Summer 1946
ON A BRIGHT SUMMER’S DAY, NEAR A BEAUTIFUL atoll in the South Pacific, a group of aging warships had laid anchor as though stationed there to deliberately spoil the lovely tropical scenery. Among them was the Imperial Navy’s one-time flagship, Nagato. She floated listlessly in a lagoon along with several dozen other older ships, their bows pointed every which way in seemingly random directions, waiting for its time to come.
Then, a flock of nearby seabirds abruptly changed course, flapping their wings and calling wildly as if possessed. They fled the area as fast as they could. The sky was clear and blue as far as the eye could see, and the waves calm.
And then the time came.
In the blink of an eye, a sun burst forth from the sea.
The resulting shockwave vaporized the ocean water around it, which then rapidly condensed, freezing into a haze of tiny ice crystals that swelled outward in all directions. For a moment neither the Nagato nor its brethren could be seen within this sphere of frozen mist. But eventually, a pillar of smoke pierced the vapor, billowing upward in a distinctive mushroom cloud.
The second nuclear test at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads—codename Baker—had just been successfully conducted, eradicating all marine life in the lagoon through intense heat and radiation and destroying the surrounding underwater ecosystem. The seabirds, for all their haste, were broiled alive and then cremated in midair, their ashes spiraling through the sky as if continuing their flight.
But somewhere on the ocean floor, not far from Bikini Atoll, a ferocious creature lay dormant. Godzilla, the same beast that had destroyed the Odo Island garrison, now stirred from its slumber by the same searing heat and radiation from the nearby nuclear test. Awakening, the beast cried out in unfathomable pain as its skin was scalded, its flesh burned, and its eyes boiled turbid and white in their sockets. Any ordinary life-form would have perished instantly, but Godzilla’s extraordinary regenerative capabilities allowed it to weather the blast. And as its body regenerated, a rage began to form within the beast, an immense hatred toward whoever or whatever had inflicted this pain upon it.
But even with its great power of regeneration, Godzilla’s body would not return to its original shape. The radiation from the blast had penetrated so deeply into its epidermis that the beast’s cells grew distorted and irregular, turning its hide rugged and rocklike as the replacement tissues hardened. The dorsal fins along its spine grew longer and sharper, branching out in fractals like Hell’s own snowflakes. This process repeated, the body building layer upon layer of this new armor over itself until it took on the appearance of an impenetrable, battle-hardened oyster shell that had lived for eons at the bottom of the sea.
Yet still, its body grew larger and larger, as if its biological systems had broken and no longer knew when to stop, until eventually the creature became so gargantuan and so mutated that it hardly even resembled the being it had been before.
Godzilla had become the king of all monsters.
Time flowed ever onward.
For each weeklong stint of work aboard Shinsei Maru, Koichi was given three days leave on dry land. With this basic schedule in place, his life with Noriko and Akiko had finally taken on a semblance of stability and routine.
Whenever he returned home, he brought with him four bags of laundry—one for each member of Shinsei Maru’s crew—which Noriko promptly washed and neatly folded. According to her, she’d never known how to properly do laundry until Sumiko from next door came by one day and offered a few pointers. Now her washing and ironing services were in high demand, and Koichi’s shipmates greatly appreciated her help.
On his days off, Koichi spent a majority of his time either playing with Akiko, or patching up their ramshackle home. Before long, he’d saved enough money to afford a used motorbike. He was eager to have some sort of vehicle he could call his own again; to him, there was no greater feeling in the world than racing through the town, with the wind against his cheeks and Noriko at his back. To watch in real time as the familiar streets he grew up on were slowly rebuilt made him feel he was witnessing the dawn of a shining new era—even if the buildings themselves were a bit shoddy and makeshift at the moment.
Eventually, Koichi decided it was time to fix up their own home into something a bit more respectable, so he hired an actual construction firm to rebuild a portion of their shack into a more permanent structure, with actual foundations and walls made of the plain, unvarnished wood that was awfully hard to come by in this booming era of reconstruction. It was, admittedly, more of a semi-luxurious shack than a proper house, but when he saw the look of elation on Noriko’s face as she ran her hands along every surface of the newly installed kitchen, he knew it’d been worth every yen.
Before they knew it, the seasons changed, and the days grew shorter and colder. On a night of gentle snow flurries, Koichi invited his fellow shipmates over for a simple dinner party to celebrate the completion of his new home.
