Categories > Anime/Manga > Fruits Basket > "Bad Things Happen for a Reason" (I Hope)
Inora shuttered in her sleeping bag. It was only early November but she had underestimated how cold it got in Japan. She had tried living in a motel but she had only made it a week before she realized exactly how much of a money drain that was. Anyway from the way it was looking she would want to save her money and stay there in a few weeks when it seriously got cold. ‘Well this isn’t how it was supposed to go’ she thought. She was a little dizzy but she tried to remember what happened. ‘Always learn from your mistakes because you can’t afford to make them again.’
-Flashback-
She stepped off the plane breathing in the fresh air after the long flight. She was grinning ear to ear. She could hardly contain her excitement, she practically ran through the terminal to find the family that was going to take her in. she only brought one suitcase; the whole point of this program was to throw yourself into the culture you chose. She was certainly going to do that. She could have learned enough Japanese in a month to get by with very light and proper conversation. She had a gift for languages, but she had decided she wanted more of a challenge. She wanted to learn as she went. When she had told her uncle about her plan he laughed “your not gonna learn any Japanese before you go? You won’t survive there a month!”
She smiled thinking of him; he always pushed her to try new things. He knew how to hit her with her competitive spirit. “Don’t you worry,” she had said. “I’m gonna make it the whole year AND I’ll be fluent in Japanese when I get back! So HA!” She smiled again. Anyway it didn’t matter because the family she was staying with knew English. She came to the end of a hallway where the crowed was bottle necking to find the person who had come to get them. She scanned the crowed a few times before she finally spotted and old haggard looking man with a sign that said “Inora.” She walked up to him.
“Hi!” she said cheerily. “I’m Inora, how are you doing?” He just gazed at her with sad eyes. “Are you ok?” finally he shook his head.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. On your way over something terrible….” He paused to catch his breath. “Our house caught fire,” was all he was able to say before he burst into tears. Inora then had to do a lot of consoling and reassuring that she would be fine. She told him that she would probably just stay for a week or two and then go home. A lot of tears and kind words later she was alone. This wasn’t some high school exchange program, the only thing the “program” was for was too match the people up and do background checks. That was it. There was no protection for this sort of thing, she was on her own.
-End Flashback-
She should have learned Japanese. That had been her mistake, and her uncle had tried to warn her but in that way that you don’t realize it until its too late. She had done okay with miming but it would have made her life so much easier till this point if she had learned. ‘So there I was,’ she thought. The saying made her chuckle but immediately wished she hadn’t, she rolled over and threw up into the bushes beside her. She groaned and got out of the sleeping bag to pull it away. The movement made her even dizzier, she only got a few feet before she tripped and fell over. She rolled over and looked at the stars; it was all she could do to not throw up again. She had decided a while ago to save money on water, just drinking out of streams, another mistake.
She was sick. There was nothing else for it, she had never been this sick in her life. She had been out there for about three weeks and the last few days she had been considering going to a hospital before she thought about her cash flow, which was nonexistent. Now she knew it for sure, she needed help and badly. She gathered her strength and somehow got up. She pulled her sleeping bag over to her suitcase and piled it on top. She remembered crossing a path to get to this spot so she headed towards where she thought it was.
It seemed like she had been walking forever, she started to get worried. Her sense of direction was usually good but she was so dizzy. It didn’t help that she had to keep stopping to throw up, she was miserable. Finally, she found the path. Her relief was so great that she started to cry, which she didn’t do often. However, she had used every ounce of her strength to get to that point. She was in a fog but she decided that if anyone was going to find her this would be the place, it looked pretty well traveled. She
let the fog consume her and she collapsed onto the path.
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She was warm. That was weird. The last thing she could remember was being cold, enough so that she couldn’t feel her fingers. She also remembered that she had been on the ground, dirt filling her nose, and she was alone. More alone then she had ever been in her life. Now, however, she wasn’t in the dirt. She seemed to be in some sort of super soft sleeping bag. But she pushed all of that to the back of her head almost instantly because she realized she wasn’t alone anymore either. She could hear the deep steady breathing of someone next to her.
Was she in danger? She pretended to be asleep still while she thought about that one. Well they couldn’t be that bad if they brought her indoors and gave her a place to sleep. But what if they just did that so they could keep her locked up and make her their sex slave or something? She almost smiled at the stupidity of that thought. But still… people are weird. Finally she mentally checked over herself and decided that she was strong enough to get away if she needed to. She slid open her eyes to see who had helped her. Her mouth fell open.
