By the time Eiji made it to Shijima at the end of sixteen days he had with him some extra weight and vague plans to marry.
The Hansillan barista indeed no longer worked at the coffee shop when he got there. He spent the better part of three days sitting in it waiting for her to show up to work, but she never did. He ate all of his meals in the café, all of it light lunch or snack food meant to be enjoyed with a relaxing cup of coffee or tea, not to be sustained on. He drank so much coffee that the cup would start to tremble in his hand when he lifted it, so much that remaining nonchalantly in his seat watching passersby through the window came to require an intense force of will, so rattled were his nerves – and worst of all, he had to use the toilet every half an hour.
By the fourth day, Eiji had begun alternating each cup of coffee with a glass of water, and doubling up on food intake just to avoid the adverse affects of the caffeine. It was around noon, and he was just starting to think about what to order for lunch (he already had the menu memorized) when he saw her. She entered the café with a bag in hand, her cheeks flushed and her hair ruffled. She looked to be in a hurry.
“Minsuk!” said another barista, a young Hansillan man with a trendy dyed hairstyle, as she came in. This was how Eiji learned her name. “What are you doing here?”
She brushed her hair back from her face and leaned over the counter, answering him in a low voice, inaudible to Eiji.
“Oh sure,” said the barista with the trendy hairstyle, nodding and wiping his hands on a rag, “I’ll get him. Hang on a second.” He disappeared into the back of the shop.
Eiji half-turned as Minsuk stepped away from the counter and paced slowly toward him, her eyes on the clock behind the bar. He was unsure whether to continue watching her until she looked at him or to pretend that he wasn’t. He was doing both when she tilted her head just slightly and noticed him, and their eye contact came as both naturally accidental and fairly neutral, which gave Eiji a great deal of relief.
“Whoa,” she said, smiling. “Soldier.”
“Hi,” Eiji said.
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “of course. How could I forgot?”
She laughed. “A pointless walk and some tea? A lot of people would.”
“No, it was a great night for me.”
Minsuk smiled, and for a moment their eye contact lingered in a not quite casual way. She nodded once, her smile widening a little. “Yeah,” she said, “me too. Eiji Daitokai, right?”
Eiji’s eyes widened. “I didn’t think we told each other our names.”
“We didn’t,” she said. “I thought about that too, how strange it is that we didn’t. But you had your uniform on, and I peeked at your nametag.”
“I can’t believe you remembered it.”
She smiled. “Me neither. I’m not usually very good with names.”
“And your name is—”
“Oh, Minsuk!” the proprietor of the place had come out from the back, followed by the trendy-haired barista.
“Minsuk,” she echoed with a sheepish grin. “I’ll be right back.”
The proprietor was an older man with a barrel chest, a bull neck, and thick arms, his skin leathery and sunworn, his face grayed with a light and scraggily beard. Between his booming, friendly voice and his bright eyes, the man seemed to radiate warmth from the first moment Eiji laid eyes on him. He was not a type Eiji had ever seen in the military. “Long time no see!” the man waved her over to the bar. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” she called back, moving over to the bar. “Hey, I’m sorry to surprise you out of the blue like that. My registration deadline really crept up on me.”
“Mm,” he nodded. “I remember when I first got mine. It’s a lot of money to spend all at once. And these days it’s even worse, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said, repeating the sheepish grin she had just given Eiji. “I’m really embarrassed to have to bother you about it.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. Your final pay is still your money, early or not.” He handed an envelope over the counter to her. “I just tallied it up in the back, so it ought to be all squared away in there. But to be safe I put the count sheet and your time sheets in there too, so you can double check,” he scratched his head. “I am getting old, after all. I will probably have to hire an accountant soon, or just step down and let someone else take over.”
She parted the opening of the envelope with two fingers and peered in, her eyes widening. “I trust you. Wow. Thanks so much for this, Ilwoong. I owe you one.”
