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A/N: I know, I know…I haven't updated my Gennai fic in forever, and I still have to work on Crown Impulses :( Gomen! That's sorry, right? Lol. I'm such a dork. Anyway, this story is for asuka, it's a Mimi/Kari friendship-type thing. I am SO SORRY GIRL! This is way way way late ^^; Not Yuri, but if you want to make it so, I guess you can. Somehow I end up writing a lot of stories about drugs, pimps, etc... Is it some type of hidden message?
And even though this is such a cheap shot, I'm entering this in TK Takaishi's fic contest :)
The song of this fic is "stranger by the day" by Shades Apart
I'm always contactable: sunshine ba ba (AIM), joy_fishy@hotmail.com (email, MSN), stellar687@yahoo.com (Yahoo!), and 71018292 (ICQ)
Another thing: Moonchild, Karin_Aoi_007, and I are holding a mimato contest. More information can be found at geocities.com/stellar687
Though tabloids may inform you otherwise, I don't own digimon.
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Watching the candle flicker out
In the evening glow
I can't let go
When will the night be over
"Ghost of You and Me" - BBMAK
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I was never much of a giver. Growing up in my posh neighborhood, with successful and loving parents, the only thing absent in my life was, well, absence. Lack of anything.
I was 19 when my friend Asuka opened my eyes. This girl was AMAZING, so different from me, yet here we were at the same Sakura College. She was bright, funny, kind, and caring. And a former homeless drug addict.
You could still see the tracks on her arms. Not the kind kids get from doing recreational drugs; the harsh, cruel, lines of addiction. Her arm was punctured in so many places that at times the limb would fall numb because of the damage the numerous hypodermic needles had ravaged on her.
It was the first time I actually acknowledged that there was more to life then fun, money, shopping, and boys. Sure, I had seen the homeless men in the doorways, the tattered-clothed children wandering the streets, the girls standing on the corners with too-tight clothes and empty eyes; but I didn't know them. They had nothing to do with me. They didn't live in my upper-class neighborhood, they didn't go to my private schools, and I never saw them in the malls. My little cocoon of security had never before been pierced.
So that was when I decided I was going to make a difference. Idealistic, I know, but I believed if Mimi Tachikawa could get into the war against the street, she could make a difference. And I think I did.
I found the Haven, and became a volunteer. Have you ever noticed how similar the word is to "heaven"? Just one letter missing, one letter away.
It must surely be heaven on earth for the kids that come here. Waves in a vast ocean, a horde of lost vagabonds with nowhere to go. To them, the cots, the large kitchen, the second-hand but clean clothes are security. Every time somebody new shows up on our doorstep, his or her eyes beg me to say that everything will be alright. That they've seen too much, they've fallen and scraped themselves a few times too many on the jagged teeth of life, that they're tired of fighting the upstream like a salmon trying to get up a waterfall.
The Haven is respite for 100 of Japan's street children each night.
They've all touched my heart in places that I never knew existed. Maybe they weren't there until the hands of these little children put them there. But there was one girl who took my heart, broke it to pieces, and put it back together again.
She was 14 when she appeared on our doorstep. She was the oh-to-familiar caricature of our kids. Limp greasy hair, limbs to thin I could break them with a finger, tell-tale tracks on her arms, and those eyes. The pained, empty eyes that no teenager, that anyone, should have.
"Ohayo." She whispered, glancing around like a nervous colt. She pushed a piece of milk chocolate hair behind her ear, so she could look up at me through her pale amber eyes. She was at least a foot shorter than me, her cheeks were sunken in; none of the curves that a young woman should have were present. She looked like a living, breathing, corpse. "Is this the Haven?"
"Yes, it is." I said, sweeping her up in a hug by way of pulling her inside. She relaxed for a moment, but stiffened up again. I pretended not to notice, wondering how long it had been since she had fallen into a genuine, warm, embrace.
"I'm Mimi Tachikawa. What's your name?"
"Kari."
She didn't tell me her last name. But then again, it is rare for our kids to do so. Too often it is a reminder of what they left behind, or something that isn't a part of them anymore, that belonged to a different person with a different life.
All of a sudden she started shaking. Shivers ran up and down her body, making it appear like a small earthquake was taking control of her body, sending tremors up and down right under her chalky skin. A sure sign of drug withdrawal.
She chattered. "I-ca-can't m-make it s-s-stop…I n-n-need something."
"It's just the beginning." I sighed, before taking her frail hand and leading her away from the foyer, into the busy hum of the beehive at work.
It took half an hour to strip the layers of dirt and grime off Kari's body, and another hour to find clothes to fit her. I dropped her old rags into the incinerator, wishing that the burning of them would permanently erase whatever scars and memories they came with, but knowing that they wouldn't.
