A U T H O R S N O T E
I REALLY like this story myself. It rather popped into my head when we were having a math test in school. Urgh, I had to write it down before I could concentrate on baka math again! If you want me to continue this story, you have to help me. This whole chapter just came to me from god, or something (sweat drops) but I don't know how it will proceed from now on. If you have an idea, please review or just write to me and tell me about it! Because I really want to continue.
D I S C L A I M E R
I do not own these characters. And I'm merely borrowing them for this story. So, if you bother to sue me, you'll lose and still be broke.
C L A I M E R
This is my story! Steal and you won't live to see tomorrow.
F U L L S U M M A R Y
My name is Sakura Mikan and I live in the most tedious place on earth. The roads are either, so small, slow and insignificant that snails set up home in the middle of them, or they are so big and fast that by the time you've seen the Yuasa sign you are already leaving the village. The only time that people who don't live here pull off this road is to try and get a packet of fags or if they are drunk. Fat chance, that anyone famous would ever move to this tedious place... That was until he came along and turned my world upside-down.
"YESTERDAY
TODAY WAS TOMORROW
AND TOMORROW, TODAY WILL BE YESTERDAY."
Prologue
Written by Sie
My name is Sakura Mikan. I come from Japan. Well, from Yuasa, frankly. Not many people do and I can see why. Nothing really happens there, so it doesn't take much to give us something to talk about. It's just a stop-off site, no one works here. People have to commute to find anything of real interest. There's plenty to do in Nagoya or Tokyo, but it's far enough away that I can't go there too easily and close enough to tempt me all the time.
And my house is even worse. I live in a cul-de-sac with my Jii-chan and mother (my father passed away when I was little), which is not exactly lively. The only people that come past are the same people that have been coming past for the whole of my life. There is a bit of character behind my house, though, the woman with ever-changing hair. It's black now but it started off grey, went blonde, then ginger, then almost purple. I'm sure it will go through all the colours of the rainbow before it settles on any one colour.
Sticking with the subject of strange-coloured hair, I move on to the strange hairdresser place down the road, used almost entirely by old women. They go in and come out hours later with an abundance of curls and a lovely blue rinse. Blue hair! Why do these people want it? It's so unnatural.
I think that they're probably a neo-Nazi group and that it's their symbol, not shaved hair but blue hair. They meet and plan how they're going to take over the world and make everyone have haircuts like them. All from a decrepit little shed with net curtains that they call a hairdresser's.
Or only line of defence would be the semi-literate gangs of brain-dead youths that hang around on the street corners. What is it about them, though? How can something such as a street corner provide so much fascination for so many people? The amount of time spent on street corners is amazing. Were they put there to entertain and amuse the mentally retarded, or do they have a deeper, more sinister purpose? Now, I must admit that I can turn into one of these people if there is nothing better to do, but as our last line of defence against the blue rinse, would it do?
If we were to win this vicious gang warfare, then we would have to recruit new troops. There would only be one way we could make anybody come into Yuasa: use the landmark, the Mecca to the surrounding area – recruit from the English chip shop! Technically the chip shop isn't a chip shop, it's a Chinese take-away. But this seems to be beyond the comprehension of the simple Yuasa folk. They just call it a good old English fish and chip shop.
It also isn't really in Yuasa at all, it's in Kyasta, the next village. But seeing as they are so inextricably linked and so close, then the savage war against the militant blue-haired women would definitely spill over and make this a multi-village conflict.
Now, truthfully it is unlikely that this would ever happen, as the old women can hardly move, let alone do anything mildly violent. But if it did, then this would definitely go down in Yuasa as the first time that anything vaguely interesting had ever really happened. Since the coalmines closed down about a million years ago, no one has worked here. It's a dormant village. It's dead.
There are the occasional things that happen here, though, to give us a slight break from the constant monotony of village life, such as playing 'guess the name of the village shop'. We have one shop that has been linked to almost every chain of small shops imaginable and has had to constantly diversify in order to survive.
At the moment, it has the oldest, most pathetic selection of videos you have ever seen, but a selection none the less. Before this it had a pet food section and for a while even had a small corner they tried to call a bank. How exciting!
The roads of the village are pretty boring. They are either, so small, slow and insignificant that snails set up home in the middle of them, or they are so big and fast that by the time you've seen the Yuasa sign you are already leaving the village. The only time that people who don't live here pull off this road is to try and get a packet of fags or if they are drunk.
