Revelations

The diesel motors were still rumbling into the distance when Hiroki pulled me into a small room. The Russian colonel had left with such a storm of (presumably) profanity that the whole school was able to hear him.

“Nishizawa? What happened?”

“I screwed up.”

“I meant ‘what happened with Ayasa?’ What did you do?”

“The Japanese man- the one with the colonel. He caught me outside the classroom and asked me some questions.”

Hiroki rubbed his chin furiously. Then, he declared the verdict.

“Not good.”

“I know it’s not good.”

“No- I mean, he was probably with the Redeyes. What did he ask you?”

“My name.”

“Well, that’s normal. Was he suspicious?”

“He thought it was a weird name.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah- what my relationship with Ayasa was.”

“How did he know that?”

“Like I said. I screwed up. I asked him if Ayasa was in trouble.”

Hiroki put his palm to his forehead.

“What? Why would you- no, nevermind. It’s done. What did you answer?”

“Just that she had shown me around the other day.”

“Well, not the worst thing you could have said. What did he say? If he let you go, maybe he didn’t think you were that suspicious- just naive.”

“He asked me to be a “good friend” to Ayasa. No idea if that was supposed to be a threat or a serious request.”

Hiroki tapped himself on the head a few times, struggling to put the pieces together.

“And that was it? Did the Colonel ask anything?”

“No. I wasn’t in the room with them. I just ran into the trenchcoat-man in the hallway.”

“Hmm. Maybe he really did dismiss you as a simpleton.”

Wait, no, there were a few more things. I couldn’t ignore anything.

“Oh, he did ask some more things. He asked if I knew some guy named ‘Toshio Arakawa.”

“And what did you say?”

“I didn’t know him.”

“How could you not know him?”

This was news to me. Was he famous?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Toshio Arakawa’s one of the guys they’re gonna execute for espionage. It was all over the news these past two weeks. Were you not paying any attention?”

I really wasn’t. I had better things to worry about.

“I was a little busy. He also asked me something about a Disco, and then something about… K-1104, was it?”

Wait. I did know those numbers. That was what was printed on that weird Soviet optical disk that Hiroki was now carrying around.

“...this disk?”

Hiroki pulled the translucent case from under his uniform. Sure enough- K-1104.

“Yeah…what the hell is that thing?”

“Want to find out?”

“How?”

“I looked around last night. The computer lab has a Zvesdisk player. Figures the North would have old Soviet electronics everywhere.”

“Where’s the computer lab?”

“You’re standing in it.”

Huh? This looked more like a janitorial closet. But no, Hiroki was right. The tiny room he had pulled me into had a desk with a single computer on it. It was an ancient machine built from beige-faded plastic and cathode ray tubes- it was like a machine from the early 90s. Hiroki attempted to boot the PC.

“You know how to work this?”

“Not really. I’m hoping it boots directly from the inserted disk.”

“How did you manage to sneak that thing through the inspection? They tore up all of class 2-D looking for something. That disk probably had something to do with it.”

“Funny. I got to my class after they had finished inspection. My name wasn’t on the register, so they never came back.”

That was a scary thought. Hiroki - and me by extension- had dodged certain doom by only a few minutes.

“Ok, looks like I can boot from the drive. Let’s see if we can read this…”

Hiroki was hard at work. The interface was antiquated, but easy enough to understand.

Toshi.

That name flashed through my mind. I did know someone who had a name similar to Toshio Arakawa- and he had been the one who, by proxy of Kanamaru, had given the disk to me. He had said something about it being very valuable- he was trying to use it as payment, without explaining its purpose. Could it be? Was that the real cause of all this mess?

“Got it!”

The screen flashed blue, then offered up a small window. No good. It was entirely in Russian.

“Can you read that?”

“No. I think it’s a password screen. The disk might be encrypted.”

Well, crap. There went any hope of unraveling the mystery. Unless-

“Try K-1104.”

“What? That’s crazy. Nobody would just write the password on the lab-”

I typed the combination on the keypad. The screen disappeared, revealing a long list. Some of the items were in Russian- but a few were in Japanese. Hiroki gripped his forehead.

“Nobody could be that stupid…”

“What is all this stuff? It just looks like random files.”

“Well, I can’t read the Russian ones, but…oh.”

“Oh? What is Oh?”

“This…”

“What is it, Shinji?”

“This is way too much.”

He pointed at a file written in Japanese, entitled “Implosion Tamper.”

“What does that mean?”

Hiroki didn’t respond. He just stared at the screen.

“Say something!”

Hiroki turned to me, looking past me with a thousand-yard stare.

“These are- state secrets. Big ones. This shit is way too hot for us to handle.”

