aircannonsinc Chapter 359 The Night Before the Departure
Chapter 359 The Night Before the Departure
(Thanks to "Hushan_Jinricheng" for the author certification! Thanks to "Baizhou Qingmeng" for the author certification! Two chapters today~)
Friday, November 16, 1990.
Bunkyo District, Saionji Headquarters. Side hall on the first floor.
The afternoon sun was already waning. The shoji doors were half-open, and someone was sweeping fallen leaves at the end of the corridor. The sound of the bamboo broom scraping across the stone pavement came from a distance, but most of it was absorbed by the heavy air inside.
Satsuki sat cross-legged at the low table by the window.
A hardcover copy of the original French edition of "The Narrow Gate" lay open before me, its title page bearing the gold label of Kinokuniya. Sunlight streamed in through the French windows, casting warm dappled patterns on the pages.
She moved languidly, casually turning the book to page thirty-seven.
Matsumuro Chizuru stood one and a half steps to the right of the low table.
Today she was wearing a dark gray collarless short jacket over a white turtleneck sweater, and her hair was styled in a low bun at the back of her head.
With his hands clasped in front of him, his gaze slightly lowered, even his breathing was barely audible.
The side hall was so quiet that only the rustling of paper and the occasional sound of a bamboo broom coming from outside the window could be heard.
Just then, footsteps came from the corridor.
The rhythm was steady, the intervals even, and each step on the plank floor made a regular, soft thud. It was Fujita Tsuyoshi.
He stopped at the entrance to the side hall and bowed slightly.
"Young Miss".
Satsuki didn't look up. She picked up a corner of the page with her fingers and turned to page thirty-eight.
"Travel documents are ready."
Fujita took a dark blue plastic folder from his briefcase and stepped into the side hall.
"Three passports, visas already affixed. Invitation letter from the Soviet Union, visit letter from the Academy of Sciences, list of humanitarian donations, and directions to the Intourist reception area—"
He walked toward the low table.
Then, at a point two steps away from Chizuru—
There were no warning signs whatsoever.
Fujita's right hand suddenly popped out from under the briefcase! The folder was flung at Chizuru's face, followed by his entire body.
The 1.82-meter-tall body accelerated instantly, compressing the air into a deep, muffled sound, and the right palm struck straight at Qianhe's neck in a chopping motion.
The force was genuine.
Speed is also a serious factor.
If it hits—the collarbone will break.
Chizuru's body moved the instant the folder flew in front of her.
She did not back down.
Her head tilted slightly, the folder brushed past her ear, and the airflow from its tip stirred a stray strand of hair at her temple.
In the same instant, her left foot slid forward half a step, moving her closer to Fujita.
Fujita's palm strike missed its mark.
She was too close; she slid inside his attack arc, so close that her shoulder almost brushed against his chest.
At this distance, Fujita's wingspan advantage becomes negligible.
In that brief moment, Chizuru's right hand completed two movements: first, her five fingers gripped the inside of Fujita's wrist as he struck with his palm; second, her left elbow flipped upwards, striking his ribs in a very short arc.
Fujita took a half-step back, and immediately made a tactical retreat after sensing the trajectory of the elbow strike.
At the same time, his left hand reached up from below, trying to grab Chizuru's outstretched elbow.
Bring your five fingers together.
It was left blank.
Chizuru retracted her elbow before it could be grabbed. She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right, her body flowing like water out of Fujita's grasp and to his left.
The movements were all precise, with almost every displacement accurate to the centimeter, as if measured with a ruler.
Fujita turned around quickly. He took a step to the side with his right foot, turning his body face back towards Chizuru.
With his left palm extended forward and his right hand retracted to his waist, he assumed a standard close-quarters combat stance and delivered a straight punch along the shortest distance.
Chizuru did not flash.
She took a step forward to meet the fist.
Just as the fist was about to touch her collarbone, the heel of her right hand supported the base of Fujita's fist from below.
Instead of taking the punch head-on, she used the heel of her hand to gently lift it upwards at a tiny angle, following the direction of his punch. The fist deflected by three centimeters.
The force of the punch swept past her shoulder.
Fujita didn't pause after his punch was deflected. His next move was a right knee strike, using the height difference to aim straight for Chizuru's abdomen.