He shook his head, waving the comment away. “If I didn’t have it right now I couldn’t give it to you, so don’t worry about it. You don’t owe me – like I said, it was your money anyway.”
“Guys,” she said, “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run now. I’ll be in touch.”
“No problem,” Ilwoong said. “Good luck. You take care of yourself, kiddo.”
The trendy-haired barista waved too. “Take care, Minsuk. Write us and let us know how it goes.”
“Will do.” She turned and stepped over to Eiji. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries,” Eiji shook his head. “You look busy.”
She grinned lopsidedly. “A little, yeah. What are you doing for the next hour or so?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have any plans, to be honest.”
“Would you like to come on another walk?”
“Really? I, uh—” he started to get to his feet, “yeah, sure, if you—” and then sat again. His hand jerked involuntarily and he knocked his coffee cup over, spilling its entire contents onto the table. He half-mumbled, half-exclaimed an apology, then grabbed a napkin and began ineffectually trying to wipe it up.
Trendy hair stepped out from behind the counter, “I’ll get it,” he said, coming over to the table with a damp rag. “The lady has asked you to go for a walk with her,” he said, leaning over to wipe the spill with his rag. “It wouldn’t be very bright of you to keep her waiting.”
“You’re, uh…” Eiji rubbed the back of his neck, which had grown hot with embarrassment. “Thank you.”
“I’ve got your tab written down,” said the barista, his tone flat, “so we’ll expect to see you in here again.”
Eiji made his way over to the door, where Minsuk was waiting with her bag over her shoulder and one hand in her pocket. “Coming, soldierman?”
He rushed over to her, and they stepped outside together. She paused outside the door, smiling. “Okay,” she said, and looked him over once, “let’s go.” They set off down the street.
“Where are we headed?”
“To the guild offices. I’m sorry… I’m actually running an errand, not just going for a stroll.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mind. I’m not doing anything.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I just have to mail something that has to go out today.”
They walked on in a silence for a bit.
“What are you mailing?” Eiji asked.
“A love letter, to my wounded husband on the Front.”
Eiji did a double-take at her, and then immediately swallowed his reaction, staring straight ahead. Minsuk laughed.
“I’m kidding,” she shook her head. “I got accepted to a Commerce Guild apprenticeship in Shijima… so there are some registration forms I have to send in, and a fee I have to pay.”
“An apprenticeship?”
“It’s a program to obtain a commerce license.”
“Oh,” said Eiji. They were silent again for a few moments. “I don’t know what that is, exactly,” he said.
“It’s a license you have to have to open any kind of business within the Empire.”
“Are you planning to start a business?”
“Eventually,” she nodded. “I want to run my own coffee shop, or maybe even a bar or restaurant someday.”
“Wow,” said Eiji.
“What?”
“I’ve just never thought about anything like that.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a short silence, punctuated by the subtly changing rhythm of their shoes on the surfaces beneath them.
“Everyone I know is a soldier. I’ve never actually known anyone who started their own business. Much less before they did it. Make sense?”
She laughed. “Sure. To be honest, you’re the first soldier I’ve ever had an actual conversation with.”
“Really?”
She slowed her pace for a moment, narrowing her eyes and cocking her head. “No,” she said at last, “I guess there were some kids at school with me who have ended up as soldiers, though I haven’t seen them since. If you count that.”
“So you like coffee shops?”
“I like public places. Most of the time people’s worlds are small, you know? They know only who they know, and they spend their entire life moving from one cult to another. They never mingle outside their kind.”
“Cult?”
“I’m only kidding,” she said, “calling them cults. But I don’t know what else to call them. There is your family,” they stopped as they came to a main street intersection, watching auto-palanquins roll by, “and then there are your coworkers, or in your case fellow soldiers, or whatever, and then your friends that you usually met in some cult or another, maybe school when you were a kid. And that’s pretty much it. In the big picture, your city and your country and your allegiance, Meihonese or Kolsivite, are like that too. Public places of leisure are really the only way we ever even get to brush shoulders with people who live completely different lives from us. And I think that’s neat.”