He popped the disk out and laid it on the table, refusing to touch it any further, like it was some kind of cursed item.

“You’re gonna leave it there?”

Hiroki exploded.

“OF COURSE I’M GONNA LEAVE IT THERE!”

I fell backward into a broom. I guess it was a Janitor’s closet, too. Hiroki didn’t find any levity in this.

“Even for what we’ve been doing, this is too much. I only got a quick look at what’s on that disk, and it is bad. Really, Really, REALLY goddamn bad. It’s so bad they’re tearing apart the city looking for it.”

I had never seen Hiroki this worked up. He’d usually think something like this was cool.

“We can NOT involve ourselves with this any more. This is big-leagues espionage stuff, now. If we leave it there, and walk away-”

“We’ll be implicated.”

Hiroki wasn’t thinking things all the way through. Whatever we did with it, if it was really important as he was saying, leaving it here would get someone at the school in trouble. Someone would get ‘disappeared’. Someone would be executed.

“I’m taking this.”

I grabbed the disk and shoved it inside my uniform’s pocket. It was just small enough to fit without leaving a noticeable bulge on the outside of the pocket.

“What do you plan to do with that?”

“I dunno. Burn it. Throw it out. I’ll do something.”

“That’s too risky!”

“It’s better than leaving it here.”

Hiroki took a moment to compose himself.

“What are you gonna do, Nishizawa? We don’t have much time here. If they did get suspicious, they’re gonna find out that we lied about the paperwork.”

What was I going to do? There was only one thing to do.

“Find Ayasa.”

Hiroki sighed.

“Fine. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m gonna find a way out. Meet me back at the school tonight. We’re out of time.”

Hiroki was too honorable to abandon me, even when he knew it was suicidal. I turned to leave.

“I’ll look for a way to get three people out. In case Ayasa- well, you’ll have to figure out what to do.”

Between six and seven PM. That was the time slot Erisabe had given me to visit Ayasa at home, for some inscrutable reason. I didn’t have much time- I didn’t have any way of navigating in the North besides asking for directions. We had both left our cell phones in the South.

The cramped industrial alleys gave way to sparse, tree-lined roads. This area looked almost rural, nested between several city parks. The houses here were still arranged in condominium rows as with the others in the North, but these were noticeably larger- it was surprising to see in a supposedly classless society. I was getting close - the addresses on the houses started to resemble the one Erisabe had given me.

At last, I reached it. The nameplate read “Okazaki,” as I had anticipated. I moved to ring the doorbell-

I was stopped by a hand on my shoulder.

“Transfer student.”

It was Erisabe.

“In here.”

She pulled me into the house immediately next door.

The house was sparsely decorated- in fact, it hardly had any furniture in it at all. There were a few old kitchen appliances, but other than that it was only some frayed carpet and a few folding chairs. Erisabe shushed me a few times, whenever I was about to make a comment. She led me into an upstairs room. There was only a futon laid out on the floor and a corkboard with a few meaningless notes posted to it on one of the walls. In all other respects, it was just as sparse as the rest of the house.

“Transfer student. You’re not from Hokkaido, are you?”

She was sharp. Strangely, though, I didn’t sense any malicious intent from her- not like that trenchcoated man from earlier. I decided to play along.

“No. I’m not.”

“You’re Ayasa’s friend, right?”

“I am.”

“You know you’re putting her in danger.”

Yes, I knew. She had always been in danger, from the second she had started associating with me.

“Yes. But I promised I’d protect her. I’m here to fulfill that.”

Erisabe clearly didn’t know all the details, but I had the sense that she understood enough about what was going on. She closed her eyes.

“When she disappeared… I was worried that she had gone some place where nobody would look out for her. The others don’t trust her. I don’t blame them, but…”

She paused, looking for words.

“It’s nice to know she has someone else.”

“Were you…”

“No. There is no time for that now. It’s not me you want to talk to, right?”

I nodded, reluctantly. I was here to see Ayasa. That had not changed.

“Thirty minutes. That’s all I can give you. They’ll get suspicious if the tapes aren’t changed that frequently.”

“The…tapes?”

Erisabe walked over to the corkboard and pulled it off the wall. Behind it was a small cubby- hiding a massive reel-to-reel style magnetic tape recorder. It was a genuine piece of vintage technology with wires running deeper into the wall.

“The walls have ears, Transfer student. Ayasa knows that.”

She carefully stopped the tape and set it aside.

“You can jump to the next balcony. That’s her room. Be gone before seven- that’s when her father gets home.”

Erisabe stared at the tape recorder with remorse.

“I’m a bad friend. This is all I can do for her.”