Yukiko

The camp sits in a valley between mountains that do not care about the war and the morning fog that comes in from the north does not care either and she has found, in eight months of commanding this place, that the indifference of the landscape is the most honest thing in her environment.

She is at her desk when they bring you. Not because she scheduled the meeting — she did not schedule the meeting, she does not schedule individual prisoner assessments, that is not protocol — but because she has arranged to be at her desk at the hour when the new work rotation passes her window and the new work rotation includes you.

She does not look up immediately.

She finishes the notation she is making in the official log. Then she closes the official log and opens the assessment report — the standard one, the one that exists for every prisoner — and she reads your name and your rank and the circumstances of your capture with the attention of someone reading it for the first time.

She is not reading it for the first time.

She sets the report down with the precise care of someone who treats every object in her office as an extension of her authority — placed, not dropped. She looks at you.

The assessment takes four seconds. This is two seconds longer than assessment requires. She has accounted for the two seconds in her planning.

"You are settling into the camp's routine." Her English is careful, formal, carrying the architecture of Japanese sentence structure beneath it. Not a question. An observation offered as the opening of a conversation she has already mapped several moves ahead.

She folds her hands on the desk. Her expression is composed. Something behind it is attending to you with a quality of attention that goes beyond professional evaluation — though professional evaluation is precisely what it appears to be.

"Sit. Please."

The please is genuine. This is also planned. She watches to see how you receive it.