Help Line

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Chapter 1

'Wear heels,' they had said.

'Dress pretty,' they had said.

'You'll need to look professional,' they had said.

I groaned and leant against a power pole to allow my left foot some reprieve, lifting it up off the path and shaking it out. My black-and-white striped dress shirt had obvious patches of sweat under each armpit from the hours of walking I had been doing, the confusion only increasing in my mind as I squinted at sign after sign through my glasses.

My phone had long refused to direct me where I needed to go, the city screwing up the signal on the maps like some sort of Bermuda Triangle bull-honkey. I had passed this statue at least twice, that I knew, but where I was in relevance to the corporate building - indistinguishable to its tens of identical block-mates - was completely lost to me.

"My poor feet," I whined childishly, getting a weird look from a man who shuffled past.

Between the blurred faces of the people who walked in masses, the sharp contrast of black on white drew my eyes and I looked on in confusion as a man stood across the crowded square. He was wearing a bizarre mask and top hat; the overall get up screaming Alice In Wonderland and making me tilt my head to achieve a better view of the layered patterns of checkers and stripes. The surrounding people didn't seem perturbed by his peculiar presence, nor did they have trouble walking around him.

In my hand, my phone buzzed with a notification, the calendar app overlapping the sprawling and nonsensical map to display 'Interview: 5 minutes' and the shriek of my pterodactyl ancestors ripped from my throat. Forgetting the man, I pushed off the power pole and ran awkwardly on the uneven path, my heels clapping under the sounds of morning city traffic.

"Quick, quick, quick," I whispered harshly and dashed across the road as I heard the trill of the pedestrian crossing.

It was only when I was halfway, did I notice that the other people hadn't stepped with me, and I blinked at those who waited on the other side, seeing the same chequered mask peering out from between the mass. Then the blaring horn of a truck roared through the narrow corridors of buildings and I felt my heart drop mid-step.

The collision was...underwhelming, and I rolled at the impact, my brain reeling as I lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the clear sky for one, two seconds.

That...That did not feel like being hit by a truck. But then again, what did I know about being hit by a truck?

"Oh my God!"

"Shit, where did she come from!?"

I sat up quickly as the sounds of doors opening reached me, apologies spilling from my throat, unchecked as the frazzlement. But then I choked, a small, local produce truck sitting idle at my nose, rather than the huge fuel tanker that had been charging before.

"Hey, lady, are you okay?" the young man who was behind the wheel asked, coming to kneel beside me on the road.

"Huh? Uh, yeah, I'm fine," I nodded dumbly, cogs in my brain slowly turning and crunching the numbers. "Sorry, I got in your way I…I didn't see you."

"We didn't see you either! Are you sure you're okay? Can you stand?"

I blinked and got to my feet, legs feeling weak and exhausted like I had just run a hundred suicides. My bag was strewn on the ground and the man quickly shoved everything back in and gave it to me, allowing me to dust it of gravel, despite there being no signs of such material anywhere around here.

"So like, you aren't going to take this further, are you? It's only my first week and-"

"No, no," I assured quickly, seeing the poor man panic. "It was mostly my fault - I think - and it's not like I'm hurt or anything."

The young man continued to apologise as I put my bag back on, checking the contents for any breakage and giving a sigh of relief when I saw my laptop and water bottle still intact. I winced as my knee throbbed, probably skinned from the fall, and looked past the man, a frown coming to my face as I saw no high-rise buildings of glass and metal. Instead, I was surrounded by low walls and little local stores.

"Where am I?" I asked the man, who paused and stared, not understanding. "I mean, I need to get somewhere and I'm lost. So like, where am I?" I tried again, trying to not look insane and unhinged despite how my heart was still thumping like a hummingbird's. Something was definitely wrong.

"Ah, you're just a bit from the main street in Namimori Centre. If you turn right you'll find the shopping centre…You sure you're okay? I can take you to the hospital?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I'll be fine. Just need to get my bearings…Have a good day!"

I turned on my heel and quickly walked where he had directed me, hearing him start his engine again and drive off. I thinned my lips as less and less looked familiar to me, and I turned to my phone for aid but found it out of the range of the provider.

"Shit," I cursed, and began walking again, bagging the device to hold on to the battery life. "Maybe a payphone?"

I scanned the area and hummed when I noticed a stand with such a device, jogging toward it with a hopeful clop of my heels. Pulling my wallet from my bag, I put the phone to my ear and waited for the toll instruction, before pausing as the automated voice spoke.

"Please deposit 100 yen."

"Yen?" I repeated, confusion rioting in my mind. "Like the Japanese yen?"

I looked at the pay chart and blinked as the characters showed to be those of Asian script primarily, with an underlying English, probably for tourists. Pivoting, I turned to the shops around me, reading and comprehending the kanji and other scripts which were scrawled around on storefronts and advertisements.

