Chapter 10

Chapter 10

...I’ll send all my loving to you.
     Kento finished singing. The vibration of the guitar strings gradually died down and disappeared into the silence of the studio. The MC, Tawara, snapped out of his trance and began to clap.
     “There you had it! ‘All My Loving’ sung by Kento Yamashiro!” He then looked at the other MC, Matsukawa. “Well, Matsukawa? What did you think of his guitar?”
     “It was goof,” Matsukawa said, raising one thick thumb.
     “Whoa, Kento, did you see that? You got approval from the Matsukawa!”
     Kento sensed Matsukawa staring at him, looking like he wanted to say something. But instead, he silently bowed his head and took the guitar strap off his shoulder.
     “Alright, then, let’s hear about the song we’re going to hear today in the studio!”
     “Our first album goes on sale in March,” Oka said as the leader, looking at the camera. “This is one of its songs, and it placed tenth on the Oricon billboard charts. ‘What Love Is’. Enjoy.”
     The song was already a pre-recorded video which would be edited in before the show went on air. Once Oka finished introducing the song, the assistant director flashed a board from where he was squatting on the ground. Wrap up, it said.
     “So there you had it, this week’s MVG, Chronos!” Tawara said when he saw the sign. He raised his hands and went into wrapping up the show. “So, all the good boys and girls out there, and the naughty ones too, and all the gramps and grans watching this show at home, see you all next week!” he said, garnering laughs with his comical attitude.
     “Same channel, same time!” Matsukawa, with his contrasting rugged look, pointed at a thick index finger straight at the camera and pretended to shoot a pistol. It was Music Map’s classic close. The ending song faded out.
     “That’s a wrap! Good work, everyone!”
     The scorching lights went out at once.
     The group of four, including Kento, heaved a great sigh.
     “I was sweating like mad from nerves!” Oka stood up and bowed his head to Matsukawa. “Thank you for everything. Alright, guys, let’s get out of their way.”
     Kento got to his feet before Matsukawa stopped him.
     “You hold on a minute,” he said. When Kento turned around, Matsukawa was looking at him with penetrating eyes. “I caught that. I’m not a Beatles fanatic for nothing. You messed up that spot on purpose, didn’t you?”
     “Yes,” Kento nodded honestly. Matsukawa approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You learned that from that person you love, too?”
     “Yes.”
     “You must really love that person.”
     “I do.”
     Matsukawa nudged Kento’s shoulders with both hands and scratched his head fiercely. “I’ll get them to air that part without cutting it. I hope she gets your message. I’ll be cheering for you.”
     “Thank you.”
     Kento lapsed into thought as he watched Matsukawa’s retreating back as he strode away. He thought of when he had just started learning Beatles songs when he had gotten good enough on the guitar. He had been practicing ‘All My Loving’ when Orihara told him that there was a playing mistake recorded on the LP.
     “That’s why real Beatles fans make a mistake on purpose here, to copy Paul.” Orihara’s smiling face rose in his mind.
     I haven’t forgotten about you.
     If Orihara were to see this show on air?if he were to see Kento play his guitar?would he get Kento’s message? He didn’t know. But Kento was prepared to bet on the small possibility that he would.

     After the recording, the group found Manager Shimoda waiting for them in the dressing room.
     “Time to head out for the office. We have a meeting to get to,” he said.
     “Aww, already?” Tomoya complained. “I was gonna go to Kagurazaka to buy a green-tea Bavarois while we were in the area!”
     Oka laughed as he pulled out his Nike backpack. “I bought souvenirs, so you’ll have to settle with these.”
     “Yay!” Tomoya cheered.
     In the car, Shimoda began talking about plans for a TV special during the Golden Week holidays in May. The sports-themed special was to be aired on Children’s Day on May 5 at the National Stadium, where stars competed against each other in different sports.
     “And we get to be on that show?” Tomoya leaned forward eagerly, but Manager Shimoda shook his head.
     “Nishimura is the only one from Chronos who’s entering the competition. I have something else planned for the rest of the group.” After mentioning that they would officially be assigned their roles later on, Manager Shimoda specifically pointed Kento out.
     “We’ve already decided on the perfect spot for you,” he said. It was a feature that was going to be played between competitions that got up-close and personal with athletes aspiring to enter the Paralympics.
     “Everyone knows that your debut was delayed because of your leg injury. That’s why we thought it’d be perfect for you to be a reporter.”
     “But my injury wasn’t that serious,” Kento protested. “Are you sure I’m fit for this part?”
     “Well, I know you might not like it because it seems like we’re cashing in on it, but…”
     “Then why do I?“
     “You’ve debuted now,” Oka interrupted. “You’re going to have to do a lot of things. This will be a good experience.” Oka had gotten signed with the agency before any of the four members, and had a wealth of experience in the entertainment industry. His argument stood firm, and Kento had no choice but to agree.
     “You know, I’ve had to wear gorilla masks and rabbit suits before,” Oka said ruefully, which made everyone roar with laughter.

