105 posts tagged “ohno satoshi”

Chapter 020 – Hidden hostilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

Chapter 019 – Where wisdom listens

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

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

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

“I am very sorry, madam…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES & Glossary

Non = no

Mais = but/however

Aussi = also

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

Chapter 016 – Risking arbitrage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eh? Seriously?”

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

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

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

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

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

“What are we going to do?”

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

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

“There’s more?”

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

“Made fools of yourselves on television again?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

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

Chapter 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.

Chapter 012 – Sidestepping the gambit

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

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

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

“Iya, it’s not that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

Chapter 011 – Queen’s Gambit

The opportunity to uncover what Umebayashi Saeko wanted from the J Storm label and Arashi arose the very next day when the young men were due to meet with the representatives of the Umebayashi Group. If they were apprehensive about the meeting, they could not have been as nervous as Saeko. The head of one of Japan’s technological and industrial giants was her late mother’s daughter in that she achieved her position in the business world by relying on her respectable birth, considerable good looks and fortune. Furthermore, by dint of personally overseeing the management of the company’s investments and making periodic checks on their various factories and research plants, she had acquired the reputation of an important personage in the business world. She had learnt upon completing her formative education in engineering and business in Berlin and America respectively that it was best to have a hand in all her companies.

It was a personal belief she had cultivated from her time as the COO of the German branch of Umebayashi Group. She was so successful at it that the Japanese edition of Fortune magazine named her one of the most powerful women in trade. It was rumoured that she was as astute as her late mother, and had more than a finger in various political games and intrigues at the socio-economic level. However, to do these rumours justice, it was not the power politics and double dealing that stuck in the throats of the business community. Everyone had some form of intrigue going on while playing the business and political game at the level. It was a given. However, even the most hard-headed businessperson had a heart and something vaguely resembling occasional compassion. Those traits were noticeably missing in her. It was the taint that she could never really hide her unscrupulous nature that would exclude her from the inner fringes of the business community. That comment was frequently said without any rancour, and always accompanied by the acknowledgement that though she was a successful hard-headed businesswoman, she lacked a soul. Saeko was aware of it, but she never betrayed by word or look that she was conscious of what was said about her.

As she waited for the Arashi members in the board room of JE Central, she smiled inwardly at her past – so it had come to this – after years of studying and consolidating her influence in the realms of trade, industry and engineering, she had returned to Japan and would launch that which she deemed to be the greatest scheme of her life. Staring at the two files labelled ‘Umebayashi Tech Enterprises – Cash Flow’ and ‘J Storm – Cash Flow’, she re-examined the graphs, charts and figures her analysts had run through the statistical software programmes. Their pages were well-thumbed and most of the data was already committed to her memory. But she was going through them again, to rub her nose in it, to smell the ambrosia of the deal she would clinch if she got her prize at the end. The prize wasn’t economic success and more money, though it would be pleasant. The prize at stake was her old flame, Ohno Satoshi. It was for him that she moved to discreetly buy chunks of JE stock, and now, chunks of his record label.

She briefly looked up from the number-crunching charts at the bleak Tokyo cityscape and was reminded of how she met him. She had just been finished her education in the Tokyo Institute of Technology with first class honours and had applied for a postgraduate degree in the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in preparation for taking over the family business. To celebrate her academic success, her father had purchased a yacht for her. She had taken it for a spin and had just returned to shore where Ohno was fishing, or trying to fish whereupon his line became entangled in the rug she was drying on an obliging tree branch.

She had spoken sharply to him then, and instead of accusing her of being unreasonable as she would have expected, he gave her a tiny smile of comprehension and questioned her until he arrived at the heart of her displeasure. Saeko smiled to herself whilst half-consciously running her fingers over the charts and graphs she was supposedly perusing. She recalled that in those days, he frequently advertised his deficiencies and inadequacies. But that was what she liked about him. He had no illusions about himself, and could not quite comprehend why he should be immensely popular with women up and down the country. However, he would never flee from the mobs in those days. He was uniformly polite to all.

“His unfailing civility is one of his charms,” she mused, closing the files, “he has a warm and amiable heart.”

