Takeshi Talk, Part Three
We left our dear Masaki and Keigo at a revelation cliffhanger. What will Keigo do, now that Masaki has HIV? Let’s check in with the girl first.
The scene opens with her, sobbing in the doctor’s office. Man but I’m getting sick of this place. The doctor comes in and apologises. Whatever for? Well, they made a mistake! She’s actually HIV-negative! Hooray! She runs out and skips along the road, when she comes to a dead end. It’s a steep fall off the side of a building. And she leaps!
Back into her own body. Cheap “it was only a dream” shot! Masaki sits up in bed, picks up the magazine next to her and cuddles it to herself. Why? Because the magazine had Keigo’s face on it. Um, teenage girls can be quite silly la yeah? Flashback to the time she told him she is HIV-positive, and then we cut to a pool table scene.
Keigo pots the ball right into our faces, before some dumbass comes up to him and taunts him for not having written any new songs. Um, excuse me, but do men who listen to the romantic mush Keigo creates, actually hang out in these kinds of smoky, seedy bars? Maybe his girlfriend is a Keigo fan and she’s getting difficult to handle without any new releases.
Keigo’s response is to snort, pick up his whisky, and take a sip. Then throw it in the guy’s face. Eeee so girly. The guy grabs Keigo by the collar, and Keigo responds with a right hook to the guy’s face. He was conveniently still holding his whisky glass, so. Cheaterbug!
Other bar patrons pull the guy off Keigo (even though he deserved to get beaten up). He looks at his bloodied palm, with a piece of broken glass in it, and thinks back to Masaki’s confession. Cue bonus opening music video.
It’s morning, and Masaki bums around the house in her pajamas. Her father has just left to play golf, and her brother is busy mugging for tests and is not pleased by her pajama-wearing self. She refuses breakfast by saying she’s on a diet.
Keigo is having a party with his best friends Marlboro and Johnnie Walker, when Kaoru gatecrashes. She’s come to drag him off to the office, where they are awaiting his new song. He tells her to just give a young composer a chance and slap his name on it. Er no, Keigo, that’s called… well, it’s not plagiarism, but it sure isn’t honest! He says that life has become meaningless after his late girlfriend passed on. If you ask me, he seems to attract the dying types. Let’s project into the future. If he stays with Masaki until she dies, he will have had 2 girlfriends dying on him, which doesn’t seem to be the best cure for his “meaningless life” problem.
Kaoru plops herself down on the sofa next to Keigo, saying (essentially) “what about me, I helped you too!” Keigo suddenly pounces on her as if to kiss her, but his resolves weakens and he just stomps off, leaving Kaoru a sad, confused and rejected mess. (Can you tell that I’m not very sympathetic to her cause?)
Masaki has gone to visit her friend-with-benefit Hibino, to tell him the outcome of her test. He happens to be entertaining some bimbo, who overhears Masaki disclosing her condition. The bimbo, being a stupid and jealous sort, asks Hibino about it, and he tells her very sternly not to tell anyone. Oh great, the news will be all over town before you know it.
Hibino accompanies Masaki home, where he picks up a copy of the Kaoru Fan Club newsletter that fell out of her mailbox. He then promises to buy her the CD for her birthday the following week, which she had completely forgot. Yeah, when you’re staring death in the face, the day you started life can seem pretty insignificant.
Masaki walks up the steps to her house while looking at the newsletter, and it suddenly hits her: On the front page is a group photo of some trip somewhere, and loser-type is front row left! She frantically calls Hibino back, perhaps to call a hit on loser-type or something.
Keigo is taking a walk in the park, while wearing his ugly sunglasses. There’s a dude in the park playing Keigo’s songs on the saxophone. When he’s done, he spots Keigo and comes over to say what a big fanboy he is. This is the 3rd guy in the show to have the medium-long hairstyle Keigo is sporting. I’m starting to get bored of it, mostly because it’s my hairstyle too!
The sax player sticks out his hand to shake Keigo’s, but Keigo not-so-subtly ignores it. He looks at it, exhales smoke and walks away. It is beneath him to befriend mere struggling musicians!
Hibino and Masaki go on an adventure to the record company to find out the name of loser-type. Um, these fanclubs aren’t big on their clients’ privacy, huh? They track him down to his last known address, but he’s moved and left no forwarding address. He quit his job too, so he’s totally gone now! “Do you think he left this world?” Masaki asks, suddenly. Haha, good observation!
