Chapter Three

It was so weird seeing Madison Anabel Fisher again. Should I talk to her? he thought, as he saw her before the first bell had rung. Will she think I’m weird? Maybe I should tell her what happened ten years ago. Or maybe her parents already told her?
Her eyes caught his, and she smiled at him. “Hey, your name is Tatsuya, right?”
“That’s right,” he told her. “And you’re… Maddy.”
She giggled. “Yeah. I remember you from yesterday. Thank God you picked up my schedule, but I forgot it the instant I got home!”
“Oh. Where are you living?”
She looked a bit caught off guard. “Why? You want to stalk me or something?”
“No, not at all. I’m just trying to start a conversation. It’s something I’m not very good at.”
“Aw, that’s okay. I live by Central Park. My parents told me they used to live there, so when I told them I was sick of boarding school, they decided to come back here.”
“You used to go to boarding school?”
“Yeah, for as long as I can remember I was in a private school in California. And then I told them I was sick of it, but I didn’t expect such a big move.”
“I see. Did your parents tell you anything else about when they used to live here.”
“No, nothing at all.”
“Oh.” That’s why she doesn’t remember me, he thought. Her parents are still as stupid as ever.
“Well, I’ve got to go. I need to stop by my locker real quick before 1st period. I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Yeah, bye.”
She skipped off, her high heels clacking on the ground as she left.
“Yo, Tatsuya!” Darren was the next to approach him. He put his arm around Tatsuya’s neck and began to bounce up and down. “Who was that beauty you were just talking to? I thought you were into the other new girl?”
“I’m not into any girl, you idiot,” Tatsuya said, pushing Darren’s arm off from him. “And I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Dude, relax. Do you think you can introduce me to that damsel? I mean, I saw her in the office when they were enrolling the new kids, but I need an excuse to talk to her, and if you two are right, and then we’re hella tight, then you could totally make me and HER hella tight! Right?”
“Not going to happen.”
“C’mon. I’ll hook you up with Kaida!”
“I don’t want you to hook me up with anyone,” Tatsuya said, more force in his voice this time. “What part of ‘leave me alone’ don’t you understand?”
“All of it,” Darren said, laughing. “Dude, you need to lighten up. I’ll find a way to loosen you up, all right? I’ll catch you later!” He ran off the other way.
“That boy has way too much energy,” Tatsuya said to himself, shaking his head and walking off to class.
The rest of his school day was pointless, boring, and uneventful. He didn’t see Maddy again the entire day, and thankfully he didn’t see Darren, either. He had guessed they weren’t in any of his classes.
Kaida wasn’t there, either. Then again, she was hard to spot. Not only because she was short and blended in with the crowd easy, but she was good at moving around without being seen, as proved when she was in the cafeteria the other day. Tatsuya decided not to worry about it, and that today would just be a boring day, and left to go home without saying hi to Maddy by his locker.
“I’m home, Mom,” Tatsuya called to his house as he opened the door.
“Tatsuya!” Kimi screamed as she ran towards her older brother. She jumped on him and put her arms around him as Tatsuya lifted her up.
“Hey, Kimi. Is mom home?”
“No, she went out to the grocery store.”
“What? But it’s my turn to go to the grocery store.”
“Yeah, but she figured you’d have a lot of homework and stuff, though, so she decided to go so you wouldn’t get too tired.”
“She’s such a sweet woman,” Tatsuya said, putting his little sister down. “How is your homework coming along?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about, could you help me on my math homework?”
“Sure,” Tatsuya said, kneeling down so that his sister could climb on his back. “What’re you doing in math?”
“Quadratic equations,” she said as Tatsuya piggy-backed her up the stairs. “And I want to finish fast so I can hang out with my friends after.”
Tatsuya sighed, but didn’t complain about his sister going out with her friends again. Instead he decided to quietly sit down next to her and help her finish her homework before something out of the ordinary happened.
