#90: Impossible / ep.4
“What the hell are you doing in a place like this…?”
“I got a permanent job with Hifumin!”
The person who opened the Saikawa household’s front door was Kotone’s cousin, Kurosu Aoi.
Kotone leaned against the door, speechless. In her place, Rinko asked suspiciously,
“Did you get a job at her agency?”
“I got a permanent job with Hifumin!”
“What!?”
Rinko and Kotone shouted in unison.
“What do you mean!?” they demanded one question after another, until at last the owner of the house slowly appeared from the corner of the hallway.
“…Come in. I’ll explain.”
The Saikawa living room was astonishingly bare.
Even a show flat would have had a few more furnishings and appliances. Here, there was nothing but a rug and a table. Four incongruously ordinary floor cushions had been arranged around it, apparently brought along when Aoi had moved out of her family home.
Hifumi returned from her room and placed a leaflet on the table.
When she turned it over, it revealed a handwritten employment contract.
In round, childish handwriting.
“…I hired her.”
“Ta-da!”
“As for this ‘permanent job’…”
“It’s such a good deal! I only have to do the housework, I get five thousand yen a day, I can live here, and Hifumin pays all my living expenses! I’d be happy to do a job like this forever!”
The employment contract listed the following terms, in astonishingly broad strokes:
Job: Cooking, laundry and cleaning
Salary: ¥5,000 per day, including overtime
Benefits: You can live here. Saikawa Hifumi pays the living expenses.
Additional note: Side jobs permitted.
Rinko was too stunned to speak.
Kotone gave her a meaningful glance, and Rinko nodded. Then, with appropriate gravity, she opened her mouth.
“Aoi-chan, do you know what this is called?”
“Work-style reform!”
“You’re a kept woman, you idiot!”
Living there, doing the housework, and earning ¥150,000 a month, while the homeowner covered all living expenses.
The only people who could work under conditions like these were housewives like Toko, who had entered a permanent domestic arrangement of their own, or kept partners.
“What the hell were you thinking too, Hifumi…?”
“I’m not a kept woman! Right, Hifumin?”
“…That’s right.”
Hifumi turned the employment contract over again.
It was actually a leaflet for a domestic-help agency. The price list stated that each visit cost ¥10,000.
“…Not that I’m proud of it, but I can’t do a single household chore.”
“That really isn’t something to be proud of!”
“I calculated it. It’s cheaper to ask Aoi than to hire a housekeeper. And if she lives here, there’s no transport fee. It’s better than letting a stranger into my home. I know where she comes from.”
“Can you even afford this…?”
As soon as she thought it, Rinko realised there was no point asking.
Ambush, the talent agency they belonged to, had Kurosu Kotone and Saikawa Hifumi as its two biggest stars. Those two alone supported the agency’s other dozen-or-so talents and five full-time employees. One more person certainly wasn’t going to break the bank.
“…I don’t know how to spend it, so it’s just piling up.”
“See? This is what you call a win-win!”
“Don’t brag about being a kept woman. Rinko-chan, is this even legal? You used to do office work, so you should know, right?”
“Office work doesn’t mean I’m a general-purpose legal adviser. Don’t ask me.”
Of course, Rinko had no idea.
At Meiji Stationery, at her previous job, and even in her side work, she had never dealt with employment contracts. She didn’t even know the details of Saikawa Hifumi’s contract with the agency.
Even her management work had only come about because the agency president, a careless and irresponsible man, had casually said, “Since you’re living next door, can you look after Hifumi too?”
“But… as an agreement between the two of you, I suppose it has some legal force?”
“An agreement?” Kotone echoed.
Rinko pointed at the employment contract on the back of the leaflet.
Both of them had signed it and stamped it with their thumbprints.
The terms were laughably vague, but it was still an agreement between the two of them.
“So I’m using this as my foothold to become a Tokyo woman!”
“We’re in Yokohama.”
“Then I’ll become a Hama woman!”
“Oh, wait. At ¥150,000 a month, wouldn’t you easily go over the ¥200,000 threshold?”
