Interception

Miho left in a huff, outraged at the apparent demotion I had just given her. My phone buzzed a few times in my pocket.

Rooftop of the main building.

Had a pretty good view.

Are you two back together now?

What? He was watching?

I looked out the hallway windows to the south, facing the main building. A medium framed figure was waving back at me from the fenced in rooftop. Hiroki had impressive eyesight for a guy who had worn reading glasses since 1st grade. Maybe he had that kind of farsightedness that gave you telescopic vision in exchange for not being able to see your hand a few dozen centimeters from your face.

It was getting pretty late. Did Miho tip him off to this, or was he just here by coincidence? I made my way down the stairs and over to the main building. A few sports clubs were still practicing, but the school buildings themselves were now deserted. Even if the sun wouldn’t set for some hours, the sky was now a deep golden glow.

Hiroki was waiting for me in the same place he had been waving to me just a few minutes ago. He had a shit-eating grin on his face. I didn’t like it. Kanamaru had already given me enough today.

“Nishizaaawaaa! Is the Black Prince finally back?”

It was his name for the edgy persona I had put on to catch Miho’s attention in middle school. I dropped the act pretty fast when we got together, but he still never let me live those days down.

“No. Miho’s not sure whether I’m her classmate or her friend.”

His grin turned to a slight scowl.

“Man, I told you that you screwed up. Shouldn’t have tried to keep her locked on your ideal. You are never going to get a girl that sweet again in your entire life. Not even ma petit camarade.”

Hiroki knew about the girl over the wall, but had never seen her. I don’t know why I told him. He knew a lot about the North from his hobbies, but romantic advice wasn’t his forte. Unlike him, I actually had a girlfriend - once.

“Not sure it would have ever worked out. The new Miho isn’t the type to be swayed by the whole ‘Black Prince’ act anyway.”

“I think you’d be surprised.”

What the hell did that mean? Hiroki and Miho were just acquaintances. Why was he acting like he knew something about her that I didn’t? I’ll grant that he’s a perceptive guy- It’s probably why we got along so well- but he had just been an occasional third wheel when I was together with Miho.

No sense arguing about this any further. That wasn’t what I had wanted to ask about, anyway.

“This isn’t about Miho. She just happened to be in the same place as me.”

“Whatever you say, man. I just think it’s suspicious that she and you would both be in a place you had no business being.”

He was perceptive, all right. Maybe too much for his own good.

“I had some questions about the-”

The deafening roar of a turbojet engine screeched overhead. From the north, a second jet made a low pass a few seconds later. They couldn’t have been flying at more than a thousand meters or so.

“Woah. Airspace violation.”

Hiroki was now intensely focused on the jets as they wheeled around to the southwest in a broad circle. Hearing fighter jets overhead wasn’t an odd occurrence in Tokyo. They did so practically every day.

“Huh?” I could only ask. Even for Hiroki, this wouldn’t be unusual enough to warrant a comment on.

“Those are JPAF Mig-23s. They’re not supposed to be flying in Tokyo airspace.”

Hiroki was a military nerd of the highest caliber. To most people, the presence of tanks and missile launchers on the streets of the old capital was at best a source of vague discomfort about the war that could be, and at worst a painful reminder that the country was still divided from a war that was almost outside of living memory. To Hiroki, though, this was something like a paradise. Every piece of materiel from both the western and eastern blocs could be at some point seen on the streets, in the bay, or in the skies above. He could get up close and personal to them in a way people living further south could only get to when it was being paraded through as part of a US-UK-ROJ friendship ceremony.

He must have inherited it from his father, who was a high-ranking officer in the Republic Navy, currently assigned to a land-based position in Yokosuka. His mother lived there, too, but she was also the landlady of a small 2-story apartment complex a little to the west of Akiba. Hiroki lived in one of the spare rooms there rather than make the long commute into Tokyo every day. It was a great place to hang out and pretend to study. I had learned a bit from listening to him rant about various martial matters, but I couldn’t come close to a tenth of his knowledge. He was in deep.

“How can you tell?”

“The Soviets don’t fly that type anymore, at least not in Japan. They’ve got a bunch of Su-27s stationed up in Narita, but those are twin-engine fighters. The single-engine ones with the narrow swing-wings are Mig-23s or -27s.”

“Why isn’t it supposed to be here?”

“The treaty says only Americans or Soviets can fly armed aircraft into Tokyo airspace. JPAF isn’t supposed to be flying anything here unless it’s an emergency.”

While we were all citizens of the South - the Republic- Tokyo had a special status that made it a bit weird. It was the capital of Japan during the Imperial era before the war. When the Allies divided up Japan, it became a special joint occupation zone. Relations between the Americans and Soviets had cooled after the war, and the Americans had recognized the new Republic with its capital in Osaka. In return, the Soviets refused to recognize the Republic and instead recognized the Japanese People’s Republic as the one true Japan. Tokyo, however, maintained its joint occupation. Even now, American and Soviet soldiers were, if not above the law, then at least co-equal to it.

“You think it’s an emergency? They were flying pretty low.”

“Nah, they wouldn’t be pulling a stunt like this if they had lost control of their aircraft. They’re probably trying to scope out our air defenses.”

