ArukuShibito Prologue

Prologue

Life in London was a crazy thing. And London is where we’ll start. Jessica Frost had been a student, working her ass off to pass her bachelor’s degree. She had just hit her twenty-first birthday in the last month of her course, making her one of the youngest in her year. The night after her graduation ceremony had been a drunken party of an evening.

By the time Jessica returned to her apartment on that fateful evening she had drank far too much. She had staggered through the doorway, thrown her rented mortarboard down. It had landed in the sink. It went straight into the water, but she had been too drunk to notice. She had then proceeded to use the bathroom, and had drunkenly checked her email. Hardly reading any of the titles, she had passed out.

In the morning after she awoke, in a bright sunlit room. Her first site of the world that day had been through extremely photosensitive eyes. She had been in pain. Closed her eyes and jerked her head from the suns hateful rays.

For a long time she’d just lay in her bed, fully dressed with no intention to leave its comfort. Her course at London Met U had finished, she didn’t have to work at her part time job for a few days. That day was to be written off. Until she peeked through the covers to see her laptop was next to the bed. Powered on and showing her what was in her hotmail. Her eyes wouldn’t focus but she could make out that there was bold type there. New email! She noticed. Sliding the top half of her body from the bed she retrieved the computer.

“SUBJECT: RE: Your application to work as an Assistant Language Teacher” she read from the screen. Her eyes had stopped hurting so much. She read the full mail. Several weeks earlier she had applied for, and interviewed for a chance to go to Asia. So that she could help teach English to children and she could go sightseeing in her free time. This email had been to offer her a position working in Japan. She had been ecstatic.

Jess’s first reaction was to grab her mobile phone. She wrote a text message to her mum, dad, grandparents, her mates, and even to her ex. She wanted to tell everyone.

The idea of going to Japan had been a hope of Jess’s for a long time. The culture, with its massive skyscrapers and its geisha painted women.

The first reply to her text message had been from a friend, Harriet. “Great news, Coffee and Dictionary shopping? H”. She took coffee to mean beer, but she was good with that.

She’d met Harriet, Harry, just outside of Euston station. Together they went off and found a bookshop, buying a little Japanese phrasebook from Smiths, and then buying beer from the Red Lion.

Over the next few months Jess had worked her fingers to the bone, working the till at the bar she worked in. She was saving for the expensive move to Japan.

Soon enough, her last week in England had reared its head. Jess had already had the teary goodbyes from her university mates. Best wishes had been wished. Demands of interesting souvenirs had been made.

She had worried, like everyone who has ever been in this position has, about what would happen while she would be gone. Would her family be OK? Would her friends still be friends after a year apart? Will I ever be able to come back? What if something happens to me over there, no one knows to tell my family!

And with all of these thoughts buzzing around her brain she gave a teary farewell to her parents and had gotten on to the plane.