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

“I’d pick Sony or Hinode,” said Handa. “Back when I was at the Shinagawa Police Department, I would always stare out at their buildings from Shimbamba Station. At night, they looked like fortresses of light.”

Now that Handa mentioned it, Monoi recalled having seen the nightscape of those two companies’ headquarters. He gave the rest of the fruit-flavored milk to the girl, who was still fretting beside him. The milk was already turning lukewarm, and the girl had crumpled down the end of the straw with her teeth. In spite of this, one sip of the sweet milk calmed her down a little, and she spat out a word that meant “yum.”

Not long after this, Nunokawa thrust out a ten-thousand-yen bill. “Mind if I go take a quick nap? Watch Lady for me. I’ll be back by two.” Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and walked away—he practically fled. Monoi and the three men behind him watched Nunokawa go. None of them uttered a word, they just looked at one another.

In that moment, as Monoi watched the retreating figure of Nunokawa, who must have felt a spasmodic need to get away from his daughter even for a little while, he sensed in him a bottomless gloom, but as an outsider Monoi had no right to say anything about it. Shifting his thoughts, he turned to Yo-chan behind him and asked, “Isn’t there a wheelchair-accessible bathroom here?”

“I’ll go look for one,” Yo-chan replied and nimbly got up from his seat.

Yo-chan returned after about five minutes to announce that he had found a bathroom, and he added, “I just heard on the radio. The managing director of Toei Bank, Yamashita or something, apparently he was shot and killed in front of his home.”

This time, it was Handa’s turn to rise immediately from the bench. Saying there might be an emergency deployment, Handa too disappeared.

2

Kyosuke Shiroyama

From the regular tee of the 184-yard par-three seventh hole, his shot barely missed the pond in front of the green, and he tensed up for a moment. Right after seeing the ball fly off, he realized to his dismay that he had sliced it, but he put off dissecting why he had done so and, telling the string of players behind him with a sheepish grin, “I’ll see you up there,” Kyosuke Shiroyama quickly moved on, chasing after his ball.

Hinode’s Kantō regional competition took place every spring and fall at the Matsuo Golf Club in Chiba and was renowned for its huge turnout. Each time, fifty representatives from among all the distributors in the Kantō area were selected fairly, in a rotating order, from the main offices, branch offices, and sales offices, regardless of their size. From Hinode, in addition to the chairman, the president, two vice-presidents, four board members, and the sales manager and deputy manager of the beer division’s main office, sales managers and representatives from their five regional offices and two branch offices in the Kantō area were also invited, totaling twenty-four members. From Hinode’s subsidiaries and affiliated companies, another ten representatives were selected, again in fair turn. It was a successful event with eighty-four in attendance, all told.

Similar regional golf competitions occurred in conjunction throughout Japan in Hokkaido, Tohoku, Hokuriku, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu, and for the past twenty years, this traditional event had been a proud display both within and outside the company of the solidity of Hinode’s unique network of production, distribution, and sales. However, now that same network also seemed to symbolize a lumbering Gulliver, and Shiroyama knew that he would like to put an end to the event within the next few years, but in the same way that sundry unresolved items accumulated into a mountain, overturning tradition was always a Herculean task.

The members were divided into In and Out groups, and that day Shiroyama was on the ninth “In” team—his teammates included the president of Tomioka, a major distributor; the president of another major distributor, Iida Shokai; and the president of Sato Transport, an affiliated company.

The competition had started at nine in the morning, and by the time Shiroyama—the fourth player on team nine—had landed his ball on the seventh-hole green, it was past noon. He had nailed his approach shot from the edge of the pond, and the ball had landed two meters in front of the pin, so he thought he could make par. The cup was on a gently rising slope. The president of Sato Transport, who had holed out before him, called out, “Take your time.”

Although Shiroyama’s golf game spanned thirty years, he did not put in much effort, sometimes managing to break a hundred—sometimes not—and he did not have much enthusiasm for it, either. He set his aim squarely on the putting line and putted the ball as usual, and when the ball luckily reached the cup, light applause rose from across the green.

Shiroyama hurried off the green and, swapping his club for a 3-wood for the next hole, began walking with the other three members on his team. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” the president of Sato Transport said, looking up at the overcast sky.

“It should hold up,” Shiroayama replied.

The two distributors were engaged in their own conversation: “Instead of a price hike, there’s a better chance for a price slump,” to which the other replied, “We’ll see what kind of prices the major supermarkets will set.”

They were discussing the outcome of retail prices of alcoholic beverages, which were set for a simultaneous increase on May 1st. The manufacturer’s current suggested retail price of 220 yen for a 350-milliliter can would be raised to 225 yen, but the major supermarkets were strategizing instead to engage in a price war by extending their discount rate even further. There were reports that, depending on the supermarket, the price would be set from as low as 193 yen. Several years ago, the nationwide price of beer had started to collapse in discount liquor stores, but until now