Divorce

Outside of Masako’s home, Kana sat in her car, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel as she wondered what was going on inside the house. She was worried about what would happen between Masako and Yasuhiro, and after a while, she sighed and said, “Screw it. I need a smoke.” She then pulled out a cigarette carton from her center console and pulled a cigarette out with her teeth before taking a lighter and lighting it up.

Then, as she puffed away and exhaled smoke, she saw Masako fling open the front door as she yelled at someone, “And I thought I wasn’t putting in enough effort!”

A male voice that Kana knew was Yasuhiro’s screamed in response as both him and her stormed out, “Get out!”

“You were the one who did nothing! All you did was work all night and come home drunk!”

“We haven’t had sex in months! What did you think I was gonna do?!”

“You don’t think I wanted to have sex with you?! Of course I wanted to have sex with you! You’re my damn husband! We literally have a child together! If that isn’t proof enough I wanted to fuck you, I don’t know what is! Instead, you went and fucked some college intern at your job barely out of high school! How do you think that makes me feel as a woman, Yasuhiro?!”

“Look,” he explained to her. “Every time I had sex with you after our son became a toddler, it felt wrong, okay?! I felt like I was having sex with my own mother! When you became a mother, it felt like I was committing incest!”

Masako exploded at him upon hearing his reasoning. “Incest?! Are you kidding me?! You’re telling me you see me more as a mother than as your wife?! What the Hell is wrong with you?!”

Kana looked on and sighed, telling herself as the argument continued, “Holy shit… This is bad.”

“I want out of this,” Masako then told him. “Yasuhiro, I can’t believe I have to say this, but I want a divorce!”

“A divorce?! We have a son together!”

“I know, but I don’t care! I can’t stay in this marriage any longer!” As she began to cry, she fell to the sidewalk and buried her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, Yasuhiro… I don't love you anymore. I can’t love you anymore.”

Yasuhiro looked on in a state of shock, trying to process what his wife had said to him. “I… I…” While Masako cried on the street, he took a deep breath and looked around, wondering if anyone else had seen them argue. “Holy shit… Holy fucking shit…”

“I’ll be taking our son,” she told him as she then got up. “At least for tonight.”

“You… You can’t! He’s my son, too!”

“I never said he wasn’t!” Masako then stormed past him and walked back into the house, leaving behind Yasuhiro. As Kana watched, Masako then re-emerged with her eight-year-old son, who was crying from hearing his parents argue. “Come on, let’s go.”

Kana got out of the car, alerting Yasuhiro of her presence and prompting him to say, “Oh, you got one of your fire brigade buddies to get you, huh?”

Masako shouted at him, “Shut up!”

“Why didn’t you stay out of the fire brigade when we moved to your hometown?! You did enough working for the village hall! You could have been useful at home!”

“I don’t want to be some housewife who only works part-time as a secretary at the village hall! I wanted to be a firefighter again, and you can’t stop me! It keeps me sane!”

Kana saw several neighbors get out of their houses and watch the proceedings out front. As they began to ask questions and get concerned, she attempted to get them to turn away. “Guys, don’t be alarmed. It’s just a disagreement. There’s really nothing exciting to see here, so just go back into your houses an-“ Upon hearing the sound of an approaching police car siren and turning her head down the street, she muttered in frustration, “Oh shit.”

Two officers of the prefectural police stepped out and walked over. One of them was immediately recognized by both Kana and Masako, and he also immediately recognized both of them as well. “Wait a minute,” he said to them. “Lieutenants Yamada and Hoshizora?”

Kana walked over and said to him, “Hanae-san? You’re working out here tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m on overtime,” replied Yusei Hanae, who was around twenty-nine years old, had ten years of service with the brigade, and had also been a police officer for seven years. “Anyway, what’s going on here?”

“We’re divorcing,” Masako told the two police officers. “I can’t stay with my husband anymore, and I need to take my son somewhere else with me for now.”

“Before anything else,” Yusei then asked both Masako and Yasuhiro. “Did anyone hit anyone? Was there any physical violence or weapons involved that I need to know about?”

“No,” Yasuhiro replied.