The man looking down at her had to be one of the most, if not the most, gorgeous people she had ever laid eyes on. He was sitting by her head and was looking at her upside down. She snapped her mouth shut but continued to explore his face; in fact it would have very had to look away. His black hair dropped down like a curtain, and his eyes somehow managed to twinkle in the dim light. Ugh, how gooey, she almost got lost in them. Once she had gotten past his eyes she noticed something else, relief washed over her, he was white.
“Oh man,” she said. “Am I glad you found me, thank you so much for helping me by the way!” she wanted to make it clear how glad she was while making sure not to sound racist or anything, she was just glad he could speak English. He looked confused from the moment she had started talking, and as she kept going he just looked more and more confused. She sat up ant turned to look at him, she completely misjudged why he was confused. “If you need me to I can pay you for your trouble,” he was still confused. “I just… couldn’t make it to a hospital. I don’t even know where one is… you see?” Finally to her relief his expression cleared, but then he began to laugh. He threw back his head and everything; she didn’t know what to do so she sat in silence waiting for him to let her in on the joke. He finally calmed himself down and looked at her again.
“No English” was all he said. ‘Well fuck,’ she thought. ‘I guess I shouldn’t assume that just because he’s white he can speak English. I am in Japan after all.’ There was nothing else for her to do but resort to pure body language. She placed her hand on her chest, smiled warmly, and bowed her head. He seemed to get the ‘thank you’ because he bowed his head back and rolled his wrist in a circle a few times above his head. The way very proper stage actors used to in the 1920’s during a curtain call. She smiled and got the ‘your very welcome’ from it. They sat in an awkward silence for quite a while after that. Finally, to her complete and utter relief, three people walked in the front door.
One was a very kind looking, pretty girl with brown hair, and she was followed in by two guys. And they were as drop dead gorgeous as the man next to her on the floor, or at least they had the potential to be. They all seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform so she guessed that they were in high school. So they were boys and still had some maturing to do. One of them had sort of silver-blue hair which made her wonder if he dyed it, but he just didn’t look like he went in for that type of thing. The other had orange hair and, wait, were those red eyes? Weird.
The gorgeous man stood up and waved at them, and in between fits of giggles told them about their new guest, or so she assumed as he kept gesturing towards her. After he looked like he was done he looked and the young girl and asked her a question. She smiled widely and walked over to Inora; she took her hand gently and pulled her up from the floor and, blabbing in Japanese the whole way, led her up the stairs to a bathroom. The whole time that she was showering, then being lead into another room to change, she was trying to think of what to do about the whole situation. It wasn’t going very well though because all her mind kept going back to was the gorgeous man downstairs.
She suddenly got brought back to earth when she did the last few buttons on the dress the girl had given her to wear. If she hadn’t been so distracted she would have noticed that she and the girl didn’t exactly have the same body type. Inora was taller for one so the dress was quite a bit shorter then it should have been. For two, well she was curvier; it hugged her hips like a dress that you wear to a club would. She didn’t mind it though; in fact it was rather sexy. The waist, thankfully, was just the right size so she could breathe comfortably. The problem was the top, her boobs threatened to bust right through the buttons. She started to undo the buttons and discovered that she only had do undo the first few if she shifted the dress a little. She checked in the mirror, it would have to do, she was covered but she looked a little slutty. She shrugged to herself, she did look good.
She walked out into the hallway where she met the girls’ wide eyes. Inora grabbed the lapels of the dress and tried to pull them together in a demonstration for her. The girl smiled apologetically, Inora shrugged at her, and they walked back downstairs together. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard the intake of breath, she tried not to smile. She didn’t care who you were that was a definite ego boost. She looked up and the two boys were staring eyes wide, mouths open. The man, on the other hand, was gazing with simple appreciation. She decided he had been round the block a few times. As she came closer to him, however, she thought she saw something else in his eyes. Was that desire?
That was annoying. She was really good at reading people and she felt a little aggravation at the fact that she couldn’t tell. The girl went into the kitchen, Inora guessed to make tea, while she sat down at the table they were all sitting around. The boys continued to stare at her, though out of the corner of their eyes, while the man returned to the newspaper he was reading. ‘Well that’s just rude,’ she thought. Then she immediately wished she hadn’t, she had never been one to care what people thought of her before now. What was so different?
The girl came back carrying a tray with some sort of bread and tea. She set it down and served it to all of them. ‘Ugh,’ Inora thought. ‘I would never be able to do that on a regular basis.’ They started to talk amongst themselves while drinking their tea. Inora hated tea, but she forced it down while listening to the language and trying to get a feel for it. By the time she had finished her tea she could feel a definite rhythm to it. It no longer seemed like one string of sound, she could separate the words and recognize them when used later. So her ear for language was still working amazingly. ‘Awesome!’ she thought. There was a knock on the door. When the girl got up to answer it, Inora had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She came back in leading an older man with grey hair.
