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insanenekoWarning: I wrote the majority of this on a crazy hyper-wired state after a long (long), trying day at work and will be posting without proofing much because otherwise I'd chuck the whole thing in the trash because it reminds me of that scary state I was in, typing feverishly late at night while a little voice in the back of my head kept reminding me I had even more stressful, trying work the next day...
In any case, please forgive any strange sentences. If they hurt you to read them, let me know and I'll fix them.
Onto the book...
Mitsuyaku wa suit wo nuide by Fuyuno Jinko and illustrated by Nara Chiharu is the sequel to Kakehiki wa bed no uwe de, which I didn't realize until I got to the end and read the afterward. I had a vague suspicion as I read it that it might be a sequel, but as the author claims you don't really need the first book to read the second. But now I do want to read it...this one was very amusing on so many levels.
Yuki Nao (WTF is up with that name? It's so awkward!) is a Japanese national working for the large American retailer Walnesmart. His lover, Joshua (pronounced with a "y" sound) Yuusuke Kurozumi, is the Japanese-American COO of Walnesmart. In other words, his boss. Yuki had previously worked for the large Japanese retailer Daieitou and had headed the effort to partner with Walnesmart, but had lost the contract and his job due to the betrayal of his former best friend and former fiancee. Having lost everything, he had gone to Las Vegas with what money he had to gamble on it and met Joshua, who apparently seduced him and brought him into Walnesmart to spearhead its renewed effort to enter the Japanese market. This all happened in the first book. The second book starts in Las Vegas, where Yuki and Joshua was reminiscing their first meeting, having a vacation, and supposedly get some work done. They are interrupted by the news that a large Japanese retailer was interested in a joint business in Japan with Walnesmart. Yuki flies back to Japan to begin negotiations with the company, Grande Citta (big city in Italian, lol) and its financial advisor. He is surprised to find out that the financial advisor was a guy he had accidentally met in Las Vegas, who seemed to know Joshua...
In any case, I won't go into more details right now. Let's just say the story is about deals and jealousy and old hurts and secrets and drugging drinks and all kinds of fun things that always show up in BL novels. I mostly got a trip out of the fact that Walnesmart is obviously Walmart, Daieitou is Daiei, and I think Grande Citta is Don Quijote. Mostly the Walnesmart part, because I just...don't really associate Walmart--excuse me, Walnesmart--with giving people second chances and camaraderie among workers and fierce loyalty (maybe among the non-retail staff?). Also, hot gay executives.
Much in the story was cliched, but the author actually managed to surprise me several times. Once a scene is set up I tend to expect certain things to happen, but many times they didn't. The uke turned out to have balls (despite his lame name and his state of uke-ness), and the seme was so mature...
Like I had mentioned earlier, the story starts out with Yuki and Joshua in Las Vegas, being pretty lovey-dovey. Joshua is ultra-romantic and very sweet--unfortunately Yuki can't shake his uptight Japanese propriety and resists PDAs most vigorously. Also, Yuki ends up betting on roulette against some random stranger who comes up to him and challenges him while Joshua is called away on business. Before the bet can be settled the stranger (do I even have to mention that he is breathtakingly gorgeous?) disappears and Joshua comes to claim him. Joshua introduces Yuki to the person who had called him away...the CEO of Walnesmart, Henry Walnes. Joshua and Henry are friends from college, and Henry seems merely amused at Joshua's open displays of affection towards Yuki. Yuki, needless to say, is quite discomforted. He doesn't want to be judged by his ultimate boss by his personal association with Joshua, but by his professional accomplishments. Later, when Yuki complains to Joshua, Joshua tells Yuki he wants to tell everyone in the world that Yuki is his. His jealousy had been aroused when Yuki had told him about gambling with some random guy (they had bet on roulette the first time they had met in Las Vegas), but manages to go away to "cool off" before he does something to Yuki (who'd of thunk it, a seme that knows his failings and works to control/contain them...). They do eventually make up and have lots of sex. The next morning they are ready for more, but Joshua gets a call. It turns out to be from one of the guys in Japan, to report that the number 2 supermarket chain in Japan is interested in a joint venture with Walnesmart. That breaks up the couple's little trip and Yuki heads for Japan, with a cross Joshua gives him which Joshua has treasured for a long time.