“What’s that?”
Kotone and Aoi spoke at exactly the same time.
Up to ¥200,000 a year in miscellaneous income did not require a tax return. Go over that amount, however, and you were required to file one. Failing to do so constituted tax evasion.
A crime.
Rinko decided not to say anything.
Or rather, she decided she hadn’t heard the question.
“Well, if you just don’t leave a record, nobody’ll find out. Do what you like…”
“No, that’s going to be a problem for the agency. You’ll get blacklisted.”
“I’ll be careful so nobody finds out!”
“You’re the least trustworthy person here!”
Rinko turned her eyes away from the two cousins as they continued arguing heatedly.
Hifumi was staring intently at the employment contract.
There were countless things about Hifumi’s behaviour that Rinko found curious. But asking her about them directly felt too insensitive.
It was a woman’s intuition, in Rinko’s own way.
“Hey, Saikawa-san.”
“…?”
Hifumi looked at her with blank, vacant eyes.
It was the same hollow response Rinko had seen when she had accompanied her on business a few times, like trying to push an arm through a hanging curtain.
But Rinko’s eyes were difficult to fool.
Especially when she was looking at someone carrying some kind of trouble inside them.
“Are you enjoying living together?”
There was an extremely long silence.
Hifumi took so long to answer that Rinko began to wonder whether she had even heard the question.
Saikawa Hifumi was a woman like fog.
She simply drifted there, impossible to grasp.
Rinko couldn’t tell how thick the fog was, nor see the landscape beyond it. She didn’t know whether it was deep or shallow, far away or close.
That was why it took time for a question to reach the very bottom of Hifumi’s heart.
As Rinko waited for her answer, Aoi finally reached the limit of her patience and shouted.
“Hey, Kotone, you’ve got no right to talk about other people!”
“What?”
“You’re paying her to live with you too! If you’re going to call me a kept woman or a freeloader, then Rinko-san’s the same!”
From the outside, Rinko supposed that was true.
She had been fired from Meiji Stationery and, through a series of events, ended up moving in with Kotone. On top of that, her food, clothing, accommodation and even her job were being provided by none other than the actress who was her number-one oshi.
If that wasn’t being a kept woman, what was?
With an annual income of six million yen, she wasn’t merely a kept woman. She was so thick she was more like a rope, or the steel cable of a cable car.
If Kotone stopped supporting her, if that rope were ever cut, she would have no way to live. She was a worthless person who simply consumed whatever passed for affection Kotone gave her, taking everything and giving nothing back.
But Kotone said quietly,
“You’re different.”
“How am I different?”
“Rinko-chan is a lighthouse…”
She stopped herself.
“Everything about you is different. Come on, let’s go home, Rinko-chan.”
“Oh. Okay.”
In the end, Hifumi never answered.
They left the Saikawa household to Aoi’s tongue-out nyah-nyaah, while Kotone stood motionless outside the entrance, her expression utterly serious.
“Sorry about my cousin. She’s a complete idiot…”
“I don’t mind. She’s right, after all. I am a kept woman.”
“No, that’s not what I mean…”
“It’s about the lighthouse, isn’t it? There’s no point telling her. An ordinary person wouldn’t understand.”
“That’s not it!”
Kotone stared at her, her voice unusually forceful.
No matter how close she was, Rinko still wasn’t accustomed to having her oshi look directly at her.
If anything, living under the same roof seemed to be making her heart beat faster.
“…I want to do it.”
“Are you an idiot? In broad daylight?”
“That’s not what I mean! I want to make sure nobody calls you a kept woman or a freeloader…”
Kotone was competitive.
Not only did she want to clear her own name, she wanted to clear the name of the person she employed as her manager.
Perhaps that was Kotone’s way of being kind.
The thought made Rinko smile.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Hehe…”
“What? I didn’t say anything funny.”
“No matter what anyone calls me, I’m Kurosu Kotone’s manager, aren’t I? Isn’t that enough?”
A childish spirit in a face that could captivate anyone.