However, fate had intruded and necessitated her removal to Germany where she was accepted for further studies. He had pleaded with her not to go, but she did not think it would signify because her company came first and he had his own career and his concert tour of the time to consider. She had thought that his attachment to her would lead him to follow her to Europe. She had not anticipated his response or lack thereof. He had not gone after her as she had expected to, neither did he make any effort to keep in touch with her. When she sent him a letter, he did not reply. As she was caught up with her studies and juggling the management of the company at the same time, she did not pursue him for a response, choosing instead to shelf her plans to convince him that she was essential to his continued success. Now that she was back in Tokyo with time, money and the whole of Umebayashi Group at her disposal, she was at leisure to restart her plans.

Those thoughts remained on her mind when Arashi met her, fidgeting and nervous, as she rehashed everything she had related to Johnny Kitagawa on the collaboration between Umebayashi Tech Enterprises and the J Storm label whilst deflecting their concerns that it would affect the sound and quality of their music. This was business and like any business dealing, Saeko treated it seriously with the turnover and profit margin constantly forward in her mind. After allaying the restructuring fears of Sakurai Sho and the management fears of Matsumoto Jun, Saeko called the meeting to an end, adding that as head of the Umebayashi Technologies and CEO of the Umebayashi Group, she would sit in on a few of their recording sessions to safeguard the quality of their music for the purposes of assessing probable profit margins. The five members gave various signs of their assent, ranging from the wide grin of Aiba, to the studied indifference of Nino, to the serious nods of Sho, to Jun’s speculative sweep of the lashes, and Ohno’s intent stare at something on the wall.

Saeko chose her moment carefully, and when the meeting was adjourned and Arashi shuffled out the door, she called out, “I need to speak the leader of the group for a few moments.”

True to her surmises, Nino (whom she pegged for the silently disgruntled type) twitched his lips in disdain as the sounds of Sho’s and Jun’s vociferous objections that Arashi always made decisions as a group resounded in the board room.

“Why just Riida? He doesn’t really lead, you know. What do you want with him?” demanded Aiba, flailing his arms about, resembling a monkey gone amok.

“Business,” she replied tersely, dismissively turning away from the group to better review the number-crunchers in her files.

The sounds of Sho’s fists clenching and unclenching reached her ears, but she did not so much as crack a smile or look or surprise, and exuded a firm aura of businesslike unconcern that he was forcibly dragged out by the rest of the band. Thus, the members filed out, with Nino casting Ohno a sympathetic look before turning on his heels towards the exit, Jun shooting Ohno a look of assurance, Aiba an anxious look, and Sho a stern look of distrust at Saeko.

These glances were not lost on the astute businesswoman, who sharply told the lingering Sho and Nino, “I wish to speak to your Captain alone.”

Nino pursed his thin lips into a smile of encouragement and Sho patted the older man’s shoulders before they were dragged away by Aiba.

As soon as the heavy doors closed, Saeko turned to Ohno with something like a feral smile playing on her lips. “Can it be six years ago when we last talked? Have I aged? Have I changed? You haven’t. You’re the same Satoshi I remembered,” she declared, leisurely scrutinising him from head to toe.

“Eh?” he uttered, quite taken aback, sincerely hoping against hope that he was not having a conversation about a relationship that died six years ago.

Her unflinching gaze met his in a piercing stare. By some miracle, Ohno managed to retain his composure, until she continued, “You didn’t write back.”

“I don’t write to anyone,” he replied, incurably honest.

She stared unblinkingly at him, her face an impassive mask. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

Approaching her with careful steps, Ohno masked his trepidation with a pouting smile and tightly clasped hands. “It’s been so long; I had forgotten. Sae… Umebayashi-san, I am sorry. I am really, very, very sorry, I didn’t…”

“I promised to make your career, and I am here to keep my word. You have all the resources of the Umebayashi Group behind you. Six years late, but better late than never. You were fond of that saying, do you remember?” she interjected and cut him off from proffering his apologies. She had seen that coming, but she did not want to hear it. She was prepared to hear anything from him except an apology. She quickly went on, “Your new single is still in the recording stages, yes? I will need a run down of the marketability and potential…”

It was his turn to cut her off now and he did so by taking the seat next to her and pouting. “I didn’t write back because I was busy with work. I didn’t write after that because I thought you wouldn’t answer after I didn’t write back the first time.”

