Hello There, You Seem To Be Trespassing

On the night of July 30th, 2023, I walked out onto my bedroom’s balcony and found someone hanging upside down in front of me. Her grin told me she was clinically insane, and her sparkly emerald eyes shone with a mischief no prison cell could confine.

“Hey.”

Many thoughts ran through my head at that moment. Why is there just a girl upside-down looking at me? How is that even possible? Should I call 911? For me or for her? Of course, the only response I could think of was a classic.

“H-H-Hello?!”

“Just moved in?”

“Yes- wait, why are you asking the questions? I’m not the one hanging by her feet on a concrete ledge 40 feet in the air!” The girl smirked and grasped my own balcony’s railing with her hands, spiraling in the air and flipping herself onto my deck. We were now face to face- or, really, face to lower sternum.

“Hm. Taller than I expected. And bulkier.” She backed up a bit and tilted her head, as if making an observation. “You look like a rising senior. Judging by school zoning, you should be going to Galileo, but I bet your family’s gonna opt for Tenth Marina, like everyone else. It does have a semester block schedule, which is better than Galileo’s 7-class schedule. If that’s the case, might I recommend signing up for a sport soon? You’ll miss out if you don’t.”

…wha?

I, quite frankly, didn’t follow. One, this girl I had never met had just randomly guessed not just my age, but also my soon-to-be high school, and along the way shoved in a sports program advertisement.

“I, uh…”

“Let’s see. Your room behind you already has an electric keyboard set up, despite it being your first day here-” at which point I closed my curtains- “-so marching wouldn’t be a bad fit, but with your size it would be difficult to fit in any pre-made uniform, so… basketball’s perfect, but since your eye twitched at the mention of it, not that… ah! You could try football! It’s pretty mental, but you’re built like an OT, so I can’t imagine people getting past you.”

“I’m sorry, but I just got here. The last thing I need right now is someone risking their life to advertise my new school’s football program.” Not to mention I was at least 90% sure that this person was either on drugs or forgot to take her drugs, and both sides of that coin were equally bad. Though, I will admit that she was convincing in a weird way, even if I had no idea what an ‘oh-tee’ was.

“Point taken. Did you see the Yankees game last night? Absolutely wild.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” The girl giggled, not providing an explanation for her comment.

“Not sure. Did you see it, though?” She looked around and tussled with the bottom of her shirt, rolling the seam in and out repeatedly.

“I mean, I saw the score, but I was watching Netflix, so no. Not that I watch baseball often.”

“Eh. Better have been a good show. We scored 16. Anyway, thanks for the chat!” She jumped and grabbed the concrete ledge above her, pulling herself up and disappearing from my view.

“Wait!” I called.

“Hm?” I couldn’t see her, but she definitely poked her head over the railing.

“What’s your name, so I can file a complaint?” She laughed and opened her door above me, heading inside. Just when I thought she wouldn’t say anything, she blurted,

“Emilia. Emilia Karlsson."

***

The next day, I woke up in my new bed, riddled with confusion from the previous night’s encounter. I got ready for the day as normal, but adjusting to the new apartment was hard. See, while I was born in America, and had lived in an apartment before, I had been living in Sapporo, Hokkaido for the past three years in a, erm, more spacious home, not because of my dad’s earnings but because of our family lineage.

Why I was born and raised in America will forever be a mystery to me. My dad grew in Hokkaido, and so was his dad, and his grandad, and so on and so forth. Alas, my first time in the family manor came when I was 13, versus the rest of my family, who have been living in bliss their entire lives.

The Katsume family is really, really rich. Good trading with the Portuguese (and eventually the Americans) put us in that position, and as such, our family owns a lot of land in Hokkaido, and has a lot of money. Not that I nor my dad get to make any use of it, being the few Katsumes that ventured beyond the lavish lifestyle of no responsibility, choosing instead to actually make contact with the outside world.

First, my parents got married and moved to Tokyo, which wasn’t too far away from Sapporo, but was enough for separation from the family. Then they got more ambitious and moved to Los Angeles, where they promised each other they would set up their dream home in Beverly Hills. Then, I was born, and by born I mean pulled out of my dead mother’s womb because she passed away during the C-section. I didn’t exactly get PTSD (I was a blob of non-sentient human-shaped flesh), but my dad did.

Nevertheless, he stayed in America, giving me the peak American experience of being bullied in elementary and middle school for being fat and chubby. Only when I turned 13 and started to grow a tiny bit vertically and shrink horizontally did we move back to the family manor (though I don’t think my growth had anything to do with it). Over the course of three years I essentially lost connection with most people’s middle-class reality. And of course, out of the blue, my dad says,

“Hey. We’re moving to San Francisco.”

SAN FRANCISCO?! I was busy living the privileged life in Japan! I didn’t need the discomfort of living in a populated area with moderate levels of social interaction! Take me back to my manor, yeesh!

After a few days of staying in a hotel room, I was thankfully able to kill the rich privilege inside me. You could say I was humbled. But you know what was really humbling? Having to make every arrangement for our housing because my dad can’t speak English! I might as well have just bought the apartment myself!

Sorry. I guess not all of the privilege is dead, even now. On the bright side, I can see why we moved away now.

It was Saturday, so I only had two days before school started up- apparently school started really early in this area. (Of course, in my time in Japan it started in April, so…) Like Emilia had said, I would be going to Tenth Marina High School, built on spacious government landfills right next to Marina Green. No one’s really sure why it’s called ‘Tenth’ Marina, but from what I’d seen on the school website, It was a well-loved name, and the school was affectionately nicknamed Ten-M.

I decided to do a bit of research into their athletics (Thanks, Ms. Emilia), and as it turned out, their programs were all notorious for being… decent and having good student-staff relations? Huh. I once again considered joining that football team, even though they did have a losing record the past season. Of course, official season practices actually started on Monday, so I decided I would go to one without signing up, see what it would be like, and make up my mind. What could go wrong?