Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 21A
Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…
Author: Unare Haineko
Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi
Rating: R-ish, but NC-17 for this chapter
Summary: [Revised] Three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here), we have Juntoshi trying to raise their son Ayumu while the demons from the dark shadows that separated Arashi in KodoAi come back to haunt and taunt our heroes in this lengthy sequel.
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Now and Forever…Itsumademo - Chapter 21
When Miyazono returned to his office, it was as if a tornado had come knocking at the door, swirling in a dark vertically rotating column of debris, things half dead and things still living that had been too slow or stupid to clear from his path. Now that he had arrived at his destination, the human vortex was now ready to expel some of the hitchhikers from his funnel and suck up a few more souvenirs while creating a bit of panic and havoc.
“Here’s your next case,” he said, handing two large files to the young man standing next to the door at the fax machine before turning to the other staff members who immediately rushed to greet the head lawyer. “I picked up the information you wanted and the copies for that fraud case you’re working. Who left this on the fax machine like this? I thought I told you all not to leave sensitive information next to the door! Are we prepped and ready to go for Monday’s appearance? Who’s working on case 14532-B? I’ve got the mail and can someone call up the Ministry of Justice and find out where we are with the Yoshizumi settlement? And Sawaguchi, where’s the money for Matsuda Kei?”
“Right here-“ she replied, opening the drawer next to her.
“Is he here yet?” asked Miyazono, handing her a large shopping bag full of papers and plastic files.
“He’s in conference room 2.”
“Okay, where’s the money?”
“Right here, sir,” Sawaguchi held out a plain envelope and a tiny microphone set to Miyazono.
“Did you count it?” he asked as he clipped the microphone to the thin fabric covering his chest.
“I did.”
“Alright, hold my calls and reschedule all my appointments. I want to make sure I have as much time as I need to talk to him.”
“Understood.”
Miyazono took the envelope, adjusted the miniature microphone inside his jacket pocket, and calmly walked towards the conference room. Knocking twice to announce his presence, he opened the door and found his guest lounging about on the sofa.
“Matsuda Kei?” he confirmed, with a raised eyebrow.
“The one and only,” he smiled cockily.
“Care to have a seat?” offered Miyazono politely, gesturing to one of the many that surrounded the dark wood table.
“Sure,” he shrugged, swaggering over to the nearest one.
Miyazono took the seat opposite of Kei.
“You’ve got my money?” asked Kei.
“Only if I can get some information,” Miyazono replied, placing the envelope to the side, but in clear visibility of his gueset.
“That depends on the kind of information you’re asking.”
“Well, I can pay more if the information is good and the source is reliable.”
“You can trust me-“
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“As you wish,” shrugged Kei.
“So what can a million yen buy me?”
“Psh, what do you wanna know? Just know I don’t do love or predictions of the future.”
“About your grievance with Johnny’s Jimusho and the significance of this flyer,” Miyazono said, holding up the flyer for emphasis.
“Well, simply talking about it wouldn’t be too much fun for me, so I’ll tell you what. I’ll answer any question you ask truthfully, but I’m not volunteering too much information. If you wanna know something, you gotta ask the right questions.”
“Fair enough.”
“Also, I need immunity, if you know what I mean.”
“Of course. I’m not interested in bringing small fries like you to justice. I just need you to my Delilah and tell me the secrets of Samson.”
“Well, Samson has many secrets.”
“I have a lot of money.”
“Some things cannot be bought with money.”
“I am to be appointed public prosecutor and I have considerable influence. If you want me to bring someone to justice, I can. If you want to disappear and have a new life somewhere, I can make it happen…”
“The power to make people disappear, huh?” Kei repeated, running his fingers through the wavy tendrils framing his face.
“My power isn’t only limited to financial power.”
Kei appeared to be genuinely considering his offer though he said nothing to the lawyer initially.
“Matsuda-san?” pressed Miyazono.
“Fine, I’ll give you all the information you want if you make Matsuda Kei disappear when you’re done.”
“You got it. I’ve made entire companies disappear overnight, so rest assured, I can make it as if you never existed.”
“Now for something that will assure me that you’ll hold up your end of the deal.”
Miyazono reached over to the phone and dialed for his secretary.
“This is Sawaguchi.”