Yuki meets with Grande Citte and the financial advisor...who turns out to be the mysterious stranger Yuki had met in Las Vegas. The stranger's name is Richard de Normandy (first name pronounced "Richel?"). He's a French-American who can (naturally) speak French and Japanese in addition to English. Richel acts like he's meeting Yuki for the first time, so Yuki does the same. Yuki finds out that Richel had worked at the company that had helped broker the deal between Daieitou and another company that his betraying "best friend" had secured. He had in fact worked on the deal, but treats it as something in the past as he's at a new job in new circumstances.
Yuki goes back to the office and discovers that one of his co-workers, Tien, apparently knows Richard. Yuki takes that into account, along with an earlier conversation with Tien about Henry and Joshua's college days (co-worker had gone to same college) and figures out that Richard probably had gone to the same college as well. But Tien clams up, and Yuki can't get any real info from him. Yuki goes home, and gets a phone call with Joshua. After reporting on the initial meeting, they have some phone sex.
Several days later, Yuki gets a call from Grande Citta. To move forward in negotiating the potential deal, he meets up with Richard at a hotel bar. There, Richard comes out and says he knows Joshua. Their meeting in Vegas had not been an accident. He had actually wanted to take a look at Joshua's lover, but hadn't planned on talking to Yuki. He had ended up approaching Yuki because he had seen Joshua smile. They decide to go up to a room Richard had taken for more private business talk.
They sit down, have drinks, and Richard states Grande Citta's conditions for the deal. Of course, Yuki isn't about to swallow conditions that favor Grande Citta so much at once. Richard figures they are just a wish-list starting point for Grande Citta. But Richard soon takes the conversation into more personal matters. He starts questioning whether Yuki had used his body to get Joshua. Yuki in turn questions why Richard is so focused on Joshua, if they were merely college friends. Yuki starts feeling woozy and , and tries to go to the bathroom. Instead, he falls down. Of course Richard had drugged his drink. Richard mocks his lack of wariness. He tells Yuki that he had proposed the deal between Daieitou and the other company in order to screw over Joshua. He wanted to wound Joshua's professional pride. But he decided that violating Joshua's precious lover would be quite a wound as well. He starts assaulting Yuki, but stops when he discovers the cross Joshua had given Yuki. He proposes a deal, that he will bring the conditions to an equal footing if Yuki quits Walnesmart and comes to him to be his sex...toy?, I suppose. Richard wants to hurt Joshua as much as he can by hurting Yuki. It turns out that Joshua had stolen Richard's beloved from him, which is why he desperately wants to get revenge on Joshua. Richard gives Yuki four days to think the deal over.
Yuki think over the deal as he rides the taxi home, and is very surprised to find Joshua. Of course Joshua notices the little details of the aborted assault and gets quite jealous. He leaves before letting his jealousy get the better of him, even though Yuki really wants to talk to him...
Yuki is invited to drink after work by Tien. Yuki asks Tien about Richard and Joshua, and figures out that Joshua's beloved had been Henry. Tien reminds Yuki how Joshua had risked everything to give Yuki another chance after his best friend, fiancee, and ultimately his company had betrayed him and had left him with a ruined professional reputation, which allows Yuki to come to a decision about some of his own issues.
