Red isn't a lie and none of this content is produced at Heyworth House (aka Zoo).
Stories
Fe & Fi
Updates: In Fe & Fi, the fictitious establishment Nerf And Turf has been renamed to The Nerd And Surf, in light of it being a seafood and wings focused sports bar. In the world depicted in the story, so the management of the sports bar averts being sued by Hasbro over trade name infringement, despite the fact that in this fictitious bar, there are amusements that include a fastball pitching range with real radar clocked baseballs, and several other safety friendly Nerf toy based sports games that patrons of the bar can play, in addition to watching sports on the large screen televisions.
I don't often give sports the attention it deserves, and I'm doing my best to try and include it where and when I can, seeing as it is often a great source of support for many of the causes advocated for on Shhhh! Digital Media, and not to mention, a healthy way to keep active and show support to to participaction around the world.
As a result, I'll be adding ParticipACTION to my list of advocated charities over the next week. I have an Irish friend who is into sports, and always has been a supporter of sports, and though his influence certainly contributed to this decision (I miss watching hockey night in Canada), my friend is originally Irish, and I'm originally Welsh (amongst other European and Indigenous ancestry). However, we're both Canadian.
Chapters
- Johnny Sturgess (Finished October 15, 2025)
- The Wild Side (Finished October 16, 2025)
- Osaka And Keun (Finished October 18, 2025 11:30 PM EST)
- This Deal Has Two Front Doors (Finished October 20, 2025 11:30 PM EST)
- The Fall Of A Tyrant (Started October 21, 2025)
This content is produced by the artists indicated on the site, including
myself, Brian Joseph Johns.
I, under no circumstance will trade, barter or otherwise swap my
own identity for that of another person and I protect the same right for those
who've contributed their artwork to the various projects under my management
at Shhhh! Digital Media, my own company, no matter the colour symbolism
involved. These rights are protected by law under the
Charter Of Rights And Freedoms under
section 7.
Also, FYI, I don't reverse or alter the polarity or
context of my expression (sometimes referred to as "blove" by some people). I
say what I mean and mean what I say, and generally only joke or am sarcastic
with people I really know very well.
If you enjoy reading the
content on this website, then please consider making a donation to one of the
following charities below, or by the purchase of merchandise on our shop
at
https://shop.shhhhdigital.com.
Support Charity
Please support education and information access where you can in
addition to these charities:
Help research that provides cures and support treatment for sick
children.
David Suzuki FoundationThrough evidence-based research, education and policy
analysis, we work to conserve and protect the natural environment,
and help create a sustainable Canada. We regularly collaborate with
non-profit and community organizations, all levels of government,
businesses and individuals.
Donate directly to FireAid today to help us start rebuilding our
community. Direct donations will be distributed under the advisement
of the Annenberg Foundation and will be distributed for short-term
relief efforts and long-term initiatives to prevent future fire
disasters throughout Southern California.
United Nations FundUnited Way Worldwide
Two organizations whose contribution of expertise, human and
financial resources and volunteer efforts provide humanitarian
solutions to real world problems the entire world over. These
charities operate worldwide. The United Nations Fund supports the
various programs part of the United Nations' global mandate, as much
a foundation as it is a roof around the world.
I'd like to point out that it was the incredible
Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention.
I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great
contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend
those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of
one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.
"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have
fought in war."
Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950
The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting
Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find
treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies
and support programs.
For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting
heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and
improved the lives of millions of others.
The ALS Society Of BCALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive
neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary
muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to
combat this disease and help those with it to survive.
Muscular Dystrophy CanadaMuscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of
those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to
provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for
a cure through well-funded research.
Humane Society InternationalThe Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of
animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this
world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire
planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.
The Global Foodbanking NetworkEnsuring that people the world over have enough food day to day
in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day
and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This
is a world wide charity.
The Edgar Allan Poe MuseumBecause Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said
he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I
could kill him and bury his
heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a
brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of
Amantillado!
In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar
Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane
Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert
George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and
Pierre Burton (for
The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us
are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians
and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important.
Really it is.
Literally. It allows us to approach our
employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask:
where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and
toes.WikipediaThe model for what may become the
Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of
humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we
know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future.
Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If
you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to
Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the
site serves pages to millions every day.
Humble BundleA video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of
different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully
soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software
their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits
and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do
their part too.
Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an
estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing
to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS
research to change lives forever.
Other Ways To Help Using Your Computer
Donate your idle computer time to
science! Join the World Community Grid by clicking on one of the links below
and follow the instructions for how to participate:
Thank you for your support
Shhhh! Digital Media
Brian Joseph Johns
Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:
Grand Tapestry Of Moments 02
Three For Horror: They Came From Halloween!
by Brian Joseph Johns
Fe & Fi
Johnny Sturgess
Its not every day that you break the fourth wall, but here I am doing
exactly that with a reader I've never met in my life, and someone I will
likely never truly know the way that you are going to know me. You see, this
is a one way medium, where the story only flows in one direction, and have I
got a doozie of a story for you, and given that you're on the receiving end,
you're in for a real treat. A trick or treat that is.
Who am I you might ask yourself? Perhaps I'm an egomaniac, hell bent on
talking about himself for an hour. The truth is, you'd be wrong about that
assumption, because the fact of the matter is, that I'm very much a people
person. In fact, I'm a professional people person for a company with a long
history of giving women the tools they can ply as artists of their being,
and for the essence of their own look. To give their face a little colour
and their eyes a little more sparkle. I'm an outside sales rep
for Kawaī kao Cosmetics.
That's right. Go ahead and say it.
But you're a guy, you don't even wear makeup. I mouthed the words
exactly as you read them. Its true. I'm a guy. I don't wear the product,
though when I'm on camera, the makeup artist might use a little concealer.
Maybe some foundation as is the case with all professionals who work in
front of the camera. That's not my field, but inevitably as a sales
professional, I'm sometimes asked to do a presentation in front of a camera.
For hundreds of thousands, if not millions on late night television a few
times years ago. You know. Infomercials. Not my regular gig, but one I've
done two or three times for Kawaī kao Cosmetics in the past.
So, you might ask yourself then, in the interest of authenticity, a
weaponized word that is often thrown around too much of late, how does a guy
who doesn't even wear make-up end up as the outside sales rep for a company
whose product line encompasses the entirety of cosmetics?
First of all, what do sales reps even do? Well, they sell stuff.
In my field, there are front line sales associates, most if not all of whom
are women, who do their job exceedingly well. I mean, they wear the product.
They demonstrate it quite well. They're artists, every single one of them,
bringing art to the canvas of the human face. They're articulate as well,
which in this business is important. And, they're women. They aren't
challenging any societal norms by selling make-up, and most of our clients
want what we sell.
Sometimes however, there are clients, often powerful women, who run their
company with an iron heel if you get my drift, and our front line sales
staff don't often have the necessary tools to be able to communicate
effectively with these modern vixen leaders of the corporate world.
It used to be, that men were running that show, but that is certainly not
the case anymore. When it was men at the helm, a sales force of women, often
very charismatic and attractive women, who knew how to play men by their two
leashes: the one we got from the world of fashion known as a
neck tie, and the other one that comes in a variety of shapes and
sizes, that we got from nature. You know, the leash that rests just above a
man's family jewels if you catch my drift.
Most women of world awareness are very familiar with how to use one or the
other to control a man, and that is certainly not to say that all women are
manipulators, because that definitely isn't the case. Some women don't even
think like that, and of those women, most of them never end up with the cozy
corner office. However, some women of particular awareness are very capable
of using either leash, in addition to however many other intellectual gifts
they often possess. And now, the cozy corner offices of corporate
headquarters everywhere are fully populated with women at the helm of these
companies. Guys, you might be thinking that its the end for us, and
you'd be sadly mistaken if you dared in that direction. Remember. Its a
partnership. The longest standing partnership with which we're familiar as
human beings. So, us guys have to get our piece of the pie. That's where I
come in.
Most of what I have to offer in terms of my delivery comes from my empathy,
my intellect and my confidence. Both in the product I'm selling, and in
myself. If you can't sell one, you definitely will not be able to sell the
other. Its as simple as that, and when you're dealing with a woman who
commands an entire army of neck ties, with one hand, and the company's
pocket book with the other, you can be sure that she damned well knows how
to use her heels, or her comfy shoes as the case may be.
I'm not a bad looking guy, and some might even regard me as a little bit
hunky. I don't really focus on that or spend a lot of time preening that
aspect of my being, except for taking care to ensure that I'm clean and
professionally presentable when and where I need to be, and for the most
part, that is always in front of these women at the helm, and often within
their corner offices at very large companies. They're the ones guiding the
direction and prosperity of hundreds if not thousands of employees globally
as the one in charge at their company. I'm the guy that has something that
their company cannot be without.
So how does a guy like me, one that most such women can see coming from a
kilometer away, fit into the sales force of a company like Kawaī kao
Cosmetics?
The answer is, that I'm a charmer. Not insincere or a con man. I'm helping
these women to understand why it is that what I'm selling is going to make
the world of difference for their company. I might not wear it, but I have
an eye for what is appealing when it comes to the art of etching grand
rennaissance paintings of colour, light and shadow on one's face. I know
what gets men's attention. Not just some generic cookie cutter
representation of a man, but every guy I see, I can tell you exactly what
makes him tick when he sees a woman.
Most of these women who are the world's corporate leaders, almost always
have a nemesis. A competitor, often one of the opposite sex, who seems to be
immune to her ability to take charge or to wield his "leashes" on life. So
naturally, I'm the key to solving these women's problems, despite the fact
that they often don't realize that they have such a problem in the first
place.
My pitch is simple. I come in. First, I listen to them. Then, I speak
confidently with them, giving them the respect they deserve, and at the same
time, treating them as equals. Being candid. I find out a bit about
them, and after a meeting or two, I have enough to know that they have a
nemesis. I just give them the tools, by way of our product and an idea of
what turns the crank of that nemesis, and they're back in charge again, and
I've just signed a two year deal where they'll stock, and carry Kawaī
kao Cosmetics in their stores throughout North America, South America,
Europe, Asia, Oceania and eventually on Mars if I'm still alive then.
I bring home the big deals. That's what I do. Or did, until things changed,
that is.
Remember when I said that I don't wear the product. Well... that part wasn't
entirely true, or at the very least, always true. When I was a youth,
I had dreams of being a music star, and when we'd perform gigs at the school
events, my bandmates and I sometimes wore stage makeup. Very common since
the invention of motion pictures and way before that since the invention of
live theatrical performances. We're talking hundreds, if not thousands of
years in some cultures throughout the world that stage makeup has been an
important part of performance arts.
What harm is there in it, if our faces are an artist's canvas, and we enjoy
embellishing the art that we already clearly are. Its good for those
creative souls who enjoy that aspect of their presentation. Its good for my
company and their bottom line. Therefore, by the company being the means to
my prosperity, its definitely good for me. We all win, and any situation
where all of us win, is where we need to aim ourselves.
Now we're getting to the tricky part, where I, the protagonist of this story
so far, runs into a contradiction of values that has an impact upon my
future and changes the course of my life. Forcing me to make an assessment
of my stance on certain issues and to reconcile where I was with where I
believe I should be standing.
Before you judge me, I implore you to remember that in this life, there are
forces at work behind the scenes that ensure that we end up with by way of
our earning it, that which we protect. That's what we're led to believe and
that's probably the case for most of us.
For some of us however, there's a more reserved and sinister set of forces
behind the scenes, that creates its own alternate version of your pursued
life narrative, no matter what you protect and what you don't.
Like a force that purposely tries to keep you going in the path
they've chosen for you, so much so that your efforts to steer
yourself clear of such a force, are rewritten in such a way that makes it
appear that you support this hidden force and the place they're trying to
confine you within their plan.
