“Are ya done cryin’ yet?” Siggy asked.

“Shut up,” Sayuri said.

Siggy stood there with his hands in his pockets. The most privacy he could give her was not looking at her face, which was a mess since she couldn’t wipe tears away with her hands tied.

“Do ya want me to dab yer face?”

“No!”

“Fine. But ya look like a mess.”

“I do not care!”

Siggy wandered over to a jar of pickled eggs and popped it open. The smell of vinegar and ginger wafted into the room. Siggy plucked an egg and popped it into his mouth, savoring the tart flavor

“Hungry?” he asked, raising the jar towards her.

“No.”

A moment later her stomach growled.

“You sure?” Siggy asked again.

“I would eat if you would untie my hands. I will not be hand fed.”

Siggy was no lover of hierarchy, and he had a steadfast belief no one was intrinsically above anyone else. But Sayuri had the bizarre ability to look dignified even when her face was puffy and stained from crying. Maybe it was all that gold stuck in it.

“Awright, I’ll untie ya, but ya gotta swear on yer mum’s life ya won’t try to run or do nuffin’ stupid, got it?”

“My mother is dead,” she said.

“I— um… right. Well, ‘at’s not gonna work, will it? ‘Ow about yer chum Thomas? Could swear on ‘is life.”

Sayuri sighed. “I swear on Thomas’ life I will not attempt to abscond if you unbind me.”

“Oi! Don’t you try to get away wiv’ a technicality by usin’ fancy words like absco~ond,” he said, parroting Sayuri’s formal dialect. “Not gonna work wiv me. Say plain and clear ya won’t scram!”

“But I— fine. I will not “scram”.”

Satisfied, Siggy untied her wrists and handed her the jar of pickled eggs once she was done rubbing them. The girl was hungrier than she let on, wolfing down three eggs off the bat and ignoring the pickle juice dribbling down her chin.

“You ever ‘ad pickled eggs before?” Siggy asked.

She swallowed her fourth. “No.”

“Surprised yer awright wiv Æfrian food.”

“I have adapted,” she said. “Have you ever had Kaihonjin food?”

He nodded. “Yeh, some soup what tasted like seawater and piss.”

Sayuri giggled. It was small and choked, but Siggy felt a little better after hearing it.

“Are you sure you were not assuming hatred a priori?” she asked.

Siggy thumped his chest. “I take food very seriously, I'll ‘ave ya know.”

She handed the jar of eggs back after keeping a fifth for herself. He screwed the lid back on and set it down. He thought about retying her, but decided there wasn’t much of a point. Instead, he leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands.

“Awright, let’s talk politics.”

“Must we?” Sayuri yawned. “I am tired.”

“What! We— I’ve got 24 hours to convince ya not to be a suicidal idjit! Why can’t ya just lie n’ say you’ll ‘elp ‘em?”

Sayuri fixed him with a stare. “Because then I would have to prove it by following the Zukunashi’s orders, and they will ask me to use my hatsuden to commit violent treason against my native country. At best, your organization fails spectacularly and I am responsible for only a few thousand deaths. At worst you succeed, and not only will you ethnically cleanse—”

“No one’s talkin’ ‘bout efnic cleansing nobody!”

“You really do not believe there will be ethnic violence if the Æfrian colony revolts? That the Afujin will not retaliate over their perceived injustices? Your commander threatened—”

“Maybe we will! But it won’t be ‘bout efnicitiy! There’re Kaihonjin workers on our side too, y’know! S’bout class, not efnicity!”

“Then tell me, which ethnicity will bear the brunt of that violence?” she asked.

“Maybe it will be grenners, but why s’at!? S’it because every single one o’ you is just better’n us? Or s’it because the system’s rigged against us?”

“Again with this fiction of persecution! There are no laws which prohibit Æfrians from any of the rights and privileges afforded to any other subject of His Augustness. Rich or poor, male or female, Kaihonjin or Afujin or Daimijin or Baejin or—”

“Why’re we livin’ under the Shroud then!?”

