Chapter 1 - Eyes on the Future
Eyes on the Future
Six years ago... 2019
“With graduation sneaking up, do you have any idea what you wanna be?” Devon asked.
“I’m hoping to become an animator,” Jenna added.
“Hey, not a bad choice. I want to get into the police force, y’know? What about you, Shigeru?”
“Huh, me?” I asked.
“Yes, you.”
“Uhm... I want to become a scientist, study Supermoon Factor and all.”
“Ah, perfect job for a smart guy like you, Shigeru,” Devon teased.
“Just because I’m Asian doesn’t mean I’m smart.”
“Do I need to remind you of your gold Honour Roll every year?” Those were my friends, Devon Guerro and Jenna Lana. They were a popular couple in school, but didn’t really care for anybody but me. I don’t know how they did it, but they always found time for me. Devon was a huge metalhead; he lived for that stuff. He wore a black jean jacket with all his favourite bands on it, In This Moment, Nightwish, Disturbed, Metallica, Dragonforce, etc. He often had on light blue jeans so ripped that there was more hole than pant. His hair was black and swept downward to the top of his left eye, which was brown.
Jenna, his girlfriend, was quite a bit different. Straight A student, honour roll. Just your very smart run-of-the-mill teen. She was big on art and animation, doing a lot on apps like FlipaClip and Procreate. Hell, she even won the art contest back in Grade 9; her art is still hanging on the “Art Wall of Fame.”
She was shorter than Devon at 5′4", while Devon was 5′9" at least. She always wore a pink hand-knitted sweater that had a cute bunny on it, and very dark navy blue skin-tight pants. Her hair was long and blonde, and she hated wearing make-up. Her eyes were hazel, and Devon was always astonished by them.
I was a regular asian boy from Kyoto, with a white button-up polo and black pants. I looked like I was going to a formal dinner 24/7, and Devon always teased me about it. I had black reading glasses I never really used because I could see fine without them, I just had a hard time seeing smaller words, like those in Novels or whatever. My eyes weren’t anything special, typical dark brown eyes for a kinda twink like myself. I barely weighed 190, and it was another thing Devon teased me about; he was more heavy-set and came close to 250 lbs, while Jenna was somehow skinnier than me at 165.
These two have been friends of mine since I first moved to Toronto from Kyoto, so for a whole decade I’ve known them. One day when they were visiting me in Grade 8, Devon went through my room to figure out which high school I chose just to choose it too. Leaside High School on Parklea Drive.
Devon and Jenna also only started dating early on in Grade 11 and have been quite close since then.
“What are you gonna do without your high school popularity, Devon?” I teased.
“Fuck the popularity, as long as I graduate and still have you and Jenna, I’m a happy man. Whether you’re solving life’s biggest question about shifters, or whether Jenna is animating the next big animated blockbuster, or if I’m chasing Toronto’s next big criminal, we will all still be in contact,” Devon said.
“Those are three vastly different things.”
“I know, you’re a big science enthusiast, Jenna’s an art prodigy, and I’m an active runner. Our differences won’t set us apart even after graduation, I mean, they haven’t yet.”
“Since when did you become so woke?” Jenna teased, wearing a wide smirk.
“Me? I’ve always been woke,” Devon said.
“Sure ya have.” I couldn’t hold back my laughter. Despite being polar opposites, Jenna and Devon hit it off pretty well. As classmates described them, “The perfect couple in more ways than one.”
“Are we still good to hang out this weekend?” Devon asked.
“I can’t see why not,” I added, and Jenna just nodded.
“See you tomorrow then.” The bell rang, signifying the end of the day, and I was out by 3:40. I sat in the far back corner of the bus and waved bye to Jenna and Devon as they got on their bus. It kinda sucked we didn’t have the same bus, but I still had the friend who got me into Supermoon Factor in the first place. He was kinda like my friend outside of the usual chaos couple, mainly because he moved here when he was 11, and I know that feeling of having no friends. At some point, I wanted to introduce him to Jenna and Devon; I could see them taking a liking to him.
“Haha, hey, my man. What’s up, Shigeru?” Tufan said. Tufan Woezik and his family moved to Toronto from the Netherlands when he was 11. He came from a small Dutch town and was massively overwhelmed during his first week in a city as big as Toronto. I was used to it; Toronto was nowhere close to Tokyo. He got me into Supermoon Factor after he became a shifter himself when I was 12. He was a few months older than me and is now 18 and ready to graduate.
He was also quite a bit different from Devon; Tufan was a lot more chill and less wild. I often joked about him being more sane. Devon and Jenna knew about him and were pretty excited to meet him, but he often got quite nervous, fearing he might scare them off if they found out he was a shifter. It didn’t exactly help that he was kind of stubborn.
