My cellphone rang, my home number flashing across the screen.
"Hello?" I asked into the receiver just to hear my daughter sobbing on the other end.
"Junjun? What's wrong?" I asked, worried and she sniffed.
"I'm at Sakura park. Please come get me." She whimpered and I sighed.
"Junjun why are you at the park? What the heck are you doing there?" I demanded and she whimpered and hesitated in her answer.
"I needed to clear my head but…I…I'm scared." She whimpered and I sighed.
"Okay love, you just stay were you are okay? I'll be right there." I answered and she sniffed again
"Okay momma."
As the line went dead I sighed.
"Ruka I gotta go…. My daughter needs me." I stated and she smiled.
"Be careful." Was all that she answered as I headed toward my motorbike.
As soon as I got to the park I saw that my daughter was sitting on the risen wall around the fountain, staring into the water.
"What made you come all the way out here Monkey?" I asked as I neared her and she seemed to shrink further away.
"Are you mad at me?" she questioned and I sighed and took a seat on the cold stone beside of her.
"No, but I want to know what's wrong." I answered and she whimpered and looked up at me, tears steaming silently down her face.
"What if grandma finds out Mom? What if she wants you to…get rid of me?" she questioned and my mind instantly went back to what I had seen in her memories.
"To hell with what my mom thinks Junjun. You're my daughter and I'll be damned if I would ever send you away." I growled, putting my arm around her shoulders.
She leaned against me and began to sob into my side.
"Junjun, we'll never hurt you…you are going to have to learn that you can trust us with anything. You never have to hide anything." I stated and she glanced down.
"Our blood parents said the same thing too." She muttered then tried to fight tears.
"Damn it!" she yelled, slamming the side of her fist into the concrete as tears began to roll faster down her cheeks.
"Hey….none of that." I whispered as I knelt on the ground in front of her, taking both her hands into mine so she could hit anything else and get hurt.
"I swear on the silver crystal I would never do whatever they did to you." I vowed and she looked up at me, eyes shimmering with anger.
"How can you say that! You have no idea what kind of hell we've been through!" she snapped and I sighed.
"Then tell me, Make me understand." I responded and she gave me a frightened look.
"Fine….I'll tell you." She answered then continued "we got left there on a night that it was storming, we were just dumped there like garbage. Told that old hag that we were just trouble. She put us in the basement, there was only a tiny window that none of us could see out of and a blanket to sleep on like a mattress and a thin dirty sheet. Not all of us could fit on it." She stated, voice wavering and she paused to choke back sobs before she continued "Cerecere always said she could handle anything since she was oldest. She took it up on herself to sleep on the floor so that we could be a little comfortable."
As soon as she said that her eyes spilled over.
"Nothing we could do was ever right!" she sobbed and I couldn't help it, I pulled her tight against me.
"Junjun, that old bitch beat you, starved you and everything else but it was her who was wrong not you or your sisters. None of you have to be so strong anymore, you have a mom and dad who love you…. Not to even mention your aunts and cousin and any of us would do anything for you and your sisters." I whispered and she hugged me tightly, crying into the front of my shirt.
We sat like that for what seemed like forever, her sitting on my lap as I was seated on the ground. I couldn't believe how hard that these kids had been forced to live before they had been kicked out.
"That's not the worst of it Mommy." Junjun whimpered after what was in reality only a few minutes, surprising me because she hardly ever called me that.
"We were kicked out just because….. Just because we had taken a loaf of bread from the kitchen."
That last confession angered me, my blood boiling on the inside of my veins as I sat there.
"And this was after fried squid face?" I asked and she giggled through her tears before nodding.
"We found a mirror while we were out playing and we were promised to be able to stay kids forever…so we jumped. After we returned home everything went downhill." She answered then asked "do you think that it was because we hurt people that all that bad stuff happened? Did we deserve it?"
Her expression was so heartrending that I felt close to tears myself.
"No, the only thing you guys needed for that was a smack upside the head." I chuckled as I stood up, lifting her up in my arms before adding "No one deserves what you guys went through."
