111 posts tagged “ninomiya kazunari”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There.” She pointed to the kitchen counter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

Please bear this in mind as you read this sequel.

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

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

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

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

Chapter 027 – Lobbing a flop shot

Unaware that he had been the object of his lady’s warmest respect and devotion, Nino pinched his nose to stifle a sneeze, wondering who could be talking about him. Thinking that it was likely an obsessed fan or the skinny Haruyo scheming to throw herself at him yet again in between takes, he squatted in his dressing chair and hunched over the dressing table, blocking out anyone who wished to see what he was doing. With a cigarette dangling from his lips, he pulled opened the button that held the black leather organiser shut and smirked. His Alys, he noted, was methodological in keeping her appointments, schedules, timetables, birthday reminders, phone numbers and addresses in order. She was even careful enough not to leave any trace of her affiliation to him or Arashi in the organiser. It did not contain either his name or his picture, or anything that could be misconstrued by a stranger. The only thing a person picking up this organiser would discover was that its owner wrote in an old-fashioned English cursive, scribbled random notes on lectures and ideas for papers. He smirked and snorted to himself – his Alys could be trusted to be a consummate academic.

At last, he thumbed through a few more pages before lighting upon the dates and entry he had been seeking. A long vertical two sided arrow labelled ‘HK Philo Con’ spanned the page alongside some details as to where she would be staying and where the conference was held. He had just committed the hotel and university hall names to his memory when he heard something vibrate nearby. Thinking that it was probably nothing, he debated whether he should record some of the details of her conference to his mobile until a shadow loomed over him.

“New message on your keitai,” the teasing voice of Sakurai Sho broke into his thoughts.

“Sho-san, go block someone else’s light,” he snapped.

“What are doing, squirreling yourself in a corner?” Sho asked with a cheeky grin, peering over Nino’s shoulder. “A heavy cursive hand. They call it the Spenserian.” He paused and squinted, hoping that it would help him to make out the handwriting. Then it dawned on him that only one person in his immediate circle of friends wrote in that fashion. Dropping his voice an octave, he whispered, “Don’t tell me you stole Alys’s organiser?”

“Stealing is too strong a word,” laughed Nino, a crooked evil smirk firmly planted on his face. “Alys-chan calls it contributing to one’s self-contained economy.”

“Whose self-contained economy?” Sho narrowed his eyes at Nino whilst shaking his head at the equivocation of the professor. It was his personal belief that Nino and Alys were the only two human beings who could stand each other’s dark perversity of mind.

“In this case, mine,” he replied. “Mah, it’s for reconnaissance. I’ll give it back to her.”

“Sugoi. No one writes like that anymore,” Sho commented when his disapproval faded and came to be replaced with curiosity and awe at Alys’s philosophical thoughts and Nino’s audacity. Sometimes, it amazed him what the professor allowed Nino to get away with.

“Face it, Sho-chan, my woman has more class and more smarts in her little finger than you have in your brain.”

Completely un-offended by those words, Sho continued to stare at a word he could not make out in Alys’s slanted cursive hand. He then recalled that Alys had a habit of writing letters and wondered how her correspondents managed to decipher her handwriting. “How can you read it?”

“We’re picking up each other’s habits,” stated Nino like it was well-known fact. “Check my keitai for me.”

“Eh?”

“You said there was a message. Check my keitai for me,” Nino repeated him, irascibility creeping into his voice.

Obeying the injunction, Sho grinned on reading the incoming message. “It’s your wife. She sent Aiba to pick up her organiser and Dragon Quest IX.”

“We’re not the marrying kinds,” corrected Nino, extending a hand for his mobile phone. Wiggling his short fingers impatiently, he continued, “We’re both rascals, and if there’s a divorce, which the fortune tellers all claim there will be if I marry and we will likely divorce because her parents and mine are divorced, we’ll be fighting over the money and the property.” He paused and curled his lips into a bitter self-deprecatory smirk. “Alternatively, we could kill each other. Double murder, the press would love it. I rather avoid it all and stay unmarried, makes it much easier to cut loose at the first sign of trouble.”

Nino’s awareness of the pitfalls of having so much in common with his partner startled Sho who was constantly amazed as to the depth of Nino’s perspicuity. “Then you shouldn’t provoke her,” Sho advised, handing the mobile.

On inputting the details of her Hong Kong conference into his mobile, Nino looked up, the previous appearance of thoughtfulness gone. In its place was a devilish smirk that he used to mask his innermost fears. “Where would the fun be?”

