“NOOOO!” screamed Mizusaki, his upper body slumping down on top of the table. He lightly hit the wooden surface with his closed fist a couple of times, his facial expression twisted in frustration. “I lost again!!!!!”

“At this point, I cannot imagine how you’d ever win,” pointed out Iru, leisurely sitting back on his seat as he smugly looked down on the soldier. A chessboard was in between their seats, the super soldier’s pieces claiming the victorious side of the game. “Your only chance of winning against me was on the first game we played. I had no prior experience with the game and I had only heard the rules from you. But it seems you overestimated your abilities and have been on a losing streak since game number 1.”

“This was game number 8, in case you’re wondering,” reminded Azuma, a knowing smirk on his lips as he observed Mizusaki groaning at yet another miserable loss.

“Don’t say it as if it was you who won against me, Azuma!” yelped Mizusaki, sitting straight on his seat with a single jump. He then pointed at Iru, a fiery glint in his eyes. “Let’s play again! And this time I will win for sure!”

“Shall I give you a handicap?” proposed Iru, starting to put the chess pieces in their initial places to begin yet another already won game. Entertaining humans in such ways wasn’t that bad. “Let’s see… How about I play with my eyes closed? I’ll still win but at least you’ll be able to struggle for long enough to make the game interesting to me. Hehehe…”

“Grrr…! There’s no need for a handicap!” barked Mizusaki, proudly puffing out his chest. “I’ll win against you when the two of us are playing at our strongest. I won’t accept any other victory!”

“You mean, defeat?” snorted Iru, once again looking down at the human soldier with amused grey eyes. He gestured towards the chessboard. “Go right ahead then. It’s your turn to have the white pieces. Do your best to make it worth my time.”

“I’ll make you swallow those words!” declared Mizusaki, readily moving one of the pawns. He mumbled afterwards with a small voice, “Eventually…”

“That table sure is getting heated up,” scoffed Miue, an eyebrow slightly arched as he continued observing the endless chess match going on between Mizusaki and Iru for the last couple of hours. “Iru’s really bringing out Mizusaki’s competitive side.”

“I think Mizusaki’s just enjoying himself a bit too much,” pointed out Murayama, inwardly chuckling at his subordinate’s struggles. “It’s been a while since he’s been able to game to his heart’s content. And he was about to try to convince Nakatani-san into giving him some holidays. He could spend the whole night gushing about anime and manga with Azuma the other day and now he gets to play some board games with Iru. He’s totally in his element right now.”

“I have the feeling, one day, we’ll find him playing video games with Atsumu and Mitaru…” said Miue, putting his elbows on top of his knees and crossing his fingers to support his chin in them. “Do you think Atsumu will get even more of an annoying drama queen if he’s introduced to the Japanese otaku culture?”

“...Good luck, Miue…” simply answered Murayama, giving a quick slap to his second-in-command’s shoulder. He left the living room area with the background music of two of his men groaning and moaning in utter exasperation.

As he walked closer to the kitchen area, a cacophony of voices also grew in intensity. He could hear both Tsugi and Ikusaki strongly admonishing Atsumu for having stolen some of the food they were learning how to make, with only Yasuhisa’s soft voice trying to calm down the chaos. Murayama would have to eventually have a word or two with Tsugi - he couldn’t spend the entirety of his days cooking their supplies away. A tight kitchen access schedule would have to be implemented in that house.

Murayama went to the second floor and then climbed the access stairs to the rooftop. He was 100% sure he would find him there.

“Why are you here on your own, M0?” asked Murayama, walking closer to the super soldier missing from the ground floor of the building. “Come and join us.”

“Is it okay for me to be there?” inquired M0, turning his sitting position on the short wall around the edge of the rooftop and peering over to Murayama with a small tilt on his head.

“Of course it is,” acknowledged Murayama, dropping his hand on top of M0’s head and lightly ruffling his hair. “Even Iru is out and about wrecking Mizusaki’s dignity. Why would you be an exception to that? Not to mention, this whole area now belongs to you guys. You can go and stay wherever you want to within its grounds.”

“I see,” shortly said M0, turning his gaze to the night scenery once again. “I like it better here, though. Observing the outside world is fun.”

“I bet it is,” snorted Murayama, rolling his eyes around just the slightest at M0’s statement. Now the mystery behind his frequent visits to the rooftop had been solved. He leaned his upper body forward and placed his forearms on the short wall, staring in the same direction as the super soldier. “What can you see from here?”

“I see a really tall red and white glowing stick,” explained M0, tilting his head to the left as he observed the large structure.

“Red and white glowing stick?” repeated Murayama, trying to think where exactly in the base did they have such a thing. Then he came to the realization of which tall building he was talking about. “Wait, you can see Tokyo Tower from here!?”