A bizarre conspiracy to those who've never encountered it before.
A very real and damaging obstacle if and when you are in the midst of it.
Before I continue, I should introduce myself. I am a man of thirty six
years, once divorced in a clean separation and two years later, a
settlement. My ex-wife Nancy and I remained friends for years beyond that
time when we finally settled. When she was thirty, and I was twenty-six (I
was always fascinated by older women).
I remember that night well. We called the lawyers. Had a few drinks
together. Argued a bit. Reminisced some. The lawyers called us and told us
they'd come to an amicable agreement, which we signed off on. Then Nancy and
I had the best sex of our lives that night, but we never from that moment
spent any time together alone, ever again.
We still talk from time to time, but she recently tied the knot and for
obvious reasons, we're keeping our distance from each other.
She might not be my Nancy any longer, but I am still my own
Johnny Sturgess. Corporate Sales. Kawaī kao Cosmetics.
At your service, so long as you'd care to sign a minimum one year retail or
distribution deal.
The Wild Side
My boss, the man I report to, he's been with the company for his entire
life. He started at the very bottom, first, as a clerk in the mail room
(back in the days of snail mail), and then was trained as the company's
first generation of computer administrators for the new email system,
despite that not really being what he'd wanted for his career path. He
persevered and rather than make waves, he made money, very much moving with
the current rather than against it as he'd told me a few weeks ago during a
company social event in Toronto at the site of one of our customers:
West Meet East International, in their fashion show/ballroom.
He'd always been fascinated with women, and not strictly as part of his
sexual appetite, but rather as someone with the eyes of an artist, who'd
never pursued a vocation in the arts. Instead, he saw art in the faces of
women, hence why he'd joined Kawaī kao Cosmetics back in the early days
in Osaka, Japan.
When an opening as an ISR (Inside Sales Rep) became available, he
immediately transferred from the IT department to sales, and never looked
back. He spent the next ten years working as an ISR, backing up his OSR
(Outside Sales Rep) Shiori Sachiko. She was eventually promoted to the head
of sales for the company (the position my boss now holds), while he was
promoted to the position of OSR, essentially working the same position
that I currently hold with the company.
Over the following ten years, Shiori was promoted to the board of directors,
while my boss, whose name I neglected to mention is Hiroyuki Hori, was
promoted to the head of the sales department, whose offices had moved from
Osaka, Japan, to Toronto, Ontario, Canada during that time. It took him
three months to re-establish himself in his new home in a lavish condo in
downtown Toronto, and another three before he made the best decision of his
career: hiring me.
That was ten years ago, back when Nancy and I had the best
(post-settlement) sex of our lives, which probably had at least a little bit
to do with my having landed this career position with Kawaī kao Cosmetics.
A little over a year ago, I was called into Hiroyuki's office. I had up
until that point, enjoyed a sort of elite status in the company, especially
given my sales track record. Our top clients, had nothing but praise for me,
and for our product, which carries a bit of clout in a company
like Kawaī kao. However, what Hiroyuki had in mind for me was something
for which I was not prepared.
It turns out that a there was a new player in town. A technology based
warehousing outfit, with a sizeable warehouse storefront dedicated to
everything fashion. They had locations in Paris. London. New York.
Los Angeles. Toronto. Seoul. Hong Kong, and Osaka, and had accumulated all
of this within the last three years thanks to their online sales and
distribution model. They were simply known as Keun (Korean for
enjoyably good), and even had their own dance style which was very
popular in the Gangnam district of Seoul, and the Umeda prefecture of Osaka,
and the Lan Kwai Fong district of Hong Kong. Toronto and Los Angeles, had
their own version of the same dance, but stylized it with a bit more of a
western signature.
Keun was a company whose niche market had secured them the lucrative online
distribution deals for many major fashion brands. Many, except
for Kawaī kao Cosmetics.
Hiroyuki Hori wanted very much to change that. And so it was that I was
tasked with meeting their purchasing manager, Kazumi Fuku Chiharu, in Osaka
in three days time.
It was Tuesday afternoon when I met with Hiroyuki, and my flight would be
leaving on Thursday morning, from Pearson International with a stop in
Calgary, and then a stopover in Vancouver, where I'd catch a second flight
direct to Osaka International Airport.
I spent the rest of my day making the rounds to two of my customers, the
first being the director of marketing for a retailer we dealt with, and the
second being with one of the customers whom I could never read. She was one
of those women I'd mentioned, who ran the show for a company with a world
presence, but she also possessed a serenity that seemed, at least to me and
my experience, to be otherworldly to say the least.
I met with Helayn Ying in her office at West Meet East International, and we
enjoyed a good discussion about the future of our strategic alliance and
where she envisioned that alliance in three years time. A time at which
point she indicated that she was in negotiations with Kawaī kao
Cosmetics to eventually merge one of our product lines with one of her
fashion lines. A considerably bold move, that would commit our businesses to
a partnership for decades to come, making our meeting more like the planning
phase of a strategic marriage in the feudal era.
The meeting went successfully and we bid each other farewell, after which I
ventured into the warehouse and the receiving area to meet with my good
friend Braden.
"I'm on my way out of town in two days. Want to go to the Nerd And Surf have
a few? Catch up on things?" I asked him.
"Are you psychic or something? I was just thinking of calling you up and
asking you if you wanted to go out for few drinks myself. Unbelievable
Johnny," Braden responded.
"That's my job. I can read 'em from kilometers away, and the same goes for
friends too. That's why I'm at the top of my game," I said to him, already
knowing that the poor guy needed a friend.
I know from working in this business for many years, that its a tight knit
crew. There aren't many places or people you can talk with in this business,
without it coming back at you from a different direction, let alone a
tabloid.
Braden and I had a good friendship however, and one that was built on trust.
We were two adventurous cowboys taking on life when and where it confronted
us, always trying to leave things just a little bit better than they were
before we happened upon them. Despite what it might seem to the contrary,
even guys like us needed someone who knew when to listen, and when to force
feed us the advice that we didn't want to hear. That was something that we
could rely upon from each other, Braden and I.
"I'm done here at six. That's in like two hours. I'll be at the Nerd And
Surf at six-thirty," Braden assured me.
"We'll grab a bite to eat, and then we'll see where the night takes us from
there," I responded.
After saying my goodbyes to everyone at West Meet East International, I
left, carried out a few errands. Made a few phone calls, and then made my
way to the Nerd And Surf.
For the record, let me state that the Nerd And Surf has long been our established hang-out. The place that Braden and I often went to when we needed a quick break from the tight knit industry in which we both worked. As I stated previously, it gave us a chance to have a tasty and nutritious seafood and wings focused platter, a chance to catch up, and a chance to throw back a few, though we certainly weren't there for one of those, having the hair of the dog that bit us for breakfast nights.
When I got there, I found my way to the bar and to where Braden was seated.
"Howdy buddy. So how's life at the center of action at West Meet East?" I asked him.
"Good. Things are definitely picking up for the coming holiday season. Longer hours. More pressure from the boss. More fashion synergy events. I'm sure you know the territory. I already ordered us the shellfish and wings platter. Wanna grab a table before we pitch a few?" asked Braden.
I signaled the bartender for a pair of pint glasses of our favourite lager, each with a shot of Rose's Lime Cordial, as we are gentiles of refine I'll have you know.
"Keys?" she smiled at me with that I'm being responsible by asking you, and by paying my way through college kind of smile.
"Its a done deal, though we're only here for a couple," I responded to her as I tossed her my car keys.
"That's what they all say, but to make it up to you, your first lager is on us," she responded tactfully, and with a keep your distance sort of charm.
I had no intention of flirting, but I could entirely see where she was coming from. Maybe it was because she reminded me of Nancy. An attractive young woman in her early twenties, working as a bartender in an establishment frequented by the current and upcoming generation of professionals in the downtown core, as well your local college and university crowd. I'd bet you that she'd be hit on every shift that she worked, at least a hundred times if not more. Of those flirts, there might be one real sincere charmer with a future.
That's not the say that the others were or are lesser human beings. They just couldn't acknowledge the fact that they were using a woman who was to them scenery along the trip of their life, as an affirmation of their masculinity and maybe to dodge ending up being labeled as one of the sausage party crowd.
Now I know what you're thinking, especially with my thinking, not speaking, terminology like that. Sausage party. An often secretly offensive label applied to men that like to party with other men, seeking male romantic partners. Consider my use of the statement to be slang, and not slander, because in the industry in which I'm employed, a considerable population of those professionals are such women and men who for their own reasons, prefer the company of the same sex over the opposite. Not all. Not few.
Consider that I know this after the fact of the story that I'm telling you, and not before, because I didn't always see things the way that I do now. But I can tell you this much for certain, that I didn't get to where I am now in terms of my perspective by having a bunch of self-righteous, indignant zealots trying to tell me what I can and can't think. Thought? That's the secret playground in your head. Where a person comes to understand the world around them, and if they have any sort of scruples, they empathize with the world around them to some degree in order to better understand it and hopefully, to become a better person along the way.
Some, who don't yet fully know themselves, do become uncomfortable in the presence of those whom they might have labeled as part of the sausage party, or for that matter, the oyster party crowd. And so, when faced with such a conundrum which they regard almost as a form of social disease, like playground cooties but for adults, they immediately seek to disprove their association with said crowd, by behaving in a way that contradicts it. Like immediately flirting with a nearby woman, with no consideration of her individuality or person. Basically, just using her to wipe one's own self clean of the cooties of the association of the sausage party.
Men and women who've not lived and learned long enough to understand this, are often apathetic to this fact, and that's why a young woman in her early twenties who works as a bartender at a popular bar will often find herself a conveninent target for the clean oneself of the sausage party cooties kind of guy, in addition to those just feeling friendly and confident over having had a few drinks. In my experience, that lack of apathy is an injustice to both the sausage and oyster party crowd, and the women and men that those apathetic use to wipe themselves clean of their association.
All that from one glance from a pretty young bartender who was very obviously preparing herself both emotionally and professionally for the long shift ahead. That's why I'm at the top of my game in the profession that should really be called, a people understander.
"So what's shaking?" I arrived with our Rose's Lime Cordial crowned pint glasses of lager, placing one of them down before Braden and the other in front of my place setting.
"Same old story. Same old song and dance. You know Helayn. She's a workaholic," Braden held up his glass, which I also did, and our night's voyage began.
"Its her company. Of course she's a workaholic. Another thing that she has in common with you," I said to him, already knowing that there was some kind of tension between the two.
"I know, but... I'm getting mixed signals. Its like one week, she's really trying to get through that invisible wall between us. A few secret glances in my direction, which she thinks that I don't notice. Then, she comes in person to make requests of the shipping and receiving department directly to the shipper slash receiver. In a company like hers, that just doesn't happen. So she's sending these clear signals, and then the next week, she's shying herself away from me. I'm really beginning to think that she's just being diplomatic so she doesn't scare away her back-up baby-sitter, which brings me to the other side of the equation..." Braden took another sip of his pint anxiously.
"Kori?" I confirmed with him, already having an inkling of the situation given our last outting of half a year earlier. Just before the summer of the same year.
"At the same time that Helayn is doing the see-saw with me. Pushing me away and pulling me back. Kori has for the entire time, really been quite forward, and not making any attempt to keep that fact hidden. In a way, its kind of exciting because her and I are on the same wavelength in a lot of ways, but at the same time, its like..." Braden explained his current life struggles to me, and I did the best thing that any good friend would do and listened.
"Like someone marking you as their territory?" I asked him, introducing him to a concept few understood as thoroughly as did I.
"Yeah. It is kind of like that. If it were anyone else, I'd have definitely put a stop to it. But when its someone you think about with interest... albeit, occasionally. Its a bit different," Braden drew some relief from his discussing this situation.
