A/N: Because I'm just splitting the chapters up right now, I have nothing witty to say whatsoever.
---First Cycle: Happiness---
A young girl is running down a snowy street garbed in little more than a few rags. Her skin pulled tightly around her bones and there was nagging hunger in her stomach. She ran on.
The truth was the girl was lucky to even be alive. Nearly every other could've-been children had been force to be aborted. It was the law at that place. After all, the women there were only good so long as they weren't with a child. However, her mother's stomach had only a small bulge when she was pregnant, and as a result, she was able to hide the child. With the help of a few sympathizers, she managed to successfully deliver the child. She gave birth at the father's house and left the child under his care. She loved him very much.
Said father was accused of killing a man by stabbing him with several knives a month later and hightailed it out of town. He was never heard from again. The child was left behind. The mother had no choice but to take the child and let someone else people raise her. At least she never knew her child's father really did kill a man exactly as the accusations said.
The person who the girl stayed with was a poor, but kind man. He was someone who had known the mother for a long time; even before debts began to run her down. That man used to take her to see her mother about once or twice a month. As the girl got older, she began to go without the man.
That was where the girl was headed that day, that life. She stopped in front of a wooden building in serious need of repairs. She couldn't go directly in, so she went into the alley where there was window for her to look through. She stood on the tips of her toes to just barely raise her eye level above the sill. Her eyes scanned the room within. It was filled with men with women in daring clothes. Laughs filled the room too, some raucous, some too loud, some forced and faked, and some shrill and high.
The girl's eyes fixed onto a woman; her mother. She was laughing with a man. It was fake; the girl had heard it enough to know that. Her face was heavy with make-up; otherwise, the man would see how sallow her face was and the dark bags under her eyes. The work had taken a heavy toll on the woman. The girl continued to stare at her mother, eyes following her whenever she moved, taking everything in.
Then the woman saw the girl, but she only froze for a moment before resuming to entertain the man. The girl didn't mind, she knew that her mother would come out for her soon.
And so she did. The instant the man left for a room, the woman slipped out of the building and into the alley where the girl was. She kneeled to embrace her child. The girl smiled, enjoying the moment. She tried to remember everything, down to very last line on her mother's face. The mother patted her on the cheeks and ruffled her hair. She was happy and yet so very regretful. Her child was living in the squalors. Even the already small clothes hung loosely on the child's body.
Mommy, when are you coming home?
One day. One day.
There was a yell from within the building. It was the manager, shrieking for the mother. The woman pressed a few coins into the girl's bony hands and hugged her briefly before rushing back into the building. The manager didn't know that the woman had given birth, or that the girl's visitations were the reason for her occasional disappearances. That was a secret.
The girl immediately turned back to the window and stood on her toes, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother. She did, for a second, and then the woman disappeared up the stairs. The girl continued to stare through the window, wishing that her mother would reappear. After a good half hour or so, the girl turned away and began to walk 'home'. Her feet ached.
Jingle. Jingle. The girl tossed the coins a bit, liking the sounds they made. They were a copper color, but nice and polished. She couldn't believe how they could shiny they were.
This was how the girl saw her mother.
If she was unnoticed of course. She was usually unnoticed, but once she was caught.
The visit had gone as it always had at first, but her mother had been more careless than usual. The manager had finally seen her slip out of the building and followed her. Needless to say, the manager exploded.
The manager was a fairly old woman, not quite ancient, but getting there. She had been quite a beauty when she was young, but that had faded. Time decided to replace that beauty with skin that clung too tightly in some places, but drooped in others. Her earlobes drooped nearly to her shoulders. Heavy earrings had done that. Her remaining teeth were chipped, gray razors. Her left eye was clouded over with a yellow mist. The right eye, however, remained the same as when she was young. It was strange eye, the coloring was lighter brown than most, and the lines of the irises were defined sharply. But her skin decided to sag here too, and the eyelid covered the eye in a nearly perfect semi-circle.
The eye looked frightening to the girl. The manager screeched at the girl's mother. What are you doing? What is this vermin you dirtying yourself by touching?! She grabbed the child's wrists and swung her around. What is this…thing?! The manager glared at the child. It was then that the girl got a full look at the manager's eye. It was a black hole of a pupil with sharp, shiny copper knives lining it, ready to stab anyone unlucky enough to be pulled in. The girl screamed. Screamed and screamed, trying to pull away.
The mother ran forward and grabbed the child from the manager's grasp, holding her tightly.
