Programmed Lives - First Stage

Chapter One

While Ryosuke made his way back to his bedroom, the entire conversation kept replaying itself in his head, each time sounding worse. He was even more distraught when considering that it had been an arranged marriage which had destroyed the lives of Rin Hojo and that poor girl Kaori. When he opened the door to his room, he felt surprised to find his younger brother still reading the magazine.

'Aniki,' Keisuke said seeing him, 'what did the old geezer want from you?'

'What?' an strangely inattentive Ryosuke asked.

Even Keisuke noticed how strangely inattentive his older brother was, and putting the magazine down, he pushed himself off the bed and, using a tone of voice clipped with anger, he asked him:

'He's not asking you to drop Project D, is he?'

'No,' Ryosuke managed to reply, 'that's not it.'

'Ah,' Keisuke sighed his relief, 'because you still have another month left, don't you?'

'Keisuke…'

'I mean,' he continued, 'we still haven't gone to Tokyo, have we? And…'

'Keisuke,' Ryosuke interrupted him, 'I'm not in the mood to talk about this right now, can you please go back to your room?'

Please.

His brother never asked him to please do something: his were usually orders rather than requests.

'Alright Aniki,' Keisuke replied, 'I'll see you for dinner.'

'Sure,' Ryosuke replied distractedly.

As soon as he was alone in his room, he dropped himself onto the chair in front of his computer which was currently on screensaver mode and, holding his head in his hands, he placed his elbows on top of his knees and then, he let his guard down, allowing an intensive wave of anguish hit him.

Speaking from a rational standpoint, this shouldn't have shocked him so much. After all, as the heir of the Takahashi Medical Group it was to be expected that one day, he would end up marrying the daughter of one of the families from their exclusive social circle. Alas, Ryosuke found it impossible to be reasonable about doing something he wasn't even remotely prepared to do.

The worst part was that the decision had already been made by the heads of the two families and he knew that, whether he liked it or not, he and that Akiko girl were now essentially betrothed and there really was nothing Ryosuke could do to prevent the wedding from happening.

Getting up, he retrieved the blue folder from the top of his desk and, opening it, he took another look at the picture inside it. The girl wasn't spectacularly good looking: she looked very much like the typical Japanese upper class girl with glossy, straight brown hair which fell all the way down her back. He couldn't tell her height but her petite frame told him she wasn't going to be very tall.

Her face was kind and her smile carried all the way up her brown eyes. She wouldn't win any beauty contest but at least she didn't look like one of those big-breasted bimbos he hated so much.

With a guilty pang, he realised how shallow he was being and that made him wonder what Akiko herself had thought when she had received a similar folder containing his own picture. Not that Ryosuke had any doubts about his good looks for his brief encounters with the opposite sex had made him well aware that he had what it took to please any woman but, for some reason, he found himself wishing that Akiko's appraisal of his appearance had not been as shallow as his of hers.

At that moment, his mobile phone rang.

'Hello,' he answered.

'Hi,' Fumihiro said, 'are you busy now?'

'No,' Ryosuke replied finding it oddly amusing just how big a lie that was.

'Listen,' Fumihiro told him, 'we've received the new parts we ordered to repair your FC so we'll be able to put it on tomorrow and test it this Saturday.'

'This Saturday?' Ryosuke asked his right-hand man.

'Yes,' Fumihiro replied, 'you had scheduled a meeting to talk about what we'd do next,' the man sounded obviously surprised that Ryosuke had forgotten something as important as that.

'I can't make it this Saturday, Fumihiro,' Ryosuke said, 'something's come up.'

'Oh. I see. I take it you can't postpone it, can you?' Fumihiro asked, with disappointment badly masked in his voice.

'No. I'm sorry,' was Ryosuke's reply.

'Okay.' Fumihiro accepted, 'what about your brother?'

'I think he'll be busy too. It's a family dinner, so I think my parents expect him to be here too.'

'Okay,' Fumihiro said, 'I'll get Matsumoto to call Takumi.'

Oh God, Takumi! Ryosuke had completely forgotten all about him too.

'No, don't bother,' he replied, 'I'll call Fujiwara myself.'

'Okay, I'll speak to you later,' Fumihiro said.

'Sure,' Ryosuke replied.

He closed the call being fully aware that Fumihiro had noticed that something was off and that Ryosuke wasn't being his usual controlled self. Trying to calm down a bit, he counted up to ten, took a deep breath and then dialled Takumi's home number.

'Fujiwara Tofu,' the deep, slightly raspy voice of Bunta Fujiwara replied.

'Good evening Fujiwara-san. This is Takahashi Ryosuke, is your son home?'

'Wait a second, I'll go and get him,' Bunta replied.

After a while, Ryosuke heard Takumi's calm and monotone voice say:

'Ryosuke-san, what's up?'

'I'm calling you to cancel this Saturday's meeting,' Ryosuke said, 'I'm sorry for the short notice.'

'Ah, that's okay,' Takumi replied, 'I'll take my father's car out for some training instead.'

'Yeah, that'd be good,' Ryosuke said, 'I'll call you whenever we can do the next meeting, okay?'

'Sure,' Takumi replied.

Hanging up, it was obvious to Ryosuke that unlike Fumihiro, their downhill ace had failed to notice that something was not right in his team leader's behaviour. It was typical of Takumi to be oblivious to anything which didn't have four wheels or wasn't the girl he was currently seeing.

Lucky him. Takumi would probably end up marrying her or whoever else he chose because in spite of his docile look, Ryosuke knew that Takumi had this thing of doing exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted. Takumi would never allow for anyone to tell him what to do with his life.

Excepting street racing, everything else in his life had been programmed for him by his over controlling father: from his career path to his marriage to maybe even the place where he'd live.

Street racing was the only thing he had been able to decide by himself. It was his escape valve, the only thing that made him feel truly alive. It would also need to end when he started his job at the Arakawa Hospital. If it wasn't because he hadn't done it since he was a very small child, at that precise moment, Ryosuke Takahashi would have probably burst into tears.

To be continued…