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The next morning, Mahiru met with Karen and Hikari in the conference room on the seventh floor of the Hanayagi Corporate Tower to discuss the models they wanted to scout. There were headshots and brief biographies of models from three different agencies printed out, as well as several unaffiliated models that Mahiru found through her searching, since Hikari thought that having someone more “fresh” would be interesting. They laid out the pictures on the long conference table, arranging them and rearranging them to try to make pairs that looked good together.
There were many contrasting pairs that looked good together in Mahiru’s opinion, but Hikari turned them all down, stating that they weren’t going to bring out the right elements of the fall line, or they weren’t unique enough, or some other reason that was beginning to frustrate Mahiru. Karen, to her credit, was trying every possible combination of the photos, but none seemed to please Hikari.
After two hours, they sighed as they sank back into chairs. “Well, I think we can all agree that we like… Tendo Maya,” Karen said, reading the name under one picture that they had tried pairing with every girl on the table.
“She is the white concept, untapped potential,” said Hikari, leaning back in her chair.
“Mahiru-chan, didn’t you say you wanted a girl-crush?” asked Karen, moving Maya’s dangerously good looking headshot closer to Mahiru.
“K-Karen-chan!” said Mahiru, blushing deeply.
“The problem is, it all falls apart if there’s no countering force. We need the other half,” said Hikari. She sighed. “I’m going for coffee, text me what you want.”
Karen texted Hikari their orders while Mahiru looked over Maya’s biography. It said that she held an undergraduate degree from the University of Tokyo, studied modeling part time for the past year while working as a subject matter expert in a Tokyo Museum. Well-read, well-spoken, and well-mannered, Maya would be an asset to any company that would have her, and she was certain to become a Top Model in no time with her figure, beautiful facial features, and striking expressions.
While they were waiting for Hikari to return, Junna stopped by the conference room. While it wasn’t rare for them to work closely with Junna, they generally didn’t see her as much until it came closer to the catalogue run dates, when her expertise was needed more and more, so Mahiru was surprised to see her come through the doors.
“Junjun! What’s up?” asked Karen, already on casual terms with much of the staff despite being an intern.
“Hello, Karen. Good morning, Mahiru-san. I came to see how your scouting was going.”
“Ah, well… we haven’t managed to agree on anything yet,” said Mahiru sadly. She noticed how Junna looked tense, almost anxious. “Junna-san, are you looking forward to the models getting selected?” she asked.
Junna blushed, and though she looked as though she wanted to deny it, she sighed. “I have to say that I am. Ever since Karen suggested the possibility of going to Hong Kong, I’ve been dreaming of the shoots we could do. The designs we could create with the Hong Kong nightlife and the color schemes that evokes. I really want to do this project.” Her eyes were shining and Mahiru could feel her motivation.
“Don’t worry, Junjun. We’ll figure it out!” Karen assured her.
Mahiru wanted to caution the intern not to make promises she wasn’t sure she could keep, but just then Hikari returned, a tray of coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other. “I’ve got it,” she said, a rare smile on her features. “Hi, Junna.” She placed the magazine down on the table, implying that inspiration struck her as she was glancing at the magazine rack.
Mahiru walked closer to see the cover, wondering if it was a celebrity or singer that garnered Hikari’s attention, and nervous about how they were going to get this person involved. To her surprise, Hikari had picked up a copy of a rather trashy tabloid, and pointed to the photo on the bottom half of the front cover.
On it was a very pretty blonde girl, her expression rather distressed as she was obviously trying to avoid the photographers taking her photo. The headline above her photograph read ‘Former French Model Saijou Claudine Spotted in Harajuku Last Weekend’.
“You want the Saijou Claudine?” asked Junna, her face a deadpan stare at Hikari. Mahiru had a feeling her expression was somewhat the same, though she made an effort to keep it somewhat polite. Karen grabbed the tabloid and flipped to the article, pulling up a few more photos of the ‘encounter’.
“Is that going to be a problem?” asked Hikari. Mahiru wondered if perhaps she did not know who Saijou Claudine was. “It says she’s a model.”
“Hey, she’s really pretty,” said Karen. “She’d look really good beside Tendo Maya. Good eye, Hikari.”
“You two don’t know who that is, do you?” asked Junna slowly. When both Hikari and Karen shook their heads, she laughed a little, patted Mahiru’s shoulder, and walked out of the room, mumbling something about finishing up some print layouts for a deadline. Both Karen and Hikari’s eyes turned to Mahiru.
