Satoru Laussen's Story

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"People are usually about as happy as they make
their minds up to be."

Feeling: Excited | Curious --> Confused
Location: Town Cafe --> House; Countryside
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Typically, Natsu tries to avoid being the sort of person who allows themselves to become wrapped up in the past or the future, preferring to focus on the immediate present. However, when her mother drops her off at the tiny food place near the house where she will be spending the summer, the young woman can't help but be hit by waving rolls of nostalgia. She has always gathered familiarity about places from the feeling of the air and the smell, rather than the sights and sounds, and this place seems to have been frozen in time for all it has changed. While many of her friends moved to other countries or to further away parts of Japan, Natsu's family had actually stayed rather close to her hometown. Despite this, the young woman has not come back since all those years ago, when her closest friends fractured and fled. She is not, after all, one to relive pleasant memories. Cheerful though she may be, the girl is prone to avoidance of things like this. Perhaps evasion is the secret behind her optimism --that would be a rather unfortunate thing, though.

It hadn't been raining when her mother had brought her, and so Natsu had requested to be dropped off first at a food place which she remembered from her youth. This had come as no surprise to Mrs. Hisakawa, because her daughter had continued to have something of a bottomless stomach, a trait not lost when she left her hometown. The weather seemed nice enough, and so she dropped her off, warning Natsu to be very careful on her walk to the home, and to purchase an umbrella because the weather forecast had predicted showers tonight.

Of course, careless as she is, Natsu ignored this advice, and after eating until she was perfectly full, and thus rather content, Natsu left the food store and followed the directions to the house. It had become rather dark already, the sun setting more quickly than she had expected it to, and Natsu is almost inclined to regret not being driven all the way up to the house. Luckily, she is one who tends to pack light, even for such a long vacation, and the bags she carries are not overly heavy. Sports have made her strong, but dragging around lots of bags for the entire walk would have been a pain.

The walk, however, was destined to become torturous anyway, for as she was heading down there, perhaps half an hour away [not a thing she minded, for the girl loves to walk outdoors, and watch the fireflies and stars], those predicted showers suddenly attacked. Natsu immediately rushed beneath one of the few trees still around, and resolved to wait until the storm passed. She hoped, and therefore made herself believe, that it was merely a flash flood and would pass quickly.

Unfortunately, her hopes were predictably unfounded, and the rain continued its assault against the earth while she waited. After twenty minutes passed, Natsu steeled her resolve and decided that a little rain had never caused much damage to anyone. After all, she to this day often runs around and plays in the rain, childish though it may be, and the only difference here is that she has bags to carry while she runs.

So, this is what Natsu decides to do: run. What would have been a thirty minute walk thus becomes a fourteen minute run, and she crosses the two or so miles thankful for the fact that her track team often made members run even in the rain, so it does not cause her to slip and fall. Well, not until the very end, when a poorly placed mud spot sends Natsu slipping onto the ground just before she reaches the house. She manages to catch herself, but mud still splatters against her legs, hands, arms, and part of her torso.

But Natsu merely grins, happy enough that she had managed to catch herself before receiving a full mud facial. Some people pay for those, after all, she tells herself, standing up. Positivity aside, she is glad that a shower is now only a few feet away. It has yet to occur to Natsu that, if she were going with her friends, they could have just carpooled. Thus, she has no suspicions when she walks into the house, and at the sight of the shoes, makes guesses at who it may be.

"Those shoes. . .Ryu-kun, you're part of this?" she calls out happily, opening up the door.

But it is not Ryu-kun, a friend from the boys' basketball team, that she finds inside. Rather, it is a boy and a girl that for a moment she does not recognize, both seeming to stare at each other.

As realization dawns, Natsu drops her [muddy] bags on the ground next to her, eyes wide and smile slightly faded due to the shock. But the smile, her old friend, jumps back almost immediately, and her normal expression is back in place.

"Wow, it's like walking into a dramatic movie," she jokes in order to conceal her own sudden confusion and nervousness at the sight of them.