“I’d sure hope not. Who’s gonna go takin’ a walk around a place like this? Who knows what’d happen to you?!” said Ijuin, voice rising gradually. “My family’s supposed to be here! How do I know if they’re okay in all this?!”
“The people from the village said they only distribute rations once a day, and it’s just a bit of wheat flour baked in water or scraps of plain suiton dumplings,” Yu recalled. “This place is... It’s something.”
He could feel anger churning inside him. He knew it was their enemy, the armies from the other side, that had reduced the world to what it now was, but even still. Seeing the seat of a so-called “government” in such a state filled him with unbridled emotion.
Before Yu’s rage at the spineless, detestable adults could boil over, Ein spoke up. “Natsuki, I take it you’ve already noticed what’s happening?”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied nonchalantly. “Our car’s getting us a bit of attention. We’ll be careful.”
They had made it to Hakata, and many pedestrians were throwing curious glances their way.
“It would appear not many travel by car in these parts,” Ein said. “In fact, it’s almost as if those that do are not thought well of.”
“Yeah, some of these guys don’t look too happy with us,” Yu said.
He was peering outside the window and scanning the area when he saw, to his surprise, another car approaching in the opposite lane. It was a luxurious black sedan, fit for someone of high status—more specifically, it resembled the kind of vehicle a governor or member of the Diet would travel in.
Suddenly, one of the bystanders hurled a rock at the black car.
“What the hell are you doing to us?!” he roared.
“Pull the bastard out!” another man shouted, stepping in front of the vehicle with a metal pipe in hand. “Lemme see his face!”
About a dozen other men trailed behind him. The sedan couldn’t pick up any speed for the same reason Natsuki couldn’t, leaving it vulnerable to the people’s fury as they beat on the car with pipes, tools, and stones. Yu could sense the depths of their hatred, the intensity of their pent-up anger.
The sedan’s driver was in hysterics, as was the man in the suit behind him who was shouting something to the rioters outside. Likely desperate calls for calm.
Natsuki stopped the car, and that was when Yu realized that he recognized the suited man.
“He was with the delegation that came to Tokushima. The only one who wasn’t wearing a military uniform,” he said. “I think they called him ‘Mister Ijuin.’”
“Wait, for real?!” croaked their Ijuin.
“Yeah. I completely forgot about him after all the chaos.”
“I mean, to be fair, Ijuin’s not that rare of a last name. It could be a coincidence for all we—oh my god, I know him!”
Yu jumped as his friend lurched forward. What a coincidence it was.
Natsuki put her hand on the door handle. “I was still mulling it over, but I guess I should probably go break things up,” she said. “Be right back!”
A short while later, the mob was gone. Natsuki had done a good job of running them off simply by snatching one of their metal pipes and bending it in half without even blinking. No one stuck around after seeing that.
Ijuin senior immediately burst out of the car, blubbering, “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! I simply don’t have the words to express my gratitude!”
He reached for Natsuki’s hand, but the samurai girl dodged his grasp with a small step backwards.
“Sorry, I don’t shake hands with guys who don’t know how to keep them to themselves,” she said.
“Oh, I do! Really, I do! I don’t take just anyone’s hand, you—”
“Don’t act like you haven’t given out a billion handshakes to anyone you think you can kiss up to, Cuz,” Ijuin the younger interjected.
“Is that...” The man met eyes with the young boy and broke into a wide grin. “Takamaru! You’re alive! I thought I’d never see you again! What a blessed day it is!”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. I mean, I’m happy and all, but...” Ijuin looked at “Cuz” with a difficult expression. “What’re you doing with the provisional government? You worked out of Kanagawa, didn’t you?” He turned to his friends. “Er, anyway, right. Ichinose, this is my cousin and the second son to the head family, Haruki Ijuin. He inherited his dad’s constituents and campaign funds, and now he’s a third-generation dietman.”
“I had a feeling the Ijuins were something else,” Yu muttered. Now that it was all but confirmed, he was more content than surprised. Takamaru Ijuin was, in fact, kind of a big deal.
Former dietman Haruki fiddled with his hair awkwardly. “Well, the thing is, the government right now’s more of a... How do I put it? The Defense Force’s officers staged a coup, so it’s kind of a military junta now. But they still need suits to do the pencil pushing, and unfortunately I had the perfect job experience.”
“Uh-huh. Very unfortunate,” Ijuin said sarcastically. He squinted at his cousin. “From what I hear, the politicians get to live it up around here.”
“Listen, if someone weren’t there to be the voice of reason, the refugees would be getting nothing to eat and we’d have twice the number of casualties!” Haruki argued. “And I’m not here alone. I’ve got the whole family to think about, so I want to try and make things better.”
“Right, the family! How is everyone?! Are they safe?! What about my parents?!” Ijuin interrogated the man.
“They’re fine. I can’t say that about everyone, but they’re still around.”
Ijuin’s eyes lit up at the news. But just then, a siren started to go off, wailing from speakers around the entire city.
“I assume this means we have uninvited guests,” Ein said somberly.