Fiction: Three (part one, chapter four)

Chapter four: Devil’s advocate

It felt difficult to manage to talk to Yukiko after that. She had noticed him, of course, but had merely smiled and waved slightly – first at him, then at Arai, and not for the first time he was struck by a powerful need to punch his adoptive brother. Instead he merely glared from Arai to Yukiko and back again before he stormed out, not having a particular need or desire to watch possibly the only love interest he had had for years take her clothes off in front of a bunch of men drooling all over her.

Kenji refused to speak to Arai for days. Though when Arai came home late one evening with his clothes torn, looking unusually bruised, bloody and shaken, Kenji melted – even if the way he tended to Arai’s wounds was rather harsh, rougher than necessary. The strange part was that Arai didn’t seem to mind; he hardly even seemed to notice that Kenji was there.

“So now you’re not going to talk to me?” he finally asked, noticing that he sounded rather like a petulant child. It took a few seconds before Arai turned his head and looked at him, and for once he looked tired. Kenji couldn’t remember having seen Arai tired in months, maybe even years.

“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not in the chattiest mood ever,” he replied quietly, looking away again. “You haven’t talked to me for days, don’t you dare be mad at me. Not tonight. I’ll argue and bitch with you in the morning, but not tonight. Okay?”

Before Kenji had the chance to answer, Arai got up and walked into his room, actually locking the door, as if really signaling that he didn’t want to talk tonight. It made Kenji feel deflated. And also more than a little worried.

However, the next morning Arai acted like nothing had ever happened, and just like every other time he had been in a serious fight, most of his bruises and cuts had nearly healed overnight. When they were younger Kenji hadn’t really thought much of that, but now that he wasn’t working and Jun wasn’t home, it was so much easier to notice these little details about Arai.

He didn’t get to ask Arai about it though, seeing as he was merely grinned at, and then Arai asked if he had called Yukiko yet, which made him forget everything about Arai’s weirdness and made him want to kill the damn idiot. Hardly a new feeling.

It turned out that his and Yukiko’s meeting hadn’t been that much of a coincidence after all, seeing as Arai had told her about Kenji and said that he would be at the bookstore that day. It was all Kenji could do to not smack Arai for setting him up, and with a damn stripper, no less. He had his standards – and even though he had gotten past the fact that she was of her kind, the fact that she was a stripper and lord knew what else was actually much harder to deal with. Arai called him a stubborn, uptight, repressed imbecile, and Kenji responded by really smacking him over the head, not exactly proving his intelligence.

Most likely it would have ended up in an all out bitch fight just like when they were kids if the phone hadn’t rang right then. After giving Arai a final smack over the head, Kenji went to take it, grinning a little to himself as he answered.

It was Heath. The Redmon portfolio had been recovered, finally. It had been Paige, home on a weekend trip and coming in to work with her parents, who had found it at the bottom corner of the toiletry supply cabinet, where nobody had even thought of looking. Kenji sighed a little in relief, but Heath wasn’t quite done with him yet.

“We can’t just let you come back, Kenji. There has to be consequences. We think we’ll be able to save the deal, but not without sacrifice. Now, I want you back, because you’re good, and this has to have been someone’s idea of a bad joke or something like that, but…”

Kenji understood him – it would reflect badly on the firm if he simply got his job back, no questions asked, so he suggested that maybe he should have a month’s probation, and be watched by Sinclair and Nanette; it would enable him to work, but it would also keep him in check. Not that he had done anything wrong, but it should prevent anything from happening again.

For a few moments, there was silence on the other end of the line, before Heath agreed, but Kenji also had to agree to getting his salary cut, and there would be no chance of him ever advancing further in the firm. Before this, he had been the most likely candidate to take over as director when Heath quit, sometime in the future, but now that would be impossible. Sounding as if he didn’t like it one single bit, Heath told Kenji that he would be required to sign a contract that he’d never try to advance in the firm.

