Hands on a Hard Body (1/2)
Title: Hands on a Hard Body
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Nino and his friend Aiba enter a contest for the chance to win a fancy new car, but a competitor emerges that Nino hadn’t anticipated.
Notes/Warnings: A silly, competitive Sakumiya AU written for arashi-exchange. The contest in the story is based on an event like this one, where participants have to keep their hands on a car and the last person doing so wins. And the title comes from a similar endurance contest.
SATURDAY - 8:23 AM
HOUR N/A
There was a spring in his step when they left the massage parlor. Ninomiya Kazunari was feeling good. No, Ninomiya Kazunari was feeling great. Though the massage therapist had been alarmed by what the pair of them had planned that weekend, there was no way they were backing out now.
Aiba was walking slightly ahead of him, stretching his arms, lifting his knees up high as he walked down the street. Nino just concentrated on breathing, on the knowledge that he was in this to win this. Nobody, not even his best friend, was going to defeat him.
“I’m going to defeat you,” Aiba said anyway, doing more stretches. “You’re going to be crying when I win.”
“Fat chance,” Nino shot back. Aiba had been trash talking him the last week. He’d even sent a bouquet of flowers to Nino’s office, a beautiful arrangement with an attached card that simply read “GONNA KICK YOUR ASS ON SATURDAY.”
Nino adored his best friend, he truly did. They’d been friends since junior high, and they’d always been a little competitive. They’d both played on the high school baseball team, and in that instance, Nino had been declared the winner upon making the roster as a pitcher while Aiba and his slightly weaker arm had been tossed out into left field. They’d both asked out the hottest girl in their grade, but Aiba had been declared the winner since he’d been turned down first. They’d both taken guitar lessons, but Nino had been better at it. Aiba was admitted to the culinary school that rejected Nino. And so on and so forth, Nino victories and Aiba victories, for almost 20 years now. Today was just one more victory set to come Nino’s way, he was sure of it. Aiba didn’t have the dedication, the commitment. Nino was going to outlast him.
They were only a block away, and he could see that a crowd had already gathered for the event. They were corralled behind metal railings that had been covered with massive signs. Men, women, children in sun hats and Ferrari-sponsored oversized t-shirts. Nino could tell that some of the crowd members were relatives or partners of the men and women participating in the contest. He could tell because there was a look of irritation in their faces that didn’t seem to match the upbeat atmosphere around them. There were speakers set up, playing some American hard rock music, and Aiba nodded his head to the beat. Nino just hoped they weren’t planning to slaughter his eardrums with noise the entire time. He needed to be rather zen until this was all over.
Welcome to Super Touch 2015, the banners declared as Nino and Aiba approached the participants’ tent. Nino could already see the five identical cars lined up on the pavement, though of course there would only be one winner. The rules were fairly simple. The contestants selected would each place one hand on a vehicle, and the person who kept his hand there the longest got to keep it.
Super Touch 2015’s grand prize was a brand new Ferrari 488 GTB sports car, which retailed for just over 30 million yen. Aiba, being Aiba, had been spending most of his bragging time explaining to Nino all of the places he’d drive his new car, how many women he’d probably pick up with it, how he’d force Nino to wash it for him with a toothbrush, et cetera. Nino, being Nino, however, was not as lame as his best friend. He’d read the fine print on the Super Touch 2015 website and nowhere did it say that the winner had to actually keep the car. Nino decided he was going to win and then turn around and sell it, making him 30 million yen richer without having to lift a finger. Or, more accurately, lift his hand.
They were met under the entry tent by the annoying marketing guy, who was wearing a fancy ass suit with even fancier ass sunglasses. He had a Bluetooth thing blinking in his ear, but when he spoke, Nino knew he was directing his rage at the two of them. “You were told 8:15,” the guy said, checking his equally fancy ass watch and shooing them away from the general line and over to one of the tables covered in clipboards. “You’re late.”
Nino tried not to laugh, elbowing Aiba beside him. For the last two weeks, ever since the pair of them discovered that they’d been selected to participate, it had been a non-stop hell going back and forth with Matsumoto Jun, SupaLux Autos’ VP of Event Marketing. Matsumoto had already had them sign dozens of forms, had asked for ‘headshots’ to include on the Super Touch 2015 event website, had even begrudgingly confirmed for Nino that he was in fact allowed to sell the car if he won it.
Super Touch 2015 was sponsored by SupaLux, a luxury auto import dealership out of Nagoya, although the contest was being held at Akasaka Sacas, a few blocks from their Tokyo location. The headquarters of TBS loomed over them all, with press people and lanyard-wearing staff and camera people swarming the scene. Matsumoto had more forms for them to sign, most of them medical release forms that said, in essence, that they were participating in the event of their own free will and that SupaLux Autos was in no way responsible for any health problems that resulted from their participation.
Nino signed the form, chuckling under his breath as Matsumoto started yelling at some other folks for arriving “late.” Eventually they were escorted to the “Relax Tent,” where according to contest rules they’d be allowed a five minute break every hour and a fifteen minute break every six. On Aiba and Nino’s forms, there’d been a section authorizing them to invite one guest to the Relax Tent, who could bring them energy drinks, food, or anything else they needed to continue participating. Both of them had enlisted the assistance of Ohno Satoshi, Aiba’s co-worker at the bakery, and though Ohno had a knack for oversleeping, he was already sitting on a bench inside the Relax Tent waiting for them, armed with a backpack.
“Morning,” Ohno said, yawning. He’d had zero interest in winning the Ferrari for himself, as he had no driver’s license, but he’d apparently been quite taken with Aiba’s quest for success and had happily volunteered to help out throughout the day. Nino had originally asked his mother to help him, but she’d turned him down (and had jokingly called him a “fool” and a “disgrace to the family name” for throwing his time away on a stupid contest). He’d thus enlisted Ohno-san as a “take that!” to Aiba, knowing that Ohno was a fair and altogether decent individual, who would help Nino, his co-worker’s friend, just as much as he’d help Aiba himself.
Ohno unzipped his bag, showing the haul that Aiba and Nino had chipped in money to purchase, including some sweets from the bakery for a sugar boost. Though there was a long list of pharmaceutical products that were “outlawed” (Matsumoto Jun had provided a freakishly long list), there were no restrictions on energy shots or natural supplements. Ohno shook a bottle of “Pilot Pal” supplements, apparently a type of capsule used by airplane pilots and college students on deadlines. He also had meds for indigestion and upset stomach, over the counter allergy pills in case one of the cars shot pollen at Aiba for some reason, ibuprofen, multivitamins, and Siberian Ginseng capsules Nino had ordered over the Internet from some dodgy Russian website that he could barely read.
