. Alternatively, the arbitrageur may short sell (short-change) the acquirer and buy the stock of the target.

Readers should think what this means in the context of the story and of this chapter.

King’s Gambit explained in footnotes at the end of Ch 014

Chapter 014 – Risk charting liquidity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glossary – French

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

Glossary – Miscellaneous

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

Chapter 013 – Between praxis and phronesis

The news of Umebayashi Saeko’s 20% stake in J Storm was made public exactly a week after the deal had gone through, and it made the headlines in the finance and economics pages. The purchase was not only remarked upon by the newspaper reading sectors of Tokyo, for it was also had been remarked upon by Sakurai Sho as soon as he returned from his 6am run around his neighbourhood and perused the Tokyo Financial Times. Although the news initially excited no great concern for him, he became more disturbed as he read on. The analysts were predicting Umebayashi Tech stocks to soar, and an increase in revenue to the whole of Umebayashi Group after the cash drains and debt burdens of the corporation were settled. His eyes widened at the mention of debt burdens. Was that the reason why Umebayashi Saeko had bought up enough stock in J Storm to have voting say on the label’s board of directors?

The debt burden could only have come about from a restructuring of the company. As far as he knew, the Umebayashi Group did not require any corporate restructuring when it had bought stock in another company. If anything, it was the other company, namely the J Storm side, that needed restructuring to fit it with the expectations of the Umebayashi projected profit margins. The only reason why the large conglomerate needed restructuring was if it was in debt. Should the company be in debt, it would require a large economic turnover to offset the losses it had incurred, and that would explain why Saeko had bought chunks of J Storm stock. She needed financial returns and fast. However, that explanation only presented another question – why was the Umebayashi Group in debt and how much did it require that it would have to take a record label on a ride on the technological and engineering highway for near immediate and almost guaranteed returns? There was no doubt in Sho’s mind that Saeko knew buying stocks in J Storm was a sound investment. The label made millions, and their songs, albums and singles were purchased by fans all over the world so much so that the turnover rate far exceeded the breakeven cost. What had happened that Saeko needed large sums of fast money? That was the foremost question on his mind when he walked into JE Central.

Sho’s arrival in the Arashi room with his laptop and newspapers did not occasion more than a fleeting interest until it became apparent that he was wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box. The others who arrived minutes later one after another could not help but notice the dark storm cloud hanging over his head as he pored through the newspapers and typed rapidly into the laptop.

“What’s eating Sho-chan?” quizzed Aiba in a loud whisper with a hand on his cheek as he pressed his face against his stuffed toy dog’s and squeezed on the sofa between Jun and Nino.

“Is he hungry? People can be grumpy when hungry,” Ohno said, staring at his open sketchbook and tapping his pencil on it.

“Not with that face, ne,” came MatsuJun’s laconic response as Aiba wormed closer towards the youngest man. “Oi! Aiba-chan, will you stop that! You’d crumple my clothes, ne!”

“Has it ever occurred to you to ask Sho what’s bothering him instead of bugging me when I’m playing a game?” snapped Nino waspishly, kicking Aiba’s foot away.

“Nice idea, Nino! Ne, you’re beginning to sound like mama,” Aiba giggled, peering over Ohno’s sketchbook that was still disappointingly blank.

“Really? It must be something I can pick up from her like oh-say a cough, because I sure as hell can’t catch a wink of sleep with her hacking away in the study all night! I really love it when she locks me out and I can’t even catch a strand of her hair!” retorted the smaller man, tightly crossing his legs and shuffling cards in his hands.

“Did you fight with mama over money again? Quarrels about money always end up bad because my Okaachan refuses to sleep in the same room with Oyaji if they’ve fought over money.” Aiba nodded at his soft toy, making it nod in agreement with him.

“We haven’t any money, what’s there to quarrel over! But she’s keeping me from my beauty sleep! Damn witch doesn’t see that I don’t mind being kept up if she wants me bound in chains and reading to her while she touches…”

“Too much information, ne,” Jun reminded him, moving away to the far end of the sofa in horror, clutching a book close to his chest.

