A few weeks earlier…
"I'm going to miss you so much, Anu-chan!" Kaimu, my little brother, called out as he ran over to my best friend, Anuette, and hugged her tightly. Anuette laughed a little as she hugged him back, even though the tears rolling down her cheeks were obvious.
"I'm going to miss you too." She said, and her English accent was heard. She had a strong accent, though she tried to hide it most of the time, but now she seemed too upset to worry about it. "Both of you." She looked at me as she said that, and I gave her a small smile. I was crying too, I'll admit it. I had been crying all day and I was rather surprised that I still had tears left in me. Kaimu pulled away from Anuette and looked up at her with a big smile. "Make sure you take care of yourselves, okay?" She said.
I nodded and Kaimu said, "Don't worry!" He reached his hands up into the air and stood on his tippy toes, trying to look as tall as he could manage. "I'm a big boy now! I'll take care of mum and Maiya-chan! I'll fight off all the bad guys too!" He began punching the air out in front of him, with a serious look on his face and Anuette and I laughed. I walked over beside him and ruffled his brown hair and he grinned up at me, his brown eyes twinkling with excitement. He was excited to go to Tokyo, where we were moving, since he was born there. Me? Well, I was born here, in England and I was pretty upset that I had to leave.
"We have to get going now, you two." My mother's soft voice came from behind us and I turned to look at her. Her tired looking hazel eyes were looking mainly at me, and she looked apologetic, even though she was smiling. Her short, dark blonde hair fluttered a little in the small breeze that was in here somehow. I gave her a small smile and nodded. She blamed herself for us having to move around a lot. She thought that it was messing with our lives, but I didn't blame her at all, I loved her no matter what.
I turned back and looked at Anuette, who was wiping tears from her eyes with a tissue. "Well, we're going now." I said. I wasn't very good at goodbyes, and I didn't really know what to say at the moment. I walked over to her and gave her a big hug. "Goodbye Anuette." I whispered to her and I could feel the tears well up in my eyes again, and I tried desperately to blink them back. I pulled away from her and she smiled at me.
"Goodbye Maiya." She said. I looked down at Kaimu and grabbed his hand and we both turned around and began heading towards where we would board the plane.
We were moving to Tokyo, Ikebukuro, to be exact. We'd lived in Tokyo before, when mum was pregnant with Kaimu and we'd lived there, me, mum, dad, and Kaimu, when he was born, for three years. After our father died in that car crash, in Tokyo, our mother was obviously upset, so was I, though Kaimu was too young to understand. Mother didn't really want to be there after that, she said that everything reminded her of him. So we moved to England. We'd lived there for almost four years and now we were going back to Tokyo. Confusing, yes, but mum wanted to go there, mostly to see dad's grave. So that's why we're moving there. Though, little did I know that moving there would change my life much more than I thought that it would.
The plane ride wasn't that bad. It started off a little bumpy, but then smoothed out as we went along. It would take twelve hours to get there, but at least we didn't have to switch planes halfway through or anything. To be honest, I didn't completely like planes. To think that you're miles up into the sky, in a giant metal thing with who knows how many other people on it, and with one mistake, the entire plane could plummet down to the Earth. Then we'd all be dead. We're defying gravity here, humans aren't supposed to 'fly' or anything.
I tried to sleep most of the time, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn't get to sleep because Kaimu was sitting next to me. He was continuously talking the entire time, pointing out every cloud that we went past (he just had to be the one sitting next to the window), then commenting on how 'yummy' the food was, and then looking at everyone in the plane and making up stories about them. Most of the stories he made up for them were highly unlikable to be true. The woman behind us was a 'vampire', because she was sleeping and it was night right now, and she had a glass of red drink in her hand. The young teenage guy in front of us was a dragon slayer, because he had a large bag that Kaimu assumed had dragon killing weapons inside. The old lady sitting in the seat in the aisle next to us was actually a witch, who mixed potions with her sister, because she had a pointy noise, raggedy hair and she had a 'scary laugh'.
"And that guy over there-" Kaimu said, pointing at the sleeping, chubby man in front of the 'witch sisters' "is a big guy that ate lots and lots of gummy bears! They'll grow bigger and bigger in his tummy so one day, he'll explode!" I told him that it was rude to say that, but couldn't help but laugh myself. Kaimu said the strangest things.
