Mai felt her jaw drop. She and Lin stood staring at the woman for a full minute before Lin recovered.
"Yoneda-san, please take a seat." He gestured to the sofa. "Mai, please retrieve our boss."
Mai obeyed at once, she almost ran to her Oliver's office and knocked hastily.
"What now?" He said tersely. Mai opened the door, entered and closed it behind her.
"We have a guest." She said nervously. "You should talk to her."
"Can't you take the details? I am busy here."
Mai ignored his tone.
"She claims to be your birth mother." She stated.
Whatever Oliver had expected her to say, that was not it. Mai saw his eyes widen a fraction in shock, but he recovered his blank facial expression a second later. He stood up and Mai held the door open for him, he left his office without thanking Mai.
"I'll make tea." She said to the room at large and ran into the kitchen. She could just hear what was being said. Mai knew Oliver would be sat in the lone chair with Lin standing behind him, staring at the woman with a gaze that would pierce armour.
"Who are you?" Oliver asked coldly.
"Kimi Yoneda." The woman said, she sounded close to tears. "Are you Oliver Davis?"
"Why would you think that?"
"A little over 21 years ago on the 19th September, I gave birth to twins after an affair with the American ambassador. I followed him to America and for a while he paid for me to live so that I wouldn't tell his wife about the affair." She sighed. Mai could hear the forced toughness in her voice. "Then when he divorced his wife for her own infidelity, he refused to pay my living costs anymore. He took my babies to an orphanage, they were only four years old then, and he deported me back to Japan. My family had disowned me. I had nothing. I spent a long time on the streets before I finally found a job. I have spent the last ten years trying to find my babies." Mai brought in the tray of tea, but no one took a cup.
"You have not answered my question." Oliver said, with no hint of emotion.
"I eventually found out they were adopted by an English couple. It was hard. My English is poor and I did not know which orphanage they were placed into and with no proof of my blood relation to them… I had to pay a private investigator to find out that they were adopted by Professor Martin Davies and his wife Luella." Mai noted how the woman struggled with the 'l' sound. Oliver and Lin gave no hint of recognition at the names. "I tried to contact them for years with no avail. Finding their personal contact details was near impossible and nothing I sent to their workplaces seem to reach them." A silent tear ran down her face. "Then I heard they lost a son. That Eugene Davis had died while in Japan. I got hold of an English newspaper where the funeral was reported; it had a small picture of the family." She frantically pulled the clipping out of her handbag and placed it on the table. Mai could not read the English, but recognised Oliver and his adopted parents dressed in black in the photo. "I tried to contact BSPR, where Professor Martin Davies worked with his son or so the newspaper said. They told me that Oliver Davis was away on business. I tried many times, but every time the response was the same and no one would tell me anything more than that. It was by luck that I found another picture of you. This time in a local Shibuya newspaper reporting something about a car crash near here. You were in the photo in the background." She pulled out another clipping. Mai could see a black haired man dressed in black in the shadows of the photograph. She guessed it could be Oliver. "I knew it was you. I searched the business directory and found Shibuya Psychic Research. It couldn't be a coincidence. The director was called Kazuya Shibuya. Kazuya and Ichiya were the names of my babies." She started crying in earnest now and Mai noticed that she was wearing black leather gloves. The office was not cold, why had she not taken them off?
"I see." Oliver said, interrupting Mai's thoughts. He could not deny the man in the first photo was him, nor could he deny that he had used his original Japanese given name upon returning to Japan, it had made sense at the time as it was a name he would respond to without conscious effort. "What exactly do you want from me Yoneda-san?" Mai turned to stare pointedly at her boss. She thought he was being a little harsh.
"Are you my baby?" Yoneda-san sobbed. "I just want to find my babies."
"If you are content that you have found them, then please leave." He stood up and returned to his office, closing the door behind him. Lin did not move; he was still staring at the woman as if trying to memorise her face. However Mai stood up abruptly.
"I am sorry for my boss' behaviour, he's rude to everyone. I will go and speak to him." She said to Yoneda-san.
"Mai…" Lin warned, but Mai ignored him and stormed into Oliver's office.
"What the hell was that?" She shouted at the man behind the desk. "That was your mother!"
"It seems so." He said quietly, he was not facing her, but out of his window.
"You do not speak to your mother like that!" Mai continued. "Go and apologise and talk to her! She has not seen you since you were four! You cannot treat her like that!"
"That woman may have given birth to me but she is not my mother." Oliver said, still quiet compared to Mai's shout. "I have a mother who is currently in England; I have no want of another one."
"You bastard!" Mai was furious. "Do you not understand how lucky you are? How many orphans dream of meeting their parents? Here you are with the chance and instead you are busy hurting the poor woman's feelings!"
"And what about my feelings?" Oliver turned to face her, cold fury masking his usually handsome features. Mai was taken aback. "Take her contact details and escort her out. Now." He turned away again. Mai left his office, trembling somewhat.
"I hope I did not get you into trouble." Yoneda-san said sounding genuinely worried, she had stopped crying now. "I should leave."
"Don't worry about me; may I take your details?" Mai said, forcing herself to remain calm. "It is a lot for him to take in, he may need some time but if I can take your details he can contact you when he's ready…" She trailed off rather pathetically. Lin produced a pen and some paper and Yoneda-san wrote down her phone number and current address, which was a little way out of the city.
"Thank you." Yoneda-san said; a small smile spread across her lips. "I am glad my son has such kind people around him."
"Here, phone me if you have need of anything." Mai said, handing Yoneda-san a piece of paper with her own phone number on it.
"Thank you, I'm sorry, I did not catch your name?"
"Mai Taniyama."
"Thank you Taniyama-san." She left and Mai looked around at Lin. He looked very worried.
"Are you okay Lin?"
"I should check on Oliver." He said, frowning.
"I wouldn't. He admitted he had feelings a few minutes ago. I'd give him some time." Mai sighed and returned to her desk. The day was no longer boring, that was for sure. She thought back to the woman's appearance. Mai guessed she did sort of look like her boss, they had the same hair colour and face shape. Then, with a sudden realisation, she turned her computer on and brought up a search engine.
American ambassadors for japan
Her search brought up a list of the current and previous ambassadors. Mai flicked through them until she found the man who held the job 21 years ago. He was obviously of Japanese descent, although his profile said he born in America. The picture also showed a pair of beautiful blue eyes, Oliver's eyes. Mai read down the details of the man and was saddened to read that he had died of a heart attack a few years ago, believed to be stress induced.
"Mai, give me that piece of paper." Oliver said from the doorway of his office. He sounded tired. Mai jumped up and handed him the paper with Yoneda-san's contact details. He looked at it for a moment.
"Romanise it." He said, handing it back. Mai took it and grabbed a pencil off her desk. She quickly translated the kanji into hiragana and then the Latin alphabet underneath that. Mai could remember that much from her school English lessons. She handed it back. "Thank you." Oliver said, then turned into his office. "You can have the rest of the day off." He said before closing his door.
Mai stared at the door, shocked. Her boss had not only apologised but also let her off early, something that had never happened before.
"Lin, keep an eye on him won't you?" Mai said as she put her coat on, she was worried by how much his behaviour had changed.
"That is why I am here Mai." Lin said, giving her a reassuring smile. "He'll be okay."
"I hope so." She turned off her computer and left the office quickly, before Oliver changed his mind.
Author's note: So I am not as confident about this story as my last fic, but I will give it a go! I can't promise to update as frequently as I did with my last fic, but I will try to be relatively quick! Please review because it makes me happy!