“Really,” Eiji said.
The light changed, and they started to cross.
“It’s a pretty trivial interest, when you think about it in the big picture of things, but it’s what moves me. I’d really like to have my own little corner of the world with all kinds of people coming and going because of some common universal thing, like food or drink.”
“I’ve never thought about that.”
“Mm,” she nodded.
They got to the other side of the street, and turned left.
“So,” Eiji said after a moment. “Minsuk. Minsuk what?”
“Did I say something unpatriotic? Are you going to make a report?” she grinned at him. “It’s Im. Minsuk Im.”
“Im.”
“Pretty humble compared to your Meihonese names, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s charming.”
“Charming!” She laughed. “That’s nice of you. I actually have a Meihonese name too.”
“Really?”
“We have to. For official purposes.”
“What is it?”
“Sayaka Hayashi.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm,” Minsuk mimicked him.
“I like you better as Minsuk Im.”
“Me too,” she smiled. “I don’t feel like a Sayaka. Or a Hayashi. Do you think when I go to Shijima they’ll call me Sayaka?”
Eiji shrugged. “Could be. There’s a pretty good chance they’ll want to call you something Meihonese.”
She frowned. “I thought so. I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”
It took thirty minutes to walk from the coffee shop at the edge of the city to the Guild Offices, but they talked so easily and with such mutual interest in what the other had to say that it hardly seemed to take five. Minsuk submitted her forms and paid her registration at the Commerce Guild office, then at the Postal Guild she mailed off a letter to the restaurant where she would be interning.
From there they went to a nearby grillroom and ate lunch. Eiji, celebrating his leave and the luck it had afforded him so far, drank four glasses of beer with his meal and Minsuk matched him every one without even the slightest change in her complexion or for that matter, her enunciation.
They took an intra-urban train from the restaurant to the Garden of the Old Kingdom, a large elaborately designed and lavishly cultivated public park filled with greenery and totally undiminished since the glory days of Hansillan independence. Undiminished but for the addition of “old,” to its name, after first Kolsivite and later Meihonese conquest and occupation.
In the park, they sat on a bench and continued with their discussions. They talked of the War, Eiji telling stories to which Minsuk listened with intent and worried looks, as if the stories were not stories but were happening even as he told them. Eiji listened with fascination as she talked more about her dreams of running a restaurant after the end of the war, where people from every corner of civilization mingled and food from all over the subcontinent was enjoyed. And they shared with each other smaller-scale and more mundane memories, interests and hopes for the future – how Minsuk wanted to someday have a daughter, Eiji’s desire to collect a personal library of poetry and literature, Minsuk’s interest in music. It was during this conversation that they learned that both were orphans of the War.
When Eiji had told Minsuk of the vague speech Forward General Saitou had given him and Yuuhei in Ajanum, she agreed that it was unsettling and ominous.
“It is probably a good thing that you’re moving to Shijima,” Eiji said.
This upset her. “Eiji,” she looked away from him, “there would be nothing good about the Front returning to Hansilla whether I was here or not.”
Eiji apologized and told her that he hadn’t meant anything along those lines at all, then spent a few moments in silence considering the thoughtlessness of his remark. He wondered also whether he had been out of line in mentioning what the Forward General had said to a civilian at all.
They strolled through the garden, sharing stories from their lives that ranged from but weeks ago to childhood. They talked until it grew dark. Eiji, thinking about what she’d said about her love for public places of gathering, suggested that they go to a night club or bar and she agreed, breaking into a smile.
“I can take you to the place we tried to find last time,” she said. “It’s got a fun atmosphere, and when I finally did go there I was a little sorry that we had never found it that night. I didn’t think we’d get another chance to go together.”
“Well,” Eiji smiled. “I’m here now.
