Opening the doors of the reception, Eyre and her friends were greeted by the sight of the main campus grounds. Lawns of grass and trees among interweaving brick and concrete paths contrasted with the heavily urbanised areas surrounding the school, with skyscrapers casting shadows onto them. The central plaza of the campus was surrounded on all sides by massive multi-storied buildings enclosing the grounds, with even taller buildings behind them. The look of the school was significantly different to what the girls had grown up with. It had a far more traditional look to it compared to the fairly modern design of Koala Forest's surface campus grounds.
"Where do we go now?" Yarra asked.
"Do we go to classes now?" Simpson asked.
"I don't think our clothes are appropriate," Gibson commented. "I brought my school uniform, what about the rest of you?"
The other girls nodded their heads in agreement before Eyre brought out the map. "I think we should head to our dorms first, to put our stuff away. The lady said that we do have classes, but it's okay if we miss a few for our first day."
"Where are our dorms, by the way?" Simpson asked.
"Should be…" Eyre looked around. Her eyes glanced around the massive court that they were standing in, before setting sight on a building behind them, past the reception area, which was marked with a row of hedges. "There, that's the student dorms according to the map."
"Oh, how lovely," Gibson exclaimed. "It's so close to the school."
"It's in the school," Eyre commented. "Anyways, shall we?"
The four came back through the reception, before exiting and walking towards the dormitory building. Reaching the entrance, Eyre swiped the door sensor with the card on the key she had received from the woman, granting her access to the building, before entering. The four climbed the stairs, as Eyre continued to glance at the key to find her room. Climbing two flights of stairs and walking down a hallway, she finally found the corresponding number of her key, '27', on the door in front of her. Now, Yarra chimed in.
"How many rooms do we have?"
"I got us a double bunk room, so we'll all be in one together."
"One room for the four of us?"
"Well, single dorms were kinda expensive and double dorms weren't that much better."
"Wait, you have our key," Gibson pointed out. "What if for some reason I get to the dorms without you?"
Eyre sighed for a moment. "There should be a key in the thing I gave you earlier."
To their surprise, Eyre was telling the truth, as Yarra, Gibson and Simpson found a card with the number '27' imprinted onto it attached to a key. Opening the door, Eyre immediately put her luggage into one of the many shelves in the room, before unpacking it, taking out her normal school uniform for Koala Forest. Taking off her jumper and putting it away, she removed her shirt and put on the long-sleeved collared shirt that was a part of her uniform while the others were putting their things away. Now taking off her pants, she went to grab her leggings and dress to put on, when she heard a few chuckles behind her.
"Black," she heard from Yarra.
"You wanna get punched?" she retorted, before putting on a pair of tights and then the sleeveless dress, the straps sitting over her shirt. Reaching into her bag, she got out a pair of white socks to put on, before grabbing her shoes and blazer, quickly putting them on. Looking around, she saw her friends at different stages of getting dressed, with Simpson almost finished changing while Gibson barely started. Eyre climbed to one of the top bunks that she claimed and sat down, waiting for the others to finish getting changed. Checking her phone, the device read '10:48 am' as Eyre began to kick her feet softly, waiting impatiently.
"Can you hurry up, Gibson?" Eyre complained.
"What's the rush?" Gibson replied. "You said we can miss a few classes today."
"There's someone I want to meet, and hopefully at recess, which is in a few minutes," Eyre explained while tapping her foot against the bunk.
"You can go if you want," Gibson replied.
"And leave you three here alone? I couldn't do that on the first day."
"We'll be fine, trust me,"
"None of you can understand English, you'd all be lost without me, so hurry up."
The bunk slowly filled up as Yarra and Simpson finished changing, the two along with Eyre waited for Gibson to finish. Finally, after five minutes, the four had all finished changing, as Eyre grabbed a folder she had brought with her containing an empty notebook and her pencil case, the others following suit, before leading them out of the room, down the hall and stairs, and out of the building. Going through the entrance, Eyre walked into the courtyard, before looking at her map. Spying the building to her left, she walked through the courtyard to it, past grass lawns and trees, before coming face to face with the doors leading inside the building.
