360° (part i)
TITLE: 360° (part i)
CHARACTER/PAIRING: Ryo-centric, NEWS
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 9,350
SUMMARY: He'd been waiting for his chance to go to war, but once he gets there, it's a little different than what he'd been expecting.
NOTES: All the cities, towns, roads, geographic features, etc. mentioned are real; I had Google Maps open in the background the whole time I was writing this. If you have even a vague concept of Japanese geography and where the cities are, you'll be fine. And, this was totally inspired by (I think it was) Ryo's Shounen Club Premium interview where he mentioned practicing Kanto-Japanese and how he found the other K8 guys talking loudly in Kansai-Japanese in Tokyo embarrassing.
Since he was 18, and old enough to enlist, Nishikido Ryo, a proud Osaka-native, has wanted to fight in the war. But time and time again, he's overlooked; his small stature and sloppy hand-to-hand combat skills make him a poor recruit, and he's rejected.
His brothers are all in the army, though, in support functions; the eldest as a mechanic at an armored personnel transport factory, the next eldest is in logistics and the youngest of his older brothers is a field medic. They suffer from that same inherited small stature that keeps Ryo from the war. They tell him to find something that will fit, like they did, but he doesn't. He doesn't want to build things, or plan things or fix people - he wants to fight.
By his 20th birthday, when he's back at the recruiter for the third time, a draft has started up. The war is dragging on and the casualties are mounting. He's still rejected.
It takes until his 24th birthday for the recruiter to accept him.
At this point, they need all the hands they can get to fight.
Within a week, he's shipped off to boot camp, climbing through the mud and over walls with younger, taller, stronger guys, but he's always the first to complete the obstacle course, the first to dissemble, then reassemble his rifle, the first standing at the foot of his bed when the bugle calls at 5:30 every morning.
It only lasts for 4 weeks; the generals on the front lines are desperate for more soldiers, there's no time for the proper 10 week boot camp that's the norm in the Osakan military.
His entire boot camp group is being shipped to just south of Hamamatsu; Ryo grins when he hears that. It's a violent theater, near constant skirmishes as both sides desperately vie for control of the city.
He doesn't last a week.
When they arrive, the Colonel of the makeshift Osakan base of Hamamatsu, Shibutani, comes out to greet them, with a little Chief Warrant Officer named Yasuda. Ryo sees blood as he salutes them; how have two such short men managed to be in the military so long they've reached Colonel and Warrant Officer?
They get settled in their bunks and are given a tour by some menial private.
A few days later, Ryo is up late, peering carefully over concrete embankments and sandbags - night watch.
"They don't ever do much at night," a sergeant to his left says. "Those prissy bastards like to get their full nights beauty sleep."
As the sun starts to rise, the gravel behind them shifts and crackles together. Ryo turns, weary, but the sergeant doesn't turn whatsoever as he greets the newcomer.
"Morning, Colonel."
Ryo hastily stands and salutes, the sergeant laughs.
"Turning your back to the enemy. Not a good way to survive, kiddo."
Colonel Shibutani laughs and waves at Ryo to return to his position.
"Don't worry about me back here," he says. "Just making sure everything is going smoothly."
They're quiet together for a long time, until the sergeant takes a short pee break. The colonel reminds him not to go behind the storage shed - it's unsanitary.
It's awkward for Ryo, being alone with the colonel and very conscious of it.
"Sir, permission to speak freely?"
"It's so early," Shibutani nearly whines. "Don't worry about such formalities."
"Sir, I-"
"Just say what's on your mind."
Ryo takes a deep breath. "I can't help but notice, that we're roughly of the same physical build, yet I've been passed over for five years in recruitment, but you've made it to colonel. Sir, how-"
He stops, because the colonel is guffawing behind, slapping his knee.
"The Military Academy for Officers!" Shibutani wipes a tear from his eye. "Did you seriously think a guy like me could fight his way up to colonel? There's no way. I'm good at strategy and all this planning bullshit. Fighting isn't my thing."
"So that's how," Ryo says under his breath.
The sergeant returns and Ryo can feel Shibutani regarding him for a long time until he leaves for his breakfast.
The next day, he's called into Shibutani's office just after lunch.
"Say "maji de"."
Ryo balks, horrified of the idea of using the slang of their enemy. "Sir-"
"Just say it."
".... Maji de."
"No, no!" Shibutani snaps. "Say it with feeling! Imagine I just got a call that the fuckers up north had unconditionally surrendered!"
Ryo ponders that for a minute and returns with a stronger "maji de," though his Osaka accent and intonation is still evident.
"Interesting," Shibutani says, leaning back in his chair. "It's obvious you're an Osaka-boy, but barely. When the rest of the guys say it, it's comical with how strong their Osaka pronunciation is. Try "yabai"."
Ryo, sighs and does.
He spends another hour with Shibutani, following his orders to say things in the accent of the enemy and use their slang. With every word he says, Shibutani is increasingly impressed.
"That's it," he finally says. "You're too valuable to stay here."
"Huh? What do you mean, sir?"
"What I mean," Shibutani reaches into his desk, pulls out some papers. "is that with a little training, a week would be sufficient most likely, you could pass perfectly as the enemy."
"Why would I want to do that, sir?"
The colonel looks up. "To spy, of course."
"Wha-, but, sir, I-"
"I'm sending you to the espionage training site in Tokushima."
"Please, sir, no. I would much rather stay here and fight!"
"This is war, Nishikido!" Shibutani shouts. "You don't do whatever it is you want to! You do what you have to! For whatever reason, you already speak like a guy who flips between the two cities and with the right training, you'll be perfect for espionage!"
Ryo bites his lip and bows his head.
"This is war," he says again. "Besides, there's no glory in killing a person. Trust me on this; it haunts you. Find glory elsewhere, Nishikido."
The next day, he's off to Tokushima.
The City-State of Osaka and the Municipality of Tokyo have been at war since Ryo was 16, nearly eight years now.
Unfair economic practices on Tokyo's part and violent rhetoric used by the leaders of Osaka in response, acted upon by the far-right, ultra-nationalist Osakans was what started the war in the first place. Both sides felt like the victim, felt that at their very doorstep, just a few hundred kilometers away, on the same little island, an enemy was waiting to strike and end their every existence. Tokyo took the first action claiming to the international community that they needed a preemptive strike; otherwise, Osaka would have done it first.
Tokyo has an advantage in that their city's port is still functioning. Their SAM technology is so advanced that the Osaka generals have stopped trying to destroy the port. While Osaka suffers, Tokyo is continuing their trade, with select partners, carefully working around the limited sanctions that have been placed on them. However, Tokyo has little loyalty from their neighbors. The areas to the west and north don't want to get involved; they have a history of independence and prefer to keep to their own. They governments in Niigata, Aomori and Hokkaido, among others, don't stop their citizens from joining the Tokyo military if they feel strongly about it, but they also won't go out of their way to help that citizen if they're captured, or worse. Tokyo has been forced to take to hiring mercenaries to supplement their ranks; the leaders are sick of sending Tokyo's youth to their deaths. They would rather send greedy, hired foreigners to do the dirty work of the war.
Osaka's port was the first thing Tokyo bombed when they attacked, and it has yet to be repaired. Half-sunk boats, massive blocks of concrete and steel loaders litter the water. The closest functioning port is Hiroshima, which makes getting supplies to Osaka difficult at times. The population there has learned how to live without salt and flour, and even rice, for days at a time. Osaka has the advantage though in population. Where as Tokyo's neighbors will not assist, the region of Chugoku, where Hiroshima lies, along with Shikoku and Kyushu are strong allies, supplementing Osaka's efforts in the war. They have no need for hired soldiers; their territory is more than enough to meet their requirements for soldiers.
Ryo hates his espionage training; it makes him feel like a traitor.
Everyday, for two weeks straight (because that's protocol; it doesn't matter if Ryo is perfect by the end of the first week), he spends eight hours with one of a few Tokyo-to-Osaka defectors, learning the Kanto-dialect of Japanese. It feels disgusting and gross on his tongue and in his mouth. He still writes back to his mother like he's in Hamamatsu; he doesn't want her to know what he's being forced to do.
He aches for the feel of his rifle in his hands - a real weapon. Not this indirect bullshit that's called espionage and how he's soon going to be in a vital support role, feeding information about troops numbers and movement, or something or other, back to his Osakan superiors.
Those being trained for espionage may only speak in the Kanto dialect, in an effort to make it as natural as possible for them. Ryo hates it. Hates how the instructors praise him for how quickly he picks up the final accents and vowel stresses that he needs; the other students are envious that he's so good at it. The engineer corps, just in the next building over, working on how to fix up Tokushima's port, laugh and sneer at them in the shared mess hall, mocking the soon-to-be spies for their traitorous accents.
He's dropped, quietly, in the dead of night onto the Tokyo side of the line of combat, in the Independent People's District of Gifu, just to the east of Mt. Ontake. It's more than rural - it's deserted, no one lives way out here, which makes it perfect for sneaking further into Tokyo's areas; there's only an occasional air patrol, which is easy enough to hide from under a tree. He's directed to head northeasterly, to the town of Okaya in Nagano, a pseudo-vassal state of Tokyo, where he'll meet his contact and get further details.
It's a three day hike, alone, in what might as well be enemy territory, with nothing to defend himself except for a hunting knife. He doesn't sleep, can't. Not out with the sounds of the wild and the paranoia around every tree truck and boulder. He's a mess once he's in Okaya, terrified of some one speaking with him and realizing there's something wrong with this accent.
His contact is an older man, grey around his hairline, cheeks sagging, they talk in code for 15 minutes, sitting on a bench in a park before they're sure of each other. To passerby's, it just sounds like meaningless drivel, about the weather and how's Niigata doing these days? and I heard there are big fortifications being built on islands held by Tokyo out in the Pacific Ocean. Once that's all done, they go back to the old man's apartment, to hammer out the details. The walls are thin, and they continue in coded Tokyo-Japanese. He sleeps there that night, out like a rock once the man says they can wrap things up in the morning before he gets on the train.
He's been lined up with a job in Roppongi at an import/export firm, because the leaders in Osaka want a better sense of what's coming in and out of Tokyo's port. When he hears it, Ryo breaks out in a sweat. He'll be right in the heart of the enemy, doing their dirty work. His closest contact, a fellow spy, will be in Shinagawa, an older woman hiding in plain sight as a train station attendant.
His new name is Kurozan Yuu, from Ibaraki, just north of Tokyo proper. He lives in a tiny studio apartment. His landlady is ancient, a hunched back and poor knees. Her husband died in one of the first bombing raids done by Osaka; she doesn't curse them though. Just shakes her head at the cruelty and meaningless that is war. Ryo finds it hard to hate her, but he makes himself to do in his head, if nothing else.
The first day at the firm, Ryo is pretty sure he almost gets fired. He's too nervous to speak, worried about his accent even though no one in Okaya or his landlady have mentioned something being off. His co-workers, none of them bad guys (he still hates them though), tease him for being nervous, for the kid from Ibaraki being intimidated by the metal and glass skyline of power that is Tokyo.
At first, Ryo messages everything on his work invoices back to Osaka. Everything. No matter how insignificant they seem. A back-and-forth communication is dangerous, but after weeks of meaningless information, he gets a simply worded notice to just pass on things of importance; the shipment of Nike shoes isn't relevant.
Ryo has to put on a face of Tokyo loyalty and, as much as it physically hurts him to do so, engage in Osaka-hate talk.