This time it was Kenji’s turn to be quiet, but finally he said yes – what other choice did he have? There was no way he could afford to start all over somewhere else, and this was what he knew how to do, the thing that paid the rent, the electricity, the phone bill, Jun’s tuition, their food and clothes and everything else. He simply couldn’t put Arai and Jun in jeopardy because of his own pride. Granted, Arai would probably manage just fine on his own, but Kenji still saw him as his responsibility. Old habits die hard.

It was strange for him the next day, when he returned to work. Just like when he had left, his co-workers were staring at him. As if he was still a suspect, as if they thought that he had actually hidden the portfolio merely to screw the firm over. Sinclair and Nanette didn’t think like that, though, something which Kenji was happy about. They both greeted him as if he had never been gone, and once again he realized just how much he enjoyed their company.

They had come from France many years ago, when they were just teenagers and newly married. Sinclair was tall and dark and serious, while Nanette was small and petite, vivacious and bubbly and bright. Their daughter, Paige, was the perfect combination of the two of them. Kenji secretly wished that he could have a family like that one day. A wife and a daughter or son instead of two brothers who at times were more trouble than anything else.

Seeing Sinclair and Nanette again, how they were so perfectly attuned to each other, made him think of Yukiko, a small tremor going through him. Was he making a mistake in not calling her? She had called him a couple of times after he had seen her, her job, but she had merely left a message on his answering machine, telling him to take his time and call when he was ready. If he didn’t call, she would move on – no hard feelings.

Kenji didn’t really like the sound of that, but he couldn’t bring himself to call her either. It was impossible to find the right solution, it seemed. Sighing, Kenji went into his office, burying himself in work again – it had been his solution for years, his way of avoiding the things he didn’t really want to think about and deal with. It didn’t fail him this time either.

A few days after he had started working again, Kenji got a phone call from a reporter. There wasn’t really anything new in that – reporters tended to call them at least a couple of times a week; for comments to stories, for small interviews, for help with some fact that they couldn’t dig up themselves. Kenji was used to these phone calls, but he sighed a little anyway as he heard who the reporter was. Loki.

Not that there was anything wrong with Loki – in fact that was probably what was wrong with him. Everyone liked Loki, but nobody really trusted him. He seemed to be everywhere at any time, and he had information that nobody ever understood how he managed to get. It was easy to feel uncomfortable around him, though after five minutes, most people would let down their guard and tell the blond Nordic man everything he wanted to know and then some. Loki was the perfect reporter.

“Hey, Kenji, long time, no see. I heard you nearly got fired.” In the mouth of anyone else, an opening greeting like that would sound utterly rude, but when it was Loki is simply worked, and Kenji chuckled softly in response.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s right. Though technically I was just suspended, you know. What do you want this time? I haven’t even been back for more than a few days, I can’t possibly know something you want the answer to,” Kenji said, feeling more than a little wary at the moment, afraid of messing up, of making that one little mistake that would end everything for him.

“No, no, nothing like that. You know I’ve written about your form before, right? Taken the firm in general, and then interviewed the director, then the French couple, and a few other important people. Now it’s only you and Ming Yue left, and I have a feeling I won’t be getting a word out of him. So I’m settling for you.”

Loki’s rapid stream of words wasn’t always that easy to catch up with, and when Kenji finally does realize what the reporter just asked he looks rather mortified, and it apparently translates into his silence as well, seeing as Loki rushes to reassure him that it would be nothing bad. Apparently he merely wants an insight into how Kenji got to where he is today; maybe talk a little about his family and things like that. Loki swore – a little too quickly – that he was not looking to cause trouble for Kenji at all.

Still a little bit apprehensive about what might happen, Kenji agreed after quickly asking Sinclair about it, who didn’t see why it should be a bad thing. If anything, it was free publicity and that way Kenji would be able to tell his side of the story. Maybe it would help clear things up, maybe free Kenji’s name and make the co-workers stop staring at him in that distrustful way.

So he agreed. Hesitantly.

