Natural Gaijin

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I'll wake you up from your coma when it's time to go." Leo sticked his tongue out at his blind friend as he nonchalantly continued to throw away garbage.

Hana swallowed her face into the pillow and groaned absently. "What did I do to deserve this..."

After a long day of cleaning, Leo sat on the now visibly-carpet floor with the back of his head against the wall. Leo glanced at Hana, who had stolen his only bed hours before, as Leo held his old, red tengu mask in his hand. He stared at the half-moon that accompanied the neon city lights that illuminated the otherwise dark apartment room. Heavy traffic, crimes and the events in between was always common in Leo's neighborhood, but Leo wasn't phased by it this time around. Since his focus was toward someone hundreds of miles away from him, but now he was faced with the sudden burden of Hana Komori.

Leo yawned and tiredly stretched his arms. He was ready to sleep on the floor pillow-less and blanket-less, but he recently realized an undisclosed detail that could prove fatal in the duo's future. "Hey, Hana... do you even have a passport?"

Hana eventually spiraled into a dreamless sleep that left her paralyzed on the musty floor. Her agape mouth spilled forth a tendril of drool that reached his beloved pillow and soiled it. His words stirred the girl into a violent bout of groans before she fully came to. Her opaque eyes fluttered open as she relayed a click against a nearby wall.

"Hey, you cleaned," she felt the need to say before pulling her lissome frame up to answer him completely. "Well, when I told mother I wanted to major in journalism she got me a passport for my birthday. She said I'd probably need it if I was going to travel off of Japan for some news report." She shook her head, "I don't think she understands that not all journalism is talking in front of a camera on some obscure area that's relevant to the story."

Leo blindly and clumsily pushed the side buttons of the television until he eventually turned it on. The television was an old CRT that Leo managed to steal from his landlady, and she never found out since mostly every person that lived in the apartment also had a CRT. The vertical bar of light constantly refreshed as Leo crawled back closely toward Hana. A marathon of old, yet classic Godzilla films reran on the television and Leo could do nothing but stare. The room was filled with a silent, low-quality murmur as the only slightly-loud noise heard was the cry of Godzilla.

"Yeah, that's something, Hana. I always thought your mom was a nice lady, but it's interesting to know how she thinks like that some days. Why journalism, anyway? Could you even find out where the camera is pointing at you?" Leo snickered as the flying Mothra practically charged at an unsuspecting Godzilla.

Hana instinctively kicked out her leg at him, aimed at his ribs. She mumbled some curses before she formed herself back into fetal position. She clutched at her knees as she lost herself in the battle noises the TV projected. Godzilla's roar assaulted her sensitive eardrums and forced her to retreat under the protection of his pillow. The batgirl called out from beneath it, "I like the idea of news; it's the only way I can connect to other places. It's interesting to learn about a place completely different from ours... since I can't see what's happening, I love to hear about it. They describe it wonderfully and paint pictures in my mind. Does that sound stupid?"

Leo cried out in sudden agony as his two hands clenched his left side. His scream overlapped another one of Godzilla's screams as the frame afterward showed a stunned, idly flying Mothra. Leo fell down on his side as he took a moment to regain his strength. "What the hell, Hana!? Why did you kick me!?"

A middle-aged, next-door apartmentee kicked open his own door and ran a good ten inches to Leo's room. Vicious knocking came from the other side of their door. "What happened!? Is everything alright!?"

"Yeah, it's fine! Go back to bed!" Leo yelled out as he painfully took deep breaths and shook in place.

"Oh, alright." The middle-aged Kosuke went ten inches back to his room and back to bed as if nothing happened.

Hana bolted up at his cry in confusion. She rushed beside him in sudden consolation. "I hate your blind jokes!" She felt around the ground and whipped her head around as the voices battered her ears. She wilted and shielded them from the roused citizens with her hands. She clung to the ground until they left the pair alone.

"I'm sorry! I forgot I still had my uniform shoes on." She casually slipped off her Mary Janes and beat herself up internally for forgetting she had them on; bad household manners on top of bad actions. "A-Are you alright?" She felt around the floor until her hand made contact with his thigh. "I didn't think I hit you that hard."

Leo gently bumped his head toward the carpeted floor until he laid still as cheesy, heroic music echoed from the television. Godzilla began to walk back toward the ocean as Japanese civilians waved good-bye, so that current movie was coming to a close.

