Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

"I am Matsura Asuka." You said, and you smiled as you met her eyes. "It's lovely to meet you."

Simple. Respectful. Open for possible flirting later, if you felt up to it, but you weren't sure yet. You could always decide later in the conversation.

She smiled back, meeting your gaze. "Nice to meet y'all." Then she turned to you. "I like your hair." She gestured in front of her forehead in imitation of the sweep of hair you had. "I've never seen a style like that before."

"I wanted to try something different." You said simply.

"It's lovely, and it really suits you." She replied, gaze still locked with you.

Oh no. Here you thought you could simply put it off, but she was flirting with you. And why not? It was stupid of you to assume she'd keep quiet if she was interested.

You had not prepared for this eventuality.

There wasn't really a social script for this sort of thing, and you were on the back foot. You bought her a drink, reasoning that, if nothing else, it was fair given your respective salaries, and all of you talked together like old friends. The women Sonia worked with were all female engineers who had quit from Akibara and Kobayashi to form their own consulting firm when the war started, offering their services to the Imperial government instead. The gambit paid off, and now, ironically, they were back working on the ships they'd originally worked on before, except being paid twice as much and actually working in a decent office environment. Satomi and Minami both seemed impressed by their ingenuity, but they admitted such things probably wouldn't last long. After the war, it was likely they'd be out of a job entirely. It was unlikely they'd be going back to any of the companies they quit: it sounded like those firms demanded absolute loyalty from their employees, even as it offered them nothing in return. Working for Akibara as a woman was a privilege in and of itself, apparently. They talked about looking for work overseas, or maybe just admitting defeat and finding husbands.

As the rest of the table talked ships and politics, you found yourself increasingly drawn into a separate conversation with Minami. Soon, you'd found you'd both turned in your chairs to talk more directly, and you were basically ignoring the rest of the conversation. You learned a few things about her: She was 23, she moved to the city from her family farm in the south (her accent gave that away, of course), and she worked at a bakery before the war. She was the oldest of three sisters, and the muscles were not new: she'd been doing physical labour her whole life, and she loved it.

"So, airplanes, huh?" She said. "I've worked on a ship that had a crane for those. You make those planes?"

"No, I don't make the Navy any planes." You said, and laughed a little. "I've got terrible luck with seaplanes. They keep sinking, literally or metaphorically."

"Yeah, see, that's the thing to avoid, honey." She said mock-seriously. "First thing they told us at the docks: don't let the boats sink."

"Huh. Well, if we'd have had you, I'm sure we would have been more successful." You joked. She looked away bashfully a moment, and you felt awesome in that moment. No wonder Satomi and Kawamura enjoyed this so much!

"So what do you build, then?" She asked.

"I make the Army planes right now." You explained. You'd retrieved a pencil from your pocket and you were sketching out a little Dragonfly for her on a napkin. You flipped it around to show her. "This is one of them, there's a few hundred of them in Joseon right now." You were mentally preparing a pitch of the Dragonfly to make it sound impressive to somebody who didn't know anything about airplanes.

"You're a real good artist." Minami said, eyes wide, sliding the napkin closer to inspect it. "Seriously, this is amazing."

Okay, not what you were expecting. "Um... it's just a doodle." You said. "I have to be good for my job, drafting blueprints and all that..." That was downplaying it a little too much. You drew even before you were an engineer. Your parents had actually talked about finding you an artist to train under when you were a teenager, before you started building an airplane in the toolshed.

"How does it work? The airplane, I mean. I don't understand how they stay in the air." She asked.

"So... okay, the propeller at the back drives it forward, right? Well, when the air passes around the wings..."

Your explanation of how flight worked pretty quickly turned into a discussion of what flying felt like, a sensation still fresh in your mind from the afternoon. Minami was fascinated, hanging onto your every word. You couldn't help but brag a little about your earlier flight, about seeing the city from a kilometer in the air and landing on a dark lake.

"That sounds rad as all get out!" She said. "Sometimes I have to climb the outside of the superstructure of some of the taller ships, and I thought that was high. A thousand meters?"

"You can go higher than that!" You said eagerly. "The one my boyfriend flies can get high enough that it gets hard to breath, like when you climb a mountain."

Her face changed in some unreadable way. "Your boyfriend's a pilot?" She said curiously.

Fuck. Did you just ruin this? Almost certainly. Oh well, it was for the best. Yachi struggling over there with a wound while you talked up this woman. A wave of guilt washed over you.

"Yeah. He's in Joseon right now." You said glumly. "He was wounded recently. I hope he's alright."

She nodded sadly. "My boyfriend's over there. He's a message runner, rides a bicycle behind the lines." She said. "I've got his job right now, actually. He told me to go apply the day he got called up."

Not really sure what you were doing, you reached across the table and put your hand around hers. "He's behind the front, at least? Where it's safer?"

"He's got to go up front all the time." She said. "I worry about him so much. Every time his letters get delayed, I think, oh spirits, was that it? Is he gone?"

You cast your eyes down and sat in the silence a while.

"I miss him." She said, finally.

"Yeah." You replied. "I know the feeling."

You squeezed her hand a little.

"Sorry for the bummer." She said, and you couldn't help but smile.

"It's okay. It's hard to keep it off your mind." You said. "I've been burying myself in work, and it's always right there."

She nodded. "Yeah. I was taking extra shifts because I hated having the apartment to myself." She said. "Of course, now I got to do that anyway, because of the new fucking laws..."

"Yeah. It's rough." You said, ignoring her very unladylike profanity. "It cut the wages at our plant by more than half. My boss put a set of bunks in one of the office buildings in case anyone loses their flat."

"Wow. Yeah, no such luck down at the docks. There's a lot of women desperate to make ends meet these days."

You signed. "This sucks. The last thing I wanted to do tonight was think about this."

"You fixing for a distraction too?" Minami said.

"Yeah, you could say that." You said. "I was going to go dancing later, actually." You pondered it a moment. Weighing it all. You were still so unsure, but the stress and isolation won out. "Of course, I don't have anyone to dance with."

Minami laughed, leaning across the table to look at you closer. "Now, that's just not true at all."

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