April 1st 2022, 7:30 AM
Today was the first day of school. It’s currently morning and I’m getting in some writing. I really wanted to introduce Minato to my friends back in the US in between my last entry and yesterday, but he’s extremely hesitant, which fair enough. Maybe he’s had bad experience with making friends in the past. If we get closer I hope to know more.
Turns out, Minato and I are going to the same high school! It’s called Jade Hearts’ High School.
Minato grew up in this specific area in Hokkaido and there might be some differences between what Papa did growing up, so he wanted to meet me early so he could show me the route to school and to make sure I didn’t get lost. By early I mean extremely early. At 6:30 in the morning. I was still under the sheets of my bed, and groggily got up thanks to my alarm. While still being half asleep I got a call from Minato.
“Hello?” I yawned.
“I’m here to take you to school.”
“I just woke up, hold on.” I said.
Carefully I tip-toed downstairs and opened the door. He looked like a completely different person. He had his wig on, which was black and extremely short, which felt so cursed, Minato was practically born to have long gorgeous hair. He wore red plaid jeans, a white button up shirt with a black coat and of course, a red tie. Oh, and I can’t forget those iconic Minato glasses.
“What are you wearing?” I asked, still half asleep.
“My uniform for school. Where’s yours?” He peered into my house behind me, narrowing his eyes and adjusting his glasses.
“Ah, I forgot! Is it gonna be cold today?”
“It is now, but it’s supposed to get warmer. You might wanna bring a jacket or something. You have the shoes you need to change into with you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I haven’t even gotten ready. Come inside, it’s cold. You can watch TV or steal something from the kitchen.” I said. Minato walked inside and sat on the couch, setting his side bag on the couch and he grabbed the remote.
I raced to my room and put on my uniform. I wish I could stylize this more, do you know how cute it would look if it were a gothic lolita outfit? It was a white button-up shirt with a black coat over it with a red tie around my neck and a long red plaid skirt. I put on some thin stockings and some outdoor shoes. Still needed to put on the wig.
I spent like ten minutes pinning my hair down as flat as possible and put a wig cap on and then the actual wig. It looked a lot like my normal hair when I was younger, actually. Pretty straight and black that went down to my mid back.
I grabbed my bag and headed downstairs, careful not to fall down the stairs in my stockings.
I grabbed an apple and ate it while I quickly made some rice and chicken teriyaki. I randomly threw in some strawberries because, I don’t know I guess I felt like strawberries. I closed my bento box and put it in my bag. Finally putting on my shoes I called Minato over.
“We’re going to school!” I yelled as I was opening the door to my parents. They’re probably still asleep. Ah whatever.
I put on my jacket and we started walking to school.
“Is there anything I should know about Japanese school?” I asked. I mostly avoided talking about school whenever we were hanging out so better to ask about it now then in the middle of class!
“Number one, don’t be surprised when you see test scores posted up outside classrooms, not just something kept private between you and your teacher. Number two, you don’t switch classrooms, the teachers do. Number three, while not a rule by the school it is an expectation for you to join a club, otherwise you’ll be considered an outsider.”
“Really?
“Uh-huh.”
The rest of our walk was silent. Nothing much else to talk about.
By like seven fifteen we got to school. Minato showed me the little piece of paper that had everyone’s name on it. I recognized my name immediately of course but man, I could barely read the rest of the kanji. This is going to be a fun school year… Not!
There was a piece of paper right in front of the shoe locker area that had a list of our classes. I was in class 3-B with Mrs. Hashimoto, which is with Minato! Yay!
“What now?”
“Did you go to orientation a couple days ago?” Minato asked.
“We missed it ”
“That’s annoying. We have more than an hour before class, why don’t I show you around?”
“Sure.”
To the left and right of the shoe locker area were the two classrooms for the first years. The outside was a courtyard with a fountain and a bunch of seating areas. According to Minato, most people don’t go outside because most people eat in their classrooms.
From the left first year classroom, which is class 1-A, there was another hallway were the two second year classrooms where. There was one closer to class 1-A and another down the very end of that hallway. In between those two were the bathrooms. Ah, so that’s where they were. Noted.
