The next morning at 6:30 a.m., I woke to a phone call from Shitara. The fuck do you want at the ass-crack of dawn? I needed a few seconds to step into my “professional” persona; then, after a quick warm-up, I answered the phone. “Good morning.”
“Sorry to call so early. I need you to switch to field reporting for a bit.”
“What?”
“There’s been a string of convenience store robberies right near your house, so I figured you were the perfect choice. Cameras are already on their way; grab a taxi and meet up with ’em. The director will bring you your armband.”
“Yes, sir.”
It had been quite a while since I was assigned any unscheduled field reporting. Surely any reporter would have sufficed, so why send a nightly news anchor? Were we really that strapped for human resources? I checked the news on my phone, but didn’t see any sign of a major robbery. The hell is going on?
Confused, I put on my face mask and glasses, then headed downstairs, where I found Ushio asleep on the sofa. He must have decided to give me some space. I knew the right thing to do was to wake him and say goodbye, but I couldn’t swallow my pride and apologize for last night even if you paid me. Besides, I’m in a hurry, or so I told myself as I quietly left the house.
At the scene, we filmed our report while the morning talk shows were airing. Then we got word that there might be a new development by noon, so we hung around for interviews, but nothing ever came of it, so our whole crew grabbed lunch and decided to call it a day. I finally arrived at the station just past 2 p.m., whereupon I noticed an email from Ushio in my inbox.
“Where are you?”
Oh, crap. I’d meant to find time to email him, but we were busy nonstop. Maybe I could apologize if it’s over text… Ugh, who am I kidding?
“At work. They called me in last-minute to film,” I sent him.
“Well, you should have let me know,” came the prompt reply.
Great, now he’s pissed. I would be, too. “But you were asleep,” I wrote.
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t bother with the flimsy excuses.”
Sure enough, he saw right through me. To be fair, though it was 80 percent my own embarrassment to blame, the other 20 percent genuinely didn’t want to disturb him…but if I told him that, he’d probably get even more mad… Still, anything had to be better than no response at all… Right as I was having this debate with myself, however, I got a call on the internal phone system.
“Kunieda speaking.”
“Great work out there! It’s Shitara. Sorry for the last-minute shuffle this morning.”
You’d better be. “It was no trouble.”
“You haven’t been on one of those in a while, right? How was it?”
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. The director ran a tight ship, and thanks to that, we didn’t encounter any problems.”
“Good to know. Talk to you later.”
Despite the lack of issues, I was still extra-nervous working outside of the studio, and as a result, I was physically fatigued. I considered sleeping in the nap room for a few hours, but I hadn’t yet read the morning paper, nor had I reviewed last night’s recordings. I was terrified of deviating from my usual routine—what if it led to a mistake from which I could never recover? I’d lived my whole life in service to the fake persona I had established for myself. And while I wasn’t alone anymore, there were still things I couldn’t talk about.
We were losing by 0.5 percent in the ratings and 1 percent in the market shares. Suppressing the urge to sigh heavily (because I was in public), I rose to my feet and walked to the newspaper rack, focusing more than usual on my posture. I didn’t have time to sit there and spiral—I needed to focus on the work in front of me.
So I pushed all thoughts of Ushio from my mind. I couldn’t apologize, and I wasn’t good at making up after a fight like he was. The next time we saw each other, he’d probably rip me a new one, I’d get mad, we’d fight, we’d fuck, and then we’d be back to normal.
Around 7 p.m., after a lot of painstaking work, I was thinking about heading to the all hands meeting for The News when my internal phone rang yet again.
“They found part of a corpse in a reservoir in Saitama. Get over there. There’s a van waiting for you in the B1 parking lot.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re sending me?”
“Yeah. Oh, and be sure to grab an armband from the office. You know what form to fill out, right?”
“Wait, I—”
“Have you never had to do that before?”
“I know which form it is. But if I’m headed all the way to Saitama, I won’t be back in time for the show.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
Now I was starting to question his sanity. “What?”
“We’re planning to switch over to you during the show for a remote broadcast. Or if you’re still investigating, we’ll play it by ear at the studio. So don’t worry about us.”
What are you talking about, you stupid old man? “But…who’s going to read the script?” I asked, half-dazedly.
“We’ll get someone to do audio-only narration. The video segments are all finished, so it shouldn’t be hard. Besides, Asou can read the ledes himself. Relax—we’re not trying to replace you.”
Was this why he said, “Talk to you later”? It seemed more than a little extreme to have a regular miss his show just to do some field reporting. We weren’t short on hands—what was he thinking? But I didn’t have time to ruminate on it. I had to get ready, fast.