"Look, Mingxia," Meika's mother says in a time before she was Meika. She's unwrapping a calendar with bright flowers for each month. January has a flower she's seen before, a pale pink blossom unfurling towards the sky, reaching out of a pond on a slender green stalk. "What's this flower called?"
"Liánhuā," Mingxia says proudly, but her mother shakes her head.
"That's what it's called at home," she says, "But what about here?" Mingxia frowns, disappointed. She doesn't know the answer. Her mother hangs the calendar on the wall and steps back to admire the image. "It's called a lotus."
"Lotus?" Mingxia repeats curiously.
"That's right."
When her mother walks away, Mingxia follows. The threshold between rooms seems to stretch on forever, and by the time she reaches the next room where her mother stands before their home altar, hands pressed together tight, muttering a sutra, she is no longer Mingxia.
Several years have gone by. Meika's hair brushes past her shoulder blades and her eyes have narrowed from childish curiosity to something more somber. She notices things she never saw when she was younger, like her mother's trembling shoulders and bony wrists, how pale she is, how little she eats. She cries when she prays, and Meika has never known why. She feels like she shouldn't ask.
"You remember the lotus, don't you, Meika?" her mother asks, and her voice sounds hollow. Meika feels like she's been watching the life slowly drain out of her mother over the years, the light slowly leaving her eyes as she speaks less and less. Some days, she stands in front of the altar for hours at a time and doesn't even speak unless it's to recite the sutra. Meika comes home from school and her mother hasn't moved; she feels like she lives with a ghost, or no one at all. "You remember what it means?"
"A lotus rises out of murky and clouded waters," Meika says, like she's said a thousand times. Her mother asks her this often, as though afraid she might forget. "Out of the dark and into the light."
"Towards enlightenment," her mother murmurs, "Towards purity."
"Mom, you haven't eaten yet today." Or yesterday, come to think of it, and what about the day before?
"I'm alright."
Meika takes a step back over the threshold and into the living room, and even though she doesn't touch it, the screen door shuts between them. She reaches, trying to open it again, but it's stuck on something. Her mother is still in the next room; she can see her silhouette, can hear her praying.
"If I had to go somewhere," her mother says, a second voice over her chanting sutras, "If I just had to leave tomorrow, you'd be alright, wouldn't you, Meika? You'd know what to do."
"What? What are you talking about?" She's still trying to open the door. She was afraid to break it before, afraid her fingers might skid across and tear into the paper or she might yank it off of the track. She pulls harder.
The sutras grow louder, deafening, even. Meika winces, wanting to clap her hands over her ears, but she wants to reach her mother, wants to break down the door. "The lotus," her mother is saying distantly, nearly drowned out by her own chanting, "The lotus is the seat of Buddha. How wonderful it would be, to be reborn upon one in the next life. That's why we have to keep trying, Meika. We have to dispel our bad karma from all of the wrong we have done. We have to pray that we are forgiven."
Meika is a teenager now, home from high school, as wiry as her mother, fingers slender and just as skilled with a pair of scissors. Somehow, time is flying by, slipping through her fingers, turning her healthy tan to a sickly pallor. If she looked in the mirror, she would probably see her mother there. She throws the door open just as she becomes an adult but her mother is gone. The flowers and offerings that should be on the altar are scattered around the room, porcelain vases shattered and candle wax smeared over the floor. Her mother is long gone, gone the night before. Meika had been angry, she remembers, and lost, and she hadn't come home at all after school, only stumbling upon the scene the next morning.
"Investigators," the neighbors say, "In the middle of the night."
Meika wonders what her mother did. Not that night, necessarily, or in the nights leading up to it, but before then, before Tokyo. Why did she cry when she prayed, why did she obsess over the lotus, why, why, why?
What did you do? she wonders, What are you supposed to be forgiven for? Who is supposed to forgive you?
She never did ask, and now she wishes she had. She doesn't know if she'll have a chance now.
"Do you think he killed her?" Hagi's voice comes from behind her.
"Who?" Meika pretends she doesn't know. She doesn't want to talk about it.
"You know who. Don't be difficult."
She turns around, but no one is there. She's all alone. The house is silent, and outside, the sun is starting to rise.
"Did you know that you cry in your sleep?"
Meika knows she isn't dreaming anymore because everything hurts. It hurts to sit up, it hurts to move, it hurts to breathe. She struggles to sit upright, one flailing arm catching a reaching hand that pulls her the rest of the way. Wherever she is, it's dark, and she can faintly smell blood and rot wafting in from somewhere outside. As her eyes adjusts, she squints into the dark. The figure in front of her is a small girl wrapped in bandages from head to toe, but Meika can make out the contours of a face peeking out from beneath a magenta hood. She knows when she's being stared at.
"I what?" The stranger's words suddenly sink in and she touches a hand to her face, finding drying tear tracks along her cheeks. "Where am I?"
She doesn't get an answer right away. Her companion continues to stare silently, studying her face, and Meika glances around the room. It's empty, like the interrogation room, but the walls aren't uniformly painted and the air smells musty. The floor is grimy and damp, slickness glowing in the little light that streams in through a small square window high off the ground.
The girl jumps to her feet. "This," she says, and spreads out her arms in a dramatic manner, "Is your cage, little bird."
Meika swallows hard. She's getting that nagging feeling again, that tickle of fight-or-flight that tells her she's talking to a ghoul. "What?"
"Your cage," the girl repeats simply, and gives a childlike laugh, "If you thought your world was small before, it's about to get quite a bit smaller."
"Do I know you?"