Kari had stopped shaking when I took her to her room. I piled blankets on her in a futile attempt to stop her shivering, then was about to leave when her bird-wing light hand shot out to grab mine.
"Please stay." She whispered.
I sat on the edge of the bed, silently watching until she dropped off into a restless sleep. She tossed and turned, broke out into cold sweat. At times she seemed almost frightened, curling up into a little ball hardly bigger than the pillow her head rested on. I stroked her thin hair, hoping that we could save this little girl.
She slept all that night, and a good part of the next day, too. It was almost time for dinner when Mary Beth, the heart and soul of this place with a brain of knowledge to go with it, told me to get her up, that 22 hours of sleep was enough.
"Kari…Kari…" I shook her softly. "Wake up…it's almost time for dinner."
She immediately sat up, her head knocking into mine. I stumbled back a little bit, but recovered quickly. Kari seemed unfazed by the hit, instead looking left and right, up and down, her amber eyes not resting on a single spot more than a fraction of a moment.
I took her hand, and led her out of the room. Her bare feet slapped the linoleum hallway as I half-carried, half-dragged, her into the cafeteria. I set a tray of food in front of her, and she ravenously devoured it, her hands ramming chunks of bread into her mouth, not stopping as she chewed, prepared to stuff in another mouthful. She was done with the sandwich within a few seconds, whereupon she fell asleep right into her soup.
We took her into research, where a doctor came and took her limp form from me, and carried her into a separate stark white room. I stared through the glass window, my breath forming fuzzy fog on the surface.
Kari was hooked up to a machine, which buzzed and hummed without waking the girl. I watched as the digital numbers on the apparatus rose. 01…02…03…04.
"Holy crap," I thought. "That's a lot of crack…"
Suddenly the prone girl twitched. Her lips moved; it looked like she was saying something. The technician motioned me in to listen to her mumblings.
"Atsuko…" Kari clenched her fists, and began to shake. "…please…"
The room was totally silent for the next few minutes besides the background buzz of the machine, which beeped, signaling it was done. The tech guy unhooked Kari with shaking hands, and I pushed her out of the room on the gurney.
"Who could this Atsuko be? Her father? Her brother?" another thought crossed my mind. "Her pimp?"
I wouldn't bring it up til she did.
She refused to tell me anything about herself, but she always wanted to know about my life. To her I guess it was something out of a fairytale.
"How big is your house?"
"What's in your room?"
"What's your mom like?"
"What do you do in college?"
Every time I took her to drug rehab, she started to sweat profusely and clung to my hand; digging her nails into my skin like claws. I wanted to cry, but put on a smile and detached her from me and left her there. At the end of each session, she was tired, worn, but she seemed to glow a little more.
If you've never seen somebody in drug rehab, it's very complicated, very long, and very heart-wrenching. Many people just collapse on the way out of their hole, and I wasn't sure Kari was able to take it. First they reduce your addicted drug levels, making you addicted to another drug, and then another, one more, and finally, the last one, where you just keep reducing the amount until the rope snaps and you're free of your drug-bound prison. Not as easy as it sounds.
I was sitting in the classroom at college, listening to my professor drone on about something or other…I glanced at the clock. 4 more hours til I could get away.
I admit, my schoolwork was majorly suffering. It's just that boring dates and places on the other side of the world don't seem that important when there are little kids sitting on the street wasting away. Why are we obsessing over yesterday's problems when today's just keep on growing?
After I finally got out of class, I drove over to the Haven. I checked in, grabbed a donut from the staff table, said hi to a couple of staff members, and then headed to room 687. (A/N: I know, I know, I overuse my birthday!)
I opened the door, but nobody was there. Thinking that Kari had probably left for drug rehab without waiting for me so we could talk a few minutes, I felt hurt but shrugged it off and went to make sure she was there.
Instead I found Enid, the counselor standing outside impatiently tapping her foot. Kari apparently wasn't there.
"What took you so long?"
I answered with a question. "Where's Kari?"
She had disappeared. Just like that. I slowly banged my head against the wall. Somebody once told me that if you did that it would increase your thinking power. It wasn't really working. How. *bang* Could. *bang* She. *bang* Just. *bang* Leave? *bang* I turned my back to the wall and slowly slid down to the floor.
As soon as Kari hadn't showed up for drug rehab, about a quarter of the staff searched the grounds for her. One by one, they each came back. The Cafeteria? No. The gardens? No. Visiting someone? No. Watching TV? No. Fallen asleep in a chair somewhere? No. She was…gone. Like the little girl had never been here.
