Cent. Calendar 19/04/1639, Kurilsk, Iturup, Kuril Islands, 6:45

The mask of dawn had already receded from the skies above as the sun to the east soaked the entirety of the heavens in somber blues and warm oranges. The sharp slopes of the slender, mountainous island housed familiar flora of far north species, with the dropping temperatures of September hailing the signs of approaching winter. It was 2021, and there was little to speak of in this far corner of the world, where blood spilled long ago refuses to disappear, frozen solid in the persistent frigidity of these Kuril islands, the lonely island chain separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the greater Pacific.

“Goddammit.”

Things suddenly weren’t so great, thought Sveta, short for Svetlana.

It had been a harrowing three hours. At approximately 3:25 in the morning, they lost communications with their command in Sakhalin and other military outposts throughout the eastern military district. After the local authorities declared an emergency and power was transferred to the highest military authority still present, they moved to secure every man, equipment, and supplies to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

It was now 6:45 in the morning. The sun was already up in the cloudless sky, bearing down its naked light on them with intense luminosity. With her quivering hands on the cold steel of her AK-74M, she followed her senior officer down the concrete harbor of the town of Kurilsk. At one end of the harbor was a white ship, at the bow of which was an open ramp lowered down.

Below the ship’s imposing figure stood countless men in mottled green, wearing battle-ready gear and holding very real weapons. The patches on their arm indicated the unit they belonged to and under which flag they served: the 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division of the Russian Armed Forces. Some of them were running up the ramp in a column into the white ship, while a fraction of them stayed behind. From Sveta’s perspective, she saw them in a heated conversation with people whose lower stature allowed them to be blocked in sight by the taller Russian soldiers. Getting closer to the ship, she started to make out the contents of their shouting.

“Stand back. We don’t want to harm you!”

“You can’t just illegally hold us! This is unforgivable!”

Recognizable words from her mother tongue crisscrossed with a language she also knew very well: Japanese. Their softer and coarser tone gave her an idea as to who they were dealing with, corroborated by the Japanese persons’ wrinkly skin and shining white hair.

The senior officer she was following then turned around to face her, his alert yet visibly fatigued eyes looking straight down on her.

“The suspects we’ve encountered so far are just civilians, mostly elderly and children in high school. What we need is the ship’s crew, the highest probable to be Japanese special forces. I need you to talk to them, understand what it is they’re saying, and report back.”

Swiftly twisting her right arm up to her forehead, encountering stiff resistance from her especially tight VKBO uniform, she saluted her officer before walking into the ship.

“Yes, sir!”

Making her way up the ramp, she found herself in the well-lit interior of the ship, a Japanese ferry whose name is scribbled over her bow: the Chishima Maru.

After their forces in the area geared up for a possible attack, they learned from the local authorities that a Japanese ferry from Hokkaido was scheduled to arrive at Kurilsk, born from an agreement between Japan and Russia to allow a limited number of Japanese civilians to visit the islands, mostly for tending to family graves. With their command in Sakhalin and Moscow still unreachable, they assumed that a Japanese invasion of the islands was imminent, and the incoming ferry was flagged as a possible special forces insertion operation.

Sveta climbed up the steep staircase that reached up to the bridge. With her stock-folded AK slung to her back, she huffed as she took each step on the steel steps, softly groaning under her balaclava from the tight fit of her body armor and multi-layered uniform. As she put both of her boots down on the last step, she then found herself standing in the sunlight leaking from the array of windows around the ferry’s bridge. Lined up along the navigation controls were a row of visibly annoyed adult Japanese men, their hands tied behind their backs. Standing guard over them, their fingers readily close to the triggers of their AKs, were two of her comrades.

She kept her eye on the closest man to her, who returned the favor with an irritated glare of his own. Sveta approached her two fellow soldiers and reached out her right hand.

“Did you find anything on them?”

“Nothing of note. We had them open the ship’s logbook. You can go check it for yourself.”

The soldier replied promptly without taking his eyes off of the Japanese crew.

Turning away from the gaze of the Japanese men, she walked towards the computer containing the ferry’s logbook, inserting a storage device into one of its ports to begin transferring data. Without taking her eyes off of the dimly lit screen, she switched her tongue to communicate with the crewmen.