"But you don't want to use Kori as a means to play Helayn, right? I mean you wouldn't hook up with Kori, just to get Helayn's attention. You know? Withdrawing your interest to lure theirs in. Right?" I asked him like a therapist more so than a friend.
I did have some vested interest in this situation though, both professionally and personally as Helayn was one of our best clients, and Braden, one of my best friends.
"No. I don't think so. No. I'm thinking that I want to get on with my life. I'm in a good spot right now. I have opportunity ahead of me. I think that its time that I shared my life with a romantic partner. Someone I can trust. I don't think that Helayn knows what she wants, or that she's ready to make a decision to those ends, but I'm also afraid that if I make that choice for her, by pursuing what Kori is very obviously offering, that Helayn will regret not having come forward to me to speak about this," Braden confided in me.
"But your life counts in this adventure too. You do know that I take it? I mean, you can't wait forever for Helayn, but you could approach her yourself. Did you ever think of that?" I confirmed with Braden.
"I tried that once upon a time, and she just deflected it, and spun it around, making it out to be my shortcoming. That I needed to make a choice, and then a week later, she went back to doing the exact same thing. Push-me, pull-me," Braden revealed to me.
"Look. Braden. The way I see it is that you have two choices here. You either play the same game with Helayn that she's been playing with you. Push-her, pull-her. Or, you have done with that possibility, and instead start a life with Kori, never once for the sake of the heart of either woman, looking back in regret. Move forward on this buddy. Helayn obviously wants you to play her game, but you don't seem to be interested in that. So you've really got to hucker down and make a choice yourself. Helayn was right. She just doesn't want to ruin the fun of playing her way, and maybe you're the person that finally can do that with her. If you aren't however, then don't keep her hanging on," I said to him, already preparing the imaginary invoice for my therapy session.
By that point, the seafood and wings platter had come, along with another round of Rose's Lime Cordial crowned pints.
"Man, you did it again. You totally leveled the playing field, and its like so crystal clear what I have to do. Thank you so much man," Braden and I shook.
"What are friends for? So I'm going to Osaka. Leaving on Thursday morning. You're from that neck of the woods..." I started with him before he interjected.
"I'm from China originally, though I've traveled a lot in the region. I spent a lot of time in Korea mostly, but I also lived in Japan for a couple of years, in Kyoto. I visited Osaka more than a few times so I know some stuff. What do you need to know?" Braden offered.
"I've gotta land a rather important deal. I won't mention any names, but it involves a rather large online warehousing direct to customer shipping company, but they also have a number of large storefronts in major cities around the globe. Can you share anything with me that might help me to land the deal?" I asked Braden, knowing that despite his current humble financial existence, that he'd also chummed up with many influential people over the course of his young career as an acrobat performer with a Chinese traveling show. He'd mingled with the likes of statemen and celebrities from Mumbai, to Hanoi, to Busan and Seoul, to Shenzhen, Hong Kong and GuangZhou, and of course Kyoto. Braden was one of my secret weapons when it came to getting insider information before meeting for a deal with anyone from the Mid to Far East of Asia.
"There's the obvious. Be polite. Be cordial. Don't be tardy, but you already know all of that stuff, don't you?" Braden confirmed with me.
"I'm way beyond that. I need something that will get their attention. There will undoubtedly have been an army of guys like me sent by other cosmetics suppliers. I really want to stand out from them, and be remembered by the people who count. I've got the substance of being. I've got a great brand backing me up. I want the one thing that they'll remember, that makes me stick out from all of those other corporate and territory sales mojos," I explained to him, already getting signs from his expression that his tinker was already hard at work on finding that for which I was asking.
"Alright. I've got it. Nooo. I can't send you there..." he suddenly withdrew his ingenius possibility.
"Awww, come on man. You can't do that. If you can't send me there, then you obviously have to send me there because its obviously got what I'm looking for to stand out," I coaxed him a little harder than he'd sluffed me off of the idea.
"I don't know. This isn't just some flower shop I'm sending you to in order to find a fabled pink blossom banzai or something like that to gift them, you know?" Braden backed up even further.
"Really? That's all you've got for me considering I just helped you to solve an issue that has been an obstacle for your life for the last three years. Something that was keeping you trapped in place along your life's trajectory for years. I thought friends did better than that for each other?" I really played the violin hard this time, squeezing the melancholy out of every note over the matter of a friend turning his back to a request for help from another friend.
"Its a shop, but its closed to tourists. Only the locals use it. Its in the temple prefecture. Its even hidden between two temples and unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you'll miss it. But first, before you even go, you'll need to visit another temple, and get a special sigil..." Braden began explaining to me.
"A what?" I asked him.
"A sigil. A ward," Braden paused, accenting each noun for me.
"What exactly are those?" I asked him, appearing as confused as I truly was.
"Alright. You know how when you go camping up north in Huntsville or the Bay of Lakes in Ontario, you usually make a stop to buy insect repellent? You know, so you don't get eaten alive by flies?" Braden, who'd enjoyed several company camping trips with West Meet East, who undertook such excursions on a yearly basis, every year during the July 1st long weekend to celebrate Canada Day, used a the insect repellent analogy to great effect.
"Yeah, I know. So you're saying these sigils are like insect repellent?" I confirmed with him.
"Yes. Kind of. Let's just say that to go into the place that I'm talking about, you're going to need one of these sigils, and it will cost you. However, if you do manage to go there, I can assure you that you will stand out above all others their company has dealt with. They'll definitely remember you, but you can't tell anyone else about this place, ever. I mean ever," Braden leaned forward in his seat and got in close to me, ensuring that nobody could hear him, and nobody could read his lips as he spoke.
"Then that's the place that I want to go. Tell me, what do I need to do?" I asked him, shoving a seafood sauce covered shrimp into my gullet after I'd asked.
"Alright, but rememeber what I said," Braden reiterated his request to me, and I listened carefully to his instructions.
Osaka And Keun
The flights from Toronto to Osaka had gone considerably smooth, with only a half-hour delay between my linking up with my stopover flight at Vancouver International. I'd managed to catch up on my sleep during the flights, which took a total of fifteen hours, and put me in Osaka at 11 AM on Friday, Japan Standard Time.
I was literally in the limousine at 11:30 AM with my luggage, where I met the limousine driver. He was an older fellow, very much a gentile in professional attire. Quiet and reserved, though there was definitely a spark in there somewhere. Most of his responses to my questions had an entendre, despite how short and quaint they were. Perhaps as short and quaint as was he, compared to my five foot eleven frame.
"May I ask you your name?" I asked him after I'd gotten into the limousine.
"I am Tiko-San, Mr. Sturgess. Your meeting is to take place at 3:30 in the afternoon. That gives you four hours. Where may I take you?" Tiko-San asked of me.
"Could you take me to the hotel? I need to get cleaned up first, which will take me about half an hour. I'll meet you again outside of the lobby at 12:15, after which I'll get you to take me somewhere I need to go, to find a gift," I instructed Tiko-San.
"Very well. I will remind you that whether or not you are ready, I will be at the front doors of Keun at precisely 3:15 PM. With you, or without you," Tiko-San illustrated that he maintained a strict regimen and adhered to his own code of excellence.
Perhaps, if I had been anyone else, his statement might have offended me, and I'd have sought another way to assert my authority upon him, in order to preserve the hierarchy associated with rank and privilege in society. After all, according to such concepts, he was the service, and I was the upper management.
You see, most people in the west, who contemplate or are fascinated with Japan, immediately think about power and control. About dominance and submission. Unquestionable authority. That if you're the one wearing the green badge, that you're unquestionably in charge. An idea that is based mostly upon ignorance by those who in their lives or conduct, hold nothing to be sacred, except what they protect by their keeping it hidden, hence never putting it at risk to the scrutiny of others. Though those very same people tend to trudge all over the social acumen of other cultures like Japan's, simply because the Japanese have the courage and the pride to wear their culture and history with a sense of honour that few can truly understand, and all without being condescending.
The same can certainly be said of China as well. Of Korea, Siam and India. This same humble yet profound confidence can be found throughout the civilizations of Europe as well. In the Middle East, through to where the Tigris and the Euphrates meet. One of the potential birthplaces of civilization. Places where a people's history extends back to the early reaches of civilization itself. That is not to trounce the younger of civilizations who've joined this dance of the peoples of the world. It is to say that there is something to be learned from them, those whose monuments of a thousand years in terms of structures and ideas, still stand firmly until this day.
Sure, the people born in this generation may have ridden the coat-tails of their ancestors, though most would likely argue for the fact they were on the shoulders of giants, in reference to their ancestors, once they'd come to terms with the fact that their mobile phones and internet, were the culmination of a thousands of year struggle to understand the way of things. The truth remains that they, each and every one of them, carry something about their people, both individually and as the collective sum thereof. Something that has gone beyond the boundaries of life and death, and kept their ancestors and their dreams alive. We who could learn something from them should watch, listen and feel when and where we can for what they have to share.
They wear their history, the proof of this being in the actions of their ancestors that begat what of them still stands to this day, though to them, this is not a battle of action against thought or word. They all know that the actions that yield monuments of the centuries, all of them were built from many mountains worth of thoughts and words. That is the true cost of such things that last for millennia, and some of the most durable of those monuments, have no physical form at all.
There is much more to Japan's concept of authority than just wearing a green pin on one's shirt, and declaring: I'm in charge! Its a delicately and artistically balanced appreciation of a sense of family, a sense of friendship, a sense of duty, a sense of loyalty, a sense of honour, a sense of moral direction, a sense of self-determination, and the knowledge and courage to defy any one of those things when it is called for that defines that concept of authority and those who bear it.
I suppose if I was one of those who though that by simply wearing the green pin on my shirt, and that I'd be in charge by trouncing all over this man's sense of duty and honour to his company of employ, their time and the schedule to which such foundations of commerce adhere in order to create prosperity, then I'd have been the heel of the day. Instead, I chose to be grateful, but I remind you, it took a lot of mistakes and missteps in my life to get to that understanding.
"Tiko-San my friend. I have to thank you for making sure that I look good to the people I'll be meeting with today. Their time and my timely arrival is certainly of great importance in terms of why I'm here. We'll both be there at 3:15 PM in this very limousine, barring some disaster of the cosmos," I assured him without over doing it.
"That will be, or it won't," Tiko-San responded, without giving it a vote of confidence either way. A very good indication that in that short period of time, the man had grown to understand me.
When we got to the hotel, I quickly checked in, and given the time constraints I quickly cleaned myself up with a shower. I got dressed and was out through the front door of the hotel once again before 12:10.
When I got to the lobby, Tiko-San was right where I'd asked him to be, out front waiting with the door open like I was a visiting dignitary or celebrity. The only missing elements were the flashes of camera phones and my non-existent adoring fans.
"You smell much better, Mr. Sturgess," Tiko-San immediately greeted me, though I wasn't sure if he was referring to the fact that when I'd first met him, that I smelled of a man who'd slept in a business class airliner seat for fifteen hours, or if he was referring to the aftershave I'd put on only five minutes earlier.
"If you're going to stink, you'd better stink well," I replied, throwing open my briefcase and finding the notepaper onto which I'd scribed Braden's directions.
"Precisely. If you're going to make the effort, then make the effort. Helen Keller's best poetry was etched in epitaphs of smell," Tiko-San added thoughtfully.
"Now that is profound," I responded, never before having given the matter the thought it truly deserved.
"What is your destination?" asked Tiko-San.
"Tsūtenkaku. The south side. I need you to drop me off there, and wait for me nearby," I told Tiko-San.
"Very well. There is a car stop near to where I am dropping you off. It is visible from the same corner," Tiko-San assured me as he acclerated out and into traffic.
I was about to respond, and then realized that he'd already included everything that needed to be exchanged between us. His humour I assumed, was my privilege.
