"MERRY CHRISTMAS!"
Ranko waved enthusiastically, a thousand-watt stage smile on her face as the camera flashes all but blinded her. She was surrounded by more than thirty other musicians, the full complement of Yokai Records' top-tier talent, though she was the only representative of the Dapper Dragons in attendance. She posed for three more pictures in much the same way, trying to ignore the tuxedoed right arm draped over her shoulders at the front center of the group photo arrangement.
"Alright! Thanks, everybody! Great work! I'll let you get back to the party, but I'll be roaming around snapping candids," the photographer - a young blonde in a plain black cocktail dress - announced. "Try to ignore me. Make like I'm a potted plant."
The crowd of artists began to break up, and Ranko ducked out from under the executive's heavy arm as quickly as she could. She scurried away from the enormous Christmas tree that had served as the backdrop for the group photo and followed after a trio of other women, waiting until she was out of earshot of the main group to audibly gag.
"I know! Gods, the smell!" Luna Tsuki, Yokai's first and only rostered stand-up comedienne, turned to face Ranko and waved a white opera glove in front of her nose for emphasis. "Like, come on, Kondo! Don't throw a fancy party - at work, no less- and then get all sloppy like that!"
"Right?!" Ranko groaned, shaking her head in disgust. "Take it from someone who grew up in a bar: aftershave is made out of alcohol, so trying to use it to cover up the booze doesn't really work the way people seem to think it does."
Luna smirked, giving a shrug to imply that she, too, failed to grasp the logic. "Well, I'll give Kondo this, at least. He may be a hot mess, but he puts on a hell of a spread. Have you tried the caviar?! My gods!"
Chuckling, Ranko waved away the suggestion with the back of her hand. "No thanks. I just got back from a year on tour for these people. I know what Yokai's budget is, compared to what they try to make it look like. I don't think I'm eatin' anything raw, considering they probably got all the expensive stuff half off and expired off of some dude in a van down by the harbor."
"Honestly? Fair deal. They booked me a show a couple of weeks ago in this little town just outside of Sendai, and I must have killed it, because people came in from all around to see it. Problem is, Yokai didn't bother booking me a hotel, and all the local rooms were sold out to my fans. I ended up sleeping in my car." Luna chuckled darkly. "Life on the road, huh?! This your first tour?"
Ranko nodded. "Yeah. And my last for a little while, if I can help it. It was a hell of an experience, and I'm glad I did it, but… I traveled a lot when I was a kid, and I guess I got the need to see the world out of my system. Now? Give me my own bed, my little stage at the Phoenix, and my sisters' cooking, and I'm the happiest girl in the world."
She smiled warmly with the recollection of a recent memory. While her little stage at the Phoenix had been demolished while she was away in China, its tiny triangular predecessor had found its way into her living room. Akane had surprised her with it when she arrived back at her apartment, complete with their sparse little Christmas tree plugged in atop it. Ranko had barely had time to hug Akane and thank her for the thoughtful gesture before she had to throw herself back into public eye mode. She had cleaned herself up as quickly as she could and slipped on the sequined emerald cocktail dress Hitomi and Emi had bought her in Shanghai, as it was already close at hand in the garment bag she had with her return trip's luggage.
What I would give to get up there and just close my eyes and sing for Akane in the dark right now, Ranko thought. This party sucks. She glared at the drunken, portly man in the rumpled black tuxedo jacket across the office building's lobby. And every second feels like a fight waiting to happen.
She dug in the small purse dangling from her shoulder, retrieving her pager and jabbing at the buttons. Her shoulders slumped slightly in despair upon seeing that it had received no new messages since she had checked last.
Come on, Crash. Check your damned leash, she thought as she stared daggers at the little pink device. Makes sense that nobody's around, I guess. Everybody has plans on Christmas Eve, especially when they've been away for weeks. She did not know if her bandmates had even received invitations, but none were present at the party, and Akane's calls to them while she frantically applied her makeup had gone unanswered. Even Lance, who was normally a homebody when not trailing after Ranko, had been unreachable.
If these people weren't assholes, I could have brought Akane. She would be right here, telling me when I've got something in my teeth, laughing at my jokes, and making me feel safe. And we would be together on Christmas Eve. But there's no way she could have pulled off 'Aki' around this many people, especially when they're already suspicious.
She grumbled to herself as she pressed another button to deactivate the pager's monochrome LCD display. Then again, if they weren't assholes, I wouldn't be nervous about being at their shindig alone in the freaking first place.
"Bad news?" Luna asked, noticing the frustration evident on the singer's face as she deposited her beeper back into her purse.
