Without knowing why, Shinobu Kochou awoke with a start. A tentative smell of hazelnuts and formalin was coming from the other room, mingling with the aroma of a set of cornflowers on a desk, both elements of a whole place that appeared akin to a jumbled wooden house, an infirmary perhaps. A window on the adjacent wall, though fogged, gave plenty of light, and beyond her bed sat the long and stiff figure of a man Shinobu didn't know.

"Where am I?" she asked.

Only then did the man, palpably a soldier, notice she was up.

"Ninoshima Island," he answered. "The sanatorium. I found you on the beach…"

He spoke queer Japanese, and when Shinobu saw the auburn hair, the wide and starfish–coloured eyes, the field grey uniform and the imperial and vanguarding way he held his hands on his thighs for patience, she realised he wasn't of this world at all.

"You're a soldier…?" Shinobu asked. "Where're you from?"

The man put his hand on his heart and told the truth: he was Langer Heinrich, a German soldier stationed in Tsingtao, captured when the Japanese appeared two years ago, and a prisoner–of–war on Ninoshima ever since with a batch of his comrades. Though not permitted he had taken an unsupervised amble down the strand, and that was how he found Shinobu.

She suddenly remembered the calamity of the night before. "And the rest of them on the boat?!" she asked. "And Final Selection?"

Heinrich didn't know what she meant, but he soothed Shinobu with promises of fortune on these waters just as he felt on his ferry here. She still thought about Final Selection. Toiling four years to reach slayerhood, and now it had been hacked from her hands with some bits of fingertip too. Heinrich stood up and Shinobu saw how enormously tall he was. One–ninety something she reckoned from a nearby chart. Motley by western standards even. Inevitably Shinobu fell deeper into the death trap of gloom, but in a move unprecipitable Heinrich took a cornflower from the vase and placed it in her palms still wet. He said: "But you're here, aren't you?" And nobody, not even Heinrich, would've dared to explain just what arrival it was.

The door opened and an older man, Japanese and a soldier, came in. He embellished his chest with medals and ribbons aplenty, sapphires and otherwise, across his tea–coloured uniform, and the ceremonious sword at his side – Shinobu at least knew this – said officer. Heinrich saluted and this wasn't returned. The officer glanced at Shinobu, and spoke in a voice inflected by bubbles of sake.

"Good you are well. Nevertheless," he said, "this place is restricted. Outsiders… civilians are not allowed here. We will have to have you off as soon as possible, if your condition permits it…"

"That condition isn't permitting anything, colonel," said Heinrich.

Shinobu swivelled and got out of the bed. She thought she had a fever. Her legs burned and she made a great effort to stand right. Feeling threatened by the colonel's gaze, she bumbled across the room in her linen nightset, to her clothes on a drying rack, and her sword. For reasons unknown, she picked up the sword first.

"Doing Kendo?" Heinrich said.

"Something like it."

"What school?" he asked, but was stopped by the colonel.

The ferry to the mainland would only come the next morning. The colonel requested Shinobu stay in their garrison. There'd be home food and futons. Away from the frivolity of the gaijin, surely, but he wouldn't say that. However Heinrich objected.

"Since she's here, why not let her stay with us?" he said.

The colonel twisted his eye. "You are prisoners and this is a civilian."

"I'm not forgetting that. I'm saying maybe she's full of everything Japanese now," Heinrich replied. "It's the same reason I went for Tsingtao from Germany."

"Say your point, gaijin."

"My point may hurt you. But…"

Heinrich faced Shinobu and used this analogy: "For supper, would you prefer the eastern food you've had your whole life, or try something western?"

And eventually the colonel conceded when Shinobu chose the latter, though he would only allow the program to be conducted under the strict eye of one of his soldiers, and she was to sleep in the garrison nevertheless.