While she shocked him by placing her hand over his, he chose to do nothing, thinking that perhaps it was comeuppance for neglecting to reply to her one letter. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’ve lost you once. That’s not going to happen again.”

“What are you saying?” he gasped, sincerely hoping against hope that he had misheard her.

“I want you back,” she said plainly and thoughtfully.

“You know, I think… Er… you know, I’m with someone else. We’re engaged,” he blurted out in all honesty.

“You can get disengaged,” she answered in a businesslike manner. “You don’t have to give me an answer immediately. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

Rising and executing a formal low bow so as to conceal his amazement, he quickly cracked a thin smile, bade Saeko good day and left. His mind was a flurry of activity, and he did not know which thought to prioritise. What was he going to do when he was assailed with a demand like Saeko’s. He had already stated his position on the matter, but it appeared that she would not take no for an answer. Just what was he to do? He could not share this titbit with the rest of Arashi lest they confront Saeko. Ohno was a peaceful soul who abhorred violence, especially that towards women and children. He could not and would not risk Jun, Sho and Aiba confronting her, not when she was now a shareholder of their record label and liable to make life difficult for them. He toyed briefly with the idea of telling Kaoru, but decided against it on grounds that news about his ex-girlfriend was likely to distress her.

He was still in two minds as to what he ought to do when he saw Nino pacing outside the boardroom, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and his sharp, clever eyes deeply worried.

Nino did not wait for an invitation to begin speaking. “They’ve gone back – Sho to the news room, Aiba and Jun to their drama locations. What’s up, Oh-chan?”

“Saeko…She says she wants me back. I know she’s serious because she had that kind of look in her eyes that manager-san gives us when we’re on tour. I couldn’t tell her to stop saying the things she was saying. You can’t let the guys know. They’ll kill me; manager-san will kill me; Okaasan will kill me. The guys would go mad on her and then we would be in hot soup because she could complain about them to Johnny-san. It really is my fault,” Ohno explained with an apologetic pouting smile as Nino strode to his side, demanding with his eyes whether the older man had been reprimanded.

“Do you want her back?” Nino asked, sighing at the failure of his friend to pose this most obvious question.

“Not anymore, six years ago maybe,” was the candid reply from the older member, relieved that someone could make sense of what he was going through without making him feel more awkward than he already was.

Nino nodded in understanding and posed his next question. “Good. That bitch broke your heart, don’t break Kaoru’s. Now, what about Kaoru? She’s a delicate hothouse blossom. She doesn’t have Chiaki’s strength of mind, Sora’s get-up-and-go, Renée-Caroline’s patience or my Alys’s balls. Don’t be cruel to her.”

“Women are cruel, not men, er… not most men. You’re cruel sometimes,” Ohno pointed out, trying and failing to make light of the situation. “I can’t tell Kaoru. You’re right. It would upset her and her art would go all funny. It wouldn’t be fair to her. It’s the guys. I don’t know what I should do to keep quiet. They would say things to Saeko and she could make things nasty for them, for us, for Arashi.”

“Play it cool, Captain,” advised the consummate actor and gamer. “Be your dazed and spaced out self. Do not act out of the ordinary with the guys. I’m not as worried about the guys as you are. They would be whatever, you know what I mean? They’re all imminently reasonable people; they would respect whatever decision you make.”

Ohno pouted and protested, “But they could tell Saeko off.”

“This isn’t the time for you to be gentle. The guys won’t do anything rash because they’re not bakas, not even Aiba is baka enough to do something that cataclysmic. That Saeko woman will pounce once you act out of the ordinary with us. She sees everything, yet appears ignorant. Women like that are dangerous. Don’t become a pawn in her game, Oh-chan. I can’t help you if you allow yourself to become a pawn. Kami-sama knows what kind of trick she could pull to her advantage when she sees you slipping up. And that would spell bad news for all of us. We have everything to lose; she doesn’t.”

