The Sound Empress: Chapter 15
Brief synopsis: Nari and Kari travel to Kari's parents' place, where Kari explains the situation and requests assistance from them. Her mother agrees to come.
With everything packed up, which included the letter sealed up in a pristine envelope, I awaited the arrival of Nari. I was going to lead her to my parent’s place for the first time since I became friends with her.
Since the weather was a bit rainy, I stayed inside, while I was waiting for her. I had the television on, so that I could do something while she was coming. The news today seemed to focus on the recovery efforts from Typhoon Akanji that had hit several days ago now. Despite people obeying the orders of the government well, there were 21 fatalities and a few hundred more injured. Luckily, no one went missing as of the last update. Still, I hoped that my parents were okay after the storm.
As noon rolled around, I was beginning to doze off, when all of a sudden, a horn sounded. I jumped up, and then exited the house, locking the door in the process. I saw a car right in front of me. It was a dull yellow compact car, with an engine sound that was quite subtle. Although the glass was quite dark, I could see through it. I could see Nari in the driver’s seat. There was a quiet click, which unlocked the doors of the car. I placed my stuff in the trunk, and then I got in the front passenger seat. Although the seat was quite comfortable, there wasn’t a lot of legroom, despite my slender frame. There was a GPS unit on the dashboard, and Nari pointed to it, telling me to punch in the address of my parent’s place. I did that at once. The GPS then calculated the best route and then highlighted the best route on the map.
“Hmm…” Nari said to herself.
“Something wrong with the way the GPS is taking you?” I questioned.
“Not necessarily with the route that it suggested, but rather that it will take us into Chichibu, which is quite densely populated, and I don’t want to expose you in that guise to many people, which could cause you to be detected by the origin force. So, we are going to take an alternate route.”
“Which way are we going to go?”
“You remember that noodle shop that you walked to one day?”
“Yes! It was a good place for lunch. Although I’m not hungry right now, therefore, there is no need to head to that shop.”
“That wasn’t my intention. I was using it as a landmark. When we get to it, we’ll continue driving until we get to the next road, and then we’ll turn onto that road, which is route 53. We’ll take that to route 193, and then that road will eventually take us to route 411. Route 411 will actually take us all the way to Koshu. It’s a roundabout way to get to our destination, but it will be a very scenic one which will minimize contact with other people.
Instead of the roughly hour and a half it would have taken if we had taken the more direct route that the GPS calculated, the route we took took us 3 hours to reach the outskirts of Koshu. Yet, despite our massive detour, we made it to my parent’s place.
My parent’s place is a small farm, which has a complex of three buildings. One of the buildings, which looked like a rustic shack, is actually a smokehouse, which was operating, as we could see the smoke coming out of the chimney. It can be used to cure and smoke any meat, but my parents use it to cure and smoke fish that they buy from a local market to enjoy later or to give to their neighbors. Next to the smokehouse was a large silo which had a grain mill. It was used to store rice that they farm on their small plot of land behind their house. The house was of similar size to the house that I am living in for the time being, but it is a one story affair.
We got out of the car, and immediately I could smell the smoke and salt from the smokehouse. The smell of the smokehouse was making me even more hungry, so I really wanted to get inside the house and eat something. However, first we needed to get our luggage out of the car. So we went and took out the luggage. Then, we walked to the front door of the house, and rang the doorbell.
After a few minutes, an older woman came to the door and opened it. It was my mother. She was in her early sixties at this point, but you wouldn’t be mistaken if you thought she was twenty years younger. She was quite short (she only reached my shoulders). She was also quite slender. Immediately she hugged me.
“Kari! I missed you so much!” she said while bursting in tears of joy. “And who is your companion that is with you?”
“That is my best friend Nari, who lives in Ayase.”
She let go of me, and then hugged Nari. Nari didn’t particularly approve of this.
“Please, no need to hug me. I’m not a big fan of being touched by anyone,” Nari said.
“My apologies. Please, come in. We will soon have dinner. But first, I want to show you around the place.”