"Yeah... I'm alright. I just wasn't ready, that's all..." Leo said with a blank, defeated tone. "I don't remember much what you said before about journalism... but it wasn't stupid, I don't think."

Hana pouted and folded her thin arms beneath her bust. "Well, you wouldn't have to be ready if you didn't make fun of me all the time." Her ears slowly unfolded until they rose to a slim peak atop her head. The girl angrily huffed and moved back to her position on his pillow. "What time is it?" she swapped the subject abruptly.

Leo slowly brought himself from the floor and checked the time on his cell phone. The flash of light that emanated from the cell phone briefly blinded Leo since he didn't check his phone for a majority of the day. The next Godzilla film that immediately aired was the one where Godzilla fought King Ghidorah: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Although Leo had seen this particular movie far too many times, he did not oppose to himself when it came to watching it again.

"It's seven-eleven. Moon had been out for a while, so it's late. Do you have a curfew, Hana?" Leo said with a drawn-out yawn.

Hana nibbled at her lip.

Mother is going to be livid.

"No, no. I'm a grown woman. I can go home when I please," she lied poorly. She hopped up again and turned her back to him. She procured her phone from her purse and furiously tapped the button. She used her memory to navigate around the menu and bring up her missed calls. She placed the phone up towards her new ears and whispered at it to recite missed calls. The phone illuminated angrily and read off the recently missed calls quietly.

Hana dropped the phone into her lap and shoved it back away into her purse. She woozily stood and bowed at him. "Perhaps it's in the best interest that I go home. I've caused you enough distress tonight." She tangled a hand in her dark locks anxiously.

Distress is an understatement...

Leo nonchalantly picked at his nose and flicked off a dried booger toward a specific corner of the room. That specific corner was the landfill of dried boogers since the first day Leo lived in the apartment, and it became second nature and practically tradition to flick off mucus at that particular corner. He pondered as he stared at the half-moon outside of his window.

Do I really want to bike ride Hana back to her place at this late of night? Man... this is my favorite Godzilla film too.

"I mean... if you want to, Hana. I still have that old bike locked up outside behind the apartment." He sighed. "I forgot how many Hello Kitty stickers you put on it over the ye-"

A sudden, loud scream came from outside the apartment. Leo instinctively leaped back away from Hana as he looked toward the window. It was a random group of gangsters beating an innocent passerby in the middle of the street. Traffic began to build up as cars honked away their frustrations, but those similarly-aged gangsters flipped them off and slurred their screams.

"Shit. Thugs looking for money at this late of night... You still want to go home?" Leo looked back at Hana.

Hana chose to ignore his obsession with puffy and glittery Hello Kitty stickers. She whirled around at the noise and swallowed harshly. The batgirl untangled her clawed hand and sunk to the ground. She secluded herself into a tight corner where the walls met and spoke to him, "I should call mother then."

She tugged out her phone for the umpteenth time and pushed away the cute maneki-neko phone charm that obscured her screen. She performed a pattern of taps and raised the phone back up to her ear. With her free hand, she held up her index finger, indicating him to shut up. The device quieted for but a moment as the ringer silenced and her mother began a cacophony of irate words. Hana bobbed her head repeatedly in humbleness as her mother prattled on about where she was.

"I'm with Leo, mother."

"T-The bad side of town?!" the phone reverberated loudly.

"I know, I know. I'm safe!" she calmed her mother before continuing, "I think I'm going to stay the night here just in case. I'll be home before breakfast, okay? Can you please feed Nana, Keiko, and Mara?" Her mother deflated and agreed to care for her cats while she was away. The pair exchanged parting words as Hana killed the phone's backlight.

"She said that you're in charge of not getting me jumped."

"Heh. Alright, Hana." Leo said as he turned back toward the gangsters outside his window. He stared at them without distraction.

Kicking and screaming had a relationship at that moment that was like the ebb and flow of the waves in beaches. The mysterious pedestrian coughed up blood and used the last of his energy staring at the spiky-hair youngster who took his brown wallet. Police cars eventually made it to the neon-lit neighborhood and left their cars to chase after the offenders. They all sprinted away as one of them screamed out in momentary ecstasy.

