Paradise Circus 7/7
Jun. 25th, 2012 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
astrangestormPARADISE CIRCUS 7/7
There was little grace or precision to the way Lieutenant Katori's men kicked the door open. It took them three tries, given the nature of what was inside the room. A thicker door, stronger construction had probably seemed logical when they built it.
That they didn't open fire right off the bat gave Jun some hope, or maybe it was because Katori wasn't a fool and the six of them stood between Katori and the most important set of switches in Japan. To think of the power that lay just a few paces behind him. The power of life and death for one hundred innocent civilians. Well, Jun thought, ninety-nine civilians and one clever lump of bed sheets.
Jun could feel Sakurai tense up in front of him as at least ten Ground Unit men hurried into the room with rifles, lining up and pointing at all of them. No rubber bullets this time - he wondered if they'd already thrown Nakamaru, Tanaka, and Ishihara in the brig for being Jun's conspirators - or for simply not taking a second to investigate what was happening right under their noses. He'd feel bad for them later, if he got to experience a "later."
Katori kept his distance, walking into the room unarmed and standing in front of his men. "I think the Paradise Duty vetting procedure could use some revision," he said. "Or maybe you were just the best liar the psych eval team's failed to notice."
"People change," Jun said, tightening his grip around Sakurai. "This place can drive you mad."
Katori nodded. "What's your plan here then? You think these men aren't crack shots at close quarters, Matsumoto? You trained with them, what do you think? I can have them put a bullet between your eyes before I finish giving the order. I mean, you'd be dead before you even made it to a court martial, so me killing you now or the government killing you later doesn't leave you with too many options."
"What time is it, Lieutenant?" Jun asked, taking a page from Nino's book. Nino watched lots of movies - he liked to talk like movie characters, all bravado and sarcasm. Jun wasn't like that, never had been, but he had to be now. "I'd check my watch, but I'd have to let go of my hostage."
"Your hostage?" Katori replied, and Jun didn't dare look aside, didn't dare check to see if Aiba was focused, if Ohno had Nino under control. "No offense to you, Sakurai-san, but I could have my men put a bullet between your eyes too. Collateral damage. Caught in the crossfire. However your friends at Channel One would like to spin it."
"You've seen my file," Sakurai said. Good, he was using his big boy news voice. Even as Jun could feel him trembling, his voice gave no sign of fear. "You know where my father works."
"I do."
Jun dragged the gun barrel up and down the side of the newscaster's face. "Lieutenant, if you kill him, it's collateral damage. If I kill him, it's a soldier gone crazy. But either way, if Sakurai Sho is dead, you still lose. You see, our reputations were on the line today with him being here. The government is watching. If we fuck up, if Sakurai dies, that says something about this facility, doesn't it? That we'd let someone like him die?"
Katori's eyes darkened. "Matsumoto..."
"So Sakurai dies, bang!" Jun shouted then, tapping the gun barrel against Sakurai's temple. He could hear Sakurai's sharp intake of breath, felt guilty for a split second. "How did it happen? How could that possibly happen? After all, this is Paradise Circus. This cannot happen. Forty-eight years, and it all falls apart. They'd arrest you all. That's days of interrogation ahead of you, only to result in the condemnation of the entire Paradise Unit. For negligence. For failing the nation."
He watched Katori's face. He was smiling, but it didn't reach his eyes. He was full on panicking now.
"So go ahead," Jun told him. "Kill me. I'll shoot him before you can give the order. Doesn't matter that it's rubber. At this distance, he'll die. Or kill Sakurai Sho yourself, Lieutenant, and see what excuse you can make that won't result in your own execution."
"We trusted you," Katori said, trying to soften his voice. He even held up his hands. "This isn't like you. Jun-kun..."
"I swear," he said, raising his voice. "I will kill him right now unless you get those people out of this room."
"Please," Sakurai murmured, and Jun almost believed he was sincere. The magic of television.
Katori waved his hand, and the soldiers left. They stayed in the hallway, looking in through the busted doorframe. "What do you want? You know how this has to go. You know why we do this every day. This country has over 125 million people in it. Does that number mean anything to you?"
"It does," he said.
"You asked what time it was. It's about 2150 hours. In less than two hours, you know that switch has to be pressed. And at midnight, it has to be pressed again. It's what has to happen."
"Does it?" Jun asked. "If we let it go for one day, one day after all these years, you think it'll matter?"
"I don't want to find out," Katori said. "Nobody does. That's why we have Paradise Circus. That's why all these people work here. That's why all these people have sacrificed themselves. Why they've come willingly for forty-eight years. And I can't let you..." He tried taking a step forward, and Jun only took a step back, not letting Sakurai go. "...Matsumoto, I can't let you take that chance."
"Leave," Jun said. "If they wanted the system to work perfectly, they wouldn't have done it this way. All the subterfuge, the propaganda, and it all comes down to three men flipping a switch at midnight? This program was set up to fail, and we were too cowardly to do anything about it. We can't get those people back, forty-eight years of them, but maybe we can save the next forty-eight years' worth. We can stop this."
"We'll see what your father has to say then," Katori said, looking at Sakurai. "We'll see what the government has to say about all of this."
"They'll string you up," Jun said. "If either of us touches a hair on his head."
Katori shrugged. "I understand what it means to serve this country, Matsumoto. I think Sakurai's father does too." He turned, signaling to the men in the hall. "Let's move. They're not going anywhere."
And with that Lieutenant Katori ended his negotiation, taking the soldiers and leaving the six of them alone.
Jun waited until he heard the elevator doors close before he let Sakurai go and fell to his knees.
---
He was shaking. Jun was the strong one, and he wouldn't stop shaking. "Look at you," Nino said, trying to comfort him as Jun sat on the floor of the control room, still in shock. "Like a movie star."
They were alone again, the six of them - and Nino had a suspicion they'd won this round. Yasuda and Sakurai were sitting together alone, putting as much distance between themselves and the rest of them as they could. Even if it was fake, even if it was a complete bluff, Nino knew it couldn't have been easy to be Sakurai and Yasuda, standing there with guns to their heads. Even Nino had thought for a moment that the soldier Jun had spoken with would just riddle all six of them with bullets and make up a crazy story.