"Crude gutter monkeys," one co-workers says, tipsy from beer one night when they drag the shy Kurozan out with them. "They should just surrender already. It's not like they're winning anyways."
"It'll only be more painful the more they drag it out," another adds.
A drunk fellow from the next table over jumps onto his table and screams, "Fuck the Kansai dogs!"
The bar erupts in a cheer, and Ryo has to keep up with it, go with it, has to blend in. As he drinks to the cheer, the beer churns in his stomach and he dashes for the bathroom.
When he gets back after vomiting, the co-workers pat him on the back and laugh.
"You're such a kid!" They say. "Can't even hold your beer."
He's there for four months, and he grows to hate himself just as much as he hates those around him.
His adolescence was spent watching the road of events that culminated in the war. His late teens and early 20s were spent achingly wanting to fight. And now, on his 25th birthday, that only he is aware of, because Kurozan's birthday is in May, he finds himself sitting at a desk, in a suit, looking over invoice firms, trying to figure out where 150,000 yen went, because his boss here told him to figure it out.
He's had only fleeting run-ins with Tokyo military personnel, which consisted of a few privates asking him directions to the train station, and another fellow with a long line of stars across shoulder asking if he could make change for the vending machine.
Ryo is horrified with himself, because he's found that these Tokyo people aren't so bad. His landlady checks in on him, makes sure he's not too homesick while away from Ibaraki. A co-worker covered for him when he missed a glaring error on an export form. Random people will hold the door open for him when his arms are full of papers or boxes or bags. A high schooler gave him 10 yen when he was short on train fare and just said, "Pay it forward" as he walked off through the turnstile. He wants them all to be mean and horrible, so he'll hate them again, but they don't change at all, just continue being nice, and Ryo hates that.
Things start to go downhill after New Years.
He's drunk out of his mind one night with his co-workers, more so than he's ever been before, because he's depressed, because he doesn't hate these Tokyo bastards as much as he wants to. He's rambling about nothing, but still perfectly in the character of Kurozan Yuu. The other are egging him on, getting him to continue his drunken ranting and Ryo slips, a drunk and irritated "nandeya-" falls from his lips before he starts coughing violently trying to cover it, his training coming through even in his drunken haze. Two of the three don't seem to notice it, too drunk themselves. But the third, Satou, with his dark eyes and shrew mind, he eyes Ryo carefully, oddly, like something important just happened.
"Where in Ibaraki are you from again, Kurozan?" Satou asks a few days later.
"Near Mt. Wagakuni," Ryo answers, immediately, like it's second nature.
"Sounds rural."
"Very. I spent my whole life there, so coming to Tokyo has been a big change for me."
He nods and mutters, "I bet it has," before walking off.
Ryo feels a sweat break out along his neck.
He feels like he's being watched at all times and it's stressing him out. His Tokyo accent has felt natural for a long time now, but he starts getting paranoid again, worried that maybe he's not doing something right. Every night after work, he sits alone in his apartment, mumbling out the tongue twisters and practice sentences that he went through during training in Tokushima. Sits up through the night for days doing that, wondering if maybe he should contact the woman in Shinagawa to get her take on the situation.
He doesn't get the time to.
A few days later, there's a knock on his door in the middle of the night, an incessant pounding, and it takes Ryo a minute to realize that it's his door. He stumbles, popping it open and blinking.
"Satou?"
"Yes, and no," he says.
"What are you doing here? It's, like... 2 in the morning. And how the hell do you know where I live?"
He grins. "There's lots of things I know about you." He holds up a badge, right in Ryo's face, the words COUNTER-ESPIONAGE in bold, embossed on the gold shield. "My name is Katou, and I would like very much to have a talk with you, Mr. Nishikido."
He's given a moment to get dressed, Katou and two very large foreign men watching him the whole time. It's almost polite, the way that Katou treats him like a person, like he respects Ryo for getting so far, even though it's barely been six months.
"Did you ever think of calling on the woman in Shinagawa?"
Ryo freezes, pants only on one leg.
"I bet you did," Katou says, sighing. "That wouldn't have helped you though. She's a double-agent. I recruited her from Kyoto myself."
He's blindfolded and seated in a car. He tries to stay awake and count the hours, so maybe he'll get a sense of where he's being taken. When he's taken out of the car, he smells salty sea-air and waves on a shore.
"Great," Ryo says. "You're going to encase my feet in concrete and dump me into the bay. Wonderful."
Katou laughs and presses a foul-smelling cloth against Ryo's nose and mouth. He passes out in a matter of seconds.
When he wakes up, he knows he's been out for a very long time.
He's alone, in a little room with a desk and chair, bed, and a little door, which he opens to find a toilet. He looks out the window and sees nothing but expansive ocean, not a bit of civilization in sight.
A little later, the door opens, without warning, and two guards walk in and drag him to an interrogation room. Katou's waiting for him.
"What, you don't have anything better to do than track me?" Ryo snaps, sitting. "Get fired from the firm?"
"The only reason I was at that firm," Katou says, opening a file and picking through the papers, "was to find you."
Ryo tenses in his seat, frowning.
"The Shinagawa woman as able to give me some pointers to finding you, but I had to do quite a lot of footwork myself. It was a fun chase, Nishikido."
Ryo scoffs.
"I have to admit, your Tokyo accent is quite flawless, I honestly almost thought the spy was one of the other new recruits that joined that company a little after you. But you let 'nandeyanen' slip that one night, and well, that was quite it, really. I started paying closer attention to you."
"If my accent is so great, how the fuck could you tell? No one has ever noticed."
"Your mood helped. You went through quite a lot of spats of paranoia over it. It also helps that I was born in Osaka, so I have an ear for the accent."
Ryo's face twitches and he resists the urge to jump across the table and strangle Katou.
"You're a traitor!" He shouts, and is doesn't phase Katou in the slightest. "You're a fucking traitor to these Tokyo pigs! You're gonna burn in hell, you little shit!"
Katou laughs, waving his hand in a dismissive manner. "I'm no traitor. I might have been born in Osaka, but my parents are from Tokyo. You are aware that, up until the declaration of war, movement between our two cities was really, quite simple, correct? My birth certificate says 'Osaka,' but my blood is thoroughly Tokyo. Even though, technically speaking, there's no difference in the blood. That's just a war rumor to stir up emotions."
Ryo seethes, forced to listen to Katou ramble on about the not-so-great differences between Tokyo and Osaka. It goes on for an hour, before Ryo is taken back to his room.
Considering that he's now a prisoner of war, it's not such a bad set-up. He's got the room to himself, gets three meals a day and a guard takes him to a bath everyday, in the afternoon, so he can properly wash.
He sees Katou everyday, who honestly, does more talking than Ryo does. He thinks Tokyo's interrogation methods are pretty lacking.
After a few weeks of that, though, he starts feeling restless, stressed, freaked out. The only people he ever sees are Katou and the guard that takes him to the bath, who doesn't speak a word. It's weird and it drives him up the wall.
"What is this? An island getaway, just for the two of us?" Ryo mutters one afternoon while Katou is going off about how 95% of the information he passed to Osaka was completely made-up.
"There are others here, I assure you. But you're my case, until such time that I receive new orders."
"You're doing a shitty job, you do realize that, right? You've barely asked me anything about my orders. Not that I would tell you."
"But you've already told me lots, Nishikido. You've been very helpful."
Ryo jerks in his seat, utterly unable to call if Katou is bluffing or not.
The very next day, everything changes, like Katou purposefully wants to throw him off balance - he's let into the yard, taken to the mess hall for meals, and Ryo realizes exactly where he is: a POW camp.
Every one perks up at the sight of a new face, every one in the same orange jumpsuit, just like Ryo's, rambling at him in the wondrous, glorious Osaka accent, asking him about his hometown and which branch of the army he's in. He's barely able to get a word in edgewise until it's dinner time and he's seated with a few other guys.
"We're the ones who they don't really know how to deal with." a former air traffic controller named Ohkura says, as he mashes his rice into the shape of an onigiri, "We're not dangerous per-say, since we weren't ever proper soldiers, but they can't just let us go, you know?"
"Where are we, exactly?" Ryo asks, not even bothering to really reply to Ohkura.
"Chichijima. The dangerous guys - the Special Forces that got captured and shit - they're up north on Yomeshima."
Ryo blinks, his question obvious.
"We're basically in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Pacific Ocean. There ain't nothing around and there ain't nowhere to go if you manage to get out of here. We've just got to wait around until the war is over and we get to go back home."
Ryo frowns, and picks at his curry.
He learns that, perhaps with the exception of Katou and his shiny counter-espionage badge, most of the Tokyo soldiers here aren't quite the cream of the crop. They either don't have the nature for war or fucked something up when it comes to strategy and warfare, and since a military staff is needed at the detention center, they got the job. Military formalities don't seem to be much enforced here, a point which is driven home on multiple occasions when he sees a short, permed specialist of some kind pull pranks on his commanding officer, a blonde staff sergeant.
Katou finally starts to ask him about his orders, which Ryo is almost glad for, but he's irritated at the same time, because he's not doing it in the right environment, dammit.
He takes Ryo up to the main wall on the north side of the compound. They sit in plastic lawn chairs and drink chilled green tea.
"Are there any other contacts in Tokyo you were given?"
Ryo sighs. "The Shinagawa woman was the only I was informed of."
"Who did you make the first contact with? It was in a territory outside of Tokyo, right?"
"Nagano."
"Then you came in through Gifu."
"Yes."
"Fucking Gifu," Katou mutters. "They have a disgustingly porous border. Nearly half of all the spies we catch have come through Gifu. Yet, they don't seem to think there's a problem. I swear, they're more on your side than Tokyo's."
Ryo laughs. They don't talk about anything important after that.
Katou likes taking Ryo up to the north wall; it becomes normal for their sessions together. It's cloudy one afternoon, but still nice enough to go up there. They lean against the wall and watch a fellow attempt to surf in the poor waves down at the beach.
"The waves aren't big enough; what is that idiot trying?"
"He's stubborn," Katou says. "He honestly believes he can do anything."
An hour later they go in, and bump into the surfer, carrying his board under his arm, a towel on his head.
"It looked like you were struggling out there, sir."
"A little," he laughs. "But I had fun anyways."
"The major will be unhappy once he realizes where you've been."
"Yes, well... Who's you friend?" he asks, completely changing the subject.
"He's a prisoner, sir. Nishikido Ryo, the spy I was hunting."
"The perfect accent!" The surfer shouts, looking amazed. "Say something in the Tokyo accent!"
Ryo sighs, gives him a basic introduction.
The surfer blinks, and a moment later says, "Wait, you're seriously from Osaka?"
Ryo sees red, nearly lunges for the surfer, but Katou holds him back.
"Assault really isn't in your best interest, Nishikido."
"That's really amazing! I wish I could do something cool like that. Osaka people are so neat."
"Sir, it's saying things like that that got you sent all the way out here for duty."
The surfer frowns. "But I like being out here. I get to surf all the time and talk to interesting people."
Katou pinches the bridge of his nose, exasperated.
"Who are you anyways?" Ryo asks.
"I'm Yamashita," the surfer says, with Katou adding 'colonel,' when he skips it. "I'm the commanding officer of this facility."
("He's seriously the commanding officer here? You're not fucking with me, right?" Ryo asks, when Katou drops him back off at the yard with Ohkura and others.
"Yes," Katou sighs. "It's a little unbelievable, I know.")
"This is probably the last time we'll ever meet," Katou says out of the blue a week later while they're sitting up on the north wall.
