[Conduct Unbecoming 01.0] Conduct Unbecoming

by LA Witt

  Lead me not into temptation, I thought as I sent back a message telling him I’d be there, for I know the way myself.

  ~*~

  I parked across the street from the castle in the paved lot between a tile-roofed visitor center and a buzzing substation. After I’d rolled up my windows, leaving them open a crack so my car didn’t get too hot, I got out.

  The back end of the parking lot shared a fence with a small farm. A row of banana trees lined a garden, and along one side of that garden was a cluster of some sort of cacti. How odd, seeing a cactus in a place like this, but there they were--thick, green arms, some with spiny, pineapple-shaped flowers or something on the ends. I’d actually seen them on a few farms as I’d been driving around. I’d have to ask Shane if he knew what the hell they were.

  Shane.

  This couldn’t be a good idea, meeting out in public.

  Trust me.

  Taking a deep breath and taking him at his word, I started toward the road. On my way to the crosswalk, I looked up at the castle.

  No fewer than twenty power lines from the substation sliced across my view of the high gray walls but didn’t make the castle any less impressive. Peering over a thick forest and looming above everything from up on top of a hill, Katsuren was more like a fortress than what I would usually imagine a castle to be. There were no towers, no battlements, no real buildings to speak of. It was just a stone wall, but I imagined it was nearly impenetrable in its day.

  A sign above the crosswalk read Katsuren Castle Site—200m. Two hundred meters up a hill, of course. At least the heat of the afternoon was starting to ease up. I was in damned good physical condition, thanks to the military, but there was nothing quite like hiking up even a small hill with the tropical sun chewing on the back of your neck and the thick humidity invading your lungs.

  The substation’s buzzing should have faded behind me, but the farther up the hill I walked, the louder the sound was. In fact, I swore it was coming from the thick copse of trees beside the castle walls. How…weird.

  At the top of the hill, with the substation’s buzz almost deafening now in spite of the distance, I was in front of the castle instead of looking at it from the side.

  The hill rose another twenty feet or so from where I stood now, and the castle stood about two or three stories on top of that. From the far left, a smaller wall angled slightly downward and swept all the way to the right side, revealing the end of a set of wooden stairs that I assumed led all the way to the top. Then the wall curved gently back toward the left and led into a rocky path that ended at my feet.

  And somewhere, at the top of the walkway and the stairs and the wall, Shane waited.

  Why here? Why now? Why out in public?

  And why had I shown up when I knew this couldn’t lead to anything good? Or to something really good that was also reckless and stupid and could damage our careers?

  Go back, Eric. There is way too much at stake.

  We weren’t criminals, for God’s sake. We were just two men who shouldn’t have been fucking, which was why we’d kept it on the down low. No one would know. If they saw us now in civvies, they wouldn’t have any reason to suspect anything. Unless they knew one of us, and talked to us, and figured out the difference between our ranks. Christ, we could get in trouble just for hanging out together.

  Which raised the question: Just what the fuck was I doing here?

  Only one way to find out.

  Before my brain could talk my feet out of it, I started up the path toward the stone structure. For whatever reason, plastic had been put down over part of the path and covered with gravel, leaving green plastic pegs poking up between the rocks. I supposed it could have been to give people better footing as the incline steepened, but if so, it didn’t work. I damn near lost my balance three times when I stepped on one of the pegs just right, making my foot slip down in between them. Fucking turf was a rolled ankle waiting to happen.

  I managed to get from the weird ground to the wooden stairs without falling on my ass. The stairs creaked beneath my feet as I walked past a couple of tourists who’d stopped to take pictures, and I hoped they hadn’t noticed my less than graceful battle with the plastic pegs.

  The last ten or so steps were the original stone, and they sloped enough to warrant making use of the hand railing someone had installed in recent years.