She was hardly mature at all. She was childish and immature, and even the way she spent money was completely out of balance, making her a hopeless human being.
Then there was the way she called people lighthouses, treating them as though they were possessions of some kind.
And yet, she wanted to protect Rinko.
That much had been clear from her argument with Aoi.
She wanted to keep Rinko away from unfounded accusations and misunderstandings.
She could simply have let people say whatever they wanted.
But the fact that she went out of her way to worry about it for the simple reason that she liked Rinko was kind, foolish, and…
Rinko didn’t want to look directly at the feelings beginning to sprout inside her, so she changed the subject.
“Anyway, even if you don’t want people calling me a kept woman, is there actually any way around it? There isn’t, is there? Nothing that convenient.”
After saying it, one possibility occurred to her.
There was one way for two people sharing a household economy to escape the stigma of being a kept woman.
“No, there is! That’s why!”
“Sorry, hang on a second. Phone call.”
Kotone was a child.
Rinko knew exactly what she was about to say, so she went back into the house to get a smartphone that wasn’t even ringing.
It was too soon. More accurately, it was absolutely impossible.
She hadn’t even begun sorting out her feelings, let alone thought seriously about them.
From the very beginning, she had known such a thing could never happen.
It wasn’t even a matter of giving up.
Even if someone tried to explain it away as nothing more than “the momentum of the moment”, it was simply impossible.
To become conscious of it over something this trivial was ridiculous.
Besides, what on earth was a completely ordinary woman like Shirai Rinko, a mere manager and nobody in particular, thinking when it came to Kurosu Kotone, an actress at the height of her popularity with a brilliant future ahead of her?
“Your phone isn’t even ringing.”
“I’m going to make a call.”
“To whom!?”
“Anyone.”
That was when Rinko’s smartphone conveniently began to vibrate.
The caller was Sanae.
Rinko had no idea what the matter was, but this too felt like divine providence.
She eagerly pressed the call button and put the phone to her ear.
“What? Permission’s been granted to film at Hibiya’s headquarters? But I don’t remember asking for anything like that…”
The lift arrived on the fifth floor, the Planning Division floor, with a mechanical chime.
Michelle gave Mikoto instructions, telling her to hide in the corner.
“Nobody’s here. It’s okay.”
Mikoto stepped out of the lift and quietly exhaled.
Having somehow managed to talk the fluffy, airheaded Michelle round, Mikoto was now putting her plan into action under the guise of a date.
Michelle was technically an enemy, being part of the Secretary Division, but Kuto had already won her over, and Michelle herself seemed to have very little loyalty to the Secretary Division.
Or so it appeared.
“Still… you don’t like me yet?”
When Michelle looked up at her with those pleading eyes, Mikoto was struck speechless.
For the first time, Mikoto had a vague idea of what her own taste in women might be.
Apparently, she was weak to cute types at first glance.
Perhaps because they possessed something she herself lacked.
“Well, technically we’re enemies.”
“That’s sad. I trust you this much, you know…?”
Michelle wrapped her arms tightly around Mikoto and hugged her, pressing herself against her.
Because this was supposed to be a date, Michelle was being more forward than before, unleashing her natural, devastatingly calculated-looking cuteness in full force.
Mikoto pictured Shandy’s smile in her mind, along with the shadow that appeared beneath that smile whenever she was genuinely furious, and took a deep breath.
“Anyway, I need to get into the Planning Division. I’ll submit my proposal and sample to the General Manager’s desk…”
Immediately outside the lift was the automatic door to the Planning Division office.
This was the heart of Hibiya Trading, the department where its new products were born.
Beyond the wall where anyone without an ID card was simply turned away, Mikoto was about to make her move.
She held her ID against the reader.
“…Huh?”
There was a beep, but the Secure terminal merely lit up red.
The LED indicator for access denied came on, then immediately went dark.
“We can’t get in. Is it broken?”
“No, that shouldn’t be happening…”
Had she tapped the ID too quickly?
She tried again and again.
Every time, only the red LED came on.
