ENIGMA
Part 1: Realization
By Cookirini


"Ami!"

The blue-haired girl turned around at the sound of the high-pitched shout. She gave a smile as she saw who was coming towards her down the hall of the school.

"Usagi."
"Hey there!" Usagi ran up to her, her face red from running. "I've been looking all over for you."

It was noon, and the rays of the sun emanated into the hallway, lighting up the faces of the two girls. Usagi had a large smile on her face as she approached.

"You going to come to my house tonight?" Usagi clapped her hands. "We're going to have a party for your birthday, though…you look pretty tired from last night's battle."
"...Actually...I…."
"Study school?"

Ami slowly shook her head. The look of surprise on Usagi's face was palpable, the shadows highlighting faint scars from previous battles.

"Not coming…?"
"No...I'm going away for the weekend. I'm visiting someone."

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I have a photographic memory.

"Come on, honey. Say 'mommy'."

I remember how it became. I was only about one or two at the time. It was them my mother noticed something wrong with me.

"...Ami?"

I had been a fast developer as a baby. I could identify things before I was a year old, and I talked and walked early. But then one day.....

"Ami....Are you okay? Ami!"

...I just stopped. As my mother said to me once, it was as if I had suddenly gone deaf - I didn't pay attention to her at all. My mother thought it was a fever at first, but the doctor said I was fine.

"Ami! Why won't you answer me?!"

We had been a happy family before. Before I became silent.

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"New International, now boarding Flight 12, non-stop plane to Sapporo. Non-stop."
"You be careful, Ami." Ami's mother looked at the doors of the gate. "Remember what I told you."
"I know, mother."
"You don't have to go, you know." A look of concern came into Ami's mother's eyes. "I'm worried about you. Your father's a bitter man to me."
"I'll be fine, mother."

The two women touched heads. Ami rubbed her hands onto her mother's shoulders before taking up her suitcase. She took several turns back towards her mother before going down the ramp into the plane.

"Hello!" The flight attendant's seemingly fake smile made Ami uncomfortable. "Take a seat and have a good flight."

With a quick nod, Ami quickly eyed a seat near the window. There was no one in the preceding rows, which, for Ami, was perfect. Quickly, she put her case up in the overhead compartment and sat down, hugging her knees tightly.

"Thank you for flying Nippon Local Air Express." Ami looked outside at the hangar, easily zoning out of reality as she stared at the airplanes and the concrete ground. "This flight will last approximately three hours nonstop…"

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They said I should be committed at the age of two and a half.

"We can't diagnose it," The doctor looked at me as my eyes strayed all over the room. "It's developmental, but there's nothing we can do about it. She will never learn to write or speak, or if she has, she never again will function normally. This is how the future will be for her - silent. There's no cure for this demonic possession."

My mother looked tired, tired and upset. I can remember seeing the dark circles under her eyes as I glanced around the room. Before this, the doctor had tried a Shinto exorcism on me to no avail.

"There's a hospital in Ginza that treats children like this." My father sat in a corner, listening as the doctor spoke. "It specializes in taking care of them, so that-"
"Are you saying I cannot take care of my child?"

At this, my mother stood up, her voice angry. I remember my father standing up at this as well.

"Anza."
"I am a pediatrician." My mother began to yell at the doctor. "I've been in practice for three years. I studied in America. I know full well what's in Ginza - a mental institution. Are you saying that I am incapable of taking care of my child, that she should be a ward of the state? I know how they operate."
"Anza, no." At this, my father grabbed her shoulder. "He is just giving us facts."
"Don't touch me, Nobuyuki." My mother pushed him away. "I don't believe either of you. You'd both put my baby away in an asylum before she's even 36 months old."

There was a huge argument between the doctor, my mother and my father; it laster for two hours. In the end, I went home with my parents. To me, that doctor visit was the beginning of the end for their six year marriage.

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The flight was finished faster than Ami had expected. The time had gone by faster than she thought.

"Thank you again for flying Nippon Local Air Express." She quickly got off the plane. "We hope you decide to fly us again."