They were totally set.
The Relax Tent was nice and cool, with fans set around the room, SupaLux staff with hand fans at the ready, coolers full of ice, and it was just a short jaunt out of the tent to a line of six port-o-potties. Nino did not particularly enjoy port-o-potties, but with 30 million yen at stake, he’d be willing to pee in a catheter. Happily, such a thing wasn’t required. In fact, it was outlawed, along with super strength adult diapers. Matsumoto had been harping on him and Aiba all week, telling them that unless they had a legitimate medical reason, they had to “piss and shit like a normal human being.” He was a fun guy, Matsumoto Jun. Great at parties, Nino figured.
By quarter to nine, Matsumoto and his expensive sunglasses were back in the Relax Tent clapping his hands for attention, staff swarming around him like worker bees to his Queen Bee. “Good morning, Super Touch 2015 contestants! As a reminder, the last man or woman standing is the victor. We’ve placed stickers on the cars, and all you have to do is keep your hand on it.”
“He looks like one of the guys from Men in Black,” Aiba whispered to Nino, adjusting the Contestant #24 sticker attached to his t-shirt. Nino was Contestant #25.
“Which one? The alien?” Nino whispered back, snickering.
Matsumoto thankfully didn’t hear them. “As you know, there are five cars to accommodate all of you. Per the rules, there will be eight of you assigned to each car, and we’ll be going in numerical order. Which means contestants one through eight will be at car number one, contestants nine through sixteen will be at car number two…”
“No!” Aiba hissed, fingers twisted in his shirt, almost to the point of yanking off his contestant sticker. “No, I want to be with you! This sucks!”
Nino scowled when Matsumoto Jun deliberately looked their way. “Contestants twenty-five through thirty-two, car number four!”
“He split us up on purpose, that asshole,” Nino grumbled, seeing the grin at the corners of Matsumoto’s mouth as he clapped his hands again, wishing them the best of luck.
“At least you’re only a car away,” Aiba complained, stomping his feet, “but I wanted to stand next to you and get the full experience when you collapsed on the ground in defeat at my side!”
“Feeling’s mutual, buddy,” he snorted, wondering if it was too late to trade numbers. But people were already dispersing from the Relax Tent, heading out to check out the cars. They were all putting their hands on older Ferrari models. Nobody wanted to risk a bunch of desperate contestants fingerprinting up or drooling on the grand prize.
Ohno patted Aiba on the shoulder. “Well you’ll be in here every hour. You can be mean to each other then.”
“That’s true,” Aiba decided. “And then we can spend our time by the cars concentrating on how best to trash each other once we meet up again.”
“Seems logical enough to me,” Nino said. “But I’m going to win, so you’re just wasting your time, old man.”
“I am six months older than you, Nino,” Aiba said, hitting him on the head. “And you’re going to start crying as soon as we get to lunch time, guarantee it.”
Taking sips of water from the bottles Ohno had prepared them, they finally exited the Relax Tent, hearing the crowd cheer as the forty participants slowly approached the five older model Ferraris. While they’d been inside, people from Matsumoto Jun’s team had suspended canvas tent-like cloth over each vehicle, affording them shade during the rather warm September morning. And to presumably keep the cars from getting hot and burning their hands. The forecast was clear for the next two days, although there was a threat of a typhoon on day three. It was expected to blow over, but if there was lightning, the event would be canceled and Nino’s thirty million yen would vanish in a literal flash. He’d been praying all week long for sunny skies and he’d been rewarded.
Each car was covered with eight handprint shaped stickers - four around the hood, one on each of the windows, and two on the rear of the vehicle. By the time Nino made it over to car number four, there were only a few spots left. Aiba at car #3 was standing by the hood, probably figuring it would be easier to lean or to sit on the ground and still keep his hand up and in place on top of the car.
Unfortunately everyone else on car #4 had the same idea, leaving only one place on the rear of the car and one of the windows free. He sighed, settling in by the trunk of the car, taking a good, long look at the ugly yellow palm print he’d have his hand on for the next hour, until his break. This was going to be absolute murder on his back, massage notwithstanding, but he was going to get through this. He was going to get through this and he was going to make a ton of money, and he was going to drink Aiba Masaki’s tears when he came back from the bank with his first cashed check, not even letting his friend sit behind the wheel before he sold it. It was a cruel plan and thus a perfect plan.
All was going his way as the minutes ticked away to the 9:00 AM start. All was going his way until he turned to his left and saw the person he was going to be standing next to for the next however many hours. In a black tank top that showed off a nice set of biceps, cargo shorts, and flip flops stood a man with determination in his eyes and handsomeness everywhere else. A round face, plump and pouty “don’t you want to kiss me?” lips…everything about this guy was directly in Nino’s strike zone.
Shit.
The guy ran a hand through his fluffy hair, offering Nino a mega-watt smile of big bright teeth. “Oh, hello there,” he said in a cheery voice that just about had Nino melting into the pavement. “I’d say good luck, but I don’t want to jinx myself.”
“Hello,” Nino managed to say, wondering if this was what it felt like upon staring into the sun. “Ninomiya.”
“Sakurai,” the guy said, inclining his head. “Let’s have a good fight, how about it?”
Nino’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Relax Tent. He needed to get back to the fans and the ice and backpack full of Russian dietary supplements in the Relax Tent. How was he going to get to a zen place when he was going to be stuck next to this guy?
“Yo Nino!” Aiba hollered from car #3, waving.
Nino waved back weakly, and as soon as Aiba looked over a bit more closely, he just nodded his head, feeling assured of his victory. Because what kind of best friend would Aiba be if he didn’t know just the type of person that made Nino weak in the knees?
“Ha!” was all Aiba said once he realized it, turning back to his car and cracking his knuckles.
“You know him?” Sakurai asked, oblivious to Aiba’s reaction and still smiling as he put on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. The guy did a few final stretches that mostly seemed to involve him leaning against the car and sticking out his ridiculously perfect ass.
Nino was fucking doomed.
“He’s the person who will lose this contest,” Nino said through gritted teeth, rolling his neck side to side, hearing little cracks that apparently the massage therapist had not managed to tamp down.
This was going to be a harder-earned victory than he’d planned. But the effort would make the added zeroes in his bank account all the sweeter.
Matsumoto Jun was back with a megaphone. “Let’s start the one minute countdown! Who wants a Ferrari?” he shouted to the roar of the Akasaka Sacas crowd.
-
SATURDAY - 9:42 AM
HOUR ONE
“So what do you do?” Sakurai in the tank top asked.
