Dawn (Photojournalist bonus saga Part 1)

It was early in the morning. The fake window next to my bed started to brighten, creating the illusion of sunlight peeking in and attempting to wake me from my deep slumber. However, I didn’t respond to it well and threw my arm over my eyes for protection.

There was a period of time in my life when my body just simply activated in the wee hours, like a switch had been flipped, and suddenly I was alive. It was one of the better parts of my admittedly disturbing past, not needing to worry about getting up on my own willpower. It was automatic.

But then I started hanging out with Ekko.

Maybe it was her bubbly energy that sapped my strength, or the fact that she secretly took me off my pills, but ever since she came into my life, I’ve just had such a hard time waking up properly. My eyes would despairingly flutter open, only to close in the hopes that I’d fall back asleep. But by then, the synthetic light from the window would have already made that impossible.

Battling my urge to stay in bed was the first challenge to overcome each morning. Seeing as we ran on a ridged schedule during the weekdays, it was a necessary fight indeed. Next came a shower, getting dressed, and then waking up the girls.

Ekko didn’t seem to have much of an issue ignoring the fake sunshine today. I almost felt bad needing to wake her up, what with how peaceful she looked.

“Come on, up and at em…” I clapped my hands a few times, then nudged her shoulder. “Ekko darling, it’s time to wake up. We need to train.”

“I swear…” Ekko spoke in a zombified tone, “...if I look at the clock and see it's Sunday…”

Thanks to her, I did in fact realize, today is Sunday. Our day off.

“Damn it,” I grumbled, realizing there was no justification for getting up this early. “Never mind. Sleep tight.” I brushed back her hair and kissed her forehead.

“Wake me when they’re serving breakfast.” She rolled over and covered her face with a pillow. “Oh… And don’t forget, after breakfast there’s a service in the chapel later. You and Ko better not skip it this week, you hear me?”

As beautiful as those services here were, they were so incredibly boring. They weren’t even in English, they were in Japanese. I always got lost and fall asleep well before the end. But she still insisted on dressing me up and dragging me to them anyways.

“Sorry Ekko. Can’t hear you with that pillow over your face.” I quickly slipped out of the room, making sure that I was seemingly out of earshot.

“You better not…!”

I shut the door. She was too much of a sloth right now to chase me down.

“Baka…” her muffled voice shouted through the door. 

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Although Ekko wasn’t an early riser this morning, my sister seemed to already be out of bed and getting her day started.

On days off, Ko would usually vanish until breakfast was served in the cafeteria. But occasionally she wouldn’t even show up to that. It had me curious, and finally today, that curiosity seemed to have overtaken me.

I started exploring around the sanctuary, trying to find a hint of where she might have gone. The skeleton crew that ran this place through the night was packing up their work and getting ready to sleep the day away, so I figured one of them might have seen her at some point.

There were underground parking lots here on a few of the floors. Vehicles and other useful equipment were stored there. A lot of our technical guys here at the sanctuary spent most nights maintaining anything we might be able to use against the government.

“Shugo, hey…” I flagged down one of my buddies in a neon construction uniform. “You seen Ko around?”

“Uh…” he took off his hard hat and brushed back his hair, accidentally getting grease all over it. “Actually, yeah.” He nodded and pointed at me. “She was lugging around a few gallons of liquid and a rusty looking box with some brown tape streaming out of it.”

“Any idea where she might be going with all that stuff?”

“Man, are you stupid?” Shugo laughed at me. “Everyone knows she practically lives in the Red Box.” He let out a yawn.

This is the very first time I’ve ever heard of this so-called “Red Box.”

“What is that place?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Beats the hell outta me. Kid might as well be doing witchcraft there.”

Something tells me Ko isn’t the type for witchcraft. Although, sometimes her potential was pretty scary.

“Hey, Kitsu, I’m gonna get some sleep.” Shugo yawned again. “But wanna’ get some drinks later tonight?”

I wasn’t old enough to drink yet, but he just turned 20 and discovered the distillery downstairs. Ever since then, he’s had some sort of alcoholic drink in hand on his off time.

“As long as it’s tea, sure,” I half joked.

“No fun.” He yawned again. “See you later then. Say hi to the Ko-Ko’s for me.”

For some reason, people had been combining Ekko and Ko’s code names and started calling them Ko-Ko. I thought it was the funniest thing ever, but Ekko wanted to kill anyone who used it unironically, including me. In contrast, Ko didn’t seem to mind.

This “Red Box” he spoke of though seemed like an interesting place. I had no idea where it was, but just based on the name alone, I assumed it would aptly be a shade of red.

Because of the nature of this repurposed underground apartment complex, full of cookie cutter rooms, trying to search for a single room was akin to hunting for a needle in a haystack. There were so many doors, and so many of those doors led to hallways filled with even more doors. The only distinguishing factor was a number, or occasionally some decoration a creative soul would have placed on it.

There’d been a push by some of the newer members of the sanctuary to actually label more of this gargantuan place with signs, but the older members kept saying that they didn’t want to waste the resources, since they already knew where everything was and anyone could just ask them. I was of the camp who wanted things labeled, but I didn’t dislike chatting with people to get directions. That’s partially why Miyazaki-sama was okay with not labeling everything, because he secretly liked letting people share info with each other.

Accepting that, for better or worse, I asked around to see if anyone had any info on the Red Box’s location. Eventually, one of the younger cafeteria ladies named Nora told me that the “Aka Batsu” was actually connected to the cafeteria. I just needed to go down a hallway.

“Thanks, Nora,” I said.

“It is alright,” she bowed, speaking in a thick Japanese accent. “If you see Ko-Imouto, please tell, I thank you very much.” She bowed again.

Sometimes it was hard to understand what Nora was saying, but I just smiled and waved, promising to pass on that exact message to my sister.