The next time Miika met Okuma was three years later.
She was still a member of the chemistry team in Kumamoto when he showed up, looking annoyed, with a white object in his mouth that strangely did not smell of nicotine in the least.
“It’s candy,” he explained, pulling a half-dissolved piece of hard candy out of his mouth to show her. “I can’t smoke anymore because of you, so I’ve got to have something in my mouth all the time to stay calm.”
The unlikely combination of this acerbic man and his sugar habit almost made her burst into laughter, but she managed to restrain herself with a quick hand to her cheek to hide the muscle twitch.
“In all honesty, I didn’t expect you to uphold the bet. I was certain you’d come up with some excuse for breaking it.”
“I have my reasons. You ever heard the phrase, ‘Vengeance tastes sweetest after the bitterest hardship’?”
“No,” said Miika.
Okuma chewed on the stick of candy. “Why are they sending me all the way from just outside the station to examine new hires? It’s a waste of travel expenses.”
“I didn’t drag you here. It’s probably because the intelligence division doesn’t have enough people. Don’t you get tired up there on the front?”
“No, it doesn’t wear me out. The military guys do that to themselves. It was more exhausting to make the trip back here. I should alter the personnel system so I don’t get called upon to do this again next year.”
“Don’t be selfish. I’ve had to do it two years in a row.”
“Uh-huh. Then there’s a problem that definitely needs correcting.”
“The mechanics in the engineering division are really busy right now. They’re heading into production on a new weapon. So they send all the random tasks to the chemistry division.”
“Ah, the N700 line. I saw it on the internal bulletin. The way it automatically adjusts to the shape of the projectile is very well done. I bet even I could hit a target with one of those.”
“After scoring an E on your military aptitude test, I’m surprised you’re still interested in weapons.”
“In theory,” Okuma replied before opening the bag he’d set down on the chair. “You want some? They sell these in Fukuoka.”
It was a box of manjuu cakes.
“Is that…a souvenir?” Miika asked.
“No, it’s for me. But you can have one, if you want.”
With his permission, she picked up the box and examined the interior wrapping paper. It looked exactly like what they’d sell at the store and didn’t appear to have been opened already. The only smell was of sweet confectionary.
“Why are you making that face?”
“I am investigating to see if you have arranged some kind of prank with these.”
“Listen, insult me if you want, but don’t go insulting sugar,” Okuma said without a hint of irony.
Miika carefully peeled off the sticker on the bottom, then unwrapped the paper, folded it neatly, and lastly, opened the lid of the box.
“Are these…baby birds? They’re very cute. I’d like one of them.”
“Go ahead.”
Miika picked up one of the manjuu, and Okuma reached out to grab two.
“I’m surprised to learn that you’re cultured enough to partake in the custom of bringing souvenirs, sir.”
“It’s not a souvenir. It’s for me.”
“You’re going to get fat if all you do is eat sweet things.”
“It won’t be a problem. I think a lot.”
“That’s utterly unscientific,” Miika replied. From what she remembered of him, Okuma had filled out somewhat since his stint in Kumamoto three years ago. He had been too skinny back then.
“It tastes good,” she said, smiling. That was probably the first time she’d ever grinned in Okuma’s presence, but he wasn’t looking. Instead, he was picking up a binder off the desk.
“Let’s see,” he began. “What’s the crop of rookies like this year?”
There were résumés for the newest hires inside the binder. He flipped through them with a free finger while still holding the manjuu.
“From Hakata. Reason for joining: wants to shoot a lot of guns. This guy’s bad news,” Okuma remarked with a cackle. Miika closed her eyes and shook her head, wondering why they would hire someone like that.
He found another one to read aloud. “From Kochi. Reason for joining: to pay back the JR government for giving me a fair education despite being a refugee, blah-blah-blah… That one’s boring. Ooh, here’s a good one. From Tanegashima. Reason for joining: I want to go to space.”
“What did you write, sir?”
“I think I wrote ‘Because it seems fun.’ ”
“That sounds stupid.”
“Well, I am, in fact, enjoying myself. And nobody cares what you put on your reason for applying.”
“I made the right decision forcing you to stop smoking.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re a child, sir. Children should not be smoking tobacco. Eating candy suits them better.”
“Huh. All right,” Okuma accepted, eating another manjuu. By the time Miika had finished her one, she realized that the box of eight was now half-empty. “But children are great. Shimabara, did you know that when they’re under six, they can go Inside without needing a Suika?”
“I did know that,” the young woman replied. Even the public schools taught that level of common Inside knowledge. Through that compulsory education, they instilled into the children of Kyushu an abstract image of a society ruled by the terrifying automated turnstiles. That way, the government could stamp out any potential curiosity to go Inside and see what it was like.
“I wonder how they can tell.”
“Apparently, it’s not exactly on your sixth birthday. The people Inside just say ‘Get a Suika by age six’ because it’s simple. In reality, the automated turnstiles just show up more frequently as you grow in size.”
“You seem to know a lot about this.”
“I can intercept Inside conversations through Suikanet. When they have children in there, the first thing they do is anguish over raising the Suika implant cost, and families with kids around four or five years old start reaching out all over to raise money.”
“Oooh. You really do perform your job at times,” Miika commented, pleasantly surprised. She didn’t see how this information helped prevent Yokohama Station from making landfall on Kyushu, however.
“Apparently, about twenty years ago, we had someone who was only eighty centimeters tall due to a disability, and we sent them Inside. The methods of shooting stuff across were still too violent back then, so they crossed over on a boat,” Okuma explained. “But they got booted right back out by the turnstiles. They only got in a few more steps than people of normal height would’ve. So it’s not simply a matter of body proportions.”
“Then maybe…it comes down to facial features,” Miika mused. She tried to come up with ways to change a person’s face from an adult’s to a child’s.
“Maybe. Facial recognition algorithms were a major field during the war, and even in the High Civilization era. It’s certainly possible that the station structure inherited that software. Apparently, it can reproduce data down to the physical storage that originally contained it.”
It seemed unfair to Miika that they were going through such difficulty trying to decode the culture of the lost age while Yokohama Station could incorporate and read the physical media perfectly. Not that complaining was going to change the situation.
“I have a question. What do the people in there normally talk about?”
“The same things as out here,” replied Okuma. “When people get together, the things they do are always the same. Someone claims they have power and rules over the others. Here, it’s JR, but in there, they call themselves employees or staffers. The only real difference is that they don’t use weapons. That’s all left up to the turnstiles.”
“I see.”
There was a knock at the door. A man’s voice called, “Miss Shimabara, it’s time.”
“Well, it’s time to get back to work,” she said. “We have some major troublemakers this year. Be sure to teach them the difficulty of real life, sir.”
“I don’t think it’s all that difficult.”
“When I say ‘the difficulty of real life,’ I’m referring to the fact that they have to deal with work superiors like you.”