A few days after Itsumi had gone back, it turned out she wasn’t just being polite when she said she really did want us to come to Japan. Itsumi told me that she negotiated with her father, who is the school chairman, and the school principal, and had successfully engineered an invitation for me to the academy’s study abroad program. I was amazed and overjoyed. Moreover, since I had been invited into the program, the academy was also going to pay all my expenses and let me stay in the convent attached to the school. But only one person could go. Though I longed to see Itsumi, I was worried about my disability and recommended that Ema go instead. I didn’t think that I’d be able to adjust to living abroad with my leg, and felt that Ema deserved it more; after all, if it hadn’t been for her hard work at the travel agency, I wouldn’t have met Itsumi or received this offer in the first place.
Ema’s preparations for the study abroad program went without a hitch. She was the one who dreamed of travelling the world. She even enjoyed the complicated visa application process. She talked about her trip every day, like how she planned to visit Mount Fuji to see if it was as beautiful as the Vitosha Mountains, and how she was interested in Aomori rather than popular tourist cities like Kyoto and Nara because she felt it was similar to Bulgaria in a way. Though I felt lonely knowing we’d be apart for a year, I was excited when I thought about the strong ties she would form in Japan during her stay.
But God can be cruel. One day, leading a tour at Aldimir’s Kaleto, Ema fell down a stone staircase. She suffered a severe blow to the head and broke her arms and legs. Thank heaven the wounds weren’t fatal, but they did require three months of hospitalization followed by six months of rehabilitation, which left her no choice but to drop out of the study abroad program.
So I was suddenly set to take my sister’s place in the program and had to prepare immediately. I was apprehensive of how I would manage, because of my leg and introverted personality, but mustered up the courage because I knew I would soon see Itsumi. Though I thought my Certificate of Eligibility for Resident Status and Visa would take a while to go through, I received both surprisingly fast and was able to make it in time for the new semester in April. Again, I was overjoyed. This must be what the Japanese call “En ga aru,” or what we know as “fate.”
My study abroad experience was also meaningful in another way: I was going to be the first international student at St. Mary’s Academy for Girls. If I could make a positive impact on the academy, they might invite students from Levagrad to come study abroad every year. This would be a huge honor for my village. On top of that, Ema would most likely receive a bonus from her company for coordinating the program with the academy. All of this depended on my experience abroad. This is why I’ve tried my best in classes and actively participated in school events, like the music festival and Easter bazaar.
✦ ✦ ✦
At first I was completely disoriented. This was my first time in another country and I was attending a school with only girls.
Although there are all-girls schools in almost every country, the Japanese equivalent feels like it exists in its own world.
This is a world where schoolgirls compete to pull the strings of leadership. These strings are stretched so tautly it’s painful to see. Like wires, they hurt your hands as they tie you up. Whether girls are trying to protect their station or are plotting to steal one away from others, no one goes unscathed. Yet, all the schoolgirls pretend that they’re indifferent to this game and laugh as they chatter innocently away.
But it all became clear to me. In this academy—in this unique environment known as an “all-girls school”—the students spend their days tugging on these strings. Who is in charge? Who has power? Who is the leader? The girls warily sniff around, find out who’s on top, then vigilantly wait for their chance to take hold of the reins. This is what my glimpse at an all-girls school in Japan told me.
It felt as if strings stretched across the classrooms. Your apathy won’t help you escape; it’ll only entangle you deeper. Perhaps the only one who could see these strings, spun into such an intricate spider web, was me, the only outsider at school.
These power relationships change by the day—no, by the hour—at a dizzying pace. Seconds ago, Girl A might have been the most popular student in school, but everyone started ignoring her after lunch. Or the opposite might—and did—happen.
Are there any webs of relationships as cruel and brutal as these? I was so happy to be an international student. I was a mere outsider and witness to this tug-of-war, and even then—I’m not sure if this is the right phrase in Japanese—it left a stinging, or hirihiri, pain, in my heart, as if it was slowly being sanded down into nothing.
In spite of that, Itsumi surpassed everyone and moved freely amongst the chaos. There were plenty of attractive girls at the academy; they were all Eastern jewels in their own refined, clever, graceful ways. But they were nothing more than pebbles at Itsumi’s feet. Itsumi was so overwhelmingly brilliant that she could outshine anything.