"That's one of the more ominous things you've ever said to me."
"I received new orders; I'll be leaving in the morning."
"Huh? But...."
"But what?"
"... I don't really know any one here except for you."
Katou laughs. "You're so attached to me."
Ryo frowns, staring at the sea.
"I'll tell Tegoshi and Koyama to keep an eye on you."
Indeed, the next morning, Katou is gone, off hunting another Osaka spy, most likely. He's teased by the other POWs, but he brushes them off with the excuse that he was sort-of friends with Satou, who was his co-worker for months. (But Satou was also Katou.) It makes him feel better about it at least.
A few days later, the permed specialist takes him up to the north wall.
"I figured you miss Shige and this would make you feel better," he says.
Ryo blinks. "Who the hell is 'Shige'?"
"Oh, I guess you knew as by his last name - Katou."
"That's a stupid fucking nickname."
The specialist regards him silently for a moment. "I'm Tegoshi, by the way."
"Whatever," Ryo mumbles, resting his chin on the edge of the wall.
"What's bothering you? I know it's not Shige. He'll be back, anyways; once he catches the new guy."
"In Tokyo... do you guys get a lot of propaganda about how awful Osakans are?"
"Of course," Tegoshi says, smiling. "We're in a war, after all. But propaganda is just true things that have been warped. Tokyo and Osaka people are different, but not that different."
"I'm worried about my mom."
"Every guy who goes to war is."
"I wonder if she still thinks I'm in Hamamatsu. I haven't written in a long time. Maybe she thinks I'm dead...."
"She knows you're okay."
"How the shit do you know?" Ryo snaps.
"When we capture some one, we always tell the Osakans through the diplomats. Your mom knows you've been captured, but she knows you're okay, too."
Ryo sighs, frowning. "My brothers are never going to let me live this down once they get wind of it."
One morning, at a god awful hour, he's pulled out of his room by a guard and taken to the office of Colonel Yamashita. He's left alone with the colonel, compete with his messy bed-hair and grinning idiot face.
"Here," he says, handing Ryo a pair of black swimming trunks.
Ryo takes them, eyeing Yamashita like he's crazy.
"Let's go surfing!"
Frowning, Ryo glances at the clock on the wall. "It's barely seven in the morning."
Yamashita blinks. "And? Get changed! The ocean is waiting!"
Ryo turns away, shimming out of his jumpsuit and into the shorts, not at all sure what to make of the situation.
The colonel goes to the large bureau in the corner of the office; he pulls out a soft board and passes it to Ryo.
"This one catches the waves better, so why don't you start out with it?" And grabs a hard wood board for himself before closing the bureau. "Let's go!"
It's early, still, only the bare begins of the staff out in the hall, casually saluting Yamashita and staring at Ryo who follows obediently behind. Yamashita ignores them, his thoughts solely on the salt water and the waves.
"Have you ever surfed before?" He asks, once they're outside, and Ryo shakes his head.
Yamashita smiles. "Then let's start around the cove, the waves aren't quite as big there."
That day, they don't ever really get around to proper surfing. The colonel spends a solid five hours teaching Ryo how to surf, patting him on the back when he swallows mouth-fulls of sea water and cheers when he's able to get up on his knees on the board.
"You've got your balance down wonderfully!" He shouts from his perch on his own board, while Ryo catches in breath in the shallows. "You've got the hard parts down, so now you just have to get from your knees to your feet, and you'll have it!"
Once they're too tired to surf any more, they lay out on the sand, listening to the waves, and pointedly not going back to the facility.
"Why did you bring me out here?" Ryo asks, and the colonel shrugs.
"All you guys are thoroughly Osakan; nothing is ever going to change that. But you're... your completely Osakan too, but you get us. You've done something so few people our age have."
"Been a spy?"
Yamashita blinks. "Well, yes, but- You've been the other side. How many 20-something Osakans have been to Tokyo? Have talked with one of us? Have seen with their own eyes how propaganda and war rumors have torn us apart?"
"I guess," Ryo mumbles.
"I want to see Osaka with my own eyes. Once the war is over, I'm going to drive down, my board strapped to the roof of my car, and surf all over the place. I hear Kyushu is great for surfing."
"You're crazy."
"When I was really little, I went to Osaka with my mom and sister. I remember the whale sharks at the aquarium so clearly, still. Are they doing okay?"
Ryo blinks. "Um, I think the older one may have died... I honestly don't know."
"You're from Osaka, but you've never been the aquarium? That's kind of odd."
The conversation dies out for several minutes; Yamashita reminiscing to himself about his childhood excursion to Osaka, and Ryo about the oddity that is the colonel.
"How did you end up stationed all the way out here?"
Yamashita doesn't answer right away, and just when Ryo thinks he's going to need to repeat the question, the other finally answers.
"Because I spoke out. I said that instead of waiting for Osaka to unconditionally surrender, we should try and engage in dialogue. Openly criticized the propaganda that drives Tokyo and Osaka ever further apart. Wouldn't support a superior's plans for a bombing raid in front of the Chiefs of Staff. I love Tokyo, but I hate this war. It's gone on for eight years too long. I'm done with the military, absolutely. That's why I don't worry about formalities and let every here - regardless of who they are and where they're from - treat this place like an escape from the war, as much as I'm able."
"You're a good guy, Yamashita," is all Ryo can think of to say, so that's what he says.
It's past noon when the blonde staff sergeant he always sees around finds them.
"I was so worried!" He whines, passing towels to both of them. "I figured you'd come out surfing, but I couldn't find you in the normal places at all! I thought you had drowned."
Yamashita just laughs it off. "Sorry, Koyama. It was his first time surfing, and I wanted Ryo-chan to have something easy to start with."
"Ryo-chan?" The sergeant, named 'Koyama' apparently, says.
"Oh, sorry!" Yamashita shouts. "That's kind of rude, I didn't-"
"It's okay," Ryo says. "That's what every one in Osaka always called me."
"You can call me 'Yamapi,' if you want," the colonel says, smiling. "Lots of people here call me that."
"What is it with this place and stupid nicknames?" Ryo mumbles, but doesn't say he won't call him that.
Ryo and Yamapi settle into a comfortable friendship, and no one bats an eye at it. Ohkura complains, saying that he actually can surf, so he should get to go with the colonel. Ryo just sticks his tongue at him and goes on eating his Omelette Rice.
Summer rolls by, moving into fall, but with their location in the Pacific, there isn't much change to the seasons, days are still warm, but less muggy, which every one is thankful for.
One afternoon, while the two are out surfing, Koyama and a major at the facility, come racing down the beach, waving their arms like they're on fire, shouting.
"Ah, we should probably go see what that's about," Yamapi mutters, catching the next wave to shore.
Before he's even back on the beach, Ryo right behind him, the two other officers are shouting at him.
"You need to get back into uniform, now, Pi!" The major yells.
"Ryo-chan, hurry up! You need to shower and get back to your cell!"
The two of them blink awkwardly back and forth between the officers. "What's going on?"
"Lieutenant General Sakurai is coming!"
The colors drains from Yamapi's face, then turns stern. "Koyama, take Ryo-chan back. Koki, help me with the boards."
Ryo and Koyama take a short cut, coming up through a maintenance hallway under the yard, which is in a panic as guards and officers alike work to make sure every one is where they're supposed to be. He's allowed a quick shower, just to get the smell of sea water off him, then he's taken back to his cell while Koyama goes back to join Yamapi.
"I've heard rumors," Lt. General Sakurai says, leaning back in what is normally Yamashita's chair, "that you're not following protocol with the POWs."
"Sir, I can assure you that I'm-"
"You can assure me of a lot of things, Colonel, doesn't mean they're true in the least."
"Then what must I do to assuage your concerns, sir?"
"I'm leaving one of my captains here, Colonel Yamashita." The Lt. General makes a move to one of his officers, who leaves the room, reaching for his walkie-talkie. "He's going to keep an eye on you. He is not under your command, Yamashita; he's still one of my officers, and he'll be reporting directly to me on the matter of your.... interpretations of protocol."
The door opens, the captain in question walking in, taking a firm salute position. "Captain Masuda, sir."
Yamashita salutes back, swearing in his head.
Sakurai stands, replacing his cap. "Well, I've got to be in Tokyo by morning, so I'll be taking my leave of you now. Masuda, keep an eye on things for me."
"Yes, sir."
It's a tense several days. The prisoners and the staff alike are unused to working under official military protocol; every one moves about awkwardly. Ryo is bored out of his mind, locked in his room for all but a few hours a day when he's allowed onto the yard (one hour) or for his meals (30 minutes for each). He misses the casual days spent entirely out on the yard, or surfing at the beach, or playing poker in the mess hall for hours on end, using rice crackers as poker chips.
When he sees Yamapi, the colonel seems especially stressed and unhappy about the situation, Masuda always just behind him, watching the goings-on. Ryo is pretty sure some one is going to snap at some point, cause this place actually starts to look like a military prison.
There's a knock on his office door.
"Come in," Yamashita mutters, flipping through papers.
"Sir," Masuda says, saluting, "if I may have a word."
Yamashita motions for him to sit.
"This may seem quite forward and improper sir, but I would appreciate a little honesty from you."
"Captain?"
"As a civilian would say, 'cut the crap,' sir."
Yamashita blinks. "Who are you? And what have you done with Captain Masuda?"
"I can tell from the behavior of every one here, that following protocol is not the norm; every one is acting like lost five year olds in a supermarket."
"Is that so?"
"Sir, I have no intention of informing the Lieutenant General of your lax policies."
"And why is that?"
"I'm sure I don't have leave to tell you about this, but," Masuda leans in, across the table, "Osaka and Tokyo are talking, discussing cease-fires and more, sir. Both sides are suffering and the will to fight is dwindling."
"And you're not going to report me because...?"
"There's no point to it. Not when things are going to end soon enough," Masuda leans back in his seat, smiling widely. "How's the swimming out here, by the way? Any rip tides?"
Yamapi is a little weary at first, but when Masuda starts spending every waking moment either eating or swimming at the beach, he can't find a reason to continue being suspicious, and instead, his mind moves to the matter of the talks between Tokyo and Osaka. He daydreams about them while signing the forms that Koyama and Koki put before him and meandering about the yard.
Masuda is let into the fold of the facility's officers quite quickly, which is only helped along when Tegoshi gives him the nickname of 'Massu,' and after that, it's just too hard to take him seriously.
Yamapi tells no one of the information that Massu gave him about the talks between Osaka and Tokyo.
Because he doesn't want to get any one's hopes up when there's no solid evidence to. It pains him though, when he sits on the beach, with Massu paddling around in the cove, just barely in sight and Ryo waiting for a good wave to come in, even though the weather is shitty and it's taking forever. He wants to be excited about this sort of news, but it's not the first time he's heard such a rumor; there are always rumors like that one during wartime.
He knows, though, that as much as he wants to go home, Ryo and Ohkura and the other POWs want it even more.
And while they all want this war to end, it's a terrifying prospect at the same time. They may lose the easy friendships here between these men who should be absolute enemies. They're isolated out in the Pacific Ocean and Yamapi thinks it's almost a little like Stockholm Syndrome, maybe. But once they get back Japan proper, who knows what's going to happen. If he runs into Ryo on the street, will the other acknowledge him? Would he greet Yamapi with the same excitement that Yamapi would greet him? It's a lot of unknowns, and it's stressful for Yamapi while he waits and waits to see if anything will come of this rumor.