Nino, eyes closed and with his right palm still firmly planted on his handprint sticker, groaned a little. “Huh?” He’d been in the middle of an elaborate daydream where he was standing at any other car and not the only one in the contest that stuck him beside this disgustingly attractive person.
“For a living,” Sakurai continued, sounding rather jovial about this whole thing. “What do you do for a living?”
“Enter free Ferrari contests.”
Sakurai’s laugh was high-pitched and friendly. “A hardcore participant, I like that. Well, as for me, I work for a food distributor. My company sells Japanese food products to foreign countries, instant noodles and potato chips and candy, almost anything really. We work with Japanese companies of all sorts, and then we handle all the shipping out to other markets. In fact, just yesterday we signed a deal with a distributor in Dubai! That’s in the United Arab Emirates, Persian Gulf region, you know? Sounds like a fun place, Dubai. Anyhow, I was the one who had opened negotiations, so I get to start my vacation on a high note! It’s a three-year distribution deal, actually, and we’ll mostly be shipping out vegetarian items since we don’t have halal certification on most of our products.”
“That sounds…” Nino looked over, eyeing his neighbor again. How could someone who looked like that do something so dull? How could someone who looked like that be so excited about selling instant ramen to the Middle East? He ought to be a TV announcer, a gracefully aging idol. With all that chatter, he could be a politician. “That sounds…like it pays you money.”
Sakurai wasn’t offended. From the blathering he’d already endured, Nino got the impression that Sakurai just liked to talk. Maybe he was the type who would keel over and die if he wasn’t talking. Like a shark who had to keep swimming, but he was a shark that had to talk all the time instead.
“So what do you do, Ninomiya-san?”
“Stand in silence and wait for cars to fall into my lap.”
Sakurai chuckled again, his hand sprawled in an almost relaxed fashion on his handprint. “We may as well get to know each other, since we’ll be standing here together for the next several hours.”
Nino tried to instead listen to the murmurs of the crowd, feeling as though some deity had just handed him a temptation. He was standing beside a really attractive person, sure, but said person was already giving off vibes that screamed of incompatibility. He was hot, but he’d never shut up, and Nino was the type of person who preferred silence if nothing of importance was being said.
“Ninomiya-san?”
It would violate the rules if his car-touching hand became a threatening fist so he offered Sakurai what he hoped was his most polite smile. “I work for a dot-com. Pet products. I keep the website from crashing.”
“Do you have any pets yourself?”
“No.”
Sakurai was undeterred by Nino’s lack of friendliness. “But you work for a company that specializes in pet products?”
“My degree is in computer science, not veterinary medicine.”
Sakurai laughed again. “You’re funny.”
Somehow the other six people with their hands on car #4 weren’t as interesting to Sakurai, and he spent the remainder of the hour talking about himself, offering Nino a laundry list of the countries they sold Japanese food to, from Ghana to Uruguay. Sakurai had a comment on almost every country, informing Nino that he’d been to India before, that Russia was on his “must see” list, that there’d been an exchange student from Hungary at his junior high school that he’d liked. By the time Matsumoto Jun’s noisy voice came shouting through the megaphone, Nino was ready to explode.
“Please excuse me,” he said in a rush, flexing his fingers as he removed his hand from the car and bolted for the Relax Tent.
He found Aiba inside, tugging him into a corner while Ohno dozed on one of the napping benches, snoring while he hugged their backpack full of supplies against himself. “Hey, we’ve got like, four minutes,” Aiba said, whining at the tight grip Nino had on his arm.
“Switch places with me,” Nino begged. “When I win, I’ll give you some of the money I make from selling the car.”
Aiba just laughed. “It’s only been an hour, Nino, and you’re already trying to negotiate? Fat chance!” Aiba flicked him in the forehead with his finger. “I thought you’d be in a better mood, what with Contestant 29-san next to you.”
Nino narrowed his eyes, looking around quickly and not seeing Sakurai nearby. “It’s Contestant 29-san that’s the problem. He won’t shut up!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he was literally talking without stopping for the last fifteen minutes. About selling dried squid to Canada.” He clasped his hands in prayer. “Aiba-chan, please, switch places with me. Please!”
“Can’t you just tune him out? He’s your type right? Does it matter what he’s talking about if he’s got the kind of face you like?”
“I have learned on this day that a pretty face is not enough,” he admitted. Even if that pretty face belonged to a person who also had a pretty mouth and a pretty ass that looked nice and firm like an apple and…
“One minute to go!” came Matsumoto Jun’s voice through his megaphone. “Are you ready? Are you ready, everybody? Who wants a Ferrari?”
-
SATURDAY - 11:18 AM
HOUR THREE
Sakurai had finally cut back on the talking upon entering hour three of Super Touch 2015, presumably because he was getting dehydrated. He still had his hand planted steadily on the car beside Nino, but he’d settled down. It made up for his nearly hour-long one-sided talk from hour 2 that had mostly been focused on a trip he’d taken to Thailand last fall. Nino, feeling blessed with the silence, was feeling better. He’d spent his last five minute break visiting the port-o-potty and then eating two sugary cupcakes from Aiba and Ohno’s bakery, chasing them with a Red Bull. He figured he could last the hour before needing to pee it all out again.
Over at car #3, Aiba had apparently made friends with the three other guys standing around the hood of the car. Nino heard periodic laughter coming from them, Aiba having told him during the quick break that they were all telling dirty jokes to pass the time. Car #4, in comparison, was a dead zone. One of the people by the hood, a woman in her early 20’s, had already quit and hadn’t come back from the break. The three remaining hood hands murmured once in a while to each other, but hadn’t brought anything to protect them from the sun. Even under the canvas, the sun was burning down. The two folks on either side of the car, their hands pressed to the stickers on the glass, were sipping from water bottles with their free hands, the only liquid they were allowed when they weren’t in the Relax Tent.
Nino had already taken a towel from Ohno’s backpack, had wrapped it around his head. Sakurai beside him had made few changes, having come back to the car in the process of rubbing sunscreen on his face and over his arms in the most distracting fashion. Nino made it another twenty minutes, eyes mostly closed and quietly reciting the names of towns and regions from Dragon Quest over and over in an effort to have something to focus on.
“Mostroferrato. Gotha. Evil Mountain. Somnia. Ghent. Zenith Tower…”
“Ninomiya-san?”
He looked over, scowling. Sakurai smiled at him.
“What’s your favorite color?”
Nino blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Mine’s red!” Sakurai sighed in seeming contentment. “I took this online test, something like ‘what does your favorite color say about you’ and I couldn’t believe the result.”
“Okay.”
Sakurai took Nino’s response to mean “oh yes, tell me more about this online test” and kept on talking. “So I put in that I liked red and it says that I’m bold and sexually charged. Now that’s interesting isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know you.”