“There are no laws which require Afujin live in areas where hatsuden generation is conducted! It is merely—”

“Market forces,” Siggy said, finishing her words for her. “But ‘ow’s’bout this, aye? I don’t bloody care whether it’s a fatfuck Emperor on the other side of the planet, or some ‘glomerate aristocrat, or the fuckin’ invsibile hand o’ the market, whoever forces me to live in this shithole, tellin’ me I can’t own the machines I work wiv because some fishfucker owns it, tellin’ me I gotta live under the Shroud cuz I can’t make enough money to move out, guess what? I’ll blow up ‘em up. It don’t matter to me.”

Sayuri rubbed her wrists. “And kill millions of your own people in the process due to your own poor economic policies? This would not be the first time that ideology has been attempted.”

“And do what ‘en? ‘Ow’s’about ya tell me what we should be doin’ instead? Suck it up n’ live in the Shroud? ‘Ow about you? You ever ‘ad to suffer yer family’s lil’ gift to us?”

“As a matter of fact,” Sayuri said, “I have.”

“And your fine wiv it? Fine wiv’ kids sufferin’ too? ‘Til the end of time?”

“No! Of course not! It is the nature of Propertism to raise living standards over time—”

“Somebody’s gotta run the fuckin’ machines! Who’s gonna do it? S’it gonna be the Ueichis? Or maybe us Æfrians get rich n’ push it off to one o’ yer other colonies?”

“S-So— get rid of hatsuden and leave the market where it is!” she said.

“What in Hel d’ya think’s keepin’ the Shroud around!? Ya said it yourself, there’s no laws keepin’ it in place, or keepin’ anyone under it in place, ‘cept the market. But fuck me if the market don’t do a better job than some dick ‘oldin’ a gun to my head.”

Sayuri frowned. “Are you ready to take responsibility for the lives lost if your utopian vision does not pan out? The Companionists who tried in Ryūkoku and on the continent felt the same way.”

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Siggy slammed his fist on the table. “Yes I am! Let us make those mistakes! At least then they’d be our mistakes, as opposed to sittin’ ‘ere, bein’ told there ain’t no other option.”

Silence followed the outburst. Siggy had meant to keep his cool and parcel out pearls of political wisdom, but that was never how it happened. Not when he was debating his friends, and certainly not now, speaking with the Ueden heiress. Here he was, screaming at a girl younger than him whose parents had just been killed, a girl who was just as much a victim of Propertism as he was. More so, maybe, since the conglomerates didn’t have a reason to skin him alive.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I want to sleep now,” she replied.

He leaned backwards in his chair. “I’ll see ‘bout a blanket.”

After the supplies came, he found he was tired too and passed right out. There was no way to tell what time it was down in the sub-basement, but Siggy woke up feeling none of the crustiness of sleep deprivation, and that concerned him. This was what oversleeping felt like. He felt like someone was about to fire him.

Siggy shimmied out of the sleeping bag he’d called for and looked at Sayuri. She was still lying on her side on the emptied canning table, a blanket wrapped around her. Even better, she hadn’t smashed a jar and slit his throat in his sleep.

He lightly tapped on the canning room door.

“S’at you Siggy?” a muffled voice asked.

“Yeh, it’s me,” he said quietly. “Lemme out.”

He heard Sayuri shuffle behind him. With some rattling bolts, the canning room door opened.

“Oi, ya look like shite,” said the guard.

Siggy exhaled and rubbed his face. “Feel awright. Needed the sleep after everyfin’. ‘Aven’t ‘ad proper sleep in a week. Say, what time s’it?”

The guard looked at his wristwatch. “S’about ‘alf past four.”

“In the mornin’?”

“In the afternoon.”

Siggy held his head in his hands. “Fuck me! Oh my days. Did the First Compatriot say when he'd be back?”

“Not to me.”

“Loothsa’s Cunt… Awright, I can make it. Fetch some bread, would ya?”