Ohno brought over a bottle of water from the pack, kneeling down and urging Jun to drink it. Who knew when the brass would come back to negotiate again. Maybe next time they'd just bring in tear gas, knock all of them out and make sure those switches got pressed.
"I didn't know you had it in you," he said, punching Jun's arm playfully. "You missed your calling in the entertainment world."
"What if it doesn't work?" Jun grumbled, staring at Sakurai. "You think they're really going to talk with your father?"
"I would," Sakurai admitted. "If I were them. Though I think they'll call the Cabinet, emergency meeting. Pros and cons of killing all of us to keep Paradise going."
"Would your dad intervene?" Aiba asked nervously. "Could he?"
Nino watched Sakurai's face pale. "I...I don't know if it would matter. I'm just one man, you know...compared to what they think will keep Japan safe."
"He's your father," Yasuda said encouragingly. "He'll tell them to do whatever it takes to spare you."
"And at what cost?" Sakurai asked, looking at each of them. "If they come in here, kill all of you and pull me out it doesn't change a damn thing."
They all grew quiet again. Ohno pulled out granola bars for each of them, walking person to person and forcing them to open the wrappers and eat them. To save their strength. Everyone at Paradise Circus was supposed to die at midnight, Nino had learned. But if the government was convening to talk about it, to determine how to salvage what had been messed up by the six of them, maybe it would take longer. So long as the people at Paradise were killed, did it matter what time it happened? Who knew how long they'd be stuck in this room?
They'd been left alone - there was little point in stationing men down here. He was pretty damn sure every camera in the command center was pointed at the doorway they'd busted through. Nino got to his feet, walking to the wall and examining each switch. Three men had stood here and seen to it that his father was killed. His mother, his sister. He hated the sight of these switches, hated how the men who flicked them could walk away mostly guilt-free, convinced it was probably one of the other two who'd killed the Paradise "guests."
"There's ninety-nine people in those rooms," Nino said. "I could be one of them. I should be. We're standing up for them. That we've come this far, it means something. I've wanted to destroy this place for years, and did I ever try? I didn't. So they come in here and kill us. But we tried. We stood here, and Jun said no. In fifty years, nobody has ever told them no. No matter what happens, we've changed everything. For better or for worse, we did something. So stop whining. Stop worrying. They'll find out that if this can happen right under their noses, it means it could happen again at any time. Now they'll know the Japanese people, their own people, aren't just animals to slaughter. That means something."
Jun took a sip from his water bottle, looking completely beaten down. "I'm sorry. If I wasn't persuasive enough and this ends up hurting the people you love..."
"Jun, shut up," Nino told him with a laugh. He held out his hand, looking at each of them. "I hate being sentimental, but having the expectation of dying, spending a whole week questioning your life and how you spent it kind of makes you that way. I just want to say, as someone who isn't a soldier or a famous person or someone who lives and works in this hell all day, I want to say thank you. And that no matter what happens, I think I'd rather die here with all of you than wait in a creepy hotel room for some gas to snuff me out."
Aiba walked over, looking tearful. He put his hand down on top of Nino's. "I'm glad we met."
Yasuda got to his feet, smiling at each of them as he set his hand down. "I'm glad we met."
Ohno joined them next. "I'm glad we met."
Nino cleared his throat, wagging his free hand at Sakurai. "Come on, celebrities are welcome, too."
Sakurai looked rather embarrassed as he walked over. "My palms are sweaty..."
"I nearly wet my pants when they came in here with the guns," Nino said. "No judgment here."
Sakurai's hand settled down on top of Ohno's, and finally they looked to Jun.
Nino could see his face turn red at all the eyes on him. If Nino hated being sentimental, at least in front of other people, then Jun absolutely loathed it. It was the soldier in him. Even if he'd turned against everything, there were some things that wouldn't change. He finally, reluctantly, got up, setting down the water bottle, looking anywhere but at the others.
"I'm glad we met," he mumbled, setting his hand down on top of Sakurai's.
They broke apart, and Nino felt lighter. Whatever happened, he'd spent these last few hours with people he wished he'd known forever. Odd people, stubborn people, but people who cared. Nino thought he'd cared. Thought that as a Riser he cared more than anyone. He'd been wrong.
The hours passed, the tension in the room growing as 11:00 PM came and went, and so did 11:30. The switches remained as they were. No sleeping gas went to the rooms of the Paradise Hotel. Nino found himself pacing the room as midnight arrived, nobody in the room saying a word as a new day arrived. Jun said that a siren of some sort went off when everyone had been killed - they'd heard nothing. There was no alternate to the room they were in now, unless the Paradise soldiers had gone door to door of the hotel and slaughtered everyone.
1:00 AM came and still there'd been no word, no interference. What was happening in the command center? What about in the rest of the facility? What about the staff, the other guests? What the hell was going on? Nino was convinced they were all going to break from not knowing. Most of them were going on nearly a full day without sleep, without a single second to relax.
He could see it in the slump of Aiba's shoulders as he sat next to Ohno, who was going in and out of consciousness, the closest any of them had come to sleeping. Jun was like a live wire, darting in and out of the room, peering down the hallway, checking the cameras. Yasuda had peeled the labels off of all the water bottles, had shredded them into thousands of pieces at his feet. Sakurai looked like he would be violently ill at any moment. For his part, Nino had to pee - Jun ended up relenting, letting him go into one of the storage rooms to piss in an empty water bottle.
It was 4:36 in the morning when it happened.
Despite their fatigue, everyone got to their feet when they heard the ding of the elevator down the hall. Nino slunk to the back, staying at Ohno's side rather than behind him. Aiba scrambled to pick up the gun he'd been using, shakily grabbing hold of Yasuda again. Jun wearily got to his feet, pulling Sakurai to his and repeating their previous stance - Sakurai, the one nobody would dare kill.
It wasn't just the sound of boots. There were shoes, regular shoes. Dress shoes if Nino had to guess, the kind that made noise when you walked. He held his breath.
The man from before, Lieutenant Katori was back - he and several soldiers ringed a delegation of exhausted looking men in business suits. Sakurai couldn't help speaking. "Your Excellency?!"
Your Excellency? Nino nearly fainted. It was the Prime Minister of Japan. Had the man himself come to throw the switch? Had he come to negotiate with Jun himself? Why was he here, several stories underground, when he had a country to run?
