The Girl on This Side

It was rushing back to me now. The adrenaline was wearing off. I could feel the weight of it all crashing down on me. Crossing the border illegally. Trying to sell illegal contraband. Running from the police- even if they were Northern police. Getting shot at. Nearly getting shot.

For all that, what had happened to me? I didn’t get caught. I didn’t lose any money on the TV tuners- that was all Kanamaru’s investment. I didn’t get rounded up in the police sweep. Most importantly, the bullet hadn’t hit me. I wasn’t in a jail cell or a gulag, like Hiroki had warned me about. I hadn’t even needed to bribe an officer to let me go. Wait, Kanamaru had spotted me some bribe money. I felt around in my jacket. Sure enough, the bills were still there- soaked in the stench of decay, but still tradable. I hadn’t just broken even- I had come out ahead to the tune of 40,000 yen (plus an old disk worth maybe an insignificant amount more).

The same couldn’t be said for the girl who had followed me out.

“Um… are you okay?”

She didn’t look okay. There was none of that usual confidence in her pose that I saw in class, nor the cool aloofness that she had shown in the club. She was shivering - maybe because she was afraid, or maybe it was just the fact that she was just as soaked and probably just as awful-smelling as I was.

“No.”

I didn’t have a reply to that. I wasn’t expecting her to just say it.

“Why did you take me here?”

What? She was holding on and following me. I didn’t tell her where I was going.

“I was running away. This was the only safe place I knew.”

“So you dragged me along?”

“I didn’t drag you-”

The memory of that sensation came back. I had blanked it out to focus on getting away as fast as possible, but she wasn’t wrong. At some point in the moments between Kanamaru finding me and the lights going out, the position of our hands had reversed. I had grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her- out through the door, into the street, through the flooded cellar, and across the death strip.

I don’t remember when I had let go, but for her, at least, it was far too late.

“I mean, we had to get out of there-”

Trying to justify it now wasn’t any use. It had been an unconscious action, maybe a product of my latent hero-phase taking over. The damage was done.

“Ichiro, why didn’t you tell me-”

“Oh…uh…that’s not actually my name.”

No use hiding it now. The jig was up.

“I know.”

I wasn’t expecting that, but it was pretty clear what was going on. Nobody waits that long to give their name unless they’re trying to tell a lie. She had seen right through me.

“How?”

“I thought you might have been one of those wezigin kids.”

There was that word again.

“A what?”

“You know. The kids who know where to get stuff from the South. The ones that talk like they’re some Southern celeb.”

It made sense. My accent would have been as unmistakable to her as her Northern accent was to me. The trackpants I was wearing were considered a luxury item up North, at least according to Kanamaru. I had assumed she had seen me as some kind of gang member, but if Vessiegen was some kind of wannabe-Southerner superstar- and if you categorically rejected the idea that an actual Southerner would want to hang out in the North- then yeah, I probably fit the bill.

“I didn’t think you’d turn out to be a real Southerner.”

Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right. That also explained why she kept following me. She must have assumed that I was some kind of hipster kid who knew a really good hiding spot.

“Well, uh… welcome to the South.”

Great. Now what? Going back the way we came was certain death. If we waited a few days, would that route even be open? It was compromised now- if not by the girl’s hand, then by the guard who had shot at us. Wait, had she been shot? She was holding her hand over her leg as if in pain.

“Sa- did you get hit?”

“Hit…? Oh, the bullet? No. I think I may have bruised my thigh.”
Of course. There had only been one shot, and that had gone into the dirt. There was something strange about the way she said it so casually, like getting shot at was a daily occurrence for her. She didn’t even react to the near Freudian slip I had just made in calling her “Sayu.” That was my name for her, but it wasn’t her name.

Wait, what was her name? I hadn’t even thought of asking.

“Uh, sorry…I didn’t get your name, Miss…”

She didn’t answer immediately.

“Higashiyama. Ayasa Higashiyama.”

Right, of course it wouldn’t be anything like Sayu Midorikawa. That was a fantasy name for a fantasy person that looked the same as her. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I had been hoping that it was also her name- that we had some deep, psychic connection. That was stupid.

“Are you going to tell me yours?”

Oh, right. She had already realized I was faking it.

“Touma. Touma Nishizawa.”

I mimicked her formulation.

“So what now, Touma?”

That caught me off guard. She was already on a first name basis with the persona I had cobbled up in a few seconds earlier, but it was still unnerving to hear her using my first name like this. Miho was the only other girl I knew who called me by my name, and she had taken a few months after we were already dating to start. A lot of people said Northerners were very up-front about this sort of thing, but Ayasa was the first Northerner I had ever spoken to directly.

