Troubled Comforts

Chapter 1:

Kazuko Natsumami (peaceful child/ summer of beauty)

It wasn't as if she'd had a traumatic experience in her life. The only thing she could think of that could possibly measure up to one was the sudden loss of her father, but even then she hardly remembered him to begin with. He was there at one point in her early life and then he wasn't, leaving behind fond, hazy memories of warm laughter, a comforting scent, and strong arms lifting her up and tossing her high into the air only to catch her and do it again.

At the time, her mother told her that daddy had to go to heaven, because they needed more strong angels to watch out for all the good people in the world.

Years later, she would know the truth. It was an accident on the highway involving a drunk driver, nothing really that shocking or horrific to talk about. Even in a city the size as Takurai, it was a rather everyday way to die. In fact, Kazuko Natsumami couldn't really say it made her feel that different from anyone else of her age group.

Then again, perhaps the way she 'felt' was the wrong word to use.

Kazuko's mother, Midori Natsumami, was a good, hard-working soul and had always cherished her daughter.

"Your father named you," she would say, "though heaven knows you were the fussiest baby ever. Masahiro would always boast about what a wonderful, special child you were going to be before you were born. Right up until the birth he was completely certain he was going to have a son, but when they told him the news and brought you out to him, the man was unable to stop smiling like a fool for a full three weeks."

Kazuko took in this knowledge with a smile and gratitude. Her dim memories and mother's account of her father helped her feel more at ease with the man who had named her. Most of the time, she would wonder if he somehow knew ahead of time just how right he was about her being 'special' and loved her because of it, or, occasionally, if he hadn't and would have been disgusted with her and her…'specialness'.

It wasn't very noticeable at first either. When she was little she would run around and play all day with seemingly endless energy, only to go home after daycare, eat everything her mother put in front of her, and fall asleep the instant her head hit her pillow. As she grew older though, whatever 'it' was started to become more pronounced.

Sugar and candies were off limits unless she wanted to become a human gas molecule for a few hours. Of course, after those few hours, her sugar high would inevitably wear off and she would be left struggling to keep her eyes open.

Sometimes growing up, Kazuko would swear that if she focused, she could feel something different in the air around her; whether a storm was building in the distance or perhaps the day was going to be extra windy or sunny. Kazuko could always tell the difference ahead of time what would happen; she could just…sense it, a buildup of something in the air around her or off in the distance.

It wasn't until elementary, however, that her 'specialness' began to make itself much more noticeable.

After all, shoving a grade-schooler half-again her own weight and height skidding ten feet across the playground would get anyone's attention.

Of course, eight-year-old Kazuko had only been trying to stand up for herself at the time. Being bullied wasn't anything she found that surprising. Despite her Asian facial features, with her mahogany brown hair from her mother and almost exotic dark emerald green eyes she had inherited from her father, Kazuko didn't look the part of the average Japanese native. So it made sense she would be picked on for standing out.

However, the repercussions of what had transpired that day would set off a chain of events that would eventually land her in the most unlikely of places she could imagine.

After looking back and reviewing what had happened later that day, Kazuko could only find herself puzzled as to how she was able to do such a thing. She hadn't meant to shove the boy away so hard; in fact, she was sure that she hadn't pushed very hard at all, only wished for him to back away from her and leave her alone. It was an unconscious decision.

But what was even more confusing than the action itself, was the strange almost overwhelming weariness that had washed through her as soon as the moment was over.

And so, sitting alone on her bed in her room, Kazuko decided to see if she could do it again.

Her beginning attempts yielded nothing. First she tried lying on her back and throwing her pillow up in the air and pushing it away as it fell on her so that it would hit the ceiling. Then she tried pushing herself away from the wall repeatedly in her room to see if she would fly back onto her bed. Several other methods were tried and all of them failed and after a while, Kazuko began to wonder if she had really done anything at all.

Then one day a few years later, Kazuko was playing by herself, happily tossing a tennis ball against the bare wall of an old apartment complex. It was a very sunny day. The sky was clear of any trace of clouds and the sun was shining brightly down on her town with not even a breeze to disturb its traveling rays.

Kazuko had always loved sunny days, almost as much as a good storm. They were simply so warm and bright, and she had never felt too hot or muggy to play outdoors. She had even yet to suffer sunburn, despite never regularly wearing sunblock.

That day was no exception.

Almost all of her neighbors and friends had retreated indoors or to air-conditioned shops to spend their evenings, rather than endure the burning heat that seemed to permeate the very air.

