Ghosts and Reunions

One Year Later

A full year of relentless, specialized training had finally culminated in this: my one-way ticket to the Orion State of America. I was now the sole passenger in the cavernous, rattling cabin of a YASDF C-130H Atlas, stretched out on a cold metal bench. My heavy rucksack served as an impromptu pillow, while a favorite manga lay open across my face, a thin shield against the dim, utilitarian cabin lights. My Type III Flecktarn YGSDF Combat Uniform was completely sterile—stripped of all name tapes, rank insignia, and unit patches. The only identifier left was the small Hi no Maru flag stitched onto my shoulder, its simple red sun a silent testament to my origin.

In truth, sleep was a distant country. My mind was far too occupied, contemplating the very real possibility that I would never see the shores of Yamato again. I had no wife or children to leave behind, but I had a mother and a sister who depended on me. My thoughts drifted, unbidden, back to our last moments together.

It had been a few weeks before my scheduled departure for the OSA. I was in the living room, controller in hand, engaged in a digital contest with my sister.

“Yes! Victory is mine again!” Nee-chan cheered, her voice triumphant after she had utterly trounced me in yet another round of Mario Kart.

“Is that the hundredth consecutive loss for me?” I asked, my voice laced with a profound boredom. I never cared for racing games; my true passion had always been for sprawling role-playing epics.

“Come on, Haru-kun! Don’t you have any fire left in you to even try and beat me?” she said, a wide, challenging grin on her face.

“No, I don’t,” I replied simply. “I think I misplaced it somewhere around my sixty-ninth defeat.” An odd number to recall, I know. “Besides…” My gaze flickered to my military-issue laptop as she casually inserted her external hard drive into its USB port. “Can you please stop loading my government laptop with anime, Nee-chan?” I asked, my tone exceptionally flat.

“Oh, I can’t?” she asked, a picture of feigned innocence.

“Of course, you can’t! This is government property! It is not intended for personal files!” I snapped, my composure finally cracking. “You’ve already conquered my entire bedroom with your mountains of manga, your legions of figurines, and your gallery of posters. Can’t my laptop at least be spared from your cultural invasion?” I apologize; when it comes to my sister, my carefully constructed stoicism can sometimes fracture.

“Hehe, don’t be like that, Haru-kun,” she said, her smile playful and disarming. “You need something to help you relax after all of your hard work.”

“Chiyoko-chan is right,” my mother’s gentle voice interjected as she entered from the bathroom carrying a basket of fresh laundry. “You need to relieve your stress with some fun.” She began to fold the clothes with practiced neatness. “Besides, you have a long deployment coming up, don’t you?” Her violet eyes, so like my own, met mine with a tender, knowing gaze. “Colonel Tanaka informed me yesterday. He said you might not be back for a year. Is that true?”

I could only nod slowly. “Yes…” I muttered, the single word feeling heavy in the air.

“You’re really going, Haru-kun?” Nee-chan’s voice was now sincere, the playful affectation gone, replaced by a sadness she couldn't quite conceal. A curtain of her dark hair fell over her eyes, hiding the tears I knew were forming there. For all the ways she drove me crazy, we had been incredibly close since we were children. The truth is, I adore her—as a sister, of course. And because of the mission’s true cargo, the WMDs, Nee-chan was one of the few who knew exactly where I was going and just how dangerous it truly was.

I nodded again. “Nee-chan, I know you’ll be lonely, but… I have my orders. This is what I do. As a soldier, I have to follow the commands of my superiors without question.” I reached out and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “My duty is to protect everyone in this country, and that includes you.”

Her expression remained hidden behind her hair. “Then…” she started, her voice small, before she abruptly shifted back into her happy, obnoxious persona, a performance I could see right through. “Then you have to let me beat you a thousand times before you go!” She furiously mashed the controller’s button, starting the next race.

A small, genuine smile touched my lips. “Not a chance. This time, I’m the one who’s going to win,” I said, my eyes fixed on the television screen.

“Hey, kids, I want to play too,” my mom announced, sitting down on the sofa next to me.

“Okaa-san too?!” Nee-chan shouted in mock outrage.

I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with my family since enlisting in the YDF. In that moment, a deep, aching longing for the simpler days of my youth washed over me. But I had chosen the path of a soldier. As my father always said, a man has to live with the consequences of his decisions, whether he likes them or not.

We played until midnight.

It was a precious, perfect moment with my family, the kind of simple joy I had rarely experienced in recent years. It was a memory I knew I would have to hold onto, to carry with me into the unknown. It was for this, for the hope of earning another day just like it, that I had to complete this mission. That I had to survive.

