"Allie, esta tiempo despiertar!"
That is my mother. She calls from the bottom of the stairs to the second-floor of our townhouse. But I don't want to wake up; I fell asleep at three o'clock this morning, and now that it is five o'clock, I don't feel like leaving a warm, comfortingly squash-able bed.
"Alejandria, abre los ojos!"
Of course, now I have to move. The imperial quality of my mother's most forbidding command could induce the staunchest of Catholics to sign over their soul to the devil. Not for lack of piety, you see, but out of a healthy fear of la Tigresa d'Espana, the Tigress of Spain. Were he ever to sleep-in on a day of papal importance, and were she for some reason ever to be in charge of his movements, the Pope himself would roust himself from his chambers and be ready for breakfast at a speed yet rivaled by any person of his office at the command of my mother: "Wake up and smell the coffee!"
"Alejandria!"
Rather than court death, I leap from the futon I have been sleeping in, and promptly sprawl across the lacquered floor of my room. I have yet to adjust to the height of the futons that they use in Japan, such short little things. However, I am used to such violent awakenings and am presently hurtling down the stairs, through the hallway, past the table and stopping breathlessly in front of the coffee-maker. I have always looked strange compared to my family, and today is no exception. My hair is as spiritedly unruly as my mother's, and I have some of her features: a straight nose that is rather long, a full mouth, a proportioned body. I am fortunate to have escaped her temper- that particular gene was passed to my sister, whom is currently draped over the kitchen table waiting for the coffee to kick start her system.
"s' a big day, Allie…" slurs my sister.
I know she is smiling at me through the curtain of her enviously silky hair. I want hair like my father's and my sister's: smooth, wavy, imperturbable. Neither my sister, Coretta, nor my father Marco, have ever had a bad hair day in their lives, lucky dogs. My sister is the colorful one of us children. She likes electric pink, and neon blue, and poison green, and anything else intense. From the very beginning, Coretta was determined to do things her way, and for this reason, the tradition of sending us to a different boarding school every year came into being. My brother Emilio is quiet, studious and patient, and will almost certainly become a diplomat like the rest of the family.
"I made you breakfast!" My mother sets a plate of eggs, bacon and toast in front of me as I stare impatiently at the winking red light on the coffee machine. She smiles and hugs me good morning, like she wasn't about to call down all the powers of death and hell upon my head two seconds ago. Mothers, it seems, are just like that.
"Are you ready to start today? Try to make some friends Allie, don't be so, so... frio."
"We'll see."
I am not particularly a morning person, and I don't particularly wish to be here in Japan; but because my mother and father are part of the delegation to parliament, I am the shiny new liaison to the Japanese military establishment. My parents are diplomats of the Spanish crown, and currently, they are working on proposing a treatise to the Japanese parliament concerning international taxes on the fish trade, and other such important squabbles in the Spanish-Japanese business world. My father plays the good cop to my mother's bad cop. She can storm out, threatening war, and he will slip in to say that such an event may be avoidable if only the good lords and ladies were to grant some small demands. They work very well together, and Spanish-Japanese relations are notoriously smooth.
As I munch through the eggs on the plate, I wonder what it will be like to finally work as a full-fledged Soul Reaper. I trained in Spain, but my employment there was delayed by familial ambassadorial duties. I don't mind that part of things, I never got a long with any of my classmates, or any of my teachers, or anyone at all for that matter. It's my fault; really, I'm cold and distant and sarcastic. My sister is the rock-star, my brother is the scholar, and I am the problem child.
I have never been able to get close to anyone outside of my family. I'm not a psychopath, I have the ability to care for other people, but I can't get close to anyone, ever, because I can feel other people's pain. I can see and hear everything that hurts them, if I put the effort in. I can even see what they've done to hurt other people, because that hurts them too, deep down inside where they can't feel it themselves. These feelings, they were white noise to me when I was young, I didn't have to care about it- I could choose not to feel it. But as I grew older it got stronger and stronger, until state dinners reduced me to tears, and I couldn't touch anyone because that made it worse. After that, every night I would dream of howls and shrieks and roars of pain and rage. The only thing that could make it better was music: my sister would sing to me until I fell asleep. I taught myself the violin because I was afraid that I had gone insane. Eventually I couldn't hide it from my parents and they consulted their friends in high places. The diagnosis: zanpakto.
The influence of my subconscious zanpakto was what allowed me to feel others' emotions. The screaming I dreamt of was the howling of hollows, my zanpakto's sworn enemies. Growing up as I did in the world of carefully balanced deceit and trust of diplomacy, my zanpakto was probably trying to help me survive by cluing me into the dark side of those around me; but she went too far as we both got older and stronger. Like a mike held too close to an amp, my brain was overloaded with the feedback from everyone around me. I was placed in what was basically solitary confinement until I had trained long enough to control my zanpakto, I learned her name, Pantera Ilamo, and together, we vowed to stop the screaming that still plagued me from time to time. But even then, I was afraid of caring about people, I was scared to death of being hurt by accident, I was frightened of losing the control I had worked so hard for. So I stopped talking to anyone but my family, or one of maybe three people I trusted. I refused to let other people like me, and I pretended that I didn't care about what happened to them. I shut myself into a world that consisted of my family, my zanpakto, and my ever faithful violin.
And now I'm in Japan, about to dive into a new job filled with new people, and a new city, and so many other new things- and I would leave behind everything but my blade and my best violin… and a couple of cases of books: who really need clothes anyway? I chuckled quietly to myself as I finished my breakfast and reached for the coffee pitcher, as long as I could stay sane, everything would work itself out.