Feelings

About an hour and a half after the call had come in, Naoko emerged from the fire station, sweating from the hard work she had put in at the accident scene, and found Enji still waiting for her in the rear parking lot. Surprised, she asked him, “Wait, Hirayama-senpai? You waited all this time?”

“Well, not exactly,” he explained. “I walked back home for a bit, but then I saw the fire truck come back so I walked back here.”

“Oh, okay.” Naoko then waved her hand near her face to cool herself down a bit and said, “God, I’m sweating like a fucking pig.”

“So, what happened?”

“A van hit a car near one of the elementary schools in Inoue,” Naoko explained as the two of them walked down the street together. “The two people in the car went to the hospital. The guy was messed up pretty good. I think he had a broken arm and a broken leg, plus he was unconscious. His wife only had a broken arm and some cuts.”

“What about the van?”

“The driver had some bumps and cuts. He didn’t feel it too much there, though.”

Confused, Enji asked her, “Why not?”

“That guy was shitfaced at four in the evening on a Sunday,” Naoko bluntly put it.

“Oh… He was drunk…” Enji realized immediately why the driver of the van most likely didn’t feel any pain at the scene of the accident. “I assume he got arrested?”

“Yep. Right on scene. We ended up drawing some blood from him to get tested at the hospital, and he blew a 0.10 for the breathalyzer, so they arrested him.”

“What’s the limit?”

“In Japan? 0.04. In America, it’s 0.08, but we’re a lot stricter here.” Naoko blushed slightly, telling Enji, “I swear, it’s not weird for me to know that.”

“I wasn’t gonna say it’s weird,” he assured her.

As the two of them walked down the street together, Rumiko, Ayumi, and Sumire watched them from the parking lot. Sumire asked the other two, “That’s the guy who saw her topless, right?”

Rumiko immediately blushed and replied, “Wait, what?”

Ayumi explained, “Oh yeah, you didn’t hear about that. That guy’s dog ripped her bikini top off while she was rescuing it.”

“Top… Topless? I’d be so embarrassed! I don’t know if I’d be able to face someone I accidentally showed my naked body in front of.” Rumiko sighed and said about Naoko, “She’s braver than me I guess. I’d die of embarrassment if I came anywhere close to him if it was me.”

Ayumi and Sumire laughed in response, with the latter telling her, “It’s not so bad, Rumiko-chan.”

“But it’s a boy,” she pointed out. “Even thinking about it just… It scares me a bit.”

Ayumi then said to her, “Stop freaking out. Shit happens, Rumiko-chan, and you know that.”

Then, another firefighter in the brigade, a man in his mid-20s with a completely shaved head, walked out beside them, asking them in confusion, “Why are you guys staring so intently down the road? Is something going on?”

“We think Naoko-chan is going out with a boy,” Ayumi told him. “He was waiting here for a bit before the ambulance left to go to the accident. We saw them walking away together, Hanae-san.”

“Oh, that guy? I was wondering what his deal was. I thought maybe he was one of those people who films fire trucks responding to calls.” Ryohei Hanae then said to them, “Well, I gotta go to the South Inoue Fire Station. I forgot a really nice watch I use there.”

Ayumi asked him, “Which watch?”

“That M-Shock I usually use when I’m doing medical stuff,” he explained. “I was looking for it all day at my house, and when the call came in, I just said screw it since we keep stopwatches on the ambulance. I’m hoping it’s at the South Inoue Fire Station.”

Sumire then asked him, “How are things over there anyway? It’s been about a month since you got assigned there, right?”

“It’s so much slower than the East Yoshimatsu Fire Station,” he replied. “There are shifts where we only get like three calls in a 24-hour period. East Yoshimatsu usually averages eleven in the same timeframe. It was a Hell of a jump going from the second busiest station in the Yoshimatsu Area Fire Department to the slowest.”

“That had to suck,” Ayumi remarked.

“It did at first,” Ryohei admitted. “But I love the crew they got working over there. It’s a lot smaller than the crew at my old station, so it’s a bit more tight-knit.” He then turned away to go to his car. “Well, I’ll see you guys later. Hopefully I’ll find my damn watch.”

“Hopefully,” Sumire replied.

