Yes, they do do some signal processing at Nintendo. So Ryuusuke’s not completely stupid. :)
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Who cares who’s there to stare and tell you how to look. I’m not sure they even know you by name.
Who cares who’s there to share what they think of you? Everybody here plays the same fucking games
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Energy
Yumi looked fairly good compared to how she’d looked the day before. Her eyes were dry, although still red, but she was clearly alert and, though Ryuusuke hesitated to count it as a victory, not looking as if she wanted to simply die. Perhaps it was the hot cup of tea in front of her. Tea had a calming effect on many people, even caffeinated tea.
Like beer for the soul.
The thought made him smile. Ryuusuke was an avid beer drinker—in a way which only one who described himself as avid about beer could be. Sei—who professed a public love of sake and a private love of very nice red wines and who considered beer, no matter where it came from, to be little but horse piss and vinegar (and alcohol, which had become her excuse for drinking it)—might have laughed. Rei would have understood thoroughly.
They sat in a small coffee shop on one of Kyoto’s less busy streets (though when one compared this to the smaller towns outside of the city, one realized that “less busy” was a truly relative term) clustered around two tables they’d pulled together. Yoshino looked less furious, which may have been Rei’s fault. Shimako sat next to Sei. Yumi sat on Sei’s other side, flanked by Yoshino. Each had one of her hands.
They simply…looked better.
Ryuusuke wasn’t sure how to take that. In a backward part of his mind, he knew he didn’t like it—he felt like they should still be in mourning for their friend. She wasn’t dead, but still. And yet, they looked all right. Not great, but all right.
But why wouldn’t you want them to be all right?
Because doesn’t that mean that their affections are…I don’t know. Fake?
No. Ryuusuke refused to believe that. Though it was his initial reaction, something he rarely strayed from, he pushed it aside this time, squishing whatever passed for logic in his oft-cynical brain.
Sei folded her hands on the table. “So,” she said quietly. “We need to make a decision, and we need to make it fast.”
“I don’t really think there’s a decision to be made,” Rei said, her voice gentle.
“And I,” Sei replied, “think you’re a very rational, reasonable person for saying that. I don’t think, personally, that rationality and reason is what is what this situation begs for, but I guess that’s what we’re going to be making a decision about.”
“What are you suggesting?” Shimako asked.
“That we do something fucking stupid,” Sei said with a grin. “Something we won’t regret.”
“That would what kind of stupid we’re talking about,” Shimako said. “We’re playing a dangerous game, Onee-sama.”
“I believe you’re the only one who called it a game.”
Shimako frowned.
“Sei, I understand your frustration,” Rei said, “but this is Sachiko’s life. Not ours.”
Oh, to hell with that shit, Ryuusuke thought.
This was the problem with reasonability. Because that was certainly a perfectly reasonable answer—and a correct one, to some end. It was, indeed, Sachiko’s life, and it was nobody’s place to interfere with it. Therefore, anybody who did was in the wrong, and that was the long and the short of it. That was the only conclusion a reasonable person could arrive at—after all, Sachiko hadn’t been kidnapped. She had walked into a car with her own two legs. She was living her own life, and it was her life to live.
But fuck that. “Are you serious?” Ryuusuke said. Rei looked surprised—she had rather assumed the man would be an observer in their deliberations; after all, Sachiko wasn’t even his friend. He barely knew her. Nobody reasonable would put themselves on the line like that—especially not going after people as powerful as the Ogasawaras. “You saw the way she looked going into that car. I wouldn’t call that living her life, would you?”
“It’s true,” Rei acknowledged, “That she was probably influenced to some extent by…things she would be better off ignoring if she could, but she can’t necessarily ignore them. We don’t know the ins and outs of her life like she does.”
“And we don’t need to. Hell, we’re better off not knowing. I don’t want to know what kind of powerful shit I’m poking at when I poke at it.”
“I don’t think you’re quite familiar enough with the situation to be making comments like that,” Rei said coldly. “You sound like you’re trying to stir up trouble for the sake of looking masculine and strong. Or perhaps simply feeling that way.”
Ouch. And to some end, hell, she’s probably right.
“Kinda harsh, Rei,” Sei remarked.
