Once I arrived back at my apartment, I turned back into my usual self. On my way home with my beloved beef bowl, however, I realized something critical: I had forgotten to set my DVR to record the current events debate starting tonight at 11 p.m. Admittedly it was just going to be a bunch of old guys with fancy titles bickering endlessly at each other…but the MC of the event was none other than Asou Keiichi himself, and I could already tell that the whole newsroom would be blathering about it nonstop come tomorrow morning. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to observe a more experienced anchor at work.
If I start running, I can make it home in time. Gripping my to-go bag in one hand, I dashed forward—completely failing to notice that the pedestrian signal was red.
“Whoa!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a small light and a giant shadow. Then, in the next instant, they were gone again—their disappearance accompanied by a loud CRASH. Then I heard the faint creak of spinning wheels and looked down at the ground. There lay a bicycle. And a rider.
I gasped and hastily…checked the contents of my to-go bag. The lid didn’t come off when I jumped back, did it?
“Nope. Still intact. Thank god.”
Relief flooded my chest as I confirmed the safety of my precious cargo. But the very next moment—
“HEY!” the bicyclist shouted at me from under his bike. “Not only did you just run into traffic like a lunatic, but you care more about your food than your fellow human being?!”
Oh, please. If you have the energy to scream at me, then you’re fine. Wait a minute—I should probably get out of here.
Before I could shift into a run, however, the man pushed off his bike and jumped to his feet with alarming speed. And when the streetlamp illuminated his face, I froze like a deer in headlights. Oh shit.
It was Tsuzuki, the animator from earlier today. I was worried about bumping into this guy from the moment I found out where he lived, and sure enough, here the hell we were. What do I do? Make a run for it? No way! The guy’s got a bike!
“You’re not going anywhere, buddy,” Tsuzuki growled as though he’d read my mind. “Agh… Damn it, this hurts. All right, you take the handlebars—my left hand hurts too much to grasp anything. And the frame’s all jacked up now, thanks to you.”
Relax! He’ll never find out you’re Kunieda Kei! Willing my panic to subside, I wracked my brain for a way out of this conflict. Do I confess to everything, or keep pretending not to know him? No, I have to keep pretending! What am I supposed to do if people find out that Kunieda Kei—ranked within Japan’s Top 5 Favorite Male Anchors, nicknamed “Mr. No-Flub” by his peers, role model to all fledgling newscasters, the human personification of wit and beauty in equal measure—ignored a traffic signal and caused an accident? No, forget that! What if they find out I dress up like a hobo and buy beef bowls every night?! My life will be over! My public image—everything I built over the past twenty-five years—will crumble to dust!
“Come on! Hurry up and grab the handle!”
“…How much do you want?”
“What?”
“For the bike and medical bills. A hundred grand? Two hundred? I’ll pay whatever you want, so get off my back, all right? Because if you try to take this to the cops, trust me, they’re not going to say the pedestrian was at fault for this.”
“Excuse me?” Tsuzuki asked.
“Look, I’m in a hurry.”
“And you think that makes it okay for you to run through a red light?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, give me a break, pal!” His voice was steadily building to a crescendo.
“The light was green.”
“Like hell it was!”
“Well, no one else was around to witness it, and I don’t see any cameras, so…it’s your word against mine.”
But before I could once again suggest money as a peaceful resolution, a fist collided with my skull.
“Ow!” Sparks scattered behind my eyelids.
“Now you know how I feel, jackass! Aagh, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to use my left hand! Now it hurts even worse!” Gripping his left wrist in his right hand, Tsuzuki was well and truly furious. “Your first instinct should have been to apologize! Who the hell raised you?! Anyone who can’t say ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ is human scum!”
He wasn’t exactly wrong, but…I mean, would he really accept an apology coming from the guy whose first thought was to check his beef bowl?
“Sorry,” I said anyway. “My bad.”
“You want me to deck you with my dominant hand this time?! Damn it, just…just carry your end of the bike, all right? My legs hurt like hell, so I’m not gonna be able to get it home by myself!”
I wanted to refuse, but…frankly, it posed a significant risk to me to have to keep bickering with this dude out here in public. At this hour, we could be reported for causing a disturbance. Plus, he didn’t seem interested in taking it to court or anything. But if I pissed him off any worse than I already had, things could get ugly fast…and I wasn’t confident I could take him, even taking his injuries into consideration.
“Fine.” I reluctantly grabbed the handlebars and started walking…then stopped myself. You’re not supposed to know where he lives, genius! “Which way?”
“That way.”
