Preparing to Move

“Miyako! Kazuya?! Are you two ready?” I heard from below.

“I’m almost done!” I turned left and called back.

“Hold on!” I heard from the next room, drying my hands on the hung towel. We’ll still be early even if take another minute or two. I turned around and looked in the mirror one last time. Hair: pretty, face: cute, clothes: all good!

I left the bathroom and stopped at the doorway to our room, nodding to my black-clothed brother as he dropped our DS and earbuds into his right pocket before following me downstairs. Dad stood at the mirror on the wall, looking closely at his face, then patted down his own black shirt as he turned to us.

“Okay, we’re ready” I confirmed, and Dad rounded to the door on the opposite side. The TV to the right was off, the lights in the kitchen were off, and the house was completely quiet.

“Oh, Kazuya, why don’t you get a few coins from the jar in case you need anything during or after the meeting?” Dad stopped on the front step and Kazuya wove to the end table and unscrewed the top of our coin jar.

“Don’t just get the 500 yen ones either!” I yelled back, yet he dumped a handful into his left pocket and left the cap off. Ugh...

“Alright, if you get hungry, we’ll go out for food after the meeting, or you can buy something from one of the vending machines” Dad handed our coats to us and we slipped into our wear, before stepping into our shoes, then out the front door.

“AAH! It’s COLD!” Kazuya bent down and rubbed the outer sides of his pants as soon as I pulled the door shut. Huu, it kind of is! I wish they had leg-coats for weather like this!

“I told you it was cold out. Four degrees” Dad began walking to the right. “Ah well, you won’t be cold for long” he said, bending down and lifting up the garage door as we caught up with him. The car’s idle engine became uh, audible. Dad took to the right side of the car while Kazuya and I took the back seats, then Dad pulled out to the right side of the road and settled in the left lane.

“Ruurriir...” still rubbing his legs, hehe.

“What are you laughing at?” Kazuya noticed my giggling.

“If your legs are cold, want a pair of my legwarmers?!” I asked, lifting my legs up.

“EH?! No way! Those are girls’ clothes!” Kazuya turned his head away.

“They have legwarmers for guys too. We could get some clothes afterwards...” Dad kept his eyes on the road. The usual houses and shops passed behind as the car sped downhill to the busy section of town. At a stoplight before the bridge, the river shone white under the morning sun. I turned around in my seat as Dad drove across and made a left to route 112, and my brother watched out his door while I saw the town slowly shrink through the rear window.

“I wish we could go to the top of the mountain or somewhere far away” I leaned on the back seat.

“When summer comes, maybe we’ll go out for one of the festivals at Fukuoka” Dad said.

Peh~? All the way out to Fukuoka...? I turned around and buckled my seat. Ugh...

“Why do we gotta go with you to your meeting?” my little brother asked. “Can’t we get some clothes after you’re done?”

“We’re already gonna do that...” Dad answered.

“No... we could stay home and you could take us to the store when you get back!”

“Kazuya, that’s a waste of time. The clothes store is right next to my workplace. If I did that, you’d just be spending more time in the cold! And besides, this new store up here might even have some boys’ legwarmers.”

Kazuya got off his knees and sat normally, buckling up.

Past a few sports fields, into another small town, then a city-like area with houses larger than ours. Dad slowed down once he arrived at a yard of parking lots, sitting around the base of four rectangular towers which were... like, at the corners of a square.

“Woah... you work here?!” Kazuya got outside the car, staring up at the nearest tower.

“Actually, I work at that one over there, behind this one to the left” Dad pointed at the tower Kazuya was gazing at. “You’ve been here before, don’t tell me you forget!” Dad smiled, starting towards the other building. These things must be like... 40, no, 50 meters tall!

Inside, we followed him through a maze of hallways and up an elevator to a darker room with an opened door, where several of Dad’s co-workers were already seated at a round table near the center of the room. Dad pointed at the corner across the doorway, the only corner in the room clear enough for the two of us to sit at, so we took off our coats, laid them against the wall, and sat. Kazuya pulled the DS and headphones out of his right pocket and began playing his save file of Fantastics of Forever while the adults began their discussion. Sharing one bud per ear, our attention was taken away from the business talk.

The two of us were snapped away from the magic box when everyone at the table suddenly stood up and said a few last words before gathering their folders, many of them stopping to whisper something in Dad’s ear before leaving the room. Dad stood near his spot at the table and slowly wiped his forehead with his right palm. Looking down the entire time, then raising his face... he jumped, looking surprised to see us.

“Oh! Come on kids, we’re going...” Dad waved us over, and while we followed him out of the building... he kept looking at the floor. In the parking lot, Kazuya raced out to the car and scrambled inside once Dad unlocked the door for him. On the road, I noticed we began passing some familiar buildings sooner than I thought.

“Uh... what about getting new clothes?!” I leaned forward, hands on the shoulders of his seat.

“I’ll take you out for them later. Right now, there’s been a change of plans” Dad said while I noticed the speedometer rising.

“What kind of change?” I asked, slowly sinking into the back seat. Big enough that we’d have to skip getting clothes.

“D-did you get fired?!” Kazuya fearfully asked.

