Crossing

Miho had told me not to do it. Hiroki had told me not to do it. A part of my own brain had told me not to do it. Yet, here I was.

The war memorial park in Chuo was surprisingly deserted as the last vestiges of Friday afternoon slipped into darkness. A few drunk office workers were draped around the benches near the edge of the park, early casualties from a night of partying at the hostess clubs in Ginza. Hardly anyone went any deeper than that. The memorial was for American soldiers, after all. Anyone coming to seriously pay their respects wouldn’t be here this late.

Kanamaru and his lackeys showed up about 5 minutes late. Ootake and Hosoya were wearing worn-out trenchcoats and carrying heavy-looking cardboard boxes. Kanamaru was wearing an ugly old denim jacket and carried another one over his shoulder. He had a roll of duct tape in his hand.

“Hey, look at this! Freshie made it after all.” Hosoya dropped his box on an empty bench.

Kanamaru snapped back.

“Told you he would. Aren’t you glad I got the extras now?”

“Should've made him carry the stuff from Akiba, too. How come he gets special treatment?” Ootake dropped his box next to the one Hosoya had just violently laid on the bench.

“That’s why he’s only getting ten percent. Quit whining and start getting these taped up.”

Kanamaru threw the denim jacket around his shoulder towards me. It looked like the kind of thing that had been out of fashion for longer than I had been alive.

“Freshman, I thought I told you to dress shabby-like. What’s with the getup?”

I didn’t remember him telling me anything like that. Still, I had come out in track sweatpants and an old t-shirt I had once won as 3rd prize at a carnival booth a few summers ago. It was comically oversized for me then and miraculously seemed to still be a little too big. I figured that I would need to be inconspicuous.

“I thought this was shabby.”

“No, freshman, that’s just slobby. You know how much branded tracksuits go for in the North? When I said ‘shabby,’ I meant you should dress like your grandpa. If you go like that you’re going to attract unwanted attention.”

I put aside the fact that Kanamaru had never actually said anything about how I should have dressed. He was in that same all-business, no-nonsense mode he had gotten into when explaining his plan a few days ago. It didn’t seem wise to break the stride of someone who looked like he knew what he was doing.

“Should I go home and change? I think I have some old jeans that-”

“Stop. I’m guessing none of your clothes are tacky or outmoded enough to pass as Northern. At least with the tracksuit you can blend in as some kind of high-roller.”

This counted as a high-roller’s outfit in the North? This minimum-effort outfit? One that would have gotten me laughed at in public if I wore it to any occasion more social than a late night convenience store run? The North must have been stranger than I expected.

“Put that jacket on and start taping up the tuners to the inside. Everything needs to be above your waist. Don’t let anything visibly show. If you ruin any of my working capital, It’s coming out of your cut.”

Kanamaru was evidently resigned to accept my fashion sense. He threw the roll of duct tape at me. I wasn’t fast enough to catch it. Hosoya and Ootake were busy taping the little tuner modules to the inside of their jackets, but not so busy that they weren’t able to look up and laugh at me as I chased the roll of tape a few meters before it tipped over. Very funny.

I started taking tuner modules out of Ootake’s cardboard box, which was slightly more full looking than the one Hosoya had dropped on the bench. They could easily be bunched up in rows of five to fit under the jacket. There must have been hundreds of them in the box. Kanamaru was now also hard at work taping them to the inside of his jacket. Hosoya was done and standing lookout.

“Ok, are we all good? Nothing below the waist?” Kanamaru asked when it looked like all of us were done. Ootake was still tying the last tuners in his box into a bundle, but other than that we had finished. It felt dirty, like I was wearing some kind of suicide-bomber vest.

“Primo. Alright, Freshie. Listen up.” Kanamaru put his hands on my shoulder.

“This is gonna go really quickly. We’ll be back before midnight, but only if you listen to me and do everything I say. And I mean everything. Any screwups could get us all in big trouble.”

He pulled out a few bills from the outside pocket of his jacket. It was 40,000 yen in total - the bribe fee he was covering for me.

“Divide this in two parts and put it in different pockets. If we get stopped by CitPol, you let me do the talking. Don’t let them know you’re from the South or they’re gonna expect a lot more than a 20,000 yen bribe. In fact, don’t even talk. Pretend you’re a deaf-mute or something like that.”

“What if we get split up? What do I do then?”

I couldn’t help but ask the question. I had no idea how complicated the route would be.

“If you get split up from us, freshie, you have already screwed up. Dump the jacket somewhere and use your instincts. I am not going after your ass if you decide to wander off and explore the wonders of communism.”

Hiroki’s words echoed in my head. Nobody was starting a war if I got captured in the North. Kanamaru wouldn’t even risk his own skin if I got lost up there for a few minutes. He was itching to go there, get paid, and be done with it.

“Ok, everyone. Follow me and don’t act suspicious.”