"Your Excellency," Sho repeated again. "What's going on?"
It was then that Nino saw that the faces of the men who'd arrived weren't grim, weren't furious. They looked almost...happy?
For being the leader of the government, he sure looked excited to meet with them. "Matsumoto Jun-san?" he asked, looking Jun in the eye. "You can put down your weapons. Both of you, please put down your weapons and let these men go."
"I can't," Jun said. "If you've spoken to Lieutenant Katori or anyone else, you know I can't do that, sir."
The Prime Minister held up his hands in a gesture of peace. None of the men surrounding him had rifles or any sort of weapons. Were they stupid?
"Matsumoto-san, I have news for you. For all of you gentlemen, in fact." He met each of their eyes, and Nino felt himself straighten even as the man who represented everything he hated looked right at him. "The Chinese government has fallen. The people of China have risen up and overthrown them. We've only just received word from our contacts there and in Moscow."
"Sir?" Jun asked, easing his hold on Sakurai just the slightest.
"Gentlemen, the war is over. We've reached peace with China and Russia. There is no longer a need for Paradise Circus."
---
When Aiba was outside again, breathing in the fresh morning air, he thought it was too good to be true. Maybe they'd all died in there, been gunned down, and he was somewhere between the earth and heaven. How else could he have possibly survived a night like he'd just experienced?
Even now as he and the others emerged from the command center, shell-shocked, he could see Ground Unit members hugging, celebrating. There were civilian staff wandering the grounds, screaming and cheering. The jet coaster was running, he could hear it whipping around as the Midway music played. He looked up the hill, saw the Paradise Hotel. All the lights were on.
The gates in the parking lot were open, the Prime Minister himself had told them before shaking all of their hands, calling them the bravest men he'd ever met. Aiba's hands were still shaking. Only seconds before the handshake he'd been holding a gun to another man's head. Of course, the six of them weren't really heroes, Aiba thought. What had happened in China had happened a day earlier and the government hadn't been able to move on the information until they were absolutely certain.
It was only a stroke of sheer luck that Ninomiya Kazunari had arrived at Paradise the day before, prompting Jun to action. If not, the war would have still been over and 100 civilians would have died for absolutely nothing. Even now as Aiba trudged through the grass on the way to the Paradise Village, he couldn't believe it.
Sakurai and Yasuda took off running for the hotel despite their exhaustion. "Keiko-san!" each of them took turns screaming in joy. "Keiko-san!"
He watched Jun and Nino walk toward the parking lot. They'd probably walk through the open gates and never look back. The minister had said they were all free to go, would not be prosecuted. It was a new Japan, reborn for only a few hours, and the weight that had been on Aiba's heart since the day he'd arrived at Paradise Circus seemed to lift.
In the madness taking place on the Paradise grounds, he lost track of Ohno. But he supposed that was okay. He was probably going to leave, to go wherever he wanted to go. Paradise Circus would be closed, the minister had promised. There was nothing here for any of them now. As the sunshine poured down on him and the promise of a Japan that was truly free started to sink in, Aiba's legs moved faster.
By the time he reached House 7 he was running so fast he nearly collided with the door. "Shihori!" he cried. "Shihori!" He took the stairs two, three at a time. Her door was closed and he knocked frantically. "Shihori, open up! It's me! I'm here, it's me!"
Stupid, he told himself, laughing. Why would she be here? When she could be out there celebrating? When she could leave the grounds completely, go home to her family? He just kept laughing, going from house to house in search.
"Kanjiya-san?" Naka-san asked when Aiba got to the front desk of the hotel. She was still at her post, seemingly in shock. "I haven't seen her."
He finally found her on the Midway, one of the staff pointing her out on the merry-go-round. He watched from the white picket fence around the ride as her bright silver horse bobbed up and down while the carousel turned. Her face was the picture of bliss, and she wasn't holding on to the pole in the center. He smiled as she kept her arms straight out away from her body, the morning breeze making her dark brown hair fly.
He watched the carousel turn for a good ten minutes, frozen in place, watching her come around again and again as the music played on a seemingly infinite loop. Eventually she came around the bend, laughing at something a woman on another horse said, and she looked out. She caught his eye just before her horse disappeared around the turn. He knew then that he wasn't in between earth and heaven, that he wasn't dead. He was absolutely certain.
The next time the silver horse came around there was no rider, and he saw her come running. He found himself moving too, along the fence, looking for a way to get through. He ended up clambering over it, nearly getting a sharp poke in his most precious of places in his desperation. The jet coaster went clicking up the hill, the music played on, and he saw her smile as they finally found one another.
"You jumped off the merry-go-round!" he chastised her as they met. "You can't do that, it sets a bad example!"
She was absolutely glowing. "Oh, be quiet!" she said, throwing her arms around him. "Just be quiet."
He bent down to kiss her then, knowing for a fact it had all been worth it.
---
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT
CHANNEL ONE - EVENING NEWS BROADCAST
ENTERTAINMENT SEGMENT
AIRED 26 MAY 2013 - 23:42-23:48
SAKURAI SHO, ANCHOR: And that's all for sports. We move on to our entertainment report. This past Friday at the Tokyo Dome, the two remaining members of Our Nation's Voices along with several members of the Playzone idol agency came together for a tribute to the fallen, one year on. An estimated 86,000 fans packed the arena for a moving show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAKURAI: (narration) The usual custom at these shows is to bring a fan with the name of your favorite idol, but instead the thousands of guests brought fans with the names of those they'd lost, those they wished to remember from forty-eight long years of pain. There was laughter and there were tears. A reminder that nobody, not a single person, will ever be forgotten.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAKURAI: All proceeds for the show will go to fund the Paradise Circus memorial, still under construction in Nerima. Moving on to the latest in the cinema world, director Fukagawa Yoshihiro-san has enlisted the talents of actress Toda Erika for a film based on the men and women of the Japan Will Rise Again movement. The film will begin production in a few weeks in...
---
It was strange to walk this road. For years he'd grown accustomed to the jeep meeting him at the train station or by the grocery store. Now he walked with his hands in his pockets, the canopy of trees overhead seeming far more beautiful than they ever had before. Before they'd been kind of suffocating. All of the signs along the way discouraging trespassers were long gone, and some people were arguing that all the trees should be uprooted to lay the Paradise grounds bare rather than cloak them as they had for fifty years.
