Minami had arranged for YF to live in the reactor complex dormitory with everyone else, though he was located on the bottom floor in the back of the main hallway. Despite Wakayama’s complaints, YF’s quarters were so much better than he had expected that it took him at least ten minutes to begin unpacking. His eyes moved from the kitchen to the balcony, the bed, the bathroom, and then back again in a circle repeatedly until he was satisfied that what he was seeing was real. YF pulled everything out of his pack and was surprised at how little there was. He had only brought three sets of clothes, hoping the operation would end soon; he now realized it could really take a few weeks.
He removed the rest of his armor and stripped down to his undershirt and underwear, laying down on the rudimentary, yet comfortable bed situated at the end of the room. This was the first time he had any private space in months, a realization that sent a tingling sensation through his legs. The area was strangely quiet. YF suspected there was some noise cancellation built into the walls, but even the muted hum of vehicles that should have penetrated through did not. He then remembered that after shift change the amount of shuttles arriving at the dorms from camp would decrease; it could be an hour before he heard anything else from outside. Even Ikusayama was not this quiet, with the cicadas chirping through the summer evenings and his father-in-law’s trucks coming and going through the laydown area.
Was this how people were supposed to live? Away from the endless noise of the outside world? Just like when he had bought the bike, YF began to imagine once more riding far out to the west, leaving behind the greater capital region and all its problems. He could see himself arriving in a mountain town after dark, sitting in an izakaya by himself while watching the lights dotting the road to the nearest tunnel. For the first time he could remember, YF felt a genuine smile crawl across his face.
“After I find out,” he said aloud as he closed his eyes.
***
When YF woke up he quickly flicked his wrist to unlock the terminal in his room, which opened to a message from Wakayama sent hours ago. The message said to show up at the loading bay on the other side of the complex.
“Shit.”
YF threw on his uniform and armor — unclasped in certain parts — and flew out of his room, down the dorm hall and out the door. There was no shuttle at the entrance, and so he decided to descend the hill on foot, running as fast as his legs could carry him toward the nearest arterial road. By sheer luck when he arrived, he saw to his right what was unmistakably Kanezaki’s truck driving toward him from further down the road. YF waved his arms at the truck, causing Kanezaki to slow down and pull over next to him.
“Where you going?” Kanezaki asked after rolling down the window.
“Loading bay,” YF replied after catching his breath.
“Huh, that’s where I’m going. Get in,” said Kanezaki.
YF planted his foot on the step and jumped up toward the passenger’s seat, pulling the door open and sliding into the truck.
“Seatbelt on,” Kanezaki ordered.
“Yes sir.” YF pulled the belt from his upper left and fastened it. Before he could firmly secure the belt, Kanezaki had already stomped his foot on the accelerator to pull into the long caravan of truckers headed for the other side of the facility.
“Going to be a trucker, huh,” said Kanezaki.
“That’s the plan.”
“It’s a good job. A bit less bullshit than the other ones.”
YF nodded. “I figured.”
There was a stretch of silence before YF turned to Kanezaki. “Where you from?”
“Ah,” Kanezaki chuckled. “See that’s the type of question I became a trucker to avoid.”
YF turned back toward the window. “Sorry.”
Kanezaki waved his hand in the air. “I’m joking. Don’t worry about it. I’m from here.”
YF sat there in silence, wrestling with the idea in his head.
Kanezaki laughed again. “Not everyone here can be from the Met Police, what a waste of expensive schooling and good pedigree. Some of us here are from around here. Just maybe not the managers.” He paused. “I enlisted and jumped ahead of the line. Keep in mind I didn’t stick around for the doozy up north. Would’ve been too old for that anyway.”
“Didn’t want to become an officer?” asked YF.
Kanezaki spat a thick, red paste into a plastic cup. “That’s about how I feel about the officers.”
“I see.”
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“Go ahead,” said Kanezaki with a grin. “Ask me which conflict I was in. Don’t be shy.”
“Which conflict were you in?”
“The one on the homeland. And it was bad.”
That particular conflict would’ve been the one that Erika’s mother was involved in. There was a general strike across most of the island’s industries. The leftist rebels had seized most of the bases, factories, and farmland in the beginning. YF knew the stories of Kawamata’s eventual surrender years later when her movement was reduced to guerilla tactics that could never be fully stamped out. But he also heard of the horror stories when the war opened. Kanezaki looked old enough — and bitter enough — to have been there when it started.
“I heard,” said YF.
“Maybe better you didn’t.”
YF could see in Kanezaki’s face a strange sense of satisfaction with his station in life. It was obvious the man was not keen on talking to too many people — and yet had opened up to YF almost immediately. Maybe what he said he wanted, and what he really wanted did not coincide.
“Which area of Itsugo?” asked YF.
