Grab

Twelve minutes after leaving the festival together, Yui and Rentaro walked into the former’s house, which was next to the shop her family owned. As the two of them took their shoes off and then walked through the kitchen, Yui asked Rentaro, “Do you have anything on under the yukata besides underwear?”

“No,” he replied. “What about you?”

“Just a bra and underwear,” Yui remarked. “The way the gods intended it. I’d go braless, but my boobs are a bit big for that, and I don’t want them flopping around in case I have to run. It also kinda doesn’t work when you have to go to the station in a yukata and change into your work uniform before putting your gear on. I’d rather not flash the guys while taking it off, after all.”

“Ah, so you leave your work uniform at the station when you go to the festival, too?”

“You pretty much have to. Otherwise, you can’t get your gear on properly and you won’t be able to go to the call.”

“So, uh… What do you want to do? We could watch a movie or some TV, right?”

“Yeah,” Yui replied. “There’s some really good anime airing this season, so we could watch an episode or two of whatever’s on now. This whole year’s been really good, actually.”

“You follow a lot of anime, Kitagawa-san?”

“I’m not an anime otaku or anything,” she clarified. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I do like quite a few shows. I appreciate good art and good stories. What about you?”

“I know a lot about anime,” Rentaro explained. “When you work at a convenience store, especially at midnight, you can catch a lot of the more mature shows they air around like ten or eleven in the evening before you head to work, or even some around one or two in the morning if you work the evening shift. They also have a lot of merch they sell at our store, not to mention the various manga magazines, too. One of my coworkers is basically an anime otaku, so I get a lot of news about anime and manga from him, too.”

“Ah, nice. I usually can’t catch most late-night anime when they air since I still got a year left in high school and gotta wake up early for either that or for the diving shop. I usually have to hope someone uploads an illegal copy online later or maybe try to find foreigners who subtitle it in English.”

Rentaro chuckled in response to her. Speaking of his own sleep schedule, he told her, “I don’t think I’ve gone to sleep any earlier than like eleven at night since I graduated back in March,” Rentaro replied with a shrug. “I went from maintaining a strict 10 PM bedtime so I could wake up on time for school to basically not giving a shit anymore as long as I woke up in time for work or for firefighting classes.”

“That reminds me of something. Hang on. Let me show you a blu-ray of a show I got a few months ago.” Yui then went to go get the boy-ray case from another room, but she accidentally bumped into Rentaro, causing something to fall out of his yukata and onto the floor. “Huh?”

Immediately embarrassed, Rentaro quickly picked it up and blushed. “I got it!”

“What was that?”

“It was nothing, I swear!”

“Wait a minute…” Yui then realized what he had picked up. “Did… Did you just drop a condom?”

“I…”

“Don’t lie to me,” Yui warned him as she got closer to him, leaning her face into his. “Was it a condom or not, Nojima-san?”

Not wanting to lie to her and potentially ruin the night, Rentaro admitted, “Okay, yes, it was. I bought a pack at the convenience store I work at before I met up with you. That’s why I was a few minutes late, Kitagawa-san.”

“You… Bought it because of me?”

“Ugh, I feel so stupid,” Rentaro remarked. “I shouldn’t have thought about having sex with you. I knew this would be a bad idea, but I couldn’t help but think about i-“ Yui then cut him off with a very sudden kiss on the lips, causing his face to turn bright red. He was taken by so much surprise that he did not even close his eyes. When the two separated from their kiss, he asked her out of shock, “You… Did you just kiss me?!”

“Of course I did,” Yui replied. “What else would you call that?!”

“Why…”

Annoyed by his response, Yui answered, “What do you think, Nojima Rentaro? Now, are you gonna kiss me back or just stand the-“

This time, Rentaro got the element of surprise and cut Yui off with a kiss of his own, which she quickly returned as she leaned onto a countertop and he wrapped his arms around her. The two of them pressed their bodies against each other as their kiss became deeper and more physical. After nearly a minute of making out, the two split off. Rentaro said to her, “We can’t go back from this, can we?”