“Wait! Are you frustrated because mama refused to sleep with you?” Aiba asked, his ears instantly pricking up at the mention of anything veering into the topic of sex and general perversity.

“Yeah, like I need her to function normally! It’s that cough! It’s driving me crazy!” the gamer shot back, still shuffling his cards.

“So it’s not about sex?”

“Shut up!” Jun helpfully smacked the back of Aiba’s head. “She still hasn’t seen the doctor, eh?” He turned to a silently fuming Nino with a sympathetic shake of his head, wondering to himself why Nino did not simply drag Alys by force to a doctor. Surely, he could not be that stingy as to refuse to pay for his girlfriend’s medical consultation.

“You could try asking mama if she…”

Sho looked up from his newspapers, groaning and swatting away Aiba’s attempt to creep towards him in a poor imitation of a sneaky tiptoe. “Nino’s bed is his business.”

“Mah, mah, Nino’s just worried,” Ohno interjected in the interest of peace.

“As worried about his little professor as I am about the state about our record label,” said Sho gravely, pushing aside his laptop so that Aiba could check his morning emails.

“Has she threatened you too?” Ohno asked quietly, putting aside his pencil on realising that he wasn’t in the mood to draw.

“Now that you mention it, ne, what did she want with you the other day, eh?” Jun raised a suggestive and teasing brow. “Did she, ne, offer you a settlement for disappearing on you all those years ago?”

Ohno’s gaze faltered as his mouth quivered into a pout. “Will everyone promise not to get angry?”

“I told you they wouldn’t be,” Nino said bracingly, leaning his head on his best friend’s shoulder.

“Spill, Ohno-kun, what did she want?” Sho demanded, miraculously preserving his calm.

The oldest member of Arashi swallowed valiantly. “Me.”

“You?” repeated Jun, removing his glasses to better express his disbelief in a well-executed glare.

A sarcastic laugh escaped Nino. “Is it so difficult to believe? I want a piece of him too.”

“Eh? What does that mean?” asked Aiba, looking to the shocked faces of Jun and Sho for help in deciphering what seemed to him to be an extremely cryptic remark. He had understood it well enough, however, he did not want to think that it was true.

Ohno sighed in his determination to make a clean breast of the situation and quickly clarified, “Saeko… She wants me back.”

“Like the way you were?” Jun enquired forebodingly, tightly folding his arms.

“The penny drops! So that’s why she bought enough to transfer securities to voting stock! She’s cunning, I give her that much,” Sho exclaimed in sudden realisation and reached for his mobile to input a quick message. “What did you tell her?”

“That I’m engaged to be married.”

“What did she say, Riida?” asked Aiba kindly, offering him the plushie dog for a hug. It was an offer that was quickly squashed by Nino who promptly stepped on the unfortunate toy.

“That I could get disengaged.” Ohno said quietly.

“That’s too much!” cried Aiba with great feeling.

“Damn right,” Nino concurred, putting aside his game.

“What I want to know, ne, is what are we going to do about it, ne?” asked Jun. “Professionally, we can go on as before, ne? What about privately, eh? What are we going to do about her claws on our Riida?”

“Nino says it’s my game and I have to play it.” Ohno pouted unhappily and hung his head, not feeling any better despite having unburdened himself to his friends.

“That’s going too far.” Aiba shot a reproving look at Nino.

“Oh yeah? What do you expect me to say? You want me to lie and say things would be okay?” challenged the gamer in a low growl. “It’s not like he’s alone. We’re in it as well.”

“Nino has a point, ne,” acknowledged Jun, pressing his fingertips together and forming a steeple at his chin. “Ano ne, this is an Arashi matter, we’re in it together.”

“Does she know about Kaoru?” asked Sho thoughtfully with a frown as he considered various worst-case-scenarios of what Saeko could do to Kaoru. Sho was a firm believer in the maxim that hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned.

