American Wolf in Hokishi

Damascus 1 – A Shadow Over Our Days at the Breakwater

High in the air the mounting cloud-mass swells,
Over the dried marsh where the python dwells
A sea beach silvered by the moon; and then
Nearby, the cries of distant fishermen.

The morning was met by the sun; flaming up slowly, sullenly above the rolling hills, painting their coat of cypress in shades of amber, and making the close-hugging sea sparkle like crushed diamonds.

The season of cherry blossoms was in full swing, and the rain of swaying petals laid down a rosy carpet for the young men and women who strutted, ambled and trotted through the winding sun-streaked streets to converge on a shared destination.

Freshmen of both sexes tugged at their uniforms and fretted over their hair, anxious to make their all-important high school debut count.

Seniors swaggered like the dons and donnas they were, leaving little to insinuate at their anxieties: choice of college, admission test results, and the other regrets that racked their less guarded moments.

The Juniors, second years, were in that carefree zone where they could still cast their worries to the interminable future, and when they could begin to enjoy their authority-by-seniority over the hapless freshmen in their after-school clubs.

To the average teenager of the town, this was a commute they’d made hundreds of times, and would for a hundred times yet. The familiar streets on the walk to and back seemed to change only when they wore a different coat of color for the season: pink for spring, as white for winter.

To some, the famed sakura simply brought to mind the things they’d rather be doing than going to school. To others, it brought treasured memories with family, friends and lovers to the fore.

However the beholder took them, the simple fact was that such sights had become for many mundane to see.

To the blue-eyed foreigner, all this might as well have been on the dark side of the Moon.

Waking up at five in the morning for his warm-up routine, Theo was already alert where most teenagers were still groggy, as lively as the sparrows singing from the rooftops.
One more time, he inspected the articles of clothing laid out neatly on the three-quarter bed.

A beige vest, white shirt and teal tie, black slacks and socks.

Everything that could be was smartly pressed, where the civilian habit at this age was to give it to mom for a quick pass-through, or to simply throw it on straight out of the closet in all its creased glory. At least, that was Theo's overall impression. 

He had spent a disproportionate length of time ironing and tidying this uniform to ship-shape, before he realized that where he was going probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about the grooming standard.

Force of habit. At least he was all squared away, and he was still on schedule.

By the time he’d come out the door of the house that he now had to himself, the sun was already bathing the narrow streets of his neighborhood in stark morning light.

Having given the scattered collection of buildings that the house– the safehouse– belonged to a walk-around, his first impression of the entrance was that it looked like a labyrinth of thickets, the only evidence of man being the paved walkway. 

Only with his pushing in did more convincing reminders of habitation emerge, nestled in the green: mesh and netting for assorted cultivated plants; a chest-high wall here, a driveway there; a house, a shed, a shrine; even an old man or woman going about their day. Man was here after all. 

Theo pulled his rucksack over one shoulder, and rolled the other in its socket.

After a week or two in-country, he still couldn’t shake off the strange discomfort that had only sank in after that first day. He had been advised that it was the so-called culture shock, but to him it felt more like groping around in the dark. Hostile territory he could live with; it was the unknown unknowns that got you.

Well, if this one was going take getting used to, he wouldn’t do that just standing around.
Theo’s thousand steps of acclimation began with one, and he set off on his first morning commute.

Not far along, the graded road opened up to asphalt, giving way to service roads and farmer’s fields that lapped round the neighborhood and kept it away from the city itself. It was closer to the city where he encountered the first cherry trees, just waking up to their spring coat.

He had passed something like these in DC, once. Same trees, different patch of dirt. It brought to mind another thing– this was around the same time as Shiloh, if he had his dates right.
He thought about that bloodbath, and briefly wondered if the soft pink of the cherries here looked anything like the peaches then.

As he walked on, he ran through his updated cover identity another time: a half-Japanese, half-American second-year transfer student, his parents off in a perpetual business trip. All of it under the same name. It wasn’t like the bean-counters in the Program didn’t have a bevy of throwaway identities on hand, but the word came down regardless– he was sticking with Theo Lovell. That simplified things, at least.

Still, something more than the stiffness of his new leather shoes irked him.

Theo had spent all of his career thus far with the combat-oriented Unit, and was more than a little rusty at the work of spies and spooks. Not since going through the A-B-Cs of Title 50 taskings years before had he been able to put a lot of it into practice. What was more, all his training was oriented around the implicit assumptions of the world of adults. Now here he was, about to be acting the alleged ordinary teenager.

It wasn’t that Theo was completely out of touch– his time with the Unit and the Program had allowed him to absorb the broad strokes of popular culture from his colleagues, after all. He was confident that he would never have too much trouble living in "the world".

But that was Western culture. And although his work meant that he had gotten around, young as he was, that was always in the company of his countrymen, prosecuting objectives that didn’t exactly require mingling with the natives. That was the crux of it, really. 

