Dacheng and his parents landed at the third terminal of Haneda Airport. Wandering through the airport, they dawdled about, looking around at the airport's facilities. Dacheng's parents took plenty of photos. Everyone was excited for their first time in Japan, and even Dacheng's usually stoic father smiled despite himself. But it was only when Dacheng's stomach began rumbling in three different languages did the Yun family remember to eat. They had a light breakfast at a nearby restaurant.
Dacheng's parents playfully lectured him for eating too fast and too soon.
"Calm down, Cheng-er," his mother remarked, "nobody's chasing you."
"Can't help it," Dacheng mumbled, "I was hungry…"
Afterward, they left the airport. In total, they had spent two hours looking around.
Outside, his parents tried hailing taxis in clunky tourist Japanese. Dacheng facepalmed but acknowledged his Japanese wasn't any better.
A few misunderstandings later, Dacheng and his family set out on foot, as Dacheng's parents, preferring to save money, decided not to take a taxi upon seeing the cost of one. And besides, they also knew about the health benefits of walking.
While Dacheng's parents discussed their itinerary, his eyes went all over the place. He watched the towering buildings, the blinding lights from no particular source, and the sea of people going about their day or on their way to work.
Everything was a big blur to him, but one person among the crowd stood out. It wasn't because of their physical appearance but rather their indescribability.
Ignored by the surrounding crowds, they wore a historically accurate ninja outfit with a kasa straw hat, making their physical features indiscernible. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, they disappeared in a blur, leaving Dacheng to rub his eyes and wonder if he had snapped. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed the ninja, but nobody had.
Dacheng was amused and interested, or at least he would have been if he wasn't so tired. His parents called him, bringing him back into focus. They had found themselves at a bus stop, and in a few minutes, they were sitting on a bus headed for Tokyo proper. Evidently, his parents had decided that the bus fare wasn't so bad compared to the taxi fare.
The Yun family, carrying their baggage, got off the bus at a quaint hotel. Its relatively cheap fees had appealed to Dacheng's middle-class, budget-concerned parents.
Their hotel's name roughly translated to "Tendō Family Estate and Tourist Hotel". The ryokan, or Japanese inn, was owned by a certain Mr. Tendō and his family. It looked relatively old yet well-maintained.
From the outside, the whole place was big and complex (at least for a family-run ryokan) but still shrank compared to the corporate buildings nearby. It had a sign on the gateway with "Tendō" written in kanji, Chinese characters. As they entered, a young woman in a pink kimono greeted them.
She had long, somewhat curly, brown hair that fell to her shoulders and a playful air about her. She smoothly and methodically confirmed their reservation and checked them in. However, because her outfit didn't include a name tag, Dacheng didn't get her name.
As he looked around, Dacheng appreciated the subtle attention to tradition and historical accuracy he saw in the room arrangements.
However, he was so distracted by what he saw that he tripped on the genkan, which was the ryokan's entryway. His parents helped him up and dusted off his knees. They took off their shoes and headed for the common room, passing by a framed photograph of the owner in his younger days with seven youths standing beside him - five men, one boy, and a woman. Dacheng noticed it and vaguely remembered his dream.
The owner himself, sitting quietly and drinking tea in the common room, was an old Japanese man in traditional garb with a full head of white hair he kept tied in a topknot, chonmage style.
Dacheng remembered once seeing that hairstyle in a sumo wrestler's picture.
Mr. Tendō Muji was very jolly and amicable toward the new guests. Spry and energetic for his age, he told his new guests that he had only one house rule- The guests were never to enter his room without prior authorization.
Dacheng would have looked for more details, but an elbow from his mother and a glare from his father told him he was staring too much.
His parents bowed in apology, forcing Dacheng to do it with them. They decided to go to their room.
The Yun family slid open the shoji door and entered their room. They unpacked their luggage and took photos of the different things in the room.
The design was pretty much the same as the common room. The floor was made of tatami. The furniture was very simple. It consisted of a hanging scroll painting of a mountain with a cracked face, a pot of colorful, traditionally arranged flowers, and a short, flat brown table. Three rolled-up futons lay in the corner of the room.
