Programmed Lives – Fourth Stage
Chapter Ten
Akito only reacted when a waitress came to the table to ask him if he wanted anything else then, realising that he'd probably been there for quite a while, excused himself, paid the bill and made his way back to the station.
He did all of this as if he were in automatic pilot.
Somehow, he managed to get on the right train, get off at the right stop and find his way home where he found his family sitting together with little Haruko trying to convince her mother that driving karts was a lot of fun and that she should try it sometime soon. If he hadn't been in such a state of shock, Akito would have found hilarious the thought of seeing his mother onboard a kart, driving around a circuit.
'Akito, I thought you wouldn't get home until much later,' Natsuki commented seeing the boy entering the house.
'No, er…well, I have loads of homework to do,' he said and, with this, he walked up the stairs and towards his room.
'Is he alright?' Natsuki asked her husband.
'I don't know,' Takumi replied for he, too, found it strange that Akito had come back home so early so he could do his school work.
'Maybe he needs to talk to someone,' Natsuki said and Takumi shook his head.
'No, if we nag him he's just going to push us away.'
'Yeah, I guess you're right,' Natsuki said thinking that, after all, there wasn't anyone who knew Akito quite as well as Takumi did.
'So, Mum, when are you coming with us to the karting track?' Haruko said, trying to get her parents' attention back on her.
Natsuki looked at Takumi begging him to help her but, cruelly enough, Takumi said:
'I think I'm going to go to Itsuki's.'
'Thanks,' Natsuki replied with a very fake smile.
'No problem,' he had the cheek to say before getting up from the sofa, leaving his wife to deal with Haruko's question all by herself.
Upstairs, Akito was laying on his bed with his head in such a mess that he didn't even want to begin the task of figuring out what in the heck had he done wrong. As far as he was concerned, he'd done everything in his power to make Ryoko as happy as possible, heck, he'd even studied at night time, before he went off to do the deliveries with his father, so his grades would be good enough so that his parents couldn't complain about them.
He also spent most of his pocket money in train rides and their dates, to the point where he was no longer able to save up any of it anymore. But none of this seemed to have prevented what he'd feared the most because, unless he'd just misunderstood the whole thing very badly, his less than two months old relationship with Ryoko was over.
Turning round on his bed, pressing his face against the pillow, he allowed himself to do something he rarely did: he started crying.
He woke up a few hours later when his mother knocked on his door to tell him that dinner was ready. Inventing some rather feeble excuse, he managed to send her away and, taking off his jeans, he got in bed and decided to sleep until his alarm clock would wake him up to go and do the deliveries with his father.
Then, he'd sleep some more, wake up and head to school and, despite what he'd told Ryoko, for Akito going to school wasn't a problem: he was fairly popular among the students and had a couple of mates he liked hanging around with so, thankfully, he managed to go through the day pretty easily.
Unfortunately, that afternoon his father was going to pick him up to go to the centre and he'd never been any less looking forward to seeing any of the Takahashi, especially Keisuke who, by now, was probably very eager to see Akito so he could make hamburgers out of the teenager.
'Hey, what's up!' Seisuke greeted Akito as he saw his friend climbing out of the AE86. Akito, on the other hand, examined Seisuke's expression as close as he could possibly do without arising any suspicions from the youngest of the Takahashi.
'Hello? Anyone up there?' Seisuke said knocking on Akito's head.
'Yeah, ouch, that hurt!' Akito exclaimed frowning slightly. What was going on? Seisuke seemed to be pretty much himself and not at all looking as though as he wanted to kill him for breaking his cousin's heart.
'Oh gosh, what's wrong with you? Lovesick again?' Seisuke said with mock horror.
'No, er…can you come with me one minute?' he whispered very conscious of the fact that as his father was locking the Toyota, Akito could see Keisuke coming their way to greet them.
'Sure,' Seisuke replied, his seemingly permanent smile gone and replaced by a concerned frown.