“Keep at it and you’ll push her too far one of these days. Say, what are you doing with her organiser anyway?” Sho asked, shaking his head disapprovingly.

Nino placed a finger on his lips that were already twisted into the smirk of impending doom.

“Hi! Hi! I’m here! Nino-chan, Mama told me she wanted a Dragon Quest something and her diary-organiser thingy!” Aiba announced, bursting indecorously and noisily into the dressing room before Sho could advise Nino against any plot that could agitate or provoke Alys.

“Is that all? Tell the witch to come and get it herself. Oh yeah, she’s pretending to be an invalid and manipulating people to dance in attendance to her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth,” Nino riposted, his sarcastic mask in place once more as he closed the organiser and pulled the game cartridge out of his DS.

Sho slapped a hand on his forehead at this quick 360 degree change in Nino’s temper. He could not understand why the diminutive bugger never said what he felt when the topic touched on the professor. Similarly, he was perplexed by the professor’s methods of treating Nino with a small degree of cruelty. However much he preferred them to be franker with each other, he did not expect them to pass verbal messages via Aiba that bordered onto private matters.

“She said she wants you in an apron and tied to a bed.” Aiba revealed nonchalantly, smiling at his friends. Somewhere in the background, Sho gasped and choked.

“Tell her she has to catch me first,” Nino replied, as much amused by Sho’s evident discomfiture as he was by his lady’s proposal.

“I don’t know how that’s going to work.” Aiba shrugged his shoulders as he took the organiser and game from Nino. Then he stopped as his eyes lit up with a thought. “I could help tie you up.”

“Aiba-chan! Don’t give him ideas!” Sho groaned and shook his head as Nino inserted another game cartridge into the DS.

“Do you want anything?” asked Ichinose Haruyo as she poked her head through the door without knocking. Paying no heed to the censorious snarls and looks thrown her way, she managed an angelic smile at the company and continued, “I’m about to place orders for lunch, anyone want anything?”

“Two Doraemon bento sets,” Aiba immediately answered, not out of greediness or stinginess as one might expect, but from the simple thought that it would behove him to enlist others to help him in his quest to find the said bento sets for him and his partner.

However oblivious Aiba was, even he noticed Sho’s polite shake of the head and Nino’s pointed disregard for the model-actress. Unable to find a reason for it, he waited until the young woman left and then posed his question, “Why don’t you like her? She’s pretty. She looks sweet.”

“She doesn’t know the meaning of ‘get lost’ – that ice cream stick with breasts,” hissed Nino obliquely.

“Eh?” Aiba gasped.

“She’s been throwing herself at Nino,” Sho whispered in an abnormally loud voice.

“Doesn’t her management agency want them to be pure, sweet, virginal?” Aiba asked, cocking his head to the side in both fascination and inability to understand.

“Yeah, we wonder what they teach them there,” Nino responded sarcastically.

“You can do what you feel and keep it quiet. Lots of people do. Mama doesn’t have to know…” Aiba ventured, his throat dry with the thought that Sho and Nino could appear to be so unconcerned with this development.

“It isn’t our place,” reminded Sho, sensibly putting aside his meddlesome streak for once. He had caught Nino’s quick dart of the eyes and his gut informed him that restraining Aiba was to his advantage if the smaller member’s temper was not to be incited.

“Let the baka say what he wants. If he breathes a word to my witch and she agitates herself into an epileptic seizure, I’ll make sure he leaves Arashi,” came Nino’s quiet, even voice from behind his DS.

In an effort to preserve the tenuous peace and to dispel the heavy mood that had descended on them, Sho tried to reason with a despondently pouting Aiba. “Nino doesn’t like to see Alys-san more upset than necessary.”

“Oh, women don’t like it, eh? Maybe that’s why Renée didn’t say much in the car when we finished golf. There was this very pretty, sweet young thing teaching golf at the course today. She had a nice rounded butt that looked like it could go ‘boing-boing’ and had legs that went on and on,” Aiba said, enthusiastically describing the woman he had seen earlier while nodding sagely to himself that girlfriends did not like the idea of their boyfriends being physically unfaithful.

“You chatted up another girl in front of your girlfriend!” Sho leaned forward in his seat, levelling a glare at Aiba. While it was not on the same level of glares as MatsuJun’s, it was still a powerfully disgusted one that frightened Aiba a little.