The limousine drove out into downtown Osaka traffic, through a maze of tall buildings and sky scrapers, south towards Tsūtenkaku.
Its hard to describe what a trip in a limo through downtown Osaka is like, but I can tell you, having traveled through the downtowns of numerous cities in North America, especially along the western seaboard, that it has its own distinct appearance and feel. I can appreciate the fact that anywhere you go, you'll find signatures of the people who made those places, and made those places what they are, but Osaka was a perfection of function, form and contained chaos, though from what Tiko-San told me, most of it was contained in a vast network of underground tunnels and walkways through reams of shops and malls, all beneath Osaka.
Osaka was like a city, built on a mirror. It went down nearly as far as it went up, and that didn't even account for Osaka Bay, and the rivers and canals that wound through the downtown core. It was very much a case where that which was far, was obscured by everything that was near. The funny thing was that the near always included everything you'd want anyway, and you'd never realize you needed something else, until you ventured beyond it and found something new. That was Osaka.
I saw the Tsūtenkaku as we approached it from the north, though Tiko-San had taken a different, more scenic route to get there and one that added about a minute extra to our travel time. Most of the surrounding buildings had dropped in the urgency of height, to become a maze of two and three story structures, through most of which wound alleys, walkways, paths rather than roads and highways, for much of city life in Japan was spent on one's own two feet.
When we were beneath the Tsūtenkaku on the north west corner, he stopped the vehicle.
"I will be waiting over by Doremi," Tiko-San assured me, unlocking the door for me.
"What's Doremi?" I asked him.
"A café," he responded.
"Great. I'll meet you there. I shouldn't be long," I responded, without actually knowing for certain.
I got out of the limousine, grabbing only the note with the directions Braden had given me, and I was off. Once I'd gotten oriented, it was too difficult from there, though suffice it to say that if he hadn't given me these directions, I'd have been lost from my first few steps.
I walked through an alley, by a variety of shops selling everything from dried fish, to books, to cards and gambling supplies until I arrived at the corner of an alley Braden had told me was the last turn on my first trip. There as he'd described it, was a Shinto Temple. Well cared for and preserved, both a beacon of colour and minute architecture in the maze of box-like homes and shops.
I turned down the lane, a rather tight one that grew dark and forboding as I set foot within, as if something was watching me as I approached, and as if it didn't want to be seen. I walked down the lane, having to walk sideways twice to squeeze between an electrical box, and a compost. I was careful not to dirty my clothes as I did, but when I'd arrived on the other side, I bumped into an air conditioner, whose sides were covered in grease.
My brilliant white shirt and part of my two thousand dollar designer blazer was soiled with axel grease.
I was about to curse, feeling the joy of something that had been baited by the grease trap watching me and waiting for such words to leave my lips, when I recalled the Shinto Temple, and something in me stopped my tongue and vocal chords, dead in their tracks.
Across from the protruding air condition, was the doorway to a shop. A show whose sign was a tiny and eloquently hand painted work of art. It seemed to include the kanji form of writing, though there were no distinctly Japanese characters within. Despite that fact, I couldn't read any of it. I could merely tell the difference, feeling more like someone who knew a cheap parlour trick.
I walked through the front door into the shop, but whatever had been watching me did not follow. It was as if it had vanished as I stepped into the dark, antiquity of the shop.
The first thing my senses were met with was a pungent yet smoky smell. Incense.
I stepped further into the shop, down a narrow corridor of wooden walls until I arrived in the shop itself.
I looked around at the shelves, finding them populated with a variety statuettes and figurines. Each of them atop a tiny sigil, as Braden had decribed them. Basically a specially crafted cloth paper onto which someone would write a special word, that would shield a person from the boogey man. Or, what had waited with baited breath for me to curse, just outside of the shop.
The other shelves contained a variety of herbs and ointments, not unlike a pharmacy I supposed. There was a shelf full of books, most of which appeared to be very old, if not ancient. Each of the books sealed in protective wrapping, preventing them from being browsed by casual shoppers like myself.
The longer that I was in there, the more that it became apparent that this place dealt with a clientele who knew exactly what they were looking for before they came in.
"何かお手伝いしましょうか？" a man's voice spoke from behind in fluent Japanese, clearing his throat first as if to introduce his presence.
I turned to face him, and was greeted by a man of age and attire with which I was not familiar.
The best way to describe this man, would be to refer to him as Lo Pan from John Carpenter's Big Trouble In Little China. He was very old, how old was impossible to know for sure. His facial hair was very long and cared for, a moutache and tiny beard, both trimmed to precision. He wore a hat, shaped somewhat like a "T", colourful red silk and vibrant yellow writing (kanji again?) . This same motif of colour and scripture repeated itself in his outfit, and seemed to be possessed of a purpose.
"我可以幫忙嗎？" he repeated, this time in Chinese. Mandarin, I thought.
"I speak English. I was told that you might be able to help me," I spoke to him as directly as I could.
"Why didn't you say so. You looking for cleaners right?" he looked at my shirt, and the grease stains on my shirt and blazer.
"That's for sure, and a special gift. I need something special, as a gift, an offering one might make, in the name of good business," I spelled it all out for him right then and there.
"I can tell you of good cleaner. Very good. Too good. They make right for you again. Gifts for business, may I suggest you go to a shop with nice pens or maybe buy a bottle of whiskey?" he said to me sarcastically as if urging me to leave.
"Look. I know somebody, and they told me to say this to you..." I leaned in and whispered what Braden had required that I remember before I went to see this man.
The look on his faced changed from one of polite sarcasm to that of familiarity and helpfulness.
"The shop you seek. It closed. A number of years ago. Maybe I can help you..." the man said to me, as another man emerged from the back, behind the counter and stepped into the room with us.
He was dressed similarly, but there was something distinctly different about him and the attire. For one, there was no kanji. The adornment of his outfit, which was very similar in the fact that it included a hat, albeit of a much different shape, and a different gown than the Longpao that the first man wore.
"You're taking my customers!" the second man bickered with the first.
"I saw him first. He clearly said he needs a gift!" the second man responded.
"But he needs a talisman in order to be able to accept anything you offer," the first man reminded the second man.
"Then get on with it!" the second man scolded the first man.
"First, let us deal with this," the first man, he stepped over to the counter, and pulled forth a tray with various paint brushes, and ink well and cinnebar.
He began mixing his ink, and then filled the well with it, after which he went through some shelves, each of which had this special cloth paper. Many different types of it labeled which Chinese characters. When he'd found the correct paper, he withdrew it from the shelf and placed it in the center of the tray.
He next took up one of the paint brushes and dabbed into the ink, and began applying it to this special paper, very precisely and with a motion he'd perfected over many decades of practice. When he was done, he replaced the brush into its holder, and began moving his hands and fingers in a dance of motion impossible to describe. This was matched by the sound of his voice, as he spoke the words of an incantation, not in his native Mandarin Chinese, but in another much older language that predated it.
He then finished, or so I assumed, and then picked the paper and writing up from the tray, and with a pin, affixed it to my blazer without warning me. The pin pierced my skin, but did not hurt, nor did it break any vessels.
"Like accupuncture?" I asked him.
"Kind of. Yes. Let's just say that. I don't want you know too much. Like accupuncture," he nodded, the sarcastic look on his face had returned.
When I looked to my blazer and shirt, both the grease and the stain were gone entirely. I had to touch my shirt and blazer to believe it.
"How much?" I asked him.
"Your first born, and ten years of your life," he said to me, with a smug look on his face.
There was a moment of silence as the shock set in, and then he began laughing profusely.
"A hundred thousand yen. A deal, considering that there are no cleaners that could have done that well," he said to me.
"Now for the other one. The one I need to be able to deal with this guy for the gift?" I asked him, already counting out a hundred thousand yen from my pocket money and handing it to him.
He silently counted it (twice) and then looked to me again.
"That one will cost you two hundred thousand yen. Pay first," he told me, holding his hand out.
"What if it doesn't work?" I asked him.
"Is your shirt clean?" he asked me.
"Yes. Obviously," I responded.
"Did you think it could be cleaned so quickly?" he continued.
"Alright, alright. I get it," I began counting out two hundred thousand yen for him and then handed it to him.
He did the same. Counted it twice, and then when he was done, he returned to the shelves of special paper, looking for what he'd needed. He ended up taking two different kinds, of paper, and quickly sewed them together at the corners and the sides.
Much the same as he had for the first one, he mixed the ink, this time including a few other ingredients, two of which had such a grotesque smell, I had to cover my nose. When mixed however, the smell quickly subsided. He then began brushing the characters to the paper. A process that seemed to take ages, though only two minutes had passed by the time he was done.
He then repeated the step where his fingers and hands danced a precise set of instructions, as if weaving something in the air that I could not perceive. His voice jumped between highs and lows as he spoke this ancient language, and then he was done.
He picked up the talisman, and walked around the counter to stand in front of me.
"Always keep this with you from herein. Never lose it. Never wash it. If you do, its your mess," he asserted to me, with a very serious look on his face.
"I'm responsible. In accepting it from you, you're saying that I'm responsible herein. Alright. Fair enough. Its a deal," I agreed.
He opened my blazer and affixed it to the inside. It was at that point that I noticed that the writing he'd etched onto the talisman had leaked through to the other side, without degradation. However, the one that had leaked through, was the mirror image of the one he'd inscribed, which got me to thinking if he hadn't merely just ripped me off.
"Doesn't the writing on the other side, the side that leaked through, cancel the side you painted?" I asked him, being cautiously skeptical for my own protection.
"Oh. I see. So now you the maker of talisman. You the one who know and me, I am the amateur. When you look in mirror, do you cancel yourself?" he asked me.
"No," I replied, still waiting for his assurance.
"But isn't that the same as leaked ink? When you look in the water, isn't that you in the reflection? When you take a picture, isn't that you? You think you know, but you don't know. You get glimpse of something, and think you know everything. Now go!" he said to me, directing me towards the second man, whom I had now figured out was Japanese.
It was like a reluctant business partnership. The second man had lost his shop, and the first man, the man who'd provided the means to protect his customers from whatever it was he'd offered, had suddenly found himself in dire need. The second man could not do business without the first, and so the two formed a reluctant business relationship, that included a place to do business, and a place to reside in the second apartment of the first man. They clearly both resented and respected each other greatly.
"Don't mind him. He's the side show. I'm the main event," the second man immediately addressed me once I'd had the talisman affixed to my body.
"I'm looking..." I began, only to have the second man interrupt me.
"You're looking for a gift to secure a deal. One that is essential to the company that employs you. That's why they gave you the task of securing it. However, you will face a challenge. Let me say that what I offer you, in terms of this gift. Its a solution, and a beginning, though if you're not careful, it could potentially be an end," he assured me, having read me like an open book.
"I want, what will secure me this deal, but scrupulously," I reminded him that I was still a gentile, and that I knew that what protected me from whatever he was offering, had bound him to a certain set of rules that prevented him from cheating me in ways that he might have been tempted to cheat others of different virtue.
A grave look crossed his face, as if I'd denied him of some innate pleasure he sought. And then just as quickly as that look had arrived on his face, it vanished, only to be replaced by an earnest interest in the opportunity that might have arrived in its place.
"I have the perfect thing, considering the people with whom you're seeking such a deal," a confident smile underlined his words.
"I'm running shy of time, so can we get to the part about what it is, you wrapping it up in a box or bag for me, and then me paying for it, and leaving here?" I urged him.
"Certainly. Just give me a moment," he said to me, disappearing behind the counter and into the back room.
There arose a sudden clatter of noises, as if he were rummaging through a collection of old pots and pans. Then horrid sounds, as if he were going through a fridge of cadavers, poking them and squeezing air and liquid from them. The sound of distant moaning then followed, as lost souls echoed their cries into the living world, and then finally...