“No,” Ryuusuke said. “She’s right. Probably part of this does go into my own ego. I’m not sure what in the past ten years hasn’t. Goddamn thing is like a black hole, has been pretty much all my adult life. But I stand by what I said; this is something fundamentally wrong with Sachiko’s life, and it’s not her own fault. It’s not something she herself can change without understanding something bigger about the world.”
“And that is?”
“That sometimes, it goes your way only if you force it to go that way. And that you can’t always force it with good ideas. That sometimes, a bad idea is your best friend.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rei said.
“Exactly,” Ryuusuke responded. “Listen. How many of you kids grew up in affluent families that always taught you to do the right thing? Come on, show of hands.”
Reluctantly, every hand went up.
Ryuusuke snorted. “I grew up with no father, and a mother who worked every bit as long and hard as a male salaryman to make up for it. Even so, we barely had enough money to get by. So what did I do as soon as my mother died? I sold our old house. Made a good bit of money at it, and with my grades I might have been able to take an entrance exam for Kyoto University and pass it. Probably could have been an engineer; I was good enough with math. I was a pretty decent student, and I had enough money from the house to pay my way through at least part of college. So do you know what I did with the money? I opened up a bar in the only place I could afford land, on the outskirts of Kyoto, where you actually have to drive to get to.”
“When you put it that way,” Yumi said quietly, “It sounds like an awful idea.”
“And yet, I do a damn decent business. Maybe I don’t make as much money as I might have if I were working for Nintendo doing signal analysis or whatever the hell it is that engineers there do, but I make enough to cover my expenses and have a halfway decent house. And the difference is, I’m doing something I enjoy, instead of something I’m good at. Because honestly, while I’m a good bartender, I’m only a mediocre businessman, so I’m not all that cut out to own my own place.”
“And not so great a—” Sei began.
“Saying nothing of my abilities as a chef,” Ryuusuke interrupted, shooting her a look which was half death-glare and half mental high-five. The kind a guy gave another guy that said, you got me, nice one. “But while I’m not as good at keeping my books balanced as I was at surface integrals, I enjoy myself a lot more where I am. So logically speaking, it was a bad idea. I’d have done better for myself if I’d done what was expected of me and gone to college.”
“And if Chiba had been making ramen for the rest of his life instead of singing in Beck, he’d have been doing what was expected of him, too,” Yoshino chimed in, an impish grin on her face.
“I thought you only thought they were so-so.”
“I lied.”
“You’re a little shit.”
“She does her best,” Rei said, her icy exterior fading a bit. “So you’re telling us to…what?”
“To encourage bad ideas in Sachiko. To do so by way of a terrible idea yourself. If only because good ideas have insofar not been effective in the least. I don’t mean bad like, deliberately stupid—not like finding two tablets apiece of bad acid, downing them, and then writhing in agony on the floor at her wedding bad. I mean like, direct in a way which would normally be considered both impolite and potentially stupid bearing in mind that these people are just a bit richer than god.”
“Direct, huh,” Sei said with a grin. “I like it.”
“You would,” Rei said.
“You should.”
“You agree with him?” Rei was incredulous. “Honestly?”
Sei looked Rei square in the eye. “Yes. Stupid ideas have their place in our lives. Hell, coming out here was a stupid idea when you think about it. It was a huge waste of money and we didn’t even get to see a live show. We just got piss drunk and wound up drinking the shit that this man,” she jerked her head in Ryuusuke’s direction, “made us to cure it. We could have had a nice quiet couple of days hanging out at Sachiko’s house and talking.”
“But you saw Sachiko there. She wasn’t even sort of able to be hers…” Rei leaned back in her chair all of a sudden, dropping off in midword. She ran her hand through her hair once, as though distressed. “I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” Yoshino smiled. “You’re just sensible. That’s got its place too, doesn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.
Rei looked at Yoshino—regarded her, really—in a way she never had before: As an adult. Somebody who had, in fact, gotten where she needed to be not just a few steps ahead of Rei but several miles. Somebody who understood, maybe, a little of how the world was, not only how she wanted it to be.
Damn.
Rei sighed and leaned back. “You guys all caught on ahead of me, huh.”
Shimako said, “It was a first. I believe it felt a bit nice.”
“You’re a shit,” Sei said.
“An honest one,” Shimako replied with a small smile.
Rei looked at Yumi. It was really her, after all, who would clinch this. “Do you agree, Yumi?” she asked. “Do you think this is what we should do? Something stupid?”