“Get me the account information for 403-2109.”
“Right away, sir.”
Sawaguchi entered a few moments later holding a tray of tea and handed Miyazono a large envelope before excusing herself.
“Here,” Miyazono said, pushing the envelope to Kei.
“What’s this?”
“Your assurance. It’s the bank information for an account that holds 100 million yen-a hundred times the amount you’re asking. I’ll put your name on it as soon as we’re done today. You can check it. Everything is legitimate. I’m sure 100 million yen is more than enough to compensate you for any information you have that I want. Don’t touch a single yen. Just hold on to it. At the end, if I don’t hold up my end of the deal, you can run away with it. But I will deliver you a new identity of your choosing and it is this 100 million yen that you must exchange for it. Do we have a deal?”
“What would you like to know?”
“What is your real name?”
“Matsuda Kei.”
“Who is your employer?”
“For the record, PricewaterhouseCoopers.”
“What do you do there?”
“Financial auditing, but they move me around and necessary.”
“What division do you officially work in?
“Assurance.”
“What is the connection between PwC and Johnny’s Jimusho?”
“Me, of course.”
“You?” Miyazono repeated with a wary raised eyebrow.
“You think it’s just a coincidence that I look like Arashi’s Matsumoto Jun?” scoffed Kei.
“There are no coincidences in this world,” Miyazono said calmly taking a sip of tea. “So what are you, the account manager?”
“That’s right. I do the books for them.”
“Do you do them according to the law?”
“I work in a world that states we must serve food that does not contain meat or poultry,” Kei began dramatically. “-So many rules and regulations controlling what we can and cannot prepare. They are afraid if we give them too much red meat that our customers will grow fat. Of course, there are ways around the rules. For example, I like to serve poached fish. It isn’t as fatty or heavy as red meat and serving it isn’t technically breaking the rules. However, if I were to fry it and add extra calories to it to make it more palatable, other chefs and customers might start to complain.”
“Poached fish…?”
“You just want a gentle simmer, slow and simple. If you’re too flashy with the cooking method or the flavorings, people start to notice and wonder how it is you’re so skillful at producing such flavor for your customer every time. I’m a subtle guy.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I may have used some alcohol here and there to enhance the fish-and that, my friend, is against the rules. Fish used in the right way isn’t against the rules, but using alcohol-I used a nice white wine for several years until my customer got tired of it-that’s something you can go to prison for.”
“I see,” Miyazono nodded, scribbling a few notes on a small pad of paper. “So are you tired of poaching or are you afraid of being caught?”
“It’s not that I’m tired of poaching. My customer demands more flavorful methods and variety than what poaching allows. Obviously, if I were allowed to smoke or barbeque a slab of meat, it would taste a lot better. But if it looked too good, people might be suspicious. He doesn’t pay me enough to take the risk of preparing food beyond a piece of poached fish. I could probably go on making poached fish for another seven or eight years before people would begin to suspect that I’m cheating the system, so I’m not really afraid of being caught.”
“Okay…so…?”
“My main customer keeps demanding that I expand beyond poached fish. He has a lot of money and resources to ensure that I comply. I don’t have any friends or family whose safety I fear, but I don’t want to end up in his piranha tank at the end of the day.”
“So are you going to show me how you poached the fish?”
“No, but I can give you the ingredients.”
“Fair enough.”
Kei took out a business card and scribbled a few notes on the back.
“Here. This is what you’re looking for,” he said, sliding the card to Miyazono. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out how I did it. That’s all I’m saying about cooking today.”
“Alright, now tell me about Host Club Nozoki.”
“What about it?”
“What kind of host club is it?”
“It’s a host club that specializes in selling Johnny’s Jimusho illusions.”
“Like yourself?”
“Correct.”
“And you work there or used to work there as well?”
“I still work there at night when I’m not at PwC.”
“Is the pay good?”
“Better than working at PwC. Only thing that kinda sucks about working there if you’re not me is that you can’t really come and go as you please.”
“So everyone who works there has to live at the club?”
“Unless you’re on an assignment. Then you can get temporarily released.”
“Why are you confined to the club?”
