V2 - A Date With Jackson: Part Two

This prompted a grin from Jackson. “I’m heart broken.”

He really is a weirdo, he just does a fantastic job at hiding it… I believe Jackie now when she said Jackson used to not have friends. He treats everything like a game. “Why not just invite Akito?”

Jackson took a sip from his coffee. “I didn’t want to. What I want is to continue our conversation from a few hours ago.”

The conversation Jackson was referencing was the one they just had on the curb at two in the morning. And to Katsumi, that talk had been concluded—or rather, he didn’t have any desire to continue it.

It only took a moment of consideration for Katsumi to make a decision. He began to rise from the booth—his decision was to not play Jackon’s game.

“Wait— Hold on, hold on.” Jackson’s eyes widened. “I’ll stop messing around, okay?”

Katsumi hesitantly sat back down, staring at Jackson with disinterest.

“I’ll be honest.” Jackson clasped his hands together. “The reason I messaged you last night and asked you to meet me here wasn’t because of caring about my sister or being ‘interested in you’. It’s because I have a problem with you.” He still used the same approachable nice-guy tone he always did, yet his words were cold.

Katsumi lowered his eyebrows. He couldn’t imagine what he did to offend him. Even if it was the thing with Mayumi, Jackson had no part in it. So why should he care?

He rested his head on his hand. “What an Earth shattering revelation...”

Jackson’s eyebrow twitched.

“All you’ve done is prod me with weird questions since we first met. It’s easy to figure you have some issue with me.”

“So you know what it is?”

“...”

The confident look Jackson wore returned to his face. “I hate people like you, Murakami. They’re the ones that are truly selfish. You know that?”

 Katsumi sat up straighter—he was blind sided by this sudden direct attack. Jackson had dropped all manners of speaking with hidden meanings or implications and came straight at him.

“All that matters is you’re happy, right? When you ‘help’ people it doesn’t matter what method you use—even if it results in them being worse off in the long run. As long as you feel good about yourself in the moment, you’ve done a good thing.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I didn’t have this problem with you when we first met. But after seeing the results of your time with Arata, I’m not a huge fan of you.

“Why does any of that matter to you? You’re not involved with Arata. We didn’t know each other during high school.” Katsumi almost chuckled. “You’re just acting like a piece of shit for no reason.”

Seriously, what is this switch up?

There was such little hesitation in Jackson’s words it was like he already knew Katsumi was going to say that. “Like I said, you’ve already burned Arata. And I’m here to tell you I don’t want you to do it to Kiki.”

Katsumi’s eyes flashed with surprise. Jackson knew about Saki asking him to help her? Did he know what it was about? Most importantly though, how did he know?

“How do you know that?”

“A friend of mine overheard you two talking in the library. I guess you two were being fairly loud.”

Instantly, the image of the girl working at the library’s front counter popped into Katsumi’s head. He let out a drawn-out sigh.

An uncomfortable silence settled over them.

Katsumi’s eyes glanced over the diner—it was beginning to fill up. Which made sense as it was mid-morning on a Saturday.

He turned his attention back to Jackson. “If you know about her asking me for help, then you should also know that I turned her down.”

“I’m aware. But a part of me thinks you just won’t be able to help yourself.”

Another sigh. “I think you have your head up your ass, Jackson.”

“...”

“I said I wouldn’t help her, so I won't. You’ve seen first hand how she treats me, so what reason would I have to go along with her request?”

“You don’t listen… Murakami. All of what I said is why you’d help her. You just willfully ignored what I said though, didn’t you?”

Katsumi narrowed his eyes. 

A sudden buzz on Jackson’s phone interrupted their conversation. The time was now nine-twenty four.

“Oh look at that, it's Kiki. I gotta go, we’re meeting at nine-forty for our date.” He took out one thousand yen and left it on the table as he stood. “I’ll see you later Katsumi.”

With that good-bye Jackson left, waving and giving a parting word to Mai at the front counter.

He’s so arrogant… It’s worse than me… I was listening and no, you’re still not right. One peek behind this curtain and I've realized this guy is actually a perfect match for Akito.