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He pushed his way through the thickets. Branches poked into his side along the weathered, woody trail. Despite the wilderness, Pvt. Goshiki crept onward through bush after bush. He was sure these were the directions Semi gave him.
Then, sure enough, like a page out of Hansel and Gretel, there stood a chocolate-colored cottage made of dark wood in a clearing.
Goshiki panted, astonished anyone lived in such a distant place, but it made sense to avoid detection. These were experts after all.
There was a special sequence of taps Semi told Goshiki to use when knocking: 3-2-3-1. He practiced the sequence in the air before attempting it for real.
He nervously began. Three taps, then two, then three, then one. He breathed a sigh of relief that he executed it perfectly.
A few moments later, an eye slit in the door parted, and Goshiki could see the suspicious, drilling glare of the cottage owner.
“Are you hungry?” said the man inside. It was the code that confirmed Goshiki was at the right place.
“I’m hungry for height,” Tsutomu replied as instructed.
The man clopped the slit shut, and then the door opened with an eerie creak.
Now was the real sigh of relief. After escaping a POW camp in Itachiyama, Goshiki had successfully made it to another safe haven on the treacherous journey back to the territory of Shiratorizawa.
The host invited Goshiki to warm himself at the fire kindling in the corner while he fetched a drink. Tsutomu stood on the fluffy rug in front of the fireplace, the warmth soothing his hands red from the chilly air. He took in the quaintness of the cottage and pretended not to be disturbed by the stuffed white bird above the mantlepiece.
When his host returned, he gestured for Goshiki to take a seat at the table and slid him a steaming cup of cocoa. Goshiki sipped it gratefully, letting the warmth and dissolved sugar delight him. He missed these creature comforts in captivity.
His host sat opposite with pen and parchment and efficiently took notes as he asked his guest questions.
“Your name.”
“Tsutomu Goshiki.”
“Age?”
“22.”
“Rank?”
“Private Second Class.”
“Position?”
“Grenadier.”
“Unit?”
“1st Ushijima Regiment.”
“Where did you escape from?”
“Camp Komori.”
“How long ago?”
“Three days.”
“Were you detected?”
“I don’t think so?” (He was pretty sure he wasn’t.)
“Have you done anything that would give Itachiyama extra incentive to recapture you?” his host posed as the final question. Goshiki leaned back to ponder.
“Well, once I did leave chewing gum in the commandant’s chair. Does that count?”
Tsutomu’s host blinked wide-eyed.
“We’ll mark that as a ‘no,’” he said, managing to keep a straight face. He set down the parchment and grabbed a notepad upon which he began to draw a map from memory.
“Let’s start with my name. I’m Hayato Yamagata, but you’re better off forgetting that when you leave.”
Yamagata tore off the top sheet of the pad and slid the paper to Goshiki. “Here’s the route you’ll take tomorrow, through the pass here, to the next safehouse. It’s a closed hiking trail; no one uses it anymore since they made a safer path nearby. The border is only 30 kilometers once you cross the ridge.”
Hayato Yamagata’s secluded house was a waypoint in a very important but very illegal enterprise: ferrying escaped prisoners-of-war out of Itachiyama and back to the State of Shiratorizawa. Hayato processed dozens of POWs, never seeing any of them again after spending a night or two with him. Tsutomu Goshiki was the latest in a long string of fugitives placing their trust and lives in his hands.
Needless to say, it was a dangerous endeavor. If Goshiki were recaptured, he would be taken back to the camp and quite possibly shot for escaping. If he then betrayed Yamagata to the authorities, there were no ifs about it: Yamagata would be shot for his activities.
Goshiki nodded firmly that he understood the directions.
Then Yamagata smiled softly. “Now, let’s get you something to eat before your trip tomorrow. Good luck, Private.”
The meal was the best Goshiki had since internment. Yamagata was an excellent cook. Then Goshiki spent his first night in a proper, soft and warm bed in over a year, snoozing solidly for ten hours—four hours longer than he’d gotten ever in captivity. When he awoke, breakfast awaited him on the table. Yamagata dutifully washed dishes while Goshiki ate the hardiest meal in recent memory.
Tsutomu wanted to say thank you, but Yamagata nigh refused to give him the chance. After breakfast, his host practically cattle-prodded him out the door on the grounds Tsutomu was already late.
“Thank you,” Goshiki managed to work in on the doorstep.
Yamagata’s smile in return felt pained.
“Hey,” he said, his voice breaking, “good luck.”
