Warnings: Female character focus.
Rating: PG for minor swearing.
Disclaimer: So bright, precious. Just a fan, precious. No harm, precious.
Notes: Best read with the other version of Identity Crisis, although this one can pretty much stand on its own.
Identity Crisis
Her Version
by Annie D
the_80s_chick@lycos.com
PART 1
I'm dying?
No, you can't die.
Who says? I have to be!
You'll live!
But why?
*****
All was quiet. And then a sharp electronic scream broke the silence.
It was the scream that woke her up. At first there was dizziness, just before the exhaustion spilt over her. Every bone and every muscle screamed in its fatigue, and that was all she knew, as everything else remained cloudy and distant. The only reminder of far-away reality was the occasional spark of pain, and the fading echo of the electronic scream.
"She's waking up…"
Was she? Waking up didn't seem to be an option just yet. She coughed, and through the cloudiness she felt something warm touch her head.
"That cough sounds terrible."
"Just remnants of the bronchitis. It'll clear up on its own."
So she was okay, then. She felt oddly cheered up by that thought. Grateful, even.
"We should just let her sleep in a bit. She'll be up and at 'em in a few days."
A few days sounded good. Sleep sounded even better. And so she did, already forgetting the distant whisper of the electronic scream.
*****
"Miyuki, are you awake?" Hands were shaking her gently.
And she awoke, the cloudiness almost completely gone. She blinked a few times and coughed, just to make sure that she really was awake.
"Hai…" she croaked.
"Oh, thank goodness." A ridiculously cheerful face broke into her line of sight, disrupting the sterile view of the white ceiling. "How do you feel?"
"Sick," she said.
The face, which belonged to a middle-aged woman with brown-black hair, laughed. Miyuki – that's my name right – let the woman help her sit up. A cup of something hot was shoved into her hands and Miyuki looked at it.
"Tea," the woman said.
Miyuki sipped the tea gingerly, deciding that it wasn't the time to complain about how much she hated the drink. As she did so, she slowly took in her surroundings. A hospital room, singular. One TV, two chairs, a small table, only the woman by her side. Miyuki blinked as a name jumped out at her.
"Mom!" Miyuki choked on her tea.
The woman's eyes turned wide as she took a piece of tissue from the table to help wipe the spilt tea from her hospital garb. "What, Miyuki?"
Miyuki shook her head, as though the action would help clear her jumbled thoughts. Why had it taken so long for her to recognize her own mother? Just then, a pounding within her skull drew her attention from the question. Headache!
"What happened?" Miyuki asked, squinting through the headache.
Her mother's face clouded over. "Do you remember that you went out for practice even though I told you not to?"
Miyuki tried to scratch her head, but her exhausted arms wouldn't let her. "Not really."
"You had just barely recovered from the pneumonia," her mother said, shaking her head sadly. "Already so weak, but you were pushing yourself. You always push yourself so hard, Miyuki. You and your volleyball."
Volleyball. Right. Her number one love, volleyball.
"What happened?" Miyuki asked again.
"You were practicing in the park, like you always do, and you were so frustrated for losing so much time when the games were so near, and you pushed yourself to almost complete exhaustion. On your way back home you stumbled in the middle of a road. There was a truck…"
Miyuki shivered as vague memories passed through her. The screech of a tire… People shouting… "Watch out!"
"A boy saved you," her mother said. "He ran onto the street and pushed you out of the way."
"What happened to him? Is he here?"
"He died, Miyuki."
Miyuki stared. "Died?"
"Yes, two days ago."
Good god… The shock reeled through her, causing her to drop the already spilt cup of tea. She shut her eyes, and within the darkness she felt rather remembered the sounds and the feels… Bodies ramming together… Screams in the background… A boy's voice, "Get out of the way!" Miyuki started trembling uncontrollably. "I killed him…?"
"No!" her mother said quickly, wrapping her arms around her daughter. "It was accident. The driver didn't see you because of the glare of the sun, he said so himself. There has been no blame or accusations, it was an accident."
Miyuki shrieked something wordless as she buried herself in her mother's shoulder.
For a long while the room was silent except for Miyuki's sobs and the soft cooing sounds of her mother. "Please, Miyuki. He died so you could live. I know you, and you'll blame yourself, but it wasn't your fault. You know, not many people are as lucky as you are to get a second chance."
Second chance. Miyuki shivered as a frustratingly elusive thought waved at her from just outside her memory.
"What was his name?" Miyuki asked softly.