“I’ll tell you two more when we get home!” Dad shouted. Kazuya shut up and I trashed any thoughts I had about asking Dad what happened as the engine roared. When we returned to the bridges of the river, the whole sky was covered in white.

Once inside, Dad threw off his shoes at the front step and fell onto the couch, gripping his head. Putting a finger over my mouth to Kazuya, we silently stepped upstairs and returned to our room. I opened up the top half of our dresser and grabbed a change of clothes while to the right, Kazuya grabbed Hearts of Royal from the bookcase. Teh... shouldn’t you change clothes? After swapping my red and white striped dress for an orange shirt and black skirt in the bathroom, I entered our room and folded my dress on and into the dirty clothes basket, then joined my brother’s feet under the kotatsu.

“If you’re gonna play that, can I have the DS back?” I asked my brother as he turned on the TV to a title screen. Kazuya dug the DS out of his right pocket and the two of us continued playing until Dad appeared in the doorway behind us.

“Come on down, you two are gonna need to hear this...” Dad said with his hands in his pockets. We followed and took the couch while he sat in the chair, leaning over to screw the cap back on the coin jar before speaking, only after Kazuya emptied his left pocket of the unused coins.

“So, as you probably know, something happened at work.”

We nodded.

“Okay, well...” He wiped his hands over his entire face. “The thing is... I’ve been relocated, and we have to move...” he sighed.

“When are we moving?! Where are we going?!” I leaned inwards on the couch.

“We’re going to America...”

“AMERICA?! All the way over there?! When are we leaving?!”

“They only gave me an estimated date. They said it’d be fine if we could get there by the end of the year, but I really don’t think that’s enough time to get everything ready...”

“A year...? That’s plenty of time! We have forever to get it done!” Kazuya relaxed.

“Kacchan, no...” I told him. Wait... “I can’t finish my last year at Seiho! Are you sure it’s got to be right at the end of the year?!” I argued. Dad looked up.

“They didn’t tell me when, they just said ‘around the end of the year’ and besides, you’ll be going to an American middle school by then...”

“No...” My head fell.

“Do we have to go?...” Kazuya asked.

“We do if I want to keep my job, and I really want to keep my job. Now hey, don’t think of this as just a bad thing though! There’s definitely a few good things that could come out of this, like...” Dad trailed off but his eyes widened and he let out a smile.

Halfway across the world... to America? We’ll leave everything behind...

“We just might be able to see your mom again. A lot more often!” he smiled. “Visits!” Dad then curled his fingers against his cheeks as he let out some kind of cold breath.

“We might even... yes. Oh yess...”

Get to see mom again? I know it’s expensive to make long distance calls, and even more so for either of us to try and visit each other, but I haven’t seen her since before I started school, and Kazuya...

Okay, maybe it won’t be such a bad thing to move.

“Do you think we could get a house with three bedrooms over there?” I asked, Dad still excited about whatever he was thinking of.

“Oooh, maybe, maybe. We’ll see about that. For now, I just want to slowly try and move things along. Don’t freak out about this and definitely- er, you don’t need to go telling your teachers at school the moment you get back. I’ll handle the school stuff when uh, parent-teacher conferences come up. Then I need to get all that stuff ready for you too as soon as I can...” He waved off. “Okay, I’m done. You can go back to your room, watch TV down here or whatever...” Dad finished, then stood up and walked into the kitchen.

Kazuya ran back upstairs while I trekked back to our room. While my little brother returned to his game, I dove under the kotatsu. We won’t get to take this thing with us, and that means we’ll have to pile on a bunch of clothes to stay warm in the American winter, in a cold house! The TV would be too big to take... the bookcase and dresser too, even our bunk bed. Maybe I will get to have my own room someday later, but I’ll be sleeping on the bottom for the first time since I can remember, and it won’t be our room anymore.

Our room... this is one of the first things to go once we start packing up.

“Micchan...?” my little brother turned around. “Why are you crying?”

“We won’t get to see this house again... or our friends, or anything!” I kept my head down.

“Eh? But it’s a whole year away!...” my brother set down the controller and turned on his knees.

“Well a year isn’t as long as you think it is Kacchan! Nothing’s gonna be the same for us after that! We won’t get to keep anything here! I... don’t-... I don’t wanna go!” I raised my face.

“Don’t you like it here? This house? This town?...”

Sigh, shouldn’t have tried to make him realize how important this was...

“I do! I like my stuff...” He gazed around the room and fell. “No... No no no! I don’t wanna go! I don’t wanna leave either!” Kacchan started crying so... I pulled myself out of the kotatsu and held him.

“I don’t wanna move!” he cried and- deh! Pulled on my shirt.

Tomorrow, break ends and we go back to school. I won’t get to finish 6th grade. I won’t get to wear those school uniforms the older girls wear, and-... and... I don’t know what school’s gonna be like over in America.

We’ve been here for as long as we can remember, I can’t even imagine saying goodbye. To think I’ll look back on the country I grew up in, the friends I’ve made, the places I’ve known, and the life I’ve lived. To all of it... we really will, in one year, have to say...

Sayonara