“You’d make it easier on yourselves if you come clean now. There’s little room for discussion once we get out of this ferry.”

For a moment, the Japanese crew was shocked to hear well-versed Japanese coming from the Russian woman, armed with killer looks and a deadly assault rifle. The man closest to her, the one who has been giving off a pissy aura, entertained her intimidating remark.

“Cut the formalities, bitch. We’re innocent, see! If you really wanted to get down, we might as well do it in the bunks!”

The other Japanese crewmen snickered, earning them a shout from the soldiers who only understood their mocking tone. Without detaching her eyes from the monitor, she monotonously retorted.

“Yeah? With what are you gonna do me exactly? Mine is longer than your toothpick, old man.”

The obnoxious crew member was silent, almost as if Sveta had hit it home, a point which his other crewmates exploited by turning their laughter towards him. After some clicks on the mouse, she swiftly unplugged the storage device from the computer before walking towards her comrades on guard.

“I downloaded the data, but I took a look at it, and there are no noteworthy activities that stood out.”

“Huh. It looks like we’ll have to go bad cop on these idiots.”

Just then, Sveta’s radio crackled to life as the electronically reproduced voice of her superior rang out.

“The entire ferry has been searched, and there are no signs of Japanese special forces on board. What did you get from the crew?”

“They’re insisting that they did not do anything. I also procured a copy of the ship’s logbook. What do we do with them?”

“We’ll have to make sure that there aren’t any surprises. Take them to the holding facility.”

“Roger.”

Having heard the conversation, the other soldiers with Sveta acted before her, beckoning the Japanese crewmen of the Chishima Maru to leave the bridge with forceful nudges.

The skies south of the Habomai islands, 7:10

“Lazur, you are about to make a visual with the contact.”

The familiar voice of ground control entered his ear canal through the headset in his flight helmet.

“Copy.”

Captain Andrei Smirnov, known to his friends as “Alyosha”, replied flatly yet sharply. He maintained his bodily posture in the cockpit of his Sukhoi Su-35, which is mirrored in the level of flight that the fighter aircraft maintained. The sun was now a tad higher up from the horizon, casting its warm, yellow light down on his airframe and illuminating the ominous, bright red star emblems painted all over his fighter.

After the Russian Armed Forces in the southern Kurils had been put on high alert following the severance of communications with the rest of Russia, their divisional command assumed that a combined Japanese and American assault on the islands was imminent. However, what currently faced them was a lone Japanese plane flying into their airspace from Hokkaido, an unusual action for the Japanese to take if they intend on taking the Kurils. Alyosha was consequently scrambled to verify the plane while armed with air-to-air missiles if push came to shove and backed by the entire surface-to-air contingent on the islands.

As he flew through the skies just south of the Habomai cluster of islands, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. At his modest altitude, he was able to see the entirety of his sphere of the world from the comforts of his glass cockpit, and yet what he was witnessing was unlike the sceneries he was used to. The sun still rose from the east, but it was in a weird position, almost as if they were closer to the tropics. The vast ring that his ancestors used to think was the ends of the earth was now further out than he remembered.

“This is unsettling...”

Looking forward, he saw the massive island of Hokkaido unfurl to the southwest, a sight which used to be limited to just the peninsula jutting out towards the Habomai cluster, signs that his concerns were not without merit. Then, he saw a gleaming object moving against the greens and browns of the Hokkaido scenery. Looking closely, it now resembled a tube with wings, all of which had a distinctive, glaring red disc painted on them. It was the Japanese plane.

“This is Lazur. Confirmed visual on the contact. It’s a Japanese P-3 scout plane.”

Gripping the flight controls of his fighter, he then proceeded to perform a bank. As his Su-35 swung around towards the rear of the Japanese Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime patrol plane, Alyosha moderated his airspeed to try and match that of the turboprop engine aircraft. Appearing from behind the P-3, he emerged towards its left side, maintaining appropriate distance from it while making sure he was visible to the Japanese pilots.

Alyosha then proceeded to talk to them in English.

“Japanese military aircraft. This is Russian military aircraft. You are trespassing on restricted Russian airspace. Turn your aircraft now or I will shoot you down.”

Alyosha made sure to put stress and emphasis on “Russian” as a not-so-subtle hint that the Southern Kurils were bonafide Russian Federation territory.

