Choose your Song

Ayasa wasn’t singing.

I didn’t know the lyrics well enough to this one, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t sing to it either. Not when her face looked like that. Whatever she had concealed earlier, whatever brave face she had put on- that was all slipping away.

“Why?”

She didn’t elaborate further, but I knew what she was asking. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was the same question she had asked me last night.

Why did you take me here?

Why is this happening to me?

Why didn’t you let go?

In the moment, I had mumbled out a list of excuses. They were going to catch us. We’d both be in trouble. I hadn’t done it intentionally. All of those were true, at least to some degree. They were also false. The CitPols had lost track of us after we went underground- nobody was following us. If we got caught, Ayasa would probably get off without any major consequences. She hadn’t done anything wrong aside from attending an illegal meeting, a pretty minor crime even in the North. I’d be the one in real trouble.

The last one was an almost-complete lie, though. I had made the choice to take her hand and drag her away from everything.

I didn’t have an answer to the question. Not one that I could admit to, anyway.

“Higashiyama…”

She was crying now. This was new- before, she had seemed almost too composed, like this she was expecting to wake up from a bad dream. Now that dam had burst. A few sparse tears were rolling down her face. Even now, she was desperately trying to keep things together.

Think, Touma. This was your fault to begin with. You have the responsibility to fix this.

“I’ll find a way to get you back.”

Another check my mouth had written. Another one Ayasa wouldn’t be able to cash.

“Back!? I can’t go back!”

“I’ll find a different route. One that isn’t being monitored.”

Kanamaru might have a different way into the North. He’d found this one, after all.

“That won’t work!”

The tension in her voice was increasing.

“I know they must exist. We can get you back without anybody knowing.”

That was all false confidence. I hoped it wasn’t showing on my face. In truth, I had no idea. Maybe Kanamaru really had gotten lucky and found a route North by pure chance. If so, how long would it take to find another one? Days? Weeks? Years?

“No, you don’t get it!”

I did get it. I just wasn’t ready to admit to it.

“Get what?”

“You don’t understand how it is in the North.”

“How is it in the North?”

Ayasa wasn’t able to keep herself calm any longer. Her hands slammed the table. Rage and sorrow battled for control. Her voice wavered frantically from spitting venom to helpless resignation.

“Do you know what happens to people who run away? They NEVER come back. They disappear.”

So the punishment for successful escape was death. Death, or a fate worse than it.

“I can’t just show up there like nothing happened. They will find out. They find out everything.”

“‘They’? Who is ‘they’?”

“Everyone. Nobody.”

I didn’t get it at all.

“The police?”

“Yes. Eventually. But not just them.”

There was something worse than that?

“Can you just…pretend you got lost?”

“They’d find out I was lying. They find out everything.”

The song ended. The booth was silent, except for the faint sniffling coming from Ayasa’s sobbing. The karaoke machine queued up another song from the recent hits. I didn’t have the heart to bother with stopping it.

We heard about it all the time in school. The commies- the real people in power, at least- kept tabs on everyone. I had dismissed it as an exaggeration, as propaganda- the same kind that made Northerners both hyper-industrious machines ready to surpass us at any moment and worthless do-nothings that couldn’t do anything for themselves. Surely, nobody could really keep tabs on every little detail of every person’s life. How many people would it take, watching each other like hawks, every waking moment of the day?

Ayasa was saying it was all true. That they really did know everything. If that was the case, then she was right. There wouldn’t be any way to explain a disappearance of more than a few hours, even if I got her back tonight. They would know, and Ayasa would disappear- or be made to disappear.

“Then, stay here.”

Huh? Where was this coming from? I knew full well it wasn’t as simple as that. Some unknown part of me was speaking when it had no right to.

“How?”

Good question. It wasn’t as simple as that. Ayasa didn’t have anything on this side of the wall except a few bags of clothes. A few bags of clothes- and me.

“I’ll figure something out. My friend Hiroki can get you a place to sleep. We can get you a part-time job. You can live here.”

What was this newfound confidence? It couldn’t really be as simple as I was saying. There were laws about this kind of thing. It would be easier to find a way to bring her back to the North than find her a place in the South.

But, if the North wasn’t an option, this was the only choice, wasn’t it?

“You want me to live here?”

Ayasa was taken aback by this declaration. It had overwhelmed both of the beleaguered emotions that had been battling to the death within her. Her face was still wet with occasional tears, but whatever fear and anger had been on there had been replaced with confusion.

“Why not? You can become a real Wezziegen.”

I hoped I was using that word right.

“What about school?”

She was seriously considering it. I knew it wasn’t as easy as I had been making it sound, and she probably did too. But who cared about practicality, or the little stuff? This was what Ayasa needed right now. Some kind of certainty that she wouldn’t just disappear.

“Skip it. It’s not mandatory.”

Junior high was the highest level of mandatory education, at least in the South.

“Where will I stay?”

It wasn’t going to be with me or Miho, not long term.

“My friend Hiroki watches an apartment complex that his mother runs. He probably has a spare room that you can use for a while. Once you get a steady part-time job, you can rent it.”

A part time job would be barely enough to cover rent and utilities. She might have to rely on side gigs to make ends meet. Still, it would be possible. Rent in Tokyo was surprisingly cheap. Maybe if Hiroki’s mother knew about her situation, she’d give Ayasa a discount on rent out of pity.

“Do you think it’s that simple?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Plenty of people here drop out.”

High-school dropouts usually didn’t make it that far, but that was usually because they didn’t have the effort within themselves to follow through or because they were being held back by circumstances outside their control. Ayasa wasn’t really bound in that way, and she didn’t seem like the kind of person who couldn’t keep up with high-school level work.

“Booth number four: five minutes remaining.”

The loudspeaker cracked through an automated message, warning us that our time was almost up. We hadn’t sung anything.

“Do you want to pick the last song?”

I handed Ayasa the touchpad. She stared at me in disbelief.

“Is now really the time?”

“We’ve got five minutes left. Is there a better time?”

Ayasa scrolled through the menus. She had gotten better at this from watching me do it.

“I always liked this one.”

It was the theme song to an old 90s anime. I couldn’t figure out how she would have known about it.

Ah, well. There was time to figure that out. Ayasa, for better or for worse, was here to stay.