Chapter Two: The Search For More Money

I kept a close watch out for other airport deliveries. Most were heavy freight jobs my paltry Vespa couldn’t handle. Yes, they have apps for hauling freight these days; there are apps for everything. Don’t act so surprised.

While I waited for that glorious high-stakes bento box delivery mission to slide into my app notifications once more, I took the opportunity to research what little I knew about this mysterious benefactor.

Janae C and Yuki, spelled with a star. Lived in Beverly Hills, so they were rich-rich. One dressed like she was in a boardroom at all times, the other was known to me only as a silhouette. Ordered trans-continental meals delivered right to their door from a place called Sushitopia.

This restaurant was the obvious easiest lead, and the first thing I thought to research. It was not a chain but a singular restaurant nestled into Shibuya. I’d seen enough anime to know that was an exceptionally trendy part of Tokyo. As they hailed from a neighborhood populated entirely by ritzy celebrities, it could be surmised they’d traveled to Japan at least once, tried Sushitopia for themselves, and liked it so much they could afford to have it imported while it was still piping-hot.

Janae was not a particularly common name but without a surname I couldn’t find hide nor hair of her on the internet. Yuki proved much easier to find out about, especially with that star flourish.

Yuki☆ was a bona fide J-pop sensation, young enough to be relatively new on the scene but established enough to get gigs overseas—well, on this side of the sea, but it was overseas for her. Sources for celebrity news swiftly devolved into tabloid slop. But I managed to glean a few key bits of info:

One, Yuki was a stage name. Apparently, idols were engaging in the v-tuber phenomenon, where their actual legal identities were shrouded in secrecy, and they operated under an alias. I couldn’t find hide nor hair of her true name, and it felt stalkerish to pry. Still was still unable to pronounce that star in her name. Kind of came off like a wingding or tilde. Yuki~ — kind of like that but much more sincere.

Two, she was in town for an extended period for her big Hollywood debut. It was a story shared by many an aspiring actress. Most of those weren’t already well established enough in their home country to buy their own Hollywood mansion, though.

These facts got me to wondering about what kind of project she could possibly be involved in, y’see? You didn’t buy or even rent out a fancy-pants mansion for a single concert.

Taking a flight off to Tokyo to explore the Sushitopia angle for myself was right out; I was living out of an RV and subsisting on tips, after all. What I could do was browse social media and deep-dive into all things Yuki☆. Most of this was in Japanese, but there was a small but dedicated English-speaking weeb fanbase that had definitely noticed her presence in the greater southern Californian area.

“Omg oshi’s in Burbank!!!!!!!!!—” the explanation points continued, exceeding the character limit of this microblogging site and necessitating a second post. The whole post chain was built around some tabloid-style photos of the singer on a movie set. She had a stunt double and everything.

Not just a singer, but also an actor, I thought, thumbing through my phone after another late night of deliveries.

Most everything about this movie project was buried behind a dozen NDAs. That’s just how Hollywood works. Director was some European fellow I’d never heard of. Named sounded French.

She was to be the lead heroine, apparently. Some kind of sci-fi thing. Male lead was, I dunno, one of the Toms. Hadn’t been to a movie theater since I moved out here. Some of these celebrity names could’ve been scribbled out in Phoenician and I would’ve recognized them just as well—which is to say, not at all.

The social media well quickly devolved into a flurry of random Japanese terminology. (Kawaii meant ‘cute’ — I was not a total pop cultural caveman. I remember that from streaming anime in three ten-minute parts untold years ago). When sorting by most recent I got a few candid shots of the mystery superstar interspersed with a dozen people from Ohio sincerely and honestly wishing they could transmogrify themselves Japanese.

With information scarce, I hit the tabloids. A shameful admission, yes, but it had to be done. Actually most of the pictures here were identical to the ones circulating through social media. Free from the tiny screen and grainy resolution of my phone, however, they were portrayed in so much detail.

I hadn’t actually gotten a good look of this Yuki lady yet. But I certainly heard a great deal of Janae. Sure enough, the spiffily-dressed bodyguard was never far from the starlet, lurking just out of range of the cameras even during a shoot.

Part of me didn’t want to pry too much. Two young (comparatively speaking) ladies sharing a house. Yeah I know Janae was supposed to be a bodyguard, but I figured maybe they were together. It was Hollywood, in California, in the modern day and age. It was not an uncommon concurrence. Certainly, the internet rumor mill seemed to ‘ship’ ‘em together quite often.

Whether or not they made out in that palatial estate of theirs was none of my business, of course. What did concern me was Yuki’s frequent cravings and the possibility of getting more delicious, delicious tips with which to fund my layabout lifestyle. To these ends, I’d been surprisingly motivated for an RV bum:

MenialTask4Tips Corp Presents: Gig Geolocation The App. It was an add-on, accessible with a 12-month subscription to MenialTask4TipsGold, which also came with an elaborate crypto trading and sports betting interface. More importantly, it allowed you to set alerts when specific types of gigs needed to be delivered.

At first, I set one to alert me should there be any food delivery coming out of the airport. Figured it’d catch the next bento craving from this J-pop princess moneybags just as soon as she put the order in. This did not work out as planned. I was getting alerts at all hours of the day. Who knew so many people wanted home-delivered food specifically from the airport’s Wolfgang Puck?

My hope had been that airport deliveries would be from people who could afford to pay gangbusters in tips. This was true, but it wasn’t ‘Yuki’s home-cooked Tokyo bento meal’ true. I hung out in the general vicinity of the airport for a day and pocketed a fair amount. Still, I narrowed down my search criteria; it wouldn’t do to be bogged down in more standard deliveries when my glorious moneymaker could put in an order at any moment. So I waited, enjoying the remaining windfall from a week of very good tips, until…

+++

Good things always come with a catch.

My enhanced alert popped up. Someone had another bento box inbound. This one was from an even higher-end Tokyo store. I hastily threw open the app and reserved my spot as the delivery driver.

“Interesting,” I said, examining the order.

The package was currently on a flight, still an hour and a half out from even approaching the airport. It’d be another hour easy before the plane could ever hope to disembark, then another lengthy wait before the package would be ready for delivery.

As I futzed around in the ol’ RV, comparing estimated travel times in L.A. congestion to perfectly plan my ride up to the terminal, I received another notification. This one was not from the app, but from an elaborate network of disposable burner phones. The device that sent me this text would never send another message again, merely be ejected from an elaborate botnet and disconnected from a VPN and cell service to be immediately wiped and laundered.

The message glowed red and remained on my phone’s screen for two full minute wether I wanted it to or not. I’m actually not sure how they did that. I kept my phone on perma-mute to avoid a loud blaring. I got the impression this was supposed to be a stealthy affair, but the benefactors of this particular gig didn’t get the memo.

Harborside. Dock D-13. 1:35PM.

I waited for the message to shoo away into my messaging app then checked the time. It was 12:45. Had less than an hour to get down to the dock, which in turn was a fair bit away from the airport. The plane would land at LAX around 2:15 barring a delay, and the food would be waiting out b the terminal curb by 2:40.

Okay, Vic. Don’t panic. An hour between appointments isn’t so bad. People pace their day out like that all the time! This just meant I had to get out the door a little early.

I grabbed the keys to the Vespa and prepared to head out into another fair-weather SoCal spring.