Shizune - Global Thermonuclear War [Non-H]

Little cliffnote: alongside being fanfiction, this also gets the familial relationship among Shizune's/Lilly's parents wrong, making it even more non-canon than is usually the case. Shizune's mother is actually the one related to the Satous, I.E. she's Mr. Satou's sister. Jigoro is the brother-in-law. I hope you enjoy the read regardless.
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Stomping shatters the silence in the room, a panicked 'WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP' tearing its way up and down the floor below.

“[What? Is there something going on]” a pair of thin hands signs.

“[Yeah, I think Jigoro is throwing a fit downstairs.]”

Shizune thinks for a moment before hopping up to her feet and beckoning for me to follow. We take position at the end of the hallway, gradually peeking our way around the corner and down the staircase.

He's grabbing every sort of newspaper, TV guide, scratch sheet, and anything else that even looks like junk and stuffing it into a trashcan under his arm, not even bothering to put the sword down for a second. Hideaki follows behind, enduring a slew of insults as he attempts to sweep everything that can fit into a dustpan off of the ground.

As soon as Jigoro sprints outside to check on something, we leap down the stairs and investigate the room, looking for a hidden stash or anything else that would explain the frantic behavior.

We don't have to look for long though, as the front clicks unlocked and swings open, paving the way for a woman toting at least five bags of luggage behind herself.

“Ahhh, at least it's clean for once.” she sighs, looking around the room.

She carries an air of maturity and class around her, taking measured steps despite dragging five humongous cargo bags behind herself. Her beige high-heels tap along the hardwood floor and adding to the professional look surrounding her tan and khaki-colored suit.

Her dark locks hang in a disheveled mess, yet it seems as if each strand of hair has been carefully groomed. Everything is measured, enough bang to cover her forehead, and yet still accentuate her radiant hazel eyes and the silver dangling earrings on either side of her head.

It all seems uncanny and familiar, especially the way she analyzes everything, her gaze passing over every single object in the room with an expression of curiosity.

Those sparkling eyes then turn and spot Shizune and I standing dumbfounded in the center of the living room. I scramble around for an explanation, introduction, terrible one-liner, or anything else I could use to break the silence.

However, Shizune beats me to the punch. Figuratively, of course.

“[Hello.]”

The woman drops the bags and raises her hands to respond, stopping to think between each sign.

“[Good afternoon.]”

They both stare at each other frozen in place, their eyes passing over one another in careful analysis. Looking at the both of them like this, I can see a striking resemblance. Hell, if I didn't know any better I'd say this woman was Shizune moth-

Well, I guess I didn't know any better. Without any sort of alarm, Shizune jumps forward and wraps her arms around the woman's waist, who accepts Shizune into her embrace with an awkward smile.

“[Oh come now, it's only been three years.]” she signs.

“[That's three years too many.]” Shizune signs in retort.

“[Well I'm sorry you couldn't come with me. You'd hate it in...]”

She mouths something to herself as she whips out an expensive-looking phone and glosses through it, the tip of her thumb flying across the screen in a practiced motion.

“[Paris.]” she signs with a look of accomplishment.

“[I've never even been. How would you know?]”

“[Mothers know these things, dear.]” she signs with a playful smile.

As Shizune tries to fake a pout, the woman who appears to be Mrs. Hakamichi approaches me with an outstretched hand.

“And who might you be?” she asks.

Pretty firm handshake for a woman, yeesh.

“Hisao Nakai.” I answer.

“Pleased to meet you. I'm Nagi Hakamichi. Here's my card.”

She hands me a small white square embossed with the words “Hakamichi Nagi – _________.”

I say that's a blank because I can't even begin to understand what's written. I think it's in french or english, or one of those other languages I can't understand.

A gold winding pattern swirls around one corner, leaving the rest of the card a pale white; a stark contrast to Jigoro's jumbled, text-littered mess. You know, that's the second business card I've gotten from the people around here. I bet even the groundskeepers and garbage collectors have them.

As I slide the white slip into my pocket, she then gives me a piercing stare and asks “of what relation are you to my daughter?”

Oh no. The mother is the protective one in this family.

“Uhhh....Boyfriend.”

“Is that so.” she replies in an almost disinterested fashion.

