Scarlet Snow, Pale Water

Chapter 1: The Taste of Plain Water and the Rule of Silence

February 1936 (Showa 11). The night wind of the imperial capital was as cold as a blade cutting into the skin.

Having finished his grueling twelve-hour shift at the ironworks, Koji, still in his work clothes blackened with soot and grease, hurried, breathless, to the election office of the proletarian party. In the dim, unheated wooden office, young people with freezing hands were folding leaflets. Unable to bear the sight, Yukino, Koji's childhood friend, tried to bring in some rice balls from her family's diner and a teapot filled with steaming, warm tea. But at that moment, a veteran activist, his face pale with panic, knocked the teapot straight out of her hand.

Crash! The ceramic shattered, and the hot tea was instantly absorbed by the cold tatami mat.

"What do you think you're doing!" Koji, his shoulders trembling with rage, closed in on the veteran activist. "Yukino brought that tea out of kindness! What is wrong with warming up our freezing comrades?!"

"You fool!" the veteran activist roared back, matching Koji's volume. "Look outside! Can't you see the Tokko (Special Higher Police) watching us? A non-candidate providing food or tea—just that is deemed 'entertainment.' They'll raid us on charges of pre-election bribery or illegal inducement in a heartbeat! This office will be shut down, and every one of us will be arrested! Do you want to ruin everything we've built, crawling through the mud, just because of your momentary emotion?!"

"Rules, rules, rules...! If we're just going to shrink back in silence, cowering before the insane rules they've created, how are we supposed to convey our anger to the world? Shouldn't we be shouting about this injustice out loud, and with far more fury?!"

Koji's outburst left the office dead silent. Beside the broken teapot, Yukino looked down sorrowfully. In the end, all they were allowed that night was plain sayu (hot water), completely tasteless. In the drafty, dimly lit room, Koji wrapped his frozen fingers around the teacup, feeling the faint steam rising from it. The hot water, swallowed on an empty stomach, scorched his insides. It was a miserable, painful reminder of their poverty and their absurd circumstances, laid bare with cruel clarity.

"Koji," Yukino said softly, sitting beside him and offering her own teacup. "Let us endure the coldness of this plain water for now. Koji, our weapons aren't anger or violence. It's these words, handed out one by one."

Koji swallowed the hot water down his throat and looked into Yukino's quiet, steady eyes. "...Yeah. I won't forget. Neither the heat of this water, nor this bitterness." They resumed folding leaflets in silence through the night, believing that their quiet words would one day become a fire to warm this freezing society.

The same night, in the dim barracks of the Imperial Army. Shintaro Nozu, a young officer, stared into the darkness outside the window. Behind him, a young recruit, still with an air of innocence about him, lay prostrate on the floor, weeping bitterly.

"...My younger sister back home in Tohoku was sold to the brothels. The harvest failed miserably, we couldn't afford food, we couldn't pay the rent... My mother wrote to say there was no other way..."

The recruit's sobs echoed off the cold concrete walls. In the tenant-farming villages of Tohoku, heavy taxes and crop failures combined to force daughters to be sold off for a pittance. This was the reality for the families of soldiers who pledged their lives to the Emperor. Meanwhile, in the restaurants of the capital, bloated politicians and zaibatsu barons feasted on delicacies night after night, gorging themselves on concessions.

Deep within Shintaro's heart, a cold, murderous intent was quietly, darkly boiling. "Rules? Parliament? While they squabble over their useless arguments, the sisters of the Japanese people are being sold off day by day."

📖Nextchapter：https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/nadeecda75747
🌐OriginalJapanese：https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/n2b353aed6138

"Thank you so much for reading to the very end!"💗