The station proceeded to swallow us whole at 5:45 AM.
Cold fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry hornets as we pushed through crowds of salarymen with identical black suits and hollow eyes. The air reeked of diesel and so called despair as Maruyama put it was a far cry from the woodsmoke and horse sweat of imperial courier stations. My boots stuck slightly to the tile floor with each step, some unseen modern filth trying to claim me.
Maruyama moved ahead of us like a battle-weary general, his overnight bag slung over one shoulder. "Stay close," he muttered over his shoulder, the words nearly swallowed by the echoing din. "And for the love of all that's holy, don't touch anything that looks like it might beep."
Hongbing's knuckles turned white around the straps of his backpack. I watched his gaze track the shifting crowd with military precision, analysing threats in a world where every flickering fluorescent light and buzzing vending machine might as well have been enemy artillery.
The station announcement system roared to life. "THE 6:05 LIMITED EXPRESS FOR TOKYO WILL NOW BOARD ON PLATFORM..."
His entire body locked up. His head snapped toward the ceiling speakers, eyes wide as a spooked horse's. I saw his throat work as he swallowed hard, the apple bobbing violently above his collar.
"...Track three. Please have your tickets ready."
The arriving train's brakes shrieked like a dying animal. Hongbing recoiled so violently that he nearly bowled over a businessman reading a newspaper. The doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss that had him backing up until his shoulders hit a support pillar.
"It's not alive," I said under my breath, gripping his elbow. The muscle beneath my fingers felt like coiled steel.
"Then why does it breathe?" he shot back, eyeing the doors like they might snap shut on his limbs. His chest rose and fell too quickly, the way it had during that awful retreat from Liaodong when we'd been forced to leave our wounded behind.
We boarded like men stepping onto unstable ice. The interior was all harsh plastics and synthetic fabrics, the seats arranged with unnatural precision. Hongbing hesitated before sitting, testing the cushion with one hand as if expecting it to bite. When the doors sealed with a final-sounding clunk, I saw his throat work as he swallowed hard.
It's just a carriage," I lied through my teeth. "Like the emperor's palanquin, but... longer."
Hongbing's glare could have melted steel. "The emperor's palanquin the last time I saw it didn't have a thousand glowing eyes," he muttered, eyeing the overhead LED displays.
That's when I remembered compared to the rest of us Hongbing was barely seen in the spotlight preferring the shadows so seeing my brother's palanquin with his own eyes is similar to seeing the eclipse at the middle of the night which is to say never
I should have given him a better example the next time we boarded this thing.
We found our seats. Hongbing folded himself into the chair like it might bite him, his knees jammed against the seatback in front of us. When the automated voice announced our departure, I saw his knuckles go white around the armrests.
Afterwards, the world outside became a watercolour blur.
"WHOA!!," I breathed, pressing my forehead to the cool glass. Buildings that should have taken hours to pass vanished in heartbeats. Whole villages disappeared between blinks. I pressed my forehead to the cool glass, mesmerised by this impossible speed, faster than any messenger hawk, any battle steed I'd ever ridden. For one giddy moment, I understood why Maruyama called this "progress."
Next to me, my partner made a small, wounded noise.
Hongbing had transformed into a statue of living tension or if living tension is a person Hongbing is quite a good example for that. His fingers dug into the armrests hard enough to leave grooves in the cheap plastic. Every rattle of the tracks travelled up his rigid spine. Each automated announcement in that cheerful female voice made his shoulders creep toward his ears.
"Next stop, Shin-Osaka," the speaker trilled in fluent Japanese
Hongbing's knee jerked, nearly upending the tray table where Maruyama had placed his paper coffee cup. "What sorcery..."
"Just a recording," Maruyama sighed, catching his drink before it spilled. He looked about as comfortable as a eunuch in a brothel. "Try to relax."
The advice might as well have been delivered to one of the upholstered seats for all the good it did. Hongbing's breathing had taken on a worrying rhythm, too quick on the inhale, hitched on the exhale. I recognised the pattern from night watches after particularly bloody battles, when even veteran soldiers started at shadows.
Then the toilet flushed.
The sound was abrupt and metallic, a whooshing roar from the rear of the carriage that might as well have been a cannon shot. Hongbing's entire body spasmed. His knee connected with the tray table hard enough to send Maruyama's coffee sloshing over the rim.
"In the name of the Yellow Emperor....!"
'Why are you uttering my ancestors title you oaf! its just a toilet flushing itself similar to Maruyama's bathrooms?' I muttered underneath my breath
"Control yourself! It's just the lavatory," Maruyama hissed at him, mopping at the spill with a handful of napkins. His patience hung by a thread I could practically see fraying. "People need to... You know. Dispose of things."
Hongbing didn't appear to hear him. His pupils had dilated until only a thin ring of brown remained around black. Sweat beaded along his hairline. The fingers gripping the armrests trembled faintly - Liu Hongbing, who could hold a throwing dagger perfectly still for hours, reduced to tremors by a toilet.
I reached over to squeeze his wrist. His skin burned fever-hot beneath my fingers. "Breathe," I murmured in Mandarin, our native tongue. "It's just noise."
He blinked at me like a man surfacing from deep water. For half a second, I thought he might come back to himself. Then the train's horn sounded.
The blast was deafening at this proximity, a shrieking, mechanical wail that vibrated in my molars. I flinched a little myself.
Damn why does everything have to be so noisy here?
