7.
Wine Country – Uninvited Guests – Paper Tiger – Finishing Old Business – The Hikikomori - Job Offer
August, 2009 ~ La Rioja, Spain
The vineyards of the town of Haro spread wide along its hills; the fragrant, rich scent of grapes filling the thick Mediterranean air. Once a year the festivals come and its inhabitants mark themselves purple and joyous, the last children of distant Dionysus.
It was an old place. Not far from Calahorra, itself a place of grand history that had witnessed ages of iron and stone. Not as well remembered, but it kept to itself and knew its private joys. This was a thing Richard Alpert understood and respected, and a large part of the reason why he'd chosen it for his retirement. It went often forgotten by tourists; left alone to live in peace, though there was much for the land to offer.
He lived peacefully in the two years since he'd escaped the island; not richly but comfortable and informed in a small cottage at the outskirts. He kept to a low profile, the old women in the town calling out cheerful greetings to the quiet Ricardo; he who could speak their tongue with the old, old accent. They marveled at that but didn't gossip. It wasn't their way when it came to caring for their own. He became their quiet son, and when the Englishmen and Americans with their broad, plain words came to try and talk to Alpert, they found no help in the town. They left, frustrated, and the old advisor watched them leave and bought a round each for the various bars. He knew who they were. He suspected what they wanted. He'd kept an eye on the business papers and one luxury he had selected for himself was a high end laptop stocked with a religiously updated office suite. Names, dates, who in Mittelos had been approached, financial fluctuations. He followed it all with distant, detached curiosity and more than a little irritation.
. . .
Richard's watchfulness didn't spare him the shock of returning home one day, gloaming eve setting in, and finding a familiar man sitting on his porch, hands clasped together in perfect patience. A thin briefcase sat between the feet. Richard felt shock, and yet not surprise. He lingered on the little cobbled path, returning an even, unreadable gaze for several long moments before tilting his head and speaking with slow caution. "Hello, Ben."
Benjamin Linus nodded back, eyes never leaving his. "Richard. It's good to see you again."
"Is it?" Richard waited for a response that didn't come. He moved up the cobbles to take the basket-woven chair next to his old compatriot. Still wary, he looked the smaller man over, noting the light suit and neatly trimmed hair. "You're looking good. Youthful, even. Island life still agrees with you, I see. Maybe more than ever."
Nothing. He tried again, looking for information on the world he left. "I'm really rather surprised you were kept on, Ben. You'd think Jack would have been a little more cautious, considering the history."
"Jack's dead." The words were flat, without inflection. A flutter of startlement ran through Richard, apparently showing on his face as Ben flickered a glance up to him. "It wasn't me." Deadpan. Richard licked his lips as Ben shrugged. "You didn't know."
"Kate was upset when they got on the plane. Said he was injured. Wouldn't say anything else. He... passed it to you?" Richard licked his lips again.
"He had better sense than that. Considering the history." Ben tilted his head. "Hugo. Which brings us to now, if we sum up all this little nonsense regarding our business, as I'm certain we are both quite well informed. They did try to approach you."
Richard took a moment before answering, surprised at the leadership choice. "Couple months ago, yes. Got nothing."
"I'd assumed."
"Thanks for the warning, by the way." A note of sardonic anger entered his voice.
Ben didn't twitch at the jab. "Were your visitors from Paik or Hanso?"
"Paik." Richard shook his head. "I don't understand the movement there. I'm watching it, but I don't understand. Why them?"
"I suspect some of it is quite simple. What's more complex is their method." Ben leaned back, his voice entering a long-familiar tone of musing. "Mm. That clarifies a little for me. Paik establishes a bioscience firm, an industry they've never had a foothold in and they have no real names on their staff. The firm lands in England, a stone's throw from Widmore, who was in bioscience and which Paik buys, and the new firm's only particularly named officer is a former executive from Hanso."
"You think this all stems from them somehow? A distorted move from Hanso?"
Ben gave a light shrug. "That's the thing. I don't. Their founder hasn't moved, nor have any of the old Dharma remnants. But the latter have also been contacted, apparently by the same Paik sources that tried to approach you. So there's the layout. A move was put on Widmore. The initial move was started within Hanso, according to my information. Hanso sees a death in its corporate ladder, and then some movement in its staff. It ended externally, via Paik, and all sources have an expressed interest in Mittelos Bioscience."
Richard leaned back in the chair, absorbing the litany. "Where's the simple bit?"
"I can understand a personal interest from Paik, specifically the CEO, Woo-Jung Paik. His daughter and son in law are now both missing, presumed dead, and under mysterious circumstances. His granddaughter is missing, as far as he knows." Another flicker of the blue eyes as Richard started. "She is safe and cared for."
