I wasn't planning on updating so soon since my teachers decided to give an overload of work this week and was going to update next week during my mid-winter break, but I decided to since it was Valentine's Day and V-Day is so special. My original plan was to update on the exact date but failed to do so. This is still my gift to my readers for Valentine's Day :)
Oh and THANK YOU for the wonderful reviews :D
Chapter 3: (Belated V-Day Special) Winner/s?
It was Thursday the 7th of February. Instead of spending mere seconds unlocking his bicycle, Fuji rushes home by foot to catch the evening entertainment news. It was unfortunate for Eiji, who got dragged home too when he wanted to stay at school and practice his acrobatic moves on the balance beam.
Eiji was practically panting when both boys entered their little home, but not Fuji. Even though Eiji was involved in sports and Fuji wasn't, Fuji still had more stamina than the red haired boy probably due to Fuji's tennis days. Fuji pops down on their little comfy brown recliner and turns on the TV to the entertainment channel. He had his full concentration on the television.
"Hey (huff puff) Fuji," says Eiji still trying to catch his breathe. "Mind letting (huff puff) me (huff puff) sit? (huff puff) I'm tired (huff puff)." Fuji snapped out of his state.
"Oh sure, Eiji." He gets up and lets his best friend sit. There was only room for one of the boys on the recliner.
"Thanks Fuji." While Eiji sits on the recliner, Fuji actually went to sit in front of the television. 'This is serious. Very serious,' thought Eiji.
Soon music comes on to indicate the start of the evening entertainment news.
"Good evening everyone. I'm Shiba. We'll get straight to it as most people are most anxious for the announcement of the winner for 'Spend a Day With Tezuka'. Just a couple of minutes ago, the stage was set for the selection of the winner. In a super enlarged enclosed vacuum like structure, all the entries were placed in their respective containers and placed into this spectacular structure. We will now go to Inui Sadaharu with information on how the structure works. Inui?" The scene on the television screen is now the event setting. A man with square glasses appears on the screen with a microphone.
"Hello, I'm Inui Sadaharu. The structure standing behind me was made by me. It's made so that each entry has an equal chance of winning. Even though the winning entry will come out through a slot on the bottom of the structure, the entries at the top can still end up coming out as the winner. Each plastic ball weighs approximately an ounce and a half which requires some effort to mix them up so that top plastic balls could have the same chance of winning. So using my knowledge of physics, I have made it so that once the switch for the vacuum is turned on, each plastic ball becomes as light as cotton balls and all the plastic balls mixes evenly." The camera zooms in on the large structure, encircling it a couple of times. "Now for the main event. To present the special guest who will be the one to pick the winner, here's Tezuka's manager, Taichi Dan!"
When a small little boy who looked the age of twelve came out, Fuji couldn't believe his eyes. He was expecting some big macho man or something.
"Hello. Hi everyone! This is the first time I appeared to the public and yes believe it. I am Tezuka's manager. Don't underestimate my abilities just because of my size." He clears his throat. "Onward with the conclusion to this contest. The person who will select a winner will not be me. In fact, everyone watching is in for a special treat. Our special guest is the one and only TEZUKA!" Applause could be heard in the background as Tezuka appeared from behind curtains in stylish casual wear and wearing his signature glasses.
Fuji's smile only grew wilder when he saw Tezuka come onto the stage. The young actor didn't say anything but pushed the switch up to start the mixing. All the little plastic balls flew up to the top of the structure, colliding furiously. A tiny slot for one plastic ball to fall into opened. When Tezuka saw the slot open, he pulled the switch down and all the plastic balls flew down, and that special one landed in the slot.
"WE HAVE A WINNER!" Taichi proudly announces. He pulls out the slot, takes out the plastic ball and opens it. "The winner is...," he unfolds the entry sheet, "Yako Gureta! Congratulations to you if you are watching at this very moment. If you happened to miss the event, it'll be announced again tomorrow morning. Your 'Spend a Day With Tezuka' will take place exactly a week from now, on Valentine's Day! How exciting, right? Thank you all for watching and participating, and congratulations once again to our winner, Yako Gureta. Good night!" The television turns off.
"Fuji... sorry you didn't win," said a sad Eiji. Fuji turns his face to his best friend with a smile and not with a frown like Eiji expected.
"You don't have to feel sorry for me, Eiji. Did you see how many people participated? The chances that I would be the winner would literally be one in a million or even two. Don't mind me, Eiji. It would've been nice if I could meet Tezuka, but it wasn't in the stars for me."
"Fuji, let's go eat. I'll treat you to some hamburgers!" cheered Eiji hoping to lighten up Fuji.
"Okay," answered Fuji. Both boys rise from their seat and left for some fast food in the city.
"A successful contest!" yelled Taichi. "Wrap it up!" he claps twice and all the members of the cleaning crew went straight to work. Taichi approaches Tezuka, "Now that wasn't so bad. I don't know why you were so against this idea in the first place. Can't you see how popular you are?"
Tezuka simply answered, "Something's off. Manage it better" and he walked off.
"Everything went perfectly. What are you talking about? Sheesh," grunted Taichi Dan.
"Tezuka is right actually. The person who happened to be a winner was a fluke," said Inui, wiping his glasses.
"That's impossible! Someone explain this to me! Inui?." Inui takes out his data book.
"When we were counting the number of entries, I also wrote down each and every name of the participants." Taichi's mouth drops.
"That's a lot of names!" he exclaimed.
