Bullseye! by Tsutsui Yasutaka

Author:Tsutsui, Yasutaka [Tsutsui, Yasutaka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kurodahan Press
Published: 2019-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

Sleepy Summer Afternoon

It was still sweltering when I left the factory. As I walked out, I looked up to see a cloudless sky, a sky colored ultramarine with eyes of jade. There was still plenty of time before sundown, but pencil-pushing time was over and beer time was about to begin; it was already two minutes past 4:30, when everyone could go home. I took the path across the grassy forecourt and answered a smile from the security guard with a wave. Then I walked out through the factory gates.

Workers were piling out onto the main street from other munitions factories. They all looked so neat and clean, those young men and women with their healthily tanned faces. They exchanged cheerful looks and laughed as they divided into two groups, one hurrying off home while the other headed straight for the beer hall by the town square.

“On your way home, then?”

The factory supervisor came to walk alongside me. He was two years older and two inches taller than me. I was in my shirtsleeves, but he was dressed in a smart blue pinstriped suit.

I shook my head and pointed to the beer hall with my chin. He smiled, and the sight of his white teeth made me feel a lot cooler.

“Mind if I join you? Just for the one.”

“Sure, come along. I’ll only have the one myself.”

The main street had just been sprinkled with water, making the asphalt shine. The air was clean and healthy. Ten years earlier, the factories had all been fitted with air purifiers and the chimneys pulled down; now the smoke was passed through a radiant energy field, where it was vaporized into nothing.

We continued along the broad, poplar-lined sidewalk, together with a mass of other people walking in the same direction. In the distance, I could see the blue-and-white striped awning outside the beer hall flapping in the breeze. It seemed to be beckoning us.

Some secretaries were walking ahead of us. The breeze caused their thin white skirts to billow and flipped the end of my necktie over my right shoulder.

“Hey, what’s that?” said the factory supervisor as he pointed up at the sky. A little puff of smoke was floating there all alone, like a drop of white paint in a pool of deep blue ink.

“Must be fireworks,” I replied. “Some kind of display.”

The beer hall was still quite empty. We went out onto a terrace overlooking the town square and the fountain in the middle of it, and sat facing each other near the edge of the terrace.

The beer was so cold that I could only drink it in little sips. Even that sent pain shooting through my teeth; it was enough to make my eyes water. I looked at the factory supervisor. His eyes were watering too, but he smiled when he saw me looking at him. He always had a smile in his eyes, even when the rest of his face was serious. He must have experienced some unpleasant things in his life, but he never lost that smile.

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