Chapter 1: New Ones In The Neighbourhood. (Xiaoyu)
The fourteen hours journey from Osaka to Tokio had been a real horror. The trip was impregnated from the first moment of a feeling of guilt, and the torture didn't stop along the 1500 Kilometers. The only scape for Xiaoyu Ling was pretending to be asleep.
-Welcome to Boringland-said her older sister-. Or better, Yawnland. What about, Frightland? Maybe...
-Shut up, Miharu!-shouted her father from the driver seat.
But the protests of his older daughter grew when it started to rain.
-Uggh!-Miharu kicked the back of her mother's seat-. I don't get it-she continued-. Xiao has survived fifteen years breathing polluted air. Another year is not going to kill her. What if she whore a mask? People could sign on it. It could be an inspiration for new line of accesories for asthmatics. For example, inhalers strung into necklaces or...
-That was enough, Miharu-Keiko sighed, exhausted because of the discussion that extended from one month ago.
-Next year, in september, I'll be in college-pressed Miharu, unaccustomed to lose in a dispute-. Couldn't you wait another year to move?
-This move will benefit the entire family. It's not only for your sister's asthma. The Mishima Politechnical School is the best High School in Tokio. In fact, it's about contact with nature and get away from all the superficiality of Osaka.
Xiaoyu smiled. Her father, Hiroshi, was a famous plastic surgeon, and her mother worked as an image consultant of japanese actors. The superficiality dominated both's life. Both were it's zombies. So Xiaoyu appreciate the efforts of her mother to avoid that Miharu could blame her of the moving. But Xiaoyu felt that, somehow, it was indeed her fault.
In a family of genetically perfect human beings, Xiaoyu Ling supposed an inconsistency. An abnormality.
Hiroshi had been graced with a sublime beauty. The flash of his black eyes resembled a sunbeam on the surface of a lake. His smile had the warmth o the cashmere, and his permanent tan had not affected his skin, of 46 years old.
Keiko was 42 and, thanks to her husband, her skin had undergone to stretching before there was any need. With shoulder-lenght brown hair, her candy colored eyes and her lips, as full of nature that they didn't need collagen, Keiko could have served as a model if she wasn't so small. Everybody said so.
The lucky Miharu was a combination of her parents. She had Keiko's eye color and Hiroshi's shiny smile; Hiroshi's tonned skin and Keiko's perfect skin. Her cheekbones resembled marble railings. And her shoulder-lenght hair had the color of the chocolate.
Miharu's friends took photos of their square chin or straight nose, and gave them to Hiroshi hoping that his hands could do the same miracles that his DNA did. And they ended up getting it.
Even in Xiaoyu's case.
Her chin was small; her tooths, like fangs, and her hair had a less grace black colour. Without wicks. Without reflections. Only black. Her eyes had the grey color and the form of a steptical cat. But her nose was the center of the atention. It had the form of the hip of a camel. But her hability to sing was her best attribute.
But, unfortunately, when she was eight, the asthma appeared and she lost her vocal hability.
When she started the primary school, Hiroshi offered to operate her. But Xiaoyu refused. A new nose wasn't going to cure her asthma so, Why worry? She only had to wait untill the high school and things would change. Girls would be more friendly and boys, more mature.
HA!
When she started high school in Osaka, things turned worse. Girls called her Toucan because of her nose; boys, didn't call her nothing. They didn't look at her.
Hiroshi couldn't take that her daughter would suffer more so, that Christmas, he told Xiaoyu that he discovered a new kind of rhinoplasty that could cure her asthma. She could sing again.
-What a surprise!-said Keiko.
-No more Rudolph-teased Miharu.
-It's about her health, Miharu, and not about her appareance-said Hiroshi.
-Wow! Amazing-Xiaoyu hugged her father.
So she had surgery but, unfortunately, she still couldn't sing.
When she came back to the high school girls were friendly, and boys were shoked.
During a barbecue that the Lings made on july 4th, Xiaoyu suffered a severe asthma attack wich sent her to the hospital. In the waiting room, Keiko was reading a traveling magazine an she stared at an exuberant photo of Tokio. When Xiaoyu left the hospital, her parents told her that they were moving. For the first time, a smile appeared in her perfectly simmetrical face.
-Hello, Wonderland!-she mumbled while the car raced.
Then, Xiaoyu fell asleep.