Disclaimer: I do not own X. the Prison is mine though and is based (in name only) on a prison over here. Pochi Project was something I saw on Oz.
Author's notes: the ranks of wardens here go by military ranks as it is over here anyways. Plus I've aged characters who in X are too young to fill in the roles of this story.
Author's Thanks: many thanks to my beta Kitsunia (she's in her finals, wish her good luck people!) From goes to Whitesakura (you know I'm here dear, I was also surprised, and much disgusted, that I can write something so darn fluffy and about the mind games you'll just have to wait), Amy Levi (yes I will dedicate a chapter to each character then I'll get to the top of the plot, it is equally exhausting to try and make a split chapter like that instead of straight lines of parallel plots but the structure will return to itself, please be patient, this is indeed a story that tries to look at every character in X due to the fact that Clamp made them oh so perfect and wonderful and it'll be a shame to look into only four of them), Kuroshira (well guess what? It's your lucky day about Kakyou! Hope you'll like it!), Tekoo (you ARE special dear, in a slightly chobits way, kidding), Grubble (what happens in the basement? Ah, it's for me to know and for you to find out in future chapters dear ha ha). From Clampesque board (not 'bord' like last time…): the anon. reviewer (I will! I will! I am!). from Adult Fanfiction: to the anon. reviewer.
Part 3
When she felt her wrist searing with the ache of cramped muscles, Karen decided she has to take several things off of her keychain. Ignoring the pain, she turned the key in her home's front door and entered the house, stumbling and fighting the brown paper bags in her arms to not topple over.
She placed the huge keychain (actually a collection of several different key chains she received as gifts from former colleagues, current underlings and good friends in general) on the little stand by the door, noting the bottle filled with water and a torn branch of the fuchsia from the house's little garden is dangerously close to toppling over with the weight of the revived and growing branch. She made a note to herself to re-plant the branch in a pot of it's own and thank Yuzuriha for her kind contribution to the bottle's fresh water and good caring.
The chance to do so came bouncing on the tips of her toes around the corner from the living room, casting little hidden glances down at her feet as she leaped towards Karen. The youth took several bags from Karen's hands with the softness and pedantry of a nurse taking a baby into her arms, and carried them to the kitchen where she'll place the items belonging to the refrigerator on the kitchen table before the great white machine and those in less need of cooling on the kitchen's marble working corners where she snooped through them impatiently.
"Did you get a collar for Inuki," the young girl shot a hesitant question over her shoulders as she poked through the pile of MnM's and Pocky, obviously, intended for her.
Karen took her time on answering that question.
Yuzuriha was brought over at the age of eleven, a girl with big sad eyes, big hopeful heart about to burst into childish disappointment's icy splinters, and an imaginary friend; Inuki the spirit dog.
Her parents were friends of Karen from high school days, a pair of strict traditional yuppies (apparently a possible combination) with hearts too hard, life too busy and minds too narrow to understand what 'counselor', 'child psychologist' and 'listening to your child when it needs attention' to be able to cooperate with their daughter's insistence for seeing Inuki past the age of eight.
They gave Karen a monthly amount of money enough to buy food for the somewhat sweet-toothed girl, clothes for her growing early teenaged body and a little sum that would serve as pocket money for the little girl.
From the moment they walked out of Karen's house Yuzuriha never heard from the again. Karen saved the girl from the news of seeing the two pushing a baby carriage some ten months after Yuzuriha's abandoning.
Yuzuriha was at first very shy, in an abused puppy waiting for the next kick kind of way. She soon unraveled to reveal an energetic, ever enthusiastic, constantly happy, contagiously optimistic, life loving, and easy laugh young girl.
She was still a bit shy around strangers and took slightly lower then average grades in school as bad omens for her academic future but when Karen melted all those worries and pains away with hugs and hot tea cups Yuzuriha would bounce right back to her happy modes like a plastic bathtub toy filled with air pushed deep into water and returning to the surface right away.
And she insisted upon the existence of Inuki. Perhaps it was the relatively late age in which her parents abandoned her; and it was the obvious reason for it that made her stick to Inuki's existence. Karen liked to think about it as teen rebellion.
She never knew Inuki survived only because Karen had thought Yuzuriha to not talk to Inuki in public and to pretend to not have him by her side so that people won't look at her funny and pest her like her parents did.