Eyre opened the door and guided her friends inside. The hall, lined with metal lockers, was mostly empty. Eyre took the lead, she could see her friends were obviously acting very shy in this foreign place. Even if it was simply a school, it was still different to anything back on the schoolship, and even though she could understand everything, for her friends, the walls were lined with foreign words and the people spoke incomprehensible chatter. At the end of the hall, she spotted a tall boy with a fair complexion and short blond hair.
"Alex-kun!" she shouted out loudly, attracting the attention of the boy and his friends, as Eyre ran to them while waving to get their attention.
"Ohayo," Alex responded somewhat nervously.
Eyre stopped, surprised. "You can speak Japanese?"
"A little," he replied. "Is it okay if we speak English, my Japanese is no good."
"Okay," Eyre responded with a cheery smile. She could hear Alex's friends talking to each other.
"She's kinda cute," one of them said.
"And pretty," said the other.
"She can understand you two," Alex said, turning around to face his friends. He could see a bright red blush on Eyre's cheeks when he turned to her again. "Would you like to introduce yourself?"
"Oh of course," Eyre started, thinking hard about the English she had learnt when she was younger. "I am Oya Suzu,"
"Hey, Oya,"
"Oh no, please use honour word with last name," Eyre corrected Alex's friend. "You can call me Oya-san or Oya-chan, or just Eyre if you want not to be formal."
"Or you could call her Susie like I do," Alex chimed in, receiving a blow in the chest from Eyre's elbow as a reward.
"Don't call me Susie unless you want the same as him," Eyre warned in a serious tone before going back to her previous cheery face.
"Okay, nice to meet you, Eyre," the boy in the front said.
Alex stood up again, recovering from his brief wound by Eyre. "Where are my manners, this is Connor and Jack," he introduced, Jack and Connor both waving. "Jack, Connor, this is Susie, my…"
He paused for a while before continuing. "Third cousin from Japan,"
"Yes, our great-grandparents were brother and sister," Eyre chimed in.
Now, Alex nudged Eyre while glancing at her friends trying to signal to her, which she picked up. "Oh, how I forget? These are my friends. Araki Yoshiki, or just Gibson, Utsugi Chisa, or Simpson, and Sato Mitsuru, or just Yarra."
The mention of their names brought the girls' attention to the conversation, as Eyre chatted with the boys in a foreign language to them.
"Eyre, Gibson, Simpson, Yarra," Jack said aloud, grabbing the girls' attention. "They're some pretty Australian sounding names, aren't all of you Japanese?"
"Ah yes, these are names we pick for our sport club," Eyre explained. "Is informal but not intimate."
Finishing her sentence, Eyre turned around to her friends, who had been standing behind her, not knowing what was going on. In Japanese this time, she began to explain.
"This is Alex, and Connor and Jack. Alex is my third cousin and Connor and Jack are his friends."
"Third cousin?" Gibson asked. "I keep forgetting that you aren't fully Japanese."
"His and my great-grandparents were siblings," Eyre replied.
"Are you sixteenth Australian?" Yarra asked.
"Eighth actually, two of my great-grandparents were from Australia," Eyre answered her question.
Answering her friends, she turned to Alex again.
"What classes you have next?" she asked.
"Maths," Alex answered. "We're in the same class, aren't we? All of us."
"How you know?"
"Let's say it's my intuition, and leave it at that," Alex replied.
"If you intuition is so good, you know what I ask you?" Eyre teased him.
"I knew you were coming, so I packed an extra Tim Tam for you," he replied, before grabbing a zip lock bag and taking a chocolate-coated biscuit out of it, giving it to Eyre, who graciously accepted his gift. "Your palette is so childish, Susie."
"First, don't call me that," Eyre warned Alex. "Two, is Tim Tam. It's good no matter how old."
Grabbing the bag from his hand, she opened it and took one of the biscuits out to eat. As they were waiting, the school bell rang, signalling the start of the next period, and Eyre followed Alex and his friends to class, while Yarra, Gibson, and Simpson followed her.
