I don't think I was much happier to leave Hagi than Cye was to see me go, but I do think I had the better deal. I was going home, I had my family all around me to provide irritating but not unwelcome distractions, and I had a load off my mind. The question of school was settled and now all I had to do was wait out the week, pack up, and go. 

...Would've been nice if it had been as simple as I just made it sound, but in my family, nothing ever goes that smoothly.

Just packing up was kinda challenging. Deciding what to take and what not to take wasn't always easy, I think I put a little mental 'yes' or 'no' on just about everything I owned, and I couldn't make up my mind on some of it. Like should I take both pairs of sneakers, or just one? What about my pillow? I might not need that, but I might want it. Which books was I going to want to read, and how many should I try to fit in, and was it worth taking out a pair of jeans to get my boots in or not? I kept remembering Grandfather's bare-essentials house and thinking about how not to get bored while I was there; Ma had to remind me a couple times that I might be too busy studying to read or listen to music or whatever. 

Oh, and that was when I found out that Grandfather did actually have a phone. Pop came into my room one evening- Tuesday, I think it was- and told me everything was arranged. "Honorable Grandfather will be pleased to have you. He says you will have the guest room with the desk, to help with your studying," he told me, and I looked up from the suitcase and nodded. "There is a Hanai bus stop just a block from the house, so that will be convenient for you," he added.

I still don't know how they figured that out, but it turned out to be true.

"Oh, good," I said sort of vaguely- it was starting to sink in that not only was I leaving home, I wasn't exactly going on vacation. 

"He has no great requirements, only that you assist with the chores and keep your room relatively neat. It is not a large house, you know, and will not take much time to dust and sweep every now and then."

I nodded. "And dishes," I added after a moment. 

"Yes- as to that, he refuses to charge for the bedroom, but he requests a small sum for buying food. You will probably want to assist him with that, also." And as I looked blank, he added, "So that he knows what you like to eat, and so that he doesn't have to carry heavier bags by himself."

"Oh! Oh, yeah... Say, he might like some new dishes. Maybe you could send some of your recipes with me and I could cook 'em for him. It would be another way of paying him, wouldn't it?"

My father brightened. "That is an excellent idea, and I will bring you copies tomorrow." Then, growing serious again: "I will also bring you a quantity of phone cards. The phone lines in Toyama are good, but expensive. If you run low, you can let me know and I will send more."

"I'll probably run out," I agreed, touched.

"I will also send such spending money as you need for personal things and school things," Pop concluded, studying the floor. 

"Oh- Papi-san, I don't think I'll need much," I said softly. There was this lump suddenly sitting in my throat. "I have all my school stuff, and...I'm taking plenty with me..." I shrugged, waving at the suitcases.

"That is true, but it may be that you and Shin-san wish to do something- see a movie, have a treat, travel somewhere on a Sunday...it would be good to be prepared and able to have an amusement with your friend," my father said formally. 

Cye. Suddenly I felt a little better. "It would be good," I agreed. "Though Shin-niisan already thinks my family is very generous, giving him such a beautiful watch." 

Pop smiled again; he'd picked out that watch himself. "It was nothing, only nothing, you know that. He is a good one, Lei Fan- let him guide you and you won't go wrong."

"I have a sort of an idea about that," I mused. "As long as we cook for two, maybe we could cook for three sometimes. Shin-niisan isn't too bad with a stove himself, and he's a long way from home. Besides, he cooks for his housemates, he might like a night off."

"Indeed," my father said, looking interested, and that was pretty much the end of anything school and departure-related. But I went to bed feeling about sixteen different things, and lay awake for a while to sort everything out. It was touching to know Pop was going to miss me and wanted me to call home often, but I wasn't so sure about the pocket money thing. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the thought; it was more like I felt sad because I had a feeling he didn't know how else to express his caring for me other than making sure I had everything I wanted...physically. I thought I might have preferred a hug and some informal words- but then, maybe not. Maybe that would just make it harder. It was already hard enough thinking about leaving Ma and Princess and Yun!

Ah, Yun. Yun took all the packing and preparing pretty hard and got real clingy again. I know he didn't really understand why I was going so far away; he asked, indirect-like, why I didn't go to a school in Yokohama instead of all the way to Toyama. I pointed out that even if I did, I still wouldn't be at home, I'd be staying in a dorm on campus, but I got the feeling Yun wasn't convinced. For him it was as much the distance as the absence.

I was almost glad he got clingy, actually, though I felt bad about it too. It meant he had gotten over the incident with Brat in the hotel and wasn't scared of me anymore- if he ever had been. Or disapproving or whatever.

