*I own nothing but the OCs. Thanks for reading!*

The Big Move

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

-George Bernard Shaw

Chapter One

"Upset" can't even begin to describe how Rose Matlin felt when she heard the news. Distressed? No. Enraged? Close, but no cigar. In actuality, her feelings at the time could in no way be captured by just one word. All Rose knew was that she felt like she was dying; she felt on the verge of a waterfall of tears, like she was experiencing the worst period cramps in the history of period cramps, and like she had all of her breath violently strangled out of her lungs, all at once. The world that she once knew and took for granted was falling apart.

Rose just found out that she and her family would be moving to Japan in a year thanks to her father's work, and that they would stay there permanently. Rose loved America. She loved her suburban neighborhood outside of Boston. She loved going to sports games and cheering loudly and unabashedly for her favorite teams. Rose had only been outside of the U.S. a handful of times, but only on family vacations. She was sure that there were plenty of people who would kill to be in her position, but it was a tough pill for her to swallow, knowing that after her freshman year at her local public school, she would have to leave all of her friends and local family members behind in order to move to a completely foreign land.

The day after her father sat her and her little brother, Mikey, down to tell them the news, the 14 and 12 year-old, respectively, were sent off to a Japanese tutor in Boston, supposedly the best in the city. Rose had taken French in school for the past 8 years and still knew close to nothing. She liked to blame that fact on the awful language teaching system that America offers children, but deep down, she knew she had to put some of the blame on herself. After all, maybe if she had worked a little harder in pre-k instead of sticking French fries up her nose to show off her walrus impression, maybe she would now fluently parle francais. She felt that there was no way she could learn Japanese in a mere year; they didn't even use the same alphabet! Nonetheless, she decided that the least she could do was try her best in the time that she was given.

Her teacher, a tiny old woman by the name of Abe Akemi (last name first, she learned, was proper etiquette in Japan), with her long, gray hair tied up in a low bun. With Abe-sensei , as Rose learned to call the elder Japanese woman, she learned that there were a ton of rules in Japan that extended beyond the language itself. Things as seemingly simple as taking your shoes off after entering a home baffled and confused Rose at first, but as she and her family immersed themselves (in Rose's case, reluctantly) in Japanese culture and language.

"I thought you'd be more into this, Rose! Or should I say, uh…" she leafed through an English to Japanese dictionary that she had started carrying everywhere in her purse until she found what she was looking for. She pointed aggressively to a word on the page.

"…Aha! Musume!"

Rose facepalmed. "Mom, you're so embarrassing! God!" she paused before asking, "and why did you think that, anyway?"

"Well, you and your brother, you especially, have always loved those cartoons. You know, the ones with the violent, screaming kids? They have huge eyes and say 'Oh! Ah! Wah!' and-"

"Mother, please stop while you are not ahead," Rose interrupted. "First of all, it's called anime. Secondly, the show is Naruto, and lastly, they don't sound like that! Plus, why would watching anime make me an expert on Japan? Not all Japanese people are Naruto! They don't all do Sexy Jutsus and run up trees using impressive chakra control!"

"Run up trees…" Rose's father repeated. He sighed whimsically. "I remember when you were in that phase. You would run up our big old oak in the backyard with some chalk in your hand and mark your highest spot. It was always just adorable when you did that little hand sign before running at that tree, you always looked so darn serious! Those were the days!"

A look of pure horror covered Rose's face. She stared first at her father, at his shiny balding head and bespectacled face, at his short, graying beard and pale skin. She then looked at her mother, a pretty woman in her early forties, seven years younger than her father. She had bright, green eyes, short blonde hair, a youthful face, and was even paler than Rose's father, thanks to her polish ancestry. Rose sighed. Her parents were so embarrassing, so American. And so was she. She glanced over at her little brother. Mikey was furiously mashing the buttons on his Nintendo DS, his long, skinny legs bouncing up and down on the floor and his big, brown eyes trained on the double screens. He had dark brown hair and was skinny as a twig. Rose had a feeling that he'd do pretty well in Japan.

With only a groan in response to her goofy parents, she ran from the living room, leaving her family member sitting reminiscing or playing games on the couch, as she sprinted up to her room on the third floor of her house. She was gasping for air as she attempted to wash her hands of her parents' craziness. As she washed, she looked into the mirror at her own reflection and grimaced. There was no way she'd fit in at Japan. Rose took a moment to study her own face. She saw light, almost golden brown eyes gazing bad at her critically. She saw thick, dark eyebrows and breast-high light brown hair with natural blonde streaks. If she smiled creepily huge like the weirdo that she sometimes tended to be, she saw a little dimple that appeared at the top of her right cheek. She thought it was embarrassing, since people seem to find lower dimples cute and normal. Then, she glanced down at her body and scowled. She was certain that the Japanese would find her chubby. She wasn't overweight, but she surely wasn't a stick like her brother. Rose Matlin was a sports fanatic, and she had the strong, body of an athlete. Still she couldn't help but be embarrassed by her thunder thighs and thicker limbs. She wished more than anything to be taller than her 5'7" frame, which may have been tall for some, but wasn't enough for her. She wanted to be Michael Jordan. Every night she did the same thing that he did as a child and sprinkled some salt in her tennis shoes in a desperate and last resort effort to reach 6 feet tall.

It didn't work.

Rose was done analyzing herself. She hustled to her room, grabbed a worn, leather basketball, and jogged down the steps and out her back door to her basketball hoop in her backyard. Rose loved basketball. She lived for it. She had played since the 3rd grade and as only a freshman in her Boston high school, worked her way into the Varsity starting lineup. Rose frowned as she wondered if they even played basketball in Japan. She assumed that all they had was sumo-wrestling and ninja training. Clearly, she wasn't as into researching the country and its customs as her parents were.

She shook her head as she began to dribble her ball on the concrete of her driveway. The sky behind her glowed stunning shades of pink, gold, and orange, as the sun slowly set and day turned to night. Rose took the ball in her right hand and tried to focus on her form as she stood right in front of the hoop, shot, and snapped her wrist, making sure to follow through. The ball swished through the net. When she stepped back a few feet and added her guide hand, making sure to actually bend her knees and jump this time, she frowned as the ball rolled around the rim and out. Something with her form was off. She got close to the basket again and dropped her guide arm, going back to square one. She stayed out there until the sky was only lit by a smattering of stars and Boston's bright city lights in the distance. Rose sat down on the concrete and crossed her legs, then folded her hands in her lap. Whenever she finished practicing, she liked to take a moment to become one with the hoop and ball. She did this nearly every day for the rest of her last year in America.

*Author's Note: The KnB characters will begin appearing at Chapter 4. After that, they'll always be there, I swear! These first few chapters are mostly so you can get to know the OC. So don't worry, things will begin to heat up soon enough. Thanks for reading :) Please leave reviews, I'd love to know what you think and what you think/hope will happen!*