I ignore my dad as I walk in, books tucked neatly away under my arm. It's amazing how I managed to find the time to stack them from largest to smallest, thickest ones below the thinner, paperback pressed flat under hardback. I resist the urge to kick off my shoes or, even worse, go to my room with my sneakers still on, and instead lightly peel them off and slip into the house slippers, set neatly aside. I almost fall over as my backpack suddenly shifts to the left while I'm balancing on my right foot, but I straighten myself out at the last moment.

My father continues to watch me unblinkingly as I walk away, heading down the hallway to my room. I've almost made it without any snide comments, and my foot is just over the threshold to my room, when I hear, "Your room smells. Clean it up before I go in there and start throwing things out."

I bite my lip to keep from saying anything and nod, not really agreeing to anything, but placating my father nonetheless. I hear him grunt a noncommittal noise and unwillingly think how similar we can be. It makes me want to gag.

I close the door behind me, a modern touch to the old-style house that, according to my father, has been in the Kido family for generations. I can only praise my mother for taking some sense into the man who sired me and forcing him to put locking doors inside the house.

"I came home," I announced, breathing in the deep scent of earth. For such an ancient house, the area all around us has been modernized and the vast plains of farming land we used to own has been sold off for new houses and apartments. To make up for the loss, my mother constantly filled the house with plants – herbs, flowers, vegetables, and even saplings of fruit trees. The pollen used to collect in the house and dust everything gold.

I suddenly remember being little. My mother and father are talking – arguing, really.

"How can you do this to him?"

"I'm protecting him."

"From what? Life?!"

"From people like you!"

My mother stormed out that day, like so many others. My father came into my room later that night, and told me that I was allergic to pollen. Hypochondriac that I was – that I still am, unfortunately – believed him and I refused to go near my mother's plants for years.

I toss my books on the floor, watching them splay out everywhere, and chunk my backpack on the ground arbitrarily, freeing myself from their weight. I flop backwards on my bed and stare up at the rafters in the ceiling, my eyes turning to focus on the third one from the left. It stands perpendicular to my door and parallel to the front door – I've actually spent days comparing the angles of everything in the house – and is the only beam that is dark brown. All the other wood in the house is a soft honey yellow.

Again I breathe and earth smothers me, burying me in the rich scent. Not only is it earth, I realize, but pollen. Some of the flowers I kept alive from when mom was still here must have re-germinated.

I sit up and look around. There have to be at least ten pots in my room – I refuse to count them on sheer principle – and each one of them contains something different. But they all have something in common with each other. All of them are green.

I sniff the air for a clue. I stand up and begin to wander, pressing my fingertips to each pot as though they will tell me if they are growing. It takes me a while – I must have more than I thought I did – but eventually I find it.

The one plant that has never moved from where it sat when mom was here. The one plant that thrived where it sat. The one plant that grew under the dark brown beam.

I can see the little yellow flowers from across the room.

I can still smell the rich copper stench.

I can still see my mother's body hanging, swaying, from the rafter, blood dripping down her wrist, past her fingertips, to drop gently onto red-stained leaves.

The plant that she said gained its red from the blood of those who love it.

I walk over and press my fingertips into the damp dirt, copper, water, and earth all assaulting my nostrils at once.

The tomatoes will grow nicely this year, I think.

Katamon: If you're going into your Digimon craze again, do you think you can at least write my back-story?

Angel: -hums as she waters her new tomato plants-

Katamon: Ignoring the muse does not make the muse happy, you know.

Angel: -still watering- I don't own Digimon. So, till next time!

Katamon: Hey! Don't ignore me!