Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 17D
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
Summary: This story follows Ayumu, a more or less normal child born in 2012, three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here). His parents, Jun and Ohno, are everything but ( Read more... )
Haineko revealed the following explicitly in CH 12 of Itsumademo (my emphasis added):
Aiba was stunned to learn that the jimusho was one of Fa-nine’s best clients.
Is that how our leader had gotten his drugs?
Ohno admitted to the other members that he had done marijuana, but he had quit as quickly as he started. After all their scandals had surfaced, they all vowed to live so-called ‘clean’ lives to avoid scandals that would inevitably hurt the group. He doubted that the other members had been users and purchasers of drug paraphernalia. Sho was obsessed with not disappointing his family, so he was definitely out. Nino and Jun had been extremely hard on Ohno. Nino repeatedly asked Ohno if he was still using and Jun threatened to beat Ohno to a pulp and hang him off the balcony by his testicles if he ever got near another illegal substance. But despite all of that, Aiba still wondered if it was an idol of the jimusho who was dealing the drugs or if it was an administrative staff member who was dealing.
In light of this then, why did Jun tell Miyazono that Iago hadn’t used the JE-sponsored drug parties to entice anyone from Arashi. Why did he claim that Iago never really had a problem with any one of the Arashi men? If Aiba (who isn’t exactly the sharpest thumbtack in the box) can recall that Ohno is one who would know how to get marijuana on his own, why didn’t Jun? Surely, when the whole Ohno-doing-marijuana fiasco blew up, Jun threatened Ohno in very vociferously pugnacious terms as we can see from the extract of CH 12 I quoted above.
(04) That is a possible contradiction in Jun’s mind. Did Jun ask how Ohno acquired the marijuana back in the day when the fiasco first blew up? We know BOTH Nino and Jun were hard on Ohno over the drug fiasco. Given that Jun came down hard on Ohno over the marijuana fiasco, would he have asked Ohno where the hapless leader acquired his marijuana? Wouldn’t Ohno who is incurably honest and unable to cover up his own mistakes to save his own life admit (especially when pressed and threatened and scolded by Jun) that he acquired the marijuana from a JE-sponsored drug soiree?
(05) So, how did Ohno acquired his marijuana back in the day?
- Why didn’t Jun even think that it could be via the jimusho at one of those exclusive soirees?
- From the extract I quoted of CH 12, it seems that there was indeed a scandal over Ohno’s marijuana consumption and that there was some kind of cover up.
- Doesn’t Jun wonder whether that’s why the Jimusho could cover up the would-be scandal that would have broken out over Ohno’s consumption of the said drug?
The dramatic irony of Jun claiming to Miyazono that he’s thinking too hard when he isn’t really doing much thinking (or dot joining) leaves me in sardonic smirks. Moreover, given how much Jun knows and doesn’t actually question, I have a few queries:
(06) How did Jun know about the hard drive of videos on the talents Iago keeps in a safe in his office?
(07) How did Jun know about Kakia and the ‘club’? Did Jun overhear it?
(08) When Jun does recall enough about the Kakia and the club, what exactly will be done about it? Will it be Ohno who inadvertently lets slip something about HC Nozoki either through that flyer he picked up from Gima? That is possible given how Ohno is someone who doesn’t exactly know how to cover up his tracks, nor does he know how to properly finish something that he starts.
(09) Will Jun make the necessary connexions between finding himself, understanding himself, worrying about Ayumu, fretting over Ohno and the 2009 infernal contract?
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Iago & Megalomaniac Paranoia
Paranoia comes from the Greek words ‘para’ for ‘outside’ and ‘nous’ for ‘mind’. In other words, people with paranoia are outside their minds. An important feature of paranoid is THINKING TOO MUCH. A paranoid person thinks he/she is always in a dangerous or persecutory position and because of that tends to think rather self-importantly that events/situations which have no reference to them in reality are directed at or about them.
Megalomania comes from the Greek words ‘megalo’ for ‘very large’ and ‘mania’ for ‘obsession that makes one tick’. Megalomania is an obsession with wealth, power, genius and omnipotence. Iago has obsessions with all four of those and he certainly thinks everything is about him otherwise he wouldn’t have spies everywhere and video cameras with live feeds to his office and whatnot. He feels he needs to control everything.
