Second Serenade: Chapter 31

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After the awards ceremony, there was a small party held for the winners. Kakegawa had planned to head home right after the ceremony ended, but the other two stopped him.

“Talking to people can help take your mind off things,” Takagi-san said with a smile, and that was enough to make him decide to stay.

Most of the attendees were people involved in the film industry, so for Hayashida and Takagi-san, who both hoped to make a living in film, it was a perfect “marketplace.” But for Kakegawa, it didn’t mean much.

He sat in a chair along the wall, at the edge of the venue, sipping from a cocktail glass. The bustling crowd paid no mind to the guy lingering at the fringe, and that indifference was, in a way, comforting. When he closed his eyes, the clamor of voices passed softly by his ears.

“You’re a college student, right?”

A hand grabbed his shoulder without any preamble, and Kakegawa quickly opened his eyes. A man with a stocky build loomed over him, blocking his view. He wore jeans and a navy jacket. His squarish face was creased at the corners of his eyes in a grin as he looked down at Kakegawa. He must have been in his thirties, and the round glasses he wore didn’t suit him at all.

“That girl who wrote the script—is she your girlfriend?”

It was unclear whether the man was a fellow awardee or part of the judging panel, but it was obvious he had taken an interest in Takagi-san.

“She’s not.”

“Oh? You two looked cozy—I figured she was.”

“She’s the director’s girlfriend.”

The man’s mouth hung open for a moment, then he flapped his hands in exaggerated surprise.

“You mean that dull-looking guy? She’s got no taste. If I were a girl, I’d pick you without a second thought.”

It irritated Kakegawa to hear someone judge people he didn’t even know based on surface impressions.

“If you ask me, the one who lacks taste is you.”

He returned the jab with a sweet smile, his overly polite phrasing laced with a sharp thorn. The man seemed to catch the sarcasm, and his face twisted with annoyance—wrinkling his nose and pursing his lips.

“You’re a cocky little punk. Don’t you know how to take a joke? What a bore.”

Grumbling, the man plopped down in the seat next to Kakegawa.

Kakegawa considered getting up and moving elsewhere—it was uncomfortable—but doing so felt like admitting defeat, so out of sheer stubbornness, he stayed where he was.

The man didn’t seem inclined to move either, and sat next to him watching the same crowd.

“That movie your team made—the script was based on you, wasn’t it?”

He asked the question casually. Kakegawa didn’t want to talk, but it felt too childish to ignore him completely, so he gave a curt reply.

“No.”

“Really? I was sure it was—you fit the role almost creepily well. Don’t tell me you want to be an actor?”

The man leaned in to peer at his face.

“I want to be a high school teacher.”

He spoke quickly, hoping the man would shut up already.

“That’s lame. Give it up.”

The man waved his arms with exaggerated disgust.

“Whether it’s lame or not is for me to decide. It has nothing to do with you.”

The man clicked his tongue.

“You’re a pain in the ass. Always ready with a comeback.”

Despite the complaint, he chuckled as though he found something amusing.

“Hey, college students have lots of free time, right? Want me to hook you up with a high-paying job?”

“What I have now is enough.”

Kakegawa didn’t like the way the conversation was going—and the man’s persistence was starting to creep him out.

“Turning me down without even asking how much? And there’s a hell of a bonus right now, too.”

His crude tone made it clear the offer was trash.

“You sound like a street recruiter for a sex parlor.”

He dropped the polite speech altogether, spitting the words out in a disdainful tone. The man’s face turned bright red, and he grabbed Kakegawa’s arm tightly.

"Even though I’ve gone so far as to come down off my high horse for you, what’s with that attitude? Do I have to spell it out for a dumbass like you? You're going to be in my movie."

“Let go of me. You’re disgusting.”

He violently shook off the man who was grabbing his wrist.

“A movie—who the hell even are you? I already told you I’m not aiming to become an actor. I only did that movie because Hayashida asked me to. If it weren’t for that, no one would do something so humiliating.”

The man gave a triumphant grin.

“Oh? That’s funny. In the film, you didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. You were practically begging for pity, putting on that pathetic little face of yours.”