"Sakuragi Hanamichi."
A boy, shouting… The hard gravel of the road… Miyuki clutched her mother even more tightly.
"I want to pay my respects."
"He's been cremated," her mother told her.
Miyuki fell silent again. Slowly, she took a deep breath, pulled back from the hug and looked at her mother with a determined expression on her face. "I'll get better, then I'll go and see his parents to pay my respects properly."
Her mother nodded.
*****
Miyuki returned home with her mother no less than two days later, and that was only after Miyuki had screamed at the doctor that she was not a weakling and that she was feeling all right and that there was nothing worth worrying about. The doctor had checked her thoroughly, perhaps hoping to find some excuse to keep her in the hospital, but to his own surprise she was as well as she claimed to be.
Except for the headaches. Those came in occasional sharp pounding sessions that would merit jaw-grinding fist-clenching toleration, and sometimes she'd even lose her sight completely, but she considered those just remnants of the near-accident trauma, and she even managed to blame said headaches for making her memory sluggish. The late-recognition of her mother was only the first, for in the following days she found it difficult to recall other basic memories, like which school she went to, the name of her cat, her favourite volleyball team, that sort of thing.
But really, she didn't consider the sluggish memories or the skull-cracking headaches anything to be worried about. Not when there were other more important things. And so she conveniently neglected to mention them to the doctor, and received a release charge form in return.
Finding the family of the boy who saved her wasn't too difficult, since there was the convenience of the phonebook. Miyuki took the first opportunity she could to go to the Sakuragi home, which was barely a day after her release, despite protests from the mother who kept telling her to take some time to rest first.
Arriving at the entrance of the small apartment building, Miyuki double-checked the address she had scribbled on a small piece of paper. She was just about the approach the main door when it swung open, letting out a middle-aged woman carrying two large suitcases.
The headache started with a dull pounding at the back of her skull, but Miyuki pushed it back as it wasn't the time for that sort of thing. Without a doubt in her head, Miyuki spoke up. "Mrs. Sakuragi?"
The woman looked up at her in surprise. Miyuki's initial response was to immediately catalogue the many similarities between the woman before her and her own mother, and she had to choke back the fist of shame that had wedged itself in her throat. Miyuki could easily see that the woman had been beautiful once, but exhaustion and sadness had made themselves permanent residents on her face.
"Yes?" Mrs. Sakuragi said.
"I'm… Takemoto Miyuki." She bowed quickly, but not before seeing the surprised recognition that passed over Mrs. Sakuragi's face. There was a soft twin-thump of two suitcases being dropped, and then another cautious silence.
Miyuki swallowed slowly, and it took all her courage to bring herself to look at Mrs. Sakuragi in the eyes. She had never thought beyond finding the boy's family, and now that she had, she came to the realization that there was nothing she could say that could make what had happened less painful. Miyuki realised in horror that her appearance had most likely made it worse.
"I am not angry with you, if that's what you're thinking," the lady said softly. She was not smiling, but she was not frowning either.
Miyuki's throat was shamefully dry, but she was determined to overcome it. "It would make it easier for you to hate me. It would it make it hurt less—"
"My son was a wonderful kind person, and his choice to save you was his to make," Mrs Sakuragi said firmly. "Do not taint his memory by suggesting I hate what he'd done for you. I don't blame you for what happened because he wouldn't blame you."
Miyuki blinked rapidly as she opened her mouth, wishing that she would say something deep, something meaningful, something that would make the lady understand all her regret and sorrow and shame. Instead, all she was able to say was, "I'm sorry."
"Yes, and that's all you should be," Mrs Sakuragi said. Slowly, her aged face drew into a smile. "You are a good person to try and take the blame the way you have, but that's not the way things should be done. We all regret many things, but we should learn and then move on, don't you agree?"
"Yes," Miyuki said quickly. "If there's anything I can do—"
"Live," Mrs Sakuragi told her firmly. The elderly lady approached Miyuki carefully and rested a warm hand on her shoulder – the touch in its kindness and understanding partially lifting the heavy burden Miyuki had placed on her heart. Miyuki smiled uncertainly, just then catching sight of the two suitcases behind her.
"Are you going somewhere?" Miyuki asked.
"To go live with my sister, away from this place," Mrs Sakuragi told her. "I've many happy memories here, but also many sad ones. I'm going to try and make a new life elsewhere."
Miyuki didn't mention her husband, for she knew without asking that Mrs Sakuragi was a widow. Instead, she was overwhelmed with the urge to stop the lady from leaving, but she knew there was nothing she could say about that, either. So she settled for, "Then I wish you luck and happiness."