After making up stories for basically everyone in the plane, including himself and I (he declared me a princess while he was a knight), he began looking a little tired. He never went to sleep the entire plane ride though, claiming that 'knights never had time to sleep; they always had to protect the princess'. So on and on he continued talking. After a while, I finally managed to get to sleep, only to be awoken again by a very hyped up Kaimu what seemed like five minutes later. But the plane had landed then and we had to get off and I was glad.
We grabbed our bags and then got off the plane. The airport was huge. Well, every airport is huge, but this one seemed overwhelmingly large. There were a lot of people here too; I had to carry Kaimu, because he almost got swept away into the crowd several times.
Our bags were checked and everything was fine. Once we'd made our way out of the airport, we caught a taxi to the train station, and then got on the train to Ikebukuro.
The train ride was quiet. Kaimu wasn't talking for once, though mum was. She'd only make small talk though, complimenting on how nice the weather was, and how well-kept the city seemed. Once the train ride was over, we'd had to try and find the apartment we'd be living in. One of my fathers friends live here and we'd sent money over here, so he could buy us a new apartment, and also send all our stuff from our previous house here to our new apartment.
The buildings were huge and colourful and Kaimu and I looked up at them in awe. Kaimu had been here before, he was born here, but he was young back then and he couldn't remember what it was like here in Tokyo. Even I had forgotten what it was like here.
Every few seconds Kaimu would tug on my sleeve and yell out "Maiya-chan, Maiya-chan! Look, look! Look!" Whilst pointing at several different things. Occasionally mum would point out a specific building or park, to say that we'd been there before, or that that was where a friend of hers or dads lived. We'd had to drop by Johnny's house, to pick up the keys to the apartment. He welcomed us here, and told us briefly where we had to go.
It was nice here, very nice. I was starting to think that maybe living here wouldn't be so bad.
By the time we found our apartment, it was noon. The building our apartment was in was just as huge as the rest, it towered above us. I was glad that we weren't living up near the top, our apartment was somewhere in the middle, which was fine with me. We took the elevator to floor eight, and found our apartment. As soon as mum opened the door, all I could see were boxes, everywhere. They were all over the place, in every room.
"Looks like we'll be doing the unpacking! I said in a cheerful voice, attempting to make it sound a little fun.
Mum nodded and gave a smile. "Yes, we will be. I suppose we should start now, then we'll at least have the essential things unpacked."
I walked over to where the bedrooms were, and found what would be my bedroom, well, mine and Kaimu's bedroom. I was going to have to share a room with him, and I didn't mind. He'd always slept in mum's room, back in England, and each night he'd wake up with a nightmare and then take forever to go back to sleep. So I'd volunteered to let him sleep in my room, to give mum a break.
My bedroom was filled with boxes too. The only thing that made it any different from anywhere else in the house was that there were two beds set up, both against walls opposite each other. There were no sheets on them or anything, just a mattress and two bare white pillows on each bed. Well, at least he set up the beds. I thought, knowing that it would be hard for us to even try to set them up. I smiled to myself as I studied each and every aspect of it. It was bigger than my room back in England. I liked it.
And so did Kaimu, apparently. At just a glimpse of the room, he ran in with a grin on his face, and began running around the room and jumping on the beds whilst saying; "My room! My room! My room!" I had to remind him that it was my room too and he just stopped for a moment then smiled at me and began running around again, shouting; "Our room! Our room! Our room!"
Once he'd finished with his running around and everything, we began to unpack some of the boxes in our room while mum unpacked the things in the kitchen. By the afternoon, we'd managed to get seven boxes fully unpacked. We'd put the sheets on the beds, hung some of our clothes in the wardrobe, along with unpacking a few other things and setting them up in the room.
By that time, I could tell that Kaimu was very tired. I'm pretty sure he could have fallen asleep standing up.
"Kaimu?" I said. He looked at me, and I could see that his eyelids were drooping slightly. I couldn't help but laugh a little. "Why don't you have a nap? I can tell that you're tired."
Kaimu instantly cried out, "No way! I'm not tired!" Almost as soon as he'd said that though, his mouth opened up in a large yawn.
I raised one of my eyebrows and crossed my arms against my chest. "You were saying?"
He frowned at me and repeated, "I'm not tired!"
