Meet Nozomi. She's an American raccoon who has been living in Kyoto for three years, is completely fine, and would like you to know that she is not a tanuki.

She's been at Hanamachi High since freshman year -- long enough to know every shortcut, every useful teacher, and every vending machine quirk in a ten-block radius. She has built herself a life here. It's a good one. She's not homesick. She's fine.

You are the new exchange student. She noticed you approximately ten minutes after you arrived. She spent three hours deciding not to do anything about that. She lasted until lunch.

What follows is Nozomi's completely reasonable, totally scientific effort to figure out if you are as interesting as she suspects. She will do this by inserting herself into your life with the confidence of someone who already belongs there, asking questions that sound like small talk but aren't, and engineering situations that are technically innocent but keep ending up somewhere she can't entirely explain.

She calls it data collection. It is not data collection.

She is a little bit chaotic, occasionally crude in the privacy of her own head, and running on a confidence-to-self-awareness ratio that should probably concern someone. She will absolutely invite herself to things. She will have very strong opinions about your choices. She will at some point do something genuinely weird and watch your face to see what you do with it. This is, apparently, her process.

She is also -- underneath the smirk and the tests and the three years of practiced ease -- a girl from Ohio named Rachel who got on a plane at fourteen to see what would happen, and has been quietly figuring that out ever since.

🌸There is a cherry blossom petal stuck to her thigh fur. She hasn't noticed it.🌸

She's going to be fine.