Chapter Text
Everyone knew Tommy Jensen was odd. Everyone in Badger, South Dakota said, “That boy is just…different.”
He didn’t want to do the same things as everyone else. He didn’t want to go the same places. He had no interest whatsoever in taking over the family farm and settling down with his soul mate.
But then, everybody knew that was going to be a problem as soon as he was born. One look at the inside of his arm, and the faint unfamiliar symbols on them, and everyone knew that settling down just wasn’t happening. Nobody in town could read them.
Tommy had asked everyone what they meant. The closest he’d gotten had been when Ole Johnson had said, ‘Looks like Chinee writing to me.’ Eventually, Tommy had just given up and decided it meant ‘no soul mate’. He forgot about it.
The war started when he was fourteen. It had been going on for a couple years in Europe, and France had fallen to the Nazis. But for the US, it started on December 7, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Tommy volunteered as soon as he could, joining the Marines. When they asked him for his soul mate’s name while filling out the enlistment papers, he said it was illegible.
The atomic bombs were dropped as he finished basic training. By the time he could be deployed, the war was over.
They sent him to the Philippines first, and then on to Japan as part of the occupation force. He found himself guarding a navy base outside Tokyo.
The locals spoke little English, and he spoke no Japanese. But he got to know the ones who came and went, and they got to know him as well. There was Kimura-san, the representative of the local civilian government, who came to talk to the military governors. Nakamura-san, the grocer, who made sure the base had supplies. And his favorite, Yamaguchi-san, a pretty young woman who did laundry for most of the officers.
He chatted with Yamaguchi-san as she went through; she’d blush prettily and giggle at him. He learned that she was supporting three younger siblings; her father had died on Guadalcanal, and her mother had been killed by a bombing raid.
They spent a few minutes every day, practicing each other’s languages at each other, and Tommy began to wonder if, maybe, she might meet him away from the gate. She couldn’t be his soul mate - he didn’t have one, he knew it. But maybe they could spend time together until she found hers.
He was trying to figure out how to talk to her as he let her out of the gate, when she paused and asked, in her poor English, “Coruporal Jensen, may I ask…favor?”
"Absolutely," he responded automatically.
She looked at him, confused.
"Yes," he said, and she smiled.
"I read no Engurish. What is this word?" She bared her forearm, and he read the faint letters of her soul mate. Thomas Arthur Jensen.
"I…I…" he stumbled, trying to figure out what to say. "Thomas Arthur Jensen. It’s my name." He pulled up his sleeve, showing her his own arm. "I never knew what this was."
With a smile, she traced three lines with a lower line connecting them, and a square, saying, “Yamaguchi.” A box with six subsections and a couple lines under it, and what looked like a crossed number seven, “Michiko.”
"Michiko? Is that your name?" he asked. She nodded eagerly.
"It’s a pretty name," he said. "Almost as pretty as you are."