by Chris Ward
‘Shut up, you dumb tool.’
Kaede leaned down towards him. ‘They’re only fucking here,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Their van’s up in the courtyard. At least it’s got their logo on the side. I guess it could be some shit covers band, I don’t know.’
Akane stared. What a bizarre coincidence. Plastic Black Butterfly was Jun’s favorite band.
‘Is that turkey ready yet?’
Ron looked up and stared. ‘What? I can’t speak Japanese.’
The girl pouted and planted delicate hands on her hips. ‘I spoke English. Is that turkey ready?’
‘Oh.’ Ron glanced up at the oven. His eyes widened as he noticed the temperature setting. He’d put it to 150 centigrade for four hours. Wasn’t that what it had said on the packaging? Or was it 250? Or two hours of one and two hours of the other?
He looked back at the girl. He’d only been in Japan a couple of weeks. If he screwed up perhaps he’d get deported. It was only a turkey, it would be fine, surely…
‘It’s ready,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Great. Let’s get it carved up for dinner.’
As she walked away, Ron pulled on a pair of oven gloves, took the turkey tray out, and put it down on a countertop. It was steaming and looked baked on the outside, but the little thermometer pushed into its centre hadn’t popped out yet. After a moment’s hesitation, Ron gave it a little tug. Turkey juices dripped off its pointed end as it slid out of the bird. He nodded in satisfaction. Juices meant it must have cooked okay. He smiled and reached for a carving knife.
It would be fine. Tonight’s Christmas dinner would be one the guests would never forget.
‘And this is how you hold a knife and fork…’
Jun sighed. Sitting at the back of the lecture hall, he gazed forlornly at Akane’s back as the teacher on the podium talked them through dining etiquette with the help of a slideshow that was so overly jovial it was almost sarcastic. Down near the front, Ogiwara’s minions had descended into a chorus of mockery, whooping and jeering as the teacher manfully battled through his presentation. Over to Jun’s left, Kirahara-sensei was peering at a clipboard, the only sign of his embarrassment a slight grimace and a frown.
‘So, enjoy your meal!’ intoned the teacher, breathing an audible sigh as the students jumped up in a rush and headed for the exit. Jun noticed Kaede leaning close to Ogiwara’s ear, but rather than feel any jealousy he only felt a sense of relief. Perhaps if they paired off—and no one would doubt they suited each other—Jun might be able to patch things up with Akane.
‘Hey.’
She was standing right beside him, those lovely eyes looking up at his. If only she could have smiled, she would have looked perfect. A needle twisted inside his gut at the sight of her, the pain evident on her face. How he would have loved to take that pain away.
‘Hi. How … are you?’
She shrugged. ‘I thought you might be interested. It’s what all the others are talking about. That band you like, Plastic Black Butterfly … they’re here.’
Jun stared. ‘Huh? What on earth do you mean?’
‘Jun, their van is outside, parked up beside our bus. Don’t ask me why they’re here … but they are.’
‘My favorite band…’
‘I thought you’d be interested.’
‘Thanks for telling me. Have you seen them around? Perhaps I might get an autograph or something.’
Akane gave a brief smile. ‘I’ll tell you if I see them.’
Then, before he could reply, she had turned and headed down towards the front of the lecture room, where a couple of her friends were waiting. One of them, Natsumi, looked up at him and gave a small shake of her head.
‘Come on, Jun,’ Kirahara-sensei said, gathering up his clipboard and stuffing it into a briefcase, ‘let’s go eat before the judo lot get all the food.’
7
Dinner is served
Ron smiled proudly as he carried out the carved turkey and set it down on the buffet table, the centerpiece between all the spaghetti, fried chicken, rice salad, and mini hamburgers. It looked great. He’d had to hide a couple of pieces that were a little redder than he would have liked underneath a small side-salad garnish, but none of the students would take more than a couple of pieces each, and that wouldn’t do any harm, would it?
No, it would be fine. Ron twisted the platter a little so the meat was facing outwards at its best angle, nodded with satisfaction, and headed back into the kitchen to bring the next dish.
Working in Japan was turning out pretty well.
‘Only take what you can eat,’ the waitress, whose name was Janine, intoned in patronisingly slow English as she stood in front of the long trestle table. ‘We like to see clean plates here. And when you’re done, please take your plates to the kitchen.’ She grinned, ignoring a chorus of groans. ‘And now … you may begin.’ Her additional, ‘Enjoy your meal,’ was all but lost beneath the sound of scraping chairs. The students leapt up en masse and rushed for the buffet tables.
Huffing out her cheeks, Janine marched over to the new kid, Ron, who was standing by the entrance to the kitchens with a thin smile on his face, watching the rabble of students as they piled their plates with food.
‘Like bloody vultures, aren’t they?’ she said under her breath. While she doubted any of the students would understand, some of the Japanese staff spoke English, and unlike the foreigners, who were all on three-month working holiday visas, they were company loyal. ‘Bad lot, these, so I heard. Some special class of messed-up kids.’
Ron shrugged. ‘They’re no more unruly than the kids at my school were,’ he said.
