"Haruka Kanata"

“Beneath the heart that said,

‘I like being alone!’

I am crying,

Crying in bitterness for the world

Of the one whom I love but cannot follow.”

          - Misora Hibari, Mournful Sake

==========

On one fine April morning, a particular gust of wind breezed through downtown Tokyo and blew a particular current of cherry blossoms approximately 35,000 feet into the air and 3,500 miles across the sea, making them dance and swirl outside a particular window of a particular jetliner streaming westward out of Newark.

The figure in the window seat sat with his arms crossed, head hanging forward, eyes closed, knowing smile on his face. His appearance - spiky blonde hair, white headband with the phrase VICTORY written across it in Google-translated black kanji, orange sweatshirt of the New York Metropolitan baseball club, scuffed-up sneakers - suggested a commoner, but his mannerisms - the kindness that made a home-sick flight attendant swoon, the self-assuredness as he left his family behind for a year in the promised land - spoke of royalty.

At the moment the sakura petals susurrated past his window, his eyes snapped to attention, as he possessed a sixth sense for all things Japanese. He spoke the language fluently, having studied diligently at the school of the sketchy streaming sites; he knew all about Japan’s customs, tropes, traditions, the wabi-sabi and konbini; he was prepared for his destiny, and his destiny was a kick-ass year studying abroad at Higashikatsushika High in Tokyo.

The student chuckled to himself, sitting there in his seat, because he was gonna be the best exchange student there ever was - believe it!

“Konnichiwa, you motherfuckers.” Dick Slaughter watched the cherry blossoms swirl away as he continued his inevitable, unstoppable march towards time, fate, and getting a Japanese girlfriend.

BRILLIANT

BATTLE

FIRST CORINTHIANS

She - short, brunette, dark bags beneath her eyes - arrived at her shoe locker at Higashikatsushika High. She heard the usual snickers in the background, but paid them no mind. Unsurprisingly, someone had gotten into her locker and crossed out her name KUROSHIO SHIGEKO in favor of SHINIGAMI, surrounded by little, if admittedly well-drawn, figures of schoolchildren assaulted by a scythe.

Shigeko sighed, not from the cruelty of her classmates - she had gotten used to it by now - but the banality of it all, because nothing truly mattered anymore. Perhaps it started with her birth, where her mother’s final push to deliver Shigeko from her womb was assisted by the sudden, window-shattering power of the Great Tohoku Earthquake (having a surname that meant “Black Tide” in the wake of radioactive water leakage did her few favors either); it also could’ve been little Shigeko wandering out of the house during a storm, forcing her ill mother to leave the futon in search of her, leading to the inevitable cold, sickness, hospitalization, final promise, and death that Japanese mothers seem to be so susceptible towards, especially after exposure to rain; or perhaps it was her father’s subsequent descent into gambling, alcoholism, and his own early demise.

Death seemed to follow Shigeko, and her classmates knew it. She lived as a miko in a rotting shine on the outskirts of Higashikatsushika dedicated to a forgotten local variant of Inari, the harvest goddess, whose scythe Shigeko occasionally wielded to cut through the shrine’s overgrowth. When the bullies who came by to accost her at the shrine realized she wouldn’t raise the scythe in anger at them, they only felt more compelled to tease her. Shinigami, they called her. The death goddess with her scythe.

“Make way for the shinigami!” the Newspaper Club hound Fujinami Kano called out, overly-dramatically lunging away to safety when Shigeko entered Classroom 2-C that morning. The class ooh’d and gave her a wide berth, laughing all the while, warning each other about getting too close, otherwise they’d be next on Shigeko’s kill list. Shigeko had been through this routine too many times to feel anything but emptiness, which wasn’t really a feeling at all, truthfully. That made things a little bit better.

She did remind herself that it wasn’t the whole class laughing. Sure, the delinquent leader Arashi Gaizo with his ridiculous pompadour and his baggy-sock spray-tanned bleached-haired gyaru girlfriend Yoizuki Raika were the loudest, but withdrawn basketball captain Kinugasa Enji and little Naka Hayata didn’t laugh, nor did the school princess Zuiho Hisa. But Enji and Zuiho had their heads buried in books, hearing it all but detached from it nonetheless, while Naka was kind of a baby.