"Ben." Richard's tone was a warning.
"Woo-Jung is a thug." For the first time, some inflection entered Benjamin's voice. It was distaste tinted with anger. "His staff are gangsters. You saw Kwon's file. I've accomplished better parenting and I've been repeatedly informed I'm a bastard. The child deserves her inheritance. She could certainly do better in relations than her grandfather."
"Nonetheless, they are her family." Richard's voice was still sharp.
"Her family gave itself up to the island." Ben's voice went flat again. "That makes matters our responsibility. I take that seriously and I will not give up a child to an incomprehensible and possibly dangerous situation. Woo-Jung is not the main issue here. I don't know yet who is. The Paik bioscience officer, Flood, is a paper tiger. He's working for someone else. I don't know their interests yet. I doubt they're well-meant."
"Which means everyone who's worked for Mittelos may be a target for pressure. Again, thanks for the warning."
"I got your point the first time. This is a digression, Richard." The cold stare, the slight tilt of the head towards him.
Richard smiled. There was no mirth in it. "To hell with that. You used me as bait to watch these Paik moves."
"So I did. Over Hugo's objections, which I count as a mild personal victory. I admit there may be a taste of revenge here." Ben tilted his head slightly at Richard's blank look. "He's told me some interesting stories of the last days we all had together."
The older man shook his head. "I don't understand."
"What happened at the temple, Richard? What don't I remember?"
Something cold and sick dropped into his stomach.
"Hugo told me they tortured Sayid. To be sure he wouldn't be one of them." The voice was deceptively mild. "It was handled very calmly. Like they were used to it, Dogen and the others. Hugo remembered it quite well." Ben arched an eyebrow. "I did warn that this was a digression."
"Ben." In an attempt to sound soothing, it came out a whisper.
"What did they do to me? When I was a child?" A flare entered the blue eyes. "Did we do that to the other children, when we took them from the plane?"
Richard couldn't say anything.
"Did we torture them, too?"
He closed dark eyes. He knew Ben would take it as the confirmation he couldn't say.
"You knew."
In self-defense, he flashed back. "You never asked!"
"How could I ask? I never knew!" It was a snap that bordered on a shout. The struggle to regain his composure was visible and Richard watched him take a deep breath before speaking again. "You and Jacob left me out of what happened at the temple."
"You would have overreacted. Like now. We had to be sure - "
"It doesn't matter." Ben cut him off with a vicious gesture. "Jacob's way is over, and I can at the very least be comforted by that. I didn't know. I didn't know to ask, though perhaps I should have pressed more. Pressed for something other than your notes." He exhaled. "Now we both get to live with our regrets." He stared off as Richard said nothing to that. "Here we are in wine country and you live like a hermit. What are you scared of? Life? Your last vestiges of connection to the island?"
"I'm not scared of anything." Defensive. The entire conversation had thrown him off his balance.
"Whatever. I'm here to take care of that last." He reached down to the briefcase, snapped it open, and pulled out a sheaf of paper. He thrust it at Richard. "I'm buying you out of Mittelos."
"Wh-" He didn't reach out for it.
"It's a fair deal, and if you invest it, you'll live like a king. Buy a vineyard, watch your fingernails grow. I don't care. I put in a list of local financial advisors that seem well respected. I particularly like the one in Pamplona. As a bonus, you'll stop getting visitors and they'll give up trying to tap your phone."
"What?"
"Just sign so I can go." Ben glanced down at his watch. "I need to catch a flight in about two hours. You've been informed of what I'm willing to tell you. The emergency line remains available if something goes awry. In all other regards, you're out."
With numb fingers, Richard took the sheaf of paper and began to skim through it, looking for loopholes, looking for numbers. He caught sight of the buyout offer and raised both eyebrows. More than a fair deal. "Where are you going?"
"London." A quick, meaningless smile. "We've been doing some hiring."
. . .
Chiyoda, Tokyo
A pale, thin face was lit by gleaming computer screen. Scraggly, wild dark hair fell into the young man's eyes and he pushed it back with a slender hand. He licked his lips frequently, anxiety gnawing at the base of his stomach. Kanji, ascii images, obscure internet jokes scrolled on the screen while dark eyes bulged, reading but not reading. Futaba-chan held no real interest for him right then. It was just something to absorb while he waited to go out.
