Jinpei was bouncing the following morning, and only Nambu’s presence at the breakfast table prevented him from diving straight into the program. Instead he dutifully took his place with the rest of the team as they tucked into their meal.
“So what are everyone’s plans for today?” he cheerfully asked the normally animated team.
“Oh, the usual, I guess,” Joe answered for everyone, “unless Galactor have other plans for us, of course.”
The rest of the meal continued in silence, although all it did was arouse Nambu’s suspicions.
“What is it with you all today?”
“What do you mean, Hakase?” Jun asked.
“Well I’ve never known you all to just sit and eat like this. Is something going on that I need to know? I noticed you were all on the computers late last night.”
“If you must know, we’re trying to find some information on Jinpei’s parents.” Ken finally admitted, to the others surprise. “I don’t think it’s fair that he should be the only one to have no idea of who he really is.”
Jun glanced across at him, but said nothing. She had told them all so often that her parents were dead, she almost believed it herself.
“Is that what you all think?” As the other’s agreed, Nambu just sighed. “If I ordered you to stop, I suppose you would disregard it anyway?”
“Too right.”
“Ok.” Nambu got to his feet, his own breakfast unfinished, “Give me fifteen minutes, Jinpei, then come to my office. The rest of you, training is cancelled for today, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Can Jun come too?” Jinpei began, but Nambu seemed to ignore him and left the room without another word.
“I knew it!” Joe crowed “I knew he had to know more than he was letting on.”
“Ok, and in the meantime, we get started on those programs again.” Ken suggested. “There’s a possibility he could still try to fob Jinpei off.”
“Oh, by the way, Jinpei,” Joe added, “Jun’s running a program that will input data automatically, it should save you hours of work.”
“Neat, can I go and see?”
“Might as well, it’ll pass the time while you wait for Nambu.” Joe winked at Jun, as Jinpei rushed to his computer terminal and booted up.
It didn’t take long. He quickly found the name Joe had spotted the night before.
“Hikaru Himura,” he read to the rest of the group. “Could that be me?”
“Well, we would need to investigate further, but it’s certainly a good starting point.” Ken agreed.
“Shall we wait until we hear what Nambu has to say first?” Ryu suggested, “I mean it would be pointless to put in all that work, if Hakase just confirms it willingly.”
“Or if it’s wrong, we’ll have wasted a lot of time following a wild goose chase.” Ken concurred.
“Hikaru Himura.” Jinpei repeated the name over and over, “Wait a minute, isn’t that the name of the boy Mr. Landau was looking for?”
“It certainly sounds similar, you know, he might have been on to something after all.” Jun patted his shoulder in support. “Come on, let’s see what Hakase has to say for himself.”
888888
The Swan and the Swallow sat facing their mentor across his oversized oak desk. Jinpei clung to Jun’s hand tightly, the nervousness clear across his features.
Nambu himself looked similarly anxious, and shuffled round the sheets of paper he had in front of him.
“Well?” Jun prompted, “Are you going to keep him waiting all day?”
“No, no,” Nambu stuttered, his normally calm composure suddenly deserting him. “This isn’t easy for me either, as I’m sure you’ll understand as I go on.”
Jun and Jinpei glanced at each other, confused, but Nambu pushed a photograph across the table. “Mai Himura.” He said as Jinpei picked up the image. “This is the only photograph I have, it was taken on her 21st birthday.
“My mother?” he snatched up the picture and stared at it for a long while. The face in the picture was smiling, straight brown hair framed her fair skin and the eyes were a deep brown. “She looks a bit like you, onechan.”
“There is a resemblance.” Nambu agreed, but we’ll come to that later, “first of all, I should explain one or two things first.”
“Go on, Hakase,” Jun prompted, taking a curious glance at the picture.
“Right, of course.” The doctor seemed to take a moment to compose himself. “When I first started working for the I.S.O., I used to give lectures at the local university campus. Mai was one of my students, one of the keener students, I might add. She was always asking for extra tuition, even though I didn’t consider it necessary. Anyway, during a private tutorial she told me she wanted to have a party for her uni friends to celebrate her 21st, but her parents would only allow it if a responsible adult was present to chaperone her. She wanted me to be that responsible adult.”
“Why you though? There must have been plenty of others she could have asked.”
“Well, I was in a position of responsibility, but not that much older than the students themselves, I was only in my late 20’s myself, young enough to not put too much of a dampener on things, and at that time, I only had Ken in my care. In retrospect, I was stupid to agree” Nambu paused to get a drink of water, taking a long gulp before he continued. “Well, I don’t think I need to spell out what happened on the night, but we began seeing each other in secret for about a month, before our affair came to light. I was hauled over the coals, and quietly resigned, and her parents took out a restraining order to keep me away from their daughter.”
“Are you saying YOU’RE Jinpei’s father?” Jun looked shocked, but Jinpei just sat back in his seat, not quite believing what he had just been told.
Nambu rose from his chair and walked across to the window, staring out at the bay. “I had every intention of telling you when the war was over, and the Science Ninja Team was disbanded. I was worried the rest of you would think I was showing him preferential treatment.”
“Not to mention if Galactor were to find out, then he would be their main target, instead of Ken.” Jun added, hoping to soften the blow of Nambu’s keeping yet another devastating secret for so long.
“Indeed, but that wasn’t my main priority when you both came to join us here.”
“Hakase,” Jinpei’s voice was so quiet, they weren’t sure he had actually spoke, but Nambu turned in response. “How did I end up wandering the Jupiter Mountains alone? Or is all that made up too?”
