Chapter 1
"Attention, all passengers. We will begin to descend in a few minutes. Please return to your seats and strap on your safety-belts. I repeat, please return to your seat and strap on your safety-belt. We will be landing in New York shortly."
Ryu shut his book as the green safety-belt icon before him winked on. Reading during take-off and landing always made him ill. As the plane descended, he instead looked out of the window. New York was a concrete jungle—filled with towering skyscrapers and other buildings. He could vaguely make out a traffic jam on one of the roads. Eight o'clock, New York. People were heading to work. Just like Tokyo. Where was the exposure?
Miss Yurie returned and strapped herself in. She had been prowling the aisles from the moment she was allowed out of her seat, for reasons unknown. "Don't worry, Master Ryu," she comforted, mistaking his silence for homesickness. "New York is a wonderful city, I'm sure you'll adapt quickly."
"Right this way then, Amakusa."
The school secretary led Ryu down the hall towards his new class. So far, he understood little of what she said, but he took it that she wanted him to follow her, mainly based on the rather obvious sign language she was flashing at him. She must have thought he was a mute.
"Mrs. Clapham, the new student Amakusa Ryu."
A stout lady dressed in a violent shade of pink, glasses perched tremulously on her beak-like protuberance of a nose. Mrs. Clapham peered at Ryu. "Amakusa, huh? You look rather small…"
Ryu had absolutely no clue what she was saying. Why in goodness sake hadn't he bothered learning some English on the hikouki?
"Class, meet your new classmate Amakusa Ryu." Mrs. Clapham directed Ryu to an empty seat, then sat down, absorbed in test papers. Why weren't there any jyuu-gyou being conducted? Was this the way American schools were run?
Next to him was a pale, fair-haired boy, nose jutting out like a crow's beak. "Yo. I'm Ryan Cresteas. Call me Ry."
"Shut up, Ry. Can't you see the poor boy's struck dumb with fright?" Beside Ryan, a young girl's long brown hair draped over Ryan's desk as she leaned across. "I'm Maria. Ignore Ry, he's an idiot."
Completely at a loss, Ryu stared back at them. "Eh…Watashi wa Ryu desu. Douzoyoroshiku."
"Erm…?"
"Yo, man, whaddya heck are you talking, Chinese? Speak English, pal. Or can't you?"
Ryu stared in consternation.
"I don't think he does. Mrs. Clapham said his name was Amakusa. That sounds foreign. Maybe…" Maria skipped out from her seat and sat on Ryu's desk. "Amakusa, hablar espanol?"
Ryu shook his head. "Usare la italiano?"
Shake.
"Sprechen sie Deutsch?"
Shake.
Maria was getting impatient.
"Chiang-kek! Get your butt over here!"
A tall, gangly Asian kid crossed the large classroom. "What, Maria?"
Maria pointed at Ryu. "Get this guy to talk. He doesn't speak English. Or Spanish, or Italian, or German…"
"OK, OK." Chiang-kek bent down to Ryu's height, accidentally allowing his unruly mop of black hair to get in Ryu's face. "Ni hao?"
Ryu shook his head again, flinging Chiang-kek's raven strands off him.
"Vanakkam?"
Shake.
"Sawaddikap?"
Still shake.
Chiang-kek sighed. "No can do, folks. For all we know this guy's probably a mute freak."
"Master Ryu, won't you come down for dinner?"
"No. I'm not hungry."
Holed up in his room, Ryu carefully highlighted and underlined English phrases he felt would be useful in school the following day. If he couldn't pick up English in America, then he'd force himself to learn it.
"Yo, Amakusa. You still speaking that alien language?"
"My…name is…Amakusa Ryu…" Ryu stammered, trying desperately to recall his studies the night before. Why, oh why didn't Japanese elementary schools teach English?
"Whoa! You actually speak!"
"Call me Ryu…"
"Ya like to be called by your surname?"
Ryu stared. He could vaguely understand what Ryan meant, but what was a surname? He dove for his English-Japanese dictionary.
"My name is Ryu. My surname is Amakusa." Now how did he manage to string together a coherent sentence like that?
"OK, Ryu Amakusa. Then where d'ya come from? Some remote island in the Caribbean? I've never met someone who can't speak English before."
"I'm from Japan." Ry's eyes suddenly widened. He propelled himself away from his desk, pushing so hard his chair clattered to the ground and he fell on his backside.
"Stay away from me, man."
"Ah…?"
"I said, stay away from me! Understand? No crappy Jap's gonna come near me."
Ryu had no time to translate Ryan's words, for Mrs. Clapham walked in at the moment. But he got the gist
Mr. Deverenz, the algebra teacher, started the day off by introducing the class to the world of x.
"The thing is, class. Most people think algebra is boring. Why? Because they don't understand it." Mr. Deverenz placed his hands on the table, and stared reproachfully at the class. "They can't appreciate algebra. They have no sense of what it is to be algebra." Panting heavily, nostrils dilating, he glared until his glasses slipped down his sweaty nose. The very climax of his speech. "And THAT," he roared, "IS WHY YOU STUDENTS KEEP FAILING IT EVERY YEAR! You need to beFRIEND algebra! Familiarize yourself with it! Know it INSIDE OUT! Exercise books out, everyone! Grasp this wonderful opportunity to make friends with the most fantastic, mysterious mathematical concept ever! ALGEBRA! GET TO WORK! I want to see these problems done by the time the bell has rung. Now GETONWITHIT!"
Mr. Deverenz scribbled ten problems on the board, then sat down, tilted his head back and drank deeply from a thermos, breathing slowly.
Sums, sums and more sums… Ryu took out his exercise book and copied the problems out laboriously. Hmm. Expand x(5y-7x+2). Simple. His brain supplying the answer effortlessly, he immediately scribbled down 5xy-7x2+2x. Question 2…Well, at least mathematics was a universal language he understood.
A mere ten minutes later, he laid down his pencil, satisfied. Chikusho! Half an hour to the end of the lesson! What was he supposed to do until then?
Most of the class were not concentrating on the sums; they hadn't even bothered to take out their exercise books. Majority of them had failed this course the year before. Whispering, chit-chatting and gossiping, most of them. All staring at him, pointing, speaking in low voices. Moving further away from him, still staring, some glaring. Ryu suddenly noticed a crumpled ball of paper on his desk. Opening up the note, the capital letters jumped out at him and whacked him in the gut like a baseball bat. Scribbled on the ledger lines of the math exercise book in black marker were just a few sentences, but each of them were worse than a shot in the head.
'BLAST YOU, BLOODY JAP. ARROGANT SHIT. GO JUMP IN A LAKE.'
A/N: ookay... 0.0 this chapter was kinda weird. sorry for the coarse language... pls R & R! and sorry for the long time i took to post.