Despite the other tour buses, there was almost no one in sight as the students made their way into Greenland Amusement Park’s first promenade. It was as if the park had cleared out the whole place just for Nakano Junior High’s use. After receiving tickets for lunch, their teachers released the students to go and have fun, with a strict return time.
After a quick ride on a free leg coaster, David surveyed the rides, stalls, and people around them. The park was not as empty as it had first seemed. Here and there, other uniformed students ran around in small groups. David even spotted a few gray uniforms among the more common blue and white.
‘Seems like the Okinawa kids are here too,’ he thought to himself.
‘You’re going to be left behind. The rest of your friends are almost to that other metal contraption you call fun,’ Kou answered, prompting David to run off toward a ride called the Corkscrew.
‘Welcome back.’
As they went through the rides and attractions, everything from huge coasters to gondola rides and archery, David saw more and more of the gray uniforms. Everything was fun enough, though some of the rides were difficult for him to fit into since he was so much taller than most of his other classmates. The thrill of dives and spins paled against his memories of the fight in the warehouse and the other dangers he had faced.
‘It’s the same prey- I mean kids that are following you. They change up between getting to the rides before or after us but they are following.’
‘Could it be Chul Soon?’ David asked as he tried to catch the other students’ faces. The operator opened the door then and they were ushered into another giant spinning wheel.
By unspoken consent, David’s group decided to wait for lunch until just before it was time to leave, that way they could get as much done as possible before they left. After a particularly rickety old wooden rollercoaster, Rie sidled up to David.
“This is so much fun!” she said, her face flushed with excitement. “It’s my first time on rollercoasters. Guess what? I heard Mizuki got so scared after the first one she refused to go on any others. So much for the Class Representative!”
“You know, I had forgotten,” David said smiling. “I used to be afraid of rollercoasters. I never went on them until a few years ago. We went to a place by my house for my birthday, and since I was the birthday boy, they dragged me onto the biggest coaster there. It scared the hell out of me, but it was also exhilarating. I guess after what we’ve been through anything they can throw at us here is pretty tame.”
“I can almost imagine the old David sitting scared in a cart before it plummets,” Rie said wryly. “I guess he really is gone isn’t he? That’s okay though. I like the new you. And so do a few other people.”
Turning David saw a group of girls from another class eying him and giggling as they pretended to examine a game. One of the girls turned away from the rest and walked over.
“Picture time!” she said in enthusiastic, if muddled English. David was jammed in a small kiosk with the group as they maneuvered him around. Kou growled within as the flash stung their human eyes, and David had to concentrate to ensure they did not transform. Then with more giggles, they pushed him out of the booth. They let him stumble away and rejoin his own group as they concentrated on digitally editing the prints and adding cute graphics before they were printed. Kou’s growl shifted from annoyance to amusement.
‘Now you are going to have your picture stuck on a bunch of girls’ pencil cases, complete with little hearts and all their eyes enhanced to look like yours.’
With his own growl at Kou, David rejoined the others. Naoto looked at him but said nothing.
‘If I didn’t know better I’d say he was jealous!’ David thought.
“Ha! You got snatched by the pikura girls,” Tsubasa said with a smile. “Maybe we can lose them in the maze.”
The wiry boy turned toward a two-story building that looked as if there had been at least an attempt at making it look scary. With his tracking and martial arts training, David was confident the indoor maze would be easy enough.
Inside the building was an interesting explosion of glow-in-the-dark colors. Every few meters, there was another set of doors and a quiz question. While it was entertaining for the group to watch whoever answered the question wrong to try to open a locked door, the path led them in a relatively straight line at first.
The second floor was a different matter. Darker than below, it was more like an old bomb shelter with twists, turns, and a low ceiling. David hung back, allowing the girls to take the lead, as they seemed the most excited by the maze. Just as David was losing interest, a strong hand grabbed at his black uniform jacket and pulled him away from his group.
Twirling and on the edge of summoning his Seikaku, David found himself face to face with the beautiful young girl he had seen the previous day. Her gray uniform seemed to blend with the low lighting and dark walls. A shadow was across her face but her bright eyes shown out like lanterns. They were in a small space, inside a divider accessed by a gap between it and a wall. He was surprised to note some kind of perfume on her that, while he could not describe, was intoxicating.
“Uh, hi,” David said, while he gulped in breaths of air in an attempt to steady his racing heart and Kou’s fighting instincts.
“I’ve been watching you. You’re different from most of your other classmates, and not just because you’re a gaijin.” Leaning in, her voice became a bare whisper. David froze. She was so close in the small space. “I need your help. Someone is after me. Someone that I think you could handle.” Her hand brushed against his side.
‘Chul Soon.’
“David?” Rie called from out in the maze. Before he realized what was happening, David was back out in the maze just in time to catch Rie walking around a fake wall. “Come on, everyone is already outside, where were you?”
“I, uh, I guess I got lost,” he replied, glancing back. He saw the barest flicker of gray as the mysterious girl disappeared. Rie studied him.
“Either you’re lying or you’re an idiot. I’m not sure which I’d prefer,” she said, turning for the exit.
Outside the maze, the rest of their group was trying their hand at a hammer bell while they waited for him. With only twenty minutes to go before they had to leave, the students headed toward the entrance for lunch. David tried to spot the Okinawan students, but even Kou failed to find them. With everyone fed and the last stragglers accounted for, they took one last picture before a giant superhero statue and headed out.
As everyone on the bus began discussing the virtues of the various attractions, David pondered the strange girl’s words. Kou replayed the memory of their encounter as they rode through the Kyushu countryside. The bus took them through towns, farms, and mountains as they made their way south and east. The rice fields gave way to buildings and the Nakano students were suddenly in the midst of another large city. Beside him, Naoto pointed to the outer walls of an ancient Japanese castle through gaps in the tall buildings around them.
The Nakano Junior High School tour buses pulled into yet another parking lot behind a long line of other buses. Unlike at the amusement park, there were people and tourists everywhere. From the parking lot, a large expanse of grass and a dike spread out before them. As David got off the bus, he saw the tall walls, first of stone, then