“I mean, just because I have a few red t-shirts and I’m in a contest to win a red Ferrari, I mean, how is that bold? How is that sexually charged? So I sent the test around the office, and my team took it, and would you believe it, I’m the only one who picked red! There were a ton of blues and greens, but nobody else liked red.”
“Heartbreaking,” Nino mumbled, thinking Sakurai might have a good place on some super secret government torture interrogation squad. He was wasting his strengths working for a food distribution company. And Nino really didn’t want to know if Sakurai was going to explain more about how ‘sexually charged’ he was or not.
“So what about you?”
“I’m colorblind,” Nino lied.
“Oh.”
This shut Sakurai up for at least ten minutes, and Nino reveled in his victory. Until…
“Well what about Myers-Briggs?” Sakurai asked, scratching an itch on his nose with his free hand.
“I don’t know him.”
Sakurai chuckled. “It’s a personality test. There’s sixteen types out there. I’ve done a few tests, and I get the same result every time. So I guess you could say I’m stuck in my ways. I’m an ESTJ!”
“Oh really?” Nino answered. “Well, I’m an F-U-C…”
“Hey Nino!” Aiba was shouting from Car #3. “Listen to this one!”
Nino was nearly saved by the dirty joke told by the guy Aiba was standing next to, until that jerk Matsumoto Jun turned on his megaphone and reminded the participants that there were “children in attendance!”
Sakurai leaned over a bit, rolling his eyes. “Got a bunch of ENFP’s over there, huh?”
-
SATURDAY - 2:27 PM
HOUR SIX
There was about half an hour to go before Nino would be blessed with his first fifteen minute break, and it could not come too soon. Once Sakurai Sho (because he felt the need to share his first name) had explained all sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types to Nino, he’d been motivated to offer celebrity examples of each. Nino almost missed the talk about dried squid by now.
As the sun remained overhead, the crowd had finally started to disperse. It was mostly SupaLux employees lingering around as well as girlfriends and mothers and husbands of the participants. Of the forty hands that had started touching the five Ferraris at 9:00 that morning, only twenty-seven remained. It was moving along rather quickly, and Nino suspected that by nightfall, there’d only be some hardcore folks left. It was the usual way of these things, the lightweights dropping out quickly and then the nutjobs persevering until they won or needed to be hauled off on a stretcher.
Ohno was apparently having a wonderful day in the Relax Tent, his face turning into a miserable scowl each time Nino and Aiba returned and woke him from yet another nap. Nino wished Ohno was more of a malicious person, if he could use his hours in the Relax Tent to sabotage Sakurai Sho in some way. As far as Nino could tell, Sakurai had brought along his sister as his Relax Tent guest, given how much they looked alike in the face. If Nino had his way, he’d have Ohno try and ask her out, to make Sakurai lose focus and defend his sibling. Unfortunately, Ohno preferred napping to cheating.
That left him out in the heat, holding a water bottle to his forehead and praying that Sakurai would finally talk himself to sleep, would slip his hand off the car so Nino could hear the sweet, sweet sound of Matsumoto Jun saying “Ah, I’m afraid that’s all for Contestant 29! Another one bites the dust!”
It was looking increasingly unlikely. As the hours passed and Nino grew more uncomfortable, leaning more heavily against the car and shifting his weight from foot to foot, Sakurai Sho only grew more beautiful. So long as he wasn’t talking, he was still astonishing to look at, and now that he’d been out in the heat this long, his skin was glistening with sweat and he took periodic sips from the water bottle his sister had brought for him. With each chug-a-lug, Nino stared at the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, at the length of his throat, the way he crushed the plastic in his fist and squeezed.
Why did someone so damn annoying have to be so good looking? It was the Devil’s work, Nino was convinced, setting his water bottle down on the car and applying more of the lip cream he’d stolen out of Aiba’s pants pocket at their last break. Aiba caught him this time, feeling his pockets before glaring at Nino.
“I’m going to crush you!” Aiba mouthed at him, but Nino simply applied more lip cream in retaliation.
“Hey Ninomiya-san, have you ever seen the American show Prison Break?”
He exhaled slowly. If he said yes, then Sakurai would probably ask him questions about it. Questions he wouldn’t know the answers to because he’d never seen it. But if he said no, then Sakurai was probably going to spend the remainder of the afternoon spoiling it for him. That was it then. There was no escape.
“No, Sakurai-san, I have not seen Prison Break. And I don’t wish to because prisons are scary.”
“No, no, it’s actually quite good…”
“Not into prisons. Just said I wasn’t, so…”
“This guy, his brother’s going to get the death penalty, but he’s been falsely accused.”
Nino scowled at his neighbor. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear…”
“So the guy, Michael, he’s the main character, he’s this really smart guy and he gets like the entire prison tattooed on his body. But as I said, he’s smart, so it’s not like actual blueprints but a pattern that is pretty much the entire layout of the place. But it still just looks like a tattoo so you really have to be looking closely to figure out what it is.”
“Please stop.”
“So he gets the tattoo and robs a bank so he gets put in the same prison as his brother. I thought that was a little coincidental, you know? But I mean, you already have to be on board with him getting that crazy tattoo of the prison, so…”
“Sakurai-san.”
“And so he hatches this plan to break his brother out from the inside! I mean, I guess you can figure that out from the title of the show but…”
“FOR GOD’S SAKE WOULD YOU SHUT UP?” Nino exploded, but carefully so as not to take his hand off of the Ferrari. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! STOP TALKING! WOULD YOU STOP TALKING, PLEASE? PLEASE, WILL YOU STOP?”
The other people standing quietly around Car #4 looked over in surprise, most of them giving Nino a dirty look. The people standing around Car #3 and Car #5 were equally irritated with his outburst. Aiba, of course, was cackling in glee, presuming his victory was close at hand.
Nino looked down, muttering an apology and having a sip of water.
Within a minute, Sakurai was talking again and Nino couldn’t detect any distress in his voice, any anger or embarrassment about Nino’s outburst. In fact, Nino thought he saw a wickled little twinkle in the man’s eyes. He continued as though nothing had happened.
That little twinkle, that was how Nino figured it out.
Sakurai Sho was smarter than he looked.
Sakurai Sho was not to be underestimated as an opponent.
Sakurai Sho was being deliberately annoying.
“So now that Michael’s in prison, he discovers it’s not as easy as he thought. He’s going to need allies if he’s going to get all the supplies he needs to help in the escape.” The smile he showed Nino then was just a little too friendly.
Because Sakurai Sho, with his cheery smile and encyclopedic knowledge of boring subjects, was here to win.