When he saw Kakegawa flush crimson, the man burst out laughing.

“It’s not a bad thing.”

The man suddenly turned serious and murmured,

“You’ve got something. I’ll put you in my film, so why not give acting a shot? Personally, I think the film industry’s a hell of a lot more shocking than teaching.”

◇:-:◆:-:◇

The man forcefully handed over a note with a phone number—he said it was the office’s—and his name. He claimed to be a director, but the name written on the note, Yamaoka Hajime, was someone Kakegawa had never heard of.

The man kept pestering Kakegawa, who tried to escape, demanding his mobile number. But he seemed sketchy, someone whose background was totally unclear, so Kakegawa gave him a fake number and got away. On his way home from the party, he tore up the note and completely forgot about the weird guy.

About a week after the award ceremony, Kakegawa was invited by a friend from his department to a mixer with a women’s university. Thinking it might be a good change of pace, he went, but in the end, he couldn’t get into the mood. He ignored the organizer’s complaints—“One of the girls came just for you!”—and left after the first round.

“Still gonna take more time before the next oil painting's done, huh…”

Muttering to himself, he climbed the stairs to his apartment. Just three more steps to the top—when he suddenly saw a shadow in front of his door. His heart jumped.

“Hashimoto…san?”

The man turned at Kakegawa’s voice and raised a hand.

“Yo.”

Wearing worn-out jeans and a tacky purple shirt, a gold chain hanging from his chest—it looked like something a nightclub bouncer would wear. Hashimoto would never dress like that.

“Lying bastard. Gave me a fake number, huh? Took forever to track you down.”

It was that self-proclaimed movie director. Kakegawa was pissed to see him outside his apartment, and even more irritated that he’d mistaken the guy for Hashimoto and had his heart leap like that. No matter how hard he tried to forget, even tiny things brought it all back.

“I never wanted to see you again.”

He shoved the man away from his door.

“Who's Hashimoto? Your boyfriend?”

“Shut up.”

Everything he said got under Kakegawa’s skin. The man grinned and leaned in to whisper near Kakegawa’s ear as he tried to unlock the door.

“Hayashida-kun, right? That dull guy? I asked him, and he happily gave me your address and cell number.”

“What the hell is that idiot thinking…”

As Kakegawa tried to go inside, the man grabbed his arm with surprising force.

“I fell for you.”

He said it dead seriously, staring straight at Kakegawa.

“From that very first scene in the film, I was hooked. When I saw you come out on stage at the award ceremony, just like in the movie, I thought my heart would stop. You've got a great face. You were born to be in my film. No doubt about it. Even if you say no, I’m taking you. I’ll drag you out if I have to.”

The man grinned and finally let go of his hand.

“See you around… my little kitten.”

Spouting some incomprehensible line, the man left like a storm. For a fleeting moment, he raged through Kakegawa like a whirlwind and disappeared. Kakegawa could only stand there, dumbfounded by this tornado of a man.

He wondered if it had all been some kind of joke—but the next day, everything was laid out clearly and officially before his eyes.

A formal offer to appear in a film came through a movie production company. That suspicious man turned out to be (at least professionally) a rising, up-and-coming young director, and it seemed Kakegawa had somehow been scouted as an actor. Apparently, the director was a notorious control freak who had insisted he wouldn’t shoot the film unless Kakegawa played the lead.

Swapping out the lead actor right before the start of filming caused an uproar among the staff. Several actors, fed up with the director’s behavior, had walked off the project, and things were descending into chaos. It was supposed to be a mini-theater-style indie film, but even so, producing it would involve millions of yen.

On the other end of the phone line, the director’s manager—someone named Motoki—was practically in tears speaking to Kakegawa for the first time.

“It’s all a disaster. We’re supposed to start filming next month, and now a quarter of the staff have quit. We have to start recruiting all over again. I knew the director was impulsive and irresponsible, I really did. But this time—this time even I can’t take it anymore. That bastard!”

Moved by the manager’s tearful plea, Kakegawa agreed—on the condition that it would be just this once.

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