Late one night, a few days after I had officially moved back to my father’s house, I came face-to-face with him for the first time. He had spent so much time away that I had half a mind to ask where the hell he’d been. According to Saijou, there were a lot of important bills to discuss, so he had been staying at the office building on weekdays for group study sessions or whatever. On weekends, he was expected to travel out of town to attend lectures and other ceremonial occasions. Evidently, his constantly packed schedule was proof of just how successful he was.
“Still awake, Ushio-san?” Saijou asked.
“Got nothing better to do.”
As for my dear old dad, we exchanged exactly one look. That was our touching family reunion after fourteen years. What a joke.
“We need to talk,” I said to him.
“What is it?”
Wow, he actually answered. “I don’t want to be a politician.”
“Then leave,” he said.
The audacity. “Give me a fucking break,” I said loudly. “If I leave, you’re gonna harass an ordinary citizen.”
“That’s right.” My father handed the shoehorn to Saijou, stepped barefoot into the house, and casually turned back to me. “You’re here because you want me to leave him alone, correct? Why must we go over this all over again? Did you think you could appease me with your presence just long enough to talk me out of it?”
He saw through me so completely that it rooted me to the spot.
“You must be stupid,” he continued in a flat voice. “Stupid indeed to think you could possibly get your way. I have nothing to say to you right now.”
“Then you should choose a smarter successor,” I said. “Or maybe stupid runs in the family.”
“It’ll take some time, but we merely need to whip you into the sort of shape that won’t disgrace me in public.”
As I expected, he completely shut me out, and I suppressed the urge to punch him in the face. At this age, I could probably kick his ass, but resorting to violence would only be an admission that I failed to beat him with words. A loser’s tactic. And besides, he was right—I came here with no real plan in mind other than “keep Dad away from Kei.”
When I walked into my old room, I found a cold, empty void furnished with only a desk, a chair, and a bed. With the door shut behind me, the space was so pointlessly large I could no longer sense other human life nearby. As I was lying on the bed, struggling to quell my directionless anger, I heard a knock and sat up.
“Ushio-san, might I speak to you for a moment?”
“…Come on in.”
In walked Saijou. “Shall I pour you some coffee?”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll make you some if you want, though.”
“No need to trouble yourself.” He sat down in the desk chair and chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s quite amusing just how poorly you and your father get along.”
“Are you trying to piss me off?” I snapped back.
“I apologize… So, how did you spend your day?”
“Cleaning,” I answered. “Nothing else for me to do. I was kinda surprised, actually, since I thought you guys were gonna force me to study.”
“I’m afraid I’m too busy at the moment to get around to that. Consider it a brief respite. Are you unsatisfied with your housekeeping work?”
“Technically, it was 20 percent cleaning, 80 percent snooping.”
“Snooping for what?” he asked.
“Dirt I could use to blackmail my dad… Hey, don’t laugh at me!”
“Care to check his campaign expenditure reports? Perhaps you’ll find some nebulous entries in there,” he teased with a straight face.
“I wouldn’t know what the hell I’m looking at… Real talk, doesn’t it make more sense for you to be his successor? People know you, and you know how to do the job, right?”
“I am the last person who would take up the mantle,” he told me.
“Why not? I hear about secretaries taking the reins all the time.”
“My greatest wish is to fulfill my duties. Even on the off chance we failed to bring you up to par, your father has plenty of younger, more capable secretaries who could theoretically…”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Something the matter?”
“…You’re telling me you’re not his only secretary?”
“Indeed. There are two executive secretaries and a policy secretary. But they’re considered government officials, so they work at the office building and generally don’t set foot here.”
As Dad’s personal secretary, however, I suspected Saijou was the most important of them all.
“So there’s four of you in total? Why so many?” I asked.
“It’s not many at all when you consider that some legislators have ten.”
“What do they even do every day?”
“How very blunt. There’s no shortage of work to be done—standing in at meetings and events, organizing schedules, analyzing elections and policies, serving as an extra pair of eyes, ears, hands… To be a real politician, you need as much help as you can get,” he explained.
“Hm.”
“Piqued your curiosity a little?”
“Quite the opposite. I’m not good at managing people. And if I lose the election, they’ll all lose their jobs, right? That’s terrifying.”
His eyes gleamed. “That’s what makes elections so thrilling.”
“It’s just not my bag,” I replied.
“Yes, well, bags reshape themselves to suit their contents. That’s how Wakamiya Homare has kept his career going all these years, and not a soul would say it ‘isn’t his bag.’”
“You really do have a comeback for everything, don’t you?”
“In this line of work, it’s vital… That reminds me, I was watching television at the office building. The late-night news.”
“Yeah?”
“That Kunieda fellow truly is a master of his craft. His words have weight to them. He must work very hard to hone his talent,” Saijou said.
“…Let’s just say he’s not the kind of guy you might think he is.”
“Did you speak with him before you came here?”
“None of your business,” I replied. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d still be together.”
“Point taken. I apologize. In that case, I’ll be going now.”
“Night.”
Once the door was shut and Saijou’s barely audible footsteps receded into the distance, I was once again left with only silence. Back when Mom was still alive, this place was constantly buzzing with visitors. Maybe Dad used the lack of wifely hospitality as an excuse to trim down his contact list. But without some kind of distraction, my mind kept wandering back to the soulless look on Kei’s face the last time I saw him. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep.