Chapter One
Kelechi
The first thing that hit me when I finally cleared the CBSA checkpoint and walked out through YVR’s arrival doors into the cool September air wasn’t the bliss I had expected from finally landing in my dream country. It wasn’t awe either, but a raging migraine that felt like it had crawled out of hell. My jaw throbbed, a dull ache radiating from somewhere deep in my back tooth, and my head pounded hard enough to blur my vision.
I had been on a nineteen-hour journey in total. The first stop was in Frankfurt, then Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, and finally, we landed in Vancouver. At this point, all I wanted were my favourite gummy bears, but they were buried somewhere in the farthest corner of my luggage, which I had over-wrapped with both prayers and recyclable plastic film.
So that wasn’t happening.
I had to endure it, get a ride to campus, take a bath, eat a proper meal, and take my medication before rummaging through my luggage.
That would happen in at least five hours.
I switched on my phone.
I remembered the Japa?* Telegram group I had joined before travelling, where we shared ideas and tips about surviving the first few days in Canada. One user had mentioned that we should make sure to tap into the airport’s free Wi-Fi, which I hurriedly did. A sigh of relief left my lungs when the Wi-Fi bars connected.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want to get a SIM card. I had passed several mobile carrier kiosks advertising plans starting at 30 Canadian dollars. That was too expensive, so I instantly moved past them. The airport Wi-Fi would have to do for now.
I opened the Uber app and typed in my destination. Within seconds, my phone buzzed with a notification.
“Nawa… six whole minutes,” I mumbled about the wait time.
My arm already hurt from dragging my luggage cart, and the cold wasn’t helping. The light jacket I wore wasn’t even helping matters at all. I had completely underestimated Vancouver’s September weather. Even though it wasn’t snowing heavily as I had initially feared, the nippy air cut through my inadequate layers like a blade.
I maneuvered the trolley containing three of my massive suitcases towards a designated ride-share pickup zone and gripped my crossbody bag tightly as I waited. My throat felt dry and my stomach rumbled with hunger. All I wanted to do at this point was to collapse onto a soft king-sized bed for eight hours, but first, I had to let my family know that I had landed safely. That their daughter had actually made it to Canada.
I was checking my phone again when I felt a push on my left arm. Whipping around, my already frayed nerves snapped like a rubber band.
“Excuse me!”— I barked, only to wince at the heavy, irritated sound of my own voice.
The person behind me was tall, much taller than my five-foot-five frame, with broad shoulders under a dark leather jacket. Short dark hair, a sharp jawline, and an androgynous build that made me squint through my migraine haze. For a second, I couldn’t tell if this was a man or a woman.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” the voice said. It was distinctly female, low, with an accent.
Definitely a woman. A rude one at that.
“I should watch where I’m going?” I shot back, my voice pitched higher. The exhaustion of the flight and the pounding headache made me more confrontational than usual. “You literally just bumped into me!”
Instead of arguing, she looked at me properly, her pale green eyes moving over me in an assessing sweep that seemed to catalogue everything about me in seconds. I could swear she took in every wrinkle in my travel clothes, the death grip on my purse strap, and my thin jacket that was practically useless against the Vancouver chill; all of it punctuated by the trolley stacked so high I could barely see the walkway.
Her gaze lingered on my overstuffed trolley for a beat too long before she let out a heavy, pointed sigh.
“Maybe if you weren’t blocking the entire walkway,” she said, gesturing at my suitcases.
Heat flooded my cheeks despite the cold air. “I am waiting for my ride, plus I have every right to stand here.”
“Yeah, but not in the middle of traffic,” she replied, shoving her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. “Look, princess, this isn’t a luggage storage facility. People here actually move fast instead of camping out wherever they feel like it. You’ll get run over if you stay planted like this.”
Princess?
My mouth fell open. Her bluntness and tone stung more than if she had raised her voice—the assumptions, the sheer audacity wrapped up in that husky voice and pretty face.
Before I could form a coherent response, before I could tell her exactly what I thought about her and her rudeness, she stepped around me. Then she paused, as if she had reconsidered something.
“And your phone,” she nodded towards my hand. “You’re about to drop it.”
Then she walked towards the taxi line, her leather jacket swaying with each step.