After ending his transmission, he rolled his fighter slightly towards the left, showing his missile-armed underbelly to the Japanese in a gesture to show that he was armed. Returning to his level flight, he looked out towards the P-3 cockpit, barely catching sight of the two pilots looking back at him. He couldn’t make out their faces accurately, but he felt in his gut that they were surprised to see him.

His radio was then filled with English, a reply from the Japanese plane.

“Acknowledged Russian military aircraft. We are now turning to 270.”

As he received the reply, he watched the Japanese plane rolling over to the right, turning their aircraft away from their previous course as directed. Acknowledging their compliance, Alyosha then proceeded to escort them out of their airspace.

18th Machine Gun Artillery Div. Field HQ, 7:40

The sound of hardened boots stomping on the loose dirt followed the figure of a Russian Army colonel, still in his multi-layered combat fatigues and gear, entering a camouflaged tent. The colonel joined an array of other officers and aides in the presence of their highest ranking commander, Major General Alexei Yegorov, whose near static figure the colonel found standing in the middle of the group.

All of their eyes were temporarily on him as he entered, but Maj. Gen. Yegorov’s hoarse voice prompted them to turn their attention back to him.

“Ah, good. We can begin.”

Yegorov clapped his hands together as he turned his weary, wrinkled face towards his men.

A seasoned commander in the Russian Army, Yegorov knew how to make good on what resources he had been given, impressing those who could be impressed in the top brass when he returned with deliciously favorable results. However, he was not without enemies, especially in politics, who disagreed with his unmalleable rigidity. Equally disgusted with how things were being conducted for the past 20 years, he accepted his distant posting in the Far East with little regret.

However, his experience in the multiple fronts Russia had opened since the turn of the millennium could not have prepared him for what he initially feared was a combined American and Japanese attack on their Pacific holdings. The grayed, dead eyes with which he saw countless deaths, most needless and unnecessary, were now filled with a single emotion: confusion.

It had been more than four hours since they lost contact with Sakhalin. If the feared invasion was indeed coming, then they should have perished long ago under the hail of Japanese and American cruise missiles leveling their positions.

But none of that came to be.

Instead, what they got was a suspicious ferry coming to port and a single scout aircraft straying into their airspace yet complying in a level-headed manner. Yegorov wondered what his enemy’s course of action was. Were these attempts to lower their guard? Were they lacking in coordination, thereby sending in their forces in a lackluster and half-assed manner? Was it wise to keep overthinking?

With almost five hours of action-less idling, his forces in unsustainable high alert, and their allies in the other parts of the eastern district still unreachable, Yegorov was considering his options. For that, he wanted his officers present to borrow their input for this unexpected situation.

Before he could say anything, the telephone rang. Yegorov picked it up and put it to his right ear.

“Yes?”

“Major General, sir! We are receiving a broadcast directly from the Japanese government, and they are requesting dialogue with our civil and military authorities! They also said that they’re in contact with the embassy in Tokyo...”

This changes things, thought Yegorov.

It was still very unusual for the Japanese government to extend a request for dialogue, especially in their situation wherein they still couldn’t contact any of their own people. However, he needed the situation resolved soon since the islands were effectively under a siege-like condition without the rest of their nation. If he could get a hold of their diplomats in the capital Tokyo, they may know what is going on.

Setting aside his anxieties, Yegorov decided to answer the call.

“Alright, I’ll be down there.”

Putting the phone back on its receiver, he then turned to his officers as his facial muscles relaxed from the looser tension.

“The Japanese are reaching out to us for dialogue... Let’s see what they have to say to us.”

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo, 9:45

It was now midmorning.

The sun was halfway towards its highest point, although the seemingly peaceful environment betrayed what was happening on the ground. Mass communications with the rest of the world were still down. Planes were still grounded, and ships were still not allowed to leave. The Tokyo Stock Exchange was closed mere minutes into opening due to the drastic changes. Whatever was left of the internet exploded with conspiracy theories owing to independent sleuths discovering that facets of the environment are eerily out of place. The entirety of the nation was in unrest as it held its breath for the upcoming emergency press conference by the Japanese prime minister slated for 10:30 AM.