“Nino, you know, you’re making this sound like a game.”

“It is a game, oh-great-and-oblivious-leader. This is the game of power politics. Like it or not, this is your game. You have to play it because you won’t come out of it with your soul in tact if you let her win.” Nino curled his lips into an unpleasant smirk as he added, “Welcome to the real world.”

NOTES

The Queen’s Gambit in the chapter title refers to one of the oldest known chess openings and though currently ‘unfashionable’ amongst amateur chess players, is often the opening moves of chess grandmasters. This gambit is divided into two categories based on the black player’s response: The Queen’s Gambit Accepted (QGA) and the Queen’s Gambit Declined (QGD). In the QGA, Black typically gives up control of the centre to obtain freer development. In the QGD, Black holds the centre and moves out of his cramped position by exchanging pieces with White so a to free his game.

I shall leave it to the reader to decide (a) the identity of the queen issuing the gambit, (b) the identity of the other player, and (c) whether the gambit was successful.

The next chapter hints whether the other player reacted to the gambit.

COO = Chief Operating Officer. This is the one of the top ranks in any conglomerate. CEO is the no. 1 rank. The COO manages the day-to-day activities of the corporation and for operations management.

Chapter 010 – A Matter of Economics

Johnny Kitagawa, head of the Johnny’s Entertainment Corporation, was generally thought to be very fortunate to have made his fortune in grooming male singing, dancing, and acting idols for the consumption of the female population of Japan and beyond. He was tolerably satisfied himself with his accomplishments for a few of bands had international appeal, and he was doing his bit for society by keeping the impressionable youths off the streets, instilling discipline in them, and inculcating the right values in them. He had, in his private moments, believed that he was performing a service for society, as providing the women with idols they could scream and faint over tantamounted to a public career. To his detractors, he often coldly but politely insisted that he ran a serious business concerned with the economic affairs of the nation. Members of some bands have sometimes speculated that Johnny-san, as they called him, was of a sinister disposition as he seemed to have eyes everywhere and a connection in nearly every profession in every walk of life. He did nothing to disabuse these rumours, and took delight in them when he went to his Tokyo office to look over the profit margins and auditions. In fact, this New Year season, he was in Japan overseeing a serious business matter.

While he usually left the running of his business empire to the management teams in Johnny’s Entertainment, he was that very Tuesday seated in his office, carefully reading the sheets of paper for the fine print. The woman seated opposite him inwardly seethed at the sight of Johnny-san driving a pen through several of the terms of the proposal. Johnny-san, much older than the businesswoman before him, was aware of her chagrin. In response, he looked up at her with a charming smile and said, “I feel for you, Miss Umebayashi, believe me. But to take up this much of my stock to break your new scratch-proof and copy-proof CDs into the technology market, would be too much of a gamble even for the Chief Executive Officer of the Umebayashi Group.”

He could not bring himself to like the woman, Umebayashi Saeko, so he tolerated her as he did with some of the lower management. He smiled faintly and mockingly at her when she said nothing. However, he could respect her. In their two hour long negotiation, he saw that Saeko’s well-pressed, perfumed skirt suit concealed an extremely formidable businesswoman, and that her weary eyelids drooped over eyes could become as keen as the brain behind them. Umebayashi Saeko’s intention to break her newly developed scratch-proof copy-proof CD line called ‘radiance’ through the music industry by buying a stake in Johnny’s Entertainment, or more specifically, she was offering to buy a 20% stake in the J Storm for 6800 yen a share.

“Compliments on your business savvy for taking an interest in one of our labels.” He looked up at the woman whose complexion was flawless, bob was cut to geometrical perfection and makeup was subtle. “But I have some reservations on selling our stock. The talents especially may object to…”

“I am not asking for a majority share on the label, only 20%. I am asking for shares as a means to breakeven my turnover on the manufacturing and the R&D.” She got up from her seat at the desk and scrutinised the old man’s expression carefully.

“You are insatiable, Miss Umebayashi.” He laid the papers down, and tentatively said, “20% of J Storm is more than covers the breakeven. You will be wanting voting stock next; that can be the only reason why you’re buying more than 10% necessary for voting stock.”