“...?”

“Ah… Just give me a few seconds,” mumbled Murayama, taking his cell phone from his pants’ pocket and opening the search engine app. He typed the building’s name with its night view and then showed M0 the photos displayed there. “Is it this glowing stick?”

“Nn.” M0 simply nodded his head in acknowledgement, returning his gaze to the same direction as before. “So the glowing stick is called ‘Tokyo Tower’. Are there more ‘Tokyo Towers’?”

“Yes, there are some similar buildings in other places, they’re just not called Tokyo Tower,” tried to explain Murayama, making his words as simple and easy to understand as possible. He still very much remembered how Iru had chastised him for not being able to explain things properly to M0 upon their arrival to the airport. “This one is called Tokyo Tower because it’s located in Tokyo.”

“There’s also zooming lights moving back and forth all around this ‘Tokyo’ place,” continued M0, wondering what those lights were too. “They always zoom by the same places and make a very loud rattling noise.”

“Zooming lights that rattle…” repeated Murayama once again, thinking about what might M0 be referring to this time. “Since you said those zooming lights always pass the same places, I’d say they’re trains. Do they zoom by really fast but are always making short stops every few minutes?”

“Yes, they are,” acknowledged M0 with another small nod.

“Then the zooming lights are definitely trains,” said Murayama, also nodding his head a couple of times. “They are… very big cars that can take a lot of people from one place to another extremely fast.”

“Anyone can use them?” asked M0 further, observing from his sitting location as one of those ‘trains’ came to a stop and a fair share of humans went in and out.

“For as long as you pay for the ticket, anyone can ride them, yes,” explained Murayama, making a few corrections to M0’s idea of trains. After making a brief pause to his ‘lesson’, he asked, “Do you want to try riding a train, M0?”

“I can ride it too?” asked M0, readily turning his head to the human soldier, his grey eyes wide open in surprise, even though his facial expression remained the same as always. “Ah… But I don’t have a ‘ticket’...”

“You can get tickets on those platforms where the trains stop,” said Murayama, inwardly chuckling at how M0’s expressionless when from excitement to disappointment in a matter of seconds. “They’re called train stations and have these machines where you can get some paper tickets in exchange for money. If you ride trains a lot, you can get a more permanent plastic ticket, that lets you ride as many times as you want for as long as you pay a certain amount of money every month. If you don’t know how to use the machines, you can go to the workers behind some large glass windows and get your tickets from them.”

“But… I don’t have ‘money’ either…” mumbled M0, his shoulders slumping down even further.

“You don’t have to worry, M0,” reassured Murayama, once again lightly ruffling his hair. “You used the data inside of the external hard drive as coin, right? All of your expenses are covered for as long as you remain in our base. You can ride the train as much as you want.”

“Let’s go then, Murayama-san,” exclaimed M0, his expressionless reaching the peak of its hype.

“No, wait!” intervened Murayama, grabbing the back of M0’s clothes as he was preparing himself to jump out of the building. “It’s too late already. The trains will stop moving in a matter of hours. The closest train station is considerably away from the base, for safety reasons, and I don’t feel like going through a highspeed run to it. Not to mention, every soldier needs to put in a request to leave the base for leisure reasons. The officials who approve those requests are probably already fast asleep.”

“Wake them up?” suggested M0, tilting his head in a cutesy way as he almost begged at Murayama with his puppy grey eyes.

“Wake them up not,” denied Murayama, releasing a sigh afterwards. “There’s a time and place for everything, M0. We’re still busy trying to learn more about you seven, with the help of the files inside of the external hard drive and Mitsu’s guidance. Besides, wouldn’t it be more enjoyable if you rode the train together with Iru and the rest of them? Let’s wait for Mitaru to wake up from his resting period and then we can go ride the train together. Deal?”

Even if I were to put a leave request right now and an official were to accept it, Iru would definitely come after my life, thinking that I was trying to elope with M0 or something along those lines, added Murayama in the back of his mind, a small shudder going down his spine at the thought alone.

“Okay…” unwillingly acknowledged M0, sitting back on the short wall once again.

“What more can you see there?” asked Murayama, trying to change the topic of the conversation to something else.

“There’s a lot of bright colourful squares and circles on the buildings,” pointed out M0, his eyes fluttering around through the distant scenery. “There’s a lot of glowing, bright lights around humans.”

“We’re not very fond of darkness, that’s why,” said Murayama, moving on with his explanation of what neon signs were and what purpose did they serve.

The question-explanation exchange smoothly went on and on for hours, leaving Murayama with a victorious taste in his mouth.