Ryo finally catches a wave, coming into shore and wading through the shallows to the beach.
"You have a really intense expression on his face right now," Ryo says, standing over Yamapi. "It's weird. Stop it."
"I'm just thinking about some stuff."
"Well, don't hurt yourself."
There's a 'huff' off to their left, and watch as Massu makes his way through the loose sand, towel drying his hair.
"I can smell katsu in the air. Let's go shower so we'll be ready once dinner is served."
So, they go, the three of them together. The facility CO, the watchdog who doesn't care to watch, and the Osakan former-spy POW.
In late October, a big storm comes through the area; the yard is closed, and the building feels cramped.
"This happens every year around this time," Ohkura says, while they play poker. "The weather gets all crappy, and even if it's okay-ish outside, it's windy as all hell and the sea is choppy."
Ryo swears.
"The CO here gets a little snappy," he adds, throwing in a few of the crackers that they use for poker chips. "Cause he can't go surfing or swimming or anything out there. It's way too dangerous."
The news is surreal, yet like a birthday present to Ryo; it comes in by wire on the evening of November 3rd.
CEASE FIRE SIGNED STOP
INFORM POWS STOP
AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS STOP
Yamapi stands on a chair and shouts the news over the chatter in the mess hall, and it's immediately followed by a loud round of cheers. The chefs in the kitchen whip up an impromptu cake to celebrate the news.
The next batch of new comes in nearly two months later, missing both Christmas and New Years, but it's appreciated nevertheless.
WAR IS OVER STOP
NEGOTIATED SURRENDER ON BOTH PARTS STOP
PREPARE POWS FOR DEPARTURE STOP
The POWs are the first to leave the island, getting picked up by a handful of Osaka's smaller transport carriers that can manage the choppy ocean seas. The Tokyo officers have to stick around a little longer, close off parts of the facility and clean-up while the higher ups in Tokyo decide what exactly to do with the island.
There's a line of men waiting to get on the boat, Ryo with them, Ohkura right behind him. It's taking a little bit of forever to load the boat, because Yamapi, the man that's been looking over these men, some of them for years, is determined to see each one of them off properly. When he gets up closer to the boat, he can see Koyama and Massu on deck, finding places to shove extra life-vests, since the boats are all short on them.
When Yamapi shakes Ryo's hand, it feels weird, too formal for them, after all the time they've spent together.
"Find me in Osaka," Ryo says, as Ohkura jostles him to hurry up. "We'll go to the aquarium."
Then he's pushed on board and looses sight of Yamapi. He was on the island for barely 11 months, and he thinks it's weird that in less a year, he's gotten so attached to the little island and the people on it.
His whole family is at the pier in Kobe to greet him, and Ryo wonders when the port got fixed up.
His mother is sobbing, checking him over, like she's making sure those Tokyo soldiers didn't rough him up. His father and brothers look relieved too. Their reaction is a little different that he'd been expecting too.
"How badass is it that our little brother was a prisoner of fucking war?!" The oldest yells.
"You're gonna get all the chicks, dude."
"The Tokyo guys on the island weren't harsh, were they?"
Ryo shakes his head. "They were all great."
His family blanches, like they can't believe what he's saying, but all around Ryo, other POWs speak up, saying similar things; that the Tokyo officers were fair, kind, even friendly.
At first, the POW status does get Ryo a lot of chicks and the standing of local celebrity. But, when he goes into the details, informing people that he never killed a single person in the war; he was in espionage. The POW camp, imagined by others as a place where the brave Osakan soldiers slept in the dirt and were abused by the Tokyo officers is a rumor he breaks down. He doesn't go into the details of being taught to surf by the Tokyo CO, but he makes a point of expressing in the clearest language possible that the differences between Osaka and Tokyo are nothing, just empty rumors and nationalistic, overly-zealous propaganda.
And even though the war is over and all this hatred should be put behind them, no one wants to hear what Ryo has to say. His privileged status lasts less than two weeks, before rumors start spreading that it wasn't a POW camp he was sent to at all; it was a brainwashing camp, and that Tokyo had been preparing to use Osaka's soldiers against their own city.
Even Ryo's own family doesn't believe him. They think his flawless Tokyo accent is from being on a small island with a lot of Tokyo officers for a year. His mother will not believe that her youngest son, the only soldier among her four sons, wasn't in Hamamatsu fighting up until the time he was captured.
"You've never been to Tokyo, dear," she says, smiling. "Why would you want to go there?"
Coming back from war is weird; he doesn't know what to make of it. He misses that easy camaraderie on the island, he misses spending hours on end sitting on the beach or surfing or playing poker with crackers.
He can't even find Ohkura, to share all this with. The phone number he gave Ryo has been disconnected.
He's lonely and sad and wonders if there's something like post-war normalization depression.
He's reading in his room, old books written long before war, so there's no nationalistic under-tone to them. The door bell rings, and he hears his mother get it. There's a long silence, and it sets off little buzzers in Ryo's head and he goes downstairs, hearing his mother's stern voice the moment he reaches the stairs.
"I don't know what you think you're doing here, but I suggest you go back up north, young man."
"Ma'am, I'll say it once again: I'd like to have a word with your youngest son, Ryo."
He'd recognize that pompous Tokyo-accent anywhere, and Ryo leaps down the last half of the steps, his mother automatically turning to scold him.
"Katou!" Ryo says, grinning, slapping him on the shoulder. "You come all the way to Osaka and don't even use your Kansai accent? How embarrassing."
Ryo's mother looks on, absolutely horrified, watching in disbelief at her son's friendly rapport with this fellow from Tokyo.
"Mom, this is Katou Shige," Ryo pulls Shige further into the genkan, but he won't step up into the house.
"It's 'Shigeaki,' actually."
"He's the counter-espionage guy who caught me in Tokyo."
His mother looks nauseous. "And now you're friends."
"Well-" Shige starts, but Ryo cuts him off.
"Yeah, basically."
Ryo knows he gets his temper from his mother, but he's still surprised when she screams, hitting him in the chest.
"Get out!" She shrieks. "Get out, get out, get out!!"
Ryo's jaw drops and he feebly tries to fight back as his mother pushes them both out the door and locks it.
"I'm sorry," Shige says, quietly, worried about some one over hearing his Tokyo-accent. "I didn't mean for anything to happen. I just figured..."
Ryo sighs. "You just figured that the war is over and considering that I was a spy and a POW, my family would expect that I might know some Tokyo guys."
Shige nods, looking guilty.
"No one believes me. That I was a spy, that people from Tokyo aren't incarnations of pure evil. There's still a lot of hate here for Tokyo. The masses seem to think that Tokyo forced the surrender, that it wasn't negotiated."
"But, that's-"
"Bullshit, I know. Why are you here anyways?"
"There's an integration advisory board being set up. You've been specifically requested."
Ryo laughs. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Colonel Yamashita is at the head of the board. He says you'll be invaluable."
"Yamapi?"
"Yes," Shige smiles. "Yamapi. I'm pretty sure he's just trying to organize a reunion, or some such shit."
"When do I need to report?"
"I knew you'd do it," Shige mutters, reaching into his pocket, pulling out a little card. "I'll let him know you'll be there. Be at the the Tokyo Diplomatic Office downtown in five days, noon sharp."
Five days doesn't come fast enough. His mother won't talk to him, and his father doesn't look happy when he hears who (or in his words, "what") was in his house.
"The war is over!" Ryo snaps. "Do you actually even know any one from Tokyo? How can you judge them so quickly to be nothing?!"
Really, five days later, standing outside the diplomatic office doesn't come fast enough. He loves Osaka, but he's realized an important truth about his world; that everything he was ever told about Tokyo was a lie. He can only trust his own knowledge.
Ryo feels a little out of place on the board; he's the only one in civvies, surrounded by a mass of Osaka's forest green and Tokyo's navy blue military uniforms, all of them present with rows of stars and medals and commendations. But honestly, it's been a long time since Ryo's worn his uniform. He doesn't even know where it is any more. Probably shoved in some closet in some base. Spies can't exactly have a military uniform one hand during wartime; it would be the end of them. When he thinks about it, really, Ryo's glad he doesn't have that uniform of his any more. Technically speaking, he never made it past private, and to be so low-ranked in the midst of colonels and captains and majors would have been embarrassing.
In the front of the room, though, Yamapi looks even more out of place. It's obvious how uncomfortable he is in uniform, how he sees the stark difference between the blues and greens and it disheartens him.
And once the meeting officially starts, it's clear that it's been a long time since Yamapi has spoken formally to any one in the military for a prolonged period.
"The war is over," he says, smiling, and there's a short round of grumbles around the table. "It's wonderful."
Some one laughs under their breath.
"Osaka and Tokyo have been split for a long time, and it is the mission of this board to recommend policies for both sides in order to close the gap between us and fix the wrongs of the war."
Ryo takes a look around the room, seeing people openly rolling their eyes, and he worries, because he doesn't think this let's-put-the-past-behind-us outlook is going to go far with a group of men who got to their positions through war and spent time on the front lines, literally fighting the people who are sitting across the table from them.
Yamapi seems absolutely unfazed, for his part.
"Do you really think the board will do any good?" Ryo mumbles in the mess hall during lunch, and Yamapi barely hears it over the constant noise there.
"Maybe. I hope so," he answers.
"Osakans are really mad. A lot of them didn't want for the war to end until we'd won," Ryo says. "Aren't Tokyo people like that too? What good can we honestly do?"
Yamapi sets his chopsticks down on his plate, looking sad. "They're still upset? Really?"
Ryo nods, and Yamapi sighs, tired.
"Every one in Tokyo was really happy when the news was announced. There was dancing in the streets and everything still going on by the time I got back."
"It's been perceived as Tokyo's victory, not a mutual one. A lot of politicians are still espousing the hate speech from the war."
Yamapi looks into his ramen, an expression of half depression, half determination, and Ryo realizes that he still quite can't figure this guy out.
The board degenerates into arguments and near-fist fights more than it actually gets anything done.
The Osakan officers are bitter, having desperately wanted a glorious defeat of their enemy, while the Tokyo officers are defensive, confused by their counterparts.
"Have you even read the peace treaty?" Snaps a Major Ikuta, who rose to prominence in the navy, one afternoon. "Osaka very well may have gotten the better deal! Tokyo is paying the full costs of rebuilding your port!"
"Is that supposed to be hush-money so our people won't talk shit about Tokyo any more? Is that it?!" Shouts a lieutenant from Osaka, not even pretending to show the necessary respect to a higher ranked officer.
"Tokyo doesn't have to change any of their economic policies, which is what led to the war in the first place!" An Osakan major brings up a few days later. "It needs to be renegotiated, or else this will all just happen again in a few years!"
"If we could just stay on point here...," Yamapi says, sternly, but completely unheard by the other officers, and as the weeks pass by with no real discussion by the board, Ryo watches him become more and more morose.
"I hear the board isn't going well," Lt. Gen Sakurai says, watching as Masuda hands Yamashita a cup of tea.
He sighs, looking into the tea. "They're all soldiers, and can't get past that."
"I've gotten complaints that the Osakan officers are especially...."
"They're difficult to work with, to say the least."
"The rhetoric down south is still quite dangerous," Masuda adds.
Sakurai leans back in his chair. "That's the source, in my opinion, but anything we do will be perceived as meddling."
The silence between the three of them is heavy, strong, near-debilitating.
"Is it unprofessional of me," Sakurai whispers, "to think this peace isn't going to last?"