The sound of preened claws on a wooden floor. Those of a tiny animal or two.
He emerged from the back room and then from around the counter, wielding a leash which extended a distance from his hand before splitting into two ends, each one affixed to a tiny Pomeranian, both of whom were groomed to perfection and appeared perfectly healthy and happy. When he stopped, they stopped and sat themselves beside each other on the floor, looking up to me with mild disinterest.
"I'm not even going to ask where you had them stored. I didn't want a pet. I wanted something like an antique vase or an old sumi-e painting or even a haiku written on the fancy paper," I looked to the first man once again and then to the second.
"You're telling me that these wonderful little creatures don't warm your heart? So I'm assuming that you don't see the genius or merit of what I'm offering you. You obviously don't want that deal, so get out of here and go to one of the stores at the airport and buy them a mug or something like that, because you are clearly not worthy of such a deal," he said to me, ready to turn away and retreat into the back, where he'd return those poor mutts to whatever storage closet he was keeping them within.
"Wait!" I said, thinking carefully about his proposed gift.
Its true what he said. They were clearly friendly and heart warming, if not well cared for and healthy. If I walked into the office with such fine dogs, they would certainly warm even the coldest heart of those within the company, not to mention that they'd think of me every time they were with their furry micro-companions.
"What are their names?" I asked him.
"Their names are Fe and Fi. The white one is Fe [pronounced Fē], and the black one is Fi [pronounced Fē]," he told me.
"Wait. You mean they both have the same name?" I confirmed that I'd heard him correctly.
"No. This one is Fe, that one is Fi," he said to me, though both names sounded exactly the same to me.
"You're kidding me, right?" I confirmed once again.
"Not at all. It isn't a matter so much of the sound, as it is thinking to which one you refer," he explained further, making it that much more confusing.
"So you're saying that when I call them, that I also have to think of them and the spelling of their name at the same time?" I asked him, now completely baffled.
"Are they all as astute as you from where you came?" he asked me sarcastically.
"Smarter. Alright. Let me try. Fe?" I called one of the dogs, the white one to be precise, and it began wagging its tail, though it did not get up from where it was seated.
"And the other one?" the second man insisted.
"Fi?" I thought of the black dog, and the spelling of its name.
The black dog began wagging its little tail, and looked over to me happily.
"Very good. You see? You've already mastered it. So, do we have a deal?" he held out the end of the leash to me.
"Alright. Its a deal," I agreed, accepting the leash from him.
Fe and Fi immediately walked over to my side and took a seat beside me, now facing the man who relinquished them to me.
"Excellent. I will go and get the adoption papers, and their medical history for you, and you will prepare for me no less than one million yen for each," he requested.
"Two million yen?" I confirmed.
"Two million. And believe me, for what you're getting, that's the deal of a lifetime," he said before disappearing into the back.
A moment later, he returned with a paper envelope containing an agreement for me to sign, and their complete medical history.
"Sign here, please and I'll leave you with the copy," he requested.
I signed the adoption agreement and then counted out the last of my cash, handing it all to him and pocketing my empty wallet.
"Please don't forget about the dirty air conditioner when you go," the first man said to me as I collected the adoption papers and the medical history and proceeded out of the store.
"Thank you. They'll be well taken care of," I assured them as I left.
Fe and Fi followed me to the door, never once getting under my legs or tripping me up. Instead, they kept a safe distance, but never outpaced me. It was more and more clear that they were very well trained.
When I got outside again, the bright afternoon sun nearly blinded me, but I made sure to go nowhere near the air conditioner, instead taking the other way down the lane. Strangely enough, there was no sign of the eerie presence that had waited for me to curse outside of the strange shop. It seemed to be gone entirely, and then I recalled the talisman. I checked my jacket to make sure that it was secure, only to find that it was affixed by some hidden force far stronger than thread or a pin alone.
Fe and Fi led me, through the maze of this little suburb and then back out onto the street, where I quickly found Doremi.
It was true what the man had said. Everywhere I went, people smiled upon seeing Fe and Fi. Women stopped to pet them, men stopped to take pictures of them. They were quickly the center of attention everywhere I brought them and it was no different in Doremi, where I bought a coffee each for myself and Tiko-San, and a small pastry that I though might appeal to Fe and Fi.
When I got to the limousine, Tiko-San seemed unsurprised by these new guests in his car.
"Here's a coffee for you. There's cream and sugar in the bag. We have a bit of time, so I'd like you to stop at a pet store so we can pickup some food for these two fine specimens," I requested of Tiko-San as Fe and Fi sat comfortably in the seat beside me.
"Very well. Then we should depart for Keun," he responded.
"And that we will," I replied, now confident in the genius of bringing these two little fur friends as the gift that would land me this deal.
This Deal Has Two Front Doors
The limousine pulled up to the front of the building, one of the many office towers that lined the downtown core of Osaka, their shapes which played with the elements of structure and form, both in terms of the sense of future they presented, and the familiarity they evoked. I found myself thinking of the downtown core of my own home, and couldn't help but contemplating that everyone else from a big city who ever came here, probably thought the same thing, being reminded of their own home. The genius that architecture and design could illicit in one's own presence and sense of recall.
Tiko-San got the door to the limousine for me, Fe and Fi casually jumping out through the door as if they'd already done this routine a thousand times. When they got to the extent of the leash, they stopped and sat where they were as I got out of the limo.
[Ganbare.]
"頑張れ！" Tiko-San said to me as I stepped out.
"Pardon?" I responded.
"Break a leg," he said to me without losing a step.
"I'll try not to, but if I do, it would only be as a last resort to get the deal out of sympathy," I responded.
"That's what I meant," Tiko-San added.
"Well thanks for your vote of confidence," I replied, leaving him to close the door to the limousine as I ventured forth to the front doors of the building.
I ventured forth into the building, and was greeted by the monumental front foyer of the building, which bore that familiarity to which I'd referred earlier, yet still retained its Japanese esthetic. Like stepping both into the future and the past in terms of its design.
The reception desk was a short walk from the front doors, though it gave you ample time to admire your surroundings. Fe and Fi of course looked about with seeming disinterest, though in their own pomeranian way, I'm certain that they probably found much of interest to them, though more likely thanks to their olfactory senses than their sense of sight.
I spotted a woman and a man standing at the end of the reception desk, both of whom watched me with earnest interest as I approached. I nodded to them ever so slightly, thinking that they were likely interested in Fe and Fi more than I.
When I arrived at the front desk, I was greeted by a uniformed security guard seated behind the desk.
"お名前と目的地を教えていただけますか？" asked the security guard of me.
"I'm John Sturgess. I'm here to meet with..." before I'd finished my response, the woman and the man at the end of the reception desk approached me.
"Mr. Sturgess?" the woman greeted me.
"John Sturgess. Why do you ask?" I responded, though I'd already guessed by that point.
"We're with Keun. I am Yūna Hanae, and this is my professional peer, Ichiro Daisuke. We were sent to meet you by Kazumi Chiharu," she addressed me in nearly perfect English, with hints of her accent just enough to remind me of the intense effort she'd put into being able to communicate with people from my side of the world.
They both bowed to me once, formally, which I returned with similar formality.
"Your puppies are they?" Yūna asked me, looking to the two dogs with a smile.
"They are so friendly and so well behaved," Ichiro added.
"Well that's good news. I hope that their presence here isn't an inconvenience or embarassment for you or your employer," I asked them.
"No. Not at all. You know that Keun, like your company Kawaī kao Cosmetics, are supporters of protecting the safety and well being of our fur friends. We will not stock any products that bring harm to our fur friends both in the wild, and in cosmetic research labs," Yūna stated rather firmly.
"I don't suppose that extends to restrictions on my dietary consumption, does it?" I challenged her.
"You mean about what we eat? No. Not at all, though I think that Kazumi Chiharu is a vegetarian, though we do not enforce any dietary policy upon our employees, or our business allies. That would be somewhat hypocritical, seeing as many of our domesticated fur friends consume meat by-products, and those in the wild hunt and eat other animals. The choice of diet is a personal one, and not one that should be mandated by company policy," Yūna very obviously had a firm understanding of Keun's business ethic, and her having brought this fact up gave a whole new level of genius to the idea of having brought these puppies here as gifts to secure the deal.
"Music to my ears, and stomach," I responded with a smile.
"Lets get up stairs so that you're not late for your meeting with Kazumi," Ichiro suggested politely.
...
Their office space on the sixtieth floor was just as lavish as the foyer, if not even more so given their marketing paradigm, which was often full of scintilating colour complementary to the fashion industry, though never overpowering the product of their vendors. When it came to design, no such restraint was apparent in their headquarters, however it did still retain its professional atmosphere.
I sat in a large meeting room. Its difficult to give you an idea of scale, but this room was very large, and mostly empty. That wasn't the only aspect that made it different to any meeting room I've ever been, for the room was oriented lengthwise along its longest diagonal corners, with the double doorway being on one corner of the room, at a forty-five degree angle to the outer walls of the building, in such a way that when you walked into the room, it got bigger the further into it you delved.
To the left and right, nearest their opposing corners were two boardroom tables, each with space for twenty-four people, and each with their own hundred and twenty inch display on the adjacent walls. As you ventured into the meeting room, on the far corner (the one one that actually was the corner of the building itself), was a obscenely large desk with nothing on it. Behind it, a high-backed chair and in front of it, one lonely solitary guest seat, assumedly the one I'd be occupying.
The walk from the double door entrance to this behemoth meeting room and the desk at the far end took me nearly a minute and a half before Yūna and Ichiro indicated to me that I was to be seated, and that Kazumi would soon arrive. From the point that they'd dropped me off at the lonely chair, they'd become distant and perhaps even cold, keeping me at an arm's length.
To say that I was intimidated by all of this, the meeting room, the grandeur of scale and their sudden withdrawn nature was the understatement of the century. Fe and Fi took their places beside my chair, not even visible through the desk, hence Kazumi would have no sight of them whatsoever. Like every other sales meeting I'd had, I'd be doing this one alone, whether I liked it or not.
I checked my watch, and when I saw that I was five minutes early, I suddenly had a whole new respect for the idea of being fashionably late. The five minutes of silence in this gargantuan room were nearly unbearable, and by the time that silence was broken, I felt as if I'd been stripped naked and to the bone by those who were undoubtedly watching me.
I became startled when I heard a whirring sound, like that of precision machinery. I looked around for the source of such a noise and nearly jumped out of my seat when a head, followed by shoulders and eventually an entire person rose up into view, behind the desk. I immediately stood, and there on the other side of the desk from me, still a good distance, was Kazumi Chiharu.
"Mr. Sturgess. So glad you could make it for this meeting. I hope that your flight was pleasant?" Kazumi addressed me professionally.
"I slept through most it to ensure I'd be at the top of my game for this meeting, so I didn't see much. Where I'm from, we have an incredible skyline and our harbourfront is forever being embellished in one form or another. I've been to Vancouver a thousand times, though the city and scenery there never gets dull if you've an eye for the collision of civilization and nature, both at their extremes in one form or another. I have to say however, that I wasn''t prepared for what I'd see in Osaka. A remarkable achievement in architecture here, not to mention the people and the professional atmosphere," I stuck with what I'd seen so far. Futuristic vision, tradition, and familiarity.
As my eyes adjusted I could see that Kazumi wore a lot of makeup, and bore a body shape that revealed few curves. Kazumi's hands were rather large and possessed of something lacking the grace my experience and perhaps instinct expected to see. The more I saw, the more I could not tell what gender Kazumi was and I felt myself suddenly uncomfortable, but not for the reasons that you'd likely first think.
For one, there was a moment when Kazumi and I both realized the nature of my contemplations, and that came across by way of an uncomfortable silence as Kazumi gestured to some unseen presence in the room. A large 60 inch LCD monitor suddenly unfolded from atop of the desk, not obscuring our view of each other, but breaking the awkward moment.
