Surprise

So I didn't have the wrong address. She looked around the fence for some sort of doorbell but couldn't see any. She pushed the door to see if it was open, and sure enough it was open. No one was around. She brought her luggage up to the front door and knocked. Nothing. She knocked again. Silence.

I guess I should check the backyard, she left her luggage at the door and wandered towards the back. She saw the back of somebody lying under the gazebo bell. It looked like a monk's robe, careful to not disturb him too much if he was meditating, "gomen nasai, but would you please tell me where the family has gone?" she said in Japanese.

"It depends, who is doing the asking?" the man turned his head towards her.

She nearly dropped her precious bag, her jaw however did completely drop. "MR. ECHIZEN?" she nearly shouted in her surprise.

"C-C-CINDY?" Echizen's father fell from his seat on the edge of the gazebo onto the ground, what he was reading flew in the air landing a few feet away from Cindy. "YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO COME UNTIL TOMARROW!"

She looked at the magazine that was in front of her, things never cease to amaze. Even though he looks like a monk Ryoma's dad is still a pervert. Cindy picked up the magazine without even the slightest hesitation and walked towards him. "Still looking at dirty mags huh?" she handed it to him, although he looked at partially nude pictures of girls all day long,he was harmless. Growing up with Ryoma, she had gotten used to that particular bad habit of "pop's"

"I called yesterday and Riko agreed that it was better for me to come on Friday instead of Saturday because it would easier to enroll when there were people actually in the school offices to process me. Then I wouldn't be missing more school and I would be able to start school at the beginning of next week. It must have slipped her mind, what with work and stuff…can you pay attention to me, instead of your dirty pictures?"

This is hopeless, she thought. After a bit of time passed she finally gave up, "hey pops, where is Ryoma?"

"Hum? Oh, the kid's in school…"

"Where?"

"Seigaku…"

"I know what it is called, I am going to be going to that school, if you have forgotten. I meant, where is it?"

"…"

This is getting really annoying, she wanted to say but she knew that it would only be a waste of breath, if it didn't involve girls or tennis he was oblivious. "Where should I my luggage?" she finally asked

"House…unlocked…"

I give up, he can be so dense. But God help anyone who accidentally moves one of his mags. She trudged back to the front door and turned the door knob. Geze, aren't they afraid of theives? Then agian,do theives really want to rob a temple? She look walked up the stairs checking out the house, trying to find her room. She passed what looked like Ryoma's room, there was a group picture and a bunch of textbooks on the desk and Karupin was taking a nap on the bed.

She smiled when she saw Karupin, Ryoma's precious Hemilyan cat. Few people outside Ryoma's immediate family and friends knew how deeply he cared for that two toned cat.

The bedroom across the hall from Ryoma's, she guessed, was hers. It was expectedly devoid of any person's personality. She placed the bag she was caring on the bed and went downstairs and began the long process of transporting her bags upstairs, it took three trips.

There done. When she finally moved everything up to her room, she plopped onto the bed. As much as she hated to move it was probably better to get to her school and had in the enrollment papers as soon as possible. It was at these times when she really hated her "get things done when you can," motto, or what she was trying to make into her motto. She emptied all of the objects out of her tennis bag, various things fell out of it; not surprisingly there were tennis rackets, but several objects wrapped in newspaper and a file folder containing her school documents also fell onto the bed.

She looked at the wrapped objects and carefully picked them up, and put them onto the dresser. She then looked at the rackets and then at her black purse, she decided that she would bring her tennis bag since it was bigger and thus could hold what she needed. She repacked her tennis bag, I am going to need that, she picked up the file folder and placed it into one of the front compartments. Map and address, all go with the papers. Let's see, I got my wallet, she patted her wallet, which were now in the front pocket of her jeans, what else do I need? Rackets go to the back compartment and a change of clothes, maybe me and Ryoma could have a game later. Okay, so wallet, map, address, school stuff, tennis stuff, multipurpose leatherman,she buckled the tool in its case on her belt, and my i-pod. I think that's all. She zipped up all the compartments on her bag and made sure nothing would fall out before leaving her room.

She opened her tennis bag and pulled out the map of the area. "Seigaku, Seigaku High, where are you," she said to herself as she tried to find it on the map. "There you are."

After getting a good idea of where she would be headed she went back into the back yard and shouted to Echizen's dad "hey pops, I'm headed to Seigaku. I'm going to try and meet up with Ryoma. So I guess I will be back when he normally is."

"…"

"Okay?"

"Hai, Hai…"

His absent minded acceptance reminded Cindy that she had been speaking only English, well mostly English since she left America and that she should strive to only talk in Japanese since she is going to be living here. She turned around and proceeded to walk toward Ryoma's and in a few hours, her own school.

Oh, crap. Oh, crap. I got lost, that's just great, just great. She scrounged in her bag looking for her map to find out where she was. I couldn't have gotten that lost. She tried to look for street signs weren't on the map, she deduced that the streets weren't important enough to have on the map.

She put away her map and decided to ask one of the shop keepers where the school is. Most of the shops around her, she noticed was really busy. The sports shop caught her eye, there wasn't anyone in there at the moment.

She walked into the shop and browsed the shop, I should really get some more grip tape for my racket, and OMG those tennis outfits are so cute. She ended up only buying black grip tape but she made a mental note to buy the baby blue, after all blue was her favorite color, tennis outfit with matching sweat bands later on. As she was paying for her purchase, the shopkeeper commented offhand that he would have to order more of the grip tape since is so popular. "Um, sir, please could you tell me were Seigaku High is?"

"Seigaku? Huh. You are really close by. The tennis team comes here often to buy things, are you going to Seigaku?" when she nodded, he went on, "they come here so often I give them a discount, since you are also a tennis player, neh? I will also give you one." He gave her the change and the directions.

Ha, I only missed it by a couple of blocks. She put away her recent purchase away in her bag, and headed towards school.

That took longer then I thought, actually that was an understatement. It took three hours for her papers to get processed. I didn't actually have to stay for the whole thing. They went over all of her papers at least twice and were about to go over it again before she informed them that she had a few more stops to make to get situated in this new city. They apologized and let her off the hook.

"Wow, school's already out… where would Ryoma be?" Cindy smiled to herself, there could only be one place, "Tennis courts."

She saw a group of boys lugging a box, well two of them were carrying the box the other boy, dressed in an awful orange striped shirt, and was carrying a handful of fuzzy, yellow tennis balls. The other boys were complaining about the fact that the striped shirt boy was carrying so little, the striped shirt boy then said something about two years of tennis experience.

"Sumi masen, but could you please tell me how to get to the tennis courts?" she asked when she reached them. The boy in the strips only stared, looking from her black baby-T that had the street sign and said, "Dangerous Curves" all the way down to her fitted flared jeans, and white sneakers. "Ah-hm…?"

"Ah…" the other boys pointed, "It's there."

"Domo." Cindy walked towards the general direction of where the boys pointed her to. Pretty soon she heard sounds of balls bouncing and being hit. As she turned the corner she saw four sets of three courts, each surrounded by chain link fencing. There seemed the most activity in one of the middle courts so she headed there. There was a lot of people outside of the chain link enclosure watching what was going on inside, most of them were wearing a sort of blue green uniform, the others ranged in school uniforms and a red and white one.

The teenager with glasses stood in front of the group, he had a commanding sort of presence, she guessed that he was the captain of the tennis team."Regulars, there will be practices matches today."