a quirky, moody confession
There was sweat beneath his arms, his heart beating quicker in his chest. Despite the fairy lights in Ginza proclaiming the season, Kusaka Yujin felt neither cheer nor good will, the weight of the impending finality pushing down upon him as he stood amongst the evening crowd of the Yamanote Line train from Shinjuku, the cautious crowd about him, each, like him, with a thin covering of polyester over the mouth, the subdued atmosphere within the carriage reminding him again not only of how much they had lost, but how much they still had yet to lose.
The year had started like any other, the faint murmur of the situation abroad growing ever more troubling. By February, he was told that in hotels, there was information for travellers, the politely requested cooperation of those who had arrived from mainland China, and then, by March, there had been an unprecedented shift of a global scale towards isolation, as the increasing number of contagious patients in both hospitals and in the community skyrocketed.
Kusaka had not seen the like of it before, could not have imagined anything such as the unfolding drama happening in his lifetime, and yet all around him, Tokyo fell silent—save for the ceaseless assault of terrible and awesome powers against them, and the bravery of six shining warriors who stood against such threats.
In the early days of the invasion, Kusaka had not felt truly like his life was in danger, not with those warriors of light standing between the city and the encroaching influence of Yodon. Likewise, with the spread of coronavirus, he had not felt in any real danger; he worked from home for a few months, he frequented bars and cafés less. It was fine, he told himself, he still had work, he still had access to all his research, he just couldn't physically be in the lab.
In late December of the previous year, there had been reports of a trail of white vapour off the coast of Sakhalin drifting out across the Sea of Japan towards them. On further examination, it had been discovered that the cloud was not vapour, that it was a cloud of seeds, floating, so infinitely light they were, even in the rarefied air. Millions of gossamer-slung seeds. A number of samples had been retrieved, many of them destroyed in the process, and eventually a handful had made their way to Kusaka, being known for his theoretical paper on conditions for growing fauna in the inhospitable conditions of a world such as Mars.
He had no doubt that there were probably men and women just like him in both Russia and China who were working on the same problem as had been presented before him, and he was certain that amongst those men and women, there were those who would seek to link the spread of the seeds with the recent pandemic, but Kusaka had always known there was something special about the sample that had been delivered to him by the Ministry of Agriculture.
In vain, he had laboured over the spore sample, had sat in front of his computer at home analysing the data over and over, trying to understand what it was he was looking at—and then, she had been there, with her gilded raven armour, her smart, purple uniform, and her vicious crop, and everything had made sense, the futility of it all, the inevitability of it all.
When first she had visited him, when first she had informed him of how little he mattered, of how little any of them mattered, he had trembled and wept, his body shaking as if the death sentence he had received was for him and for him alone. He had fallen at her feet, thrown himself before her, and clutched at her boots, begging her to spare him.
In those moments when the secret of the spore was revealed, the secret of the Yodon Ivy seed, Kusaka Yujin had snivelled and grovelled and sobbed for mercy, crying out that he could be of service to her, that if she just spared a handful of them, if she allowed just two of them to live, then maybe, in the brave new world they were now rushing to greet, just maybe they could be of value to Yodon, to the Emperor.
She had raised an eyebrow, looking down upon his prostrate form in disgust.
'Oh,' she had asked, 'and what value would that be?'
Snivelling, his face ugly with tears, he had lifted his head.
Let me live, he had begged her; let me pick my bride, and we could be like a new Adam and Eve for you, we could raise a new race of humans, a race of servants loyal to you for all time.
Her lips had twitched, she had rolled her head with laughter, yet there was no mirth in her eyes.
Standing amongst the crowd, the paper-thin polyester stretched across his mouth, Kusaka Yujin caught sight of his reflection in the glass, his linen jacket, his v-neck shirt, light brown hair parted in the middle.
A man on the way to meet his future bride, he thought; a man who had sold out his entire species.
The Yamanote Line train continued to rattle along its path towards its destination. Above them, clouds of white vapour went unseen amongst the dark clouds of the winter night.