"I can read?!"

A woman and her child paused at my gasp before they shuffled along, quickly trying to get out of my range. I clicked my jaw shut and proceeded to panic internally as I straightened my dress shirt and rightened my black slacks, once again externally well-kempt while my inner workings fell apart.

I put the phone back on the hook and stumbled over to a bench under the shade of a tree, slowly trying to create a viable scenario in which this event could have happened. Perhaps I was in a part of the city which used Japanese primarily? Like an area of China Town?

I pinched myself with my nails, making a flap of skin come off but the illusion didn't break. No matter the twists or turns of logic, I couldn't find a sensible way to travel from Australia to Japan.

A breath cycled through my lips and I let it out, forcing my body to relax and arrange my thoughts. First, I needed to convert some money into yen, and then I can try the payphone again. I'm in a market centre, so I should be able to find something.

My feet hurt by the time I found a place that would let me exchange currencies and I had half the mind to kick off the low heels. Even if they were only two inches, I wasn't used to wearing them for such a long time without sitting. I was sure to have some sort of blister on my ankle and toes, and they might be bleeding by the time I'd be able to take them off.

"I shouldn't have listened to them," I sighed, walking out of the bank, a walletful of yen coins and notes.

I made my way back to the payphone with aching feet and inserted the required coins, quick to plug in my mother's phone number, only just remembering to add the area code beforehand. I pressed it against my ear as it rang, and after five tones, it picked up.

"Hello?"

I felt a surge of dread go through me at the unfamiliar voice of the woman on the other end, but took a breath and pushed on.

"Hello, is this Rosanna Smith?" I asked carefully.

"Oh, no," she denied, "Sorry honey, you must have a wrong number."

"Yeah, probably. Sorry, ma'am, have a good day," I breathed and hung up, knowing I didn't make a mistake in my dialling. "The fuck is going on?"

: : :

The sun was starting to go down, and I was beyond starting to get stressed.

The sky was starting to become overcast, and the temperature was dropping, hinting at an incoming downpour, though I couldn't tell if it was going to happen today or tomorrow. Either way, it meant I needed to find some sort of shelter before dark.

I checked my phone and winced at the fading sixty percent, quick to turn it off. I didn't have my cables on me, after all. I didn't think I'd need them when I had left the house.

I thinned my lips and played with the cap of my water bottle before tucking it away in my bag and got to my feet, feeling better after the sit-down, though the blisters still stung through the bandaids. There were children and families bustling around now that the main activities of the day had ended, and I had to step carefully as the youths zigzagged irrationally in their excited behaviours.

I walked for a while and let my eyes scan the area, taking in the sights of 'Namimori', a town I had honestly never heard of before. The way I could read the signs despite their lack of English still unsettled me, but I grit my teeth and took it as a blessing as I bought some kind of lunch box from a stall. I ate slowly by a small park, a soft frown on my face as I wrestled with the chopsticks that I had been given, able to use them, but often having to pause and fix my hold as they slipped around.

A group of children bustled into the park as I ate, all wearing the same uniforms of their elementary school. They screamed and clambered over the play equipment, a brightly coloured ball kicked across the field.

I leant against the back of the bench and watched quietly, trying to press the stress down and relax for a moment. By the time, they began to taper off though, I still hadn't quite settled myself, a constant tension sitting in the back of my mind.

Closing my lunchbox, I decided to keep the container in case I needed it in the future and put it in my bag beside my laptop. I looked up when the shouts of children finally fell silent, thinking they had all left, but paused when I found one young boy kicking a ball around on the floor. I made an internal noise of confusion, recognising him as being the one who had conducted the flow of the other children; the centre of attention with a big smile and boisterous laugh.

Now, his smile had completely faded, and he stared down at the bright rubber ball as it rolled back to him.

I frowned and tilted my head, looking around for a parent who should have been with him or was coming to collect him. No one.

A glance to the high standing clock, perched on a black pole, showed me the slow lurching minutes against a backdrop of ominous looking clouds. Four-fifty in the afternoon and an incoming storm, yet this boy stood unaccounted for in an all but abandoned park.

I tapped my nails against the metal armrest absently, wondering if it were wise to approach the youth and urge him to head home like the many others that were here did. I didn't get the chance, however, as whilst I watched him in my deliberation, his face scrunched up suddenly and he furiously rubbed at his eyes with his sleeves.

Oh God, something's wrong. The young child is crying, oh God.

"Um," I called out, biting my tongue when he whipped around as if he hadn't noticed me present. Big brown eyes stared at me from across the park."Are you okay?"

I could almost literally see the gears change in his head, the long look that he had given to a middle distance in a kind of solemn absence boxed away and painted over with a cheery youth. He grinned wide with the same enthusiasm he had shown the other children before whilst playing and gave a sheepish laugh like he had been caught drawing on the walls.

