10:30 PM.
Arato Endo was lecturing his little sister. While he’d been trying to get things ready for dinner, Yuka, the little sister in question, had been gobbling down the ingredients intended for their meal.
“Is your brain working properly?” he scolded. “You couldn’t even leave me enough to cook with?”
It was just Arato and Yuka in the Endo household. Their dad was busy with work and almost never came home, and their mom had passed away while they were still small. So, Arato had dedicated himself to raising his little sister. Unfortunately, he may have overdone it, as she was now hopelessly spoiled.
“What were you thinking,” he moaned, “when I was right here, trying to make dinner for you?”
“I was thinking, ‘Yay, meat!’” Yuka squealed happily.
“You belong in a zoo,” Arato told her.
“Well, dinner was taking too long,” Yuka whined, flipping the channel on the TV away from the game she had been playing. She was fourteen, three years younger than Arato, but she still had the happy-go-lucky personality of a younger child.
A news program came up on screen.
“Woah, cool,” she exclaimed. “Something blew up.”
On the 3D screen rising from the floor of the dining room, great tongues of flame were bursting from a burning building. It was an image from just 30 minutes ago.
“‘The No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group’... That’s kinda close,” Yuka worried. “Or, wait, isn’t it kinda far?”
“It’s close, ya dummy,” Arato scoffed at her. “Well, if you go in a straight line, at least.”
Grabbing the remote, he called up the guide function and asked it the question. It analyzed his spoken request and replied. According to the guide, the incident had happened fifteen kilometers from the Endos’ apartment.
“Hey, that’s pretty close,” Arato said, feeling unsettled. “Crazy.”
The sound of an explosion rang out from the 3D display.
“Wonder if they’ll close school tomorrow,” Yuka mused.
“Of course they’re not gonna do that.”
“Yeah, guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I hope no one around there got hurt or anything.”
Yuka may not have been good at studying, but she had a kind heart, and that wasn’t just Arato’s bias as her brother. She settled down cross-legged to watch the news, while Arato went back to the kitchen to restart dinner.
Dinner didn’t actually require much cooking; it was a simple matter of pouring the frozen food pack and spice pack in together, and then frying them in some oil. That evening, Yuka had ruined his plans by scarfing down the fried sweet and sour pork, so instead he decided to just pour it all over some carbs and call it good.
“They’re saying it was an hIE robot company,” Yuka commented. “Arato, go get a job so we can buy one of those. We could have it cook for us and stuff.”
“Crap, outta rice,” he said. “Guess we’re having fried udon tonight.”
“What?! No way, we are NOT having fried udon two days in a row,” she whined. “C’mon, do rice instead.”
“Well,” he said, “we don’t have any rice, so one of us will need to go buy some.”
Yuka bounced off the couch and turned to face him. If human strength came from enjoying eating and playing, she would be a superwoman.
“Arato, will you buy some ice cream for me too?” Truly a fearful specimen of youngest child, she showed no hesitation while making her spoiled request.
“Why is it automatically me who’s going?” Arato asked.
At his question, Yuka gave him a brilliant, innocent smile. “Cuz I wuv you,” she said cutely.
“Words can’t convey how little I care,” he sighed. Despite the season, it was still cold outside at night, so Arato grabbed his heating jacket from where he had it draped in the entryway.
“So you’re gonna go?”
Arato had already come up with an excuse, just so Yuka didn’t think her cutesy act had worked on him. “Well, there’s stuff blowing up tonight,” he said, “so I figured it wasn’t safe for a girl to be out there alone.”
Yuka put her hands together like she was praying. “Please let there be some more explosions tomorrow. Amen.”
“I feel like this is going to turn into one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ things,” Arato remarked. That said, he still thought that his sister was a cute kid. She saw him off with an expression that said she’d rather have just stayed on the couch, and Arato headed out into the night.
The feeling of being dear to someone, of being accepted, was one that made Arato very happy, which was why he wanted his little sister to be able to feel that way. Though, it could also be said that he’d just gone all in on spoiling her.
Shin Koiwa, the neighborhood where the two of them lived, had been built as part of a Tokyo Bay restoration project. It was constructed near a transfer station set up to connect railway lines from the bay to the land side. From the transfer station, one could get to the Endos’ apartment by heading south on the Urayasu subway line; their residential district was conveniently located for easy access. Further south, toward the bay, there was an area heavily impacted by the Hazard. But Shin Koiwa was a comfortably normal residential district. Many of its residents lived there specifically to get away from life at the heart of the metropolis, so at that time of night there was hardly anyone on the street.
“But seriously, an explosion?” Arato worried to himself. “Are we really gonna be all right?” The danger he’d used as an excuse for Yuka lingered in his mind. Off in the distance, he thought he could hear a siren.
The No. 2 Landfill Island Group was one of the areas where his dad used to work.
It was about a ten minute walk to the grocery store. He didn’t want to spend the whole walk worrying, so he took out his mobile terminal to listen to some music.
“Oh, out running some errands?” a middle-aged woman asked, as Arato walked past her. The slightly plump woman, who looked to be in her late forties, was actually an hIE named Marie who worked for a local landlord. She had been running for over ten years, which was old, for a machine. Arato had seen her face around all the time since he was a kid.
“Yep,” he replied. “You too, Marie?”
“That’s right. We managed to run out of food, too.”
The night walk suddenly felt a little more enjoyable. With someone to talk to, the trip to the store seemed quick. At the little store, run by a single hIE, Arato picked up the same frozen rice and ice cream as always.
Then he headed toward home, walking alongside the road where autonomous cars had eliminated the need for most traffic signals. Marie, shopping bag dangling from one arm, walked alongside him with a gentle gait.
Then, Arato saw them: flowers, falling everywhere.
“Woah,” he wondered, “what the heck?”