“Well, it’d be problematic and just plain weird if you saw a bunch of Matsumoto Jun lookalikes just strolling about Kabukicho with a bunch of Sakurai Sho lookalikes, putting aside the fact that wholesome idols like Arashi shouldn’t be in someplace seedy and shady like Kabukicho in the first place.”
“These are all plastic surgery created, correct?”
“Most of them have some done. I have never gone under the knife. When I was thinner and younger, people said I looked like Mizushima Hiro, but as I got older, I started to look more like Matsumoto Jun.”
“The ones that get plastic surgery, how are they recruited in the first place?”
“Most of them are transients or orphans picked up off the streets and shelters. Anything is better than living on the streets, so they sell their freedom.”
“Sell their freedom?”
“The club agrees to take care of you in exchange for your ability to walk around freely. The club will pay for the surgery so you can work and will give you room and board.”
“I thought you make money as a host?”
“You do and you get a pretty decent cut.”
“But you’re not allowed to spend it?”
“You can spend it, but you have to go through the proper channels.”
“Proper channels?”
“You have to use the ordering system inside the club.”
“What is that?”
“There are computers for the hosts to order pretty much whatever their heart desires short of their freedom and outside company.”
“Whatever they want?”
“Food, liquor, drugs-“
“What do most hosts do with the money?”
“Most of them buy drugs, porn, or luxury goods.”
“What do they do when they’re not working?”
“There are game rooms, a salon, and computers-“
“The computers are monitored though?”
“Of course, but they can play games or chat. They just can’t talk too intimately about themselves.”
“How big is this club?”
“Well, it’s six floors above ground and three floors below ground. Though from the outside it only appears to be three floors since only three of the floors actually have visible windows. The top three floors are behind the club sign and billboards on the other three sides.”
“What’s the layout like?”
“The bottom two floors are where the hosts live. B1 is security. The ground level is the lobby with some rooms. I know the first three floors above ground are private rooms for customers. The other three floors are off limits for us.”
“How does the club ensure that no one escapes?”
“Once you agree to sell your freedom, they put these high tech ankle shackles on you so you can’t ever leave the confines of the club.”
“High tech ankle shackles?”
“I dunno what else to call them. They’re these clunky metal rings that are fitted around your ankles, not tightly, but it’s not like you could remove them yourself. I’d say you probably have less than a centimeter of give. They’re silver and look like jewelry so customers that see you naked don’t really notice anything odd about them.”
“So how do they keep the hosts inside the club?”
“I think they’re magnetic or something. They don’t really tell us the science behind them, but I do know that there are at least three settings on them. The first setting is normal.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you can walk freely about the club, but the second you try to leave the club, they lock up.”
“What locks up?”
“Well, whichever foot tries to pass outside the club first triggers some sort of alarm in the security office and it activates this…uh, weird force inside the shackles-almost like a really strong magnet. It pulls your legs together so you can’t walk.”
“Couldn’t you have someone just carry you out of the club if you can’t walk?”
“Not if everyone except boss lady and her goons are wearing them. Besides, with their feet bound it would be like lugging 50 or 60 kilograms of sand against considerable force. Apparently there’s also something in there like those things they put in shopping carts to lock the wheels in order to prevent people from taking them out of the parking lot. I’m sure with enough force you could probably force your way out or with time you could find a break in the perimeter, but security is so fast you’d never make it out in time.”
“They’ve thought of everything to ensure you hosts don’t escape, haven’t they?”
“Yeah, and if you’re caught trying to escape, there’s no warning or slap on the hand. You get your ass dry raped and thrown to the gators.”
“You must me joking-“
“No joke, man. You can stay as long as you’re useful at the club, but there’s no place there for ingrates. Kakia, she doesn’t mess around.”
“Kakia?” Miyazono repeated as he spelled out her name in katakana.
“She’s the manager of the club. She runs a tight ship. No monkey business with her. Even the most incompetent and bumbling hosts have a place. But once you try to ‘break the contract’ and as she says, ‘bite the hand that feeds you’, she shows no mercy. Once security gets a hold of you, they drag you off to Reiya the sex addict and when he’s done, they feed you to the massive reptiles in that giant tank under the club.”
“I see, and what are the other settings on these shackles?”
“There’s a limited movement mode, which allows you to leave the club, but keeps track of you wherever you go.”
“Like a GPS?”
