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Fankuwo

Hanguk-Nippon wrote:

      Kyūin snapped free of his dimming calm and turned back to Sakamai with a certain subdued intertia grounding against the whites of his eyes. He suddenly felt like he was chewing sandpaper and rubbed his nose in hopes of alleviating the coarse pain of fatigue. The car rumbled as he collected his thoughts.
      "His Majesty Emperor Sesato ascended to the throne on 30 July 2040. During the reign of both Emperor Hyo and Emperor Min, the two previous emperors, he was the Crown Prince of Hanguk-Nippon. He was born on 7 January 2011 at the Satake-Joseon estate in Kōyuhatsu (光유初) in northern mainland Hanguk-Nippon," responded Kyūin. "The emperor's birthday is a national holiday in Hanguk-Nippon, so we know how old he is."
      He scratched his head and peered briefly at the window before resuming his explanation.
      "Us officers in the Imperial Navy like to think that Emperor Sesato gave us purpose again after about more than over half a century of peace. After the Imperial Democrats and the National People's Party, our country has seen a sort of rebirth in part due to Sesato's policies, though attributing all success to the emperor wouldn't be giving proper credit to the ministers or policymakers at all levels of government. Nevertheless, the Hanguk-Nipponese imperial lineage is a sterling one. It dates back, say, hundreds... thousands of years." Kyūin looked at Hoshi, who flipped his phone back around and searched on the internet a tidily-ordered chart with all known Hanguk-Nipponese emperors laid out in order. He held it out in front once more to show the two Fankuwoans. "Perhaps this little graph will put what I'm saying in perspective, hopefully."
      Hoshi nodded and scrolled down the chart, moving closer to the present until he eventually arrived at Sesato.
      "I believe it was one of the Emperor's motions that called for the founding of Sōryodō," Hoshi noted while clicking on a wiki article of Sesato. "If we were certain about anything, it would be that Emperor Sesato doesn't shy away from spearheading national projects in public. I suppose speeches and conferences are his go-to method of communicating with the people. I do know, however, that he's actually a quiet man."
      Kyūin glanced out of the car's left window. They were heading uphill now. He could feel the steady incline as the fluids in his head were gradually pulled further up the back of his skull. The officers were heading to the base of Gojo Hill where the Ikanjō Inn was located.
      "I suppose this is news to you two, Sakamai and Majun, but despite how much we're talking about Emperor Sesato, Hanguk-Nippon isn't just run by him alone. Our country is democratic. I'd say that Hanguk-Nippon is sensibly democratic. Not the most in the world, but the peoples' opinions are always taken into account. Moreover, we defend other countries. We're the protective power in our region, so it's our duty to maintain peace and order."
      Kyūin turned back to the two foreign officers. He gestured to the two lieutenants, then to the rear-admiral, and lastly to himself.
      "All of us, we've been to many faraway places including, most obviously, Sōryodō. Let's say that our careers in the Imperial Navy have given us," he suddenly eyed the inattentive Gyōju with crestfallen revision and lowered his voice to a whisper, "—er, some of us the gift of a worldly understanding of our place."
      Hoshi pulled up an image of a large convoy of Imperial Navy gunships off the coast of Cacatuoidea, Hanguk-Nippon's most recent foreign excursion that lay entirely outside of its territorial jurisdiction. He regarded his place in Kyūin's lecture and chuckled self-consciously, looking down at the fuzzy pitch black floor of the car.
      "Heh, I feel like I'm presenting a slideshow or something," said Hoshi with a smile. "Tōbuk, you see it too, right?"
      "It's fine. You communicated my message well," said Kyūin, glimpsing at Hoshi's phone. A torrent of calm drenched him and returned him to serenity.
      Kyūin gradually felt leveled once more. He relaxed as he let his body slump into the dark leather car seat. The van carefully tread over a speed bump before entering the the Ikanjō Inn's parking lot.
      "Gentlemen, we're just about at the inn. As always, it has been a pleasure to service you," said Ichō as he brought the car to a comfortable stop. "Enjoy your stay at the inn."
      He unlocked the doors and climbed out of the driver's seat into the open. Ichō took a deep breath of cool, fresh midnight air before tidying himself in the window and opening the door for the officers with a tepid smile under the light of a nearby lamppost. His glasses reflected the white flush emanating from the sleek inn.

