After the War
It was a dark and stormy night. Rain pattered against the tent-top, a harsh accompaniment to the scritching of his quill as he penned in the accomplishments of the day. Two storehouses raided, one encampment bombed, five enemy aircraft downed; 293 casualties, 46 missing in action. An entire company wiped out by Niou Masaharu's Black Brigade.
The smell of damp earth was a relief, covering the accumulated stink of months on the move without the luxury of bathwater that he'd become accustomed to carrying around with him. A number of commanders had subordinates gather tubs of snow to heat until the snow melted, but Tezuka wasn't one to abuse the privileges of power, a quality that had caused him inconvenience in the past, then did an about-face and taken him to his present position.
Creased maps lined the table, some bought from convenience stores, some with the blood of his men. The flickering light from the tablelamp wavered across names like Hyoutei, Rokkaku, Fudomine, written in bold black ink and encased in bold black borders, names that as of this moment existed only in history, trophies of Seigaku's western march.
There was only one name left between them and the sea.
"General." The tent flap lifted, and the guard on duty for tonight -- Katsuo, he thought, but couldn't be sure -- poked his head in. Lately the faces had begun to blur; friends, subordinates, allies, enemies. They all looked alike. "Lieutenants Kikumaru and Oishi reporting back."
"Send them in," he said, turning over the unfinished missive.
The two lieutenants tumbled in with a gust of wind and rain, dripping soddenly over the canvas floor. Their oilskins were ragged, mud-splattered, but their faces as they pushed back the hoods glowed. Still running high on adrenaline, Tezuka surmised; there was little other reason for cheer in the camps.
Kikumaru had barely clambered out of his dripping outerwear before tossing over a thin cylindrical container. It drew a graceful arc in the air, landing neatly in Tezuka's palm to the sound of Oishi's exasperated "Eiji!"
"It's just Tezuka, not Ryuzaki or those other old bats," Kikumaru returned, rolling his eyes. Dirty, soggy, dishevelled, he still managed to shine like the movie star he could have been in another life. "Tezuka's not going to court-martial me for displaying my perfect aim, ne, ne, Tezuka?"
Oishi looked over at him helplessly. Tezuka flicked open the cylinder without glancing up and said, "No court-martial." Then, as Eiji waved a V-sign in his partner's direction, he added, "I do expect you to make five sweeps of the camp's perimeter before dawn."
"That's just imean/i." Kikumaru made a face, flinging his discarded garments on the back of a nearby chair, paying no attention when they drooped and slithered onto the floor. Oishi, sighing, started picking up after him. "And we were just coming to tell you that we've found Kirihara's encampment, too."
Tezuka already had the fresh map spread out on the table, fingers smoothing down the edges. "I see." An X marked the current position of Rikkai's troop of berserkers, about three day's march on foot. It would be infinitely safer to take them out from the air, but the last round with Marui had taken its toll -- Marui was dead, as were most of his men, but not before they'd decimated a good quarter of Seigaku's airforce. "A good job."
A good job was what he expected from Seigaku's Golden Pair, the apple of Intelligence Chief Inui's eye. Besides consistently returning detailed and accurate information from their scouting sorties, they possessed that truly desirable scout's quality of consistently returning. "Were you spotted?"
"You doubt Kikumaru-sama's powers of espionage?" Kikumaru waggled his fingers, then withered slightly under Tezuka's expressionless glare. "They had an air picket up, but we caught sight of it leagues away and circled around."
"It could have been a ruse."
"There's always a chance of that, isn't there?" There was no sign of concern in Kikumaru's voice.
"I received a report from Inui this afternoon," he said, listening as the words came out short and clipped. He was incapable of softening them, but then, soldiers should shun a softening of the truth. "Captain Momoshiro's company came unexpectedly across the Black Brigade on their way through what was formerly known as Rokkaku. A result of faulty intelligence, apparently. They were taken by surprise, and only six men returned."
He paused, then stated deliberately, "Captain Momoshiro was not one of the six."