Still, no matter how uneasy he had felt about it, as he met Loki for lunch and the interview at a restaurant nearby, it was difficult to keep up that level of wariness. Loki’s way of rambling, of asking small questions that really didn’t have anything to do with the interview at all, the way he’d laugh and change the subject ten times in the matter of seconds – it all served to make Kenji relax, even if he had a feeling he was going in the exact same trap as hundreds of others. Loki really was the perfect reporter.

He had interviewed Kenji a couple of times before, in relation to the firm and to his co-workers, so they knew each other fairly well, even if they hadn’t met each other outside of an official setting. This was the first time that all the focus was on Kenji, and he felt a mixture of nervousness and joy over being able to talk about his job, how he had gotten it and how he had stuck to it, slowly rising in esteem and getting ahead of his competitors. It felt good to talk about how he hadn’t messed up – how he had no idea what happened, but that he was sure that he hadn’t done anything wrong whatsoever. Loki seemed to be particularly interested in his suspension and what had happened surrounding it, and he seemed to know awfully lot about the Redmon portfolio, but Kenji didn’t really think twice about it. Someone like Loki would have connections; after all, that was no surprise.

Gradually the interview – which felt more like a casual conversation – went over to more personal things. Once again Loki was incredibly informed; he knew about their parents, he knew that Kenji had been taking care of his two younger brothers, he knew that Jun went to the Yamada School, he even knew about Arai – and his troubles with the police. This time Kenji was more apprehensive about answering straight out, especially when it came to Jun and Arai, but he willingly talked about how he had taken the responsibility for them, how he had raised Jun without any help from someone besides friendly neighbors. A little part of him was thinking that maybe this kind of interview would help him with the social services – would they dare to take Jun away after he had talked about him like this in Saitama’s biggest (and only) newspaper?

It took ages before Loki was satisfied, and still there were things that he hadn’t gotten Kenji to open up about; mainly concerning Arai and the police and everything he was up to. Kenji had merely answered lightly that he didn’t know what Arai was up to most of the time, and that they hardly saw each other because when Kenji was home, Arai was out, and vice versa. It was at least partly true, so he didn’t feel too bad about the little lie.

Even though he sort of trusted Loki, Kenji couldn’t help but feel nervous about the interview – seeing it in print would be strange indeed, and of course – he really had no way of knowing what Loki would make of the things he had said. As far as he knew, he hadn’t said anything that would be dangerous, so to speak, but reporters did have an uncanny knack for twisting someone’s every word, taking it out of context until a compliment sounded like the worst insult in the entire world and then some.

He was right to have fears. Nanette dropped the newspaper off at his office, an unreadable look on her face. It made Kenji uneasy, because usually she’d be laughing and joking around – especially if he had said something silly. She even closed the door behind her on her way out. Definitely not normal.

After taking a deep breath Kenji unfolded the paper, not expecting to see anything about himself on the first page. Which was why it was more than a slight shock to find that he was staring down into the image of himself, ten years younger, and the only thing he could think was; How the hell did Loki get that picture?

There was a smaller picture below, of him in the restaurant; with his hair tied back in a loose ponytail, with his black suit and white shirt and the red tie that matched his hair perfectly, and he looked serious and professional and all those things he had tried to be for the past ten years. And then having to come to terms with the other picture… Kenji almost didn’t dare to look at it again, but it felt as if it was screaming, asking for attention, attention, attention.

It hit him that he nearly looked like Arai on the picture. Not in colors or in appearance, because his hair was red and his eyes were green back then and his face was definitely his, but the look in his eyes was utterly different. He looked wild like Arai, he looked confident like Arai, he looked like he didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought of him and like he would do anything and everything he wanted simply because he could – just like Arai.

Kenji heaved an almost scared sigh and read the intro underneath the picture, finding himself go cold. It was an interview all right, but it was more than that – this was an exposé. He had a feeling that this would uncover every single detail about his past without going too much into the present, and as he opened the paper with slightly shaky hands, he found that he was absolutely right. Scarily right.