Ohno thought the trees were necessary. They reminded him a bit of the walk to the Meiji Shrine in the center of Tokyo. He'd been to the shrine as part of a school trip when he was young, and he remembered feeling so bored, walking and walking and walking to the temple complex. He'd thought then that he would never get there. Of course, it hadn't been as far as he'd thought.
He thought the same as the trees started to thin out. He expected the walls and the barbed wire to emerge out of the forest the way they always had, locking things in. The walls had come down - all the other buildings were being preserved as part of the memorial, as a reminder of what everyone had been through. But the walls, the government and the people decided, the walls could go.
So instead of the walls, there was the parking lot. He suspected some trees were going to be knocked down to make the parking lot larger for visitors in the future, but for now it looked the same. Very few people came here now anyway since the memorial wasn't ready yet. It would be another few months, he'd heard Sho-san say on the news.
The Midway rides were roped off, closed. They'd never run again, and he wondered if they'd let the jet coaster simply rust with the passage of time. The hotel up on the hill with its swimming pool was mostly locked, but Ohno could see crews going in and out. Construction and surveying teams, looking inside to see how things could be arranged to best allow for the flow of visitors without destroying the space.
The Village houses were still there. Ohno's stuff was probably gone though. On the day peace had come, he'd only stopped for one thing - the letters he'd stashed in the closet. He'd taken those and walked out of Paradise Circus, walked all the way to his parents' house with the box in his arms. It had taken him almost all day.
He ran a website now, in his spare time when he wasn't at the community center lifeguarding. He scanned the letters, posted them online with what information he had about who'd written them. He sent the originals to the families or the recipients, whoever contacted him to claim them. He wished he could have saved more letters. He'd had 10 years to save letters, and he hadn't.
He pushed those thoughts away as he moved north to the gardens, seeing that they'd added even more stones. They'd drained the koi pond completely, moving the fish elsewhere, for the stones. They'd had to go through years of records. They were smooth, polished black stones with names inscribed into each one. The stones were kept together in what had been the pond, and the pile was getting larger all the time as they added more. When it was done there'd be more than a million and a half names, a million and a half stones. Ohno wondered what that many stones would look like gathered all together.
There was a bench there, and he saw that Nino and Jun were already there, sitting and talking. He still sometimes felt like he was intruding if he interrupted them, but they got up, greeted him. He'd grown so used to seeing Jun in his uniform all those months; it was kind of odd seeing him in civilian clothes now. He was still in the Self-Defense Force, a desk job now. He seemed to be doing well there.
Nino was never as stiff and formal as Jun, foregoing a handshake and throwing his arms around Ohno like they'd been friends forever rather than a year. "I heard Yasuda can't make it," Nino said with a sigh. "But I guess when you're Mr. Documentary Filmmaker Extraordinaire, you can't take time for your friends."
"He'll be back next week," Jun said, rolling his eyes. "He's in America, you know. It's a big deal."
Ohno didn't really envy Yasuda-kun, all the way over on the other side of the world, interviewing the people who lived in the small pockets of civilization left there. But that's why Ohno was a lifeguard, not a director.
"Hello! Hey, I'm here!"
They turned to see Aiba coming up the pathway, all smiles. It was completely contagious, and Ohno laughed as Aiba nearly tripped over a plant on his way over. "It's good to see you!" he said, opting for a Nino method of greeting. "Can you believe it's been a whole year already?"
"No!" Nino said, "No, you can't start reminiscing until he gets here. You know how those celebrity types are. They can't stand it if they aren't the center of attention."
"You know, I can hear you," Sakurai Sho said, coming from the opposite direction, dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt and jingling car keys.
When they were all gathered (and with a collective hello to the absent cameraman), they stood together in front of the pond full of stones. Aiba made them hold hands, and Jun complained, but Ohno gave the soldier a nudge and he gave in. They stood side by side, hands linked, and closed their eyes.
"For Paradise Circus," Nino said quietly.
"For Paradise Circus," Ohno repeated with the others.
They stayed in the gardens for some time talking before the five of them piled into Sho's fancy car and headed for a meal. "It's what, 2:00 AM in America right now?" Nino asked, pulling out his cell phone as Sho drove them back under the trees. "Let's call Yasu-chan..."
"There's no cell towers over there," Jun pointed out.
Nino scowled at him. "You're never any fun."
"No, I'm not," Jun admitted, the slightest smile poking out at the corners of his mouth.
Aiba was beside Sho in the front seat, and he started gabbing. "Sooooo I was reading a tabloid at the convenience store..."
"Since when can you read?" Nino chimed in.
"Shut up," he barked back at Nino before turning his attentions back to Sho. "Anyway, so I was reading this tabloid magazine, and I swear, this one's always right about these things..."
"Aiba-san," Sho grumbled, his hands tightening around the steering wheel.
"...and it said that super bachelor newscaster Sakurai Sho was seen on a date!"
"A woman would actually go out with you?" Nino teased, happy to go after any target in the car.
Aiba grinned. "A date with a famous actress! I wonder which one it could be! Hmm, I bet I know who it is!"
Sho turned bright red. "I'm trying to drive here!"
Ohno tuned out the sounds of Aiba teasing Sho about Kitagawa Keiko and ignored Nino's repeated attempts to get a call through to Yasuda's phone. He thought back a year in time, thought about everything that had happened. About the people he'd met and the friends he'd made for life.
He looked out the window of Sho's car with a smile as the trees disappeared, and they left Paradise Circus behind.
---
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Notes:
*Paradise Circus is a song by Massive Attack. It doesn't have much to do with the story at all, lyrically, but credit where credit is due.
*The main plot inspiration for this story is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It's called A Taste of Armageddon, and no, I'm not ashamed.
*For the Civilian Manual, I borrowed some of the language and many of the ideas from this old employee manual for the Old Chicago indoor theme park.
*Even though this is an alternate history, I hope there are no glaring errors in any of the history I did try and incorporate. I very much wanted to ground this story in reality rather than go full-on Hunger Games dystopia. Please let me know what you think! Thank you for reading!
