Programmed Lives - First Stage
Chapter Thirteen
Akiko's only response to Ryosuke's proposal was to sit back on the couch. Ryosuke remained in the very ridiculous and rather uncomfortable pose that had him with one knee on the carpeted floor. He didn't want to move so he wouldn't scare Akiko any further for, right at that moment, the girl looked positively freaked out.
'Why?' he finally heard her ask with a breathless whisper.
Very slowly Ryosuke stood up so he could take a sit next to her. He then took a deep breath so he would have enough air for the lengthy explanation that this whole thing required in order to make sense.
'Look, I know that what I've just said is, at best, the most unromantic proposal ever but, unfortunately, the situation doesn't allow me to do it much better than this. Akiko, we were never given much of a choice really. Your father wants you to get married, it doesn't seem like he's too fussy who with, just as long as you give him an heir,' Ryosuke saw her flinch at that but, for the sake of not losing the thread of what he was saying, he carried on, 'my parents, on the other hand, have always expected me to take over the family's clinic and I recently discovered that marrying you is something that would be convenient for our business too, so they'd be happy with this marriage too…'
'Ah, so that's the whole point then?' she asked finally reacting.
'No!' Ryosuke exclaimed, then returning to a normal tone, he said, 'it may have been at the beginning, when I didn't know you. But the short time we've spent together has made me realise that you may be the closest thing I will ever be from getting the woman I'd like to have by side the rest of my life. You have to agree with me when I say that we have loads of things in common: we both know what being the first born of a rich family really is like, we know what it feels like that, no matter how hard you try, your father will never be impressed with what you do because, after all, for him you're just doing your duty.'
He saw her nod to that.
'We've always put their wishes and expectations before our own dreams, haven't we?' she said.
'Yes, we have. And, on top of that, we even like the same kind of cars…' he said smiling.
'That's all true Ryosuke but, what will happen when you get tired of me?' she asked miserably.
'Why would I get tired of you?' he said puzzled.
'Oh come on Ryosuke! You're a fantastic guy, so popular, so charismatic, so sure of yourself. You're probably used to spectacular-looking girls and I, well…'
'Akiko, once you'll get to know me better you'll realise that, the few occasions I had the time for girls, I never went for the kind of big-breasted, bubbly-headed girls who seem to populate the galleries. I need a lot more than good looks from a woman. I need her to interest me at an intellectual level and that's something you do very well. If the few conversations we've had are proof of it, I think we'll have a very balanced relationship from an intellectual point of view…'
He could see that Akiko was slowly seeing things from his way but, just in case, he decided to use the last one of his cards.
'And I'm not quite so sure of myself either. I shouldn't tell you this and I beg you not to tell anyone ever but, I have been taking romantic advice from a teenager cousin of mine who seems to be the freaking Encyclopaedia Britannica of relationships.'
'What?' Akiko said smiling almost tenderly.
'Yeah, pathetic, I know. Go ahead and laugh,' he said trying his best not to blush Takumi-style.
'No, it's kind of cute of you,' she said, her smile widening.
'Really?' he asked with an expression in his face that Akiko found totally adorable.
She nodded.
'So, what do you think?' Ryosuke asked, insisting.
Akiko took a few minutes to think about it then, realising that marrying Ryosuke was probably the best thing she could do and that an opportunity such as this would never present itself again, she said the only thing she could given the circumstances:
'Alright, Ryosuke I accept. Like you said, this is not the most romantic of proposals but, I think that if we work hard, we can make this relationship work. Also, I don't really have a choice. I mean, you vs. a man old enough to be my father, it's a lost battle for the poor guy.'
Ryosuke didn't know what to say to that. Knowing that she had considered that as a decisive factor didn't help his own self confidence very much. In any case, and for the sake of their newly made agreement, he chose to ignore the whole thing.
'Also, you've got an advantage he never had,' she carried on saying.
'What is that, apart of my good looks and my being about twenty five years younger than him?' he asked.
'Well, this is something I never told you but, do you remember when we were kids and we played together?' she asked.
'Not very well but yes, I do remember, why?'
'I had a bit of a crush on you back then,' she finally confessed.
'What? Really? I never noticed,' he said genuinely surprised.
'I never told you about it but I liked you a lot because, unlike other boys our age, you were really nice to me and never bullied me because I was so small,' she said.
'Did other boys bully you?' he asked feeling an irrational anger towards those boys.
'Yep, I've only recently overcome the fact that, no matter what I do, I will always be short and of small complexion. It used to tick me off because my own father always said that I was a pathetic mousy-looking little girl.'
'He said that?' Ryosuke asked, refusing to believe that a parent could be so cruel to his own offspring.
'Oh, that was a compliment, believe me, he's said much worse things to me. I've grown used to pretty much ignore him and now, I almost thank him for it: it has made me a much stronger person.'
'You had to become strong in order to survive but that's not how a father should treat his daughter,' Ryosuke said, his hatred for her father increasing one more notch.
'Oh gosh, it's almost nine o'clock!' she suddenly exclaimed.
'You've got to go, don't you?' he asked.
'Yes, I do. Do you want to come with me?' she said.
'Sure,' he said, then, having gathered enough courage to do so, he asked, 'Akiko, did you mind so much when I kissed you?'
She looked startled for a second then she shook her head.
'No. It scared me how much I liked it,' she confessed, her cheeks blushing delicately.
'That's good, because if you don't mind, I'm going to it again,' he said and, much more carefully than when they were back in the car, he kissed her again.
When they stopped, he said:
'I just remembered that I haven't brought the ring with me.'
'Oh about that, Ryosuke, do I really have to wear that thing?' she asked.
'You don't like it much, do you?'
'Not really. Sorry, is just much too big for my style,' she said shyly.