"Worse. No news." Ranko sighed. "What kind of jerk throws a work Christmas party on Christmas Eve, anyway? Do it like a week or two before, like every other company does!" Indeed, a good many corporate Christmas parties had been held at the Phoenix in Decembers past, and she had served more than a few drinks at them before being barred from waitressing to focus on entertaining the guests from the stage.
"Actually, we have you to thank for that one," came a new voice to the conversation from over Ranko's shoulder.
The redhead turned, offering a cordial wave to Amaya Uyehara, who looked resplendent in a shiny gold-colored empire dress and matching flats. "How do you figure? I wasn't even in the country!"
Amaya nodded. "Exactly. And Kondo wanted all the talent here, so he held off on throwing the party until you got back."
Ranko rolled her eyes again, laughing mirthlessly at the realization. "And then he made it so everybody had to come, because he knew I probably wouldn't have shown up if he didn't force me." She wondered whether Yokai's management even had the power to enforce such a demand, but with fewer than four hours' notice to prepare for the party in the event she did have to attend, she hadn't risked spending the time to check her various contracts with the record company or ask Nabiki to do so for her. In the end, she'd discussed it with Akane and decided it was safest not to rock the boat, however much a part of her wished the boat would sink.
"Yeah," Amaya said, lowering her voice to ensure she was not overheard by passers-by. "I wasn't real happy about that, either. I didn't find out until I got the invitation in the mail myself." She glanced at Luna, giving her a little nod that communicated a silent reminder to Ranko that the comedienne's presence merited additional discretion in their conversation. "Aki couldn't make it?"
Ranko shook her head. "You know how he is around crowds. Not really his jam. Which is killing me, because I haven't seen him in almost a month, and I really wish I could be on my couch with him right now. Not gonna lie, I'm a little crowded out myself at the moment."
Luna laughed, swinging her empty mai tai glass in the air as she did. "Aww, poor baby! Are all those sold out stadiums getting to you? Enjoy it while it lasts, girlfriend."
"I guess," Ranko replied. "I'm just tired. It's been a long year, and I'm ready for a little bit of normal for a minute."
"Fair. Hey, it was good catching up, but I need another drink something fierce! Take care, Ranko! Amaya, Merry Christmas!" Luna waved energetically to both women before darting off in the direction of the open bar.
Amaya gestured to Ranko's feet with her half-empty cocktail, deciding to maintain the small talk for a few more moments until she was certain the pair were alone. "I don't know how you do a party like this in heels that high. I'd be planted in a chair for the night after twenty minutes."
The redhead waved her hand in reply. She did not want to admit that when she wore her highest heeled shoes, the few centimeters of height difference they provided could sometimes change her perspective entirely. It allowed her to see the world from an angle much closer to the one she had in her long-abandoned masculine form. She did not miss life as a guy - not for a second - but something about it made her feel a little less vulnerable in a way she couldn't quite articulate to anyone, including Akane.
"Please. I'm not dancing, these things aren't made of glass, and they're also not onfucking fire, so this is child's play by comparison."
Amaya laughed, tipping her glass slightly in Ranko's direction. "I can drink to that. How you doing, kid?"
Ranko shrugged again. "I'm here. Looking forward to tomorrow, and wrapping up the tour. Still fighting off the last of the sniffles after the icebox in Seoul, but I left the sick mask at home. It wasn't really working with the party dress, and honestly, with Kondo forcing me to be here, I was quietly kind of hoping I was still contagious."
With a nod, Amaya downed the last of her beverage in one gulp so that she could hand the empty glass off to a passing server in a black dress shirt and white necktie before she was out of reach. "Can't say I blame you. Truth be told, things have been getting worse here while you've been gone. I'm really starting to worry."
Sighing, Ranko's eyes panned the cavernous lobby, spying the source of her ire hobnobbing with a pair of female singers. From the look of it, he was striking out fairly badly. "What the heck is Kondo's problem, anyway? Like, he's been with Yokai for ages, right? Why is he doing all of this, all of a sudden?"
Amaya craned her neck and looked around to make sure the pair was not being observed. Unsatisfied with their current level of isolation, she reached down for Ranko's hand and pulled her down a short, darkened corridor, away from the festivities, in the direction of the locked mail room.
"Look. You didn't hear this from me," Amaya began in a hushed tone. "But, the scuttlebutt around the office water cooler is that his father, the CEO, is sick. Cancer. They don't think he has very long left, even though it's not showing too badly yet. So, Kichirou is making his play now, trying to make himself visible and assert himself. Rumor has it that Atsushi - Mr. Kondo - doesn't want to see the company handed down to Kichirou when he passes. Rightfully so, given what a buffoon he is."
Ranko swallowed hard as she took in the news. "What would happen if it didn't go to him?"