“[Boyfriend?]” she signs to Shizune.

“[Boyfriend.]” Shizune echoes.

“[I see.]”

She looks me up and down a little more seriously, as if going over a mental checklist. I'm not sure what the parameters I have to meet are, although it would seem that I fall short in only one of the categories.

“Lose the sweater-vest and you're golden.” she comments.

What is it with everyone in this house and sweater-vests? No one ever said anything about it until I met Shizune, and now suddenly everyone has some sort of irrational hatred of them.

“What's wrong with my sweater-vest?”

“Everything. Let's leave it at that.” Mrs. Hakamichi answers, waving one hand in front of her face as if to restrain herself from going off.

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything. I'm a fashion designer, we know these things.” she answers.

A...fashion designer? High-class people really do flock together.

Looking at her, it actually makes sense. A little too much in fact – the carefully calculated hairstyle down to the meticulous placement of each lock of hair, little to no makeup, and a suit that seems to fit her 'sizes' a little too well, especially in the upper-torso area.

Reminds me of a certain someone.

“[What? What are you looking at?]” Shizune signs.

“[Nothing, just thought I was seeing double for a second there.]”

At this; Shizune jumps back, startled.

“[I am nothing like this woman!]” she retorts, her brow narrowed and a cute pout emerging on her face.

“[Oh come now, you used to want to be just like 'mommy'.]” Mrs. Hakamichi interjects, a familiar glint in her eye.

Shizune's face flushes with crimson as she grabs her mother's wrists and keeps her hands from forming anything more. However, she just opens her mouth to keep speaking.

“I miss those days. Just us sitting on the bench outside passing that notebook back and forth.” she mentions aloud, looking nostaligic.

“Before I had to go and take that job.” she says, her voice heavy with regret.

“Hopefully that man didn't ruin too much while I was gone...” she mumbles as she paces around the room, stopping to run her hand across the coffee table.

“I don't remember all these scratches here.” she announces.

“The walls too...” she continues, straightening a few portraits.

I never noticed it, but everything here seems to have some small flaw or another. Nothing major, but for everything in this room, there's been one point when someone clearly didn't agree with it. A few scoffs here, a couple of scratches there. Wall-hangings off center, chips out of the paneling, all these tiny details that wouldn't have been noticeable had Mrs. Hakamichi not pointed them out.

She's right, someone really hasn't been taking care of this furniture.

“Mr. Satou needs to hire someone to keep that barbarian under control. Of course he would send all the attendants away the second I left...” she mutters under her breath.

As if called on cue, Jigoro runs in from the backyard, a cell phone in one hand and his trademark sword in the other, both shaking with a feverish apprehension.

“Your workers are just lazy! I should run to your office, give your 'employees' a chat about true effort, and bring every single one of them back here begging to work for me without pay!”

He starts to add on to his statement, but his speech stops cold when he locks eyes with the woman across the room, his entire body falling slack as if the air were just let out of a balloon.

5.

A 'tap tap tap' echoes throughout the room as she places her hands on her hips and taps her foot, the room soon filled with a frozen silence save for the angry babble pouring out of the phone's speaker.

4.

One gaze lies full of terror, darting back and forth to look for anything he can use to either defend himself or make his escape. The other pair of eyes, however, glares onward, slithering up and down as she analyzes each and every inch of his figure, compiling a list of objections.

3.

Shizune clasps her hands together and looks onward at the burning fuse, lips pursed together as the seconds tick by. I can't say I blame her, it's so quiet that I almost feel guilty making the tiniest noise. I can't even bring myself to breathe as my eyes jerk back and forth between Mr. and Mrs. Hakamichi.

2.

The air is laced with a sort of tension, as if a bomb could go off at any minute, or someone could be shot dead. The furniture could sprout legs and run around playing tag and no one in this room would even bat an eye.

Defcon 1.

“You can't even get a haircut without me telling you, you ape?” a harsh voice rings out.

“I've been busy.” Jigoro replies with the same stinging tone.

“Busy? Ha. You could be busy if you were at least unemployed; where you stand, 'unemployment' would be an accomplishment.”

“Stepping down would be an accomplishment? Obviously I am gainfully employed, unlike 25% of this failing nation's population. My time is extremely valuable, I'll have you know.”