PART II
CHARACTER/PAIRING: Ryo-centric, NEWS
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 9,350
SUMMARY: He'd been waiting for his chance to go to war, but once he gets there, it's a little different than what he'd been expecting.
NOTES: All the cities, towns, roads, geographic features, etc. mentioned are real; I had Google Maps open in the background the whole time I was writing this. If you have even a vague concept of Japanese geography and where the cities are, you'll be fine. And, this was totally inspired by (I think it was) Ryo's Shounen Club Premium interview where he mentioned practicing Kanto-Japanese and how he found the other K8 guys talking loudly in Kansai-Japanese in Tokyo embarrassing.
Since he was 18, and old enough to enlist, Nishikido Ryo, a proud Osaka-native, has wanted to fight in the war. But time and time again, he's overlooked; his small stature and sloppy hand-to-hand combat skills make him a poor recruit, and he's rejected.
His brothers are all in the army, though, in support functions; the eldest as a mechanic at an armored personnel transport factory, the next eldest is in logistics and the youngest of his older brothers is a field medic. They suffer from that same inherited small stature that keeps Ryo from the war. They tell him to find something that will fit, like they did, but he doesn't. He doesn't want to build things, or plan things or fix people - he wants to fight.
By his 20th birthday, when he's back at the recruiter for the third time, a draft has started up. The war is dragging on and the casualties are mounting. He's still rejected.
It takes until his 24th birthday for the recruiter to accept him.
At this point, they need all the hands they can get to fight.
Within a week, he's shipped off to boot camp, climbing through the mud and over walls with younger, taller, stronger guys, but he's always the first to complete the obstacle course, the first to dissemble, then reassemble his rifle, the first standing at the foot of his bed when the bugle calls at 5:30 every morning.
It only lasts for 4 weeks; the generals on the front lines are desperate for more soldiers, there's no time for the proper 10 week boot camp that's the norm in the Osakan military.
His entire boot camp group is being shipped to just south of Hamamatsu; Ryo grins when he hears that. It's a violent theater, near constant skirmishes as both sides desperately vie for control of the city.
He doesn't last a week.
When they arrive, the Colonel of the makeshift Osakan base of Hamamatsu, Shibutani, comes out to greet them, with a little Chief Warrant Officer named Yasuda. Ryo sees blood as he salutes them; how have two such short men managed to be in the military so long they've reached Colonel and Warrant Officer?
They get settled in their bunks and are given a tour by some menial private.
A few days later, Ryo is up late, peering carefully over concrete embankments and sandbags - night watch.
"They don't ever do much at night," a sergeant to his left says. "Those prissy bastards like to get their full nights beauty sleep."
As the sun starts to rise, the gravel behind them shifts and crackles together. Ryo turns, weary, but the sergeant doesn't turn whatsoever as he greets the newcomer.
"Morning, Colonel."
Ryo hastily stands and salutes, the sergeant laughs.
"Turning your back to the enemy. Not a good way to survive, kiddo."
Colonel Shibutani laughs and waves at Ryo to return to his position.
"Don't worry about me back here," he says. "Just making sure everything is going smoothly."
They're quiet together for a long time, until the sergeant takes a short pee break. The colonel reminds him not to go behind the storage shed - it's unsanitary.
It's awkward for Ryo, being alone with the colonel and very conscious of it.
"Sir, permission to speak freely?"
"It's so early," Shibutani nearly whines. "Don't worry about such formalities."
"Sir, I-"
"Just say what's on your mind."
Ryo takes a deep breath. "I can't help but notice, that we're roughly of the same physical build, yet I've been passed over for five years in recruitment, but you've made it to colonel. Sir, how-"
He stops, because the colonel is guffawing behind, slapping his knee.
"The Military Academy for Officers!" Shibutani wipes a tear from his eye. "Did you seriously think a guy like me could fight his way up to colonel? There's no way. I'm good at strategy and all this planning bullshit. Fighting isn't my thing."
"So that's how," Ryo says under his breath.
The sergeant returns and Ryo can feel Shibutani regarding him for a long time until he leaves for his breakfast.
The next day, he's called into Shibutani's office just after lunch.
"Say "maji de"."
Ryo balks, horrified of the idea of using the slang of their enemy. "Sir-"
"Just say it."
".... Maji de."
"No, no!" Shibutani snaps. "Say it with feeling! Imagine I just got a call that the fuckers up north had unconditionally surrendered!"
Ryo ponders that for a minute and returns with a stronger "maji de," though his Osaka accent and intonation is still evident.
"Interesting," Shibutani says, leaning back in his chair. "It's obvious you're an Osaka-boy, but barely. When the rest of the guys say it, it's comical with how strong their Osaka pronunciation is. Try "yabai"."
Ryo, sighs and does.
He spends another hour with Shibutani, following his orders to say things in the accent of the enemy and use their slang. With every word he says, Shibutani is increasingly impressed.
"That's it," he finally says. "You're too valuable to stay here."
"Huh? What do you mean, sir?"
"What I mean," Shibutani reaches into his desk, pulls out some papers. "is that with a little training, a week would be sufficient most likely, you could pass perfectly as the enemy."
"Why would I want to do that, sir?"
The colonel looks up. "To spy, of course."
"Wha-, but, sir, I-"
"I'm sending you to the espionage training site in Tokushima."
"Please, sir, no. I would much rather stay here and fight!"
"This is war, Nishikido!" Shibutani shouts. "You don't do whatever it is you want to! You do what you have to! For whatever reason, you already speak like a guy who flips between the two cities and with the right training, you'll be perfect for espionage!"
Ryo bites his lip and bows his head.
"This is war," he says again. "Besides, there's no glory in killing a person. Trust me on this; it haunts you. Find glory elsewhere, Nishikido."
The next day, he's off to Tokushima.
The City-State of Osaka and the Municipality of Tokyo have been at war since Ryo was 16, nearly eight years now.
Unfair economic practices on Tokyo's part and violent rhetoric used by the leaders of Osaka in response, acted upon by the far-right, ultra-nationalist Osakans was what started the war in the first place. Both sides felt like the victim, felt that at their very doorstep, just a few hundred kilometers away, on the same little island, an enemy was waiting to strike and end their every existence. Tokyo took the first action claiming to the international community that they needed a preemptive strike; otherwise, Osaka would have done it first.
Tokyo has an advantage in that their city's port is still functioning. Their SAM technology is so advanced that the Osaka generals have stopped trying to destroy the port. While Osaka suffers, Tokyo is continuing their trade, with select partners, carefully working around the limited sanctions that have been placed on them. However, Tokyo has little loyalty from their neighbors. The areas to the west and north don't want to get involved; they have a history of independence and prefer to keep to their own. They governments in Niigata, Aomori and Hokkaido, among others, don't stop their citizens from joining the Tokyo military if they feel strongly about it, but they also won't go out of their way to help that citizen if they're captured, or worse. Tokyo has been forced to take to hiring mercenaries to supplement their ranks; the leaders are sick of sending Tokyo's youth to their deaths. They would rather send greedy, hired foreigners to do the dirty work of the war.
Osaka's port was the first thing Tokyo bombed when they attacked, and it has yet to be repaired. Half-sunk boats, massive blocks of concrete and steel loaders litter the water. The closest functioning port is Hiroshima, which makes getting supplies to Osaka difficult at times. The population there has learned how to live without salt and flour, and even rice, for days at a time. Osaka has the advantage though in population. Where as Tokyo's neighbors will not assist, the region of Chugoku, where Hiroshima lies, along with Shikoku and Kyushu are strong allies, supplementing Osaka's efforts in the war. They have no need for hired soldiers; their territory is more than enough to meet their requirements for soldiers.
Ryo hates his espionage training; it makes him feel like a traitor.
Everyday, for two weeks straight (because that's protocol; it doesn't matter if Ryo is perfect by the end of the first week), he spends eight hours with one of a few Tokyo-to-Osaka defectors, learning the Kanto-dialect of Japanese. It feels disgusting and gross on his tongue and in his mouth. He still writes back to his mother like he's in Hamamatsu; he doesn't want her to know what he's being forced to do.
He aches for the feel of his rifle in his hands - a real weapon. Not this indirect bullshit that's called espionage and how he's soon going to be in a vital support role, feeding information about troops numbers and movement, or something or other, back to his Osakan superiors.
Those being trained for espionage may only speak in the Kanto dialect, in an effort to make it as natural as possible for them. Ryo hates it. Hates how the instructors praise him for how quickly he picks up the final accents and vowel stresses that he needs; the other students are envious that he's so good at it. The engineer corps, just in the next building over, working on how to fix up Tokushima's port, laugh and sneer at them in the shared mess hall, mocking the soon-to-be spies for their traitorous accents.
He's dropped, quietly, in the dead of night onto the Tokyo side of the line of combat, in the Independent People's District of Gifu, just to the east of Mt. Ontake. It's more than rural - it's deserted, no one lives way out here, which makes it perfect for sneaking further into Tokyo's areas; there's only an occasional air patrol, which is easy enough to hide from under a tree. He's directed to head northeasterly, to the town of Okaya in Nagano, a pseudo-vassal state of Tokyo, where he'll meet his contact and get further details.
It's a three day hike, alone, in what might as well be enemy territory, with nothing to defend himself except for a hunting knife. He doesn't sleep, can't. Not out with the sounds of the wild and the paranoia around every tree truck and boulder. He's a mess once he's in Okaya, terrified of some one speaking with him and realizing there's something wrong with this accent.
His contact is an older man, grey around his hairline, cheeks sagging, they talk in code for 15 minutes, sitting on a bench in a park before they're sure of each other. To passerby's, it just sounds like meaningless drivel, about the weather and how's Niigata doing these days? and I heard there are big fortifications being built on islands held by Tokyo out in the Pacific Ocean. Once that's all done, they go back to the old man's apartment, to hammer out the details. The walls are thin, and they continue in coded Tokyo-Japanese. He sleeps there that night, out like a rock once the man says they can wrap things up in the morning before he gets on the train.
He's been lined up with a job in Roppongi at an import/export firm, because the leaders in Osaka want a better sense of what's coming in and out of Tokyo's port. When he hears it, Ryo breaks out in a sweat. He'll be right in the heart of the enemy, doing their dirty work. His closest contact, a fellow spy, will be in Shinagawa, an older woman hiding in plain sight as a train station attendant.
His new name is Kurozan Yuu, from Ibaraki, just north of Tokyo proper. He lives in a tiny studio apartment. His landlady is ancient, a hunched back and poor knees. Her husband died in one of the first bombing raids done by Osaka; she doesn't curse them though. Just shakes her head at the cruelty and meaningless that is war. Ryo finds it hard to hate her, but he makes himself to do in his head, if nothing else.
The first day at the firm, Ryo is pretty sure he almost gets fired. He's too nervous to speak, worried about his accent even though no one in Okaya or his landlady have mentioned something being off. His co-workers, none of them bad guys (he still hates them though), tease him for being nervous, for the kid from Ibaraki being intimidated by the metal and glass skyline of power that is Tokyo.
At first, Ryo messages everything on his work invoices back to Osaka. Everything. No matter how insignificant they seem. A back-and-forth communication is dangerous, but after weeks of meaningless information, he gets a simply worded notice to just pass on things of importance; the shipment of Nike shoes isn't relevant.
Ryo has to put on a face of Tokyo loyalty and, as much as it physically hurts him to do so, engage in Osaka-hate talk.