"They don't have these things, you'll have to go to the pet shop honey."
Yuzuriha was the second 'orphan of life' Karen took in. It was during Yuzuriha's first days that Karen realized that helping people with all of her abilities was addictive.
She collected people like lost kittens and puppies from the streets and she couldn't care less what the strict, stoical society around her thought about it.
A happy little yelp marked Yuzuriha's discovery of chocolate covered mint sticks. Karen was just rearranging the frozen bags of vegetables and various meats so that the older ones would be up front, within reach, while the yet to be used in due time newly bought groceries waited their turn at the back of the fridge.
The yelp made her smile. Yuzuriha was a great helping hand around the house these days. Karen couldn't be filled with more pride to see the once timid frightened little girl grow into a responsible adult.
"You bought chocolate covered mint sticks," the teen chirped happily, bending down to grab a lump of frozen salmon fillets Karen handed out to the great beyond behind her back to help her with the re-engineering.
"You asked me to, didn't you dear?"
"I did! But then I asked you last week too but you didn't buy them." By the end of her sentence Yuzuriha was mumbling under her breath. Karen-san was far too kind, warm, loving, and a real mother to her then to deserve any trace of teen tantrums from her or anyone else.
Karen popped her head above the refrigerator's door for a second to stare at Yuzuriha with the packet of chocolate covered mint sticks mulled in her hands bashfully.
"Last week, darling, the store was out of them and the candy store nearest to here only had vanilla sticks."
In order to be able to properly house all of Karen's 'orphans' she had to move to a bigger house at the outskirt suburbs of Tokyo, where there were few grocery shops and most of them already old and overpowered by the huge newly opened hangar-like low priced mall of a grocery shop on the road conveniently leading from Karen's house to Sharonza prison.
For the ability to have their own room, the 'orphans' had to pay with delicacies such as slightly higher then average food items coming in high rarity.
"Oh well, thank you! I'll go bring this to 'Kyou!"
"That's a good girl."
From the kitchen, Yuzuriha dashed over to the television room, minding Inuki's whereabouts around her feet, to bring the candy to her so far best friend.
Kuzuki Kakyou sat on the big green sofa, its seat softened by its prior owners into a comfortable mush that fitted Kakyou's light weight and often physiotherapy aching muscles perfectly.
As soon as he heard the girl storming towards him, Kakyou turned his head lazily on its thin long neck and cast his sleepy eyes on the impending happy teen.
Within a moment the packet of chocolate covered mint sticks stood before his eyes, painfully close to them. Smiling faintly, Kakyou reached his thin long fingers and took the packet from her. With his long and strong fingernails (the only strong feature in him that wouldn't break under pressure) he prized the plastic seal off the top of the box.
He needed Yuzuriha's help with tearing the inner silver dyed nylon bag around the sticks.
With a happy smile, Yuzuriha tore the bag pretending it was Inuki biting one end of it instead of her left hand. She handed the open bag for Kakyou's eager fingers and awaited her reward.
Kakyou pulled two mint sticks out of the bag, placed them between his loose lips and handed a third one for Yuzuriha who pretended to share it with Inuki.
While munching contently on one of his sticks, Kakyou observed the girl feeding empty air to half a stick. "It's bad to give dogs chocolate, don't you know," he teased her, curling himself deeper into the worn sofa.
Yuzuriha stared at him for a while, trying to decide if he teased her out of maliciousness or was he actually speaking seriously to her. Since Kakyou was never the communicating type she never had the chance to get to the bottom of his personality.
But Kakyou just smiled and said. "Oh, right, I guess Inuki-kun isn't affected since he is a spirit dog." He looked at her for a little longer, seeing the expression of a child stabbed at the back still lingering at the rims of her eyes. "I forgot, I'm sorry. Does he like it?"
With a head still slightly heavy with doubt, Yuzuriha nodded and walked away from the television room back to the kitchen mumbling for Inuki to go throw the stick out in the back yard.
It'll take her a few days to gain enough trust in Kakyou to speak to him again.
This is how vulnerable Yuzuriha is.
Kakyou smacked his palm on his forehead, swearing mildly under his breath at his stupidity.
Five months ago Karen sprained her ankle and came to be re-bandaged (she never really trusted the somewhat constantly high looking nurse at Sharonza's infirmary) and get a prescription for painkillers.