“Yeah, something like that. And the only other setting I know of is off or disabled.”
“How do you know they’re disabled?”
“It falls off.”
“Do you have one?”
“No. I negotiated mine off when I got into PwC.”
“Is there anyone else like you walking around without those things?”
“Not that I know of-except maybe Reiya. He loves the club, so he doesn’t really need them. He’s definitely not going anywhere. No, wait. I think he actually has one on his left ankle. It’s probably just to track him in case he forgets to come back to the club. I think he’s the only one allowed to do house calls.”
“What about people who are on limited movement mode?”
“Hmm, right now, probably only Gima and Tsukishima. They’re the only ones allowed out of the club. Both are really timid creatures. I can’t believe Kakia has them on important assignments-actually, scratch that. I think the person who actually put them on those assignments was the big boss.”
“The big boss?”
“Old man Kitagawa.”
“As in Johnny himself?”
“Of course. He’s the one that owns the club in the first place. You think he’d allow a host club of idol lookalikes from his jimusho to service the lonely of Kabukicho?
“So what does a mogul like him need a host club of lookalikes for?”
“Che, probably to make more money?” shrugged Kei, crumpling a gum wrapper from his pocket and flicking it between his hands.
“How much money does it bring in per year?”
“You mean the club?”
“Yes.”
“Officially?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“It manages to generate ‘losses’ every year,” Kei bend his index and middle fingers together twice to emphasize the lack of so-called revenue.
“But you said it was profitable.”
“Not if you’re funneling the revenue from the club into some other more legitimate business and taking the debt from the legitimate business and sticking it in the ‘less profitable’ club,” yawned Kei.
“What would the numbers look like if the revenue and debt wasn’t being moved around?”
“You’d have a host club generating upwards of several billion yen in annual revenue, virtually no debt, and very little expenses.”
“What’s happening to his other ‘legitimate’ business?” probed Miyazono, pulling a miniature Rubik’s cube from his pocket and gently rolling it across the table to Kei.
Kei eagerly pounced on the colorful cube, excited for a new distraction.
“Too much debt to repay, not enough revenue to cover costs and repay the loans among other things, but those are the main problems in a nutshell,” Kei said, moving the colored squares around.
“What happened?”
“He took out a lot of loans in the early 2000s, mostly real estate in metropolitan Tokyo. He was stupid. When I took over the books, I told him to pay it upfront when he had the cash, but did he want to listen to me? No. He wanted to float the money. Not because he needed to, but because he could! I told him that if he lost one of his cash cows, he wouldn’t be able to cover his loans even with his investments-Arg, what the hell?!”
Kei scrambled the cube once he realized he was not solving the cube correctly.
“And then all of a sudden Arashi disappears. There goes his cash cow. I saw the books. He spent so much money on them and he was supposed to be harvesting the returns on them for the next ten years according to the investment plans. I find that his pet, MatsuJun, has all but disappeared from sight and his golden leader of synchronized singing and dancing, Ohno Satoshi, has fallen off the face of the planet right along with him. The talented Ninomiya Kazunari disappears for a few years. He was good too. It isn’t cheap to run a talent agency. Training prepubescent boys to sing and dance while trying to figure out which ones are going to number one, look handsome in about five years, two, put out to at the very least double your investment, and three, not overpower each other or at least be able to get along reasonably is a costly endeavor. Without Arashi and with SMAP lacking the power they used to, the operating costs started to suck up the profits. I’m sure that’s how he came up with the crazy idea to make a host club of imitations.”
“So how does this affect your conscience?”
“It doesn’t. I’ve just had enough of this fake life. I’m done hiding in the shadows and doing all the dirty work-this is annoying,” Kei grumbled as he tossed the cube back at Miyazono.
“I see, so you really don’t have a grievance against the old man?”
“Not really, but I wanna cash out while I’m still ahead. There’s no way I’m going back in that club,” Kei declared adamantly. “Anyway, I better head back before they start to wonder about me. I’ll be taking my payment for today.”
Kei picked up both envelopes and stood up.
“Have I asked 1 million yen worth of information?” asked Miyazono following him to the door.
“You make me disappear and get me a new identity and I’ll answer whatever the hell you want. You have my card,” waved Kei, opening the door.
>>> Chapter 21B