As soon as Akito was sure that there was enough distance between them and the two adults, he said:
'Seisuke, did anything strange happen at your place last night?'
'No, why?'
'Are you sure?' Akito insisted.
'No, well, yeah, now that you mention it, Aniki didn't mind me having the remote control of the TV, and that's really strange.'
Akito rolled his eyes and, hoping to help Seisuke, he said:
'Did anything happen with Ryoko?'
Seisuke stared at Akito, looking very confused then, he said:
'Why are you asking all of these questions?'
Akito, surrendering to the unavoidable, he decided to confess:
'I think we broke up yesterday.'
'What?' Seisuke shouted so loudly that scared the shits out of Akito.
'Seisuke, shush…'
'What happened?' Seisuke ignored him still speaking with an indecently loud tone of voice.
'She asked me to choose…and I couldn't…'
'She did what?' Seisuke exclaimed.
'Yeah, well, I couldn't choose, so she chose for me.'
'And?'
'She went home,' Akito said.
'Wow…well, she sure didn't say anything to us during dinner,' Seisuke commented after recovering from the shock.
'Why wouldn't she tell you?' Akito asked, feeling even more confused than the previous night.
'Several reasons, I guess,' Seisuke explained, 'to begin with, she was probably too embarrassed about it, also, she probably didn't want Uncle Keisuke take his Magnum to go to your place and kill you.'
'He's got a Magnum?' Akito asked suddenly fearing a lot more for his life than usual.
'Of course not,' Seisuke replied, 'he collects katana though,' he added as an afterthought.
'Great, I'm going to be sliced to death,' Akito said sarcastically.
'You want me to tell you something?' Seisuke asked and Akito just nodded, 'I think that if she didn't say anything is because there wasn't anything to say, this means that she probably doesn't think you guys have broken up…'
'She surely fooled me,' Akito said even more sarcastically.
'No, look, she probably has just given up on you.'
'And that helps me how?' Akito asked with a very dry tone of voice.
'I don't know, who do you think I am? I'm her cousin, not her freaking shrink,' Seisuke complained.
'Sorry,' Akito said.
'Look, I think you should focus on Sunday's race and forget about the rest,' Seisuke said.
Akito nodded to that and then followed Seisuke to the garage where they kept the karts.
'Come on, I'll help you with your training today,' he said.
'Seisuke, can I ask you something?'
'Sure,' he said.
'If Kaori had second thoughts about asking you to choose, what would you do?'
'I honestly don't know,' he replied, 'but right now I have to focus on school so I get a mark high enough to study Medicine. Also, I need to help Aniki building up our team.'
'I get it,' Akito said and, with this, he just climbed into the kart and, this time and unlike the last time he'd been driving, he did a very good job.
'You're great! Look at the times,' Keisuke said and Akito was pleased to see that his times had indeed got much better.
'Now, this is what I call driving,' Takumi said patting his son's shoulder.
'Yeah, drive this way on Sunday and you'll be finishing the race even before the opponents can find their helmets,' Seisuke said smiling in the cheeky way that made him so popular with the girls.
On Sunday afternoon, he didn't quite end the race before the opponents found their helmets but, he could have very well had a cappuccino as he waited for everyone to cross the finish line.
'Well done son, very good,' Takumi said, 'now remember that this is how you drive if you want to win.'
'Yeah, Dad, don't worry, I'll remember,' Akito replied.
'Leave the boy alone,' Bunta said walking towards them.
'Grandpa! You're here too!' Akito said, 'Are you coming back home with us? Mum and Dad are going out and…'
'Sorry boy but I'm going out for a meeting.'
'What's with you and those meetings? What kind of meetings are they anyway?' Akito asked half disappointed, half amused.
'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you,' Bunta said with a smirk.
'I've been asking him that all my life and that's as straight an answer as you're ever going to get,' Takumi said to his son.
