Chapter Ten: October
Sevastiana Evdikimova was not the kind of woman who you wanted to cross. Growing up, she had to forage for food in the Soviet Union. When she married Hyobe Nekozawa. The family hadn't approved of their son marrying some random Russian woman, not when they had already picked out a daughter from a auto manufacturing family for him to marry. Despite this, she pushed on, and eventually rose to the second-in-command of the Nekozawa firearms manufacturing company (it probably helped that back in Russia, her father had been part of the military and she had a good understanding of weapons), after Saburo Yamawaki, the vice-president of the company, retired. Now she ran the company alongside her husband, and anyone who had half a brain in their head knew it- angering the matriarch of the Nekozawa Firearms Group was a Very Bad Idea.
She had always expected that she would help plan her son's wedding to a wonderful girl, and that it would be the perfect, fairy-tale wedding. Despite the fact that Umehito was entrenched in the darkness (it seemed to be a Nekozawa thing- both of her in-laws had been very into the occult prior to their deaths, and Hyobe dabbled from time to time), she would make sure he had the perfect wedding, the wedding she had always dreamed of as a little girl, and never got to have because of the circumstances of her own marriage.
So imagine her surprise when she checked the mail one morning. It was the usual junk mail- catalogs for housewares, the cell phone bill, and some political mailer, but something caught her eye. It was a pretty, pale pink envelope with pretty gold calligraphy adorning the address. Curiously, she opened the paperwork, and immediately, her eyes almost popped out of her sockets.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of
Miss Haruhi Fujioka
and
Mr. Umehito Nekozawa
on the 31st December, 20XX , 1:00 PM
at St. Isabel's Cathedral
19232 2nd Street
Reception to be followed at Blue Bunny Cafe.
Please respond by November 10.
Sevastiana blinked. Then her mouth opened to form a perfect O shape. "KIRIMI!" she finally bellowed. "KIRIMI! GET DOWN HERE!" The young woman hurried down the stairs, looking worriedly at her mother.
"Is everything alright?" she asked.
"I want to know- is this why you've been spending so much time on the phone with your older brother over the past few months?" she asked, thrusting the invitation out at her daughter. "Tell me- did you know about this?"
"Yeah..." Kirimi began. "Didn't he tell you?"
"No, he did not tell me! I didn't even know he was still seeing that Fujioka girl! I thought they broke up years ago!"
Kirimi couldn't help but think to herself, Of course they wouldn't have told you, not with the way you try to micromanage everything around you. I wouldn't have told you either!" But not being suicidal, Kirimi didn't say that. Instead, she just asked, "Are you going to go?"
"No, I am not going to go! Not if I can help it!" Sevastiana exploded. "He's making the biggest mistake of his life by marrying some … some common girl! He has the company to look after!"
"But mom, Big Brother doesn't even work for the company! He's working for a completely different business! I don't even think he wants to be a firearms manufacturer," Kirimi countered. And she had to think, Mom, you were that "common girl" back when you married Dad... aren't you being hypocritical? But again, she didn't really feel like being caught up in her mother's explosive temper, so she held her tongue.
"Well, I always expected he would end up at the family company! And, well, if he doesn't take over, there's still you! But I only have one son, I don't want to lose him to the first gold-digger that comes his way!"
"I think you should talk to him," Kirimi said quickly, trying to calm her mother down. "I think that you're making a mistake by dismissing him so quickly... he really loves her. And she's not a gold-digger... she's an attorney and makes as much money as he does."
"I don't care!" Sevastiana yelled. "I don't want my son to throw his life away!"
Meanwhile, back at the Fujioka residence, Ranka opened his mailbox and sighed. More of the usual crap. Bills, bills, bills, catalog, more bills, political mailers, another catalog, and a pink envelope. Thinking it was an invitation to some party someone at work was having, he opened it, expecting to see announcement about a party at Sayuri's apartment or Misuzu's bed-and-breakfast. He definitely did not expect to see what he did.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of
Miss Haruhi Fujioka
and
Mr. Umehito Nekozawa
on the 31st December, 20XX , 1:00 PM
at St. Isabel's Cathedral
19232 2nd Street
Reception to be followed at Blue Bunny Cafe.
Please respond by November 10.
He stumbled back into his apartment, and dropped the mail on the table, before going to the fridge and grabbing a beer. Yeah, he had to work later, and no, he didn't usually make a habit of getting plastered before work. But these were extenuating circumstances. His little girl was getting married, to a guy he'd only met once and had honestly been creeped out by him. That Nekozawa boy had been dressed up in some creepy black cloak and had been carrying around some creepy little cat-puppet-thing. That had been several years ago, and he had been sure that the two of them had been broken up for some time now. Haruhi had moved apartments, and he thought she had moved after the break-up.
But this? They were getting married in two months and no one had bothered to tell him? No one had even bothered to tell him that the two of them were still together.
He was still trying to parse this information when his cell phone rang. "Hello?"
"Ranka! It's Misuzu!" his friend's loud voice cried out through the speaker. "Haruhi is getting MARRIED!"
"Yeah, I know," Ranka replied. "Did you know about it?"
"Of course! Mei's been making Haruhi's wedding dress for months now! It's so beautiful!"
"Wait, you knew Haruhi was engaged?"
"You're saying you didn't?"
"No..." Ranka let his voice trail off.
"Well, you have nothing to worry about," Misuzu said. "I've met Mr. Nekozawa and he's a perfectly reasonable young man. And he's got a stable job with the possibility to take over his family business. Haruhi will be set for life!"
"Nekozawa... why does that sound so familiar. What family business?"
"Nekozawa Firearms Manufacturing," Misuzu replied, "although I don't think he works there now. I do know he has a pretty good job, though."
"I'm going to need to speak to them," Ranka decided. "I need to know- do they have a plan? What are they going to do about the marriage? What about grandchildren?"
"Isn't it a bit early to be thinking about grandchildren?" Misuzu asked, shocked.
"It's never too early to be thinking about grandchildren," replied Ranka.
To Be Continued
Author's Comments:
I'm so sorry this is so late, it's what, October 5th? September has kind of been the month from hell, and it looks like October is going to be the same way. Exams, a break-in (they didn't steal anything other than food out of our fridge and some quarters), floods, a utility fire, a hurricane, illness- pretty much everything that could have possibly gone wrong has gone wrong, and I'm honestly exhausted. When I'm not working I'm in meetings or studying, and what free time I do have has been spent watching television, because I'm too tired to really do much else.
And there's not really any interaction with Nekozawa and Haruhi here in this chapter, but you cou;dn't honestly think that the parental units wouldn't make an appearance. I don't know a whole lot about Nekozawa's family other than Kirimi, but I do know that at least one side of his family is Russian, so I made it be his mother (Nekozawa is a Japanese surname, so his dad would be at least ½ Japanese). As for the name Sevastiana? It's my grandmother's sister's name, but my family is Lithuanian, so I don't know if it's in use in Russia or not (my grandmother's name, Ykaterina, is in use in both countries, so I figured that maybe in both?) And the firearms manufacturing? It's mentioned in the manga that Nekozawa can trace his family back to the Tokarev family in Russia, and Tokarev manufactures pistols, so I guess it would make sense?
Thanks for reading and I'm sorry for the delay.
Edit: Durk, I must be more tired than I thought. Thanks to MayContainRandomness for pointing out a very stupid error.
-Kaboom