The three emerged from the sanatorium, began to cross the asymmetrical flagstone paths, and the air became cold and Shinobu couldn't smell the formalin anymore. Ninoshima Island, which she was unfamiliar with, was a jungled plateau lost in the desolation of an interminable fog. They took a skinny trail that went through the centre. Set beyond the road at odd intervals were deserted huts, cultivated spaces of failed farmland, old wagons in the bushes and other tools on limping tables, appearing to be a worksite somewhat, and at the tip of the island was the heavy and duly–lanterned fortification where the guards lived. A few soldiers passed them on the way, all raising an eye at Shinobu, and all wary of Heinrich, who was not supposed to be walking so freely. The barracks appeared from nothingness at the most desolate corner of Ninoshima, protected by zigzagging wire and more men, a rising sun on a pole somewhere far, and a German flag on the door. The colonel was replaced by a grunt. He saluted them gone with prejudice and they went inside.

When the men saw Shinobu, they did not have time to stop their bungling, to kill their cigarettes and their shirtless card games, and drink their pilsners and whiskey done, nor one to put away his amorous magazine, and another his crinkled sweetheart photo. Indeed, her appearance was like a firecracker in a den of sheep. They sat in a rough semicircle wherever and observed Shinobu while Heinrich explained her stay and her herself, silent all the while, neither communicating any malignance, or hospitality. They sat dressed and without smoking and drinking. They sat in a way that hid what they thought a mess behind them. Only after Heinrich's introduction, did one stand, and in Japanese worse than his, speak: "Are you the one… the captain was talking about?"

The officer from before? Shinobu thought. But no: that was a colonel. Nevertheless she considered it a jumbling in translation. After Heinrich relayed the question in their language she decided to nod and affirm, without any cause to it. Suddenly the barracks erupted, in glee that blazed higher and higher, for no reason Shinobu knew, like some impulse of delightfulness.

Twenty–seven Germans and one Austrian, an unchanged crew here since being deported from the battle, were immediately fond of her, and took her arrival as one to be regarded with commemoration. So they commemorated, and tried to teach her everything.

They told her their stories of soldiery, first as a conglomerate narrative of their time on Tsingtao, but when it became clear they could no longer avoid mentioning the battle, which they thought contentious, they went to individual tales. Shinobu listened to them all. Wittekranz was a burned man and the Austrian, and he had defected his Alpine existence enticed by a single postcard he'd seen as a boy, advertising a spiced life under the Mandarin sun, palm trees and jujubes, and a special 'Peking palate' to the way of doing things. Indeed, adventure seemed to be the superior reason in the group for why they came to Tsingtao. It was somewhat for Heinrich too, who had defied the destiny of inheriting his family day–trading business in Dresden, to…

"Actually, I wanted to go to South–West Africa," he said. "If you're army long enough there, I heard they give you a farm."

"Well, how're you here?" Shinobu asked.

Heinrich made his jaw tight and looked Shinobu in the eyes. "I got on the wrong boat." Then everyone who could understand went mad with laughter, everyone except the watchman, and there was nobody to tell if the joke wasn't just reality.

Supper, the objective of Shinobu coming here, was an hour away by mandate of the guards, and they turned to something alike to the miscellaneous exchange of cultures for time to go. They showed Shinobu the German way of saying 'three' on the hands: only extend the index, middle, and thumb, and if you were to order three glasses of scotch another way, it would be very dangerous. Then they distinguished their two cheers: 'Zum Wohl', for when it was wine, and the one she knew, 'Prost', for beer. They both wished the toastee good health. They soon grew bored of that, and it went to Shinobu. She was asked about her school life, and she said it was plenty fine, and then they said her mother must have worried for her terribly, and she agreed. Soon they knew the root of her butterfly clip, and to a marginalised extent, her white jacket. They did not ask about the sword because she was not allowed in with it, and indeed this may have been fortunate for they inquired everything they could. And when Shinobu pulled her sleeve, they asked about the watch too.

"Longines," one said. "That's Swiss."

"But French Swiss," replied another.

It put a sour taste behind the teeth of the men. That brought it to Shinobu's mind: Europe, dear Europe, and the war they were missing. Through all their fantasies of Tsingtao she had detected a tinge, a subtle homesickness for Europe. She asked that next: "Do you miss Germany?"

