Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 11A
Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…
Author: Mayonaka no Taiyou/Unare Haineko
Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi
Rating: R-ish. [I am changing this rating to R due to the direction I am taking with this story. I probably should have done it earlier, but I think it is time to officially change it since I have decided which direction ( Read more... )
To escape from the hustle and bustle of the Health Centre, she fled up to the surface and arranged to have a late supper with one of her clients. As a devil, Lady Strange had a propensity for rule breaking, and as her most intimate friend, the honourable Miss Unare once pointed out - nothing is fair in love, war and hell.
Thus, her first session of the day was conducted in a private room in a very small and exclusive bistro of one of Tokyo’s best gaming hells. Upon her arrival, she saw that her first client of the night was already waiting for her.
“I got you a Virgin Mary,” he addressed the bespectacled devil as she sank in a rustle of black bombazine into a chair. “Thought it might be appropriate since you’re a devil and you don’t drink on duty.”
“Mon petit, je vous aime,” she smiled thinly at him as she stirred the non-alcoholic tomato juice and Tabasco sauce. “If not for this, I will be eating you this evening, Mr Ninomiya.”
“You wouldn’t eat me. Not enough meat on my bones,” he levelled at her.
“How fortunate,” she purred, her smile now becoming one with an evil aspect. “We devils have an animal form when we need to go incognito. Mine is the Nubian vulture. I would tell you the significance behind that, but that’s the not point. We’re here to talk about you. Alors, petit, what ails you that you made an appointment to see me?”
“That slut…” Nino growled, tightening his grip over his own glass of whatever cheap slosh he had ordered.
“Which one?” enquired Lady Strange with specious civility. “Daisuke? Mr Ohno? Mr Matsuda? Mr Matsuda?”
“You know which one, I mean!” he tore out at her, getting infuriated with the manner in which his therapist was idly stirring her drink.
“Between Daisuke and Mr Matsuda, who’s the bigger slut?” she asked, patting his hand in a maternal manner.
“They’re both at fault, damn it!” he growled, scruffing up his hair in frustration. “Oh-chan’s playing me out by associating with that Matsuda Kei guy who happens to look like MatsuJun. That Matsuda Kei guy’s probably playing me out by wheedling things out of my personal assistant. Come on, what does a Price Waterhouse Cooper auditor holding on to the Johnny’s Entertainment account want with my personal assistant?”
“To dig up dirt on you, of course. To see if you are economically viable. To determine if you are a good investment,” Lady Strange said calling one of the garcons for a few packs of their best cards. This was done with alacrity as she opened one packet and removed all the 2s through the 6s whilst continuing, “It tells me that Johnny’s Entertainment is conducting its own internal audit of its talents.”
“This whole thing stinks like a set up,” he complained, scowling the devil as she removed the 2s through to 6s of another deck.
“It is. Because PwC is famous or should I say infamous for dodgy audits. There was the suspicious Kanebo audit in 2006 which resulted in a lawsuit. Then there was the whole business with Tyco over accounting fraud in 2007, as well as the Satyam case of 2007, again over accounting fraud. PwC also has a knack for covering up for whoever hires it. There was the fiasco when PwC failed to disclose information on Dell’s financial condition in 2007. Do you see a pattern?” her ladyship calmly pointed out, continuing her ministrations on a third, then fourth deck of cards.
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“Because we’re going to play piquet and talk shop,” she said blandly as if it should be obvious. “You do play piquet, don’t you?”
“Why are we playing cards when you’re talking business and politics?” Nino groaned, looking askance at the devil.
Dealing the cards swiftly, she elaborated, “Mon petit, everything in your case has to do with business and politics. Daisuke is your personal assistant; you’re a talent of Johnny’s Entertainment. Johnny’s Entertainment has hired Matsuda Kei of Price Waterhouse Cooper as its auditor. This same Matsuda Kei is now ostensibly dating your personal assistant. What happens when there are more than three coincidences in a row?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Nothing is a coincidence. We talked about that last time,” intoned Nino testily. “There is something rotten in the state of Johnny’s Entertainment.”