“It's not right of a man at the bottom of the ladder to be looking down on others.” she answers.

“Just who here is at the bottom of the ladder?” he asks, offended.

“Who do you think? In this room we have a successful woman, a young man who, despite his horrible fashion sense, seems well off, and a young woman more than likely to succeed in life if she takes after the right parent.”

“And a prodigious man who excels in everything he does, who has more than the right to point out the wrong in all that he sees.” Jigoro adds in with a gormless smile.

“I seem to have forgotten what time of year 'opposite day' occurs – I take it back, you're not at the bottom of the ladder.” she concedes.

“You're not even on the ladder. You're squirming about on the ground waiting for someone or something to pick you up and carry you to the top, grasping at anything that will make you even a tiny bit less pitiful.” she adds on before Jigoro can even answer.

“I'd be a little more forgiving if you at least carried yourself like a man who did anything at all, but you don't even have the decency to wear presentable clothes.” she continues.

He flinches at this statement.

“You can't honestly tell me that when there's a boy right over there in a-”

“Sweater-vest? They're painful to look at, but it least it gives of the aura that he put some thought into his clothing, however little.”

Again with the sweater-vest hatred.

“Hawaiian shirts? Seriously? And those pants are disgusting. Khakis? Maybe if you drove a segway and nagged browsing shoppers with warranty offers. And why do you wear dress shoes if you do not even leave the house except to go to that damned pier?”

Jigoro fumbles around with his argument, the only sound coming from his mouth turning into a mess of inarticulate, jumbled up syllables.

“And put that plastic sword away, you manchild. It's painful to look at you.”

He stops with a look of shock before explaining, “this sword is not plastic! I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine steel katana right here in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that's about $20,000) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now! I can even cut slabs of solid steel.”

It sounds like he's practiced saying this many times.

“Plastic? Hah. Japanese smiths spend years working on a single katana and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest blades known to mankind.” he continues.

“Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering Japan? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Samurai and their katanas of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the katanas first because their killing power was feared and respected.” he finishes, throwing his phone aside and trying to look valiant with the black sheathe.

Mrs. Hakamichi merely gives him a long, disappointed glare, like a mother would to her son that just brought home a report card with eight Fs, despite only having seven classes.

“It's remarkable that you know so much about such little.” she replies, her deadpan insult stopping him in his tracks.

“If you applied yourself and learned that much about something that mattered, maybe you could land a job that doesn't involve mooching off of your wife and brother.”

Jigoro jitters back and forth trying to sneak a counterattack in, but Mrs. Hakamichi pretty much has him cornered on all fronts. The next salvo of insults and chastisements never lets up, not even for a moment.

How are these two even married? Did someone lose a bet?

“I simply can not believe it.” she finishes.

“For one, I HAVE been busy. If you'll go out front, you can be the first to read a piece of life-changing literature conceived, written, dictated, and autographed by the one and only me.” he returns with a big dumb grin, as if that one statement were enough to even the score.

“Those books on the front table? You wrote that?” she replies in amazement.

“Of course.” he says, straightening up as if to pose for a picture.

“How typical. I had Morris burn those.”

Jigoro's face jerks into an expression of pure bewilderment.

“In order to write a biography, one must have a life worth reading about. “Stand-in janitor for the student council who leeches off of his more successful brother's business” is nothing worth reading about.”

A shock jerks through his limbs as he loses any and all posture and slumps forward, his jaw slightly agape. He opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out – his hands jerk into every which position to aid what must be his muddled thoughts, but only the sigh of a man firmly whipped into line slithers out from between his lips.

“Are you done? Good. Go upstairs and shave. Chop that mop off. Put on some decent clothes. Learn a second language. Do SOMETHING to make it less agonizing to even remember that you exist.”

He grumbles out a “yes m'aam” as if it pains his very existence to admit that there's an authority above him and slouches his way up to his room, dragging his feet along the way.

“Wow.” I comment aloud.

Mrs. Hakamichi lets out a deep sigh and joins us, cracking her knuckles.

“How...Why...”

“Because that man needs to grow up. He's lived off of his brother for far too long.” she answers.

