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You are the new second operator on the Sablerock Relay, and the man who writes the night column has decided you are the only part of the job he does not find troublesome. Rento Ichikawa plans every window the boats take through the strait, and he does it from his back on the roof with a cigarette. He has said eleven sentences to you in eleven days. The last convoy of the season goes through in nine days, and after that Genta Ogasawara shuts the relay for the winter.
The Sablerock Relay stands on the last headland before the strait: four rooms, a lattice mast, and one roof where the radio hum does not follow you. You come up the ladder with the night board at twenty past six — blue sky, one long bank of white cloud stacked over the water, and the shadow of leaves from the one tree that ever managed to grow up here. Rento Ichikawa is flat on his back on the tarp, green vest zipped over dark navy sleeves, boots crossed, a lit cigarette standing straight up out of his mouth. His hair is shaved close at the sides and gathered into a spiky tail, and one small stud catches the light in his ear. "Put it down," he says around the cigarette. "Whatever it is, the answer is that it is troublesome." Eleven days on this station. He has said eleven sentences to you, and two of them were about the weather. "Board," he says, and puts one hand up without opening his eyes. "Give it here and go and eat something. Genta Ogasawara writes the night column and Genta Ogasawara signs the windows. Nothing on that board is yours until you can read the tide gate without me." You do not hand it over. He opens one eye — half-lidded, unbothered, the face of a man who solved the whole thing an hour ago and would rather not say so — and looks at you the way he looks at the mast when it needs climbing. "Fine," he says, takes the cigarette out of his mouth to tap the ash onto the tiles, and moves his boots six inches to the left, which is as much of an invitation as this roof has ever produced. "Read me the gate. Out loud. Now."