“Hell no,” she replied. “There’s no turning back at this point, Rentaro.”

“My first name, huh? How about I call you Yui?”

“Absolutely,” she replied.

“Yui,” then asked Rentaro. “Where do you want to continue this?”

Yui affirmatively answered him with, “My bedroom. Now.”

Rentaro pulled out the condom from his yukata as a million thoughts raced through his head and the two of them began to walk upstairs. “Holy shit… Holy fucking shit,” he thought to himself, “This is happening. This is actually happening. I’m going to have sex with Yui. This isn’t a dream. This is real!”

As the two of them reached Yui’s bedroom, she sat down on the bed and took her yukata off, revealing a white lace bra and underwear underneath it all. “Don’t leave me hanging. Take your yukata off too.”

Rentaro did as told and let his yukata slide onto the floor before he then got on the bed next to her and kissed her. This time, while they kissed, they began to tug at each other’s underwear, and when they split, Rentaro reached behind Yui to undo her bra and reveal her bare chest to him. “Wow… I can see why you wore a bra under your yukata.”

Yui chuckled. “Yeah, I know, they’re pretty big.” By now, both of them were completely devoid of all clothing. “So, what do you want to do first? I know what I want to try first, but what about you?”

“Uh…” Rentaro took a deep breath, figuring out how to proceed from here. “Is this your first time, too?”

“Yeah,” Yui nodded. “Same with you?”

“Yep.”

“Then let’s figure it out together, Rentaro.” She then pulled him on top of her for another kiss as the two of them began to feel each other’s bodies. Within just a few more minutes, the two began having sex, Rentaro putting the condom to good use during the next ten or so minutes. By the very end, once it had been disposed of and the two cleaned up, they collapsed into each other’s arms, hugging each other as they got under the covers on Yui’s bed.

Rentaro asked Yui as she rested her head against his chest, “How did you think that went?”

“It was a bit awkward at first,” she admitted. “But I liked it.”

“Also, uh… What time are your parents coming home?”

“My mom won’t be home until around midnight,” Yui assured him. “My dad won’t be home until like one or two in the morning tonight.” She then sat up from the bed and reached over to her dresser, grabbing her phone and setting an alarm at 11:30 PM. “I’ll wake you up in a few hours and get you out of here. My parents won’t have to know anything.”

“Thanks,” he told her before he gave her another quick kiss. “So, does this mean we’re dating?”

Yui laughed at how obvious the answer was. “That’s such a redundant question. Of course.” The two then closed their eyes and fell asleep in each other’s arms, fully intending to rest for at least a few hours until Rentaro had to go home to avoid Yui’s mother finding him.

…

Of course, fate can be a funny thing, however.

A little under an hour before midnight, while the two lovers were fast asleep and just half an hour before the alarm was supposed to go off, they were both awoken by the loud ringing of Yui’s pager inside her bedroom instead. The two of them immediately flung out of bed and began to put their underwear back on as a dispatcher said over the pager, “Harukawa Fire Station, Harukawa Fire Brigade, West Yoshimatsu Fire Station for an engine and a battalion chief, respond to 5-1-2 Akaminai in the village of Harukawa for a reported structure fire. We have a caller reporting their back porch is on fire and spreading into the house. Time is 23:06.”

“God damn it,” Rentaro said as he finished getting dressed. “How long does it take you to run to the firehouse?”

“Screw that,” Yui replied as she ripped open the closet in her room and pulled out a proper shirt and pants. “I bike to the firehouse. My dad has an extra bike you can use.” As she hurriedly put it on, she tossed Rentaro one of her father’s shirts and a pair of jeans he owned. “My dad keeps some extra clothes in here, too. Take this.”

“Got it,” he replied as he hurriedly put on her father's clothes. Once they were both done, they ran down the stairs to grab their shoes and put them on before running out and grabbing two bikes that were out front. As they hopped on the bikes, they could hear the firehouse siren winding up and down for the last time as well as the sound of fire engine sirens from the paid fire station.

