Epilogue, 2017

"Defused?"

“Defused,” Hasegawa Mamoru acknowledged. “He’s being put away permanently.”

“But why alive?”

Mamoru didn’t have the real answer to that question, but he had one answer. “It was an explicit request from Sano-san on the Japanese side.”

“And the mopping up?”

“The rest are being rounded up as well,” Mamoru said in confirmation. “They’ll stay alive as well. Same request,” he added.

He almost had to shout the words. The waterhole they visited might be targetted at people in their forties and older, but it still poured out music at a volume more suited for those in their twenties.

The outdoors cityscape of Gothenburg might be silent in a way Tokyo never was, but indoors was a very different matter. Apart from that Gothenburg was strangely similar to Tokyo. An abysmal winter, wetter here than at home, but still the same kind of windy almost winter that drowned the city lights in dreary darkness. Illuminations all over the city mitigated it somewhat, but Mamoru grimaced at the thought of staying here late January when they were all taken down. Sweden was dark in winter.

At least the speakers blaring out foreign music, foreign for him at least, made certain they could speak undisturbed.

“You look like you would have preferred seeing them dead,” the other man said.

Mamoru clenched his fists under the table. “I have a daughter in another school in that area. Thinking it might have been my little Ai...” The cold smile he was rewarded with made Mamoru regret he ever got involved with this organisation.

“There never was any risk. Your daughter is Japanese.”

If being Japanese is the reason Ai-chan was never raped then my own pride in being Japanese just crashed. He chose not to respond, but a feeling of distaste lingered in his mind. “And the outcome?” Mamoru asked. He was genuinely interested, but it was also an excuse to change the topic.

The other man shrugged. It was a thoroughly western expression, which made sense since he was just as tall, blond and blue eyed as any stereotype of the concept of Swedish would want you to believe. “We’ll see. We’re sending to their eighties, or at least we believe we do.”

That was further back than I thought. Mamoru pretended the information didn’t surprise him. “So our readings are from the fifties?” he suggested.

“Probably. It’s a double blind. We don’t know exactly which year in the... What did your contacts call it? Yes, upstream world we’re sending to. We sure as hell make certain they don’t know which year we’re sending from.”

That made sense. “And it’s the same with the… ah… downstream world?”

“Probably. I mean, if we’re sending a bit over thirty years into their past, then it just makes sense we’re receiving from some thirty years ahead in the downstream future. We get hints about what kind of people they want transited and we deliver.”

We deliver. What a disgusting way to put it. “Why?” He could just as well ask that all important question.

“Economic and technological trends some ten to twenty years ahead. It keeps both Sweden and Japan afloat of the rest of the world.” The advertisement for a Swedish male grimaced. “Well, if the idiots over there could get their collective heads out of their arses Japan would be on top as well.”

“There have been major mishaps in Sweden as well. At least if I remember my history books,” Mamoru tried.

Half a beer later the other man smirked and showed Mamoru a toothy grin. “He have our share of idiots here as well. We get the information from downstream; doesn’t mean people in power always listen to it.”

“Why removing Kareyoshi? Pigs worse than him have been allowed to stay in power.” Mamoru said and changed the subject. He could just as well gain some more clues to the riddle.

“Because those in power upstream suffer from the same kind of decency as we do. The last time we allowed things to deteriorate like this they plugged the bottle for fifteen years.”

“Fifteen?” Mamoru was certain one of the arrivals was in his mid twenties objectively. He sipped his own beer and let his eyes wander over the rustic tackiness that served as decoration around them.

“Ashiga James was an accident. He was never supposed to transit.”

So that’s what happened. They’re not fully in control of the transits. But…

“Yes, we have accidents here as well. Or rather we believe those have to occur. Some of the people who should transit probably never get identified. Call it fate, or karma. Whatever.”

The interruption was brutal, but it told Mamoru just about everything he didn’t want to know. Some people got caught in transition as accidents, but most were manipulated into leaving the world they knew for another, and the man on he other side of the table, with a beer in his hand, still dared talking about decency.