She noticed Kakyou sitting like a rag doll carelessly tossed into a wheelchair in the middle of one of the hospital's corridors she wondered in to (she was never really good with directions and all the corridors looked the same, damn it).
The bent over body, pale, thin beyond good health, it's long disheveled bright hair falling to obscure its face, cast like that in the wheelchair immediately turned Karen's alarms on.
She crouched at the feet of the wheelchair trying to peek into the face beyond the hair. She saw a pair of empty golden eyes and a face so blank it was obviously sad and lonely.
"Hello," she said kindly, placing her palm on the long thin hand dangling at the side of the wheelchair where it's supposed to grab the iron loop and propel Kakyou away from here.
The body did not reply. The palm was icy cold and limp.
An icy chill ran through Karen's back, starting with lighting in her mind and ending in a cold pool at the shallow of her belly. She leaped away and called a nurse (where she managed to find one three corridors down).
The nurse checked the body's pulse and sighed. "This is Kuzuki-san, he's always like that."
"How come he's here and isn't out there in the bright day's sun. Such an early spring sun will do him a world of good, I'm sure." Only Karen could lace such words of complaint with enough kindness and playing dumb to make the nurse miss the sharp criticism within it.
"Kaboke sensei ordered him not to be exposed to too much sun since he is can easily dehydrate. We take him out for short drives outside, five minutes each but not too much. He's more delicate then he looks, um?"
"Captain Kasumi." Karen was still in her uniform and decided to indulge in the authority they gave her over the nurse's somewhat common, weaker, pure white robe.
"Kuzuki-san, does he like staying here in the middle of the corridor for everyone to walk by and stare at?" She lowered the amount of kindness in her tone this time and avoided eye contact with the, by now, slightly timid nurse.
"Ano…the nurse on the shift before me must have been called to another room on an emergency. Perhaps she thought he'd like it better to sit here and look at the passer byes then to be cooped up in his room all the time."
Slowly, dramatically, Karen turned her head, lowered it to catch the nurse's big, on the brink of tears eyes with her cold harsh fiery ones. "Does it look to you like he's in any position to look at anyone?"
Kakyou's bowed head with its veil of hair obscuring any vision he might attempt to have, if he had willed himself to try it, was like a fist to the nurse's awareness as it stood there motionless and obvious at the edge of her vision.
The nurse bowed her head and mumbled her apology, turning to walk away.
"Wait."
The nurse turned around, clutching the chart board to her bosom like a comforting teddy bear. "Yes madam, I mean, Kasumi sensei."
"What is the story behind him?" Karen had her back to Kakyou, her arms folded on her chest demanding an answer.
"Ah, Kasumi sensei, I'm not sure we should talk so near him and I'm not entitled to give such information to strangers," the nurse mumbled, gripping at procedures like a man grabs his boat in the midst of a storm at sea.
"I don't think Kuzuki-san is in any way capable of hearing us, I think you and your colleagues saw to it that he stayed in this condition."
Before she was fully hit by the harshness of Karen's words the nurse had time to wonder how Karen was perceptive enough to note Kakyou was a male and not a female like anyone else would think at first. She looked around her back, into the rooms around them and made sure no one was here to hear them.
"Kuzuki-san is the son of a certain politician who's name I'm not permitted to tell you. He tried to run away from home and, mistaken for an intruder, was shot by his father's bodyguards. He is paralyzed from his lower back down and had only now emerged from coma, that is, he now began showing signs of recognizing his surrounding."
"Why would his father's bodyguards not recognize the son of the man they're protecting?"
"Ah, it seems-" and this is where the nurse overcame her fear under the need to gossip properly and neared Karen a bit "-that his mother forbade her son from ever stepping out of his room…"
Karen raised her eyebrows, looking at the nurse doubtfully.
"It was his step mother; he is the child of the minister's first and most beloved wife."
"Sounds too much like Cinderella to me." Karen tightened the folding of her arms on her chest, scolding the nurse with her gaze.
"It's true! His parents came over here only once after Kuzuki-san's hospitalization. I hear the step mother talking about how she's going to give birth to Kuzuki-san's father and that they should go and prepare for the baby. At two month pregnant, why leave the sickbed of your son to start preparing for a baby that will arrive seven months later?"
The heated emotion in the nurse's voice and eyes made the icy walls of doubt in Karen's heart melt. It was then that her heart began opening its arms to the still oblivious Kakyou.