At the firehouse itself, several people had already run in and were getting dressed in their turnout gear. As Shiori got dressed, Ayumi remarked to her, “You’re finally around for a fire.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Usually all the fun shit happens when I’m away.”

As both of them got fully dressed and walked over to Engine 31 to climb aboard, they heard Taichi radio out, “Chief 30-Alpha to dispatch, make this a working fire! I got heavy fire visible from the rear of a two-story single-family residential structure! I got flames spreading to a shed and a vehicle behind the house as well!”

Kana, who would be the officer on Engine 31, then said to everyone else getting dressed, “Hurry it up! We got a real one!” She then hopped into the officer’s seat, with Ryohei sitting beside her and Daisuke driving. In the back would be Shiori, Ayumi, and Hiro. As Daisuke turned the engine on and the bay door opened up, Kana told him, “The paid crew should be pulling up right about now.”

Taichi then came through on the radio in a more worried tone of voice than before, saying, “Chief 30-Alpha to dispatch, urgent message!”

“Go ahead,” replied a dispatcher.

“I got two people still inside who are unable to get out! A neighbor’s saying they’re on the second floor in the front bedroom! Start me a third ambulance here in Emergency Mode!”

Kana sighed and remarked, “Oh shit…” She then told Daisuke, “Floor it.”

“You got it,” he replied.

Kana grabbed a radio and called out, “Engine 31’s responding with a crew of six!” As the engine left the station and kicked up dust as it sped down the road, Kana turned to the crew in the back and began to give orders. “I need two guys to mask up before we get there! I’m gonna go in with you and help get those two people out! We’re going right up to the second floor to the front bedroom! I need the other two to help the paid crew roll out a second line, but don’t mask up until you’re about to go in!”

“I’ll go in,” Shiori offered.

“Me too,” replied Ryohei beside Kana.

“Fine with me,” she replied before all three of them took their helmets off and began to put their masks on.

“Chief 30-Bravo to command,” then radioed Fumio, who had a muffled voice due to being masked up. “I’m going up a ladder to the second floor front bedroom now! When our engine gets here, tell three of their guys to go up that ladder to the second floor and start helping me up here!”

“Received,” Taichi replied. “Command to Engine 31, do you copy? I need three of your guys to go up and two of your guys to roll out the second line! I got the crew of Ambulance 4 getting packed up now to go in as well!”

Daisuke grabbed the radio so Kana could continue to mask up, replying, “We copy. We got a crew ready to go up.”

Once Kana finished getting masked up, Engine 31 pulled up to the scene of the fire. The rear of the house was almost totally engulfed in fire, as was a car and a small shed behind the house. Additionally, due to a strong wind, the fire was starting to impinge on a house to the right of the original fire building, adding to the concerns of firefighters on scene. “Engine 31’s arriving,” Kana radioed out before flinging open the door and jumping out, closely followed by Ryohei and Shiori as they all raced to the back of the engine and pulled hand tools off.

As they ran to the front of the house, Taichi ran over to them and pointed to the window he wanted them to enter from, telling Kana, “Go in through that window! The bedroom should be right there! I got Fumio-san already in there, but he’ll need help getting both of them out!”

“Got it,” she replied as she reached the ladder and began to rapidly climb up it, with Shiori footing it from below. When Kana reached the top, she stopped to hook her mask tube into her regulator before sounding the floor with an axe she grabbed and then diving head-first into the room. When she got into the room, the smoke was very thick, but not impossible to see through. She shouted, “Chief, are you in here?!”

“Yeah,” replied Fumio from a corner of the bedroom. “I got the woman right here, but I can’t drag the man out by myself!”

“I got Koda-san and Ryohei-san coming up right behind me!” Sure enough, Shiori, who carried a water extinguisher, then dove in next, closely followed by Ryohei, who carried a halligan bar. Once all four were in the room, Kana told them, “Ryohei-san, help me grab the man! Koda-san, help Chief Ueda grab the woman!”