“What am I, yer errand boy? I don’t take orders.”

“It’s not an order! I’m askin’ polite-like, cuz I’m sick a’ eatin’ outta jars n’ I’m sure she is as well. Now, would ya get some fuckin’ bread?”

“Since y’asked so nicely.”

The guard locked the door and let Siggy stew in panic while trying to figure out how he was going to convince Sayuri to let go of her lifelong brainwashing. When the guard returned with a round of rye bread and a couple rashers of bacon, Siggy asked him how things were going outside.

“Bad. Or good. Too soon to tell,” he said.

“‘Bout as clear as a bog you are. Fuck ya mean bad or good?” Siggy said.

At this point Sayuri was yawning and stretching. The guard eyed her curiously around the doorframe. “The Propertists are doin’ what we always said they would. All that talk ‘bout “bodily property rights” are out the window. Mask’s clear off now. They’re execution’ people at the smaller strikes if they think they can get away wiv it.”

“Fuckin’ Hel…” Siggy said.

“Might wanna wrap up with ‘er soon,” the guard said, gesturing at Sayuri. “The ‘igher-ups’ is talkin’ ‘bout stormin’ Kintoki’s supply center. We’re talkin’ ‘istory bein’ made. Ground floor o’ the Æfrian revolution! Don’t wanna spend it down ‘ere wiv a glomerate slag, eh? Unless ya do.”

The guard winked.

Siggy blushed. “Come off it ya prick! I’m doin’ work ‘ere.”

“Not comin’ then?”

Siggy felt like he was about to split apart at the seams. This was the moment he dreamed about since he first learned the word “revolution.” Was he going to miss it to debate with some spoiled little rich girl? He looked back at Sayuri who was staring at him in confusion. The electric light gave her golden skin a glow like the embers of a dying fire.

“I’ve got orders, mate. But—” Siggy balled the guard’s shirt up in his fist. “I want ya to give Kintoki back everyfin’ they’ve given us, awright? Won’t be another chance in our lifetimes.”

The guard, whose name he didn’t know and might never know, knocked his head together with Siggy. “I swear it, Compatriot. On me life, me mum’s, Saito’s, everybody’s. Let’s leap into the dark, aye?”

“Aye.”

The guard shut the door but there was no bolt locking it this time. One of two things had happened overnight, Siggy suspected. Either the “act now” faction won, or the rest of the unions had gone radical. It was amazing how quick you missed things once history started moving again. Half a day and he felt as out-of-time as Æfrian aristocrats.

“Sorry you ‘ad to ‘ear all that,” Siggy said, handing her the bread and, as a joke, the bacon. To his surprise, instead of calling him a lard eater, she ate it.

“Truthfully,” Sayuri said, swallowing a bite of rye with the bacon. “I can hardly understand your non-Suigen dialect even when I focus. Both of you together was too much.”

Siggy chuckled. “Heartlanders can’t hardly understand us neither if it makes ya feel any better.”

“Heartlanders?”

“Folks from the midcountry. Where Middrodor is,” Siggy explained.

“Middrodor?”

“Grenners call it soo-iggin.”

“Suigen.”

“Oi, it’s my country! I’ll tell you ‘ow it’s pronounced!”

Sayuri giggled. “It is a Kaihongo word though.”

“Yeh, n’ you lot put it there!”

He stopped to let her eat. Weirdly, even though his deadline was coming up, he felt less pressure to change her mind. Of course, he’d have been surprised if anyone still cared she was down here, what with the storming of the Kintoki supply center.

“What does grenner mean, by the way? I have gathered it is an ethnic slur against Kaihonjin, but I am curious about the etymology,” Sayuri asked.

“Old grammar, so I can’t explain ‘ow precisely, but it means someone who smells like green onions,” he said.

“Always with the food,” she said.

“Ya mean the lard-eater fing?”

Sayuri nodded.

“You seem to be ‘andlin’ pig fat awright,” he said, gesturing at the bacon on her bread.