As for the Hyper One- well, him I had a little chat with on Thursday. He'd been pretty well behaved since we got home and didn't seem mad at me anymore (the kid holds a grudge like you wouldn't believe, but honestly, I couldn't blame him for that one) so I pulled him into my room and told him I wanted to talk. Then I asked if he was going to keep behaving while I was gone, or if he was just waiting for me to leave.

He doesn't blush easily, but that time he did.

"I thought so," I said. "Look, Sprout, nobody can make you be good but yourself. If you want to be good you will be, and if you don't, you won't. You're just stubborn that way. But you know, when you behave badly, you make the family look bad too. And you remember all those jerks who made fun of you and insulted you? Well, when you act bad, they can say things like how rude we Chinese are and how it's right to be unkind to us and how we don't know our place and how bad the neighborhood is with all 'those' in it. See how inferior we act? See how bad our manners are? See what a bad example you set?"

Little Brother's eyes went wide, then very narrow. "It is not! We're not, we-"

"I know, but kid, when you act like that you're giving 'em all these reasons, excuses, to say stuff like that. It doesn't matter if they think it's true or not, all that matters is they can point to you and say look, he just proves it." I paused a minute to let him think that over, then said softly, "Though really, when you think about it, that's no different than how you act about girls."

"I- what? I don't!"

"No? You're saying you don't think girls are stupid and useless and inferior and should be ignored- or locked up in zoos?" I was quoting him directly on that last one.

"That, that's different!" My brother looked up at me with the strangest mix of a glare and a pout.

"It's not different at all. You fight with Rinfi, so you've decided every girl alive is awful and she's the most awful of 'em all. And that's how those creeps are about us- they see how you behave badly, and they say all Chinese are rude and disgusting and you're the worst of them."

It's not every day I argue Sprout into a corner. He sat blinking at me for a moment, and then he looked down at his feet and kind of shrank. "I- I won't be rude no more," he mumbled after at least thirty seconds.

"Thank you." I sat down and put my arm around him. "You know, you don't have to like her. But maybe you could try to respect her."

He gave me his 'you have got to be kidding' look. 

"Well, she's got good qualities," I pointed out. "Tell you what, when I come home at New Year, you can tell me some of them, okay? You can say, 'well I still don't like her, but she is very tidy and she doesn't take a long time in the bathroom and use all the hot water.' Or something." 

"I, well, okay, I guess," he muttered. "But she's so- she's all-"

"She tells you what to do and you don't like it. Maybe if you're more polite, she won't tell you what to do so much. She sure won't be telling you to be quiet all the time if you're not saying rude things at her, hm?"

"I gueeeesssss," he sighed- in English, surprising me- then gave me a sly look and asked out of the blue, "While you're gone, can I have your room?"

"I- think either Sister or our Quiet One will have it," I said slowly, shocked. I hadn't thought about that! "Ask Ma, she'll be the one to decide."

"Okay," he said cheerfully, jumped up, and ran off yelling for our mother. I sat there for a few minutes, looking around my little bedroom and trying to shake the feeling that things were getting out of hand. Going to high school, yes; traveling to Toyama and living with Grandfather, ok- but losing my room? And what would happen when I came back on break- would I sleep on the floor or the living-room sofa for three weeks? Well, no, I'd probably share with one of my brothers, but- was I not going to have 'my' room again in this house? It was a weird thought, strange and scary and lonely. I almost felt like I was about to become homeless. Things were changing a little too fast and I wasn't at all sure they were going to go back to their old familiar ways again.

If I only knew, eh?

Anyway, I spent Friday and Saturday feeling kind of gloomy and going all around the neighborhood, looking at my favorite places. I climbed up the Rockpile a couple times and took pictures of the mountains to take with me and dropped into the dojo to say goodbye to the instructors and some of the students. In a way, I was wishing I could just go and get it over with, and I was definitely impatient to see Cye again, but at the same time I really didn't want to go at all. I'm not used to feeling all divided like that and it wasn't fun. Also, it didn't help that everyone else was starting to get kind of gloomy about me leaving. I suppose I would have been real hurt if they were happy about it, but the whole house was down in the dumps a lot of the time. Even Sprout got rather solemn and more affectionate than usual. Princess didn't really get what was going on, but she knew something about me was making everyone quiet and she got almost as clingy as Yun.