“Hello,” he said to Inora. “My name is Hatsu.” She almost screamed with joy.
-Flashback-
She stepped off the plane breathing in the fresh air after the long flight. She was grinning ear to ear. She could hardly contain her excitement, she practically ran through the terminal to find the family that was going to take her in. she only brought one suitcase; the whole point of this program was to throw yourself into the culture you chose. She was certainly going to do that. She could have learned enough Japanese in a month to get by with very light and proper conversation. She had a gift for languages, but she had decided she wanted more of a challenge. She wanted to learn as she went. When she had told her uncle about her plan he laughed “your not gonna learn any Japanese before you go? You won’t survive there a month!”
She smiled thinking of him; he always pushed her to try new things. He knew how to hit her with her competitive spirit. “Don’t you worry,” she had said. “I’m gonna make it the whole year AND I’ll be fluent in Japanese when I get back! So HA!” She smiled again. Anyway it didn’t matter because the family she was staying with knew English. She came to the end of a hallway where the crowed was bottle necking to find the person who had come to get them. She scanned the crowed a few times before she finally spotted and old haggard looking man with a sign that said “Inora.” She walked up to him.
“Hi!” she said cheerily. “I’m Inora, how are you doing?” He just gazed at her with sad eyes. “Are you ok?” finally he shook his head.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. On your way over something terrible….” He paused to catch his breath. “Our house caught fire,” was all he was able to say before he burst into tears. Inora then had to do a lot of consoling and reassuring that she would be fine. She told him that she would probably just stay for a week or two and then go home. A lot of tears and kind words later she was alone. This wasn’t some high school exchange program, the only thing the “program” was for was too match the people up and do background checks. That was it. There was no protection for this sort of thing, she was on her own.
-End Flashback-
She should have learned Japanese. That had been her mistake, and her uncle had tried to warn her but in that way that you don’t realize it until its too late. She had done okay with miming but it would have made her life so much easier till this point if she had learned. ‘So there I was,’ she thought. The saying made her chuckle but immediately wished she hadn’t, she rolled over and threw up into the bushes beside her. She groaned and got out of the sleeping bag to pull it away. The movement made her even dizzier, she only got a few feet before she tripped and fell over. She rolled over and looked at the stars; it was all she could do to not throw up again. She had decided a while ago to save money on water, just drinking out of streams, another mistake.
She was sick. There was nothing else for it, she had never been this sick in her life. She had been out there for about three weeks and the last few days she had been considering going to a hospital before she thought about her cash flow, which was nonexistent. Now she knew it for sure, she needed help and badly. She gathered her strength and somehow got up. She pulled her sleeping bag over to her suitcase and piled it on top. She remembered crossing a path to get to this spot so she headed towards where she thought it was.
It seemed like she had been walking forever, she started to get worried. Her sense of direction was usually good but she was so dizzy. It didn’t help that she had to keep stopping to throw up, she was miserable. Finally, she found the path. Her relief was so great that she started to cry, which she didn’t do often. However, she had used every ounce of her strength to get to that point. She was in a fog but she decided that if anyone was going to find her this would be the place, it looked pretty well traveled. She
let the fog consume her and she collapsed onto the path.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She was warm. That was weird. The last thing she could remember was being cold, enough so that she couldn’t feel her fingers. She also remembered that she had been on the ground, dirt filling her nose, and she was alone. More alone then she had ever been in her life. Now, however, she wasn’t in the dirt. She seemed to be in some sort of super soft sleeping bag. But she pushed all of that to the back of her head almost instantly because she realized she wasn’t alone anymore either. She could hear the deep steady breathing of someone next to her.
Was she in danger? She pretended to be asleep still while she thought about that one. Well they couldn’t be that bad if they brought her indoors and gave her a place to sleep. But what if they just did that so they could keep her locked up and make her their sex slave or something? She almost smiled at the stupidity of that thought. But still… people are weird. Finally she mentally checked over herself and decided that she was strong enough to get away if she needed to. She slid open her eyes to see who had helped her. Her mouth fell open.
The man looking down at her had to be one of the most, if not the most, gorgeous people she had ever laid eyes on. He was sitting by her head and was looking at her upside down. She snapped her mouth shut but continued to explore his face; in fact it would have very had to look away. His black hair dropped down like a curtain, and his eyes somehow managed to twinkle in the dim light. Ugh, how gooey, she almost got lost in them. Once she had gotten past his eyes she noticed something else, relief washed over her, he was white.
