In the Cold April Rain

Water splashed onto the window of the bus as a car passed the other way. Talia woke up from her restless slumber. She looked at her phone expecting to see multiple calls and texts from her family...all of them. Instead it was all from just one of them, Charlie. She wasn't sure if her eyes were watery or if it was just the rain. Still, she swiped the notifications away and leaned her head against the window. Her head bounced off the window and hit it as the bus drove along.

Things felt familiar to her, and somehow they were also entirely new. This use to be a strange, scary place to her. There were so many people. It was amazing she didn't get lost among the hundreds of millions of people here in Japan. But at the same time, she always wanted to just disappear. To just...vanish among the endless seas of people. How any girl managed to find herself in the first place in this never-sleeping, busy world was a miracle in oneself. Surely getting lost in it should have been a cinch.

The train station was just ahead. She didn't have all her things but she had enough to get by. There wasn't really a destination in mind. But she knew she was going to get wherever it was eventually. Anywhere that wasn't here would work. Maybe a place where time stood a little more still. A place where she could find a little peace for the first time in her life. Well, second.