Never Without You │ BOTW modern AU fanfic

Aryll

As soon as we get off the plane, we enter a new world! Suddenly, English is scarcely seen or heard anymore... Even though we are at an international airport, most signs are in Japanese!

"I tried to memorize the Japanese alphabet during the flight but most of these symbols weren't on the list!" I gasp concerned.

"You probably only studied the hiragana alphabet," Link says, leading the way.

"Are you implying there is more than one alphabet?"

"There's three," he laughs.

"What?!"

"Hiragana, katakana, and kanji."

"Why?!"

"I don't know?" his laughter continues.
"Why would anyone need three alphabets? Do they all have 48 characters too?!"

"Well... technically there are more than 70 for hiragana and katakana and then a couple thousand for kanji."

"You're kidding... Americans use 26 letters and are doing just fine! I don't understand why you need a couple thousand characters!"

"Well... you see..." he looks over his shoulder to give me a know-it-all smirk. He's totally enjoying being the smart-ass for once. "Hiragana is like the main alphabet and kanji are symbols that represent certain things because sometimes the word will have many different meanings and kanji helps to keep them apart. And then the katakana is only used for foreign words. Like... your name I would write in katakana. Or hamburger, or America. Because those words didn't come from Japan, they came to Japan."

"You're enjoying this aren't you?"

"Just call me Sensei from now on," he winks at me.

We grab our luggage from the baggage claim and leave the airport. A lot of people keep staring at Link, so I wonder if he is more famous in Japan than in America. It would make sense; he did play for the national team and holds the record for the youngest athlete to win the fencing olympics.

The sun has already set but the sky is still in the presence of light. The first thing I notice is how everything is so clean! The streets aren't littered with rubbish, it doesn't smell like urine, and no cigarette smoke is polluting the air. Not at all like some other airports I've been to in the past.

The second thing I notice is that the cars are driving on the left side. I didn't know about that until now. I feel so unprepared! There is so much I don't know about Japan. It's making me nervous... I hate being unprepared.

I look at all the signs around me, there is an utter absence of English now... I've been to foreign countries but those at least consisted of most of our alphabet and they would display a lot of English in their most touristy cities. None of that seems to be true for Japan from what I can tell. My breaths quicken as I look to Link for comfort. He gives me a soothing smile to counter my worried expression.

"Welcome to Japan, babe," he says, hooking his arm around my shoulders.

I blush and press my lips together. My heart flutters every time he calls me by a nickname. I like it. Even though it still feels a bit strange at times.

"So... who is picking us up?" I ask.

He raises one of his brows as he tilts his head. "My family doesn't have a car."

"What? What do you mean? Then how are we getting to your house?"

"The train?" He says as if that was the most obvious answer.

"We were on a plane for 12 hours, I don't want to take any more public transportation today," I pout.

"Kyoto is almost an hour away so taking a taxi would be too expensive."