"One of many reasons. The main one was to prevent anyone from entering more than once, but now it has been proved useful in another way." He reaches for a random plastic ball that wasn't chosen as the winner. He opens the ball and pulls out the entry sheet and holds it next to the winner's sheet. "See the difference?" Taichi scans both entries carefully and shook his head.
"The only difference I see is the personal information."
Inui points at the lower left corner of the random entry. "Look here." Taichi takes the entry sheet and had to really focus to read what was stamped there.
"It's the number 435693." Inui hands him Yako Gureta's entry sheet.
"Look at the bottom left corner here." Taichi looks carefully. His eyes widen with surprise.
"...there's no number here..." said Taichi with a look of death. "Ahh! How could I have screwed up so badly?"
"Also when the name was called, I thought it sounded familiar. I decided to not mention it while the event was still airing so I'm telling you now. If I could recall correctly, Yako Gureta was one of the workers who was hired to put entries into each ball. She must've wanted to enter the contest but was too late to do so, so she decided to take the place of a participant. Coincidently the participant whom she replaced turned out to be the winner and should be the winner."
Still with a panicked look in his eyes, Taichi asks "What should we do?"
"Leave it to me. I have all the data right here and on my database. I will go through each plastic ball for the numbers and strike them out on my database. Eventually only one name will remain and that should be the winner," explains Inui.
Finally Taichi breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank you Inui."
"The four common signs and symptoms in medical diagnosis is pain, hyperthermia, lassitude, and weight loss. We'll start with pain. Pain is the most common symptom in medical diagnosis. The etiologies of pain can be classified into three: trauma, infection, and neoplasm," Professor Ryuzaki lectured once again, the same everyday.
Fuji was taking notes on everything his professor said but wasn't processing the information like he usually did. The contest outcome surprisingly did weigh heavily on his mind. Saeki, who now sits next to Fuji instead of behind him, could sense Fuji's uneasiness.
"Hey Fuji." Saeki's voice causes Fuji's head to turn toward him. "You okay?" Fuji nods his response, but Saeki didn't buy it. There was nothing else Saeki could've done. He couldn't keep pestering Fuji to tell him what's wrong; he was taught better.
"Gina, there's a rumor about the Tezuka contest yesterday. Did you hear?" asked Nina, who sat diagonally across from Fuji and Saeki. Fuji couldn't help but divert his attention from the lesson to the girls.
"No. Tell me what happened," answered Gina.
"Well, apparently the winner Yako whatever the name was turned out to be an invalid participant!" Gina gasped loudly, so loudly the professor stopped her lesson.
"If you wish to gossip, do it outside but it will not happen in this lecture hall. Now weight loss is the loss of more than ten percent of the body weight and this weight loss is involuntary and unexplained. Some etiologies of weight..." scolded Professor Ryuzaki and then instantly went right back to lecturing.
"Gina, be quiet next time," whispered Nina.
"Sorry Nina. Continue," apologized Gina.
"My older cousin was hired as a cleanup crew member and he overheard Tezuka's manager and some genius talking."
"What does this mean then?" asked Gina.
"It means a completely new winner will be announced soon and instead of the faulty winner spending Valentine's Day with Tezuka, the real winner will spend Valentine's Day with Tezuka," explained Nina. "I hope I'm that lucky person," she added with a dreamy look on her face.
Fuji went right back to work after listening to those two girls. Saeki turned his attention to Fuji and somehow felt the normal Fuji was back again, and he smiled.
"Fujiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii," screamed Eiji as the event on February 7th was repeated once again today. Dragged all the way home on foot by the vigorous Fuji.
"Here sit." Fuji pushes Eiji into the recliner. Eiji was quite taken back by Fuji's behavior and was confused as heck. Fuji took his seat in front of the television again. Eiji was almost too nervous to move from his seat let alone speak.
The evening entertainment news' music came on, which made Fuji sit up and concentrated.
"Good evening. I'm Shiba with extremely important news. It has come to our attention that the winner of 'Spend a Day With Tezuka' was not actually a legitimate entry. Yako Gureta, a female worker, who was hired by Taichi Dan to help with the contest took matters into her own hands when she was clearly too late to enter the contest. Unknown by her, all the legitimate entries were stamped with their own unique number and her entry sheet failed to provide a number and was proved to be invalid. Inui Sadaharu volunteered to fix the mistake and was expected to give the name of the real winner after three days. However due to his hasty work, he was able to provide us with the name earlier this morning! I wish I could reveal the name, but it was a personal request by Tezuka that he'd announce the real winner. We have him here today with us. Please welcome Tezuka!"
Music begins playing and Tezuka is seen appearing from backstage. Tezuka bows before the camera and takes a seat next to Shiba. Once the music faded into the background, Tezuka started talking. "Thank you for granting my request."
"It's our pleasure, Tezuka," answers Shiba who looks at Tezuka dreamingly. Tezuka pays no extra attention to her and turns to the camera.
"I apologize for all the confusion and inconveniences that this contest has brought. It should've been conducted better and didn't meet up to everyone's standards so I offer my sincere apologies. The only proper way to announce the actual winner is if I personally do it. Also, for next week's activities on Valentine's Day, it'll be one extravagant experience for the winner and we're going to make sure of it because of this mistake we made. Of course, it was originally planned to be an experience that the winner would enjoy and never forget, but like I said; due to our foolish mistake, Valentine's Day standards are set much higher for us to fulfill. Without further ado, congratulations to..."
Fuji was mesmerized by Tezuka's facial features and expression that he was no longer paying attention to what the actor was saying.
"Fuji Syusuke. I'm looking forward to meeting you next week." Tezuka ended with his oh so rare sexy smile.