Part Two
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Nino and his friend Aiba enter a contest for the chance to win a fancy new car, but a competitor emerges that Nino hadn’t anticipated.
Notes/Warnings: A silly, competitive Sakumiya AU written for arashi-exchange. The contest in the story is based on an event like this one, where participants have to keep their hands on a car and the last person doing so wins. And the title comes from a similar endurance contest.
SATURDAY - 8:23 AM
HOUR N/A
There was a spring in his step when they left the massage parlor. Ninomiya Kazunari was feeling good. No, Ninomiya Kazunari was feeling great. Though the massage therapist had been alarmed by what the pair of them had planned that weekend, there was no way they were backing out now.
Aiba was walking slightly ahead of him, stretching his arms, lifting his knees up high as he walked down the street. Nino just concentrated on breathing, on the knowledge that he was in this to win this. Nobody, not even his best friend, was going to defeat him.
“I’m going to defeat you,” Aiba said anyway, doing more stretches. “You’re going to be crying when I win.”
“Fat chance,” Nino shot back. Aiba had been trash talking him the last week. He’d even sent a bouquet of flowers to Nino’s office, a beautiful arrangement with an attached card that simply read “GONNA KICK YOUR ASS ON SATURDAY.”
Nino adored his best friend, he truly did. They’d been friends since junior high, and they’d always been a little competitive. They’d both played on the high school baseball team, and in that instance, Nino had been declared the winner upon making the roster as a pitcher while Aiba and his slightly weaker arm had been tossed out into left field. They’d both asked out the hottest girl in their grade, but Aiba had been declared the winner since he’d been turned down first. They’d both taken guitar lessons, but Nino had been better at it. Aiba was admitted to the culinary school that rejected Nino. And so on and so forth, Nino victories and Aiba victories, for almost 20 years now. Today was just one more victory set to come Nino’s way, he was sure of it. Aiba didn’t have the dedication, the commitment. Nino was going to outlast him.
They were only a block away, and he could see that a crowd had already gathered for the event. They were corralled behind metal railings that had been covered with massive signs. Men, women, children in sun hats and Ferrari-sponsored oversized t-shirts. Nino could tell that some of the crowd members were relatives or partners of the men and women participating in the contest. He could tell because there was a look of irritation in their faces that didn’t seem to match the upbeat atmosphere around them. There were speakers set up, playing some American hard rock music, and Aiba nodded his head to the beat. Nino just hoped they weren’t planning to slaughter his eardrums with noise the entire time. He needed to be rather zen until this was all over.
Welcome to Super Touch 2015, the banners declared as Nino and Aiba approached the participants’ tent. Nino could already see the five identical cars lined up on the pavement, though of course there would only be one winner. The rules were fairly simple. The contestants selected would each place one hand on a vehicle, and the person who kept his hand there the longest got to keep it.
Super Touch 2015’s grand prize was a brand new Ferrari 488 GTB sports car, which retailed for just over 30 million yen. Aiba, being Aiba, had been spending most of his bragging time explaining to Nino all of the places he’d drive his new car, how many women he’d probably pick up with it, how he’d force Nino to wash it for him with a toothbrush, et cetera. Nino, being Nino, however, was not as lame as his best friend. He’d read the fine print on the Super Touch 2015 website and nowhere did it say that the winner had to actually keep the car. Nino decided he was going to win and then turn around and sell it, making him 30 million yen richer without having to lift a finger. Or, more accurately, lift his hand.
They were met under the entry tent by the annoying marketing guy, who was wearing a fancy ass suit with even fancier ass sunglasses. He had a Bluetooth thing blinking in his ear, but when he spoke, Nino knew he was directing his rage at the two of them. “You were told 8:15,” the guy said, checking his equally fancy ass watch and shooing them away from the general line and over to one of the tables covered in clipboards. “You’re late.”
Nino tried not to laugh, elbowing Aiba beside him. For the last two weeks, ever since the pair of them discovered that they’d been selected to participate, it had been a non-stop hell going back and forth with Matsumoto Jun, SupaLux Autos’ VP of Event Marketing. Matsumoto had already had them sign dozens of forms, had asked for ‘headshots’ to include on the Super Touch 2015 event website, had even begrudgingly confirmed for Nino that he was in fact allowed to sell the car if he won it.
Super Touch 2015 was sponsored by SupaLux, a luxury auto import dealership out of Nagoya, although the contest was being held at Akasaka Sacas, a few blocks from their Tokyo location. The headquarters of TBS loomed over them all, with press people and lanyard-wearing staff and camera people swarming the scene. Matsumoto had more forms for them to sign, most of them medical release forms that said, in essence, that they were participating in the event of their own free will and that SupaLux Autos was in no way responsible for any health problems that resulted from their participation.
Nino signed the form, chuckling under his breath as Matsumoto started yelling at some other folks for arriving “late.” Eventually they were escorted to the “Relax Tent,” where according to contest rules they’d be allowed a five minute break every hour and a fifteen minute break every six. On Aiba and Nino’s forms, there’d been a section authorizing them to invite one guest to the Relax Tent, who could bring them energy drinks, food, or anything else they needed to continue participating. Both of them had enlisted the assistance of Ohno Satoshi, Aiba’s co-worker at the bakery, and though Ohno had a knack for oversleeping, he was already sitting on a bench inside the Relax Tent waiting for them, armed with a backpack.
“Morning,” Ohno said, yawning. He’d had zero interest in winning the Ferrari for himself, as he had no driver’s license, but he’d apparently been quite taken with Aiba’s quest for success and had happily volunteered to help out throughout the day. Nino had originally asked his mother to help him, but she’d turned him down (and had jokingly called him a “fool” and a “disgrace to the family name” for throwing his time away on a stupid contest). He’d thus enlisted Ohno-san as a “take that!” to Aiba, knowing that Ohno was a fair and altogether decent individual, who would help Nino, his co-worker’s friend, just as much as he’d help Aiba himself.
Ohno unzipped his bag, showing the haul that Aiba and Nino had chipped in money to purchase, including some sweets from the bakery for a sugar boost. Though there was a long list of pharmaceutical products that were “outlawed” (Matsumoto Jun had provided a freakishly long list), there were no restrictions on energy shots or natural supplements. Ohno shook a bottle of “Pilot Pal” supplements, apparently a type of capsule used by airplane pilots and college students on deadlines. He also had meds for indigestion and upset stomach, over the counter allergy pills in case one of the cars shot pollen at Aiba for some reason, ibuprofen, multivitamins, and Siberian Ginseng capsules Nino had ordered over the Internet from some dodgy Russian website that he could barely read.