Yuki meets with Richard in a hotel room. Richard asks to see the cross again. He had given the cross to his beloved initially. He asks Yuki to give it to him, but Yuki refuses. He received the cross from Joshua in love, and what had gone on between Joshua and Richard has nothing to do with him. Richard warns Yuki not to upset him and brings up the whole business with Grande Citta. Yuki takes the opening to basically tell Richard to take his deal and fuck off. He isn't going to mix personal and business matters in the first place. In the second, Walnesmart isn't some two-bit company, it is HUGE. Yuki is willing to let the proposed business venture die, because he is very certain that he and Walnesmart can enter the Japanese market on their own terms, even if it takes years to do it. He knows that they can overcome the myriad obstacles in their way. In the face of Yuki's professional pride and integrity, Richard backs down. He will have Grande Citta contact Yuki for renewed negotiations. Yuki, about to leave, asks for the cross back. In the process he's overpowered by Richard. Richard decides to take Yuki by force, as Yuki isn't willing to give himself over willingly. He hates being dictated to, especially by yellow-skinned guys like Yuki. He'll do what it takes to get what he wants. Even as he begins his assault on Yuki, Yuki doesn't cower. He asserts his belief in Joshua, calling out Joshua's name over and over until he is silenced with a kiss. At that point the door bell starts ringing. It rings so incessantly, Richard gets up to answer it...
And in comes Joshua, who of course punches Richard. Then the secrets of the past unfold. When Yuki asks Joshua if Richard's beloved "Henri" (pronounced the French way) is "Henry" Walnes, Richard is dumbfounded. He had no idea his beloved was the CEO of Walnes. Turns out that Henry's mom had been disinherited by her father when she fell in love with a Japanese student and moved to France. But when her siblings' children didn't survive, Henry was the only grandchild left to succeed the company. In college he had kept his connection with Walnes a secret. He had also kept his half-Japanese heritage a secret because Richard was a racist pig. He wondered if Richard only loved him as an imagined ideal Frenchman, and so enlisted Joshua's help to break things off with Richard. Richard is all dumbfounded, claiming that there were no secrets between them (obviously false) and that he knew everything about Henry (also false). But in the end he accepts the truth. He asks Joshua where he can find Henry....
After Richard rushes off to find his beloved Henry, Yuki confesses that he had until now kind of been going with the flow in terms of his relationship with Joshua (though I can only make a conjecture about their courtship, I can easily imagine Joshua basically sweeping Yuki off his feet in the first book...). But this whole business has made it very clear to him that he truly cares deeply for Joshua. Joshua is of course absolutely ecstatic at Yuki's confession, and...sex ensues. And...they live happily ever after?
Joshua and Yuki in Vegas.
Yuki playing roulette with mysterious gorgeous stranger.
Sex.
More sex. With money!
Yuki getting teased by his coworkers in Japan.
Phone sex.
More phone sex. "That's not your hand touching you, it's mine..."
Richard in shock over the cross.
Tien and Yuki going for drinks after work.
Richard being dastardly. Or like a spoiled child who has to get his way, no matter what...
Yuki showing just how much he cares for Joshua.
Lastly, a couple of things:
1. HENRY YOU CAN DO BETTER! Don't take Richard back! Oh man, what an arrogant prick...
2. Joshua explained to Yuki after Richard skipped out that the reason Richard didn't realize Walnesmart CEO was "his" Henry was that sometimes American companies cultivate a...mystery? around their CEOs...And I had to scratch my head at that. In my experience public companies and institutions tend to trumpet their leaders, not wrap them in a cloak of secrecy. Besides, even if it was true, Richard was in the business. Why the hell wouldn't he have seen a picture of the CEO of such a behemoth? Whatever...
3. Still can't get over what a stupid name "Yuki Nao" is ("Yuki" is his last name, BTW--the narrative used his last name primarily, so I think of him as "Yuki.")
4. The cover of the novel is seriously misleading. It makes it seem as though Yuki and Joshua's relationship is some sordid money for sex thing, rather than the (close to over the top) romance that it turned out to be.
5. I seriously think Joshua's character design is pretty awful. He seems like a pretty decent guy, but he looks. Well. Like a pimp? Okay, maybe not. Just not a COO of big-ass company with a huge romantic streak...