"But you know the step mother…she was of that sort of women, with her make up and her western clothes…"
Karen translated the understated 'western' for 'tight, revealing, cheap' and nodded.
"She had the minister's head spinning, can you imagine?"
"Men," Karen huffed.
"And you know, when we called them about Kuzuki-san waking up she answered and you know what she said? She said 'oh well, you can keep him if you want' and hung up! Such behavior!"
Immediately Kakyou's fate was re-carved from rotting in this hospital or another to slowly recuperate and finally bloom again under Karen's roof.
The first thing Karen did was to send a letter, through her commander who happened to know Kakyou's father from the golfing club they both attended, to inform the minister of his son's new house and of her demanding for money to send him to proper physiotherapy.
The minister sent her back a letter with a sheet of bank paper containing a new order from his bank to transfer a monthly amount to Karen's account to support his son.
Karen wrote back that a father should come to visit his son, aught to do it, and that money would not suffice to revive his emotionally scarred for life boy.
The minister reported that he had far too many things in his schedule for such a thing and that he trusts Kasumi-san to do well with his money.
A less personal letter, written on a plain notebook paper sheet, in pen, carrying the minister's signature, asked Karen to send him photos of his son standing again, photos of him smiling, and to write her a weekly report of Kakyou-kun's well being.
Karen took her time to cool down from this two faced behavior and replied that in order to see his son standing or smiling he will have to come over and see his son face to face, and that such a thing alone will help his son pull both acts off.
The minister did not reply soon after. His next letter contained a much humbler plea and a little more money.
Once again Karen calmed her raging anger and took deep breaths as she wrote down that money only sours her empathy towards him and that kind words she brush completely off; she is affected by deeds not fancy words.
The minister did not reply. He came to visit.
Beyond the high white painted wall, between the thick flowery bushes, the minister observed his son sitting in the clear bright sunshine of mid summer, in his wheelchair, looking at a young girl playing with a ball.
Karen approached him with a broom as if about to shoo him out with violence (actually she was just brushing the path to the house from fallen leaves but she thought the impression might work something on the minister and make him either run away or walk into the house). She was about to say something awfully snappy to a minister in the government when she noticed the man before her became transfixed by something.
Yuzuriha had managed to throw the medium sized pink rubber ball into Kakyou's lap. Kakyou, who was staring at the nearby orange flowered bush, looked at the ball and with a faint smile grabbed it and pushed it against gravitation and his own muscle's limitations back to Yuzuriha.
The minister's eyes tracked the slim pale fingers slowly grab the ball and hurl it against all odds back into the air with amazement, and a great deal of love and pride. He watched the frail lips curve up in a smile and his heart became, most visible on his face, filled with happiness. He turned his teary eyes to Karen and bowed deeply, uttering endless words of thanks to the stunned woman before him.
Karen's eyes were also gathering tears and with the hormonal side effects of emotions swinging from one extreme to another, she offered him to come on in with a tear soaked crooked voice.
The minister shook his head; dabbing at his eyes with an old man's handkerchief, and sighed.
"I am afraid that my appearance will only damage him. You see, I've done too little and too late and that in itself is the worst wound I've inflicted on him. I don't want to wound him again. You are a good, kind woman Kasumi-san. You've not only helped save my son but helped save something in me, I'm forever grateful to you." He turned to walk away, noting his son had tossed the ball back to Yuzuriha once again, and then turned back to Karen again.
"Please." He bowed again. "If you see that my son is in a good enough shape, tell him of everything I did after you took him in. Don't sweeten the facts please, just tell him that if he wishes he can call me and I will come immediately to meet him. But only when you feel that he is ready for it, before that I prefer to stay out of his way."
He bowed once more and thanked her again, then disappeared into his shiny black minister's car and drove away, his eyes hanging at whatever he could see of his son from the blackened window of his car.
Karen lingered there, staring at the car's direction long after it disappeared, gaping, crying, and smiling.
Kakyou needed a lot of intense care at first. Karen bathed him, fed him, read to him and talked to him as if he was really there to answer back.
She combed his hair neatly, dressed him in brand new clothes and took him out to the park to look at things even if he did not as much as raise his head to actually cast his eyes upon anything.
Slowly, patiently, she broke through the walls he had built around his soul and, one by one, pried the first eye contact, nod, word, and smile out of Kakyou.