"Not plenty," Heinrich said.

Wittekranz came up.

"I only want to fight the French."

That earned bludgeoning cheer from some. Wittekranz requested that Heinrich put on 'the movie'. He leaned on an imposing and tarnished projector which Shinobu had somehow missed. Heinrich apprehended. Then he conceded. They closed the curtains and the lamps and they aimed the nozzle of the projector to the section of wall that was cleanest. Shinobu sat foremost, but they told her, 'you can close your eyes if you want'. The tape was loaded and a thunderous sound and image came on:

DER KRIEG DER EUROPÄER
DIE FEINDE DEUTSCHLANDS

Shinobu did not know German, and though she had learned the Latin alphabet under Tsubone, Heinrich nevertheless had to translate: 'the war of Europeans. The enemies of Germany'.

With the prospect of another war in Europe seeming more and more inevitable, this movie has been compiled to educate the German soldier on the enemies he will possibly face.

A spritely tune was emerging from the projector. But then it turned to ominous military bugle.

THE BRIT (UNITED KINGDOM)

A Brit is a man born on the island of Great Britain, from any of the three kingdoms: England, Wales, Scotland. An Irishman may join the British army, though he would not be called a Brit.

Synonyms: Englishman, Scotsman, Tommy, Flusse Themse

The Brit averages 5'5 to 5'7 tall, and a weight between 8 and 11 stone. Most Brits that join the army are poor farmers by birth, but with an astute sense of nation.

He is a linear and cautious fighter. It is not in a Brit's nature to make large advances, as they are programmed to think they will always entail large casualties. As such they have reserved their biggest powers as their navy, their diplomacy, and their persuasive ability to make others fight for them (i.e. the French).

Most Brits have given up eating beef since colonising India (see film 2, archive 7: Rudyard Kipling).

An obtusely random slide that left the men laughing. However a montage was shown next and they were suddenly quiet. It was reels and pictures of the Brit in action. Ducking in the reeds and shooting and wading through the water like renegades. Ever slowly, the men started to shout. She heard:

"Tommy–boy!"

And a variety of slurs to follow. In German but obviously so. The massive audio of gunshots and the bass drums could not drown out the tormenting cries of the men against the screen, of everyone but Heinrich and the guard in his far corner, and Shinobu who watched sitting and unsure where to stand. The slide turned and it was the Russians. The men were less spirited as their compilation played. Some cursed them the same and others cursed them less and some didn't at all. It passed, in all objectiveness and relativity, calmly. But they were the most virulent with the French. Only their banner was shown to be taken with ruthless defamation. An awful ecstasy of profanity and vindication, a desire to beat, to kill perhaps, coursed through the crowd like a charging pulse, threatening to overthrow one's will against him in a bonfire of larval antagonism. Wittekranz led the thing with his passion. One man tossed his shoe and another his canteen, and above all terrible and universal words were being flung. And yet Shinobu could only feel that the anger was abstract and somewhat unbelieved, though she was afraid to doubt it – it seemed only her, Heinrich, the guard, and the Frenchman in the screen agreed: who gallantly stood above the rancour, and went on with his obstacle course smiling.

The end would come not when the tape had dried up, but as a new enemy was displayed, in total defiance of the 'War of Europeans' headline:

THE JAPANESE

Shinobu understood because of the flag. Before anything was said the projector was switched off and she turned around to see who did it. Heinrich was there.

"How come?" she asked.

But Heinrich had an answer. "It's time for supper."

By then the men had completely calmed, and some even looked ashamed of their display. Onwards, therefore, to eat.

A corned beef stew would recover the mood somewhat, however oversalted and underdone it turned out to be. Shinobu thanked them graciously but sat alone with the tray. Despite original intentions mealtime had become secondary to her. In some way, and for reasons not entirely above ground, she felt strange in this place. Shinobu peeked at the watchman by the wall and he tapped his wrist. One hour left. She did not wish it, but Heinrich saw this too, and came to stand over her. Suddenly, in the most imperious tone naivety could muster:

"Would you like to meet our captain?"