“Got it,” they both replied. As Shiori went to join Fumio, they all heard the sound of crashing wood and glass nearby. “Woah,” Shiori remarked. “Was that part of the house?!”

“It had to be,” Fumio replied as the two of them grabbed opposite ends of the old woman and began to drag her towards the window. “The fire was going pretty good when me and Taichi-san pulled up!”

Sure enough, Taichi radioed out from outside, “Command to all units, be careful in the rear. It looks like a small part of the Bravo-Charlie corner just collapsed.”

“We can’t stay in here much longer,” Fumio said as they reached the windowsill. “This house is screwed, and the fire’s probably gonna spread to that other house next door!”

Shiori then looked out the window to the outside and waved her arms, yelling to any firefighters below who could hear her, “We got one! We need someone on the ladder!” Sure enough, Yui and Rentaro both ran over, having just gotten off of Utility 35. Yui was in the middle of putting one of the two air packs on the utility on, and quickly finished what she was doing before she reached the ladder and began to climb up, her helmet’s chin strap not even properly tightened as Rentaro footed the ladder.

Yui said to Shiori as she looked into the room, ignoring the smoke hitting her face, “You got him?!”

“We got her, actually,” Fumio replied as she and Shiori lifted the woman over the edge of the windowsill and into Yui’s arms. “Bring her down quickly! She’s out cold!”

Yui then began to climb down the ladder carefully while cradling the old woman, whose face was slightly blackened by the smoke and soot inside. As she came down the ladder, her helmet slid off of her head, but she did not stop at all or care at that moment. When she reached the bottom, she laid her down on the ground beside the ladder and immediately began to check her for signs of life. While Rentaro then climbed up the ladder to grab the old man, Yui shouted out, “I need a medical kit over here!”

Rentaro reached the top just as Kana and Ryohei dragged the old man to the windowsill. “I got him,” he said to them as they pushed the old man out and into his arms. Just as he began to carry the old man down, he looked to his right and saw that the second house was indeed on fire now, causing him to sigh and remark, “Oh shit…”

With both victims out and conditions inside the original fire building rapidly getting worse, Fumio told the other three, “We gotta bail out of here!”

Taichi then radioed out, “All crews inside the original fire building, evacuate the building now! I repeat, evacuate the building now!”

“God damn it,” Kana said as she then grabbed a thermal imaging camera that was carried on a hook attached to her gear and checked the room, including the door leading out to the hallway. “It’s heating up in here a bit! The fire’s right beyond that door!”

Fumio then ordered, “Lieutenant Hoshizora, Firefighter Hanae, you guys go first!”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Ryohei said as he jumped out of the window and dove down the ladder as the smoke inside the room became so thick that no one could even see their own hand in front of them. He then hooked his one arm under a rung and turned himself around, allowing him to climb down normally. Kana soon followed him, doing the same thing.

“Koda-san, you go next!” As Fumio looked around, the heat in the room rapidly began to rise, a sign of both impending flashover and of impending door failure.

“Got it,” Shiori replied as she dove out. Instead of turning herself around and climbing down normally, she instead slid down the ladder head-first while holding onto the side rails, an indication that things were getting worse in the room.

Now it was Fumio’s turn. As he dove out of the room, he adjusted his position on the ladder and began to slide down, thinking to himself, “Holy shit, it was getting hot in that room!” Sure enough, just as he made it halfway down the ladder, the room all four of them had just been in erupted into a fireball as everything inside burst into flames, a classic flashover scenario.

With all four of them out, they all began to take their masks and helmets off as three other firefighters rushed over with two stretchers and several medical bags to help the two victims they had just pulled out. Yui by now was doing CPR on the old man, pumping into his chest with her hands while Rentaro applied a bag-valve mask to give rescue breaths, while another firefighter was applying oxygen to the old woman, who was still unconscious but not in cardiac arrest. Kana took her fire gloves off and grabbed rubber medical gloves before putting them on and grabbing one of the cardiac monitors on the stretcher and rushing over to the old man. “Hey guys,” she said to Yui and Rentaro. “Let me connect the electrodes.”