Meanwhile, the anxieties were felt the most by people of non-Japanese nationality, who suddenly found themselves unable to contact the outside world and are now stuck indefinitely in the country.

“Ngh...”

Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Japan, Park Sung Yong, could not hide his impatience as he clenched his fists on the table of a waiting room in the Foreign Affairs building.

His impatience was born from frustration over the Japanese government’s lack of transparency regarding the mass communications blackout. Ever since the unrest started to pick up earlier that morning, the Korean embassy in Tokyo began to be hounded by Korean nationals demanding answers from their government representatives. Unfortunately for them, the embassy too cannot reach their people back in Seoul. While Park has heard of similar stories happening with the other countries and their embassies, theirs was a very unique challenge.

Not only are there more than 241,000 ROK nationals currently in Japan, but apparently, it also seems that contact has been confirmed with one of their sovereign territories: the Liancourt rocks, known to them as Dokdo.

“Damn it...”

His concerns were also running wild as he found himself powerless to restrain them.

He remembers where he was earlier this morning, just before sunrise.

- - - Flashback - - -

Just as some of their fellow Koreans began to show up at the doorstep to the grounds of the embassy, he was still back in his home, waking up to his staff calling him to come quickly. Before he could leave, his house telephone rang. Expecting it to be his staff, Park picked the phone up and answered it.

However, the voice that came from the other end was different; older, more hoarse, and above all, accented.

“Good morning, Mr. Ambassador. Mind if we have a chat first?”

The accent was one Park knew all too well and one he regarded with hostility. However, his curiosity got the better of his wariness and knowledge of standard operating protocol, so he obliged.

“Who is this?”

The person on the other end of the call spoke in a North Korean accent.

“Let’s settle with “Hong,” shall we?”

“Out with it, or I’m ending this call.”

“Good. I will share with you some information on the events that are unfolding as we speak.”

Park was eager to leave, but he felt drawn into what “Hong” had to say.

“The mainland is gone. What communication we had with them is completely severed. That is the same for everyone; the Chinese, the Americans, the Russians, and so on.”

He was inclined not to believe whatever “Hong” was saying, but remembering what his embassy staff had told him about losing contact with the rest of Korea, and there was substance to his words. Still, these pieces of information are coming from a source he couldn’t trust.

“All that remains is Dokdo, along with some of our people on it.”

Park’s heart skipped a beat.

“If the Japanese were to realize that our great nation has vanished, what do you think will happen to our people? To Dokdo? This situation is nothing but a prelude to the revelation that their perverse designs on all of us are still very much alive.”

Sweat started flowing in drops all around Park’s body. As a career politician himself, he knew how to use words to his advantage, but he was tempted to believe in the words of this person, a fellow Korean he was raised to treat with suspicion. His silence served as his message of consideration to “Hong”, unable to bring himself to deny his still unproven statements.

“Hong” picked up on this and ended the conversation on an open note.

“We stand united in the face of these circumstances, Mr. Ambassador. We are ready to commit ourselves if necessary.”

Then, “Hong” listed out a string of numbers, which Park took note of using a pen and a piece of wrapper lying nearby. After saying the last number, the call was abruptly cut, replaced with the repetitive beeping of the telephone.

- - - Flashback End - - -

Opening his sweat-riddled eyelids, Park found himself in the moderated atmosphere of the waiting room. Remembering the vivid, colorful, striking words of “Hong”, he thinks of their veracity. Looking in hindsight, his words were indeed substantial, as it has now become more apparent that the Korean peninsula had disappeared. He then wonders if the Japanese government being mum about the situation means that they too are aware of it.

Memories of Japanese ultranationalist protests popped into his mind. He fondly remembers the anti-Korean slogans being shouted out in open hostility to a crowd of civilians that were not the least bothered; a showcase of their indifference and silent affirmation to the sentiment. Now, he fears that these sentiments will resurface again, especially that their great nation was nowhere to be found.

In one way or another, the words of “Hong” made him less inclined to be open to his Japanese counterparts, with whom he’ll soon meet. He took note of his indirect suggestion of cooperation, filing it in the back of his mind for safekeeping as he decided to tackle the Dokdo question.

Then, the door to the waiting room opened, and in came a ministry staff member in office dress.

“Ambassador Park. Our representative is now ready to see you.”

