Chapter Text
Celcius Torch was a courageous young man. He just wanted a good life, a good career — the American dream, basically. Freedom and rights.
Arriving in Japan was part of that. War was booming, literally. His company, Smith & Wesson, decided to get themselves some more money and trading influence. It made sense, especially with how Japan was so accepting of the weapons trade.
Standing at the bow, he watches as the ship slows, how it moves up and down against the waves that would drag it out if not for the engineering. He wasn't here alone; that was the lucky part.
"I mean, it wouldn't make any damn sense if the company sent one man to do it all, ain't it?" He turns to an older worker. There were at least thirty men here. Moderate amount by this time.
The older worker — a grizzled man named Harlan with a graying mustache and a permanent squint — grunts at that, still chewing on the toothpick he's been working since they left San Francisco.
"Hell, you think Smith & Wesson's gonna trust one man with all this? They'd sooner trust a cat to guard a fish market." He spits over the rail, watching the dark water churn against the hull. "Thirty of us. Half to talk, half to carry the samples. And you, kid — you're the talkin' type, ain't ya?"
Another man, younger, with spectacles and a nervous stomach, leans over the rail beside them, already looking green. "I heard the Japanese don't even shake hands. They bow. How the hell do you close a deal with a bow?"
Harlan snorts. "Same way you do with a handshake. You smile, you nod, and you don't say nothin' stupid." He glances at Celcius. "You speak any of their tongue yet?"
"Ain't too good with it." He tips the flimsy hat on his hair. "Reckon they'll speak ours instead. America's big and all that."
Looking to the sides, some were already moving out onto the bay. "I think we should get a moving... Wouldn't want my pay to be docked first arrival."
Harlan barks a laugh, clapping Celcius on the shoulder hard enough to stagger a lesser man. "America's big, sure. But we're on their dirt now, son. Pride don't buy you a translator."
He grabs his worn valise from the deck, jerking his head toward the gangplank where the other men are already gathering their crates and cases.
"Come on, then. Don't want the company to think you're scared of a little foreign soil."
The bespectacled man — Morton — stumbles after them, still clutching his stomach. "I heard they serve raw fish. Just... raw. On rice. In public."
Harlan doesn't look back. "You'll live. Maybe."
The ship groans against the dock, and the sounds of Yokohama's port rise to meet them — voices in a language none of them fully understand, wooden carts clattering, the distant clang of metal from some warehouse beyond the water.
The gangplank shudders under their boots as the thirty men file down onto the dock, each one carrying the weight of their own ambitions and anxieties. The air is thick with salt, fish, and the smoke of coal fires from ships still anchored further out.
Harlan spits over his shoulder and mutters, "Smells like money, if you ask me." He gestures with his valise toward the crowd of dockworkers and merchants who part just enough to let the foreigners pass, their eyes lingering with curiosity and wariness.
Morton nearly trips over a coil of rope, clutching his sample case to his chest as a fishmonger barks something sharp in Japanese. The man's apron is slick with scales, and he gestures wildly at a cart loaded with glistening tuna.
"What's he saying?" Morton whispers, his voice cracking.
Another employee — broad-shouldered and red-faced, by the name of Cobb — grins without humor. "Probably tellin' you to watch your damn feet." He pushes past, carrying a crate stamped with the Smith & Wesson insignia, the letters bold and foreign under the pale afternoon light.
Ahead, the street beyond the dock is a narrow artery of noise and motion — wooden signs swinging above storefronts, the clatter of geta on packed earth, the occasional bellow of a merchant hawking silks, tea, or roasted skewers. A group of children pauses mid-game to stare at the procession of Western suits and boots.
Harlan glances back at Celcius. "You wanted a new life, kid. Here it is." He squints into the crowded street, his expression hard to read. "Now let's find the damn hotel before Morton pukes on our samples."
"They have hotels here? Damn, I might be underestimating them." Celcius laughs with surprise.
Later, Celcius lugs a giant box of chamber parts towards the factory. "Whew!" He lets out a tired but proud sigh.
"That was heavy... My back's hurting already." His hand went to his pocket, grabbing a handkerchief to brush the sweat away.
The narrow street gives way to a wider road lined with two-story wooden buildings, their tiled roofs curved at the edges. Signs hang everywhere, painted with characters Celcius can't read. The smell of miso and charcoal drifts from a nearby stall, mixing with the salt air still clinging to their clothes.
Harlan casts a sidelong glance at the box in Celcius's arms, his expression caught somewhere between approval and amusement. "Careful, Torch. You throw your back out on day one, they'll leave you at the dock and hire a rickshaw to carry the parts."
Cobb marches ahead, his voice carrying over the clatter of carts and the murmur of Japanese passersby. "Factory's another half-mile. Manager said the local smiths are eager to see what we brought. Try not to look so impressed."
Morton, still pale but steady, leans in. "I heard they forge blades here that can cut through a man's spine in one swing." He swallows. "Maybe don't mention we mainly make guns."
Harlan snorts. "We're not here to sell swords, Morton. We're here to sell the future." He taps the crate in his own arms, hard enough to rattle the contents.
A few Japanese merchants pause to watch the procession, their conversation dipping low. One old man in indigo robes whispers something to a younger companion, who stares openly at the foreign boots and the strange, branded boxes they carry.
The street bends east, and the factory comes into view — a long, low building with a smoking chimney and open shutters, where the rhythmic clang of hammers echoes into the afternoon heat.