It was then that I'd realized that Kazumi probably had this exact moment with every one of the vendors who'd come here to deal with their company. That moment when their sales rep suddenly realized that they did not know the gender of the person seated before them, and given that person's position and authority in negotiating a deal, that was very relevant.
One of my successes in sales had been the fact that I'd been a charmer, especially of the opposite sex. It had definitely been a factor in my achieving so many deal closers in our company's favour, that it had become a part of our business strategy, especially those involving negotiations for volume sales and distribution.
Kawaī kao Cosmetics had in the last two years, plateaued in terms of its growth, and that time until this meeting was spent looking for other markets into which to expand by corporate sales executives, which had led to this deal and assumedly, would lead to others very much like it.
With this sudden realization about Kazumi and the leadership of Keun, that changed things very significantly in terms of the advantages my historical sales record indicated, with regard to charm, which begged another question in my all of the sudden having to face the morality of my business ethics: was it even right for me to use my charm to land deals where it involved members of the opposite sex, and if it was, then assuming I knew Kazumi's sexual orientation, would it be right for me to use similar charm in this situation.
Having arrived at that doorstep, I suddenly realized why so many others had failed achieving sales deals with Keun. Most of the fashion industry were on board for the protection of wildlife and animals in the lab, and those who weren't would lose one of the biggest sales channels there were. That was one filter, leaving companies whose sales reps had arrived at this very point, and had suddenly realized that Kazumi was androgynous, and their sexual orientation indeterminate. As I stated, there were people of all ilks in my industry, but when it came to cutting a deal and where one of your sales tools was you appeal and charm, it became an obscuring fog, and one that I'd be willing to bet saw many vendors lose the deal. Where I decided to go with this would very much determine the future of the company that employed me, and given the vulgar display of sheer market volume they had, in terms of this humongous meeting room, the weight that rested upon me finally reached my shoulders.
I had to act on what I knew, and make the sell without the sex appeal of my charm, or I could gamble and assume that Kazumi liked men and do business as usual, with charm when and where it was needed. Either way, I'd be doing this very differently than I'd ever done any deal. So, I started by playing my ace first.
"Do you like dogs, Kazumi?" I asked.
"I'm dreadfully allergic to them," Kazumi announced, though showing no signs of such allergy thankfully, and with that one statement, my ace was spent and in the discard pile. The meeting had officially become a disaster, so I decided that sincerity would be the next best approach.
"Look. I'm having difficulty with this..." I began.
"With what?" Kazumi asked me, unfazed by my statement as they looked at the monitor, using a gesture based diplay to navigate their sales database.
"Its very difficult to broach this subject..." I continued precariously through the trap laden territory ahead.
"The subject of how to approach this particular deal you mean?" Kazumi sat back in the chair.
"Yes. That. I mean, there are things about you that a sales representative should know before entering into such negotiations..." I tried to draw it out of Kazumi.
"Like?" Kazumi obviously knew they possessed the only ace in this deal, and they were very obviously drawing it out to their advantage.
"I have no problem with men wearing makeup. When I was young, I used to want to be a music star, and even joined a band. I thought it quite stylish to wear a bit myself. You know, like stage makeup. Some people take that a bit further and bring the stage into their life. We're all artistic canvases in one form or another. Our business is based upon that idea, however, I honestly don't know what gender you are, and that has an affect upon the way I do things, and I'd imagine, the way that many other people do things as well," I took the leap and just came out with it.
"And you're saying that knowing my gender would help to fix that?" Kazumi responded, very much unshaken by my statements.
"In all honesty, it would," I responded.
"And once you do, what are you going to want to know about me next? Perhaps whether I like women or men?" Kazumi came right out with it.
I remained silent, for Kazumi had just hit the bull in the eyes. I'd have wanted to know such a thing in order to add another tool to my belt in terms of procuring this deal. Whether or not my charm applied.
"Mr. Sturgess, if you're going to be a vendor for this company, you're going to have to make the sale based not upon your sex appeal or charm, but rather your skill as a salesperson or as a fair human being," Kazumi looked me right in the eyes.
"Very well. Kawaī kao Cosmetics has been an honest and integral part of the Japanese economy since its birth..." I began my pitch.
"Its very flattering that Kawaī kao Cosmetics has origins in this country, but lets focus on what makes Kawaī kao Cosmetics a good fit for Keun. Why do you feel that what you're selling fits with the Keun ethic, and market?" Kazumi asked me.
"We're selling an ethically made product, and have a devoted client base by way of our customers, the actual women and men who use our products, and none of those products arrived on any shelf at the expense of any of our fur friends out there or in a lab. We're as honest a company as there is, though we do play hardball too if need be. The people who use our products keep coming back again and again, and in the email my inside sales rep shared with you, you'll find all the data and statistics you'll need to come to that conclusion yourself. Now I've put forth in the proposal, our terms and pricing for volume sales, and those will not budge. We are not negotiable because our cosmetic products are worth it, not to mention our volume pricing is very generous already and we even gave your company an extra five percent per volume category, given the fact that you'll be handling the warehousing and shipping. I can't offer you more than that, except that if you go with this deal, you'll be gaining a staunch business ally with many allies in this industry. Last, but not least, you're wearing Kawaī kao Cosmetics. I can tell the difference right away. That colour lipstick that you're wearing, is an exclusive colour to Kawaī kao Cosmetics, not to mention your eye liner and mascara. Good job putting it on, but its a little thick for my tastes. The work of art on a canvas is as much about the canvas as it is the paint," I decided to go all in, and bear the consequences, come what may.
A phone suddenly rang on Kazumi's person they pulled it from their pocket and answered it, holding a hushed conversation with the back of her chair to me. Once it was over, Kazumi spun the chair around and faced me.
"Please, if you could, just wait here for a moment," Kazumi stood from the chair and stepped over to the same elevator device that had brought them up to the desk. The whirring noise returned and they disappeared, sinking into the floor behind the desk.
I waited for another two minutes, thinking about who I'd apply to first if I lost my job over this situation, when I heard the whirring sound again.
This time, it was an attractive face and a shapely but modest woman's figure that appeared riding the elevator device up to the desk. She appeared to be in her mid thirties much like myself, and bore long perfectly groomed black hair. She first stepped around the desk revealing a shapely pair of legs beyond the knee length skirt she wore. She went directly over to Fe and Fi, kneeling in front of them and brushing their fur with her fingers.
"They're just adorable!" she said to me, or perhaps to them.
With her nearness to me, I smelled the flowery fragrance of her perfume and smell of her hair.
I by that point was already on my feet and blushing at the sight of her.
"Kazumi Chiharu. Its a pleasure to meet you," she bowed for me.
"Japanese?" I asked her.
"Japanese father. Korean mother," she smiled.
"John Sturgess. A pleasure to meet you... I think? The other one?" I asked her.
"Kazumi Chiharu. That's all you need to know for the time being," Kazumi assured me.
"That Kazumi is the one we see in the press I take it...?" I asked her.
"Correct. That's the Kazumi people know, but I'm the Kazumi that really owns and runs Keun," she smiled.
"Its an honour to meet you," I said to her humbly, even bowing for her.
"I was listening in to your speech and I just wanted to tell you in person that you got the deal. I use Kazumi sometimes to filter out the jerks. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't one of them, as there are quite a few in this day and age. So, we've just got to finalize the contract and we're off and running," Kazumi smiled at me, extending her hand.
I shook her hand gently, finding it to be delicately soft.
"So, do you bring your dogs to every sales meeting?" Kazumi asked me.
"To tell the truth, they were to be a gift," I responded honestly.
"Already trying to buy me, are you? So why aren't they still my gift?" she flirted.
"Because you're allergic?" I confirmed with her.
"The other Kazumi is. I'm not," she smiled holding her hand out for the leash.
I almost gave her my tie, but instead chose to hand her the leash to which Fe and Fi were tethered.
"Congratulations, you're now the proud owner of two very well behaved Pomeranians," I told her with a smile.
"Congratulations, you're invited to dinner tonight. My place. I'll have Tiko-San bring you. See you at 7 PM?" she asked me rather forwardly.
"I'm very much looking forward to it," I said to her, and she started walking over to the elevator device again.
"Bring their adoption papers and medical history with you tonight if you could?" she asked me.
"Most certainly," I responded, smiled and blushed.
"Bye! See you then!" she waved and then disappeared down through the elevator device.
It was easy to see that she was clearly the person who got this business off of the ground in those few moments I first had with her, but what was to come, would be beyond my wildest imaginings.
The Fall Of A Tyrant
The drive back to the same office building later that evening was markedly silent. Tiko-San had already given his congratulations to me over the closing of the deal, though to me, it still felt like a hollow victory for some odd reason. Perhaps Tiko-San knew of this for he broke the silence as the limousine neared the building of the Keun offices.
"Don't take your successes or your failures too seriously, but certainly do remember to learn from them," Tiko-San offered.
"Am I that easy to read?" I responded to Tiko-San's wisdom.
[Hara no uchi ga yomeru,]
"腹の内が読める," Tiko-San responded in his native Japanese.
"Care to elaborate?" I knew at that point that it was just enjoyment of the euphimisms his language offered.
"It might be written on your face, but your belly reveals all," Tiko-San explained.
"My belly? What, you mean the sound of my stomach on account of the fact that I haven't eaten yet?" I confirmed with him sarcastically.
"That too. I'm just trying to give you advice that will help you in life," Tiko-San replied rather candidly.
"What? You're not that much farther ahead of me in years. You've maybe fifteen or twenty on me?" I responded.
"You flatter me, but its not the time as much as it is, what you do with it. It is hard to make future plans from a shīsō," Tiko-San looked into the rearview mirror at me momentarily.
"I beg your pardon?" I asked him.
"A shīsō. A see-saw. Even when you get off of it, it takes a few moments before you have your bearings again. The enjoyment and suffering from your successes and failures are like the see-saw. Better to find a comfortable medium from where its easier to plan your future. Perhaps tonight, you will learn a great deal about that,"
"You know, I only had those dogs for a few hours, and I miss them already, though I believe that they ended up in the right hands. She seems capable of giving them the attention they deserve, if she has time, considering that she's running such a huge company," I looked off into the distance at the passing towers and skyscapers about us.
"Though the puppets must leave first, there always comes a time when the puppeteer must leave the stage," he gave me one last cryptic saying to keep me thinking as we approached the Keun building.
Keun's offices might have been on the sixtieth floor, but Kazumi's space was on the sixty-first and sixty-second floor, which doubled as her two-level condo of massive proportions. The term living large was coined to describe people like her, though she certainly didn't horde her wealth. There were an army of support staff all working to keep her living space immaculate, many of whom lived on site and quite comfortably I might add, and that didn't include the money she'd given in support of her favourite causes.
She was as it seemed from my perspective, the right one to be at the top of this giant ecosystem of a business, guiding it deftly through the more turbulent market conditions to which her company was subject. She cared about the fact that there were many people whose well being and prosperity depended upon good leadership, and as far I knew, I was one of the few people who was aware that it was truly her that ran it all, rather than the other Kazumi.
Tiko-San chose once again to get the door for me, which bothered me this time seeing as I didn't have the dogs and there seemed no good reason for it. By the time I'd gotten out and was on the pavement, I remembered that Tiko-San was a man to whom honour meant a great deal, and to do the job as he felt it should have been done, was his greatest honour of all. Perhaps why he'd chosen to be regarded by his family honourific, rather than just his name alone.
"Enjoy your evening," Tiko-San said to me as he returned to the driver's seat of his limousine.
"Where are you going?" I asked him, uncertain of how this night would turn out.
"That remains to be seen," he replied as he got into the limousine.
...
