Yuki Meshida looked briefly at her father, who had a grim look on his face, as usual. Apparently, Yuki passed his inspection of her, this time. But every week it got a little harder, as his parenting of her got stricter and stricter. Soon, he may not even allow her to have any friends. Not that she really had any at the moment. She was kind of an outsider. But that was mainly because she was basically a foreigner ... and no one wanted to be friends with someone who had a hard time speaking English and who didn't quite fit in with American society.
She looked down at her food, then up at her mother, who was dressed about as plainly as she was. Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and looked at something that she thought was there, but it must have been just her imagination, because when she looked, there was nothing there.
She went back to her breakfast and began eating again, but just as she took her last bite, she felt strange. She stood up from the table and left, without asking her father's permission. That was a big no-no in the Meshida household. But, oddly, her father nor her mother made any notice of it.
As Yuki opened the front door, about to leave the house, she faintly heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Normally, she might care about that, wondering who it might be. But no. For some reason, she didn't. The only thing on her mind at that moment was a desire to find something. She didn't know what it was she needed to find, but she was sure it wasn't in her house.
Was it her house? Yuki wasn't sure. She thought it was; she thought that was her family eating at the table, as she left the house. But the further away she walked, the less familiar they were to her. And as she closed the door behind her, she caught a glimpse of the pale black-haired girl sitting down at the table, wearing her clothes. Were those her clothes? No, her mind told her. Those weren't her clothes. But she knew where to find them.
She walked through the neighborhood, seemingly in no particular direction (although in her mind, she knew exactly where she was headed), until she spotted her destination ...