"You might," the girl says playfully, "Would you like to know for sure? You cut hair, don't you? Maybe you could cut mine." Her hands rise to her face, slipping into the hood, and Meika sees the bandages begin to loosen. "Of course," she says, tilting her head, and Meika feels eyes on her, "If I showed you, then there's no way I could let you leave your cage. Wouldn't Tatara be angry then…."
Meika is startled into lucidity immediately. "Tatara?" she echoes.
The stranger presses one hand to where her mouth must be, giggling, and Meika flushes when she realizes how desperate she must sound. "I don't envy you at all," the girl says in a pitying tone, "Haven't you ever heard stories about humans and ghouls trying to be together? It doesn't end well."
Meika has a sudden juvenile urge to deny it, to say something like, "It's not like that!" But she stops herself because she realizes it is like that, even if she just stumbled in head first and knew she'd be better off not falling in love. "Where is he?"
"So nosy," the girl huffs, "He'll be back soon. Just wait patiently until then." A dull pain blooms near the top of Meika's head and she gingerly runs her fingers over her scalp, finding the skin tender. "The dove's headquarters collapsed all around you," she hears, "I hear you just sat there and got hit on the head."
It starts coming back in bits and pieces; Itsuki Marude and a lot of bad coffee, bright lights, an alarm. Confusion starts to settle in. "Wait," she says, "Then, who…what…?"
"Ah, now you're waking up. Asking the important questions. I don't think I should tell you everything, though. All that matters is that you stay here."
"I can't stay here," Meika says, trying to get to her feet, but a wave of dizziness and nausea washes over her and she crashes back to the floor, lying on her side. "I-I have to go."
"Go where?" the girl laughs, going to kneel in front of Meika, head tilted curiously. "You're in no shape to leave, let alone walk, for a while. I'm doing this for your own good, you know. Once you step outside that door, you're on your own. I'm not going to protect you from hundreds of hungry ghouls."
Meika glances at the only door in the room, battered and hanging crooked on the hinges. The girl doesn't say anything for a moment, but Meika thinks she's looking closely at her face and reading her intentions. She leans in close, and Meika sees the bandages shifting with her breathing. "You can try to run, if you want," she whispers, "But if you do, I'll break your legs." She sounds like she's smiling.
Then she stands up straight and pats the dust off of her dress, apparently satisfied with how much Meika is shaking. "I'm not going to waste all day watching you, so I'm going to trust you to be good," she says dismissively, "But I'd really rather you don't do anything stupid. I want to get to know you better." Her head is still turned in Meika's direction, but Meika doesn't feel that she's being stared at. "I want to know what kind of person falls in love with a ghoul," the girl says quietly.
The door opens and shuts, and there's the sound of a key turning a heavy lock. Meika remains on the floor, fighting back angry, frustrated tears, and when her eyelids grow heavy, she doesn't fight sleep.
She wakes up to a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her. Meika rolls onto her back, rubbing her eyes, and through her blurry vision, she sees Kazuichi Banjou. She doesn't trust her eyes, though. She's been dreaming of people who aren't around anymore for what feels like days, and wasn't he supposed to have left the ward?
"Go away," she says, covering her eyes, "You're a dream. Go away."
"What—? Meika, I'm not a dream," she hears, "Stop messing around."
"I'm not," she snaps. The hand leaves her shoulder. Meika remains in silence, waiting to hear Hagi or Tatara's voice next, but never does.
Instead, she hears Kazuichi again, and he says, "So you didn't get out either, huh?"
Slowly, she uncovers her eyes and finds him sitting on the floor next to her, looking mostly the way she remembered except for the coat he wears, not unlike Tatara's, but in the color of dried blood. "No," she murmurs, "I didn't." Kazuichi offers a hand and she takes it, wincing at the pain in her head when he pulls her so she's sitting upright.
"You okay? Did they hurt you?"
Meika shakes her head. "No, I'm fine. Concussed, if anything." She smiles bitterly. "I didn't even make it out of the ward; doves caught me down the street from my apartment. I was interrogated for a few days, and I guess…I got here somehow. I was a little out of it at the time, I don't remember it all."
Kazuichi hasn't smiled once since she woke up, not even a small one. "Do you know where we are?"
"No."
"This is Aogiri Tree's base."
She feels like she should have known, but it still comes as a shock. The name "Aogiri Tree" had always been some invisible specter hanging over the ward for her, a nebulous threat with no face. Knowing that Tatara was a part of it didn't help, because she couldn't connect the images of death and destruction shown on the news with how gentle he'd been.
"I don't know why you were brought here," Kazuichi admits, looking at the floor, "Humans have never been in here, unless…they're…." He can't seem to bring himself to finish the sentence, but Meika already knows what he means to say. "But that can't be it, because I'm supposed to be keeping you alive." He says it with conviction, clinging desperately to whatever silver lining he can come up with, and digs through the pocket of his cloak, producing a couple of rice balls in plastic wrap.
Meika doesn't even know what's in them or what flavor they are, but her mouth is already watering at the sight of food. Her fingers dig into the plastic, shaking hands struggling to tear it off. Kazuichi looks pained when he leans forward, helping her unwrap them. "What happened to you, then?" Meika asks between bites, mouth full of rice. "You were going to leave, too, weren't you?"
Kazuichi doesn't look at her, and he doesn't answer.
Meika swallows what's left of the first rice ball and stops to breathe, glancing at him. "Banjou?"
Still, he doesn't speak. He sits quietly, hands in his lap closing into fists, and begins to tremble. Meika eats the second rice ball in complete silence.
Sorry to leave you hanging, but I do have an exam next week, so I'm not sure if that update will be on time.