“No, that is true. After I left the university, I continued with my work here, and eventually put the whole sorry business behind me. Galactor was making its presence felt, Joe joined the household and we were beginning to formulate the foundations of what would become the S.N.T. About two years after I’d last seen Mai, I got a call from her out of the blue. She sounded scared and distressed, and wasn’t really making a lot of sense. The gist of her call was that she had left home, and wanted me to find her, and our son. Well that was the first I knew of any child, and I’d raced to the location she’d given me as quickly as I could.” He paused there to have another drink and there was a distinct tremor in his voice as he recalled what happened next.
“Finding the village she had called from was easy, finding her exact location was considerably more difficult. It took me a long while, but I eventually found her in an abandoned hut. She had attempted to kill herself. Well I couldn’t leave her like that, and waited with her until the police and ambulance arrived, trying to keep her talking. She told me her parents had kept her like a prisoner, forcing her to keep the child as penance for her wicked behavior and for the shame she had brought to the family. She begged me not to let the child go back to her parents; they apparently beat him for any supposed misdemeanor of hers. I tried to get her to tell me more about you, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t, so when the police asked me for information, I couldn’t really tell them anything. I didn’t know your name, or what you looked like, just that you were a boy around two years old. Not much to go on, but it didn’t matter. Within an hour, the police had a report of a small boy turning up at the nearby orphanage. It couldn’t be a coincidence.”
Jinpei crept off his seat and went over, “what about my mother?”
“Oh, she survived the suicide attempt. She got counseling, and signed away her parental responsibility of you once your paternity was confirmed. After that, it was merely formality. I applied for a residential order and changed your name to Jinpei, in case the grandparents tried to track you down. It was still long enough for you to become attached to Jun while you were there though. The first time I saw you, you wouldn’t leave her side. According to the social workers initial assessment, you couldn’t speak, and there was evidence of non accidental injuries, although who inflicted them would have been difficult to prove. It was Jun who coaxed you out of your shell, teaching you the very basics the average two year old should be doing, so rather than have you go through any separation anxiety, I applied for residency of her too. In hindsight, I suspect it was her resemblance to Mai that drew you to her.”
“Do you suppose it was my grandparents that hired Mr. Landau then?”
“It’s possible, I know Mai was an only child, she certainly didn’t have any brothers, although why they would want to seek you out after all this time is a mystery to me. The only other one who would possibly want to find you is Mai herself, but I would think she would contact me directly.”
“Not necessarily though, she could be worried that you would turn her away.” Jun said, “I mean it has been over 8 years, how would she know how you’d react if she got back in touch?”
“I want to meet her.” Jinpei decided, taking Nambu completely by surprise with the determination in his voice. “Can you fix it up for me?”
“Jinpei, I don’t even know if she’s still alive, never mind if she’d be willing to meet you.”
“Well you can try. Phone Mr. Landau and ask him for her number.”
“He wouldn’t give it to me though, those kinds of details are kept confidential. The best I could do is to ask him to pass on our number and hope she gets in touch.”
“Ring him though, please Hakase, and arrange to meet up?”
“I’ll try, but I’m not going to make any promises, ok.” Nambu sat back at his desk and called the number on the P.I.’s business card. Jinpei waited with bated breath, only to feel deflated when the doctor left what sounded like a voicemail message. “Well, that’s all I can do for now, but if they get back to me, I’ll let you know immediately.”
“Come on Jinpei, we’ll go open the J, it will help pass the time while you’re waiting.”
“Ok, onechan, can you just give us a minute please?”
Jun looked between the two of them, “yeah, just come in when you’re ready, we won’t be too busy straight away anyhow.” She left the room, gently closing the door behind her. Out in the corridor, Jun leant against the wall and took a deep breath. Of all the secrets Nambu had kept from them over the years, this had to be the biggest. If the fact that he was Jinpei’s father wasn’t massive enough, then the possibility that Jinpei’s mother was also alive, and bore a striking resemblance to her too, was completely overwhelming. She couldn’t begin to imagine how their young teammate was taking it.
Once alone, father and son sat staring across the desk, as if seeing each other for the first time, an uneasy silence hanging between them.
“It feels weird.” Jinpei spoke at last, “am I supposed to call you otosan now?”
“I won’t insist on it, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Thank you, Hakase.”
“Was there something else?” When Jinpei just shrugged, Nambu went around the desk and knelt in front of the young lad. “Look, I can’t begin to understand what you are going through. I’ve had years to adjust to it. It doesn’t have to change anything if you don’t want it to. I’m not going to treat you any differently, because from my point of view, nothing has changed.”
“Why couldn’t you have told me before though? Yesterday, while the P.I. was here?”
“Having a stranger present when you hear something like that wouldn’t be a good idea, although I could have had a quiet word with him before he left, but it had took me by surprise too. The only people who knew your given name were your birth family, and I knew as soon as Mr. Landau said it, that you were going to find out the truth. I needed to prepare myself.”
“Prepare yourself? How?”
“I wasn’t ready to tell you. I wanted time to figure out how I was going to break it to you. I had no idea how you would take the news, I mean it is quite a bombshell after all. I wanted to be prepared for every possible reaction, but I must say, you’re taking it better than I’d anticipated. I guess it’s still sinking in”
Now Jinpei couldn’t stop tears from streaming down his face. Nambu found his long buried paternal instinct rising and held his son, muttering what he hoped were words of comfort while the boy sobbed in his arms, something Jinpei would have found unimaginable even an hour earlier.
“So you really are my dad then?” he sniffed eventually, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Yes, I am. If you want more proof, we can have a DNA test done today.”
“Will you do that for me then? How long will it take?”
“A couple of hours, perhaps, all you have to do is provide a cheek swab, and I’ll do the same.”