She sidestepped the issue by deftly changing the topic and producing another set of papers with the main number-crunchers and charts. “Your business model, Kitagawa-san is driven by pandering to the fickle consumer with the cult of celebrity. However, your numbers and growth are anything but insignificant. To market my newly developed radiance CDs under your label would bring substantial dividends for us both. If your label does well, my patented CD-ROMs will be the hottest thing on the electronic market and your company would be able to avoid the piracy issue with more of the fickle public buying the label’s CDs.”

“Give me a reason why I should sell 20% of J Storm stock to the CEO of an engineering and technological group who has no experience with the entertainment industry,” replied he, casting his eyes perfunctorily over the papers.

“What if I tell you your stock under the J Storm label is undervalued?” She leaned forward on the table aggressively to push her point

He stared back at her, his expression a complete blank as his brain attempted to work out the possible negative impact of this sale if he allowed it to go through. “What ifs is a game for scholars. We’re businesspeople, Miss Umebayashi.”

“Businesspeople? You think I’m a corporate raider,” she smoothly returned, watching him read the number crunching projections.

His eyes narrowed suddenly to her discomfiture and she made a show of arranging and collecting the papers on the desk. “You have yourself a deal, Miss Umebayashi.” He held out a hand. “20% of J Storm stock at 6800 yen a share, and exclusive marketing of your radiance line of compact discs. I’ll tell the talents and have our solicitors and brokers make the sale.”

Grasping his hand tightly, Umebayashi Saeko allowed herself a feral smile that showed her teeth. “I hope this will be the first of many business collaborations between our companies.”

As soon as the female CEO stepped out of his office, old Johnny Kitagawa pressed a button on the intercom of the phone on his desk. “Minoru, send for Date, I want to see him.”

The stalwart manager of Arashi, simply known as Date-san in the Johnny’s Entertainment management was summoned as per the request of the head of the corporation. Used to such cavalier treatment by the aged company head, Date crossed the wide marble paved hall, observing as he passed a young woman in her late twenties or early thirties, obviously someone who thought well of herself enough to wear a Dior skirt suit and Chanel perfume, walking past him, and clutching her file tightly. No doubt, the Boss had made another killing, he thought while nodding to the secretary who opened the mahogany doors to Johnny-san’s office.

The Boss, as Johnny-san, was colloquially christened in JE Central was standing with his back to the door, apparently inspecting an oil painting hanging on the far wall he had newly acquired through his links with one of the leading Japanese auction houses. It was a piece depicting fireworks bursting into various human faces contorted into the gamut of human emotions. Johnny stared at the contours of the brushstrokes and admired how the artist had captured the expression in the eyes of all the faces. It was well executed and very modern this piece by Morimoto Kaoru. He felt sure that she would be one of the leaders in the modern art world given a few more years honing her skills. This was definitely an artist whose career he would watch with great interest. Heavy footsteps broke into his reverie, and Johnny turned quickly as Date entered, showing a face of impatience. He then turned back to the painting.

“Tell the talents that 20% of J Storm stock has been sold to the Umebayashi Group in return for marketing and distributive rights to the new radiance compact discs,” the old man instructed.

“The boys aren’t going to like it, sir,” said Date, narrowing his eyes under his sunglasses. He always wore sunglasses, even when indoors. It was part of the rough and uncouth ruffian made good image he cultivated.

Johnny looked resolutely into Date’s shaded eyes. “They will keep doing what they have been doing, and demonstrate their returns to the new investor.”

“But Boss…”

“Just do it!” Johnny cut him off curtly and returned his gaze to the painting, signalling that the conversation was over. Date promptly bowed and stalked out, wondering as to the changeability of the Boss’s moods as well as the restructuring that would have done to the management of the record label now that 20% of it was in the hands of another company, that was, mercifully (he mused) not in the music and entertainment industry.