It was probably a respect for privacy that prevented him from checking their reactions. He glanced back down at the map, tracing clean lines of ink drawn in Oishi's meticulous hand.
Outside, the wind howled a dirge, bringing different names to different ears. Perhaps Kikumaru and Oishi heard only Momoshiro's name in its mournful lilt. Tezuka heard all three hundred thirty nine names on the list, more, a long and dreary procession, and finally, at the end, that one name already mostly forgotten, the one that prevented him from leaving all this behind.
"Does Echizen know?" said Oishi finally. He sounded composed, voice unwavering, but weary; inexpressibly weary. Kikumaru stepped closer to him, and he placed a hand between Kikumaru's shoulderblades.
"No." He'd forbidden Inui from leaking the news, knowing how fast information spread in the army, and that the responsibility for breaking this knowledge to Echizen should rest on his shoulders alone. "He's still battling Sanada at the river. He shouldn't find out about this yet."
"Yes. Yes, you're right. Sir. I -- "
Oishi was cut off by a blast of wind as Katsuo? Katsurou? peered in again. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Colonel Fuji -- "
"I can announce myself." The private's nervous face disappeared to be replaced by Fuji's smiling one, followed quickly by the rest of him as he stepped in without waiting for permission. "It's a cold night," he said by way of explanation, meeting Tezuka's glare with what was certainly spurious innocence.
"It'll grow colder before long," he replied after a pause. There was rarely any point in arguing with Fuji.
"My, what long faces," said Fuji, glancing around. Though wet, his coat was almost pristine in condition, and he shrugged it off briskly. "Have I missed something important?"
"Fuji, Momo's...gone." Kikumaru spoke up before Tezuka thought to cut him off, sounding lost.
He hadn't spoken that quickly.
Perhaps some part of Tezuka wanted to hear it said, and know that, for once, this loss wasn't his alone. Perhaps a part of him wanted to see Fuji's reaction, to check if the capacity for human grief still existed within the perfect porcelain shell of this former companion.
"Ah, yes, that. I know."
"You know?" Tezuka pinned him down with a gaze.
"I ran into Inui a few hours ago," Fuji shrugged, fishing his cigarette case from a pocket and tapping one out. Kikumaru tossed him a lighter, seemingly by rote, which he snagged unerringly from the air.
"I wasn't aware he'd become talkative."
"He hasn't." A flicker of light haloed his hair. "I got a look at his face."
"But don't you care?" Kikumaru spoke again, still with the disbelieving wonder of a child. He hadn't grown up in this war, Tezuka thought, which was for the best; it was the only thing that saved him from growing old like the rest of them.
"These are the casualties of war. We all knew what we were getting into when we started out." Tobacco companies would probably have paid good money to photograph Fuji as he stood right then. A curl of smoke drifted from his fingers, hazying the outlines of his face.
"I didn't," said Oishi, staring at the ground. He was running a hand up and down Kikumaru's back, soothingly but mechanically, as if it were a gesture of comfort performed too many times by now to register. "I thought this war would be over in a few months. It's been two years."
"You can't blame the politicians for turning greedy. If anything, we probably have ourselves to blame for finishing off Hyoutei too efficiently."
Oishi looked up at that. There was a hardness in his brown eyes that Tezuka didn't remember seeing back in school, the glow of amber solidifying around hurt and anger and never letting them go. "Sometimes I don't think I like you anymore, Fuji."
"Oishi," said Kikumaru softly, but it didn't sound like a contradiction.
Fuji took this the way he'd taken a bullet in one of the early skirmishes, the way he took out the garbage. Dispassionately. "Sometimes I don't like any of us anymore. As long as it doesn't affect our working relations, it doesn't seem to do any harm."
"Don't say that." Kikumaru's voice firmed, and Tezuka remembered that the two of them had been inseparable once, Kikumaru's bright, brash cheerfulness against the undertones of Fuji's softer amusement. "It might not harm you now, but it'll harm you -- afterwards. After the war."