When he became communicative enough Karen began driving him to physiotherapy, using the money she received, used until then for clothes and new furniture for Kakyou's room.
Newer days Kakyou was able to keep himself upright on his legs for almost a whole minute, while heavily leaning on something for support. Kakyou had his first taste of champagne when he first managed to pull it off.
Karen drove Kakyou's wheelchair back into reality and society, into her love and the love of his brother and sister orphans.
Karen's greatest success so far was a shopping spree with him in Ginza, with Kakyou talking to her and to the salespersons all along the trip. So far Kakyou would only bow his head away in public and ignore any attempt from strangers to open conversation with him and hardly dared to speak up his opinions.
Deep inside of him Kakyou ignored all the sparkling Technicolor happiness around him, brushed off the sweet happy behaviors of his housemates and surroundings, refused to embrace the love and warmth around him. To his broken beyond repair heart, his forever frozen trust, this was just a passing phase and soon the pain his life so far showered him with will return again. Like it was every time for Kakyou. Maybe one day he'll come to realize it isn't true and lower his last guard.
When Yuzuriha walked back into the kitchen Nataku was already at the kitchen counter, chopping a long leek and feeding it to the boiling pot on the stove. Karen stood by him and chopped mushrooms.
Pouting at her obvious needlessness and at her role in helping to make dinner taken from her, she spun on her heels and dashed back to the television room to switch the channel from Discovery to the Japanese version of Cartoon Network to watch Sweet Valerian. Kakyou wouldn't mind and even if he did she'll poke her tongue at him and let him figure out that it's a punishment for what he said before.
Wordlessly, in complete coordination, Nataku and Karen worked on dinner for the house's residences. So were things with Nataku: silent, pure harmony, flowing and with a heavy, ever dark cloud of Nataku's existence hanging above him. Or her.
Nataku was the third orphan in the house.
He was born a hermaphrodite (or intersexual), not a man and not a woman. When he was an embryo his mother's pre-birth test showed that she would give birth to a healthy baby girl. But a series of failures to produce the right hormones his tiny body needed to follow his genetic blueprint deemed Nataku to be born with physical features of both sexes, ambiguous and mixed up. At birth, the doctors noted a jumble of limbs, twisted, blocking many feature vital for the young baby's healthy development.
Over the years Nataku underwent so many surgeries to help him overcome impending (or already raging) infections caused by his condition that he hated hospitals with his whole being. He'd beg his parents not to take him to surgery every time and, like every time, was overcome by pain enough to allow them to take him. The doctors operating him were often ill skilled at such maneuvers due to the rarity of cases like Nataku's. His parents did not have enough money to bring their son overseas to fully proper treatment.
As he grew older he showed no sign of developing into a woman and further examination of his already tormented body showed that his female organs were too tiny, too shriveled by receiving access testosterone amounts in the womb to ever function properly and so he was deemed a male and his registration name was switched from Kazuki to Nataku.
As he grew older and bigger the complications in his organs became so severe that the doctors offered only one solution: the removal of all features (by now over-handled and too scarred to be ever perceived or re-organized in a nearly esthetic shape), leaving Nataku with the ability to pass fluids without danger of infection. The ability to couple with others was beyond the question.
Many times, looking at his niece's Ken dolls, Nataku noted (through the black fog of his now full fledged chronic depression) that he resembled it too much to want to keep on living.
Karen had spotted Nataku in a men's clothing shop with his mother who grew tired of dragging a sack of flesh, bones and depression around. She only did it to keep him within eyeshot where he will not attempt committing suicide.
By now Nataku had attempted suicide six times.
Two times he tried to slit his wrists. One time he tried to leap off Sunshine 60 (where his mother worked as a secretary). One time he tried to leap before the cars of the main road a few blocks away from his house. One time he tried to hang himself. One time he took almost a whole bottle of his father's sleeping pills. Gladly the bottle was half empty by the time Nataku got his hands on it. The Tojou pharmacy pills worked with cruel efficiency, Nataku was clinically dead for two minutes.
When Karen saw him he was just scanning the droning horizon of the great store trying to find a meaning in the clothes he saw all around him and in his mother's shallow, fake happiness at shopping for clothes matching a sex Nataku did not belong in completely.
