What Not To Do (Part 1)

Tani and Anita are making their way through the halls of Kokusai, passing empty classrooms and lively clubrooms alike. They are going at a lumbering pace, so the sound of the outside rain pelting the windows and the muffled voices from within adjacent rooms echo through the space they’re in. The competing noises surrounding them come across particularly loud considering their silence.

They haven’t spoken a word since leaving the Languages clubroom.

Tension seems to build with each falling raindrop as they continue to quietly dawdle along. Tani isn’t sure if he is supposed to speak up first or not, and if he were to do so, he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say. 

His lament inflicts a dreadful series of ailments upon his body. The knot in his stomach is working hard to double him over despite his gallant battle against it.

“So…” Anita says, saving them both from suffocating. “How long have you known?”

Her voice cures his stomach issue, but the question creates a new obstacle. 

With a befuddled jerk of his head he wonders aloud, “Known?” He pauses for a moment before finishing, “I guess a week or so.”

“I see…” 

“To be honest it wasn’t very hard. Although it feels a bit weird speaking Icelandic compared to Norwegian, both languages share a significant amount of cognates.”

“Huh?” Anita finally looks his way.

Tani doesn’t notice and he rattles on.

“What’s pretty interesting about Icelandic is how old-timey it sounds, it’s fun to imagine myself as an ax wielding Viking when I speak it.”

“Tani, I think you’re---”

“Modern Norwegian on the other hand sounds a lot more like other Germanic languages I’ve already dabbled in.” Tani interrupts her without sensing her obvious consternation. “Maybe I can pull off Danish and or Swedish in the future? I’m sure I can if I wanted to. Speaking of other languages, do you know any Faroese?”

“Hold on---”

“I’ll probably add that to my repertoire while I’m at it, although they are under the external sovereignty of another nation, they are still their own country after all.”

“....”

He finally detects something is off when she goes silent. She stares at him with a blank smile that very clearly reveals her brain short circuiting. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he can see smoke rising from the top of her head.

“W-What?” he asks.

“Are you finished?”

She grabs his sleeve and gently pulls him towards her.

“?”

“I would like to know how long it’s been since you’ve known about my situation?”

“Uh, your situation? I mean, you’re doing pretty good in class, and your Japanese is progressing at an impressive rate.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but that’s also not what I want to hear.”

Tani adjusts his glasses and glances sidelong at Anita in the process. She’s looking at him like a child who got a disappointing present from their parents for their birthday. The pressure of her grip on his sleeve seems to try and pull an acceptable gift out of him.

“I’m sorry,” Tani says with a bewildered sigh, his eyes trailing off down the hall. “I don’t know what you’re wanting from me.”

Anita’s grip is released, and she lags behind him when she replies, “You really don’t?”

“I can’t even answer that question either, that’s how little I know about whatever it is you’re talking about.”

“But… you learned Icelandic.”

“I did.”

“That means you gathered information on it after hearing me talk to Elisabet on our VR night.”

“I did.”

“So that means you looked into my Icelandic surname too.”

“I did not.”

Anita stops in her tracks befuddled.

“Don’t look so surprised, Ms. Liljadottir. Did you think I’d dig into your past without your consent?”

“Of course I thought that.”

Her swift answer feels like an arrow to the forehead.

A puff from Tani's nose expels the affront. “You obviously didn’t want me to know, and although I’ll admit that it wasn’t easy, I chose not to pry out of respect for your wishes.”

Her skeptical smirk shrugs his words right off her shoulders as she walks past him, leading him down a flight of stairs.

Tani folds his arms and retorts, “I’m not that much of a monster. I don’t just go spying on the people around me willy nilly.”

She turns to him and tilts her head, giving him a face.

“No, seriously!” He implores as he trots down the stairs to her side. “I only probe into someone’s past to gather info that will come in handy for very specific future interactions. It is an absolute necessity in my line of work. But with you it’s different.”

“With me?”

“You’ve done more than enough to show me that you’re capable of getting through this year here at Kokusai, I don’t need to know anything else about you.”

Anita grips the strap of her bag rather tightly, and a delicate movement of her head presents her cheek. She is both flattered and slightly disappointed.

“But,” Tani says, his tone now sounding more resolute. “That doesn’t change the fact that I want to know more about you.”

Her eyes go wide.

The serious expression he’s showing reads as something illegible to her. Probably because there isn’t a hint of unease to it despite it being the boldest sentence she’s ever heard out of him.

“Hmm, is that so?”

Their eye contact is so electric that it seems able to charge the rain filled sky outside to the point of lightning. With Tani’s eyes broadcasting his truest desires, there is no longer a need to say anything else.

Anita wouldn't dare give those eyes anything less than a proper answer.

“It’s not that I didn’t want you to know, I just didn’t tell you because I figured you investigated us right away. And the thought of you knowing so much about me made things a little… weird. You didn’t treat me any differently though, which made me feel like I was overthinking how you viewed me in the first place.”

