Calling Dad

The phone felt heavier in my hand than it had any right to be.

Not just weight—presence.

Hiroto had set it on a raised panel with little rubber feet, as if the floor itself couldn’t be trusted to touch it. The hum of the tubes traveled up my arm, faint vibrations settling into my bones. A pulse of blue light throbbed near the base, slow and steady—too much like a heartbeat.

The rotary dial caught my reflection, stretching and warping it in the rim’s polished metal until I barely recognized myself.

It didn’t feel like calling home.

It felt like opening a portal.

Beside me, Ryoji spoke in his usual even, clipped tone. The words were aimed at Hiroto, but the weight of them landed in my chest.

“You’re calling from a booth under the Umeda Shopping District. In front of Hanshin Department Store. Don’t give your name. Don’t ask to be redirected. Just ask for him. Be yourself, you’re your usual wording.”

I blinked.

The hum in the room changed.

There was a sound—background noise, threaded into the static of the machine—that hadn’t been there before. Echoes. Distant footsteps. An escalator chime. A rustle of shoppers and overhead announcements, warped by ventilation and time.

It wasn’t just sound.

It was a location.

They’d cloned the auditory signature of the Umeda phone booth. I could almost smell the soft plasticky drift of cheap perfume and steamed buns from the food stall nearby.

And now, whoever picked up at the weather station… they’d hear all that too.

I glanced at Hiroto.

He was glued to the monitor, eyes darting across lines of text scrolling in a rapid crawl. His fingers flicked over knobs with clinical precision. The goggles made him look like a mad bug, but there was genius under it.

A chill ran through me.

They were relocating the call.

Not tracking it. Not encrypting it.

Faking its origin.

I steadied my breathing.

Why was I so nervous?

It was just a phone call.

I’d dialed this number a million times before. Probably more. Always the same. Ask for the weather desk, mention his name, wait. Wait for the callback. Wait to be allowed in. Wait to connect.

But this time was different.

This time I wasn’t calling as the daughter who needed to chat. Or the girl waiting for permission to speak. This time, I was the one crossing a line.

I slipped my fingers into the rotary groove.

The numbers came to me from memory.

Every click of the dial sounded louder than the last.

As I turned the final digit into place, I felt Ryoji’s eyes on me.

I glanced up.

He wasn’t looking at me.

He was watching Hiroto’s monitor.

Silent.

Sharp.

I took a breath.

The line began to ring.

The phone kept ringing—soft and regular, like a metronome ticking down to something.

Ryoji stepped closer to the rig. From a small metal box tucked to the side of the call setup, he lifted something that looked like a power supply crossed with a calculator. A single line of liquid crystal digits blinked softly on its display.

I didn’t understand what I was looking at until he handed me a plastic cup.

Inside: coins.

I stared at him, confused, until I followed his gaze back to the display.

¥20. Then ¥10. Dropping steadily.

Oh my god.

This wasn’t just some hypertech patch into the phone grid. I was literally calling from a disassembled payphone. This whole Frankenstein machine was just an overclocked coin-fed booth, built from components they must’ve salvaged and wired together from museum-grade tech.

I looked down at the cup in my hands like it had suddenly become radioactive.

Ryoji gave me the faintest nod.

Put in the coins.

The line clicked.

A soft connection hiss filtered through the speakers.

Then a voice answered—clean, formal, young.

“Hokkaido 3, Weather Station. This is Mayumi speaking.”

I froze. My breath caught halfway in my throat. Something about hearing it now, through this rigged monstrosity, in the middle of this sterile lab… made it sound unreal. Like dialogue in a stage play I wasn’t part of.

But muscle memory kicked in before my thoughts could stall me.

I softened my tone, shifted my posture slightly, and responded in my most polite, clipped Japanese.

“Good afternoon. This is Natsumi Nakajima. I’m calling to reach my father, Yuuto Nakajima.”

There was a brief pause.

“Please hold.”

The click of the receiver felt surgical.

Then came… ambiance.

Soft sounds filtered in again. Distant mall chatter, indistinct announcements, the grind of a vending machine.

Ryoji had said Umeda Shopping District, but I hadn’t expected this.

The sound was immersive. Convincing. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I really was standing in front of Hanshin’s coin locker corner on a Sunday afternoon.

It was too real.

And suddenly, too fake.

I looked at Ryoji.

His expression was unreadable—stone, still; his gaze somewhere between the cup of coins and the LED digits slowly draining.

Hiroto, on the other hand, was beaming. A child on Christmas morning. Still typing. Still monitoring everything through his flickering screen, fingers dancing without looking, like he was composing symphonies through code.