Epilogue

“You’re certain you can’t stop it?”

“Kareyoshi-sensei, we’re saying we don’t have any interest in stopping it.”

Kareyoshi heard the emphasis on ‘sensei’, but there was no respect in it. If anything it sounded as if the man smirked.

The spring trimester was a memory since just a few days, but it never felt like it had ended for him. Especially since the summer of 2017 showed leniency when it came to temperatures. The last, lingering days of July offered weather better suited for late May.

“Don’t want to?” Kareyoshi asked, more for confirmation than anything else.

“Look, if the kids behave like some unruly gaijin you discipline them. As it is now those expelled got rewarded by an entry into Irishima High.”

He could growl, but it helped about as much as wiping dirt from his suit. Out of the three schools there had never been any question about which one had the highest status. Now there were effectively only two of them left, but even as Benibara High, or Akai Bara High School as it was formally named, was dissected last winter the students with the highest grades went to Irishima High and the rest entered Himekaizen Academy. Only those with pure Japanese hearts found no place in either school.

Benibara was left as a burned out shell of its former glory.

“Kareyoshi-sensei?”

He left his thoughts and shifted his attention to the representative for arrivals in Japan. A dirty half blood at that!

“As I said earlier. We’ve made an agreement with your superiors that the expulsions be rescinded.”

“And if I don’t agree?” Kareyoshi stared at the woman who had spoken without being spoken to. Being half Swedish meant she was probably incapable of cleansing herself from the foreign taint clinging to every fibre of her being.

She returned his stare.

He could have sworn there was something condescending in her expression.

“We emigrate. All of us.”

“Why? Because you love Sweden that much?”

Her next stare sent shivers down his back. “No. We represent a little over a trillion yen. That gives us a lot more power in Sweden than in Japan. We’ll use it to shut down the business with arrivals.”

Kareyoshi shrugged. If a few dirty foreigners given overblown rights were to cease arriving in Japan, then what was the problem?

“You don’t have to understand. I’m aware it’s beyond your mental capacity anyway. You just have to obey.”

Kareyoshi almost gave in to his need to discipline a woman who didn’t know her place, but a glare from the man beside her calmed him down. Whatever the reasons for the strange order given here Kareyoshi still trusted the people who worked with the arrivals but still aimed for a pure Japan.

“Whatever is best for my home,” Kareyoshi said and made certain his voice was at its most formal.

“Whatever is best for humanity,” came the immediate reply.

Kareyoshi didn’t even bother to answer. His hand forced he’d have to reinstall every student who wanted to come back to Himekaizen.

“You’re right, of course. I’ll keep that in mind,” he said and smiled. His new orders were clear. He had to allow the garbage back inside his school. That was all. He could still make anyone stupid enough to return regret that decision for the remainder of their high school lives.

Epilogue, 2017

With gunshots still ringing in his ears the man stared at his phone in disbelief.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck! And after we've done so well. He opened up his com unit. “We're out of here. Split to the cars as planned!”

Two hours earlier they received the go ahead they needed, and now five men lay dead in different parts of Tokyo. The sixth managed to get halfway to Sendai before they found him and killed him in his hotel room.

He ran down the stairs and jumped into the waiting car. Police would arrive soon. Five minutes too late thanks to the green lieutenant colonel who abused every contact she had to have her former colleagues finish their meals or whatever they did with smiles on their faces. All knew, and none of them pretended knowing. Today would mean a sudden surge in unsolved homicide cases.

Then there was that message on his phone. A car accident. A car accident combined with a prepared transfer order for the headship of Himekaizen Academy meant that it was no accident at all.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck!

The other faction won in the end. A pyrrhic victory, but a victory still. In a burning car wreck the new principal had been found dead just minutes earlier. Another candidate would receive his career step soon.

How the fucking hell did he manage to get that position?

Starting tomorrow the new principal of Himekaizen Academy would be Kareyoshi Takeshi.