Euphoria

"Distance"

Tae Rin-Cha

Four years. It's been four years since I moved to Japan. Today was the annual marking of another year in Tokyo, where I've been living for all this time. I'm now twenty-eight, and my birthday just passed a couple months ago. I also send letters to South Korea all the time, but not getting a lot of replies so far. I got a lot of them in the first two years, mainly from Jin-Woo, but they stopped coming in after a while. I thought it best to let him continue his training, so I evidently gave up. The only person who I still send letters to is Jin-Ah. Most of my old teammates and comrades used to keep in contact with me, but the long distance friendship eventually fell apart. I should have seen this coming from a mile away, but I really had no plans when I first arrived in Japan.

Before I knew it, I was living in a small apartment in the middle of Tokyo. I knew absolutely no one, and only knew some basic Japanese. I wasn't bad at it, and I would definitely survive with my vocabulary, but I would still need some practice. My mom was from Japan and my dad from South Korea, so I learned both languages as balanced as I could. Korean became my main language, but I did have my knowledge of Japanese still in the back of my head. And now was the time to use it.

I joined raid teams as fast as I could to earn money, and I soon became known as the "Korean Mage." I got into contact with a few small guilds and did some work with them. I never joined one, but liked to see how different each of the gates and members were. I settled on going on raids with an A class guild, which proved very useful and got me the money I needed to survive for all these years. I also did some training by myself and with a few of my new Japanese friends. Instead of being called Rin-Cha, I chose the name Kyoko, and stuck with that for the past few years. My first year in Tokyo was a bit rough, but after getting into the jobs and meeting new people, I grew accustomed to everything. My Japanese was getting more fluent, and I was able to hold long conversations and alert people well during raids. Luckily I had Yukina Harumo to help me throughout this entire time I've been here. She's my neighbor and also exactly my age. I've gone on raids with her a lot, and she's the only person I've ever really connected with as a friend other than Jin-Ah and Jin-Woo. She's an A Rank Healer, and a really good one at that. She's definitely on the road to become an S Rank someday, and is working really hard to get that title one day.

I've actually come in contact with some of Japan's S Ranks, and even fought alongside them once or twice. I was never really friends with any of them, but I received the nicest compliment from Akari Shimizu. She is an S Rank Healer, and saw some real potential in Yuki and me. Her exact words that day were: "I really think you'll be an S Rank someday Kyoko. You should get a re-rank evaluation again soon."

Those words meant everything to me, so I went to get a re-evaluation just a few weeks later. I had just received the results a couple days ago, and was positively shocked. I had invited Yuki over for a drink, and as we were both completely intoxicated, I told her I had officially made S Rank. She didn't believe me, and honestly, I couldn't believe myself either. I wanted to write a letter to Jin-Woo and tell him the news, but decided to hide it in case he was too busy to answer or read the note.

It has now been four years on the dot since I left, and exactly a week since I revived my re-rank evaluation. I had to attend a meeting with some of the other S Ranks from Japan when they returned from their mission on Jeju Island. It was said an S Rank gate was there, and they needed almost every S Rank they could get to go on that raid. I hadn't been permitted to accompany Japan's S's since I didn't even have my evaluation until after everyone had already left, but I could still look out for them.

I did stay on top of the news for a while, but nothing seemed to be occurring at this point in time, so I stayed home and made some food for myself.

Yuki was on a raid today and I had no new jobs coming up, so this day was going to be unbelievably boring.