The skies of Yuasa can play host to much more exciting things, though. With British Aerospace only a few miles away and us directly in the flight path, then occasionally we are in for a real treat, a glimpse of the majestic grandeur of English aviation history, some might say. We are too affected by the USA and England, Jii-chan would say.
Souring over us with all the grace and splendour of a graceful and splendid thing, Concorde often makes the people of Yuasa stop, look to the sky and think to themselves that not all things in life are as bad as living here.
Many of the people in the village used to work at the aircraft works not too long away, but not anymore. With job cuts people are moving away and the village is dying. But I have to ask myself: is that really a bad thing?
In summer, it's more fun, though. The temperature gets up to 25 degrees (77 F) and it seems the whole village goes to the beach. The best one – or I might add – the only one, is called Hanabi no Musko (The Flower's daughter) near where we live. It is a very good beach for surfing, so of course everyone does it. Most days we walk down for a swim after school. But that is only in summer.
If a sixteen-year-old girl like me wanted to bore herself to death, I can think of three things that would be effective:
1. A conversation of over 0.01 microseconds with Plastic Pamela Anderson.
2. Being married to the Prime Minister (You might as well become a nun.)
3. Living in Yuasa. (Dinner in a morgue surrounded by stiffs would be a wild party compared to this)
Some of you may think I'm right after hearing this – some of you might think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, so let me tell you the story of how I came to live here. In the summer of 2000, June to be precise, we came back to Japan after nearly eight years' absence. We had been in England, prior to that. Initially, my mother wanted a house in Nagoya. That was fine by me, except that she couldn't find a house that suited us there. In the end we started to house-hunt elsewhere, namely in Yuasa.
As misfortune would have it; she did find a house that she liked, so that was that. The deeds were done and our fates were sealed. If my memory serves me correctly, then my initial reaction was "No way, I'm not going to live miles away from the city". But whether I liked it or not, we moved to Yuasa.
Yuasa is an old housing development that was started (but never ended) about thirty years ago by some devious person who obviously doesn't like the countryside or the people who live there. This person planned the development of a housing estate, and the housing was about all he planned for. He completely overlooked any sources of amusement for the inhabitants. Well, there's the school of course.
I can honestly tell you that my secondary school is the most boring place on earth and, to top it all, some of the teachers suck. A certain Jinno-sensei gave us a science exam. He told us what we had to do, but I misheard and ticked the boxes instead of colouring them in. he then accused me of cheating. His accusations were totally unfounded. I couldn't hear on the day, due to a cold blocking up my left ear. This I thought was a bit too much. I mean, if a pupil accused a teacher, they would be in a heap of trouble but if it's the other way round the teachers get off scot-free. The fact that I suck at math, the other subject he teaches in, doesn't really help any further.
Anyway, enough of school. It's a very depressing topic. Instead, let's talk some more about Yuasa. My neighbours are mostly O.A.P or families with young children. It seems to me that all the children are blonde, blue-eyed and very, very noisy. I'd join in the noise making if I weren't so old. What a pity (Sigh). The older people in my neighbourhood comprise of a South African lady, the blonde noisemaker's parents and a family who, for the sake of discretion, I call the Stonefaces.
The Stonefaces have a five-bedroomed house but Mr and Mrs Stoneface don't live there all week because they are very clever. Not that there's anything wrong with being clever. I have never seen their son who is attending some famous university, the daughter (Miss Stoneface) goes to my class and Mrs Stoneface is a primary school teacher. Brains obviously run in the family. Interestingly enough, they have their own garage full of motorbikes. I don't think anyone who owns so many motorbikes can be that dull. In my eyes, the Stonefaces are OK, despite the teaching. I'd love to own their bikes because whenever things get rough, I could jump onto the back of one and drive off onto the sunset. Now that would be cool… but I would never have the guts to ask Miss Stoneface about it.
This is probably the most boring autobiographical account ever written but what did you expect? I live in Yuasa, the land of the living dead, not Beverly Hills, the land of sex, drugs and Christian Slater. If I were there, I really would have something to write about but as I'm not, that is my excuse for sending you all to sleep. I wish to say one last thing: beware of Yuasa, the most tedious place on earth.
Now why would anyone famous ever move to such a place?
I didn't know either. Well, that was until he came along.