From the right first year classroom, 2-A there was another hallway with two third year classrooms, one nearby 2-A and one all the way at the other end yet again. The middle classroom was a home economics classroom, which confused me.
“I thought you wouldn’t switch classes in Japan?” I asked Minato.
“For the most part. During home economics and gym you move around, at least at Jade Hearts.”
The one all the way at the end was our classroom, and it wasn’t anything special like the others. Brown tiling, brown desks all in neat rows, and a desk at the front. The thing that stood out the most to me was the chalkboard. I was already shocked when we went school shopping a few days ago and there was nothing about a computer, but still.
“You still use a chalkboard?”
“Yeah? What else?”
“Well, back in America, or at least in my school, a lot of the chalkboards were slowly being converted into whiteboards, and by the time I hit high school it was all whiteboards.”
“Interesting…”
“Is there a seating chart or anything? I don’t know if we should just sit down where ever or not.”
“Yup. They have seating charts hanging around since people get to school super early on these days.”
There was one last hall that was the farthest, on the first floor, at least. There was the faculty room, guidance counselor’s office and principal’s office. The faculty room had a bunch of seated teachers doing paperwork. I wanted to peak inside more but some teachers kept glaring at me so we figured it would be better off looking later. If there even IS a way to.
“Is there something out there?”
“Outside is the gym, but that’s not open in the mornings unless you have some special reason to be there. There’s a whole other sets of classrooms upstairs as well.”
Since we still had time, we decided, why not, and we walked upstairs. There was a set of staircases near the corridors, so we ended up taking the left one. Near the staircase we came out of there was an ominous single door and two rooms. All the rooms I saw so far had some kind of sign indicating what they were, but there was nothing. They were completely empty, just brown tiled floors and windows. The rest of the hallways had more classrooms, two more for each year. There orwas also another room that was basically deserted, but it had furniture in the classroom areas in case the school needed to accept new students from what Minato heard.
Since our tour was basically over, we just walked back to our new classroom. Somehow in the time since we’d left there was some other students sitting down in their seats. We checked the seating chart and yes! Luck again was on our side since we sat in the same row.
I was seated in the very back on the same wall as the entrance, with Minato in front of me. Right in front of Minato was another girl. I debated saying something but I just wanted to finally write in my diary a bit. So we got settled and Minato was reading a book and I was writing, quietly waiting for our teacher to come. It was seven thirty at this point, guess it’s too early for her to come in.
Out of the corner of my eye the girl in front of Minato turns around and looks at Minato. She had dark brown messy hair that fell down to her shoulders and a handband-like cloth wrapped around her forehead with interesting patterns, they were sorta like lines, randomly scribbled. Argh, my description sucks, just look up Ainu and you’ll see what I mean! (I say to whomever is reading this. If you are, do you know who I am? Or is it just myself? Okay, sorry, off topic). Her uniform was a little sloppy on her, the buttons on her shirt were unbuttoned showing her collarbones and she wore straight up leggings underneath her skirt.
“Hey, in the same class for the 10th year in a row. Ready to be forcibly assigned to be partners for something again?” She greeted loudly in Japanese.
“Yes, hi, Anchikar-san.” He greeted back.
“Who’s the new girl?” She pointed at me, as I jumped in my seat a bit.
“Hi. I’m Kuromiya Keiko. ” My voice wavered in Japanese.
“I’m Anchikar Hotene.”
“Anchikar doesn’t sound very Japanese…” I commented. Thinking on it now I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that out loud, shoot.
“It’s ‘cause I’m not Japanese, I’m Ainu!”
“Oh! Minato, why didn’t you tell me you had friends after all?”
“It’s really not, we’re acquitances at best. Achikar-san has her own group of friends and I don’t really have any friends at all, we’ve just been in the same classes for so long when there’s partners made we’re usually forced to work together, and even if we get to choose, we end up working together anyway, her friends are usually in different classes.”
“Wow, you’re so mean.” Hotene dramatically flopped on her desk. Minato rolled his eyes.
Hotene made a few more attempts at conversing with us but I think we just wanted to hang out before class begins for real. Oh, Mrs. Hashimoto is in now, I’m gonna end this here and write some more later.