I was accompanied by security in the only elevator that went directly to the sixty-first floor. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting. Maybe that I'd press the door bell to her front door and she'd arrive, dressed to the nines to greet me. Perhaps a fantasy I had, or maybe even a recycled moment from my time with Nancy. It just seemed that was what should happen given my sense of awareness. When the elevator doors opened however, I realized once again, like when I entered into Kazumi's gargantuan meeting room/office, that this was on an entirely different scale. Her living space was practically a vast complex and company unto itself.
There was a receptionist and security desk, staffed by three guards and one suit.
"Good evening Mr. Sturgess. It is an honour that you could join Chiharu-Chan this evening. Please, if you'll step this way, I'll take you into the estate," the suit, whom I assumed was Japanese, addressed me in perfect English, then turned to his attention to the guards, whom he gave an order in Japanese that I couldn't understand.
He led the way through a somewhat confined short hallway, where we stopped in front of a door and waited for a moment.
"I apologize for the delay," the suit addressed me once again, turning quickly back to the door as the electromagnetic lock buzzed, and the door opened by itself.
At that moment I began to wonder if this wasn't more a prison than it was a home.
"I'm sorry Mr. Sturgess, but we have to take precautions. I'm sure you understand that there are people in this world who'd prefer to see this company in the hands of another leader," the suit said to me, and the pieces slowly began falling into place.
The room we entered into was somewhat like a waiting area, complete with a large screen television on the wall, whose remote was situated on the coffee table in front of a large sofa that could easily accommodate twelve people comfortably.
The walls were sparsely decorated, perhaps one painting per wall and much like another popular Japanese artist of whom I'd become aware in my time, one of whose homes was to be found in Shepperton, off the Thames, the pictures were placed asymmetrically, giving the space an imperceivable depth and breadth.
"Please wait here for a moment and there'll be someone here to greet you momentarily," the suit assured me, the door through which we'd come suddenly buzzed and he quickly let himself out.
I looked to the sofa and then to the television, which was currently off, debating as to whether I should attempt to make myself comfortable, despite the fact that it was clear that an army of employees were running around throughout the home making certain that it was running smoothly. Amongst them, there was certain to be some form of security, who'd be watching me like a hawk.
I was relieved when the inner door opened and Kazumi walked into the room. She bowed once with a bright smile on her face, and I returned her gesture, though it didn't stop there.
She then opened her arms up and wrapped them around me, and my hands instinctively found her thin waist, rubbing her sides through her silk dress.
"This is a little informal, isn't it?" I smiled at her, knowing already that my words would likely do little to make her uncomfortable.
She brought her lips closer to my right ear and whispered:
"Please. Just play along. You're the only one that I can trust," I could smell her luscious hair and perfume once again, and I found myself suddenly intoxicated with her.
Before she moved away from, she planted a tender kiss on my cheek, but retained hold over my hand left hand. She led me through the inner door and into the front foyer, which lacked little compared to the building's front entrance, not to mention it had a fully functional water fountain centered between two spiral staircases which led up to the sixty-second floor. It was an open space as well, the floor of the sixty-second floor absent, just the tremendous skylight through which the last vestiges of daylight left a scattering of reds, yellows and magentas.
There were a few people visible, support staff, all of whom were uniformed and who were either cleaning or attending to the mechanisms of this vast home.
"This is the foyer. I seldom come here unless I'm greeting guests, and seeing as this is your first time, I thought I'd bring you in this way," we looked around and admired the artisanship and architecture of the foyer, not to mention the immense precision that must have gone into constructing it.
She then pulled me by my hand, leading me through this skyborn palace of hers, weaving between her support staff and stopping at the various rooms, of which I'd seen twenty by that point when she led me down a long hall whose walls were filled with a combination of paintings and photos, most of them portraits, with a few group pictures strategically positioned.
"This is my family, going right back to my Great Great Great Grandmother and Grandfather on either side. That's why there's so many of them. Once every three years, I have a family get together. I fly them all in and together we celebrate our prosperity. We hold a little service for those who've left us," Kazumi shared with me.
"That's very endearing that you'd go to such ends for your family. Quite remarkable really," I said to her, trying my best to be supportive.
"Why? They hate me and it shows every time. I try to do something that brings us closer together, and they really make it difficult, always jealous of me over one thing or another and telling other people that every success I've had was stolen by me from someone else," Kazumi's face momentarily contorted into a grimace, before she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Its alright. I'm alright," Kazumi's smile returned as a mountain of stress I could barely comprehend seemed to subside.
She then pulled - no - forced my face and lips onto hers, wrapping her arms around my neck and hanging on for dear life as she kissed me, and then my entire mouth. Then, just as quickly as she'd grasped me for that purpose, she backed away from me, looking around to see if anyone had seen. She then leaned into my right ear again and whispered:
"I wanted to do that since I first saw you. You don't understand, but I know so much about you. Your good. Your bad. The stuff that even your own parents don't know about you, and I just want to..." she spoke like a woman ready to devour me, though in all honesty, I could have just as easily devoured her.
Instead, I erred on the side of restraint.
"I think we should take this a bit more slowly. You know, so we can make it last?" I suggested to her.
"Ohhh. An innuendo? Well, I should have you know that I eventually get what I want," Kazumi assured me, grabbing my hand and once again pulling me down the rest of the hallway and into a large traditionally decorated (about half Korean and half Japanese) dining hall of once again, epic proportions.
Most of the interior space was empty, the floors and ceilings the clear centerpiece of artistanship, decorated both elaborately and ornately with a pattern that was impossible to determine. As we approached a large dining room table near the end of the room, by the window, it became increasingly apparent that there were a group of twelve guests already seated.
As we got closer, an array of strange faces and three familiar greeted us. Kazumi led me to the table and introduced me to her guests, though I could have sworn that a dinner date usually entailed two.
"You already know Kazumi, Yūna and Ichiro..." she gestured towards the three guests I'd recognized seated at the table, Yūna and Ichiro beside one another, and Kazumi across from them.
"Pleased to meet you again Mr. Sturgess," the androgynous Kazumi greeted me first.
"Mr. Sturgess. A pleasure to see you again," Yūna then greeted us with a smile, a sentiment echoed by Ichiro.
"The pleasure is mine... er... ours..." I quickly corrected myself, trying to play the part that Kazumi so desperately wanted me to play.
She squeezed my hand to let me know that she appreciated it.
"Going around the table from the left of Ichiro, we have Mi Mi-Kyong from Marketing. Harmony Griffith from Human Resources. Ota Katashi from Legal. Pan Seungri from IT. Qui Quan from Finance. Nisha Kota from Customer Service. Melvin Gill from Operations. Roselle Fabron from Marketing, and Alexndre Couture from Administration," Kazumi introduced her staff one by one.
"Pleased to meet you all. I don't think that I'll remember all those names in one go, but I'll do my best," I smiled and put on the charm.
Kazumi then took me by the hand and pulled me over to the seat at the head of the table, nearest the window, to where there was on additional setting beside her, to her left which was obviously intended for me.
We sat down and shortly thereafter, drinks were poured for us by the wait staff in her home. When Kazumi had her drink firmly in hand, we raised our glasses and took our first sip together.
"Oh, this is so lovely to finally have a chance to have a nice dinner with you all, though I have to admit that the reason I gathered you all here tonight was because John proposed to me..." Kazumi began, and upon reaching the last part of her sentence, I suddenly found myself choking on my drink, spitting it into my lap.
"Pardon me... but I didn't know that you were going to share the news with them so quickly..." I said to Kazumi, trying to cover for my shock with her statement.
"You know how it is when you're in love... You want to let the whole world know!" Kazumi spoke much flamboyance as her foot found my leg under the table, where she began playing footsie with me.
"Do you think that marriage is a good idea when this company is on the brink of economic hardship?" Melvin addressed Kazumi with a glass of wine in hand.
"How dare you remark on my personal life!" Kazumi responded rather harshly.
"It was not I who brought up this personal subject of yours. We need your full undivided attention with company matters to overcome this potential crisis. Do you have any idea how serious this is?" Melvin demanded of Kazumi.
"I do. If it were in my hands, I'd immediately..." the androgynous Kazumi interjected.
"But its not in your hands. You are a face for the public, and nothing more and nothing less," Kazumi immediately crushed the androgynous Kazumi under foot.
"Madame Chiharu. I can't help but think that both Melvin and our public Kazumi are right. This is a bad time for you to be diverging your focus between your home life and your company. We need leadership and we need it now. Not tomorrow," Alexandre seemed to support this idea of denying Kazumi the pleasure of a personal life, though his reservations were not unfounded, for all of their livelihoods depended upon the success of Keun.
"Please excuse me, but I've got to clean my trousers of this drink, if you could tell me where I'd find the washroom in here?" I got up from my chair and excused myself.
"I'll take you," the androgynous Kazumi offered, quickly standing with me and leading me out though a door into a hall on the adjacent wall of the dining hall.
"She's not capable of running this company," the androgynous Kazumi asserted to me.
"That's nonsense! Look at what she's accomplished this far, and she started this entire thing herself, four years ago, from a tiny office in Seoul. I mean, look around you. What do you see? It took four years, three if you count the fact that she didn't actually incorporate until after her first year. Three years, and all of you have great jobs, and you're now trying to oust the very person who put you there!" I defended my Kazumi.
"Get over it, you barely know her. This is just some facade the two of you have concocted in order to drum up support in her camp. She's a regular dictator. If she doesn't make a change soon, this company is going to go under and that is that! So get in there, get your piece of tail, and get out before this whole thing comes crumbling down!" the androgynous Kazumi advised me.
"You know, I'm not saying this because of your androgyny or any aspect of your gender. I'm saying it because you're a real back biter of a snake, you know that? She's obviously a real leader in a pit of vipers," I stood androgynous Kazumi down as we neared the men's room.
"She's not a leader. She's only a surfer riding the crest of a tsunami she started, and lost control of the first year in, that's why she hired me as a figurehead to lead her empire. So she could give a face that wasn't her own, to her growing difficulties. There needs to be change or there will collapse," the androgynous Kazumi's patience seemed to be waning.
"The only change that needs to happen is the attitude of her senior staff apparently. There's only two washrooms. You'd better make a choice and I'll be watching," I said to androgynous Kazumi before I stepped into the men's washroom, cringing after the fact that I had momentarily become so crass as to put stipulations upon androgynous Kazumi's understanding of themselves.
Regardless, I was eager to get to the bottom of this situation and find out what was going on with Kazumi that she'd on a whim, invited me to this dinner and surrepititiously, announced our engagement. It was clear that there was some kind of mutiny that was brewing or in fact was coming to a head, and I had just happened upon this situation as the proverbial wave had crested.
I listened for a moment, pressing my ear to the wall nearest the women's washroom to hear if it was in use. After a minute had passed of my waiting and listening, I finally gave up and attended to my own business in the lew, cleaning my trousers of wine as best I could, after which I returned to my seat at the dining room table, where the conversation seemed to have become even more intense.
Several trays of food had been placed throughout the table, including succulent Salmon, Kimchi, Sushi and Gimbap not to mention my wine had been refilled, and a few bowls of Soju punch had joined the drink selection.
Androgynous Kazumi had already returned to the table and was part way through consuming the feast on her plate, that was put there by her host's hard work in creating Keun. Melvin was once again on about how operations had suffered drastically thanks to recent budget cuts, that mostly stemmed from Kazumi's leadership and mismanagement.
Kazumi had been arguing with him to little effect since I'd left for the washroom, the division amongst the leadership already becoming obvious, especially when Roselle joined Melvin in his critique of Kazumi.
"Marketing has been suffering as a result of those cuts as well..." Roselle joined Melvin.
"That's not true. Advertising costs have gone up substantially in the last year, and that's where your budget is disappearing to Roselle!" Kazumi stood her down.