"Thank you."
They bowed to one another, Miyuki deeper than the other, before parting ways. There was something of peace now in Miyuki's restless spirit, as the meeting had caused an avoidance of depression and self-berating anger on Miyuki's part. She wasn't about to waste the boy's kindness, no matter how much she was angry with herself for her own stupidity.
She felt comforted at least, and was much more enthusiastic to continue her life, but such peace was short-lived.
Mainly, there were the headaches. They were related to her botched memory, although Miyuki didn't know why. The only thing she did know was that just barely a few days after obtaining quiet peace from her meeting with the boy's mother, the headaches returned with a vengeance, angry and determined to disrupt whatever resolutions she had made to continue her life. Quiet tolerance no longer seemed adequate to deal with it, so Miyuki turned to anger for what little comfort it gave.
That, and the overwhelming sense of wrongness that was starting to plague her. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was, just that everything seemed inexplicably wrong. Especially after she returned to school, little by little even the smallest thing was able to provoke her, causing her temper to flare so often that her friends and team-mates were starting to joke that she had PMS (Permanent Menstrual Stress). Everything was making her angry, even the love of her life: volleyball.
One day, at volleyball practice four months after the accident, she snapped.
It had been a rather basic dive, but Miyuki had missed it by a good few feet, causing the team captain Ryoko to start lecturing her on concentrating on the ball's trajectory and…
"SHUT UP!" Miyuki screamed. She grabbed the white ball and threw it straight at Ryoko, who ducked her head calmly as the white sphere went flying past.
"Takemoto, this behaviour of yours—" Ryoko began.
"I hate volleyball!" Miyuki screamed. Everyone gasped.
"Takemoto…" Ryoko said softly.
"I HATE IT!" She stomped her feet on the floor a bit for effect, just barely containing the urge to kick one of her team-mates. "This is so stupid! You're all so stupid!"
With that final non-memorable phrase, Miyuki stalked off the volleyball court, steam practically rising off her head.
The girls watched her leave with shocked faces.
"What happened to her?" one of them asked, breaking the silence.
"What's been happening to her?" another one asked. "She's like, permanently pissed off."
Ryoko picked up the volleyball and tossed it to one of the girls on the bench. "Continue practice. I'm going after Takemoto."
Ryoko found Miyuki in the nearby park, sitting forlornly in a tiny kid's swing. She looked up as Ryoko approached her, and since the temperamental girl didn't start screaming her head off, the volleyball captain took it as a good sign and eased herself into the other swing.
"Takemoto-san… What's wrong?"
Miyuki was quiet for a while. "Everything."
"Everything everything?"
"Hai."
Ryoko scratched her chin. "Then you have a big problem there."
Miyuki jumped to her feet, eyes blazing. "I knew it! You came here to make fun of me! Well, I'm not going to take this—"
SLAP!
Miyuki slowly turned her face back toward Ryoko, who was now standing in front of her with her right palm upraised. Miyuki raised a hand to touch her stinging cheek.
Ryoko didn't look angry, only stern. "You're losing it, Takemoto-san."
Miyuki clenched her fists at her side. "Hai."
"Ever since the accident, you've been bad-tempered," Ryoko said. "You've not been yourself. You barely talk to your friends, you never hang out with anyone anymore, you explode for the smallest reason… I know you're still upset since that boy died saving your life, but this is ridiculous. You need to get on with your life."
I'm trying… Miyuki mind moved back to the boy's mother's kind words. At that time she had truly believed that she'd be able to move on, but somehow it hadn't been as easy. I can't move on. Everything's wrong somehow.
Ryoko sighed. "You were never this angry before, Takemoto-san. And you were such a good volleyball player. You're still good though, but your heart is somewhere else. As it is with your friends. You don't laugh as much, or smile as much. You're angry all the time."
Miyuki hung her head. "Hai."
Ryoko crossed her arms over chest. "Well, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a volleyball captain. The IH tournament is starting in a few weeks. I need to know if you can play."
Miyuki looked at Ryoko in surprise. Volleyball was her life! Of course she… wanted… to…
"I can't," she said, the words out before she even knew they were in her head. "I'll mess up."
Ryoko nodded solemnly. "I don't know what's going on, but I know you're confused. You need some time to yourself. Figure out what's wrong."
Miyuki shrugged. Ryoko patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and then walked off.