"Die in hell, you dirty foreigner!" A cry forged in broken English which was followed by a flurry of repeated screams by fellow criminals. "Gaijin! Gaijin! Gaijin!"

Leo shifted his head at the laid-out, motionless, Caucasian man that was in the middle of the road. Many other civilians moved closer to see if he was alright, but it seemed unlikely to Leo. He slowly picked up the red tengu mask which laid on the floor beside him, and intensely clenched its wooden framework with eyes focused on the dead man in front of him.

"Do you want to go to bed, Hana?" Leo said as a tear fell from his left eye.

Hana sensed the tense atmosphere in the room and picked herself up. "No," she stated. Her legs felt like lead as she traversed the room via clicking. She led herself beside him and stopped before the window. Her delicate hands clutched at the sill as she pushed her forehead against the glass. She stared out with unblinking eyes.

"Xenophobia is a crippling plague among our people," she felt the need to include him. "Is the man alright?" she gingerly asked as she imprinted her spiral prints upon the foggy glass. "You've never been attacked for your ethnicity, right, Le... Koya?" The name felt odd on her tongue, she stuck it out and turned away in her blissful ignorance at the scene unfolding below the pair.

"I had my impromptu nap, you know. Are you tired?"

Leo silently sat on the floor as he gave out a genuine smile toward Hana at the thought of the new name. He had almost forgotten the plans about California, but the name "Koya" had given him back his goal. He placed his hand on the cold-surfaced glass window as he saw ambulances rushing in and treating the lifeless foreigner by putting him in the back of the medical vehicle.

"He'll be fine... believe me." Koya said as he removed his hand from the glass, leaving a foggy imprint only to be cleared away over time. "It's amazing that I haven't been to the hospital ever since I came here. The worst that was done to me was hate letters filled with dead threats with the occasional bike stealing." Koya yawned and stretched his arms as Godzilla fired his atomic breath at the flying King Ghidorah.

He wiped the few tears that he cried out, and regained his composure as Hana was near him. "Anyways... I'm not that tired, but I-... we do have an adventure sooner or later, right?" Koya gave out a weak, yet sincere laugh.

Hana acknowledged the ambulance with an annoyed flick of her ear. "I hope he has health insurance," she offered as a final word before she move back beside Leo. She groped around until she found his hand. She seized his wrist with one hand as she used the other to lace their fingers together.

"You can sleep on planes you know, it might not be all that comfortable although. We could just drink a lot of coffee and become caffeine-addled insomniacs!" She chortled and knocked her head against his arm. "I have no idea how my mother will react to me going out to America. She's probably already petrified by watching the news." Hana went bug-eyed dramatically and drew attention to him by jarring his arm with a shake. "What about my cats!" Worry consumed her vapid features.

Leo awkwardly stared at Hana's control over both of his hands. He attempted to slowly release away from Hana, but he felt a strong connection coming from Hana that didn't give him the second thought of quickly removing her grip entirely. He kept his hands still while bonding them together with his blind friend. The ambulance drove away as the police followed right after. The traffic jam ceased.

Hana, do you like me?

Brief moments pass by Leo's mind just as Hana placed her head toward his arm. With all the laughter and the seemingly endless things to do in America, Leo couldn't do much but to laugh and be happy like Hana. The night sky looked darker, and the neon lights looked brighter. Leo felt that he was at the point in time that he could laugh at just about anything, as it was less tiring to laugh than to think.

"Your mother will be just as well as your cats. Your mother needs company, so she takes care of the cats. And the cats needs to be taken care of, so they go toward her. They'll be alright, and it'll be as if you were never there." Leo obnoxiously laughed as he shook his hands with Hana.

Hana kept his hands in a vice until the street sounds died from their original crescendo. She flexed her fingers around his wrist as she pondered the nature of what was to come. A whimper of sympathy passed through her lips as she composed them into a simper. She tilted her head up and stared directly where his voice came from; she liked to pretend she could watch his expressions change.

Why can't you understand?

"Keiko doesn't like to be fed unless you sit there and pick out the pieces that are shaped like little chickens," she recited her normal cat routine as if he was interested. Hana used it as a diversion to stray her mind from dwelling on his existence in her life. Her ears fluttered as he laughed the laugh she came of love. "Well, then how do we prepare to leave?"

I know for sure she likes me...but does she?