There was no bathroom or kitchen because these were in the common room for all guests. Dacheng and his parents decided to spend the rest of the morning exploring the ryokan.
As Dacheng walked around, he opened another sliding door and found a spacious, tranquil garden. It had a pond and bonsai trees, and he could hear birds chirping. As he walked around, he saw a dark-haired young woman watering the flowers in the garden's flower bed. She quietly hummed a simple tune as she moved the watering can around the flower bed. Dacheng decided not to disturb her and quietly turned back the way he came.
He reunited with his parents in the common room, and the family decided to head out for lunch.
The Yun family noted with some concern the many police cars running around town. Dacheng's father hypothesized that someone important must have gone missing and advised him to be more careful and stay with them.
They went to a restaurant that claimed to serve authentic Chinese food and ordered dumplings and beef soup. The Yun family said grace and ate their lunch.
Dacheng felt the food was terrible, but so was the feeling of his parents wasting their hard-earned money. So, he decided to pinch his nose when his parents weren't looking and swallow. Dacheng barely stomached the most unpalatable things he had ever eaten and was relieved when his parents decided to look around instead of going for more food.
They wandered into a gym, where Dacheng thought he saw a cowboy hat-wearing wrestler lifting weights in a corner. As Dacheng marvelled at the eccentric sight, his father considered getting a membership. Dacheng's mother gently reminded her husband that they weren't staying.
And so, they spent the rest of the afternoon acting like proper tourists - taking photos, stamping a book for commemorative purposes, looking at the things on sale in novelty shops, and generally having fun - while still being polite to everyone they met.
They returned to the ryokan at dinnertime. The food served was simple - some onigiri rice wraps and a few bowls of broth and ramen noodles - but for Dacheng, it was the best thing he had tasted that day.
"This stuff is umai!" he proclaimed in between bites. "Simply delicious!"
"If you must thank someone," Mr. Tendō said, "thank our chef, Sakura."
As Dacheng turned to look for her, he found that Sakura was the girl he had seen in the garden earlier. She stood off to the side, wearing a plain white apron. He bowed deeply in gratitude but was greeted with silence.
Dacheng inwardly cringed but could do nothing.
The Yun family returned to their room, and Dacheng decided to shower.
Walking past a painting on a nearby wall, he went to the common bathroom for a shower. He toweled himself off and came back to their room.
His father rolled out all three futons and turned on an ancient yet miraculously still working TV. The family browsed the television channels for anything with English subtitles. But they decided to watch the news when they found nothing, not even an anime. Using the kanji mixed with the hiragana, Dacheng guessed the contents of the breaking evening news.
"Defense Minister's young daughter vanished, kidnapped on her birthday. A ransom note recovered at the scene of the disappearance." was all he could get.
Dacheng's father recalled the police sirens earlier and again warned his son to be careful tomorrow.
Dacheng sighed. Not even Japan was safe from ne'er-do-wells.
He decided to go to sleep before the dark cloud forming above his head made him think up something bad. He said goodnight to his parents and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Around the same time, in the forbidden room, Mr. Tendō opened a panel on a wall, revealing a shining array of eight multi-colored pearls. There were seven small pearls surrounding a larger, pure white pearl.
The pearls were all perfect in any way, enough to make any jeweler green with envy and astound even the strictest appraiser. Each of the seven pearls was delicately carved with a symbol of the elements- fire, wind, metal, earth, flowers, water, and lightning.
Of the seven pearls, six shone brightly - green for wind, gold for metal, brown for earth, pink for flowers, blue for water, and orange for lightning. The other pearl, which was initially a dull red color and bore the element of fire, began to glow red as though it had been set aflame.
The ninja Dacheng saw earlier appeared and asked. "Master, the new seventh ninja has awakened?"
"Or so it seems," said Mr. Tendō. "I can't help but wonder who it is."
As his body began to heat up strangely, Dacheng sneezed in his sleep that night.