  I climbed the steep stone stairs and looked around the castle. There wasn’t much left up here--a chest-high wall encircled a grassy area that must have been the lowest enclosure of the original building. Another steep set of stairs led up to a second enclosure, and above that was another high wall. Some tourists milled around, taking pictures beside the tree in the middle or up against the edge.

  It was tempting to go to the edge and look around at the scenery below, but there would be time for that later. For now, the one thing I wanted to see was nowhere in sight, and I needed to find him before my brain caught up with my feet and talked me out of being here.

  Normally, every inch of the castle would have fascinated me. I could have spent an hour in each enclosure, checking out the shrines on the second level and marveling at the precision with which the stones had been fitted together to form the walls. On the second level, about thirty evenly spaced stones about two feet across stuck up a few inches from the ground. I assumed they were the remains of the foundation of a building or something, and any other day, I’d have stopped to figure it out.

  I walked right past them, throwing only the briefest glance at the foundation and the shrines tucked away in the bushes off to one side.

  The stairs leading up to the third enclosure were even steeper than the lower ones. The wall was three or four feet wide and mostly dirt in between the stone interior and exterior, much like insulation between siding and drywall. The dirt was packed down like people had been walking on it, but I took my chances on the stairs and the tricky cobbled path that followed it. Walking on top of the wall was…a bit much.

  At least the stairs and cobbles were easier to get across than those stupid plastic pegs down below, and I made it past them all with relative ease. Chuckling to myself, I wondered if the next level had some sort of Indiana Jones booby traps or a shark pit or—

  God. More stairs.

  Big surprise. At least it was only a small set. Steep, angled sharply because of hundreds of years of shifting and settling, but only ten or twelve steps. Simple enough.

  And if you shouldn’t be here, you’ve had ample opportunity to turn around, I told myself. So if you get in over your head, it’s your own damned fault.

  At the top of what I hoped was the last set of stairs, I came to another enclosure. Smaller than the others, grassy like the others, and…

  There he was.

  My pounding heart had nothing to do with the climb up here. I didn’t know why I was surprised to see him. I mean, what did I expect? A giant sign reading Your Prince Is in Another Castle?

  He certainly wasn’t in another castle. His back was to me, giving me time to drink in the sight of him as I started across the enclosure.

  The wind tugged at his T-shirt and khaki shorts, and he had his thumbs casually hooked into his pockets. If he looked this good dressed like this, he must have been stunning in his uniform. Most guys looked good in tailored whites, and the very thought of those black boards emphasizing his broad shoulders…

  A shiver went down my spine.

  It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t just standing up here looking over the wall--he was standing on the wall.

  “Living on the edge?” I said.

  He turned around and flashed me that electrifying, toothy grin. “Always.”

  I stopped beside the wall and looked out at the scenery below us. Damn, we were high up. The buildings and cars below us looked like toys, and even with a four-foot-wide wall in front of me, I still had that vertigo that comes with looking over a cliff’s edge. Kind of like peering over the side of the flight deck on a carrier. There was a reas
on I hadn’t spent much time on flight decks.

  Shane offered his hand. “Come on up.”

  I looked at him warily. “Are you insane?”

  He chuckled. “These walls have been standing since the fourteenth century, and there’s a good two feet between where I’m standing and the edge.”

  “Two feet?” I raised an eyebrow. “And how many feet between the edge and the ground?”

  “Relax. There’s nothing to worry about.” He beckoned with his outstretched hand. “Come on. You’ll be fine.”

  I hesitated, then glanced around the enclosure to make sure no one was around. Once I was certain we were alone, I took his hand.

  He helped me up onto the wall, and I craned my neck a little to look over the edge. My God, we were high up. My car looked like a Matchbox car in the parking lot down below, and even the substation looked tiny. Sure didn’t sound tiny, though.

  “Okay, am I hearing things?” I gestured at the substation. “I swear to God, I can hear the power lines more up here than I could down there.”

  Shane furrowed his brow and listened. Then he laughed. “Those aren’t power lines. Those are cicadas.”

