Tears slipped down the girl's pale face as she hugged the dark haired boy tightly to her. Her body was shaking slightly with sobs.
"Hey," the boy said. "Don't worry. We'll see each other again in June."
The girl nodded. "I know..." she pulled away. "Bye Nick, I'll see you soon, right?"
The boy nodded. "Of course Kari."
Kari nodded and hugged the girl standing next to her oldest friend. "Bye Crystal."
The punk-rocker girl smiled and hugged her friend back, their green and red hair clashing. "Don't worry Kari, I'll email you every day," the girl said, her English accent making Kari smile as it always did.
"Promise?"
"Of course!"
"Okay...." Kari looked down at the silver locket hanging around her neck, her short, dark red hair falling into her sea green eyes. "Okay...I'll email you when I get there okay?"
Her two best friends nodded sadly and watched as Kari got onto the plane. Crystal leaned on Nick for support. "She'll be okay, right Nick?"
They watched as the plane lept into the sky. "Of course she will."
***
A girl with dark red hair stepped off of the continental plane and looked blearily around. This was were she was supposed to meet the family that hse would be boarding with...right?
On the plane ride over, Kari had worried and worried and then decided to stop worrying. She decided to think about what she wanted to be like in this city. She had a brand new start here, she could be anything that she wanted.
About half of the way to Japan, Kari decided that she wanted to just be one of the kids that kind of blended in. She looked around her at the sea of black hair and sighed, tugging a lock of her dark red waves. That would be hard...
Maybe she should be the class clown type person....nah. She never really was that funny anyway. Kari sighed. As much as she wanted to make friends here, she didn't want to go through what she went through with Nick and Crystal back home. It was so painful....and she'd had a good deal of pain in her life.
So, cold it was.
Of course the girl found the problem with that as soon as the plane landed in Japan. She was, to say the least, an emotional person. It would be...a challenge. That's what it would be. A challenge.
"Kari?" a voice asked. "Kari Jeons?"
A girl about Kari's age was standing in front of her peering at her with huge azure eyes. She had short brown hair and was wearing a short blue skirt and a pink top. Very different from Kari's own black jeans, baggy T-shirt and huge skateboarding shoes.
"Um...hi?" Kari blushed. That sounded stupid. "I'm Kari."
The girl smiled brightly. "Good! My name is Tea Gardener, my mom sent me to pick you up."
"You can drive?" Kari asked, surprised. The girl only looked about her age, fifteen or so.
Tea blushed. "No, I took the bus."
Kari nodded and heaved the heavier of her three bags onto her shoulder. Although she was staying for a year, she had only brought three bags. Two were filled with clothes and the such and the third was a backpack filled with all of her writing notebooks and pictures of her friends and the things that they had given her.
The two girls began to walk towards a bus parked out in the front of the terminal. The ride to the city was a short one, only about ten minutes or so. Kari took a deep breath as she saw a sign proclaiming: 'Welcome to Domino City!'.
Domino City, her home for nine months.
***
Tea's home was huge, or at least compared to Kari's. It was two stories tall and looked like a mansion compared to the tiny four room home that Kari had last lived in.
Tea's room was also big and another bed had been put up in it, for Kari to sleep in.
Kari was about to smile, about to thank Tea graciously but she remembered just in time that she was going to be stoic here. She couldn't make any friends...because she didn't know if she was going to be able to say good-bye to them when her nine months were up.
So she just nodded. "Cool. Nice house. Nice room."
"Tea! Are you home?"
The brown-haired girl smiled at the sound of the voice and then turned towards Kari. "I'll be right back, okay? That's my friend Joey." She paused. "On second thought, want to come down and meet him?" The red haired girl nodded and followed her new room mate down the stairs.
Joey tapped his foot impatiently, waiting for Tea to hurry up. He needed her advice, quickly. Well her opinion really.
Footsteps crowded his ears and he looked up at the stairs to see two girls coming down them. One was Tea. The other was a girl that Joey had never seen before. She was about Tea's height, with short dark red hair. She was wearing dark, baggy clothes.
"Hey Joey," Tea said. She pulled the mysterious girl in front of her. "This is Kari Jeons. She's the American exchange student that I told you about."
"Oh yeah," Joey nodded and smiled. "My name is Joey Wheeler. I'm sure that Tea has told you all about me and my fantastic dueling skills."
Kari gave him an odd look. "Dueling?"
Before Joey could say anything, Tea quickly intervened. "What did you need Joey?"
The blonde boy nodded. "Right." He pulled two boxes out of his pocket and opened them for Tea. In each was a ring. One was a band of gold intertwined with silver. On the top sat a beautiful diamond. The other ring had the same band, but it had a beautiful light blue stone on it. "Which one should I give to Mai?" Joey asked. "Tonight we're going out to dinner. It's our year anniversary."
Tea looked astounded by both rings. "Joey?" she asked softly. "Where are you getting the money for this?"
The brown-eyed boy shrugged. "Some left over money from the Duelist Kingdom, plus the money I've saved up from working at the cafe. So...which one?"
The brown-haired girl blinked. "Um..."
"The one with the blue stone." Joey and Tea looked at Kari who was staring at the rings.
"You sure?"
Kari bit her lip thoughtfully. "What does she look like?"
Joey cocked his head slightly, a smile creeping onto his face. "Long blonde hair, beautiful violet eyes, small red lips....a nice body...wears skirts a lot."
Kari nodded. "Yeah. The one with the blue stone." Tea nodded in agreement.
Joey smiled hugely and stuck the box in the pocket of his jacket. "Thanks guys."
"Tell us how it goes!" Tea yelled at Joey's quickly fleeting back. She sighed as she shut the door and turned to Kari. "He's such a goof but sometimes...." she smiled. "Sometimes he can actually be serious." Then she sighed again. "Tomorrow is a school day. So let's get your stuff unpacked, okay?"