Gate – Jietai Kare no Chi nite, Kaku Tatakeri

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Not even Kurokawa could work her evil on Itami in front of everyone, and so she backed up against the wall.

“Good timing. Great timing, everyone.”

Itami pulled up his half-removed pajama bottoms and welcomed Tuka and the others as though they were G.o.ddesses come to rescue him.

This was when Itami noticed Tuka was dressed slightly differently from normal.

“Tuka… what are you wearing? Is it cosplay?”

“Ehehehe~ is it cute?”

Tuka turned a circle in front of Itami.

“Ah, mm, excellent. It’s cute, but it’s also really cool.”

“Of course, I was going to meet you after all, Father… Youji. Had to dress up for it.”

Itami scratched his head and said, “Really now, well, that makes me really happy.”

“Here, for you.”

“Hm? What’s this?”

Looking at it, he saw that Tuka had given him a bag full of clothes for his hospital stay.

Itami did not intend to spend all day sleeping. He was perfectly capable of washing his own clothes, and in fact he had washed his own clothes, but his heart was warmed by the fact that someone was actually concerned enough about him to bring him extra clothing.

“There’s a bento inside too. It’s got all the things you like, Youji…”

Tuka winked.

Itami opened the bento box, which was filled with many kinds of food. It looked like someone had spent a lot of time making. This was what they called charaben, and the core of the design was a heart drawn with ketchup.

It was kind of embarra.s.sing to leave it open for everyone around him to see, so Itami hurriedly closed the lid.

“Thank, thank you very much, Tuka. I’m really happy you made this!”

“Also, give me any dirty clothes you have, I’ll bring them home to wash.”

“Er, sorry to say this but that’s not good, is it?”

“Why are you being so shy at this point? We live together, right? It’s just clothes, let me handle it.”

Tuka had said as much to lay down the facts as a shield under which she could draw closer to him. However, people like Komakado and MP A ー who did not know about the relationship between Itami and Tuka and who adhered more closely to the law than most ー were startled by it.

In particular, MP A’s expression looked like he was about to say, “You’re laying your hands on another young girl again…” A had been the one who had seen Rory flirting with Itami, and who had summoned his colleagues to arrest Itami for harsh questioning.

His cold, judgmental eyes made Itami feel like he had been stabbed, and he tried to explain:

“Ah, this girl is 165 years old. She’s totally not a high schooler.”

Itami had supplied an answer to a question which had not been asked. Tuka looked at him with a puzzled look on her face, as though to say “what?”

Elves had very long lifespans. They experienced life differently from human beings and they were not bound by age restrictions. Still, she was bothered by why Itami was stating her age like an explanation.

“The truth is, the last time Rory came, Mr. Policeman gave me a really stern talking-to because he thought I was violating the Youth Protection Act or whatnot. While we cleared the misunderstanding up on the spot, I still got an earful of ‘As a JSDF serviceman, you have to take care of how the world sees you…”

Itami indicated that he had been severely lectured after being mercilessly questioned.

“The Youth Protection… Act?”

Kurokawa answered Tuka’s question.

“In our country, you can be arrested for committing lewd acts with underaged girls. For

instance, someone laying hands on someone who looked like Rory would be charged with statutory rape and put on trial.

“What a strange law. Did the person who made it think that young people shouldn’t fall in love?”

“It’s not like that. However, when you’re young, you’re impulsive and easily fooled, no? That’s why the adults made such laws.”

“So instead of moral education to keep people from acting rashly, humans choose to ban those acts instead… how strange. If they don’t gain experience in dealing with such things, they’ll just act impulsively once they’re of age.”

It would seem that in Elven society, they did not place such things beyond the reach of children, but taught them how to control themselves. They nurtured the souls of children with experience, rather than restrictions.

“However, while using age as a limit is strange, limits do have to be placed. It would be very troublesome for the lawmakers to not have a standard for this sort of thing, so in the end they went with age. Such is life.”

Komakado supplied an explanation from his experience as someone connected to law enforcement.

Tuka clapped her hands.

“In any case, it’s fine as long as the girl isn’t underage, right?”

“I guess it’s all right when you put it that way…”

It made sense in theory, so Kurokawa could not help but agree. Still, after seeing Tuka go, “See, it’s fine” and cling to Itami’s arm, Kurokawa felt a little worried and warned her:

“Even so, please don’t do weird things here. I’ll say this now; this is a hospital.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just be sleeping with Father.”

Those words elicited a powerful reaction from Itami.

