15/4 Saturday / Afternoon

As the ferry pulled up to the jetty, a soft chorus drifted out. It sounded poetic, like an old classical song. Junpei looked up from the book he was reading. He'd spent long enough with his old friends checking out the island of Osumi to know that it was as boring as it looked.

He slung his bag onto one shoulder and waited patiently for the ferry to dock. Osumi was the largest town on on the island. Everything about it seemed flat. Junpei had read online that outside of the Institute of Space and Exploration, the largest building was a 31-story corporate headquarters. Everything seemed so flat and lifeless.

He was the only getting off the ferry who had to have his ticket validated. Junpei guessed he was the only with a one way ticket.

'So there you are,' a bored lady called out from the booth. Junpei was surprised by her appearance. Leaning forward, cigarette dangling from her lips, she looked more like she'd be at home serving behind a bar. She was dressed professionally in a shirt, vest and skirt that were monochrome. Her golden tie shimmered as she moved. She was far too formal to be working on an island wharf. 'You're not what I expected.'

'Sorry—' Junpei started before realising he didn't know why he was apologising and stopped mid-sentence. He looked at her confused. She gave him a pertinent stare and a flat smile. She stubbed her cigarette out between her fingers, flicked her wrist and produced a formal looking document.

Junpei guessed she was a magician.

'Don't worry, all it says is that you'll accept full responsibility for your actions. You know, the usual stuff.'

'D-do I just... read it?' Junpei left her holding the piece of paper. All he'd been told by the ferry company was that he'd need to have them confirm his boarding ticket at the other end.

'You must sign the contract if you wish to use our services.'

'The company told me I just needed to have my ticket validated?' He pulled the ticket out of his pocket to demonstrate.

'This contract allows you access to beyond and you will need it for the following trials,' she responded. Junpei gazed around, trying to find someone to ask for help. Nobody else was around but it felt strange, like they should be there but were just missing.

'Where are we?' Junpei asked.

'Osumi Port Wharf. Do I take it to mean that you are not signing our contract?' There was an impatience in her tone. Honestly, it was probably easier to sign it.

'Fine,' Junpei gave in. She produced a pen out of nowhere, which he took without comment and signed his name on the contract. Junpei Matsui.

'Thank you.' She waved away the contract. 'My name is Frederieke and I will be your host in the Golden Playhouse.'

'The what—'

'It is a place that exists between dreams and reality, between mind and matter. You have been destined for greatness but someone has taken it upon themselves to interfere. I am here to facilitate your original purpose as best I can.'

Junpei stared blankly.

'Soon you will awaken to your power and the others to theirs,' Frederieke stepped forward, through the ticket booth and offered the first sign of emotion Junpei had seen. Her smile was mischievous. 'The coming year was meant to be how you would define yourself. Now that a destiny has been placed upon your head, I wonder how you will carry yourself.'

She flicked her wrist and placed the lit cigarette that appeared between her lips.

'You would do well to remember that no one can escape themselves.' Frederieke offered that advice with an air of finality and stepped around the corner of the wharf. A few seconds later when Junpei shook off his confusion and chased after her, she was nowhere to be seen.

He blinked. He blinked more. As silly as it was, he pinched himself. Some guy in a suit bumped into him, offered an insincere 'sorry-didn't-see-you-there' without turning back and continued walking. That strange feeling had gone now and there was... the hustle and bustle wasn't quite the right word, given it was forty or so people, but life was back in the wharf.

Junpei checked his phone. He had two new messages, both from the vaguely familiar number of his step-sister he hadn't saved yet. He flicked a text back.

saki: im just in the parking lot, black toyota supra

saki: hey where r u?

junpei: sorry, difficulties with ticket. coming out now

Outside of the passenger terminal, the majority of the port was devoted to cargo. It almost seemed like the passenger element was an after thought. Junpei walked past the chain link fences, wandering around trying to figure out the right car park. After a couple of turns into shuttered areas, he found a bus stop with a sign that looked like one from the text books and a small row of parking. He guessed ten or so cars could park here.

He mentally tallied it as the first notch in his dislike belt.

A car's horn blasted out a few times. He saw the only car that was still on, an old and dusty model and walked over towards it. He tried to gauge that it was his step-sister through the window. Sure, they'd video-called this morning and he'd followed her on Twitter since the decision to send him to Osumi but he'd never actually met her.

'Hey,' she called out as she wound down the window. 'Throw your bag in the back.'

