Day 1 -Forgetting Where You Came From- Misae Yoshitano
Location: The Yoshitano household.
Time: 4:15PM
"Grr...where is it!?"
Miyu Yoshitano ducks aside as her daughter rips through their storage closet, she wasn't sure what she searched for but it seemed to be of the utmost importance, she looks down at the pile of boxes next to her feet, she didn't care if Misae found what she was looking for- only that she cleaned up her mess afterwords.
"Misae...what are you searching for?" Miyu asks as she bends down to pick up a fallen box.
Misae grabs her head in frustration, she'd been searching for almost an hour now and her mother's hovering didn't help with her anger at not finding what she looked for.
"Mom, what happened to that book of yours, the one from One Heart?"
She turns to her mother expectantly but Miyu simply shrugs.
"Cannot say for sure," she whispers as she uses her foot to slide a box back into the closet, "honestly...I think I threw it away, it was so old and-."
She's cut off by a sharp cry of frustration from Misae, "mom," she moans. "You threw it away, I could have used that for my school project."
Miyu raises a brow as Misae climbs out of the closet, defeated.
"How was I supposed to know that you would need it at some point." Miyu sighs, "maybe you could find another copy at the library."
"Doubt it," Misae murmurs as she sulks toward her bedroom, "maybe I should just check the internet for some info...it shouldn't be too difficult to find.
Miyu nods, "yes, the internet should hold the answers you seek."
Miyu smiles when her daughter casts her a reassuring sort of look, though raising a teenage girl had it's struggles- there was something special in seeing her daughter smile, it was so rare that she did it. Miyu releases a small sigh as she turns to leave the hall but as she moves toward the stairs, her foot gets caught in something, it nearly sends her crashing to the floor but she manages to catch herself. She looks down and immediately that feel-good feeling she'd had for Misae disappears, she yanks her foot out of the box that she'd gotten caught in before rushing over to Misae's door.
"Clean up your mess!" She shouts at the door.
Misae ignores her mother's cries as she opens her laptop, she planned to clean up the hallway at some point but her search for info was way more important at the moment. She frowns as the screen lights up with regurgitated information about the orphanage/children's hospital, currently the the internet wasn't telling her anything that she didn't already know, and because her mother once worked at the orphanage, Misae knew quite a bit.
She knew about it's joyful opening, and it's bitter closing nine years before.
She could remember being there one day, playing around with her friends and then, just like that- it was all over for the orphanage. No one explained it to her, whenever she asked why, the adults would just click their tongues and ignore her, even now her mother seemed hesitant to talk about it. Misae looks toward her bedroom door as her mother stomps away, part of her wondered if her mother had really thrown the book away. The book had always been a rather strange and unwanted guest within the house, her mother would let her read some of it but then at times she would take it away, other times she would rip out whole chapters and pretend that what Misae had read before was just her imagination. Her mother's secretive nature had really thrown a wrench into Misae's plans this time though, she wanted to use her knowledge of the orphanage to help the other girls and get into better graces with Yuuri and Mazuhara..
The older girls had always been so cool to her, on a level all their own.
She chews on her bottom lip as she taps on one of the few links that wasn't already high-lighted in the search results, a familiar looking page springs up on the screen and she sighs.
"Nothing I haven't already seen," she mutters adding the page to her favorites list, "but maybe we can use it later."
She pushes the laptop off of her lap before getting up and walking over to her bedroom door, there was nothing more that she could do from home, maybe if she went there with the girls they could find some old records to bring in to show to the class, though it confused her as to why she and the other girls had been sent to do such a thing when the all the other students had simple projects, such as: a report on the new roller-coaster at the Genji Amusement Park in Hayaradori.
"I wish we could have done something like that," she sighs as she steps into the cluttered hall, she bends down to pick up a box of picture frames, she lugs the box over to the the closet before pushing it in, she turns to the rest of the mess with sigh.
"One box down, dozens more to go," she whispers moving over to the nearest box, as she goes to lift it she catches sight of a glittering pink object, she looks down the hall before pulling it from the box.
It was a birthday card, the thin paper was decorated in horribly drawn rabbits and birds and glitter had been glued freely to the page, it created quite the mess at the bottom of the box. Misae turns the card back and forth in her hand before opening it, almost immediately she regrets doing so.
The inside was even more glittery and garish than the outside, two stick figures had been drawn on the left hand page and on the right- in horrible Japanese, a message was written.
'Happy birthday Misae.
Love, Rukae.'
"Love Rukae," Misae whispers to herself as she begins kicking the box toward the closet, her eyes never leave the page as she continues to kick the boxes, it was like being pulled back in time, she remembered getting the card on her 6th birthday in the Mess Hall at the Orphanage.
-Misae's Memories -1-
Misae presses her hands close to her face as she prepares to count backward from 10 to 1, she peeks at the room from the corner of her hands only to be admonished by the bossy Mazuhara.
"Sorry," Misae whispers covering her eyes again, she wipes the budding beads of sweat away from her forehead as she goes to count again...
It was a typical Summer's day at the One Heart Orphanage, the sounds of children playing outside could be heard in the colorful hall that the girls had taken to playing in, another game of 'hide and seek' of course, Misae groans rubbing more sweat away; she hated standing still for so long, it seemed like she was always "it".