“Iya, iya! I wanted to learn golf from her.” Aiba flailed his arms about in protest at his friends’ misunderstanding. “I was just admiring her, that’s all. But a fling with her, I wouldn’t mind. Ow!” He looked up at the two faces looming before his – one was cold and inscrutable, the other, disapproving. His two friends had smacked the back of his head and he had no idea why they had done so when he was merely being honest. He pouted and rubbed the afflicted part of his head. “Nino has Haruyo-chan hanging around him and you’re sorry for him. No one feels sorry for me when things like this happen.”

“The circumstances are different…” Sho tried to explain.

“You really want to know if anyone feels sorry for you?” retorted Nino, as he cut Sho off. An unpleasant smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth when he continued, “Let’s set your toes on fire and wait to see if anyone pees on you to put the fire out. It’ll be our A no Arashi.”

“Wah! Nino-chan’s mean!” Aiba cried out, cling to Sho, who patted his friend and shot the sarcastic gamer a speaking look that he had gone too far.

“Deal with it, brat,” he snapped, flicking a wrist and returning to his game, wondering if he was ever going to have any reprieve between dealing with idiot friends, his work commitments, CM engagements, ignoring Haruyo’s advances, and worrying over the health of his little professor.

As he had turned around and was facing away from then, Nino missed the shared pregnant glance that passed between Sho and Aiba. Although they said nothing to palliate him (and there was nothing to do be done when Nino’s mood took a turn for the worse), it had not escaped their attention that the avid game player had unconsciously used one of the professor’s stock phrases. It was a discovery that resulted in them quietly leaving the dressing room for the safety of the corridor where they could laugh unimpeded by blows to the head or an acerbic comeback.

NOTES

Flop shot is a short shot, played with an open stance and an open clubface, designed to travel very high in the air and land softly on the green. The flop shot is useful when players do not have "much green to work with", but should only be attempted on the best of lies.

Lob refers to an old-fashioned style of bowling in the game of cricket which is also played on the green. It is an underarm kind of bowl that is now illegal in cricket.

Take these two explanations and applying them to the story and this chapter.

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 017 – Playing a Closed Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

Hypatia is a feminist academic journal of ancient political philosophy.

Chapter 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 015 – Thinning the paint

True to the surmises of the other Arashi princesses, Kaoru had indeed suspected that her fiancé was deeply troubled by a private matter. Although Kaoru was not one to readily give her opinion when it was unsolicited, she had noticed that her affianced had been more than uncommonly out of things since the engagement dinner party. Like the rest of the Arashi princesses, she had caught Ohno’s startled dropping of his chopsticks at the news report of the deaths of the former heads of the Umebayashi Group, as she had caught his eyes widening briefly in recognition of the conglomerate’s heiress when the latter’s pictured flashed on the television screen that day. She had supposed there was some kind of connection between Ohno and Umebayashi Saeko, but she had not expected the connection to run so deep as to encompass the whole of Arashi. Like most of Japan’s newspaper reading public, she learnt of the 20% stock sale of the J Storm label to the new head of the Umebayashi Group. And as the other Arashi princesses had foreseen it, she had suspected a connection between Umebayashi Saeko and Ohno Satoshi that went further beyond anything she could imagine.

Despite these thoughts, she remained silent, declining the efforts of Chiaki, Sora, Renée-Caroline and Alys to take her out over the weekend. She wanted to work on her art and think in solitude without external stimuli affecting her opinions. Thus, she closeted herself at home and in the postgraduate art studio in Geidai, painting and mulling over matters. This was so much so that even Ohno himself had not seen her for the better part of the week. It wasn’t until the following Monday that he managed to take sometime to visit her at her work studio in Geidai.

While his unexpected call on her art studio was more than welcome, the misgiving that something was troubling him was made all the more apparent with his sullen pouts and stubborn silence. Gone was his dazed careless habit of staring into space and chuckling to himself at a new artistic concept he had coined. Where he would previously stare blankly at a point on her canvas or draw something in his sketchbook, he now adopted a furrowed brow as he looked at things. Stealing a quick glance at him from the corner of her eye, Kaoru was perturbed to see his previous sanguine equanimity gone. He was being very provoking with his silence, and she would have to do something to rouse his spirits before his troubles got the better of him.

“Satoshi-kun, would you mix the paints for me please?” she asked, more for the benefit of seeing occupied than his furrowed brows and depressing pouts.

Ohno, who had propped his chin in a hand while pondering the disagreeable thought of being put in a difficult position by his ex-girlfriend, was startled from his reverie. “Eh? Nani? Oh, okay, I’ll do it for you.” He offered her a poor imitation of a smile and looked half-heartedly at her canvas. “A new piece?”