  “Say, what? Those are…insects?”

  He nodded. “They’re loud as fuck this time of year.”

  “So I’ve gathered.” I eyed the trees. Really? Bugs were making all that noise? This was one strange island. Turning my attention back to Shane, I said, “So why Katsuren?”

  He shrugged. “I just like it up here. The view is incredible.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Katsuren kept watch over neatly arranged farms with tidy rows of greenhouses, crops, and perfectly square pastures of black cows. Beyond the fields and fences, houses of every shape and color huddled together between winding highways and shorelines. Huge electricity towers stood at attention along the forested hills, connecting the towns to the substation below us and the power plant in the distance. Beside the power plant, the triplet blades of a wind turbine made lazy circles in the same early evening breeze that played with my shirt and warmed the back of my neck.

  The castle was situated on a narrow sliver of land jutting out from Okinawa’s west coast into the Pacific Ocean. Fishing boats left white wakes in the otherwise flawless water as they navigated between reefs and concrete tsunami breaks. In the distance, a bridge snaked across the water, connecting the island to a smaller one via a few tiny, possibly man-made islands. From there, another bridge arched over a narrow inlet to yet another small island.

  I nodded toward them. “So which islands are those?”

  He pointed to the largest. “Off to the right, at the end of the second bridge, is Hamahiga. Not much there, but it’s a decent snorkel spot.” He gestured to the other larger island. “And it looks like one island, but it’s actually Henza, Miyagi, and Ikei Islands. Kind of in a chain.”

  “There’s three islands over there?”

  He nodded. “Ikei and Miyagi are worth checking out. Mostly farms and stuff, but there are some great views, tons of real cool-looking tombs, and some awesome beaches.” He paused. “There’s some amazing snorkeling too, when the jellyfish aren’t swarming.”

  “Good to know,” I said quietly.

  He said nothing for a moment, then: “We’ll have to go drive around Ikei one of these days.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. On my way to and from work every day, I passed that bridge connecting Okinawa to Henza Island. It was just a few clicks away from White Beach, which meant I wasn’t the only one in my command who drove past it. Being up here with him on top of Katsuren was risky enough. Being in the same car when a coworker happened past? Not a good idea.

  “You know,” Shane said after a moment. “They say you used to be able to see Nakagusuku and I think Shuri Castles from here. I suppose you still could if you knew what to look for.”

  “Really?” I lowered my gaze to the homes and businesses at the base of the hill on which Katsuren sat. “I wonder how many people down there can see us up here.”

  “Who cares? Not like any of them know who we are, right?”

  “Good point.”

  Footsteps behind us turned both our heads. My heart jumped into my throat. I was certain we’d been busted by both our chains of command or something, but it was just a couple of middle-aged Japanese tourists.

  “Gobenwa,” the man said, smiling and waving at us. “Good evening.”

  “Gobenwa,” Shane and I both replied, returning the smile.

  Leaving the tourists to check out the walls and the view, Shane turned back around, facing the fields and ocean again. “Relax, they don’t have a clue who we are.”

  “Guess I’m just a little jumpy.”

  “Understandable,” he said with a slight nod. “But the fact is, for all intents and purposes”—he looked at me—“we’re alone.”

  We are. But should we be?

  I stared out at the ocean and the farms and the trees and the homes, but all the while, my attention was focused on him. My skin prickled with awareness of him, and uncertainty twisted in my stomach. Finally, I said, “What are we doing up here, Shane?”

  “Checking out the view from on top of Katsuren Castle.”

  I pursed my lips. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. And the answer’s the same.” He glanced over his shoulder, as did I, and the other tourists had left. We really were alone now as he turned to me again. “We’re just two guys who came up to look at the castle and happened to strike up a conversation.”

  Cocking my head, I said, “Where are you going with this?”

  “Well, you want to see more of the island, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And I want to see more of you.” He shifted his gaze back out to the farms and islands. “Let me ask you this: How many Americans did you see on your way up here?”