6. Yuki's co-worker Tien is featured in his own novel, Ryu wo kau otoko. It looks pretty interesting from the blurb.
In any case, please forgive any strange sentences. If they hurt you to read them, let me know and I'll fix them.
Onto the book...
Mitsuyaku wa suit wo nuide by Fuyuno Jinko and illustrated by Nara Chiharu is the sequel to Kakehiki wa bed no uwe de, which I didn't realize until I got to the end and read the afterward. I had a vague suspicion as I read it that it might be a sequel, but as the author claims you don't really need the first book to read the second. But now I do want to read it...this one was very amusing on so many levels.Yuki Nao (WTF is up with that name? It's so awkward!) is a Japanese national working for the large American retailer Walnesmart. His lover, Joshua (pronounced with a "y" sound) Yuusuke Kurozumi, is the Japanese-American COO of Walnesmart. In other words, his boss. Yuki had previously worked for the large Japanese retailer Daieitou and had headed the effort to partner with Walnesmart, but had lost the contract and his job due to the betrayal of his former best friend and former fiancee. Having lost everything, he had gone to Las Vegas with what money he had to gamble on it and met Joshua, who apparently seduced him and brought him into Walnesmart to spearhead its renewed effort to enter the Japanese market. This all happened in the first book. The second book starts in Las Vegas, where Yuki and Joshua was reminiscing their first meeting, having a vacation, and supposedly get some work done. They are interrupted by the news that a large Japanese retailer was interested in a joint business in Japan with Walnesmart. Yuki flies back to Japan to begin negotiations with the company, Grande Citta (big city in Italian, lol) and its financial advisor. He is surprised to find out that the financial advisor was a guy he had accidentally met in Las Vegas, who seemed to know Joshua...
In any case, I won't go into more details right now. Let's just say the story is about deals and jealousy and old hurts and secrets and drugging drinks and all kinds of fun things that always show up in BL novels. I mostly got a trip out of the fact that Walnesmart is obviously Walmart, Daieitou is Daiei, and I think Grande Citta is Don Quijote. Mostly the Walnesmart part, because I just...don't really associate Walmart--excuse me, Walnesmart--with giving people second chances and camaraderie among workers and fierce loyalty (maybe among the non-retail staff?). Also, hot gay executives.
Much in the story was cliched, but the author actually managed to surprise me several times. Once a scene is set up I tend to expect certain things to happen, but many times they didn't. The uke turned out to have balls (despite his lame name and his state of uke-ness), and the seme was so mature...
Like I had mentioned earlier, the story starts out with Yuki and Joshua in Las Vegas, being pretty lovey-dovey. Joshua is ultra-romantic and very sweet--unfortunately Yuki can't shake his uptight Japanese propriety and resists PDAs most vigorously. Also, Yuki ends up betting on roulette against some random stranger who comes up to him and challenges him while Joshua is called away on business. Before the bet can be settled the stranger (do I even have to mention that he is breathtakingly gorgeous?) disappears and Joshua comes to claim him. Joshua introduces Yuki to the person who had called him away...the CEO of Walnesmart, Henry Walnes. Joshua and Henry are friends from college, and Henry seems merely amused at Joshua's open displays of affection towards Yuki. Yuki, needless to say, is quite discomforted. He doesn't want to be judged by his ultimate boss by his personal association with Joshua, but by his professional accomplishments. Later, when Yuki complains to Joshua, Joshua tells Yuki he wants to tell everyone in the world that Yuki is his. His jealousy had been aroused when Yuki had told him about gambling with some random guy (they had bet on roulette the first time they had met in Las Vegas), but manages to go away to "cool off" before he does something to Yuki (who'd of thunk it, a seme that knows his failings and works to control/contain them...). They do eventually make up and have lots of sex. The next morning they are ready for more, but Joshua gets a call. It turns out to be from one of the guys in Japan, to report that the number 2 supermarket chain in Japan is interested in a joint venture with Walnesmart. That breaks up the couple's little trip and Yuki heads for Japan, with a cross Joshua gives him which Joshua has treasured for a long time.