…

August 7, 2023

Yui had woken up around six in the morning to do a jog, something she usually did at least three times a week. As she looked around on the sidewalk outside of her home, she adjusted the small pager she carried on the waistband of her sweatpants to make sure it would not fall off as she ran. “Ah,” she said to herself as she took in the early morning summer air. “It’s a nice morning. Not too hot yet, and definitely not too cold either.” She wore blue sweatpants, a gray tank top, and a blue baseball cap. After walking across the street from her house, she put her wireless earphones in, pulled out her phone to play a song she saved on her running playlist, turned to her right, and began to run.

While the song played, she ran past several buildings in the heart of Harukawa, including a convenience store, a gas station, a small grocery store, and a fish market. When she passed the local police station in the village, she turned down a smaller side street and kept running, passing two parked cars and an empty bike rack. Several people were already out and getting ready for the day, but most had either just woken up or were still asleep for another hour.

As she rounded another corner to go down another side street and head the opposite way of where she came from, she looked out in front of her and noticed Rentaro walking out of his house. She took her earphones out and waved over to him, saying, “Nojima-san!”

Rentaro looked up and saw Yui run over to him. “Kitagawa-san?”

Yui then came to a stop and said to him, “I didn’t expect you to be up this early. What’s going on today?”

“I fell asleep super early last night, so I woke up super early today. I gotta work from twelve to six in the evening, go to class after that, and then work again from midnight to six in the morning tomorrow.” He then yawned as he picked up a newspaper that had been left outside of his house and wrapped in a plastic bag and two rubber bands. “My parents are away all week this week, so I got the house to myself.”

“Cool. You got anything planned for the week?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “Just working and going to class. I got nothing going on right now.”

Feeling curious, Yui asked him, “Wanna jog with me for a bit?”

Rentaro looked around and replied, “Eh, why not? How much longer do you have?”

“I usually jog for about fifteen minutes at a time. We’ll end at the firehouse.”

“Sounds good to me. Let me just get some actual sneakers on first.” Rentaro then walked back into his house with the newspaper, followed about fifteen seconds later with a pair of sneakers for running. “Okay, I’m ready.”

…

About fifteen minutes later, Yui reached the firehouse, and as she came to a stop, she took a few deep breaths and turned around, finding Rentaro about two blocks behind her. He was far more tired than her, breathing heavily as he reached the firehouse. She said to him, “So, how was that?”

“Holy crap,” he replied as sweat poured down his body. “I haven’t run that fast since… Since… Shit, I can’t remember if I ever have. Holy shit…” He then stopped and placed a hand against one of the bay doors of the firehouse to brace himself. “Holy shit…”

“Are you okay, man?”

“Yeah… I needed that, though.”

Yui opened the front door to the firehouse and asked him, “Wanna come in? I can get you some water.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

As the two of them walked in, Yui said to him, “If you run more, runs like this become a lot easier.”

“I’m sure,” he replied. He walked past Ambulance 33 and Light Rescue 34 as he wiped his forehead of even more sweat. “How hot is it gonna get later?”

“About thirty degrees Celsius,” Yui said to him as the two of them walked into a small break room and she opened up a refrigerator to grab two bottles of water, handing one to Rentaro. “Here you go.”

“Thank God…” He proceeded to down almost the entire bottle in one sitting, extremely thirsty and trying to also cool himself down. After stopping briefly to take a breath, he finished the last little bit of water inside the bottle and then took a deep breath. “Ah, that hit the spot.”

Yui then looked over and noticed a small couch in the break room she recognized. “No way, they moved this couch up here?” She then looked at a note attached to it. “It’s being given away for free?”

“Oh yeah,” Rentaro then remembered. “After the accident, me and a few other guys moved that couch up from the basement since they want to get rid of it. What’s up with it?”

Yui chuckled as she looked at the couch, remembering something she had been told about it. “Ah, it’s nothing.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“Alright, alright. Take a seat in it.”

Confused, Rentaro asked her, “…Why?”

“Come on. Just do it.” Yui leaned in a bit closer to him, an intentional move on her part to entice him. “Trust me.”

Not thinking anything was odd, Rentaro sat down on the couch and shrugged. “Okay, what is it?”

Yui told him while holding in a laugh, “That’s the sex couch.”

Rentaro immediately stood up from the couch and exclaimed, “Wait, what the fuck?!”

“You haven’t heard the stories, have you?”

“What stories?!”

Yui explained to him, “That couch is about twenty-five years old, and there’s a good chance I was made on that couch. Guys would bring their wives or their girlfriends down here and go to the basement, and then they’d bang on the couch.”

