Chapter 40: Penicillin
March 6th.
“Yes, we have arrived”
A girl, wearing her schools uniform was brought came back to consciousness after coming to this “unknown” place. This girl was Yumi Honjo.
As soon as she looked up, she saw a man. The man in front of her, had his body turned away from the driver’s seat. He wore camouflage clothing, and bore/had a cheerful smile on his face.
“……Thank you very much”, she said.
“It’s okay. I’ll bring the car back later and pick you up, you need to get back to headquarters”
She shrugged of the sound of getting back to headquarters. It was the worst place she could think of, she had to be forced to go there every time.
Thanking him again, Yumi lowered her head as she disembarked from the small truck. In her hands she held a paper-mache, laundry basket, labeled “Technical Building Line”.
Honjo watched as the happy, smiling man left. She stood there on this sunny day while she wondered to herself, “……What was his name again……?”.
She didn’t seem to remember it at all, but she didn’t need to remember. She picked up the laundry basket and set foot inside the technology building.
“I wonder if I should have asked where to put it…”
As the newcomer, Honjo was taking the initiative.
Honjo was indeed helped in a way that she hadn’t hoped for. The position that Makoto was in was very special and Honjo who had been helped by such a person received a lot of special treatment. That time, She had been brought to headquarters by a helicopter.
She had no intentions of accepting the princess like treatment, and decided to work as an affordable laundry clerk so she got to know the arrangement of goods and personnel. Knowing the information she needed, she could avoid uneventful happenings and leave whenever she wanted.
It’s been a week since she first came here, but she had visited most of the facilities. Although it’s entirety was too big. It was impossible to say that she knew the headquarters inside out, but at least she knew the location of the weapon storage, the food storehouse and also the patrol schedules.
The base was surrounded by walls that were about 2 meters tall or more, on the opposite side of the location of the residential area, they had no walls only fences. Yet, if you wanted to escape by that going through that place, then you had to get pass through various guards. There were guards patrolling the perimeter, since it was only this narrow area. The time period of which the number of patrolling guards was the smallest was during daytime, but you would be easily seen as there were no places to hide. Therefore, it was necessary to escape quickly, late during the night within only a few minutes time, because that was all she was going to get.
The things Honjo needed were, conserved food, weapons and something she could make a hole in the fence with.
She searched and found all the items. It seemed that there were no problems with her taking them. The rest was up to her and her timing. It was good to have a rainy day, so that the rain silenced her and her movements as much as possible.
However, when electricity had been recovered, she turned on the TV but there was no weather forecast.
(I thought it would be easy. One could just look up and see if it would rain or not, but the weather forecast was also important）
There are many things that you miss when you lose something that is valuable to you. This was something that was even more important to her now, since she had already lost this.
Which, of course, was Kazuya. She was dying to see him now, a week had now passed.
“I wonder if it’ll rain soon……”
Honjo didn’t want anyone to hear her. She didn’t want to have her plan fail because she had been careless by speaking out of hand.
“Rain, it won’t rain anytime soon”.
On the contrary to her beliefs a person who seemed quite different emerged from what had at first seemed as a quiet and abandoned area. Honjo began trembling from the sudden interruption.
Honjo, quickly looked back while suddenly feeling embarrassed to hear her own words rephrased.
“……Who are you?”
Behind the scenes was a girl whose age was unknown. She was pretty short and didn’t seem to be wearing any makeup. However, she could easily have been perceived as a grown woman. She was wearing a white coat covered in an atmosphere that could resemble an adult.
“Here……this is for the leader. You are the only other person here”.
Honjo said that and the girl received the washing basket.
“I appreciate your efforts”
She thanked Honjo and without any emotions, she turned around and left. Apparently the interaction had ended.
“Emm..”
After all, Honjo-san wanted to say something to this unknown woman, who knew that it wouldn’t rain.
“Do you need something?”
It was impossible to interpret anything from the face of the girl, as if it was made of stone. Had she lost her emotions or was she just uninterested in Honjo?
Either way Honjo, wanted to ask her something.
“Even though there were no weather forecasts, how are you so sure that it won’t rain?”
“Statistics”
The girl answers promptly.
“It is said that for the last two decades that it rains on average about two days in March. Not counting when it rains for several consecutive days. It usually lasts about a week to two before it rains again. Since the weather is stable and it just rained about three days ago, it seems that it will be two weeks until the rain will fall. Maybe…… after the seventeenth…..”, she continued.
“Ha,yeah…” Honjo muttered
“For example, if scaling clouds appeared, it would rain tomorrow and fall silent in the mountains, but unlike those, which are mostly related to such scientific events, it is quite improbable for rain”.
“……The weather forecast is accurate because of it’s statistics……I mean, thanks to the data. The supercomputer will do hundreds of millions processings of various data so that we can predict the weather of tomorrow”.
Conversely “ Even though there are countless data and processing capabilities of a supercomputer, the weather forecast after a week isn’t stable”. That’s what this girl was saying. However, Honjo who didn’t understand it, well, tilted her head sideways.
“Well, statistics are also a wonderful science. The famous and well-known fortune-telling is a fine academic of statistics……haha”. she laughed.
The girl stopped talking at the look of Yumi’s empty face. Apparently, she guessed, it was a waste of time to continue talking.
“It is difficult for the rain to fall in March. So it’s a while until the next time it’ll rain”.
With that said, she turned around again and walked.
Honjo didn’t know what the girl was talking about, but she knew what she wanted to say.
She felt fascinated by the different atmosphere of this person.
It didn’t mean that she was a strange person. She was different from other people and she wasn’t satisfied with the present situation just like Honjo……they thought alike. Other people were definitely satisfied with this safe situation, but this girl wasn’t.
“……Still, is there something else?”
The girl stopped again, didn’t talk and endured the starving hunger of Honjo’s curiosity, that didn’t let the girl leave.
“What are you doing here?” Honjo asked.
“……obtaining medicine”
“Medicine?”
“Yes, because the number that can be secured in the vicinity is limited. I make medicine”.
Honjo thought that it was simply amazing. Although it was just an ordinary story, she looked as someone with the respect and capability of making medicine.
She then revised her plan and decided that she should also get medicine, if possible, before she left the camp.
“……How do you make the medicine?”
“I will stop you here, it will be difficult for you. to make it. But, you can make antibiotics with blue fungus”
“Waa?! I didn’t know that! ” Honjo shouted
Honjo had heard of it before. Antibiotics that can be handled freely for the first time in the history of man, it can be made with blue fungus. The name is――――
“Penicillin, have you heard about it?” The girl said.
“It’s penicillin!”
Slipped from Honjo happily.