Amaya shrugged. "Kichirou has a sister, Yasu. She's never had anything to do with the business, and doesn't really want to. I think she's a high school teacher somewhere around Nagano. It would probably fall to her, and she'd turn around and sell it off to somebody. Maybe we get a good new owner, maybe we don't. It's a crap shoot. But Kichirou wants the company, because he thinks it's his big ticket to fame and fortune, whether or not he's earned it."
Groaning, Ranko let her forehead fall into her open palm. "So, he's trying to make a show of running things big and bold to impress his father."
"And in so doing, proving exactly why his father doesn't trust him in the first place," Amaya added, her head bobbing in agreement. "Tonight being a perfect example. Forcing all the talent - and all the admin staff - to come to his party on Christmas Eve just so he can schmooze with them. Like, he's trying to show them who's boss, and as a nice bonus, he gets to brag to everybody that he spent his night partying with all these artists, and conveniently omit the fact that they wouldn't have given him the time of day if they had a choice in the matter."
Ranko sighed. "What are we gonna do, Amaya? Things can't go on like this. I mean, I had my issues with Yokai before, but they weren't anything I couldn't live with. But now?! It's like he's trying to hurt me every chance he gets!"
Amaya shook her head emphatically. "He's not. It's… I don't think it's personal for him, however much it must feel like it to you. You have to understand, Ranko." She scanned the vacant hallway again, triple-checking for eavesdroppers. "Nobody else on Yokai's roster has the kind of star power that you do. Not even close. If Luna Tsuki pisses him off enough, he'll cut her as easily as he changes his socks. But you? He doesn't control Yokai in any meaningful way until he controls you. So he's desperate to bring you to heel, and make sure everybody sees him do it."
"What do I do?" Ranko asked. "I can't keep this up much longer, Amaya. I'm…" She swallowed hard. Her pride made certain things very hard to admit. "I'm scared of him. He has my whole career in his hands, and he knows it."
Amaya nodded. "I know. For now, just keep your distance as much as you can. After tomorrow, the tour will be over, and we'll get the mastering going for Behind Bars. I'll push the idea that the tour should count as your promo blitz for the album, since you performed a few songs from it in the show. If I can pull that off with marketing, you can lay low for a little while. Hopefully by then, all of this blows over, one way or the other. Just don't let your guard down around him, and have your sister do as much of the necessary interaction with Yokai as possible. In the meantime, be extra careful who sees what with you and Akane. Kichirou is running out of time, and he knows it, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him ratchet up his efforts to get you pinned. If he manages to prove something, he's got you - and the company - right where he wants. You can't let that happen."
Ranko sighed in despair. Great, more hiding. She fidgeted nervously with her manicured fingernails. "Can't you just… go talk to the CEO? Tell him how bad it's getting, and tell him to make his decision now? You said you have a lot of respect in the company; I bet he'd listen to you, especially if what you're saying agrees with what he already thinks."
Leaning against the wall, Amaya shook her head. "It's not as simple as all that. Atsushi Kondo is a proud man. He hasn't made it publicly known that he's ill. Going to him and suggesting that people know would dishonor him, and it would put him on a defensive footing. I've tried dropping little hints that he needs to pay closer attention to the things Kichirou is doing, but I don't know how much impact they're having. And, he's been coming into the office less frequently, so I don't get as many chances to talk to him as I used to."
"Would it help if I talked to him myself?" Ranko asked hopefully. "Maybe put some of that star power to good use?"
Amaya pursed her lips. "I don't really think so. Kichirou's been telling his father for months that you're a malcontent and a troublemaker, and things like your stunt with the bow and arrow last year have made that easy to believe. I think if you went to Atsushi and complained, you'd be viewed as a petulant diva who's mad that she has to play by the rules. And, if it got back to Kichirou that you tried, it would make him even more motivated to come for you. For now, I think the safest thing for you is to stay as far out of the tug-of-war as you possibly can."
The exasperated redhead sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping. "I'll try, Amaya. He doesn't make it easy."
Amaya frowned, nodding in assent. "I know. It's not fair how much of this office politics bullshit is falling on your shoulders. But you have to do this for a while longer, for all our sakes. We know the cards he's holding; we just have to play the hand smarter than he does." She peered down the corridor toward the tinsel-festooned lobby. "C'mon. We should get back out there before people notice we're talking."
* * *
"My whole world is red and green, and never, ever blue! It's Christmas every day that I'm with you!"
Ranko rolled her eyes at the sound of her own voice playing through the pitchy speakers of the lobby's public-address sound system. The A Very Yokai Christmas album she'd contributed her lone holiday-themed song to had been played on repeat for the last two hours, and she was getting quite sick of it. Besides, it's far from my best song, she thought with a twinge of regret, as the song had technically been written as a gift for Akane. At least I got out of the stupid Christmas concert they were gonna put on because I was in China. I wonder if they even bothered doing it without me.