"After the war." Fuji seemed to be tasting the words on his tongue, drawing them out like molasses, thick and dark. "It seems like tempting fate to even think of it."
"The war will end, whether we conquer Rikkai or not," said Kikumaru. He reached out without turning and tugged on Oishi's hand until it was resting between both his own. "There's still -- remember that sushi shop we used to gather at after school? They had that really scary wasabi sushi you couldn't get enough of?"
"I remember. The owner's son used to write to me, before he lost a leg in Fudomine. He stopped writing after that." Warmth and irony came together in Fuji's twist of smile.
He walked up to the table and tapped his cigarette on the ashtray there, a sleek white specimen of pottery that he'd placed in Tezuka's hands the prior March. 'To pour your ashes in, so they don't build up,' he'd said, and then, before Tezuka could thank him, 'I made it myself.' Feeling a chill at those words, he'd turned it over, and found a large green cactus grinning up at him from the base. In sunglasses and a sombrero.
The ashtray had seen hard wear since then, its edges chipped and battered, the glaze chafing thin. Tezuka wondered if the cactus was still there, out of sight, or if it, too, was gone, scraped against rough surfaces one time too many.
"You never wrote back, did you." Kikumaru's exasperated tone made it more a statement than a question, more an accusation than either. "You always iassume/i. Well, I can tell you that the shop's still standing, doing well, and Taka-san's working there. My sister writes to me whenever they come up with a new dish. There's a Super-Spicy-Peel-Your-Skin-Off flavor now that nobody's been able to try more than once, and it's waiting for you to go back. After the war."
Tezuka reflected that it had been months since he'd seen Fuji genuinely taken aback, longer since he'd heard Fuji's laugh without a hidden sting. It sounded like a bedtime story, an echo of happier times.
"And what's waiting for you, Eiji? After the war?"
"Secret," said Kikumaru with a mysterious wink, but Tezuka noticed his grip on Oishi's hand tighten. "You'll all have to live and see if you want to find out."
"I'll certainly strive to survive, just for that," Fuji promised solemnly. He turned to Oishi, inclining his head, a small adjustment in the usual angle of his smile that spoke of apology only if you knew him well enough. "How about you, Oishi? Or is that a secret, too?"
"Of course not. I just -- people. Peace." Oishi's dignity was somewhat marred by the blush that crept over his neck. "A life without ulcers. I want to sleep without nightmares, and wake up looking forward to the day, that's all."
Don't we all, thought Tezuka in the short pause that followed, and knew that he wasn't alone.
They glanced up at the hum of a passing aircraft, barely discernable through the rain, then relaxed when no alarm sounded.
"Myself, Eiji, Oishi. Isn't it time for our beloved General to share with the class?" Only Fuji took that tone with him nowadays, polite and deferential as proper to one addressing a superior, with a dash of sly teasing to serve as a reminder that he'd seen this superior as a callow youth and treasured the memories. "What are you looking forward to, sir?"
He'd been waiting for the question. He'd been dreading it. He thought back to their first large-scale attack on Hyoutei, and the aftermath, in which he'd held his commanding officer in his arms and fought panic for the first time.
'Lead our armies to victory,' Yamato had said, his skin cooling but his blood still warm as it pulsed over Tezuka's fingers. 'Promise me, Tezuka,' and he'd promised without considering what the words would mean, acted for once in his life without thinking first. Hyoutei and Rokkaku were ashes on Yamato's funeral pyre, Rikkai next, and all he wanted was to rest, to see an end to this burden. An end.
But it hadn't started out like this, had it? He'd entered the war with a goal in mind, a vague image formed out of written descriptions and blurry black-and-white photographs. With his friends, he'd stepped on the warpath in innocence, unaware of the pitfalls that loomed ahead.
"I want to go to the beach," he said, ignoring Kikumaru's startled jump, Oishi's pained smile, the gleam in Fuji's eyes. "I want to stand on a strip of white sand, and watch the sunlight hit the sea."