*[Mega = large. Megalo = very large]
Bear in mind that a megalomaniac's overwhelming and excessive preoccupation with his own importance does NOT mean he is deluded. Delusion (and by extension, delusion of grandeur) is a completely different thing.
In most documented cases of megalomania, a real life important man/woman IS preoccupied with his/her own actual importance. Look at Alexander the Great, for example. Alexander the Great was an able leader, an intelligent man and a sound politician. Although he was already important enough in his own right (and in the minds of others), it wasn’t enough. Alexander wanted to be EVEN MORE important. That’s why he went conquering more and more dominions even though his men were all tired and wanted to go home. Indeed, he was hardly home in Macedonia. In his reign, you can practically count the months he was in Macedonoa. This desire for more and more conquest to add more fame and glory to his already famous and glorious name meant that Alexander suffered from megalomania. Because he couldn’t stop conquering from fear that the gods and other people would take away what dominions he already had, this meant he was paranoid. Put these two things together and you will realise that Alexander the Great had megalomaniac paranoia.
Iago also has megalomaniac paranoia. He is already a pillar, a giant in the Japanese entertainment industry, a mogul as it were. But this isn’t enough, he has to hire PwC (and Kei) to cook his accounts books; he has to control the night scene with HC Nozoki. He’s not even satisfied with JE, because he wants everything in JE to be completely under his thumb. Because he does all that, he’s afraid that someone might rebel and take all that power, money and influence he has amassed. He is afraid someone might take all away from him. We know this because he uses drugs to control his talents to keep them under his shoe, and he has a chokehold of the talents under the NC - both of which methods prevents his talents from rebelling and taking his power &ca away from him.
If it is paranoia on Iago’s part (which is likely), Iago probably thinks ALL the Arashi men (not just Jun) are threats. This is why he’s bringing them down one by one:
(i) First, he got rid of Jun and Ohno at the end of Kodoai;
(ii) Then he suspended Nino for 2 years following the dissolution of Arashi;
(iii) Then he orchestrated the battery and sexual assault of Nino;
(iv) He will shortly orchestrate the downfall of NaSA!Ohno via Reiya and HC Nozoki;
(v) Because of NaSA!Ohno’s foray into HC Nozoki, he will shortly use that to bring down Jun as well
(vi) He will shortly orchestrate the downfall of Aiba at the drug party as Aiba has learnt too much;
(vii) It remains to be seen what he will do to Sho, but if he’s “done in” four of the Arashi men, he’ll likely “do in” Sho as well.
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(a) We have Sakurai Sho, an economics graduate who could (if he had enough observational skills) tell what’s wrong with the financial auditing processes of the jimusho.
(b) We have Ninomiya Kazunari, a master bastard who observes everything silently and sizes both situations and people alike quietly.
(c) We have Aiba Msakai, a Shakespearean fool who looks and acts stupid but is actually the only one capable of seeing and telling the truth regardless as to how black and bloody it is, more so since our sparrow’s escape from the Tower in Crete.
(d) We have Ohno Satoshi, someone who recoils from everything the jimusho works for because it’s troublesome to be involved with an agency that controls everything.
(e) We have Matsumoto Jun who knows the inner machinations of the jimusho and who must have seen something or know of something that has given Kitagawa a bone to pick with him. That’s why the Old Goat kept showing Jun what Iago does to people who go against the jimusho.
Iago knows that collectively, the five of you could bring down the whole mountain side. Ergo, before Arashi can play against him, he made a pre-emptive strike against them. however, in so doing, he has made a tactical mistake - he placed himself in a state of war with everyone in Arashi [though right now, it’s just Jun, Nino, Aiba and Ohno (when he finally grows a brain cell) with a bone to pick to Iago]. Can Iago fight a five-front war and win? By my calculations, Iago can win a three sided war albeit with heavy casualties, but any more than a three-sided war and Iago will be in trouble). What Iago failed to notice is that he has given all the Arashi members a common cause - namely, his dastardliness. Not only do have a common cause against Iago, Iago has made the colossal mistake of releasing all them directly from his control at JE. He should have imprisoned them within JE, locked them up, instead of sending Juntoshi into exile, selling Kazu off as a galley slave and using Sho and Aiba has decorative door pieces. In that sense, Iago has bungled his strategy twice.