There was little grace or precision to the way Lieutenant Katori's men kicked the door open. It took them three tries, given the nature of what was inside the room. A thicker door, stronger construction had probably seemed logical when they built it.
That they didn't open fire right off the bat gave Jun some hope, or maybe it was because Katori wasn't a fool and the six of them stood between Katori and the most important set of switches in Japan. To think of the power that lay just a few paces behind him. The power of life and death for one hundred innocent civilians. Well, Jun thought, ninety-nine civilians and one clever lump of bed sheets.
Jun could feel Sakurai tense up in front of him as at least ten Ground Unit men hurried into the room with rifles, lining up and pointing at all of them. No rubber bullets this time - he wondered if they'd already thrown Nakamaru, Tanaka, and Ishihara in the brig for being Jun's conspirators - or for simply not taking a second to investigate what was happening right under their noses. He'd feel bad for them later, if he got to experience a "later."
Katori kept his distance, walking into the room unarmed and standing in front of his men. "I think the Paradise Duty vetting procedure could use some revision," he said. "Or maybe you were just the best liar the psych eval team's failed to notice."
"People change," Jun said, tightening his grip around Sakurai. "This place can drive you mad."
Katori nodded. "What's your plan here then? You think these men aren't crack shots at close quarters, Matsumoto? You trained with them, what do you think? I can have them put a bullet between your eyes before I finish giving the order. I mean, you'd be dead before you even made it to a court martial, so me killing you now or the government killing you later doesn't leave you with too many options."
"What time is it, Lieutenant?" Jun asked, taking a page from Nino's book. Nino watched lots of movies - he liked to talk like movie characters, all bravado and sarcasm. Jun wasn't like that, never had been, but he had to be now. "I'd check my watch, but I'd have to let go of my hostage."
"Your hostage?" Katori replied, and Jun didn't dare look aside, didn't dare check to see if Aiba was focused, if Ohno had Nino under control. "No offense to you, Sakurai-san, but I could have my men put a bullet between your eyes too. Collateral damage. Caught in the crossfire. However your friends at Channel One would like to spin it."
"You've seen my file," Sakurai said. Good, he was using his big boy news voice. Even as Jun could feel him trembling, his voice gave no sign of fear. "You know where my father works."
"I do."
Jun dragged the gun barrel up and down the side of the newscaster's face. "Lieutenant, if you kill him, it's collateral damage. If I kill him, it's a soldier gone crazy. But either way, if Sakurai Sho is dead, you still lose. You see, our reputations were on the line today with him being here. The government is watching. If we fuck up, if Sakurai dies, that says something about this facility, doesn't it? That we'd let someone like him die?"
Katori's eyes darkened. "Matsumoto..."
"So Sakurai dies, bang!" Jun shouted then, tapping the gun barrel against Sakurai's temple. He could hear Sakurai's sharp intake of breath, felt guilty for a split second. "How did it happen? How could that possibly happen? After all, this is Paradise Circus. This cannot happen. Forty-eight years, and it all falls apart. They'd arrest you all. That's days of interrogation ahead of you, only to result in the condemnation of the entire Paradise Unit. For negligence. For failing the nation."
He watched Katori's face. He was smiling, but it didn't reach his eyes. He was full on panicking now.
"So go ahead," Jun told him. "Kill me. I'll shoot him before you can give the order. Doesn't matter that it's rubber. At this distance, he'll die. Or kill Sakurai Sho yourself, Lieutenant, and see what excuse you can make that won't result in your own execution."
"We trusted you," Katori said, trying to soften his voice. He even held up his hands. "This isn't like you. Jun-kun..."
"I swear," he said, raising his voice. "I will kill him right now unless you get those people out of this room."
"Please," Sakurai murmured, and Jun almost believed he was sincere. The magic of television.
Katori waved his hand, and the soldiers left. They stayed in the hallway, looking in through the busted doorframe. "What do you want? You know how this has to go. You know why we do this every day. This country has over 125 million people in it. Does that number mean anything to you?"
"It does," he said.
"You asked what time it was. It's about 2150 hours. In less than two hours, you know that switch has to be pressed. And at midnight, it has to be pressed again. It's what has to happen."
"Does it?" Jun asked. "If we let it go for one day, one day after all these years, you think it'll matter?"
"I don't want to find out," Katori said. "Nobody does. That's why we have Paradise Circus. That's why all these people work here. That's why all these people have sacrificed themselves. Why they've come willingly for forty-eight years. And I can't let you..." He tried taking a step forward, and Jun only took a step back, not letting Sakurai go. "...Matsumoto, I can't let you take that chance."
"Leave," Jun said. "If they wanted the system to work perfectly, they wouldn't have done it this way. All the subterfuge, the propaganda, and it all comes down to three men flipping a switch at midnight? This program was set up to fail, and we were too cowardly to do anything about it. We can't get those people back, forty-eight years of them, but maybe we can save the next forty-eight years' worth. We can stop this."
"We'll see what your father has to say then," Katori said, looking at Sakurai. "We'll see what the government has to say about all of this."
"They'll string you up," Jun said. "If either of us touches a hair on his head."
Katori shrugged. "I understand what it means to serve this country, Matsumoto. I think Sakurai's father does too." He turned, signaling to the men in the hall. "Let's move. They're not going anywhere."
And with that Lieutenant Katori ended his negotiation, taking the soldiers and leaving the six of them alone.
Jun waited until he heard the elevator doors close before he let Sakurai go and fell to his knees.
---
He was shaking. Jun was the strong one, and he wouldn't stop shaking. "Look at you," Nino said, trying to comfort him as Jun sat on the floor of the control room, still in shock. "Like a movie star."
They were alone again, the six of them - and Nino had a suspicion they'd won this round. Yasuda and Sakurai were sitting together alone, putting as much distance between themselves and the rest of them as they could. Even if it was fake, even if it was a complete bluff, Nino knew it couldn't have been easy to be Sakurai and Yasuda, standing there with guns to their heads. Even Nino had thought for a moment that the soldier Jun had spoken with would just riddle all six of them with bullets and make up a crazy story.
Ohno brought over a bottle of water from the pack, kneeling down and urging Jun to drink it. Who knew when the brass would come back to negotiate again. Maybe next time they'd just bring in tear gas, knock all of them out and make sure those switches got pressed.