“Not at all,” Masako also replied. “We wouldn’t hit each other. That’s about the only thing the two of us agree on right now.”

“I hate to say it,” Yasuhiro admitted with a sigh. “But she’s right about that.”

Yusei then told the other police officer with him, who seemed a bit younger, “Go with the husband. I’ll talk to the wife.” As the other police officer went to talk with Yasuhiro, he told Masako, “Lieutenant, let’s go over here for a bit. Do you mind if Lieutenant Hoshizora watches your son for a bit?”

“That’s fine,” she replied. She then told her son, “Go with Aunt Kana for a bit, okay? Mommy has to talk to the police.”

As Masako and Yusei began to talk, Kana took Kaoru into her car so he would not have to hear anything else being said. As the two of them got in, Kaoru asked her, “Aunt Kana, what’s gonna happen to Mommy and Daddy? Is Daddy going to jail?”

“No, no, no,” Kana assured him with a soothing tone of voice. “Listen to me, dear, neither Mommy nor Daddy are going to jail, okay? They just… They need to be apart for a while. Do you want to go with your mother?”

“I mean…” Kaoru then wiped away tears from his face. “I know I’ve been mad at my father, but… I don’t want to see him go away.”

“I know, dear, I know.”

Kana then looked out the front window of the car and saw a young woman storm out of the house. Sure enough, as Masako had said earlier, she looked no older than twenty. She screamed at Yasuhiro, “Don’t drag me into this shit again, Yamada! I’m not gonna sit here and watch you and your stupid whore wife yell at each other anymore!” She then slapped him across the face, which immediately prompted both of the police officers on scene, as well as a third police officer who was just pulling up to the scene in his motorcycle, to immediately rush the young woman and tackle her to the ground, causing her to scream as she flailed around and tried to fight the three officers pinning her down, “Hey! Hey! Let go of me! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Yusei shouted at the woman as he wrestled with her, “Stop resisting! Don’t slap someone like that in front of us! Stop! Stop resisting!” The woman then bit him in the right hand, causing him to yell, “Agh, shit! She bit me!”

“Serves you right, asshole! Don’t you dare touch me! You’re gonna violate me, aren’t you?! That’s what you’re gonna do, right?! That's what they all do!”

Another officer restraining her yelled at her, “Would you shut the Hell up already?!”

“I won’t shut up! I won’t let you touch me! Let go!”

While Masako cried nearby, Yasuhiro looked on in shock, and the fight with his mistress from work came to an end with the woman being fully restrained and handcuffed while she screamed more and more insults and curses, Kaoru asked Kana as he began to cry again, “What happened?! Is Daddy okay?! Why did that girl hit him?!”

“Your father is gonna be okay,” Kana assured him as she turned around to see him. “She didn’t hit him hard enough. That girl is the only one going to jail. Your father and mother won’t, okay?”

“Okay… I don’t want to see Mommy and Daddy fight, though…”

“I know, kiddo. I don’t want to either.” Kana then felt her phone vibrate and checked it, finding it to be a text from Masako herself. Upon reading it, Kana told Kaoru, “Hey, Kaoru-kun, do you want to go to your Mommy’s firehouse? We can play a bit there.”

Kaoru’s face began to light up upon hearing that he was going to go to the firehouse. “The firehouse? I want to go to the firehouse!”

“Alright! That’s what I like to hear, kiddo! Let’s go!” Kana then turned her car on, and as she shifted into reverse to back up, she thought to herself, “Masako wants me to take him to the firehouse until this bullshit is settled. I wish we had left sooner so Kaoru wouldn’t have had to see his father’s hookup freak out like that. What the Hell happened in that girl’s life for her to yell out that the cops were gonna rape her or something, anyway? Sounds like Yasuhiro stuck his dick in crazy.”

…

At the firehouse, Rentaro, Rumiko, and Sumire had just gotten back from another class and were putting away their gear when Kana walked in with Kaoru. Confused, Rentaro asked Kana, “Wait, whose kid is that?”

“Lieutenant Yamada’s,” she explained. “I have to watch him for a bit, and he wanted to go to the firehouse. She then bent down and told Kaoru, “Can you go to the radio room for a bit, Kaoru-kun? Don’t touch anything in there, okay?”

