Meet the Satos

“Bring the sake, girl! It’s time for Mahjong!”

“Hahaha! Would you please, Hayami? Oh, it’s been too long!”

Hayami had the wrinkles of every relative’s smile burned into her retinas. Every time was a reminder of what her extended family looked like.

For once, her cousins liked her company. She actually responded to their jokes. To be liked by anyone, you had to appear useful.

But the dam was leaking. The pressure behind her smile was becoming impossible to hold back. Every conversation, every fake laugh she emitted was another fracture in the concrete.

Thump-thump. The mahjong tiles downstairs sounded like bone on bone. Thump-thump. Her heart clawed at her ribs.

The TV was still playing, still talking about the scandal with Hina, the scandal at the sports carnival, the scandal with Veronica; the jokes were still coming—that she’d marry into Akira’s world and make them all richer for it.

Thump. Thump. THUMP!

Air. She needed air.

“Let me go c-change! My s-shirt got dirty… preparing the food and all,” Hayami stammered.

The rest of the family didn’t seem to mind. Only one aunty looked up at her and smiled.

“Oh, silly Hayami. Of course you can. Such a dutiful and polite girl, looking after her guests. You have really turned yourself around," one of the aunts chirped.

Hayami beat a hasty retreat to her bedroom, clicking the door shut.

She sat on the edge of her bed and began to empty her pockets.

"I'm sorry," she wheezed as she tossed them out as if they were swearing her hands. "Grandma, I'm so sorry…!"

Hayami had promised never leave Grandma alone, and yet, she’d been placated by money of all things.

The money dulled the pain for a while; she’d be able to afford rent for a month now without working. She effectively chose money over Grandma, so then was she really any better than her Uncle?!

Breathe in. Out. In. Out.

She wasn’t going to die.

She stared at the envelopes scattered on her bed.

She had received so many red packets it was crazy. The envelopes were stuffed to the gills. They didn't talk in person; they didn't offer apologies for the years of silence or comfort for the loss of their grandmother.

“East Asian affection, I guess.”

Little did she know that an unwilling voyeur had been watching the entire time.

\\

Day Three of Hayami being in perpetual lockdown.

Every waking moment consisted of Akira searching the house for anything out of the ordinary through those smart devices. Nothing much to report, other than the fact that Hayami was clearly being overworked—but hardly life-threatening. His friend's got tougher bones than that.

However, by the third day it was too much for him.

“Hang in there…” he said to himself. “You got this.”

The irony wasn't lost on him. Here was a national idol, reducing himself to the level of a dedicated fan club manager.

He let his attention drift for a fraction of a second. That was a mistake.

By the time his eyes snapped back to the screen, Hayami was already mid-motion, peeling her shirt over her head—wait, what?!

It fell to the ground with a muted thud.

He shoved both hands over his eyes and flipped the tablet to the side, almost throwing it away.

Unfortunately, the gods watching over his lecherous behaviour had decided to punish him in the form of an intruder who cheerily cried, “Yo, Akira, practice in fifteen!”

‘Shit!!’

Akira scrambled. His fingers shook and pressed about four different buttons before the program finally closed.

“Y-Yeah!” He blocked the tablet with his body to turn and face the intruder. “Got it! Just… uh… needed to wrap up some work.”

“Was that what I thought you were watching?!”

‘Shiiiit.’

Akira’s eyes looked away sheepishly. “Look, I’m… I know what it looks like but…”

“Dudeeee… finally!”

Akira blinked.

“I wasn’t sure whether you were attracted to women at all. I swear, none of you guys are. I thought Hayami was just part of your strategy. I didn’t know you had the hots for her!”

“Don’t talk about her like that!”

“Oooh, getting all defensive now. I like it, I like it. I wish you luck in your love-quest, I never really liked that Veronica scamp anyway. I swear there's more to her than meets the eye. Aaaanyway...” The P2D boy flashed some finger-guns. “I ain't judgin' ya! We all need to let out a bit of stress every now and then. Part of the natural human process.”