“This? You’re being silly again. I’ve been working on this for the past fortnight.” She forced herself to put on an air that everything was all right and compelled herself to giggle as she once again reminded him. “It’s one of the six I have to do for Toyomi sensei’s class as the practical examples to my dissertation. Sometimes thinking doesn’t always work and you have to try doing it to see if it would work. In this, for example, I’m playing with dreaming and reality. The shadows between them are very blurry, don’t you think? And if you keep dreaming the bad things, won’t they become reality?”

Ohno was taken aback, just as Kaoru had predicted. Her words had been deliberately calculated to bring him out of his doldrums, or failing that, cheer him into more optimistic thoughts. However, as he was not privy to her intentions, he could only gape at her in amazement as he marvelled at her ability to make sense of things for him without his uttering a sound. “You’re very clever. I wish I could think like you; then I wouldn’t have to wonder whether I should do something or not do something.”

“Sometimes it takes more courage to do something, even if it is the wrong thing, than it is to do nothing,” she replied encouragingly, handing him several tubes of paint and a fresh palate.

The colour rushed to his cheeks as he wondered whether she would have told him to go ahead and do what he thought he had to if she knew it concerned his ex-girlfriend. “What if it’s the wrong thing?”

“You won’t know until you do it.”

The reply, uttered with such serenity discomposed him and he quickly pointed to the paints and asked, “What colour do you want?”

She looked intently at him and watched his lips form the question before flitting her eyes upwards to his and shaking her head. “Are you angry? Have I done something wrong to make you angry?” she asked directly.

“No, no, it’s not you. It’s me,” he protested.

She raised her eyebrows for a moment. “If it is not me, why will you not tell me what is troubling you?”

“It is not ‘will not,’ Kaoru. It is ‘cannot’ tell. I would like above everything to tell you but I cannot.” He pouted and looked away from her clear eyes, brimming with anxiety and worry. He could not bring himself to tell her that his ex-girlfriend was stirring trouble. There was nothing for him to do but be a man about things and deal with Saeko himself. He did not want Kaoru to get hurt playing this kind of perverse game where human feelings were entangled with the fate of his career, the career of his friends, the future of his record label, and the future of another company’s stocks. Things had gotten so complicated in Ohno’s mind that he didn’t know which way was the right side up in the situation.

“Oh, I see,” she murmured with a smile, taking up her three-quarters complete painting to the far end by the window. She hid it well, but even so, she could not deny that she felt forlorn at his inability to trust her and to open up to her. He had previously told her everything, including the changes in the advertisements in the billboards around JE Central. There would be no getting across this hurdle, and she only hoped his current troubles would not result in any estrangement in their relationship.

As Ohno was left to stand alone in the middle of the room, his heart fell when she moved away to the window. There would be no getting nearer to her that day because of Saeko’s shadow hanging over them. Watching her paint at some distance away from him, he became conscious that her withdrawal away from him also indicated a withdrawal of her protective influence over him. He had never noticed it before, but now he saw that Kaoru had always steered him clear of situations where he did not know what to do, and now that he was in such another situation, she had withdrawn her advice because he had decided that he could not tell her. He allowed his eyes to travel wistfully towards the easel by the window where she was painting. She seemed to know he had been staring at her, for she looked up. But there was nothing on her face. She met his eyes unsmilingly and it upset him to know that he had been the cause of her cool look.

“Kaoru, I’m…” he ventured to speak but was cut off by the arrival of Toyomi Hoshina sensei who gave him a perfunctory bow and made straight for his protégée.

“Morimoto-kun, email. I think this might interest you,” he said and swiftly as he had entered, he left again, mumbling about his latest installation at a gallery somewhere else.

“Looks like you’re going to be busy,” Ohno said, feeling the lameness of his remark when they were alone once more.

“Hai, it looks like it,” she replied evenly, looking intently at his face for some kind of sign that he wasn’t going to leave things hanging as they were presently.

Oblivious to that which was going through her mind, Ohno flashed a glance upwards at her, wondering what she meant and settled instead for shaking his head. “You’re busy, I’ll text you in the evening,” he offered and left.