Eleven minutes later, Date, known to Arashi as ‘manager-san’ tramped his heavy footsteps into the Arashi room where the five band members were practicing their harmony for a new single amongst themselves. He nodded approvingly at them to see them at work, but his flash of the teeth, more a grimace than a smile, indicated that his purpose in breaking into their sanctuary within Central was more than an everyday briefing. He conveyed the news of the transfer of some of their record label stocks to a new investor and let them mull over the matter by generously granting them the permission to take off at six in the evening as soon as they memorised the lyrics to the single.

“What does this mean? Sho-chan?” demanded Aiba, throwing aside the lyric sheet on the departure of their manager.

Sho looked at his friends enigmatically and shook his head. “It’s too early to tell. I need to see the figures and the cash flows and whether there will be any debt burdens. Umebayashi Group is going slow with the stocks, and with the majority still in the hands of the Jimusho, the influence she would be able to exert on the label would be minimal; unless she transfers her stocks to voting stocks.”

“Eh? Riida’s ex is buying our record label! Why would the Boss man let her buy it?” exclaimed Aiba, waving an open bottle of water around and spilling some of its contents on the floor.

“There will be rich possibilities for the Jimusho if she offered Johnny-san stock options on top of the cash for the bidding of the shares. Umebayashi Technologies launches their radiance line of CDs today. It looks set to revolutionalise the CD market; and if the CEO plays her cards right, she could saturate the market with our label as the springboard,” explained the economist as he strode to the table and flipped opened the newspapers to the headline that read: Radiance of scratch-proof, piracy-free CD.

“In laymen’s terms?” Nino asked testily, folding his arms and tucking his legs under his frame on the sofa, half-watching Ohno who had chosen that moment to stare in rapt fascination at his loafers.

“The Umebayashi Group CEO is taking our label for a test drive to determine if she wants to continue doing business with the Jimusho,” said Sho, taking up a pen and making a few quick calculations in the margins of the newspapers.

The implications of this ‘test drive’ weighed heavily on the Arashi members as they fell into an uncomfortable silence, where each member pondered as to what this might mean for the band and for the state of their joint careers.

“Ano ne, how much is the Umebayashi Group worth when compared, ne, to J Storm?” Jun asked suddenly, pressing his hands together and looking to Sho, who was really the most knowledgeable person to talk to about all things economic. If the revelation that 20% of their record label had been acquired by a corporation not in the entertainment industry had stunned then, Jun’s penetrating question had completely bowled Sho over.

Sho shot Jun an appraising look and rubbed his brow at his preliminary calculations, as Aiba tried to make sense of the figures and numbers Sho had scribbled down and cross-multiplied. Although Aiba had no idea what was going on, he knew from the mood in the room that this sale of their record label’s shares was a very important and serious matter with the potential to change how Arashi did its music.

“Conservatively, the Group has at least a net worth of 4 million USD more than the Jimusho. Johnny-san couldn’t acquire the net worth of the technological and industrial giant even if he sold us,” Sho said after looking up from his hand calculations.

“Ne, why is she, ne, buying so much of J Storm, eh? Eto, does she have a motive ne?” Jun continued, making Nino sit up straight in interest at the turn of this discussion.

“Yeah, what does a large company like that want with a label like ours?” questioned Nino, lowering the DS briefly from the front of his face.

“What I want to know is how she would use her shares on the label.” Sho slapped his forehead in frustration. “With 20%, we are obliged to meet with her if she proposes changes to the business side of J Storm.”

“You think it would be ‘give her what she wants or she could buy the rest of the shares and make life tricky for us’ or what?” Nino asked, perfectly serious as he rubbed his chin. “What does she want with us?”

Aiba whisked around and loudly injected a cheerful note in his voice, “We won’t know until we talk to her. What do you think, Riida?”

“Huh? Why are you asking me?” Ohno asked, still staring at his loafers.

“I can never tell what you think by looking at you,” admitted Aiba candidly.

“Poor Aiba-chan, it must be very difficult for you,” sneered Nino as he rose in defense of his best friend. He had a fair inkling as to what was possibly running through Ohno’s mind at that moment and he did not want anyone to press Ohno or push him into a corner. He had an idea that Ohno’s discomfiture had something to do with Umebayashi Saeko, and if what he suspected would come to pass, it would not do to allow Aiba to take up cudgels on Ohno’s behalf before the woman had showed the cards she had in her hand. “By the way, Oh-chan,” Nino continued, “come by later for your kotatsu. The bakas fixed the heating yesterday.”

