When one door closes, another door opens. If you close a door and find this to not be true, then you should open a window instead, and climb out of the building. Edifices are overrated. Especially when there is a whole world out there to explore.

1.

Shizuru Fujino is twenty-four years old. And her life as she knows it, is over.

She is known for having near perfect control over her emotions, her pragmatic diplomacy and… well, for having the largest fan club to ever grace the grounds of Todai. This does little to explain her impulsive, irrational, and, above all else… rather stupid behavior of late.

Half a day ago, she had thrown her BlackBerry and scrunched up Letter of Requisition as far and as hard as she could into Tokyo Bay in what she hoped was a dramatic act of defiance. She had revelled immensely at the plop the former made as it sunk beneath the depths, then stood, arms forlornly resting on rusted metal rails, while she watched the little paper ball bob up and down in the water.

Shizuru has spent all her life fulfilling expectations—first her family's, then her peers'—to a T and she is tired of it. Beyond tired, she is exhausted: dead on her feet, and sleepwalking through life. The letter had been the final straw. Realization dawned. It was now or never, brave uncharted territory or be jerked around like a marionette on a string for the rest of her life.

She is tired of living a lie. She is tired of being an expy of someone else—the archetypal perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect heir. She is tired of having the plans for her entire life laid out before her. When the ball starts to break apart into nothing, Shizuru cups her hands around her mouth and screams her throat raw. It wasn't a cuss word she screamed, wasn't a name, wasn't even a word, just a high-pitched wail - the language of the disgruntled, the exhausted, the defeated.

Then, chest heaving and face red, she had made a quick get-away before anyone reported her to the authorities for disrupting the peace.

2.

When Shizuru makes up her mind to leave, there is little to hold her back. She slips an envelope entailing an abridged and, admittedly, far-fetched account of the circumstances of her sudden departure under her landlady's door, together with the rest of the month's rent. She takes two weeks off from work, then duplicitously instructs her secretary to unwittingly tender in her letter of resignation on the day of her supposed return.

Erstin's a nice girl, Shizuru thinks. When her secretary nods earnestly at her order and inquires concernedly if everything is quite alright, Shizuru clears away all doubts with an immaculate and reassuring smile. Somewhere along the line, lying became easier to tell than the truth. Her heart pangs the slightest bit at having to lie to the young woman, but it was in Erstin's best interest to be kept in the dark. Honestly, the less she knew, the better.

Shizuru throws together a haphazard mix of clothes, toiletries and knickknacks then crams them into a single monstrous suitcase. She ties the protective charm her mother had given her when she had first left Kyoto to it, because ultimately, she's still more sentimental than shrewd. Because it's the only thing tying her to her mother, other than the flower-arranging, tea-ceremonies and traditional calligraphy.

Before Shizuru leaves, she takes a long, hot shower. And standing in front of the mirror at the sink, bare and pink and clean, she stretches a hand out to scrawl on the fogged up mirror. One squiggly line, then a dot. A question mark.

It is bad enough that she has to make a hasty exit, the least she can do is to make sure it isn't a sloppy one.

3.

Shizuru drives to the nearest convenience store and buys, among other things, a map of Japan, a BIC marker, and a store-bought bento box.

She locates herself on the map and circles it in red ink. In retrospect, Shizuru thinks, sitting on a park bench with the map spread out, whoever said that the first step was the hardest was lacking sorely in the foresight department. After the first step, every subsequent move is increasingly dogged by self-doubt and hesitance at the prospect of navigating the great unknown. Taking in the enormity of the situation, she leans back onto the cold wooden bench and heaves a great sigh. There went her future: up in smoke, down the drain, out the elephant's caboose and what have you. Well, to that she says goodbye and good riddance.

But with liberation comes a whole different set of problems to face. Upon trying to chart a new destination, Shizuru draws a complete and utter blank. Apart from her childhood spent in Kyoto, the furthest Shizuru's travelled was Chiba. And that had been solely to attend a business seminar. There was one other time, but she would rather not remember that right now. Skeletons were meant for another time, another place.

An orange tabby, catching a whiff of her open, but as yet, untouched bento box, hops onto the park bench. It mewls cutely at her, partly hoping for a free meal, and maybe a tummy rub, if the situation permitted. Unbeknownst to it at this point in time, it will get all those things and more. It will get a conversation partner.

Back to matters at hand: in retrospect, Shizuru thinks, she has, in laymen terms, fucked up big time.

"Where will I go?"

"What will I do now?"

"What will become of me?"

Shizuru hunches forward, elbows poised on her knees and head cradled in her hands. Through the gaps in her fingers, she peers at the feline beside her.

"Why am I asking a cat?"