Iago wanted Nino to be the fellow dissolving the group so that he wouldn’t get his grubby-old-goat-paws dirty. He wanted to still ‘look’ like a good guy to people like Messrs Sakurai and Aiba, and the rest of the impressionable youngsters within JE. That’s why in all honesty, that Old Bugger can honestly say that he didn’t dissolve Arashi because it was Nino who did it with some help from Ohno and Jun (due to the existence of their love triangle). Conveniently, no one can ask Jun or Ohno the truth of what happened because they’ve ‘disappeared’ so to speak.
All of which means Iago has a ‘trust no one’ mentality. This is why he keeps changing lawyers and accountants and whatnot. The only person he trusts is himself. Again, this is a classic sign of megalomaniac paranoia. I have an uncle who’s exactly like this (Haineko knows this as the uncle who looks as his children as investments).
As Iago’s megalomaniac paranoia does not dispose him to trust anyone at all, this could be used to the advantage of all our Arashi men. How Haineko chooses to do this remains to be seen.
All I can say right now is that this ‘trust no one’ mentality will be one of the reasons for Iago’s downfall.
To deal with a megalomaniac paranoid person like Iago, one must never take the direct approach, which is what Miyazono tells Jun in the ‘what if Ayu were _____’ example to Jun. Jun’s first instinct is to do something. This means Jun’s methodology is direct and to the point. While Jun’s method is succinct, it is too direct to successful against Iago who will probably see it coming. Thus, Miyazono counsels the method of ‘finding direction through misdirection’ through the Rubik’s cube.
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Miyazono showed Jun how things should be and could be through the Rubik’s Cube. That demonstrates how Jun must go about the problem. So long as Jun is daunted by the fact that there can be 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations to a 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube. However, it is possible to solve the puzzle in 22 moves if he is careful. Finding direction through misdirection as Miyazono did with the Rubik’s Cube is the only viable option.
One uses two things to solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle - wits and logic. There are no orientation markings on the centre faces of a Rubik’s Cube, therefore solving it does not require any attention to orienting those faces correctly. The algorithm governing any Rubik’s Cube solution is based on decidability, much like fox hunting. It’s like a flow chart of possible steps you could take and the outcomes of each step. That’s how you solve a Rubik’s Cube problem. Looking at the surface is not enough as Mr Miyazono told Jun. That will only give the wrong solution and one could end up mangled.
Shuffling the pieces around without looking at the big picture looks confusing and looks like you’re making things more complicated, but it only LOOKS that way. That lulls your fox into a fall sense of security. This goes back to the whole concept of ‘finding direction through misdirection’. Upon misdirecting the fox, you let the fox think it has confounded you. However, when the fox realises you have found its burrow and when the last side of the Rubik’s Cube slips into place, you can shoot the fox between the eyes or through the heart. That’s what Jun should do.
As with Miyazono’s ministrations on the Rubik’s Cube, the orientating and permuting of the last layer of the cube is the most important because that utilises the largest number of algorithms, First, on the last face of the cube, one makes the cross in the middle of the cube in the shape of ‘t’ and then, adjust for the corners and edges simultaneously. This will solve the puzzle. But notice what I said. My words were that the final step in solving the rubik’s cube puzzle is to “adjust for the corners and edges simultaneously”. This is the same as locking the fox in its burrow so that you can kill it.
(10) How will Iago be lulled into a false sense of security? Will Jun pretend to bite a certain bait and thereby rendering Iago gleeful and susceptible to other simultaneous attacks from the corners and edges?
(11) What is the current state of the Arashi rubik’s cube now?
(12) Will what Jun can recall about JE dealings and Iago’s proclivities contribute to the solving of the Arashi rubik’s cube? How?
The strategy of direction through misdirection to solve the cube (as demonstrated by Miyazono) was used by the mysterious sender of the prophecy.
[TBC. More to come eventually on direction through misdirection, the Tao Te Ching, the prophecy and the contract. If anyone else is reading this and wondering about the roses and the trilogy ring, please cf. my commentary in CH 17C in the Ohno Section. For now, to bed.]