“Ha, and there I was assuming that I was the one overthinking things. You didn’t treat me any differently either.”

“Really? I was quite embarrassed by that night you know? I have been pretty awkward around you since then.”

It’s a surprise to him that she found the last couple weeks awkward, judging by how she acted in the immediate days after that night he never would have guessed it. He tried his best to return the favor.

“You’re usually pretty bad at hiding how you feel,” she says with a relieved chuckle. “I guess I couldn’t read you this time.”

Another surprise.

His feelings finally made it past her keen eye.

“...Oh.”

But for some inexplicable reason, that doesn’t make him happy in the least. It’s almost as if he would prefer himself unable to hide such a thing from her.

“Alright…” Anita expels a deep breath, preparing herself for a confession. “I am ready to tell you, if you’re still interested?”

Tani postures himself up and says, “I am.”

Anita smiles and hops off the last stair. Turning to him in one fluid motion, her hair dances behind her when she asks,

“Where do I start?”

-----------------------

Just like everyone else who has ever existed, Anita Pedersen’s story starts when she was born…

Actually, as for what brought her to Tokyo Japan where she is now in her 18th year of life, her story started about a year before her birth.

Interestingly enough, it began with an Icelandic business woman working in the budding Aluminium smelting industry.

At only 26, she rose the ranks from a company logistics coordinator to a contract negotiator at lightning speed. The reasons why can’t be tapped down to one simple trait--- she was a master at all simple traits.

She could entertain clients with charisma and confidence, holding engaging conversations with fellow business people and industry leaders with the ease of breathing. She could give impassioned presentations in front of crowds of people that had each audience member hanging on every word that left her mouth.

She seemed to combine all of those simple traits into a phenotype so complex that Mendel’s Law of Dominance would bow to her as a freak of nature itself.

Her knowledge of scientific theory was even more impressive than her social talents. With a firm grasp on all things involving the periodic table, she could confidently and accurately predict how multiple elements would react to each other upon mixing, and could even hand draw more efficient smelting machinery designs that never once failed to work.

This young woman was considered an absolute genius.

Surely, she couldn’t handle the murky world of multinational corporations as well? That was easy too, especially when the people around her immediately saw her talents and let her loose in the name of profit.

She was an unstoppable force that had yet to meet an immovable object.

Not even the Americans could withstand her when she restructured the contract of a merger between a New York corporation and the Icelandic company she had previously worked for. The societal expectations placed on her as a young woman in a male dominated field couldn’t hold her back either.

The ride to the top of her mountain was as smooth as silk…

That is, until she crashed into her immovable object on a day she traveled to Oslo, Norway.

She went there to negotiate the building of Iceland’s newest plant in an isolated eastern corner of the country called Reyðarfjörður. The idea was that the company she works for will be partnering with a Norwegian conglomerate in a joint venture to build the $1.3 billion plant.

The idea was of course rushed by the needs of the shareholders, so the contract that was brought to the negotiating table already had ‘favorable’ terms for the politicians built in.

There were two organizations that just needed to sign off on it and her company could start breaking ground.

She used all of her skills to lobby the Finanstilsynet to great success and breezed through the red tape involving money.

There was only one remaining obstacle.

At the time, and even now, the regulations imposed on the industry were specifically overseen by the Ministry of Climate and Environment.

With Iceland and Norway sharing economic ties through the EEA, bureaucracy demanded regulatory compliance from all participating nations. This delicate system managed to work in relative efficiency, with both Nordic countries having a low pollution index value that their citizens and in some cases the rest of the world enjoyed the benefit of.

Things like water and air quality, commercial fishing rules and limits, and especially resource gatherings like oil and natural gas all fall under this umbrella, juggled almost impossibly by the Ministry, and by its leader who is appointed by the King of Norway himself.

19 years prior to today, the organization was run by the youngest man to ever hold the position of Minister. At just 34 years of age, the man had served the first two years of his six year term with a diligence and candor that received adulation from both friend and foe alike.

He was honest and straightforward, never budged from a principled decision, and always put the interests of both the public and the environment’s health above all.

The young woman from the Aluminium smelting industry in comparison was… different.

She went into this deal thinking it’d be like any other, and an unfortunate fact about all big business is that it is inherently shady. Not only that, it is inherently ruthless.

The young 26 year old was well equipped and well versed in it when she met the Minister for the first time.

Abigael Liljadottir would apply the tools of her trade the very moment she met Andreas Pedersen…

-----------------------------

“So your parents really are rich.” Tani says, holding his chin and nodding his head in confirmation. “That’d explain why you were able to join Kokusai the way you did. I always assumed they paid the school to accept your application.”

“My mom did, yes.”

“Ha! I bet that sneaky bastard Togashi pocketed more than his fair share. I’ll find out how much it was and send him a ‘friendly’ request for more funding for our club.”

Anita furrows her brow and purses her lips.

Tani cringes.

“Did I offend you??

She relents her agitation with a sigh. “No, you didn’t. It’s just that you’re a lot like her, you know? That would be the first thing she’d think to do as well.”

