You Wanna Talk To My Sista?

If I had a choice I would rather be killed by a jealous boyfriend than die of cancer. At least it would be the result of a lifestyle choice. Fortunately, at the time of writing, I have never had problems with overprotective big brothers, husbands nor cancer.

There was just this one time when I was in Japan, at the end of my first two-week solo trip to Tokyo. I was pulling my suitcase through the metro on my way to Haneda airport. A few hours earlier I was outside my Hanzomon hideout, kissing goodbye this Chinese girl I had met at the start of the trip. Nineteen years old, full of life, she was a fan of cosplay and Miku Hatsune. She grew up in Tokyo so she told me plenty of fascinating details about the local teenage culture.

I was standing in the carriage in a daze still remembering flashes of the night before, when my phone beeped. The message said, “Sorry I can’t make the meeting.” Totally out of the blue. I had no idea who this was from. But it was from a number that was already in my phone with a message history. This was a girl I stopped in a London escalator a few months earlier. The message didn’t make sense but I could still remember how I met her.

It was indeed the end of Winter and I was on my way back home in the Jubilee line. She was in the same carriage as me. I saw her get off the train at St John’s Wood station and liked her body shape – large hips, generous boobs. I jumped off the train before the doors closed and ran after her in the escalator. She was carrying one of those non-electric little scooters that were popular in London at one point, a few years before the e-scooter tsunami. We chatted for a bit outside the station. She was in her early twenties, chubby-sexy with this rough urban accent from the London hood. She gave me the vibe of someone who was not used to spontaneous compliments. She declined my initial offer for coffee and eventually gave me her phone number, which she typed on my phone a little bit too quickly before she left on her scooter.

I was smelling a flake so I texted her a little while later with an identity check message “Hi next time we meet I will try on your scooter.” To which I got a reply “Who are you?” The following exchange of messages was friendly but suggested I definitely had the wrong number. Scooter girl must have simply typed random digits in my phone.

And then out of the blue, months later, while I was in Tokyo pulling my suitcase through the metro on my way to the airport, the same number texted me, “Sorry I can’t make the meeting”. Obviously it must have been a fat-finger mistake.

I texted back, “What meeting?” It was about 10am in Tokyo therefore right in the middle of the night for the UK. My phone rang a few seconds later and I picked up.

Some guy was yelling on the phone with an aggressive voice and a strong laddish London accent, “So you want to talk to my sista, yeah you want to talk to my sista?!”

“Sorry you have the wrong number.” I hung up.

No more calls after this, this was the end of it. I concluded it must have been an over-protective brother who got annoyed that someone texted her sister in the middle of the night.

And the girl I had met in London had definitely given me a very random number.