Turbulent Surface

Time began to pass steadily for Yumi. The job started to fall into a rhythm that she could understand. While she still leaned on Kasuse for his experience in what would be for marketing, she used her developed skills in leading and strategy to organize them. It turned out to be a surprisingly good team for the two.

Their meeting with Soseki and his editor went off even better than she could have hoped. They were deeply impressed with their attention to details and ideas. Even without the editor giving the approval he was on board for everything that they did. In fact, he wanted to do more with how they were bringing in the local shops.

As they were leaving the meeting, Miki tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a client let alone a writer actually want to help out. Keep it up and you’ll be going places.” She passed on after continuing with Soseki and his editor.

It gave a bit of relief to Yumi to see things move so well. Kasuse came up behind her watching them leave. “I wonder if she’s disappointed she doesn’t have to use her charms to clean up our mess.”

‘There’s that again,’ she thought. Looking back at him, she tried to get a read on how honest he was being about that statement. It could have just been him teasing around, but there seemed to be a hint of genuineness to him even if it was joking a bit. “She have to do that often?”

“It’s pretty common. We call her the closer for a reason. It’s often that she needs to do it for us because our deadlines are tight. Like with the last client, they like to try to use leverage to get a better deal since they know that we don’t have a lot of time. Which means often we don’t have the perfect plan, even though if they gave it to any other team they wouldn’t even have half of what we deliver. There’s a reason we do what we do, we’re good at it.”

‘Politics even in the business world. I’m familiar…’

“Like her or hate her, she’s good at getting people to sign paper. And we need that. She knows we’d get less jobs if things fell through because we lost a client at the last stretch.”

“Lesser of two evils and all…”

“That might be stretching the metaphor here, but sure we can go with that.”

Yumi stared at the woman for as long as she could before they disappeared down the hall. ‘Who is this woman? She’s good at her job, but seems to have means to do so that aren’t too popular. Though I haven’t really seen much of her yet interacting with everyone else. I’m still trying to figure out what she did to Shigeki and their history…’

A lot of unknowns remained with Miki and that only made her uncertainty about the woman worse. She didn’t like the feeling that she got from listening to Kasuse or the others. Looking at the way things were going Yumi worried that she would have to start looking at the long game before making any decision.

Chapter 563 - Turbulent Surface

Shigeki and Ogura wrapped up their project with success and joined them the following week on the Soseki job. Their additions sped up the work that they were doing. Yumi was also grateful to be able to work more closely with the two to get a better read on them.

She wanted to understand Shigeki better since he was the one that seemed to be having the problem more than the others with Miki, if what she was told turned out to be correct. Anything that she could learn from him might help her understand Miki better and gauge if she was the one that she looked for. The problem that she faced was that he was troublingly shy, almost to the point of being a hindrance.

If she left him on his own there wasn’t a problem and giving him tasks worked out fine. However, direct conversations with her just proved to stall more often than not. There was rarely a good time for her to just talk to him because they were always together. It wasn’t until Thursday came around that she found the right chance to corner him, which she didn’t really like the sound of, but it was what she did.

They were both in the break room and she was grabbing some tea. “Hey Shigeki, do you have a minute?”

“Miss Mizuno!” He didn’t seem to be startled, but he looked a little frozen by her calling out to him. Judging from what she saw he seemed to be considering that she might try something and was prepared for it. Though not well enough to not look like he was going to fall over from being too stiff.

She moved in around him where he stood at the counter in mid pour of coffee, though he stopped the moment she spoke. “No need to be scared. How about this? You don’t need to be so formal around me. You can talk to me like the others. Just my last name, no honorifics.”

“B-but that would…”

“Hey, I’m saying it’s okay. We’re on the same team together. Right, Shigeki?”

He nodded to her, but the thought of dropping honorifics seemed to terrify him from the scared look in his eyes. Seeing how nervous he became troubled her. ‘What in the world happened to him? I feel like understanding him will give me answers to what’s happening in this place and Miki. Everyone seemed to know what’s happening, though they’re not being too specific, so I can only read on context clues and I still don’t have enough information on everyone to make good calls from that. My thoughts could be wrong and I can’t rule people out because I got bad information or misinterpreted it.’

“You can do that right? I’d like us to all be like a team.” He shrank further from her, only making it more difficult. This wasn’t the sort of person that she was used to dealing with. Often she could strongarm or just trick them and get away with what she wanted because of the era. However, she didn’t really have status or that sort of freedom to afford trouble to her social standing. “Do you not feel like you’re part of the team?”

There was more silence out of him, but he was bad at poker. Everything she said at least gave a facial reaction that she could read. So it wasn’t like he was actually silent. He clearly didn’t feel like he was part of the team, but he wanted to be included. However, he was very scared with everything that was happening.

The big question mark remained around what his trauma was and that wasn’t going to be solved today, Yumi knew. “I’m sorry that you feel that way.” She paused trying to figure out what she could do next. Taking a sip of the tea, she went stone walled in front of them while evaluating the options. ‘I’m not thrilled by it, but it should get him to act.’ They were means that were underhanded a little, not that he would know it.

Yumi stepped away a little, starting to take her approach. “You’re clearly talented, so I’d imagine any other team would love to have your brains working for them. Maybe I should talk to Miss Tomori about getting you transferred since you’re unhappy. I wouldn’t want you to-”

“No!” That happened faster than she thought, though he did move on cue as she expected. While there was a battle within him over what he wanted to do, he remained certain about one thing. He wanted to remain on the team. The trouble that he had didn’t involve the three of them, but something external.

“Shigeki?”

“I don’t...want to leave the team.”

