National Journalism

Umewaka Park, Simida, Tokyo
February 24th

A few days have passed since the school year ended early, and despite our efforts, we haven't been able to confirm the I.S.C.'s involvement in the Ueno Dam terrorist attack. Although we suspected they were behind it, just as we knew they were the ones who tried to kidnap my mother and sister, unfortunately we didn't have any concrete proof. All we had was Inspector Yamamoto's word that he had seen the company's logo on some boxes before they were stolen by another government group.

Speaking of tired people, Xian said she wanted to take a vacation, get away from everything and have some quiet time to think and to herself. Poor girl, losing one of her students in such a messed up way and over something as trivial as a momentary mistake. I'm sure she feels the same way I do, wondering if she had done something different, maybe things would have turned out differently. Xian had told me before that she left her problematic lifestyle behind for a similar reason, but it is undoubtedly difficult to fall back into the same trap. I hope she recovers, as she seemed like a great ally to have around.

As for me, I've literally spent the last few days doing nothing; it's been glorious and everything - waking up after noon, playing video games until dawn, living like a hermit in my room. I feel like my youth is coming back. Even though I'm enjoying it, I don't want to just sit around, so right now I'm doing the grocery shopping for the house. And even though I don't look very manly with my new body, my mother didn't raise a two-trip loser, so even though I'm about to finish with my arms aching, I'm going to carry these bags with groceries to my kitchen or die trying.

After walking a few blocks, I decide to give up... I mean to make a tactical retreat and stop at the park near my house to get a soda from a vending machine and rest on a bench before continuing my journey. My house is close by, so I can see it from where I'm sitting. While I was thinking about this, I noticed something very strange next to me. There was another girl sitting on a bench with a table nearby. On the table were several food packages and a large bottle of juice; everything was empty, indicating that she had been there for a while. However, her eyes never left one direction - my house.

Was that girl watching us? The way she was acting, it looked like it. Maybe she was the stalker Momo had mentioned before. The girl looked to be in her 20s or maybe 30s. She wore casual clothes and a briefcase, had glasses and long brown hair. Her build was slim; she didn't look like someone who would want to fight, but rather someone quite fragile. But she had a book in her hands in which she was writing things, and she also had a camera with her. She didn't look like a direct threat, but she wasn't someone to be ignored either, not after the events and attacks we've seen in the past few days. So I decided to find out what she was doing here in the park.

"Hey, how are you? Sorry to bother you, is that a camera?"
"I'm sure spying on others is quite annoying and problematic," I said, surprising her from behind.

"Ah!"
"You really scared me, girl; I wasn't expecting that."
"Uh, no, I'm not spying; I'm just doing my job."
"You see, I'm a journalist, doing research for my next publication in the newspaper."

"Oh, so you work for the newspaper."
"And what's this research about? Paparazzi, maybe?"

"No, I'm not that kind of scumbag."
"I do serious research, real research."
"Right now I'm just investigating that house over there," she said, pointing to the only house I didn't want her to point to.
"Don't you have anyone else to bother?"
"I'm not going to lend you my camera for your cosplay session, it's too expensive."
"Besides, try to do it in a more private place; can't you see you're bothering others?"
"..."
"By the way, are you friends with that weird blue girl? She often hangs out in this park  a lot too."

Damn, I knew it; she's investigating us, a journalist of all people. This isn't good. How did she even notice? No, wait, she doesn't seem to know that I'm one of the people living in that house; she’s off guard. Maybe I can get some information if I play along. I'm sure the cosplay excuse will work again.

"Oh, them?"
"That explains a bit. My best friend... Sakura Izumi... is their neighbor. "
"She said they recently moved here."
"We were supposed to take some photos for our club before classes ended, but she had a little problem and was late."
"Even though I come here all the time, she wouldn't let me stay at her house."
"She told me that after I put on the whole kitsune costume, can you believe it?" I said, lying as much as I could.

"Oh, so you're someone who frequents the area?"
"Did you know that property used to belong to the government? Now look at it, being used as private property by none other than a U.S. Army officer."
"That's an invasion right there! They must have used dirty methods to take over the place."

"Are you sure? Couldn't it be that they just didn't see any use for the place anymore and just sold it?"
"Besides, as far as I know, they're not Americans, they're Latin Americans. They speak Spanish."

"That's even worse!"
"Those damn immigrants are probably more intolerant of our culture than I ever thought."
"They probably just come here to talk about their tacos and ponchos all day long.
"What else could you expect from a poor place like Mexico? Those bums probably paid for the place with drug cartel money," said the so-called serious journalis.

"You know, not all Latin Americans come from Mexico. There are a lot of countries that speak Spanish, too."
"Besides, the lady in that house works in a café, that one over there."

"Listen carefully, while you're still young and not gray-haired... Oh... forget the gray hair......sorry."
"Foreigners are a threat to our country, to our culture."
"Outside our island, there are many countries that want to take our resources and replace our values and way of thinking to suit their needs."
"That is why we, our society, must work together to drive these taco-eating gypsies out of our territory."
"But don't worry, I have a great plan to save our country!"

What the journalist said sounded like someone pretty dangerous, or at least crazy, so I did what anyone would do and pulled out my gun close in my bag, taking the safety off just in case I needed it. She didn't know it, but she was one wrong word away from putting a hole in her head.

"And what is this plan you're talking about?"