“I won’t, Aunt Kana,” he replied with a big smile.

Sumire smiled and remarked, “Awww, that’s so cute. Has he always considered you an aunt, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah,” she replied as Kaoru walked into the radio room. Once he was out of earshot, she told the trio in a quieter voice, “What I say to you three doesn’t get repeated out of here, alright?”

Rumiko asked her, “What is it?”

“Lieutenant Yamada is getting a divorce from her husband. She found him cheating on her with some intern from his office, and this was on top of other issues going on. To top it all off, that same intern then attacked her husband and then the police, so she’s going to jail, and Masako will probably stay with me for a while. We don’t know how it will work with her son yet, but if I had to guess, he’ll move in with me too.”

Shocked, Rentaro replied, “A divorce?”

“That’s horrible,” Rumiko replied. “I can’t believe he did that to her.”

“I hate to say it,” Kana admitted. “But I had a feeling this was gonna happen sooner or later with those two. If we get a call while you’re all still here, can one of you stay back to watch Kaoru so I can go on?”

“I can’t since I have to go to work soon,” Rentaro replied. “I’m working on the midnight shift again tonight at my store.”

“That’s fine,” Kana assured her.

“I can do it,” Sumire offered. “I have nowhere else to go besides the dorms of the school, but…” She then looked at her right hand, noticing the scars on it. “Will he… Will he be scared?”

“Of your scars?”

“Yeah… Uh… I don’t want to see him cry when he looks at me…”

“Suwabe, you’re fine,” Kana assured her. “He’s not some scaredy-cat, okay?”

Rumiko put a hand on Sumire’s shoulder and told her with a smile, “You’ll be fine, Sumire-chan. I think you’ll be good with kids.”

“Thank you,” she replied to her, comforted by her words.

Rentaro asked her, “How much longer until Lieutenant Yamada gets back here?”

“I’d say at least another thirty minutes to an hour,” Kana explained. “The police will probably need her to make a witness statement since her husband’s side bitch slapped him and then bit a cop.”

“Wait, she bit a cop?!”

“Not just any cop,” Kana pointed out. “She bit Hanae-san.”

“No way,” Rumiko replied, shocked by what the intern had done. “He was working in Harukawa?”

“He was doing overtime here and was first on scene, in fact,” Kana explained. “I was just sitting in the car with Kaoru when all of a sudden this girl who had to be like twenty or twenty-one at most walks out, yells at Masako’s husband, and then slaps him. Of course, the cops aren’t gonna let her get away, so they tackle her, and she begins to fight three of them at once. She actually bit one of Hanae-san’s hands.”

“Do they need an ambulance over there?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Hanae-san is gonna drive himself to the hospital to get checked out. No one else wanted to go. I imagine she’ll get charged with battery and assault.”

“Damn, that sucks. Does anyone else in the brigade know, like Chief Mikazuki?”

“No, not yet at least. They’ll know eventually. Word spreads around here pretty fast.” Kana then instructed the three of them, “If you see Lieutenant Yamada, please, make her feel welcome, okay? If she needs help with anything, help her out. This is gonna be a tough time for her, and right now, she needs our support.”

“Understood,” Sumire nodded. “We’ll be there for her.”

“Thank you.” Kana then walked into the radio room to see Kaoru, asking him, “You wanna go see the fire trucks, Kaoru-kun?”

Kaoru excitedly replied, “The fire trucks?! Yeah! I wanna go see the fire trucks!”

“That’s the spirit, kiddo!” Kana then took him by the hand and led him out of the radio room and to Engine 31. “Let’s take a look inside.” As Kana opened the rear driver door for him to go inside the cab, she sighed and began to wonder what would happen now that Masako was seeking a divorce from Yasuhiro, particularly what would happen with Kaoru.

