I have been staring at this phone for so long that I expect it to break down and confess any moment. Nothing to be gained by postponing, really. I replay the last phone call in my head once again, still painfully clear after two years.
"Yes, this is the Yukinoshita residence. Hikigaya-san?" the majordomo's voice, which usually switched to warmer at this point, remained carefully neutral.
"No, Yukinoshita-san no longer lives here. Regrettably, she left no forwarding address or phone number, but I am sure she will contact you in due course." The call had ended before I managed to say another word.
Not that bad as conversations go, but it left me shivering in my hospital bed. Feeling a tidal wave of disaster coming my way. Considering everything I had gone through before without a trace of premonition, it was quite a warning. Not that it helped any, just marked the first step of a long descent into some dark places. Will this phone call be the same? No… at least I don't have to worry about that. Having nothing to lose leaves you with very few real worries.
I reach out and type the number. The phone rings and rings. Is she home? Damn, I miss mobile phones.
"Yes." That voice. I used to love it once upon a time.
"Hayama-san?"
A sudden intake of breath, followed by another, weaker "yes?".
"Hachiman Hikigaya speaking. I apologise for the inconvenience, but we have an important matter to discuss. Would it be fine with you if I came to visit tomorrow, say, dinner time?" I would be so proud of myself if not for a crumpled piece of paper in my hand. The lines are so smeared with sweat I can barely read them.
An endless pause. Why does it last so long? I don't need to ask for her permission. I can go there anytime I choose. I can have her brought here. In chains, if need be. Well, perhaps having a girl brought in at gunpoint is not a good conversation opener.
"Of course." The voice is much stronger now. And colder, if that is possible. "I will expect you at seven." A click.
I slowly put down the receiver. That went better than the last time. I wipe my clammy hands on the trousers and try to steady my breathing. This dinner will be so much fun.
The drive to the Yukinoshita villa lasts longer than I remember. Perhaps it is the absence of other cars and all that empty countryside. I wanted to go on my own, but Makino refused flatly. Just as he refused when I asked to borrow his suit. I am starting to suspect he is not entirely happy with this visit.
After passing down a small lane, we park in front of a tasteful country house. It looks slightly dilapidated and darker than I remember it. Don't we all. Makino opens the boot and takes a compact submachine gun out. His steps crunch-crunch on the gravel path behind me.
"I can handle this." I turn.
"That woman is dangerous." There is nothing but cold distaste in his tone. He never calls her anything but 'that woman'.
"I can handle a twenty-five-year-old girl". I sound more confident than I feel.
"It could be an ambush. She could have brought her Resistance friends here." Never took us for people who wished to live forever, Makino.
"It will be fine."
He looks at me for long seconds, finally turns around and walks back to the car. If only he cared about his own life as much as he did about mine. If only I did.
The door opens before I can knock the second time. Yukino stands before me, much thinner than she looked at that bizarre reception, the cheekbones prominent, slight dark circles under her eyes. She is so beautiful that words freeze in my throat.
"Welcome, Colonel." She says coolly. "Please come in."
I follow her down a dusty hallway. There is a fashionable suitcase by the door. Was she planning to leave rather than meet me?
Yukino wears a long black coat with some expensive-looking fur. A slightly strange choice for dinner. I've learned from bitter experience that you can hide all manner of dangerous things under such coats. But the house is quite cold. People wear what they have to these days.
We've spent two happy summer weeks in this house, and the familiarity throws me off balance. It is only when we reach the dining room that I remember my manners. The two of us no longer have anything else to fall back to but empty pleasantries.
"Please accept this as a token of my appreciation for your hospitality," I say, bowing almost imperceptibly. It took me half a day to find a pre-war can of peaches. Her eyes widen a bit but the face remains expressionless.
"Thank you, Colonel. Please be seated."
I can recall this woman's face consumed by passion. And I still do, to my embarrassment, every night. To be treated with such icy, distant formality is… demeaning. To us both, and to what we had. Then again it wouldn't be my first time to imagine having something more than was actually real.
There is soup already served, and it is cold, and thin, but it is better than anything I have eaten in the last week.
"This is an excellent soup, Hayama-san." I watch her wince. Two can play this game.
