◦•●◉✿ The Days We Have ✿◉●•◦

✩one

✩one

The fresh smell of wet grass filled her lungs as the passing shower drifted through the sky. June sat on top of a moss covered boulder with her head raised to the treetops. She was surrounded by green, and drenched, but she didn't take notice. There was a pagoda nearby but June didn't need the shelter from the rain. A part of her felt so lost and empty, but sitting there with wet clothes sticking to her body, she felt solid again. June looked down and saw a white slug slowly crawling up the side of the rock. Its little antennas wiggled back and forth in a sloth-like motion. Apart from her newfound companion, there were no other signs of life. June liked coming up the mountain to hide from the rest of the world. She had just moved into the city because her dad was offered a great job opportunity. So her family picked up their happy life in New York and planted themselves in Taiwan. It was okay. June had been there before; they had loads of family. From aunties to uncles and cousins, she was just completely overwhelmed with the amount of relatives she never knew she had. Her parents had left their homeland twenty years ago to go to America and start a new life. To June, it seemed like they were taking a step back in order to move two steps forward. But she didn't mind too much. Although she did have a couple handfuls of friends back in the states, she knew that most of them weren't genuine. The fact she was moving to another continent across the world helped her filter out the ones who didn't really care about her. Fake.

June sighed. They were fake, but at least they were friends. Here, she was known as the strange new American girl who had a terrible accent. She hated the stares that she received from the neighborhood women when she would walk by. Her mother told her not to mind them, and she knew it was silly to let forty-something-year-olds bother her, but it still made her uncomfortable. And she felt like an outsider. It was August, but the new school year was about to start soon. June didn't know whether the kids would welcome her or shun her. She was terrified of the girls. After watching so many K-dramas, she had officially psyched herself out. June pushed those unwanted thoughts to the back of her head as she wiped a stray hair out of her face. She hadn't brought much on this little trip. In her backpack was some money, a small camera her dad got for her when he announced the move, a pack of Wrigley's watermelon gum from the states, and an already scratched up Easy MetroCard. The thing was loaded, so she could pretty much go anywhere she wanted. But right now, June was starting to feel gross in her wet clothes and the humid weather. She knew she needed to change and head home, but her stomach had other plans at the moment. It started to growl a while ago and she knew it wouldn't be long before she could no longer ignore the hunger. June got up, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and make her way down to the nearby town. There was a 7-Eleven there, so she planned on grabbing a bag of noodle snacks and a bottle of milk tea. She knew it was probably dumb that she had stayed out in the rain, but she would dry. Eventually.

After finally arriving in the small town, June walked through the soundless street, observing everything around her. It was pretty calm and the few people who were out were working and kept to themselves. June liked the simplicity of life there on the mountain and wished she could live as quiet of a life. As she entered the 7-Eleven, the electronic bell chimed to let the workers know someone had come into the store. There was a girl who was probably in her twenties behind the counter and a boy who seemed to be around the same age in the corner. He was helping a woman use the fax machine, but it seemed like he was having some trouble. June walked past them and headed towards the fridge to take out a milk tea drink. The cold blow from the chiller made her shiver in her wet clothes, so she quickly went into the snack aisle to pick her dry noodle snacks. They were one of her favorite Asian snacks besides prawn chips and practically anything she could get her hands on. In New York, when she would bring a pack of dried seaweed to school, she would be so badly scrutinized and people would make a show of her "foreign foods". Now that she was actually living in Asia, she didn't have to worry about looking so different from everyone else. Of course, she still felt different because of how Americanized she was, given that that was the only home she ever knew until about two weeks ago. It wasn't too hard to adjust to Taiwan, but she knew she would be learning a lot of new things in the next few months of settling in.