She turned around to face him once more. There was more conviction in his face as she expected, but no more closer to anything helpful. “But you’re uncomfortable with all of us, especially me. You don’t seem happy.” A little push would get him talking, though she had to be careful about pushing too hard. He could just as easily collapse.

The entire history wouldn’t come out in a single conversation, but if she could get even a little bit then that would be really hopeful. She could use that to climb further with him. It would take time, but she could build up some form of comfort with him that he could talk to her naturally

“I-I’m not...it’s just hard.”

“Are you happy with the way you are now?” He looked away from her making the answer pretty obvious. “So let’s take steps to improve that then. You want to remain with us right?”

“Y-yes!”

“Then something simple for you. Call me Mizuno please from now on.”

“B-but…”

“You’re not comfortable around me. That much is clear. You may want to be on the team, but you have a problem with me, whatever that is. But you don’t want it to continue. This isn’t about forcing change, just making steps.”

There remained silence between them as he seemed to be thinking. A lot of turmoil stirred within him. It seemed pretty clear that no one had ever tried to make him confront what he was dealing with. Everyone just let him do his thing and since he wasn’t causing troubles he just got ignored. The phrase a raised nail gets hammered sounded pretty accurate right now for the situation. Something that she learned to go around, though in this era her aggressiveness might not work out as well.

The sounds of footsteps signaled the end of their chat. She moved away from Shigeki, but paused just long enough to stay in his ear shot. “Just try to work on it. I’m not scary, I promise.”

The rest of the day and week went about how she expected. There were no further interactions with Shigeki. Reality was that she noticed he seemed to retreat a little more from her being shorter in his replies and staying away from her more. ‘Perhaps I was too aggressive, but I think I got something from him. He might not be comfortable dropping formality in front of the rest of the team as they might make fun of him. Though if he goes on like this too long, they could make fun of him regardless for being a stick in the mud while the rest of the team is more friendly.’ It was a two edged sword she knew, though Shigeki probably didn’t. All she could do was watch him and help out where she could. The goal wasn’t him she knew, but he started to become a personal project in her mind under the guise of being a clue to what was going on with Miki.

The last week of their job arrived and Yumi had to stay focused on her work. There was little time to try to figure out the mystery around Miki or even help out Shigeki. They all worked together in their different parts towards putting the materials together with the strategy. Some pull from Miki, which seemed to be common, they were able to secure the time of a few artists to do the work that they needed. Terrible deadlines aside, it seemed that everything was coming together.

Yumi felt pretty good with how things were looking and the rest of the team responded well. Reviews from Soseki came back positive as well. There still remained plenty of time for something to come up as Yumi tried to keep the unexpected in mind. And while they had some bumps in the road, there was nothing that they couldn’t handle with a little extra hours. It sounded like a terrible solution, but overworking seemed to be the usual means of getting anything done. While other teams had a normal work life, they didn’t as the problem solvers.

A positive from it was that she could tell there was a general enthusiasm for what they were doing. Like with Kasuse, they had a fire within them to do the best job that they could. They seemed inspired by the plan and how the locals wanted to make it work. It brought out a good side to everyone, not that it was easy to tell from Shigeki.

But two weeks of hard work paid off eventually and they finished the final presentation for everything. All the papers were signed and agreements finalized. Everything looked like it was moving towards a huge success. Everyone was excited about what was going to happen.

Two weeks still remained before the release of the book, but they still had a little bit of a celebration for a job well done and under the wire, if only barely. It was a modest outing at a bar where the four of them went. Shigeki got dragged along even if he didn’t want to join them. He remained silent the whole time, hardly even drinking while the others enjoyed the evening to their fullest.

Yumi had learned to manage her alcohol, but still knew what her limits were. Plus she wanted to keep her head about her if anything did come out as drunken habits often were. Sadly, there was little that they said in regards to Miki. Kasuse complained more about the time that they had and the editor getting picky about the wording in some of the posters while Ogura apparently had some artist’s eye and didn’t like how the artists that they grabbed did the work.

As she learned, the artist for the cover of the book was different and a woman. He had a bit of a thing for her and found in his drunken state that their internal artists had taken great offense to her work. She admitted to not have the same sort of eye for detail that he had and couldn’t find the flaws. These were never concerns that he brought up during any of the meetings, which he clearly kept to himself knowing that it wasn’t the right place. But in the social atmosphere he could rant all he wanted.

Then the day of the meet and greet came at the launch of the book. Yumi went down with Kasuse to Hino to see how it was going. Nerves still ran a little high as they had only heard back from some early reviews and critics were mostly positive about the book, but not glowingly. Yumi didn’t know how much reviews altered buying intent, but Kasuse said that they weren’t as important as reader reactions.

When they arrived at the Aoi Kame there was a modest group gathered inside the bookstore. It wasn’t a large place so it felt like more were there then in reality, something that Yumi noticed quickly. Hino might have been in Tokyo, but Soseki was a new author and this was a little store even being popular. That was the harder sell with it, but it still looked to be on course with the plans that Yumi hoped for. This was about the long game rather than short term.

Yumi noticed Yuki coming up behind her mostly just minding his own business fixing books on the shelves as the signing steadily progressed. “How’s it looking?”

“More than I’ve seen in the store, but still less than the boss was expecting. She seemed to be thinking that it was going to be a tidal wave of people. Wanted a lot of books to get sold today.”

“Still doing good business though right?”

“Definitely, best day in a while, just short of her wishes.”

She nodded to herself watching the line. Excited fans greeted the young author. There was a lot of energy in the air. He really looked happy to be here spending time in a place that meant a lot of his childhood. “It’ll work out. Though I’m no closer on the Miki problem.”