"So, I hear you are doing a great job, Colonel. Chiba is a different city already since you arrived. Have you already shot anybody you know? Don't be distressed if not, I am sure it is just a matter of time." I look down as I try to push back the picture of Yui's body, blood slowly pooling around it. She doesn't know. She can't know.
"Not as good as the work you are doing, madam. I hear that thanks to you stories about all the bad things happening in our country find their way to foreign ears. Why, you might even get food shipments to Japan sanctioned. I am sure that it will be the junta generals and not the ordinary people that will go hungry." Yukino frowns at that, and her hands slip beneath the table. Is she gripping the hem of her skirt? What is she, seventeen?
"I fight you the only way I know how. You are just a bunch of criminals. You have killed thousands of foreigners, and now you've come home and are killing thousands of our own. We've let slip the dogs of war, and now they are tearing chunks of our own flesh and it is no more than we deserve. But I will fight you as long as I can and as long as you leave me alive. Which will not be much longer, I am sure." Yukino doesn't look that frail and tired any more. Her eyes are blazing with righteous anger. I know she means every word.
"I trusted you." She continues, more quietly. "More fool me. I never believed you could do such terrible things. They will shoot you all in the end, or hang you, like the common criminals you are. I hope they shoot you, too." The last sentence is barely audible.
"I hope they do." If I could only find such an angel of mercy. "But I fear we will both be disappointed."
"Eh?"
"That was the original plan. Take the country and hold it together for the next few bad years, seize every scrap of food and every yen, using any means necessary, make them last as long as needed. Get through the rough patch with everybody alive," almost everybody "and then…" I allow myself a small smile.
"And then who cares. Somebody else takes the responsibility, and we get lined against the wall, the survivors get their closure and move on with their lives." It is never that simple. We were just deluding ourselves.
"But I've seen top secret reports. We are just holding our own. Barely. People still starve, far fewer than when your families ran the country," I can't resist the dig ", but some starve. And the situation is not improving. There is no end of the rough patch in sight. Outside our borders things are even worse, nobody has enough and everybody is eyeing each other greedily. Sooner or later somebody will make a move and what is left of the international trade will fall apart completely." I sigh.
"And we import almost everything we need. Even today." I look up and see her staring back furiously.
"You are lying. You are lying like all your uniformed, goose-stepping ilk! Things are improving, you are just lying to stay in power. To avoid the just punishment." Her hands wander under the table again.
A just punishment? Is there a punishment worse than this reality? "No, things are not improving. It might look that way since we seized your villas and limos and your billions in banks and now use your family silver to feed people. But every year there is less to share." I shrug.
"So we hold on as long as we can. We arrest and we execute until everybody is too terrified to resist. We take every grain of rice, and we redistribute, leaving everybody hungry but nobody… almost nobody starving."
"It will all fall apart in our hands soon enough." I don't tell her that only the sense of duty is preventing the entire General Staff from committing a collective seppuku. And the fact that there is nobody to take their place.
My spoon falls to the floor, and I bend quickly to retrieve it. As expected, there is a gun taped to the underside of the table on Yukino's end. It points in my general direction, and the whole thing is so amateurish that I can barely keep my face straight.
"You are going to kill me." Her face is as calm, as flawless as I remember it from those long hours in the club.
"Wh-what?"
"You wouldn't be telling me all those things if you planned to let me live. First I thought you were coming to arrest me. To laugh at me for all I've done to you before having me taken away. Before having me d-disappear. And I thought it was only fair. Only just. I packed my things."
That pathetic fashionable suitcase by the door.
"I've dressed warmly."
For a prison camp? You planned to wear a fur coat to a prison camp?!
"But you actually want to kill me, don't you? Not let your attack dog standing outside bury me in some unmarked grave. You want to do it with your own hands. For what I did to you. For what I did to myself. For ruining our lives."
I stare in fascination as tears slide down her perfect face and drop, to make little circles in her soup. Yukino's hands are out of sight.
We sit here, her gun under the table, mine at my hip, and the irony and the tragedy of it all makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. We have come a long way since those sunny school afternoons sitting at the ends of another table, reading in companionable silence. They say that life is all about journeys and not destinations but, considering where we have arrived, we shouldn't have bothered.