The green light granting access never appeared, and the automatic door remained firmly shut.
“W-What’s going on!? Sanae-san!?”
“M-Mikoto-san! Look at the lifts!”
Of the three lifts lined up together, the central one showed a downward arrow.
Its floor indicator read 27.
Twenty-seven.
The top floor of Hibiya’s headquarters.
The Secretary Division was on the top floor.
“T-The section chief. The section chief is coming…!”
“No way, have they found out!? Is that why my ID isn’t working…?”
“Run, Mikoto-san!”
Told to run, Mikoto immediately spotted the toilet nearby.
She was about to flee into the women’s toilet when she remembered that the Secretary Division chief was also a woman.
She couldn’t hide there.
“This is an emergency, sorry!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Mikoto charged into the men’s toilet.
She made awkward eye contact with a male employee who was using the facilities, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Ahh! My stomach really hurts! The women’s toilet was crowded!”
Making a tremendous show of how completely unavoidable this had been, she dashed into a cubicle in the men’s toilet.
Why did she have to suffer this much humiliation?
Her face was probably bright red as she buried it in her hands and sat down on the toilet seat.
Her job application to Hibiya was off to an extremely difficult start.
“I see.”
“They got ahead of us. I never imagined the Secretary Division had reached into Secure as well.”
“What a strange way of talking. Are you a female spy?”
Sanae was forced to revise the plan after receiving a call from Toko.
Immediately after Mikoto disappeared, Toko had gone to meet up with Kuto.
After that, the listening device they had planted began picking up sound again, allowing them to understand what had happened.
“So Hirose Michelle let Mikoto-san go?”
“Yes. She’s in the men’s toilet right now. I’ve also got some excellent photographs of her at the scene of the affair. And, incidentally, we’re in a cubicle in the women’s toilet next door.”
Sanae wondered whether Toko couldn’t change the way she spoke, but she didn’t want to complain to someone who was cooperating entirely out of goodwill.
Toko loved festivals and events.
She wanted to enjoy herself to the fullest.
So if she wanted to have fun playing the role of a female spy, Sanae was willing to let her.
But the thought of Toko being alone in a women’s toilet cubicle with Kuto was enough to make even Sanae uneasy.
“Has Akazawa done anything to you?”
“Oh my, oh my. Sanae-chan’s jealous? How cute.”
“…She’s the person I love most. If you dirty her, I will kill you. I am not joking.”
“Eee! I love you!”
Sanae was holding her head in her hands when a message came through from Nomura, the head of the coup countermeasures headquarters.
The message had been sent privately, despite the sender being in the meeting room directly opposite Sanae.
That could only mean one thing.
They had confirmed that Mikoto and Toko were safe.
For the moment, Sanae set aside the matter of changing the plan.
She left the meeting room, continuing the already-ended call with Toko as she headed for the single word flashing in Nomura’s chat:
Rooftop.
Nomura arrived on the roof a moment later.
“Nobody is here. What did you want?”
“You certainly get straight to the point. The title ‘General Affairs Hound’ isn’t for nothing.”
“I don’t like that nickname. Sometimes people even call me a dachshund.”
A dachshund.
A hunting dog that was small and short-legged.
Nomura looked Sanae up and down before letting out a snort of laughter.
“A loyal little dog with excellent manoeuvrability. Rather cute, really.”
“Would that last remark qualify as workplace harassment, sexual harassment, or moral harassment?”
“No, my apologies. I’ve become rather exhausted from the Werewolf Game going on inside the countermeasures headquarters. I felt like making a joke.”
“Jokes are no excuse for…”
Sanae stopped.
She remembered the Werewolf Game held at Kotone’s house.
A psychological battle in which the villagers won by identifying and eliminating the werewolf hiding among them.
Of course, the countermeasures headquarters was not playing games.
They were engaged in a sleepless, behind-the-scenes battle against simultaneous coups taking place at thirteen different points, all in an effort to preserve the ruling structure of Hibiya Trading’s president, Emi Gozen.