Ohno shook his head. “I didn’t tell her about Kaoru, only that I was engaged.”

“Keep it that way,” Jun suggested, tapping his fingertips together. “Constant vigilance, ne, is what we need. No mentions of Kaoru must ever be said in front of the Umebayashi woman. If we’re going to use names, ne, make sure we don’t use real names or real places. We have to keep that woman as far away as possible from Kaoru.”

Aiba sighed, hugged his plushie dog closer to himself and screwed his eyes shut, hoping that it was a nightmare and that it would all go away. But it wouldn’t go away, not when he could hear everyone’s heavy sighs and the muffled thumping sounds of Ohno banging his head on the sofa armrest. He opened his eyes again when a thought occurred to him. it was a thought to which he did not have an immediate answer. Thus far, the discussion pertained to what they would do vis-à-vis Ohno and Kaoru, and that was only half the equation. “What are we going to do about Umebayashi Saeko?” he asked, the raspy edge in his voice all the more apparent from his distress that this unpleasantness should be happening to his friends.

“Excellent question,” commended Sho approvingly. “Do we act or do we wait?”

“We do exactly what she’s doing to us now, ne,” replied Jun with a grim purse of his lips. “We observe her.”

NOTES

Praxis in ancient Greek lingo may simply be understood as theory.

Phronesis in ancient Greek lingo is practical wisdom, frequently translated as prudence.

I used praxis and phronesis as the chapter title because I want readers to reflect on the difference between them and how each character in this chapter and the whole story tries to balance theory and the act of doing something prudently. Think about the implications of this.

Chapter 012 – Sidestepping the gambit

There was no way for Ohno to tell what Nino, that perversely perceptive and sarcastic creature, meant when he alluded to the game of power politics. He had dined with Nino and Alys to better understand the concept, and yet, Ohno was no closer to understanding it or unravelling the reason why he should have to play and win a game he was so unwillingly thrust into. Years of friendship with Nino had taught him that the younger man’s perverse enjoyment in watching situations unravel out of control meant that Nino was likely more interested in the outcome of the situation resulting from Saeko’s declaration than in steering him out of the perilous waters of power politics. Any hope that Nino’s little professor would explain the premises of the political game was also doomed to failure for Alys brought in the political realism of Hans Morgenthau and spoke about Machiavelli with such tremendous enthusiasm that Ohno was frightened into thinking that politics was a very troublesome thing requiring a lot of thinking and planning if one wanted to emerge unscathed as a victor. Ohno suspected Nino was much deeper involved in what went on in Central and their record label than he let on, but he had never uttered a word on the matter. However, Ohno knew in his heart that Nino was a keen observer, an able verbal fencer, and a dabbler in any game he deemed challenging, even if the younger man gave no show of surprise at the revelation that Saeko wanted him back. Ohno could not understand why Nino seemed to think it natural that Saeko should make a declaration to that effect.

He had repeatedly reiterated his personal feelings on the matter to Nino in the days following Saeko’s revelation. “You’re telling me to play a game I don’t understand. This isn’t like play acting for drama or butai, Kazu,” he protested.

“Do you still believe yourself in love with Saeko?” questioned Nino when he dropped by the theatre where the older fellow was rehearsing his butai.

“Iya, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” The younger man placed a supportive hand on his best friend’s shoulder.

“It’s not that I’m not glad she’s back. I’m happy to see her again. But you know how I used to laugh at the things she did and the things she said? I can’t do that anymore. It’s like she’s become untouchable now, not in the way like we’re touching now, and that’s only because you’re touchy-feely.” He paused and took Nino’s hand with the convulsive grip of someone who was internally afflicted and frightened. “It’s like I’m scared of her now. She wasn’t like that from six years back, was she? I can’t see, and I don’t see why but I am scared of her and what she can do. I ask myself when I think about it – was that what she always was like? Was that what she was like when we were young and really liked each other?”

“Her?” Nino snorted, twitching his lips into a disdainful smirk. “She’s probably always been that way.”

