Deep Snow - Narrow Path

"My name mean 'Deep Snow'," Miyuki-chan said shyly, still minding the ship with an expert's cool appraisal. She was wheezing badly for air, and had to breathe deeply several times before adding between gasps, "This a—good ship! Just like my—Papa-san one—only this one—bigger, ne!"
"Cool!" Kyle-kun enthused. "My name means 'Narrow Path'. My mom told me once. Looks like you've got this ship all figured out."
He stood with hands on hips, feeling unusually cocksure of himself even though it was the girl who had done everything.
She tilted her face downwards in momentary self-deprecation, and said, "Ee-eh! No, Kyle-kun. Almost wreck ship."

Two children, a ten year old American boy and a ten year old Japanese girl, are kidnapped from a campground in the California Rocky Mountains after the deaths of the boy's father and both of the girl's parents, and escape from their captors in the South Pacific.

"You take that pretty little geisha doll and git on out of here before they come and grab you both!"
"But—"
"I said go! Now! Run!! Take the girl and find the Moon Rise, and sail her, boy!"
Motivated by the dying words of Richard, their former captor, when he realizes his life is about to end, the two children seek out and commandeer Richard's modern two-masted forty-three meter schooner, and set sail on a solo 4,500 mile voyage -almost 8,000 kilometers- fraught with danger in an attempt to traverse the South Pacific from Fiji Island to Japan.

Kyle-kun leaned forward and stared into the hopeless mass of broken wires. He reached for a single strand, and pinched it between thumb and forefinger.
"I can't fix this! See? It's broken!"
Miyuki-chan regarded him a moment. Then she hunkered down and sat on her haunches directly in front of him as close as she could without touching knees, with her head tilted back, peering up into his face as she regarded him steadily. Her bruised face was looking directly up into his face with a frank, forthright expression, and her deep dark eyes were staring directly into his blue ones in a way that brooked no possible evasion.
"Still can try, Kyle-kun," Miyuki-chan persisted gently. "Onegai? No give up, prease? Just try fix. One wire at a time, ka? Gambare!"

"She said I have, um, it was; 'ah—cute'," Miyuki-chan paused, remembering carefully. "'Ah—cute loo—kee—mee—ah'."
"Ah—cute—loo—kee—mee—ah," Kyle-kun repeated equally slowly, frowning in confusion. "So—what's so 'cute' about being sick? Wait. That sounds like; 'acute leukemia'. Woah! I heard of that before!"
"Eh?" Miyuki-chan touched her upper lip and the septum of her nose gently to see if she had finally stopped bleeding -which she had- and blinked in puzzlement. "What dat?"
"I'm not sure. I think it's some kind of sickness. Like a cancer. A very powerful, very deadly kind of cancer."
Kyle-kun suddenly stopped speaking, realizing the scariness of his own words, but it was too late. Miyuki-chan was staring at him in momentary horror.
"I not look sick, ne. Just feel tire. I wonder what it mean, ka?"
"Hmm. I'm not so sure," Kyle-kun replied. "Kids who get it always go bald. They lose all their hair. But you're not going bald."
Miyuki-chan reached up and felt her hair, to see if it was coming out. It wasn't. Not by so much as a single strand.
"Ee-eh," she remarked negatively. "Not bald, ne."
"Then maybe they were wrong, huh?" Kyle-kun said.
"Mm," Miyuki-chan nodded.