A-tsu-be-tsu-chu-u-o…

Teresa scribbled on her notebook.

“Is that how it’s written?”

“Mhm!” Ayane smiled as she nodded in agreement.

It was around late in the afternoon when they arrived. Shin-Sapporo station was the last and closest station on the line to their mutual destination.

The station is not distinctively different to the previous station they’ve dropped off. It was plain, much like stations in Tokyo, although the sight of beds of snow resting on the roof of the station and its adjacent street could make kids gasp in bewilderment and excitement.

Atsubetsuchuo. The street where Ayane grew up. She would have some fond memories growing up here, but her wistful eyes that one moment said something else, Teresa pondered.

“According to my notes here in this notebook, we should be stopping by at this place while waiting for the bus.”

Wait, why the bus?

“This is how we took the ride back home if no one can drive a car legally yet,” Ayane replied, as if she had heard Teresa’s thoughts. It made her spooked a bit. “I’m supposed to meet up with someone here, at…”

Ayane checks her phone to check the time. With the time on her phone rendering in her brain, she became surprised.

“Huh? That’s strange… I thought we would meet up here at this hour?”

Teresa blinked twice and looked at her surroundings. She scanned a panorama of a newly raked street with buses coming and going, unloading and loading passengers and luggages. “All I see are perpetually moving people and buses, what is going on?”

Ayane tapped her shoulder. “It’s fine it’s fine; I was just waiting for someone else to show up.”

Ah, this I’ve heard. 

Teresa pondered that thought. Japanese people, especially schoolgirls, usually travel in groups. Must be to ensure their safety, Teresa inferred. That could have been a reason why Ayane latched on to me so quickly- no, no, no- to her youthful eyes I’m just a dumb blonde gaijin girl- and no Japanese person wants to share a train ticket space with a random gaijin.

Teresa assures herself such, however, she briefly remembers a time…

“Hey, Adelaide, would you like to come with me?”

“For Christ’s sake, Teresa, it’s SHOPPING!”

Back in London, during her college years, Teresa would ask her roommate Adelaide to join her to do things which would require some degree and some form of traveling. At this point in her life, Teresa might be somewhat conscious of her attractive looks which spawned gazes from bewitched people. She was regarded as a school beauty, which made her slightly uncomfortable. Thus, she started to grow worried about her safety and her friends’ safety.

Maybe Teresa was a Japanese schoolgirl once.

…or so she would keep thinking about that, had it not for the annoyed screech Ayane let out.

“Argh! It’s been almost 30 minutes and she isn’t here yet! I swear I would-“ Teresa could not make up the rest of the words being thrown by the schoolgirl, because she had code-switched to Japanese and some wasei-eigo. 

Instead, Teresa stood in silence, that is, until another person showed up behind Teresa during Ayane’s annoyed rants.

“E… E-E-Excuse m-me…”

The voice of a more matured woman seeped through behind Teresa. Naturally, she yelped in surprise, expecting the other person to stay calm and collected.

However, the young woman also yelped in surprise. Stepping backwards to avoid tripping herself, she dropped what appears to be sheet music, a pen, and some of her belongings which were inside her somewhat small saddle bag.

Teresa calmed herself. I’m not the only klutz here, she thought and sighed. She saw what the woman dropped and offered to help.

“I’m very sorry miss, may I help you pick it up?”

“S-S-Sure…”

While Teresa was picking things from her which fell down, she noticed her features. Long, luscious hair, with a texture and color that looks similar to Ayane’s. She has the appearance of a Japanese pop idol, the likes of AKB48 and Nogizaka46. She may be somewhat of a klutz, but she really tries her best to do what she wants to do best.

When she had her belongings tidied, she bowed before Teresa.

Thank you for helping me return my belongings, said the woman in Japanese.

Teresa could not make out what she was saying. However, by stroke of destiny, Ayane happened to turn around and profile the Japanese person standing in front of Teresa.

There is no mistaking it: the long luscious hair with the similar texture and colors as her own, the idol physique, a bit taller in height.

It has to be…

“Yukino-nee-chan?!”

She turned her head around to face her older sister, who greeted her with a smile back, which Ayane returned with a shocked expression.

“How have you been, Aya?”

Teresa stood confused for a moment, until it hit her. Oh right, nee-chan-

Wait.. Nee-chan?

“She’s your sister?!”

The three boarded the bus they had all been waiting for. Teresa sat in pure amazement, as she looked at whatever she saw on either side. On her right, her window stood clear, being a real portal to the bigger Sapporo area. In the thirteen whole minutes of her bus ride she saw landscapes like one could find in Tokyo, yet it seemed more intimate because the houses and buildings seem smaller than the ones in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

However, Teresa’s left showed a different kind of amazement. It was a silent bickering of two sisters, and from what Teresa could decipher, it seems like Ayane was winning the argument. Her sister, apparently named Yukino, was trying to explain her case as gently as she could. Ayane’s hand gestures and facial expressions contrast that of Yukino’s and it was fascinating to Teresa.

During the thirteen whole minutes, both spectacles endured. By around half of the time, Teresa had pondered about what she would say when she would face the woman in the photo from the Fujioka household. 

What would she be like? 

Would she be excited? Worried? 

Concerned that it took Teresa’s gran a long time to finally reciprocate the message? 

Confused that it was not Gran Darlington who came but her granddaughter—who looked almost different from her—and one whose connection to Japan was the letter of her gran: the picture in her notebook?

She had so many questions that she lost time to write the details of her journey in her notebook. Rats, she exclaimed in her mild disdain.

“Teresa-san,” Yukino stood near Teresa holding out a hand. “Let’s go. Obaa-san is waiting for us.”

Teresa looked at her, rather confused.

Daijoubu, Yukino reassured her.

“Ayacchi told me everything.”

Ayane smiled at Teresa, who looked at the schoolgirl a second prior seemingly to ask for consent. Truthfully, she was still in a dazed, confused state; apparently they had made up while Teresa was bewildered and/or pondering the questions of the Fujioka gran.

Nonetheless, due to the limited time, Teresa accepted the young woman’s invitation, as Ayane brought the bag down with help from a passenger adjacent to her.

They had to walk in a mildly confusing pattern, which was led by Ayane, even though it was Yukino who was ought to show them the way.

“Yuki-nee can be a total klutz if need be.”

“Hey, that’s not true!”

“Well she did say, if need be…”

Yukino blushes. Teresa smirks. 

“It’s usually the older ones who turn into immediate klutzes, I still have no idea why,” Ayane lamented, quite irritated.

“In this case, the senpai-kouhai culture that exists would be warped a little, huh?”

Ayane sighs. “Pretty much…”

“Dare I say she turns her kouhai into her senpai sometimes… they had to teach her instead of the other way around.”

Yukino chuckles silently.

“T’was a bit of a stretch but that’s—”

“Oh hey we’re here!”

Teresa looked at the front porch of the house. It was a rather small to average sized one, with the façade painted in a neutral grey color, which complimented the colors of the other houses. However, the gate was bright beige, which was strange to Teresa until she found out about the rusting—underneath lies the true color of the gate, darker brown.

There was an oak door which led to the entrance of the house. The parking space was empty, giving way for the bicycles of the immediate adjacent neighbor. It looked rather modern for a house with their obaa-san staying inside. Teresa had been waiting for this moment, and she turned to the sisters, visibly excited.

“Well then, shall we?”

“You’re way into this, Teresa-san.”

Tadaima, Yukino said as Ayane opened the door with her key.