“I feel a little sorry for her because I think a part of it is my fault for not making a clean break with her, but the feeling of being sorry for her keeps becoming fear.”

“Captain!” exclaimed Nino in frustration, grabbing his friend’s chin and looking straight into his eyes. “You don’t have to be scared of her if you know what she’s like, and you do know what she’s like. You can play it to your advantage.”

“Why should I play it? I can’t see why I should play it!”

“You will do it because Arashi’s future is at stake. You will do it because of Kaoru. You will do it because that damn Saeko bitch doesn’t believe in honour like Sora. You will do it because that damn bitch isn’t upright like Chiaki, or thoughtful of others’ feelings like Renée-Caroline, and she doesn’t have Alys’s self-restraint. That’s her true face! Meet her head on in this or we sink!” Nino said severely.

Ohno flushed at these words, silently acknowledging the truth therein. “I don’t like doing it, Kazu! I don’t want to do it!”

“Yeah? I hate playing games at that level too, but it’s never stopped me! Damn it! You must contrive a win in this or Arashi will never be the same again. The guys know that the bitch’s 20% stake in our label means a change in the way J Storm does business. They know she would be watching our every move. Did you hear Sho yesterday? We’re an investment. We screw up and we’re dead. We’ve gone from being Johnny-san’s money cows to that Saeko woman’s shares in the J Storm label. How’s that for objectification! What happens to you then when you don’t give her the returns she expects? You’d probably never be the same again! Don’t forget our women, Satoshi! Each of them has a wing spread over Kaoru. If anything should happen and Kaoru’s heart is broken, they would do things to you that would make the things Alys and I do seem like a walk in the park,”

“Kaoru and Okaasan wouldn’t let them do that,” continued Ohno, ignoring his friend’s vivid descriptions of medieval torture devices.

“Wanna bet? Your mother would stand guard while the ladies tear you limb from limb,” Nino told him grimly.

Ohno wasted three days dwelling on this violent prospect, but arrived at the conclusion that if he continued to be polite to Saeko and continue as he had been, there could be no truth in Nino’s pessimistic prediction. By the weekend, he was expending his frustrations on his clays while considering whether it would be expedient for him to keep the whole situation a secret from Kaoru when his mother announced that his fiancée had arrived.

He looked up from his blob of clay with a sheepish smile as Kaoru came in, and offered her his untouched breakfast while hastily mumbling that he was trying to create something and had gotten carried away.

A quick glance darted to the ball of clay in his hands and his slightly flustered appearance would give anyone intimately acquainted with Ohno Satoshi to doubt his words. As his fiancée, Kaoru was more than commonly in tune with his peculiarities. The perfunctory glance she had thrown over his art studio was all it took for her to surmise that something was troubling him. Even so, she gave no indication that she was surprised by his blatant lie, or an indication that she knew it to be a lie. She merely smiled placidly at him and shook her head gently.

“I’ve eaten already,” she said. “Oh, I’ve brought the backdrop designs for your new butai.”

“Eh?” pouted Ohno apologetically, finally putting aside the clay he had been unable to shape.

There fell a sudden stillness. “The designs for the backdrops of your new play,” repeated Kaoru, holding out an A4 envelope to him. “Be as cruel as you like in your critique.”

He received the envelope and made a half-hearted attempt to peep at its contents without so much as removing the papers. “They look nice.”

A slight pause fell over them as he briefly considered telling all to Kaoru. However, he found himself unable to give voice to his fears. Being a soft-hearted individual, he believed that he was partially as responsible for Saeko’s present guise of a frightening corporate raider as he was responsible for her belief that she still stood at chance at getting him back. He knew, like any person with a modicum of commonsense, that he should have firmly told her that he was involved with someone who was shortly to be his wife. However, his unfailing politeness that endeared him to many had now placed him in this trap. He could tell Kaoru, and she would reason with him, and perhaps even ask to have a ‘sit down’ with Saeko. He knew Kaoru was equal to it, as she lacked his natural cautiousness when she was angry. He had seen her fling tins of paint on canvas in anger and frustrations at her male students at Musashino who refused to take her nude figure drawing classes seriously. But what if Saeko took things the wrong way and exerted her considerable influence to block Kaoru’s career in art? He had heard whispers between Nino and Sho that Alys’s academic career was nearly ruined by a former love rival. He had no wish for a similar fate to befall Kaoru.