“Icchome. It was a bit cheaper to live there when I grew up. Subsidies helped keep my mom in her apartment but you can imagine it’s not enough to live on, least not for two. This place gives free housing. I hate to break it to you Kondo, but it’s just a spacious prison we’ve got here. If you think hard enough though, life in general is. Your prison just might be a bit bigger or smaller depending on how much money you have.”
“What a pleasant thought.” YF planted his elbow in the open window and looked outside watching as the dust clouds flew behind them. Nothing in Kanezaki’s voice suggested he was upset with this so-called spacious prison. YF wondered if his life would end up resembling Kanezaki’s, and whether that meant the rest of his life would be meaningless or liberated.
“We’re here,” Kanezaki announced. “I’m taking the shuttle back. You have fun.”
Kanezaki quickly hopped out of the truck without waiting for YF’s reply, took a long drag from his vape box, and power walked over to the shuttle stop.
“Sure thing,” said YF to no one in particular.
YF spent the next few days going through general site training before starting his probationary period as a driver — which involved even more training off the wheel. The trainer — a senior who, from what YF could tell, did not drive anymore — continuously emphasized how much material would be assessed and how difficult such an assessment would be.
“He’s talking out his ass,” said Kanezaki one evening as he drove YF to the bay.
YF took that to mean the real assessment would be quite different from the way the instructor described. But when he finally took the test, YF could barely answer a quarter of the questions. The instructor was definitely not talking out of his ass.
YF spent the weekend in his dorm thinking of alternative jobs and figuring out how he could retrieve the data for Minami — and himself. He had had no real plan upon entering the complex other than to find a position to seem normal. The more he thought about it though, the more he realized there was really nothing that seemed to give him access to the buildings without raising suspicion.
In the end he received a notification on his room terminal that he had been accepted. Good, at least it would buy him some time to think. YF wondered why it was so easy to secure a position among the truckers despite obviously failing the test, but during the first week he could quickly see why. The trek every evening from the dorms to the other side of the complex had started to grow tedious, even when he woke up early enough to catch Kanezaki at the end of day shift.
Every evening a row of boxes — unopened, as they had to open it themselves — were dropped off at the bay for the truckers to sift through, checking the SKUs and destinations before loading them into the right vehicle.
But the truckers rarely did it themselves. Around the time the boxes arrived, a crowd of locals would gather at the security gate. YF activated his helmet around that time in case somebody among them recognized him, causing him to sweat profusely in the summer heat.
As the crowd grew thicker, a lead trucker would approach the gate, checking in people by pulling their shoulders through. From what YF could tell that was against procedure, as he only saw half of them scanning their wrists through the machine. While the local men started to load boxes onto the trucks, the truckers generally smoked, chatted, or stayed in their cabins scrolling through their receivers.
On the last shift of the week, YF turned from his truck to see an old man struggling with a box and found himself walking toward him. He winced as the sweat snuck into his eyes, causing a painful, stinging sensation.
“Here, let me help with that.” It was only when YF shoved his arms under the box to help the man lift it that he realized just how heavy it was.
“Where’s this going?” asked YF.
“That one,” the man struggled as he motioned with his head to a vehicle further down the bay. Even with the two of them, they struggled to bring the load to the designated truck. As they walked, YF noticed his colleagues watching him with amusement, stopping their regular activities. After what seemed like an eternity, they finally arrived and pushed the box into the open container, both of them automatically leaning against the side of it to catch their breath.
“Must be hot in there,” said the old man, shaking YF’s hand.
YF would’ve loved nothing more than to take his helmet off, but he thought better of it. He shook the man’s hand back. “Just prefer to keep it on.”
Something else that made the job less desirable was that the loading bay was too far from the main camp to use the cafeteria; the food given to them was cold and stale, and the drinks lukewarm. Though YF was used to that from his long hours sitting in the koban, it would have been nice to get a proper, hot meal and a tall cold drink.
YF wolfed down his food to catch up on the missed time. Even then, the team leader pushed him to hurry up, as if the former were not standing near YF during the loading period. There was a safety briefing after breakfast by a disinterested safety officer YF still didn’t know the name of. At the end of the briefing, YF started climbing into his vehicle.
“Hey, new guy,” he heard someone call to him from below.
YF didn’t like his tone. He held onto the door bar and turned around. “Yes?”
“How about some drinks in town after? It’s Goldday.”
“I think I’m supposed to work tomorrow.”
The man shook his head. “Nah, that batch isn’t coming. Something wrong with the warehouse in Nishida. We’re getting off.”
“Oh,” said YF. What he really wanted to do was sleep straight through the weekend. “I’ll come next weekend.”
“It’s the first weekend,” the man insisted, a hint of threat in his otherwise amicable tone.
YF juggled the desire to punch the man in the face with the needs of the mission, and decided on the latter.
“Fine. Meeting here after shift?” asked YF.
“Where else would we meet?”
YF forced a smile. “Right. I’ll see you then.”