‘This is Japan. They’re usually a lot more polite. This lot, though … bloody animals. Look at them scoffing all the food! All that turkey’s gone already.’
Ron smiled. ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘I guess they must love British traditions.’
‘Love being greedy, more like,’ Janine replied with another huff. ‘You catching the minibus down into town tonight? Some of the staff are organizing a little Christmas party.’
‘Sounds great,’ he replied.
Standing at the back of the line, Jun heard Akane groan a few places in front of him. When he reached the buffet table, he saw the platter labeled TURKEY was already empty. As he picked up a couple of hamburgers and dumped them on his plate, a blonde-haired young foreigner only a couple of years older than himself came and picked up the empty turkey platter, gave it a satisfied smile, and carried it out into the kitchen. Jun waited a couple of minutes, but when the young man came back he replaced the empty space with another plate of meatball spaghetti. So much for British Christmas dinner, Jun thought. Perhaps I’ll get lucky tomorrow night.
As he carried his plate back to the table, the main door opened and Kaede came in, followed by Ogiwara. Both were grinning. Both had flecks of snow in their hair. Kirahara-sensei stood up and immediately began to admonish them for being late. Kaede fluttered her eyelids and smiled coyly at the teacher, while Ogiwara did his usual thing of staring at the ceiling in exasperation until the berating was over.
Dinner, in the absence of any turkey, was a boring affair. Jun ate three bowls of rice and a couple of pieces of smoked salmon, but his appetite was gone. Akane sat opposite him, engaging in occasional banal conversation with her girlfriends, but she seemed to have gone even further into her shell than usual.
Ogiwara, a few seats down, was now berating Nakamura and some of his other judo mates for gorging on turkey, leaving him none. ‘After all the things I’ve done for you clowns … I’ll never show you pictures of my girlfriends again!’
Akane’s head shot up. She glared at Ogiwara for long seconds, then looked back down at her plate.
It was later that same summer. Akane, ten years old, was waiting patiently outside the front door of her piano school for her mother to pick her up. She waited and waited as the evening got darker and the streetlights came on, until finally the teacher came ou
tside to ask her what was wrong.
‘My mother is two hours late,’ she said.
‘Perhaps she’s got stuck in traffic.’
Akane shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, but the smile had gone.
An office worker, driving home after a work party, four times over the legal alcohol limit, ran a red light at eighty kilometres per hour. Akane’s mother had turned right into his path.
The hospital said she died instantly. That was something.
Her father, sick with grief, hung himself three months later. Never a strong man, he saw his wife in his daughter’s wide eyes, and his own suffering in Akane’s sullen face.
Her grandparents became her parents, but the darkness became her guardian, and her best friend, Jun, became a reminder of all that had gone wrong.
8
O-Remo meets a stranger
‘Where the hell is he now?’ Dai said, standing outside the pub with Ken as Bee strode up the road towards them, shaking his head.
‘He’s not in his room.’
‘Fuck him, then. Let’s just go to dinner.’
The three of them headed for the dining hall. There only seemed to be one school group staying at British Heights, which Ken could see was a disappointment to Dai. It meant less options. Still, there were probably more people here than had been showing up at their gigs for the last two years. Perhaps they should stage an impromptu concert.
Except their lead singer was missing.
Ken was actually starting to worry. If O-Remo got too high, took leave of his senses and wandered off, he could get lost out in the snow, which was beginning to dump, blanketing everything. The weather had really turned, and while an onsite mechanic had fixed their fuel leak, he wondered whether it would even be possible to leave.
Still, they had credit cards. And the Christmas tree standing in the lobby outside the dinning hall promised special Christmas food.
Ken, who could count on one hand how many times in his life he’d eaten turkey, was very much looking forward to a few slices.
Dai pushed through the doors into the hall. They were met by a fat waitress whose nametag identified her as JANINE. With a wonderfully fake smile, she pointed them towards a table laid out for four people on the far side of the room.
As they followed her towards it, Ken noticed how a hush descended on the group of high school students. There were roughly twenty, and now every single head was turned in his direction. Several mouths hung agape, while one or two of the girls were unconsciously fiddling with their hair. Ken smiled. It didn’t surprise him to see a massive grin on Dai’s face.
‘Dinner is buffet-style,’ Janine told them in English. ‘You can eat as much as you want. Unfortunately the turkey has all gone.’
‘Greedy fucking students,’ Dai said, after she had left them alone. ‘At least some of them are decent looking. Do you think they’re wondering where our lead singer is?’
‘I think everyone’s wondering that,’ Ken said. ‘Not least of all us.’
‘He could be dead,’ Bee added. ‘He could have shot up in the forest and now be lying under a growing snowdrift. Do we replace him or break up?’
Dai clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I think we stop worrying about it for now and eat, before those students finish everything off.’
She has to be here somewhere.
O-Remo had checked all of the rooms he could find, but Karin was still proving elusive. After hiding his stuff under his mattress he had gone back to the Grand Mansion to look for her. He’d found himself wandering through room after room of mock Medieval charm, from a chapel to a library to a pantry complete with plastic food. Tacked on to the end of the living museum were modern facilities, a swimming pool and weights room on the lower floor, a gymnasium and a youth club-styled recreation room on the second, complete with video games, a pool table, and a couple of pinball machines.