Chizuru immediately withdrew her palm and rotated her body ninety degrees to the right. Fujita's knee grazed her waist again, but her right hand took the opportunity to grab the outside of his thigh above his knee, using the force to propel herself further away and increase the distance between them.
She landed exactly to Satsuki's left and slightly behind.
Satsuki was still reading, having turned to page forty-one.
She even reached out and picked up the cup of black tea, taking a sip.
The temperature is just right.
The distance between Fujita and Chizuru has narrowed back to three steps.
Their breathing became slightly heavier—but very lightly, more like climbing a flight of stairs than experiencing a life-or-death struggle.
Fujita's tie was crooked by half an inch, and there was a newly folded crease on his shirt collar. Two strands of Chizuru's low-bun hair fell loose and hung down beside her neck.
Apart from that, everything in the side hall was as if nothing had happened.
The low table didn't move, the teacup didn't tip over, and even the pages of the book weren't ruffled by the wind.
Satsuki remained seated at the low table, and within a half-meter radius around her, the air was absolutely still.
The two men, one in front and one behind, one attacking and one defending, treated the entire side hall as a battlefield, yet they ensured that not a single ripple of their attack reached the area within that radius.
Fujita took another half step forward. This time, his attack was even faster—his right hand swept the blade horizontally, while his left hand simultaneously swooped in from below, creating a pincer attack in a scissor-like fashion.
Chizuru's approach to the situation has changed.
She neither moved closer nor backed away. She took a small step back with her right foot and leaned back slightly—it was at this angle that Fujita's chop grazed just three centimeters from the tip of her nose.
Then her hands moved at the same time.
With his left hand, he slapped Fujita's right arm away from the outside, skillfully deflecting the trajectory of the hand chop to the right. At the same time, his right hand grabbed Fujita's left wrist, which was flanking from below.
Her fingers wedged into the gap of her wrist joint, her thumb pressing precisely into the depression of the radial styloid process.
Fujita's body was controlled and pulled by this tiny joint, causing his center of gravity to tilt forward for a moment.
That one moment was enough. Chizuru smoothly rotated his arm outward half a circle—without using force, just twisting his wrist to a critical angle where "any further movement would dislocate it."
Fujita stopped in his tracks.
He knew what that angle meant. Another half inch of rotation, and the wrist bone would dislocate from the glenoid fossa.
The two of them remained in this position.
Chizuru's right hand gripped Fujita's left wrist. Fujita's right hand hovered in mid-air, his hand still in a chop-like stance. Their breaths mingled.
There was a three-second silence in the side hall.
Snapped.
A very soft clapping sound.
It is Gaoyue.
She closed the book in her hands, placed her hands on the cover, and gently patted it.
"alright."
Chizuru's fingers loosened. The five fingers withdrew one by one from Fujita's wrist joint: the little finger, the ring finger... and finally the thumb.
Fujita pulled his arm back to his side. He loosened his wrist and took a half step back.
The two men's fighting stances dissipated simultaneously.
Chizuru lowered her hands and clasped them back together in front of her. Her breathing returned to normal within three seconds.
She turned slightly to the side and bowed her head in Satsuki's direction.
Fujita straightened his crooked tie and smoothed out the wrinkles at the collar of his shirt. Then he bent down and picked up the dark blue folder he had thrown earlier from the tatami mat a few steps away.
He patted off non-existent dust from the cover and handed it to Chizuru with both hands.
"Travel documents".
Chizuru accepted the folder with both hands.
"learn."
Satsuki leaned back in her chair, her fingers slowly tracing her name along the rim of her teacup.
She turned her head, glanced at Chizuru, then at Fujita. A slight twitch appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"good."
It's just two words. It's unclear who it's evaluating; perhaps it's evaluating both people.
Fujita stepped back to the doorway. He leaned against the doorframe, his hands hanging naturally at his sides. His gaze fell on Chizuru, lingering for two seconds.
A slight soreness still lingered in his wrist. In terms of pure strength, Chizuru was no match for him, but the point of suppression she chose was too precise.
The depression at the radial styloid process is the most vulnerable fulcrum of the entire wrist joint.