"Can we not just eat? Enjoy the food and the company?" Yūna asked the occupants of the table, seemingly growing more and more anxious with this critique of the woman who'd given them all the career opportunities by which they currently flourished.
"So good the food. Yūna and I are having a very good time," Ichiro backed Yūna, and it was easy to see that there was going on between the two than I'd initially suspected.
One of the wait staff, a man in his forties, came over to the table and leaned over to whisper something into Melvin's ear, but amidst the disarray of conflict at the table, nobody else noticed this but me. Not even Kazumi. I gestured to to the wait staff and called him over.
"I'm a bit of a fan of lager and Rose's Lime Cordial. You wouldn't happen to be able to attend to that for me, would you?" I asked of him.
"We have. I'll bring some for you. Would you prefer it rather than wine?" he asked me, a hint of an Irish accent in his speech.
"If it wouldn't be too much trouble. I'm John by the way. John Sturgess," I responded with a smile, having already learned so much about him as I offered my hand.
"I'm Darren. Darren O'Connor, and I think we can accommodate you on the Rose's Lime Cordial for a night," he responded in a friendly yet cautious tone.
We shook, and he went on his way, drawing me a scathing glance from Melvin.
For about ten minutes, the vitriol had died down as everyone engaged themselves in the consumption of the scrumptious food on the table, though I could have hardly written off the rising mutiny to a case of hangry dinner guests.
When the guests had finished eating, the food remained while most of them continued to drink and pick at what was leftover, while continuing their verbal assault upon their host. When the growing fervor at the table had almost become unbearable, that's when Mi Mi came over to my chair with her drink in her hand, and leaned over to chat.
"So Kazumi tells me that you're quite into pool?" she said to me with a playful grin on her face.
Harmony had gotten up from her chair and was now standing behind Mi Mi, smiling at me.
"I don't play that well, but yeah, I really enjoy a good game over a drink or two, but its all about the company your with," I responded to Mi Mi's question.
"Why don't we go play a game? We can play teams. You and Kazumi against Harmony and I?" Mi Mi suggested, and I looked to Kazumi who was at that moment into it again with Melvin and the androgynous Kazumi.
"May I interrupt your discussion?" I spoke up, waiting until Melvin was speaking before I interjected.
"What is it honey?" Kazumi asked me, with a smile and a somewhat flustered look on her face.
"Mi Mi and Harmony here just challenged us to a game of pool. Are you interested?" I asked her.
Her face literally lit up at the idea.
"Lets go!" she got up from her chair, grabbing her drink and then my hand.
The four of us left them at the table, while Yūna and Ichiro looked on as we left. A moment later though, they too were on their feet and catching up with us as we made our way to the billiards room.
As we were about to arrive at the hallway, we ran into Darren once again, who held a tray full of drinks. He stopped us and handed me my pint glass of Rose's Lime Cordial infused lager and I thanked him. It was then that I caught him whispering something to Kazumi that sent her off of her rails.
"Are you going to the billiards room, Miss Chewhari? Would you like me to send the bartender?" Darren addressed Kazumi.
"That will be fine," Kazumi responded, now clearly over her threshold.
"I'll have the bartender bring a cart with lager and Lime Cordial, John," Darren added.
Her grip suddenly tightened around my hand, and she pulled me very aggressively and quickly from where Darren had been. He continued on towards the table, a confused look on his face as if to make it out to be Kazumi's issues rather than what he'd whispered to her. I stumbled, hanging onto my pint glass as Mi Mi and Harmony followed, looking somewhat confused.
"What just happened?" I asked Kazumi.
"Nothing. Lets just keep going," Kazumi's fit of anxiety seemed to dissipate the closer we got to the billiards room, whereupon our arrival, she found herself calm and excited to play.
The billiards room itself was bathed in red light, appearing very much like a classy bar, which in fact it had. The tables themselves were cared for very well, and consisted of two full sized Snooker tables and two standard tables for Stripes and Solids, which we'd be playing.
"So are you going to tell me what happened?" I asked Kazumi again as Mi Mi and Harmony selected their cues from a rack on the wall.
"It was nothing... Its... its... so hard to explain and you wouldn't understand," Kazumi seemed frustrated the more that she thought about it.
"Does it have anything to do with this rising mutiny against your leadership at Keun?" I asked her the billion dollar question.
"Mutiny? That's an understatement! Its like... when a bunch of people who want to oust you try to drive you crazy... To have me question my own sanity or to provoke reactions that undermine the confidence of my employees in me," she explained to me, moving in closer to my ears so that Mi Mi and Harmony could not hear.
"You mean they're gas lighting you?" I said to her quietly, though my shock was very much apparent.
"Yes... if that's the term that describes when a bunch of people try to drive you insane," she said to me, still very much flustered.
"Financially, you're worth a fortune. I certainly don't agree with it, but I'd say that in times like these, it comes with the people you've chosen to surround yourself with," I stated honestly to her.
"Either I chose them, or I'm a magnet for them. Either way, I've got to deal with this and make certain that I hold onto what I created. My company," Kazumi moved closer and wrapped her arms around me, holding on tight.
"We'll find a way to fix this. Lets play for a bit, it might help to take your mind off of this, and it will give me some time to weigh this," I assured her, rubbing her back to comfort her.
We then went over to the rack and picked our pool cues, and by the time we'd returned to the table, Harmony had already set them up in a rack. It was becoming clear to me that like Yūna and Ichiro, there was something more to Mi Mi's and Harmony's relationship than met the eye and this was confirmed when they appeared to be intimate with one another, holding hands just like Kazumi and I had been.
This didn't bother me at all, as I stated that in our business, it was common, and these two women seemed genuinely friendly and people oriented, and though they were still relatively young and had not been scathed by life like many other people I'd met throughout my life. I could only hope that they held onto that aspect of their being and innocence.
The door to the billiards room once again opened and Yūna and Ichiro stepped in, followed by Darren, who was wheeling a cart of lager and three bottles of Lime Cordial.
"I finagled it so that I'm your bartender. I can't help but admire a fellow fan of lager like John," Darren smiled at Kazumi with a hidden sinister spark in his eyes.
Kazumi seemed to momentarily struggle with it, before containing it successfully. She then addressed Darren with a new resolve.
"Darren, have you seen my new dogs? John brought them for me as a gift," she spoke with such friendly and familiar demeanor that I thought she'd given up on her issues with him.
"Dogs? You? Chewhari, I am impressed. Why I'd love to see them," he said to her, still very much that edge about him as if he were trying to get her goat.
"Yūna? Ichiro? Play a round with Mi Mi and Harmony while I show Darren my new dogs," Kazumi smiled, leading Darren out of the room and beckoning me to follow them.
I accompanies them down the hall a short ways before Darren addressed me.
"So you must be a dog kind of person. Do you have any dogs yourself?" he asked me.
"Well, I've always been a kind of cat person myself, but I get along with dogs. I have a cat, but he's in the care of a friend of mine right now. You?" I asked him in turn.
"No. It'd be a bit difficult having a pet, living in here," Darren explained.
"But I do allow my employees to have them. I encourage it in fact," Kazumi stressed the point that she supported her staff.
When we arrived at the door, Kazumi used a key card and unlocked it, opening the door within which the dim lights automatically flickered to life to reveal the two Pomeranians within a large comfortable setting she'd had the custodians arrange for her impromptu.
They immediately sat up upon seeing me, their tails wagging.
"Well if it isn't Fe and Fi," I smiled, as Kazumi joined me in greeting the dogs.
They were happy to see us, yet calm and withdrawn as they had been while they were in my care.
"Are you going to say hello to Darren?" Kazumi asked the two of them as she stood, grabbing my hand and pulling me back towards the wall.
The dogs looked to Darren, and there was an immediate change in their demeanor. Their faces went from that of two friendly adolescent puppies to vile ferocity, the two of them bearing their fangs and growling viciously.
"Oh come on there. I'm not that bad a guy?" Darren laughed at them, looking over to Kazumi and then me for support as he risked getting closer to them.
The change was instantaneous. They were no longer two Pomeranians, but one enormous black and white canine, with quills growing out of its back and a large mane around its neck. Its eyes glowed red as it snarled at Darren, who desperately tried to scream but found himself to be paralyzed.
I backed myself into the wall, and would have gone through it if not stopped by the barrier, my own terror of this thing beyond imagining. It simply was something that could not exist, and yet it was there right in front of my eyes, snarling and slathering as it growled at Darren.
When their standoff finally broke, it happened just as quickly as the transformation. This enormous canine ripped into Darren's flesh, biting at his neck and ripping his head clean from his body. A burst of energy from Darren's body emerged into the room and floated about like a blue mist. It remained floating as the two separate parts of his cadaver fell to the floor. The quills on the canine's back suddenly glowed with a bright and blinding light, which completely eradicated any sign of the blue mist, as Darren's soul was expunged from reality. The canine then viciously devoured his remains, bones and all, even licking the sanguine stained floor clean of any evidence that Darren had ever existed.
And then when there was nothing left of him, the two Pomeranians stood looking towards us, Kazumi and I. Kazumi with a look of grateful elation upon her face, and me a look of sheer terror, the contents of my stomach readying themselves to vacate.
"They didn't just... they didn't... Did they?" I confirmed with Kazumi that what I'd seen was not just some illusion or trick. Perhaps a virtual reality arcade she'd installed or some other amusement that only the extremely wealthy possessed.
"That's the second one. Mutineers I mean. They somehow... know. They can read people. My staff. Everyone whose seen them or been up close with them, though they only seem to do this when I'm around and its in a contained environment, like this room," she explained to me, a look of relief upon her face, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
"But... but... he's...?" I said, still absolutely in shock with what I'd seen.
"Who?" Kazumi asked me.
"What do you mean, who? Darren! You're wait staff slash bartender. He's gone. A missing person..." I said to her in disbelief that she could accept such a thing.
"You mean, one of the people attempting to oust me from the leadership and ownership of my own company and fortune? That's impossible, because I treat my employees so well, and if they had issues with me, they'd take them up with me like responsible human beings, by arranging a meeting with my Human Resources department, and correcting the issue at hand. They could even email me directly. How could I have any people so crass as to attempt any such thing like that? To take the work of my life from me, along with my finances, and send me to the poor house while they give it all to someone else? That doesn't sound like anyone that works for me," Kazumi wrapped her arms around me, but kept her eyes firmly fixed upon mine.
From that moment, I suddenly realized what I must do.
To be continued...
Written by Brian Joseph Johns
Credits and attribution:
I collaborated with
Google Gemini,
Grok and
DeepSeek AI to come up with the title to this brand new episodic content, and
all three contributed to the process, yet
DeepSeek somehow managed to do it ever so poetically and with the mind of an
artist and writer. We need more poetic thinkers in AI. Think Jodie
Foster's enigmatic scene in the movie adaption of Carl Sagan's and Anne
Druyan's Contact and you'll know exactly what I mean. In fact, watch the
entire movie! The world needs that right now!
Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best
place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very
much.
Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Deepai.org, Google AI Studio, Borderline Obsession...
DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing
scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.
InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen,
Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in
Seconds.
Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong
and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized
Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime
inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that
one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR,
(both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming
and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and
at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire
family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International
presence of a very scalable intensity martial
art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation
thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even
Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be
Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck
Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef
Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a
team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's
own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at
ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and
other Zen)
Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real
thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay
tuned)
Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.
Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study
the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for
health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life
Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study
the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for
health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life
Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores
the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to
meet practitioners of a variety of different arts
Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand
the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its
effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying
its history
Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza
(mostly Shotokan)
Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai
The original weapons focused curriculum under which
Samurai became masters of their art
Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength,
stamina and flexibility
Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools
Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!
Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one
roof
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate
and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice.
We do.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200
Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
Brian Joseph Johns