We then entered the main room of the house. It had a metal roof on top of us, with bamboo flooring. There was a little shrine in the corner where my mother would practice meditation and focus on the tenets of Buddhism. There was an old television in the room, with a few chairs surrounding it.
“Here’s the main room, where we spend most of our time when we are both here,” my mother said.
We walked a bit further, taking us into the kitchen. In here we saw my father cooking up some grub for all of us. There was a small refrigerator and a stove in the room, with some cabinets where spices and culinary tools are located.
“This is the kitchen. This is where we (or rather, Harami, as he is the main chef here) cook and prepare food.”
We backed up a bit, and now we walked down into a small corridor. This is similar to my own place in Yokohama. Unlike my place, there was no storage room. Instead, there are two bedrooms. One of them was my parent’s bedroom, which is where they sleep during the night. This bedroom had only one bed, but had plenty of space for both of them to sleep comfortably. The other bedroom had two smaller beds, which made it a guest bedroom. It used to be my bedroom when I was younger, hence why there are some pictures of myself when I was still a child. My mother pointed some of the pictures out to Nari. They talked for a bit about my past. This could go on for ages, but then a voice came from the other side of the corridor:
“Dinner’s ready!”
“Be right there,” my mother, myself and Nari said one after the other.
We returned to the kitchen. There were a few plates of food out on the counter, all of which had a serving of herring, a heap of rice, and some wasabi sauce. We then got some silverware from the drawers, and then we sat down.
Harami, my father, began to speak:
“Hello Kari, how has life been for you?”
“Umm…” I said, so as to give myself a moment to collect my thoughts, “where do I begin?”
“Perhaps you should start with the girl to the right of you. Are you dating by any chance?”
“No,” I said, conceited, “that is not my date. Rather, she is Nari, a courier that is from Ayase. She’s a great friend of mine, who has been a great help in my recent endeavors.”
“Recent endeavors?”
“Yes. These endeavors have to do with the government.”
“The government? I hope you didn’t do something illegal and got in trouble.”
“You know I wouldn’t get in trouble. It’s not in my nature to break rules. Let me explain my involvement with the government.
Back a month or two ago, I was taking care of a client’s cat while the client was on vacation. While I was returning to my home in Yokohama, I stopped by a vending machine which offered weird products which had messages and stuff recorded on them. Somehow I got lucky, or perhaps unlucky, and apparently I had won a prize, and I needed to go down to Tokyo to claim it. Then…”
My mother interrupted me: “Hold on. You listened to a can that said you won something? That has to be a scam.”
“Hear me out, Martha. As I hadn’t gone to Tokyo in a very long time, I would need some help navigating the streets of Tokyo, to head to the National Diet Building, which is where I needed to go to claim the prize. My friend Nari took me up there, since she had to deliver a package. When we got there, there was a protest going on in front of the building. As we were heading towards the building, the protest turned violent and some explosions occurred. Luckily, we were right next to the building that we needed to go to. We went into that building with haste and hid until the explosions subsided. Then Nari delivered the package that she had. After we delivered the package, we went to the House of Representatives. One of the representatives was willing to take us up to the emperor, and therefore we followed him. When we got to the emperor’s chamber, we were told to scram, but one of his guards told us that the message we got was legit. The reward was that I would become the next empress of Japan. There was a catch, however. In order to claim said reward, I would need to destroy a militant force known as the Korean Origin Force.”
My mother was dumbfounded.
“Wow, being the empress of Japan after hearing sounds off of a can. A so-called sound empress. That would be a thing that goes down as legend,” my mother stated, still in shock.
“Indeed. Now this quest to destroy the Korean Origin Force has been a roller-coaster, to say the least. My original plan would be to join the force and sabotage it from within. I made an alias, Jung Moon, a man who wanted to see some changes occur within Japan. I went to the nearest recruitment center, which Nari told me was in Yamato. It was going well initially, but it went horribly wrong and they discovered my real identity, and they didn’t like people who lie. I then was forced to vacate my house and go into hiding.