"Crude gutter monkeys," one co-workers says, tipsy from beer one night when they drag the shy Kurozan out with them. "They should just surrender already. It's not like they're winning anyways."
"It'll only be more painful the more they drag it out," another adds.
A drunk fellow from the next table over jumps onto his table and screams, "Fuck the Kansai dogs!"
The bar erupts in a cheer, and Ryo has to keep up with it, go with it, has to blend in. As he drinks to the cheer, the beer churns in his stomach and he dashes for the bathroom.
When he gets back after vomiting, the co-workers pat him on the back and laugh.
"You're such a kid!" They say. "Can't even hold your beer."
He's there for four months, and he grows to hate himself just as much as he hates those around him.
His adolescence was spent watching the road of events that culminated in the war. His late teens and early 20s were spent achingly wanting to fight. And now, on his 25th birthday, that only he is aware of, because Kurozan's birthday is in May, he finds himself sitting at a desk, in a suit, looking over invoice firms, trying to figure out where 150,000 yen went, because his boss here told him to figure it out.
He's had only fleeting run-ins with Tokyo military personnel, which consisted of a few privates asking him directions to the train station, and another fellow with a long line of stars across shoulder asking if he could make change for the vending machine.
Ryo is horrified with himself, because he's found that these Tokyo people aren't so bad. His landlady checks in on him, makes sure he's not too homesick while away from Ibaraki. A co-worker covered for him when he missed a glaring error on an export form. Random people will hold the door open for him when his arms are full of papers or boxes or bags. A high schooler gave him 10 yen when he was short on train fare and just said, "Pay it forward" as he walked off through the turnstile. He wants them all to be mean and horrible, so he'll hate them again, but they don't change at all, just continue being nice, and Ryo hates that.
Things start to go downhill after New Years.
He's drunk out of his mind one night with his co-workers, more so than he's ever been before, because he's depressed, because he doesn't hate these Tokyo bastards as much as he wants to. He's rambling about nothing, but still perfectly in the character of Kurozan Yuu. The other are egging him on, getting him to continue his drunken ranting and Ryo slips, a drunk and irritated "nandeya-" falls from his lips before he starts coughing violently trying to cover it, his training coming through even in his drunken haze. Two of the three don't seem to notice it, too drunk themselves. But the third, Satou, with his dark eyes and shrew mind, he eyes Ryo carefully, oddly, like something important just happened.
"Where in Ibaraki are you from again, Kurozan?" Satou asks a few days later.
"Near Mt. Wagakuni," Ryo answers, immediately, like it's second nature.
"Sounds rural."
"Very. I spent my whole life there, so coming to Tokyo has been a big change for me."
He nods and mutters, "I bet it has," before walking off.
Ryo feels a sweat break out along his neck.
He feels like he's being watched at all times and it's stressing him out. His Tokyo accent has felt natural for a long time now, but he starts getting paranoid again, worried that maybe he's not doing something right. Every night after work, he sits alone in his apartment, mumbling out the tongue twisters and practice sentences that he went through during training in Tokushima. Sits up through the night for days doing that, wondering if maybe he should contact the woman in Shinagawa to get her take on the situation.
He doesn't get the time to.
A few days later, there's a knock on his door in the middle of the night, an incessant pounding, and it takes Ryo a minute to realize that it's his door. He stumbles, popping it open and blinking.
"Satou?"
"Yes, and no," he says.
"What are you doing here? It's, like... 2 in the morning. And how the hell do you know where I live?"
He grins. "There's lots of things I know about you." He holds up a badge, right in Ryo's face, the words COUNTER-ESPIONAGE in bold, embossed on the gold shield. "My name is Katou, and I would like very much to have a talk with you, Mr. Nishikido."
He's given a moment to get dressed, Katou and two very large foreign men watching him the whole time. It's almost polite, the way that Katou treats him like a person, like he respects Ryo for getting so far, even though it's barely been six months.
"Did you ever think of calling on the woman in Shinagawa?"
Ryo freezes, pants only on one leg.
"I bet you did," Katou says, sighing. "That wouldn't have helped you though. She's a double-agent. I recruited her from Kyoto myself."
He's blindfolded and seated in a car. He tries to stay awake and count the hours, so maybe he'll get a sense of where he's being taken. When he's taken out of the car, he smells salty sea-air and waves on a shore.
"Great," Ryo says. "You're going to encase my feet in concrete and dump me into the bay. Wonderful."
Katou laughs and presses a foul-smelling cloth against Ryo's nose and mouth. He passes out in a matter of seconds.
When he wakes up, he knows he's been out for a very long time.
He's alone, in a little room with a desk and chair, bed, and a little door, which he opens to find a toilet. He looks out the window and sees nothing but expansive ocean, not a bit of civilization in sight.
A little later, the door opens, without warning, and two guards walk in and drag him to an interrogation room. Katou's waiting for him.
"What, you don't have anything better to do than track me?" Ryo snaps, sitting. "Get fired from the firm?"
"The only reason I was at that firm," Katou says, opening a file and picking through the papers, "was to find you."
Ryo tenses in his seat, frowning.
"The Shinagawa woman as able to give me some pointers to finding you, but I had to do quite a lot of footwork myself. It was a fun chase, Nishikido."
Ryo scoffs.
"I have to admit, your Tokyo accent is quite flawless, I honestly almost thought the spy was one of the other new recruits that joined that company a little after you. But you let 'nandeyanen' slip that one night, and well, that was quite it, really. I started paying closer attention to you."
"If my accent is so great, how the fuck could you tell? No one has ever noticed."
"Your mood helped. You went through quite a lot of spats of paranoia over it. It also helps that I was born in Osaka, so I have an ear for the accent."
Ryo's face twitches and he resists the urge to jump across the table and strangle Katou.
"You're a traitor!" He shouts, and is doesn't phase Katou in the slightest. "You're a fucking traitor to these Tokyo pigs! You're gonna burn in hell, you little shit!"
Katou laughs, waving his hand in a dismissive manner. "I'm no traitor. I might have been born in Osaka, but my parents are from Tokyo. You are aware that, up until the declaration of war, movement between our two cities was really, quite simple, correct? My birth certificate says 'Osaka,' but my blood is thoroughly Tokyo. Even though, technically speaking, there's no difference in the blood. That's just a war rumor to stir up emotions."
Ryo seethes, forced to listen to Katou ramble on about the not-so-great differences between Tokyo and Osaka. It goes on for an hour, before Ryo is taken back to his room.
Considering that he's now a prisoner of war, it's not such a bad set-up. He's got the room to himself, gets three meals a day and a guard takes him to a bath everyday, in the afternoon, so he can properly wash.
He sees Katou everyday, who honestly, does more talking than Ryo does. He thinks Tokyo's interrogation methods are pretty lacking.
After a few weeks of that, though, he starts feeling restless, stressed, freaked out. The only people he ever sees are Katou and the guard that takes him to the bath, who doesn't speak a word. It's weird and it drives him up the wall.
"What is this? An island getaway, just for the two of us?" Ryo mutters one afternoon while Katou is going off about how 95% of the information he passed to Osaka was completely made-up.
"There are others here, I assure you. But you're my case, until such time that I receive new orders."
"You're doing a shitty job, you do realize that, right? You've barely asked me anything about my orders. Not that I would tell you."
"But you've already told me lots, Nishikido. You've been very helpful."
Ryo jerks in his seat, utterly unable to call if Katou is bluffing or not.
The very next day, everything changes, like Katou purposefully wants to throw him off balance - he's let into the yard, taken to the mess hall for meals, and Ryo realizes exactly where he is: a POW camp.
Every one perks up at the sight of a new face, every one in the same orange jumpsuit, just like Ryo's, rambling at him in the wondrous, glorious Osaka accent, asking him about his hometown and which branch of the army he's in. He's barely able to get a word in edgewise until it's dinner time and he's seated with a few other guys.
"We're the ones who they don't really know how to deal with." a former air traffic controller named Ohkura says, as he mashes his rice into the shape of an onigiri, "We're not dangerous per-say, since we weren't ever proper soldiers, but they can't just let us go, you know?"
"Where are we, exactly?" Ryo asks, not even bothering to really reply to Ohkura.
"Chichijima. The dangerous guys - the Special Forces that got captured and shit - they're up north on Yomeshima."
Ryo blinks, his question obvious.
"We're basically in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Pacific Ocean. There ain't nothing around and there ain't nowhere to go if you manage to get out of here. We've just got to wait around until the war is over and we get to go back home."
Ryo frowns, and picks at his curry.
He learns that, perhaps with the exception of Katou and his shiny counter-espionage badge, most of the Tokyo soldiers here aren't quite the cream of the crop. They either don't have the nature for war or fucked something up when it comes to strategy and warfare, and since a military staff is needed at the detention center, they got the job. Military formalities don't seem to be much enforced here, a point which is driven home on multiple occasions when he sees a short, permed specialist of some kind pull pranks on his commanding officer, a blonde staff sergeant.
Katou finally starts to ask him about his orders, which Ryo is almost glad for, but he's irritated at the same time, because he's not doing it in the right environment, dammit.
He takes Ryo up to the main wall on the north side of the compound. They sit in plastic lawn chairs and drink chilled green tea.
"Are there any other contacts in Tokyo you were given?"
Ryo sighs. "The Shinagawa woman was the only I was informed of."
"Who did you make the first contact with? It was in a territory outside of Tokyo, right?"
"Nagano."
"Then you came in through Gifu."
"Yes."
"Fucking Gifu," Katou mutters. "They have a disgustingly porous border. Nearly half of all the spies we catch have come through Gifu. Yet, they don't seem to think there's a problem. I swear, they're more on your side than Tokyo's."
Ryo laughs. They don't talk about anything important after that.
Katou likes taking Ryo up to the north wall; it becomes normal for their sessions together. It's cloudy one afternoon, but still nice enough to go up there. They lean against the wall and watch a fellow attempt to surf in the poor waves down at the beach.
"The waves aren't big enough; what is that idiot trying?"
"He's stubborn," Katou says. "He honestly believes he can do anything."
An hour later they go in, and bump into the surfer, carrying his board under his arm, a towel on his head.
"It looked like you were struggling out there, sir."
"A little," he laughs. "But I had fun anyways."
"The major will be unhappy once he realizes where you've been."
"Yes, well... Who's you friend?" he asks, completely changing the subject.
"He's a prisoner, sir. Nishikido Ryo, the spy I was hunting."
"The perfect accent!" The surfer shouts, looking amazed. "Say something in the Tokyo accent!"
Ryo sighs, gives him a basic introduction.
The surfer blinks, and a moment later says, "Wait, you're seriously from Osaka?"
Ryo sees red, nearly lunges for the surfer, but Katou holds him back.
"Assault really isn't in your best interest, Nishikido."
"That's really amazing! I wish I could do something cool like that. Osaka people are so neat."
"Sir, it's saying things like that that got you sent all the way out here for duty."
The surfer frowns. "But I like being out here. I get to surf all the time and talk to interesting people."
Katou pinches the bridge of his nose, exasperated.
"Who are you anyways?" Ryo asks.
"I'm Yamashita," the surfer says, with Katou adding 'colonel,' when he skips it. "I'm the commanding officer of this facility."
("He's seriously the commanding officer here? You're not fucking with me, right?" Ryo asks, when Katou drops him back off at the yard with Ohkura and others.
"Yes," Katou sighs. "It's a little unbelievable, I know.")
"This is probably the last time we'll ever meet," Katou says out of the blue a week later while they're sitting up on the north wall.
