Disclaimer: I don't own Initial D, Shigeno-sensei and the Kodansha Publishing Company do.

The Kizuna Ethridge name and character belongs to fellow Initial D fanfic author SouthSideSlider.

Golden Arrows

Prologue

Goose Creek City, South Carolina, USA – February 2021

Just like every Friday evening, eighteen year old Kizuna Ethridge was at the repairs shop owned by her forty five year old Uncle Josh. He was the younger brother of her father Kenneth and while both siblings had been heavily involved in motorsports, Josh suddenly retired when Kenneth died in a horrific crash nearly fifteen years ago.

'What do you think?' the girl asked him looking at the engine they had in front of them. They both had their arms crossed and they were staring at the thing a bit like a couple of doctors confronted with an ailing patient.

'You want me to be honest?' her uncle asked her.

'Of course,' she replied glancing at him with a frown on her grease smudged face.

'I think,' Josh started, 'that it's too bad that a young girl like you spends her Friday evenings with an old man like me worrying about how we can salvage this engine.'

'Uncle Jo…'

'Kizu,' he interrupted her, 'you know I love having you around and that you're very useful more often than not but, you're eighteen and you've just graduated from high school, you should be having the time of your life with your girlfriends.'

'What girlfriends?' she challenged him, raising her eyebrows.

'Er…'

'Look,' she said, 'I know that if I made an effort I could try and enjoy the company of Cheryl and the rest of her gang of cheerleaders but, to be honest, you know I've never really been into any of the stuff they talk about. Seriously, sometimes it seems like they're speaking in a different language.'

'Kizu…' he started again.

'Besides,' she continued, 'what's the point of trying to make friends if I might be leaving soon?'

Uncle Josh considered this briefly and, nodding a couple of times, he returned his attention to the engine so that he could buy himself time to formulate what he wanted to say next. Just like the girl she had next to him, he'd never been exceptionally good at dealing with this kind of things.

'Kizu,' he finally tried, 'I get what you're saying but, make me a promise, will you?'

'Sure,' Kizuna said.

'Use this chance to try and make new friends,' he told her, 'you know your mum is worried about you.'

'Alright, I'll do my best,' Kizuna promised, 'speaking of mum: she hasn't talked to you about, you know...'

'Yes,' Josh replied, 'she's very happy about it. She thinks it's the chance you need to get out of here and see a bit of the world so don't worry about her; or me for that matter. Even if you go to Antarctica you'll always have a home here with us, you know that, right?'

'Of course,' the girl replied.

Kizuna felt the usual knot tying her throat while she thought of leaving the beautiful southern town where she had grown up for most of her life. She was understandably excited about the prospect of a new life but, the very thought of going out there on her own scared her so much she had not slept properly in weeks.

Shaking the feeling off, she armed herself with a wrench and, following her uncle's instructions, they started disassembling the engine so that they could then decide if there was a way to get the engine of that poor 1994 red Camaro running ever again.

Later on that evening, Kizuna went home to find her mother in the kitchen working on one of her latest recipes. Rather tall for Japanese standards, Salina Ethridge was also a little more outspoken than her fellow countrywomen and, seeing her daughter standing there with her jeans and jumper full of grease, dirt and only goodness knew what else had her shouting in no time at all:

'YOU, SHOWER, NOW.'

Kizuna tried to repress a chuckle while she ran out of the kitchen. She then walked up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, on her way to the bathroom. Once there, she took her clothes off and, catching her own reflection on the mirror, she realised that she did look rather bad.

'Oh wow,' she gasped.

Stepping onto the shower plate, she spent the next few minutes scrubbing until the water became clear once again. She then dried herself and covered her wet hair with a thick white towel thinking that she might do something about it later.

Clean and pyjama clad, she returned to the kitchen.

'Mum…' she started.

'Kizuna,' her mother interrupted her pulling a white envelope out of the front pocket of her apron, 'this came for you this morning,' she then added looking at her daughter with a smile on her still youthful face.

'Oh,' was all that the girl could say.

'You want me to open it?' Salina asked her.

'No,' Kizuna replied, 'er…I…'

'Let's sit down,' her mother proposed and, taking her by her arm, the two women made their way to the living room. There, they sat down on the plush dark brown settee and only then she gave the envelope to her daughter, frowning a little when she noticed the way Kizuna's hands were shaking.

'Okay,' the girl said, 'here we go.'

She opened the envelope and in those few moments she considered all the effort she'd put into studying, all the sacrifices she'd had to do in order to follow her late father's motto: always chase your dreams no matter how impossible they might seem. Now, her entire life depended on what this single sheet of paper said.

'Kizuna?' she heard her mother say.

'Yeah,' the girl said absentmindedly.

Gathering all the courage she needed, she started reading the letter. She read it twice just in case she missed something, after all, it was written in the most formal register of the Japanese language and some of those kanji were awfully difficult to understand. Despite that, she still understood the general message.