Alone again, Miyuki sat on the swing and stared up at the sky.
*****
By the time Miyuki got home, she was feeling wretched. Now not only was she angry, she was also sad and embarrassed. Her brain felt like imploding from emotional overload despite there not being any particular headache there at the moment, and so she went straight to her room and hid under the covers.
Her mother managed to coax her out from hiding for dinner and the inevitable long talk afterward. Miyuki's initial ramblings were mostly nonsensical, as she herself was confused as to what was going on, but by the guidance of her mother the conversation soon become constructive.
Miyuki told her what had been going on, including how she had been feeling lost and how everything had felt wrong. Her mother didn't laugh, but listened thoughtfully and asked proper questions that made Miyuki feel a little better, because there may be the chance that she wasn't going insane.
"A change in environment would do you some good," her mother said after a while.
"It's still the new school year, mom," Miyuki told her. "I can't go on holiday now."
"I mean a new school," her mother said, tapping a finger on her chin thoughtfully.
Miyuki gaped. "Are… Are you serious?"
"Yes, why not?" her mother asked cheerfully. "Why not go a co-ed? It would do you some good to get into a different environment, mix around a bit, figure things out…"
Miyuki's mouth opened and closed silently.
Her mother frowned thoughtfully. "There's only one other school I know of that is close enough to get to by walking…
And that was how Takemoto Miyuki ended up going to Shohoku High.
*****
After much negotiating, Miyuki was given passage to continue her sophomore year at Shohoku High. In her heart, she felt more than a little excited to be going to another school, and somewhat relieved to get away from the unnamed shadows at her old school that had annoyed her to no end. It did not occur to her that Shohoku would be more of a relief than she had ever thought it could be.
So on her first day at the new school, she bounded off from home happily. It was still a respectable walking distance away, the only difference being that she had to go through the town a bit. She felt the barest tinge of guilt for not missing any of her friends from the old school, but that didn't hinder her spirits much.
She hummed a little under her breath as she walked along, feeling a little surprised at the presence of jitters in her stomach.
BANG! Miyuki started in surprise at the loud noise unmistakable as that caused by one moving object hitting a stationary one, and she turned slowly to see a tall dark-haired boy picking himself up from a fallen pile-up of trash cans just across the road.
"Baka," was her first response. She tried to walk away, but for some reason her feet were rooted to the spot. She stared at the dark-haired boy, who was lifting up his bike and brushing it off a bit, the innocent action causing anger and annoyance to spurt inside her. She felt that more was required of her, including making her annoyance known, so she raised a shaking finger and pointed it at him. "Hey, stupid! What were you doing, sleeping?!"
The boy didn't acknowledge her call, and instead just hopped back on his bike. And that just angered her even more.
"Woi! Don't ignore me, you idiot!" She started to charge across the street after him, but before she was halfway there he was already on his bike and pedalling off.
Miyuki huffed to herself. "Idiot." The thought and its accompanying anger made her surprisingly happy, so she laughed. It wasn't the same sort of anger she'd suffered the months before, but a clean type of anger, associated with rightness instead of wrongness, and realising the change was exhilarating.
Soon Miyuki was bounding back on her way to school, chomping some bubblegum she'd found in her backpack, and eventually blowing bubbles cheerfully in time to her steps.
Her first day at the new school was looking to be up, and it couldn't even be brought down when the first schoolmate she'd met – a horizontally and vertically-challenged boy with a shaved head and specs – opened his mouth to leer at her.
"Waaaaah you're so tall! Are you a model, sweetie?"
She punched him, then sauntered off to class, still popping bubbles all the way.
*****
So she had been scolded by three of her teachers so far in the day – one for chewing bubblegum in class, one for not having the proper books and one for nodding off to sleep when being asked to answer a question. She still felt better than she had in months, and the awareness of that fact just raised the rush in her blood all the more.
Some of her classmates were nice to her, particularly this shy girl with very short hair named Fuji, who was sitting next her, since she was very helpful in explaining what she'd missed in each class, as well as the quirks of each teacher.
It didn't matter that many of her other classmates, as well as some of the teachers, were looking at her as though she were some kind of alien. So she had picked a fight with one of the teachers (it wasn't her fault that she didn't have the required books, because she's a new student, dammit!) and tended to make loud comments or ask irrelevant questions in class. All of that didn't matter, because they would all know who she was soon enough.
A tensai.
The word had appeared out of nowhere, but had branded itself clearly in her head. Miyuki smiled.
Yup, she loved this new school.