The whole building was almost deserted. There were a couple of staff on reception, but everyone else seemed to be in the dining hall. Of course it was entirely possible that Karin was in one of the dormitory buildings, or the other study centre near the main gate, but the snow was heavy now and he was convinced she was in here somewhere.
He had found one locked door. He knew, almost beyond certainty, that she was behind it.
Peering through the keyhole, it appeared to be some kind of mock stately home suite. He could only see a corridor, but it was wide and lined with ornately carved coffee tables topped by expensive-looking vases and sculptures. Paintings in large dusty frames hung between intricate windows flanked by thick drape curtains.
Several doors led off the corridor. She was in one of them, he knew it.
‘And the winner of this year’s bestselling single goes to … Girls Chorus!’
Karin jumped up along with the rest of her bandmates, whooping with delight, pulling each other into hugs and punching fists into the air. In reality, they’d known their single had to be close, but to have that final confirmation at the end-of-year music industry awards, that they—they—had done it, had the bestselling single of the year and a place in the records books … it was almost too good to be true.
It was Karin, the designated group leader, who was required to make a speech. As she stood up on a stage not nearly as big as many she had danced on, a microphone in front of her and a hushed crowd of five thousand industry professionals and other artists watching every flicker of emotion on a large screen behind the stage, the words came slowly at first.
‘This is the greatest honour … in our wildest dreams we never thought we’d stand before you like we do today, with the bestselling single of the year. It really is a dream come true. First of all, I’d like to thank … my sisters in the band.’ Cheers, group hugs, tears. ‘And I’d like to thank my family, for always supporting me. And my…’ She paused, Hiro’s face flashing into her mind like a misplaced firework, temporarily blinding her. He’d made it more difficult than she had wanted, crying in her arms at Shinjuku station as she said goodbye for the last time. No boyfriends is the rule, and even if I could … it just wouldn’t work. We’re too far apart.
He had thought she meant distance, she had meant in life. He was on a career path to a simple life as a train conductor or ticket officer, she had the world at her feet.
‘…and I’d like to thank our manager, Banba-sensei.’ Her eyes picked him out of the crowd, where he was nodding slowly, his arms folded, a grim, stern look on his face as if he had written this line for her. ‘You have given us everything. You have been a mentor to us, and … a father figure when we needed help. Without you there would be no Girls Chorus.’
The crowd erupted into applause. After a few moments for the other girls to say a couple of brief thank yous, they filed back to their seats. Banba-sensei gave her a quick wink as she sat back down, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the human behind the public mask. Dread flooded through her. She had never known just how tenuous their fame would be, how easily they could be dropped or kicked out of the band, to disappear back into obscurity. As leader of the group she had more power because of her visibility, but she knew three of the other girls regularly shared his bed to ensure their continuing involvement.
The money wasn’t even that good. Livewire Entertainment Ltd, the company under which Banba-sensei ran his stables of boy and girl-groups, took seventy percent of everything, even external work such as TV commercials. If her expense account was withdrawn she would barely be able to cover the rent for her modest apartment in the Tokyo Docklands. The contract had offered slave wages in return for a dream, but what choice did she have? What choice did any of them have? If she could get out while the group was on top she had a chance of a solo career or even TV or film work, but she was contracted to make three more albums. There was no telling how successful they might or might not be after the three to four years it would take for those records to be made.
At the after-show party, Karin played her part, entertaining record company bigwigs a
nd TV producers with the smile that shone from the covers of a dozen magazines each week, but her mind was elsewhere, torn with indecision. Did she have the nerve to quit the group, to risk years of legal wrangles in order to take her freedom back?
At times, being a member of Girls Chorus felt little different to being a prisoner on day release. She had barely a day off a month, was driven everywhere by a Livewire Entertainment Ltd chauffeur, rarely had five minutes where she wasn’t in either the company of the other girls or the management. It was stifling. Two girls had quit a year before, but two junior members, already in the public eye, had merely been promoted to the main group through a public vote, filling the vacated spaces without fuss. You never quit a band when you worked under Livewire Entertainment. You graduated. Your passing from the group was celebrated at a contractually binding farewell concert, and twenty thousand fans would wave you goodbye as you faded into obscurity.
The girls, for all their fame, were tools. The only real winners were Banba-sensei and his financiers.
She’d spent three years on a treadmill of touring, recording, and fashion shoots. She was exhausted. She was surrounded by people almost twenty-four hours of the day, but she was so desperately lonely.
She wanted out.
She opened her eyes and looked down to see the bald crown of Forbes’s head bouncing up and down between her thighs. He liked to screw her at least twice a day, and he had some pills he took that gave him the libido of a teenager. Still, it didn’t change anything. He wasn’t a teenager. He was a sixty-seven-year-old balding, overweight, British businessman with more money than the Japanese government. He repulsed her, but the wilderness years had made her accustomed to revulsion. And it wasn’t so bad really. All she had to do was put up with a few grunts and a bit of sweat and it was over for another few hours.