The Sound Empress: Chapter 2
Brief synopsis: Nari is introduced via a phone call. Kari asks her if she could be a guide while in Tokyo. Nari agrees and will pick Kari up during a mail run.
I grabbed my cellphone out of my pocket, and looked through my contact list. I don’t have too many people on the list, mainly because after I am done with a client I usually take the number off of the list. There are a few repeat clients, but these are few enough in number that I don’t really need to keep all the numbers in my phone. Looking through the phone, I saw the contact “Nari Fukuhara”. She is a best friend of mine, who I met several years ago in junior college. She’s a bit older than me, yet behaves very much like me. I know she works with a courier service, and oftentimes she would travel into Tokyo to drop off packages for the government. So, she looks to be an ideal person to accompany me into Tokyo.
I pressed the phone icon associated with that contact. My phone started to make the usual ringing sound. After a few seconds I grew a bit impatient.
“Come on, pick up,” I whispered under my breath. Then a familiar voice popped through:
“Hey Kari.”
“Hi Nari! How are things going for you?”
“Quite well. I’m on my day off, so I’ve been working on cleaning my house. Yourself?”
“I’m well. Anyway, I have something to tell you. Something big.”
There was a brief silence, then Nari punctuated the silence:
“Ooh! Did you get engaged?”
“No,” I stated, “although I wish I were.”
“Did you get a new house?”
“No,” I stated, a bit disappointed since she didn’t guess correctly again, “I’m still in the same apartment in Yokohama.”
“Well, tell me. I haven’t the faintest clue of what you want to tell me.”
“So, I was in the midst of walking back from the fish market in downtown Yokohama and I found a weird vending machine that sold drinks that have sound recordings on them. Which I have never heard of before, even though I have plenty of experience with rare and unusual audio storage formats.”
Intrigued, Nari said, “Go on. Did you buy a drink just to see how the format worked?”
“Yes. I bought a can of tea that had a vinyl record on it, partially for curiosity, but also to satiate my thirst. I found the tea adequate, but I was more interested in what the message was. I took the can home, and then prepared the can per the instructions on it, and then played it on my Edison phonograph. It then played a message that I won something, and that I need to go to Tokyo to claim it.”
“Wow.” Nari was in shock after I stated that.
“I know, it was something unexpected. But there is a problem. You see, I’ve only been to Tokyo once as a child, and as a result, I’m not familiar with the area. And I know you often go to Tokyo to deliver things for government officials. So, I thought you could take me over to Tokyo and we could enter the National Diet together.”
“I’d be glad to,” Nari said. I jumped in place when I heard that. “In fact, I have a courier run up to the Diet tomorrow after I pick up some mail in Kanagawa prefecture. I could pick you up and then we could head up to complete my delivery.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” I said with a large grin on my face.
“Make sure you are ready by 11 am. I start my run at 9:30 tomorrow, and I will call you when I get close to you.”
“Thanks! I’ll see you then. Bye.”
“You’re welcome. See you tomorrow.”
I hung up after that last exchange. By this point Marcus was really grinding into my legs, as if to get my attention.
“Alright, alright,” I uttered to Marcus, “I didn’t forget about you. I’ll get dinner for you ready, and I might as well cook something for myself.”
The rest of the evening was quite a quiet one. I fed the cat a good chunk of the fish, and I made some handmade sushi with sticky rice and wasabi for dinner, using a bit more of the fish. There was something interesting on the news while I was relaxing for the evening, regarding some potential dissonance in the way the government is running things. I’m not sure if it is something I need to worry about, though.
As I lay down for the night, I had difficulty falling asleep. My mind was continuing to race on the message I heard from the can earlier today. What could this reward be that would require me to go to Tokyo? Would it be something big, like becoming the next emperor or empress of Japan? Or would it be just a scam, like “ha, ha, ha, you actually listen to messages off of cans? What a loser!” Or would it be somewhere in the middle, like a little trinket? Perhaps if the whole message played, I would know. But now, only time would tell.
I was up until 1 in the morning thinking about it. This ended after I drank some freshly brewed tea, as I was knocked out cold from drinking it.