When Shigeko got to her seat, Yoizuki yanked it away at the last moment, sending Shigeko sprawling on her ass. Yoizuki, laughing with that wide mouth of hers, joined her boyfriend, sitting atop the desk behind Shigeko.

“Careful, shinigami,” Arashi sneered. “You might hurt something, falling around like that.”

Shigeko sighed, rubbing her heinie, as she retrieved her seat. Yoizuki had been scribbling across her desk again in the same scrawl that covered her indoor shoes, writing your basic fare like Ugly and Creepy to more intellectual teasing such as Slut and Radioactive. Shigeko covered the writing, like usual, with her books and papers, then rested her head atop them. She didn’t care about any of that. She didn’t care about anything.

Not one for talking, Shigeko had become incredibly adept at listening, though classroom conversations usually bored her. Fujinami heard from her cousin, who heard from a classmate, who heard from his nee-san’s boyfriend’s club captain that there were fox-spirits and ghosts in the hills; rumors that the Suisei Conglomerate was pressuring the Seppuku-dori Shopping Arcade Association to sell their land; that there would be a new transfer student today.

“I heard he’s an American,” Yoizuki told Arashi and the delinquents of his Deacon Blues who gathered ‘round at the back of class. 

“I hope so,” Arashi answered, punching an open palm. “I’ve never beaten up an American before.”

“Careful, he might shoot you,” Yoizuki teased.

Arashi merely pulled open his gakuran, revealing his (admittedly quite-chiseled) six pack. “I got armor on, babe.”

A tired, hungover hand opened the door. “Settle down, minna,” Katori-sensei said, propping herself up against the wall as she made her way to her desk, sighing in relief when she plopped herself down. “The second week of the semester and you’re all so rambunctious. So loud. Eto…in any case, we have a new transfer student today, hooray and what-not.”

Katori-sensei brought a hand to her mouth and swallowed last night’s dinner back down, then sweatily gestured towards the door. “Please welcome our transfer student.”

Shigeko still had her head down on her desk. She didn’t care. But even for someone who made not caring her whole identity, the sheer cascade of gasps running through the classroom, the excited whispers and hushed exuberance, made Shigeko lift her tired eyes.

“Konnichiwa,” the shit brickhouse of a student greeted in flawless Japanese. He wrote his name on the board in kanji - RICHARD SLAUGHTER.

“But you can call me Dick,” Dick said.

“You can call me anytime,” Yoizuki mumbled, batting shaded eyelids at him. Arashi crossed his arms and grumbled to himself.

“I was supposed to get here last week,” Dick explained, rubbing the back of his thick neck sheepishly, “And attend the opening ceremony and all, but my flight got delayed…you know how it is at American airports.”

Fujinami raised her hand, sensing a good scoop for the school newspaper right there in front of her. “Where did you live in America?”

“Brooklyn,” he grinned. “Flatbush’s finest. I’m here for a year to study abroad.”

“Why here?” Fujinami asked. “And you speak decent Japanese for a gaijin, how’d you learn it?”

Dick laughed. “The answer is the same for both. It’s because I love anime! Ever since I was a kid, I just knew that one day, I had to attend a Japanese high school and live a Japanese life. I love your clubs and the fact that you have to clean the classroom yourself and the indoor shoes and going home in the rain with a girl ‘cept there’s only one umbrella so you have to get close and you chivalrously cover the whole girl while your own left elbow is left out and gets soaked and she realizes that and feels simultaneously guilty and elated about how you’re so nice to her that it simply isn’t fair. I also like trains.”

The crowd ooh’d and aah’d in various stages of admiration and surprise.

Katori-sensei, not wanting to teach today, allowed Dick’s introduction to transition into a Q-and-A session and drifted off to sleep. Dick’s eyes lit up in delight upon seeing a huge snot bubble rise and fall from Katori-sensei’s nose as she slumbered - just like anime!

Dick laughed and laughed and explained to 2-C all about life back home in the Big Apple, his family and Mets’ tickets he had to leave behind in his pursuit of his destiny as a Japanese high school student. Back home, you didn’t have to call your seniors senpai or anything, clubs weren’t really a big thing though sports teams certainly were, the streets were cracked and vending machines could only be found in buildings. He explained it all with his winning smile. Shigeko felt herself growing bored again.