'Mum…' she breathed.

'Are you…'

The poor woman never finished the sentence because right at that instant, her daughter engulfed her in the mother of all the bear-like hugs. Kizuna felt some tears of joy rolling down her cheeks while she started laughing in an almost hysterical manner. If she hadn't been hugging her mother, she was sure she would have skipped around the house like a frigging kangaroo.

'Kizuna?' her mother asked.

'I'm in,' the girl replied pulling herself away, 'Mum, I'm in! I made it!'

Salina smiled at her with one of her motherly smiles and, cupping her daughter's face with both of her tiny hands, she nodded once before the two of them hugged again. This time it was her turn to start crying.

'Mum,' Kizuna said all of sudden, 'this is still okay with you, right?'

'Of course,' Salina hurried to say.

'I mean,' the girl continued, 'I'll be gone for nearly four years and…'

'Honey,' Salina interrupted her, 'you've worked very hard to get in the Maebashi Institute of Technology. I can't possibly become a hindrance to you now. You need to go; we'll be here for you no matter what, okay?'

'That's what Uncle Josh said,' Kizuna confessed with a small voice.

'Your uncle has always been a wise man,' Salina said looking very serious.

'So,' Kizuna said, 'I'm really going to Japan.'

'It looks like it,' Salina replied, her smile returning to her face.

'Wow,' the girl gasped, 'I have so much stuff to do now!'

The mother laughed softly at her daughter's panicked expression but, in her mind, she had already started making a list of things which she would need to do to send her only daughter away for college. She also hoped that by keeping herself busy enough, she would not have time to think that the day had finally come and her baby was leaving the nest.

Two weeks later, Kizuna's room was a mess: books, magazines, clothes and toiletries were spread everywhere and a couple of rather large suitcases were placed on top of her bed. She had never been exceptionally good at packing and things got a whole lot more complicated since she had to be selective as to what to take with her but pack enough so that she wouldn't need to buy too much stuff in Japan.

'Having problems, I see,' she heard her uncle say.

She looked at the door and, shaking her head, she passed a hand over her face and, giving up, sat down on the bit of the bed which wasn't occupied by the suitcases.

'I don't know what to take with me,' she complained, 'I just want to pack so much stuff but I…'

'Hey,' Josh said, 'just take what you think you'll need in the first month you'll be there. The rest, you can either buy it there or we can send it to you from here.'

'All the way to Japan?' Kizuna said, 'it'd cost a fortune!'

'Not really,' Josh said, 'if you have the right contacts in the shipping industry.'

'Uncle Josh…'

'Don't worry about it, okay?' he interrupted her, 'now, why don't you finish packing, your mother has cooked a lovely dinner for us and you know how she gets if the food gets cold.'

'Yeah,' Kizuna said smiling.

'Ah,' Josh said, 'before I forget, here's my going-to-college present.'

He had a brown envelope with him of the kind used to put money in. Kizuna was about to protest when her uncle shoved it into her hands and, making a gesture with his head, he told her to go ahead and open it. She did and, inside, instead of banknotes, she found a piece of paper. Written on it she saw a name and an address from some town called Shibukawa.

'What's this?' she asked.

'You'll see,' Josh said, 'just make sure you go to this address as soon as you get settled at the dorm.'

'But what's in there?' she insisted.

'It's a surprise,' Josh said, 'but don't worry: you only have to wait for a couple of days.'

'Yeah but…'

She couldn't finish the sentence because, right at that moment, Salina showed up with her two passports, the dark blue American and the burgundy Japanese one, and the plane e-ticket that she had just printed out. Shocked by the mayhem which reigned in her daughter's room, she asked:

'You haven't finished yet?'

'Er…'

'Oh,' she complained, 'I'll help you.'

Following Salina's precise instructions, Kizuna found herself closing the two suitcases less than half an hour later and, to her surprise, she saw that she had managed to pack a whole lot more than she originally expected. Mostly thanks to the fact that her mother seemed to use a military-like style of packing.

Less than twelve hours later the three of them made their way towards the United Airlines check-in counter and, within just a few minutes, she saw the two suitcases leaving through the carrying belt. That, more than anything else, made her realise that it was happening: she really was leaving to Japan.

'Call us the minute you get to the dorm,' Salina ordered her.

'I will,' Kizuna said.

'Be careful,' Uncle Josh said, 'but have fun, okay?'

'I will,' Kizuna repeated.

She could tell that her mother was about to start crying and, since she didn't think she could cope with that without bursting into tears herself, she decided to give them both a bear-like hug and, before she could give herself time to think about what she was doing, she grabbed her backpack and, saying a quick 'I love you' to the two people who had raised her, she walked to security so that she could go to the boarding gate.

To be continued…