  Not that I’d paid much attention to anything except the stairs and my desire to see him, but as I mentally retraced my steps, I realized what few tourists I’d seen down below had been Japanese.

  “None, now that you mention it,” I said.

  “And in the parking lot, did you see any Y plates?”

  I looked down at the parking lot. Of course I couldn’t see the plates from here, but there were barely any cars at all. I hadn’t seen a single Y plate, which was a license plate with a letter Y on the far left instead of a kanji symbol, differentiating American-owned from Japanese-owned cars.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think I saw any.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “Our cars are probably the only Y plates down there. Come up here on a weekend, you might see a handful of Americans. On a weeknight like this? None.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Right now, we’re a few clicks from White Beach. A few more from Kadena or Camp Courtney. The farther we go in any direction from any of the bases, the fewer Y plates we’ll see.” He looked at me again. “Which means the fewer people who might see us and actually give a fuck about it.”

  “Are you suggesting we date, just do it as far away from the bases as we can?”

  A faint smile played at his lips. “What I’m suggesting is I can show you around the island. Take you to some of the other castles, snorkel spots, hiking, whatever you want to do.” He shifted his attention back out to something in the distance. “Like I said, as far as anyone else is concerned, we’re just two Americans who bumped into each other and struck up a conversation.”

  “Unless we’re in the same car.”

  “So we drive separately. Means using twice as much gas, but the island’s like seventy miles long. Not like we’re driving to another state or anything, you know?”

  “True,” I said, almost whispering. I let Henza and Hamahiga Islands hold my gaze. Getting together outside of his bedroom or mine was risky. We could get hemmed up for fraternization if we got caught hanging out. If anyone figured out we were sleeping together too, our careers were over. Going out in public meant
taking the chance of someone putting two and two together, even if we did say we were two strangers who’d run into each other.

  “You really think this is a good idea?” I asked.

  “Not at all, if we give a shit about our careers.” He turned to me. “And I do care about my career, but this…” He released a long breath. “No matter how many times I tell myself we shouldn’t, I just keep coming back to the fact that I want to.” He swallowed. “I want you.”

  The words sent a pleasant shudder right through me. I couldn’t deny I wanted him. For that matter, the fact that I’d defied every bit of good sense I had and come up here to meet him at all took the wind out of any attempts I might have made to tell myself I only wanted him in bed. If we dated covertly under the guise of being tourists with the same taste in destinations, then every beach we walked, every trail we hiked, and every monument we explored would be one more strike against my certainty that we were just notches in each other’s bedposts.

  And my own willingness to even consider this made it clear as day that no matter how much I’d told myself otherwise, I was hooked on him. I was hooked, and I wanted to be.

  Shane broke the silence. “We don’t have to do this. If you want to keep it to what we’ve been doing, that’s fine with me.” He paused. “You can say no.”

  “I probably should.” I stepped across the platonic distance and slid my arm around his waist. “In fact, I know I should.”

  Shane faced me. “But are you saying no?”

  I looked around. The whole time we’d been up here, only two other tourists had come up the stairs to this level. The daylight was fading fast, so I doubted many more people would be heading up to the castle today. Anyone below us could probably see us if they cared to look, but I…I didn’t care.

  “Eric?”

  “No,” I whispered, drawing him closer. “No, I’m not.”

  “Good.” He touched my face and wrapped his other arm around me.

  With just inches between us, I met his eyes, and we just looked at each other for a long moment.

  My heart thundered in my ears as I closed my eyes and leaned in. My lower lip brushed his, and he drew back a little. Then he raised his chin, and our lips grazed again, but I was the one to pull back this time. My fingers trembled on his face. Our foreheads touched, and we both just breathed for almost a full minute. On the side of my neck, goose bumps rose in the wake of his gentle fingertips, and my knees shook way too much for someone standing up on top of a wall like this. Finally, I broke the standoff and pulled him all the way into a kiss.