They were totally set.
The Relax Tent was nice and cool, with fans set around the room, SupaLux staff with hand fans at the ready, coolers full of ice, and it was just a short jaunt out of the tent to a line of six port-o-potties. Nino did not particularly enjoy port-o-potties, but with 30 million yen at stake, he’d be willing to pee in a catheter. Happily, such a thing wasn’t required. In fact, it was outlawed, along with super strength adult diapers. Matsumoto had been harping on him and Aiba all week, telling them that unless they had a legitimate medical reason, they had to “piss and shit like a normal human being.” He was a fun guy, Matsumoto Jun. Great at parties, Nino figured.
By quarter to nine, Matsumoto and his expensive sunglasses were back in the Relax Tent clapping his hands for attention, staff swarming around him like worker bees to his Queen Bee. “Good morning, Super Touch 2015 contestants! As a reminder, the last man or woman standing is the victor. We’ve placed stickers on the cars, and all you have to do is keep your hand on it.”
“He looks like one of the guys from Men in Black,” Aiba whispered to Nino, adjusting the Contestant #24 sticker attached to his t-shirt. Nino was Contestant #25.
“Which one? The alien?” Nino whispered back, snickering.
Matsumoto thankfully didn’t hear them. “As you know, there are five cars to accommodate all of you. Per the rules, there will be eight of you assigned to each car, and we’ll be going in numerical order. Which means contestants one through eight will be at car number one, contestants nine through sixteen will be at car number two…”
“No!” Aiba hissed, fingers twisted in his shirt, almost to the point of yanking off his contestant sticker. “No, I want to be with you! This sucks!”
Nino scowled when Matsumoto Jun deliberately looked their way. “Contestants twenty-five through thirty-two, car number four!”
“He split us up on purpose, that asshole,” Nino grumbled, seeing the grin at the corners of Matsumoto’s mouth as he clapped his hands again, wishing them the best of luck.
“At least you’re only a car away,” Aiba complained, stomping his feet, “but I wanted to stand next to you and get the full experience when you collapsed on the ground in defeat at my side!”
“Feeling’s mutual, buddy,” he snorted, wondering if it was too late to trade numbers. But people were already dispersing from the Relax Tent, heading out to check out the cars. They were all putting their hands on older Ferrari models. Nobody wanted to risk a bunch of desperate contestants fingerprinting up or drooling on the grand prize.
Ohno patted Aiba on the shoulder. “Well you’ll be in here every hour. You can be mean to each other then.”
“That’s true,” Aiba decided. “And then we can spend our time by the cars concentrating on how best to trash each other once we meet up again.”
“Seems logical enough to me,” Nino said. “But I’m going to win, so you’re just wasting your time, old man.”
“I am six months older than you, Nino,” Aiba said, hitting him on the head. “And you’re going to start crying as soon as we get to lunch time, guarantee it.”
Taking sips of water from the bottles Ohno had prepared them, they finally exited the Relax Tent, hearing the crowd cheer as the forty participants slowly approached the five older model Ferraris. While they’d been inside, people from Matsumoto Jun’s team had suspended canvas tent-like cloth over each vehicle, affording them shade during the rather warm September morning. And to presumably keep the cars from getting hot and burning their hands. The forecast was clear for the next two days, although there was a threat of a typhoon on day three. It was expected to blow over, but if there was lightning, the event would be canceled and Nino’s thirty million yen would vanish in a literal flash. He’d been praying all week long for sunny skies and he’d been rewarded.
Each car was covered with eight handprint shaped stickers - four around the hood, one on each of the windows, and two on the rear of the vehicle. By the time Nino made it over to car number four, there were only a few spots left. Aiba at car #3 was standing by the hood, probably figuring it would be easier to lean or to sit on the ground and still keep his hand up and in place on top of the car.
Unfortunately everyone else on car #4 had the same idea, leaving only one place on the rear of the car and one of the windows free. He sighed, settling in by the trunk of the car, taking a good, long look at the ugly yellow palm print he’d have his hand on for the next hour, until his break. This was going to be absolute murder on his back, massage notwithstanding, but he was going to get through this. He was going to get through this and he was going to make a ton of money, and he was going to drink Aiba Masaki’s tears when he came back from the bank with his first cashed check, not even letting his friend sit behind the wheel before he sold it. It was a cruel plan and thus a perfect plan.
All was going his way as the minutes ticked away to the 9:00 AM start. All was going his way until he turned to his left and saw the person he was going to be standing next to for the next however many hours. In a black tank top that showed off a nice set of biceps, cargo shorts, and flip flops stood a man with determination in his eyes and handsomeness everywhere else. A round face, plump and pouty “don’t you want to kiss me?” lips…everything about this guy was directly in Nino’s strike zone.
Shit.
The guy ran a hand through his fluffy hair, offering Nino a mega-watt smile of big bright teeth. “Oh, hello there,” he said in a cheery voice that just about had Nino melting into the pavement. “I’d say good luck, but I don’t want to jinx myself.”
“Hello,” Nino managed to say, wondering if this was what it felt like upon staring into the sun. “Ninomiya.”
“Sakurai,” the guy said, inclining his head. “Let’s have a good fight, how about it?”
Nino’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Relax Tent. He needed to get back to the fans and the ice and backpack full of Russian dietary supplements in the Relax Tent. How was he going to get to a zen place when he was going to be stuck next to this guy?
“Yo Nino!” Aiba hollered from car #3, waving.
Nino waved back weakly, and as soon as Aiba looked over a bit more closely, he just nodded his head, feeling assured of his victory. Because what kind of best friend would Aiba be if he didn’t know just the type of person that made Nino weak in the knees?
“Ha!” was all Aiba said once he realized it, turning back to his car and cracking his knuckles.
“You know him?” Sakurai asked, oblivious to Aiba’s reaction and still smiling as he put on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. The guy did a few final stretches that mostly seemed to involve him leaning against the car and sticking out his ridiculously perfect ass.
Nino was fucking doomed.
“He’s the person who will lose this contest,” Nino said through gritted teeth, rolling his neck side to side, hearing little cracks that apparently the massage therapist had not managed to tamp down.
This was going to be a harder-earned victory than he’d planned. But the effort would make the added zeroes in his bank account all the sweeter.
Matsumoto Jun was back with a megaphone. “Let’s start the one minute countdown! Who wants a Ferrari?” he shouted to the roar of the Akasaka Sacas crowd.
-
SATURDAY - 9:42 AM
HOUR ONE
“So what do you do?” Sakurai in the tank top asked.