Ootake and Hosoya followed Kanamaru nonchalantly as he walked out of the park. Surprisingly, he wasn’t headed towards the Wall. He was heading further into the bright lights of the city. We followed him for about 10 minutes to a subway station. He rented a small locker and circled us around.

“Leave the phones here. Any other electronics, too. They’ve got sniffers that can track cell signals. Plus, it’s a dead giveaway that you’re a Southerner if a CitPol finds it on you.”

We did as he said, and Kanamaru shut the locker, tossing the key in his pocket. Kanamaru turned to lead on, but stopped in his tracks. He looked at me, almost like he was regretting this before it had even happened.

“If we do get split up on the way back, somehow, and you manage to find your way back here by yourself, meet us here. We’ll divvy up the final cuts here. I’ll wait until the last train.”

With that, he spun around and led us out of the station. Now we were walking to the west, towards old Fukugawa. The wall didn’t bisect this area nicely- it zig-zagged along random old roads as it headed out to the sea. There was a small portion of the district that was still technically in the south, although its proximity to the wall and isolation from the western half of the city had left it all but abandoned. A few old buildings were lit up with the stragglers who had refused to leave for greener pastures.

We came to a large industrial plant of some kind. It looked like a grain-processing plant, but it clearly hadn’t been used in decades, maybe even since the 60s. The lot was overgrown with weeds and blocked off by a rusty chain-link fence. Kanamaru searched across the fence and climbed through a small hole. Ootake and Hosoya followed him through. How the hell were they so calm about this? The jacket Kanamaru had given me was too hot for the late-spring weather. Even if I hadn’t been nervous, I still would have been sweating.

As if thermally sensing my distress, Ootake signaled me over to warn me.

“This route is a secret, freshman. Don’t tell anyone. Only Jun’s allowed to vet people to know.”

Great. That wasn’t why I was nervous, Ootake. This route was only valuable to those three, anyway. Nobody else I could think of would actually want a way into the North.

Kanamaru was already across the yard and headed down a concrete stairwell into what looked to be the basement of the plant. We followed him through. The basement was lined with old equipment that had been rusted into disfigurement- if it had ever done anything, it wasn’t doing that now or ever again. We came to a crack in the concrete wall. Kanamaru vaulted it and beckoned Hosoya through. I struggled over it. Ootake laughed but Kanamaru shushed him quickly.

We were in some kind of storm drain, now. Kanamaru plunged into a dark pipe. It was big, but not big enough to stand up all the way in. It reminded me a bit of that game with the plumber who stomps on mushrooms. You know the one. We followed the pipe down an incline for about another minute.

“Stop here. Need to check if it’s clear.” Kanamaru spoke for the first time since we left the station. He peered out the opening of the pipe.

The Pipe opened into a small gully. On the other side of this gully, the Wall stood in complete darkness. There was a lit-up guard tower a few hundred meters to the left, but this area didn’t have a trace of spotlights or patrolling guards. Maybe Kanamaru had been right and this wall really was just for show. There was a guard in the far-away tower, but he was laid back in a chair and barely visible. Was he sleeping?

“Coast is clear. We go over…there. One at a time.” Kanamaru searched and pointed to another drain pipe, hidden in some weeds just under the wall. He went first. He dashed across the open gully and into the second pipe.

I was next. I tried to copy what he did as closely as I could. A quick glance around to confirm that there weren’t any guards on the wall. Nope, just the one sleeping in the guard tower to the north. I lunged out across the gully, sliding into the second pipe like I was a shortstop stealing a base.

“Hey, don’t overdo it, Freshie. You could damage the product.” Kanamaru rebuked me almost playfully. It was an odd break from his serious business persona. Ootake and Hosoya scuttled over. They were a lot less dramatic about running into the pipe.

“Welcome to the North. Next time, listen to what I say and go ONE. AT. A. TIME.”

Kanamaru smacked Ootake over the head in time with his rebuke. For people who had done this before, Ootake and Hosoya had been pretty cavalier about following Kanamaru’s instructions.

We crawled up the storm drain pipe. This one was smaller than the one on the Southern end, so we had to crawl on our knees to make any headway. It was, thankfully, dry.

The next room was not. We came to a breach in the pipe. Hosoya lit up a pocket flashlight. It was a basement corridor, but it had been flooded up to waist high. A noxious scent like rotting seaweed mixed with machine oil wafted up through the breach.

“One at a time, and I mean it this time. Walk slowly. Don’t let any of the product get wet.” Kanamaru lowered himself through the breach and began to slosh through the knee-deep water. The stench was overpowering.

It seemed like an eternity, but we were able to wade through the corridor and up a concrete stairwell on the other side. Kanamaru peeked up and then gave us the sign that It was all clear. Hosoya darkened his flashlight before stepping out. We were in the middle of a large industrial plant. This one was newer than the one we had entered on the other side of the wall.

Kanamaru, Hosoya, and Ootake- none of them seemed to feel the same impact that I did. Maybe it would wear off with time.