When their gazes met Karen felt an icy pinch to her heart as the loneliest, saddest, most lost looking eyes met hers.
But the young man's mother seemed to be very happy to have him around. It seemed fake, but it could be attributed to the fact that her growing teenaged son was having a teen depression. Karen actually felt pride and admiration at Nataku's mother, for striving to break her son's gloom with some lavishing and a breath of fresh air in the shop; she even shot a smile at her when the mother met her gaze.
As she tested the reflection of light off the exotic fabric of a tie she chose for her boyfriend, Karen noted that lonely looking lithe young man being abandoned by his mother.
Nataku stood there, a victim to the wind's changing directions at the wild city traffic, gazing about carelessly when his mother had had enough of it. Her son's palm felt limp in her hand, refusing to squeeze back as she tried to pull him into another shop. The scarred wrist she saw when she looked down at his palm made her shameful of her failure as a mother that it grew into anger and hate at her son. As she called Nataku's name he did not answer, choosing to stare around meaninglessly like a dummy. When she neared him to try and gaze into his eyes she saw an empty stare, without light, without life.
Holding back her tears she turned her back on him and walked away, into the subway station nearest to them. She put Nataku's little pathetic excuse for a normal functioning adult's purse in his hand, where his ID card was along with a few hundred yen bills she placed in it before she left. Then she tried to give her son a kiss on his cheek but found she had no more strength within her for it.
Just before she walked away she looked behind her shoulder and deep into her son's seemingly sightless eyes. "I'll be going now," she said, turned around, and left him to the world beyond.
She didn't even give him a proper 'Sayonara'.
Karen, who walked to the store's door when she noted the first signs of distress on the mother's face, immediately walked to Nataku's side and took his hand. She hesitated for a while, staring down at the staircase leading down to the subway as if expecting the mother to return, begging for forgiveness from her son. Then she shook her head, tossing all her silly illusions away, and walked back into the store.
She asked the salesman what the woman with the young man bought.
The man said she did not buy anything, and that she left all the clothes she chose on the counter and mumbled for him to forget about it. Karen nodded; walked to the tie rake to pick the tie she wanted earlier and added it to the pile of clothes Nataku's mother failed to provide for her son. She asked for all the clothes to be wrapped in as a present, the tie separate from the other items. She paid for it while violently gossiping with the salesman (who was, according to Karen's sharp senses, gay) about the latest teenager's idols and which one of them they both thought was hottest, testing her outing-of-the-closet abilities.
Then she stepped out of the store, took Nataku's hand in hers and walked him to the bus station then off to her house. She noted that, unlike with his mother's attempt at doing this, hers worked. She choked back the tears.
When she sat Nataku on his newly spread sheets, on his new bed, in his new room, she placed the gift-wrapped package in his empty lap.
He opened it, examined the clothes inside the twinkling paper wrap and raised sad lonely eyes, filled with timid hope, filled with tears, to Karen.
He told her, in short, his tale. Those were the last words he had uttered since his arrival at Karen's 'orphanage'. Then he collapsed into her embrace and they cried their eyes out together, their arms entangled.
Nataku was very productive in the household; doing the laundry, hanging it, doing the dishes and cooking for the rest of the house's residence when Karen was at work, cleaning the cat sands, taking the dogs for a ride while rolling Kakyou in his wheelchair along. Without words he helped Yuzuriha with her math homework and in his free time he studied for his university entrance exam.
Nataku had not yet decided what he wanted to study in university. He just wanted to slowly introduce himself back into society, as someone whose personality he had not yet determined completely but was hell bound on finding.
He and Karen had a nasty habit of eating chocolate and ice cream on the big sofa in the television room and watch late hour soap operas and yaoi videos Karen rented once she realized she had someone to share them with.
As the final stages of dinner were finished both Karen and Nataku rinsed their hands in the kitchen sink and smiled at each other, content.
They filled up the food bowels and plates, piled them on two trays and along with two jugs (one of apple juice and one of cola) climbed the stairs to the third floor where the Studio lay.
Following the good smell and Karen's fake hoarse marketplace shouts, Yuzuriha tore herself off the television screen, yanked Kakyou away from the sofa into her arms and hurried up the stairs to the Studio.
The Studio was the lair and Wonder Cave of Kazuhiko Hinoto, a crippled artist.
