Remy
Through the train window, Tokyo’s lights glimmer like birthday candles in the fading afternoon sun, and Remy feels like she’s so, so close to having her wishes come true.
With a yawn, she rubs her eyes, shifting on her pillow for a better angle.
There are only two things she wishes for; one in particular that she’s wished for every year, for as long as she can remember. Both might very well come true this winter break. If—if—she has more luck than she’s ever had before. Knowing how things have been recently, though, this trip might be her last chance to make them come true.
The loudspeaker crackles overhead as the train conductor announces in Japanese, “We will arrive momentarily at Shibuya.”
Remy freezes. She’s not lying in her bedroom back in California, scrolling through travel blogs—the rocking train had lulled her into a jet-lagged daze on the ride from the airport to Shibuya Station. That’s right. She’s just arrived for a busy week, with an interview at her dream university, the potential answer to her first wish—and a full week with …
Her pillow. Who is definitely not a pillow.
Remy’s eyes swing up and to the left and her breath hitches, in that involuntary way it does whenever she sees Cameron Yasuda these days. Her best friend is lanky and nearly a foot taller than her, his chest rising and falling gently as he sleeps—he can snooze through anything, even the train’s loud conductor.
She knows almost all of Cam, her best friend throughout her entire life, even his soft, sleepy, quiet breaths. Dark eyes and light brown hair that’s softer than clouds, and tanned skin from their days spent sitting in the park near home. He’s a cinnamon roll, from outside to in; his kindness has melted even the coldest of hearts at their high school. And everything about him—all the little things, like his sweet smiles, his obsession with elixirs—feels like it’s become a part of Remy, too.
Remy sits up, trying not to jostle him, but he rouses himself.
“Are we there yet?” Cam yawns. “A potion for your thoughts?” The city lights make his face glow.
“You’ll whip one up here?” she murmurs back. “That’s pretty smooth, even for you.”
That’s the second-biggest secret Remy keeps, but at least this one she happily shares with her best friend: magic. There’s a whole enchanted side to the world, but it’s kept hidden from “the general public.” If he hadn’t also come from a family sworn into magical society, Cam wouldn’t be allowed to find out about magic because of past disasters where it’s gotten into the wrong hands. By international magical society’s laws, she would’ve had to marry him to share the world of magic … and she’s not anywhere close to making that happen. After all, she hasn’t even been able to confess her feelings yet.
He laughs. “I’ll try to create whatever you want.”
And he totally would, too, because Cam is Cam. He’s always been a rock for Remy, whether she’s bawling from a K-drama, burning yet another batch of cookies, or frantically studying for her finals. Cam always knows to bring tissues and a box of Goldsticks (their favorite magical snack) for their Netflix marathons, and he always knows just how to tutor her in chemistry so she can ace her tests.
But Remy can’t ask him for one now, because the only potion she could ever imagine helping her would be a love potion—not that they exist, anymore. And this year, she made a different promise on her birthday candles, in late January. Her biggest secret, the one that she holds close to her heart, thrumming and beating with every breath, every wish: This year, I’ll tell Cam how I really feel about him.
Except now it’s December 23, and she only has this week before the year’s up.
She stares out the window as the train slows. Somewhere, out in Tokyo, she has to find the perfect spot for her confession. The Spot where they’ll potentially become a couple.
The doors purr open, and she hurriedly stands. Her arm shoots out right when Cam is also reaching out for her aqua-blue suitcase, and their hands collide.
Instantly, she turns into the mess she always becomes these days when Cam touches her, even accidentally. “Oh—I’m sorry—”
He withdraws his hand like her touch burns, and all her words dissolve into ash, dry in her throat.
“Um, no worries,” Cam says, his eyes glued to the suitcase. “I’m just clumsy when I’m sleepy.”
He’s sweet as ever, trying to say anything to not make Remy feel bad, but the way he jerked back is enough of a sign.
If I tell him, Cam will be so sweet and nice, even as he rejects me. The lump in her throat grows, the lump that’s been there for almost four full years. She’s tried and tried to fall in love with someone else; she’s kissed a lot of (human) frogs that definitely didn’t end up sparking a feeling even close to the way she feels with Cam.
Remy grabs her suitcase and follows him out of the train and into Shibuya Station, wishing on birthday candles and this once-in-a-lifetime trip and shooting stars that Cam might be in love with her, too.
“We’re meeting Ellie and Jack near that dog statue, right? Hachiko?” Cam asks.
She nods, squinting as she reads a sign, looking for the right exit among the five million possible exits. Cam and Remy have been learning how to speak Japanese at their Saturday classes for years, but it’s bewildering that they’re actually here.
“This way—I think.” Remy points to their left. The train station is full of shiny white tiles, so pristine that they glimmer under the fluorescent lights. Before she knows it, they’re exiting out of a ticket gate, and a winter breeze blasts them in the face.
“Oh,” Cam breathes out with relief.
“That feels so good,” Remy echoes. After a twelve-hour flight from San Jose Airport to Tokyo followed by the half-hour train ride, it’s nice to feel something real.
Speaking of real …
Tokyo is truly unreal.