“What good is asking if the air is any good when it’s the only thing you can breathe in, my sweet?” Lady Strange’s voice lilted unpleasantly as she proceeded with the first rubber. “Are you asking the ‘why’ question yet?”
“Is this Matsuda trying to get through to me via Oh-chan because he’s been given an order to do so from the Jimusho?” Nino asked, starting with the discards of the card in the set.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” her ladyship drawled with a dangerous glint in her eyes as she hovered a pale hand over her cards. “Then get off your bony arse and find out.”
“What about Oh-chan? Could he be feeding information to this Matsuda Kei wanker?” Nino spat with growing testiness, throwing down a card with visible agitation.
“You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment,” she chuckled lowly, picking up one of the card he had abandoned.
“Are you intimating that Oh-chan may be in this Matsuda Kei’s pocket and playing ME out? Is that why he had a farce of a date with that MatsuJun lookalike? Is that why I overheard the things I did when Oh-chan was in the balcony and talking on his mobile?” His voice was stretched and almost hysterical as he threw out that supposition.
“Those are all valid queries,” Lady Strange acceded with a mocking coquettish smile so as to give him a glimpse of her pointed teeth. “However, you should be considering the following: (1) Who is Daisuke answerable to? You? Mr Matsuda? Someone else? (2) What is the nature of Daisuke’s relationship to Mr Matsuda and vice versa? (3) If Daisuke is answerable to someone else, is he in league with Mr Matsuda to bring you down? If so, why? (4) Who is this ‘someone’ throwing up these slew of coincidences?” She paused and curled her lips contemptuous as Nino frowned in contemplative consternation. “Don’t you ever wonder about these things, mon petit? Don’t you wonder what they have to do with Arashi?”
Nino threw his head back in an affected laugh of bravado as he tossed out another card as he picked a card from the stack by the side. “Where does the Jimusho fit into all of this?”
“I’m glad you asked,” her ladyship drawled in a clipped and deliberate manner as she darted a coy upwards glance at him as she carelessly threw down a quint and conceded defeat in the first rubber. “Does your employment agency conduct all its business above board?”
“What has that got to do with anything?” he asked with a tightly controlled quaver in his voice, his unflappable attitude cracking a barely perceptible fraction as he ran the cards through his hands for the second rubber of the night.
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“Give a reason why I should. The devil take you, my lady!” he retorted, his patience finally dry as he shuffled the cards. “Why should I be giving you answers when you don’t even seem to be helping me!”
Her ladyship’s hand shot out as she aborted the would-be push at her glasses and caught his hand as he was dealing out the cards. Flipping his wrist around, she found a trump hidden in his palm and his ring finger discreetly marking a card he had flipped over in the deck. She leaned over to him and twisted his fingers painfully. “Points of information, my sweet,” she sneered, gazing disinterestedly at him from above the glasses sliding a few millimetres down her nose. “One, don’t come to me if you can’t join the dots on your own. Two, I’m already a devil and you, my darling, are in hell. Three, don’t ever play if you can’t afford to pay the price.”
Taken aback that his therapist was manhandling him when she had never done so in the past, Nino snatched his hand back and shrank back slightly while asking, “What is the price?”
“Do you really honestly want to know?” she drawled slowly, sinking back into the chair at her ease, her free hand lying on the table, the fingers lightly drumming. Her impassive yet mocking gaze rested on his face in studied boredom.
“Are you going to tell me?” he asked warily, finishing the rest of his drink and glaring at her. “You either tell me what’s going to happen and how I’m going to work everything to my advantage or you can go back to whichever hell hole you came from. I’m not going to lose again, damn it! I can’t get back what I lost, but I’ll be damned if I let you take away my soul when you don’t lift a finger to…”
Nino got no further in her exposition, for in one swift movement, Lady Strange had seized him by the collar at his throat and dragged his out of the chair and half across the table that separated them. With a mocking flash of derision in her eyes, her ladyship bunched the fabric at Nino’s throat, climbed over the small dining table and fenced him in his seat forcibly. “You want to win at this? Do you really?” she hissed viciously, narrowing her eyes at him. “How can you expect to win when you are weak in your discards at piquet? Do you know what you have lost? No! Because you don’t think about it!”
