Hi, I'm Riken Ishida. I won't be the one narrating this story, but I wanted to start it off by telling you about my current situation. So, my mother got a job in Japan. We moved there over the summer and I am starting high school this year. Yep, I'm in ninth grade. It was pretty new going to a Japanese school but I had seen many of them in anime and manga that I read. Of course, my mother made me learn Japanese just in case. However, the school speaks in total English which is awesome for me. It's your typical Japanese high school too. The students wear standardized uniforms, guys in pants and girls in skirts. No confusing schedules and class changes. Eat anywhere on campus during lunch break. It's pretty cool. I thing I'll like it. However, as I was filling out my resume to join, the last question asked me about my spirit animal. It gave me a link to a separate website so I could take the quiz for it.
After maybe an hour of questions being thrown at me, I finally got my results. My spirit animal was supposedly the wolf. I felt proud of that. The top canine as my spirit animal, well who wouldn't want that? I recorded my results and sent in the resume. Then, two weeks later, an acceptance letter came back giving me my class number, the books I'd need to buy, and any general supplies I'd need. The rest of the time I was there during summer, I was buying my supplies along with some new video games, anime, and manga. During one of those trips, a girl came up to me and asked if she could have a picture with me. I agreed and we took a selfie together. However she had to have been wearing make-up or a suit of some kind because she looked like a snow leopard. Her tail even moved, which impressed me with her "costume."
As I walked around town a lot more, I saw more and more people like that girl, however, in different animals. I saw wolves, tigers, jackals, lions, and all sorts of other people like them. I was beginning to think that people in this town were really into to dressing up like anthropomorphic animals. I got more information from the school in the mail, mainly about different clubs I could join. I decided I'd join the combat club and the swimming club, for obvious reasons, wink wink. Anyways, after another month of walking around, reading manga, and watching anime in my new room and in my new house, my mother found a very well-paying job and then the first day of school came along. I rushed downstairs in my new uniform with my backpack on, grabbing a pack of pop-tarts out of the box and heading out the door. I hopped on my bike, riding like crazy to my new school. I was so excited! Then I turned the corner, and that's where this story begins...