Practical Rika

Hi everyone! I would adore if you would review often and make plot suggestions. Believe me I will acutally take them into account. Also, any misspellings will be corrected if you tell me where there are. Again, use the kid gloves unless the critism is constuctive. I like this pairing alot and I would like to see more of it!!! well here we go!!!
EVILinnocence

Practical Rika


Rika had been waiting for little over an hour here, her shoulders growing stiff as she typed that night’s homework on her laptop within the walls of the Tomoeda Library. Where was he? Flustered she paused in her typing to make a quick glance around her surveying each table and bookshelves. Sighing she turned back to her assignment. What was she doing here?

14-year-old Rika was practical. Her parents would often tell her with a chuckle, that she was born that way. Practical in dress, thought and action. She should be doing this assignment at home. She shouldn’t have put herself out here. But there were times when she wished that she could fly away from Tomoeda, farther than any airplane could fly or boat could drift to, away to some foreign country where she wouldn’t be plain “practical Rika” but someone who let impulse take her where she let it.

There she wouldn’t pine for love, she’d conquer hearts with just a mere smile. She’d have the courage to do what she’d always dreamed of, just to write. Not a journalist or a secretary, the practical jobs she would recite to her parent’s friends when they asked her of her aspirations but a writer of fiction. Just the thought made her eyes glaze over dreamily. One day, the day she turned 18, Rika would disappear from Tomoeda and a new one would appear somewhere, a struggling writer impractically making her way.

“Rika.” The low tenor made her eyes dart up and widen and she flustered closing her newly opened word document. “No, no,” Tereda-sensei chuckled. “Don’t let me interrupt you Rika. You seemed so deep in thought I almost didn’t want to start our little conference.” She shyly lowered her gaze as she cleared her voice and closed her computer with a snap. “No, Sensei, that’s why I’m here. I would just be studying at home otherwise.” “Your mother couldn’t make it?” Rika felt her head bow, her cheeks pinkening. “No, I’m afraid not. She had to work for the bakery today. With the upcoming Tanabata festival, she wanted to put out more star cakes and good luck charms. I’m not slipping in my work am I?” Her voice wavered. Tereda found himself smiling in spite of himself. “Did I worry you Rika-san? Actually you’re the top of my class this year and although you must think that’s a snap the way you been turning in each assignment I must tell you that most of the teachers back at school think I’m a tad harsh on my students.” “I don’t think you’re harsh at all Sensei!” A smile flitted across his boyish face spreading like rays of sunshine. “I’m glad you feel that way which is why I’ve recommended you for this school.”

With one sentence her world crumbled. What? A new school? By some miracle, Terada-sensei had chosen to teach the 9th grade here in the tiny school that she and all her friends had vowed to graduate from. She could still remember how hard it had been to tell her parent that she didn’t want to go to a elite high school that would lead to Tokyo U. she had ignored her mother’s crescent fallen expression of disappointment and focused on what she really wanted: to travel, to be close to friends, to stay in the town that would let her see Terada even if just in passing as he led his new classes on class trips. The decision to stay in Tomoeda was a daring move. Practical Rika should have jumped at the opportunity to separate herself from him. After all, what would become of this elementary school crush: ultimate heartbreak. As much as she dreamed and wrote of an 18 year old Rika, an impractical woman who had the world in the palm of her hand, she knew that to everyone in Tomoeda that she was just little nine-year-old Rika. She had just hoped that she could have been slightly more to the person she admired most, Tereda-sensei.

“With all due respect sensei, I want to stay here.” The look of more than mild surprise made her lips twitch into a smile. “Are you certain of that?” Her voice was steady and calm as she told him with an even, almost practiced tone, “My parents want me to go to a city school but although I am their child I still want to look after them. After all, they need me to run the shop after school. Not to mention, I wouldn’t want to leave Li or Kinamoto. I like my school here.”

“I don’t think you’re being honest with me Rika. I still remember a paper you wrote for me years ago when you were in my 4th grade class. It was entitled “What I want to be when I grow up.” At first you talked about taking over your mother’s bakery; I asked you for a rewrite because it wasn’t an honest paper. You then wrote a piece about loving to write more than anything, how you love to lie on the hill in Provance inhaling the smell of flowers as they wafted in a French breeze. That Rika, the one that wrote your best and most honest paper yet, wants change and I think that this school would do that for you. They have an abroad program I’m sure will expand your horizons and scholarships for aspiring writers like you.”

A childish hope passed through her eyes as she glanced at her binder covered neatly with cutout pictures of faraway places. “What would my parents do,” her voice was low and forlorn. “Rika-chan, your parents are just that, parents. They are there to take care of you, not the other way around. They had the bakery before you were born, they’ll do fine. Besides, what will happen when you leave for those distant places one day? They need to let go sometime Rika and see that although you are their little girl, you are not a little girl anymore.” His hand, smooth and soft reached across the table with a pamphlet and application. His smile was sympathetic. “Please at least consider it.”


That night she propped the pamphlet on her desk unsure of where it might take her. Here lay the opportunity of rebirthing as someone other than plain practical Rika, and a way to navigating to her dreams of being published. Her hand brushed the glossy cover of a pair of smiling Japanese students in front of the empire state building. That could be her, she thought dimly. Suddenly the thought of leaving her tiny room above the bakery and close knit town welled up inside choking up as tears in her throat. What if I don’t like it there? What if I can never break free of practical Rika? What if this is all a mistake?

“Rika-honey? Are you upstairs studying?” Hastily Rika shoved away the pamphlet in a drawer oblivious to the application that fluttered to the ground. Taking care to wipe her tears with the edges of her hands, Rika opened the door. Her mother smiled down upon her. “Studying hard?” “Hai.” The fourteen year old reclaimed her seat at her desk once again drawing up her homework document. “You’re so studious Rika. I hope you realize that must have come from your father considering the fact that all I ever wanted was to get married and start up this shop. Not very ambitious huh?” Rika turned in her computer chair, glasses perched on her nose. “I think being a good mother and good business woman is nothing to be sneezed at.” A sweet smile spread over Rika’s mother’s features, “You are so right. You know I wonder where all that maturity comes from too? You know, sometimes I wonder how much of it you suppress when you’re around father and I out of love and knowing we want to hold on to the 2 year-old we had all those years ago. I don’t mean to interrupt your studies I just wanted to tell you I love you and that dinner will be ready in a bit.” As she turned to leave, soft cotton slippers scuffling on the hardwood floor, she stepped on a rumpled piece of paper: it was the application. Saying nothing Rika’s mother frowned glanced at her daughter’s back and left the room.