While I was in hiding, I did get a good supply of intelligence from the sound dispenser machines, and one of them told me the last known whereabouts of the leader of the force, Buson-min Park. He was in the city of Fukuoka. So, both Nari and I went to that city via the train and looked for clues there. We did see one piece of paper that was essentially a piece of propaganda for people to join the force, so we questioned the mayor of Fukuoka to see if he knew anything. Unfortunately, he didn’t really give us anything useful.
This is when I pretty much broke down. I almost wanted to just end things, as my life had become completely different. Nari was there to calm me down, and assured me that we would eventually figure out his whereabouts.
Then the typhoon hit. Hopefully you guys survived that okay?”
Both my mother and father nodded their heads yes. They did note that the power did go out for about a day though.
“Thank goodness. That was one of the reasons I came here.”
“Why else did you come here?” my father questioned.
“I will get to it. So, the typhoon hit. Despite my location getting lots of rain and wind, I was safe. The storm did create a bunch of debris though, as many homes in my new location had roof damage and a good number of trees fell down. After the storm raced off into the North Pacific Ocean, I decided to walk around the village to inspect the damage. While I was doing that, I found a letter written to Buson-min Park, which included the village that he is in, which is Juksan-Ri. This was a huge breakthrough in my mission. However, that is in South Korea, and I have never been there in my life.”
My mother interjected here: “Actually, you were there once when you were, like 2 years old.”
“Okay, correction: I have been to South Korea once, but I have no recollection of me being there. As a result, I have no idea where the village is. This leads me to the other reason why I am here. I am wondering if perhaps either of you know where the village is, so that Nari and I can go there in the night to avoid being detected by Park’s henchmen. Then I can eliminate him and destroy the origin force, once and for all.”
There was an eerie silence in the room, punctuated by a very high pitched humming sound. This was ended by my mother, who stated the following:
“I know where it is. It is roughly halfway between the cities of Gwangju and Daegu. It will be best for you to enter Korea via the port city of Busan, on the southeastern coast, and then look for a hotel in a small town, like Sillim-Gil. There you can plan your final attack, as you will be pretty close to the headquarters, and you will be away from a large population center.”
“Thanks, Martha! Now we shall proceed on our journey tomorrow to Korea, and then we will take down this force.”
“Hold your horses!” Harami said. “The Korean Origin Force has a good stronghold on the southern part of the Korean peninsula, and you need to be prepared to encounter the force at some point. I do not want you to die on foreign soil. So, I urge you to take your mother with you. She can then provide you tips and pointers while you are in South Korea, so that you don’t stick out like a sore thumb.”
Nari, who had been just sitting there, listening to the conversation, then said: “Are you sure that’s a good idea? After all, if we bring more people along, we stand a greater chance of being detected, simply because we would be a larger target.”
“Well, this brings me back to a story that my father told me. When he fought in the war, in a Zero, he was always told to remain with his squadron at all times, because there is safety in numbers. If you broke off for no reason and went against the enemy on your own, you stand a great chance of losing, in more ways than one.
He was a crazy pilot, as he racked up a bunch of kills in the Zero, thanks to the agility of his plane and his steady hands on the stick. However, he was a bit wild, and would often break from his group. This cost him in 1945, when there was a bunch of aerial warfare near the mainland. He engaged a US fighter, I think it was a Mustang, and he was getting some good hits with his machine guns. However, he wasn’t careful, and another Mustang got behind him and shot his oil tank, which caused his engine to eventually seize up. Luckily, he was able to land the plane on Japanese soil, albeit with the gear up.
So the moral of this is to ensure you have a solid group surrounding you, so that you have support.”
Both me and Nari whispered to each other at this point.
“My father does make a good point here.”
“Yes, but we are talking about two different things here. Your father is talking about military tactics from some 70 years ago, back when computers weren’t even a thing yet, and he is talking about aerial warfare. We are in the present, and we are planning an infiltration and sabotage mission for the government. These aren’t really related.”
