DFS Chapter 11
Tsuru moves with a few of the girls, and prettier boys, following the woman's directions.
Her feet stumble on earth instead of gym tile, and laminate.
She is also younger. So much younger.
There are days Tsuru's torn between how natural the child-like acts have started to feel, and how she still views herself.
She wonders idly, as she twists the fan if this is how con artists, and police officers felt as they led different lives. Soldiers like her father when they returned home.
If this is what leaves so many shinobi mad.
The fracturing of a whole.
0o0o0
The thinner inner walls allow sound to carry well.
Isano enters the nursery, and catches her sister humming. An errie tune, slipping from her lips and filling the room. Satoru's chubby little fist reaching up, trying to grasp Tsuru's braid. The bound locks swinging precariously over the crib's ledge.
If she lets her eyes blur and the tune change, she can almost imagine their mother in Tsuru's place, rocking Eito.
Isano can almost imagine the excitement she felt, coming home to them.
0o0o0
Her sister tries to connect with strangers often, going out of her way to greet everyone who crosses her path. An inviting smile splayed across Tsuru's lips, one that encouraged people to talk and that said, look I'm harmless. Talk to me, I'll listen.
Not all of the attempts were successful of course, many ignored the child, but her sibling never complained. She pushed on. Hunted people, like they were another person's shogi pieces in some unknown game she needed to collect.
And Isano knows she avoids other children, and wonders if it is because a part of her sister subconsciously remembers that loss. Associates their prescense with pain.
Her birth isn't something often spoken of.
It isn't something Isano likes to remember either.
Isano can still smell the blood, something that remains more visceral in her mind than recent kills, or perhaps because of it. The horrible, heartrenching sounds. Her father shoving the medic aside, and trying to grasp his wife's hand.
Their mothers weak smile, when she realised nothing could be done.
Her apology.
The doctor cutting a third child from her sibling, after they were torn out, smeared with blood and other fluids. The two forms seperated only by a thin layer of flesh. She had thought her siblings monsters then, in that moment. For the next few years in Isano was feeling more honest.
Still, Isano watches her husband force Satorou into her sisters thin, weedy arms a week after his birth.
"Isn't he adorable?"
"He looks like a shriveled potato with eyes."
Watches Tsuru's lips part, to take a sharp intake of breath. Gold irises flickering to hers.
Eito laughing, as he adjusts the child in the girl's arms further.
Sometimes Isano thinks, her sister is seeking the bond she lost at birth. Trying so hard to bond with strangers to fill that void, to find those she lost.