Yokohama
The office emptied by evening, colleagues scurrying home to escape the worst of the cold. Only left humming servers and the sound of rain against the glass. More relaxing than silence, easier to focus.
Daichi liked this time. Office chatter was over, no distracting bustle, dimmer lights and a sense of peace among the flowing numbers. The ships never stopped, the harbor below and around the world. AR tags above the containers, cargo unsleeping.
Another manifest. Bulk container from Manila. He’d seen that ship name before, somehow, among the hundreds…MV Negishi. Made his mind wander, thinking of the Negishi line trains rattling from Hongōdai into Yokohama, station chimes from his childhood.
He paused. Nothing out of the ordinary at first glance, but a detail jarred. No stopovers before Yokohama. That ship always stopped at Busan, except now the route was rewritten.
Frowning, Daichi drilled a little deeper into the log. An edit trail smoothed over a little too neatly, patching numbers with care. He was surprised it hadn’t raised an amber to someone.
He pulled up the metadata, and saw it in the hidden fields…
そラΔ
Three characters, hiragana, katakana, delta symbol.
Not random. He rocked back slightly, blinked as his pulse stuttered.
Sora. Just leaning against the railing after school. Uniform collar slack, tie deliberately too short. Their notebook always scrawled with sketches and half-words. Writing his name in that weird mix of scripts. He’d always laughed when Daichi asked why. “It just looks better like this.”
The rain still blurred the glass. Dissolved the harbor view below into smears of glowing light. But the glyphs on the screen were sharp.
Liverpool
Rotterdam manifest. James opened the log, saw immediately - unsanctioned patch mid-route. Smart, but simple, cipher to fool the automated checks.
SKYEΔ
A jolting tag in the metadata. He remembered Skye. Cousin’s cousin, older, sharp grin. Always carving her triangles with a compass point or whatever came to hand.
His fingers opened the report form, logged the anomaly. Muscle memory following procedure.
Hit submit, and the screen cleared. Already swallowed by the system before he realized that he hadn’t hesitated.
Yokohama
Daichi hovered over the report button. Ten seconds to log the anomaly, be packaged and sent in another three. His manager’s voice echoing in his head, “Every anomaly is a potential loss. Every crack must be sealed.”
He almost logged it.
But the name stopped him. Sora fixed his broken watch once. Told him fixing things instead of buying something new was a way of fighting back. Sometimes shared a snack. Small things - they’d known each other, but not like they’d been close - but enough to stay bright years later.
A place like this wasn’t supposed to remember people like that.
He shut the window. The manifest disappeared as he shifted to the next entry. He felt like the silence was a little heavier.
Liverpool
Another anomaly filed. Another line of data consumed. The next manifest already on the screen for his attention.
But he leaned back in his chair, chest tight. Felt like some a weightier decision, about who he was. He’d done his job, as expected. Nothing more, nothing less.
Could still see the after-image of the tag on the screen, like it didn’t want to be buried.
Yokohama
The rain still thickened. No sign nor sound of the harbor beyond, hidden by the steady drumbeat on the windows and the fractured shards of refracted light.
It was just a noise in the system. It wouldn’t make much difference, in the scheme of things. Not much that could really check the flow.
The glyphs stayed with him, though. そラΔ
He whispered it once, barely audible, drowned by the background patter of rain on glass.
Sora.
Part 2 of a four-part story from the Static Drift universe.
Part 3: Merit will be published next Friday (Oct 31).