Hey everyone! I'm back with another chapter, and super sorry that I've been gone this long. I wasn't expecting that but health declines and working long hours catches up to you eventually. I ended up sleeping for 39 hours straight at one point and my family was convinced I dropped dead or something. Thanks for reading if you still do after all this time and I hope you enjoy the story! Let me know in the reviews what you think!
This definitely was not how I wanted my mother to meet my 'internet boyfriend,' as she teasingly called him every time she caught me sneaking smiley glances at my phone during family dinners.
"Mom?" I felt my eyes go wide as I saw her staring at me from her seat beside my bed.
"Hi sweetheart," she smiled but it was tainted by the slight solemn grimace she was forcing behind her 'mom is here, everything is going to be fine' mask.
I wanted to jump out of bed and give her a hug, but I would hear Kozu snoozing next to me and didn't want to wake him, he was exhausted. I hadn't been homesick here in Japan because of all the great people around me, but I missed my mom, both my parents really, a whole lot.
"Can I have a hug?" I asked.
"Of course!" she wrapped her arms around me, careful not to hit Kozu in the process and when it was over, she sat back in her seat and we talked. I told her about everything thing. I mean, sure, I had called her to talk a bit every night before bed but she didn't know everything that happened, so I told her. It was one long story with funny little details from Akaashi's stalker to funny moments in class when Anahori and I would make jokes and pass notes. She loved hearing all about Kozu and I's big date in Tokyo , minus the part about the panic attack, she was a bit upset about the Mina incident so I figured for her sanity it was best not to mention the panic attack.
I heard Kozu start to stir beside me and I smiled as I brushed his hair out of his face and left a kiss on his cheek. He hummed in reply and put his face into the crook of my neck.
"Good Morning, love," I said as he put a kiss on my cheek as he sat up and suddenly stiffened at the sight of my mom. I bit back a laugh at his reaction.
"Ria, who's this?" he asked.
"Kozu this is my mom," I said in Japanese and then switched to English, "Mom this is Kozume Kenma."
He stood up and bowed a full 90 degrees to her, "It's very nice to meet you ma'am!" Mom seemed a bit startled.
"Oh, mom," I told her, "He says it's very nice to meet you and the bowing is a sign of respect."
Her expression softened and she stood, walking over to Kozu and putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Look at her." I told him and he hesitated to look up.
Mom smiled really big at him, "It's very nice to meet you, Kozume, thank you for making my daughter a very happy girl."
He looked at me for a clue what she said and I translated.
"I am lucky Ria let me around. She make me a lot happy then everything." He said in broken english and that was enough for my very happy and very much a hugger mom to wrap him up in her arms and say "Arigato Kozume." in the harshest American accent.
I burst out laughing at the two of them and they both just looked at me until they started laughing too.
"Since when can you speak that much English?" I asked him in Japanese.
"I've been practicing for a while. I have a goal I want to achieve with my english and if I can get there, I'll be really happy." He sat down on the edge of my hospital bed, an arm around my shoulder while my mom took her seat back on my other side.
"And what's the goal? Maybe I can help." I laid my head against him and looked up at his eyes.
"I'll tell you another time, it's not very important right now, but I think you need to talk to your mom about what you're going to do with your arm." he put a kiss to my temple and I agreed with him, so I spoke to my mom in English.
"Mom, I'm sure they already told you all about my arm while I was asleep. What are we going to do?" I asked.
"Well, the doctors here think it will be safest for you if you get surgery to screw the bone back together here, but then it will be a while before we can go home. I think its best if they do the surgery though. There's no sense taking you back home just for a possibly emergent surgery is something goes wrong in the air."
"It wold also be a lot more money in America." I said.
"What?"
"The japanese health care system is actually pretty great on the people who need to use it, even foreigners."
"Is it cheaper because it's worse?"
"No, Mom," I laughed, "It's actually pretty great because it's mostly nonprofits like Massachusetts and they have Universal Healthcare for their citizens here, like Canada. The translator told me earlier but people usually only pay about 30% of the total bill."
"I need to get a Japanese tutor." mom said and I burst out laughing again.
"Mom as much as I would love for us to just pick up our lives and move here, I don't think it will be that easy and Japanese is actually a lot harder to learn than you might think."
"Point taken, I'll make this a long term project for now." I rolled my eyes and gave Kozu a brief translation.
"Since I'll be getting the surgery here, I'll have to wait a bit afterward before I'll be able to fly home so I might be here another few weeks, but probably not through the end of the semester."
"Oh," he seemed sullen, "I want you to stay, but you probably should go home. It will make it easier on you when you're trying to recover."
"I don't want to go home, Kozu."
"I know, but it might be for the best. It does not in anyway mean that this is over though. This, us, will never be over."
"Agreed." I kissed him and prayed that everything would be okay like I hoped it would be.
"Can I come visit you every day while you're still here?" he asked.
"Only if you can manage that while doing all your homework and not blowing off practice." I quipped, "I would appreciate you coming whenever you're available, but don't you dare screw up your school work because of it."
"Okay, I promise."