Nino, eyes closed and with his right palm still firmly planted on his handprint sticker, groaned a little. “Huh?” He’d been in the middle of an elaborate daydream where he was standing at any other car and not the only one in the contest that stuck him beside this disgustingly attractive person.
“For a living,” Sakurai continued, sounding rather jovial about this whole thing. “What do you do for a living?”
“Enter free Ferrari contests.”
Sakurai’s laugh was high-pitched and friendly. “A hardcore participant, I like that. Well, as for me, I work for a food distributor. My company sells Japanese food products to foreign countries, instant noodles and potato chips and candy, almost anything really. We work with Japanese companies of all sorts, and then we handle all the shipping out to other markets. In fact, just yesterday we signed a deal with a distributor in Dubai! That’s in the United Arab Emirates, Persian Gulf region, you know? Sounds like a fun place, Dubai. Anyhow, I was the one who had opened negotiations, so I get to start my vacation on a high note! It’s a three-year distribution deal, actually, and we’ll mostly be shipping out vegetarian items since we don’t have halal certification on most of our products.”
“That sounds…” Nino looked over, eyeing his neighbor again. How could someone who looked like that do something so dull? How could someone who looked like that be so excited about selling instant ramen to the Middle East? He ought to be a TV announcer, a gracefully aging idol. With all that chatter, he could be a politician. “That sounds…like it pays you money.”
Sakurai wasn’t offended. From the blathering he’d already endured, Nino got the impression that Sakurai just liked to talk. Maybe he was the type who would keel over and die if he wasn’t talking. Like a shark who had to keep swimming, but he was a shark that had to talk all the time instead.
“So what do you do, Ninomiya-san?”
“Stand in silence and wait for cars to fall into my lap.”
Sakurai chuckled again, his hand sprawled in an almost relaxed fashion on his handprint. “We may as well get to know each other, since we’ll be standing here together for the next several hours.”
Nino tried to instead listen to the murmurs of the crowd, feeling as though some deity had just handed him a temptation. He was standing beside a really attractive person, sure, but said person was already giving off vibes that screamed of incompatibility. He was hot, but he’d never shut up, and Nino was the type of person who preferred silence if nothing of importance was being said.
“Ninomiya-san?”
It would violate the rules if his car-touching hand became a threatening fist so he offered Sakurai what he hoped was his most polite smile. “I work for a dot-com. Pet products. I keep the website from crashing.”
“Do you have any pets yourself?”
“No.”
Sakurai was undeterred by Nino’s lack of friendliness. “But you work for a company that specializes in pet products?”
“My degree is in computer science, not veterinary medicine.”
Sakurai laughed again. “You’re funny.”
Somehow the other six people with their hands on car #4 weren’t as interesting to Sakurai, and he spent the remainder of the hour talking about himself, offering Nino a laundry list of the countries they sold Japanese food to, from Ghana to Uruguay. Sakurai had a comment on almost every country, informing Nino that he’d been to India before, that Russia was on his “must see” list, that there’d been an exchange student from Hungary at his junior high school that he’d liked. By the time Matsumoto Jun’s noisy voice came shouting through the megaphone, Nino was ready to explode.
“Please excuse me,” he said in a rush, flexing his fingers as he removed his hand from the car and bolted for the Relax Tent.
He found Aiba inside, tugging him into a corner while Ohno dozed on one of the napping benches, snoring while he hugged their backpack full of supplies against himself. “Hey, we’ve got like, four minutes,” Aiba said, whining at the tight grip Nino had on his arm.
“Switch places with me,” Nino begged. “When I win, I’ll give you some of the money I make from selling the car.”
Aiba just laughed. “It’s only been an hour, Nino, and you’re already trying to negotiate? Fat chance!” Aiba flicked him in the forehead with his finger. “I thought you’d be in a better mood, what with Contestant 29-san next to you.”
Nino narrowed his eyes, looking around quickly and not seeing Sakurai nearby. “It’s Contestant 29-san that’s the problem. He won’t shut up!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he was literally talking without stopping for the last fifteen minutes. About selling dried squid to Canada.” He clasped his hands in prayer. “Aiba-chan, please, switch places with me. Please!”
“Can’t you just tune him out? He’s your type right? Does it matter what he’s talking about if he’s got the kind of face you like?”
“I have learned on this day that a pretty face is not enough,” he admitted. Even if that pretty face belonged to a person who also had a pretty mouth and a pretty ass that looked nice and firm like an apple and…
“One minute to go!” came Matsumoto Jun’s voice through his megaphone. “Are you ready? Are you ready, everybody? Who wants a Ferrari?”
-
SATURDAY - 11:18 AM
HOUR THREE
Sakurai had finally cut back on the talking upon entering hour three of Super Touch 2015, presumably because he was getting dehydrated. He still had his hand planted steadily on the car beside Nino, but he’d settled down. It made up for his nearly hour-long one-sided talk from hour 2 that had mostly been focused on a trip he’d taken to Thailand last fall. Nino, feeling blessed with the silence, was feeling better. He’d spent his last five minute break visiting the port-o-potty and then eating two sugary cupcakes from Aiba and Ohno’s bakery, chasing them with a Red Bull. He figured he could last the hour before needing to pee it all out again.
Over at car #3, Aiba had apparently made friends with the three other guys standing around the hood of the car. Nino heard periodic laughter coming from them, Aiba having told him during the quick break that they were all telling dirty jokes to pass the time. Car #4, in comparison, was a dead zone. One of the people by the hood, a woman in her early 20’s, had already quit and hadn’t come back from the break. The three remaining hood hands murmured once in a while to each other, but hadn’t brought anything to protect them from the sun. Even under the canvas, the sun was burning down. The two folks on either side of the car, their hands pressed to the stickers on the glass, were sipping from water bottles with their free hands, the only liquid they were allowed when they weren’t in the Relax Tent.
Nino had already taken a towel from Ohno’s backpack, had wrapped it around his head. Sakurai beside him had made few changes, having come back to the car in the process of rubbing sunscreen on his face and over his arms in the most distracting fashion. Nino made it another twenty minutes, eyes mostly closed and quietly reciting the names of towns and regions from Dragon Quest over and over in an effort to have something to focus on.
“Mostroferrato. Gotha. Evil Mountain. Somnia. Ghent. Zenith Tower…”
“Ninomiya-san?”
He looked over, scowling. Sakurai smiled at him.
“What’s your favorite color?”
Nino blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Mine’s red!” Sakurai sighed in seeming contentment. “I took this online test, something like ‘what does your favorite color say about you’ and I couldn’t believe the result.”
“Okay.”
Sakurai took Nino’s response to mean “oh yes, tell me more about this online test” and kept on talking. “So I put in that I liked red and it says that I’m bold and sexually charged. Now that’s interesting isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know you.”
