Work Text:
It all started with a spark.
Somehow the first of the unmarked keys I picked out from the packed key-ring turned over inside the ignition cylinder and after a few seconds of cranking, which felt like an eternity, its three-cylinder powerhouse of an engine spurted to life-- being an old keitora1 from the nineties meant that there weren’t any immobilizers built into the keys yet, in fact you could get unmarked duplicates made anywhere you could get a house key copied. Dad’s Daihatsu was the same way, much like him it was the workhorse of our family’s shop, so we all kept a spare key that looked just like this.
Wait, who leaves all of their keys with their mechanic anyway?
I’d have to give whoever took this in an earful later for not asking the customer to separate the correct key… but it’s no matter now; the unremarkable Suzuki Carry was running as smoothly as it did the day it left the factory, signified by a hearty rumble that had no business coming from a 657cc keijidousha2 engine; I suspect an exhaust leak is responsible judging by the smell of un-catalyzed gasses which quickly filled the cabin and made me feel woozy.
“Wha- this thing reeks, Nattsun!” A familiar voice called out from outside the truck.
Standing there outside the Carry’s door was a girl my age, my childhood friend Akari, had she come to pay me another surprise visit?
It never used to bother me, Akari and I used to go over each other’s houses all the time when we were in high school, often unannounced since her parents were usually too busy to care, and mine were grateful that someone respectable was keeping an eye on me; lately something was different though. Ever since Akari got that apartment on her own so she could attend university, those visits started feeling less natural.
Did she actually want to see me?
Is she just looking after me still, like my parents always wanted her to?
“Nattsun?”
“...You didn’t have to come all this way for me, you know?” I replied hastily, but the sting of regret made me wince just as quickly as the words rolled out of my mouth. What was I saying all of the sudden?
“Huh?”
She swept her brown bangs to the left and looked down at her feet. I could tell she was trying not to look hurt. Her chestnut eyes always seemed to sparkle when I got a close enough look, but this time they seemed wetter than usual.
Crap, I don’t know how to react when she gets this way!
“It’s good to see you, Akari.”
She perked up immediately, as if she had the attention span of a puppy, then leaned herself into the cabin, resting her arms against the trim of the door where the retracted window sat.
“I wanted to come see you, Nattsun.”
“Won’t you miss class? It’s Tuesday morning after all.”
“Professor canceled on us last minute, said something about his little brother returning to Okinawa. Didn’t read the rest of the email, Japanese isn’t his first language so he can be a bit wordy sometimes.”
Akari’s gaze returned to mine with such a reborn fervor that it almost closed the physical distance between us entirely. I couldn’t take it for more than a couple seconds before I looked down at my gray, grease-stained coveralls and started to feel embarrassed for some reason.
She’s seen worse than this, why do I care all of the sudden?
It’s not like I’m a total slob, she came to visit me with no warning!
“Do you mind if I stay here while you work?”
I looked back at her expecting that distance between us to have closed even further, but it felt different this time.
“S-sure you can. If you’d like. This is the last thing I have to work on today.” I replied while tapping the steering wheel with the service clipboard.
“Great, I love getting to watch you while you are working!” Akari hurried around the front of the truck; for a girl her size she took long strides.
Thunk-- I could hear the latch being undone before noticing her middle three fingers pulling up at the lock mechanism through the half-opened passenger window. It was like a flood-gate had been released when she swung the door open, the air around my head being vacuum sucked from my side to hers for a split-second. Akari chucked herself into the seat and closed the door again before reaching down to grab the crank and rolling the window down the rest of the way. As if to distract myself before Akari could notice me watching her, I hurriedly looked down at my clipboard and read:
[CUSTOMER COMPLAINT]: AIR BAG MALFUNCTION. READ CODE AND ADVISE.
Maybe I should stop tapping the steering wheel after all…
I put the clipboard up on the center of the dash and noticed the flashing air bag light in the center of the cluster. If I was going to know which fault code it was giving me I had to time the blinks of the air bag light. Focusing on the flashing red light gave me tunnel vision, it was as if for a moment the only thing that existed were me and the methodical strobe of an indicator light, like my own personal gauge cluster was passing me a cryptic SOS, but what was it trying to tell me?
One, two...pause...One, two, thr--
Before I could finish counting I was assaulted by a sudden blow to my left shoulder and the saccharine aroma of warm sweat coming from the scalp of a girl who’s clearly spent the entire morning outside in the sun.
“Oh, is there something wrong with the air bags?” Akari asked, adjusting her head’s position against my arm and parting her bangs away from her eyes and behind her ear with her index finger. She has such cute ears.
“Yeah, I need to count the blinks to find out what’s wrong.”
One, two...pause...One, two, three, fou--
“It’s two blinks and then five.” Akari chimed matter-of-factly.
I wonder if she’s always paying this much attention to the things around her. Maybe she’s trying to impress me.
“Thanks.” I reached for my smartphone where I had an electronic copy of the service manual saved. With a little bit of scrolling I’d found the section on code reading.
“Driver air bag short to power circuit.” I announced as Akari shot up in her seat.
“Hey Nattsun, it felt like something just brushed up against my leg.”
My cheeks gushed hot at the thought that she might’ve suspected me as the culprit, how much more pathetic could I get?
“Could it be a mouse or something?”
Akari let out a yelp and pulled her legs back towards the seat. There wasn’t a whole lot of legroom in the cabin of a keitora so she wasn’t able to move them far, but as she did suddenly there was a piercing silence.
The engine just stalled.
Akari looked back at me with an embarrassed smile, like she was accepting fault for breaking the Carry. After wiggling the gear shift lever back and forth with my left hand to make sure we were still in neutral, I turned the key again in the ignition.
Nothing.
Shit.
It wasn’t just the engine, all of the electrics were out completely. I frantically started trying to turn on the lights and the radio, but there was no response.
Could it be the alternator wasn’t charging the battery?
No, I hooked up the circuit to an external power supply already, and it hasn’t been running for nearly long enough to discharge the battery, so I could rule that out.
The main power fuse probably blew.
“That’s it! It might’ve been your fault after all, Akari.”
“Aw, don’t blame me, I didn’t touch anything!”
“But something touched you, isn’t that right?”
I opened the driver side door and confidently strut around to the other side of the truck, then opened the passenger door. Akari was looking perplexed as I plunged my head in front of her legs and down beneath the dash. Aha!
“The thing that touched your leg before wasn’t a mouse, it was a wire that had been pulled out from the loom on the harness.”
“I see…”
“Akari, could you please do me a favor and grab the electrical tape from on top of the rolling tool cart right over there?”
“On it, boss!” Akari joked as she deftly removed her feet from behind my head without kicking me and hopped out of the truck.
A reddish-gray wire was dangling in a loop out from a part of the plastic loom which had been ripped open. Next to it was another, brown-striped, wire. The sight made me think of Harakiri3…
The pair of wires had parts of their protective insulation torn apart by something, exposing the copper filaments within. The gray-ish truck was actually supposed to be white but it had been coated in a patina of dirt, it’s likely been sitting in a shed for a long time, perhaps something tried nesting inside it at some point.
Before, the exposed wires had just been tapping each other occasionally causing the intermittent short circuit, but Akari’s fussing must have brought them together directly long enough to overload the circuit and blow the fuse. Suddenly I felt a hand on my side as Akari leaned over to hand me the tape I had her fetch. It was only after completing my re-insulation of the two wires that I noticed her hand had never left my side.