The concept was always frightening to Josuiki Tsuchi. His parents had seemingly grown used to it; the long nights and the quiet scuttling from his little room. He would come out at night to eat while his family slept. He communicated solely by IM and text message. He banked by automation, he got work via a faceless website, and he contributed, at least a little, to his family's rent. He could do that much, even if face to face communication with them frightened him. He was terrified of what they'd say, despite his friends, the other faceless hikikomori supporting him. Terrified that he'd left everyone down. Terrified to try for more. Living with the fear was still better than dealing with Tokyo unemployment rates. Better than trying and failing miserably. It was okay now to stay in and live via electric ether. They even had their own little society.
But that night, Tsuchi had to go out. Some of the others he knew had banded together; that night they'd all go to Akihabara to get the new Monster Hunter game. It was supposed to be less frightening if they'd all emerge in a group. Instead, it was the opposite. His guts gnawed. His instincts said something would go wrong.
It took a gasp and a mindless push to get himself moving out the door as the hour crawled towards midnight.
. . .
Tsuchi stuck with the group for the entire trip despite his instincts, the five of them together, the one outlier cawing at drunken businessmen who swore back, gutter language. He knew something'd go bad. He was right; the bad blood was the cousin of one of the others, a youth that claimed to know yakuza in Roppongi. An asshole, in other words. Tsuchi kept his eyes closed as much as possible and pressed on, trying to be invisible. Avoiding the eyes of the shop owner who stayed open late for hikikomori business, took their money and more for the privilege, and still looked down on them for it.
A high screech drew his attention when the group scuttled out the shop door. "Hey, hey! Gaijin fatboy! Lookeee!" Roppongi asshole was pointing at a Westerner leaning against a concrete pole, making cackling noises at the man. Tsuchi grew certain the asshole was on drugs.
The westerner looked back at his verbal abuser with a crinkled look of annoyance. "Dude. That's not nice."
"Fatboy!"
"And not really creative. I've had better, dude. You can't top a southern butthead for insults, man."
Roppongi unleashed a torrent of Japanese and broken English insults he'd clearly stolen from a bunch of cut-rate action movies. The other guy looked bored. Tsuchi tried to shrink in on himself. The others just shifted uncertainly, unsure of what to do. They said nothing. When Roppongi paused, the big guy spoke up again.
"If you're the kid I'm looking for, man, I make some rotten choices. You Tsuchi Josuiki?"
That made Tsuchi jump. Roppongi just cackled as the big westerner looked past him and towards Tsuchi. "Please tell me it's you instead. You understand me, right? Cuz this is real pointless if you don't. And I can ask for a beer in Japanese, about it."
Tsuchi clutched his plastic bag closer to himself, nodding a little. The westerner kept ignoring Roppongi, who'd given up on some of his insults as he wasn't getting any interesting response.
"Okay. If you're the kid I'm looking for, you're supposed to do translation work. English, Japanese, Korean. Buncha dialects."
"Internet only," he managed to squeak out, in English.
"Yeah, I can't do that. I need someone on hand. But on the bright side, I also pay in all-expenses covered trips to very private tropical islands. Plus money."
Roppongi, who could apparently follow some of all this, finally shut up and flat out stared at Tsuchi. So did the others in his group. If it was possible for a human being to shrink into their own personal pocket dimension, Tsuchi was working very hard on being the first to figure this out.
"You get your own little cabin, nobody bothers you if you don't want. And you could get some sun, dude, you look like hell. I read about you kids, you shut ins. That ain't healthy, dude." The guy shrugged and sauntered slowly towards him. There was a card clutched in a big hand and he shoved it out towards Tsuchi, who shrank back on instinct before gingerly reaching out to take it.
Roppongi pushed in, tried to snatch the card from the big guy while giving Tsuchi a dirty look. He inhaled and shrank back again when the man grabbed one of Roppongi's hands with his own. Roppongi went still and his eyes went wide. The big guy looked past him, back at Tsuchi, who found enough confidence to flick a hand forward and pluck the card from the man. This time, Roppongi didn't move. The big guy released him, gave him a look that Tsuchi couldn't read, and then looked back at Tsuchi. "I'm Hurley. You think it over. If you're in, phone or email anything on the card. We'll get it going." Roppongi began to back away, eyes still wide.
"Seriously, kid. Think about it. Get out of the house, get some color. You look like... I don't know, some whipped up Eastern version of Edward Scissorhands."
Tsuchi flushed, hand nearly crushing the card out of instinct. "'Kay."
"Okay? And if you gotta talk to a guy named Ben, don't freak out. He's like that to everybody." The big man rolled his eyes and turned to go. Tsuchi turned just a little to glance at the others, then back.
The big guy had vanished.
Roppongi fled down a side street, leaving the rest of the ragged little group to stand around in shock.