Yumi said slowly, “I think…it would be very hard to do nothing. And I also think that everything else that makes sense has already been tried, because, really, there isn’t much to try that hasn’t already been tried.”
“What do you mean?”
Yoshino grinned and squeezed Yumi’s hand. The two had to have a psychic connection; of this both Rei and Ryuusuke were quite certain. Ryuusuke envied it.
Rei did too, but for a different reason.
“I mean,” Yumi said, her voice shaking a bit, “I’m really…really sick of just sitting there and letting Onee-sama…” she shook her head. “No, that’s not right.”
“Sure it is,” Yoshino said, her eyes fiery. “What Yumi was going to say, but is too much of a lady to, is that she’s sick of letting Sachiko fuck her life up by being such a damn wimp. And, if we’re going to help her get her life back on track, we’re going to have to grow an iron pair and just tell her what’s what.”
There was dead silence for a moment. Nobody was quite certain that they believed they had just heard Yoshino tell everybody to grow a pair.
Nobody, that is, except Rei. If anybody was going to tell them that, it would be Yoshino, who possessed a rock-hard pair herself. She always had.
Damn.
“I think that deserves a toast,” Sei said, also grinning. “Anybody got any booze?”
“Tell you what,” Ryuusuke said. “You girls go bust up what needs to get busted up, I’ll buy you all rounds and we can toast to our hearts content. Besides, it’s not even noon yet.”
“And yet, in California, it’s almost six in the morning.”
“That…doesn’t mean anything,” Ryuusuke pointed out.
“It would mean I was just getting warmed up.”
Shimako snorted. “It would mean you had been passed out on a couch for at least five hours, Onee-sama,” she said.
Sei grimaced. Shimako had her number. She always had.
It didn’t matter. She took Shimako’s hand, and said, “Well, what the hell are we pissing around here for?”
“We’re going…right now?” Rei said, frowning a bit.
“Why the hell not? Can you think of something better to do?”
“We don’t have any time to waste anyway,” Yumi said. “If we give Sachiko too much time, she’ll…she won’t go along with it.”
“Too much time to get set in her ways,” said Rei. “I know the drill.”
As one, they stood. Ryuusuke grinned at them, said, “I think I can manage closing the shop up for a day or so.”
Rei frowned. “I don’t know if that’s a great idea. The Ogasawara group manages your property, don’t they?”
Ryuusuke blinked. “How’d you know?”
Rei shrugged. “They manage a lot of land around here. I didn’t, but I do now.”
Ryuusuke frowned. “Eh. I ran into that Suguru guy already. I’m not worried.”
Yumi shook her head. “No, I think you need to stay here.”
Ryuusuke blinked. “Why?”
“This isn’t…something you can really help with. You’ve done a lot already, and we’re very grateful, but…do you understand?”
Ryuusuke shook his head. “Not really.”
Sei said, “Put it this way. We’re going in to fight, but it’s going to be a fight mostly comprised of a bunch of girly bullshit. Nothing personal, but there’s not a lot of shared ground between us, you know? I think the extent of it would be, ‘hey, remember that one time I made you a prairie oyster and you almost puked it up?’”
Ryuusuke hated to admit it, but she did have him there. He sighed.
“This is going to eat at me, you know.”
“Can I help by telling you we’ll call if we need you?” Sei asked. “Because, while we’re really grateful for your help…that’s about all I can do in return.”
Ryuusuke had been dumped by enough women to know when he was being dumped, but…something about this felt a little better. Maybe it was the note of discontent in Sei’s voice when she said it.
Because, honestly, that was the thing about getting dumped. Usually the person doing the dumping was, in the long run, right. And it sucked, but…if it felt like inevitability from the very beginning, rather than like one person being a bastard, it was easier to take.
A little, anyway.
Either way, as the girls filed out, each thanking him with a hug which was mostly sisterly, but no less sincere or firm, he couldn’t help feel a little sense of regret; a little tug at his stomach, telling him, You should be with them.
Maybe that was the case.
Or maybe he needed to let go. Chiharu might also have told him that.
He decided that maybe that was what he needed—to have Chiharu tell him to let go. As he paid the bill, (his final act of chivalry towards those girls, at least in this matter) he dug in his pocket for his phone. As he dialed Chiharu’s number, he decided that was exactly what he needed.
She gave him that, and more.
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