Amaterasu: Chapter 1

Flashback

"I'm sending you to New York," Katsumi, or as I normally call her, Mom, had said one day.

''"What? Why?" I asked. I was shocked, this had come up out of no where.''

''"Maybe it'll get you more focused on your future." she had answered.''

''I didn't really have anything to say to that. I had been pretty much drifting around town since graduation, and graduation was like two or three years ago. I had no plan, I had no job, hell I hadn't even applied anywhere. Not like I could get in anywhere, my grades had always been near the bottom of the class. It wasn't totally my fault, I couldn't focus in class, I was always restless and unless I forced myself to focus (which was never very often) everything would just kinda get blurred together.''

''"Why would New York get me to focus on my future?" I asked.''

''"Well," she hesitated, I knew she was holding something back. "It might let you meet your Father as well."''

''"My Father?" I repeated, a little dumbly. Mom had never talked about my Father and I never asked.''

''"Yes, your Father." she said. Her tone had that finality about it that only a mother could pull off that told you that the discussion was over without ever really giving you any information.''

End Flashback

That had been about a week ago. She had me shacked up in a hotel in the city, but other than that I had to either get a job and provide for myself or starve. I had managed to find a job, in one of the numerous little Sushi shacks that this place seemed to have. The place I worked at was called Chagama's Sushi.

I gotta say, New York is way more diverse than anything I had ever been exposed to before. After all, I had never really left Japan. Who am I kidding? I've never even left Kyūshū Island, or Ōita Prefecture... actually, I don't think I've ever even left Usa...

That was kinda depressing, in and of itself.

I shook my head. Focus! I gotta get to work. If I'm late one more time the Old Man swore he'd fire me this time.

Then I could've sworn I heard somebody laughing behind me. Whatever, it's New York City, I'm sure there's almost always somebody laughing.

Whatever. I arrived infront of my place of work. It really was almost nothing more than a literal hole in the wall. The only reason I even got the job was because the Old Man had been standing out front and grabbed me and asked if I wanted a job. Of course I had said "Yes". That had been three days ago and I had been feeling starved.

The Old Man was both what I tended to call him and an accurate description of the man. He was bald, and always wore some kinda hat. His eyes were surprisingly large and perceptive and he almost always had a bottle of Sake in his hand, not surprising, the place did serve Sake. He also had a large gut that was barely contained in his shirt. The way he walked always reminded me of some of those people I saw outside the shop who wore pants that didn't fit properly and he never looked that comfortable in his pants, which for some reason always had something that looked like a promisory note sticking out of his back pocket. And, probably the strangest thing of all, when the Old Man wasn't yelling at me he always seemed to have the friendliest smile you could imagine on his face as he sang some of those weird songs in the shop. His favorite was a song about a Tanuki, that one that started out "Tan Tan Tanuki~".

I entered and heard the Old Man yell.

"Minamoto!" he hollared. "You're lucky today, you're not fired. Yet."

I sighed quietly, the Old Man always threw in that "Yet", reminding me that I only had this job because he had given it to me and I took up my station in the kitchen, or what counted as the kitchen here. That's right, I'm the dishwasher. Lucky for me, though, being a Sushi shack, this place didn't really have too much in terms of dishes. All I ever really had to clean were the knives. For some reason having a knife in my hand always made me feel calm, weird as that is. Sounds like something a serial killer would say, but I've never had the urge to kill, so I guess I'm safe.

I did kinda like working here, though. Everyone who came into this hole spoke Japanese, so I never had to rely on my miserably weak English, and it made me feel a little better, though pretty much everyone who came in here were weird. Plus, the Old Man let me eat free at the end of my shift. Though the end of my shift wasn't until closing, so there were going to be some long hours of cleaning knives, and whatever else the Old Man told me to clean, ahead.

However, something kept nagging at me. Something that told me that by the end of today, things would be completely different.

"Haven't had that feeling in years..." I muttered.

"Don't talk to yourself!" the Old Man yelled. "Makes you look crazy!"

"Yes, Boss." I said, least that's what I assume he took it to mean. Far as I was concerned, what I said was "Yes, Old Man."