Chapter 2
Ashley
POP MUSIC SUNG BY A high-pitched, young pop star buzzed quietly over the sound system of the small, faded café, and a soccer game—sorry, football game—played on the TV in the corner. Every so often, the two men watching the match intently, their hair thinning and long-sleeved laborer shirts dingy with sweat, would give muted words of excited praise or an approving hiss through their teeth before falling silent again.
I swirled my straw through my coffee, the half-melted ice clinking against the glass. A drop of water slipped through the condensation on the side of the glass, and I followed the path down to the faded wood of the tabletop, swiping the sweat from my forehead.
A fan buzzed in the corner, but the small café was warm and humid, barely better than the heated summer day waiting just outside. I felt mentally and physically sluggish and turned my gaze from my coffee to the view out the window. From my seat, I could see through the few buildings to the docks and the intensely blue Pacific beyond. The sun glittered in patches on the water, and fishing boats bobbed as small shapes, almost children’s toys. A sailboat, white sails raised and billowing in the breeze, cut through the water, a weaving butterfly among the inelegant fishing boats.
I could have been home in Oakland, except the music playing was in Japanese, as was the football announcer, and the occasional quiet conversation from the few other patrons or the single proprietress.
This wasn’t Oakland—this was Nemuro, a small fishing village on a flat peninsula branching off Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s islands. And I was about to embark on a mission to the contested string of islands off the coast claimed by Japan and Russia. At the thought, my anxiety gave a flutter, my stomach clenching slightly. I was a marine biologist, not a politician, and the idea of what could happen in a disputed territory had been circling my head for the past few days as I made my way here, to the place I would meet my ride to the island.
As a scientist, I was politically neutral, but even being politically neutral didn’t always mean others saw it that way. My team was international and sanctioned, but it wouldn’t have been the first time someone trying to make a point, stir up trouble, wield their minuscule amount of power, “misread” papers, or “failed” to receive the correct orders, and only the worst followed.
I was hopeful my team and I could collect the information we needed and be off the island as soon as possible, having solved the mystery we’d been sent to unravel. Another job waited for me, anyway, one I had postponed just for this strange, emergency mission, but one that still had some urgency to it.
My laptop dinged, and I turned my attention back to the screen to see the email had come in I had been waiting for. I clicked on the dialogue box, and the message popped open. I scanned the contents, wiping my forehead again before typing my reply.
Then another dialogue box popped up on my screen, this one a message from my mom. Have you left yet?
Not yet, I typed. In a café, waiting for my ride to come to get me.
Three dots hovered in the bottom left-hand corner of the dialogue box, and I could almost see my mother trying but failing not to send her following words. I’m not crazy about this, you know? Something about it seems off.
My mother never failed to air my deepest concerns, the ones I wanted to keep buried and pretend they didn’t exist.
It’s just a job. I have all the paperwork, and my team will be here soon. We’ll get in there, get what we need, and get out.
She picked out the only thing that would make her worry, ignoring the rest of the statement I’d meant to reassure: You’re going alone?
There’s a caretaker who will be there waiting for me.
All I received in response was silence, and I rolled my lips together, pressing them until I felt the blood leave them entirely.
The bell over the door dinged, and the proprietress looked up to call out her cheerful greeting, a smile on her face pointed towards the weathered, slightly stooped part-time ferryman, part-time fisherman. He bobbed his head in greeting to the proprietress before his gaze swept the small coffee shop, looking, I was sure, for me. When his eyes settled on me, the only foreign face in the place—with my dirty blonde hair and green eyes, I stuck out like a sore thumb—he bobbed his head again in a bow and headed my way, taking off his floppy hat and holding it in both hands, and he bowed. “Ashley Perry-san?” he asked.
I nodded and smiled. “That’s me.”
“The boat is ready,” he told me in heavily accented English. “Sorry for the wait.”
“Hai, chotto matte kudasai,” Please wait a moment, I answered in Japanese, just one phrase of my small vocabulary, and turned back to my laptop, typing a message to my mom.
The boat is ready. I have to go. I’ll contact you when I get back to Japan. I thought for a minute, then added, I’ll be fine. I know how to take care of myself.
It took a moment for the dots to return before the message popped up. Be safe, please. Love you.
Love you, too. My fingers flew over the keyboard before I powered it down, snapped the top shut, and stuffed it into my backpack.
The boat’s captain took one of my bags, and I hefted the other onto my shoulder after sliding my arms into the straps of my pack.
“Heavy,” he grunted as we pushed out of the coffee shop. I turned to bow a last thanks to the proprietress before skipping after.
“Scientific instruments,” I replied, miming typing on a computer and inspecting a test tube. I wasn’t even sure why I thought that would help, but the captain seemed to understand. He nodded anyway.
The walk to the dock was short, which was why I chose the coffee shop in the first place. That, and it had free access to the Internet so I could tie up some ends at work before being nearly unreachable.
The boat was small, with a crew of only two. They were helping load two other people and their bags as we came up. I had to bite back a smile as one of the passengers, a thin young man with a backpacker's pack, grasped tightly to the railings on either side of the boat deck as he stumbled on, clearly without his sea legs yet.