“Boy, you sure got your money’s worth,” said Akitsu, marveling. “Gotta hand it to ya. The place looks great.”
On his lap sat little Akiko, who was now two years old. Koichi might not have pegged the captain for a kid person, but he seemed awfully fond of the little tyke. Mizushima, meanwhile, was simply twisting his head from side to side and marveling at the house’s interior, while Noda raised his beloved camera—a Leica 250 Reporter—and pointed it at Noriko as she walked back over to the table with a decanter she’d just filled at the sink.
“Mind if I snap a photo for posterity?” he asked her.
“Wh-what, of me?” said Noriko. “Oh, please, that’d just be a waste of film…”
But despite her polite refusal, Noda insisted on taking the picture anyway.
“Yes, that’s it!” he said. “Keep smiling just like that!”
He pressed the shutter button, burning Noriko’s bashful, reserved face in that moment forever into silver halide film.
“Hey, careful there, Doc!” teased the captain. “Don’t go getting the hots for ol’ Nori-chan on us!”
“Oh, come now!” said Noda. “I’d never fall for a married woman!”
“Okay, that’s quite enough, you two,” said Noriko, smiling awkwardly. “And I’m not married, for your information.”
As she stood up and walked back over to the kitchen, all three of Koichi’s crewmates turned their heads in unison to look at him. Their confusion was palpable.
“Wait, you two aren’t married?” said the captain. “Then why the hell is she living here with you?”
“She just followed me home one day,” Koichi explained. “Said she didn’t have anywhere else to go, so now we’re just kind of…living together, I guess.”
“And what about this kid?”
“Akiko’s her adopted daughter. No blood relation—just an orphan whose mother died in the air raids.”
“Wow,” said Noda, staring Koichi straight in the eye. “Now there’s a heartwarming tale of finding family in the wake of adversity if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Please don’t romanticize it… We’re just cohabitating for now because that’s the way things happened to turn out.”
“Daddy…” said Akiko, all of a sudden.
There was a hint of anxiety in her voice that suggested she could tell Koichi was distancing himself from her, even if she couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Koichi was slightly taken aback by this interjection for a moment, but then leaned down to her eye level and addressed her firmly.
“Now, now, Akiko. I already told you: I’m not your daddy,” he said.
This dismissal clearly wounded Akiko, as her eyes immediately started welling up with tears.
“Hey, come on, man!” snapped Mizushima anxiously. “That’s just cruel!”
Then, right on cue, the dam burst, and Akiko started bawling loudly.
“Aw, there, there, kiddo!” said the captain, bouncing her in his lap. “No need to cry… Your Uncle Akitsu’s gonna talk some sense into your mean old dad, okay?”
“You should really reconsider. Every child deserves a father figure in their lives,” said Noda.
“Now, you listen here, Shikishima,” said the captain, launching into the lecture he’d just promised Akiko. “Call it fate or divine will or whatever you want, but the fact of the matter is this—the three of you were brought together for a reason. And as the man in this household, it’s time for you to step up and take responsibility.”
“Yeah, come on, big guy!” Mizushima teased, affecting a faux-sultry feminine voice as he wrapped his arms around himself and wriggled coquettishly. “Make me a happy woman, why don’t you?”
Happy.
For whatever reason, Koichi recoiled at the word. “Enough!” he shouted. “I just… I don’t need that sort of thing, okay?”
As soon as he raised his voice, the convivial atmosphere around the table froze over in an instant, only to be quickly replaced by an oppressively awkward tension.
“Sheesh… Fine, have it your way,” grumbled the captain.
Meanwhile, Noriko had been listening to this entire conversation as she stood at the sink doing the dishes, her back turned to the men.
And with that, the dinner party ended on a sour note. Once their guests had all left, Koichi practically dragged his tired, slightly intoxicated body over to the box where the bundle of photographs wrapped in oilpaper lay. He looked them over again for what felt like the thousandth time. Their faces were so familiar he could almost hear their voices—all of them cursing his name.
Only when Noriko broke the silence did he snap out of it.
“I have to say, your coworkers are quite the amusing bunch,” she said, clearly trying her very best to sound chipper. “What a ridiculous notion, though. As if you and I would ever get married and start a family together.”
Her oddly bright tone of voice in saying this, however, betrayed her actual feelings on the matter all too well—and Koichi couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.