Stale Donuts

The next morning, Miho and Hideo watched Kumiko dart out the front door with her lunch in hand as she raced to get to the train station in time.

Kumiko wondered sometimes why she didn’t go to one of the local schools. Her parents sent her across the city to Kakurejin Academy, a private school. There were a lot of well-to-do classmates there; if her parents were rich, they did a good job hiding it from her. Their car was old and they wouldn’t buy anything new until whatever it replaced was done for.

The house was the only thing that might’ve tipped her off. But as far as she knew her father was a salaryman and her mother didn’t have a job. How could they afford living in Minato City?

----

Hideo checked his watch, sighing. “It’s that time of month again.”

“Really?” Miho looked at a calendar handing next to the front door. “Huh. Well, look at that. It is. Ready to go?”

She got a non-committal grunt, which was practically a ‘yes’ where Hideo was concerned.

The two opened up the garage, which had just enough room to store a red shitbox almost as old as they were and what looked like a motorcycle covered in a thick beige tarp.

She saw Hideo linger near the covered motorcycle. Miho could see Hideo’s hand run along the tarp covering, almost stroking it a few times before he got in the car with her and got it started.

Miho got into the front passenger seat, shifting around to find the part of the seat that still had cushion. It got her wound up that for all the money Hideo had poured into this thing to keep it running, he’d never bothered paying a cent to fix the seats.

It was a holdover from the old days, back when they ran around town as Sweet Bear and Wolf Knight. Protecting people from kaijin, yokai, and criminal conspiracies wasn’t something you could list for a job history on that resume – nor was it something you did for the pay. And when Miho found out she was pregnant, even that wouldn’t be an option anymore.

Which led them to have a clever idea. With the connections they’d built, they managed to pitch their adventures to a media company that would then adapt their adventures into a tokusatsu show and an animated magical girl show.

The initial merchandising agreements alone paid for their wedding.

---

It took an hour for Hideo and Miho to get to their destination: a skyscraper nestled in the heart of downtown Tokyo. Obata Plaza was as sleek and modern as its counterparts in the area. But to them, it gave a feeling that they’d struggled to describe for years. Angst? Dread?

It was an unspoken thing lurking just beneath the surface. None of which was made better by each visit they’d made here get slightly worse every time. The secretary getting a little less polite, the elevator doors closing slower, the complimentary coffee getting blander. Each visit just got a bit shittier.

This time, Hideo and Miho were in a meeting room on the thirty-second floor. They’d passed by a number of posters on the way in advertising a number of tokusatsu shows – live action TV shows with a lot of special effects – and magical girl animated series. They all ran together to Hideo and Miho, and what wasn’t there stood out more than the rest of the slop.

Not a single reminder of Sweet Bear or Wolf Knight. They’d been memory holed, out of sight and out of mind.

The building was owned by Nise Kitai, an international conglomerate that had its fingers in every industry that one could imagine. During the height of the popularity for Sweet Bear and Wolf Knight, they’d bought the company that Hideo and Miho had pitched their adapted adventures to.

It was the birth of an entertainment empire, cranking out special-effects action and animated series ever since.

But not a one was based on either of those original successes. When Nise Kitai bought that entertainment company, they came to a shocking discovery. Hideo and Miho had kept creative control over any new merchandise or media when they signed their original contract, and it now bound Nise Kitai as surely as it did the company it bought.

Which is why they were being called in. Again.

Hideo reached for a box at the center of the meeting room table, pulling a dozen cake donuts towards them. He held one out from Miho, who politely declined.

“You sure? These are the one thing they’ve never screwed up,” said Hideo. He took a bite out of the first donut and immediately frowned. “Stale.” He flung the donut straight into a waste bin across the room.

No sooner that Hideo had spat out the stale bite of donut than an overweight bald man carrying several folders entered. His smile showed off his impossibly perfect teeth, and his sunglasses matched well with his dark suit.

At some point the company had hired an American. Said American was the man they’d had to meet with every month for years now.

Roy Smith was always full of two things: a family-size meal and bad ideas. He spread the folders on the meeting table before Hideo and Miho, taking a seat across from them. “Good morning. We’ve got a few pitches for you today.”

Miho sighed. “Are they new pitches?”

Roy laughed off the question. “We really put forward our best into these ideas. The tenth anniversary for the release of Magical Girl Sweet Bear and Wolf Knight is next year and we think it would be great to announce some new shows to spearhead a celebration.”

Miho took half the folders, with Hideo taking the other half. Each folder was filled with a two-page elevator pitch and concept artwork, and each folder after the next put the two in a worse and worse mood.

The second Miho finished her last folder; she shook her head. “You’ve missed the point entirely. Just like the other times.” Miho held up one of the pitches in disgust. “This one has Sweet Bear embracing the power of ‘dark magic’ and having to surrender her powers to an heiress. She would never do… half the stuff in this!”

Hideo grunted. He handed a folder to Miho, showing a pitch that had Wolf Knight become the secret head of an evil organization that murders kaijin. “How can you make the son of the guy who was in charge of Jade Chrysanthemum the good guy?!”

“It was meant to be a plot twist,” said Roy.

“It reads like someone who thought they were cool because they had snappy outfits.” Miho pinched the bridge of her nose and grimaced. “And this one has me die in the first episode to prop up the new antagonist… wait a moment.”

She flung the offending folder across the table, screaming. “You pitched this one last year! You’re recycling pitches! Again!”

“They tested well,” stressed Roy.

Hideo rose from the table in disgust, finally speaking for the first time all meeting. “Do you know why people liked the original Wolf Knight? It wasn’t just the explosions or the action. It’s what he stood for. Not justice, not revenge, not peace. Human life in all its forms.”

“And Sweet Bear,” Miho added, “was all about the power of never losing hope. Even in the face of the impossible, that you had to fight for others because it was the right thing to do.”

Roy took a deep breath. “No one wants that message anymore. Times are different now, don’t you look at social media? Things are worse and people want us to speak to that.”

“Speak to what,” asked Miho. “That good things deserve to die and it’s pointless to try?” She stood up after Hideo, who was already halfway out the door. “Don’t call us again until you’ve got something that isn’t edgy bullshit.”