I sighed and unfolded my arms, shaking my head a little. "You're a little boy in denial, Kai." I grabbed his hand and pulled him over to his bed. I pulled the covers down off it, and then pointed at it. To me, the bed looked warm and cosy and I would have loved to have crawled into the bed right now. But Kaimu? He just stared up at me blankly- which is what he usually did when I asked him to go to bed, or to eat all his dinner, or even to have a bath- all things he never wanted to do. He always just gave me a blank look, his way of saying 'No, I don't want to do it, so I'm not'.
I pointed at the bed again, and the blank look of his instantly disappeared and he replaced it with a pout, most likely thinking that he'd win me over that way. But he was wrong, of course. He sighed a little and crawled into the bed reluctantly and pulled the covers up to his chin. He lay there, frowning at me, whereas I gave him a smile. "Goodnight Kai!" I called out in a singsong voice as I walked towards the door, waving at him a little.
I only just heard him mumble; "But I'm not tired…" Just before his eyelids closed. I chuckled a little and walked outside the room, closing the door behind me.
While Kaimu slept, I helped mum unpack the kitchen. For the few hours that Kaimu slept, we'd managed to get a lot done and had almost finished unpacking everything in the kitchen. It was mostly because we didn't really talk. She occasionally made small talk again, asking me if I liked it here, but other than that there was silence. Though it was nice to get things done with no distractions.
After having a just a small nap, Kaimu woke up and walked out to us, crying. He'd said he'd had a bad dream, and mum comforted him like she usually did. I don't know why he had these bad dreams all the time, he'd always just wake up crying and it's been like this since he was only very young.
Since he'd seemed more shaken than usual, mum suggested that we go for a walk and to take a look around, to take his mind off of it. It seemed that as soon as she'd said that we could go for a walk, Kaimu had instantly forgotten about his dream and was immediately excited. Although mum seemed a little hesitant, about letting us go. Even though I didn't really know my way around this area yet, and it was beginning to get dark, I assured her that we'd be fine and that I wouldn't take my eyes off Kaimu.
After a while, she agreed, saying that she trusted me with him. Before we left, I grabbed the small, black bag that I carried everywhere, and slung it over my shoulder. Mum gave me some money and said that we should get something to eat while we were out, too.
As soon as we walked outside, Kaimu's eyes lit up with excitement. I'll admit it; I was a bit excited too. By now, my life back in England was shoved to the back of my mind, and I hadn't thought about it at all for the entire day.
"Look at that, Maiya! It's so big and… and nice!"
Once again, Kaimu was pointing at every building that was in sight, yelling out how big, colourful and good it looked.
"So, Kaimu, what do you want to eat?" I asked him, as we continued walking. There were a lot of people out and we basically had to push past them.
I could tell by the look on his face, that he was deep in thought. His eyes flicked back and forth between each of the stores. His eyes lit up as they fell on a specific restaurant and he looked up at me with a big grin on his face. "I want sushi!" He called out, pointing to a restaurant on the corner of the street.
As is by instinct, I felt my face turn sour. "You want sushi?" I asked him, and he nodded his head and began eagerly pulling me towards to the restaurant. I'd never really liked sushi, or fish, for that matter. I'd tried sushi last time I was here, when I was younger and instantly the taste filled my mouth- a taste that was just wrong to me. After spitting it out in the bin, I remember feeling sick afterwards. I'd just hated it. So, after that, I'd never dared even touch sushi, or fish.
I sighed deeply as Kaimu pulled me into the restaurant. It was crowded, but nice. Most of the tables were occupied with people- families, friends and even people just by themselves. The air was filled with happiness and laughter, and it made me smile.
I walker over to the counter, Kaimu following closely behind, and leaned against the counter. We were served almost immediately, despite the fact that the restaurant was filled with people. Kaimu studied the signs above the counter, with the pictures and information on meals and all that, that you could get here. After a while of him standing there, staring up at it, he pointed at a picture and said that he wanted that one. I instantly forgot what it was called, but ordered mum pretty much the same thing. We waited for a bit, then they gave us our order, and I paid them. Kaimu held my hand as he skipped out of the restaurant, holding the bag of sushi in his other hand.
"Should we go home now?" I asked Kaimu, who was humming a happy little tune, off in his own world. Without even glancing at me, he nodded his head.