Behind her stood Mazuhara and Ruka, they smile at one another before taking off into the same direction, at one intersection Rukae goes to break away from Mazuhara but Mazuhara doesn't allow it, she pulls Rukae down the hall with her.
"10."
"9."
Misae pauses to listen for a moment...
"5."
"Don't peek!"
Misae nearly turns at the sound of Yuuri's voice, it was so rare that they got to play with her, but she was always welcome.
"Hey Yu, wanna help find Ru and Mazu?" She asks from behind her hands.
Yuuri tugs as her large braids as she thinks over Misae's offer, did she want to be a hunter or the hunted...
"Sure, I saw them run toward the Infirmary Hall," Yuuri says taking Misae's hand and pulling her away from the wall, Misae nods to her as they rush down the hall toward the Infirmary.
"Ru...Mazu..., you might as well come out, we've got you guys cornered!" Yuuri shouts as she makes her way down the hall past Rukae's room.
Misae emerges from Rukae's room a little dejected, "not in there..."
She folds her arms as Yuuri goes down the hall peeking into other people's rooms, she sighs when Yuuri turns to her shaking her head.
"Where could they have gone," Misae whimpers.
This game was becoming monotonous, 'hide and seek' was no fun when the 'hiders' were unable to found at all, Misae turns to the opposite end of the hall when she hears a whooshing noise behind her.
A woman stood at the end of the hall, maybe she had just entered but she didn't move any closer to them, she cocks her head when she and Misae's eyes meet.
"Shimure," she whispers holding her arms out for Misae, her lips curl into a sweet smile as she beckons for the girl.
Misae takes a step back when the woman lurches forward, "Yuuri...," she grabs for her friend's hand as fear begins to mount within her, the woman, though beautiful, held such a dark oppressive aura. The way she hungrily eyed Misae was enough to send Misae's heart into her throat, she reaches for Yuuri's hand again as the woman takes a step toward her.
"Shimure, you've come back for me..."
Misae shakes her head as she backs away, "my name's Misae...what's yours?"
"Ungh, wha!?"
Misae gasps when Mazuhara suddenly appears before her, "Mazu...what..."
"What's wrong with you Misae, why aren't you looking for us!"
Misae peeks past Mazuhara to look down the hall, the woman wasn't there anymore but Rukae was, she stared at the Infirmary Hall doors with wide eyes, in her hands she held a glittering pink card but her shaking had already knocked most of the loose glitter onto the floor around her, she glances back at Misae with fear-filled eyes.
"Ru...what's wrong?" Misae manages to choke out when Mazuhara moves past her to complain to Yuuri about their horrible 'seeking' skills.
Rukae lowers her head when the other girls look her way, she turns to look back at the doors before looking up at the girls through her wispy brown bangs, she raises the card in her hands as she seems to get lost in her own mind.
"Ru-."
"Happy birthday, Misae!" Rukae exclaims as she thrusts the card into Misae's hands.
Misae stares down at the card incredulously, it was like being slapped- the sudden change of atmosphere that Rukae's happy outburst had caused, she giggles into her hands happily when Misae opens the card to read the inside...
"Happy birthday Mis-."
Her last happy cry is interrupted by a fit of coughs, she coughs into her hands as the rest of the girls begin to sing 'Happy Birthday'.
-The Present-
"That's the past," Misae drops the card back into it's box before closing the closet door, she didn't want to remember anymore about the past, for some reason it just felt wrong, like something she wasn't ever supposed to do.
However, whenever around Rukae she couldn't stop it.
She couldn't stop wondering about their lost friendship, she maintained that it wasn't her fault- Rukae had just changed, for the worse.
Now, she was that strange girl that sat in the corner of the class buried in her books, the strange girl who refused to enter the locker-room by herself, the strange girl who sometimes spoke to herself during class.
When they were little, no one really cared but as the years went on and the children became more mature and gained compasses for what was considered strange, Rukae did not.
She was still that innocent little girl that lived in the Infirmary Hall.
Misae glances back at the closet door once more before going to back to her bedroom, as she passes by her bed, her eyes skim the digital clock on her night-stand.
"5:45...I should start on my homework," she turns to her bed expecting to find her book-bag there, but it wasn't. Misae sighs when the image of her book-bag appears in her mind's eye, "oh yeah," she mutters as she makes her way out of the room and down the stairs. "Mom, do you know where my bag is," she calls as she makes her way to the kitchen, she moves past the family altar and as she does, a cool breeze pushes past her.
She turns to the altar with fearful eyes, she'd never liked the altar, it creaked and lurched on`it's own and sometimes she even heard voices coming from it.
Though the altar held the appearance of any other, she could feel the difference pouring from it, or from an item within it.
On the front, sat a large camera, it was old and pieces of it were chipped but it still seemed to be in working condition, she backs away from it but the urge to touch the camera suddenly appears.
It could be useful for the trip, and I'm sure mom won't notice a thing...
"Misae, dinner is ready!" Her mother calls from the kitchen.
"Coming!" She shouts before making a quick grab for the camera, she rushes up the stairs and into her bedroom where she stashes the camera under her bed.
Hopefully mom doesn't find out.
"Misae!?"
Misae jumps to her feet to answer her mother's call, "coming mom!"
As she rushes out of the room and toward the stairs her cell phone goes off from it's place on her bed, she grins, it played Mazuhara's song. She rushes back into the room to answer the phone...
Next: The Lost Girl- Yuuri Asou