The matter with Saeko was not as hopeless as he saw it, or so he wanted to believe. It would be a dark road ahead if he were to deal with her and Ohno did not relish it. But what else was to be done? Saeko had steered him like a small fishing skiff into a whirlpool, and it was up to him to get out of it. The more he thought about it, the more he developed an ambition to steer himself out of the whirlpool without anyone’s help. He could not bring himself to tell Kaoru about Saeko because it could potentially put her face to face in an encounter with the corporate raider. His masculine pride was roused and he was determined to shoulder the responsibility of dealing with Saeko alone.

Kaoru realised with dismay that he was out of humour with himself. It was apparent from the way he squared his shoulders. To see him attempt to work on art and not produce anything pained her, for it bespoke of the weighty cares on his minds – concerns so utterly perturbing to him that he lacked the heart and inspiration to throw himself fully into that which he loved. She wondered whether she was the cause of his apparent dejection and if he would tell her how she could relieve his worries. She was tempted to enquire after his troubles. However, she held back, thinking that her lack of knowledge of his work and of music in general rendered her ill-equipped to provide either a listening ear or sound advice. Moreover, there was no assurance that an enquiry into his work troubles would palliate the nerves of her worried, red-faced fiancé. He could interpret her questions as prying and she had no wish to be seen as a prying wife. Kaoru only feared one thing more than her inability to produce paintings of artistic merit, and that was the loss of her Satoshi’s good opinion. It seemed that she was being put to the test, and she would have to tread gingerly.

Thus, she cracked a smile and wiped the residue of the clay from his hands, speaking deliberately as she did so, “Has work been very bad?”

“It’s been the same,” he answered, curling his fingers around Kaoru’s as she tried to clean his hands.

He knew she was asking him to confide in her. As she was his affianced, almost his wife, he would readily have done so. Yet, he was loath to involve her in the matter and throw her to the shark that was Saeko. The thing as it stood with Saeko refusing to back down from her declaration was already bad enough. It was true that he felt responsible for Arashi now that Saeko had stated her stance and her stake in J Storm. He knew that he had considerable experience in dealing with difficult people in managerial positions. He had encountered a few in the many play productions of which he was a part, and he believed he had watched Nino, Jun and Sho talk business with all kinds of people involved in any Arashi production and concert to know what to do in professional dealings with Saeko. But he also knew that things invariably became complicated when emotions were involved, especially women’s emotions. He had no wish to hurt Kaoru, and he certainly had no wish to hurt Saeko any more than she had been hurting for the past six years.

“But your art isn’t the same, Satoshi-kun. Art never lies,” she murmured, staring intently at him as if doing so would allow her to absorb the unease on his mind and put him in his usual sanguinity.

“Eh? I’m just tired from the butai rehearsals, and learning the lyrics of the new single, and trying to think up dance steps for it.” He offered her a smile and pinched her nose to give credence to the act that he was untroubled.

“Hontou?” she asked, levelling her wide-eyed gaze at him

He nodded and smiled again at her. He couldn’t tell her and spoil drag her into thing that Saeko started. He would have to do this by himself. Everything from Arashi’s future to that of his career as a JE artiste depended on how dealt with Saeko. He smiled wryly at himself when he realised Nino was right. It was his game, and he had no choice but to play it.

NOTES

The gambit in this chapter’s title refers to a chess opening where the first player risks a piece (usually a pawn) with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. Sidestepping the gambit maybe understood as dealing with the gambit through accepting it or refusing it. Whether the gambit is accepted or refused in this chapter is something readers must discern for themselves.