"That's one of the more ominous things you've ever said to me."
"I received new orders; I'll be leaving in the morning."
"Huh? But...."
"But what?"
"... I don't really know any one here except for you."
Katou laughs. "You're so attached to me."
Ryo frowns, staring at the sea.
"I'll tell Tegoshi and Koyama to keep an eye on you."
Indeed, the next morning, Katou is gone, off hunting another Osaka spy, most likely. He's teased by the other POWs, but he brushes them off with the excuse that he was sort-of friends with Satou, who was his co-worker for months. (But Satou was also Katou.) It makes him feel better about it at least.
A few days later, the permed specialist takes him up to the north wall.
"I figured you miss Shige and this would make you feel better," he says.
Ryo blinks. "Who the hell is 'Shige'?"
"Oh, I guess you knew as by his last name - Katou."
"That's a stupid fucking nickname."
The specialist regards him silently for a moment. "I'm Tegoshi, by the way."
"Whatever," Ryo mumbles, resting his chin on the edge of the wall.
"What's bothering you? I know it's not Shige. He'll be back, anyways; once he catches the new guy."
"In Tokyo... do you guys get a lot of propaganda about how awful Osakans are?"
"Of course," Tegoshi says, smiling. "We're in a war, after all. But propaganda is just true things that have been warped. Tokyo and Osaka people are different, but not that different."
"I'm worried about my mom."
"Every guy who goes to war is."
"I wonder if she still thinks I'm in Hamamatsu. I haven't written in a long time. Maybe she thinks I'm dead...."
"She knows you're okay."
"How the shit do you know?" Ryo snaps.
"When we capture some one, we always tell the Osakans through the diplomats. Your mom knows you've been captured, but she knows you're okay, too."
Ryo sighs, frowning. "My brothers are never going to let me live this down once they get wind of it."
One morning, at a god awful hour, he's pulled out of his room by a guard and taken to the office of Colonel Yamashita. He's left alone with the colonel, compete with his messy bed-hair and grinning idiot face.
"Here," he says, handing Ryo a pair of black swimming trunks.
Ryo takes them, eyeing Yamashita like he's crazy.
"Let's go surfing!"
Frowning, Ryo glances at the clock on the wall. "It's barely seven in the morning."
Yamashita blinks. "And? Get changed! The ocean is waiting!"
Ryo turns away, shimming out of his jumpsuit and into the shorts, not at all sure what to make of the situation.
The colonel goes to the large bureau in the corner of the office; he pulls out a soft board and passes it to Ryo.
"This one catches the waves better, so why don't you start out with it?" And grabs a hard wood board for himself before closing the bureau. "Let's go!"
It's early, still, only the bare begins of the staff out in the hall, casually saluting Yamashita and staring at Ryo who follows obediently behind. Yamashita ignores them, his thoughts solely on the salt water and the waves.
"Have you ever surfed before?" He asks, once they're outside, and Ryo shakes his head.
Yamashita smiles. "Then let's start around the cove, the waves aren't quite as big there."
That day, they don't ever really get around to proper surfing. The colonel spends a solid five hours teaching Ryo how to surf, patting him on the back when he swallows mouth-fulls of sea water and cheers when he's able to get up on his knees on the board.
"You've got your balance down wonderfully!" He shouts from his perch on his own board, while Ryo catches in breath in the shallows. "You've got the hard parts down, so now you just have to get from your knees to your feet, and you'll have it!"
Once they're too tired to surf any more, they lay out on the sand, listening to the waves, and pointedly not going back to the facility.
"Why did you bring me out here?" Ryo asks, and the colonel shrugs.
"All you guys are thoroughly Osakan; nothing is ever going to change that. But you're... your completely Osakan too, but you get us. You've done something so few people our age have."
"Been a spy?"
Yamashita blinks. "Well, yes, but- You've been the other side. How many 20-something Osakans have been to Tokyo? Have talked with one of us? Have seen with their own eyes how propaganda and war rumors have torn us apart?"
"I guess," Ryo mumbles.
"I want to see Osaka with my own eyes. Once the war is over, I'm going to drive down, my board strapped to the roof of my car, and surf all over the place. I hear Kyushu is great for surfing."
"You're crazy."
"When I was really little, I went to Osaka with my mom and sister. I remember the whale sharks at the aquarium so clearly, still. Are they doing okay?"
Ryo blinks. "Um, I think the older one may have died... I honestly don't know."
"You're from Osaka, but you've never been the aquarium? That's kind of odd."
The conversation dies out for several minutes; Yamashita reminiscing to himself about his childhood excursion to Osaka, and Ryo about the oddity that is the colonel.
"How did you end up stationed all the way out here?"
Yamashita doesn't answer right away, and just when Ryo thinks he's going to need to repeat the question, the other finally answers.
"Because I spoke out. I said that instead of waiting for Osaka to unconditionally surrender, we should try and engage in dialogue. Openly criticized the propaganda that drives Tokyo and Osaka ever further apart. Wouldn't support a superior's plans for a bombing raid in front of the Chiefs of Staff. I love Tokyo, but I hate this war. It's gone on for eight years too long. I'm done with the military, absolutely. That's why I don't worry about formalities and let every here - regardless of who they are and where they're from - treat this place like an escape from the war, as much as I'm able."
"You're a good guy, Yamashita," is all Ryo can think of to say, so that's what he says.
It's past noon when the blonde staff sergeant he always sees around finds them.
"I was so worried!" He whines, passing towels to both of them. "I figured you'd come out surfing, but I couldn't find you in the normal places at all! I thought you had drowned."
Yamashita just laughs it off. "Sorry, Koyama. It was his first time surfing, and I wanted Ryo-chan to have something easy to start with."
"Ryo-chan?" The sergeant, named 'Koyama' apparently, says.
"Oh, sorry!" Yamashita shouts. "That's kind of rude, I didn't-"
"It's okay," Ryo says. "That's what every one in Osaka always called me."
"You can call me 'Yamapi,' if you want," the colonel says, smiling. "Lots of people here call me that."
"What is it with this place and stupid nicknames?" Ryo mumbles, but doesn't say he won't call him that.
Ryo and Yamapi settle into a comfortable friendship, and no one bats an eye at it. Ohkura complains, saying that he actually can surf, so he should get to go with the colonel. Ryo just sticks his tongue at him and goes on eating his Omelette Rice.
Summer rolls by, moving into fall, but with their location in the Pacific, there isn't much change to the seasons, days are still warm, but less muggy, which every one is thankful for.
One afternoon, while the two are out surfing, Koyama and a major at the facility, come racing down the beach, waving their arms like they're on fire, shouting.
"Ah, we should probably go see what that's about," Yamapi mutters, catching the next wave to shore.
Before he's even back on the beach, Ryo right behind him, the two other officers are shouting at him.
"You need to get back into uniform, now, Pi!" The major yells.
"Ryo-chan, hurry up! You need to shower and get back to your cell!"
The two of them blink awkwardly back and forth between the officers. "What's going on?"
"Lieutenant General Sakurai is coming!"
The colors drains from Yamapi's face, then turns stern. "Koyama, take Ryo-chan back. Koki, help me with the boards."
Ryo and Koyama take a short cut, coming up through a maintenance hallway under the yard, which is in a panic as guards and officers alike work to make sure every one is where they're supposed to be. He's allowed a quick shower, just to get the smell of sea water off him, then he's taken back to his cell while Koyama goes back to join Yamapi.
"I've heard rumors," Lt. General Sakurai says, leaning back in what is normally Yamashita's chair, "that you're not following protocol with the POWs."
"Sir, I can assure you that I'm-"
"You can assure me of a lot of things, Colonel, doesn't mean they're true in the least."
"Then what must I do to assuage your concerns, sir?"
"I'm leaving one of my captains here, Colonel Yamashita." The Lt. General makes a move to one of his officers, who leaves the room, reaching for his walkie-talkie. "He's going to keep an eye on you. He is not under your command, Yamashita; he's still one of my officers, and he'll be reporting directly to me on the matter of your.... interpretations of protocol."
The door opens, the captain in question walking in, taking a firm salute position. "Captain Masuda, sir."
Yamashita salutes back, swearing in his head.
Sakurai stands, replacing his cap. "Well, I've got to be in Tokyo by morning, so I'll be taking my leave of you now. Masuda, keep an eye on things for me."
"Yes, sir."
It's a tense several days. The prisoners and the staff alike are unused to working under official military protocol; every one moves about awkwardly. Ryo is bored out of his mind, locked in his room for all but a few hours a day when he's allowed onto the yard (one hour) or for his meals (30 minutes for each). He misses the casual days spent entirely out on the yard, or surfing at the beach, or playing poker in the mess hall for hours on end, using rice crackers as poker chips.
When he sees Yamapi, the colonel seems especially stressed and unhappy about the situation, Masuda always just behind him, watching the goings-on. Ryo is pretty sure some one is going to snap at some point, cause this place actually starts to look like a military prison.
There's a knock on his office door.
"Come in," Yamashita mutters, flipping through papers.
"Sir," Masuda says, saluting, "if I may have a word."
Yamashita motions for him to sit.
"This may seem quite forward and improper sir, but I would appreciate a little honesty from you."
"Captain?"
"As a civilian would say, 'cut the crap,' sir."
Yamashita blinks. "Who are you? And what have you done with Captain Masuda?"
"I can tell from the behavior of every one here, that following protocol is not the norm; every one is acting like lost five year olds in a supermarket."
"Is that so?"
"Sir, I have no intention of informing the Lieutenant General of your lax policies."
"And why is that?"
"I'm sure I don't have leave to tell you about this, but," Masuda leans in, across the table, "Osaka and Tokyo are talking, discussing cease-fires and more, sir. Both sides are suffering and the will to fight is dwindling."
"And you're not going to report me because...?"
"There's no point to it. Not when things are going to end soon enough," Masuda leans back in his seat, smiling widely. "How's the swimming out here, by the way? Any rip tides?"
Yamapi is a little weary at first, but when Masuda starts spending every waking moment either eating or swimming at the beach, he can't find a reason to continue being suspicious, and instead, his mind moves to the matter of the talks between Tokyo and Osaka. He daydreams about them while signing the forms that Koyama and Koki put before him and meandering about the yard.
Masuda is let into the fold of the facility's officers quite quickly, which is only helped along when Tegoshi gives him the nickname of 'Massu,' and after that, it's just too hard to take him seriously.
Yamapi tells no one of the information that Massu gave him about the talks between Osaka and Tokyo.
Because he doesn't want to get any one's hopes up when there's no solid evidence to. It pains him though, when he sits on the beach, with Massu paddling around in the cove, just barely in sight and Ryo waiting for a good wave to come in, even though the weather is shitty and it's taking forever. He wants to be excited about this sort of news, but it's not the first time he's heard such a rumor; there are always rumors like that one during wartime.
He knows, though, that as much as he wants to go home, Ryo and Ohkura and the other POWs want it even more.
And while they all want this war to end, it's a terrifying prospect at the same time. They may lose the easy friendships here between these men who should be absolute enemies. They're isolated out in the Pacific Ocean and Yamapi thinks it's almost a little like Stockholm Syndrome, maybe. But once they get back Japan proper, who knows what's going to happen. If he runs into Ryo on the street, will the other acknowledge him? Would he greet Yamapi with the same excitement that Yamapi would greet him? It's a lot of unknowns, and it's stressful for Yamapi while he waits and waits to see if anything will come of this rumor.
