Minako walked out of the clothing store that she helped run and made her way home. She hummed as she passed by crowds of people on their way home from wherever they had come from. A few children had been smiling and laughing at silly things they saw and thought about and a few jocks swarmed by with football as their leader. Just another busy day in Tokyo for Minako. The sun was shining bright above the office buildings and the scarcely spread trees standing in front of fire hydrants and on sidewalks, swaying back and forth from the wind that blew from the alley ways between each building. Yep, just another busy, noisy, hot, normal day in Tokyo for Minako. So, why was there this foreboding presence lingering in the back of Minako's mind that almost made her hair stand on end? She looked left, right, up, and down at her neatly tied tennis shoes trying to locate the fading presence. But so far, no luck.
She straitened her back and held her head up and walked. Many people looked at her like she was acting strange, but she didn't think she was. Many eyebrows rose as she continued to shift her eyes in every direction around her. 'This feeling is weird.' She thought to herself. A cold breeze swept by and Minako held her long orange hair on the side of her shoulder. She looked over at the trees wondering why they weren't making a sound as the wind rushed by. The trees were still. The people were walking normally and no ones clothes or hair moved with this sudden chill of wind. 'Even weirder.' Minako turned to the alley ways to feel no wind. She turned back to the people to see that they had completely stopped moving! 'What the heck is going on?'
"Kaoru!" A voice yelled coming from the alley way. "Kaoru" It screeched again.
"Kaoru? Whose Kaoru?" Minako asked herself. "Hello?" She called to the dark damp alley. Another cold wind rushed by and the walls began to change. Moss was slowly dissipating from the brick walls as the walls too began to fade into wooden ones. The cans lay out on the streets crumpled and popped out of existence as bright green luscious grass formed on the streets hiding the ugly gray asphalt. Poles leant up the now wooden walls began to grow in width and height and change to a perfect colour brown as leaves sprouted from each limb forming on the pole/tree. "What is going on here?" Minako screamed as the world began to change before her eyes. Her world that she had lived in so peacefully with others, now forming into a world that no one could imagine. Minako turned to flee from this beautiful scene, to find that the street had left; the sidewalks were replaced by more grass, as the streets were now tan coloured dirt. The trees had grown four times their original height and the people were gone! There was no one in sight. "What the hell? What happened?!"
"Kaoru!" The voice screamed again. "Where are you?"
Minako gasped. "That's a boy's voice! Maybe I can ask for their help." She told herself. The boy was screaming the name even more but no faint answer of another human being responded. Minako was so close to just saying, "I'm over here!", but then how was she going to explain herself to the boy that she wasn't who he was looking for? She sighed, knowing that the only way to get out of this was to confront the boy and ask him for help.
"Kaoru! You stupid girl! Where the hell are you?"
"Um...Hey!" She screamed to the trees. A boy came out behind one of them and stopped. The look on his face was priceless. It was a mix between familiarity and surprise. Minako walked to him cautiously, like approaching a scared animal scared by humans hunting. "Uh..I'm sorry to interrupt your searching but I need help. Can you?"
The boy kept staring at her. 'This girl looks like someone I know.' He thought to himself. He looked the girl up and down. She was wearing a short red flannel skirt with a milky coloured shirt, neatly tucked in the skirt. Her long red hair that reached a little past her mid back flowed with the on-coming breeze as her warm smile held most of his gaze. "Y-yeah, sure I can help-?"
"Oh! I'm Kenshin, Minako !"
It was like a white bolt of lighting struck behind the boy. He looked at the girl and noticed her fair purple eyes. "K-Kenshin did you say?"
"Hmmh!" Minako smiled as she bounced back and forth on her heels. "What's your name?"
"It's uh..." He gulped. "Yahiko. Myojin, Yahiko ." He bowed.
"Please to meet you, Yahiko." Minako said smiling.
"You said you needed help?"
"Oh yes. You see, it might sound strange but I was walking home from my store and this strange wind picked up and I heard a voice calling someone, you i think, and i went to check in the alley way but no one was there and than the brick walls began to change and the cans and poles and sidewalks and streets were disappearing and-" Minako stopped, noticing the look on Yahiko's face. He clearly was confused.
"What's a sidewalks?" His face twisted to try and contemplate what exactly was happening.
"Oh, um....uh..where am I?" 'I'm clearly not home if this guy can't tell what a sidewalk is.'
"Tokyo."
"But that's impossible. I was just in Tokyo. How can this be Tokyo?"
"It's Tokyo alright, Tokyo during the Meiji Era." Yahiko said standing tall to be proud.
"Wha-?" Minako was the now the one confused. She spun around to check her surroundings to make sure she wasn't going crazy, but alas, when you don't watch where you're going, your likely going to run into something. That's exactly what happened to Minako: She spun around so fast that she ran smack dab into a tree. The last thing she saw as she hit the ground was Yahiko yelling out her name and coming to her aid and then she blacked out.
Minako began to stir as she opened her eyes to a sunny room. She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes. "What happened?" She asked the lonely room. Except, the room wasn't as lonely as she thought.