“Heads up, LT! We’re approaching the LZ.” The pilot’s voice, distorted by static, crackled over the intercom, jolting me from my reverie.

I set the manga aside and cleared my throat. A short time later, the aircraft touched down with a controlled jolt at Horizon Airbase—a facility better known by its notorious, conspiratorial moniker, “Sector 7.” The theorists claimed a UFO and alien corpses were hidden somewhere in its sprawling, subterranean depths. But I wasn’t here to uncover Orion’s secrets; I was here to catch a ride to another world.

As I disembarked onto the tarmac, the oppressive desert heat hit me like a physical blow. All I saw was a standard, if massive, military installation baking in the middle of a vast, featureless desert. GIs in desert BDUs were everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder about the Orion military’s fixation with the desert. It seemed that nearly all of their most famous battles had been fought in arid, dusty landscapes just like this one.

While I was scanning my new, temporary surroundings, a figure approached me.

“Are you… Haru?”

How does he know my real name? The man was clearly an Orion. I turned to see a soldier in desert camouflage BDUs pointing at me. The moment I saw his face, I recognized him. On his uniform, I saw an OSA flag patch, a Sea Dragon Trident, and another, more irreverent patch that read, ‘So You Wanna Be a Frogman’.

“Noah?” I said, a rare note of surprise in my voice. He broke into a wide grin and pulled me into a brief, firm hug.

“Hehe! It’s been a while, my friend!” He let go and looked me over. “How are you? Still in one piece?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied in my usual stoic tone.

This was Nolan Vance, an old friend. He was one of the few gaijin I knew and genuinely considered a true friend. I had first met him during a middle school cultural exchange trip to the OSA, where he had been assigned as our student guide. By a strange twist of fate, his family later moved to Yamato, and he ended up attending my very own high school. He was a massive nerd and a self-professed weeb, and could be brash at times, but he was a fundamentally good man. The last I had heard, he’d served five years with Sea Dragon Team 4 before being selected for the elite Unit Six. It seemed our paths were destined to cross again.

“Man, you haven’t changed a bit after all these goddamn years,” he laughed. “By the way, Captain Thorne, our CO, is waiting. Let’s not keep him. And you can call me by my codename, ‘Bard’.” He started walking toward a nearby barracks building, and I fell into step beside him.

Bard? Why is everyone I associate with so obsessed with otaku culture? At least his tastes seemed to run more toward high fantasy than J-pop idols.

“And my rank is Ensign, buddy,” he added with a smirk over his shoulder. “So you can’t pull the rank card on me.”

Whatever you say, Bard.

The walk to the barracks took about ten minutes; the airbase was easily the size of a small town in Yamato. We entered our assigned room, a spartan space containing three bunks. My eyes immediately landed on the third man. Dressed in multicam fatigues, he sat on his bunk, methodically sharpening a large, menacing cutlass with a whetstone. He had a sharp buzz cut of fiery red hair and intense maroon eyes that seemed to miss nothing.

“Yo, Cap,” Noah said casually. “Found the new guy.”

The man looked up, his movements economical. He gave me a quick, appraising once-over before setting his blade and whetstone aside. “You must be Lieutenant Arc.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded.

He chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “Name’s Cutter. Special Projects Group. Good to meet you, mate.” He extended a calloused hand, and I shook it. His grip was like iron.

“Nice to meet you too, sir.”

“So, how’ve you been? Did they have you retraining for this op for a whole bloody year as well?”

“Pretty much, Captain,” I answered.

He glanced from me to Noah and back again. “What’s with the stone face? You know anything about this?”

“Negative,” Bard replied, popping a fresh piece of bubble gum into his mouth.

“It’s natural, sir,” I stated in my characteristically flat voice. I have my reasons for speaking this way, but I had no intention of sharing them with men I had just met.

“Right then. Huddle up,” Cutter said, his tone shifting instantly to business. “Once we drop through that wormhole, there’s a good chance we’ll be separated—wind shear, late chute deployment, you name it. For security, we’ll use a two-part passphrase system. One of you will ask, ‘How is the Texas stadium?’ The other will respond, ‘Very bright with some clouds.’” We both noted it down as he clapped his hands together decisively. “Alright, that’s it for now. Get your gear stowed and get some rack time. We move out before dawn.”

Following that brief but essential exchange, we each settled into our bunks, the silence filled only by the quiet rustle of gear being secured for the mission that lay ahead.