“They’d… They’d do it in the firehouse?! Why?!”

Yui shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess people just get in the mood when they’re here.”

Rentaro looked at the old couch and remarked, “Ugh, that couch must be filthy.”

“You probably got an STD from just sitting in it,” Yui joked with him. “I’d probably get pregnant.”

Rentaro said with a chuckle, “Ewww…” He then pulled out his phone and checked the time, seeing that it was 6:24 in the morning. “So, now what do you want to do?”

“I was just gonna run back to my house from here and then take a nap before getting my family’s shop opened for the day. What about you? What do you have planned before work?” They then both heard her pager ring, prompting her to say, “Well, that answers that.”

…

Engine 31 pulled up about seven minutes later to a fast food restaurant in the village. As the crew on board all got off, Yui turned to Tomoko and asked her, “I wonder what set the alarm off this time.”

“Probably some idiot in the kitchen who overcooked fries again,” she replied as she adjusted the straps on her air pack. “That’s what it was when we went here two weeks ago.”

Hideaki turned to his crew and told them, “Just hang out here. I’m gonna meet up with the crew from Engine-Aerial 4 and Ueda-san.”

As Yui’s father walked away to meet up with Fumio and the paid station’s crew, Tomoko asked her, “So what were you and Nojima-san doing at the station when the call came in?”

Yui turned to her and replied, “Oh, us? I was doing a run in the morning and I passed by his house. He asked if he could come along, so I let him. We were just talking at the firehouse when the call came in.”

“I heard he and a few other guys moved ‘that’ couch up to the break room and left a note on it.” Tomoko did not use the exact name of the couch just in case regular citizens heard her.

“Oh yeah,” Yui replied to her. “They did. He had no idea about the history of the couch until I told him to sit on it and then told him what it was called.”

Both Tomoko and Yui laughed. “How did he react when you told him?”

“He shot right up off of the couch. I joked and told him he probably got an STD from sitting on it.”

Tomoko joked with her, “Come on, don’t be so cruel with the guy.”

“By the way,” Yui then asked her. “Did you pay Okubo-san after we found out the van driver was drunk?”

“Wait, how did you know that?”

“He mentioned it to me when we were cleaning the hydraulic tools at the station.”

“Yeah, I did,” Tomoko nodded. “It was only a thousand yen, so it’s not a big loss on my end.”

Then, Hideaki walked back over to his crew, having conversed with Fumio and the paid crew. “Alright guys, we can head back. They confirmed it was false.”

Yui asked her father, “What caused it?”

“Some guy lit up a cigarette in the bathroom and set the smoke alarms off,” he replied to her.

“That’s a new one,” Tomoko added. “Usually it’s because an employee messed up, not a customer trying to smoke.” The whole crew then got back on Engine 31, all of them putting their air packs back into their seats and then sitting down. As Tomoko checked the straps on her pack and made sure they were made totally loose, she turned around to see if Hideaki was in the truck, which he was not, and then turned back around to ask Yui, “So, are you gonna do anything else with your date?”

Yui quickly snapped back in denial as her face slightly reddened, “We’re not on a date!”

…

With Sumire and Rumiko at their Basic and SCBA Firefighting class and Naoko and Ayumi at their Advanced Firefighting class that day, the third-years were the only student firefighters around in the evening. Shiori was at her home, practicing on a musical keyboard that had a set of headphones plugged in so she did not make any noise as she played aside from her fingers tapping on the keys. As she played a classical piece, she closed her eyes and let the music guide her. Then, partway through, she felt something hit her hands and opened them, finding that a small flag that was on her wall had fallen. “Oh no,” she said to herself as she took her headphones off. “I thought I taped this on correctly.”

She then stood up and set the flag, which was a rainbow one, on the keyboard before opening up a drawer on her computer desk and reaching in to grab tape. As she put the flag back up on her wall, she sighed and looked at a manga volume that was on her computer desk that contained two girls staring at each other and holding hands. Once it was back and staying in place, she sat back down on the piano and decided to change songs to a more modern rock song that was based around the piano.