     Kento’s reporting work took place during the spring holidays. As he met and spoke with a number of athletes aiming for the Paralympics, Kento began to realize that he had had the wrong idea all along. For these people, sports was much more than a casual hobby to engage in after conquering their injuries or disabilities. These were real athletes in a competitive world, with everything on the line.
     They conditioned their bodies for maximum performance, and had the skills and ideas to make full use of their capabilities. At the very end of his project, Kento met a certain man.
     He was a triathlon athlete with a prosthetic leg who lived in the Shikoku region and also a software developer for a medical equipment manufacturer. The venture company not only manufactured CT and MRI scanners, but was also active in developing prosthetic legs and nursing robots for those with cervical spine injuries.
     The company had a large factory and research institute in Kochi, and the man, named Ishizaka, worked at the research institute.
     One day during the spring holidays, Kento and the TV crew visited the research institute. Despite the intimidating image that came from the “research institute” name, the facility was in fact a large open space like a gymnasium with an array of training machines connected to computers for analysis. It looked like a gym that one would find around town.
     Ishizaka was running on a treadmill with his prosthetic leg. Various wires were attached to every part of his body. His skin was tanned from the sun and his hair was cropped short. His sharp face and thick eyebrows made him look like a rugged actor. Muscles bulged in every part of his body, and his thighs were taut.
     From the knee-down on his right leg, he was wearing a strangely-shaped prosthetic leg. The knee consisted of a metal rotor, and the shin looked like it was made from thin, flexible plastic. The ankle was a metal spring.
     A few researchers were clustered around the monitor, staring intently at it. After fifteen minutes or so of running, Ishizaka stopped and beckoned to Kento and the staff.
     “This is called an electromyogram. It tells you which muscles contract when I run.” He explained the jagged slopes on the monitor that looked like a seismic reading. “My body becomes the research subject. I contribute the data myself so we can make better prosthetic legs,” he said.
     Triathlons involved swimming, running, and bicycling, which required different prosthetic legs for each. Ishizaka sat down on a nearby chair and took off his prosthetic leg to show Kento. His real right leg was amputated from the mid-thigh downwards. Kento stared unflinchingly at his leg. Then, he touched the prosthetic leg lying beside it.
     “This must be an artificial joint that works in place of your knee. And instead of a hinge, you use a rotor ? that’s a good idea. When you land, this spring absorbs the shock. That’s pretty amazing,” he said, impressed. “This is an amazing leg!”
     Ishizaka looked at Kento with surprise. “You’re pretty honest with your reactions, aren’t you?” he said loudly. “As long as you’re not afraid to speak your mind, you can be assured there are no barriers between you and me. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much about you idol singers, but it looks like I was the one discriminating.” He grinned, rolling his big eyes.
     “I really am impressed,” Kento said earnestly. “I hurt my knee and was told I couldn’t exercise for a year. That’s when I learned about the knee joint from my doctor.”
     Yes, Orihara had explained in detail to him, using an anatomical chart, just how complex and well the knee functioned, despite how simple the structure looked at first glance.
     “Until then, I didn’t know. I thought all the knee did was bend.”
     “That’s right,” Ishizaka said. He proudly lifted his prosthetic leg. “Someday I’ll make a knee more magnificent than the one God made. My ambition is to make a knee so great that when an athlete enters a competition with it, he’d make all the non-disabled people jealous.”

     After their filming segment was finished, Kento walked around looking at the computers and training machines. Ishizaka came over to talk to him.
     “So I heard you’re going to the same school I used to go to.”
     “My school?”
     Ishizaka jerked a thumb at the staff, who were busy carrying cameras, microphones, and other filming equipment on their shoulders.
     “I just heard. You’re from Shonan Senior High? I used to be in the Athletics department there. I was on the track team.”
     “What?” Something familiar sparked in Kento’s head. But the man in front of him looked much older than Orihara. He recalled the list of new members he had looked at in the club room. He had been too occupied with Orihara’s name at the time, but?he said alphabetical order, right? If he remembered correctly, didn’t the name that came after Orihara start with “Ishi”?
     Even if they didn’t join the team at the same time, if they were fellow members, it was possible that they knew each other’s names, at least. Kento grabbed Ishizaka’s arm.
     “Do you know a Yuri Orihara?” he asked hoarsely. Ishizaka’s thick eyebrows shot up.

