"Stop the car, please!"
We stop.
"Can I see some ID?"
Aiko gives her driving license.
"Why is the kid driving when you have a driving license ma'am?"
"I don't know how to drive manual, officer."
As he looks inside he finds Tachibana sitting there. He suddenly looks a little worried.
"Tachibana ma'am,", The man salutes, "sorry for the inconvenience. I didn't notice you there. Please pardon me. I heard about your loss ma'am. I'm extremely sorry to hear about it."
"It's ok. Is there any formalities we have to do?", Tachibana replies.
"No, ma'am. Can I offer some food ma'am. We have a few tons of rations.", The man looks at me, "please open the trunk, sir. I'll have the soldiers load some in for you."
"Ok, if you insist.", I release the trunk gate lock.
"Sir, if you don't mind we can reorganize the luggage for you too. It'll be convenient for the journey."
"Sure." Wow, how high ranking was Tachibana's parents!? I guess respect is a necessary element of survival.
"Sir, your vehicle is ready. We rearranged your luggages. We told some of our lady officers to reorganize our both ma'ams' baggage. You don't need these bags anymore, sir. We shall be getting rid of these. You can departure any time you want, sir."
"Thanks, this was a lot of help."
"It's our pleasure, sir."
As we go out we got surprised. The SUV is so clean. They even installed a new luggage area on the top of our car. The car looks like it just came out of the factory.
"We thought we'll clean it up a little too. Do you like it?"
"Like it?! This is perfect. Thank you very much for all the things you've done."
"My pleasure, sir. I'm glad that you like it. We gave you about 3days worth of rations and two extra cans of fuel too."
"Thanks a bunch."
We leave the checkpost. We had some dinner there too. So all we have to do now is journey. This will really take long to reach Iculto-38. It's about 3 days worth of journey. This is actually great in a sense. I get to do my favorite thing. Drive. And hopefully collect some new writing materials. Everyone seems to enjoy it too. They are gossiping. Aiko is in the front sit. Banging some tunes in the car audio system. She actually has pretty versatile taste in music. Looks like she likes J-pop too. Specially anime ones. Other than that, rock, country, pop, jazz, hip-hop, she loves them all. She even knows some classics. I might have actually asked her out if she wasn't such a pervert.
War can ironically bring happiness sometimes too I guess.