All of a sudden, he stopped, and pointed at a small-looking shop. "MANGA!" He squealed, as he ran over to the shop. I followed him curiously, to find that it was a manga shop. He pressed his nose against the glass, trying to peek in. It was closed right now, and the store was dark. I rolled my eyes at Kaimu, but found myself doing the exact same thing. "They didn't have any manga shops in London!" He exclaimed. I nodded my head absentmindedly, but I was really wondering if they had certain manga's that I wanted. Me and Kaimu- we loved manga. Despite the fact that Kaimu was only six years old, he was obsessed with reading it. Most of the time, he'd make me read manga to him, when he was younger and I always agreed, because I had a love for manga too.
I glanced over at the shop door and saw that there was one of those timetable things, saying when it was opened and all that. I walked over to it and read it over. "It's opening at nine tomorrow..." I said to Kaimu, as I ran my fingers over the lines as I read them.
"Can we come here tomorrow then!" He asked, jumping up and down a little. I nodded my head and grinned. I told him that we had to get home now, and he agreed, but I had to basically drag him away. I made a mental note in my head to come here tomorrow. I grabbed Kaimu's hand and began walking away, though he still looking back at it.
Suddenly, when I snapped back to the real world, there was a large man in front of us. He had dark skin, and completely towered over Kaimu and I and he was grinning down at us. "Long time no see!" He called out. His voice was heavy with an accent, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. In his hands he held papers, and he was offering one to me. I took it without saying anything. "Try sushi! It good!" He said.
I shook my head slowly, and looked up at him, slightly puzzled. Kaimu then stepped in front of me and held up the bag of sushi he was holding. "We already got some, mister! Over there!" Kaimu pointing over at the restaurant that we'd bought the sushi from, and smiled.
The man looked over at the restaurant then back at Kaimu, still grinning. "Come back tomorrow and try sushi!"
Kaimu nodded happily and said, "Okay!" He then grabbed my hand and began walking away, back in the direction of our apartment.
The man called out "Long time no see!" again, and I gave him a small wave, before looking at the paper he'd given me. It was a flyer, for a sushi restaurant. Russia Sushi, I thought, as I read it. I glanced back over my shoulder at the man, who was now giving out the flyers to other people- or at least trying to. I wonder if it tastes as bad as normal sushi…
While I thought this, looking back at the man, I wasn't watching where I was going and bumped into someone. My head hit theirs and I stumbled back a little, and I only just saw them do the same. I groaned a little, as my head was now hurting, and looked up to see who I'd run into. There were two teenage boys there, probably about my age. The one I'd bumped into had short blond hair, and brown eyes. He was rubbing his head with one hand, and I felt my eyes widen a bit as I realized my stupidity. "I-I'm sorry! I wasn't looking where I was going!" I said, panicking a little, and hoping that I hadn't actually hurt him.
He opened his mouth to say something, but as he looked at me, his mouth closed and his eyes widened a little. He let his hand drop from his head, and stood up straight with a grin on his face. "Oh, it's nothing." He said, waving his hand in the air in a dismissive manner. "Barely felt a thing."
I gave him a small smile, and then looked over at the other boy, who hadn't said anything yet. He looked a little shorter than the other guy and had short black hair, and blue eyes. The other boy pushed in front of him, back into my view again. "I'm Masaomi Kida!" He said cheerfully. "And what might your name be?"
"I'm Maiya Hayami." I said politely. I felt something tug on sleeve of my shirt a little, and I looked down to see Kaimu. I'd almost completely forgotten he was there. "Oh, and this is my little brother, Kaimu." I said, gesturing at him.
Kaimu smiled up at them, and then looked back over behind him, probably at the manga store. I could tell he wanted to go home, most likely just to eat his sushi then to go to bed, so he could get to the manga store early tomorrow. He was like that.
"It's nice to meet you both." Masaomi smiled at me again and then nudged the other boy in the arm a little and he jumped to attention and looked at him, then at me.
"Oh! I'm Mikado Ryuugamine, nice to meet you." He said. I couldn't help but think how strange his name was. Well, it wasn't really strange, just uncommon, I guess.
Masaomi swung an arm around Mikado's shoulders, grinning, and pointed at him. "This guy is my best-"
At that moment, there was a loud crash, disrupting Masaomi from his sentence. All four of us looked over in the direction of the noise, and I saw the most bizarre thing.
It was a vending machine, flying up into the air.
