WON'T TURN BACK, miyuki kazuya

chapter 23

The next day is a flurry of excitement.

You pick up Lula at ten, not wanting to wait longer just in case traffic bogs you down. It turns out to be a good decision, because by noon, I-5 is backed up bad and the traffic in downtown is not any better. It reminds you a lot of New York. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, honks echoing off the skyscrapers, sidewalks chock-full of pedestrians. Except this time it's a sea of grey and green.

At the hotel, there is a lot of debate on whether you should take the van.

That was the original plan but as mentioned before, traffic is horrible.

(But you can't fault your fellow Seattleites. These are the guys called the 12th Man, the ones who broke a Guinness World Record for the loudest crowd at a sporting event. If there is anyone that needs the support, it's the Mariners.)

The stadium is almost two miles from the hotel, which makes for about an hour-long commute by foot. But there's Eitoku, Eimi, and Eiichi, and then you, with your knee; you woke up with it aching, bad enough that you can't put much weight on it, so you dug out your cane. Just a black cane, with a pivoting head and a non-slip rubber end, since it's drizzling.

Your best option, in theory, is the light rail.

Overall almost thirty minutes, it's a ten minute walk to Westlake Station, where you'll board the 1 Line southbound. Another four stops along the way that'll make it ten minutes before you arrive at Stadium Station (very aptly put). That stadium is only eight minutes by foot from the station.

This is all, of course, based on the assumption that it's a regular day.

It is not a regular day.

The light rail is operating like it usually does but the amount of people using it is unparalleled. The walk there will probably be fifteen with everyone on the streets, then a thirty minute wait to get onto the light rail itself; probably a little bit of a delay as it hits the stops along the way, but once you get to Stadium Station? Then you'll be in the thick of it. You've kept up with King 5, the local news station on Instagram and Twitter, where there are deluges of pictures and videos of the state of the streets and sidewalks around T-Mobile Park.

It's all so bad they've closed off streets around the stadium (nothing around the parking garage for it, of course) to allow for more space.

So, you guess thirty minutes to an hour, maybe more to get to the stadium and then to get inside.

"All of it is going to suck," Kuramochi says at one point when you're all debating. "So it really doesn't matter."

Very true.

You decide to take the van. You had that fifteen passenger van for a reason, anyway, and that was so you could transport all fifteen of you, with Chris driving.

At least then, you will be stuck in traffic, but you'll be sitting down. Best for you and Eitoku and really, everyone else.

After grabbing a quick early dinner (or rather a late lunch) at two, you all set off.

The game is set to start at six. It is a large margin, you know that, but with the way traffic shapes up with delays and detours, it ends up taking a good two hours to finally get inside the parking garage and find a spot inside the garage.

From there, you join the masses of people crossing the street to the stadium and pick a line to join; it's a little past four but the lines are slowly moving. Usually they wouldn't let people in until an hour before but you guess the massive influx of people made them reconsider that policy. It'd suck for the game to start and there still be people waiting to get in.