Which meant that when Nomura referred to a werewolf…
“…The ID given to one of our collaborators had been rewritten. I cannot say that I am certain yet, but it would be reasonable to assume there is an insider.”
“That’s right. There’s even a possibility that I myself am the wolf, given that I’m talking to you like this. But let’s assume, for the moment, that you trust me.”
The canned coffee Nomura handed Sanae was black.
Black.
There could hardly have been a more ominous drink.
“Let’s confirm one thing. Our company is currently under attack by an enemy faction. Their objective is tomorrow’s executive appointments.”
“Yes.”
The president of Hibiya Trading was chosen by a majority vote of the executives.
And those executives were selected from the company’s subsidiaries and departments.
For a corporation as large as Hibiya, executive appointments resembled a small national election.
It was indirect democracy.
Much as a prime minister was chosen from among representatives elected by the people, Hibiya’s executives were selected according to a variety of interests, and those executives ultimately decided the company president, beginning a new term.
The enemy had identified those executive selections as the means by which they could take control of Hibiya.
“They intend to replace all thirteen executives and recommend someone other than Emi Gozen as president. I was surprised when I first heard it.”
“Me too. Replacing one or two would be one thing, but to interfere with the selection of all thirteen executives…”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Exactly. The president is chosen by majority vote. They don’t need thirteen. If they can influence the selection of seven, that would be enough. So why do you think the enemy has gone to all this trouble?”
The Hibiya Group was under attack.
In the Sales Division, there was a power struggle between the Sales General Manager and the star department, Overseas Sales.
The loss-making subsidiary Hosokawa Chemical was split between those who wanted to keep the business going and those who wanted to sell it.
Elsewhere, disputes between factions over subsidiary mergers, acquisition plans and corporate donations meant that there was no telling which way the thirteen executive appointments would go.
One of those conflicts was the Secretary Division’s attempt to infiltrate the very core of headquarters.
Incidentally, the Secretary Division was apparently trying to install Kosugi, who had been exiled to Saint Helena, as an executive.
In short, anyone willing to serve as their puppet would do.
The objective of someone willing to go to such roundabout lengths was obvious.
Sanae drained her canned coffee.
It was bitter.
Caffeine began to swirl through her sleep-deprived head.
“If we consider who the enemy is, the conclusion becomes obvious.”
“Let me hear your theory.”
“The enemy is Ashiya Chie, a young entrepreneur who heads the venture consultancy Cheshire.”
“Impressive. You’re quick off the mark.”
“All twelve executive candidates other than Kosugi are connected to Cheshire. It’s a simple deduction.”
Cheshire was a young company specialising in consultancy work, primarily for venture businesses.
Its founder, Ashiya Chie, had already established more businesses than could be counted on both hands, selling them off one after another and expanding her sphere of influence each time.
“Here’s what I don’t understand. We’re not a venture company. We’re an old-fashioned, long-established corporation. Why would Ashiya Chie of Cheshire, a consultancy specialising in ventures, target us in this way?”
Sanae exhaled and forced her stiff lips to move.
“…I’ll put it bluntly. It’s a show of force.”
“Hmm.”
“She wants to demonstrate her planning ability, her network, her groundwork, her charisma, all of it, and use those things to show Emi Gozen and the rest of us that we are finished.”
“That sounds rather personal. You could even call it obsession.”
“Of course, she must also have concluded that gaining control of a trading company would give her a business advantage. If the straightforward approach of acquiring shares is impossible, then however roundabout it may be, this method is still rational.”
“And because of her network and groundwork, we’re being forced onto the defensive?”
“Yes. It would not be surprising if there were one or two insiders. One of them would have administrator privileges allowing them to rewrite Secure IDs. Someone like me.”
“Then that means you have been made the werewolf, Yanase Sanae-san.”
Nomura smiled through the wrinkles around his eyes.
It was a familiar smile.
As far as Sanae knew, only seven people possessed administrator privileges.
For security reasons, the identities of the other six were kept secret.
To prove her innocence, Sanae had revealed to the members of the countermeasures headquarters that she possessed administrator privileges for Secure.