…

August 10, 2023

“Back it up! Back it up! Back it up!” Fumio, who had just gotten back from work as a paid firefighter that morning, was instructing a tow truck operator on where to position a large RV that was being parked in an open concrete lot next to the grounds where the village’s Tanabata festival would soon be held. Already, many of the wooden shop stands were either complete or close to completion, with those still under construction being actively worked on by the people running them. The festival itself would start on Friday evening and run until Saturday night, with the main festivities for the fire brigade being on Saturday. Once the RV got into the correct position, Fumio commanded, “Okay, right there! Drop it!”

As the tow truck operator dropped the RV into position, Fumio’s brother Michio remarked to him, “Man, I’m glad I got to swap shifts and have Saturday off. This is gonna be so fun, Fumio-niisan.”

“You’re God damn right,” he nodded. “And it’s why we need all the help we can get.”

“I hope Yamada-san is able to come. It’ll be a nice distraction for her after what happened yesterday.”

“Oh yeah,” Fumio remembered. “Is she really staying with Hoshizora-san?”

“Yep,” Michio nodded. “She moved in with her last night after she fought with her husband. Her kid moved in, too.”

“Damn, that whole situation sucks.” Fumio sighed and then turned around to look at the rest of the festival grounds. “I’m just glad we’ll have a normal festival this year. We couldn’t even do it in 2020 or 2021, and 2022 was restricted due to all that COVID crap.”

“At least last year’s demonstration was cool,” Michio pointed out. “It’s not every day we get to cut into a minibus, much less one on its side. The locals loved it.”

“Yeah, but this will be larger than anything we’ve ever done before. We’ve torched cars, we’ve cut into cars, we’ve flown water out of ten lines at once, we’ve burned small sheds, and we’ve even landed a helicopter here, but this… This will be a new one for us.” He then opened up a box nearby and pulled out a can of spray paint. “I’m gonna go mark the RV. Call Taichi-san and tell him we’re all set.”

“Got it,” Michio replied as he pulled out his phone to call Taichi.

While his brother talked to the chief, Fumio went on one side of the RV and spray-painted in large characters on it: “VILLAGE OF HARUKAWA FIRE BRIGADE, DO NOT ENTER!” He then proceeded to spray-paint the same message on the other side.

Meanwhile, nearby, Shiori and Daisuke were watching Fumio spray-paint the RV and Michio talk to the chief. As Daisuke ate a breakfast sandwich he had picked up on his way to the festival grounds, he looked at Shiori and asked her, “Koda, are you worried about something?”

“Huh?” Shiori turned to him, startled by what he had said and having been snapped out of her train of thought.

“You look like you’re deep in thought over there,” he joked. “Are you contemplating life or something?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she politely insisted. “I’m just thinking about how Saturday will go. I’m really looking forward to it, Miyagi-san.” She thought to herself, “In reality, I’m thinking about the fact that I’m still hiding who I really am from most of the fire brigade. I swore that I would tell them I’m gay soon, but now, I’m starting to get second thoughts. I’m scared of how they’d think of me, even though I keep telling myself they won’t mind since I pull my own weight here. Even so, I can’t keep hiding it from my brothers and sisters in the fire brigade forever. One day, they’ll find out, whether it’s from me or someone else, and I’d greatly prefer it to be through me. Perhaps… Perhaps I could tell just one other person for now and see how it goes from there.”

…

Later that day, as Kana was working at the large and well-furnished West Yoshimatsu Fire Station and helping to prepare lunch for the crew working that day, she felt her phone vibrate with a text. She pulled it out, read the text, and then turned to another firefighter in the kitchen with her to say to them, “Sorry, I gotta make a phone call. It sounds important.”

“That’s fine,” he replied. “You’re almost done anyway, right?”

“Yeah,” she replied as she walked out of the kitchen and then went into the hallway to talk privately over the phone. She dialed the number of the person who texted her before waiting on them to pick up. “You texted me, right?”

“Yeah,” Shiori said to her. “There’s, uh… Something I need to tell you, and you need to promise not to tell anyone else, at least not yet, Lieutenant Hoshizora.”

“Okay…” Unsure of what she was about to say, she asked her, “Koda-san, what the Hell’s going on?”

“I’m just gonna come out and say it,” Shiori then said after taking a deep breath to mentally prepare herself. “I’m gay.”

“You… You’re gay?”