Replying with a slight nod, Park stood up from the chair he had been anxiously waiting in. With the destinies of more than 241,000 people weighing down on his shoulders, he followed the ministry staff out of the waiting room and onto their uncertain future.

Cent. Calendar 13/06/1639, somewhere in Iturup, Kuril Islands, 9:10

It was now almost two whole months since their unexpected transfer into the new world, a bigger Earth-like planet which the natives call Asherah. They last saw their world back in September of 2021, but according to the calendar that the natives followed, it was now the middle of the year, roughly around mid-June, of the year 1639.

“It’s so fucking hot...”

Groaned Captain Andrei “Alyosha” Smirnov as he lay on the supposedly frigid sands of an unnamed beach.

To conserve what little supplies they were being sent by the Japanese, the state of readiness of their military forces had been toned down. It was almost as if the Japanese were actively trying to make sure that they didn't remain a threat, although everyone knew that it was only a matter of time until their unmaintained equipment falls apart entirely.

As such, Alyosha was able to catch some time off away from his duties to attempt to appreciate the massive “fuck you” given to him and his people by God. Other than the grainy sensation of the Iturup sands, he also felt in his right hand a hard, cylindrical object. He clutched on it and raised his arm up, holding the object directly in his line of sight. It was a bottle of vodka that he had stashed away from even before the transfer for safekeeping.

“You gonna crack that open, Alyosha?”

Lying in the sands next to him was a fellow captain, whose bagged eyes betrayed the tone of interest in his voice. Just like him, Alyosha’s eyes were circled with dark bags, a result of insomnia from grief after losing contact with his family back in Yakutsk. At this point, two months after the transfer event, it was all but pointless to hope that he would ever get to see them again. He wanted to cry, but the rationing of important supplies such as water meant that he was too dehydrated to shed more than a couple of tears.

His sensation and train of thought returned to the present, with the sands behind his back and the bottle of vodka in hand.

“Yeah, why the fuck not.”

Popping open the cap with his left hand, he shoved the bottle’s lips onto his own, as the bottle’s nearly 50% alcohol content painfully rinsed his dry throat.

It hurts, but not as much as the thought of him never getting to see his family again.

Continuing to let the vodka flow down his throat unbarred, his fellow captain watched in envy.

“Oi, save me at least half of that, you asshole!”

His still parched lips clamped shut as he handed the bottle over to his fellow aviator, the stinging alcoholic liquid flowing down his cheeks and throat. While his friend indulged in the burning sensation offered by the vodka as it flowed down his gullet, his memories drifted away from the sensitive echoes of his sister and parents welcoming him home to more recent recollections. He recalls their panic when they heard the Japanese military mobilized for an operation in one of Asherah’s kingdoms, invoking a sense of dread from the thought of a remilitarizing Japan.

“Still can’t believe that the Japanese actually deployed their forces in a “special defensive posture,” or whatever they called it.”

Alyosha randomly blurted out his thoughts, which his friend happily entertained with a snicker.

“Hah! And then we laughed at the news when their pacifist cucks decided enough was enough just because of a single airstrike and went begging the Americans for help. Despicable, if you ask me.”

He and Alyosha knew some friends who served during earlier operations in other parts of the world. With the heaping amount of stories, both exciting and ugly, that they brought back with them, it was a depressing part of life to constantly experience being in combat. Personally, Alyosha viewed the Japanese attempt at embracing peace to be an active act of indifference to the horrors that others experience, especially after they restarted dipping their hands back into the business of war-making.

Still, it made sense for Alyosha and his fellow countrymen since it meant that the Japanese were also unwilling to risk an armed takeover of their islands, which they viewed with a desire for revenge since their defeat in the Great Patriotic War. He’d rather shut up about Japan’s oxymoronic attitude if it means that the Kurils are staved off from prying, vengeful eyes.

However, their ruin likely won’t come in the form of Japanese and American infantrymen storming their beaches, but in the form of their deterrent, their long-range cruise missiles, and armor elements, collapsing from lack of maintenance. With no supply of spare parts coming from the now long gone mainland, their vehicles will be reduced to rust in no time. Before long, they will have nothing to deter Japan from forcefully taking the islands. It was a scary thought.

“What the fuck do we do... We can’t just fade into obscurity and be annexed by those Japanese dogs.”

