Chapter 8: The Bomb

Day One — Arrangement

Kurumi carried the last of her boxes.

That was the thing about wartime, Hana thought, watching from the engawa as her new housemate made her final trip up the path. You learned what was important and what wasn’t.

The squirrel woman straightened with a groan, rubbing the small of her back, her round ears swiveling to take in the outside sounds of daily life. Her bushy tail, grey with a white tip, curled upward. Hana knew her tail was a signal of her next-door neighbor’s feelings.

“That’s everything,” Kurumi said. Then, quieter: “For five years of marriage.”

“Yes,” the catgirl agreed. “You’re more practical than me. I would be trying to figure out what to take and what to leave.”

They had been neighbors for three years without being close. Polite conversation over the fence. Occasional pickled vegetables and local gossip shared. Their husbands had known each other better, both pilots, both posted together before the orders that sent them east, toward Hawaii, toward a morning that had ended two marriages before either woman turned thirty.

The practical arrangement had been Kurumi’s suggestion. Two households, two ration books, two women alone in houses built for families. She thought it only made sense. Sharing resources. She tried not to think lonely.

By midday the rooms were settled enough. They had gone out together in the late morning to queue for rations: rice, a little dried fish, enough to make a meal. The city square was bustling with women, children, the elderly, and men who for some reason were not acceptable for the military. People in monpe trousers and kimonos waited quietly for their allotment of food, expressions practiced at not showing anything deeper.

It was on the way home that the two wolves fell into step beside them.

They were big, broad-shouldered men in dark clothes that projected allegiance to the local gang. One had an empty smile and pale eyes. The shorter one said nothing but walked too close, close enough that Hana could feel the heat of him at her shoulder.

“Two ladies carrying all that alone,” the pale-eyed one said pleasantly. “Where are your husbands?”

Kurumi’s tail went rigid. Hana kept her eyes forward.

“We’re fine,” Hana said, trying her best not to sound nervous.

“Didn’t ask if you were fine.” He smiled. His companion still hadn’t spoken. “Hiroshima’s not what it used to be. A lot of women are alone these days. Could use someone looking after them.”

They walked another half-block like that, the men asking questions and matching their pace. The feline-eared woman’s grip tightened on the ration bag. She was calculating: the distance to the next cross street, whether the old bear man outside the kite seller’s would be any use, whether her voice would carry if she raised it.

Then a neighborhood warden rounded the corner ahead, his armband bright, spear in hand, looking bored and official. His gaze locked on the group.

“Good evening. Is anything going on here?”

“No, officer. Just making sure these lovely ladies get home. But since you’re here, we can go on our way.”

The pale-eyed wolf slowed. Said something low to his friend. Turned and left, his companion following.

Hana and Kurumi walked the rest of the way home without speaking.

Inside, Kurumi put the kettle on with hands that were not quite steady. Hana set the ration bags down and stood in the kitchen doorway, watching her.

“They weren’t going to do anything,” Kurumi said, to the kettle. “In the middle of the street like that.”

“No,” Hana said. “Probably not.”

Kurumi’s ears flattened briefly, then came back up. “I hate that I was frightened. I hate that that’s just something we have to think about now.”

“It always was something we had to think about,” Hana said quietly. “Our husbands just meant we thought about it less.”

Kurumi turned to look at her. Something passed between them.

“Yes,” Kurumi said, after a moment. “That’s exactly it.”

They cooked together, moving around each other carefully in the small kitchen, and ate at the low table as the light outside went grey. The soup was quite tasty. The two widows were still learning about each other.

“Tell me about him,” Kurumi said. “If you want. You don’t have to.”

Hana turned her cup in her hands. “Ichiro was very serious. He believed in things. Honor, duty, Japan. He meant all of it, genuinely. It wasn’t performance.” She paused. “I didn’t always agree with him. About the war. About what it was for.” Her ears tilted back slightly. “I never told him that.”

Kurumi nodded slowly. “Saigo knew I disagreed. We argued about it.” Her tail curled. “The last letter I sent him, I was still a little angry. I didn’t know it would be the last one.” She looked down. “I’ve thought about that every day since December.”

“They were honorable men,” Hana said. It came out careful, precise, the thing she’d decided was true, that she held onto. “Whatever we thought about the war, whatever any of it was for, they were honorable. That’s separate.”

“Yes.” Kurumi’s voice was soft. “I believe that too.”

Outside, the city settled into its nighttime quiet. Inside, the lamp made the room small and warm and theirs.

Later, they lay in the dark on the shared futon, a careful distance between them. The cold had settled into the walls of the house.

“I steal the blanket, apparently,” Kurumi said to the catgirl. “Saigo always accused me of it. I don’t remember doing it.”

“Ichiro had cold feet. Always. No matter the season.” A beat. “I never understood it.”

Silence. A cart somewhere on the street outside. Then nothing.

“Goodnight, Hana.”

“Goodnight.”

Sometime in the deep of the night, without waking, Kurumi turned toward warmth. By morning she had crossed half the distance between them, her tail loose across the blanket, one hand open near Hana’s shoulder.

Day Two — Grief Surfaces

The morning came in grey and cold.

Hana woke first, as she always had. She lay still for a moment, orienting herself to the unfamiliar sounds of another person’s breathing, the feeling of a tail brushing the back of her knees. Then she rose quietly, dressed in the dark, and had the kettle on before Kurumi’s ears twitched toward consciousness.

They moved through the morning with the careful courtesy of two people still learning about each other. Kurumi talked while she went through her day: small things, surface things, the price of charcoal and whether the woman at the end of the street had really been hoarding sweet potatoes. Hana listened and offered enough response to keep it going. She had already understood that Kurumi’s chatter was not shallowness. It was how she kept herself busy.

The day had the particular feeling of wartime ordinary, which was to say, nothing happened until it did.

They mended clothes. They boiled water for the bath in turns. Kurumi found half a bag of barley they hadn’t accounted for and was pleased about it. Hana reorganized the kitchen shelves twice, the second time for no reason she could have named.

In the afternoon, Kurumi sat by the window with a letter in her hands, not reading it, just holding it. Hana recognized the gesture. She had a letter like that too.

She put a fresh cup of tea beside Kurumi’s elbow and went back to her mending.

Kurumi’s ears tilted toward her. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

They ate dinner. They washed up. They let the lamp burn a little longer than they should have, talking about nothing in particular: an argument between neighbors, a song Kurumi half-remembered from childhood, the way Hiroshima was different in summer. Two women building a life together.

Then they extinguished the lamp and tried to go to sleep.

It was well past midnight when Hana woke.

Not to sound at first, but to the absence of the stillness that had been there before. A change in the air of the room. She was already turning before she was fully conscious of why.

Kurumi was curled on her side, facing away, but her whole body was wrong: shoulders drawn up, tail tucked tight around her, one hand fisted in the blanket. A sound was coming from her, barely audible, the kind of sound that a person makes when they are trying very hard to hide it.

“Kurumi.”

Nothing. The sound continued.

“Kurumi.” Hana sat up, reached across, and placed her hand between the squirrel girl’s shoulder blades.