During a dry run in the editing booth, something caught my attention on the monitor, and I abruptly stopped reading the script. “Hold on a minute. Isn’t that a little problematic?” I asked the director, who stared blankly back.
It was during an interview with a member of the National Diet who was suspected of making unlawful campaign contributions.
“See?” I said. “You can see him entering his condo’s access code on camera.”
“Oh crap, you’re right!”
The picture quality wasn’t especially crisp, but anyone who zoomed in on the keypad could easily figure out the four-digit code.
“Sorry about that!” said the director. “I’ll have them blur out that part. Hang on a sec.”
“Sure thing.”
“Man, am I ever glad you caught that! Thanks a bunch, Kunieda.”
“No problem.”
Incompetent moron. It’s YOUR job to think about this crap, you ignorant pleb. Maybe I’ll take a marker and play Connect the Dots on your stupid polka dot tie, I growled internally as I stepped out of the booth.
Then, as I waited in a nearby chair and passed the time reading the newspaper, someone suddenly called out to me: “Kunieda-kun?”
“Yes?”
The second I looked up, however, I froze in spite of myself, my facial muscles unsure what sort of expression they were meant to form.
Standing before me was a man, approximately forty years old, with a face I thought I vaguely recognized—but that wasn’t the part I took issue with. No, my problem was everything from the neck down. He was wearing a pastel cardigan tied around his shoulders, and under that was a cotton button-up shirt tucked into chino pants. As my gaze panned further down his body, I noticed he was also sporting a pair of loafers with no socks.
In other words, everything about him screamed “sketchiest man alive.”
Just then, one of the veteran crew members walked by. “Oh hey, Shitara-san! What are you doing here?”
“I’m allowed to be here, aren’t I? I work for this station, you know.”
Shitara? As in the executive producer for The News? The head honcho whose program overhaul will determine the entire fate of our station’s twenty-year-old signature news show?
“What’s with the outfit?” the crew member asked.
“Lost a bet, and my punishment was to come to work wearing a cosplay costume. So this is my ‘producer’ cosplay! Get it?”
Oh, I get it now. It’s a self-parody. Wait a minute… Our executive producer is wearing producer cosplay to work? Isn’t that kind of ridiculous? Sorry, stupid question—that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Good god, this overhaul hasn’t even started and it’s already screwed. The whole station is going down in flames, I just know it.
“You’re definitely rocking the look, but I can’t help but feel that something’s missing…” the crew member said.
“Yeah, me too, actually.”
“Oh! You know what you need? Some aviators! Ooh, or some tinted glasses! Like, on top of your head, you know?”
“That’s perfect!” Shitara snapped his fingers. “I’ll go ask the prop department if they have any.”
“Weren’t you in the middle of something?”
“Oh, right.”
First he calls my name, and then he immediately forgets that I exist. Great.
Finally, he turned back to me. “Hi there, I’m Shitara. Sorry to make you evening folks do all the promo work for The News! I wanted to come and thank you personally for your work. My apologies for interrupting.”
“No, no, you’re not interrupting at all.” Having regained my composure, I rose to my feet and smiled gently. “I’m looking forward to the new and improved News.” In more ways than one.
“Ha ha! That’s the most frightening thing you could have possibly said!”
“Do you have anything special planned for the first broadcast?”
“Mmm, not yet. If you have any ideas, shoot ’em my way, okay?”
“What?” I stared at him, speechless. Dude, those two months are going to fly by before you know it!
“I’m just messing with you,” he laughed. “We’ve got something in the works, but I can’t give out any details just yet. Soon, though.”
“Oh, I see. I’ll try my best to be patient.” Cool story. Nobody cares.
“Say, Kunieda-kun, why don’t we grab dinner sometime? I’ve been out of the area for so long that I haven’t had a chance to get to know any of our younger anchors, and I’d like to fix that. You can think of it as a token of my gratitude for doing the Tsuzuki interviews.”
“That’s extremely generous of you, sir. Thank you. I’d be happy to.”
Truth be told, it sounded like a whole lot of hassle that I would’ve preferred to avoid, but since he was technically my superior—albeit not directly—I couldn’t risk offending him. So instead I decided I would play nice this time around, then find a way to decline any subsequent invites. It was the safest option.
“I’m free anytime after 7:30, so I’ll let you choose the date, Shitara-san.”
“Yeah? All right then, I’ll get in touch once I’ve got it all figured out. Sorry for barging in! Anyway…” Shitara turned to leave, then suddenly stopped short. “Oh, and don’t worry—I promise I won’t wear this getup to dinner,” he added as an afterthought.
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Like hell I will. It took an incredible amount of willpower to maintain a smile. The absolute last thing I wanted was an intimate dinner for two with some middle-aged man. Fortunately, it was right around then that my news recording finished reediting, so I went back to rehearsal.
“You know, Kunieda, it feels like you’ve gotten even better lately,” the director commented.
“You really think so?”
“Yeah, I do. Don’t get me wrong, you were always really talented, but these days your voice feels…clearer? More polished, maybe? And you caught that error, too. You’re doing wonderful work all around.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“Is it some external influence from your personal life? Did you get a girlfriend or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
Subtitle: Get bent, asswipe.