"I didn't know you had it in you," he said, punching Jun's arm playfully. "You missed your calling in the entertainment world."
"What if it doesn't work?" Jun grumbled, staring at Sakurai. "You think they're really going to talk with your father?"
"I would," Sakurai admitted. "If I were them. Though I think they'll call the Cabinet, emergency meeting. Pros and cons of killing all of us to keep Paradise going."
"Would your dad intervene?" Aiba asked nervously. "Could he?"
Nino watched Sakurai's face pale. "I...I don't know if it would matter. I'm just one man, you know...compared to what they think will keep Japan safe."
"He's your father," Yasuda said encouragingly. "He'll tell them to do whatever it takes to spare you."
"And at what cost?" Sakurai asked, looking at each of them. "If they come in here, kill all of you and pull me out it doesn't change a damn thing."
They all grew quiet again. Ohno pulled out granola bars for each of them, walking person to person and forcing them to open the wrappers and eat them. To save their strength. Everyone at Paradise Circus was supposed to die at midnight, Nino had learned. But if the government was convening to talk about it, to determine how to salvage what had been messed up by the six of them, maybe it would take longer. So long as the people at Paradise were killed, did it matter what time it happened? Who knew how long they'd be stuck in this room?
They'd been left alone - there was little point in stationing men down here. He was pretty damn sure every camera in the command center was pointed at the doorway they'd busted through. Nino got to his feet, walking to the wall and examining each switch. Three men had stood here and seen to it that his father was killed. His mother, his sister. He hated the sight of these switches, hated how the men who flicked them could walk away mostly guilt-free, convinced it was probably one of the other two who'd killed the Paradise "guests."
"There's ninety-nine people in those rooms," Nino said. "I could be one of them. I should be. We're standing up for them. That we've come this far, it means something. I've wanted to destroy this place for years, and did I ever try? I didn't. So they come in here and kill us. But we tried. We stood here, and Jun said no. In fifty years, nobody has ever told them no. No matter what happens, we've changed everything. For better or for worse, we did something. So stop whining. Stop worrying. They'll find out that if this can happen right under their noses, it means it could happen again at any time. Now they'll know the Japanese people, their own people, aren't just animals to slaughter. That means something."
Jun took a sip from his water bottle, looking completely beaten down. "I'm sorry. If I wasn't persuasive enough and this ends up hurting the people you love..."
"Jun, shut up," Nino told him with a laugh. He held out his hand, looking at each of them. "I hate being sentimental, but having the expectation of dying, spending a whole week questioning your life and how you spent it kind of makes you that way. I just want to say, as someone who isn't a soldier or a famous person or someone who lives and works in this hell all day, I want to say thank you. And that no matter what happens, I think I'd rather die here with all of you than wait in a creepy hotel room for some gas to snuff me out."
Aiba walked over, looking tearful. He put his hand down on top of Nino's. "I'm glad we met."
Yasuda got to his feet, smiling at each of them as he set his hand down. "I'm glad we met."
Ohno joined them next. "I'm glad we met."
Nino cleared his throat, wagging his free hand at Sakurai. "Come on, celebrities are welcome, too."
Sakurai looked rather embarrassed as he walked over. "My palms are sweaty..."
"I nearly wet my pants when they came in here with the guns," Nino said. "No judgment here."
Sakurai's hand settled down on top of Ohno's, and finally they looked to Jun.
Nino could see his face turn red at all the eyes on him. If Nino hated being sentimental, at least in front of other people, then Jun absolutely loathed it. It was the soldier in him. Even if he'd turned against everything, there were some things that wouldn't change. He finally, reluctantly, got up, setting down the water bottle, looking anywhere but at the others.
"I'm glad we met," he mumbled, setting his hand down on top of Sakurai's.
They broke apart, and Nino felt lighter. Whatever happened, he'd spent these last few hours with people he wished he'd known forever. Odd people, stubborn people, but people who cared. Nino thought he'd cared. Thought that as a Riser he cared more than anyone. He'd been wrong.
The hours passed, the tension in the room growing as 11:00 PM came and went, and so did 11:30. The switches remained as they were. No sleeping gas went to the rooms of the Paradise Hotel. Nino found himself pacing the room as midnight arrived, nobody in the room saying a word as a new day arrived. Jun said that a siren of some sort went off when everyone had been killed - they'd heard nothing. There was no alternate to the room they were in now, unless the Paradise soldiers had gone door to door of the hotel and slaughtered everyone.
1:00 AM came and still there'd been no word, no interference. What was happening in the command center? What about in the rest of the facility? What about the staff, the other guests? What the hell was going on? Nino was convinced they were all going to break from not knowing. Most of them were going on nearly a full day without sleep, without a single second to relax.
He could see it in the slump of Aiba's shoulders as he sat next to Ohno, who was going in and out of consciousness, the closest any of them had come to sleeping. Jun was like a live wire, darting in and out of the room, peering down the hallway, checking the cameras. Yasuda had peeled the labels off of all the water bottles, had shredded them into thousands of pieces at his feet. Sakurai looked like he would be violently ill at any moment. For his part, Nino had to pee - Jun ended up relenting, letting him go into one of the storage rooms to piss in an empty water bottle.
It was 4:36 in the morning when it happened.
Despite their fatigue, everyone got to their feet when they heard the ding of the elevator down the hall. Nino slunk to the back, staying at Ohno's side rather than behind him. Aiba scrambled to pick up the gun he'd been using, shakily grabbing hold of Yasuda again. Jun wearily got to his feet, pulling Sakurai to his and repeating their previous stance - Sakurai, the one nobody would dare kill.
It wasn't just the sound of boots. There were shoes, regular shoes. Dress shoes if Nino had to guess, the kind that made noise when you walked. He held his breath.
The man from before, Lieutenant Katori was back - he and several soldiers ringed a delegation of exhausted looking men in business suits. Sakurai couldn't help speaking. "Your Excellency?!"
Your Excellency? Nino nearly fainted. It was the Prime Minister of Japan. Had the man himself come to throw the switch? Had he come to negotiate with Jun himself? Why was he here, several stories underground, when he had a country to run?