"Yeah! I'm fine!"

I didn't have time to hide how I didn't believe him, my lips pulling thin and my brows furrowing in concern.

He must have seen it, for he upped the ante of his energy and made a show of kicking the ball up into the air and bouncing it around. It continued until he tripped over himself and fell on his backside, rubbing the back of his head with a smile even as I lurched to my feet instinctively at the tumble.

"...Are you sure?" I asked slowly, looking to the clock again. Five o'clock in the afternoon. The clouds were closer.

"Really! I'm fine, nee-san!"

My face scrunched up in confusion as my ears crunched the numbers and translated the term over somehow - God, I needed to address that soon. The expression seemed to make him rethink what he had done; the boy drawing back a bit as I squinted at him.

"Is that a thing here?" I breathed, "Calling people you don't know 'sister', and stuff?"

That made him perk up, and he came trotting up to me from mid-field, dust still sitting on the back of his pants as he held the ball in his hands and stared up at me, intrigued.

"Are you not from here?" he inquired.

"No, I'm," I paused and looked around. "I'm not from here."

"Where're you from then? And yeah! We call older girls nee-san! Do the people where you're from not do that?"

Oh, lots of words at once, okay.

I blinked and sat back down on my bench, levelling myself with his own height which seemed to make the tensions in his shoulders fade the tiniest bit.

"Well, in one of my cultures we do, but the one I mostly grew up in: no," I answered, making his eyes widen further. "In Australia, we don't typically call people who aren't related to us those things unless we really know them."

"Australia!?" he gasped, "What about the other one?"

"Um, Burmese?"

"Oh!"

"You have no idea where that is, do you?"

"Nope!"

I snorted and nodded my head, already very used to people having no idea about my other country. It was only a small one after all, and not many people talk about it.

"It's a country in Asia, just below China," I hummed, "In that country, we call younger girls 'thamile', and older girls 'ma'."

"Cool!" he exclaimed, "Do you speak the language?"

"I know enough to know when my mum's angry with me," I laughed before fading off when I saw that faraway look again and the despondent dip of his shoulders.

Parental. Something's wrong at home.

I bit my tongue and glanced to the clock, five-fifteen.

"What about you?" I asked, "You a pureblood?"

The boy's eyes seemed to shine at the term 'pureblood', the fantastical connotations and status catering to his imagination. It seemed to pull the boy from his low, and as such, did the job.

"Yep! Born and bred!" he smiled, spinning the ball in his hands restlessly. "Pureblood!"

I glimpsed past him and saw an empty street, no one walking around with the rain coming so close.

"Why are you out so late?" I asked finally, "Shouldn't someone be coming to collect you soon?"

"Um..." he began, looking - understandably - vaguely alarmed. "My dad is a bit busy...but he's coming soon!"

"Does this happen often?" I was being very careful with my tone and words, trying not to give off that creeper vibe which would send any right-minded youth scrambling for the local police station.

"Only...lately," the boy murmured out.

I bit my lip and rubbed my hands together awkwardly before I sighed and folded them in my lap.

"Are you okay?" I asked again, and this time, he didn't try to hide the twitch in his shoulders. "...Do you want to talk about it?"

He winced and looked at me carefully, as if weighing his options and uttered a weak, "But-"

"Look," I breathed, pausing him as I spoke softly. "The likelihood that I will ever see you again is small. Like, minimal. I don't know you, you don't know me. Anything you tell me will only go as far as this park bench, I promise."

The young boy looked up at me for a moment from under his lashes before he nodded and stepped forward, hopping up onto the bench as I made room for him and moved my bag. There was a long pause of just the boy fiddling with his ball, the plastic clicking loudly under his fingers and the toes of his shoes scuffing the ground.

"I don't know how to start," he finally admitted, keeping his eyes low.

"Yeah, that can be hard," I agreed, looking up at the sky. "How about you tell me what's causing you to feel bad at the moment."

A moment went past, and I didn't say anymore, allowing the boy to try to cherry pick his words and formulate concepts which he could convey.

"So, um, my mum died last year," I kept the knee-jerk reaction of a sympathetic hiss contained and instead allowed my brows to furrow as I nodded, showing I was listening. "And I don't think my dad took it well. He's been forgetting everything lately. Like, last night, he left the stove on and we only found out 'cause I went to get a drink and smelt gas."

I nodded again as he bounced his knee irritably, probably not noticing the action.

"And, um, he's working a lot too so he and I don't spend a lot of time together. Which is better, I guess, because he's been all grumpy. He's not, like, hitting me or anything! But he'll yell and I don't like it."

He was quick to defend his father, which I took into consideration. The weight of the situation had settled on the back of my neck and my lips tilted downward, not having expected more than perhaps a bully or arguing parents.

Another silence stretched on and I saw the child biting his lip, hands digging into his ball as his head tilted downward.