'Okay, I get it,' Akito said laughing at the way his father looked at his old man. Then, as he saw Kyosuke and Seisuke walk towards him, he remembered that he hadn't seen nor spoken to Ryoko ever since that horrible Sunday morning a week ago. That was enough to kill his smile instantly.
'Hey, you won, so, what's new?' Kyosuke asked flatly but with a smile on his face.
'I don't always win,' Akito complained and, he saw the two Takahashi giving him a knowing look.
'Let's go and celebrate!' Seisuke shouted happily and, Akito did everything he could to be as happy for his first victory of the season as everyone else seemed to be. Unfortunately, he couldn't help but to think that what he really wanted to do was to celebrate Valentine's Day with a gorgeous fifteen year old called Ryoko.
A few hours after the race, and with Haruko having gone to bed shortly after dinner, Akito was busy trying to find a space in his room where to put his newest trophy when he heard the house's phone ringing and, afraid that Haruko would wake up, he ran out of his room, getting to the phone just before it went into the answering machine.
'Hello?' he answered.
'Hello, Akito, this is Kyoko, listen, have seen Ryoko today?'
'Er…no, why?'
'Oh, it's just that I brought her back home after her rehabilitation session but, I've just gone to her room and she wasn't there.'
'Ah, well, maybe she's gone to get something from the mini market,' Akito suggested even though he knew all too well where Ryoko really was.
'Well, if you do hear from her, please call us, okay?' Kyoko said clearly not buying Akito's hypothesis.
'Of course,' he said and, as he hung up the phone, he ran back into his room.
If there was one person who knew where the party Ryoko had gone to was, that was Ryoko's best friend Yayoi. Thankfully, the girl was a maniac of those little do-it-yourself personal cards so he probably had one lying around somewhere. Small problem was: where?
He started rummaging through his whole room until, about half an hour later, he found it beneath a pile of manga books. After taking it, he went back to the phone and dialling Yayoi's number, he waited for her to answer.
'Hello?' he heard her say.
'Hi, this is Fujiwara Akito, you know…'
'Ryoko's boyfriend, I know,' Yayoi said and that made Akito frown: so not even Yayoi knew about their break up.
'Yeah, the thing is…'
'It's awfully quiet in there,' she commented confusing Akito.
'Of course it's quiet, I'm at home,' he said.
'What? Weren't you supposed to go to that party with Ryoko? She's been talking about it the whole week,' Yayoi said.
'What are you talking about?' Akito asked.
'She said you were going to take her to Takasaki for a huge party they're having up Mt Akagi.'
'Ah, right, yeah, er…' Akito said then, finally being able to think straight, he said, 'I'm going to join her in a minute.'
The line went mute for a short while then, Yayoi said:
'Is everything alright? I've noticed that Ryoko's been behaving weird lately.'
'Yeah, sure, everything's good,' Akito lied through his teeth.
'Okay, well, I'll see you,' Yayoi said.
Then they hung up and Akito remained standing by the phone for a while, trying to decide what to do. He could call Kyoko-san back and tell her where her daughter was but that would probably land Ryoko in a huge amount of trouble.
He could also try calling her.
Yeah, he'd do that, he thought as he picked the phone back up. He dialled Ryoko's number and, for the second time that evening, waited for an answer. Unfortunately, the only one he got was that of her voice mail.
Okay, so her phone was turned off. Now what?
He could hardly go to Takasaki to try and find her, could he?
'Why not?' he asked to himself.
Because he didn't have any means of transportation available, he said, answering to his own question.
'That's not true,' he said thinking of the panda coloured car that was parked inside the Fujiwara's garage.
Without giving himself too much time to think, he ran downstairs and, taking the key from the top of the small table at the house's entrance, he went into the garage and opening the garage's automated gate, he got into the AE86, turned its engine on knowing perfectly well that his father would probably kill him for what he was about to do. He then drove out of the garage and started heading towards Mt Akagi.
With a bit of luck, he'd be back before his parents would so his father would never find out.
To be continued…