A flood of business workers in black suits push them out like a tide; they’re swept up and out of the station and deposited onto an expansive plaza, lined with buildings so tall that Remy is sure she’ll fall over if she looks all the way up. Billboards flash with lights, and there are store names everywhere. She wants to drink in everything all at once: the chatter of people meeting friends, the blinking lights of advertisements from nearby stores, the sound of buses and cars whirring by on the road and filling the air with noise.
Remy and Cam gape at the edge of an intersection—the Shibuya Scramble, the most famous crossing in Japan, or maybe even in the world. The pedestrian light flashes green, and the floodgates open as people stride every which way, cozily dressed in thick coats.
Out here on the street, even without wearing rose-tinted charmed spectacles to check, Remy is sure that thick puffs of raw magical dust swirl from the passersby, shimmering with their joy and ready to be turned into a charm. The world can seem completely ordinary, but she knows: there is magic in it. She would bet a hundred yen that the coffee shop overlooking the crosswalk sells French press coffee tinged with enchantments for awe and excitement, and that Shibuya 109 is likely stuffed with cute, trendy clothes woven with spells for confidence.
“Wow,” Cam says. “We’re finally here.”
It sounds silly, but she completely understands. Dedicating so many hours at their part-time jobs to scrape together money for the tickets, rummaging through their closets to sell off anything and everything that might add up to a few bucks, dipping into their savings … has led to this.
Remy’s heart swells with joy. If they managed to make it all the way to Japan, surely they can do anything together, even that wish.
Cam drinks in the sights with a huge grin. “This is amazing, Remy. I’m so glad we’re here, together.”
He always knows the right thing to say, when Remy can’t even decide when or how to confess her feelings for him. But she has to. Even if there’s a chance she’ll lose him, even if he rejects her … she has to get out her confession before they go their separate ways for college.
With Cam, there have been so many moments that feel like they’ve been stolen from someone else’s life—like their movie nights lying out on her bedroom floor, or the school dance she asked him to as “just friends” where she was so close to blurting out, I like you. Like, really like you. But the thought of changing their relationship made her blabber about how the cheap decorations looked like a box of discount Goldsticks instead.
Remy has been searching for hints, for jars of good luck, for shooting stars that sparkle with the message now-now-now.
But what if there really is no perfect time?
She tugs at her hairband, and her stick-straight black hair falls out of its top-of-head messy bun, so her bangs and long hair frame her round face and owl-like wide eyes. Then she looks down at her black fleece leggings and the rumpled coat Cam had pulled out of his backpack for her, and groans. No amount of magic can fix this. She needs a fairy godmother—and those don’t exist.
But this is the start of their trip. Maybe they’ll be able to spend their winter break as a couple, instead of just as best friends.
Hesitantly, she turns toward Cam. “I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I totally understand if you don’t feel—”
“The bus is here! Over here!” A group of loud tourists plow through, and there are too many cameras and flag-wavers in her face. The moment they disappear, Remy looks around frantically.
Cam, her crush, the person she was just confessing her undying love to, is nowhere to be seen.
Remy
“Cam, where are you?” Remy wraps her jacket closer in the late December chill, wishing she’d remembered to bring a scarf.
A salaryman—that’s what office workers are called here—dodges Remy’s broken suitcase. One of the creaky wheels doesn’t work right, and it keeps sliding away. She drags it back to her side as she rummages through her pockets.
“I swear, there’s a vanishing charm on everything around me.” Her phone screen is flickering with one bar of battery left, but that’s enough to text. Cam had used her charger during the flight, because they’d been playing puzzle games on his phone. She unlocks her phone and it flashes to the background picture of her, her older sister Ellie, and their dog Mochi in front of their parents’ tea shop in California.
Her phone blinks with a warning message: No reception.
“Shoot.” She hasn’t set up her international phone plan yet. Because the general public doesn’t know about magic, she isn’t even able to use a charm to find her way, like that time she and Cam went hiking and ended up lost in the woodsy hills of Portola Valley. There are too many people around for her to open up her luggage and start pulling out enchanted charms, anyway. The Tokyo Magical Bureau would escort her straight back onto the plane.
“I’m totally not lost. I absolutely know where to go. Everything is fine. When I look around, I’m sure I’ll find him…” She looks around at the bewilderingly bright billboards and fluidly moving, chattering crowds.
Remy and Cam would both willingly admit they’re directionally challenged. Not to say that Cam isn’t smart. His “for fun” hobby is recreating archaic potions. And together, he and Remy are whizzes at puzzles on paper, can get out of escape rooms in under forty-five minutes, and are one more train ride from completing level 5,518 of Candy Crush. But if either of them strolls into a store and walks straight out, they’re completely unable to figure out which way they’ve come from.
Even if she knows she’s bad at finding places, it doesn’t help that nervous pit of anxiety roiling in her stomach. Because she hates not having Cam at her side, though she’d never admit it out loud.
Then—“Oh.” Remy spots him. Cameron Yasuda stands in the middle of the Shibuya intersection, scanning the crowds.
She thought she was ready to confess but, truthfully, she probably would’ve blurted out something completely unrelated again. Remy needs more courage than there is luck in the world in order to tell Cam she loves him. Something always gets in the way, like it’s a big red stop sign that says, No, don’t confess now or He doesn’t feel the same way.
Just like those tourists.
Copyright © 2023 by Julie Abe
