“Thanks for making time in your busy schedule for me, fellas,” Shitara grinned. He seemed like he was in a good mood.
“Sure thing.”
“No problem.”
I smiled modestly and took a sip of my champagne. The three of us were situated evenly around a round table: myself, Shitara, and Tsuzuki.
So this is what you meant by “business dinner”?
I’d already come to terms with the fact that “Kunieda Kei” would still have to visit Tsuzuki’s house for work, but I was not expecting to see him here, and it caught me off guard. Now I was furious all over again. God, I want to punch your face in.
Meanwhile, Tsuzuki sat fiddling idly with the knot of his tie. “I’m glad I asked for the name of the restaurant ahead of time, ’cuz I would’ve showed up totally underdressed, and they wouldn’t have let me in. Why’d you bring us here, anyway? You got a more refined palate now that you’re some big-name corporate hotshot?” he asked Shitara.
“Nonsense.” Shitara let out a self-deprecating laugh. As promised, he was wearing an ordinary business suit instead of his producer cosplay. “I’ve been out of Tokyo so long, I don’t know any good places anymore. So I asked my secretary to pick a place for me, and funnily enough, when I mentioned Kunieda-kun was coming, what do you know—she was suddenly very motivated!”
Evidently this was what she had settled on: a hole-in-the-wall French restaurant.
“Me, I would’ve been fine with some teppanyaki or something, but she insisted I take ‘our beloved prince’ somewhere nice.”
“I’m really not that picky,” I demurred. Man, these tiny champagne bubbles really aren’t doing it for me. I don’t care if it’s winter—I could kill for a beer right about now.
“How’s work going on your end, Ushio-kun?”
“Not bad! You could come see it, y’know. You being the producer and all.”
“True, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. Besides, I already have a general idea of what to expect from The Evening File’s video segments.”
“All right, well, don’t come crying to me if you decide you don’t like the finished product!”
“No worries there. I’m a big fan of yours, so I’m sure I’ll love it. Plus, I have full creative control, so I don’t need any of the higher-ups to sign off on it.”
Based on the way they spoke to one another, I could tell they were close friends who trusted each other. Their last gig together must’ve been a blast.
Look at them, two peas in a pod. Why’d they even bother inviting me? You guys realize that if the higher-ups hate it, they’ll just sweep it all under the rug with another overhaul six months from now, right? And then Tsuzuki’s precious stop-motion sequence will end up right in the trash…not that I care, of course. It’s no business of mine who you hang out with or what happens to your work.
“Would you like another drink, Kunieda-kun?” Shitara asked.
“Huh? Oh, uh…sure.” It was then that I realized I’d finished off my glass of cheap champagne.
“You’re more of a drinker than I thought!”
“Forgive me. I was feeling particularly parched… In that case, could I get some white wine? Sommelier’s choice.”
Play it cool, play it cool, I told myself as I continued to feign interest in the conversation. Then, right as the soup arrived at our table, Tsuzuki asked: “Hey, Kunieda-san?”
“Yes?”
“What made you want to be a newscaster?”
“This is sudden…”
“Not really. I’ve been wondering about it for a while, actually. I just haven’t had the chance to ask you during the interview filming since we’re always so busy.”
“The answer is,” Shitara cut in, “Kunieda-kun never actually wanted to be a newscaster at all.”
“How did you know that…?” I asked him.
“Are you kidding? The whole network’s heard the story.”
Who the hell told them, damn it?
“You didn’t want to?” Tsuzuki asked.
Now, there was a faint heat to his gaze. Of course, it was nothing more than idle curiosity; I was used to people looking at me like that. And yet, for some reason…this time it made me restless. I averted my eyes.
“I originally applied for a general staff position,” I explained. “I had no particular ambition—honestly, I was just another applicant. But in the final interview with the CEO, he looked at me and said, ‘Would you be interested in a position as a news anchor?’ I was completely blown away.”
The application form and job requirements for a newscaster were completely different, so at first I thought maybe this question was my final “test.”
“And he was serious?”
“Yes, he was.”
“Maybe he could tell you had the talent for it.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged awkwardly. “Apparently none of that year’s anchor candidates had what they were looking for. When I asked him ‘why me?’ he said it was because my voiced velar nasals are very distinct.”
“Your what?”
“Basically, it’s a ‘g’ sound that passes through the nose,” Shitara cut in again. “More specifically, it’s that sort of ‘nng’ sound—I haven’t studied phonetics, so I can’t replicate it exactly. Anyway, if it’s at the start of a word, like ‘go’ and ‘get,’ then it’s just a regular voiced consonant. But ‘sing’ and ‘ingredient’ both have voiced velar nasals in them. There are other specifics, too, obviously.”