He wore blue or black shorts in the warmer months and switched them out for construction yellow or construction orange jogging pants. You could make him out from down the road and a little to the right anytime he wore those neon-coloured pants. Then there was his shirt, during warmer months like now, it was a blue or green tank top, and during colder months, it was a black long-sleeved shirt with white stripes. This time, he seemed to be wearing blue shorts and a green tank top. His hair was naturally brown but dyed with blue highlights.
He lived just down the road from me and often came by to say hello whenever he went for his walks around the neighbourhood. “Hey, Tufan. I’m doing pretty well. What about you? Have you made any new friends so far?” I asked.
“Nah, man, not really. I’ve been too busy adjusting to the big city and shit. I’m not used to feeling so small,” Tufan said.
“It’s been seven years. You arrived here in 2013, and you’re still not used to city life?”
“Exactly. The biggest city we had in the Netherlands was Amsterdam, with a population of 863,000. Toronto is triple that. 3 million in this city alone, the GTA itself exceeds like seven million. It’ll take some time to adjust.”
“Damn, you wouldn’t like Tokyo then. It trumps Toronto in population.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mhm, 14 million, double that of the GTA alone.” Tufan didn’t have too many words; he was that shocked. Toronto was nothing to me. When you grow up in a country that has a city area that can house basically all of Canada’s population, other cities are just babies. Yeah, Canada has the size, but most of it is arctic anyway. I mean, Canada did have a lake for every person in Toronto, so that’s my surprise. I didn’t mind Toronto; it was quite nice. Sure, it was like a small town compared to Tokyo, but it’s not about the population; it was about the scenery, and I loved it in both.
Living back in Japan, we often visited Tokyo every other weekend, and I loved it. Tokyo is massive and has tonnes of green space for a city its size, it’s nice. I spent time in Kyoto and Tokyo felt like the final boss of Japan, the endgame one that got stronger on every replay.
“Ooh, what is one thing you miss about Japan, Shigeru?” Tufan randomly asked. “
Hm... interesting question. I’ll have to say my family and Cherry Blossoms, you? What do you miss about the Netherlands?”
“Family and castles,” he said. “Canada has castles. If you want to feel back home in Europe, visit Quebec. Montreal is probably the most European-looking city in Canada.”
“Eh, it won’t be the same.” He had a valid argument. If anything, it was just one city compared to an entire freaking continent of castles. I liked Asia because of its history, and I liked Canada because of its scenery. I mean, at some point I hoped the visit Banff, probably the most scenic damn town in the entire country. The mountains out there looked lovely in pictures.
Tufan and I spoke about the most random things as the bus drove to our bus stop. From our countries to summer plans and the city. There was no specific topic. Just talk about this before asking a question about that, and then talk about that. The bus came to our bus stop on the corner of Broadway Ave and Rykert Crescent near Serena Gundy Park. My house was one of the ones on an odd roundabout on Rykert, and Tufan was just down the road.
It was a really nice Toronto suburb, East York. Right across the road was the entrance to my favourite place in the city, Serena Gundy Park, with its fancy rock fence placed just before you enter. The trees formed a canopy over the path that made it feel like a fairytale garden. The houses around here were old Victorian-era ones that made this place feel almost like a medieval village.
As I took in this nice neighbourhood, I saw Tufan examining the hydropole. It was placed just outside the entrance to Serena Gundy Park and had some vines climbing up the bottom of it, further solidifying that fairytale feel. It was just across the road from where the bus dropped us off, and he was looking at a newly hung poster that wasn’t there yesterday.
“What’s up?” I asked him as I crossed the road.
“Ayesha Keel: last seen June 2nd, 2019, at 8:43 p.m.
Age: 17
Height: 5′6"
Weight: 152 lbs
Eye colour: blue
Hair colour: Dirty blonde
Last seen wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt, grey-ish blue ripped jeans with black sneakers with white accents... missing shifter.
Dude, it’s a missing poster,” Tufan said.
“Oh no, don’t tell me,” I said, looking at the picture.
“Tell you what? What’s going on?”
“It’s becoming mainstream that shifters are disappearing in East York and the area. It’s like there’s a new poster going up monthly; this is the sixth case of 2019... this one is just a lot closer... she lived just over on Killdeer Crescent.”
“K... Killdeer... that’s just up Broadway and down Brentcliffe. Dude, that’s walking distance. How long have shifters been disappearing from East York?”
“Three years now, it’s just especially more common this year. From 2016 - 2018, 12 cases occurred in two years. Now? In one year, half of that has happened.”
“What does this mean for me? I’m a shifter.”
“Stay hidden, dude. That’s all I can tell ya. They disappear after it got out that they were a shifter, and if it does somehow get out... please keep checking your back for me, okay?”