April 1st 2022, 12:39 PM
This schedule is throwing me off, hold on let me jot it down real quick before I actually talk about stuff.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
1st Period
8:40 - 9:30
Japanese
English
English
Science
Math
2nd Period
9:40 - 10:30
Math
Japanese
Music
English
Health & Fitness
3rd Period
10:40 - 11:30
Music
Math
Math
English
Social Studies
4th Period
11:40 - 12:30
Science
English
Social Studies
Japanese
Japanese
Afternoon Recess/Lunch
12:30 - 1:20
5th Period
1:30 - 2:10
Science
Home Economics
Fine Arts
Social Studies
English
6th Period
2:20 - 3:10
Social Studies
Home Economics
Health & Fitness
Japanese
Math
Okay there we go. So when I stopped Mrs. Hashimoto just came in. She had straight brown hair in a side ponytail and wore black jeans with a black blazer. It’s a thing for teachers to have students do little tasks, only in elementary school would my teachers want me to do that. She made Hotene and Minato get some papers from the printer and then sat down near me. I was a little spooked at first, afraid I somehow did something wrong. I stiffened when she sat near me, and she noticed that.
“Oh, I’m sorry, your not in trouble, I just wanted to talk to you and help you get familiar with anything you needed.” She apologized.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Oh, good.” I sighed in relief.
“Obviously, you’re new to this school. You immigrated here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Where from?”
“The US.”
“You seem to speak it fine, how good are you at writing Japanese?”
“I know hiragana and katakana, I struggle with kanji though.”
“You should consider getting a tutor or something.”
“I probably will. I’ll talk with my parents later.”
“How about school so far? Adjusting well?”
“It’s very different compared to school back in the US, but yes.”
“Alright, if you have any questions feel free to ask me.” She said. She got up from Minato’s seat and stretched before returning to the front of the classroom. Minato and Hotene returned with stacks of paper that they handed to her. They walked back over to their seats.
“How come you didn’t get assigned anything to do?” Hotene said.
“Since I’m the new kid I guess she wanted to know about me.”
The teacher sent the three of us on an errand to find the rest of our classmates that hadn’t showed up yet, that wasn’t really eventful. The rest of the morning was mostly just us setting up for our classes. Luckily our first day of school fell on a Friday, so we have another break tomorrow. We started with a test for that hour for Mrs. Hashimoto to see where we’re at in math. You know what’s even worse then math? Math in Japanese. Some of the questions I could take a good guess at but some others I had zero idea since there was no instructions.
For Health and Fitness our gym teacher came in and gave us some papers to fill out. Basically it’s gym and health, that’s very fun. At least this class will be more discussion based then reading based.
Social studies, one of my favorite subjects. If only I could read. I really need to set up a tutor like immediately. Let me text my parents real quick, actually.
Okay, what actually happened in social studies, apparently we barely learn anything about Japan, just world history. At least it’s world history, but man, they don’t even learn their own history? WE don’t learn our own history? I hate that.
Then Japanese class. The teacher did a little demo on how hold and use the bamboo brush and she showed a huge list of kanji we’d be learning. The teacher herself was pretty charming, this will be a super helpful class.
And then lunch, which I’m at right now! Once again, I shoveled food into my mouth as fast as possible, despite Minato telling me that I’ll probably choke and Hotene telling me to slow down. That doesn’t matter when I have stuff to catch up on my diary now. I wish today was a little more eventful but it really isn’t. At least I have a new friend! Hotene is very cool. I think I’m gonna stop writing a little early now, I’ve covered everything up until now.
April 1st 2022, 10:38 PM
Oh man what a day! I got my wish, today got more interesting. Okay, school recap first.
Right after lunch was English class with Mrs. Hashimoto. We did a little activity where we write something in english on the board, she let us have free reign, some people just wrote some really simple sentence, but me, feeling a little extra, wrote an entire paragraph about myself, because I felt like that. As I placed the chalk down I turned to see the rest of the class wowed, jaws dropped. I thought everyone knew I was from America at this point but I guess not. So that was cool. If only I could have that kind of performance in any of my other classes. Mrs. Hashimoto and I talked back and forth in English, that was pretty cool, but it also confused the rest of my other classmates.
