The Funeral (2)
****
"Do you think that's all?"
"I know everything about you. Why do you think the suit you're wearing right now is a perfect fit? The classmates you were close to, the garbage-like grades you received until now.... There is nothing I don't know about you!"
No.
You don't know me, Grandpa.
I'm not the Hata Ryuta you know; I'm ■■■.
I refuted Taira Danjo's words in my head, but of course, I didn't say them out loud.
If I were to say that I had been possessed into the world of a game, not just Taira Danjo but even my own mother would surely have me committed to a mental hospital right away.
But from the way he was talking, it seemed like Grandpa Danjo had been watching me all this time.
Judging by the fact that he knew about my school friends and my grades.
It was a little creepy, but I guess this is Taira Danjo's way of showing affection.
"So, what is it that you want, Grandpa?"
"From now on, you are Taira Ryuta. I had you put on Saburo's family register from the moment you were born."
Is that even possible?
That meant I had two family registers.
I had two identities: Jin Yong-tae, the son of Jin Mi-ja, and Taira Ryuta, the son of Taira Saburo.
I'd have two passports, then?
Before I even had a chance to think about this information, Taira Danjo continued to speak.
"I've already contacted that small, dirty company you were supposed to go to and told them you can't make it. You were scheduled to start in three weeks, right? Starting in three weeks, you will come to work here."
Yep, you can't go to the company you were planning on~
While saying that, he casually tossed an employee ID card at me.
I picked it up and read it; it was an ID card that read, 'Taira Group Human Resources Development Center, Employee Taira Ryuta.'
It was nice that my affiliation had changed from a small-to-medium-sized enterprise to a megacorp.
Still, the fact that I start work in three weeks hasn't changed.
"Your father, Saburo, has no assets of his own. If you want to receive anything at all, you'd better work hard."
Ah…
For me, who had been excitedly wondering what the inheritance would be, his words were like a bolt from the blue.
Grandpa Taira Danjo left, leaving only the employee ID card behind.
Ah, Saburo-san, why did you have to pass away broke instead of saving up some money beforehand?
It had gotten a little noisy because of my grandfather, but soon a monk arrived to give the Kaimyō (戒名), and everyone's attention shifted over there.
To briefly explain what a Kaimyō is, it's a Buddhist name similar to a Dharma name, and it is said that for a deceased person to achieve rebirth in paradise after death, they need a Buddhist name, the Kaimyō.
In Japan, if a funeral is held in the Buddhist style, a monk comes and bestows a Kaimyō.
I heard it's also become a social problem because they charge exorbitant fees for the Kaimyō... but this family is overflowing with money, so I guess that's not a concern.
Well, I wasn't interested in that sort of thing, so I just talked with my mother in the meantime.
According to my mother, she had a brief relationship with my father, Taira Saburo, during their college days, and after they had dated for about a year and broken up, she found out she was pregnant with me.
In fact, when Taira Saburo heard the news, he said he would take responsibility, but my mother refused.
She said she didn't want a loveless marriage.
Still, since I was half Saburo's child, she said she received child support from him.
And that's why we were able to live without any hardships.
Then why couldn't I go to college?
To that question, Jin Mi-ja said that I had arbitrarily assumed that because we were a single-parent household, our family was poor.
So, from the outset, I didn't think about college and therefore didn't study.
No matter how many times my mom told me, "Yong-tae, I have the money to send you to college," I didn't believe her....
This Jin Yong-tae guy... he was an idiot.
He should have just believed his mom when she told him, but instead, he just jumped to his own conclusions and didn't even study.
As I was talking with my mother, two middle-aged men approached us.
One was small in stature but had the sharp, intellectual look of someone who wore glasses, and the other was a large man who had the feel of a modern-day samurai.
"So you're Ryuta. I am your eldest uncle, Taira Ichiro. This here is your second-eldest uncle, Taira Jiro."
"Hello."
"He's handsome, wonder who he takes after."
"Saburo was good-looking, too."
The small, intellectual-looking one was Taira Danjo's first son, Ichiro, and the large one was Jiro.
The two acted friendly, praising my face, but the eyes they looked at me with were cold.
It was only natural.
Only one person could inherit the massive empire that was the Taira Group.
They were probably happy that the third son had died, so they couldn't possibly have a good impression of the guy who showed up claiming to be his son.
"I have something to say to your mother, so why don't you go over there and say hello to your cousins."
In the direction Ichiro pointed, there were several young people.
They all looked older than me.
Under Taira Danjo were three sons and three daughters, and since Taira Saburo was the youngest, there was a chance that I was the youngest in the Taira family.