“Sure. But hear me out: we don’t really have a good lay of the land. This will be a disadvantage for us, especially if we are planning a night mission. We need to know the roads heading into the village and his building inside and out. That way, we can plan the best route.”
Nari was about to respond to that, but then my father jumped into our conversation:
“So, what do you think?”
“We are thinking about your advice. Can you please give us some time to think about it?”
“Sure.” He then walked out of the room.
“Now, what was I going to say… oh yes! That is a good asset to have, but like I said, we need to carefully weigh out the positives and negatives here.
Let’s consider the positives. Your mother has great knowledge of the Korean Peninsula, which will be very helpful. However, this isn’t strictly necessary to have. We could find this knowledge through other sources. Another thing that can be viewed as a positive is that she’ll try to protect your life.
Now, let’s consider the negatives. With her tagging along, we now have three people in our group. This makes us a slightly larger target. Also, we would have to make a disguise for her, which would require some time to prepare. Time, however, is of the essence. We need to act quickly, as if we don’t, the Korean Origin Force could succeed on their goal.”
Nari seemed concerned, but also seemed to realize she was talking to a brick wall here.
“It looks like you have your mind so set, that you don’t care what I have to say.”
“I did listen to everything that you said, and you’ve made some good arguments. However, I think Martha could be a valuable asset here.”
“Okay, let’s consider one more thing. Say she passes away as a result of our expedition. Won’t this affect you? And what about your father? Certainly he would be heartbroken if he found out that she passed away, leaving him a widow?”
“Yes, it would. But it’s inevitable that she’ll die at some point in my life. Then again, if we are careful, she’ll survive this.”
I called out my father’s name after our conversation. He then came back into the room.
“So, what do you think?”
“I have decided to take your advice and take Martha with me, despite the inherent risks to her life while we are in Korea.”
“Very good.”
“One thing, though.” I pulled my identification card out, and gave it to my father.
“I know that the Korean Origin Force is male dominated, and as a result, if Martha dresses as she normally would, she’ll stick out and she will be an easy target for them. Can you tell her that she needs to dress like a man, similar to how Jung is dressed in the picture?”
“I can try, but she doesn’t have much in the way of clothing. By the way, who is Jung?”
“That’s me! Or rather, my alias that I used as part of trying to join the force. The government issued me that card and told me to use that card instead of my actual identity.”
“Oh! That’s odd, as it shows that you are a man, when you are clearly a woman.”
“Never mind that.”
“That’s not really an issue, though. A lot of people have aliases, or nicknames. My father, for instance, was often called Bugger in the military, since he would often bother people, especially his superiors, with his antics. I was sometimes called Zero in my younger days.”
Nari was interested as to why he was called that.
“Well, remember when I told you about the time my father broke away from his squadron in his Zero in 1945?”
Both Nari and I shook our heads yes.
“Well, he had landed the plane down at the site of our home, albeit with no landing gear. The plane was riddled with bullet holes, and there was a good amount of damage on the belly of the plane, thanks to the landing being done without the landing gear being down. After the war, the Zero was retired by the military and replaced with jet powered planes, which were much faster and technologically superior to even the best piston powered planes. The government wanted to basically scrap and recycle the materials from all of these planes to help rebuild after the war. Somehow, they missed the Zero that my father had crash landed.
Now, I had a natural aptitude with tools, and as a result, I became a mechanic, which I still am to this very day. Sometime in my youth days, I used all of my technical know-how, plus the knowledge that my father had on the plane from flying it, to repair the plane to the point in which it could be flown again. In fact, I did fly it once, and everyone in the neighborhood was impressed. As a result, I earned the nickname Zero, and some people call me by that name.”
Nari was quite impressed by this feat.
“Well, I best be heading off to check the fish in the smokehouse. They have been in there all day, and I want to ensure that the fish do not overcook. Enjoy the rest of the evening.”
My father ran off.
“You have some really good parents, Kari,” Nari said.
“Thanks.”
The rest of the evening was spent getting our clothes ready for tomorrow, as well as to nail down the last few details of our plan.