He doesn’t know how to receive that statement.

“It’s true that my mom is rich, and she’s showered me with all the money I would ever need for me to come here and study in Japan this year…” Despite describing how fortunate she is, she looks as though she has just stumbled upon a bird's nest fallen on the ground. “But I actually grew up far outside of her money’s influence, her doing all this for me now is just my mom’s way trying to make up for what she did.”

“...What she did, you say?”

Tani can feel the gravity of her words push down on him.

“There’s a lot more to the story… Should I carry on?”

“Please do.”

Anita takes a deep contemplative breath and continues.

--------------------

Abigael’s proposal was rejected by Andreas repeatedly over the course of the first week of negotiations. Despite her best efforts to mend portions of the contract, she just couldn’t find a way to make the Minister approve a contract that best served the profit margins of her company.

Things are never entirely smooth in International business, especially when talking about such a giant sum of money floating around, but Abigael was not used to having such a rough go at it.

She had to find a way to crack the hard shell of righteousness that Andreas Pedersen used to shield himself without sacrificing her desired outcome.

She landed on trying the age-old tactic of creating a rapport with him. To do this, she decided to have his daily routine tracked by a company spy.

Andreas seemed naive to the world around him, and went about his daily activities in an almost clockwork-like fashion. Every morning he would go to the same cafe for coffee, spend his lunch breaks in Mathallen Oslo to eat at the food stalls, and each evening he would go to his modest home and cook dinner for himself. Every two days he would go shopping at a grocery store near his flat, and in between those specific days he would go to the local bar after dinner for a drink.

For the most part he was a creature of habit.

And as has been pointed about before, a creature of habit has no real protection.

Certainly not from a genius Icelandic lady who decided to meticulously plan out what time of the day and where Andreas seemed most relaxed and happy.

After preparing for an entire week, she just happened to ‘bump’ into Andreas at a grocery store.

And from there in the fresh produce aisle, their relationship left the confines of business and reached a destination that neither of them would have ever imagined.

----------------------

“Tani… Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you dream of becoming the top diplomat in the world?”

He wasn’t expecting such a question to suddenly land on him. More enthralled by the story she was in the process of telling, the topic switching towards him causes his shoulders to jump.

“W-Well, it’s kind of a long story in its own right.”

Tani has never brought up the promise with his father to her, and really doesn’t want to start that conversation now.

Anita turns to him as they walk and sends him an inquisitive smile. “Does it have to be a long story? I’m sure it started with just one thing.”

He puffs and pushes his glasses up the brim of his nose. “The UN has been a borderline worthless organization for quite some time now, and it’s high time there was a leader bold enough to enforce its Doctrine and no longer let powerful countries step all over international law.”

As confident as he was when he said that, Anita feels like that was the answer of a politician and not a normal human. She stares at him, her lips and eyes shift into a knowing smile and don’t waver.

Tani’s face gets hot. Sensing that she expects more of an explanation, he continues to elaborate, “Because of my studies into the impact of geopolitics throughout history, and what I am currently seeing out of it today, I feel that I am especially equipped with the tools to become that bold leader.”

“But that’s not the real reason why you started down this path, is it?”

Anita’s honey gold eyes seem to shine exceptionally bright in this moment, like water kissed by the late morning sunlight. Not even the rain of the real world can break through the radiance.

He ponders on her question while floating in that sea of gold and comes to a quick conclusion that he struggles to say out loud.

“...No, it’s not.”

He pauses for a hanging second as though debating the consequences of revealing an essential truth about himself.

But in the end, he relents.

“I… I wanted to help people.”

Right after saying that, his legs stop and he stands there as if something had dawned on him.

Anita contentedly stops with him and pats him on his shoulder.

He never gave thought to a logical fallacy he has trapped himself in until just now. What happens when the people he helps no longer offer him something in return?

“....”

“You have a pure heart, Tani. And that’s what you have most in common with my dad.”

“....”

“I could tell the moment we met. As good of a job as you do at masking it, you let it slip more often than not.”

“It’s not a matter of masking it, it’s a matter of necessity. The way this world works, I can’t kill it with kindness, I’ll get crushed. If I truly want to help people one day I have no choice but to tackle the world with the same viciousness that it dishes out to all of us.”

Tani is clenching his fists and hiding them at his sides.

“Isn’t that a shame, though?”

“A shame?”

“Thinking about the future like that, trying so hard to get there… If you do that, you’ll miss out on something much more precious.”

“What do you mean?”

Anita does a little hop to get in front of him, she leans forward with a soft smile and says, “You’ll miss out on what you have now.”

Tani relaxes his clenched fists and lets his tense shoulders loose. Anita again pats his shoulder, but this time she keeps her hand there and looks him in the eyes.

“There’s still more to the story I've been telling you, and I think from here you might find a little bit of yourself in it.”

Tani lets a puff of air escape his nose. 

"Sounds like I better pay attention then."

To be continued!