The Tutor

Chapter 35: Changes

"What just happened? Right at the end?" Nick asked.

They were walking out of a production meeting that had been held in a conference room at one of Matsuyama's tall, luxury hotels. It was the first one to which Nick and Sumire had actually been called; most of these meetings only involved location scouts, producers, directors, and the writers, who incorporated the changes and handed out the revised scripts.

Today's meeting had been huge, involving most of the principals, every writer, all of the producers, the director and assistant director, everyone's assistants, the scouts, and interpreters. Only the crew seemed to be missing, and it turned out that they were at their own meeting down the hall, covering a lot of the same material.

"I'll tell you when we get in the car," Sumire said, her color bad, and Nick knew that his suspicions were correct, and that something bad had transpired.

He waited until Mino-chan pulled out into the mid-November drizzle, then turned to Sumire, his expression expectant.

Sumire took a deep breath and shook her head in disgust.

"You know how that sewer rat Kondo-san has the hots for me?"

Nick pulled a face and nodded, saying, "I told you, it's even been on camera a few times. When you have scenes together, he watches you walk away, or even when you and Hiro have scenes together, and he's in he long shots? The way he looks at you? It's gross."

Sumire nodded grimly. "Right. Well, you haven't been around some of the times when Kondo-san and I have scenes together, but he's gone off script a little and ad-libbed some of that, reaching for me and stuff. Once he even stroked my cheek when he said a line about how he couldn't wait until I was part of his household, something like that? It was disgusting, and I didn't break character or anything, but I shuddered, I couldn't help it."

In the back of the car, Sumire shuddered again, just remembering the incident.

"Anyway, the camera got it all, and Murakami-sensei and Reiko-san, the AD, have been seeing a lot of it when they watch the dailies every night," she continued.

"So?" Nick asked, confused. "It didn't sound like they were even pissed at him. Did they tell him to knock it off? That wasn't the impression I got."

Sumire shook her head, looking positively ill.

"Both of them said that they liked it, that it brought a sense of--menace--of danger, to my situation, of how I'd have to live in that house after I married Hiro and everything.

"Oh my god, so they want him to keep doing it?" Nick was aghast. He noticed in passing that the rain had gotten stronger, and the raindrops sounded like bullets hitting the roof of the car.

"It's even worse than that," Sumire told him. "That fucking producer that Sachiko Burns is screwing suggested that it be written into the script, building it up until the day before the big battle on the Hirajima Plain, when he could sexually assault me, or at least try. And everyone thought that it was a fantastic idea, that it would up the tension exponentially, and they put two of the writers on it right away, so Kondo-san and I would have the changes by filming next week." She sat back, indicating that she was finished.

"What?" Nick didn't know what else to say.

"You heard me," Sumire said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the rain hitting the car. "Please don't make me repeat it."

"That producer? Greg whatever his name is?" Nick said. "He's just a wallet, someone to sign checks. He dumber than a sack of hammers. You know he didn't think of this on his own. That cunt, she put this in his head." He leaned in to hug Sumire, who was so tense it felt like hugging a marble statue of her. "I'm so, so sorry, Mimi-chan."