There was a cold sense of dread in his stomach as he skims through the paragraphs written about himself, about his life, about his past. He has no clue how Loki managed to uncover all of this, but he can’t deny that every single word of it is true, all too true. And as he reads through it, he gets hit once again how much it seems like he’s reading about Arai, something which would have made him smile if he wasn’t so terrified about what this would do for his reputation; and even more so, what it would do for the case the social services had against him and his family.

He doesn’t think that his past should matter, but Loki managed to make it sound like he had raised Arai to be like him, and that he’ll make sure that Jun grows up in the same way, and once they’re all grown up, he’ll go back to being like that as well. Those hints actually do make him smile, almost sadly, as if he wishes he could turn back that easily. What wouldn’t he give to be careless and rebellious again? What wouldn’t he give to not have to worry about work and money and bills, about schools and tuition and making sure that his brothers had the kind of life that their parents had intended for them? What wouldn’t he give to be young again?

It didn’t even take an hour before his phone rang, an overly concerned voice that annoyed him too much suddenly being in his ear. Even if he had waited for it, he didn’t particularly like it, and he made a mental note of calling up Loki later on and bitch him out for having written this, for having stirred up the parts of his past that he had buried and forgotten.

“Miyazaki-san, I’m sorry to call you during work hours, but I’m too concerned to leave it until later,” the voice said, and Kenji recognized it as one of the two women that had come to their apartment, looking around disdainfully as if he had been living in a pit. He grimaced, glad that it wasn’t possible to see through the phone line.

“I think I can guess what you were so concerned about, Nakamura-san,” he replied dryly, and continued before he got bombarded with questions and reprimands. “The article, right? Before you start with your concerns, let me just say that I did not know he would be writing those things about me, though I don’t deny that they are true. Apart from the hints that are made at how I’ve raised Arai and Jun badly. It should not matter who I was ten years ago. What matters is who I am now.”

He knew that he sounded a lot more confident than he felt, because the fact was that Kenji felt terrified – the current problems might be more than enough to get Jun taken away from him. It all came down to him, to his ability to sort things out. Jun didn’t know about it yet, and Arai was sure to not be much of a help, after all. He was Arai, he couldn’t help himself. No matter if he wanted desperately to help.

Kenji was brought out of his thoughts by a sigh from the other end of the line, a rather impatient one. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. It does matter who you were, it makes us worried that the boys in your care have been brought up wrong, that they will be causing more trouble because they have been left in your care. We’d like to make up for the mistakes made before it’s too late, and we---”

“Are you kidding me?!” Kenji couldn’t help but interrupt, almost standing up because this was honestly pissing him off. Maybe half losing his temper wasn’t the best policy at the moment, but he was not going to be talked to like that. “They have been in my care for ten years. Arai is twenty-three; Jun is turning sixteen in not too long. What on earth would be the point in taking them, or rather Jun, away from me now?”

There was another sigh from the other end of the line, something which quite honestly pissed Kenji off even more; even though he managed to keep his cool – starting screaming down the phone wouldn’t exactly do him any good at all.

“We would be getting the boy away from what we believe is an unhealthy surrounding, Miyazaki-san,” she replied, all too softly, and Kenji shuddered. “He has potential; we have looked into him extensively. He is at Yamada High, is he not? Half scholarship, even, and that from a school that usually never gives out scholarships. But lately his grades have been slipping, did you know that?“

“Yes, I’m very aware of that, and it’s not---”

“Please, Miyazaki-san, don’t interrupt me, you’re only making this worse for yourself,” the Nakamura-san said silkily. Kenji was sure that if she had been here, he would have ended up slapping her. Hard. “Jun’s grades are slipping, and he’s not integrated socially. As we have found out, he is a bit of a loner, very shy. This worries us. There is something else too, but I won’t go into that. But there are suspicions that he has been abused in the past.”

This time Kenji simply couldn’t manage to respond at all. Having to listen to someone say those things, to accuse him and quite possibly Arai, of abusing Jun… No, that was too much. He was very near slamming the phone down, but managed not to, merely taking a few deep breaths instead.

