A Quick Author's Note
(March 5, 2005)

Thank you to all who have been reading this story and encouraging me to update! Thanks to your kind words and constant support, I've finally gotten back on track. Today I'm posting the next installment of the story, but there are some things I'd like to explain first.

This story is based on the anime. (Nowhere else is that statement more loaded than in the Fruits Basket fandom!) Simply put, the events described in Chapter 97 of the manga have no bearing on this story. This is just the way things worked out — I decided it would be better to continue the story as is. With this update, I am starting Part II of In the Absence of Memory. I decided to designate the continuation from here on as a distinct Part since I think the style and focus of the story might be somewhat different from what it's been like before. It's been a while since I've worked on this story (I sincerely apologize for that) but I do want to complete it. Please bear with the sudden shift in style and focus. My intention is to tell the story in the way it'll best unfold.

Part II begins with a Prologue set in the "present day" of our story. Twenty-five years have passed since the events thus far described in the previous chapters. This is just a Prologue, of course, to open Part II. The years in between will certainly be revisited and revealed.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think! Reviews are greatly appreciated. You can also drop by my LiveJournal (link on my profile page) and leave a comment!

—mikan

In the Absence of Memory
by mikan

Part II: Prologue

Okinawa
Summer

The day has grown quiet, afternoon lengthening into the small garden, settling a warm stillness over everything. The street empties, children are lulled into naps, toys and hopscotch grids abandoned in the drowsy, dusty heat. I do not dislike this part of the day; there was a time when I cherished the peace it brought. But I have found that there can be such a thing, also, as too much peace: when the air falls silent, suddenly the mind can widen, overflow. Voices, smells, faces. All spill into the emptiness of the room around you, the blankness of the air about you, and come alive. Therein lies the danger. In a surfeit of peace, all that has been lost, all that has passed, returns.

As it is doing now. I stare at the sunlight in the garden, but sounds are crowding my ears, faces flashing before my eyes. The silence is now a living mass of memory, threads of it hovering about me, converging upon me. My fingers remember touch, my body warmth all the more keen because of its absence. The softness of skin, the crispness of hair, the low rumble of a chuckle, a cheek pressed against a chest. Warmth and touch, silk under my fingers, laughter shared. A bright day.

I close my eyes and feel the throb of pain, strong and surging. It saves me. There is always this pain, running like an undercurrent to all the layers of sensation and memory, grounding me back to reality, to the truth.

The wooden gate creaks, swings open. Footsteps on the dusty path, drawing near to the porch where I am sitting. They halt directly before me.

"Mother."

One word, cutting and cold. I open my eyes.

The flowers are in full bloom, their centers exposed fully to the heat of the afternoon sun. Tomorrow they will bear the visible scars of such an assault: petals no longer lush, stems hardening into a browning green, leaves losing their sheen. Yet even now, as they bloom so vibrantly, even now they are dying, wilting slowly from the inside.

What is truth?

Everything dying, everything on the edges of death. That alone is truth.

I look at him. His eyes are narrowed, shuttered. In one hand he carries a briefcase; tucked under his arm is the blazer matching his dark slacks. His white dress shirt is damp with sweat. A dark suit in summer. What a stranger he has become, this son of mine. His hair — meticulously slicked backed, spiked in some places — glistens in the sun.

My son always had tousled hair.

"Akira," I say softly.

His lips tighten. "I can see that you're well."

"I've made you worry. I'm sorry."

"You're not sorry, Mother. I'm convinced that you must derive some perverse satisfaction from doing this sort of thing — dropping out of contact any time you well please, and everybody else be damned."

He is angry, as he was the last time he came.

"How many times," he continues, his tone sharp, harsh, "have I been making these trips? How many times have you had me scurrying down here, only to find the same thing every time — you sitting on that porch, without a care in the world?"

"Akira." His name is suddenly heavy, the word heavy to say. "Please. I already said I was sorry."

"We both know you're really not. You're quite famously unrepentant, Mother. And you yourself will prove me right… in about a month's time, shall we say? By then you should be bored enough to pull off another disappearing act."

"That's enough!"