His name was Otto Hansel. He was the oldest of them and the only officer amongst, but nevertheless obliged himself to separate from the group and take up solitary captivity in a nearby catacomb, where he kept occupied with medical notions. Heinrich's tone was not as much asking as it was pressing, and Shinobu agreed to depart the barracks at twenty–eight minutes past seven in the evening, when darkness had already joined the sky and sea, and the jungle had acquired the distant silence of an observer. Supposedly permission was not needed and they followed a gas lamp to the cave, before stopping.

That was the first strangeness: Heinrich saluted Shinobu's warden and he left them without hesitation. They resumed down the grotto, and the further they went, and the more of its snake length they illuminated, Shinobu gradually detected the scent of formalin perspiring through the icy walls. They arrived at the bottom and the tunnel had coiled so much that nothing of the outside could be seen. A credenza desk by the edge was crowded with labelled bottles and tubes containing organics in coloured oils, which was the source of the formalin smell. Aside it was a bin holding rolls of written posters, and painted next to that was a smeared cross. There were crumpled magazines and newspapers everywhere, broken furniture across the floor, a smashed vinyl, but all kept free of dust by a dutiful hand. Nevertheless, the darkness sounded like yellow fever in there, and inexplicably, nightmares. And beyond it was the bed.

"Are you a Japanese?"

He had a sublime and accentless way of the language. Shinobu was made to kneel in front of the bed, and she could only see the captain's shape through the mosquito net. She answered:

"I was born here."

"Whereabouts?"

"Shikoku."

The captain sat up. He uncovered the mesh but was still wrapped by darkness.

"And how far from the city across the strait?" he asked.

Shinobu had to determine what he meant. "…Hiroshima?"

"Uh–huh."

"About seventy kilometres."

Heinrich maintained his distance watching. The captain tried to pick up a basin of dried froth, losing the touch in his fingers twice, but succeeding by the third attempt to balance it between his thighs. He adjusted a mirror on the nightstand in a way that only he could see himself, and took out from its buffalo leather pouch the frayed shaving implements and the brush, which he dipped in water. Then he began to lather.

"I was in Hiroshima when I first came to Japan. I don't know what it was, but they put me in an asylum or a boarding house of some kind for a few months, and they didn't want to let me go but I went myself eventually last year. Anyway, there's a place on one of those inland rivers, actually where one of them was dissolving, and it must've been a chrysanthemum field or someone's field at one spot in time, but for about half a kilometre you'd think that… a piece of God's own garden just up and fell on the earth, in the form of white chrysanthemum."

The captain was shaving now. With amazing dexterity he guided the razor across his cheek with a hand that minutes before could not hold a bowl. In the lamplight Shinobu saw the hair light as wheat and the Roman nose like marble, but not the eyes. He went on.

"I went to the red–light district once, too. I don't suspect I was excessively sane at the time, but I recall well some men were after me, not really police, and they were in nice uniforms and they had real metal swords, and they named themselves something like demon slayers, but that didn't help them."

Shinobu looked again at the desk. She saw the snakes in the jars which she hadn't before and the resolution that was coming to pass. Slowly, she began to suspect.

"And they sent more. Boy after boy… girl after girl. Soon it wasn't just the demon slayers anymore. They wanted something from me and I knew because every time I'd look at them they'd just chase harder. It's the exact thing with you, and your friend, your living and true friend, despite me. Intervention is a harsh mistress… and your people were so afraid of mine, they put me on this island."

The captain nicked his chin. He dried the cut with his shirt and wiped the rest of the cream off. Behind the black, he had his eyes on Shinobu. And though she knew and knew there was absolutely no possibility she was mistaken, she didn't go, and wouldn't absolve. The captain put the bowl down.

"But I know who you really are," he said.

Shinobu answered tremoring. "Who's that?"

The captain leaned and seized the light across his face, and told her with no consideration: "You are Baoyuan's dream." Then for the first time, she saw that Otto Hansel had rainbow–coloured eyes.