If my hypothesis was true, then I was also a megacorp's youngest son, just like the drama or game title.
I wondered if this was a coincidence.
I approached my cousins.
The oldest-looking one seemed to be in his early thirties, and most were in their mid-to-late twenties.
There were also some of mixed foreign heritage like me, so it seemed Taira Danjo was of the school of thought that as long as his own blood flowed within them, it was fine even if other blood was mixed in.
Of course, as an East Asian, my mixed heritage wasn't noticeable at all, but among my cousins, there were some of Caucasian or Latino mixed heritage.
"You're Ryuta? Now that your father has passed away, you probably have the highest succession rank among us here."
"What are you talking about? Tamenobu-oniisan is the highest. Did you think I wouldn't know that he inherited a small portion of the shares from our eldest uncle?"
What a ridiculous sight, discussing succession rankings at our very first meeting.
And this was when their parents' generation hadn't even inherited the chairman's position yet.
For reference, Tamenobu was Ichiro's eldest son, and they said he couldn't come to the funeral because he was at the Taira Group's branch office in America.
"There's no need to talk about stiff things like succession at our first meeting. I am Taira Yuichi, the eldest son of Taira Jiro."
Yuichi, who was the oldest here in his thirties, introduced himself, and then they each began to introduce themselves.
For reference, Taira Yuichi, contrary to being the son of the large Jiro, had a small build and the feel of a scholar.
The rest introduced themselves one by one, but frankly, they were people I had no interest in, so I just memorized their names and moved on.
It was also a bit dizzying since all their last names were Taira, Taira, Taira.
Excluding Taira Yuichi, who introduced himself first, there were two people worth remembering.
Of course, the standard for remembering them was their appearance—that is, beautiful women.
The first was the woman who had just brought up Tamenobu in the conversation; she was Taira Kisa, the eldest daughter of Taira Danjo's eldest daughter, Taira Kokoro.
She was a pretty but feisty-looking woman, and she said she was doing well after launching her own clothing brand.
Normally in Japan, when a woman marries, she takes the man's surname, but Taira Kisa's mother and the chairman Taira Danjo's eldest daughter, Taira Kokoro, did not take her husband's surname and maintained the name Taira.
Rather, her husband entered her family as an adopted son-in-law and took the Taira surname.
Because of this, gossips speculated that Taira Kokoro held ambitions of becoming the next chairman of the Taira Group.
The second woman I took note of was the almost fully Caucasian-mixed Alice Fitzgerald.
As her surname Fitzgerald suggested, Alice Fitzgerald was of mixed Caucasian heritage, and appearing to have inherited a lot of her father's blood, she looked completely Caucasian at a glance.
She was a woman with blonde hair, green eyes, and skin as white as snow.
She said she worked as a model, and while she wasn't that tall, she lacked nothing in terms of her body or face.
In a word, she was pretty and had a great body.
Perhaps because she was a model, she had a slightly thin, slender feel to her.
Truthfully, there wasn't much to say at a first meeting, and honestly, even the cousins gathered here didn't seem close to each other.
That's because their fathers and mothers were all rivals, aiming for the position of head of the Taira Group.
Only Alice Fitzgerald's mother, Nae Fitzgerald, was someone who lived abroad and didn't aim for the chairman's seat, so everyone else was just putting on fake smiles and probing each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Of course, a few conversations were exchanged to find out about me, but perhaps because they thought I was a nobody who hadn't even gone to college, they didn't talk to me anymore.
Only Alice Fitzgerald, who had no interest in the Taira Group succession, continued to talk to me.
"You're pretty handsome, you know? Like a K-pop idol."
"You're beautiful too, you know? Like a Hollywood actress."
"Really? I am thinking of trying to work in Hollywood someday."
Alice giggled at my cheesy line.
Isn't she liking this a bit too much?
After talking with her, I learned that Alice's father was a promising American businessman who, while not on the scale of a megacorp, ran a considerably sound company.
And she said that because she had lived in America for a long time, she had no greed for the Taira Group in the first place.
She said she's been spending most of her time in Japan recently for her modeling work, so we exchanged LINE addresses and decided to get a meal together sometime.
As I was spending time talking with Alice Fitzgerald, the casket containing Taira Saburo's body arrived.
The casket was brought into the house because of a Japanese funeral custom called Tsuya (通夜), where one spends the night beside the casket.
The relatives went into the large room, took their places beside the casket, and sat down.
I disliked spending my time so meaninglessly because of a father whose face I didn't even know, but since he had provided child support all this time, I guess I had to endure this much.
****