Then, last class of the day was another period of math. Already Mrs. Hashimoto had our tests graded. She definitely wrote some comments, but, say it with me now, I couldn’t read it!
“I can’t read this, help.” I begged Minato, leaning over to his desk.
“She says she’s always willing to help you in Math and in Japanese if I need.”
Shout out to Mrs. Hashimoto. Then we discussed and went over the test. That took the whole period so that was basically everything.
Three minutes towards the end of class we were allowed to pack up and walk around. Hotene walked right up to me.
“Keiko, can I have your phone number? Maybe we can do something this weekend.”
“Sure!” We swapped phones and entered in our respective phone numbers.
“Oh, also, where do you live?” Hotene asked.
“Isn’t that a little invasive for someone you only met and talked to today?” Minato said.
“Eh, I don’t care. I live right across from Minato. Do you know where that is or…?” I said.
“I do, been there for projects sometimes. It’s always very empty. Is it still empty almost all the time?”
“Yes,” Minato almost growled. His response made me wonder why him being reminded of an empty house made him angry.
“Geez, calm down, it was just a question! Anyway, got any plans this weekend?” Hotene said.
“Besides getting me a tutor to teach me kanji, probably not. What about you, Minato?”
“I got nothing. Where would we go anyway?”
“We don’t have to go anywhere, maybe we can just chill at my house. I have a few games you might like.”
“Perfect! Can I walk home with you guys too?” Hotene begged.
“If you feel like making the trek to the southern part of town, sure.” Minato said.
“Agh, your right, never mind. Text me what day you’re not busy!” Hotene waved goodbye, starting to make her way out the classroom as soon as the bell rung.
I started to leave, but then Minato reminded me that we still have our fifteen minutes to clean up. It sucked to remmeber this was a thing right as I’m about to leave, but hey! Fifteen minutes is better than an hour! Minato was sweeping our classroom floor while I wiped the desks and Hotene cleaned the chalkboard. Thank the Japanese gods I didn’t get assigned to clean the bathrooms. I’m gonna have to do that eventually.
“Can we take these off yet?” I asked, starting to peel off my wig
“Not yet, wait until we get to your house. Are you parents usually home at this time?”
“Papa takes off on Fridays, he said he’ll take today off too if he can, and it seems like he was able to do that today. What about yours?”
“Uh, they usually work late. I doubt they’ll be home earlier than eight.”
“Oh geez, is that normal?”
“Overtime. That’s normal.”
“Oh.”
The rest of our walk was silent. Nothing much else to stay.
Finally we arrived home, and we took off our shoes and dropped everything on the floor. Dad was watching tv on the couch, sprawled out.
“Hey guys, how was your first day of school?”
“A little tiring, but otherwise fine. I’ll be right back, let me drop off my wig at home.” Minato quickly ran off.
I took this as an opportunity to finally take my wig off, putting it on the wig stand in my room. (Did I mention I got a wig stand?) I also changed out of my uniform into something comfortable, I’m not in the mood to wear gothic lolita stuff that’s too much work right now.
I want back on the top of the stairs and peered over the railing to see Minato again.
“Is it considered cheating to do homework together?” I asked.
“Uh, if the answers are the same but we don’t know more about this kind of thing in class, then yeah. Doesn’t matter for today though, we just have the introduction homework then that’s about it.” Minato walked up the stairs. I opened the door to my room and I sat in my desk. Minato sat in the middle of my floor with crossed legs.
“You want a chair or something? We can sit at my desk together.”
“If it’s not too much trouble or anything, than sure.”
I ran downstairs and grabbed a table from the dining room and brought it back up. I placed it on the ground in front of the desk, right beside my chair.
“Alright, let’s get homework done and then we can do… something fun, I don’t know.”
Homework was nothing special so I don’t think I should go over that.
When we finished I raced downstairs to grab a snack, we were both getting hungry but Minato tried to refused getting something from my kitchen since he already planned on staying for dinner. Me, being stubborn, I shoved pocky into his mouth and he had to hesitantly accept it.
“Alright, what now?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
And soon after Minato said that, my phone rang. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was my friends calling!
I accepted, and I saw everyones’ faces again. It looked pretty dark where they all were, except for Lucas who was sitting in his desk in his gaming chair, with his head set on.