“What now?”

“I can’t go back.”

Our situations were similar, yes- we were both tired, cold, and wet with a filth that would be difficult to describe to anyone who hadn’t been in that sunken tunnel. There was one key difference, though. I could go home and wash myself off. I’d probably have to sit through a lecture from my mom- or if I was really unlucky, my father- but there’d be a hot shower and time to think at the end of that ordeal.

She couldn’t. There wasn’t any way for her to go home that didn’t involve trying to run back through bullets. She probably wouldn’t be able to go back through a real border checkpoint without raising some eyebrows. Swimming it to Chiba was probably out of the question, even with the water this warm. And what would be waiting for her? They awarded unsuccessful escape attempts with bullets. Who knew what they did to people who had successfully escaped?

“I don’t…”

Know any way to get you back? Know how to fix this? Have a single clue what to do? Think, Touma. What does she need right now? The same thing you do. A hot shower and time to think.

“Do you, uh, need a place to crash?”

“I’m already a wreck.”

Evidently that idiom didn’t scan in the North.

“I mean, do you need somewhere to stay for the night?”

What are you doing, Touma? I might be able to explain away staying out late on a Friday night, but bringing a girl home- a Northern girl, at that- would be a death sentence. I was writing her a check I couldn’t cash.

“Yes.”

If nothing else, she was still refreshingly blunt. I was hoping she might have demurred so that I would have enough time to think of an actual solution to this problem. Just accepting outright like that gave me no room to maneuver.

Hiroki might have a room, though. The complex his mother managed usually had a few rooms spare, and he probably had a spare futon. It would be spartan, but better than sleeping on the street- or risking incurring the wrath of my parents.

“Let me make a call. I think I can get you a place to stay, at least for the night. We can-”

Talk about what to do in the morning is what I had wanted to say, but what else could I do? For whatever trouble I was in for staying out late, she would be ten times- maybe a hundred times deeper in trouble.

“-We can think about what to do later.”

Ayasa nodded in assent. She must have been overwhelmed too. I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone. It wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t there. Kanamaru had made us surrender them into a locker at the train station.

“Uh, I have to go pick up my phone. Can you walk?”

“I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine.

“Okay, well- just follow behind me and... try not to get lost.”

You big hypocrite, Touma. You’ve been lost this entire night.

We trudged through the deserted streets of Fukugawa. We weren’t soaking wet any more, but we were still uncomfortably damp. Ayasa probably had the worst of it- the light blouse and thin skirt she was wearing was probably cooling her a lot faster than the heavy denim jacket and track pants which held onto the moisture better and had warmed up with my body heat. She was shivering. I was just shuddering.

“You look cold.” I said, handing her my jacket.

“That’s disgusting.”

It was disgusting, yes. But that could be said for all of our clothes. Still, she seemed to prefer shivering in her own filthy clothes rather than being exposed to any of mine. I draped the jacket around my shoulder. It wasn’t cold out- actually, it was pretty warm, but the breeze from the bay made the soaking t-shirt I was wearing feel much colder. Now we were both shivering.

Nearer to the train station, the streets began to fill again. There weren’t as many people as before - it was probably after midnight by now- but the same trickle of drunken salarymen and off-duty soldiers was still leaking out from the direction of Ginza. Nobody seemed to notice the two teenagers who looked like they had fallen into the sewer.

The locker was already open when we got to the station- Kanamaru and his cronies had already been here. Thankfully, my phone was still in there, hidden in the shade. I pulled it out and turned it on. 32% battery remaining- enough for the night.

“What’s that?”

Ayasa had been quiet for a while, but something had caught her attention.

“This? My phone?”

“That’s a phone?

“You’re acting like you’ve never seen a smartphone before.”

“I haven’t.”

Oh, right. Northerners wouldn’t have smartphones. Ayasa had been expecting me to walk over to the row of old payphones on the opposite wall, not pull out a tiny little computer-box and hold it up to my ear. She stared at the device.

“Uh, I’ll…show it to you in a bit. Let me make the call first.”

Needed to delete some of the weird photos I had taken with Miho. I hadn’t upgraded since the first year of middle school. I didn’t want her to think I already had a-

Really, Touma? Is that what you’re worried about right now?

I scrolled through the contacts window to find the number I was looking for. Ayasa was watching intently, fascinated by the little animations the phone made as it scrolled down the list. She really hadn’t ever seen a smartphone before. I found Hiroki’s number- if he was still up, he’d have the key to a spare room.

Strangely, though, I didn’t call him. I scrolled a bit further down.