Akira shut his eyes and put two fingers on his nose bridge. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Hahaha! You’re really easy to rile up nowadays. Catch you at training.”

“Y-Yeah… see you, Kaito.”

With a long, long sigh as soon as his bandmate’s footsteps faded away, Akira turned his tablet back on.

In which he saw a very high-definition view of Hayami’s face.

Her fingers were holding the smart device and her eyes were staring straight at its hidden lens.

At first, Akira thought he was hallucinating. He looked at the buttons he had pressed.

One of them was the microphone button.

She must have heard... everything.

Surprisingly, Hayami’s face was not terrified like he thought it’d be. It was just one of solemn blankness.

In recent weeks, Akira had picked up certain tells. This expression usually signaled to Akira that she planned to do something.

Like… confronting somebody when she’s had enough.

“Wait, Hayami, it’s me!” he shouted through the mic. “It’s Akira! It’s not Kenji, I swear! I planted—”

It fell on deaf ears.

She didn't even look at the smart home device. She grabbed a jacket to cover herself, turned on her heel, and walked out of the room.

Akira jumped out from his seat and grabbed his own.

\\

It took about thirty minutes for Hayami to gather the courage for what she was about to do.

“Oh, just like that!” Auntie Mei screeched, slamming her tiles down with a triumphant clatter.

It was a massive Mahjong win, and she wasted no time extending a manicured hand toward Uncle Kenji.

“Pay up, Kenji! My Sato luck is clearly better than yours!!”

He scoffed. “Oh, I’ll get you back, just you wait…!”

“Uncle Kenji!” Hayami tried to shout over the commotion.

But the family was a wall of sound that was much too loud for a frail girl like her.

“Welcome back, Hayami!” another relative laughed, drowning her out. “Your Auntie Mei was always the best player in the family.”

“Now come take a seat, and watch a master at work…” Auntie Mei said cheekily.

Every second, every forced interaction—this family was an utter, suffocating cage!

“UNCLE IS SPYING ON ME!” Hayami screamed.

The room went deathly silent for a heartbeat.

A cousin snickered. “I mean… he lives in the same house as you. Of course he’d be looking at you.”

“He hid a camera in my smart home device!” she cried, thrusting the thig into the center of the Mahjong table.

Now the room was deathly quiet. Everyone looked at the device as if they didn't comprehend its nature or purpose.

A few dirty looks from people toward Uncle were all it took for him to visibly lose color.

“Give me that,” another uncle muttered, pulling a pair of reading glasses onto his nose. He turned the device over in his palm. “Hmm… this here’s a model AX-1932. An unusual piece of high-tech equipment that was in production only recently for the public—”

“Get on with it!” Auntie Mei snapped.

“It’s just a very expensive smart home variant that you won’t see in Don C Retail Stores!”

“So Uncle replaced the one in my room—the one Akira gave me—didn’t you?!”

“It’s way too expensive for me, Hayami!” Kenji’s face went pale at the implication. “Oh, this won’t do. Not to my poor Hayami. I’ll go check.”

He soon slipped away toward Hayami’s room.

She felt the walls caving in on her.

She was being crushed, her lungs were being squeezed of air, blood scratched the walls of her veins, and the world tipped over.

She couldn’t hold it. She slumped against the wall, thinking about the logic of her situation, and how all signs were pointing too…

‘Akira couldn’t have.’

He wouldn’t have.

Right?

Their relationship was deeper than that. Was every interaction fake? Did he not trust her to bungle his career, even after all the times he reassured her she was perfectly capable of handling herself?

From the bedroom, the family could hear Kenji’s muffled shouts.

He soon emerged holding a small sticker.

There could be no doubt.

It read ‘Sponsor Product for Rocketblast Recordings use ONLY’.

But how? Were Rocketblast really so arrogant that they thought they wouldn’t be caught?!

The living room descended into a cold silence. Then the gasping started. Then the horror. “Akira was spying on Hayami?”

Hayami stood up, her legs shaking, her vision blurring. In an incredible move of what could only be some Shakespearean love, she looked Uncle Kenji dead in the eye.

“I don’t believe you, Uncle Kenji.”