Leo swallowed his brief dose of anxiety and reinforced the bond that was happening between the duo's hands. He saw Hana tilting her head, as if she was thinking about making a move or something like that. At least that's what Leo thought and it seemed that was what's happening like in the movies he saw and the books he read. He let out a deep breath to reassure himself that maybe the two of them do share mutual feelings toward each other, or at least Leo did at that moment.

"Just, um...close your e-... Actually, just imagine you're there for the time being..." Leo nervously smiled as he slowly tilted his head toward the right. He had already tilted his head, so Leo felt the need to complete his momentary goal and involuntarily began to push himself toward Hana's lips. From what Leo knew in his physics class, power could be measured using force and speed. Therefore, the kiss that Leo had done theoretically had the strength of a boxer's left hook to the left cheek. He had never kissed a woman he had liked before, and he had never embraced a kiss toward a woman he had liked before. His teeth awkwardly clacked with hers, and he had almost forgotten the realization that they were mere centimeters apart. Yet, Leo could not move away.

What the hell am I doing...?

LEO?!

Hana cringed and threw her shoulders up in fear of him completely knocking her to the ground with his force. Her blank eyes crossed and her dark brows knit to convey the confusion she was experiencing. She refused to blink, instead keeping empty vigil upon him. Her unnerving stare betrayed her lips as she awkwardly fought to enjoy his act of affection.

She pulled her head to the side and spoke in exasperation, "Le- Koya... what are you doing?" To reciprocate some form of attraction, she planted a soft kiss upon his cheek to hopefully calm his rapid train of thought.

This isn't how I envisioned this at all.

This is bad.

"N-nothing... Go to bed." Leo said with a fake laugh as he loosened the grip between their hands. He quietly crawled a few inches back away from Hana just to contemplate what he had just done as well as what had just been done to him.

A cellphone in Leo's pocket suddenly gave out a vibration as well as the catchy melody of an abstract Japanese pop song. It was the designated ringtone for most of Leo's contacts, and it was the designated ringtone for his mother who suddenly called him in the middle of the night. Leo stared at the 'Mom' caller ID as he opened up the cellphone to talk.

"Hello?" Leo monotonously said.

"Leo, my son! Sorry for calling at such late notice, I've been doing that for a while now, have I? Anyways, how have you been? Has Japan been treating you well still? What did you do today? Were exams easy? Did you meet any new friends? Tell me what you ate today? Oh, I just have so many questions for you, Leo. Your father has been worried sick about you as well, you know! Did you want to talk to him, I'm sure it will make his day." Amalia, Leo's mother said loudly in German through the cellphone's weak speakers.

"I've been alright, mom. I'll call you back when I'm awake. Good bye." Leo replied.

"Oh, okay. Good b-" Amalia said until Leo immediately closed his cell phone and gently slid it on the floor away from him. Leo began to lie down and remain silent, staring at the ceiling as the Godzilla marathon kept its course.

"The menace was gone, so was a great man... But the whole world could wake up and live again." A voice said from the television.

Hana deflated fully to the ground as he brushed her off and made the awkwardness of the room palpable. She resisted the urge to curl up into a protective ball and instead went rigid and stared blankly at a wall as his ringer fired off into her heightened ears. She hummed along with the tune well after he had picked up. She pondered about their strange dialect and how forceful it was enunciated compared to his soft-spoken Japanese.

How do I fix this... I didn't even do anything wrong. He reads people poorly.

"Hey, Koya," she forced herself to interject his new name. Her body slid against the floor until she was near his side. She draped herself over him like a discarded doll. She then rolled off and instead placed her head warily on his chest as stared at him. Blush consumed her pallid face. "Uh..." her words lingered on her lips like his kiss. She couldn't bring herself to finish what she wanted to say.

Koya heard the brushing of musty carpet from his right side. French house music passed by the apartment through speakers of a car and the sound of skateboards grinding against bike rails followed after. Koya briefly chuckled at the small, injured cry of one of the skateboarders after a sudden thud and the immediate reaction of a car's honk. However, he glanced toward his right side and had failed to realize Hana had already placed her head on his chest. His chuckle ended quick, and he simply stared back at the ceiling, speechless and nervous.

"W-what... Hana? I-I'm sorry for what I did earlier, if you were wondering..." Koya said nervously as he kept his glare toward the moldy, asbestos-covered ceiling.