As he spoke the vision aloud it expanded, filling with color and sound. Kaidoh lifted his face to the wind, chest bare, bandanna wrapped in one hand, as Inui worked methodically on a sand castle, its turrets balanced with geometrical precision. Kikumaru pulled Oishi into a water fight and was taking outrageous advantage of his superior diving skills, while Echizen and Momoshiro ignored such things as rules to pound each other over the head with a multi-colored beachball, kicking up a minor sandstorm in the process. Fuji stretched out on a beach towel, hidden behind shades, but his smile at Kawamura who was pouring on thick glops of lotion was open and real.
Tezuka stood barefooted behind them all, watching them at play, watching the sky turn from indigo to peach to rosy pink as the sun finally rose, blinding, purging away every hint of darkness, until all he could see was white.
"We'll go there together," said Oishi quietly, and the image shrunk back against the dank interior of the tent. "After the war."
"Yeah, Buchou." The old title dropped naturally from Kikumaru's lips, another remnant of a past that was beyond recall. "I hear that the Rikkai beaches have the greatest waves in the world."
Fuji merely extinguished his cigarette and said, "It's late. I should be getting back."
"You should all go." He stood, gathering up his papers; the letter could be finished tomorrow. Tomorrow, if events went according to plan, Echizen would return, and perhaps Kaidoh if Inui saw fit to recall him. Tezuka already had a speech prepared. This night would pass, and another would begin.
They filed out of the tent opening, Fuji first, Oishi following after him. Kikumaru paused before leaving. "Do you really want me running sweeps?"
"No. Go to bed, Lieutenant."
He waited until the flap closed after them to sink back into his chair. He would sleep in a short while, because it was necessary for the good of the army, but there was no harm in remembering for a moment the determination in Kikumaru's eyes, or the enduring warmth in Oishi's. Fuji was still there, under the layers of cynicism. He could pretend for now that promises would be kept, and that there was an afterwards beyond the war.
Under a starless night, Tezuka waited for dawn.
It was a dark and stormy night. Rain pattered against the tent-top, a harsh accompaniment to the scritching of his quill as he penned in the accomplishments of the day. Two storehouses raided, one encampment bombed, five enemy aircraft downed; 293 casualties, 46 missing in action. An entire company wiped out by Niou Masaharu's Black Brigade.
The smell of damp earth was a relief, covering the accumulated stink of months on the move without the luxury of bathwater that he'd become accustomed to carrying around with him. A number of commanders had subordinates gather tubs of snow to heat until the snow melted, but Tezuka wasn't one to abuse the privileges of power, a quality that had caused him inconvenience in the past, then did an about-face and taken him to his present position.
Creased maps lined the table, some bought from convenience stores, some with the blood of his men. The flickering light from the tablelamp wavered across names like Hyoutei, Rokkaku, Fudomine, written in bold black ink and encased in bold black borders, names that as of this moment existed only in history, trophies of Seigaku's western march.
There was only one name left between them and the sea.
"General." The tent flap lifted, and the guard on duty for tonight -- Katsuo, he thought, but couldn't be sure -- poked his head in. Lately the faces had begun to blur; friends, subordinates, allies, enemies. They all looked alike. "Lieutenants Kikumaru and Oishi reporting back."
"Send them in," he said, turning over the unfinished missive.
The two lieutenants tumbled in with a gust of wind and rain, dripping soddenly over the canvas floor. Their oilskins were ragged, mud-splattered, but their faces as they pushed back the hoods glowed. Still running high on adrenaline, Tezuka surmised; there was little other reason for cheer in the camps.
Kikumaru had barely clambered out of his dripping outerwear before tossing over a thin cylindrical container. It drew a graceful arc in the air, landing neatly in Tezuka's palm to the sound of Oishi's exasperated "Eiji!"
"It's just Tezuka, not Ryuzaki or those other old bats," Kikumaru returned, rolling his eyes. Dirty, soggy, dishevelled, he still managed to shine like the movie star he could have been in another life. "Tezuka's not going to court-martial me for displaying my perfect aim, ne, ne, Tezuka?"