By afternoon, Tsutomu had already trekked a couple of miles underneath the dry canopy of the woody hillside. He followed only the faintest trail to speak of, thin and winding towards the top of the ridge. If soldiers from Itachiyama were to find him (though it’d be a wonder why they’d be patrolling this remote area), Tsutomu wasn’t sure he’d be able to lose them in the sparse underbrush.
He could trust Yamagata though, and so he let his guard down just a little.
As the sun rolled farther into the sky, the hum of insects and click of jumpy rabbits was interrupted by the aggressive barking of dogs.
He froze and glanced back in the direction of the sound. Quickly he saw two canines, racing in his direction between the trees. Beyond, yellow-and-green-clad soldiers from Itachiyama picked up the pace in pursuit of their bloodhounds and prey.
Goshiki sprinted, ahead of the first crack of a rifle, its bullet buzzing past his head and thumping into a tree trunk. The hounds’ deep, ravenous barking didn’t abate. Shouting resounded from his pursuers.
Tsutomu threaded in between the trees, irrecoverably deviating from his assigned route. He threw down the pack of supplies Yamagata gifted him, to lighten his load. He leaped across a well-trodden hiking trail, ascending which another set of soldiers unfortunately laid eyes on him and joined the chase.
Goshiki didn’t know how fast or how far he was running. The dogs were gaining. Ahead, he saw Itachiyama soldiers moving to block his path. He cut up the hillside and ran solidly toward the peak of the ridge, hoping to elude his pursuers on the downslope.
When he mounted the top of the wooded hill, his first sight on the other side were two rifle-wielding soldiers waiting for him. Their first shot throttled Goshiki onto his back, and, lying there wounded, the POW’s efforts to reach freedom were over.
The next morning, Yamagata counted the money spilling over the table. Exactly 2,000,000 yen—his reward for the recapture of Tsutomu Goshiki.
With the innocent, trusting visage of Tsutomu plaguing his mind, Yamagata let his face plod on the tabletop, scattering the bills around the room. One floated into the fireplace and burned up.
He stayed lying like that even when knocking came from the door.
Three taps. Two. Then three taps. One. The normal signal.
…Followed immediately by three more firm knocks.
Yamagata’s head snapped up. That pattern signified only one visitor.
He patted down his shirt and pants before going to the door and sliding the slit aside.
He recognized the eyes on the other side with relief. There was still a procedure though.
“Are you hungry?”
“Hungry for a way to fly.” A distinctly different reply from Goshiki, but that was Eita Semi’s personal signal that he wasn’t being followed.
Yamagata promptly unlocked the door and invited the caretaker of the other safehouse in.
“How are you feeling?” Semi asked, noticing the scattered bills and Hayato’s evident melancholy. Yamagata didn’t realize his body language was that obvious. He held onto the dinner table—the one at which Goshiki gratefully ate his last meal earlier today—for stabilization.
“Terrible. I hate this.”
“I don’t think I could do it,” Semi said, his stomach churning at the thought of Tsutomu Goshiki being transported back to the camp—or worse.
It wasn’t the first time Yamagata had done this. In total, 12 of the people who’d been through his checkpoint over the last year had ended up back in Itachiyama’s hands—all because Yamagata tipped off authorities about the route the escapee was to take.
“Are they ready?” Semi said, turning to today’s business.
Yamagata pushed the thoughts of guilt to the back of his mind.
“Yup,” he said, marching over to the furry rug at the base of the fireplace. With his heel, he dragged the rug aside, revealing a trapdoor in the hardwood floor. With an awful creak, he opened the passage, revealing five gaunt escaped POWs huddled around the shaft below.
Semi was to personally escort the five to Shiratorizawa.
“You’ve got their packs ready?” Semi asked his host.
“Sure do,” asserted Yamagata, retrieving the prepared supply bags while Semi assisted the haggard crew up the ladder into the main floor of the cottage.
Yamagata said little as the gaggle made its way outdoors. Semi took a long hard look at his cohort, who would remain behind to await the next POW sent his way.
“Listen. I know it’s hard,” Semi tried to comfort him, “but you and I both know it’s because Itachiyama thinks you’re on their side that we can assist so many more people back to our lines.”
“Just go,” Yamagata said, signaling he wasn’t in the mood right now.
Semi nodded and dutifully excused himself.
On a purely statistical level, the tradeoff was manifestly advantageous. Itachiyama didn’t suspect at all that their spy, Hayato Yamagata, was a double agent.
But when Yamagata would imagine the shining, beholden faces of the people he had to occasionally betray to maintain his ruse—real people like Private Second Class Tsutomu Goshiki—his conscience attacked him all hours of the day….