Sakura House Vol. 1

Chapter 2: Start of a New Life

        Two weeks have passed since I was basically shot down by Maria, and given amazing powers from the Old Man. In those two weeks, I packed up what I thought was most important to me, and sold everything else, because I decided that once I leave, I wouldn't be coming back. Maybe once in a great while though. I even payed back my parents who were very supportive of what I wanted to do, though when they asked how I was able to do this, I had to tell them about everything, so they are the only ones who know of my powers, I refuse to tell anyone else, mainly because it may lead to something bad happening.

        Later that afternoon, my parents drove me to the airport, once there, we met with my older brother, his wife, and their son. They all saw me off with both smiles and tears. As I boarded the plane I was both nervous and happy about leaving. I had too many bad experiences to want to stay any longer. Once the plane took off, I looked out the window and watched the clouds just pass me by. I decided to take a nap to pass some time.

        Apparently, the weight lifted off my shoulders from leaving America was so great, that I slept through just about the entire flight, because I was woken up by the pilot telling us we'd be landing in the Otomaki airport. I decided to move to a relatively small city, Otomaki is still big, but nowhere as big as Tokyo. While searching for places in Japan to move to, I stumbled upon Otomaki, a beautiful town that has amazing cherry blossoms in the spring. Too bad I moved here in the summer, but oh well, I'll be here for a quite a long while. Once the plane landed, I grabbed my overhead luggage and went to the airport terminal.

        The airport was quite bustling with people. I went and grabbed my remaining luggage from the conveyor belt and made my way outside the airport. Once on the street I looked for someone who could possibly tell me where the nearest hotel was; I wanted to put my stuff into a room before I went to register as a citizen, and before I found a small apartment to move into. As I looked around, I saw a person in a green tracksuit stopping for a breather from running, so I got their attention.

        "Excuse me." I said.

        The person turned around, it was a girl with jaw length brown hair, she almost looked like a boy. When she saw me, she started to freak out, and in broken, awkward English she said:

        "I am very...uh sorry...but I not speak English well." She then hastily ran away looking embarrassed.

        I then realized this might be difficult...I was a foreigner after all. I soon spotted a middle aged business man, so I asked him, right away where a hotel was, he gladly pointed one out to me, apparently there was one just around the corner. I thanked him, ran to the hotel, checked in, and put my stuff in my room. I made sure I had all the right documents for the citizenship register, and went out. I remember seeing the building I was supposed to go to across the street from the airport, so I was good on that. When I entered the registry building, there wasn't many people there, I guess it was still early, I arrived in Otomaki at 7 in the morning, it was now 8:30 a.m. I was soon called in to register, I decided to keep my name, I could've changed it, but I decided not to; after about an hour or so, my registry was complete, I was now a citizen of Japan.

        I decided to ask the man who helped me if he knew of any cheap apartments nearby that had any vacancies. He didn't know. That was fine by me, I thought I may as well just stay in the hotel for a bit, look around the town, get used to the area, then look for an official place. One thing is for sure, I don't want to make any friends any time soon, if I do, my past may catch up to me in an instant, and I might never recover from having a new set of friends crush me down due to my ignorance. I left the registry building and looked around trying to figure out where to go first.

        I decided to just go in a random direction, but at the same time, made sure to remember where I was so I wouldn't get lost. As I walked around the area, I came to realize that since I basically had unlimited money, I may as well buy some cook books; since I could afford to cook actual good meals, instead of instant microwave items. Upon realizing this, I noticed I was actually in front of a small bookstore, the door was wide open, so I suspected it to be open. I peeked inside but noticed no one was at the counter, I rang the assistance bell there to ask if they had any cook books, but no one came. Thinking whoever worked here was busy in the back, I just decided to look around for the books, while looking, I noticed a couple of things, there were a lot of books missing from the shelves and none of the lights were on in the store, so I was just really hoping this place wasn't actually closed but left open by mistake, it would suck to be arrested for "breaking in" on your first day being in a new country.