A Pearl in the Snow Ch. 02

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For my uniform number I deliberately choice #9, matching the gold Koban coin that I now always wore around my neck. The numbers 4 & 9 are considered especially "unlucky" in Japan. Nine is pronounced 'ku' which has the same pronunciation as the words 'agony or torture'. I felt with my bad knee I knew all about agony and torture, and would not let any of my teammates deter me from my 'unlucky choice'. For me, this number was now one of very good fortune indeed!

The baseball season also began quite auspiciously also, we were still a young team with next to no established talent or star players, but we played scrappy and fought for every run and stayed right near the top on the standings long after we had been expected to drop down to mediocrity. This was the third year we had been in the league; the first two years each they had finishing in last place, as expected and was anticipated for us to do so again this year.

By the All Star break we were finally starting to fade, we had played on emotion for as long as we could but our relative lack of talent was beginning to tell. I was batting well over .300 and was one of our team representatives for the All Star Game in Tokyo (I went 3-4 with a home run and made a game saving defensive play at third that probably preserved the win for my Pacific League). Within weeks, my name was regularly in the sports newspapers and TV baseball highlight shows. Suddenly, I was a gaijin of considerable interest, and no longer just a little fish swimming in my own little remote northern pond.

'The Chief', Mr. Sato, caught on to this trend nearly at once and before I knew what was happening, after nearly every game there was a company car waiting to take me to one of his TV studios so that I could appear almost nightly on a never ending variety of late night television talk shows. Some sports related, but an increasing number were gossip and celebrity focused.

Suddenly I began to feel concern for Shinju's privacy, but that was already now far too late as one of the very first celebrity chat shows I appeared on featured nice large crisp photos of Shinju and I walking together places hand in hand and looking obviously deliriously in love with each other.

"No." I admitted. "We did not yet have plans to marry, my first and only concern at this time was for the success of my ball club and to redouble my own efforts in support of my teammates to regain the lead in our Division". And so on. I knew exactly how to play the role of the enthusiastic but humble gaijin, careful always to place the team before myself.

They lapped this up like tentacle monster going after some Japanese schoolgirl. I was apparently handsome, articulate and not at all a 'typical selfish gaijin sukett'. Seemingly overnight I found I had fan clubs full of love struck teenagers and women old enough to be my mother. Both groups of women often sent me nude photographs of themselves and suggested various means by which they would like to provide me with comfort.

Shinju laughingly took all of this in stride, but this new media game started to become much more serious towards the end of the season, when I received instructions just before the start of a long road trip to the Tokyo area (there are five NPB teams in that area alone) that I was to report directly to the Chief for some last minute instructions.

These instructions threatened to upset entirely my entire happy and very comfortable home life.

In short, while I was in Tokyo, I was instructed to present myself to a certain delicious young actress and become her very visible escort for a number of high profile social engagements. The young lady in question, a Miss Misaki, was a fast rising star of television and movies, and she had also recently recorded a record of pop songs. She was naturally under contract to Sato for all of those things, and he saw this as a way of increasing the popularity even further of two of his most photogenic assets.

I explained as politely as I could that I was very much in love with the excellent woman I had been living with all season, and hoped that she would not feel the shame of her lover being seen in public in the arms of another understandably beautiful woman. Sato was not moved.

"Just be seen and photographed with her in your arms, you don't have to invite the photographers into her bedroom, unless you both really want to!" He said with another wink, but signaled that the matter was indeed closed to further debate or discussion.

I only had a few minutes before I was to catch the team bus to go the train station for the trip to Tokyo, but I called Shinju to report the 'bad news' so she could hear it from my own mouth first before someone else could show her photos causing her to imagine the worst. She took the matter far more calmly that I had.

"Please your boss first; do exactly what he asks you to do and don't worry about me. I will be home for you when you return and you can tell me all the silly details then. Make him happy and do what it takes to make and keep her happy if 'needs must'. It won't be the first time that one of us has had to do something we disliked in order to please those above us, and it probably still won't be the last. Go now, and know that I will always love you and there is no way that you can possibly ever disappoint me, or ever fall from my eternal affection turning it into displeasure. I remain yours always and forever. I love you." With that she hung up before I could utter another word.

I didn't deserve that woman!

***********

The Tokyo trip went both better than I feared and worse than I hoped. For the next week, Miss Misaki, a very attractive and intelligent young lady, was my constant companion and it was no great hardship for me to spend our late evenings together being seen at the most fashionable clubs and exclusive restaurants (all at Sato's considerable expense).

She was a tad self-absorbed, but that was probably natural for her young age (twenty-four) and a result of her recent and rapid rise to stardom. She was on a popular samurai era historical soap opera that had millions of weekly viewers, and both her last movie and her first record had done well. She probably hadn't heard the word 'No' in quite awhile, and was quite a taken back when she found she couldn't quite wrap me around her little fingers.

I avoided the clutches of her bed, but not by much... it was a near thing.

If she hadn't told the gossip press waiting outside the club we visiting that she was 'dragging me home so I could give her a bit of western pony ride' and then admitting as much to me in the limo what she had said, I might have let her get away with it. My dislike of being manipulated overcame my ardor, and I angrily got out of the car at the next light and caught a cab back to the hotel.