"Your Excellency," Sho repeated again. "What's going on?"
It was then that Nino saw that the faces of the men who'd arrived weren't grim, weren't furious. They looked almost...happy?
For being the leader of the government, he sure looked excited to meet with them. "Matsumoto Jun-san?" he asked, looking Jun in the eye. "You can put down your weapons. Both of you, please put down your weapons and let these men go."
"I can't," Jun said. "If you've spoken to Lieutenant Katori or anyone else, you know I can't do that, sir."
The Prime Minister held up his hands in a gesture of peace. None of the men surrounding him had rifles or any sort of weapons. Were they stupid?
"Matsumoto-san, I have news for you. For all of you gentlemen, in fact." He met each of their eyes, and Nino felt himself straighten even as the man who represented everything he hated looked right at him. "The Chinese government has fallen. The people of China have risen up and overthrown them. We've only just received word from our contacts there and in Moscow."
"Sir?" Jun asked, easing his hold on Sakurai just the slightest.
"Gentlemen, the war is over. We've reached peace with China and Russia. There is no longer a need for Paradise Circus."
---
When Aiba was outside again, breathing in the fresh morning air, he thought it was too good to be true. Maybe they'd all died in there, been gunned down, and he was somewhere between the earth and heaven. How else could he have possibly survived a night like he'd just experienced?
Even now as he and the others emerged from the command center, shell-shocked, he could see Ground Unit members hugging, celebrating. There were civilian staff wandering the grounds, screaming and cheering. The jet coaster was running, he could hear it whipping around as the Midway music played. He looked up the hill, saw the Paradise Hotel. All the lights were on.
The gates in the parking lot were open, the Prime Minister himself had told them before shaking all of their hands, calling them the bravest men he'd ever met. Aiba's hands were still shaking. Only seconds before the handshake he'd been holding a gun to another man's head. Of course, the six of them weren't really heroes, Aiba thought. What had happened in China had happened a day earlier and the government hadn't been able to move on the information until they were absolutely certain.
It was only a stroke of sheer luck that Ninomiya Kazunari had arrived at Paradise the day before, prompting Jun to action. If not, the war would have still been over and 100 civilians would have died for absolutely nothing. Even now as Aiba trudged through the grass on the way to the Paradise Village, he couldn't believe it.
Sakurai and Yasuda took off running for the hotel despite their exhaustion. "Keiko-san!" each of them took turns screaming in joy. "Keiko-san!"
He watched Jun and Nino walk toward the parking lot. They'd probably walk through the open gates and never look back. The minister had said they were all free to go, would not be prosecuted. It was a new Japan, reborn for only a few hours, and the weight that had been on Aiba's heart since the day he'd arrived at Paradise Circus seemed to lift.
In the madness taking place on the Paradise grounds, he lost track of Ohno. But he supposed that was okay. He was probably going to leave, to go wherever he wanted to go. Paradise Circus would be closed, the minister had promised. There was nothing here for any of them now. As the sunshine poured down on him and the promise of a Japan that was truly free started to sink in, Aiba's legs moved faster.
By the time he reached House 7 he was running so fast he nearly collided with the door. "Shihori!" he cried. "Shihori!" He took the stairs two, three at a time. Her door was closed and he knocked frantically. "Shihori, open up! It's me! I'm here, it's me!"
Stupid, he told himself, laughing. Why would she be here? When she could be out there celebrating? When she could leave the grounds completely, go home to her family? He just kept laughing, going from house to house in search.
"Kanjiya-san?" Naka-san asked when Aiba got to the front desk of the hotel. She was still at her post, seemingly in shock. "I haven't seen her."
He finally found her on the Midway, one of the staff pointing her out on the merry-go-round. He watched from the white picket fence around the ride as her bright silver horse bobbed up and down while the carousel turned. Her face was the picture of bliss, and she wasn't holding on to the pole in the center. He smiled as she kept her arms straight out away from her body, the morning breeze making her dark brown hair fly.
He watched the carousel turn for a good ten minutes, frozen in place, watching her come around again and again as the music played on a seemingly infinite loop. Eventually she came around the bend, laughing at something a woman on another horse said, and she looked out. She caught his eye just before her horse disappeared around the turn. He knew then that he wasn't in between earth and heaven, that he wasn't dead. He was absolutely certain.
The next time the silver horse came around there was no rider, and he saw her come running. He found himself moving too, along the fence, looking for a way to get through. He ended up clambering over it, nearly getting a sharp poke in his most precious of places in his desperation. The jet coaster went clicking up the hill, the music played on, and he saw her smile as they finally found one another.
"You jumped off the merry-go-round!" he chastised her as they met. "You can't do that, it sets a bad example!"
She was absolutely glowing. "Oh, be quiet!" she said, throwing her arms around him. "Just be quiet."
He bent down to kiss her then, knowing for a fact it had all been worth it.
---
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT
CHANNEL ONE - EVENING NEWS BROADCAST
ENTERTAINMENT SEGMENT
AIRED 26 MAY 2013 - 23:42-23:48
SAKURAI SHO, ANCHOR: And that's all for sports. We move on to our entertainment report. This past Friday at the Tokyo Dome, the two remaining members of Our Nation's Voices along with several members of the Playzone idol agency came together for a tribute to the fallen, one year on. An estimated 86,000 fans packed the arena for a moving show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAKURAI: (narration) The usual custom at these shows is to bring a fan with the name of your favorite idol, but instead the thousands of guests brought fans with the names of those they'd lost, those they wished to remember from forty-eight long years of pain. There was laughter and there were tears. A reminder that nobody, not a single person, will ever be forgotten.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAKURAI: All proceeds for the show will go to fund the Paradise Circus memorial, still under construction in Nerima. Moving on to the latest in the cinema world, director Fukagawa Yoshihiro-san has enlisted the talents of actress Toda Erika for a film based on the men and women of the Japan Will Rise Again movement. The film will begin production in a few weeks in...
---
It was strange to walk this road. For years he'd grown accustomed to the jeep meeting him at the train station or by the grocery store. Now he walked with his hands in his pockets, the canopy of trees overhead seeming far more beautiful than they ever had before. Before they'd been kind of suffocating. All of the signs along the way discouraging trespassers were long gone, and some people were arguing that all the trees should be uprooted to lay the Paradise grounds bare rather than cloak them as they had for fifty years.