Don't tell me, the manager said shrilly, that that thing is your child!
So what if she is?
You ungrateful wench! After all I did for your father, and this is how you repay me?
No, the woman replied coldly, you made me repay you in other ways.
You! You! The manager's face was contorted into strange shapes that would not have been out of place in one of 'today's' contemporary paintings. The girl hid her face in her mother's clothes. The next time I see that thing here, I'll kill it. Kill it like every other problem in this place. She leered at the girl, Only I cannot believe that I let this problem get so big.
What's the difference if I have child or not?!
What's the difference?! Are you forgetting your position? You have no family, there's no need for love in a place like this, for a person like you. It'd do nothing but get in the way! With that, the manager walked back into the building, shouting only one last thing to the woman, I will kill it!
The girl sobbed into her mother. D-does this mean I can't come back anymore?
No, her mother replied quietly, not at all. Not at all. She released the child and drifted back towards the building, a dreamy expression on her face.
The child ran forward and tugged at her mother's dress. Mommy, don't go back in there yet!
The mother turned and looked at the girl. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth was twitching upwards, forming a contently sinister smile. Oh, don't worry about anything. You can come back. Come back anytime. So just go home for now, alright?
Mommy?
But the woman had already floated into the building, murmuring to herself, I'm so tired of it. Yes, so very tired of it.
The girl stood still for a few minutes until finally, she slowly began to walk home. She felt around in her pockets for the coins her mother had given her yesterday (she had forgotten to give them to her caretaker). They were still as shiny as ever.
And they glinted in the same shade as the old woman's eye. The girl shivered and stooped to the ground, digging around for a place where the snow was layered thinly and dirt could be easily found. When she found a spot, she rubbed the dirt on the coins to dull their color. On the last coin, she started with a streak down the middle. That coin resembled the old woman's droopy eye even more. Hesitantly, the girl smeared a zigzag down one side of the streak. Now, she had her own evil eye. She replaced the coins in her pocket and resumed her walk home. Once she got there, she would give her caretaker the coins. Except for the one with the eye. That she decided to keep to use against the real thing should it reappear and haunt her.
Now then, here's what the mother did that same night. She was so tired of working the way she did, and of trying to repay debts she knew she never would be able to, and of knowing she couldn't see her own child on top that; she did something quite rash.
She mixed various chemicals she found lying around and poured them all into the manager's tea. The manager only drank a gulp before trying to spew the tea back out, for it tasted horrible, but it was too late. The manager died.
The woman didn't even notice she did it; she was too deep in her dreamy state. In her eyes, all she did was make a cup of tea taste better. In her craze-induced euphoria, the woman suddenly decided that it would be alright to just leave her workplace and pay her first visit to her daughter's home. On her way there, she saw a glistening path, winding like a snake. It was so clear and crystal-like, with wonderful swirls that could just barely be seen under it, that she had to take walk on it and see those patterns better.
She took only a few steps before the path cracked and sent her into painfully cold water. Yet as the water swirled around her in different shades of light and dark, the woman could not help but think, how pretty this is.
The next day, a few a people found the body frozen in the water. The daughter was among them (she had been planning to head to the building again). She tried very hard to get closer to the prettiness, but the people near her kept her away.
Here's how the girl would die, years later: pneumonia.
Yako groaned and clutched at her stomach. Her belly had just waked her up again in its quest to eat everything. Although, Yako had to admit; she didn't mind. She didn't like the dream she was having, whatever it was about. Besides, her alarm clock would've begun ringing in a few minutes anyways.
Grumble. Gurgle.
"Alright, alright, just be quiet already. I'm going to eat," she muttered sleepily.
Her mother was already in the kitchen. "Good morning, Yako!" she said cheerfully, "What do you want for breakfast?"
Instantly, Yako was awake. "Oh, no no no no no! Mom, you can just sit down," she said nervously, "You already work so hard all day, so at least leave breakfast to me!" She pulled Haruka by the shoulders towards the table and seated her.
"I really don't mind," Haruka protested, "You make breakfast every morning. I can do that occasionally, can't I?"
Yako didn't answer out loud, but mentally, she was giving a firm no. A terrified no. She looked into the frying pan where her mother had begun to make eggs and shivered. The egg shells were still in it, and there were strange brown and blue lumps of who-knows-what sticking in the yolk. Really, her mother's cooking was lethal. Haruka had sent more people to the emergency room with her cooking than most criminals could brag about. And the way she got when she began to cook! Yako slumped, face darkening, oh yes, it was horrific.