The line clicked again.

“Thank you for holding,” Mayumi said. The same voice, but warmer now. Practiced-friendly. “Mr. Nakajima is currently out on the boat, but I’ll make sure to pass your message. He should return your call tonight or tomorrow.”

The phrasing struck me.

Out on the boat. No details. No time. Just a gently closed door.

I adjusted my voice quickly. “Actually, I’m traveling to Osaka with a friend—would it be possible for me to call back instead? Perhaps we could set a time?”

“Of course. One moment, please.”

Two minutes of silence stretched out like a hallway with no doors, endless.

I felt the coins thinning between my fingers. I added more. Way more than needed. My hands, sweating now, moved without asking permission.

The whole time, I stared at nothing.

At everything.

Did it always feel like this?

All those times I called him over the years—was this voice always this polite? Always this impenetrable?

Had I ever questioned how many times I had to wait for him to return the call?

Leave a message.

Wait for evening.

Wait for tomorrow.

It had felt normal. Like scheduling a call with a busy parent. He worked with weather stations. They had shifts. Radios. Boats.

But now…

Now every memory of those calls felt warped. Pulled out of frame. There was a playbook behind the politeness.

Another click.

“Mr. Nakajima typically doesn’t pass by the station again after going out,” Mayumi said with that same, artificially soft tone. “But he’ll be back tomorrow evening to return the instruments. You may call again between 21:30 and 22:15. Shall I leave him a message?”

That pause came on its own.

It wasn’t acting. Not entirely.

Because I didn’t know what to say.

What could I say?

Yes, tell him his daughter wants to know why she’s being followed?

That she’s found a stranger who might know more about her father than she ever did?

That the lab they’re standing in just faked the entire Umeda Shopping District to get this call through?

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Not forceful.

Just… grounding.

I turned slightly.

Ryoji.

He said nothing.

Didn’t have to.

I took one last breath.

“No, thank you, Mayumi,” I said, putting on my lightest voice. “I’ll call back and speak to him tomorrow.”

“Understood. Have a good day, Ms. Nakajima.”

The line went dead.

And I let the receiver fall gently back into its cradle.

“Mic off! Signed out! All clear!” Hiroto practically sang, spinning away from the console with both hands raised in triumph, like he’d just landed a plane.

Behind me, I felt Ryoji move.

His hands settled gently on my shoulders—not gripping, not heavy. Just… there.

Steady.

Was it reassurance?

Or was he bracing me for something?

I didn’t have time to decide.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Hiroto breathed, bouncing on his heels. “I’ve got it. Pingback confirmed. Traceback path logged. And, whoa, you’re gonna love this—”

He cleared his throat dramatically, spreading his fingers in front of his chest like a stage magician before the reveal.

“Tokyo,” he declared. “But with an absolutely astounding labyrinth of redirections. Notable hubs: Sapporo, Fukuoka… then San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, and…” —he tapped a key and leaned toward the monitor for confirmation—“somewhere at 2-chōme-8-1 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 163-8001.”

My stomach dropped.

Cold, immediate.

That address—I’d just heard it, spoken flatly like coordinates—but I knew it. Knew it.

Not in passing.

Not from a map.

From my own memory.

From the skyline.

The rooftop.

The Nightlights.

I had stood just blocks from that tower. With Ryoji. Looking out across Tokyo as the city swallowed the hour. That building had been there—bright and silent, windowless at the top like it didn’t need to see anything anymore.

I stared ahead, not seeing the lab, not seeing Hiroto’s smug little smirk.

Mayumi was speaking from there?

Not Wakkanai?

That couldn’t be right.

The weather station was supposed to be a little prefab outpost. A squat thing by the water. A terminal where they managed fishing boats and wind data and half-broken sonar arrays. Nothing sleek. Nothing urban.

I turned slowly.

Ryoji was still watching me.

Still calm.

Still unreadable.

But something softened in his gaze.

Like he could see it all clicking together in my head.

“That wasn’t Wakkanai,” I said, voice quiet.

He nodded once. “We just called Tokyo.”

Silence.

My breath hitched, just enough to betray me. Just enough to widen the crack already running through everything I thought I knew.

My father wasn’t out with the boat.

He was behind the skyline.

In the lights.

In the lies.

I blinked, once, hard—then looked away. Because the second I locked eyes with Ryoji again, I might’ve crumbled. And I wasn’t ready to crumble. Not yet.

He spoke again, voice lower now. Not coaxing, not commanding.

Just… certain.

“We’ll ask your father tomorrow.”