Ryo finally catches a wave, coming into shore and wading through the shallows to the beach.
"You have a really intense expression on his face right now," Ryo says, standing over Yamapi. "It's weird. Stop it."
"I'm just thinking about some stuff."
"Well, don't hurt yourself."
There's a 'huff' off to their left, and watch as Massu makes his way through the loose sand, towel drying his hair.
"I can smell katsu in the air. Let's go shower so we'll be ready once dinner is served."
So, they go, the three of them together. The facility CO, the watchdog who doesn't care to watch, and the Osakan former-spy POW.
In late October, a big storm comes through the area; the yard is closed, and the building feels cramped.
"This happens every year around this time," Ohkura says, while they play poker. "The weather gets all crappy, and even if it's okay-ish outside, it's windy as all hell and the sea is choppy."
Ryo swears.
"The CO here gets a little snappy," he adds, throwing in a few of the crackers that they use for poker chips. "Cause he can't go surfing or swimming or anything out there. It's way too dangerous."
The news is surreal, yet like a birthday present to Ryo; it comes in by wire on the evening of November 3rd.
CEASE FIRE SIGNED STOP
INFORM POWS STOP
AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS STOP
Yamapi stands on a chair and shouts the news over the chatter in the mess hall, and it's immediately followed by a loud round of cheers. The chefs in the kitchen whip up an impromptu cake to celebrate the news.
The next batch of new comes in nearly two months later, missing both Christmas and New Years, but it's appreciated nevertheless.
WAR IS OVER STOP
NEGOTIATED SURRENDER ON BOTH PARTS STOP
PREPARE POWS FOR DEPARTURE STOP
The POWs are the first to leave the island, getting picked up by a handful of Osaka's smaller transport carriers that can manage the choppy ocean seas. The Tokyo officers have to stick around a little longer, close off parts of the facility and clean-up while the higher ups in Tokyo decide what exactly to do with the island.
There's a line of men waiting to get on the boat, Ryo with them, Ohkura right behind him. It's taking a little bit of forever to load the boat, because Yamapi, the man that's been looking over these men, some of them for years, is determined to see each one of them off properly. When he gets up closer to the boat, he can see Koyama and Massu on deck, finding places to shove extra life-vests, since the boats are all short on them.
When Yamapi shakes Ryo's hand, it feels weird, too formal for them, after all the time they've spent together.
"Find me in Osaka," Ryo says, as Ohkura jostles him to hurry up. "We'll go to the aquarium."
Then he's pushed on board and looses sight of Yamapi. He was on the island for barely 11 months, and he thinks it's weird that in less a year, he's gotten so attached to the little island and the people on it.
His whole family is at the pier in Kobe to greet him, and Ryo wonders when the port got fixed up.
His mother is sobbing, checking him over, like she's making sure those Tokyo soldiers didn't rough him up. His father and brothers look relieved too. Their reaction is a little different that he'd been expecting too.
"How badass is it that our little brother was a prisoner of fucking war?!" The oldest yells.
"You're gonna get all the chicks, dude."
"The Tokyo guys on the island weren't harsh, were they?"
Ryo shakes his head. "They were all great."
His family blanches, like they can't believe what he's saying, but all around Ryo, other POWs speak up, saying similar things; that the Tokyo officers were fair, kind, even friendly.
At first, the POW status does get Ryo a lot of chicks and the standing of local celebrity. But, when he goes into the details, informing people that he never killed a single person in the war; he was in espionage. The POW camp, imagined by others as a place where the brave Osakan soldiers slept in the dirt and were abused by the Tokyo officers is a rumor he breaks down. He doesn't go into the details of being taught to surf by the Tokyo CO, but he makes a point of expressing in the clearest language possible that the differences between Osaka and Tokyo are nothing, just empty rumors and nationalistic, overly-zealous propaganda.
And even though the war is over and all this hatred should be put behind them, no one wants to hear what Ryo has to say. His privileged status lasts less than two weeks, before rumors start spreading that it wasn't a POW camp he was sent to at all; it was a brainwashing camp, and that Tokyo had been preparing to use Osaka's soldiers against their own city.
Even Ryo's own family doesn't believe him. They think his flawless Tokyo accent is from being on a small island with a lot of Tokyo officers for a year. His mother will not believe that her youngest son, the only soldier among her four sons, wasn't in Hamamatsu fighting up until the time he was captured.
"You've never been to Tokyo, dear," she says, smiling. "Why would you want to go there?"
Coming back from war is weird; he doesn't know what to make of it. He misses that easy camaraderie on the island, he misses spending hours on end sitting on the beach or surfing or playing poker with crackers.
He can't even find Ohkura, to share all this with. The phone number he gave Ryo has been disconnected.
He's lonely and sad and wonders if there's something like post-war normalization depression.
He's reading in his room, old books written long before war, so there's no nationalistic under-tone to them. The door bell rings, and he hears his mother get it. There's a long silence, and it sets off little buzzers in Ryo's head and he goes downstairs, hearing his mother's stern voice the moment he reaches the stairs.
"I don't know what you think you're doing here, but I suggest you go back up north, young man."
"Ma'am, I'll say it once again: I'd like to have a word with your youngest son, Ryo."
He'd recognize that pompous Tokyo-accent anywhere, and Ryo leaps down the last half of the steps, his mother automatically turning to scold him.
"Katou!" Ryo says, grinning, slapping him on the shoulder. "You come all the way to Osaka and don't even use your Kansai accent? How embarrassing."
Ryo's mother looks on, absolutely horrified, watching in disbelief at her son's friendly rapport with this fellow from Tokyo.
"Mom, this is Katou Shige," Ryo pulls Shige further into the genkan, but he won't step up into the house.
"It's 'Shigeaki,' actually."
"He's the counter-espionage guy who caught me in Tokyo."
His mother looks nauseous. "And now you're friends."
"Well-" Shige starts, but Ryo cuts him off.
"Yeah, basically."
Ryo knows he gets his temper from his mother, but he's still surprised when she screams, hitting him in the chest.
"Get out!" She shrieks. "Get out, get out, get out!!"
Ryo's jaw drops and he feebly tries to fight back as his mother pushes them both out the door and locks it.
"I'm sorry," Shige says, quietly, worried about some one over hearing his Tokyo-accent. "I didn't mean for anything to happen. I just figured..."
Ryo sighs. "You just figured that the war is over and considering that I was a spy and a POW, my family would expect that I might know some Tokyo guys."
Shige nods, looking guilty.
"No one believes me. That I was a spy, that people from Tokyo aren't incarnations of pure evil. There's still a lot of hate here for Tokyo. The masses seem to think that Tokyo forced the surrender, that it wasn't negotiated."
"But, that's-"
"Bullshit, I know. Why are you here anyways?"
"There's an integration advisory board being set up. You've been specifically requested."
Ryo laughs. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Colonel Yamashita is at the head of the board. He says you'll be invaluable."
"Yamapi?"
"Yes," Shige smiles. "Yamapi. I'm pretty sure he's just trying to organize a reunion, or some such shit."
"When do I need to report?"
"I knew you'd do it," Shige mutters, reaching into his pocket, pulling out a little card. "I'll let him know you'll be there. Be at the the Tokyo Diplomatic Office downtown in five days, noon sharp."
Five days doesn't come fast enough. His mother won't talk to him, and his father doesn't look happy when he hears who (or in his words, "what") was in his house.
"The war is over!" Ryo snaps. "Do you actually even know any one from Tokyo? How can you judge them so quickly to be nothing?!"
Really, five days later, standing outside the diplomatic office doesn't come fast enough. He loves Osaka, but he's realized an important truth about his world; that everything he was ever told about Tokyo was a lie. He can only trust his own knowledge.
Ryo feels a little out of place on the board; he's the only one in civvies, surrounded by a mass of Osaka's forest green and Tokyo's navy blue military uniforms, all of them present with rows of stars and medals and commendations. But honestly, it's been a long time since Ryo's worn his uniform. He doesn't even know where it is any more. Probably shoved in some closet in some base. Spies can't exactly have a military uniform one hand during wartime; it would be the end of them. When he thinks about it, really, Ryo's glad he doesn't have that uniform of his any more. Technically speaking, he never made it past private, and to be so low-ranked in the midst of colonels and captains and majors would have been embarrassing.
In the front of the room, though, Yamapi looks even more out of place. It's obvious how uncomfortable he is in uniform, how he sees the stark difference between the blues and greens and it disheartens him.
And once the meeting officially starts, it's clear that it's been a long time since Yamapi has spoken formally to any one in the military for a prolonged period.
"The war is over," he says, smiling, and there's a short round of grumbles around the table. "It's wonderful."
Some one laughs under their breath.
"Osaka and Tokyo have been split for a long time, and it is the mission of this board to recommend policies for both sides in order to close the gap between us and fix the wrongs of the war."
Ryo takes a look around the room, seeing people openly rolling their eyes, and he worries, because he doesn't think this let's-put-the-past-behind-us outlook is going to go far with a group of men who got to their positions through war and spent time on the front lines, literally fighting the people who are sitting across the table from them.
Yamapi seems absolutely unfazed, for his part.
"Do you really think the board will do any good?" Ryo mumbles in the mess hall during lunch, and Yamapi barely hears it over the constant noise there.
"Maybe. I hope so," he answers.
"Osakans are really mad. A lot of them didn't want for the war to end until we'd won," Ryo says. "Aren't Tokyo people like that too? What good can we honestly do?"
Yamapi sets his chopsticks down on his plate, looking sad. "They're still upset? Really?"
Ryo nods, and Yamapi sighs, tired.
"Every one in Tokyo was really happy when the news was announced. There was dancing in the streets and everything still going on by the time I got back."
"It's been perceived as Tokyo's victory, not a mutual one. A lot of politicians are still espousing the hate speech from the war."
Yamapi looks into his ramen, an expression of half depression, half determination, and Ryo realizes that he still quite can't figure this guy out.
The board degenerates into arguments and near-fist fights more than it actually gets anything done.
The Osakan officers are bitter, having desperately wanted a glorious defeat of their enemy, while the Tokyo officers are defensive, confused by their counterparts.
"Have you even read the peace treaty?" Snaps a Major Ikuta, who rose to prominence in the navy, one afternoon. "Osaka very well may have gotten the better deal! Tokyo is paying the full costs of rebuilding your port!"
"Is that supposed to be hush-money so our people won't talk shit about Tokyo any more? Is that it?!" Shouts a lieutenant from Osaka, not even pretending to show the necessary respect to a higher ranked officer.
"Tokyo doesn't have to change any of their economic policies, which is what led to the war in the first place!" An Osakan major brings up a few days later. "It needs to be renegotiated, or else this will all just happen again in a few years!"
"If we could just stay on point here...," Yamapi says, sternly, but completely unheard by the other officers, and as the weeks pass by with no real discussion by the board, Ryo watches him become more and more morose.
"I hear the board isn't going well," Lt. Gen Sakurai says, watching as Masuda hands Yamashita a cup of tea.
He sighs, looking into the tea. "They're all soldiers, and can't get past that."
"I've gotten complaints that the Osakan officers are especially...."
"They're difficult to work with, to say the least."
"The rhetoric down south is still quite dangerous," Masuda adds.
Sakurai leans back in his chair. "That's the source, in my opinion, but anything we do will be perceived as meddling."
The silence between the three of them is heavy, strong, near-debilitating.
"Is it unprofessional of me," Sakurai whispers, "to think this peace isn't going to last?"
PART II