. 1 .
On nights like tonight, I was to stay in my room. On nights like tonight, I did not belong. On nights like tonight, I wanted more than anything to be where everyone was. On nights like tonight, I sneaked out of my room. And on nights like tonight, I was filled with fear of what would happen if I was caught.
An icy gust of wind shot through the passage pushing against me. It seemed to urge me to turn back. Each step I took towards the hidden servant door filled me with excitement and nervousness. My hand slid across the cold iridescent ivory color palace wall. It reached the crescent indented shape that was the only sign of a hidden door. My finger traced the crescent shape causing it to grow larger and shift into a full moon big enough for me to pass through. Having passed through, it returned back to the indented crescent shape it had been before. I had found the same shape hidden in my locked room years ago.
I pulled the hood of my black robe over my head to hide my long white hair that radiated any light around. I wrapped the robe tighter around the white shimmering fabric of the night gown I wore. My left hand held tightly to the hood and my right held to keep the robe in place as I moved closer to the light ahead. If I was going to watch from the shadows of the upper floor then no light from my hair or gown could escape from the robe.
My heart felt like it stopped as my breath felt heavy in my chest. The emotions from below swept over me as I stepped slowly towards the railing. The happiness, love, jealousy, raw hatred that the mixture of guests below were feeling crashed into me. The strength of so many different emotions at the same time overwhelmed me. It felt like a physical form of those emotions slammed into me over and over again. I closed my eyes to listen to my heart beating. I focused on my own emotions of excitement and fear to drown out the others. The music from the room purred to me as it entered my ears. The foreign emotions started to fade…or rather I was starting to ignore them.
I could hear the voices before their owners came into sight as I peeked over the railing. I scanned the faces of people gliding across the ballroom in dance. Not seeing her among those dancing, I looked towards the mezzanine where the thrones were.
A large golden crystal throne, decorated with silver crystals shaped into different phases of the moon, glittered in the light of the ballroom. There the Queen of the Moon’s golden eon sat. To her left a second golden crystal throne laid empty with a piece of black fabric tied across the back. A slightly smaller, silvery crystal throne, this one with golden shapes of the phases of the moon, sat to the right of the Queen’s throne. There the young princess sat.
She was about the same age as me, eight earth years, but lived a completely different life within these same palace walls. Her long white hair was pulled back with twists and braids leading into a large loose bun at the nap of her neck. A simple crown of silver, pearls, and moonstones rested gently atop her head. The fringe of hair covering her forehead parted at the center revealing the crescent moon mark glowing slightly. Envy instantly wrapped me as my eyes fell to her white gown with yellow highlights that were enhanced in the lights around the ballroom.
The princess watched the guest below as they danced. Movement at the foot of the stair shifted her attention to a young boy who was making his way up the stairs to the thrones. I could only assume that the woman and man accompanying the boy were his parents. As they were dressed in the finest styles from the Earth Kingdom on the neighboring planet I assumed it was the royal family of the Earth Kingdom. Then the boy must be the princess’s betrothed. Tonight was their first public meeting and the official announcement of the betrothal. As the Earth Kingdom’s royal family neared the thrones the prince fell behind his parents. I fought back a laugh. I didn’t need to let his emotions in to know he was nervous.
The queen rose to stand and stepped forward to formally greet them. The princess quickly follow suit and stood as well. She mirrored the boy’s actions standing behind her mother. She hid her face within the fabric of the Queen’s white gown. I focused on the princess and allowed the wave of apprehension and dread to flow into me. I closed my eyes envisioning the emotion as ripples in water around me. I reached my hand out to the surface of the water as the ripples clapped into it. I felt the emotions seep into my hand as the ripples grew quieter and quieter.
Opening my eyes again I saw The Queen’s long silver hair covering her face as she bent down to talk to the princess. After the princess nodded in response the Queen kissed the glowing crescent moon on the princess’s forehead. I felt a monster of jealousy grab hold of my chest seeing the tender motherly kiss.