Sapporo was a city foreign to Ami. She knew nothing of its people, of its ways or of its streets. People speaking Japanese and Russian passed by her. In such a new setting, Ami wanted to shrink into nothing, to get away from the unfamiliar people. She was afraid of people in general, especially if they were strangers.

Taxi…. Her feet involuntarily marched to an unheard four-beat rhythm, her left foot going over cracks of the sidewalk outside of the airport.. Have to find a taxi…or a bus….or something….

She looked up from the ground, surveying her surroundings nervously. There were many taxis to choose from, and several buses. She knew where to go, but did not know how to get there.

"Hey!"
"STOP!!!!"

Ami was suddenly jolted out of her thoughts by a shout. She turned to see several airport security officers tackling a man dressed in white. They took out sticks and began to beat him, blood spurting onto the sidewalk from the assailed.

Wow…. Ami stared in surprise not at the scene itself, but at the blood on the ground. Its like a Jackson Pollack painting. The drip technique he used back in the 1950's with industrial paint. Just like the one in the museum my mom took me too when I was a child-

"Ma'am?"

Ami's head jerked around. A man with a mustache had tapped her on the shoulder.

"E…." Ami was suddenly paralyzed with fear at the sight of this strange man, and she stiffened. "E...Excuse me…"
"You're Ami, yes?" The mention of her name, and the smile on the man's face helped Ami to relax. "You've gotten big…Don't worry. I'm a friend of the family; you probably don't remember me. Your father asked me to pick you up."

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My mother looked everywhere for a diagnosis.

"We're sorry," they always said. "We can't diagnose her. We don't know what problem this is. She may have to be committed when she is older."

After that first doctor visit, ,my mother dedicated my early years to finding a diagnosis. She quit her private practice and went all over Japan, taking me to every psychologist she could find. In the end, she had little money left, and nothing to show for it except for no certain future for me.

"Why don't you stop painting," my mother shouted at my father one night. "Stop painting and get a steady job? We won't be able to afford an apartment here with all of the traveling you do that drains our money."

My father was a painter all of his life. He traveled around the world showing his work off, though he did not earn a lot of money to support a family. Our apartment, the old one in Yokohama, was a studio; it was filled with his paintings and art tables.

"What about your family?" My father took offense at the thought of giving up his trade, and it was in his voice. I remember sitting on the couch, looking at my parents. "Can't they help us?"
"I will not live on handouts!" My mother took up his paints. "This is shameful. Instead of leaving for months at a time, stay here and help us!"
"Help us."

That was me. I echoed what my mother and father said; I did not talk on my own, nor did I talk intelligently. One doctor compared my talking to listening to garbled radio static.

"DON'T tell me how to live." My father became very angry. "And in return, I will not tell you how to raise your daughter."
"She is our daughter."
"She's your problem, not mine. You're her mother, you're the one who brought her into this world, the one who noticed what was going on. She won't even talk to me! But that's how it always is; worldly woman brings forth her own downfall."
"How dare you!" My mother shouted so loud that the neighbors eventually called the police that night. "To imply our daughter is the way she is because of me!"
"Because of me…."

With that, she threw the paints to the floor, making a mess, and in fright I made noises as I ran off into the bathroom to get away. I knew full well what they were fighting over.

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Ami sat in the back of the car, looking at the scenery as it rushed by. The trees and buildings of the city blurred together into lines of greys, browns, reds and greens.

"So, I hear you're doing well in school." The man smiled to Ami through the rearview mirror. "You got another 500 on the practice exam."
"Yes. It was hard."

Ami hugged her knees nervously as the buildings gave way to meadows and mountains. She caught herself, however, before she began rocking back and forth.

"I was worried I wouldn't get a perfect score."
"…Are you all right?"

The man looked concerned at this. Ami met his eyes, then looked down.

"No, I….I'm fine."
"…Ami." The smile on the man's face saddened. "Your father was very happy to hear you were coming to his house for your birthday. For the past several days, all he could talk about was you…how proud of you he is."