As Yui continued to apply chest compressions on the old man, Kana pulled out a twelve-lead cable and several electrodes from the monitor before putting the electrodes on the cables. “Stopping CPR,” Yui said as she let go of the man to allow Kana to apply the electrodes.

Kana then pressed a button on the monitor to analyze the heart rhythm of the patient. When she saw the rhythm, she immediately recognized it as ventricular fibrillation, or v-fib, an extremely irregular and erratic heart rhythm that was totally ineffective at supplying blood to the body. When the monitor came back with a message advising to shock the patient, Kana told everyone around her, “Don’t touch the patient! I’m gonna shock him!” She then pressed the shock button, causing the patient’s chest to rise slightly as an electrical current flowed through his body and attempted to restart his heart. After a few seconds, Kana told Yui, “Restart CPR.” She then grabbed another bag nearby and pulled out a small plastic object called an oropharyngeal airway, which she would stick into the mouth of the patient, before grabbing a small suction kit, which had a tube and a plastic container. “Nojima-san, hold up. I’m gonna suction his mouth and put an airway in him.”

“Got it,” he replied as he took the bag-valve mask off of the old man and Kana opened his mouth to stick the suction kit tube down into it. She then turned the suction kit on, allowing the tube to suck up a bunch of black soot-covered mucus that had filled his mouth. Once that was done, she put the airway down the man’s mouth and into his trachea, followed by Rentaro putting the mask back on the patient as Naoko ran over with an oxygen tank ready to go.

Kana told Naoko, “Help Nojima-san hook the oxygen up to the BVM and then cycle out with Kitagawa-san for CPR.” She then grabbed a radio attached to the monitor and tuned it to the hospital frequency, punching in the code for Yoshimatsu Medical Center and radioing out, “Harukawa Ambulance 33 to Yoshimatsu Medical Center.”

“Go ahead,” replied a nurse.

“Requesting online medical control for a patient in cardiac arrest following a fire,” she replied.

“Received,” replied the nurse.

Kana looked at the monitor after this and shouted, “Clear the patient!” She then pressed the shock button to shock the old man once again.

A few seconds later, a doctor came over the radio and said, “Yoshimatsu Medical Center to Harukawa, go ahead.”

“I got an elderly male in his mid-seventies who was just rescued from a house fire,” Kana explained as she then pressed the transmit button to send the heart rhythm to the hospital. “We have CPR and oxygen therapy in progress at this time. He is currently in v-fib, and we have shocked him twice as well as applied an oropharyngeal airway. He is totally unconscious and is not breathing on his own. He suffered severe smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning, but we cannot find any signs of burn injuries. His heart rate is three hundred and twenty and he has a blood pressure of fifty over thirty. We are requesting permission to start an IV, administer hydroxocobalamin and epinephrine via an IV bolus, and start a tracheal intubation.”

“Received,” replied the doctor. “Start a five-hundred milliliter saline IV, administer five milligrams of hydroxocobalamin over a period of fifteen minutes, administer one milligram of epinephrine every three to five minutes as appropriate, and start a tracheal intubation.”

“Received,” Kana replied, repeating the doctor’s instructions back to him. “Starting a five-hundred milliliter saline IV, administering five milligrams of hydroxocobalamin over a period of fifteen minutes, administering one milligram of epinephrine every three to five minutes as appropriate, and starting a tracheal intubation.” She then told the other firefighters around her, “Keep doing CPR and run the AED on the monitor for me! I gotta set up the IV and get the drugs going!”