Alone and left to her own devices, Kaoru looked at the email Toyomi sensei had printed out for her. Her curiosity as to what could be of interest of her was roused and as she read its contents, she gasped imperceptibly. It was from the owner of the Saatchi Gallery in London, and it expressed a genuine interest in promoting and introducing her art to the European public for the spring/summer season after chancing upon an article about her exhibition in Moderne Artes magazine. She would have three weeks to decide if she would be taking up the offer, and it seemed Toyomi sensei was keen for her to seize the opportunity as evinced from the excited manner in which he had burst in earlier. Save for the gasp she had let out, Kaoru felt strangely cool towards this flattering offer. She would have to discuss matters with her parents, Toyomi sensei and perhaps a few of her friends before she made a decision. For now, her mind was unable to weigh the pros and cons of the Saatchi Gallery offer. She was much too worried about her fiancé to consider anything else. Thus, beyond staring out the window with a sigh, she found herself feeling rather worse than she usually did when she was suffering from menstrual cramps.

The Saatchi Gallery offer was not the only offer made to a woman that overcast wintry Monday. For in another part of Tokyo, in one of the briefing rooms in the TV Tokyo station, another woman, a younger one, was presently facing an offer herself.

This woman was presently all the rage in Japan for her thin, vivid, flower-like countenance, narrow black eyes, and air of innocence; all these features have endeared her to the Japanese public, so much so that that she was dubbed the honeysuckle of the entertainment industry. This same woman, one Ichinose Haruyo, would be the envy of women throughout the country not only for her wholesome image and ‘pure’ beauty that landed her many modelling and advertising deals, but also for currently being in the same room with Sakurai Sho and Ninomiya Kazunari, albeit with their respective drama managers, the script writer and the director, ironing out the finer details of a new 12 episode drama series entitled ‘Resurrected Butterflies’.

“Ichinose-san, we will accommodate the scheduling of your classes as well,” reassured the flat expressionless voice of the director.

“Eh, you’re studying at Hitotsubashi University, aren’t you? It will be tough to juggle both studies and this additional commitment,” asked Sho, making polite small talk, for he did find the young woman charming. Moreover, as far as he was concerned, he and Nino were already signed up for the drama, and the ongoing discussion only dealt with the trifling matter of scheduling the film sessions.

“I will manage it somehow.” Ichinose Haruyo nodded primly. “My honours thesis supervisor is very accommodating.”

“Mah, Sho-kun managed it without dying or losing his hair. Ask him for tips,” sneered Nino, folding his legs on the chair to keep them off the floor and making a great show of studying the script before him. Unlike Sho, he had no illusions about the actress-model who was to be their co-star. He eyed her with the same lazy unconcern as he did most people. Experience had taught him that people were acquisitive, avaricious and brutish. He had a low opinion of humanity in general and had always used this same cynical a mindset in reading people. With the exception of his Alys, he had always found it laughably easy to read people and their moods, and played with them accordingly.

“Thank you for the considerate offer. I look forward to working with both of you.” She demurely bowed over the table.

“Likewise,” Sho said, smiling and inclining his head forward.

Saved from the necessity of saying something polite, Nino nodded once at Haruyo and her manager, swallowing the words ‘Yeah, I bet you would, you desperate bitch’ that were on the tip of Nino’s tongue. For all the modest airs she gave herself from the way she had her hands folded on her lap to the upright way she say, Nino could see that she was not an ingénue. He had seen that her eyes were wilful and sly. The way she ‘accidentally’ kicked his leg thrice under the table (until he tucked both limbs under himself) was a sign that she was a simpering young miss who had always had her way for the asking. He had known there were people like that, and he did not respect them, especially if they were like Ichinose Haruyo and did not possess the traits of gentleness, purity and virtue as touted by her talent agency.

Unaware of Nino’s antipathy for their co-star, Sho ventured when the model-actress departed with her manager, “Kono ko ii, ne?”

While it was Sho’s habit to make such comments about the fairer sex who had appeared in magazines, on television or were the wives and girlfriends of his friends, he really did think his new co-star was pretty. He, like Jun, could appreciate female beauty without sampling their wares, as it were; and Ichinose Haruyo was a very well put together female. His appreciation was unmarred by any hint of lechery, for he looked on the model-actress as something akin to a younger sister who was going through the same travails he had gone through when he was schooling and juggling his JE career. In JE Central, Sho’s stance on the importance of education was famous, for the simple reason that he extolled the value of higher education as a contingency plan should their careers as entertainers be, for some reason, truncated. Although Sho did have a belligerent and hot tempered side to him, he did have a tender heart. The proof of this amiable disposition lay in his friendship with and whole-hearted acceptance of the volatile, hyper-active Aiba – foibles and all. He could not bear to see the suffering or pain of others, and was often rendered helpless by his overwhelming care of those he held dear. This was true to a great extent that Nino and Jun occasionally addressed teasingly him as ‘Okaasan’. It also once led Aiba to tell Renée-Caroline that anyone whom Sho allowed himself to befriend would discover in three minutes that he was a kind hearted person