Oishi looked over at him helplessly. Tezuka flicked open the cylinder without glancing up and said, "No court-martial." Then, as Eiji waved a V-sign in his partner's direction, he added, "I do expect you to make five sweeps of the camp's perimeter before dawn."
"That's just imean/i." Kikumaru made a face, flinging his discarded garments on the back of a nearby chair, paying no attention when they drooped and slithered onto the floor. Oishi, sighing, started picking up after him. "And we were just coming to tell you that we've found Kirihara's encampment, too."
Tezuka already had the fresh map spread out on the table, fingers smoothing down the edges. "I see." An X marked the current position of Rikkai's troop of berserkers, about three day's march on foot. It would be infinitely safer to take them out from the air, but the last round with Marui had taken its toll -- Marui was dead, as were most of his men, but not before they'd decimated a good quarter of Seigaku's airforce. "A good job."
A good job was what he expected from Seigaku's Golden Pair, the apple of Intelligence Chief Inui's eye. Besides consistently returning detailed and accurate information from their scouting sorties, they possessed that truly desirable scout's quality of consistently returning. "Were you spotted?"
"You doubt Kikumaru-sama's powers of espionage?" Kikumaru waggled his fingers, then withered slightly under Tezuka's expressionless glare. "They had an air picket up, but we caught sight of it leagues away and circled around."
"It could have been a ruse."
"There's always a chance of that, isn't there?" There was no sign of concern in Kikumaru's voice.
"I received a report from Inui this afternoon," he said, listening as the words came out short and clipped. He was incapable of softening them, but then, soldiers should shun a softening of the truth. "Captain Momoshiro's company came unexpectedly across the Black Brigade on their way through what was formerly known as Rokkaku. A result of faulty intelligence, apparently. They were taken by surprise, and only six men returned."
He paused, then stated deliberately, "Captain Momoshiro was not one of the six."
It was probably a respect for privacy that prevented him from checking their reactions. He glanced back down at the map, tracing clean lines of ink drawn in Oishi's meticulous hand.
Outside, the wind howled a dirge, bringing different names to different ears. Perhaps Kikumaru and Oishi heard only Momoshiro's name in its mournful lilt. Tezuka heard all three hundred thirty nine names on the list, more, a long and dreary procession, and finally, at the end, that one name already mostly forgotten, the one that prevented him from leaving all this behind.
"Does Echizen know?" said Oishi finally. He sounded composed, voice unwavering, but weary; inexpressibly weary. Kikumaru stepped closer to him, and he placed a hand between Kikumaru's shoulderblades.
"No." He'd forbidden Inui from leaking the news, knowing how fast information spread in the army, and that the responsibility for breaking this knowledge to Echizen should rest on his shoulders alone. "He's still battling Sanada at the river. He shouldn't find out about this yet."
"Yes. Yes, you're right. Sir. I -- "
Oishi was cut off by a blast of wind as Katsuo? Katsurou? peered in again. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Colonel Fuji -- "
"I can announce myself." The private's nervous face disappeared to be replaced by Fuji's smiling one, followed quickly by the rest of him as he stepped in without waiting for permission. "It's a cold night," he said by way of explanation, meeting Tezuka's glare with what was certainly spurious innocence.
"It'll grow colder before long," he replied after a pause. There was rarely any point in arguing with Fuji.
"My, what long faces," said Fuji, glancing around. Though wet, his coat was almost pristine in condition, and he shrugged it off briskly. "Have I missed something important?"
"Fuji, Momo's...gone." Kikumaru spoke up before Tezuka thought to cut him off, sounding lost.
He hadn't spoken that quickly.
Perhaps some part of Tezuka wanted to hear it said, and know that, for once, this loss wasn't his alone. Perhaps a part of him wanted to see Fuji's reaction, to check if the capacity for human grief still existed within the perfect porcelain shell of this former companion.
