SAYU

Miho had seen through it all, after all.

It was 6th period. Mr. Matsui was rambling on about the Turkish Bomber Crisis of 1953. It was an unusually boring lecture for him to give. Perfect for a Monday afternoon, though. Sunday had passed without incident- I had helped Ayasa move what few belongings she still carried over to Hiroki’s place and then went home to study. I had managed to dodge my father’s lecture on using free time to study- he was at work for a not-too-unusual bout of overtime- but my mom caught me on the way out the door.

My suspicions had been correct. There was a conspicuous absence in the 3rd floor window across the wall. Occasionally, a student clad in the dull-green sailor suits worn by the Northern students would cross in front of the window to collect papers or answer something at the board, but the desk where she usually sat was empty. Ayasa and that girl were one and the same.

I had also been spared the awkward encounter with Kanamaru and his goons. The 4th years were absent today. Maybe he was already cooking up his next get-rich-quick scheme. I really hoped that if he was, he’d shove the memory of lending me money somewhere in the back of his mind.

The pages that Miho had given me were thick enough to fill a binder. Their purpose was clear from the ominous title printed in official-looking font on the first page:

PENALTY SCHEDULE FOR UNLAWFUL ENTRY OF REPUBLIC OF JAPAN

Yikes. The legal punishments for illegal immigration were very steep, and almost all circumstances involved deportation. It would be functionally the same for Ayasa to get caught in the South and deported as it would be for her to try to walk back across to the North. However, the size of the stack of paper indicated that there was more to the story. Miho hadn’t given up looking, after all. I turned over the thin sheet to the next page. It was printed in a still-official but slightly less imposing font:

PROCEDURES FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS ENTERING R.O.J.

This packet was much longer. The instructions detailed a byzantine procedure in which a refugee would have to declare their intentions to seek asylum to a customs officer upon arrival, then go through a complicated series of declarations to have their case heard before a high minister. The process sounded arduous, and we had already blown the first step.

So then, was that it? Ayasa would have to keep her head down for the rest of her life? No, it was too early to give up. Miho wouldn’t have handed me this stack of papers if it was hopeless. There had to be something else in here. What about citizenship marriages? Maybe someone could apply for permanent residency in-country if they were married to a citizen?

“Nishizawa.”

It was Mr. Matsui.

“Huh?”

Mr. Matsui was waiting for something.

“Your answer?”

Crap, had he asked me a question?

“Uh…1954?”

Mr. Matsui sighed, almost as if he had expected this to happen. Had I broken some kind of unspoken rule?

“That had better not be a comic you’re reading. I asked you, ‘what was the primary consequence of the Cairo Memorandum towards the political situation in Japan?’”

Crap. Crap. Crap. I hadn’t been paying attention to the lecture at all.

“Um… the Partition agreement?”

Mr. Matsui’s eyes flickered with something- I wasn’t sure if it was surprise or irritation.

“Close. Remember, the first version of the Partition Agreement was signed in 1947, so it had been going on for about 6 years at this point. The Cairo Memorandum formalized a revised Partition Agreement, where the modern Republic of Japan and Japanese People’s Republic were allowed to gain formal recognition internationally.”

Ah, that did ring a bell. Mr. Matsui continued.

“Now, Nishizawa, let’s see if you can get this one right. If other nations recognize the two states, why don’t the ROJ and JPR recognize each other?”

“Uh… is it because they’re commies?”

That sounded like a dumb answer because it was. It was all I had. Mr. Matsui’s face contorted. It looked like he was trying to hold back laughter, but he continued with a slightly patronizing tinge to his voice.

“Well yes, that’s fundamentally why the ROJ and JPR do not get along. However, pragmatism almost always trumps ideology in international relations. It would have been likely that the two states would have recognized each other in 1955 if it weren’t for the free-border dispute.”

“Ah.”

Mr. Matsui went back into lecture mode.

“The free-border dispute specifically refers to the status of citizens of Japan. The ROJ wanted an open land border and free settlement of all Japanese people in the North or South according to preference in a kind of dual-citizenship arrangement. The North refused to grant this concession. Next time, do the assigned readings properly.”

Did anyone in this class do the reading properly? I was in the slackers section, why single me out?

Wait. There was something interesting there.

“Sensei!”

Mr Matsui turned around, shocked that someone was asking a question in his class.

“Oh, something more to say, Nishizawa?”

“Does the Republic still consider everyone in Japan to have dual-citizenship?

Mr. Matsui scratched his head. He didn’t so much seem confused by the question as much as why the question had been asked.

“No.”

Damn, so there wasn’t-

“No, the ROJ doesn’t recognize the North as a legitimate country. It considers everyone in the North to be a citizen- albeit citizens living outside the legal authority of the government. It’s a complicated legal fiction that gets amended every time North-South Relations change. Good question, Nishizawa. That’s relevant to the next topic, which is the fallout from the Cairo Memorandum and the negotiations over-”

I tuned Mr. Matsui out as soon as he went back into lecture mode. That was the answer I was looking for. Ayasa didn’t need to apply for asylum- she was already a citizen. There had to be something in this packet covering her situation.

There was something- barely there, but it was impossible to mistake. Underneath a sub-bullet on the “Criteria for Asylum” sheet, there was a footnote pointing to something written in tiny font near the bottom of the sheet:

*Eligibility for residents of the Northern Provinces of Japan

The Republic of Japan considers all native-born residents with any ancestor living in the Japanese Archipelago or Outlying Territories in the year 1945 to be a full citizen of the Republic of Japan. For Citizens residing in the Northern Provinces of Japan (colloquially referred to as “JPR”), Identity documents are granted on an unlimited basis to any resident capable of claiming them from either domestic civil bureaus (See Annex 18.B for list) or from consulates in countries with formal diplomatic recognition of the Republic (See Annex 10.A for list). Please note that possession of ROJ Identity documents within the Northern Provinces or countries that do not recognize the ROJ may be treated as a criminal action and subject to civil or legal penalties. Please see supplemental document “Instructions for Northern Province Residents” for more details.

It was convoluted and used some extremely…diplomatic terminology, but the message was clear. Ayasa could stay, and it shouldn’t even be all that hard. I flipped through the packet to see if the document the footnote had mentioned was there.

It was. Miho had really done her research. The steps were much more straightforward. All Ayasa would have to do would be to show up at a civil office, prove she was a Northerner, fill out a form- and she would get a Passport. That was it. My eyes were drawn to a relevant-looking bullet that had been hastily added to the margins:

NOTICE TO NORTHERN PROVINCE RESIDENTS APPLYING FOR ROJ ID DOCUMENTS:

Due to recent events, it is recommended that real names or information that could be used to identify residents of the Northern Provinces should not be used. The ROJ has, on its authority, suspended ID requirements for residents of the Northern Provinces entering the ROJ by non-standard means. It is further recommended that residents applying for ROJ ID Documents use new, non-identifying legal names for all public and private transactions. The amended document A1044-B contains a space for an alternate legal name for those applicants who wish to follow this recommendation.

Form A1044-B was stapled to the back of the sheet. It was a typical government document with tight margins and numerous blanks. A self-identification in the format of a form letter- Name, date of birth, place of birth, slots for various tax and social security numbers- and just as the bullet mentioned, a slot for a new legal name.

The characters filled the empty box in my mind. It was all right, wasn’t it? If Ayasa couldn’t be Ayasa- shouldn’t be Ayasa- then any other reasonable name would work just as well, right? Ayasa would do just as well with any other name- even one that was a little flashy.

I really should have read those documents a little closer. I had been so enthralled by the possibilities in that little box that I hadn’t stopped to think about why it was there.