Yuki meets with Grande Citte and the financial advisor...who turns out to be the mysterious stranger Yuki had met in Las Vegas. The stranger's name is Richard de Normandy (first name pronounced "Richel?"). He's a French-American who can (naturally) speak French and Japanese in addition to English. Richel acts like he's meeting Yuki for the first time, so Yuki does the same. Yuki finds out that Richel had worked at the company that had helped broker the deal between Daieitou and another company that his betraying "best friend" had secured. He had in fact worked on the deal, but treats it as something in the past as he's at a new job in new circumstances.
Yuki goes back to the office and discovers that one of his co-workers, Tien, apparently knows Richard. Yuki takes that into account, along with an earlier conversation with Tien about Henry and Joshua's college days (co-worker had gone to same college) and figures out that Richard probably had gone to the same college as well. But Tien clams up, and Yuki can't get any real info from him. Yuki goes home, and gets a phone call with Joshua. After reporting on the initial meeting, they have some phone sex.
Several days later, Yuki gets a call from Grande Citta. To move forward in negotiating the potential deal, he meets up with Richard at a hotel bar. There, Richard comes out and says he knows Joshua. Their meeting in Vegas had not been an accident. He had actually wanted to take a look at Joshua's lover, but hadn't planned on talking to Yuki. He had ended up approaching Yuki because he had seen Joshua smile. They decide to go up to a room Richard had taken for more private business talk.
They sit down, have drinks, and Richard states Grande Citta's conditions for the deal. Of course, Yuki isn't about to swallow conditions that favor Grande Citta so much at once. Richard figures they are just a wish-list starting point for Grande Citta. But Richard soon takes the conversation into more personal matters. He starts questioning whether Yuki had used his body to get Joshua. Yuki in turn questions why Richard is so focused on Joshua, if they were merely college friends. Yuki starts feeling woozy and , and tries to go to the bathroom. Instead, he falls down. Of course Richard had drugged his drink. Richard mocks his lack of wariness. He tells Yuki that he had proposed the deal between Daieitou and the other company in order to screw over Joshua. He wanted to wound Joshua's professional pride. But he decided that violating Joshua's precious lover would be quite a wound as well. He starts assaulting Yuki, but stops when he discovers the cross Joshua had given Yuki. He proposes a deal, that he will bring the conditions to an equal footing if Yuki quits Walnesmart and comes to him to be his sex...toy?, I suppose. Richard wants to hurt Joshua as much as he can by hurting Yuki. It turns out that Joshua had stolen Richard's beloved from him, which is why he desperately wants to get revenge on Joshua. Richard gives Yuki four days to think the deal over.
Yuki think over the deal as he rides the taxi home, and is very surprised to find Joshua. Of course Joshua notices the little details of the aborted assault and gets quite jealous. He leaves before letting his jealousy get the better of him, even though Yuki really wants to talk to him...
Yuki is invited to drink after work by Tien. Yuki asks Tien about Richard and Joshua, and figures out that Joshua's beloved had been Henry. Tien reminds Yuki how Joshua had risked everything to give Yuki another chance after his best friend, fiancee, and ultimately his company had betrayed him and had left him with a ruined professional reputation, which allows Yuki to come to a decision about some of his own issues.