“Hi Keiko!” Everyone said.
“I know we haven’t called you but we’ve been meaning to. We have a surprise for you, also.” Clara said.
On the screen I saw Jia’s name and face flash on screen.
“Oh my god hi!” I screamed out in excitement, hurting Minato’s ears.
“Hi! You didn’t tell me you moved.” Jia said.
“I’m sorry I meant to but I forgot! What time is it for you? It looks late.”
“Two in the morning. We wanted to call you earlier but it was still school for you so we had to eat.” Annika yawned.
“But why is Lucas gaming?” I asked.
“Because I don’t care if I wreck my sleeping schedule, I have people on COD to kill.” Lucas said.
“Who’s the person standing behind you?” Clay asked.
“Oh yeah, this is my new friend in Japan, Minato!” I moved my phone to show him. I could see in his eyes how uncomfortable he is. Oops.
My friends all greeted him back, but Minato didn’t respond
“Why isn’t he saying hi back?” Clay asked.
“He’s shy. He’s embarrassed about his heavy Japanese accent when he speaks English. He understands what your saying though. He’s good at writing in English though” I explained.
“If it helps, I grew up in America and my Chinese was terrible when I visited my other family in China. I hated visiting them because my other relatives were always barking at my parents about how my Chinese was horrible. It made me insecure but it never helped me get better, so I’d just practice Chinese with my parents since I knew they weren’t gonna berate me for not learning. Though, that’s kinda different.” Jia said.
“Can you give us a house tour?” Clay asked.
“Sure!” I said.
Okay, you kinda get what happened. Facetimed my friends, Minato met them and was very shy and quiet at first but slowly got out of his shell a little and tried talking to them.
Eventually, we ended up going outside to walk the street and go to Minato’s because by then Minato felt comfortable also showing his house and speaking to them a little more. I have yet to actually go in because he mostly just visits my house so I guess this is a nice opportunity to write about it.
The front room was a fancy brown, with fancy shoes and coats lining the walls. The front had a ridiculously huge tv on the wall, with a super long couch around it with an equally long table.
On the left, there was a little hallway with three doors, where their bathrooms were. Yes, bathrooms. Their bathroom was split into three, with one room with a sink, another with a tub, and another with a toilet, each with dark blue walls and all made of white porcelain. It surprised me for sure but my friends were all screaming about how inconvenient it would be to have to use the bathroom, wash your hands and jump in the shower.
Moving on, to the right were the bedrooms. The master bedroom was Minato’s parents, so we obviously didn’t go in there, but we saw Minato’s. His was still quite ridiculously huge, with a huge bed that I’m pretty sure would be classified as a California king (in Japan they should call those Tokyo king honestly). He still had plenty of empty space for a really long desk in the corner that stretched from where the door was to his bed with a spinny chair. On the opposite side of the door was a hamper and right next to it a decently-sized dresser. I guess something had to be small in this room.
Oh yeah, he also had two computer screens with a really nice PC setup. I was pretty sure it was a gaming computer but no! It’s just a really expensive computer that he thought he might need for high school that he doesn’t even use. Lucas is still trying to convince him to get into gaming, but it seems like Minato refuses to even budge.
I thought that would be the last of it but in the front, there was another door with stairs. The hallway was short with two rooms, one had boxes and stuff and the other had two computers, probably for Minato’s parents, both with two computer screens and fancy desks each.
Okay, I don’t want to speculate too much, but why does Minato live in a middle-class neighborhood when he’s probably, like lower upper class at the least? Now I wish Minato would let me come over, it’s really nice, and so were his parents that one day! I’d like to get friendly with them like how Minato has with my parents. Maybe they’re just really busy a lot. Still!
Anyway, by the time we ended, it was about like, five and my friends were starting to fall asleep so we were heading across the street, they wanted to say hi to my dad before they went to bed so we did that, greeted my mom when she got home and ate dinner.
Now here’s where things started to get weird.
So it’s like seven and Minato was gonna hang at home before his parents came home. I opened the door and looked outside, it was kinda foggy and difficult to see, and the night lights outside really didn’t help all that much. In fact, they were barely working, and were blinking, probably about to go out.