“Nakamura-san, I suggest you weigh your words carefully when speaking to me. Do not accuse me of things there is not an iota of evidence for. If you knew me, if you knew us, you would not be saying this. I assure you, Jun has never been mistreated in any way while he’s been in my care. He is my little brother. I love him more than I will ever love anything in this world, and I’d rather die than have anything happen to him. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it does to me, and it does to Jun. If you take him away and place him with some foster family… He’ll never survive it.”

Kenji heard the half desperate tone in his voice – more out of fear for Jun than himself, because he knew that what he was saying was very true. Jun was far too sensitive to be dragged away from the only family he knew, the only ones he trusted. Just going back to the boarding school he had been going to for over two years now was like torture to him; and that was with knowing every nook and cranny of the school, with knowing all the students and all the teachers.

“I assure you, Miyazaki-san, there is no need to be so dramatic. I’m sure that Jun would be fine. Maybe he would even thrive in a new environment. But I can tell that we’re not getting anywhere with this. I have more – a lot more – to go talk to you about, but I’d rather not do it over the phone. May we meet? Preferably in your apartment, so that I can survey Jun’s surroundings properly.”

There was a moment of tense silence before Kenji gave in, nodding tiredly. There was no way out of this, he knew as much, but he still dreaded it, dreaded what kinds of things the horrible woman might have dug up from his past and his present. “Fine, we’ll meet in my apartment. What about tomorrow evening, at six? I’ve been working pretty late this past week.”

“Yes, yes, that sounds good, although I’d make it at seven, if you don’t mind. I too am working late. Your case is a very time-consuming one,” Nakamura said with such a satisfied tone of her voice that it led Kenji to believe that she had made up her mind about whether or not to take Jun away already. Again feeling very scared, he agreed to the slight time change and said goodbye, as politely as he could manage at the moment.

His eyes drifted down to the paper again, once again skimming over the article as he tried to calm down and think rationally about the whole matter, even though that wasn’t easy. Only a few dislodged words made it to his consciousness, though they were more than troubling enough. He found himself muttering quietly while he pondered the problem, glad that his door was closed.

…love for rock music….wild parties…..guitarist…..breaking the law…..

“I’ve done nothing wrong for the past ten years, which has to count for something. It has to. And they are both doing well. Well, pretty good, anyway. I guess that maybe, just maybe, they can make the argument that Arai has grown up to be the person I used to be.”

…reported incidents….problems….a dangerous element….artistic, no focus….

“But all Arai lacks is focus, he’ll sort it out once he’s done with his partying phase. He’s already straightening out, don’t they see that? No, of course they don’t, all they see is the police reports and him dropping out and not being serious at all. They don’t know him, they don’t know how caring he is, how friendly and sociable. They don’t get that stuff. Arai tells me that I don’t get it either, but I get it. Oh, I get it more than he knows.”

…talents above normal….never amounted to….now, with the focus on responsibility….

“I have to talk to him, have a serious talk with him and make sure that he gives off a good impression. Force him into getting a job or something like that. And hope that he’ll manage to get out of that drug thing; otherwise I think we might be screwed. I guess I really should tell Jun too, but I don’t want to, not over the phone.”

….high profile job…respected….never looked back…family is the most important…

“I’ll wait until he comes home again, it’s only two weeks until then. I’ll explain everything calmly so that he doesn’t panic, and I’ll come with him back out to school; maybe talk to the principal again. I don’t like what’s been going on with him. If I’m lucky, everything else will have sorted itself out by then, so that he doesn’t have to worry. I’ll fix it. I’ll meet with Nakamura, I’ll talk to Arai, and I’ll talk to Jun. I will sort this out. I’m not letting them take Jun away from me. There’s just no way in hell.”

…for me, it’s all been worth it. These past ten years I have done everything for my brothers, Jun and Arai. They are the pillars of my existence. They are my life…


~tbc~