"Ah, yes, that. I know."
"You know?" Tezuka pinned him down with a gaze.
"I ran into Inui a few hours ago," Fuji shrugged, fishing his cigarette case from a pocket and tapping one out. Kikumaru tossed him a lighter, seemingly by rote, which he snagged unerringly from the air.
"I wasn't aware he'd become talkative."
"He hasn't." A flicker of light haloed his hair. "I got a look at his face."
"But don't you care?" Kikumaru spoke again, still with the disbelieving wonder of a child. He hadn't grown up in this war, Tezuka thought, which was for the best; it was the only thing that saved him from growing old like the rest of them.
"These are the casualties of war. We all knew what we were getting into when we started out." Tobacco companies would probably have paid good money to photograph Fuji as he stood right then. A curl of smoke drifted from his fingers, hazying the outlines of his face.
"I didn't," said Oishi, staring at the ground. He was running a hand up and down Kikumaru's back, soothingly but mechanically, as if it were a gesture of comfort performed too many times by now to register. "I thought this war would be over in a few months. It's been two years."
"You can't blame the politicians for turning greedy. If anything, we probably have ourselves to blame for finishing off Hyoutei too efficiently."
Oishi looked up at that. There was a hardness in his brown eyes that Tezuka didn't remember seeing back in school, the glow of amber solidifying around hurt and anger and never letting them go. "Sometimes I don't think I like you anymore, Fuji."
"Oishi," said Kikumaru softly, but it didn't sound like a contradiction.
Fuji took this the way he'd taken a bullet in one of the early skirmishes, the way he took out the garbage. Dispassionately. "Sometimes I don't like any of us anymore. As long as it doesn't affect our working relations, it doesn't seem to do any harm."
"Don't say that." Kikumaru's voice firmed, and Tezuka remembered that the two of them had been inseparable once, Kikumaru's bright, brash cheerfulness against the undertones of Fuji's softer amusement. "It might not harm you now, but it'll harm you -- afterwards. After the war."
"After the war." Fuji seemed to be tasting the words on his tongue, drawing them out like molasses, thick and dark. "It seems like tempting fate to even think of it."
"The war will end, whether we conquer Rikkai or not," said Kikumaru. He reached out without turning and tugged on Oishi's hand until it was resting between both his own. "There's still -- remember that sushi shop we used to gather at after school? They had that really scary wasabi sushi you couldn't get enough of?"
"I remember. The owner's son used to write to me, before he lost a leg in Fudomine. He stopped writing after that." Warmth and irony came together in Fuji's twist of smile.
He walked up to the table and tapped his cigarette on the ashtray there, a sleek white specimen of pottery that he'd placed in Tezuka's hands the prior March. 'To pour your ashes in, so they don't build up,' he'd said, and then, before Tezuka could thank him, 'I made it myself.' Feeling a chill at those words, he'd turned it over, and found a large green cactus grinning up at him from the base. In sunglasses and a sombrero.
The ashtray had seen hard wear since then, its edges chipped and battered, the glaze chafing thin. Tezuka wondered if the cactus was still there, out of sight, or if it, too, was gone, scraped against rough surfaces one time too many.
"You never wrote back, did you." Kikumaru's exasperated tone made it more a statement than a question, more an accusation than either. "You always iassume/i. Well, I can tell you that the shop's still standing, doing well, and Taka-san's working there. My sister writes to me whenever they come up with a new dish. There's a Super-Spicy-Peel-Your-Skin-Off flavor now that nobody's been able to try more than once, and it's waiting for you to go back. After the war."
Tezuka reflected that it had been months since he'd seen Fuji genuinely taken aback, longer since he'd heard Fuji's laugh without a hidden sting. It sounded like a bedtime story, an echo of happier times.
"And what's waiting for you, Eiji? After the war?"
"Secret," said Kikumaru with a mysterious wink, but Tezuka noticed his grip on Oishi's hand tighten. "You'll all have to live and see if you want to find out."