"Oh, so you've been paying attention to your Onee-san, that's good."
"Now listen, a few days ago there was a shooting, right in front of this house to be exact, a fight between those stupid forest indigenous and possibly a heroic yakuza group who bravely tried to defend our home."
"On that day, February 14, I was already here investigating, so I was able to be the first to report the news."
"But I'm sure what happened was no accident, not after the government refused to name those responsible."
"Since that woman from the Alliance appeared, many strange things have happened in the government."
"According to my research, the property somehow ended up in a company in Los Angeles, but when I asked them how they acquired the property from the Japanese government, they denied having anything to do with the process."
"So I dug a little deeper, and thanks to my journalistic skills and the help of a friend, I found out that the current owner of the property is a woman named Adelis."
"Finding information on this woman is quite difficult; almost everything about her seems to be classified in some way. The only thing I was able to find out is that she was a secretary in a law firm in the United States for a few years."
"But here's where it gets interesting: according to my friend, she found out that this same woman was spotted several times in Hampshire, at the British Army headquarters."
"The same one that was used as the headquarters when the Alliance was formed after the Empire attacked NATO headquarters in Brussels."
"The next time she appears is on the aircraft carrier USS Essex in Portsmouth, shaking hands with Admiral Mark Halsey."
"This means that she is at least someone involved in the Alliance's chain of command."
"......"
"Now that I think about it, why am I telling you this? You probably don't know anything about the people I mentioned or where those places are on a map. You're just a little brat."

I wonder if this journalist would feel the same way if I told her that I had been to all these places personally, or that I knew Admiral Mark Halsey. I'm sure her attitude toward me would change. But despite her terrible prejudice against foreigners, the girl was actually quite good at research. She did a pretty good job as a journalist, connecting some dots, so much so that she was on the verge of winning the highest journalism award, being kidnapped by some security agency and then buried in the woods with no questions asked. In fact, I'm thinking of doing it myself, just for fear that she might find something else. But worst of all, this girl didn't know she was talking about these things with a stranger in a park. It was like seeing someone who was a genius at some things and a complete idiot at others. But it was also something I might be able to use to my advantage to get her to research other things and then steal her finished homework.

"Well, maybe I don't understand much about these things, but I remember hearing Adelis mention something once about having the I.S.C. as an enemy or something like that."
"I think it was a few days after the shooting when my friend and I were here in the park trying to cook some yakiimos," I lied, trying to sound as Japanese as possible to stay on the journalist's good side.

"The I.S.C. again? It's not the first time that name has come up in my investigations lately."
"But this isn't something that happened out of the blue. Ever since that foreigner Brandon arrived to oversee the operations, a lot of strange things have been happening around here or in places like Kitamoto."
"Besides the Naichō's activities with the police."
"Could it be related to what happened at the Ueno Dam? But if that's the case, it wouldn't explain the giant fox..."
"Unless what Bastet said is true, but if I want to confirm it, I'll have to go to Akihabara."
"Also, I still have to look for the proof of the guard's infidelity with his wife to get through there."
"But for that, I need to buy a spy camera, and that's not cheap. The store owner won't let me pay in installments unless I pay off the new washing machine first."
"And I won't get paid until next week, although maybe if I just buy instant noodles and fix my bike..."
"I also still have this news about cheap school lunches that will probably be published and give me some extra money..."
"......"
"......"

The journalist started talking to herself at an alarming rate, almost impossible for a non-native like me to understand. From what little I could understand at first, it seemed to all be related to the same thing she had been investigating all along.

"Okay, this could work!"
"Girl, you have no idea how much you helped me today."
"You could certainly help me in the future and get those pesky foreigners out of here once and for all."
"Don't you want to exchange phone numbers?"
"If you help me with my work, I can get you things that are hard to get, like tickets to the premiere of a famous movie so that you can go with your friends or boyfriend."

" OK"
"That sounds good enough." I said as I pulled out my smartphone to exchange numbers.

"Don't use that word, it's another one of those things the Yankees are trying to get you to do."

Are you not aware of the irony of what you just said?

"By the way, I forgot to ask you your name!"
"May I know what it is?"

"My name is Nanami, I live with my parents in a house over there, three blocks from here," I lied to her so that she would continue to look at me favorably.

"Well, my name is Nozomi Yasuda, I work for the Nichibotsu no Taiyō Shimbun newspaper," she said cheerfully.

"I hope the movie tickets arrive soon, Miss Nozomi Yasuda."

"Don't worry, I'll give them to you the next time we meet," she said, laughing a little when she saw the problem she had gotten herself into.

After talking to the journalist, I returned to my house and immediately told my mother about her. My mother did not pay much attention to it, arguing that she could try to search for anything she wanted, but she would not find anything. However, we decided not to risk it anyway and asked the twins to keep an eye on her. They seemed to be paying attention to our conversation, and Charlotte replied that Ms. Nozomi Yasuda worked part-time at a movie theater in Shibuya, so it didn't take a genius to figure out why she offered me movie tickets.

As night fell, everyone in the house was doing the usual. My mother was in the living room watching her Turkish soap opera, Maria was with her also watching. Momo was working on improving the system for connecting my daughters to the Internet, with an emphasis on data transfer speed. Charlotte was trying to learn how to make flower arrangements from Tamamo. For my part, I was trying to build a shoe rack at the entrance of the house with the help of Kazumi, because now there were too many people living here to have it messy. Suddenly, the doorbell rang, and since I was the closest to the door, I quickly put on my hat and my waistcoat, which I always left hanging at the entrance, and opened the door to see who it was. But we were all surprised to see who it was.

"Good evening, I am glad to see that you are all well."
"Let me introduce myself, my name is Stella and ....."

I immediately shut the door as fast and as hard as I could, trying in vain to keep bad luck away from our house.