'Don't worry, unfortunately it's a family ring that all the women in my family have to pass on to their sons for their brides, but you don't have to wear it. Come to think of it, I've never seen my mother wear it other than in special occasions,' he explained.
'Oh well, that's a relief,' she said so honestly that Ryosuke started laughing.
'Ah, another thing,' she added.
'What is it?'
'I'd like for your brother to come and live with us,' she said shocking him so much that he felt his eyes widening to their limits.
'Why?' he managed to ask.
'Because I think that if you left him with your parents he'd die of misery. I know he's incredibly close to you and, from what I remember, you're the only one who keeps him from going berserk. Besides, he'd hate me to the last of my living days if I took you away from him.'
'Akiko, one day he'll be the one leaving me,' he said.
'Yes, but that'll be whenever he's ready and, from what I've seen, he's very far from that day,' she insisted.
'Do you know what living with Keisuke is like?' Ryosuke asked, just to make double sure that she knew what she was getting into. He was actually very happy she had thought of that herself for, he agreed totally with her when it came to leaving Keisuke alone in such a delicate period of his life.
'I've got a half idea. In any case, I'm not saying that he'd have to be with us around the clock. I think that we could try and get some space within the house to make some sort of independent apartment for him as to give both him and us some privacy. What do you think?'
'I think that this is a splendid idea Akiko,' he said growing every time more convinced that asking her to marry him had been the totally right thing to do.
'Good, now we should really go. I don't want James to arrive and not find anyone at the airport. He doesn't speak a word of Japanese,' she said finally getting up.
'Ah, we're going to have a problem,' he said while they were walking towards the front door.
'What's that?'
'Your car is a two-seater, mine's not very roomy at the back and we're going to be three coming back from the airport,' he pointed out.
'Ah, yes, that may be a problem. Do you feel like driving a sedan for a change, because we could borrow my father's Diamante since he's taken the BMW tonight,' she said.
'Alright then,' he said smiling thinking that if his brother or Takumi saw him going anywhere near a Mitsubishi they'd probably have a heart attack. After all the battles they had with the EVOs, they weren't very fond of that particular make of car.
'After all, if it's you borrowing it, I'm sure he's not going to mind too much. We can always say that you are considering buying one…'
'What?' he said sounding alarmed.
'That's our excuse, there is no way I'd let you buy a Mitsubishi. It has to be a Mazda or nothing at all,' she said firmly.
'Good girl,' he said proudly, smiling again while patting her on the shoulder.
Leaving his beloved FC parked next to Akiko's Mazda, Ryosuke drove down the lane with Dr Arakawa's Mitsubishi Diamante. Ryosuke drove the car as carefully as possible finding it way too big and not very agile at all. Used to the fine tuning of his FC, he found the car not too responsive to his driving style and, for this reason, he found himself driving at a speed that would have destroyed his reputation among street racers irreparably.
'How did you and James meet?' he asked conversationally, also because he wanted to have some background information on the guy.
'I was in my first year of university when I started volunteering at a home for the terminally ill. Toby, James's boyfriend, was one of our patients. He was dying of AIDS and James never left his bedside. I started seeing him everyday there and I talked to him, at first to offer him some sort of comfort, then we ended up becoming friends. I basically became the shoulder where he cried when Toby eventually died. James was doubly devastated because he had been kicked out of his parent's house because they had discovered his and Toby's relationship,' Akiko explained and Ryosuke could read equal doses of pain and resentment.
'You must be very close…' Ryosuke commented.
'We are, he's like the brother I never had,' she said and Ryosuke remembered that Akiko should have had a brother so he understood the double meaning of her words.
'After he pulled through it, we became partners-in-crime, essentially, we went to every single university party together and got into almost all sorts of trouble. There was one night when we snuck into a golf course and, after having downed quite a few vodkas, we challenged each other to see who could find more flagpoles in the darkness.'
'You did that?' Ryosuke said not believing his own ears.
'Oh yes. He won, of course. I found out later on that he had worked there part-time so he knew exactly where all the holes were. Cheater!' she said laughing fondly at the memory.
'And here I was thinking I was marrying a good girl,' Ryosuke said. That made Akiko stop laughing and Ryosuke looked at her worried.
'Sorry, is just that I'm still getting used to the idea,' she said justifying herself.
'I know, me too, I think that's why I want to repeat it as often as I can, it'll make it more real,' he said.
'Yeah, you're probably right,' she said.
They drove the rest of the way to Narita International Airport in silence, interrupted only when she decided to start the radio so the car wouldn't be so quiet.
Ryosuke discovered that she liked Super Eurobeat music for, after finding a station which played it, he saw her moving her right knee at the rhythm of the music. He made a mental note to take her clubbing one the following nights.
'This way,' she said, the minute they had parked the car and were walking to the international arrivals of the airport's first terminal.
James appeared through the doors that separated the baggage claim area from the space where they were just five minutes later and Ryosuke had to make a superhuman effort so his shock wouldn't show on his face.
He didn't really know what he had been expecting but he was as sure as hell that it wasn't that. James was quite a lot taller than he was and much bigger built. He was as big and looked just as manly as a rugby player.
'James!' Akiko cried with her voice full of joy. Ryosuke saw her running to James who dropped his suitcase to pick her up from the floor lifting her a good thirty centimetres off it.
'Babe, it's been too long!' Ryosuke heard him say in English. He could tell that Akiko's affection for James was fully returned by him.
With the maximum delicacy, James put Akiko back on the floor and, pointing at Ryosuke, said:
'Who's this?'
'That's my…,' Akiko started then she looked at Ryosuke with her eyes full of uncertainty.
'I'm Ryosuke Takahashi, her fiancé,' Ryosuke said in his best Cambridge learnt English, finishing the sentence for her.
To be continued…