     When Kento told the TV crew that he would be having dinner with Ishizaka, they sent him off willingly. Perhaps they had figured that they could enjoy their celebratory drinking party more freely without a minor like Kento around. Ishizaka took him to a restaurant that served Sawachi style cuisine, a Kochi specialty.
     The restaurant was located inside a multi-storey building, but the interior was decorated to look like a rural house with a thatched roof. Beams carved out of whole trees spanned across the ceiling.
     “Apparently they dismantled a hundred-year-old house and rebuilt it here.”
     “Wow, it looks like a filming set.”
     Ishizaka burst into laughter. “You sound just like someone in the entertainment business.”
     Among the restaurant guests were businessmen as well as younger people who looked like tourists. Ishizaka made for a seat close to a group of young college-age women. Kento hastily tugged at Ishizaka’s jacket.
     “Oh, right. I almost forgot you were a celebrity.” Ishizaka asked a server in a happi coat for a private booth. The booth had a wood-panel floor and a sunken hearth, with rattan floor cushions placed around it. Once they sat down, trays were brought in front of them with appetizers. Ishizaka gave his order to the server.
     “I know you’re a minor, but you can still drink beer, right?”
     “No, I can’t.” Those were the rules at his management office. Ishizaka shrugged at Kento’s staunch refusal.
     “Well, I guess no means no. You’re a pop icon, after all.” He ordered one Japanese sake instead.
     A big platter arrived with servings of seared bonito and sashimi.
     “Eat,” Ishizaka encouraged. “You’re a growing young man.” He then drank his sake as he began his story.
     “Both Orihara and I weren’t sprinters. We were long-distance runners.” Ishizaka was born in Kochi, but had been granted a scholarship for his performance in junior high school and had moved into a dorm for senior high. He was a ten-kilometre race runner, and his most immediate goal was the inter-high-school championships. He eventually wanted to enter the senior high-school Ekiden relay race, and finally, as a matter of course, the Hakone Ekiden relay race once he entered university.
     During autumn of their second year, Orihara and a few other runners accidentally tripped over one another and ended up falling. That was when Orihara hurt a ligament in his knee.
     “The injury itself wasn’t serious, but he was worried that he wouldn’t make the cut for the high-school Ekiden race. So he trained in secret without telling the coach.”
     Ishizaka had been worried about Orihara running on the roads alone at night, so he decided to practice with him.
     “That’s when I got into the accident.” A truck had edged into the oncoming traffic lane as it attempted to veer clear of an illegally-parked trailer in the lane. To avoid an oncoming car, it had ploughed right up onto the sidewalk, hitting Ishizaka,
     “It was a pretty bad accident. I ended up quitting high school and coming back here to focus on my treatment.”
     Kento waited for Ishizaka’s next words with bated breath.
     “I had a few operations, but ultimately the doctor’s verdict was that I should amputate my leg and switch to a prosthetic limb if I wanted it to function at its best.”
     Ishizaka sighed and drained the rest of the sake in his cup.
     “I was devastated, to be honest. I’d had so much encouragement from everyone in rehabilitation, after all. But I decided to place my best on that prosthetic leg.”
     He had also strengthened his resolve not to give up running even after he had lost a leg.
     “I thought, if there aren’t any good prosthetic legs out there, I’ll just make one.” So he had taken a university entrance qualification exam and entered the computer engineering department at his local university.
     “He came to visit me in the spring, when he’d just graduated high school. Around the same time of the year as now.”
     He had gotten a few letters from Orihara, but had refrained from contacting him back until after he had firmly established his academic path. He also hadn’t mentioned his amputated leg, since he didn’t want to worry Orihara more than necessary.
     “And eventually, we drifted out of touch.”
     That day, Orihara had visited him out of the blue. He had been shocked to see Ishizaka with a prosthetic leg.
     “But I ended up yelling at him,” Ishizaka sighed. “All because when I asked him if he was still running, he said he’d quit long ago.” Ishizaka covered his face with his hands, as if the painful scene were replaying in his mind.
     “I said to him, ‘Whose fault do you think it is that I can’t run anymore? You were supposed to run in my place after the accident’.”
     But of course, that hadn’t been out of hatred.
     “I thought he’d quit running because he felt guilty about what happened to me.” He had thought his words would give the push that Orihara needed to start running again. “I wanted him to run the Hakone Ekiden race.”
     That way, he could cheer Orihara on from afar.
     “How was I supposed to know that he’d quit so he could study to get into medical school? He’d never even told me.”
     Ishizaka cradled his head in his hands. Although Kento felt like he was making things somewhat worse, he told Ishizaka what Orihara was going through at home?including his complicated relationship with his older brother. Ishizaka lifted his face and widened his eyes in surprise.
     “I had no idea. So that’s what was happening to him, huh?” He looked up in exasperation at the ceiling and its sooty beams. Now that he thought of it, perhaps Orihara had come to tell Ishizaka that he would become a doctor so he could make his leg better. But after Ishizaka had yelled at him, Orihara had simply left looking dejected, not saying another word. There had been no contact from him since then.
     “To think he’d applied for medical school just so he could make me better. I had no idea that was what was going through his mind.”
     Ishizaka had not even known that Orihara had become a doctor until Kento told him.
     “I sent out letters a few times, you know.” But he had only gotten a simple postcard once from Orihara that said he was doing well.
     “He can be pretty stubborn and prone to jumping to conclusions.”
     Kento almost burst out laughing because Miyashita had said the exact same thing. But he could not laugh when he thought of how Orihara must have felt at the time.
     He had chosen the path of medicine to make his best friend better, but in turn had undermined his older brother’s position. And when he had finally gotten into medical school, his friend had already lost his leg.
     Ishizaka knocked back his replenished glass of sake, then looked intently at Kento.
     “So, what do you want me to do?”
     Kento looked him straight in the eyes.
     “I want you to see Yuri.”