Fujinami asked the next question. “Can I say that word when I’m singing along to a song lyric-”

Yoizuki hip-checked Fujinami back into her seat. As the class’s resident gyaru and self-proclaimed America expert, Yoizuki was eager to assert her credentials. “I love America-san,” she proclaimed. “How many cowboys have you met?”

“Well…none, actually,” Dick answered.

“But everyone from Texas is a cowboy! Isn’t New York City in Texas?”

“Not exactly…”

“Have you ever shot someone?”

“...no, haven’t done that either…”

“But everyone gets shot every day in America.”

“That’s not quite it either…”

Yoizuki, realizing her knowledge of America wasn’t quite accurate, started to grow frustrated.

“Why do you keep your shoes on when going inside your home?”

“It’s not unacceptable, but a lot of people do take their shoes off, especially when visiting a friend.”

“Are you saying that I know more about America than you do?” Yoizuki stomped her foot. “I know that Kansas City is the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row. And that New England went undefeated for an entire year. Or are you saying the shirts I got from the thrift store are wrong, huh, huh?” Yoizuki sat back down in a huff. “Typical Americans don’t even know their own history. And there’s only a couple hundred years of it anyway.”

“...right…”

Shigeko could hear Arashi jeering and laughing from the seat behind her. He always laughed when his girlfriend Yoizuki got flustered and angry. “This Dick is alright, how about that? But I got one word of advice for ya. Stay away from the shinigami in the class. You don’t want her plague.”

The class laughed at that. Dick looked confused. Shigeko, for some reason, found her face flushed and beet-red for once. She slumped in her seat, hoping to avoid the sneers, but Arashi grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her back up.

“Get a good look, Dick. But don’t get too close!”

More laughter. Shigeko averted her eyes. But then she heard footsteps approaching, and then all of a sudden the grip from her collar was gone.

Arashi was the largest student in class, the same size as the new transfer student, but the stocky Dick had pulled him out of his seat and tossed him into an empty desk elsewhere in the classroom. Dick then claimed Arashi's seat for himself.

“I won’t stand for bullying,” Dick said, sitting down. “That goes against my ninja way. As punishment, I’ll be taking the protagonist’s seat for myself.”

Shigeko felt her insides do somersaults.

Arashi, sprawled out in the empty desk, now found himself at the center of the class’s laughter. He fixed his pompadour then raised a fist. “You’re dead, pal, you hear me-”

“Enough.”

The interjection didn’t come from Katori-sensei, who was deep in dreamland about another life where she got married before age twenty-five. No, the voice came from-

“Zuiho-sama,” someone whispered.

“Zuiho-sama has spoken,” came back another.

Tall, elegant, flowing black hair, dangerously beautiful, Zuiho Hisa finally closed her book (she was Buchou of the Classic Literature Club). “I’ve had enough of this tedium. As Class Representative, I will allow the transfer student to take that seat. I’ll hear no more of this shinigami talk today, understood?”

“Agreed,” Katori-sensei agreed, not knowing what she agreed to, only that the force of Zuiho closing the book woke her up from the dream. “I guess it’s time to start teaching today.”

Arashi and Yoizuki both glared daggers at Dick and Shigeko, but even they couldn’t go against the school princess.

As Katori-sensei readied herself, Shigeko could feel the presence of Dick behind her, and Dick’s relaxing, musky scent that promised safety…

Shigeko wasn’t used to looking people in the eye, so she spoke quietly at her desk. “Thank you, Dick-kun.”

To her surprise, Dick slipped from his seat and squatted next to her so she could see him. The surprise eye contact felt like a flashbang to her system, but to actually see someone’s face, to not see that person laughing - well, she felt herself growing red again.

Dick raised his hand, fingers shaped in a V pose. “Don’t mention it! Protecting the weak and overcoming any challenge, that’s my nindo, my ninja way!”

And for the first time since the Tohoku earthquake, Shigeko laughed.

===========

EPISODE 1

“THE TRANSFER STUDENT”