"I'll certainly strive to survive, just for that," Fuji promised solemnly. He turned to Oishi, inclining his head, a small adjustment in the usual angle of his smile that spoke of apology only if you knew him well enough. "How about you, Oishi? Or is that a secret, too?"
"Of course not. I just -- people. Peace." Oishi's dignity was somewhat marred by the blush that crept over his neck. "A life without ulcers. I want to sleep without nightmares, and wake up looking forward to the day, that's all."
Don't we all, thought Tezuka in the short pause that followed, and knew that he wasn't alone.
They glanced up at the hum of a passing aircraft, barely discernable through the rain, then relaxed when no alarm sounded.
"Myself, Eiji, Oishi. Isn't it time for our beloved General to share with the class?" Only Fuji took that tone with him nowadays, polite and deferential as proper to one addressing a superior, with a dash of sly teasing to serve as a reminder that he'd seen this superior as a callow youth and treasured the memories. "What are you looking forward to, sir?"
He'd been waiting for the question. He'd been dreading it. He thought back to their first large-scale attack on Hyoutei, and the aftermath, in which he'd held his commanding officer in his arms and fought panic for the first time.
'Lead our armies to victory,' Yamato had said, his skin cooling but his blood still warm as it pulsed over Tezuka's fingers. 'Promise me, Tezuka,' and he'd promised without considering what the words would mean, acted for once in his life without thinking first. Hyoutei and Rokkaku were ashes on Yamato's funeral pyre, Rikkai next, and all he wanted was to rest, to see an end to this burden. An end.
But it hadn't started out like this, had it? He'd entered the war with a goal in mind, a vague image formed out of written descriptions and blurry black-and-white photographs. With his friends, he'd stepped on the warpath in innocence, unaware of the pitfalls that loomed ahead.
"I want to go to the beach," he said, ignoring Kikumaru's startled jump, Oishi's pained smile, the gleam in Fuji's eyes. "I want to stand on a strip of white sand, and watch the sunlight hit the sea."
As he spoke the vision aloud it expanded, filling with color and sound. Kaidoh lifted his face to the wind, chest bare, bandanna wrapped in one hand, as Inui worked methodically on a sand castle, its turrets balanced with geometrical precision. Kikumaru pulled Oishi into a water fight and was taking outrageous advantage of his superior diving skills, while Echizen and Momoshiro ignored such things as rules to pound each other over the head with a multi-colored beachball, kicking up a minor sandstorm in the process. Fuji stretched out on a beach towel, hidden behind shades, but his smile at Kawamura who was pouring on thick glops of lotion was open and real.
Tezuka stood barefooted behind them all, watching them at play, watching the sky turn from indigo to peach to rosy pink as the sun finally rose, blinding, purging away every hint of darkness, until all he could see was white.
"We'll go there together," said Oishi quietly, and the image shrunk back against the dank interior of the tent. "After the war."
"Yeah, Buchou." The old title dropped naturally from Kikumaru's lips, another remnant of a past that was beyond recall. "I hear that the Rikkai beaches have the greatest waves in the world."
Fuji merely extinguished his cigarette and said, "It's late. I should be getting back."
"You should all go." He stood, gathering up his papers; the letter could be finished tomorrow. Tomorrow, if events went according to plan, Echizen would return, and perhaps Kaidoh if Inui saw fit to recall him. Tezuka already had a speech prepared. This night would pass, and another would begin.
They filed out of the tent opening, Fuji first, Oishi following after him. Kikumaru paused before leaving. "Do you really want me running sweeps?"
"No. Go to bed, Lieutenant."
He waited until the flap closed after them to sink back into his chair. He would sleep in a short while, because it was necessary for the good of the army, but there was no harm in remembering for a moment the determination in Kikumaru's eyes, or the enduring warmth in Oishi's. Fuji was still there, under the layers of cynicism. He could pretend for now that promises would be kept, and that there was an afterwards beyond the war.
Under a starless night, Tezuka waited for dawn.