What would've been a quiet summer turns into a globe-trotting adventure when an incident in Olympian High's campus garden gets the attention of resident Chosens Amelia Kingston and Zeus Olympian. To their surprise, the culprit is none other than the...
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Underneath the afternoon sun, Tokyo was a concrete jungle to behold. High-rise buildings dominated Amelia's gaze everywhere she looked. Ridiculously large and flashy billboards took most of the little space left among the buildings. The foot and vehicle traffic was chaotic and organized at the same time, so much so that it almost looked unreal. She had been to New York before, and while they both looked similar in almost every way, the place felt different.
More than half a day later from their flight, Amelia and Raymond decided to head to downtown Tokyo, where the latter suggested they start their search. They called in a taxi when they exited the airport. Its driver, like any other local they've met so far, was warm and welcoming, and upon seeing them, began to speak in broken English. Amelia hadn't opened her mouth yet when Raymond suddenly spoke in fluent Japanese. The seemingly old driver was as surprised as she was, but he quickly gained his composure and talked back to him in his mother tongue.
A few beats later, the driver nodded in glee and gestured at them to get inside the car. While Raymond did so without hesitation, Amelia simply stood there, confused.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Raymond asked. "Come on. Get in."
Amelia raised a brow. "Since when did you speak Japanese?"
"Like right now?"
"No, I mean, since when did you learn—" Amelia paused at the driver staring at her. She smiled sheepishly and went in before they drove off. "Is this one of your 'skills'?"
"You can say that," Raymond answered. "It's a boring power that I got as Hermes' Chosen."
"Boring?" Amelia repeated. "But that sounds like a pretty cool power to me."
"Then I guess we have different definitions of cool, Redhead," he said. "You won't mind if we swapped powers, right?"
"Uh, no." Amelia rolled her eyes. "So does it come to you naturally? Speaking in other languages, I mean."
Because you don't look like someone who would study languages in their free time, she mused.
Raymond nodded. "It's like a huge dictionary of almost every language is stored inside my brain, you get what I mean? It doesn't sound bad but, like, it kinda gets weird when you hear people talking in some other language and it gets all translated into English in your head."
"Does that count animal language too?" Amelia teased.
"You decide," he said, his ever-mischievous smile drawn on his face.
"Okay. . ." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not even sure what to decide."
While Raymond continued talking to the Japanese driver, Amelia couldn't help but feel left out of their conversation for obvious reasons. She was glad that Raymond even knew how to speak Japanese—she had to admit, the language barrier worried her more than the aspect of looking for the Artifact. But he probably should've taught her a word or two while they were in the plane.