“Oh man,” she said. “Am I glad you found me, thank you so much for helping me by the way!” she wanted to make it clear how glad she was while making sure not to sound racist or anything, she was just glad he could speak English. He looked confused from the moment she had started talking, and as she kept going he just looked more and more confused. She sat up ant turned to look at him, she completely misjudged why he was confused. “If you need me to I can pay you for your trouble,” he was still confused. “I just… couldn’t make it to a hospital. I don’t even know where one is… you see?” Finally to her relief his expression cleared, but then he began to laugh. He threw back his head and everything; she didn’t know what to do so she sat in silence waiting for him to let her in on the joke. He finally calmed himself down and looked at her again.
“No English” was all he said. ‘Well fuck,’ she thought. ‘I guess I shouldn’t assume that just because he’s white he can speak English. I am in Japan after all.’ There was nothing else for her to do but resort to pure body language. She placed her hand on her chest, smiled warmly, and bowed her head. He seemed to get the ‘thank you’ because he bowed his head back and rolled his wrist in a circle a few times above his head. The way very proper stage actors used to in the 1920’s during a curtain call. She smiled and got the ‘your very welcome’ from it. They sat in an awkward silence for quite a while after that. Finally, to her complete and utter relief, three people walked in the front door.
One was a very kind looking, pretty girl with brown hair, and she was followed in by two guys. And they were as drop dead gorgeous as the man next to her on the floor, or at least they had the potential to be. They all seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform so she guessed that they were in high school. So they were boys and still had some maturing to do. One of them had sort of silver-blue hair which made her wonder if he dyed it, but he just didn’t look like he went in for that type of thing. The other had orange hair and, wait, were those red eyes? Weird.
The gorgeous man stood up and waved at them, and in between fits of giggles told them about their new guest, or so she assumed as he kept gesturing towards her. After he looked like he was done he looked and the young girl and asked her a question. She smiled widely and walked over to Inora; she took her hand gently and pulled her up from the floor and, blabbing in Japanese the whole way, led her up the stairs to a bathroom. The whole time that she was showering, then being lead into another room to change, she was trying to think of what to do about the whole situation. It wasn’t going very well though because all her mind kept going back to was the gorgeous man downstairs.
She suddenly got brought back to earth when she did the last few buttons on the dress the girl had given her to wear. If she hadn’t been so distracted she would have noticed that she and the girl didn’t exactly have the same body type. Inora was taller for one so the dress was quite a bit shorter then it should have been. For two, well she was curvier; it hugged her hips like a dress that you wear to a club would. She didn’t mind it though; in fact it was rather sexy. The waist, thankfully, was just the right size so she could breathe comfortably. The problem was the top, her boobs threatened to bust right through the buttons. She started to undo the buttons and discovered that she only had do undo the first few if she shifted the dress a little. She checked in the mirror, it would have to do, she was covered but she looked a little slutty. She shrugged to herself, she did look good.
She walked out into the hallway where she met the girls’ wide eyes. Inora grabbed the lapels of the dress and tried to pull them together in a demonstration for her. The girl smiled apologetically, Inora shrugged at her, and they walked back downstairs together. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard the intake of breath, she tried not to smile. She didn’t care who you were that was a definite ego boost. She looked up and the two boys were staring eyes wide, mouths open. The man, on the other hand, was gazing with simple appreciation. She decided he had been round the block a few times. As she came closer to him, however, she thought she saw something else in his eyes. Was that desire?
That was annoying. She was really good at reading people and she felt a little aggravation at the fact that she couldn’t tell. The girl went into the kitchen, Inora guessed to make tea, while she sat down at the table they were all sitting around. The boys continued to stare at her, though out of the corner of their eyes, while the man returned to the newspaper he was reading. ‘Well that’s just rude,’ she thought. Then she immediately wished she hadn’t, she had never been one to care what people thought of her before now. What was so different?
The girl came back carrying a tray with some sort of bread and tea. She set it down and served it to all of them. ‘Ugh,’ Inora thought. ‘I would never be able to do that on a regular basis.’ They started to talk amongst themselves while drinking their tea. Inora hated tea, but she forced it down while listening to the language and trying to get a feel for it. By the time she had finished her tea she could feel a definite rhythm to it. It no longer seemed like one string of sound, she could separate the words and recognize them when used later. So her ear for language was still working amazingly. ‘Awesome!’ she thought. There was a knock on the door. When the girl got up to answer it, Inora had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She came back in leading an older man with grey hair.
“Hello,” he said to Inora. “My name is Hatsu.” She almost screamed with joy.
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