She goes to wait at Keigo’s house until the white van drops him off. She’s pestering him to get tested, and scares him by telling him that loser-type is probably already wasting away from the disease. She doesn’t want him to die, but he gets all existential and retorts that when the time comes, he’ll die anyway. Then he literally and metaphorically pushes her away, because it’s none of her concern whether he lives or dies.
She yells back that she has discovered the beauty of life, and now she wants to live! Then she digs a little deeper and identifies his defensive reaction as one of fear. He wordlessly walks away to sulk in a corner, so she must have hit the nail on the head.
In a noisy club filled with silly girls, a bitchy silly girl with a secret spills it to 3 other sillies that Masaki has an illness, which they would do well to avoid. We’ll come back to this in a bit, because now we see that Masaki’s mother has told her husband that Masaki isn’t eating. Of course she’s not, she’s in love! She survives on fresh air and sunshine! Otosan blames Masaki’s non-eating on the fact that she has a bad relationship with her mother, since Okaasan is always busy. Dude: pot, kettle, black, you.
Okaasan actually puts her money where her mouth is, and goes in to chat with Masaki. She asks what gift her kid wants, and Masaki is touched that her own mother would remember the day she came into this world. Duh. So based on this scene, I predict that Masaki will soon confide in her mother, her only remaining ally in this world!
Keigo is standing on a building rooftop, but he’s too chicken to commit suicide. Just as well, the president of the record company wants to talk to him. Boring scene la.
Masaki retrieves her books from her locker, and they’ve all been defaced in black marker. Okay, can someone tell me what is the point of this? I know it’s meant to show how she’s been ostracised, but girls generally do social isolation and gossiping, not this juvenile graffiti-ing. She goes to the restroom, where one of her erstwhile friends is in need of a hanky. When Masaki offers her one, the girl asks for a tissue from someone else instead. Then they leave hurriedly, and Masaki enters a cubicle to see more graffiti implicating her with a disease. Oh boo hoo hoo!
We are then treated to a slideshow of Masaki’s childhood pictures, some of which are really charming.
After school, Masaki corners the most sympathetic (and left-out) girl of her former clique. Of all the betrayals, only this girl’s rejection mattered to Masaki. She goes to find Hibino at the “shop offering unimaginable goods” where he works. Stupid bimbo is there, and she takes the opportunity to drive a wedge between Masaki and HIbino by playing instigator.
Masaki goes home and reads a nice card written to her from her mother, so she goes in search of Okaasan at the shop. Okaasan has just had a visit from the traveling salesman, and Masaki stands outside watching her mother work, when the salesman leans in to kiss Okaasan! Oh no! She politely dodges and pushes him away, and Masaki decides this is a bad time. She walks away, but Okaasan catches a glimpse of her retreating reflection in a shop mirror across the street. Masaki stomps home in a rage, and her father notices that she’s making so much noise as to disturb his sports telecast. Masaki ignores her father’s query on what is wrong, but she makes a conflicted beeline for the safety of her room.
She is lying in a disturbed heap on her bed (no futons for these guys) when her phone rings. I’d make fun of her ringtone, but I didn’t even have a cellphone in 1998, so. She answers with a barely-audible “hai”, and gets the familiar “ore dayo”. He took the test! Several moments of suspense follow.
His result is… not out yet. *deflates* Oh well, not like I was expecting anything different. It took a few days for my blood test to come back too, and mine was only to find out my blood type. Apparently, Keigo “went to a hospital that will mail the results”. So, not the type of place to go to for emergency diagnoses, then.
“I’m scared,” he confesses. Then it’s her turn to shock him. “Keigo, I wish you would test positive.” For the humanly simple reason that she is all alone, so at least they’d have each other if they were both ill. She’s tired of fighting her battles alone. Our Keigo is at least perceptive enough to figure out that something happened to upset her. With a final gasp, she hangs up the phone and collapses onto her bed. Keigo, faced with the unrelenting beep-beep-beep of the line, has a few moments of camera time to himself, so he can work on his “looking sad and worried” face.
Despite the bleakness of the situation, morning comes again, as it invariably does. As Masaki leaves for school, her mother tells her to come back early, as it’s Masaki’s birthday. Again, Masaki takes several moments to digest this, then says only “bye”.