"Is it just you and your dad at home?" I urged, trying to get him to open again.

"Yeah."

So no one else to help out and take on roles.

"Has your father forgotten to pick you up?" I asked, glancing once more to the clock.

"Probably," he murmured, "Kaa-san was the one who always picked me up after school."

I squeezed my hands together and gave a quiet sound of acknowledgement, piecing together a crumbling family.

"How do you feel about your mother being gone?" I asked slowly, and immediately, I had the gut-wrenching realisation that he had not been asked that question before.

The young boy, no older than 10, stared at me with wide, blank eyes, his mind slow to create a viable response to the question. It was likely he hadn't even had the time, nor the assets to process the loss being so young and his only other family member having their own difficulties.

"I...don't know," he finally choked out, looking so very confused.

"That's okay," I shrugged and he scrunched up his face in bafflement. "Hey, emotions are weird, man. And loss is hard to process for full-grown adults, no way are we going to expect a kid to be able to grasp it first try. You're still just a little bean, after all."

He seemed to think on it for a while, his toes dragging lightly on the dirt and leaving shallow rivets in their wake. The boy thinned his lips and frowned, his breath growing thick for a moment before it shuddered out through his lips.

I bit my tongue and didn't dare to touch the child, not wanting to overstep despite how everything in me sang to give him a hug. My internal debate didn't seem to matter in the end, however, as the youth gave another quivered breath and scooted over to close the gap on the bench seat.

I sighed and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing firmly. There was an undeniable feeling of vague guilt for starting this in such an open environment, wondering if I should have offered him like a cafe booth or something - but then realised that it might have been a worse direction.

My gaze was pulled to the clock again, and I winced as the sign of five-forty showed on its shadowed face, the quiet words and long pauses leading to the time passing almost unnoticeably. The temperature had dropped while I had listened, and my skin went up on goosebumps as I finally acknowledged it.

"You should go home now," I murmured to the boy finally, making the decision for him at this point. "Is your house close?"

"Yeah," he nodded, rubbing at his eyes for a moment. "It takes, like, fifteen minutes to get there."

I thinned my lips at that, wondering if I should walk with him before I looked to the sky again and winced threatening rain.

"Here," I began, taking my arm off him slowly, noticing how he turned to me quickly at the removal. I pulled my bag over and grabbed my notebook, quick to pen down something, pause and then tear it out and handed the small page to the boy. "This is my number. I don't have any reception right now, but give me a few days and I will. If you want to talk, you can call me. Do you have a phone, little bean?"

"A home phone, yeah," he said, taking the page from me with both his hands, ball balanced on his lap. He looked down at the words I had written and I held the double take that tried to make me jolt, knowing full well I had written down English letters and yet saw Japanese characters sitting on the paper.

I had thought about writing down the Kids Helpline or Headspace, but realised that Japan probably didn't have those, and nor did I know of any Japanese or international alternatives. So I had reluctantly left it barren with only my own, presently unavailable, number.

"Mari Smith?" he read brokenly, obviously trying to find parallels with his own experience and mispronouncing the European name.

"Almost," I hummed, "Mary Smith."

"Mary Smith."

"There we go."

A small smile came to his face then, and he squeezed the paper tight enough to make it crinkle audibly.

"I'm Yamamoto Takeshi," he introduced, and I smiled warmly down at him, watching how he smoothed out the creases he had made in the page.

"It's nice to meet you, Yamamoto-san," I paused, and pushed down the startle of tacking on that '-san'. Stomping it down further into the crooked cardboard box that was my straining disassociation, I reached into my bag and pulled out the little umbrella within, handing it to the boy. "It looks like it's going to rain before you get home, then. Take it, we don't want you to catch a cold on top of everything else. Stress can reduce the immune system."

"But what about you?" Yamamoto asked.

"Oh, I'll be fine," I waved off with a laugh. "I'll be able to find a place easy."

: : :

Finding a place wasn't easy. Not on my meagre funds.

Sure, I had enough and at the moment money wasn't a huge issue at the moment, with my pay having come in only yesterday and so I had enough to buy a room. However, I couldn't keep up this lifestyle for any longer than a week, especially if I wanted to eat and get home.

The room I had bought for the night was a small, cheap one. It was only thirty-four dollars per night, and I sighed in relief when I saw it was actually pretty clean, and decently furnished with the basics. I had until 1pm in the next afternoon to get out, so I was in no rush, and the lack of baggage only made it more so.

I dropped my sling bag on the small table and rubbed my shoulder as the tension wore off, quick to kick off my heels and drop down on the bed. It thunked beneath me, a thin mattress covering the frame, but it was enough for me as exhaustion of all facets came flooding me at once. I had barely enough of the mind to shrug off my dress shirt and hang it over the back of a chair before I crawled under the thin, papery sheets and completely blacked out for the night.