“It was the best way to cut my losses!” he retorted astringently, clawing ineffectually at her bony hands.
“Your losses. That’s all you ever think about! Do you even look at the larger picture?” Contemptuously leaning into him, her ladyship sneered in a ragged, hoarse whisper as she shook him lightly, “Do you think the Johnny’s Entertainment Jimusho does things overboard? Answer me?”
“No,” he countered, still struggling somewhat from her iron grasp.
“What did I say PwC is good at?” she went out in the same harsh hiss as she caressed his cheek with her free hand and tightened the grip on his shirt collar.
“Cooking the books for the companies that hire it.”
“And?”
“Covering up the financial condition of the companies that hire it.”
“It would be reasonable to believe that PwC is doing things for the Johnny’s Entertainment Jimusho.” Her lips curled in vague satisfaction as she released her hold over his throat. An evil glint entered her eyes as she elaborated, “Which begs the question - what is the Johnny’s Entertainment Jimusho trying to cover up?”
“This is Johnny-san, we’re talking about,” Nino stated as his therapist perched herself on the arm of his chair in deceptive relaxation. “There’s always something underhanded he’s up to.”
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“What do you mean? I haven’t done anything. I was the betrayed party, last time I checked,” he shot back.
“Piquet is all about trick taking,” she said, draping an arm over his shoulder familiar as she leaned slightly on him.
“I know that.” He stared at her and threw off her arm violently.
That proved to be a mistake for she swivelled herself over the armrest of the chair to step a well-heeled foot into his crotch. Smiling sweetly at him as she cupped his face in her hands, she increased the pressure over his nether regions enough to make him squirm in discomfort and hissed, “You discarded a card that you should not have. And you know that. That’s why you picked up another card that resembled it. However, it wasn’t the same as the original card. As an upshot, you’ve surrounded yourself with imitations of imitations in the form of your current career, Daisuke and Mr Matsuda. What have you done, mon petit?”
“This whole cover up involving that Matsuda Kei guy and Oh-chan, the Jimusho, and possibly Arashi - what has it to do with me?” he razzed at the devil, refusing to back down.
“You’ve put this cover-up into place, sweetness,” Lady Strange’s voice lilted into a cold timbre as she pinched his cheek affectionately. “You have to undo it. Play it like Janus, and play it like you would chess. You’re a better chess player than you are a card player.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snarled, brushing aside her hand.
“Your sleights of hand are to compensate for the fact that you’re not an adept at cards,” she told him, leaning into him and snaking an arm around him. “Whereas with chess, you use strategy rather than diversions to win. That’s what you need, my little Janus. No more diversions, you need a cold and hard strategy to win.”
“Then why the hell did we play cards just now?”
“Silly darling,” she laughed unpleasantly, “you don’t get it do you? All the connexions between PwC, Matsuda Kei, Daisuke, Arashi, the symbolism of this very building, the number 11, and the set up you inadvertently created with that one careless discard of your metaphorical card game - everything goes back to the Jimusho. And what do you find there, hmm?”
“That hand is over. There are no survivors to tell the tale and no records of what happened,” Nino snapped at her.
Lady Strange tilted his chin up and purred in his ear “You can’t change the hand with which you are dealt. All that matters is how you play it. Comprenez? Play it like chess. Watch, observe, think, analyse and strategise. Regroup, rethink, rework and replot. Then see what you have.”
“You make it sound so easy. What about this Matsuda guy, PwC and Oh-chan possibly feeding info to him and the Jimusho?” asked Nino in exasperation.
“We’ll talk about that by and by. But now…” She paused and pecked him on the cheek. “I could eat you... alas, I have to whizz. Tell the bar to put the drinks on my tab.”