NOTES

The painting in Johnny Kitagawa’s office executed by Kaoru was mentioned explicitly in Ch 26 of Life’s Colours & Sounds when Ohno said:
(a) “I watched her work on her latest piece. It was very modern. It looked like fireworks but with faces. I didn’t know how to interpret it but I liked it.”
(b) She [Kaoru] giggled with a hand at her mouth. “The semester exam piece isn’t due till next month and the faces of life piece – the firework faces painting – that’s almost completed....”

It was stated in Ch 37 of Life’s Colours & Sounds that the paintings at Kaoru’s exhibition were for sale. It may be assumed that old man Johnny bought the painting. This painting will be making an appearance much later in the story. Watch out for it because I may not mention it in the footnotes.

Chapter 007 – Behind the smoke and mirrors

Despite that slight upset, dinner went well, and however much Ohno pretended that he wasn’t affected by the announcement of the Umebayashi tragedy, the Arashi members could tell from his unusually focused staring at the switched off television set that something was definitely amiss. Though he would not say anything about it, Ohno himself, whose mind had not ceased turning upon hearing the report, was to shake off the feeling that he and perhaps his friends were all on the cusp of something.

Yet he chose to say nothing of the matter until Nino returned from the toilet smelling heavily of cigarette smoke. Taking the opportunity that arose from Alys’s racking cough, Ohno announced that he needed a cigarette and would be outside if anyone cared to join him. After expressing their wish that the ladies would see to the sickly academic, the men shuffled out after Ohno with the exception of Jun and Nino – one out of concern for his partner, never mind his nicotine-withdrawal symptoms of twitchy fingers; the other out of a kind of brotherly affection. However, the urgency of the backwards glance Ohno threw them indicated to Jun that Arashi was going to have an impromptu meeting and it would not be fair to the rest of the band if he and Nino dallied. Thus, he linked arms with the smaller man, offered Alys a handkerchief so that she could cough with a modicum of dignity, and promptly pulled Nino out with him.

“Ne, what’s the deal with calling us out, eh? This has something to do with the Umebayashi Group chairwoman, ne? Is it me, ne, or is her name familiar?” Jun began, coming straight to the point as befitted someone who always needed to be in charge of anything that smacked of logistical planning.

“Maybe she sells plums. Oi, papa Nino, how come mama’s still coughing?” Aiba asked, watching his friends light up their cigarettes one by one. “Are you taking care of her?”

“What am I? Her husband? The damn witch can take care of herself.” Nino brushed aside his forelocks with one hand and stretched out his other so as to watch the smoke waft upwards from his cigarette. “What?” he snapped when the eyes of the other members fell on him. “Alys has pride. She doesn’t want to be dependent on people. She’s got balls, you know what I mean? I can’t trample on her pride when she doesn’t trample on mine.”

“Kind of like Sora, ne. She has problems accepting help from people,” chuckled Jun as he exhaled the smoke from his cigarette. “But you know, ne, that doesn’t mean you can do it without her knowing, ne?”

“Yeah, which is why I’ll have to make sure the electricians understand that they’d be kissing sewer rats if they’re not going to do anything about heating on Monday while she’s home. It’s a masterful plan. She’ll think it’s her supervision that got us the heating, but I’ll know it’s me.” Nino smirked while taking a long drag, feeling much better now that he had some nicotine in his blood.

“Wah! Nino’s pretty kind of nice to mama.” Aiba slapped his friend in the back and stretched his hand out to Sho’s pocket.

“An old married couple already. Who’s the head of the house? You or the wife? It’s a given Kaoru-chan will be ruling Ohno-kun’s home, just as his mother rules him,” teased Sho, carefully removing Aiba’s hand and throwing him the light cigarettes he personally favoured. He privately acknowledged the tar content in Japanese cigarettes were outrageously high, especially the brand Nino favoured, and it was for Aiba’s own good that he only had one stick of a light one than a stick of Nino’s brand.