“Her? She has an arresting face, no more. Our Oh-chan’s button-nosed painter is far prettier than her,” said Nino dismissively as he extracted a bottle of home brewed chrysanthemum tea and took a generous mouthful. “That twenty-one year old ‘pure’ and ‘virtuous’ creature is a mantrap.”

“You’re saying that because you can only appreciate older women,” teased Sho, taking the proffered bottle from Nino and taking a swig before returning it. When the younger man put aside the bottle without answering, he continued, “Why did you accept this drama deal? I didn’t think this kind of script was something you liked.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it. But I like to play games, work on magic tricks and keep my domestic life in the pink,” he scoffed with a dismissive snort and equally scornful flick of the wrist.

Sho sighed and cast his friend a queer look full of pity and understanding on catching Nino’s last stated reason. “You are not going to chalk up debts. There is no need to push yourself if you dislike the script. Alys-san wouldn’t want you to work yourself to the point of exhaustion.”

“It isn’t okay for her to do that either, but does she listen to me? She shouldn’t have to work as hard as she does, scrimping from the money she gets from conferences and taking on editing and translation jobs within Todai as a sideline. She’s a professor and a scholar; she shouldn’t have to take on so much. The woman seriously doesn’t check up on her own health.” He paused and smirked bitterly when he realised he had said too much. “I am not going to repeat old mistakes, Sho-chan. I will not allow her to work herself like crazy like my mother did to support my sister and me.”

Nodding in compassionate understanding, Sho draped an arm around the smaller man’s shoulders. “You are not your father. You and Alys-san are stingy to the maximum. You haven’t any debts, and you won’t have any debts. You’re not going to leave Alys-san in the lurch saddled with your debts. Remember that, old friend, you are not like your father.”

“That’s because I’m going to model myself after her father and deprive her of everything she deserves,” intoned the gamer waspishly. “You try making her see that I can provide for her and then you’ll know how she takes it. My woman has balls. She doesn’t like being spoonfed.”

Sho could only chuckle at this sally. “So your dislike for the script notwithstanding, I’ll make an intelligent guess that you’re only accepting this drama because they’re offering 5% more than the rate you got for your last series. What’s your motivation? Paying for the refills on the professor’s prescriptions?”

Nino’s lips curled into a disdainful smirk while fishing out his DS from his pockets and turned it on. “Iya, two words – Hong Kong.”

“You’re being deliberately mysterious.” Sho shook his head and led him to the room where the rest of Arashi was waiting for them so that they could begin the shoot for one of their television programmes.

“Yeah, just noticed?” the smaller man laughed sarcastically, discomfiting Sho with the implications of the smirk of doom that had settled on his lips.

NOTES

Thinning the paint is where the paint is deliberately made lower in viscosity (i.e. less sticky), and formulated so that the pigment penetrates the surface rather than remaining in a film on top of the surface. Traditionally, turpentine is used as a paint thinner.

Readers are expected to imagine what happens to sticky paint that you have just squeezed out of a tube when you dissolve it and make it thinner. With this image in mind, watch what happens to the conversation in this chapter and you will see that things are not made clearer at all. The reason for that should be something readers discern themselves.

Moderne Artes is a fictional Arts magazine.

Saatchi gallery is a real gallery in London, UK.

Kono ko ii, ne? = She’s a great girl, huh? I read somewhere that Ohno once said Sho had the habit of looking through magazines and making that comment at the pictures of girls.

I did not pull Toyomi Hoshina out of a hat. He is Kaoru’s doctoral thesis /artwork supervisor at Geidai. We met Dr Toyomi Hoshina in Life’s Colours & Sounds in Chs 14 and 37. Kaoru mentions him a great deal as an influence in her art.

Lest readers forget, Kaoru is a doctoral student in oil painting at Geidai. Geidai is the Arts and Music University equivalent to Todai, and just as difficult to gain admittance into. Kaoru also teaches nude figure drawing in Musashino Art University. These two facts were mentioned through out Life’s Colours & Sounds and appeared as early as Ch 03 in the aforementioned story.

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.