“I mean, just because I have a few red t-shirts and I’m in a contest to win a red Ferrari, I mean, how is that bold? How is that sexually charged? So I sent the test around the office, and my team took it, and would you believe it, I’m the only one who picked red! There were a ton of blues and greens, but nobody else liked red.”
“Heartbreaking,” Nino mumbled, thinking Sakurai might have a good place on some super secret government torture interrogation squad. He was wasting his strengths working for a food distribution company. And Nino really didn’t want to know if Sakurai was going to explain more about how ‘sexually charged’ he was or not.
“So what about you?”
“I’m colorblind,” Nino lied.
“Oh.”
This shut Sakurai up for at least ten minutes, and Nino reveled in his victory. Until…
“Well what about Myers-Briggs?” Sakurai asked, scratching an itch on his nose with his free hand.
“I don’t know him.”
Sakurai chuckled. “It’s a personality test. There’s sixteen types out there. I’ve done a few tests, and I get the same result every time. So I guess you could say I’m stuck in my ways. I’m an ESTJ!”
“Oh really?” Nino answered. “Well, I’m an F-U-C…”
“Hey Nino!” Aiba was shouting from Car #3. “Listen to this one!”
Nino was nearly saved by the dirty joke told by the guy Aiba was standing next to, until that jerk Matsumoto Jun turned on his megaphone and reminded the participants that there were “children in attendance!”
Sakurai leaned over a bit, rolling his eyes. “Got a bunch of ENFP’s over there, huh?”
-
SATURDAY - 2:27 PM
HOUR SIX
There was about half an hour to go before Nino would be blessed with his first fifteen minute break, and it could not come too soon. Once Sakurai Sho (because he felt the need to share his first name) had explained all sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types to Nino, he’d been motivated to offer celebrity examples of each. Nino almost missed the talk about dried squid by now.
As the sun remained overhead, the crowd had finally started to disperse. It was mostly SupaLux employees lingering around as well as girlfriends and mothers and husbands of the participants. Of the forty hands that had started touching the five Ferraris at 9:00 that morning, only twenty-seven remained. It was moving along rather quickly, and Nino suspected that by nightfall, there’d only be some hardcore folks left. It was the usual way of these things, the lightweights dropping out quickly and then the nutjobs persevering until they won or needed to be hauled off on a stretcher.
Ohno was apparently having a wonderful day in the Relax Tent, his face turning into a miserable scowl each time Nino and Aiba returned and woke him from yet another nap. Nino wished Ohno was more of a malicious person, if he could use his hours in the Relax Tent to sabotage Sakurai Sho in some way. As far as Nino could tell, Sakurai had brought along his sister as his Relax Tent guest, given how much they looked alike in the face. If Nino had his way, he’d have Ohno try and ask her out, to make Sakurai lose focus and defend his sibling. Unfortunately, Ohno preferred napping to cheating.
That left him out in the heat, holding a water bottle to his forehead and praying that Sakurai would finally talk himself to sleep, would slip his hand off the car so Nino could hear the sweet, sweet sound of Matsumoto Jun saying “Ah, I’m afraid that’s all for Contestant 29! Another one bites the dust!”
It was looking increasingly unlikely. As the hours passed and Nino grew more uncomfortable, leaning more heavily against the car and shifting his weight from foot to foot, Sakurai Sho only grew more beautiful. So long as he wasn’t talking, he was still astonishing to look at, and now that he’d been out in the heat this long, his skin was glistening with sweat and he took periodic sips from the water bottle his sister had brought for him. With each chug-a-lug, Nino stared at the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, at the length of his throat, the way he crushed the plastic in his fist and squeezed.
Why did someone so damn annoying have to be so good looking? It was the Devil’s work, Nino was convinced, setting his water bottle down on the car and applying more of the lip cream he’d stolen out of Aiba’s pants pocket at their last break. Aiba caught him this time, feeling his pockets before glaring at Nino.
“I’m going to crush you!” Aiba mouthed at him, but Nino simply applied more lip cream in retaliation.
“Hey Ninomiya-san, have you ever seen the American show Prison Break?”
He exhaled slowly. If he said yes, then Sakurai would probably ask him questions about it. Questions he wouldn’t know the answers to because he’d never seen it. But if he said no, then Sakurai was probably going to spend the remainder of the afternoon spoiling it for him. That was it then. There was no escape.
“No, Sakurai-san, I have not seen Prison Break. And I don’t wish to because prisons are scary.”
“No, no, it’s actually quite good…”
“Not into prisons. Just said I wasn’t, so…”
“This guy, his brother’s going to get the death penalty, but he’s been falsely accused.”
Nino scowled at his neighbor. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear…”
“So the guy, Michael, he’s the main character, he’s this really smart guy and he gets like the entire prison tattooed on his body. But as I said, he’s smart, so it’s not like actual blueprints but a pattern that is pretty much the entire layout of the place. But it still just looks like a tattoo so you really have to be looking closely to figure out what it is.”
“Please stop.”
“So he gets the tattoo and robs a bank so he gets put in the same prison as his brother. I thought that was a little coincidental, you know? But I mean, you already have to be on board with him getting that crazy tattoo of the prison, so…”
“Sakurai-san.”
“And so he hatches this plan to break his brother out from the inside! I mean, I guess you can figure that out from the title of the show but…”
“FOR GOD’S SAKE WOULD YOU SHUT UP?” Nino exploded, but carefully so as not to take his hand off of the Ferrari. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! STOP TALKING! WOULD YOU STOP TALKING, PLEASE? PLEASE, WILL YOU STOP?”
The other people standing quietly around Car #4 looked over in surprise, most of them giving Nino a dirty look. The people standing around Car #3 and Car #5 were equally irritated with his outburst. Aiba, of course, was cackling in glee, presuming his victory was close at hand.
Nino looked down, muttering an apology and having a sip of water.
Within a minute, Sakurai was talking again and Nino couldn’t detect any distress in his voice, any anger or embarrassment about Nino’s outburst. In fact, Nino thought he saw a wickled little twinkle in the man’s eyes. He continued as though nothing had happened.
That little twinkle, that was how Nino figured it out.
Sakurai Sho was smarter than he looked.
Sakurai Sho was not to be underestimated as an opponent.
Sakurai Sho was being deliberately annoying.
“So now that Michael’s in prison, he discovers it’s not as easy as he thought. He’s going to need allies if he’s going to get all the supplies he needs to help in the escape.” The smile he showed Nino then was just a little too friendly.
Because Sakurai Sho, with his cheery smile and encyclopedic knowledge of boring subjects, was here to win.
Part Two