Keigo is nattily dressed in a coat when he goes out to retrieve his mail. And in his mail is… his long-awaited result from the hospital! Stupid show keeps us in suspense by cutting to a gym scene. Masaki is being ostracised during a game of volleyball. I must say, their PE uniform is ridiculously cute. Floral-patterned t-shirts and pink shorts.
She looks so forlorn after school that her erstwhile friend decides to go talk to her and tell her what the rest of the school is saying about her. She doesn’t believe the rumour that Masaki has AIDS, she thinks it’s just malicious gossip spread by those who couldn’t stand Masaki’s independent character. “What if it’s true that I have AIDS?” Asami (her friend) is shocked, and scatters her armful of magazines that I think she was carrying especially for this dramatic purpose.
Asami doesn’t move to pick up her magazines, so Masaki picks them up for her. When Asami doesn’t reach out to take them, Masaki leaves them on the bench, and promises to sever her friendship with Asami so that she won’t be affected by Masaki’s status.
We return to Keigo, who finally gathers up the courage to open the mailer from the hospital. He gulps, steels himself to open it, then collapses to his knees as the camera cuts to show us the contents. He’s negative. So he has a cigarette.
Masaki returns to the one friend she has left, but stupid bimbo is now acting helpless and calls Hibino into the shop before Masaki can approach. Meanwhile, her family are waiting for her at home with a cake. Wow, they even have champagne on ice. I am so doing this for my birthday next.
The birthday girl returns home in time to see, through the curtains, her happy family popping open the champagne, so she decides not to bring gloom upon her own party. She goes to Keigo’s apartment building, and waits outside sans umbrella or raincoat, in the pouring rain. A stray puppy joins her, until a set of headlights reveal a black roadster coming for her. Specifically, Keigo’s black roadster.
We get the first real mushy romantic moment of this episode, as they stare at each other through the windscreen and the rain. They go back to his apartment, and Keigo hides his test result inside a coffee-table book. While he pours out a whiskey (I hope it’s for him), Masaki reveals that she’s being picked on at school. Keigo puts his glass on the table (oi! Use a coaster!) and delivers some advice about humans who can only feel good by putting down others.
“I wasn’t planning to come to you,” she says.
“If I’ll do, then come to me.” Oh yes you definitely do very well indeed, despite the anger management and unhealed wounds from the past. He continues smiling (smiling! Him!) as he reassures her that she’s not troublesome. And in a retro return to 1998, he says: “If you want to see me, just call me. Let me give you my number.” I recall SMS was still pretty new then, but no caller ID? Really?
He writes it down for her. What, don’t you have namecards? While his back is turned, she notices his test results sticking out from the book. He turns back to her in time to see that she’s picked up his mailer and is now opening it, and for some reason he seems conflicted. Like, “Oh no she shouldn’t be seeing that” and not for privacy reasons either.
“You didn’t have to hide it out of consideration for me.” Yeah, I know why he did that. It’s the same reason I feel a bit embarrassed to share my good grades when I know the asker didn’t do all that well. She exclaims that she’s happy he’ll live a long and healthy life (not with those ciggies he won’t), and then breaks into tears because it’s a life she won’t ever have, anymore.
And now it is Keigo’s turn to hold the little broken birdie to his chest and stroke her head. She continues, between sobs, that it is now the end between them. Hey, stop discriminating against the HIV-negative! His facial expression now tells us that he’s sad to hear this, which implies that he has feelings for her. Not like you didn’t see that coming.
She pulls away from him. His hair is ridiculously tousled. Why can’t I get that kind of volume on my hair? Before it’s too late, he speaks up. It’s hard to keep a straight face while watching this, because his hair is seriously insanely funny. She leaves anyway, because he didn’t ask her to stay.
She walks home, fighting back tears. Someone bumps into her and her trinket flies onto the road. While she’s squatting there, reminiscing, she sees loser-type in the human traffic on the pavement! He’s wearing a surgical face mask! Ta-da!
Masaki is now filled with renewed vigour and stops moping for a while, so she can track down this fella and give him a piece of her mind, as payment for the virus he gave her. The theme song started a while back, so this signals the end of yet another episode.
This one was draggier, all “woe is me” on Masaki’s side, but at least they got Keigo’s HIV status cleared up. If nothing of note happens in an episode, then it’s really rubbish.
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