Immediately afterwards, Mikoto’s ID card was rewritten, causing their plan to collapse.
The traitor who had led the countermeasures headquarters’ plan to failure.
The person who, at this moment, looked most like a werewolf.
That person was Sanae.
“Wait. That logic doesn’t hold.”
“Go ahead.”
“Based on the information we have, I am the most suspicious person. Yet, Nomura-san, you never suspected me. That makes no sense.”
“Haha. You’re the strange one. If you don’t deny it, you’re practically admitting that you’re the werewolf.”
“Of course I’m innocent. I owe the current president a considerable debt. But you have no basis for trusting me, Nomura-san.”
“I do have a basis. Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you eventually, but somehow it didn’t feel right coming from me.”
Nomura took out his smartphone.
On the screen was a woman who appeared to be his wife.
She looked about the same age as Nomura, perhaps in her late fifties.
There was something familiar about her face, too.
“Actually, I wasn’t always stationed in Hamamatsu. It was at the direct request of Emi Gozen. I was seconded to the New York branch for about twenty years. My wife and our only daughter went with me.”
“Right…”
“There were some problems between my wife and me, though. Nothing involving an affair or adultery. But about ten years ago, we ended up getting divorced. My wife got custody of our daughter, but we’re still on good terms. My wife jokes that we’re the sort of couple who get along better when we’re apart.”
“Um… what exactly are you telling me?”
Nomura gave an embarrassed smile, as though he was having trouble getting to the point.
He was impossible to read.
A master of the art of speaking without saying what he really meant.
“Er… my wife’s maiden name is Yanase.”
“…What?”
Sanae was speechless.
“Our only daughter’s name is Toko. I lost contact with her after she quit General Affairs at Hibiya. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is or what she’s doing these days, would you? Your maiden name was Okamura, and now you’re Yanase Sanae-san?”
“F-Father-in-law…?”
Nomura beamed.
He seemed so delighted to have caught Sanae off guard that he laughed until he started coughing.
Sanae snapped back to reality and patted him on the back.
“This is why I trust you. My daughter’s husband… or wife, I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. You two have a wonderful relationship that isn’t bound by words. I’d be crazy to suspect you.”
“N-No, but… nevertheless…”
“She’s a troublesome daughter, but please look after her, will you? Ah, I’ve always wanted to say that line. It’s one of those things you simply have to do as the father of a girl! Hahaha!”
Sanae could feel Toko’s blood in him.
Toko had inherited her face from her mother, presumably, but her personality had clearly come from her father.
The strange obsession with events and occasions.
The laugh.
And that completely open nature.
Sanae had no idea what she was supposed to say.
“Oh, and sorry for taking so long to introduce myself…?”
“No, no, I should be apologising too. Knowing Toko, she probably wanted to make the whole thing a surprise.”
“She told me as much. She said she wanted to see the look on Mum and Dad’s faces when they found out.”
“So please keep it secret that I spoke to you. And, officially, I’m still in New York.”
At last, the dots began to connect in Sanae’s mind.
Toko was a returnee who had grown up abroad, and she had joined Hibiya’s General Affairs Department largely on the strength of her language skills.
But if behind that appointment had been her father Nomura, who enjoyed the special favour of Emi Gozen, then her hiring suddenly made more sense.
And if Sanae, having helped Toko in that way, had subsequently been transferred from headquarters to Hamamatsu at Nomura’s hand…
“Oh! I wanted to do the whole ‘I won’t give my daughter to a young upstart like you!’ thing too. Can I do it now?”
“Just do whatever you like…”
Sanae decided that Nomura was innocent.
Even if he were secretly on the enemy’s side, at least Toko would not come to any harm.
If he had inherited Toko’s personality, then he must love his daughter dearly. There was no way he would deceive Sanae in a way that caused his own daughter actual harm.
“I won’t give my daughter to a young upstart like you!”
“Please reconsider.”
“Excellent spirit! Take good care of my daughter!”
“Thank you.”
What a troublesome person to add to the mix, Sanae thought.