“We’re fucked. That’s that. We might as well just enjoy what little time we have left.”

Alyosha and his friend basked in the scorching sunlight, content with their status quo. Their fears of a more-than-certain future remain but so are slivers of hope that their future will not turn for the worse.

Awara City, Fukui prefecture, Japan, 10:30

“Did anyone follow us?”

A group of three Korean girls in their late teens looked behind them as they walked down a back route, inconspicuous paper bags in hand.

“No, we seem to be fine.”

One of them wore their long, still silky black hair in a ponytail directly over their head. Her irises, embedded in her squinted eyes, showed a hint of coloration different from the typical brown, but just like her fellow compatriots, they were riddled with broken hearts, unfulfilled dreams, and terrible experiences.

She was Min Yumi, a high school student from Busan, visiting the Liancourt rocks, known to her people as Dokdo when the transfer event happened. Having taken a multi-day trip to Ulleung-do and Dokdo, Min and several other people woke up to a bleak reality after they were notified by the resident police and South Korean military personnel that they could no longer contact Ulleung-do or the mainland.

After the Korean provisional government in nearby Japan silently brokered an agreement with the Japanese government for an emergency joint resource exploration of the islands, they were allowed to be taken into Japan as refugees. After being shipped to the mainland, she and several other young foreign nationals were voluntarily taken in by orphanages. Ever since then, she has had to participate in a nationwide effort to keep Japan afloat, a harrowing and spirit-breaking endeavor for her and fellow Koreans. In the two months since, she had made two friends, Ari and Eun, who were both on vacation in Japan when the transfer happened.

“Oi, Ari, open the bags.”

Yumi commanded her friend as they all sat around in a circle near a concrete barrier. Since they’ve gotten to know each other, having come from the same disenchanting circumstances of never being able to return home, Yumi’s condescending tone meant no hostility towards them.

Impatiently tearing the paper bags open, Ari produced a pack of cigarettes and three green-tinted bottles of soju, a popular Korean alcoholic. As Ari held out the cigarettes towards the other two, Eun commented as she took a single roll of tobacco from the carton.

“Bitch, why’d you get three? I thought I told you I don’t drink.”

Ari swung her hair towards the back of her neck before lighting her cigarette with a match. Taking in as much nicotine-filled smoke as she could from her first puff, she then exhaled before proceeding to entertain Eun’s comment.

“My bad. I’m just in a really shitty mood today.”

Yumi chuckled, although it was devoid of any gay emotions.

“Aren’t you every day?”

“Shut the fuck up. I had to listen to that fucker Yanagida rant on about how we’re only aliens. Fuck him; I wish he’d just go explode.”

Sitting down on the cold concrete floor of the back route, Yumi proceeded to open one of the soju bottles as she inhaled the last puffs from her rapidly decaying cig.

“Mood. Fuck Yanagida. In fact, fuck all of them. How dare they say we can’t go back.”

Tossing off to the side the cigarette butt, she then grabbed the now open soju bottle and plunged its lips straight to hers. The sweet 20% alcoholic content of the bottle flowed down her throat, like a raging flood bursting from a longstanding dam that just gave way. Satisfied with the throbbing reaction her body gave, she closed her lips shut and put the bottle back down as she exclaimed in pained glee.

“Fuck! This shit’s stale as fuck!”

Throwing aside her now depleted cigarette, Eun joined Yumi, proceeding to open her own bottle.

“If we could just steal a boat and go west... Maybe we can get better shit, don’cha think?”

She giggled as she discarded the plastic cap of the bottle before indulging herself in its contents.

Yumi looked down in contemplation. Eun’s suggestion may have been a joke made in the spur of the moment, but it was a prospect too good to ignore. Despite her outward acceptance of the miserable hand life had dealt her and her friends, deep inside, she ached to go home.

She missed her parents, her friends, her neighborhood in Busan, her school, her room, her pet dog, and the rolling green hills that succeeded the concrete gray foreground; all of which she always took for granted. She missed her home and the land of her birth.

Sniff.

The soft sound of her nasal tract getting blocked by tears was loud enough to pierce the hearts of her friends. Before long, they too were caught up in tears, the unstoppable flow of regret, nostalgia, and sentimentalities overtaking their built-up instincts not to cry. Yumi clenched her slender fist, as if to crush the glass bottle she held in her hand.