The now newly turned 12-year-old Kazuko was unconcerned. It was on days such as this one that she felt the liveliest, so instead of staying indoors she contented herself with her game. Tossing the ball skillfully against the wall again so that it would hit the base at just the right angle to pop up again, Kazuko continued throughout the steady heat. She had backed up a ways from the wall in order to create a greater distance and therefore, a harder challenge to throw the small ball with enough speed to hit the wall and bounce off back to her.

It was on one such throw that Kazuko's 'special ability' became clearer.

She had focused on the wall; a decent fifteen feet away from her, before reaching back her arm and throwing with a bit more vigor than before. She wanted to see how high she could make the neon green ball bounce if she aimed it at just the right angle to the ground before it hit. Kazuko swung her arm forward and the fist-sized ball flew from her hand, resulting in a bounce had the round projectile flying high overhead, speeding off behind Kazuko and over the rooftops of the closest buildings.

Despite the loss of her previous object of enjoyment, Kazuko had now found herself in possession of an even greater source of entertainment.

Because this time, she had felt it. The same almost-foreign feeling that had occurred when pushing away the bully on the school playground or as she was ran around on a hot, sunny day, only amplified several times over. The same weariness that had accompanied her last excursion was also there as well but at the same time fading at a noticeable rate.

Needless to say, the rest of that day was spent exercising her new elusive talent. And she didn't stop there either.

Throughout the next few years, Kazuko began to practice as much as she could with this unknown 'ability' of hers. She began taking trips into the large park not too far from her and her mother's small house, to the lake at its center to see if she could skip rocks all the way across its surface. When she was running across one of the fields, Kazuko would try testing how high she could jump or how fast she could run if she focused that same feeling towards her feet.

By the time Kazuko was in high school, the results had her with a new stone-skipping record of forty-two skips from one side of the lake all the way to the other and jumping several feet into the air in excitement.

It wasn't until almost the middle of her freshman year in high school that Kazuko came across something that would by then answer most of her remaining questions.

Her Science class teacher had finally reached the lecture on the energy cycles of plant and animal cells as well as the "energy currency" molecules of ATP and PTP.

After reading through her text book and looking further into the subject online, Kazuko's view of her ability began to make even more sense.

Energy. E = mc2. The fuel to all living and nonliving things.

It made so much more sense from that point of view.

Regardless as to the mystery of how she was able to do it in the first place, the theory that she was (somehow) able to conduct and/or channel energy made a great many things in her lifetime make sense.

Such as how she was able to spend hours upon hours outside in the hottest and most humid of weather and feel energized and lively rather than sluggish and overheated, never mind the threat of sunburn. It explained the rush effect sugars and processed sweets had on her as well as the inevitable energy crash afterward, while a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, proteins, and carbohydrates kept her feeling steady. Or how she would get a strange feeling of something building up whenever there was a storm on the horizon.

Like a human catalyst.

With so many questions that had once plagued her, it wasn't long before Kazuko delved straight into this knew found knowledge with newly found vigor.

Obviously there was only so much energy within her body and logically there could only be so much she could hold but what where those limits? What was her limit? Could she use all types of energy (potential, kinetic, PTP, etc.) or only a specific few? And if so, which ones? To what extent? Kazuko continued her search through both written research and private experiments alone in the park.

Her mother had taken her deep fascination with Chemistry with a bit of surprise but accepted it quickly and encouraged her to pursue her interests where ever they took her. Kazuko's late night trips to experiment in the middle of the city park however, were unknown to her; and while it hurt Kazuko to hide things from her mother, she decided it was probably for the best.

Midori was a hard worker carrying two full-time jobs. One at a high class bakery as a cake decorator and the other at a furniture store as a saleswoman, to support herself and her daughter, as well as save up money should Kazuko ever choose to attend college. While Kazuko had taken up a part-time job at the local pizzeria as a delivery girl to help lighten the load, her mother always seemed drained when she came home from work.

The small nagging fear in the back of Kazuko's mind about what should happen if she ever found out just what she was capable of didn't have anything to do with that decision.

A least, that's what she had told herself.

By the beginning of her sophomore year in high school, Kazuko had a rather clear idea as to where her personal limits were and most of what she could do.

Focusing her own energy out of her hands and feet allowed her to break apart and repel herself away from objects as well as vice versa. She could even speed up healing processes for scrapes and cuts by focusing on the cells around the injured area. Absorbing energy from sunlight was something she had been doing unconsciously since she was a child. Now that she was fully aware of what she was doing, she could take in greater quantities providing it was a sunny day with few clouds. Drawing from trees and plants was harder and took a few months of practice, but soon reaped rewarding results; although the wilted stems or leaves of the unfortunate plants led Kazuko to other avenues at her disposal.