Mahiru was an abundance of patience, but after two hours of offering reasonable combinations of models to Hikari, only to have every last one of them rejected, and to have Hikari come back to suggest them scouting Saijou Claudine, with the added bonus of her not knowing who that was, she was running very low. “I’m going to take a short break,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Karen, I think it would be a good time for you to research Saijou-san’s work history,” she suggested. Taking her coffee, she walked out of the conference room, leaving the other two bewildered in her wake.
Mahiru rode the elevator two floors up to Kaoruko’s office, where she and Futaba were sitting at her desk discussing something that seemed to be very important. Mahiru turned to go, realizing that venting her frustrations to her boss was not the wisest thing to do, and perhaps she was better off going for a walk or seeing if Nana was around, but it was too late when Kaoruko summoned her inside. “I’m sorry to disturb you!” she said, bowing.
“No worries,” said Futaba, standing up to move a second chair beside hers for Mahiru to sit as well. “We were only planning parts of the summer barbecue party,” she said.
“Tell me,” Kaoruko said. “How are things going with your scouting?” She gave Mahiru a knowing smirk, as if ascertaining at once that this was the reason Mahiru came to her office.
“I… I am doing my best,” she said. “We all are. It’s just that Hikari has a certain vision, and it’s very specific, and she… she wants…”
“Oho, don’t tell me, she has expensive taste?” asked Kaoruko, cocking her head slightly in interest.
“Well, all three of us agreed that we think Tendo Maya- currently unaffiliated but who has trained under the Seisho agency- would represent the ‘Light’ half well.”
Futaba glanced at Kaoruko, as if waiting for her thoughts on the matter.
“Tendo Maya, huh? We’ve met once or twice. Her mother is also in the industry, and her father runs in those high art circles, so they interact with my family fairly often. She’s… striking certainly. Yes, I can absolutely see your vision.”
Mahiru sighed. “The problem was, none of the other girls we had brought to the meeting complemented Tendo-san well. We couldn’t agree on anyone. Then, just now Hikari went to the coffee shop and bought a tabloid and decided for herself that she’s the one, we’ve got to have her… Saijou Claudine.”
Futaba snorted in laughter, but to Mahiru’s surprise, Kaoruko did not. “Saijou Claudine, like the girl who used to model Christmas dresses for children?” asked Futaba. Mahiru nodded. Kaoruko was busy typing something into her laptop. “And didn’t she do that other campaign, the one with the annual passes for that theme park… what was it called…?”
“Futaba, focus!” Kaoruko’s voice brought them all back to attention. “Ugh,” she sighed. “Hikari is going to make me work, and you know how much I hate working hard,” she moaned. “That girl is truly a genius. A genius, but impossible.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Futaba, leaning forward to peek at Kaoruko’s laptop screen.
“Hikari. She’s right, you know. Saijou would be perfect for the ‘Darkness’ half. She would look exquisite opposite Tendo, and most importantly, they would both look divine in our clothes. The hard part will be getting her. She hasn’t worked in the industry in five years, and she isn’t affiliated with any agency. If she was in a tabloid, that’s the most I know about where she is,” Kaoruko said.
Mahiru cleared her throat, a little nervous to speak, but knowing that once Hikari and Kaoruko get carried away with something, it might be too late. “Do you think, maybe, that Saijou-san is retired, and she doesn’t want us to find her?” she suggested. “If she was considering modeling, she would have an agent, or she would make her profile available for scouting.”
Kaoruko shot her a look as if to say ‘do you even care about my vision?’ but kept her mouth shut. Futaba came to Mahiru’s defense. “I agree. We can’t just hunt her down and propose a contract, that’s an invasion of privacy, and borderline harassment.”
Mahiru thought of how bothered she looked in the tabloid photo, how it must be difficult for her to go out in public, even after several years, because of her high-profile work and her distinctive blonde hair and partially European features.
“We could do it once,” Kaoruko said.
Mahiru and Futaba looked at her like she was crazy, but she held up a hand to stop their rebuttals before they happened. “We could approach her just once. Tell her about the job, the company, how we need her specifically, how we’re envisioning her as one half of this project. We carefully explain it all, and either she accepts, or we never bother her again. And then either we get what we want or we abandon it. Or she reports us to the authorities, in which case this will cost me a lot of money, but she’ll probably cost me a lot of money to hire anyway, so…”
Mahiru bit her lip. She wasn’t exactly happy with the plan, but asking Saijou Claudine just once seemed better than bothering her dozens of times, and in her heart, it seemed better than never finding out if she would accept the opportunity. “We could maybe ask her just once, and it would have to be a very, very good proposition,” she said slowly.
“I know,” said Kaoruko. “That’s why I’m sending Karen and Hikari after Tendo Maya, and you and Futaba after Saijou Claudine.”