Ohno thought the trees were necessary. They reminded him a bit of the walk to the Meiji Shrine in the center of Tokyo. He'd been to the shrine as part of a school trip when he was young, and he remembered feeling so bored, walking and walking and walking to the temple complex. He'd thought then that he would never get there. Of course, it hadn't been as far as he'd thought.
He thought the same as the trees started to thin out. He expected the walls and the barbed wire to emerge out of the forest the way they always had, locking things in. The walls had come down - all the other buildings were being preserved as part of the memorial, as a reminder of what everyone had been through. But the walls, the government and the people decided, the walls could go.
So instead of the walls, there was the parking lot. He suspected some trees were going to be knocked down to make the parking lot larger for visitors in the future, but for now it looked the same. Very few people came here now anyway since the memorial wasn't ready yet. It would be another few months, he'd heard Sho-san say on the news.
The Midway rides were roped off, closed. They'd never run again, and he wondered if they'd let the jet coaster simply rust with the passage of time. The hotel up on the hill with its swimming pool was mostly locked, but Ohno could see crews going in and out. Construction and surveying teams, looking inside to see how things could be arranged to best allow for the flow of visitors without destroying the space.
The Village houses were still there. Ohno's stuff was probably gone though. On the day peace had come, he'd only stopped for one thing - the letters he'd stashed in the closet. He'd taken those and walked out of Paradise Circus, walked all the way to his parents' house with the box in his arms. It had taken him almost all day.
He ran a website now, in his spare time when he wasn't at the community center lifeguarding. He scanned the letters, posted them online with what information he had about who'd written them. He sent the originals to the families or the recipients, whoever contacted him to claim them. He wished he could have saved more letters. He'd had 10 years to save letters, and he hadn't.
He pushed those thoughts away as he moved north to the gardens, seeing that they'd added even more stones. They'd drained the koi pond completely, moving the fish elsewhere, for the stones. They'd had to go through years of records. They were smooth, polished black stones with names inscribed into each one. The stones were kept together in what had been the pond, and the pile was getting larger all the time as they added more. When it was done there'd be more than a million and a half names, a million and a half stones. Ohno wondered what that many stones would look like gathered all together.
There was a bench there, and he saw that Nino and Jun were already there, sitting and talking. He still sometimes felt like he was intruding if he interrupted them, but they got up, greeted him. He'd grown so used to seeing Jun in his uniform all those months; it was kind of odd seeing him in civilian clothes now. He was still in the Self-Defense Force, a desk job now. He seemed to be doing well there.
Nino was never as stiff and formal as Jun, foregoing a handshake and throwing his arms around Ohno like they'd been friends forever rather than a year. "I heard Yasuda can't make it," Nino said with a sigh. "But I guess when you're Mr. Documentary Filmmaker Extraordinaire, you can't take time for your friends."
"He'll be back next week," Jun said, rolling his eyes. "He's in America, you know. It's a big deal."
Ohno didn't really envy Yasuda-kun, all the way over on the other side of the world, interviewing the people who lived in the small pockets of civilization left there. But that's why Ohno was a lifeguard, not a director.
"Hello! Hey, I'm here!"
They turned to see Aiba coming up the pathway, all smiles. It was completely contagious, and Ohno laughed as Aiba nearly tripped over a plant on his way over. "It's good to see you!" he said, opting for a Nino method of greeting. "Can you believe it's been a whole year already?"
"No!" Nino said, "No, you can't start reminiscing until he gets here. You know how those celebrity types are. They can't stand it if they aren't the center of attention."
"You know, I can hear you," Sakurai Sho said, coming from the opposite direction, dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt and jingling car keys.
When they were all gathered (and with a collective hello to the absent cameraman), they stood together in front of the pond full of stones. Aiba made them hold hands, and Jun complained, but Ohno gave the soldier a nudge and he gave in. They stood side by side, hands linked, and closed their eyes.
"For Paradise Circus," Nino said quietly.
"For Paradise Circus," Ohno repeated with the others.
They stayed in the gardens for some time talking before the five of them piled into Sho's fancy car and headed for a meal. "It's what, 2:00 AM in America right now?" Nino asked, pulling out his cell phone as Sho drove them back under the trees. "Let's call Yasu-chan..."
"There's no cell towers over there," Jun pointed out.
Nino scowled at him. "You're never any fun."
"No, I'm not," Jun admitted, the slightest smile poking out at the corners of his mouth.
Aiba was beside Sho in the front seat, and he started gabbing. "Sooooo I was reading a tabloid at the convenience store..."
"Since when can you read?" Nino chimed in.
"Shut up," he barked back at Nino before turning his attentions back to Sho. "Anyway, so I was reading this tabloid magazine, and I swear, this one's always right about these things..."
"Aiba-san," Sho grumbled, his hands tightening around the steering wheel.
"...and it said that super bachelor newscaster Sakurai Sho was seen on a date!"
"A woman would actually go out with you?" Nino teased, happy to go after any target in the car.
Aiba grinned. "A date with a famous actress! I wonder which one it could be! Hmm, I bet I know who it is!"
Sho turned bright red. "I'm trying to drive here!"
Ohno tuned out the sounds of Aiba teasing Sho about Kitagawa Keiko and ignored Nino's repeated attempts to get a call through to Yasuda's phone. He thought back a year in time, thought about everything that had happened. About the people he'd met and the friends he'd made for life.
He looked out the window of Sho's car with a smile as the trees disappeared, and they left Paradise Circus behind.
---
---
---
---
---
Notes:
*Paradise Circus is a song by Massive Attack. It doesn't have much to do with the story at all, lyrically, but credit where credit is due.
*The main plot inspiration for this story is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It's called A Taste of Armageddon, and no, I'm not ashamed.
*For the Civilian Manual, I borrowed some of the language and many of the ideas from this old employee manual for the Old Chicago indoor theme park.
*Even though this is an alternate history, I hope there are no glaring errors in any of the history I did try and incorporate. I very much wanted to ground this story in reality rather than go full-on Hunger Games dystopia. Please let me know what you think! Thank you for reading!
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Date: 2012-07-03 04:48 am (UTC)