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I've been working at the bookstore for the past four days and I am exhausted, but after today, I have reduced hours. *sigh* I am working on my CV and cover letters so that I can apply for another part time job. I was trying to edit, but I got bored. So I'm going to take a look at your commentary. I don't have work until Thursday, but I just found out today that there is drama in the place that should have *NO* drama! Fork! I am annoyed. Perhaps I will bitch about it in a proper post later.
Anyway, back to responding to your commentary (a task long overdue), I must say that the point about the seemingly harmless poisonous mushrooms was interesting. Ooh...doku-kinoko!Aiba making Sho sick while Iris burns him from the shoes up so that he's vomiting while making like a human candle... *sniggers*
On a side note, would shooting the megalomaniac paranoid fox!Iago between the eyes several times be overkill? Oh, no, wait...I don't want him to die so quickly...Perhaps we want to rough him up a bit just for sport. Maybe feed his blood to my lovely sangrivorous plant that I yoinked from Tony-sensei and Mikeila...But the sadistic witches that we are, we want him to see as the waves wash away his empire. Wouldn't that be a sight? All his life's work destroyed at the hands of the very ones he tried to destroy...Viva la vida...
Komodo dragon Jun and his sacrificial goat... Hmm...do Komodo dragons have a slow metabolism? If they do, we don't want him getting full off the drinks and free bread when the main course is on its way, do we?
Do you like to fiddle with Rubik's cubes? Or is this another one of your misleading areas that you are extremely knowledgeable out but do not practice? Personally, I love the Rubik's cube. Twisting it about in all the different combinations...heh, I found a cheap one in a small town I visited in Medellin. I got excited and decided that it *had* to have a reference in Itsumademo. Yes, I am lame like that.
By the way, Chapter 18 is nowhere near completion. I have about two pages...that's it. *sigh* Good luck with the lectures. Try not to be too disappointed with the sorry lot.
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Sweetness, you ought to rest a little if you've been working yourself to the bone. I would offer to give you a back massage, but alas - geographical distance impedes that offer.
The commentary for CH 17 is the longest by far, even longer than CH 16, if we're going by the size of the file and actual number of words. I didn't realise I wrote that much.... In between, I'm working on an AU friendship fic for a friend (because she drew me something and to my mind, it triggered some kind of fic), but writing is slow. I only have a draft CH 01 and some preliminary notes for the other 20+ chapters.
Drama always creeps up when one least expects it. It's like drama lurks behind those gaps at the back of furniture, waiting to pounce.
When I was 12-16, I was in my 'gothic and suicidal' phase, so I conducted research on ways to die (especially since I read Antony and Cleopatra and realised that dying by asp bites takes a long time to die and there will always be an Octavius watching and waiting to drag one's corpse through the main streets of Rome). As part of this research, I learnt things that were probably not for public consumption shall we say - such as the uses of apricot pits and apple seeds, the different types of poison mushrooms and so on. My personal favourite is the destroying angel (yes, that is the name). Looks like a white straw mushroom, but deadly. It takes 24 hours to be absorbed into the body before it starts to liquidate one's liver and kidneys. Lovely stuff. Sho and poison mushroom!Aiba liquidating his innards... Oooh *shiny eyes* Throw in Iris and let all the discord follow... *cackle*
Shooting the fox between the eyes is a good way to kill it, but fox hunt enthusiasts don't recommend it. Fox skulls shatter very easily. Feeding him to Tony's beautiful sangrivorous plant is indeed a viable option too. *snigger*
Komodos do have slow metabolic rates. They bask in the sun after eating to aid their digestion. The poor darlings have problems digesting food apparently. They swallow stones and other things to help grind the food in their tummies too. Well, we don't have over-feed Junjun. He's not a goose whose liver we want to harvest. A splash of blood here and there to whet his appetite is more than enough for now, I say.
I haven't fiddled with Rubik's cubes in a very long while. I've never speed-cubed, nor do I intend to. I tend to take my time with cubes. My pleasure must be drawn out, sounds suspiciously like my approach to sex but I digress... As for the number of permutations - that was culled from simple probability where 8! x 3^7 x 12! x 2^10. C'est ca. I like games but I'm bad at them. I can't even get Mario to jump over things without the fellow plummeting to his doom. Heh.
Take your time with CH 18... Your regular readers would have to wait patiently for your next instalment if they know what's good for them. *mighty glare at them*
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