Saki Matsui looked like a more western mix of hipster and professional than Junpei normally saw in Tokyo. Her hair was black, messy and long and her ears had large stretchers in them. She wore thick framed glasses on and a sourness to her that seemed permanent.

Junpei could count the facts he knew about her on his fingers. She was three years older than him; she was an undergraduate from Kyoto University; she was clever enough to be offered an internship at the Japan Institute of Space and Exploration. Based on her Twitter bio, she liked hip hop, had recently visited South Korea and was willing to be openly critical of the Ruling Party. He was also pretty sure she owned a dog but his father had given a definitive no to that question.

Junpei did his best to be polite as got in the car. He caught her stare which he was sure was similar to what he was thinking. He tried to think of what facts she could have learned from his info, especially since he'd culled as much as he could after the reporters started asking questions. He was sure their father would have told her more about him than he'd gotten about her.

Probably because Junpei had strictly tried not to ask.

'Alright, it'll take about ten minutes to get back to mine. I'll take you through Osumi tomorrow so you can get your bearings, yeah?'

'Sounds good.' Junpei felt his stomach start to sink. He really was here. It had seemed more like a day trip until this point.

The trip was uneventful. They made small talk about the ferry, about how the weather had been oddly hot lately. Conversation stopped abruptly whenever it came to their father or their new living situation. Saki seemed to skirt around the town as she drove home instead of go through it and Junpei avoided trying to sightsee. He was worried it would only grow the sinking feeling.

The apartment was more modern than he would have guessed from what he saw of the town. It was four stories tall, each apartment with their own small balcony. Saki parked on the street and headed inside, Junpei following behind her. She swiped into the building, made a comment about how there was a pass for him upstairs and hit the lift.

They were on the third level, apartment C he learned. The lift was quiet and when she unlocked the apartment with a key, she was quick to walk in and grab her laptop off the table and retreat into her room. Junpei stood awkwardly for a moment and then decided it was his place too now, he should look around.

The apartment interior was clearly newer than the outside. It was a lot of modern woods, white paints and minimalist furniture. It was the sort of thing he knew he'd seen on a few of the blogs he followed. The paintings were Edo, or at least Edo-style.

The kitchen appliances seemed older than anything else in the house and both of the rooms had their doors pulled shut. He poked his head in the bathroom and decided it was too early to comment on the mess of bottles and products.

'Hey,' he called out. 'I'm not sure which room mine is?'

'Sorry,' she pushed a door open and stuck her head out. 'This one will be. I'm just cleaning a few things first.' The rooms ran lengthways along the apartment, separated by the bathroom. After a few more minutes of awkwardly standing there and some ruffling, Saki came out of the room with a half-filled garbage bag and laptop in one hand.

'So,' she paused. 'Something came up and I didn't get to rearrange the house. We're,' she stressed, 'going to have to move most of my university things out of here. I've bought a futon already and put your boxes in here, so we'll just need to set that up and it'll be liveable at least.'

'Thank you,' Junpei said. He got the impression Saki expected him to be grateful for this level of support even though it was literally providing him a place to sleep. Father is making this happen. Be made at him, he thought to himself as much as about her.

They spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening disassembling the furniture that had been set up. Junpei actually had the room with the balcony, which from the looks of the rubbish was the beer, cigarettes and computer binge room before this. Some of the furniture, namely the shelves, was built into the walls and it seemed like Saki had ordered a futon that fit specifically into the space available and had some kind of idea of how she would have rearranged the room. At least she wasn't lying, Junpei guessed.

Once they'd moved the books out, Saki had somewhat disappeared and left Junpei to his own devices. She'd checked in at least twice, mostly to confirm what he wanted for dinner and then to bring him the ramen they had delivered.

By dinner time, he'd set up his futon and started to unpack a few of his items. He knew he needed a desk and some storage and was halfway through drafting the e-mail to his father when she chimed in that she'd been given money to help him sort that out and they'd do it tomorrow. He got the impression she just didn't want their father to know.

Nothing remarkable happened for the rest of the night. Between both of them being engrossed in their phones once they'd eaten dinner and especially now that Junpei had wifi again, the tiredness from rearranging the house and the massive change in his life that today had been, Junpei crawled into bed with a polite goodbye a lot earlier than he normally would and rather than wallow in a mix of emotions like he'd expected to, he fell straight into a deep sleep.