Her demeanor is filled with a mixture of worry and annoyance. She flicks a lock of hair over her shoulder as she whips out her phone once more, flipping through whatever messages she's received in the past 15 minutes.

“Lived off of his brother?”

Lilly is Shizune's cousin, so would that make Mr. Satou Jigoro's brother? I guess that explains a bit.

“Yes, lived off of his brother. Mr. Satou sends us checks regularly in the hopes that it'll motivate him to get up and take control of his life, but it has the opposite effect.”

“He sits around all day either fishing or barking at attendants. Of course, once I left he sent away the attendants I had secretly hoped would be decent babysitters. So now I'm sure he treats Hideaki as his personal servant.”

“...When he remembers that Hideaki exists...” she adds on with a grumble, her brow furrowing in restrained rage.

“Wow.” I repeat.

“Yes, 'wow.' The man is 48 years old, he needs to grow up and do something with his life before it's too late. The only reason he's even still on his feet is because the Satous hope his gambling habit will somehow pay off.”

“Wait, so why do you bother with him? As far as I can tell, he's beyond help, while you seem pretty well off on your own.” I comment.

“It was an arranged marriage, as I'm sure you've guessed. “

Saw that coming. Somehow.

“My family and his were good friends, and old Satou entrusted me with making a man out of his youngest son. And I said I would do just that.” she answers.

“He...has his moments.” she comments, as if admitting even that is the most painful thing for her.

“Even with as despicable and worthless of a creature as he is, there's still the tiniest amount of good.”

“In fact, he started out as quite the gentleman. He was even in school, pursuing a business degree. Of course, he only did it so he could say he'd graduated college, and now it just sits on the wall gathering dust.”

She sighs as she remembers what must be at least 20 years of marriage to someone who basically amounts to a rich howler monkey, grimacing every now and then as her eyes gloss over the row of portraits hanging on the wall.

“I know you're over there, come on.” she suddenly announces to the empty room.

Hideaki peeks out around the corner, adjusting his glasses before running over to us.

“I'm not father's personal servant.” he mutters, wincing as Mrs. Hakamichi ruffles his already messy hair.

“Nope, you aren't, and tell him to get off his lazy ass if he treats you like it.” she comments as she drops down to one knee and kisses him on the forehead.

“I'm not a kid anymore! Stop!” he objects, growing even more annoyed as Shizune lets out a silent giggle.

“Heh. Why are you wearing your sister's clothes?” she asks.

The two have a back-and-forth over what kind of clothing constitutes 'cool', with one side fighting for clashing colors and sparkly and the other standing by solid-color tuxedos and jewelry.

I turn and give Shizune a snicker as the two of them duke it out.

“[What?]” she asks.

“[Those are your clothes?]”

She blushes harder than I've ever seen before, her fingers fumbling over one another as she tries to think of the right response.

“[I was twelve! I don't care because they don't even fit me anymore!]” she finally replies.

“[They don't? I wonder...]”

Shizune in a yellow sweater-vest, red shorts, and starry stockings. Even that little ribbon on the side of her head would be kinda funny.

“[I wanna see it.]” I sign without even thinking.

She gives me a fiery glare, as if to knock the thought out of my head before it can blossom any further.

“[Absolutely not. Most of that would not even fit on me.]”

“[You don't know unless you try~.]” I argue with a snicker.

“[Oh? Fine then. But you have to wear it too.]” she answers, smirking as if to issue a challenge.

“[Really now? Challenge accepted.]” I retort.

Before Shizune and I can continue any further, Jigoro slumps down the stairs with his hair tied into a ponytail and his normal clothes discarded for a black business suit. The sword that I had begun to think was grafted to his palm has disappeared, although his hand is still clenched in a fist as if to hold it.

His eyes slither between everyone in the room, looking for something to say to make himself feel better, but all the thoughts that come to mind are stopped dead by the woman tapping her foot expectantly. His expression and posture droop as if he were a slave being forced to do the one thing he told himself he wouldn't.

“Better. Now go to the unemployment office.” she comments.

“What?! I can get any job I wanted in 15 seconds if-”

“No. Unemployment office. Now. Walk there so you don't waste any more money on a taxi.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but gives up and steps out the door, grumbling under his breath.

“Let's see how far he gets this time.”