The cat in question simply answers with a quizzical tilt of its head. Blind to the meaning of her tirade, but sensing something amiss form her tone of voice, it edges forward, and nuzzles her elbow in what Shizuru hopes is some gesture of comfort, and not some animalistic desire to mark its territory.

Shizuru looks down at it and sighs once more."I apologise. There is nothing wrong with being a cat." She picks up a slice of tuna with the opposite ends of her chopsticks and offers it up to the cat. Then, she sets the map aside, and begins to dig into her meal. With her free hand, she reaches out to gently pet the cat. It nuzzles her hand fondly, then purrs, utterly content with the moment.

Sometimes, Shizuru wishes her life was that simple. Sometimes, Shizuru wishes she were a cat.

4.

In the end, Shizuru never does come to a concrete decision on where to go. Details like where is she heading and what will she do with her time were just kinks to be ironed out later. The journey preceded the destination, after all. As any object would preceded its shadow.

But at the back of her head, a small, niggling voice still hisses, how long do you think you can run until they catch you? And what will you do then?

The ugly truth of the matter was that she really had not thought that far ahead yet. Oh well, she will cross that bridge when she reaches it. Till then, she'll drive till she runs out of gas as far away from her plastic life filled with its shiny surfaces as she possibly can.

Japan was a big place.

All she knows is that the further away from Tokyo and Kyoto she travels, the better. And criminals always head south, so she decides that's as much of a direction as she'll need for now. As for the details, she'll go where the world takes her, and failing that, she will fall back on her car's GPS system.

The only electronic device Shizuru brings along with her is her iPhone, and that's solely for the music. After all, what is a reckless escapade without some theme music? Shizuru Fujino has romantic and misconceived notions of wild getaways she would rather not give up. She is not that much of a sentimental fool though, so she stops at a discreet (seedy) auto-shop on the way out of town to get a fresh new coat of paint, and a change of number plates.

5.

So she drives.

When she reaches a fork in the road, she flips a coin. When it gets dark she either stops at a cheap roadside hotel or pulls up by the side of the road to sleep. She would lower the front seat of her car and wind down the windows to leave a small gap, before curling up in a half-moon ball.

She takes routes which deliberately stay clear of big cities and drives till 4AM to escape having to camp out near Kyoto.

In the dead of night, when the cicadas shrieked ceaselessly and the heat and humidity made her clothes cling to her like a second skin, Shizuru climbs up onto the roof of the car to see the night stars. She makes a game of trying to identify constellations and searches for Polaris on the off-chance it will guide her somewhere safe.

6.

The universe has a funny way of being a complete asshole when your chips are down.

Of course this is how it ends. The only way it could.

On a dirt road, in some remote Japanese countryside, strange noises start coming2 from the engine of Shizuru's cherry red corvette. It pops, crackles and wheezes for half a mile, then, after putting up the good fight, finally keels over at a four way intersection. Black plumes of smoke escape the hood, forming tendrils which curl upwards in a bid to reach the endless sky.

Shizuru pulls up the hood of the car to check, but it is of no use. Her knowledge of car maintenance started with how to fill the car up with petrol and ended with how to check the water levels.

Shizuru Fujino is low on funds; low on morale; out of tea.

She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She starts with the former, then works her way to the latter at the thought of returning to her old life—plastic exchanges and brittle bones, dangerous smiles and as much pretentious bullshit to propel a rocket to the moon and back.

Just who is she kidding? It had to end. Shizuru sits on the trunk of her car and bawls and bawls, hot and angry tears, like she's never done since she was eight years old and her mother left them forever.

A good fifteen minutes into her pity party, a beat-up pick-up truck pulls up by the side of the road. From it, a pony-tailed grease-monkey emerges in a baseball cap and a crinkled blue jumpsuit, smudged with grease and stained with oil. Despite the soiled threads, the young woman carries herself with an air of aloof confidence and walks like sex on a stick in the midday heat, kicking up loose, sandy particles of dust with each crunch of her boot on the gravelly dirt road.

The dark haired woman walks up to Shizuru and stops upon noticing Shizuru's tear-stained face, her puffy eyes, running nose. She offers no words, just reaches deep into a side pocket, procures a handkerchief, then offers it out to her.

Snot-nosed and bleary-eyed, Shizuru wordlessly takes it and blows. The mechanic tips her hat down and over her eyes, looking away while she stands by the side, allowing Shizuru that little semblance of privacy.

At a dusty four-way intersection in the middle of nowhere, this is where everything starts.

So how was it? Shizuru's not too OOC, I hope. Feedback is immensely appreciated, grammatically or otherwise. I promise, dear readers, that when I do write the second chapter, Shizuru will talk to entities who aren't… cats.