Between us, the cheapo cruiser bike wobbled unsteadily, either from the damage or the uneven momentum. Now that the fear of exposing my true identity had faded, I was free to curse my terrible luck: Man, what the hell were you doing riding your bike at this time of night? For that matter, what the hell are you doing living in my neighborhood? God, this sucks.
Just then, Tsuzuki spoke: “That bag you’ve got there…”
“Huh?”
“By any chance, is that a beef bowl from Sudou’s?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I go there all the time. Great food, am I right? But I feel like they must’ve changed the recipe. I don’t know what it is, but…doesn’t the sauce or gravy or whatever taste kinda different now?”
“Actually, yeah, I’ve noticed that, too,” I replied before I could stop myself. “The sweet-to-salty ratio is different.”
“Exactly! So, do you usually eat at the restaurant?”
“No. I get it to go.”
“Me too, mostly, except for every now and then. But their beer’s worse than piss!”
“All beer tastes like piss.”
“No, seriously! I don’t know if it’s the bartender or the server who screws it up, but either way, when it gets to your table, the head’s as thin as the film on a cup of hot milk!”
“Huh.” Wait…why am I having a normal conversation with him?
You’d think I’d be devastated to learn that we were both regulars at the same restaurant, and yet…for some reason, I was really enjoying this opportunity to talk to someone about beef bowls.
“Do you like BBQ chicken?” he asked. “You should try The Grill over behind the post office.”
“Do they let you order to go?”
“Yeah, totally!”
And so we arrived at the very same house I had visited earlier that afternoon. All right, I kept my end of the bargain, so now I’m free to go, right?
“Okay, see ya.”
But before I could turn on my heel, he seized me by the wrist. “I’m not done talking to you! Sheesh, I can’t let my guard down for a single second. You know what? Give me your phone number, just in case.”
I blurted it out as fast as I could—my private number, to be clear. I couldn’t afford for him to reach me on my work phone.
“I’m never going to be able to remember that!”
“Not my problem.”
“What are you, five?!”
As we carried his bicycle inside, he gestured to the same couch from earlier. “Have a seat. And if you try anything funny, I’ll hole up in Sudou’s every single night until I catch you. I think you’ll find I’m very persistent.”
“Fine! Whatever!”
As Tsuzuki headed up the stairs, I did as instructed and sat down on the couch. When I saw how badly he was limping, even I started to feel a little guilty…but then again, it wasn’t as though he had a real job to go to. He’d just be holed up in here with his stop-motion crap regardless.
Idly, I picked up a tablet I found lying forgotten on the other end of the couch. At my touch, it woke from sleep mode and the screen lit up. What, you left it on? And you don’t even have a password? That’s pretty careless—
“What the…?!”
I shouted so loud I nearly ripped through my surgical mask.
“What’s up?” Tsuzuki called from upstairs.
“Huh? Oh…uh…I saw a cockroach!”
“What? You’re kidding! I’ve never had any cockroaches here. Kill it for me!”
“Fat chance!”
Obviously I was lying about the cockroach, but I had to come up with something—I was just that shocked. Of all the things I expected to see on a tablet screen, my own face was not one of them!
Not only that, but it was a pretty old photo of me, too. Specifically, it was a still image from a recording of the Mascot Sumo Grand Prix (MSGP for short) back when I first started out as a news anchor—the one where Asabi TV’s (extremely lame) mascot character Asazou tragically gets knocked out of the ring. Then his head pops off to reveal—surprise surprise—one very sweaty Kunieda Kei.
Back during my first year, they made me do all kinds of crap. See, if you’re an unknown quantity with stamina to spare, the production staff views you as their plaything to use as they see fit, and I was no exception. Variety shows, comedy shows, you name it—I did it all without complaint. As a rookie, I couldn’t afford to be choosy, or else they’d label me “useless” and I’d never get another gig with them so long as I lived. Why? Because the TV industry has no use for those who refuse to open themselves up to the possibility of humiliation. Of course, no one ever wants to make a fool of themselves, but at a lot of stations, that’s your entire job. Fortunately, in my case I was quickly given the label of “classy/unfunny” and after that they shifted me away from that part of the work altogether.
That being said, I felt no shame regarding my less-than-glamorous early years. Think about it: behind every A-list actress is a long history of gravure pin-up work, you know? It’s like that. I did what I had to do, and now it’s in the past. The only downside was whenever some loser with too much time on their hands dug it all back up again and spread it around online. Sure enough, when I scrolled down to the comments section, it was full of crap like “Ah, the early days, before the Prince was crowned.” Dude, shut the hell up, all right? I was just doing my job, dumbass.