This of course didn't stop the tabloid press from reporting that we had indeed spent the night together with some reporters even calling Shinju at home hoping to get her 'tearful reaction' to my betrayal. She understood the game and played it well and was quoted as saying the "Busu (ugly cow) might be occasionally borrowing her man, as she couldn't find or keep any decent ones of her own, but that I would always be returning home to her, his soul mate, where I could receive "proper care and attention."

The media adored this sort of romantic rivalry and the whole thing spiraled way out of control faster than anyone could have predicted. By the end of the season, two camps of popular opinion had arisen. Rural women stuck firmly behind 'their' candidate, Shinju (who was after all a girl from a small village) vs the 'big city hussy' Misaki, the teen idol of millions, who had wealth and fame and all of the sparkle that the big city lights of Tokyo could bestow on her.

I kept smiling for the cameras, but I wasn't nearly as amused as I appeared to be.

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When the season ended (we finished in fifth place out of the eight teams in our League), I hoped that the matter would start to die out for awhile, at least until next spring, but no -- if anything my list of scheduled TV appearances and 'dates' with Misaki only continued to increase. Worse, some enterprising reporters were starting now to do a thorough background check on Shinju, and some unhappy hints about her prior life before she began school teaching were starting to be whispered.

It was only a matter of time before the whole story broke wide open that the live-in girlfriend of one of Japan's most popular baseball players had been a notorious teenaged prostitute - honor High School student by day and star fellatrix by night. Every Japanese male's top fantasy. I was at a lost as to what to do to forestall this catastrophe when fortune again smiled on me.

*******

Two surly young men that I well remembered from Shinju's village came to our door one early afternoon, but when they asked to speak to 'the whore I was living with', I snapped and spent a very satisfying five minutes completely beating and kicking the utter shit out of them. At length I delivered them into the hands of the doorman downstairs with instructions that neither they, nor their friends were to be admitted unless they demonstrated considerably better behavior and politeness to a 'fine lady of quality'.

Our doorman, a former professional wrestler, was quite up to the challenge and picked up where I had left off kicking their asses out of the building and onto the street.

They returned the next day with an older gentleman (not 'Great Uncle'), but still an elder of the Clan. He made his two miscreants formally apologize to myself and Shinju for their previous rudeness, and then he asked to be admitted to our home for 'discussions of a delicate nature'. The only thing delicate about what followed was Shinju's gentle restraint of me from also kicking this new fellow's ass all the way back down to the harbor ferry terminal.

The long and short of things was that 'Great Uncle' was disappointed at not receiving his regular payments from Shinju, especially now that there were certain other financial 'opportunities' available to them, but the clan would much prefer not to speak of the background of family members to outsiders.

This was blackmail pure and simple, but also this suggested a means of getting them entirely off of her back forever.

At Shinju's request, I did make one firm pre-condition to any deal. Shinju was to have inherited some jewelry that had been passed down through the female line, mother to daughter for a great many generations. She wanted those items quite badly, particularly two pieces that she knew had been her grandmothers; a pearl necklace and a long hairpin with a pearl end piece.

"Locating these items would be very difficult and of uncertain success." We were told, but this answer was not acceptable to me. I held firm that return of at least those two items was essential to any further agreements that we might later make, and would demonstrate trust between us.

We agreed to carefully consider 'Great Uncles' position, and made an appointment to meet with him at a certain restaurant in Ryotsu in three days, which we did.

Shinju received a long mother of pearl inlaid box that did contain most of her mother's family jewelry, included the two pieces that were most important to her. A few minor pieces from the collection were deemed 'lost and unable to be found', but those items were not especially valuable or of sentimental important to her, and she signaled her acceptance and satisfaction. The pearl necklace and the pearl hair pin became immediately permanent parts of her daily wardrobe from that day onwards. I learned later than each of these pearls had been personally collected by a great-grandmother who had been a pearl diver in her youth. This explained the extreme sentimental value she had for the items.

We wheedled over small points of concern for several hours and several pots of Saki, and eventually I grudgingly handed over a gym bag containing an improbable amount of yen. Much less than he had originally wanted to receive, but way more than I had wanted at first to pay. The actual total amount was actually unimportant to me, and I would have willing paid any amount to get Shinju "free". This sum was still less than the bonus check Sato had given me at season's end for all of my extra hard 'after-hours' work.

With this payment we covered Shinju's 'debts' and all past, present and likely future earnings due to the Clan. She was now truly free at last.

We formally grasped hands in agreement, and I more or less became a de-facto 'member of the family'. We never became close like real family ought to have been, but at least now we were properly welcomed if we visited her village and both of us were now treated with respect. The belt knives stayed put away, and for good, and the words "Baita" and "Yariman" were never again uttered within my hearing.

We did not visit often, but I later assisted 'Great Uncle' in purchasing five new modern fishing boats and regularly receive some tiny token profits from this family investment.

***********

Almost instantly, the increasing media hints about my beloved's 'unsavory past' began to dry up, and eventually the story died cold -- the truth untold. One journalist who had covered part of the story later became friendly with me and told me a few years later that they had gotten 'very close' and guessed much of the real story, but could never get anyone 'on the record' to confirm it. Libel laws are very strict in Japan and they were scared of what Sato might do to their careers unless they could present 'unassailable evidence', which they never could. We agreed that it was much for the best anyway, and we drank to each other good health -- and journalistic success at someone else's expense!