Ami gave a sigh. The greens and blues blurred, and shot across her eyes like atoms.

"Please don't tell my father this…." The Seville drove on. "But I don't truly believe that sometimes."

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I was not well-liked by my peers as a child, just like now. Only, it hurt more as a child. At first, I was in a school in Juuban - the only kindergarten that would take me in because of my 'problems', so pronounced - yet undiagnosable and untreatable.

"Hey! Stupid!" I felt someone hit me. "Stupid Ami!"

I made a noise and flapped my arms angrily. I was four at the time, and the children in kindergarten made fun of me all of the time, I'd scream every time they hit me, because I didn't like how it felt. The kids noticed the strange habits I had - I only wore blue cotton, and ate tuna sandwiches with orange in my milk - and made fun of me for them.

"Oooh, look!" I remember watching them as they squashed my sandwich. "Stupid! Tuna breath! Book worm!"

I gave another noise, and they'd copy me and make noises after me. There was one girl in particular who was very mean. She was my height, and she had beady, Aryan eyes and a head of maize. Most of the time, I didn't do anything. This one time, however, I just kind of….snapped...

"RaaaaAAAAAAAAH!"

I remember it well. We were outside, crossing the street to the school on a trip. After she did that, I went after this one kid who had pushed me and stomped on my lunch. I pushed her right into the street, right in front of the teacher. I hit her so hard, his head and face hit the curb, and she was bleeding and crying, her light hair and cheek soaked red.

"AMI!" I remember the teacher spanking me hard the minute she came up to me. "I'm going to call your mother! You know better than to push!"

When they called my mother, she came in enraged and yelled at the teacher and the mother of the girl. I felt bad because the girl I pushed ended up in the hospital and had to get stitches on her cheek, but I hated her too at the same time. She always laughed at me, and pushed me around, and never got in trouble because her father was a famous writer or something like that. So I was glad, especially when later, her father took her out of the school, but also confused. She sat next to me that day my mother took me out of the school, looking at my mother with fright.

"You'll punish my girl for fighting back," my mother shouted. "But you won't punish that little brat for starting the fight. Because my girl is handicapped its automatically my fault! This is wrong!"

I had always knew I was the problem, but this is the first time it ever occurred to me that, perhaps, it was not all me. Perhaps it was the others, perhaps there was a reason outside myself….but as days went by, and I was picked on still, the thought that I was not to blame vanished. I couldn't stay in the kindergarten.

So I was home taught for a year before my mother allowed me back into a regular school, and it was not in Juuban or Yokohama, but in Shibuya. During that time, I began to read the autobiography of Newton and his theories on math. I read everything I could get my hands on, even things I couldn't understand. I had been reading since before I was silent, but I began reading intensely that year. Soon, I had taught myself how to read three languages besides Japanese: Russian, Chinese, English. But still, I did not talk normally.

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It was another hour before the car finally drove up to the small log cabin. The road had been bumpy, and to Ami, this trip had taken an eternity.

"Do you need help with your suitcase?"
"No…."

Ami felt more comfortable around this man than before. She could tell he was a friend; few people knew exactly where her father's studio was. Not even her mother knew; whenever her father wrote to Ami, he used the address of his father, who lived in downtown Sapporo and was full-blooded Ainu.

"Your father's waiting for you." The man motioned towards the house. "I can go before you if you wish."
"I'll be fine…"

Ami felt her stomach twist into millions of knots as she approached the door of the cabin. Every step she took sounded like the beat of a drum, a drum being hit in tune for a sacrifice. Finally, she reached the door, and reluctantly knocked on it.

"….Hello?"

It took several minutes for the voice to reach the door. It opened, and Ami nearly choked on her saliva. There he was, his hair thinned and whitened by stress and age, his figure thinner than what she remembered it to be when she last saw him, his trademark glasses still on his face. The moment his eyes came upon her, his expression brightened, and the next thing Ami knew, she was in a slightly uncomfortable embrace.

"My beautiful Ami." He rubbed her back. "Happy birthday."