I was almost glad to get on the train Sunday morning, since it meant I was done waiting for the time to pass, but I was also fairly spooked at making the trip by myself. I reminded myself that if Cye could travel alone from Hagi, switching trains every few hours, I could sure take one straight to Toyama. So I put on a confident face, hugged everyone goodbye, took my seat, and, well, it was hard when the train pulled out. I didn't cry, but I sure felt like it. I cheered myself up by taking the little seashell Cye'd given me out of my pocket and remembering Hagi. 'And tomorrow I'll see him,' I thought. 'Finally. It seems like a lot longer than just a week since we were sitting under the pier and talking!' I sat back, closed my eyes, concentrated on remembering the vacation, and soon began to feel better. 'I don't know how he did this, alone, going to a city where he didn't know anyone- didn't even know where he'd be staying! Sure wouldn't wanna have been in his shoes. And I would've been, if I hadn't met him and he hadn't told me about Hanai...'

Once I settled down, the trip was pretty dull. Looking out the window loses its novelty after a while, and I was too keyed-up to lie back and snooze. I got out a book and tried to read, but my stomach decided it didn't like that, so I had to put it away. I've heard all about getting car-sick and sea-sick, but I didn't know there was such a thing as train-sick. It was obnoxious, and it made me twice as glad that I wasn't coming from somewhere as far off as Hagi. If I'd had to spend the entire day just looking out the window or at the other passengers, I'd've gone stir crazy. Besides, staring isn't polite. And talking with my fellow passengers was pretty much out of the question- Japanese rarely talk to each other in public unless either it's vitally necessary or they already know each other. I found myself wishing some foreigners would get on; foreigners, and Americans particularly, are always a lot of fun to talk to. Unfortunately, none did.

Grandfather was waiting for me when I got off the train- with a sigh of relief- and we took a taxi to his house. That was one wild ride, and it made me wonder if the bus rides to and from school were going to be as, um, adventurous. The first thing I did was call the folks to let them know I'd got in okay, which made me feel a little weird, like I'd been gone for a lot longer than just a few hours. Then I started unpacking in the guestroom, and that felt even more weird. I hadn't ever stayed in the main guestroom before- usually Ma and Pop had it. And that made me feel how strange it was to be at Grandfather's by myself. I mean, yeah, technically Grandfather was there too, but we'd always visited as a family, before. So being in a familiar place but not having the family around felt kinda awkward for a while. 

I got over it by the time dinner was done, though. Grandfather was really- well, familiar, like talking to me not exactly as an equal but as a friend, almost. I don't know- I guess I mean I expected him to be formal and proper, and he wasn't, and it was real nice. Unexpected, since he'd always been extra-formal whenever we visited, but thinking about it, that might have been because of Pop- always calling him 'honored one' and stuff. I didn't really think about it then; it just was the way it was, whatever. I'm adaptable.

I think what surprised me the most, though, was that he liked my idea about Cye so much. Of course I told him what Cye did for us, first, but even with that I was expecting to have to persuade him for a while. But he was all for it. 

Anyway, things were fine until I went to bed. Grandfather turned in pretty early, and since I didn't really have anything better to do, I did too- I had to get up early and I was tired from the train ride (it's funny how sitting on a train can tire you out) -but the problem was, I couldn't fall asleep. I started feeling kind of lonely, then switched to being nervous about the first day of school tomorrow, then switched to being all impatient to see my pal again, and hyper about my plan, then back to lonely, you get the idea. Also, I wasn't used to hearing cars going by outside all the time, and trucks too. There were good shades on the window so the headlights didn't shine through, but with the road just a few feet away, there was plenty of engine and tire noise. And sometimes some horns, which I thought was pretty rude.

I practically bounced out of bed the next morning, though that was more from accidentally setting my alarm on 'buzz' instead of 'radio' than because I wanted to get up. Woke up thinking I was in the middle of a fire drill. And when I say bed, I don't really mean 'bed', I mean 'futon'. You know, those cushion-things you put on the floor and then put your sheets and blankets on. It's pretty hard to bounce out of one of those, them being right on the floor- that tells you how startled I was. I put on the school uniform, had breakfast with Grandfather, grabbed my class supplies, and left to wait for the bus. There were three other students at the stop, all older girls and all too busy talking to each other about a popular boy-band to pay any attention to me, which was fine with me. I've got nothing against girls generally, but those three seemed unusually air-headed. 

The bus, when it finally showed up fifteen minutes later, was mostly empty and I got a seat to myself. As we lurched off down the road, I pulled the gold headband Cye'd given me out of my pocket and put it on; I hadn't been quite willing for Grandfather or those girls to see it. I knew I'd have to take it off once I got to class, of course, but I figured it'd up our chances of spotting each other. 

And I was right. Of course. 