Movement turned my attention to the Earth Kingdom’s prince as he stepped out from behind his parents. He dropped to one knee before the moon princess and lowered his head. The princess looked to her mother once again for reassurance before extending her hand to the prince. The prince raised his head and kissed the princess’s hand.
A cold wave of emotions I did not recognize crashed into me from behind.
“You shouldn’t be here little one…” an amused croaky voice whispered into my ear.
The whisper sent a shockwave through my body causing me to freeze in place. My breath caught in my chest as a cold sensation crept up my body from my toes. The emotion submerging me grew stronger. I could feel what it was, the happiness of anticipation… the anticipation of causing another being pain.
“Good little girls listen and do as they are told.” The whisperer took a satisfied slow breath as my body started to shiver. “Bad little girls…” they continued. “get punished.”
I felt an explosion against the back of my head before seeing a flash of white and everything then went black. A sensation of something else pulling me away entangled me.
@}—,—‘—-
I gasped for breath, feeling as if I had been held underwater. The back of my head was pounding. The dream slowly faded away as I opened my eyes. My eyes focused as I looked around to remind myself where I was; a business hotel room in Tokyo. My eyes adjusted slowly to the light from the bathroom that we left on as a night light. My head continued to throb as I registered the halo of light around the blackout curtains of the hotel windows. Daylight? I looked across the room from the intruding light of the bathroom to the clock. It read 5:57.
Terra’s soft breathing in the bed next to mine comforted me. I closed my eyes to focus on letting the peace and calmness from Terra float towards me. She must be having a wonderful dream. I started to feel Terra’s peace wrap around me and envisioned it as a warm blanket on a winter’s day. I still felt the terror still lingering from the dream as nails digging into my skin. Their grip on me lightened as the blanket I imagined acted as armor. When my breathing returned to normal and the pulsing in my head subsided, I dropped the blanket from around me.
I opened my eyes when Terra let out a small gasp in her sleep. It astonished me that she was still asleep. It may only be six am in Tokyo but our bodies were still on Hawaii time which was eleven… five hours later but also yesterday. When traveling, time became a very strange thing indeed.
I picked up my iPad from the night stand between our beds and angled it so the light would not bother Terra. I connected it to the hotel’s WiFi last night to send my mother a message that Terra and I had arrived safely at the hotel. I ignored the reply from her and searched for the email from the University. I double checked the time we had to arrive at the international student’s office. Even taking ‘Hawaii time’ into consideration, there was still plenty of time to let Terra sleep more.
I laid back in my bed still feeling a haze around me from the dream. I‘ve had these dreams my whole life. The setting and the people were always the same. What changed was the age I, and the people around me, were. In one dream, I was a toddler playing a hide and seek type of game with my friends and, in another, we were readying for some kind of coming-of-age traditional ceremony. The girl I was in my dream was an empath just like me. She could sense and control other beings’ emotions.
I thought it could make an interesting story someday so I started to write the dreams down to make some sense of them. Sometimes all that were left of the dreams was the wisp like feeling of the person I was in the dream. Other times I remembered everything from the scent of the air around me, to the feel of the weight of the dresses I wore. And sometimes all that was left was nothing but the fear, pain and sorrow that had been in the dream. Those were the dreams I woke from in tears. There was even a time I had terrified my mother when I had woken up screaming. Usually, those dreams were the quickest to fade away.
Replacing my iPad back onto the night stand I got up to get some water from the bathroom. I splashed water on my face and dried it with a towel. I caught my reflection in the mirror, surprised. I think I had half expecting to see white glowing hair instead of my ginger hair that any Weasley would be proud of. With a couple of swipes, I brushed the hair of my fringe back into their proper place. I grabbed a hair tie from a small bag sitting on the bathroom counter and pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
Returning to my bed I pulled a shopping bag from the floor to the bed next to me. I retrieved one of the many notebooks I had bought and a pen from the bag. I bought the new notebooks yesterday from a department store near the hotel. I wanted a clear start of the dreams I had while in Japan… if I had them at all. The notebooks all had the same plain light brown cardboard covers. I bought some color illustration pens as well and I planned to draw on the cover once we got settled into our new dorm rooms. I wanted to start writing what details I could remember from the dream before they slipped away.
