Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

“Yoshiko?”

“Oh, Uncle. Are you still at work?”

“Yes. It’s been a while. How are you doing?”

“My thesis isn’t coming along very well,” she replied. Usually his niece was much more effusive: I’m great! When are you taking me out to eat, Uncle?

“Is your father home?”

“Yes. I’ll go get him.”

“Before you do, I’d like to ask you about Takayuki Hatano. I’m sorry to hear that he died in a car accident. Did you know he had applied for a job here?”

“No.” The girl replied after a brief pause, and her voice shook with genuine distress.

“Hatano had his second interview with the company on the tenth of last month. When was the last time you saw him?”

Now she waited for an extra moment before responding, “October ninth.”

“I’m sorry to be so intrusive, but where did you see him?”

“At the university.” His niece’s voice had sunk lower and, on the verge of tears, she said, “I’m going to switch to the phone in my room, could you hang on?” She put the phone on hold, and as Shiroyama waited, part of him began to regret making the call.

He heard his niece’s voice return. “Did I cause some kind of trouble for the company?”

“No, this isn’t about that. So on the ninth, what did you and Hatano talk about?”

“I told him I’m leaving home and I wanted him to come live with me—”

“And why would you do such a thing?”

“Because Mother and Father are stupid.”

“You have to be more clear. Explain it to me.”

“I had kept our relationship a secret, and when I finally told my parents over summer break, Father hired a detective agency to investigate Hatano’s family, and he told me to forget about marrying him because his father was from a segregated buraku community. And I figured I don’t need parents who would say such stupid things in this day and age. So I took my savings and looked for an apartment. When I saw him on the ninth . . . I had no idea he was applying for a job at Hinode. He told me he was going to graduate school—”

“When you saw him on the ninth, what did you two talk about?”

“He was shocked when I told him I was leaving home . . . He asked me why things had come to this so suddenly, and I had no idea how to explain it to him and—”

According to his niece, on October ninth, in the course of describing to Hatano the details about what had happened, she ultimately brought up the issue with the segregated community. Shiroyama had to stop himself from shouting at her—he was at a loss for words. His niece had meant no harm, but she had been quite thoughtless. He wondered how his sister and Sugihara could possibly have raised their daughter to be this way.

Since Shiroyama remained silent, his niece asked again in a tearful voice, “Did I cause problems for the company?”

“This isn’t about the company. It’s about you and Hatano. You should have thought a bit more about his feelings. Do you understand? Your parents may be stupid, but you behaved inconsiderately yourself.”

As he listened to his niece’s weeping over the phone, he kept asking himself, What is the point of saying all these things now? What good does it do to act rationally now? How am I going to deal with this situation? These questions shook him to his core.

“And did you attend Hatano’s funeral?”

“How could I? His parents have no idea who I am. There’s no way for me to apologize!”

“Yoshiko. Listen to me. Hatano’s car accident is not your fault. You didn’t kill him. Do you understand? With that said, you must now think about his grieving parents first, and there’s something you must do. So must your parents. This is not a problem that you can figure out and resolve on your own. I will talk to your father for you, so please put him on.”

While he waited on hold again, he pondered what his niece, Sugihara, and his sister could have possibly been thinking over the past month. Shiroyama thought about how for quite some time he and his wife had been living a monotonous and peaceful life after sending a boy and a girl of their own into the world without much trouble—no, actually what he felt now was displeasure toward his relatives coupled with anger about the dishonor that would reflect back on him. This fact itself was already the source of an uneasiness he had never grappled with before. In particular, he was nothing if not livid when he thought about Takeo Sugihara’s absence at this morning’s breakfast meeting and his almost certain lack of focus on his work; and as a fellow salaryman who knew there had to be a better way to have handled things, his fury only mounted when he considered such incredibly careless behavior from Sugihara, a man who had followed a steady and sure career track.

A despondent voice came on the line. “Yes. Sugihara speaking.”

“I heard all the details from Yoshiko regarding this student Hatano. Make some time tomorrow and go with her to pay your respects to the deceased.”

“About that, Kurata said—”

“This doesn’t concern the company. It concerns our family. It concerns your own integrity.”

“I wanted to go see them. But Kurata must have his own reasons too! He told me to pretend I had nothing to do with it—what was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t care about the company. This is a family problem. I’ll take responsibility for the company—I’m well aware of Kurata’s thought process. I will speak to him myself, and you do what you must do as head of the family. Hatano’s father is a dentist, so best to visit him during his midday break, or after he’s finished seeing patients. Understood?”

Sugihara hesitated briefly before he asked, “Is this about the Okada Association?”

Shiroyama was forced to reiterate, “That has nothing to do with your family’s problem.” Though as