Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

Fried Noodles

"Nah, book store," Sunny insisted. "I think you'd enjoy it more."

"You don't just have to go to the places I'd enjoy," Basil protested. He was much more of a library person than a book store person in any case.

"Just? Come on, Basil," Sunny said, a hint of a grin, "I love reading books too."

I guess you're right...

The bookstore attracted a different sort of crowd than the average teenager hanging out after school at the mall. And, as it turned out, artists loved the brand new volumes of comics and manga offered within.

"Hey, Sunny!" Mincy spoke, noticing them as soon as they entered the store. "Hey, Basil."

"Hi, Mincy," Sunny replied with a delighted smile, walking over towards her.

"H—Hello," Basil said, following Sunny.

"What're you here for?" Mincy asked Sunny. "Looking for the latest edition of Tennis Crush?" She held up a volume in her hand that even Basil hadn't read yet.

"Not really here for anything," Sunny replied. "But now that you mention it..."

"It's good," she said, offering the book to Sunny, who took it in his hands and started flipping through. "They're getting really close to revealing the guy's family secret."

Wow, sounds like I want to read it too!

Basil's hand moved towards his wallet, remembering his new credit card that his parents had registered for him that could spend up to two thousand dollars. He might end up making his first purchase with the card today.

"Sunny, let's get it," Basil offered. "I want to read the new volume too."

"Sorry, I think Mincy plans on buying it," Sunny replied. "She was here first and—"

"No, you can have it," she said. "I already read the scans online in Japanese."

"Wait, wha?" Basil said. "You can speak Japanese?"

"I've been learning. But, I'm really not very good at it," she responded with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Good enough to read manga? That's impressive," Sunny said.

"Manga's pretty basic..."

"But if you can read manga, you must've memorized over a thousand Kanji," Sunny said. "I still kind of shudder when I think about learning all those characters."

Yeah, I remember back then, Mari was teaching Sunny Kanji characters, but he always complained about how hard it was to memorize so many of them, and finally gave up after a few years.

"Learning all those Kanji wasn't the hardest part," Mincy tried to say humbly, averting her eyes. "It's the grammar that really confused me."

Basil, who didn't know any second language beyond a few classes in Spanish, came to feel distinctly inferior to his two multilingual friends. Even if Sunny didn't really get the Kanji reading part down.

"I'm going to check out some other books," Basil said, smiling, moving to another section of the bookstore.

"Okay," Sunny responded, then went back to discussing manga with Mincy.

Having caught up on all the books he loved from his childhood in the past couple of weeks, Basil had refreshed his memory on the names of his favorite authors. He kept a keen eye out for any new books released by those authors in the bookstore's mystery, thriller, science fiction, and fantasy sections. It didn't take long for him to find several new books published by the ones who were still alive.