“Yes,” she affirmed. “I’ve known that for a while, Lieutenant. My parents know, all the student firefighters know, and my friends know, but no one else in the brigade knows aside from you now. I wanted to tell you first since I really look up to you and Lieutenant Yamada, but I know she’s going through a lot right now with the divorce, so… I figured I’d let you know so I won’t burden her any more than she already is.”

“I see,” Kana replied. “How long have you kept this a secret?”

“Since my last year of middle school. That’s when I fully realized I was gay. My parents have known since last year, and…” With a chuckle, Shiori continued, “Well, they actually accepted me, which was a huge relief, actually.”

“You’re lucky,” Kana pointed out in a somber tone. “Not every gay person can say that about their parents… Or every LGBTQ person for that matter.”

Noticing her tone of voice, Shiori asked Kana, “Wait, why did you bring that up like that?”

“Because I’m bisexual,” Kana admitted to her. “And my parents were never fully accepting of that.”

Upon dropping that information on her, Shiori paused as she tried to form a response to her. “Oh, uh…”

“I don’t hide the fact I’m bi from people,” Kana explained. “I just don’t tell everyone I meet I’m bi. I only really tell them if they want to know. The brigade largely knows I’m bi, or at least anyone who was in when I was with a girl a few years ago.”

“You two broke up?”

“Yeah, we broke up during the pandemic in September 2020. That explains why it never really came up when you joined.”

“Ah, okay.”

“The point I’m getting at is this,” Kana then said to get back on topic. “You have a great support network, especially compared to me. I didn’t have any friends who were gay or bi or whatever when I was in high school. I dealt with that part of me largely by myself, and my parents not truly accepting me for who I was didn’t help. I think you should tell more people in the brigade about your sexuality, and if anyone gives you any shit for it, let me know, because I’ll put a stop to it.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes,” Kana insisted. “I mean, you don’t have to go shouting from the rooftops that you’re a lesbian or anything, but if someone asks about it at the firehouse or if you get a girlfriend, I don’t think you should hide it. Speaking of girlfriends, do you have one?”

“No, but… Uh… I do have a girl in mind.”

“Please don’t say it’s me,” Kana warned her in a semi-joking tone of voice. “I’d prefer not to go to jail.”

“No, no, no,” Shiori immediately denied. “It’s not you at all! It’s… Another firefighter.”

“Is it one of the other girls in the student firefighter program?”

“Yes… It’s…”

Kana assured her, “You can tell me. I won’t say a word, Koda-san.”

“It’s Ayumi-chan,” Shiori then said with a sigh. “She’s the girl I want to be with.”

Confused, Kana asked her, “Wait, wait, wait, you want to be with Tamura-san?”

“Yeah. Why is that confusing?”

“I thought you’d be into one of the other third-years, considering how close you are to them.”

“No,” Shiori explained. “I know both Tomoko-chan and Yui-chan are straight, and besides, I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I like Ayumi-chan because when I moved into the area as a middle schooler, she was the first one to really welcome me in Harukawa. She’s been my friend ever since, and I just… Lieutenant, I think I love her.”

“I don’t know if Tamura-san is straight or not. Do you want any help from me in regards to her?”

“No,” Shiori replied. “I can take care of that by myself. Thank you, though.”

Then, Kana heard the alarms inside the station go off, followed by a robotic voice that began to list out units to respond to a call, one of which was Engine 1, which she was assigned to. “I got a call. I gotta go.”

“Goodbye, Lieutenant. Thank you for talking to me about this.”

“Anytime, Koda-san. Goodbye!” Kana then hung up and stuffed her phone back into her pocket before running to a fire pole nearby and sliding down it to get to the large apparatus bay of the station. She then walked over to Engine 1, where her gear was hung up on the rear passenger door, and took her shoes off before putting her bunker gear on and hopping into the engine along with the other three crew members assigned to it that day. She thought to herself as the engine left the station to respond to a fire alarm activation at a nearby middle school, “Man, this past week has been nothing but crazy. Between Masako-chan getting a divorce and now Koda-san coming out of the closet to me, it feels like a never-ending storm of events. I’d ask what could be next, but that would be tempting fate a little too much.”