Someone with greater force but a two-millimeter difference in angle would be less dangerous than her.
Chizuru, as if nothing had happened, lowered her eyes and stood back one and a half steps to Satsuki's right.
Fujita looked away.
He silently revised his judgment in his mind—she was indeed more suitable than his own people for the personal security in Moscow.
The side hall returned to silence. Only the sound of a bamboo broom scraping across the stone slabs outside the window and the soft rustling of Satsuki turning the pages of her book could be heard.
Satsuki took a sip of tea; the temperature was just right.
Then--
"Make way! Make way! Make way!"
A series of hurried footsteps came from the depths of the corridor. The "pat-pat" sound of slippers scraping against the wooden floor grew closer and closer, as if they were running.
Amy appeared. She was tightly clutching a large, silver-gray suitcase, forcing her to squeeze sideways through the doorway of the side hall.
The zipper on the suitcase was stretched to its limit, bulging on both sides, with several differently colored wires and a yellow screwdriver handle sticking out from the gaps that weren't fully closed.
She carried the box, staggered into the room, and placed it on the tatami mat.
"Bang."
The weight of the box when it hit the ground caused a dent in the straw surface of the tatami mat.
"Here it is!" Amy wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, her face flushed, and squatted down to open the suitcase.
The contents inside looked like they had been in a small explosion.
Three boxes of 3.5-inch floppy disks were crammed haphazardly in a corner, one of which had its plastic lid pried open, revealing a floppy disk inside labeled "MIPS_ref_v3.2".
A gray-white Toshiba T3200SX portable computer was wrapped in a towel and tucked in the middle, with the power adapter cable tangled around its flip cover. Next to it was an oscilloscope probe, its metal clips protruding and almost poking into a stack of papers beside it.
The stack of papers was a copy of the MIPS R3000 instruction set manual from the University of Tokyo library, its corners already curled up. Next to it were two hardcover textbooks—"Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" and "Introduction to VLSI Systems"—with barcodes from the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Engineering Library affixed to their spines.
There was even a soldering iron lying at an angle at the bottom of the box. It was a 30-watt white light brand, and there was still a trace of rosin burnt on the iron tip.
Scattered nearby were a roll of solder wire, a pack of spare soldering iron tips, an anti-static wrist strap, and six or seven different types of adapter plugs—Japanese standard flat pins, German standard round pins, British standard three-pin square pins, and two homemade adapters that she had encapsulated with epoxy resin.
Chizuru looked at the open box without saying a word.
Satsuki leaned against the low table, propping her face up with one hand, and glanced at the silver-gray box.
Ah, the last time I went to the US, I brought a bunch of random stuff... Haven't you changed this habit yet?
"Chizuru, please collect this for her."
"Once we get there, things in the room can be ransacked at any time." Satsuki took a sip of black tea, the rim of the cup obscuring half her face. "Don't let them confiscate Amy's treasures as spy equipment."
"Yes."
Chizuru walked to Amy's box and knelt down.
"Ms. Suzuki, my apologies."
She reached out and pulled the white soldering iron out of the tangled cables. Then came the oscilloscope probe with its exposed metal chuck. She found the anti-static wrist strap at the bottom of the box and wrapped it around the chuck.
"ah--!"
Amy sprang to her feet instantly. She lunged forward, her hands protecting the soldering iron, and lay face down on the tatami mat.
"No! That's very important! Do you know that you can't buy those kinds of precision soldering iron tips in Moscow—"
"Ms. Suzuki, this is the young lady's instruction." Chizuru's voice remained calm. Her hands didn't stop; she continued separating the tangled adapter plugs according to their specifications. "I won't break them, please don't worry."
Amy lay on the ground, her hands still protecting the soldering iron, her eyes fixed on Chizuru's hands.
Upon hearing the words "young lady," she immediately wilted. She wanted to ask Satsuki for help, but found Satsuki holding a cup of red tea, looking at her with a half-smile.
In this situation, there's usually no room for negotiation.
"...Hmm."
You cannot disobey Satsuki-chan.
She loosened the soldering iron and squatted down to watch.
With its forehead pressed against its knee, it let out a very small whimper, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on but had no choice but to accept it.
"By the way, who are you?"