Questions, Answers

The nurse’s office at the school hadn’t been left locked, and that was better than sleeping behind the dumpster, even if we had to take turns awake in case the night watchman decided to stop in. We spent Sunday scrounging for something to eat. The North wasn’t big on stores, and especially not convenience stores. Not that one would have helped - we didn’t have any Northern money. I cursed Kanamaru for not grabbing a stack of that worthless stuff when his deal fell through. We had stumbled into the only situation where it would have been useful.

On Monday, we left the school in the early hours of the morning. It would raise too much suspicion if we were the first ones there. Hiroki insisted on making a long loop a few city blocks out to delay our entrance to the same time as the other students. We got lost in a tangle of alleyways and arrived late. It may have saved us.

The balding teacher - Comrade-Sensei Tsuda, if Ayasa had his name correct - intercepted us as we crossed into the courtyard. At first, it seemed like he was about to scold us for being late. His fear-stricken face said it was something much worse, though.

“You two! Can you sing?”

“Sing?”

Hiroki was just as stunned as I was.

“Like, an opera?”

I had to be careful not to mention anything too Southern.

“Yes! It doesn’t matter! Just get in line and follow my lead!”

“Line?”

As it turned out, there was a line. Two rows of students stood in parade-like formation in the school’s concrete courtyard. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they looked like they were all in different classes. The shorter students- they were all fairly short- stood in front, and the few taller students stood in back. One in the back held a trumpet with a badly-faded coat of varnish. Another held a short flagpole with a featureless red flag hanging limp. Tsuda shooed us into joining the back of the row and scurried up front, pulling out a fountain pen.

“Alright. The Union, on my mark. Wait for my signal.”

The students looked around, confused. Good, they were just as clueless as we were. There came a rumbling from the front gate- the sound of diesel motors. Two lumbering armored cars screeched into the lot, followed by what must have been dozens of large trucks. Soviet soldiers wearing blue berets began to unload.

“VDV. Paratroopers.”

Hiroki whispered his identification to me. It didn’t help. What was going on now? Had we been busted this quickly?

At the tail of this column came a pair of black cars. They were fancy European ones, not unlike the one that had been stalking Ayasa. These were clearly older models, though- they looked like they had driven straight out of the 80s.

The cars screeched up to our little formation. Tsuda gave the signal, and the trumpet screeched away a few notes. Wait, I recognized this song. This was the Soviet anthem- the one that got played at the Olympics. I didn’t know the Russian lyrics, but fortunately, it seemed like none of the other students did, either. Tsuda mimicked the motions of a conductor with his pen, but even Leonard Bernstein couldn’t control the cacophony that resulted. It sounded more like circus music than a national anthem.

Two men stepped out of the first car. One was a Russian- and he looked like a high ranking officer. He wore the same blue beret of the others. He must have been 2 meters tall, and he did not greet the terrible noise well. A second man- a Japanese man wearing a khaki trenchcoat and thick horn-rimmed glasses- stepped out beside him.

The music had almost reached a crescendo when the Russian bellowed out “STOP!” in adequate Japanese. All the students fell silent. Tsuda made a formal bow to greet the two men.

“Greetings, Comrades. I am honored by your-”

The officer didn’t wait. He shouted something in Russian and shoved him aside.

“Comrade-Sensei Tsuda.”

The Japanese man moved forward.

“Oh, yes, it is an hon-”

“Inform the students and faculty that the school is being inspected. The colonel and his men need everyone to remain in their classrooms unless otherwise instructed. Please do not interfere with the investigation.”

With an icy glare, the trenchcoat-clad man wheeled around to follow the Russian colonel. Comrade-Sensei Tsuda stood there, mouth agape. The soldiers began to file into the school building. Hiroki leaned to whisper to me.

“Stay calm. I don’t think they’re here for us.”

That wasn’t calming at all. Finally, Tsuda-sensei recovered enough to deal with the students.

“You heard him! Back to your homerooms, and stay there!”

The soldiers were already in class 2-D when I returned. Every student was glued to their desks, watching the man at front. He called names one at a time from a list. Each student meekly answered if their name was called.

“Who you?”

The soldier at front- he looked like an officer of some kind- was pointing at me. He repeated his query in loud and broken Japanese.

“Who you?”

“Uh- Ichiro Shelley!”

“Uhichiro Shelley… Not on list. Who you?”

“No…Ichiro Shelley.”

“Not on list.”

The teacher of class 2-D- a small old woman who I had unfortunately not learned the name of yet- attempted to interject. The officer’s Japanese wasn’t good enough to grasp the nuance of “Transfer Student.”

“List is wrong? Correct it.”

He shoved the attendance clipboard in the teacher’s chest.

“Stand up. Show bags!”