Yuki meets with Richard in a hotel room. Richard asks to see the cross again. He had given the cross to his beloved initially. He asks Yuki to give it to him, but Yuki refuses. He received the cross from Joshua in love, and what had gone on between Joshua and Richard has nothing to do with him. Richard warns Yuki not to upset him and brings up the whole business with Grande Citta. Yuki takes the opening to basically tell Richard to take his deal and fuck off. He isn't going to mix personal and business matters in the first place. In the second, Walnesmart isn't some two-bit company, it is HUGE. Yuki is willing to let the proposed business venture die, because he is very certain that he and Walnesmart can enter the Japanese market on their own terms, even if it takes years to do it. He knows that they can overcome the myriad obstacles in their way. In the face of Yuki's professional pride and integrity, Richard backs down. He will have Grande Citta contact Yuki for renewed negotiations. Yuki, about to leave, asks for the cross back. In the process he's overpowered by Richard. Richard decides to take Yuki by force, as Yuki isn't willing to give himself over willingly. He hates being dictated to, especially by yellow-skinned guys like Yuki. He'll do what it takes to get what he wants. Even as he begins his assault on Yuki, Yuki doesn't cower. He asserts his belief in Joshua, calling out Joshua's name over and over until he is silenced with a kiss. At that point the door bell starts ringing. It rings so incessantly, Richard gets up to answer it...
And in comes Joshua, who of course punches Richard. Then the secrets of the past unfold. When Yuki asks Joshua if Richard's beloved "Henri" (pronounced the French way) is "Henry" Walnes, Richard is dumbfounded. He had no idea his beloved was the CEO of Walnes. Turns out that Henry's mom had been disinherited by her father when she fell in love with a Japanese student and moved to France. But when her siblings' children didn't survive, Henry was the only grandchild left to succeed the company. In college he had kept his connection with Walnes a secret. He had also kept his half-Japanese heritage a secret because Richard was a racist pig. He wondered if Richard only loved him as an imagined ideal Frenchman, and so enlisted Joshua's help to break things off with Richard. Richard is all dumbfounded, claiming that there were no secrets between them (obviously false) and that he knew everything about Henry (also false). But in the end he accepts the truth. He asks Joshua where he can find Henry....
After Richard rushes off to find his beloved Henry, Yuki confesses that he had until now kind of been going with the flow in terms of his relationship with Joshua (though I can only make a conjecture about their courtship, I can easily imagine Joshua basically sweeping Yuki off his feet in the first book...). But this whole business has made it very clear to him that he truly cares deeply for Joshua. Joshua is of course absolutely ecstatic at Yuki's confession, and...sex ensues. And...they live happily ever after?
Joshua and Yuki in Vegas.
Yuki playing roulette with mysterious gorgeous stranger.
Sex.
More sex. With money!
Yuki getting teased by his coworkers in Japan.
Phone sex.
More phone sex. "That's not your hand touching you, it's mine..."
Richard in shock over the cross.
Tien and Yuki going for drinks after work.
Richard being dastardly. Or like a spoiled child who has to get his way, no matter what...
Yuki showing just how much he cares for Joshua.
Lastly, a couple of things:
1. HENRY YOU CAN DO BETTER! Don't take Richard back! Oh man, what an arrogant prick...
2. Joshua explained to Yuki after Richard skipped out that the reason Richard didn't realize Walnesmart CEO was "his" Henry was that sometimes American companies cultivate a...mystery? around their CEOs...And I had to scratch my head at that. In my experience public companies and institutions tend to trumpet their leaders, not wrap them in a cloak of secrecy. Besides, even if it was true, Richard was in the business. Why the hell wouldn't he have seen a picture of the CEO of such a behemoth? Whatever...
3. Still can't get over what a stupid name "Yuki Nao" is ("Yuki" is his last name, BTW--the narrative used his last name primarily, so I think of him as "Yuki.")
4. The cover of the novel is seriously misleading. It makes it seem as though Yuki and Joshua's relationship is some sordid money for sex thing, rather than the (close to over the top) romance that it turned out to be.
5. I seriously think Joshua's character design is pretty awful. He seems like a pretty decent guy, but he looks. Well. Like a pimp? Okay, maybe not. Just not a COO of big-ass company with a huge romantic streak...
6. Yuki's co-worker Tien is featured in his own novel, Ryu wo kau otoko. It looks pretty interesting from the blurb.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 11:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 05:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 02:23 pm (UTC)LULZ Walmart. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 05:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 05:08 am (UTC)