"You two seem close," Gibson commented to Eyre about Alex. "What's the history between you two?"
"I already told you, we're third cousins," Eyre responded.
"Yeah, we know that already," Simpson said. "But you two act like siblings, like how Murray and Darling are."
"Surely we're not that close," Eyre replied. "Have you seen what those two are like around each other?"
"Yeah no, you're just like them, just less obvious," Yarra chimed in.
"Hmm." Eyre began to think for a bit as they walked down the hallways towards their classroom. "I suppose it's because we lived together for a few years."
"Really?" Yarra asked. "I thought you were born in Japan."
"I was, numbskull," retorted Eyre. "I moved here when I was like 4 and went through primary school with him before coming back."
"Why were you in Australia?" Simpson asked.
Eyre shrugged. "Beats me, but while I was here, I lived with Alex and his family. I guess he was the closest person I've had to a brother when I was here."
At last, they had reached their classroom. Just before he opened the door, Alex turned around to Eyre.
"Hey Susie, my mum heard you were coming here, and she wanted me to ask if you wanted to come to our place for dinner tonight," Alex said. "She said that you're welcome to bring your friends. What do you think?"
"Sounds lovely, I'll ask the girls," Eyre responded, before turning to Simpson, Yarra and Gibson, conveying what Alex had said, receiving a thumbs up from the three of them. Turning around again, she gave Alex a thumbs up before they entered the classroom. While Alex and his friends found seats up the back of the classroom, the teacher gestured for Eyre and her friends to the front of the classroom. The teacher stood up, and walked over to them, standing in front of the whiteboard and projector.
"Class, for a week we'll have four new students temporarily transferring from high school in Japan." She turned to the girls. "Why don't you introduce yourselves?"
Seeing that none of her friends were going to go first, Eyre decided to step forwards and speak first. "Konnichiwa, I am Oya Suzu, 2nd-year transfer student from Tottori Girls High School. Nice to meet everyone, and I hope I can get along with everyone here."
Finishing with a short bow, she could hear snickering from the back of the classroom, from a short brown-haired boy sitting in the corner. She turned to Yarra and gestured to her to introduce herself. Yarra returned a look of confusion, before speaking nervously.
"I am Sato Mitsuru," she said in Japanese.
"I'm Utsugi Chisa, nice to meet everyone," Simpson followed with a small bow.
Except for Alex, who had a small smile on his face, the reaction was almost mute from the classroom, as Eyre turned to Yarra and Simpson.
"You do know they can't understand Japanese," Eyre said.
"Yeah, and I can't speak English, so tough luck," Yarra responded.
Eyre sighed, before turning to Gibson. "Gibson, surely you know something you learned from Victoria."
"Only a bit," Gibson responded. Even after taking a deep breath, she started speaking nervously. "I… is… Araki Yoshiko, good… meet… yous…"
This time a few students gave a few claps of encouragement for her, however, Eyre again heard snickering from the back of the classroom. Noting down the appearance of the boy, she sat down next to Alex, before leaning over to him.
"Who's short brown-haired in the corner?" she asked him.
Alex looked at her confused for a moment, before realising who she was referring to. Looking over her shoulder, he got a glance at the boy. "That's Brian."
She looked behind her, then back to Alex. "Is he normally an arsehole?"
"Yeah, he's like this to people," Alex responded. "Just hasn't been enough for me to bother to deal with. Why you asking?"
"Oh, no particular reason," Eyre responded. "At least now I know who he is."
Settling in nicely, she grabbed out a notebook to write in and looked towards her friends, who had largely done the same thing. The class posed no challenge to her. To her surprise, what was being taught were things she and her classmates had learned months ago. With nothing to do, she began chatting with Yarra, Simpson, and Gibson, occasionally translating what the teacher and other classmates were saying, occasionally chiming in the class discussion before helping Alex with his work. Seemingly within no time, as if time had passed her like the wind, the double class was over and the lunch bell rang. Taking a stretch after getting up, she walked out of the classroom.
Author's notes
Thank you to Rosy for help proofreading the chapter. Aight, here I disappear again for a few months.