“It’s not the worst thing,” she replied.

He found a jug of water amongst the containers they pulled off the canning table the night before and sat it down next to her when she was done with the bread and bacon. She swallowed greedily and then asked to use the restroom. Siggy showed her down the hall to the toilet and stood outside.

The whole situation felt so ridiculous. There wasn’t even a lock on the door anymore, and most of the Goowies had cleared out for the raid. Forget her special hatsuden, all Sayuri had to do was run faster than him and she’d be home free. But when she was finished, she allowed him to lead her back to the canning room.

As they were walking, with the detached tone of a prophetess, Sayuri said, “There will come a day when our productive technologies can make everyone wealthy and comfortable.”

“Uh-huh,” Siggy replied.

“Why do you wish to use violence to expedite this trajectory? Is there not a moral hazard in using the threat of future suffering to absolve wrongdoing in the present?”

He bit his lip and said nothing until they were back in the canning room. Sayuri sat down in the chair she was in the day before, ropes forgotten.

Siggy sighed. “There ain’t no promise fings’ll get better. Look what ‘‘appened in yer own country. It took ‘ow many years of protest ‘fore they banned hatsuden there?”

“But those protests were peaceful.”

“Like Hel they was! Fousands of people died n’ plenty more got mangled up! There weren’t nuffin’ peaceful ‘bout them! Uchiyama was sayin’ that to us just the other day.”

“It was the peaceful side of the protests whichcreated change.”

“Bullshit! That’s the ‘istory ya learn cuz the glomerates don’t want people askin’ for more! S’why grenner workers are so docile-like. But to yer first question, why’s our revolution gotta be now? Cuz the right time’s never gonna come ‘round. S’what all the high-finkin’, academic Companionists over in Kaihon don’t get. There’s no difference in opportunity, just a difference in courage, and I’m not lettin’ no hypo-fehical future people be more courageous than me,” Siggy said, thumping his chest.

Sayuri folded her hands in her lap. “Courageous? Are you certain your courage is not merely disguised vanity? What of the innocent people you will drag in?”

“I’m no more worried than yer family was when they invented the Shroud. Look, Sayuri, all we want is to make our own decisions, our own mistakes. Yer dad stuck all that gold in ya. Yer a victim, same as us. Don’t ya wish ya got a say, ‘fore they put it in you?”

Sayuri twitched. “I chose, of my own volition, to go through with the procedure.”

“Lemme guess, it was yer own volition to be a good lil’ girl?” he said, finding a nugget of pleasure in finding a weak spot to prod at.

Sayuri shot to her feet. “You do not understand what sacrificing for your family entails!”

Siggy hopped off the table and marched right up to her face, staring down into that pinched little tangle of gold. “The fuck I don’t! I got two sisters and a mum I’m takin’ care of wiv one salary! N’ ya know why? Cuz my dad was paintin’ the inside of a Genji ship n’ the paint exploded n’ he died. No compensation, no nuffin’. Just one less income. Why am I doin’ all this? Cuz I don’t want my sisters to grow up in a world where their ‘usbands and their sons get blown up by paint! I coulda 'ad a shot at bein' a foreman, might be, but I vowed to every god I could fink of to gimme a brighter future, and I mean to follow through.'

The fight went out of Sayuri. “I-I am sorry, I did not—”

"I’m not doin’ this to ‘ave a grand ol’ time, Sayuri. Revolution ain’t a tea party. I’m doin’ this outta love. Now you tell me, Sayuri Ueichi, what would you do, eh? D’ya love anyone or anyfin’ enough to leap into the dark, not knowin’ whether it’ll be good or bad, but knowin’ ya can’t bear to watch yer people suffer anymore? Or did the glomerates pluck that outta ya when they put the gold in?”

Sayuri’s lips trembled. She looked away. For a moment, the only sound was her quiet, even breathing.

It was so quiet and still, he could hear the saliva on her gold-lined lips when they parted. “I will help the GGUW.”