She said to herself before putting her headphones back on, “If only my biggest issue was keeping the pride flag up on the wall.” As a matter of fact, Shiori Koda was indeed gay, although outside of the other student firefighters, her parents and her older brother who was away at college, and a few select friends, no one else knew, much less anyone else at the firehouse. She thought to herself as she played on the keyboard, “I promised myself I would tell the rest of the fire brigade I was gay by the end of my third year of high school, but… Who knows at this point?”

Her song was then interrupted when her mother, who looked almost exactly like an older version of her, opened the door to her room. “Shiori?”

She immediately stopped playing and took her headphones off, turning to her mom and asking her, “Yes, Mom?”

“Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes. Come on down.”

“Alright,” she replied as she got up and turned her keyboard off. “What did you make for today, Mom?”

“Beef udon,” her mom replied with a smile. “Your favorite.”

Shiori walked with her mom downstairs, looking forward to dinner with those words. As the two of them made it to the kitchen, she asked her, “We rarely have that. What’s the occasion?”

“No special occasion here,” she replied to her daughter. “I just was in the mood for it myself.”

As the two of them sat down at the kitchen table to eat dinner, her father said to her, “How nice of you to join us. How long were you playing piano up there?”

“A few hours,” Shiori admitted. “I was bored today, so I’ve been up in my room just hammering away at the keys.”

“When I was your age, I was going out a lot during the summer with my friends.” He then looked at his wife, Shiori’s mom, and remarked, “That’s how I met your mom, in fact. We were out one night and we came across this really cute girl from Harukawa. I got dared by one of my buddies to ask her out on a date. A few rough patches, some break ups and make-ups, a marriage, and two kids later, here we are.”

Her mom smiled, chucking as she told him, “I bet you’re glad you took that dare, dear.”

“I sure am.”

As her parents acted all lovey-covey around her, Shiori awkwardly looked on. “Yeah, I guess you have a point… I think.”

Her father then asked her, “Have you found any girls to your liking, Shiori?”

That question immediately got Shiori thinking, and as she paused to figure out how she should respond to him, she thought to herself, “Admittedly, a lot of the girls I know are pretty hot, but… I don’t know if I could really commit myself romantically to them, since I wouldn’t want to ruin the friendships I have with them… Except…” To make things less complicated, she told her father, “Not really. I think I can save that sort of thing for college next year.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” her mom pointed out. “I’d rather you wait and find someone you can truly love and trust instead of rushing into it with someone. Whether the waiting takes a week, a month, a year, or more doesn’t matter. The result matters.”

“Your mother isn’t wrong,” her father corroborated. “As I said about a minute ago, me and her weren’t always together. We broke up and made up twice before we finally got together completely. Sometimes, the path towards finding that person in your life you love is a bit of a winding road.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” All three of them then put their hands together and said out loud before eating, “Thanks for the food.” As they all began to eat, Shiori thought to herself, “Now that I think about it more, there is one girl I know that I think about quite a lot, but I doubt she sees me in the same way.”

…

Ayumi and Naoko were relaxing after doing a live fire evolution at the Yoshimatsu Fire Training Facility located in the neighboring city. As they say and drank water, they saw another group of firefighters begin the evolution, which involved two hose lines advancing on a simulated burning propane tank while a person in the middle directed them. As Ayumi put down a bottle of water, she suddenly sneezed. “Huh… That’s odd.”

“Bless you,” Naoko told her. “Are you sick?”

“Not at all,” she replied. “I must have gotten something up my nose, Naoko-chan.” She looked down at the gravel and theorized, “Maybe someone kicked some gravel and dirt up in the air.”

“Or someone’s thinking about you,” Naoko teased her. “Maybe someone with a crush.”

“Like that would happen,” Ayumi replied. “Aside from this, I’m really unremarkable. I can’t really think of anyone I know who would have a crush on me anyway.”

Naoko pointed out, “What about Shiori-senpai? She’s gay, after all.”

“I always assumed she had a crush on Morishima-senpai or Yui-senpai since she’s known them for so long. I’ve only known her since last year when I got into the fire brigade.” Ayumi shrugged, unsure of who would be thinking about her at that specific time. “If anything, it’s probably just my parents wondering how I’m doing here, assuming that the whole superstition about sneezing when someone thinks of you is somehow real.”

“I don’t actually believe it, you know. It’s just an old wives’ tale anyway. I’m just messing with you.”

“I know, I know,” Ayumi replied as she playfully shoved Naoko. “Speaking of crushes, what are the odds Nojima-san has the hots for Yui-senpai?”