March 22nd – age 7 or 8 – used power - first in Japan
I wrote on the first page of my new notebook. The ink from the pen in my hand flowed quickly trying to keep up with the speed I was writing at. My hand still shook slightly from the adrenaline that had been released into my body. I paused writing after a couple paragraphs to sketch in the margin the crescent moon indented shape in the wall I had seen in the dream. The lines on the first page filled up and I turned the page to continue on the back.
“Another dream?” Terra asked, her voice hoarse, still filled with sleep.
“Yeah…” I finished adding the last little detail to my sketch of the crystal thrones I had seen. I clicked the pen closed and dropped the notebook on my lap, giving my awoken friend my attention.
“Anything new or interesting?” Terra looked around the room in a daze. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost seven.” I answered, surprised I had been writing for that long.
“We only have a half hour left of hotel breakfast. Yeah? Do you want to grab some clothes and rush or do you want to shower, pack, check out and get breakfast somewhere else?” Terra asked, sitting up in bed. She ran her fingers through her chin length dark red hair. “Either way I need coffee.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Quickest way you’ll get coffee is if we go downstairs to the hotel breakfast. I’m hungry so let’s just throw clothes on and go downstairs.”
“Dirty bean water!” Terra chirped happily as she sprang up from the bed.
@}—,—‘—-
There was a loud clunk as Terra overzealously put her coffee cup and saucer down on the table.
“No food?” I asked, frowning at the lack of a plate of food.
“Not yet. I’ll get some when I refill my coffee. I just really need to get some caffeine in me before I can be hungry this morning.”
I nodded and picked up my own cup of coffee as Terra did. In unison we took a drink then we let out a satisfying ‘Dirty bean water…’
“Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” Terra triumphantly stated.
“I’ll buy you one for your new apartment fridge.” I laughed.
“So what’s the plan today?” Terra asked, taking another sip of coffee.
“We need to be at the international office by 10. After we finish getting checked into our apartments, I’m thinking we can head somewhere to buy things we need.”
“Sounds good.” Terra looked at her watch and nodded. “Feeling the coffee now so on to step two of breakfast.”
I looked down at my plate. The hotel’s breakfast buffet offered, I assume, for western guests, runny scrambled eggs, breads, sausage, and potato salad. For the Japanese guests they offered rice, miso soup, fish, and natto. I was happy to see tamagoyaki, a sweet fried folded egg omelet of egg and sugar, that appealed to both types of guests. The sausage and croissant I picked up I thought would go best with the tamagoyaki’s flavor; I was right. In true bestie fashion Terra returned with a similar looking plate though instead her bread was toast with butter and jam.
We talked excitedly about what the apartments might have in store for us as we ate breakfast and returned to our room to check out. Along with the excitement of starting a year of studying in Japan with my best friend there was also a sense that something was coming, something big.
@}—,—‘—-
Our taxi pulled up to the main gate of the university. The gate was mostly closed, leaving only enough room for people to enter the campus single filled. An arriving student showed a security guard in the window of a security office their ID as they entered the school.
Once we paid the taxi driver the door next to Terra swung open and the driver quickly jumped out of the car to take our suitcases out of the trunk.
“This place is amazing!” Terra exclaimed, stepping out of the taxi.
The driver placed a suitcase next to her as I stepped out after her. He quickly returned with mine, placing it next to me.
“Arigato gozaimasu!” I bowed thanking the driver.