We tried to go on with life as usual, and I have to say the rest of the staff did a good job. Me on the other hand…I just couldn't let her go. I mean, girl + disappear = street where she came from, right?
After I signed out at the front desk, I drove a little bit around downtown. I wasn't really paying attention to where I had been going until I hit a pothole. That brought me back to reality.
I parked by car next to a phone booth, and randomly flipped through the phonebook. Atsuko was a first name, and the chances of finding Kari's Atsuko was slim to none.
I left the heavy book, and as I walked away I could hear the wind rifling the pages, making a ripping noise.
Just as I was about to get into a car, a man jumped out from the shadows. Literally, jumped out from the shadows, like he had just been formulated from the worn brick building he had been leaning on.
"You have any money for a man trying to make an honest living?"
I know, I know. I'm a sap. I handed him 1000 yen. (about 5 bucks)
"Thanks, lady!" his grimy face lit up, as he carefully handled the bill like it was a million dollars. "If I ever get rich and famous, I won't forget you!"
I grinned in spite of myself. Maybe the money would go to beer. Maybe it would go towards drugs. But maybe it would go towards buying food for a family. Maybe it would go towards getting a shave so he could go get a job.
The man started to turn away.
"Wait," I called.
He half-turned, looking almost afraid I'd take the money back.
"Do you know who 'Atsuko' is?"
The man quickly glanced around the deserted street, turned all the way around gestured me to come closer to him, so close I could smell his putrid breath.
"Atsuko is," he confided, his eyes never stopping through lookout. "the biggest pimp in all of Japan. With the biggest gang to prove it." He finished with a slight flourish in his whisper.
"That's all I can say, lady. Thanks again!"
This time when I called, the man didn't turn back. I blinked, and by then he had melted again into the slums.
Kari must've run away from him, I reasoned. A brief surge of pride was filled by a
I bit my lip before sliding back into my car. It had been 2 days since Kari had left. 48 hours, 2880 minutes, 172800 seconds. How long would it take for him to kill Kari for her AWOL? (A/N: Absence WithOut Leave) A crack of a neck, a stab of a knife…all in less than 1/15000 of the time she had been gone again.
My first instinct was to drive into the void of the slums myself, find Kari, and drag her out of that hellhole. But then that stupid thing called reason kicked in. Obviously a college girl wasn't going to be doing any rescuing anytime soon.
So, I went back to the shelter, and after recounting what I had found out to the supervisor, I left again accompanied by Taichi, a bear of a man. More like a teddy bear of a boy inside, but the muscles don't give that away.
I put on a pair of sunglasses and a hat when we slid into the beat up station wagon the Haven had as a vehicle. Taichi tried to make small-talk as we drove into the slums, but the only thing I could concentrate on was the dirt-ridden streets. Kari had to be there somewhere.
A small whimper pierced through the air, easily bypassing the station wagon's flimsy doors. Tai quickly followed it; while whoever it was probably wasn't Kari, we should still try to help them.
I let out an audible gasp as we turned the corner. I know it sounds impossible, but it had to be her. Limp brown hair, fragile frame, the slope of the shoulders… I grabbed Taichi's arm.
"That's her!" I breathed.
I was so caught up in looking at Kari I totally forgot about the man she was cowering in front of. I stared at his clean, smooth-shaven, open, face, and tried to see anything that would say "I am your man. I abuse and degrade women to make me money. I am scum." But all I saw was a handsome good-looking man in his late twenties, kicking a poor girl.
"Did you think you could run away?"
"You thought I wouldn't find you?"
"You're worthless, you two-cent whore!"
Apparently Tai wasn't as transfixed, because he slammed on the breaks, and leaped out of the car. He bolted towards Atsuko, who calmly looked up at him. He withdrew his hand from his pocket, revealing a gun. My friend ground to a halt, staring at the cold steel barrel of the weapon.
Atsuko grabbed Kari by the hair. She plaintively cried out, but was silenced by a blow to the head. Atsuko kept his gun trained on us, and they both disappeared down a dark alley.
I tried not to look too heart-broken when Tai got back in the car. After all, there wasn't anything else he could've done. She was gone, and that was that. My big-brown haired friend asked me if I would be all right when he dropped me back at the dorms, and I tried to crack a smile in return.
A nod to my roommate, a quick change into PJs, and I was lying on my bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. The glow in the dark stars I had stuck there blushed faintly against the dark of night. And then I got my idea.
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Sorry it's not much guys...But I'm going to be gone for the next 7 weeks, camp, camp, and
then Canada. But I'll try to write and post another part as soon as possible! <3 mimi