“F-F-Fuck... I wanna go home...”

“Shut up, girl! We swore never to bring that up...”

“God, you got me crying too. Fuck you bitches! I’ll fucking...”

They desperately tried to stop their tears and their cries from leaking out.

As it turns out, no amount of nicotine and alcohol could ever substitute for the joys they had taken for granted. It was almost as if the gods had punished them for their sins.

Yumi wiped the tears off her now stick cheeks with her clothes as she struggled to clear her respiratory tracts. In their moment of weakness and grief, she felt a hostile presence perverting her and her friends’ designated safe space. Clearing her eyes of tears, she looked up to see the tall silhouette of a man standing in the middle of the backway. She immediately recognized his face, one which she attributes with raw hostility.

“What are you sluts doing here?!”

The man asked them in a taunting tone carried by an intimidating low voice. He was their dreaded overseer, Yanagida.

The girls immediately stood up to face him, making scarce their cigarettes and bottles of soju.

Yumi was the first to confront him, speaking in straight Japanese.

“What’s it to you, asshole? It’s our break time, right?”

“Breaktime? If I recall correctly, the instruction was for our people to receive breaks and... as far as anyone is concerned, you are not our people, yes?”

The girls stood guard as Yanagida nonchalantly brandished his bare knuckles, scarred and bloodied from past fights. To them, he was a textbook example of a Japanese man, a violent brute that’s extremely xenophobic towards other East Asians. To the West, he would fall under the category of people loosely labeled as “ultranationalists”.

“I knew you sluts were up to no good. Stealing a boat? Plotting the murder of one of us–me, out of all people?! You aliens are nothing but illegal scum!”

As Yanagida continued to hurl excessively hostile statements, Eun took one of the soju bottles by its neck before smashing it against the concrete barrier next to her. The bottom of the bottle shattered into countless shards, with the neck remaining intact and turning into a sharp, bladed weapon. Having been the recipient of abuses from people like Yanagida before, she was no longer willing to remain meek and helpless.

“I’m not gonna receive any more shit from men like you!”

Just as an enraged Eun was about to lunge her newly created knife at Yanagida, a loud voice evoking a sense of absolute authority rang out through the vicinity, forcing the two to come to a halt.

“Stop!”

At the end of the backway behind Yanagida was a woman whose old age is apparent in her bent back and glistening white hair. Her sharp eyes and no-nonsense facial expression reinforced her strong tone, silencing even the hotheaded Yanagida. The girls recognize her as Yamada, one of the bigheads in the orphanage and one of their allies against harassment and poor treatment. Almost immediately after Yamada’s command, they and Yanagida brought their battle-ready arms down, effectively de-escalating the situation.

“I knew this would happen...”

Yamada stroked her forehead in disappointment as she sighed deeply. Approaching a confused Yanagida, she looked up to his face and made clear her disapproval of his actions.

“I cannot tolerate this anymore, Yanagida-san. You’ll have to come to my office.”

“But these girls are actively plotting illeg–”

Slap!

Before Yanagida could put up an excuse, a single, dry, slapping sound echoed throughout the vicinity. Yamada was more than willing to show to him that she meant business.

“Enough! They’re just children, Yanagida-san. They want to go home as much as you want them out of here, but their home no longer exists. Now, before I actually get pissed, go to my office!”

A sulked, defeated Yanagida acquiesced to her command, snubbing the three girls before turning around to walk out of the backway. As soon as he was gone, Yamada then turned to the girls, who were now on the verge of crying again, this time in disbelief in them winning against another bad Japanese man. She extended her arm out to them, beckoning them to come to her while speaking in their native tongue.

“Come, girls.”

Seemingly ashamed of what they had done and expecting a punishment, the three girls walked towards her with their heads hanging low. Contrary to their assumptions, Yamada gave her tightest embrace to them, bringing them in close in an effort to shower them with as much affection as she could.

“It’s all right... You did well to come this far...”

The girls, having heard their first reassuring statements in what felt like an eternity, couldn’t hold back their sobs and tears. Despite a gloomy, uncertain future in a hostile society, they found solace in having allies and friends who empathize with them.