Blue Hawaii Aniki's Soft Ore Demand vol.4

Synopsis

That show nobody asked for is on the air again tonight.

## A late-night variety show, episode four

Blue Hawaii Aniki is a film director — in his dreams. Literally: only while

asleep. To pay the bills he hosts a worthless B-grade late-night variety

program called Soft Ore Demand.

This time the theme is autumn. Careers, cooking, going back to school,

and a day out.

Four segments, none of them important. And yet, somewhere between them,

you start to make out the shape of somebody's life.

## The segments

**Goddess of Career Change**

Ace career agent Kuri Megumi conducts her interviews anywhere but an office.

Tonight: an office worker on indefinite leave who can't stop visiting the toy

store, and a former accounting clerk whose one point of pride is that she's

very, very good at holding the pads at a kickboxing gym.

**Newlywed Cooking**

Salmon rice cooked with burdock and maitake. The couple making it met at a

mock interview at the unemployment office, back when neither of them had a

single job offer and February was running out.

**Reskilling Academy of Working Adults**

A school where grown-ups go to redo their youth, and it's festival season.

Eight clubs, one public viewing room for people who'd rather not attend, and

a planning committee locally known as the only meeting on earth where saying

something is worth the trouble.

**Busside Stroll**

A comedy segment about not going for a walk with a woman in a bath towel.

Tonight's prompt: autumn outings.

## The detours

Between the segments the show cuts away to where these people came from.

Lego bricks at after-school care. Five middle school entrance exams, five

rejections. Two hundred job applications and no offers. A 6 a.m. hiking trail

on a Saturday, because your boss said so.

The program laughs at all of them. It just doesn't say how they got there.

This does.

## Notes

Fourth in the Blue Hawaii Aniki series. No prior entries required — it's a

variety show, you can tune in mid-season.