“Oh he definitely does,” Naoko agreed. “I mean, what guy wouldn’t? Have you seen how she looks in swimwear?”

Ayumi admitted, “Yeah, that’s fair. That reminds me of when Morishima-senpai told her to use her swimsuit body to lure people in while we were passing out fliers for last year’s Tanabata Festival on the beach,” Ayumi recalled with a laugh. “I thought it was little odd she was telling a girl in high school to do that, but I guess it worked.”

“Oh yeah,” Naoko then remembered. “That’s next week this year, right? Did we put out a signup sheet for the brigade?”

“I think we just did today. I’m gonna put my name down for it when we get back. What did the chief get for us to burn this festival?”

“A whole fucking RV,” Naoko explained with excitement. “I overheard him and a few of the other officers discussing it. We’re gonna clear out a small area in a nearby parking lot and torch the RV.”

“An entire RV? No way!”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be so fun!” The two of them were eager to burn the RV and put it out for the whole village to see. “We’ve done some impressive stuff before for the Tanabata Festival, but this will top everything.”

“And I thought us doing an extrication of a rolled-over taxi last year was impressive,” Ayumi said. “This is so gonna top that!”

…

August 9, 2023

Tomoko, Yui, and Naoko were standing outside of the firehouse in their school uniforms, waiting for the meeting with the principal of their school to begin. As they stood outside, Yui admitted to the others, “Guys, I’m so God damn nervous. You have no idea.” She took a deep breath and hid her hands, which were shaking slightly, behind her back. “This meeting could be it.”

“Hey guys,” then said Keiko as she walked over with the rest of the Student Council behind her. “We’re here. Is the principal here yet?”

“No,” Tomoko replied, shaking her head. “Chief Mikazuki and Chief Ueda are both here, though, as is Yui-san’s father, Captain Kitagawa.”

Keiko turned to her and asked her, “Your father is the captain of the fire brigade, Kitagawa-san?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a nod. “There’s been at least one Kitagawa in the Harukawa Volunteer Fire Brigade since the Second World War. I’ve been around the firehouse since I was a baby.”

“It goes back that far, huh? Was anyone else in your family a student firefighter?”

“My aunt and my grandmother were,” she replied. “They were the first girls from my family to do it. My aunt was a firefighter here for ten years, and my grandmother was one for six years. They both either slowed down or stopped when they had kids. Counting them, myself, and my father, there have been nine people from my family in the brigade. In fact, two of them have been chiefs, including my father.”

One of the other student council members replied to her, intrigued by her family history, “Wait, how did your dad go from chief to captain?”

“We elect our officers every year,” Yui explained to her. “My dad did four years as the head chief of the brigade, and he decided he did not want to serve a fifth, so he stepped down and took the position of captain since we had a gap in the ranks due to two people leaving earlier in the year. This is his second year being a captain the second time. He did three years as captain the first time.”

“Woah, that’s really cool, Kitagawa-senpai. They’re elected?”

“Yep,” Naoko nodded, adding to the explanation. “All of them are. In December, we elect our officers, and then the village board votes to approve them, and on January 1st of the next year, they get sworn in. Our chief right now has been chief of the brigade three times, with this being his third time.”

Then, Daisuke walked out of the firehouse. He saw the crowd that had assembled out front and smiled, saying to them, “So the whole student council did show up… Thank you. You guys can come on in now. Furutani-san is here.”

“Speaking of our chief,” Naoko then said to the group. “Here he is now.”

Daisuke joked around and asked her, “Were you guys shit-talking me?”

“No, no, no,” Naoko assured him with a chuckle. “We were just telling the student council about how our officers get elected every year.”

Keiko then turned to Daisuke and bowed, introducing herself with, “I’m Yukimura Keiko, Vice President of the Student Council. It’s a pleasure and an honor to meet you, Chief Miyagi.”

“Same to you,” he replied. “Like I said, I really appreciate the support the student council of your school has given us.”

“Thank you. I heard this is your third time being chief, right?”

“Correct,” Daisuke nodded. “I’ve been chief twice before when I was younger. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment considering I’m sixty-seven now and don’t even go inside burning buildings anymore, but hey, someone’s gotta do it. Anyway, let’s head on in.”

As the group walked in, Tomoko thought to herself, “I’m ready for whatever he has to say. We will not let the student firefighter program die without a fight.”