Hongbing's reaction on the other hand was not human.
He screamed.
Not a shout of surprise, not a curse. This was the raw, gut-wrenching shriek of a man being flayed alive. The kind of sound that still haunted my dreams from the massacres at both Chengde and Nanjing combined. Every head in the car whipped toward us. A toddler three rows back burst into tears.
Maruyama looked ready to commit seppuku with a plastic spork. "First trip!" he announced to the gawking passengers, forcing a laugh that sounded more like a death rattle. "My nephew's never been on a train before! Nerves, haha!"
I grabbed Hongbing's shoulders and started to shake him, whispering. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Hongbing wasn't listening. He'd curled in on himself like a dying spider, fingers twisted so tightly in his hair I feared he might tear chunks out. His breathing came in ragged, wet gasps. When the toilet flushed again, he sobbed into my shoulder like a child. Tears streamed down his face as he gasped, "Kill me. Please. Just end it."
My blood ran cold.
This was something deeper, something primal not just nerves. The great Liu Hongbing an assassin turned soldier under my command who, once stitched his own gut wound with fishing line and a stolen needle, who ran for almost three or four days carrying the injured to base while battling enemies with a broken sword and a knife, was reduced to a shuddering wreck by modern plumbing.
An elderly woman across the aisle clutched her purse tightly. A teenager snickered behind his hand. My vision went red at the edges.
"Show some respect," I snarled in my broken Japanese, not caring if they understood. "He's a decorated war..."
Maruyama kicked my shin hard enough to bruise. "We're getting off at the next stop," he muttered through clenched teeth.
Shin-Yokohama Station couldn't come fast enough. When the doors opened, we half-carried Hongbing onto the platform, his legs moving with the uncoordinated jerkiness of a newborn foal. The crisp morning air did little to ease whatever demons haunted him. He swayed on his feet, eyes unfocused, sweat darkening the collar of his stupid cat shirt.
A grandmother with kind eyes pressed a chilled water bottle into my hands. A salaryman offered gum with an awkward bow. An old man in a tweed cap, the sort who might have been a scholar or a retired general, took one look at Hongbing and pulled Maruyama aside.
"Noise sensitivity," I overheard him say in hushed tones. "Shell shock, perhaps? I remember when I was a child my grandfather returned looking like this when he came back from service in the military couldn't handle any loud noises even fireworks he used to flinch heavily and we avoided it till he died"
Maruyama nodded along with the grim acceptance of a man out of options. Their conversation continued in rapid Japanese, but I caught the words "ear protection" and "sweets" before the old man hurried off toward the shops.
Ten eternal minutes later, we boarded a different train - slower, with fewer passengers. The old man reappeared as we settled in, bearing a small cardboard box like it contained imperial treasures. Inside rested a pair of enormous, fluffy earmuffs.
"Try these," he said, gently fitting them over Hongbing's ears. The transformation was instantaneous. Hongbing's shoulders slumped like cut puppet strings. The death grip on the armrests eased. His breathing slowed to something approaching normal.
"What did you put in his ears to make him relax like that?" I asked amazed
Before Maruyama himself can respond the old man replied producing a melon bun still warm from the oven
"These are noise cancelling earmuffs. We originally wanted to buy headphones for this young man but the price was too much so we settled for this, it can keep the noises at the minimum and would calm his overstimulated brain" He handed the melon buns to Hongbing.
We watched as Hongbing regarded it with the suspicion of a man who'd been offered poisoned delicacies at court banquets. One cautious sniff. A tentative nibble. Then he was devouring the thing like a starving beggar, crumbs scattering across his lap.
"Overstimulated brain?" I asked him again out of curiosity
"Our brains acts like a machine of some sorts, if there is too much tasks at hand to process it heats up and then everything just goes downhill from there, for this young man here….." he pointed to Hongbing as he explained "I don't know which division he was in the army since I left a decade back myself, I noticed that he was hyperaware to the noises around him hence I assumed he was going into shell shock at the moment just like my colleagues during the war in Myanmar the louder the noises are the more they are pushed back to where their trauma originated from as a defence mechanism they try to run, hide or fight someone"
"Hence the screaming…." the realisation finally dawned on me so that's what it was with my soldiers.
Maruyama sagged in relief. "Thank you," he told the old man in that formal tone he reserved for serious debts.
Hongbing, mouth full of pastry, didn't speak. But when his fingers brushed mine in silent gratitude, they no longer trembled.
By the time we reached Tokyo proper, he'd fallen asleep against the window, the earmuffs askew like a child's misplaced hat. Morning light gilded his features, smoothing away the years and the scars and the weight of whatever private hell he'd just endured. In this moment, he looked his true age, not the battle-hardened assassin he was known to be.
Maruyama nudged him awake as the train slowed. "We're here."
Hongbing blinked owlishly, one cheek creased from the seat fabric. Then, with devastating sincerity: "More melon bread?"
I laughed so hard I nearly choked. Maruyama groaned like a man pushed beyond mortal limits. And just like that, the spell was broken.
We stepped onto the platform together, two misplaced military men and their reluctant guardian, ready to face whatever fresh madness Tokyo had in store. Behind us, the train doors hissed shut on the worst journey of our lives. Ahead lay dorms, and lectures, and the terrifying prospect of blending in.
But first, I decided, watching Hongbing scan the station for bakeries, we were absolutely getting more melon bread.