However, Kazuko found that this kind of energy, while plentiful, was second rate to the kind that was provided in the form of food, water, milk and the occasional alternate beverage, such as juice.

If she had to describe the difference, it would be comparable to filling one's lungs with cold air versus drinking a glass of cold water while in the middle of a desert.

One would be plentiful but burn up too quickly while the other would be much scarcer yet carry far more value.

There was also of course the ever present danger of expelling too much of her own energy.

The human body automatically stored energy in the form of fat cells, proteins and the like throughout itself as an emergency source of nutrition. Kazuko on the other hand was now aware of all of her energy and therefore could access all of it should she wish to. Despite being very healthy and fit physically, the consequences of continually overreaching or expelling the natural limits of the human body could cause her to weaken or damage her own body to such a level that her vital organs would be unable to support their necessary functions and fail; especially if those exertions were in large, sudden quantities.

In simplest terms, if she wasn't careful with how much energy she expelled and how often she expelled on any excess venture on her part, even during healing, she could very well cause her own death by tearing herself apart, healing herself, and then die from fatal exhaustion.

And taking into consideration just how much energy it could take to reach the necessary level of activation energy for several of her chemical reaction tests one after another, it was a rather plausible possibility.

Nevertheless, Kazuko was quite happy with the fruits of her labor and research.

Until one fateful experiment.

It was about the same time she was studying the ionic and atomic bonds between atoms and the amount of energy that was needed to not only change them, but hold them in place. Some bonds could be very strong and took large amounts of energy to break while others were very unbalanced and took very little to manipulate. The most fascinating example of the energy backlash from a broken atomic bond was the chemistry behind the reaction of the American nuclear bomb blast on Hiroshima.

Soon following this research, upon the next Saturday night, when her mother had fallen asleep and after she had gathered all the necessary materials, Kazuko made her way quietly out her bedroom window and towards the familiar forest park. Once she made it to the usual hidden spot near the lake she set up her supplies.

So, at 16 years old, Kazuko conducted another experiment.

Having ingested two or so energy bars and washing those down with the least disgusting energy drink she could find, Kazuko placed her hands on the bowl she had filled with a few choice chemicals in front of her. It took a lot of energy to begin a chemical reaction but that was only part of what her goal was in this venture. After focusing for a few minutes, concentrating her rising energy levels into the surface of her hands, she fed it into the dry chemicals. Then, at the moment of the chain reaction, Kazuko stopped feeding energy in and tried absorbing energy back, focusing on breaking the buzzing energy that shifted between one original source to another.

The resulting explosion was enormous.

It was as if she was embracing a small sun, forced to absorb as much energy as she could or suffer the fate of scorching heat incinerating her skin and bone. At the very second she thought she couldn't hold in anymore, the blinding star of energy in front of her vanished and almost all the excess energy held inside her immediately shot out in another brilliant burst.

In the following seconds, the only sounds Kazuko could hear were the sounds of her own ragged breathing and thundering heartbeat. It could only have been seconds since the beginning of her most spectacular failure and yet it seemed to pass like several lifetimes. Her head was reeling as she lay gasping for air and tried to collect herself.

She had never absorbed some much energy so quickly before. It had been as if some great force inside her was about to tear her apart at the seams. An unrelenting pressure that if held back for even a moment longer would have ripped her to shreds as it tore its way out.

It had been terrifying.

Slowly, Kazuko forced herself to her feet and took stock of herself. Her clothes were completely gone, incinerated by the blasts. But despite every part of her feeling as if it had been puréed in a blender, she wasn't injured or burned in any way. In fact her body was still humming with leftover energy and shaking uncontrollably. It would very likely break down on her if it was not allowed to eat and rest very soon.

Taking off at the absolute fastest sprint she could manage, and absorbing the shock from her footfall so as not to leave a trail, Kazuko fled. It took a mere minute to reach her house, dodging and avoiding anything that felt like an alert life form through the shadows and back alleys at a break neck speed, and only a few brief seconds to slip through her window and straight into the bathroom that was joined to her room. It was the longest shower she'd ever taken; scrubbing away at herself until all the incriminating evidence was gone from her skin…

…and yet the creeping horror that came with the realization of what she'd done continued to cling to her.

It was to be her greatest failure and wake up call.