“W-wait! What did you just say?”

“I said I’ll be spending the night here… you mean I can’t?”

Tuka put her hands in front of her face and looked up to Itami. Her dewy blue eyes gleamed, and Itami shrank back from her.

“Why - why are you saying that!?”

“Oh yes. It might have been different for hospitals of the past, but modern hospitals don’t let anyone stay overnight with the patients, not even their family members. You’ll cause us a lot of trouble if you insist on doing that.”

Then, the black-suited man with Komakado handed him something from his sleeve, which made him step up with a sharp rap of his walking stick, which seemed to have bent slightly from the force exerted upon it.

“Actually…”

And so, Itami and Kurokawa finally learned of the Ginza disturbance. They turned on the television to learn the details, which was when they realized that the train service in the city had stopped and the banks had shut down.

Much like Komakado had said, there were were no reports about the Ginza protesters. There had been foreigners wounded during the Ginza Incident, and while j.a.pan had been compensated by the Empire, that did not include reparations for the foreigners, and so their families could only swallow their grief. The station expressed their sympathy and hoped for a solution.

Itami could not believe that the protesters would turn violent for that point alone. He felt that there was no benefit in coming to j.a.pan and causing that kind of trouble.

“Just believe me!” Komakado shouted.

“You know what happened to Nagano during the Beijing Olympics, right?”

Nagano, a station in the Olympic Torch relay, had been dyed red by Chinese flags.

The Chinese exchange students and workers who came to j.a.pan had systematically shoved the j.a.panese people aside. People who held Tibetan flags were surrounded by ma.s.sive Chinese flags and hidden from outside view before being surrounded and beaten up from all sides. Incidentally, all this had been mentioned at the Diet, but for some reason it had never been reported.

“But…”

The protesters shown on TV looked very peaceful and polite. One could hardly believe they had attacked trucks and caused an invasive disturbance.

“Cheh, d.a.m.n media.”

Komakado and Tomita both clicked their tongues. Kuribayashi took the remote from Itami and switched between various channels to see if anyone was reporting real news, but everything they saw contradicted what they had seen.

“But what Komakado said is true. We were chased around and we thought we would die. We barely managed to make it out of there because Tomita cleared a path for us.”

Tomita was not wearing his bruises for fun. Itami also believed Tuka.

“However, I didn’t think the media would…”

“Still, that was the first time I’ve had such a rough time. I might need to bring a couple of people in for questioning…”

Komakado muttered something about, “If I’m not careful, I might scare them away” and then rose to his feet along with his a.s.sistant.

Itami said, “I understand.”

“In other words, Ginza is now very dangerous and we can’t bring Tuka along, so you’re saying she should spend the night here?”

“It seems I got the message across. Good. I still need to do what I was talking about just now, so I have to get back to the office. Finding a place to stay now would be both difficult and troublesome. The security here should be very good, no?”

Komakado glanced at the MP standing beside Itami’s bed with a shotgun in hand.

MP A saluted in response.

However, Kurokawa calmly indicated her opposition.

“What are you deciding on your own? Do you think you’re shouting love at the heart of the world? Are you operating by Ptolemy’s geocentric earth model? If you’ve mistaken yourself for the center of the world, then I’ll point out the error in your thinking. If you can’t change yourself even after having your mistake pointed out, then we’ll need to perform a CT scan of your head to see if it’s really been stuffed up. If it’s filled up with nonsense, then you must be r.e.t.a.r.ded and we’ll need to fix it with electroshock therapy. If it’s empty, then we’ll fill it with syrup, that ought to fix things. Listen and listen good. Hospitals have rules of their own, and deciding these things on your own will cause me a lot of trouble. If there’s anything I want to say, it would be that you should at least get the director’s permission before talking this nonsense.”

Itami and Komakado were floored by the verbal devastation Kurokawa had unleashed

Kuribayashi’s eyes went wide and said, “Kuro… Kuro-chan, you’ve abandoned your disguise?” while Tuka went “Uwah, you’re awesome, Kurokawa,” and for some reason her cheeks flushed pink.

“What, what should we do now, Itami?”

“You ask me, but I can’t tell you.”

Then, Kuribayashi explained.

“Komakado-san. Kuro is saying you should ask someone in charge for permission.”

“I see. Indeed, that makes a lot of sense. Someone in charge… that means the hospital director, right?”

Kurokawa nodded.

“Yes, he would be good.”

Give me a break ー Komakado sighed.
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