Memories

She was sitting on a chair, looking out of the window. There wasn’t an airplane yet, which she was supposed to take. It had been raining since that morning. Her mother already went home in a hurry, saying she wanted to go to bed early, and it seemed to her that her mother didn’t want to come to see her off. She wanted to cry just like the rain outside, but she bore it as a middle-aged man was behind her, back-to-back on a chair at the gate. She started to recall the parting with her mother again: no other people came to see her off, and she could not have sushi before leaving the country as the restaurant was so crowded. A little sigh made quite a big sound, which surprised herself. Sometimes she tried to call her friends, but it ended up with her habit, “I can’t bother others.”

At last, the gate opened. Until then, she was thinking about her way to France in her head precisely: after the passport control, I should go to the baggage claim, and then, go to the toilet, and then… More people than she had expected got on board, and she felt stressed about it. The only thing she was satisfied with was getting a window seat. She was staring out of the small, blurred window as if she wouldn’t see the scenery of Tokyo anymore. Next to her was a woman who seemed to be a “very working” woman. She thought she might be the only student on the plane, which made her think of how lucky she was to get the opportunity to go abroad: her nerve has got that naïve at that point.

When it started to move forward, she got very excited. That is the moment that she loves! The strange, unusual touching of the air is somehow addictive. Even though the window wouldn’t allow her to see the outside clearly, she could see the small, countless lighting in the dark, and identify the boundary of the land and the sea. “Tokyo is indeed pretty beautiful.” She had not felt that way for a long time. So far, Tokyo has been a crowded, bright, non-clean, and stressful city. But from that moment, she could finally understand the beauty of Tokyo, being said among people from overseas. It made her miss her country, where she wanted to escape a minute ago. She made herself bear the tears and looked at the front. There was only a seat in front of her, but she was looking at something different: she was looking at her determination to live alone in an absolute foreign country.