Growing up in a different world entirely, Theo harbored no illusions that his lack of access to the Japanese experience would pose him problems.

Never one to let a challenge get away from him, he’d done his prep.

First off, he brushed up on his formal classroom Japanese to an approximation of what the average teenager would sound like, or at least what Maho Kirishima thought the young’uns sounded like these days.

That was aside from the usual tedious tasks of tradecraft: selection of routes, sites and alternates, casing reports, which was at least greatly speeded by his Japanese counterpart’s apparent love for paper.

They got it done quickly enough that Maho even brought in a collection of Japanese movies as part of Theo’s immersion. Most of it had struck him as bizarre and of dubious value to his cover, but it was decent entertainment, if nothing else.

No, the cultural side wasn’t what constituted the biggest potential snag– he was supposed to be a transfer student, after all– that was Theo himself.

At a plain-at-stateside five-foot-ten, Japan still sometimes felt like Lilliput.

He probably wouldn’t look out of place in one of their octagons, but he wasn’t about to be infiltrating a fighting promotion anytime soon wasn’t he? That wouldn’t do– the cardinal rule of covert activity was to hide in plain sight. A guerrilla wanted to swim in the sea of the people.

If his build didn’t make him stand out, his blue eyes in the sea of browns and blacks would draw attention no matter what he did.

But Theo anticipated exactly that, and he was planning on playing it to the hilt.

Theo slipped into the flow of foot traffic after reaching one of the city’s main avenues, listening to the rhythm of his feet on the pavement and keeping an internal cadence–
left,
right,
left,
right,
left,
right,
leeeft–

Steadily, he overtook one student here, a bunch of them there, drawing desultory reactions from curious onlookers when they bothered to look closer. 

He looked around, making sure that everything was still the way it was as when he first reconnoitered the route. That was when he spotted something through the gaps in the crowd, something small.

Barreling towards him.

In a heartbeat Theo whirled to meet the charging shape, stepping to the side and grabbing at the shape’s arms, turning on his heel to redirect the force of the charge into a natural spin turn that would score them an easy ten–

And suddenly, Theo was pressed up to a girl.

She was wearing a uniform from the same place as him. Her brown hair frayed out at her neck to match the color of her eyes. Round eyes, encircled by the general roundness of her cheeks, her nose, her face. A small girl, though that was most girls here. He would have never picked her out from the crowd, if it weren't for this. The girl was just as surprised as he was, but they both regained their wits at the same time to break up the impromptu dance. 

Oblivious to the looks they were getting, she apologized and started bowing a bit too dramatically. Before he could say that she was overdoing it, she was already gone; at full sprint again, and then out of sight.

The hell is her hurry?

Closer to his destination, the density of bright young things increased accordingly– students of the three year levels clumping together and separating on final approach, not unlike the fission-fusion of herds of antelopes, wildebeest and elephants, if beasts of the savannah had the mind to stick to the sidewalk.

Among them strode a vagrant that had strayed far from its usual range, a hyper-carnivorous breed of American canid, full on the alert after almost getting body-checked by the locals.

Theo shifted his eyes warily, to the foot hills and jutting housetops on the other end of the rising asphalt to his left, to the the lush tops of holly trees waving, peeking over the parapet on his right side.

His ears perked at the yawns, shouts and little islands of chatter around him, friends excited to see friends after the spring break, the new year’s gossip mill already building up steam.

A gentle breeze carried the last vestiges of the winter’s chill, and brought on goosebumps on his exposed skin.

Marked by a lamp post and a worn two-tone sign, the commute forked off from the road to a smaller driveway, a gentle climb lined with greenery leading up to a parking area and bike stands, before finally ending in the entrance to his Theo's destination.

 Hokishi Public High School.

Theo paused for a moment at the threshold, letting himself relax.

He checked his watch, the only concession to individuality that the school dress code explicitly provided for. It was the same model he used in the Unit, a slab-sided analog fitted with a nylon strap.

A bit early, he thought. He reckoned he could shave off five more minutes. He would’ve been here earlier if it wasn’t for–

A peal of a bell sounded close by, and for an instant he almost put thought into action, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there, only to realize that it was a false alarm.

The chimes were sounding for assembly.

He chided himself– he wasn’t some rookie to be jumping at shadows. Damn it, this town wouldn’t get the better of him. Brushing aside his momentary irritation, Theo resolved that that would be the last surprise to catch him on the wrong foot.

He looked back up at the whitewashed façade of his new alma mater.

It was here that he would be initiated into the deeper mysteries of adolescence– reflexively scoffing at the thought as he recalled that trite platitude by Lasch.

Learn a thing or two about myself, huh?

Theo stepped over onto his new happy hunting ground.

Author's note: 
Starting from this chapter, the default language is Japanese. 
Hence, unitalicized dialogue is in Japanese.
Italicized dialogue will now be in languages other than Japanese. (like English)