Minato’s house is like, a thirty second walk, but I walk him over to his house anyway. We hear walking and we look both ways on the street, really not seeing anything. We keep walking, and suddenly a woman jumps in front of us.
She had hair like a geisha, with a high bun and many little accessories decorating her hair. Her face was white, like she were a ghost. Actually, she probably was. She wore a mostly black kimono with gold and orange little details, and a red and golden obi. There was blood dripping from her face mask onto her kimono.
“Watashi, kirei?” She asked. (She’s basically asking us if we think she’s beautiful if you have no idea what she means.)
“Yeah, of course!” I answered nervously.
The woman pulled down her mask to reveal a deep bloodied gash in her mouth. From her ear to the corners of her mouth, there was a cut, I think that was called a glasgow smile?
“Kore demo?” She asked us again, leaning in closer and grinning. Minato and I end up screaming instead of properly answering her and we both raced into our houses. I swore I heard her footsteps as we ran. I slammed the door and locked it, panting as I do so. I can only assume Minato did the same. (Okay that’s a stupid sentence there’s no way he wouldn’t.)
I slid open the front door and hesitantly opened my phone, my hands quivering.
“What’s happening?” My mom yelled from the kitchen.
“Oh, you know, saw a woman with a cut mouth, she asked Minato and I if she were pretty on a foggy night, just normal stuff.” I explained, somewhat laughing.
“You sure? Maybe you’re just seeing stuff in the dark.” My mom walked up to me.
“I heard her voice clearly, and I saw her face up close. It can’t be some hallucination. I know what I saw.”
“Woman with a cut mouth? Sounds like Kuchisake-Onna to me.” My dad said, his voice echoing from the stairs he was currently heading down.
“Isn’t she just a local myth?” My mom asked.
“No. Growing up I’d see her every now and then and encounter her. Usually to get away I’d either say she’s just average or throw candy behind her. Did you do either of those?”
“Nope. We just ran away screaming”
“Shoot. I’ll go lock the upstairs windows.”
“Why do you need to do that?” My mom asked.
“They say if you do that she’ll just slash your face to look like her. I mean, sure, she’s not gonna murder us but that’d still hurt. Happened to a friend when I was a kid.” Dad explained.
“That’s not really reassuring.” I growled.
I wanted to make sure Minato was okay too, so I ended up calling him on facetime.
“Did you lock everything?” I asked.
“Yes. Can you see her?” He asked.
“I haven’t even looked at her yet. I’m not sure it’s such a great idea. Maybe a little peak won’t hurt…”
I stand up and approach the curtain, lightly grasping onto it. I pull it back slightly, and guess who’s there, staring right back at me? Kuchisake-Onna. I immediately put the curtain back and laid on the couch. I raced upstairs to look for the book on yokai Luke gave me. I doubt I’ll find anything on how opening the curtain to look out your windows will agitate Kuchisake-Onna, but you never know, maybe there’s some person that just moved to Japan and encountered her by accident, I don’t know.
I flipped to her info pages, but I saw nothing, as expected. The rest was basically an echo of what dad told, except for the fact that she’s the spirit of women that murdered and are doing all that instead of resting properly. That sucks.
Then I remembered Minato’s parents! His parents should at least know about Kuchisake-Onna or at least be home, I thought.
“Did you call your parents and ask them to come home? Are they even home yet?” I asked.
“No, but I can take care of myself. I think they wouldn’t be able to come home at this point anyway.”
“Not even for something like this?”
“Doubt it. They’re busy.”
“Do their bosses have the compassion to let them go home for something serious as this?”
“They’re both the bosses, they have their own company, Father is the CEO and Mother is the CFO and they’re busy getting their co-workers to do stuff and all that, some big project, you know.”
“Man… When they get home you’ll at least tell them about this, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
We were still super scared and a little on edge, so I barricaded the door and locked my window, hiding under the covers. And that’s where I’m at right now! It’s like, almost twelve. Minato is like half-asleep, half-awake. He still wants to chat about whatever else but I’m trying to get him to go to sleep. He looks cute right now. Okay it does seem weird I’m like sorta watching him sleep uh oops pretend I didn’t say that. Anyway this recap got really long and I’d like to sleep now. Goodnight!