The following morning Kazuko heard the final results. Her home town was not a very large city, but neither was it very small. Everywhere she went, everyone was whispering, talking, wondering about the mysterious massive explosion that had happened in the middle of the city park during the late hours of the past night.

"…they say that there were no explosives at the blast sight…"

"No one saw anything suspicious…"

"…an entire half-mile in diameter! Imagine if it were any closer…"

"…no bodies so far, at least, not yet…"

"It had to have been some kind of government experiment gone wrong-"

"Aliens! I'm telling you! They've finally made their landing…"

"Housing nearest the park had to be evacuated. The resulting fires…"

All throughout the day, Kazuko couldn't escape the topic. Her explosion as it turned out, had created a blast radius of a quarter-mile, but the full area affected had measured twice that distance. And the resulting fires that sprang up afterwards continued on even further.

The guilt was crushing, but nothing compared to the look on her mother's face when she returned home from school that day.

Sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk, Midori turned her head and looked directly into her daughter's eyes.

Maybe it was her face that gave her away. Or maybe it was just mother's intuition. Maybe it was the fact that Midori was a smart woman and her daughter taking an unusually long shower right after the time of an unexplained explosion in the middle of the night was too much of a coincidence to be pure chance. The only thing Kazuko knew for sure was the look on her loving mother's face was not judgment, not disgust…only sadness, and worry for her.

If the guilt of her mistake was crushing, the shame of being the direct cause of that look on her mother's face was crippling.

A monster, a freak like her didn't deserve such love or forgiveness.

That night, Kazuko put her head in her mother's lap and told her everything; from the first few signs she'd noticed to her last experiment.

Midori Natsumami took it all in quietly, all the while stroking the hair of her daughter's bowed head. When Kazuko had finished, she did not speak for a long time, and when she finally did, she took her daughter's tear-streaked face in her hands, and all she said was,

"I knew you were special, Kazuko. Masahiro and I always knew you were special…and we will always love you regardless."

After that night, Kazuko stopped conducting experiments completely.

The next few weeks were hard and passed slowly. Kazuko had since resigned herself to tuning out the whispers of her unknown epic failure and continued on with her life at school and part-time job spent in a stale daze.

In the entire time since she had become aware of her 'gift', she had never really come to think of herself as something that would (or could) hurt people; be a danger to anyone. Actually, the effects of her experiments and her 'channeling' and how it could possibly affect other people in any kind of harmful way hadn't really been that important to her. Now however, Kazuko was forced to take in a view of herself that she hadn't seen before.

She was dangerous.

If she wanted to, she could cause massive amounts of damage to anything she touched. Anyone she touched. If she became too angry to control herself and wasn't careful, Kazuko knew that she could do it very easily; perhaps without even trying to; without meaning to.

She'd already proven that with her latest and last experiment in the city park.

What would've happened if she had decided to conduct her tests in the basement instead? Her mother would've still been in the house when the explosion went off…her surrounding neighborhood…a quarter of a mile blast radius…

This newly found knife's edge her mind had latched on to was making her feel as if she was going to drive herself insane.

She couldn't pursue Chemistry or Science anymore. She wouldn't. The results just weren't worth the risks. She would have to find something else to do with her life. No one besides her mother had to know about what she could do.

And yet, even with that in mind, Kazuko was still at a loss. After spending so much time focusing on furthering her knowledge in one subject, she wasn't sure if there was anything else she wanted do…anything else she could to do. While adept at sports, they weren't something Kazuko fancied as a career choice. The most she could do in art and music was appreciate someone else's talents. History and Math…despite receiving A's in both subjects, Kazuko hated both with a passion. It was probably best not to go there.

This unfortunate dilemma haunted her for the rest of her sophomore year and well into her summer break until one day; it was none other than her beloved mother that gave her the answer.

It had been a gradual process, but being continually on her feet at the bakery and showing prospective customers the furniture around the store, Kazuko's mother had been feeling aching soreness in her feet, ankles, and lower back for almost a year.

And while Midori was always tired when she came home from work anyway, that day she seemed even wearier than normal. Her feet were troubling her again, but this time even worse than it ever had been before.

Having already finished whatever summer studying and work, Kazuko insisted taking over cooking dinner that night so her mother could rest. She was reluctant, but Midori eventually relented to relaxing in one of the more comfortable living room chairs while Kazuko prepared the food. After dinner however, the soreness in her ankles hadn't abated, only worsened, leaving Midori worried about the possibility of needing to call in sick to work and scheduling a doctor's appointment.