"Do you realize that yourself?" He is furious by now, a cold, leashed fury straining his voice. "That you've kept this up long enough? I am sick unto death of having to rush down here just to check if you're still alive or if you're otherwise rotting in your bed!"

"Do not make this needlessly difficult, Akira. You know I go away for a few days once in a while. You have always known this."

"Yes. But please do try to recall also that I have requested that you inform me when you do go away. It is merely common courtesy." His fist tightens on the handle of his briefcase. "Does it ever occur to you, Mother, that I am your son? Your only child? I am the only relation you have. And I remind you," his voice drops a shade lower, colder, "that that is by your own choice."

I listen to him, feeling the thread of the conversation begin to twist into the old, tired argument. Once more, we are going to talk of these things, these pointless things that nevertheless still hurt both him and me. Once more, he will leave me in anger. And there will again be silence between us, that frigid silence familiar by now to me. It is my only companion, the only peace I know.

How, I ask myself, have things come to this?

"Yes," I say quietly. "I chose you."

"No." His tone is low, but fierce, vehement. "Never me. You chose him."

I close my eyes, because his words are painful in their truth. But there are words that he needs to hear, too. Words he hasn't heard in a long time, words he has forgotten.

It has been too long.

"I love you, Akira. I always have. If you believe nothing else, believe at least that."

There is a sudden stillness in the air.

I look up. He is staring at me, dark eyes grave and penetrating, angry words momentarily forestalled, seething in the silence.

"Then why," he murmurs, "do you do this to me?"

In this unguarded moment, pain shows starkly in his face — that face of his which calls forth into my mind a rush of memories, memories I push away so I can see him, see his face, this child of mine standing here before me. But memory surges, overflows, and I see instead mournful eyes that are not his; I hear a voice long since faded away.

Leave me, I beg. Let me see my son.

In the shadow behind the memory, my son waits. As he has been waiting all his life. And at this moment, I am sorry beyond any apology I could ever offer, sorry beyond any atonement I could ever perform.

Why? he is asking me. Why are things this way?

I tell him the truth.

"Because I am not strong enough."

And it is only then that I feel the exhaustion settling upon me, the bone-deep weariness drawing my breath away. I close my eyes and sink into the deep, futile sadness. There is nothing left to say.

I wait for him to leave, for the sound of footsteps walking away, for the creak of the gate closing. Yet he remains there before me, silent and unmoving.

The air shifts. A slight whisper of a breeze flits down the porch into the garden, warm and scented like the sea.

He moves then, to my side and sits down, laying his briefcase on the rough wood of the porch. His sleeve brushes mine.

"Mother," he says quietly, "I don't understand."

The words are honest and plain. There is no edge, no anger, no coldness. I open my eyes. His face is turned towards me, his gaze on me. I am looking into the clear dark eyes of a child.

My son.

Did I whisper to him, or was that merely the old echo of silenced words within me? I can no longer tell. It has been too long since I have had him at my side.

He looks away, looks down at his hands. One of his cuff links glints in the sun, a small, intricately cast gold square enclosed in a circular border. He touches it, running his fingertip over the engravings. Then, suddenly, he releases the clasp, deftly unfastening the cuff link.

"Do you remember this, Mother?"

I stare at his palm.

Within the circle of gold, a square emblem. Within the square, a name.

Akito.

Everything before my eyes blurs in a wash of tears.

Do I remember? Do I remember, he asks me.

I have never forgotten.

"You gave these to me a long time ago. I think I was still in grade school."

"Yes. You still have them."

He unfastens the other cuff link from his wrist and drops it into his palm. "Because I wanted to ask you."

I look at him.

"The story behind these, Mother. Tell me why the sight of them is enough to make you cry. Tell me why you gave them to me." His fist closes, the gold circles tight in his grip. "I want to know. I want to hear it from you. I want to understand why there is this love and this hate, and why we are both, each of us… alone."

His bowed head and the fierce sadness in his voice returns me to another time and place, to the side of another man broken by loneliness and unceasing pain.

… 'Do you want to know, Tohru? The true horror of this life?'

I remember the words. And now, to this child and to myself, I must repeat them. It is the only truth I know. It is the only truth we have.

"We are cursed, Akira. With no hope of redemption."

.:to be continued:.