Everything got screwed up that night. I was staring through ashes and sediment to a collapsed building. This used to be my house. This used to be a safe place for me to sleep at night...to cry in when I was depressed...to laugh in when happy. Now my life was ruined. My reason for existing wass gone, dead.
No, it was not the house itself, my friend. It was Yaki Daokiju: my only sister. The ashes on the floor concealed her suffocated corpse.
I sank to my knees and cried. Adults would say that these things happen, that there was nothing I could've done. Well they were damn wrong. I could have stopped it. My sister had a chance of living. If it were she that went to that engagement party and I lying still in the smouldering ashes. My fourteen-year-old self in place of my seventeen-year-old angel...my poor fallen angel...
It's not as if I was unaware my house was gone and I'd have to live out on the streets. Yeah, that sucked too; it added insult to my injuries. But Yaki was like a mom to me. heck, she practically was my mom!
Our parents disowned us when we were little. Said we were too weak to be productive in this world. Well screw them, I thought obstinitely, I could make more dang money than a calculator could ever be close to counting. So at the age of seven, I traveled with Yaki in search of a good home. We found an orphanage where a lot of children stayed. I smiled at them. They were so sweet to us. Probably because their parents actually loved them, I thought disappointed.
It was about a year before we decided to strike out on our own. Yaki and I had raised enough money helping an old watchmaker run his shop to sustain us for a while. We rented a small room in a city boardinghouse and got our business started as jewelers.
Oh, we used to weave and weld like the big boys in the factories. but we had one thing they did not...okay two things: 1. YOUTH and 2. extra love built into our works. At nine and twelve years old, we were the youngest and most successful business-people in town. But something was always missing in my life somehow.
Every Tuesday evening, we would close up shop early and walk over to a large, palace like building called Ouran High School. The richest of the rich attended this prestigious academy and got to flaunt their beauty and riches like feathers on a peacock. Occasionally, girls would laugh at our ruddy clothing or a gentleman might gaze at us sympathetically for not being nearly so old or rich enough to afford tuition.
I thought it all as well at first, after all what could a little girl like me ever learn in a place like that, where everything was money, money, money? But then covetousness started taking over. So we saved up all the money we could for years in order to pay to go. Of course, letters from mourges came telling us we had inherited money from our deceased relatives, so money came even quicker.
Soon enough, we had not only money to cover the boarding costs and supplies, but Yaki got a cute tomboyish haircut and a spiffy new uniform. She looked so beautiful in her new outfit. I was stuck in middle-class school for two years after that. Every night I missed her smiling face, but during holidays and in the summer, the gate officer allowed me to visit her in school. The gazes were less contempuous, but I was still timid around older men (innocent flattery, you see).
But whatever worries I had that year were washed away whenever I saw Yaki's smiling face. Her blue-gray eyes were as calm and clear as a new spring lake not yet inhabited by any creatures. Her black hair shone like the thick curtain of sky hanging in the night. Hahaha, you'd think I were the one in love with her. No, her heart has always belonged to a redhead boy known as Kaoru Hitachiin. He was a very lucky boy indeed to win my fair sister's heart.
But what disappoints me the most is when jelousy takes a turn for the worst. This fire was believed to have been arson set by a young man she had rejected in recent times. Of course, since she was pregnant with Kaoru's child, I would believe it was only right to decline a proposal from this man. She wanted this little boy to grow up with his real parents. She loved Kaoru that much...
But that child will never open his eyes or grasp his mommy's finger whilst swaddled in cashmere blankets. Because that child was in heaven with his mother now, asleep forever on his own little cloud. I wept for the lost nephew of mine and his gentle mother who tried oh so hard to keep him alive.
That day, I felt I was that child, deprived of a chance before it was ever offered. It's been a long while since the fire but the nightmare still yields nightmares lie it had only happened just the other day...
Oh yeah.
It was.
Yaki, if you are watching me tonight, I promise you that I will finish out my school years here for you, to keep your memory alive. Did you tell the others you were dead. I wonder if you did.