A timid young woman, gentle of speech and movements (unless it was when she sat looming over her canvases, but that came far later after Karen 'adopted' her), constantly apologetic for her limitations, shriveled with the patronizing approach strangers gave her when seeing her almost childish features and her handicap.
On the way back home from her very first shift in Sharonza, Karen drove by the high walls of the mental institution where Hinoto stayed since she was ten.
If it weren't for the sick cat in a box on the passenger's seat by her, Karen would have zoomed past the institution as she usually does. But on that day she drove slowly and could notice, as she drove up a hill overlooking the institution's limited yard, the young girl sitting under a wisteria tree looking at the sky.
It turned on her alarms and she made a U turn (ignoring a few rules on safe and legal driving as she did it and constantly lecturing herself that it was okay even if she was actually a cop) and parked near the institution's gates.
It was sheer luck that Karen had somehow resembled Hinoto's niece who had once upon a time, some sixteen years ago, visited Hinoto in her family's last visit. The head nurse, a sharp woman with amazing visual memory, thought the young girl she saw once grew into this woman who came asking her about the dreamy looking girl in their yard.
Smiling, with a heart full of hope for a patience to actually leave this institution into the hands of the big world outside, the nurse led Karen to the young woman and overlooked them as they chatted for a while.
Looking at Karen loading Hinoto into her car's back seat, she wondered if that woman really was Hinoto-san's niece. The she remembered the soft pure warmth coming from Karen, the perfect kindness radiating from her and decided that it didn't matter. Anywhere would be better then here and god only knows Hinoto had stayed here for long enough.
Hinoto discovered drawing when she once asked Karen to help her express herself. Words were beyond Hinoto since all she could do was whisper in an apologetic voice and mumble in the lowest self-confidence seconding only Nataku's some seven years later.
Karen had brought Hinoto a few big sheets of paper and some finger paints and watched as, as if by magic, Hinoto picked matching colors and dabbed them with her tiny babyish fingers on the papers with amazing talent to create beautiful things.
When Karen dated an arts dealer she bought Hinoto a proper canvas and acrylics, pushing the final results (with a great deal of sweet talks and several sexual favors) into her new boyfriend's hands.
When Hinoto became well known enough and began receiving orders without the need of the art dealer's negotiation, Karen broke up with the annoying man, mentioning not a single word of how she hated him to Hinoto might she slay the woman's creativity with one word.
Hinoto became a well-known artist, her masterpieces hung in modern arts museums in New York, in the gallery of a devoted (and rich!) fan in Belgium, a few museums in London and in a museum in Berlin. She giggled shyly as Yuzuriha practiced her English reading and Karen her English translating of highly admiring articles about her art.
Despite her ever-growing bank account Hinoto refused to leave Karen's house, saying, "I will never abandon my savior and muse".
Whenever Nataku was too depressed to get out of bed, when Kakyou fell in physiotherapy and returned with a murky mood, when Yuzuriha came crying home because she forgot to not talk to Inuki in public and got teased or reprimanded by her teachers, Karen would walk out to a corner in the back yard, take a deep breath and remember those words Hinoto said. Then her hope was rekindled and she became strong once more.
The Studio was also the favorite spot for the house's animals: an old Yorkshire terrier who's owners were about to put to sleep due to his lack of ability to amuse their children, a white tiny poodle who's previous owners carelessly took out to long strolls without sunscreen and now suffered from an ongoing (and probably fatal eventually) skin cancer, a car hit surviving cat who suffered brain damage and would not be able to control his toilet ability (amongst ever changing moods and violent flipping on the living room carpet), a female cat who crawled into a car one cold winter night to be mostly torn away the next morning by the engine's fan blades leaving her deformed and scarred but alive and very sweet, and another car hit feline survivor with two hind legs missing leaving room for a great appetite for playing and food whom Nataku hurried to carry to the Studio whenever the cat dragged itself by the stairs.
Dinner was always eaten here, with everyone gathered in a circle (animals included), scattered on the paint-splattered furniture in the room. Karen poured red wine for those who were old enough to drink it and listened to the day's accounts from everyone before giving her own along with a few dirty jokes she heard from Sgt. Sorata today. She made her family giggle even harder when she told them how Arashi reacted when it slipped to Lt. Hokuto-chan that it was Sorata who told them all these obscenities.