“Thanks, Tatsuya,” Kimi said, closing her textbook and putting away her papers. “I’m going to leave in about five minutes, so you can go in and start your own homework.”
“Sure, just be careful when you’re out, okay?” Tatsuya said, standing up.
“I know, I’ve heard it a thousand times,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Just go finish your work, okay?”
“Okay. Take care,” he said before exiting his sister’s room and locking himself in his own. “Good afternoon, Gina.”
“And to you, Tatsuya,” Gina said. “Would you like me to do your math homework?”
“Not today. I feel like I should set an example to Kimi. At least for today. I feel like her upbringing is messed up because of all the time she spends with her friends.”
“Understood.”
Tatsuya picked up the old journal that was on the side of his desk. “Ugh, I really don’t feel like doing my homework right now.” He sat down in front of Gina, and flipped the journal open. “Let’s see how my great-grandpa’s expedition started out.”

It’s the beginning of November now, and we’re beginning to run low on supplies on the ship. Thankfully, we’ll be docking in Japan soon. It’s very exciting, and we’re—oh! Johnson is telling me right now that we must prepare for docking. I suppose I should have picked up this journal earlier if I wanted to tell anything of the voyage. For example, the storm we had a week ago. That one was horrible—one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It caused a huge problem and five of our men were thrown overboard. We tried to save them, but it didn’t work out. We’ve gone from 50 men to 45, and we haven’t even started the expedition yet. Some of the crew members were telling me how we should just head home because of such a bad omen, but there’s just something calling me to come to Japan.
Anyway, Johnson is insisting that I leave the ship soon as we prepare to dock, so I will write as soon as we hit land.
We’ve made it to the shore, and safely. It’s a hard place to navigate, but I there are signs of life. The berries from the bushes are gone, even though they’re supposed to be plentiful, and there are a few small, dead animals around, as if someone—or something—has been hunting around this area. Obviously, this seems like a decent area to set up our site for our expedition. Let’s see what we can find.
It’s amazing! After just two hours of searching, we’ve found a small village filled with Japanese people. We’ve got a couple of people in our crew who know Japanese, and what we’ve managed to communicate with them, they seem like a friendly bunch. They’ve accepted us and helped us clean up and gave us food, and it’s a miracle that we found them. This is where we’ll be staying for the expedition.
The leader of his village’s name is Chie. He’s a friendly old man, and the one who told the villagers to make that feast for us. He told us that he would try to help us with our expedition as much as possible. I thanked him, but I feel like I owe him so much more.
I’m staying in one of his empty huts right now with some of my men. He was actually able to provide a hut for all of my men to stay in—I truly owe this man my whole gratitude.
When I told him I was an explorer, and I think he laughed at me. I couldn’t really tell. But he seemed to be fascinated in hearing my stories of expeditions I had been on, and when I told him I was leading this one, he seemed very exciting about it. It was Johnson translating for me. He speaks fluent Japanese, so he’s the one I’m keeping closest to me right now.
It was actually incredibly interesting hearing about this specific group of Japanese people. They are very primitive, and don’t actually know too much about modern anything. It was like stepping back into a time warp or something. I loved hearing about the village, though. As Chie lead the people, he was also training his son, Chiyo, in being the next leader of the village. Their family had been ruling these people for over a thousand years, apparently.
So I asked Chie to tell him more about his village. I wanted to hear all of the legends that could help me find something amazing in this small, rural area.He said that his father told him about the treasure, and he heard it from his father, and that the story had been going down for thousands of generations, and it was one of the most prized things that the village had. He mostly told me ancient stories about Japanese dragons, and their power, and how one could rule the world if he was able to possess the power of this dragon. I asked him how one would acquire this “power of the dragon” and he told me about a treasure. He said even if the dragons and magic were just a bunch or legends, he told me that this treasure was real, and somewhere in the forest next to the village.
That was it. I knew what we were searching for this expedition.