Sunday morning. The sun was bright, the weather was warm, and Hangaku Mae was near the main entrance of the Yoyogi Park. She woke up very early because she was so nervous about the date with Sakamo Ryu. She tried to call him after dinner the previous night, but he only sent a message saying that there were too many curious people around him that would nag him a lot if he answered the phone in front of them. Later, she sent him a message when she was already in bed asking if he could talk to her and got a response wishing her goodnight, but he was tied in a game against a very nasty woman, and he couldn’t talk, or she would take that opportunity to win.
Hangaku looked at the clock on her mobile phone. There were still fifteen minutes to nine. Time was going by slowly. She picked a piece of her hair and put it behind her right ear, taking it out again, to repeat the movement. There was a faint wind blowing, and her light blue floured-pattern one shoulder strap short dress moving was making all the boys that were walking in the side-walk look at her, even the ones that were with their girlfriends. She looked down, making sure the dress was not revealing her panties, and put one hand on her left thigh to prevent it from going up. She moved her toes to adjust the pressure of the straps of her light brown sandals that were tied around her ankles and sighed. Time was not moving.
A familiar voice called for her, and she looked to her right with a big smile, “Hangaku-chan, you arrived early, or is it me that is late?”
She placed both hands behind her back and intertwined her fingers, waiting for Sakamo to approach. She kept on smiling at him, and he opened wide his mouth when he got near her. “Hangaku-chan… You look amazingly beautiful in that dress. It makes a delightful picture, with your golden hair!”
“You don’t look too bad as well. White cotton trousers, a light blue shirt, white and blue sneakers… New clothes?”
Sakamo shrugged while offering her his right arm, “More or less. A mean woman forced me to use this. She said I should look at my best on my first date with you. The problem is that she said it to me this morning with a disgusted look, like if I looked like a bum, with my blue jeans and t-shirt!”
Hangaku pulled him near and gave him a long kiss. She then caressed his face and asked, “You are not going to tell me who is that woman? And what were you doing last night that stopped you from calling me?”
“I was playing a game of Go with some friends. I had dinner with them, and they challenged me to make a tournament. Needless to say, I won, and a particular angry woman threw the board at my head! She almost took my eye with the board!”
Hangaku grabbed his right arm and walked beside him, so close that her left boob was pressed against his arm. Sakamo looked down at her cleavage and warned her, “If you are not careful, your dress is going to reveal more than it should.”
“You are probably right, but if it’s only you seeing them, I don’t mind. The problem will be if another boy can’t stop staring, and his girlfriend gets mad! There are a lot of couples around. Did you know this park is a usual place for couples to meet and enjoy each other’s company?”
Sakamo slowly shook his head and looked around. “I had no idea, but now that you mentioned, there are really a lot of couples. I understand why Hiko-chan smiled that way when I told her where we were going to meet…”
“Hiko-chan? Is that the young girl you said yesterday that had a crush on you, and you only saw her as a younger sister? Did you talk with her about me?”
“Yes. Surprisingly, she was the first to tell me she likes a boy of her School, and that she had to break the promise she made to me two years ago, that when she got older, she would date me.”
Hangaku-chan frowned. “The nerve of the kids nowadays! Shamelessly going after older boys! Introduce her to me one of these days. I need to tell her a few things on how to behave like a lady!”
“You are the one that is going to teach her? Sure… By the way, what is your brother’s name?”
“That rascal? Hangaku Say, why?”
Sakamo slowly shook his head. “What are the odds… Which School did he attend?”
“A Private School, the same that I was supposed to enter if I didn’t refuse to go with all my strength when my father enrolled me there. Why all these questions? Oh, you want to play again a game of question and answer?”
Sakamo looked to the right when the noise of music called his attention and walked in that direction. “Do you know he likes a girl named Nabito Hiko and that he even asked her to date him?”
“Yes, he told me, but he begged me for secrecy, or else our parents will try to meddle because that girl is the Princess… Wait a minute… Hiko-chan… You know her?”
Sakamo nodded, and Hangaku almost fainted. “I was with Hiko-chan yesterday, and she told me about your brother. I am a good friend of the Imperial family. It was the Empress that gave me these clothes, actually. I think she told someone to buy a bunch of clothes for me, to prepare for the day that I would accept to have a blind date with the daughter of one of her friends.”
“You mean… the nasty, mean woman that was playing Go with you last night, it was the Empress?”
Sakamo covered her mouth with one hand. “Shush, not so loud! Do you want everyone around us to hear you? See why I keep some things about me a secret? I was fearing this reaction! Or something even worse!”
“Yeah… but… it’s too surprising! Why are you telling me this? You are trying to scare me or what?”
Sakamo shrugged. “The Emperor told me you didn’t seem like a girl easily scared the last time he met you. I just thought it would be better to tell you myself before you heard it from your brother or from Hiko-chan. She also told me a bit about your family and your family business. The Emperor told me that if needed, he could speak to your parents on my behalf so that they wouldn’t think badly of me.”
“Think badly of you? How come?”
“Like me going after your family’s money or something. Like if I needed to do such a thing…”
Hangaku made a slight frown. “Yeah, I can see my mother thinking that… you being an orphan raised in a Shrine… and me being an heir of one of the richest families in Japan… the fact that you have a very well-paid job in the University of Tokyo could grant you a few points…”
She glanced at Sakamo from the corner of her eyes to check his reaction and saw him frowning. “Wait, I never told you…”
“I may or I may have not followed your bodyguard last time he escorted me and Tomiko-chan to the train. We saw him entering the Earthquake Research Institute, at The University of Tokyo.”
