The Burning Desire to Save

Chapter 8

About an hour and a half after the call had come in, Naoko emerged from the fire station, sweating from the hard work she had put in at the accident scene, and found Enji still waiting for her in the rear parking lot. Surprised, she asked him, "Wait, Hirayama-senpai? You waited all this time?"

"Well, not exactly," he explained. "I walked back home for a bit, but then I saw the fire truck come back so I walked back here."

"Oh, okay." Naoko then waved her hand near her face to cool herself down a bit and said, "God, I'm sweating like a fucking pig."

"So, what happened?"

"A van hit a car near one of the elementary schools in Inoue," Naoko explained as the two of them walked down the street together. "The two people in the car went to the hospital. The guy was messed up pretty good. I think he had a broken arm and a broken leg, plus he was unconscious. His wife only had a broken arm and some cuts."

"What about the van?"

"The driver had some bumps and cuts. He didn't feel it too much there, though."

Confused, Enji asked her, "Why not?"

"That guy was shitfaced at four in the evening on a Sunday," Naoko bluntly put it.

"Oh... He was drunk..." Enji realized immediately why the driver of the van most likely didn't feel any pain at the scene of the accident. "I assume he got arrested?"

"Yep. Right on scene. We ended up drawing some blood from him to get tested at the hospital, and he blew a 0.10 for the breathalyzer, so they arrested him."

"What's the limit?"

"In Japan? 0.04. In America, it's 0.08, but we're a lot stricter here." Naoko blushed slightly, telling Enji, "I swear, it's not weird for me to know that."

"I wasn't gonna say it's weird," he assured her.

As the two of them walked down the street together, Rumiko, Ayumi, and Sumire watched them from the parking lot. Sumire asked the other two, "That's the guy who saw her topless, right?"

Rumiko immediately blushed and replied, "Wait, what?"

Ayumi explained, "Oh yeah, you didn't hear about that. That guy's dog ripped her bikini top off while she was rescuing it."

"Top... Topless? I'd be so embarrassed! I don't know if I'd be able to face someone I accidentally showed my naked body in front of." Rumiko sighed and said about Naoko, "She's braver than me I guess. I'd die of embarrassment if I came anywhere close to him if it was me."

Ayumi and Sumire laughed in response, with the latter telling her, "It's not so bad, Rumiko-chan."

"But it's a boy," she pointed out. "Even thinking about it just... It scares me a bit."

Ayumi then said to her, "Stop freaking out. Shit happens, Rumiko-chan, and you know that."

Then, another firefighter in the brigade, a man in his mid-20s with a completely shaved head, walked out beside them, asking them in confusion, "Why are you guys staring so intently down the road? Is something going on?"

"We think Naoko-chan is going out with a boy," Ayumi told him. "He was waiting here for a bit before the ambulance left to go to the accident. We saw them walking away together, Hanae-san."

"Oh, that guy? I was wondering what his deal was. I thought maybe he was one of those people who films fire trucks responding to calls." Ryohei Hanae then said to them, "Well, I gotta go to the South Inoue Fire Station. I forgot a really nice watch I use there."

Ayumi asked him, "Which watch?"

"That M-Shock I usually use when I'm doing medical stuff," he explained. "I was looking for it all day at my house, and when the call came in, I just said screw it since we keep stopwatches on the ambulance. I'm hoping it's at the South Inoue Fire Station."