Tsuzuki cocked his head, puzzled. “So…what does it matter?”
“Well, voiced velar nasals can be grating to the ear when spoken by someone who hasn’t mastered them. You should compare your own voice with a trained professional’s—the difference may surprise you. What’s more, we’d inadvertently hired a lot of folks with slipshod articulation at the time… Did you take classes for it, Kunieda-kun?”
“No, actually. Before I got the job, I’d never given any thought to my voice at all. In fact, that interview was where I learned about voiced velar nasals for the first time.”
“Ah, I get it. So the CEO saw a diamond in the rough and pounced on it.”
“I guess so…?”
“Whoops! Looks like I’m getting a call—I gotta step outside and take this. You two eat without me.”
Unfortunately, Shitara’s absence made it a lot more difficult for me to avoid looking at Tsuzuki.
“So when the CEO or whoever told you to be a newscaster, how come you didn’t just say no?” Tsuzuki asked.
Because I wanted a job already. And they offered the best salary. And I was confident that nothing they could ask of me would make me throw in the towel.
“Well, I saw it as a personal challenge,” I said. “Plus, I was honored that an industry professional would choose me. I mean, who knows how many hundreds of applicants he must have interviewed over the course of his career?”
“Ooh, gotcha. I don’t really get the voiced nasal thing, but I do think your voice is really easy on the ears. And it’s not just that you have a ‘nice’ voice—I can tell you put a lot of work into it that the average person wouldn’t understand. You’re incredible, man.”
“No, I—”
I looked up to find Tsuzuki smiling at me softly.
As someone who was constantly put on a pedestal, compliments followed me wherever I went. Like air conditioning, they put me at ease—or at least they were supposed to. And yet for some reason, when I looked at him, my modest dissent died in my throat. My mind went blank and my face flushed red, as if my skin was somehow getting a workout from all this thinking. I’d already made the mistake of chugging my drink once tonight, and yet there I was, downing my wine in a desperate attempt to seem calm.
The hell’s wrong with you? Don’t give me those bedroom eyes. Not like you’d look at Owari like that… Not that that matters! God, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just play it off like normal?
Tsuzuki frowned. “Kunieda-san? You okay?”
“Hey, um…”
“What’s up?”
You’re Kunieda Kei, damn it! Take the reins and steer this conversation back on track! “Wh-what about you? Could you tell me what led you to your current line of work?”
“Who, me? Same as you—I just kinda stumbled into it. I always hated school, so instead I’d draw flipbooks during class. Big ones, like the size of a dictionary. And from there, one thing led to another, and here I am.”
“So you’re a child at heart, I take it.”
“But I feel like I’ll never get anywhere.”
“Nonsense. I’m really looking forward to the new title sequence for The News.”
“Thanks.”
Tsuzuki smiled again, but by now I’d built up a tolerance to it, so it didn’t fluster me as much. Instead, the bully in me decided to get my revenge. “How are things with your friend?”
“Huh?”
“You know, the one you mentioned the other day?”
“Oh…right. Him.” Tsuzuki grinned awkwardly. Then, fed up at last, he yanked off his tie and stuffed it into his pocket. “I think he’s mad at me.”
“Oh?” I pressed.
“I made this total offhand comment, and…I guess it touched a nerve.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Nah, it’s no big deal.”
Excuse me? “No big deal”? I beg to differ, asshole. I’m gonna take that tie out of your pocket and strangle you with it.
“I mean, I say he’s my friend, but I only know his last name and his phone number. And whenever I try to learn more, he just snaps at me or ignores me altogether. He probably doesn’t want us to get to know each other at all… He just pops up out of nowhere, sits around my house, then wanders off again, kinda like a stray cat, and I can never tell what he’s thinking.”
He sounded…sad. This surprised me, and I started to feel a little guilty. He always asked for details about my life so casually, I assumed he didn’t really care about the answers, but apparently I was wrong. Well, if you were serious, then you should’ve acted like it! I’m not completely heartless, you know… Maybe I need to come up with a full backstory for Owari and just try to make sure I don’t get mixed up.
It was the only solution I could think of…but was it the right move? Was it what I wanted?
“You know, it’s strange,” Tsuzuki mused aloud as he cut up his fish. “I love working independently—or at least, I thought I did. But for some reason, just having him over at the house…hearing the flip of a page as he reads his manga, or his catty retorts at the TV… Having that stuff in the background makes working so much more fun. It’s…comforting.”