229 Chapter two, 2016, just another Christmas: 10 (1/2)

Wakayama Tadao looked at Natsumi when she let loose another barrage at Mitsuo.

'There's no stopping you when you're like this.' Then he smiled. 'I guess that's why I fell in love with you.'

Love or not. He still felt a bit bad for their friend who got caught in the crossfire.

Both their kids, Noriko and Ryu, were out skiing, or more accurately, Ryu was out snowboarding with his girlfriend, while Noriko stumbled around in the children's slope alone.

Tadao grimaced. Noriko's boyfriend hadn't shown up because he got swamped with some kind of model job back in Tokyo. That was the reason his Noriko was all alone, since she had inherited Natsumi's acrobatic skills, which were all but non-existent.

Ryu, however, got his from him, and while she had been like a frenzied monkey during their high school years Tadao knew the difference between monkey and natural athlete. 'My beautiful monkey,' Tadao thought and smiled at his wife.

”I know you said you'll stay out of it, but I'll have none of it. I need those one hundred years of experience you have, and I'll have them, or else your wife is moving in with us come January.”

'Give up Mitsuo. You married Natsumi's best friend so you had it coming sooner or later.' Because if Natsumi placed one phone-call his wife would leave that onsen back at Ise and get right back to Tokyo, and there just wasn't anything Mitsuo could do about it.

A light snowfall obscured the view of the mountainside, but it was nowhere dense enough to prevent Tadao from seeing the kids in the slope closest to the hotel. One of them had to be Noriko, probably one of those sitting on their butts.

Well, it was time to come to the rescue, and in so doing to betray his best friend.

”Love, go easy on him. We're supposed to celebrate hatsumode together in a few days.”

”We are?” Mitsuo said, and from the look in his face Tadao saw a glimmer of recognition.

”Yes. Three or four of us. What would you prefer?”

”You bastard!” Mitsuo said as the trap closed around him. ”I need our place staffed over New Year's. Three, three of us.”

”Isn't that wonderful?” Natsumi said and gave Mitsuo a cheerfully false smile.

'Poor sod. Your fault to begin with. You taught us manipulation when we were kids.' Which was the one area where Tadao had caught up faster than his girlfriend. She was just too gleefully open with whatever she did. So of course she trapped him and married him. Not that he had ever been hard to trap to begin with, he knew that, and he didn't regret a single day they had shared together.

”You could at least tell me why,” Mitsuo said.

Tadao saw how his wife looked around to make sure no-one was within earshot.

”Some moron had the two arrivals targeted.”

Mitsuo sighed and bowed his head. ”I know that, but I know it had nothing to do with the factions, so not good enough.”

It was his time to nail the coffin shut. Tadao swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm tea and turned to his friend. ”It does now.” 'Hot damn! What did they use instead of tea?'

”What?”

”The kids brought that Red Rose asylum down pretty much on their own,” Tadao said. He licked the inside of his mouth to get rid of some of the awful taste. ”Sure, they got some help from Nakagawa, but your granddaughter turned out to be a monster when she got angry enough.”