“But my lady…” Nino cast a frantic eye over her.
“Tata, mon cher. Until next we meet.” That was all she said before she snapped her fingers and disappeared into her customary black and blue flames.
~~~~~next session up in a bit~~~~~
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And you give our little Nino such wonderful advice it makes me wonder, do you really intend to eat him? I feel that you gain so much enjoyment from playing with your food....but the same could be said for my addiction to Aiba's blood XDDDD
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Piquet and bezique are the only card games I really know, and they're so late Victorian/early Edwardian. Ahem. And the part where Nino deals the cards and cheats by (i) hiding a trump under his palm, and (ii) marking a card with his ring finger - I've seen him do that in the card trick he did on one of the Utaban episodes. Moreover, Piquet is a card game based on "stealing" the tricks from the other player by getting the other player to discard cards you want. It's a cerebral card game, and something I thought Kazu might enjoy. Turns out of course that he's weak at discards. Heh.
I did study economics 10 years ago in pre-university for my GCE 'A' levels, so I do have a healthy interest anything to do with fraud and corporate corruption. *snigger* Obviously, there is a cover up. I could smell it all the way from Daisuke's first appearance chapters back. *smiles* What is Old Iago covering up....
Honestly... You've caught me there. I don't intend to eat Kazu. I want to eat to Kazu, but I can't bear to do so. I do have a tendre for him after all And a healthy lust for his mind as well because I'm not all that interested in the physical side of things. After a while, it gets boring and I much rather get excited talking and dissecting his mind than an hour and a half of physical activity.
I may have tortured him a little with a boot in his crotch and a hand around his throat, but I relented in the end. He ended up with free drinks and a peck on the cheek.
Eek! I may be giving myself away. How unprofessional of me!
You know what's surprising? I've never thought of my advice to Kazu as good. I just tell him what I think needs to be said. Oh, you! *blush* It's your fault I'm lusting after one of my patients. *falls into a sofa huffily*
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Hah! I love that you have a 'healthy interest' in anything to do with fraud and corporate corruption because I have a 'healthy interest' in market and corporate failure, particularly corporate failure. My father (that caudex) and most people believe me to be a pessimistic sadist, but to me, it is easy to grow a business when the economy is booming. That's no fun and of marginal interest to me. I like knowing how corporations that were once considered to be successful manage (even in favorable economic times) manage to commit corporate seppuku. So of course I can appreciate the fraud and corruption aspect. XDDD
Well, just continue to play and lust after the psyche of your food until he bores you. You can eat him then. It's like going to those East Asian restaurants where they have the seafood still alive and swimming about in the tank for entertainment and aesthetic purposes until some sadistic customer comes along and wants to feed a party of 15 with the 'freshest seafood on the menu'. You just want to gain maximum utility before you kill your entertainment. LUST AFTER MY KAZU'S PSYCHE!! You know you want it *waves it on a silver platter in front of Lady Strange who has since relocated to her electric chair*
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"Garcon, get me that fish with the too smug face." That would fly very well. *snigger*
There is only one way to be rid of temptation and that's to give in to it. Or as Oscar Wilde once wrote, "there are only two tragedies in life - not getting what you want and finally getting it." Heh. I'm still miffed the little fellow spurned my entirely not-so-innocent advances. Harrumph. It would be a shame to eat Kazu though. He hasn't bored me, and he has that something endearing that makes me want to take care of him. What's a devil to do in times like these... *sigh*
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Spurned advances? Nonsense. If he gave in too easily, you'd get bored. This keeps you coming back for more helpings of my Kazu. XDDDD Don't worry, the secret of your addiction is safe with me. I will never tell Mephisto.
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True, it wouldn't like Kazu if it were too easy to get him. Oh, the little darling *squeezes him and pats him pointedly ignoring his flailing for help* Oh, good. I won't breathe a word about your addiction for M. Aiba's blood either.
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Addiction *twitches from withdrawal*?! Who said anything about an addiction? *hands shaking* No one here's got a problem, right, Lady Strange?
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