“We don’t do definitions like wife or husband, Sho,” Nino sneered, and laughed sarcastically at himself as he swept aside his forelocks and looked in the window at the women who were huddled close together and conversing. “She’s my witch; I’m her freeloader; we’re great together, and that’s enough.”

“When is enough really enough?” Aiba asked suddenly, scratching his brow with his cigarette in hand.

“In business, the investors and stock market players would never have enough,” Sho stated knowledgeably.

“Like Saeko,” Ohno said mysteriously.

Instead of being completely befuddled by that utterance, the other Arashi members looked at Ohno and at each other apprehensively. The unvoiced opinion that there had been something in the news report hovered above them as thick as the cigarette smoke above them, as Ohno tried to smile it off as nothing. However, the act was not convincing. Everyone, even Aiba, knew that was something in Ohno’s reticence.

Jun folded his arms and sat on the swing, crossing his legs and started on another cigarette. “Why is the name Saeko so familiar? Do we know the Umebayashi heiress?” he asked, his eyes demanding a serious answer, especially since Nino and Ohno were exchanging muted looks where one was trying to silently calm the other.

“Well, I can’t say we know her. But I certainly know of her and the Umebayashi Group as an economics graduate. The corporation is one of the country’s leading technological and industrial giants. It was a well known fact that Umebayashi Ryuhei, formerly Maeda Ryuhei had married into his wife’s family to take over the business.” Sho paused in his narration, with a bracing hand on Ohno’s shoulder. “Such things are still common in some of the respectable families. I have no doubt that the new President of the company would expect her future spouse to marry into her family as well. The company’s stock is stable as far as I know. The deaths of the president and managing director would result in loss of investor confidence for a few months until the new chairwoman consolidates her power. Its steel interests in the…”

Jun interrupted him with a well-placed cough and Sho looked up from his economic ramble with an apologetic grin. “I don’t know a thing about macroeconomics, or microeconomics, ne, but I can’t shake the sense of unease at the name Umebayashi Saeko, ne. There is something vaguely unsettling about it. I’ve heard it somewhere before, ne.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Sho concurred.

“It’d come to you eventually.” Aiba nodded and grinned, draping his arm over Sho in an affectionate, brotherly gesture.

“One of you knows her.” Sho pointedly looked at Ohno and Nino who were doing their best to appear nonchalant. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Who’s ex is she? Yours, Ohno-kun? Yours, Nino?”

Aiba jumped up and pointed a finger upwards as the cogs and wheels in his mind clicked into place and presented the information to him. “Riida, not her! The rich girl?! The one who went away to Germany?”

“Yeah, that ojou-sama,” Nino spat bitterly, starting on his fourth cigarette.

A veil of silence descended on the men as realisation dawned on them, until Jun ran a hand distractedly through his hair and sought to be voice of reason. “What are we stressing about, ne? She hasn’t anything to do with us or with Riida, ne?”

“But she’s back. Something’s going to happen,” Ohno stated plaintively, staring into the darkness of the night. “I can feel it. Something bad is going to happen.”

Sho nodded sympathetically. “I have that premonition as well. The Umebayashi Group is discreetly buying stock of a music company. It could be ours, and if it is ours, there would be more than economic ramifications.”

“Ano ne, we’d worry about that hurdle when we get to it, eh? She could be investing in another company, ne? We need the evidence first. Jumping to conclusions, ne, will make us stressed and that would give us white hair and wrinkles before our time,” Jun declared authoritatively.

“It’s probably nothing, or if it is something, we can do anything because we’re Arashi, right?” Aiba cheerfully affirmed, clapping Sho’s shoulders as the older man frowned.

While Nino and Ohno smiled their acquiescence at this recommended mode of thought, they were anything but inclined to believe in those words. Ohno could not tell his friends that Saeko once wrote him a letter many years ago while she was still in Germany claiming that she was still waiting for him. Nino, who knew of the existence of this letter, was equally apprehensive that Saeko was indeed buying up chucks of JE stock in a misguided plan to some nefarious end. However, both men brushed aside these thoughts for the time being so as not distress the others. Aiba was right after all – if anything should arise, Arashi would be able to deal with it when the time came.