Late into the evening.
"Hhaahh." Celcius lets out a long and tiring sigh. "When are we done? I mean, don't get me wrong, I know when it ends. I've been working in this damn company for two years." He slides off a wooden crate onto the floor.
"But like... you know?" He shrugs.
The factory floor has cooled with the coming night, but the scent of machine oil and hot iron still lingers in the air. Most of the Japanese workers have gone home, their low bows and quiet goodbyes exchanged at the door. A few oil lamps burn in iron brackets, throwing long shadows across the wooden beams.
Harlan sits on an overturned crate near the far wall, rolling a cigarette with the slow precision of a man who's done it ten thousand times. "You been here two years already?" He licks the paper, seals it, and strikes a match. "Feels longer. Shorter. Both."
He takes a drag, letting the smoke curl toward the rafters.
"End of the week, the head office sends a letter. Either we've impressed 'em or we're sailin' back with our tails between our legs."
He fixes his pale eyes on Celcius. "You homesick yet, or you still ridin' that American dream?"
"I ain't gay enough to ride it." He cracks a smile despite being tired. "I am by its side though, like uh... watching another man ride it."
Celcius chuckles when his coworkers cough out a plume of smoke.
Harlan chokes on his cigarette mid-drag, caught between a laugh and a cough. Smoke spills from his nose and mouth as he pounds a fist against his chest.
"Christ alive, Torch." He wheezes, eyes watering. "You got a mouth on you, you know that?"
Cobb, seated on a nearby stool with a canteen in hand, shakes his head slowly, a rare grin breaking through his usual scowl. "Man's got a point though. You've been huggin' that dream like it's a sweetheart you can't afford a ring for."
Morton glances up from the ledger he's been scratching numbers into, his spectacles catching the lamplight. "I just hope we don't have to explain that joke to the locals. They already think we're strange."
Harlan recovers, tapping ash onto the floor. "Let 'em think it. Better strange than boring." He looks over at Celcius, the ghost of a smile still on his lips. "You got that look, you know. The one that says you ain't goin' back home even if the company goes under."
A beat of quiet, broken only by the distant croak of cicadas.
"Am I wrong?"
"Is that rhetorical? Or literal, because I ain't have enough money to rent a boat either way." Celcius grabs the edge of a crate and hauls himself back up again.
"A cig please. Small. I'm not looking for lung cancer so soon." His smile retreats away as the small roll sits neatly between his index and middle.
Harlan raises an eyebrow but doesn't argue. He's already reaching into his coat, pulling out a thin cigarette paper and a pinch of tobacco from a leather pouch. "Since when do you smoke?"
"Since who doesn't" Celcius takes the rolled cigarette, his fingers moving with an old, easy familiarity. He taps the end once against his thumb, packing the tobacco, before leaning toward the match Harlan strikes. The tip catches with a small bloom of orange.
He doesn't answer right away. The smoke curls into his lungs, warm and familiar, and for a moment he's somewhere else — a back porch in D.C., his father's voice rumbling about the shop, the smell of iron in the air.
"Actually, it's been since the boat ride over," he says finally, exhaling through his nose. "Figured if I was gonna die at sea, I'd at least smell like I lived first."
Harlan snorts softly, shaking his head. "Don't say I never gave you nothin'."
Cobb watches from his stool, canteen resting on his knee. "Two years in, and you still count every coin like the boat might leave without you." He takes a slow sip of water. "You saving for somethin', or just scared to spend?"
The factory is quieter now, the last of the embers in the forge glowing a dull orange in the corner. Outside, the streets of Yokohama have settled into the low murmur of night — boots and geta on packed earth, the creak of wooden signs swaying in the warm wind.
Morton closes his ledger with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. "I wrote a letter to my sister last week. Told her the sunsets here are beautiful. She wrote back that she'd rather see a photograph."
He doesn't look up. "I ain't got a camera."
Cobb says nothing. He looks down at the floor, jaw working like he's chewing on something that won't quite break. The silence stretches long enough to feel heavy.
Harlan breaks it. "Everybody's got somethin' back home."
"Everybody seems to have their own goal, huh?" Celcius speaks slowly, the same way the smoke draws out into the air before wafting away.
"I want to marry a wife one day. Maybe get a child, start my own family." He looks off into the distance, at the outside where the shops were closing down, the lanterns shinier than they were an hour ago.
"What about you, Cobb? You speak a shit ton but also not enough, mate."
Cobb's grin fades just slightly, replaced by something more thoughtful. He caps his canteen and sets it on the floor beside his boot.
"Ain't nothin' too romantic. Got a brother back in Ohio runs a livery stable. Says if I can last another year out here, he'll let me buy in." He rolls his shoulders, the movement tightening the fabric of his shirt. "I just want somethin' with four legs and no boss."
Harlan smirks around his cigarette, smoke drifting from the corner of his mouth. "Wife, family, a stable full of horses. You two talk like you're already on the way back." He tilts his head toward the open shutters, where the lanterns sway like earthbound stars. "Me? I'm too old for new starts. I just like seein' what the world looks like before I'm planted in it."
Morton says nothing, only unfolds a battered map of the city and traces the route back to their lodgings with a finger. The paper crackles in the quiet.
Outside, a vendor calls out one last time — something about fish, probably, or perhaps a warning that the night market is closing. The sound echoes once, then fades into the hush of the harbor wind.