Sakamo had his mouth wide open. “No way! You guys followed him and he didn’t notice? Damn, you are good! That guy has sharp senses. He is almost a cat! But why did you follow him? You could get into a lot of trouble if he noticed you!”
“I was curious! You never tell me anything about you! Or at least, the juicy parts! What do you do at that Earthquake Research Institute, anyway?”
Sakamo put one finger over her lips. “That is something you can’t ask and I can’t answer. I can only tell you it was the Emperor that introduced me to the President of our fine country, and both of them asked me to help in a very serious matter. I can’t tell you what it is, and it’s better if you don’t try to find out anything more because it’s a matter of National Security and all the power your family may have won’t help you. If you do as I ask, I will take you with me the next weekend, to visit the Imperial family. The Emperor will for sure be happy to see you again. As for the Empress, I am not sure. She kept on frowning when she heard me talking about you. I think she already had someone in mind to pair me with.”
Hangaku slowly nodded. “I guess I could go, as long as my parents don’t find out, or they could make some sort of plan to go with us, to get more familiar with the Imperial family. But… I think I now understand why you always have bodyguards nearby if your work is that important.”
She then glanced around. “Do you think some of your bodyguards are here as well?”
Sakamo signalled with his head to a man that was selling balloons and a woman that had one knee on the grass and was playing with a dog. “They are never too far away. That man and that woman are from the Public Security Intelligence Agency, and I bet one or two men in dark blue suits are looking at us from a distance with binoculars. The ones in dark blue suits are the security guards assigned to the Imperial family, but the Empress sent a few to me because the undercover agents from the Public Security Intelligence Agency get on my nerves. They never keep their distance, and sometimes they try to stop me from going somewhere. When they annoy me too much, I put them to sleep with a kick to their head or a punch straight to the nose.”
“Damn, you are violent! Remember me to never make you angry!”
He shrugged and then continued, “I got the dark-blue-suit guys because one time, four agents from the Public Security Intelligence Agency tried to force me to get into one of their cars to take me to the hotel where I was staying. I wasn’t counting on being grabbed like that, and I reacted instinctively. Three of them got cleared from the hospital a few weeks ago, but one is still there, learning how to walk again. I broke both his knees when he pulled his gun to stop me from fighting them.”
Hangaku remembered something and widened her eyes. “Wait… I just thought of something weird… Your bodyguards, do they only follow you, or do they hear everything you say? Do you think they are hearing us?”
“The ones that like to listen are the guys from the Public Security Intelligence Agency. They don’t trust anyone. I found a few listening devices in several places in my house, right on the first day I moved in. I destroyed all of them, and now I have a gatekeeper keeping watch over my house. If those guys from the Intelligence Agency try to put more devices, he will know, and I will have a very painful meeting in the middle of the night with their boss. I warned him that if he ordered something like that ever again, he would regret it.”
Hangaku Mae was staring at the man that was selling the balloons and whispered, “Do you think they are suspecting me?”
“Most probably. I think by now, they already know everything about you. See why I don’t tell you everything about me? Secrets like these are better not to be mentioned. I try not to think too much about having people following me around, but it’s kind of difficult for me not to break their necks when they get too close. Every time my danger alarm buzzes, I react instinctively.”
Hangaku shrugged. “Well, I don’t mind if they watch, as long as they give us some space and privacy when we need it. I don’t like very much the idea of being with you in a room and doing some fun things, with some weirdos hearing or watching us.”
“Don’t worry, we will be completely alone when that happens. That’s why I made sure my house didn’t have listening devices or hidden cameras. A house is supposed to be safe heaven, not some peeping show for a bunch of perverts.”
Sakamo spoke to the woman with the dog, that suddenly looked at him with a surprised look, “Yes, I was talking about you, you pervert. One of these days I am going to visit you when you are having a bath in your house and I will slap your butt, to see if you like to be the one being peeped! Or I can take a few pictures of your naked body and put them on the internet. I bet I could make some good money in a bunch of porn sites at your expense!”
The woman faced the dog again, with a pale face and Sakamo approached her and took the hearing piece she had on her right ear and spoke to it, “Didn’t I warn you guys already that I don’t want to see agents near me? Bunch of morons!”
Sakamo went to the puzzled Hangaku and offered his arm again while showing her the hearing piece. “Do you want to say something to them?”
Hangaku walked with him while looking at the tiny device. “I don’t know. I can only think about telling them to go to a place where the sun doesn’t shine.”
She gave the hearing piece to Sakamo, that let it drop and crushed it with his foot. He made a slight smile as he walked. “One of these days, they are going to give up because of all the losses I am causing by destroying their equipment.
The noise of music and people singing in an unknown language made Hangaku look to her left, and she saw a crowd near a circle of people dressed in white clothes playing some weird instruments, while others in the middle of the circle were doing some kind of weird dance, mixed with jumps and kicks. Sakamo looked at where she was staring and said, “No way! I saw that on the internet! Come, I want to have a look!”
“What’s that? They are dancing or fighting?”
“It’s a fight disguised as a dance. That’s ‘Capoeira’, a Brazilian Martial Art! I never had the chance to learn it, but it’s very cool!”
Hangaku walked faster, following the excited Sakamo Ryu. She thought he resembled a kid in front of a candy store, and she couldn’t help smiling.
When they got near the circle, Sakamo found a space for them and whispered, “Hangaku-chan, try not to be too surprised, okay? I guess I can show you another one of my secrets.”