Seeing her mother worriedly rubbing at her feet, Kazuko decided to try something. Finishing up the dishes quickly, Kazuko retrieved a small container of lotion from the supply cabinet in her bathroom, came back down, and offered to massage her mother's feet for her. Midori accepted gratefully, and after washing them off with a warm wet towel, Kazuko set about trying to work out some of the stress in her mother's ankles and feet.

Using an old trick she had come up with for herself to relieve sore muscles during sports, Kazuko carefully drew out a small portion of energy from the muscles of her mother's feet then mixed it with her own and focused it back in concentrated vibrations so as to penetrate deep into the muscle tissue, relax it entirely and make it much easier to draw and flush out the built up lactic acid with the strokes of her hands.

It was the first time she'd tried 'channeling' on another person but the end results were beyond expectation.

With the added help of several ice packs on her ankles overnight, her mother's soreness had disappeared almost completely the next day and the following night asked Kazuko if she would continue her ministrations that night as well. Kazuko was only too happy to oblige in any way that would help her mother.

And so it continued that way for several weeks, whenever Midori would start suffering from sharp pains or soreness, Kazuko would be ready to help relieve whatever she could. It soon got to the point to where Midori began to feel far less stressed and more energized. Then one day, one of Midori's friends brought up the subject of her mother-in-law, who was going through some physical therapy to try and alleviate some constant pain in her lower back.

That same night, Kazuko's mother brought up an offer at dinner to her daughter. She could volunteer at the local Aided Living Home and apply at the spa resort to hone her skills that she had shown at home. Kazuko, while somewhat surprised, agreed to the request and the next day Midori brought home the applications for volunteer hours at the Aided Living Home while Kazuko turned in her resume for consideration as a part-time employee at the local spa and hot springs resort. Their combined efforts were a great success. The elderly residents Kazuko tended to were overjoyed at the results of their sessions with her, who was described by all as a wonderful, hardworking girl, pleasant company and who's 'magic hands' were always ready to help soothe their aching joints. The faculty of the hot spring resort was also very pleased to have someone with as much raw talent to be working with them and a few fellow employees very willing to give helpful tips to further her knowledge. Soon the word of Kazuko's work had spread far enough to reach back to her mother and her acquaintances, causing no small amount of joy and pride to Midori. Kazuko herself couldn't have been any happier at the turn of events.

She'd found her place in the world.

Rather than explore ways to change and destroy, Kazuko now had an avenue through which she could bring healing and relaxation to others through her 'gift'.

And even better than that, it gave way to an occupation that was completely normal.

To say she was ecstatic at the prospect would be a gross understatement.

So, at the beginning of her junior year in high school, much to the confusion of her Science teachers, Kazuko shifted her focus from the field of Biochemistry and Nuclear energy to Human Anatomy, Physical Therapy, Physiology, and the Science of the Human body with her personal goal being to become a masseuse and start her own business. Throughout the rest of her high school years and several years afterward, Kazuko took jobs to raise money for her online college classes and dream business. At the end of the fourth year after graduating high school, Kazuko had achieved her Bachelor's degree in Human Anatomy and Physical Science, and between her and her mother, had enough money for her to do just that.

While she was hesitant to leave her mother behind, Kazuko and Midori both agreed it would likely be better for her if she started her business in a larger city than there in Takurai. So, after sifting through the potential candidates, they came to a mutual agreement.

Kazuko would go to Ikebukuro and try her luck there.

And here she was, taking care of the finishing touches in the lobby of the humble sized building that was soon to be her open business.

Summer Comforts

Massage and Spa

While she was admittedly taking a bit of a risk with how low she was starting her prices at, she hoped the lure of high quality service coupled with cheaper prices would draw in more customers at a quicker pace. Perhaps if things went really well, she would eventually be able to hire a few more employees besides a cashier/receptionist. But that was getting ahead of herself.

Turning, Kazuko exited the lobby to the back of her shop and up the stairs to her apartment on the third floor. Making her way to a small desk, she turned on her computer in preparation to write an e-mail to update her mother.

While she was waiting for her computer to complete loading, a muted crash sounded off in the distance and caught her curiosity. Getting up, Kazuko made her way to her window, reaching it just in time to see what looked like a battered vending machine go flying through the air, soon followed by a warped street sign.

The soft 'bing' of her computer behind her brought Kazuko back to reality and her keyboard as she began to compose her online letter.

And, after giving it some consideration, she decided not to tell her mother about the most recent disturbance right outside her window.

After all, there hadn't been any mention of flying machinery in any of the travel brochures.