She popped the last bite of the crab puff in her hand into her mouth, tossing the red plastic plate that had accompanied it into a trash bin behind the vacant receptionist desk as she chewed.
"Never pegged you to be the wallflower type," came a masculine voice that sent shivers down her spine.
Ranko swallowed hard, and not only to clear her mouth of crab and pastry. "Hey, Mr. Kondo," she said quietly, trying to minimize her eye contact with him so as not to betray the amount of disgust evident in her gaze. "Just don't feel much like socializing. Jet lag and all, ya know."
"Sure," Kichirou Kondo said, stepping closer to her. His black bow tie had been undone and hung loosely from his unbuttoned collar, and he swayed slightly on his feet. His form blocked much of the path out of the narrow space behind the receptionist's station, leaving Ranko backed almost against the wall. "I couldn't help but notice your girlfriend didn't come with you tonight. What's the matter with her?! Didn't she miss you after all your time away on tour?"
Ranko's entire body stiffened, and she dug her fingernails into her palms nearly hard enough to draw blood. She was not sure she'd have understood his slurred and nearly shouted speech without three years of practice speaking to the more inebriated patrons of the Phoenix, and she regretted that she did. "As I've told you a hundred times, my husband doesn't like crowds." She turned her eyes away from him again, hesitating for a moment. Try though she did, she could not hold her tongue. "And it's a good thing he's not here, because I don't think he'd appreciate you speaking to me that way very much." She gestured to the space behind him with her hand. "Let me by, please."
"Still denying it, huh?" The intoxicated man's fancy attire did nothing to offset his crassness. He reached out his arm, leaning on the wall both to steady himself on his feet, and to occupy even more of the lone passageway out of the receptionist area. "Ranko, I know, and you know I know. And the sooner you admit the fact that I own your ass, the smoother this whole thing is going to go for both of us."
For the briefest of instants, Ranko missed the person she was four years ago - not because that person was a boy, but because that person would have knocked every one of the drunken boor's teeth out of his mouth before he'd finished his sentence. The person she was in the present knew better, much though she wished she didn't.
"You aren't the first man to think he owned me," Ranko muttered, her mind flashing back to her long-held, and long-dismissed, fears that her biological father would one day succeed in selling her off into a loveless marriage, probably to a guy. "But they were wrong, and so are you.I work with you. I make you a fuckload of money.But you don't own shit." She gestured to the small black label sewn onto the satin interior lining of the ill-fitting black jacket Kondo wore. "Not even your rented-asstux."
Kichirou scoffed at her words, swinging the arm that was not leaning on the wall widely as if to bat them out of the air. A few drops of the rum and Coke in his hand sloshed out of the glass and splashed onto the floor at Ranko's feet. "You know… if you're so sure you're not… ya know, one of them… There's an easy way to prove it. Right here, right now." He flashed the cornered singer a cocky smirk. "I mean, if you have been with a man before, well, you'll know what you're doing, right?"
Ranko's hands clenched into tight fists again, and she started to raise her left arm to strike him. It was long overdue. Her hateful fury was interrupted by a cheerful, ebullient voice coming from right behind Kondo before her hand had made it above her waistline, however.
"Omigosh! Is that Mr. Kondo?! I've heard so much about you, sir!"
Kichirou whirled to face the speaker, and his forearm was immediately latched onto by a slender, attractive brunette in a scintillating navy blue cocktail dress. The young woman began dragging him back toward the main contingent of partygoers, speaking loudly as she pulled him away from Ranko. "You have no idea how much I've been looking forward to meeting you!"
Ranko let herself fall back against the wall with a heavy sigh. My fucking hero, she thought as the whole of her body started to unclench from its fight-or-flight tenseness. Her thin smile of relief widened significantly when another man entered the cramped space behind the desk, wearing a brown pin-striped suit over a crisp white dress shirt.
"Sorry, Ran-chan," Crash said with a slightly guilty grin. "I was at my parents' place for Christmas stuff, and I didn't get your message right away. Once I did, I got here as soon as I could. You okay?"
"Better now," Ranko said, rushing forward to hug her best friend around the waist. "Thanks for coming. Another five minutes, and…" Her eyes finished her sentence for her, as she turned her eyes to Kondo, who looked entirely overwhelmed by the energy level of the girl speaking to him.
Crash rubbed Ranko's back gently through her sequined dress. "Don't worry about it. That's what friends are for. But, I think it's probably safe for you to get the hell out of here now." His gaze turned back to the woman that had drawn Kondo's attention, a warm smile on his face.
"With the way Ukyo talks, Santa will be done running presents and back home in bed before that son of a bitch realizes you're gone."