Programmed Lives - First Stage

Chapter Three

When Ryosuke got to the mess that was his brother's room, he found it already empty. This made Ryosuke run towards the other only place where his brother could have gone: the house's garage. As usual, his instincts served him well for as he stepped in it, he saw his younger brother opening the door of the FD3S.

'Keisuke, wait!' Ryosuke cried almost pleadingly.

'What for?' the younger man shouted back while climbing into the car.

Ryosuke managed to grab the door just in time so that his brother couldn't shut it.

'Look, I said I had a plan…' Ryosuke started saying, only to be interrupted by Keisuke's dry laugh.

'Yeah, right,' he sneered, 'Aniki, no offence or anything, but I don't think that any of your super-plans is going to work this time.'

Ryosuke stared at his younger brother while trying to come up with something that could convince Keisuke that there was hope, a tough thing to do when his own optimism was beginning to falter.

'See, you can't even come up with anything to say, can you?' Keisuke said angrily.

Repeating the same expletive he'd used at the dinning room, he snatched the door from his older brother's grasp, shut it close activating the central locking system then, he inserted the key into the ignition, turned the car's engine on and took off so abruptly that Ryosuke almost fell onto his butt.

He then was forced to watch powerlessly as the Mazda disappeared in the distance. Hanging his head in defeat, Ryosuke stared at the now empty space that his brother's FD had left before he started to make his way back to the dinning room deciding that while he needed to speak to Keisuke, right now he had more pressing matters to tend to. Alas, when he got back into the dinning room, the only person who was there was his mother who sat at the table looking very troubled.

'Mother…' he started.

'Ryosuke,' she interrupted him, 'your father wants to speak to you, urgently,' she added.

'He…he's at his studio?' Ryosuke almost stammered.

'Yes,' Kinue replied, 'and Ryosuke, try not to upset him anymore than he already is.'

Hhe nodded at her once and then he walked out of the dinning room and made his way to his father's studio. This whole situation had seriously got out of hand and, unless he did something about it, it would only get worse. Knocking quickly on the door, he barely waited for permission to step into the room and as soon as he saw him, his father started speaking with badly contained fury.

'Ryosuke,' the doctor hissed, 'sit down and listen carefully to what I'm about to say.'

Ryosuke complied as quickly as he could. Whereas he had seen his father angry before whenever Keisuke managed to get himself into trouble and had witnessed quite a few of their shouting matches, this time Ryosuke knew that the anger was entirely directed at him and he was frankly afraid of the consequences.

'Ryosuke,' his father started, 'it's a good thing Doctor Arakawa is a sensible man and has already figure out the kind of spoilt brat that your brother is and, therefore, he won't take what happened tonight as a personal offence to him or his family, now,' he continued, 'I know you're probably not too happy about this marriage…'

'Happy? Father, I…'

'Did I say you could speak?' Doctor Takahashi snapped.

'No. Sorry,' Ryosuke said, barely containing his mounting frustration. Being treated like a five year old boy was a bit more than he could tolerate. Even if the one patronising him was his own father.

'As I was saying,' the man continued, 'I know you're not happy about this marriage but, I'll have you to know that we, and when I say we I mean the clinic, need this marriage more than you think.'

'What do you mean?' Ryosuke asked, his frustration rapidly turning into concern.

'What I mean is that with the new bill the government has just passed, all private clinics which don't offer public health services as well as private ones, will have to pay five percent more in their taxes. I don't need to tell you what that increase would do to our finances, do I?'

'Of course you don't,' he replied then, he dared asking, 'but what's this marriage have to do with it?'

'To offer public health services you need a special license that takes forever to get, not to mention the nearly endless screening that they'd do to our clinic in order to grant us the license. Doctor Arakawa's two hospitals have recently obtained this license and, by marrying Akiko-chan, we'd be able to join all three hospitals into a single consortium and, in so doing, extend the license to our clinic too. This would save us the increase of the taxes we pay and, of course, with time, our family would control the three biggest hospitals in the prefecture,' doctor Takahashi said triumphantly.

'Father, please hold on for a second,' Ryosuke begged, 'are you saying I'm going to marry this girl merely to get a government's license and two hospitals?'

'Yes, that's right. Akiko-chan's dowry makes her a very coveted wife, don't you think?' his father said, smiling in a way that made Ryosuke feel rather sick and completely speechless.

'Keisuke's stunt almost caused the whole thing to go awry,' the doctor explained, 'but, like I said, doctor Arakawa didn't take offence. In fact, he was polite enough to think that maybe, as a family, we needed some space so we could talk things through. Which is what we've just done. Now, can you go and get your brother, I need to speak to him too,' his father added, clearly considering the conversation with Ryosuke finished.

'He's gone, he was very upset and took off with his car,' Ryosuke explained.

'Oh well,' his father said, sounding unconcerned 'whenever he comes back, then.'

Ryosuke just nodded. It was unbelievable how little his father seemed to care about Keisuke. True, his younger brother had caused him more than one headache and he was in fact responsible for most of his father's white hairs, but Ryosuke was sure that if their parents had cared more about Keisuke, the youngest Takahashi would today be an entirely different person.

Meanwhile, the subject of Ryosuke's thoughts was driving his FD as fast as it could go. He had no memory of going as fast as that since the race against the AE86 in Mt Akina's downhill and he didn't even know where he was when he saw a set of headlights flashing at him through his rear view mirror.

'What the…' he said, finally recognising the car that was following him.

He stopped at the side of the road and turned the hazard lights on. Then, he waited for the other car's driver to get out of the car and walk up to his already open window.

'Finally! I've been trying to get you to pull over for quite a while, you know?' Kyoko's voice said trying to sound angry but unable to hide the immense happiness she felt.

'What the hell are you doing here?' Keisuke said and, he noticed, his voice didn't sound quite as angry as he thought he was. Was this the effect of seeing Kyoko all of a sudden?

'What are YOU doing here in Saitama?' the girl asked laughing softly.

'What are your talking about? Am I in Saitama?' Keisuke asked confusedly.

'Yes, where did you think you were?' Kyoko said sounding even more confused than he was.

'I don't know,' Keisuke half-muttered, 'I just kept on driving aimlessly.'

Kyoko crouched next to the door, so she could be eye-level with him, stared at him for a bit and then asked:

'Are you okay?'

'No,' Keisuke answered truthfully.

'Do you want to talk about it?' she offered looking rather hopeful.

'Yeah,' Keisuke said without thinking.

It would do him good to talk about this with someone and, something told him that Kyoko was probably the most indicated person to talk to about this whole mess. She then smiled and said:

'Right, then follow me, we'll park our cars somewhere safer and talk, okay?'

'Alright, show me the way,' Keisuke asked her and, almost like in automatic pilot, re-started the car's engine and, after letting her black FD overtake him, he followed her.

To be continued…