I reached out to close the door but let out a yelp of surprise as the opened taxi door swung shut automatically. Terra let out a little chuckle. We rolled our suitcases up to the security guard sitting in the window.
“Can I help you?” He asked us in Japanese, suspiciously eyeing our suitcases.
“Yes. We are new students. We have an appointment with Nishimura sensei in the international student’s office.” I answered in Japanese.
“Stand over there. Please wait a moment.” The guard motioned towards the door of the gate office and closed the window.
Terra and I rolled our suitcases next to the door as a couple more students arrived. Once through the gate the students walked up wide brick stairs that paused every seven steps. The pauses in the steps were wide enough to have a cherry tree, almost in full bloom, planted on each side of the pauses until the stairs finally reached the top of the hill. At the base of the stairs was a large circular fountain. Water flowed down in a water fixture that ran down the middle of the stairs cutting the stairs into two sections and feeding water into the fountain at the base of the stairs. At the top of the stairs, in the center of the fixture, was a statue of a man.
“Mahina…” Terra called me by my nickname, the Hawaiian word for moonlight. A strong mixture of exhilaration, anticipation and dread rushed towards me from Terra. She took a calming breath before continuing. “I know we boarded a plane. We were surrounded by Japanese after we landed but…”
“This whole thing just got real.” I finished her sentence feeling the same.
“Yeah. We are standing at the gate of the University.”
“How many pictures have we seen of that statue, yeah?”
“We are here standing at the gate. Tonight, we will be sleeping in the dorm rooms. This is life for the next year.”
“Sorry, sorry!” An older Japanese woman dressed in high heels and a skirt suit quickly shot through the gate. In a smooth quick motion, she bowed an apology to the security guard and continued her way to us.
“Ayla and Terra? Nice to finally meet you. I’m Nishimura from the international student’s office. I’m so happy you’re early. I’m sorry I wasn’t ready to meet you at the gate. If you’ll follow me.”
Following Nishimura we rolled our suitcases up a ramp that built in after thought on the left side of the red brick stairs. The noisy roll of the wheels overpowered the sound of the water flowing down the middle of the stairs. I was thankful it was right before the new school term started. The number of students on campus were limited but those that were there watched us as we rolled our suitcases through the campus.
@}—,—‘—-
We were sitting at a large boardroom-like table in a meeting room in the international student’s office. The rest of the office was made up of desks for the various staff and an area with information about things to do around Japan in various languages.
“Coffee or ocha?” Nishimura asked, rolling our suitcases out of the way into the corner of the room.
“Coffee, please.” I answered, my voice shaking with a blend of excitement and nervousness.
“Me too.” Terra quickly replied, her voice filled with the same blend of emotions.
“Please wait.” Nishimura left the room.
“Are we the first ones here?” I asked Terra looking around the room.
“I think so. The drive here was faster than I thought. We’re a little early. Do you think that ‘I’m happy you’re early’ was a dig?”
“One hundred percent!” Terra laughed. “Could have been on Hawaii time.”
Nishimura entered the room again, this time she had a tray in her hands. She placed a napkin, a cup filled with steaming coffee, and another cup filled with creamers and sugar down, in that order, in front of me. She placed Terra’s coffee in front of her in the same methodical way. A phone rang in the office, sending Nishimura out of the room with the empty tray.
Terra and I looked at each other, not sure what to do. I shrugged, opening one of the creamers and sugar pouring them into the coffee. Terra smiled relaxing as she followed my lead and mixed her coffee.
After a while the door to the room opened again revealing Nishimura and another foreign student arrival behind her.
The new arrival had a natural tanned glow to her skin. Her curly thick sun lightened brown hair streamed down just low enough to brush along her shoulders. Her almond shaped eyes darted nervously around the room.
“This is Terra and Ayla.” Nishimura rolled the new arrival’s suitcase over to the corner of the room with ours.
“Hey. I’m Amaya.” She sat down across the table from us.
“Would you like coffee or ocha?” Nishimura asked the new arrival.