I didn't have the seat to myself anymore by the time the bus pulled up at the school; I was sharing with a completely silent, worried-looking kid about my own age who seemed to have a pathological terror of being spoken to. Every time I tried to say something to him, he just nodded, shrugged or shook his head and looked down at his shoes. My year for the shy ones, I guess. I gave it up and looked out the window, and as the bus stopped, I reflected that Cye was right about the school building: it was definitely very, very red. And it was huge. I'd never seen so many kids in one place at a time before, all hanging around the unloading area or going up the steps into the building. Seemed it might pop like a balloon when you put too much air into it, sending kids and the occasional teacher flying every which way... Silly thought, but it made me grin as I got off the bus and walked up the steps myself. 

There were even more kids inside the building, as if that was possible, and I slowed down and looked around, feeling seriously hyper from anticipation all mixed up with uncertainty. This ought to be what Cye meant by the 'foyer' where he'd meet me, but question one was, was he here yet, and question two was, even if he was, how in the world was I going to find him or vice versa? 

And then he was waving at me from a place near the wall, grinning, and I wasn't uncertain at all anymore. ...Talk about eyes meeting across a crowded room, right? I kinda shoved my way through the crowd, carefully, and it was about all I could do not to hug him right there in the middle of everything. He hadn't changed at all- I don't know why I thought he would, really, but it seemed like ages and ages since Hagi, and he did look older in the school getup. He got me all organized right away, telling me where to go and how to get there and where to meet for lunch and everything, talking more loudly (well, he had to, all the ruckus) and quickly than I'd ever heard him before. 

And then that cursed bell rang, nearly took out my eardrums, and we had to get to our own classes, like it or not. 

School is pretty much school no matter where you are, and first days are particularly universal. You get to your room and sit with a bunch of similarly nervous or uncertain kids and you meet all your teachers and hope they'll be more or less nice and not pound you with too much homework. You get your books and your first little assignments and your locker, and then when the day's over you clean up and go off to your activity and kinda do it all over again meeting your club-mates and instructor. And yeah, somewhere in all that you have lunch. That was interesting, I'd never encountered a cafeteria before and I really liked the chance to go eat outside. Cye met me just where he said he would, at the stairs, and neither of us really stopped talking until the end-of-lunch bell rang. It was great, he looked so happy, his eyes all alight and smiling all the time.

There was one really interesting thing that happened after lunch. Well, two. One was, I saw a blond-haired student, which was worth mentioning. I'd seen blonds before, in New York, but none in Japan, so that was a little surprise. The other thing was that when I got back to class and took my seat, some of the other students wandered over to ask how I knew Mouri-san. And to tell me how famous he was. 

Famous, yeah. These seventh-graders, who had been sixth-graders the year before, knew all about it: Cye was the descendant of a very famous warrior, who they'd actually studied in history class. Therefore, he was famous too. 

Maybe I just hadn't paid enough attention to the 'Mouri' aspect, but it hadn't ever occurred to me that Motonori Mouri of the Three Arrows and Mouri Shin might have anything to do with each other. Certainly Cye never said anything about it. To get to the point, though: apparently being his friend meant I was semi-famous too, or at least someone to take notice of. That...was weird. If I'm gonna be famous for something, I want it to be for something I did and deserve it for, was more or less what was going through my mind- that, and something about if anyone suggested I was his friend just for that reason, they were going to get corrected. Very firmly.

But I got a whole new slant on the situation when someone said casually, "That's why the bullies leave him alone. If he's your friend, they'll leave you alone, too."

"I thought it was because he was older," I suggested, frowning.

"That doesn't work as much as it used to," my informant, a girl with braces, said resignedly. 

"Well, if they don't leave us alone because of that, they'll leave us alone because they aren't Kendo practitioners and we are," I remarked, knowing perfectly well that was going to be all over the school within a day or so. 

There was a sort of rustling, an impressed noise, and nods, and then the first afternoon teacher came in and it was back to class as before. I thought about what I'd been told for a few minutes, but it wasn't helping me pay attention, so I shelved it to talk about with Cye later. A lot later, as it turned out- I lost track of it for a couple days, with everything else that was going on. 

Anyone who might've wondered if I was telling the truth about knowing Kendo wasn't wondering anymore by the time the first after-class practice was over. At least, not about whether I knew it- I was a good bit ahead of most of the other students in the club. 

Cye was still going with swimming- though why he needed to swim in the pool when he could just go down to the docks...then again, the pool was a lot cleaner than the sea in that area... Anyway, we'd agreed during lunch to meet in the foyer again when we were done for the day. I got there before Cye, noticing that it was a lot less crowded than it had been in the morning. All the walkers were leaving right away, and all the bus-riders were heading to their busses to get the best seats. I stood by the door, keeping an eye out so my bus wouldn't take off without me and hoping he'd hurry. And as he came hurrying up, still wet-haired, I sprang part one of my plan on him.