Orders to the class. They were followed immediately. Soldiers went down the rows of desks one by one, emptying out the bags of the students sitting there. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, aside from a few students with wrapped candy lozenges. The soldiers took a few but didn’t raise further objections.

“Where bag?”

It was my turn.

“Uh…no bag.”

“Where bag?”

“I don’t have a bag.”

The officer at the front, seeing this confrontation, moved over. His Japanese was slightly better than that of the common soldier’s, but not by much.

“Why no bag?”

“I’m very poor.”

“You are what?”

Evidently he didn’t know that vocab word.

“I am a beggar. I AM POOR MAN!”

Crap. I had said that last part in English, not Russian. It was over.

The officer started to laugh.

“YOU ARE POOR MAN!”

He said something in Russian, too. Probably repeating what he had just said in English almost as bad as mine. The soldiers laughed. He returned to the front of the classroom.

The soldiers rifled through the other parts of the classroom, but on finding nothing interesting, they left after a few minutes. The rest of the students just waited, still glued to their desks. After a while, a voice came on over the PA system.

“The following student will report to the Headmaster’s office: Shinichi Tanaka.”

Not a name I knew.

A while later, the same voice came on - same message, different name. Again, It was one I didn’t know. It was coming for me. I could feel it. My name - or Ichiro Shelley’s name- was on that list. I had screwed up, massively. I could have-

Another PA call. Another name I didn’t know.

Any time now. I had screwed up most recently, so I was at the bottom of the list. I was a new suspect. The others had been found out much earlier, but they weren’t going to leave something so suspicious unaddressed. What were they going to do? Torture me? They’d find everything out in a few minutes and spend hours doing it just for fun. No, I was-

There was a third call over the PA, and a third name I had never heard.

No, maybe I was in the clear. The Officer thought it was a joke, didn’t he? He bought my story about being poor, right? I didn’t have anything to search, so there was nothing suspicious to be found. Hiroki said as much, right? They probably aren’t here for us-

A fourth call over the PA. Again, nobody I knew.

Right, that was it. They were after something different. I took a deep breath.

A long time passed. Nobody moved from their desks.

Finally, there was one last call over the PA. This had to be it, right? No criminal case has more than five suspects. It’s just not playing fair at that point.

“The following student will report to the Headmaster’s office: Ayasa Okazaki.”

Oh no.

It wasn’t me they were after. They had someone with a much more suspicious history already waiting for the inevitable. I jumped from my desk. Nobody seemed to notice- they weren’t paying attention to me. Most likely, they were in the same purgatory I had been in- waiting for their name to be called.

I raced towards the headmaster’s office- or at least, where I had assumed it would be. Nothing there, that was a cafeteria. Maybe on the third floor?

There it was. Two soldiers stood watch outside. Shit, I had no plan for this. What was I going to do, trust my fists? I wouldn’t last a second. If Ayasa had been found out, there was really nothing I could do.

Suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder. It was the Japanese man in the trenchcoat- the one who had been in the car with the Colonel.

“What are you doing here? Were you called?”

“Uh-I-uh-... Is Ayasa in trouble?”

Why did I ask that? That was stupid, even for me.

“Ayasa…Okazaki? What is your relationship to her?”

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap- I was not ready for an interrogation.

“Ayasa…uh… she showed me around yesterday…”

“Showed you around? You are a transfer student?”

“Y-yes.”

“I see.”

The man stepped up to the top of the stairs.

“What is your name?”

“Ichiro…”

I didn’t want to give him an obviously fake last name. He would see through it. I had a feeling.

“Your family name?”

“...Shelley.”

“...That’s an odd name.”

“It’s very common where I am from.”

There was no choice but to play this straight. I had to believe I was Ichiro Shelley, country hick from the small town of Pizuparu deep in the mountains two hours outside of Sapporo. I wouldn’t survive if I didn’t believe it, deep down.

“I have a few more questions I'd like to ask you, Comrade Shelley. It will only take a minute.”

“Okay…”

“Do you know a person named ‘Toshio Arakawa?’”

“No.”

It was the truth.

“Good. Are you familiar with Disco U.M.I.?”

“What’s that?”

“None of your concern.”

I was apparently acing the interrogation, even if I couldn’t say why.

“Last: Do the words ‘K-1104’ mean anything to you?”

K-1104. That was familiar, but in the moment I had forgotten why.

“Is that a date?”

“No. Very well. Go back to your classroom and wait.”

“That’s it?”

“That is all, unless you have anything you’d like to tell me.”

“Uh…no.”

“Good. Get going.”

The man adjusted his glasses and turned back to the office. Then, he stopped.

“Oh yes. Do be a good friend to Comrade Okazaki, please.”