Folding her conscription into quarters, Hairy Mole picked up a massive ink stamp and hammered out a giant red B onto the face. "Pin this to your shirt on the left pocket. The train arrives at two o'clock. Do not miss it." She dropped the stamped paper and a safety pin into Yumiko's open hand. "Next!"
But wait, what about Tori and Tsubasa? Yumiko started to raise her other hand. "Ma'am, can my friends-"
Hairy Mole glared through her spectacles as if Yumiko was no longer there. "NEXT!"
"Ok, ok." Clutching her paper and pin against her chest, Yumiko cautiously found her way through the disorganized mass of girls, being careful to not step on anyone. Legs stuck out everywhere, creating a minefield that Yumiko had to slowly pick through. Exhausted, displeased eyes stared up at her from every direction as she repeatedly invaded one girl's personal space after another. What a mess! "Excuse me. Pardon me. I'm so sorry."
Eventually Yumiko found herself in the far back corner of the warehouse, the least crowded area of all. Sitting atop a wooden crate an elderly uniformed woman waited, hands hidden in her lap, her back to Yumiko. Her snow-white hair hung just past her shoulders. Golly, a grandmother. How old would the army conscript someone if they weren’t married? Wasn't decrepit a legitimate excuse to waive serving?
"E-excuse me," Yumiko said softly to the elderly woman's back. The grandmother did not respond. Hmm. Poor hearing. She decided it would better to go around the crate to address the woman properly, face to face. Walking around the crate, Yumiko leaned towards the woman's left ear so she could better hear her, while preparing to bow respectfully once she did. "Grandmother?"
The woman looked up.
Yumiko gasped.
The porcelain face of a living doll looked up, light blue eyes locking upon her. Rather than the lines of age, the fat of youth filled out the doll's snowy cheeks. Yumiko's heart pulsed in alarm as she took a step backwards, staring in horror at the ghost white doll. No wonder no one else was sitting in this corner, they were afraid, of . . . of her!
The girl's face was clearly Japanese, but her color, it was so, so wrong, the color of chalk! She studied Yumiko silently for a moment before looking back down at her lap. Atop the dark pleats of her uniform's skirt, the girl quietly folded an origami bird with her slender milky white fingers. By the girl's lack of a response it seemed that she was used to the expression of horror stretched across Yumiko's face.
A red stamped B was pinned to her left pocket.
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