“Why? Can’t they just look over and see them? It’s not like the missile launchers are hidden."

“There are some things you’re never gonna find out just by sitting back and observing. Radar coverage, reaction times, even how long it takes to scramble an interception. You only figure that stuff out by reaching out and touching it.”

“Huh. So they’re just poking us to see how we react?”

“Yeah, maybe. It could just be that Uncle Yoshi wants to feel important again. There’s a big trade conference in Osaka coming up next week. He might just want to remind everyone that the North exists, too.”

According to Hiroki, the North might as well not have existed. By some accounts, the North had a GDP less than a twentieth of the South’s, despite only a slightly smaller population. That meant the cities were on average less productive than a similarly sized plot of rural farmland in the south. No wonder Uncle Yoshi would feel a little left out of a major economic forum.

The jets had disappeared into the golden haze to the west. Right, time to get back to what I had wanted to ask him.

“Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to get caught in the North, who would be the guys coming after them?”

Hiroki looked at me, then narrowed his eyes a little.

“Bzzt-bzzt. Wrong question. You’re terrible at this ‘hypothetical’ stuff. Ask it again, more personal this time.”

No fooling Hiroki Shinji, I guess.

“Fine. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to get caught crossing over to the North, who’d catch me? The Kempeis?

This reformulation seemed to satisfy him.

“Well, hypothetically speaking, if I knew you were going to try to sneak into the North, Nishizawa, I’d call you a massive idiot and tell you that it was a worse idea than breaking up with Miho. But no, it probably wouldn’t be the Redeyes.”

“I didn’t break up with her. She broke up with me.”

“Semantics. The end result is the same. No, it wouldn’t be the Redeyes for someone as unimportant as you. If you tried to climb over the wall, BorPol would be the ones arresting you. Though they have a reputation for shooting first.”

“And if I had another way in? Then it would be the Redeyes?”

Hiroki laughed.

“No, still probably not. You’re too beneath them. The Redeyes only go after people they think are a threat to state security, and even then, they rarely get directly involved. Usually they just follow people around and spring CitPol on people they think are a threat.”

“CitPol?”

Kanamaru had mentioned bribing them if we got in trouble.

“Citizen’s Police. Basically the same as the street cops we got here, though the ones up North have a reputation for thuggery on a whole new level. The Americans and Brits who go over there frequently get fleeced for phony parking tickets and the like. Redeyes prefer using them to getting their own hands dirty.”

“So they have 3 different police forces running the same city?”

“That’s the Soviet system for you. Only thing is that the Redeyes aren’t really a police force in the regular sense. Their name is officially the ‘Military Police for State Security’ but they’re really not affiliated with the police or the military of the North. It’s more like the ROJIS, or maybe the CIA in America. They just have more power over internal matters.”

“Why do they call them the Redeyes?”

I got calling them Kempeis because it’s in the name, but I was never clear why they had an English nickname too.

“I think the Americans came up with it. I don’t really know myself. Some people say it’s because it’s a commie intelligence agency - as in, red eyes- but other people say it’s because they kidnap people outside the country and put them on late-night redeye flights to bring them to the North. Others say it’s because they love grinding peppers into people’s eyes when they interrogate them.”

That was a pleasant thought.

“Nah, I don’t think the Redeyes would even care if someone like you snuck in unless they thought you were a spy. You’d have a much tougher time with CitPol.”

“Kanamaru thinks they can be bribed.”

“Well, they are notoriously corrupt, so you might get away with something minor if- hey, wait, Kanamaru? I thought this was about visiting your little comrade.”

I told him about the TV-tuner scheme. No use in hiding it now; he had already seen through my hypothetical excuse.

“Man, I have just lost a lot of respect for you. Sneaking over the wall to meet your lover is one thing, but you’re doing this for money? You could make that much in a month at a family restaurant if you picked up a lot of shifts. Nobody at The Morning Cafe is going to be jabbing a bayonet in your face.”

No arguing with that. The sound of distant thunder rattled the roof again. No, it wasn’t thunder- the jets were back again, followed by two more from the west. The two following were a gray-gold in the fading light, and they were pursuing close behind the narrower, brown-green pencil shaped ones.

“American F-16s, out of Yokota. They must be intercepting.”

Hiroki’s encyclopedic knowledge was shining through again. The two American fighters were chasing the JPAF planes at a higher altitude, twisting and turning as they stayed locked onto the tail of the two fighters they had just sent running.

“Are they dogfighting?” I asked. It sure looked like they were.

“Nah. The new American missiles could hit them as far away as Fukushima. They’d have shot by now if they were going to. This is just like cats play-fighting each other. They poked us, so we poke back.”

The fighters broke off their pursuit as the Northern jets turned north. They made a low circle and roared back overhead to the west. Crisis averted. We stood there, wordlessly watching as they slipped into the evening haze again.

“Nishizawa.”

Hiroki turned to me.

“I don’t think I should have to say this, but…”

Here it comes.

“Don’t do it. Whatever you’re planning to do. Nobody’s going to start a war for you if your butt gets thrown in the gulag.”

Miho was right, again. Hiroki had just told me the same thing she did... in a nerdier way.