“Coffee please.” Amaya answered, sending Nishimura on her way. “I need caffeine.” Amaya let out a nervous sigh and turned her attention to us.
“Where are you from?” I asked her, smiling, hoping it would relieve some of the nervousness I felt from her.
“I’m from Hawaii.”
“Knew it!!” Terra stated victoriously. Both Terra and myself sat up even straighter with excitement. “I can see the Hawaiian in you. And also…Japanese? Which explains why you’re here. Connecting to your culture. Am I righ-”
“Ignore her!” I interrupted Terra. “What island? We’re from Honolulu.” The tension in Amaya’s body seemed to relax hearing that.
“UH Manoa? I’m here through UH Hilo. I’m from the big island.”
“Yup, we go to Manoa.” I replied as Terra pouted at me playfully.
“Sorry if this seems strange to say but…” Amaya started. “I’m shy. I might come off rude or my resting bitch face might make you think I’m all anti-social but I’m just shy.” Amaya’s tan checks seemed to get a slight red blush to them. “Sorry I want to make the most of… just forget I said anything.” Amaya turned her eyes to the ground.
“I like her, Ayla!” Terra chuckled.
“Don’t worry you’re making a great first impression.” I gave Terra a look. “We love awkward people.”
Amaya laughed.
Nishimura walked back into the room and placed another cup of coffee in front of Amaya.
“I’ll be right back with the keys.”
“Keys? Did you hear that?” I asked Terra.
“Finally, we will get our keys to our dorm!”
“If we have time today we want to go shopping for things we need… Do you want to come with us?” I asked Amaya.
“Sure that sounds like fun.”
Nishimura walked back into the room with three large envelopes in her arms. She glanced down at the name on the top envelope and placed it in front of me. The next one was placed in front of Terra and the last in front of Amaya.
“Inside of the envelopes are your student cards, the renter’s agreement for the house, and house keys.”
“House? House keys?” Amaya looked over at us trying to see if she missed something or if we were just as confused as her.
“Oh! I’m sorry. We did not have time to tell you before your arrival. There was a broken pipe in the dorm and we had to move our incoming students in that area to new housing. The University has an old house nearby that used to be a part of teacher housing.”
“Old house?” Terra gave me a worried look.
“Yes. It’s very close outside the west gate of the campus. It’s closer than the apartment where the other international students are staying.”
It took over an hour to go over everything. Nishimura explained that we needed the student IDs to be able to get on campus for classes. We will be living in a 5LDK, 5 bedrooms with living, dining and kitchen. We went over the renters agreement that started things such as not hanging anything on the walls with nails or tacks. The agreement also stated the way to separate garbage, where and when it had to be put out. A schedule for the next week was also given to us.
Tomorrow we will be doing housekeeping; opening a bank account, getting cell phones, registering at city hall. The day after that was language placement tests followed by selecting the classes we wanted to take this term. Classes would start on April 10th giving us over two weeks to get over jetlag and get settled in. We signed our renter agreements, placed the remaining paperwork into our bags and followed Nishimura through the campus rolling our suitcases in tow.
The sounds of the university faded quickly as we crossed the street from the west gate. The only sound seemed to be the sound of the suitcases rolling along the pavement of the narrow street. I doubted the street was wide enough for a car to pass.
Nishimura sensei stopped and pointed ahead. “The path leads into the shrine. If you go straight through the shrine to the left, the train station is there.”
She continued leading the way past the park. Before us was a two story house with an old shoulder-high dirty concrete brick wall with iron gates marking the entryway. Two dead looking trees framed the front door which a cracked concrete walkway led to. Second story windows could be seen beyond the pyramid style roof of the first level only entry. The windows were covered in diamond shaped metal fencing and the paint of the house was chipped, having been beaten back by years of Japanese summers.
“T-this is where we are going to live?” The confusion in my eyes were the same as Terra’s and Amaya’s.