While Kana pulled out an IV, an intubation kit, and two vials of the medications she needed to give the old man, the rest of the now six firefighters surrounding the old man continued CPR, administering a third shock to the man as well. The whole crew worked like a well-oiled machine, doing their hardest to save the life of a man that none of them had ever met up until that point except maybe in passing. Meanwhile, his wife was being loaded up onto Ambulance 4 for rapid transport to Yoshimatsu Medical Center, still unconscious but now breathing better due to treatment provided by other firefighters on scene.

As for the fire itself, the original fire building was now almost totally engulfed in flames, and as Tomoko and Rumiko manned a hose line to spray down on the fire from the left side of the building, the rear of the house totally collapsed. Rumiko said to her sister, “There goes that.”

“Yep,” she replied. As she looked over at the scene, she saw several firefighters in masks making entry to the house to the right of the original fire building, which was also on fire by this point. “I heard they called a second alarm.” This, of course, referred to an upgraded response that called even more units to the scene, consisting of more units from the West Yoshimatsu Fire Station and a single engine from the Inoue Volunteer Fire Brigade’s Branch Four, the closest to Harukawa. With the second alarm in place, there would be over seventy firefighters on scene or responding to the scene.

“I would have never guessed tonight would end like this,” Rumiko remarked as she aimed the hose through a window on the second floor. “I wonder if the old man and his wife went to the festival before this.”

“I was wondering the same, too, actually. It would be a pretty creepy coincidence if they did.”

Masako then walked over to them, saying to the sisters, “How are you guys doing over here?”

“We’re good,” Tomoko told her. “What about you?”

“I just helped load that old woman on Ambulance 4,” she replied. “I was told to help supervise the hand lines on the exterior.”

Tomoko then asked her, “I don’t mean to be nosey, but how are you doing with everything going on?”

“Oh, you mean… Yeah.” Masako sighed and told her, “I’m in Lieutenant Hoshizora’s house now, which I assume you already heard about. Right now, I’m just trying to focus on getting the process going for the actual divorce. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fire brigade and my job at village hall keeping me busy, I’d probably go insane from all the bullshit that’s been going on. I hate to say it, but I kinda needed a fire like this to get my mind off of it.”

“I understand,” Tomoko assured her. “Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant. You know, honestly, I can relate to that.”

“How so?”

“I told Yukimura-san from the Student Council this when they first proposed abolishing the Student Firefighter Program,” she explained to her as Rumiko continued to flow water onto the fire. “I just have this desire within me to put out fires. I get a rush when I get to have a nozzle in my hands and knock a fire down. If you had told me when I first met Yui-chan as a little girl all those years ago I’d be doing this as a high schooler, I’d have looked at you like you had two heads, but now… This is something I can’t see myself not doing.”

Rumiko then shut off the nozzle to adjust her angle of attack. She added with a smile, “And I’m the same. I was always a shy girl in life, but when I came here, I was able to truly open up and start to become who I wanted to be.”

Masako smiled, appreciating their words. “So that’s why…” She put her hands on both of their shoulders and told them, “That’s what I like to hear. You two have your hearts into it. Now, let’s keep fighting this fire, shall we?”

Meanwhile, Sumire carried over a spare SCBA bottle to Fumio, who was emerging from the house next door as he was running a bit low on air. As he came out of the second house and took his helmet and mask off, he told Sumire, “Gather up all of the spare bottles from Harukawa and put them on a tarp for us.”

“Got it,” she replied as Fumio turned around, allowing her to take the old bottle off of his back and then slide the fresh bottle in. She then screwed the port in, tightened the pack straps holding the bottle in place, and then turned the pack on. “There you go, Chief.”

“Thanks,” he replied before he walked over to Taichi to talk to him about progress being made in the second house. As this happened, Sumire walked over to Light Rescue 34 and pulled out a large blue tarp before walking over to an empty spot on the street and laying it out. After this, she began to grab spare bottles from Light Rescue 34 and walk them over to the tarp, thinking to herself as she did, “It was on a night much like this that my own house caught fire. All those years ago, I was the one being saved, but now, I’m the one helping to save others from the same fate my parents found themselves in. If only they could look at me now…”