Sakamai listened in through the car's rumbling and the lean's press. Majun's eyelids were squinted in attention, locked at the screen as though Hoshi's finger wasn't there, fiddling with it. There was a clear reflection of Sesato's stern image on the bright Wikipedia page gleaming in the slit of his eyes.

Sakamai silently calculated while holding his peaked cap against the inertia, leaning back to adjust to the climb. 'What year was it again... 2057...' After mumbling some simple math, he figured that it was about the year 189 when the emperor ascended to his throne. Sakamai was lucky to learn the Gregorian system in his elite education, a system of dating that was almost extinct in Fankuwo, and to be surrounded by it in a foreign land would surely be a very alienating experience. His ears were sharply listening, his mind registering and effortlessly translating. Ministers, policymakers... Democracy? His lips twitched when he realised that his vocabulary was incomplete. So far, he understood every word that came pouring out of his mouth, a testament to the validity of his education; this one word, however, was received as a noise. But it only came to pass.

'Oh?' The fact that this Sesato made public appearances, even vocal, astonished him; it was an audible and visible reaction, his head flinching to the side. 'Our Emperor would never make public appearances... We've never even heard him speak', said Sakamai, his head leaning to the opposite side as he processed the stark contrast between these two emperors. 'Our Emperor always works in the Imperial Palace, forbidden grounds. He does have his ministering governors who are also in the palace, but they can never enter the throne room. Only the vice of heaven and... Someone like Emperor Sesato can.' Telling this story, the silent doubt emerged again in his heart, the doubt that the Emperor might've never existed. It was a common crime of thought that the Emperor would easily tolerate and forgive, but to Sakamai, how dare he thought those things! His irritation was shown again through the twitch of his lips.

Majun was still fixated on the phone. Examining all the text and, in the end, seeing more text, the captain then realised that it was a book! His amazement was shared by his raised brows. Behold, a book, one that didn't have pages but a long row of text that would summon from the emptiness below the phone, intermingled with images and formatting. The sheer complexity of this technology was conjuring up dozens of questions in his head, not even one he could ask without Sakamai's help. Turning to Sakamai, he found him conversing busily with Kyuin and everyone else, still a foreign babble to his ears. The language barrier really isolated him, the light at the other side that all he would get was a shadow. At the same time, the subtle lights of the inn were pouring through the car's windows, marking their arrival. He turned back to Hoshi, joining his palms and gestured a slight bow. 'Kuron Buwanan', thank you, or more literally, receive gratitude. Of course, that wasn't going to be the end of his excitement with the item. He wondered if he could get one or more to bring back home.

Sakamai grabbed the briefcase in one hand and opened the door with the other, the cold air of the night blanketing him as it did when he first left the Segarak. But what an inn. His feet landed on the pavement one by one, followed by Majun, a minor cloud of dust rising no further than the sole of their shoes. As usual, when encountering a new location, they both looked around and, sometimes, their torso would be carried along by their turning head.

The foreign atmosphere was quick to encapsulate Sakamai, the offerings of the continental climate of Hanai Saikang seeping through his uniform. It made him miss home, Fankuwo's unforgiving heat on a cloudless day, the sun's rays akin to hot-tipped needles teasing the skin until a rare, cold breeze would take it all away. Now, he was here where the night felt like that breeze but unending... Realising the cold, he regretted not leaving the Segarak double-coated and gloved. He turned to Majun and there he was, his hands grasping his upper arms as the cold was getting to them. As time passed, it felt like the cold here was becoming more and more of a black and white contrast to Fankuwo's weather despite the temperature persisting in its degree. 'How are you doing?' Sakamai asked.

'Cold.'

The two conscripts were never tested like the Fan special forces to withstand such coldness. They were a defence force, never intended to go beyond the archipelago's tropical climate. Sakamai's conclusion: a condition called wind infiltration. Take an empty stomach, combine it with cold weather in the night.

'Wind infiltration. We should get something to eat', he muttered, Majun nodding in agreement. Sakamai turned to Kyuin and the other men. 'I know it's not courteous for us to ask this, but can we get something to eat?' Add to that, a slight gesture at Majun, as if he was putting the blame of discourtesy on the cold, wind-infiltrated captain. 'Wind infiltration... Katse wa... Shintou...' Sakamai attempted to continue with wind infiltration, realising that the Nipponese translation for that easily-spoken word in Fankuwoan did not exist. 'Er, cold!'

OOC: Still feeling a bit no no.

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