Kakyou filled Karen in on what happened in the daytime soaps Karen liked the most and waved off Nataku's nods of thanks for helping him verbalize what he could not. Kakyou only sat before the brain draining programs to help Nataku help Karen.
Then Hinoto explained Yuzuriha why she can't see her works before they're done, helped by Karen who pressed in the last of the reasons and rid Hinoto of the girl's latest naggings.
Then Yuzuriha walked down to sleep (it was a school night), along with Kakyou who said his brain had turned into miso soup from all the soaps earlier today and he had to let it reform into a well thinking human brain.
Hinoto resumed her wild splashes of colors at the canvas at her mercy, apologizing for Ein (the old terrier) when she heard the paint had fallen on something that wasn't her canvas or the floor (the dog didn't mind at all).
Nataku and Karen retired to Nataku's study to overlook his latest mock exam sheets and then to the television room to turn their brains into miso soup.
Later at night, after taking a long hot shower to melt the tension out of her shoulder blades, Karen finally flopped into bed to sleep.
Just before she fell asleep she realized she did not call her boyfriend today, not even once.
The next day, as she stood appreciating Sorata's well developing sunflowers (looks like they really will survive the winter!), she noted Cp. Aoki walk into the men's ward side of the garden with light bouncy steps.
"Good morning," she chirped at him suddenly feeling the sun on her skin even if it was actually hidden behind a heavy layer of soon to rain clouds.
Cp. Aoki beamed a bright apologetic in a childish kind of way smile and laughed. "I knew I over worked, last time I was greeted by someone they said 'good evening'."
Karen burst into laughter, noting she was laughing harder then the joke deserved it and did it naturally and not from a sense of forcing herself to flatter a man.
"I know what you mean." She was going to say 'my boyfriend called me to ask me where I've been all night' but she stopped herself. By then she knew why.
Cp. Aoki ran his hand awkwardly through his hair and just then the sun chose to gleam out for enough time to catch on the gold of his marriage ring; another reminding jab to her heart.
At once, the sky became sunless again and this time Cp. Kasumi noted it. It was like the light has been switched off in her heart as well. She chatted with the kind Cp. Aoki a little more before she excused herself back to the office with a lame excuse.
As she walked around her ward, trying to ventilate her seething mind and suddenly aching heart, she caught sight of two women in one of the cells in a position that turned the alarms in her head (the 'danger' alarms her profession gave her).
With all her might she walked in on Kanoe leaning with a malicious leer over Satsuki who was backed up into her own cell's wall.
"Don't let me bother you ladies." She leaned against the transparent wall and folded her arms on her chest.
For a brief moment a light of gratefulness flickered in Satsuki's eyes as she slipped out of Kanoe's trap and on to her bed.
Kanoe turned sharply on her high heels and folded her arms of her (ampler then Karen's) chest glaring at the commander of her wardens.
"You have a problem with what we were doing," she hissed.
"Not at all, I have nothing against the blooming of love within these walls only I think that when it is unrequited love, forced unrequited love, it should be cut at the stem."
Satsuki rolled onto her side on the bed and fell asleep.
Kanoe glared at Karen who glared back forcefully doing the slight hunch of her shoulders that made the ranks on her shoulders gleam in the cell's lights to show who Kanoe was glaring at.
After brushing her hair back behind her ears elegantly and raising her chin as high as she could with out looking ridiculous, Kanoe stormed out of the room proudly.
Karen smiled to herself and shot her eyes to the sleeping Satsuki. "You're welcome, young girl."
Satsuki ignored her.
Karen walked out of the cell and straight into her office where she peeled off the 'tough warden commander' mask and crashed into her chair.
How she hated to be reminded that Cp. Aoki was married!
Her cell phone sprang into life with an incoming call from her boyfriend. Remembering the fancy dinners her current boyfriend had taken her household out to, the trip to Tokyo Disney he had promised them on the first day of spring, Karen picked the phone up with the sexiest "Hellooooooooo" she could produce.
Her boyfriend chirped right back to the happy mood as soon as he heard it and immediately accepted her pitiful excuses as for why she didn't call him all of yesterday.
Men, Karen concluded, were too foolish and simple to not have women around to help them channel their means into better and smarter directions (who happen to match women's sense of taste in clothes, food and other luxuries men lavished on women given enough of what they needed).
Closing the cell phone once the conversation ended, she looked out through the window in her office. Clasping the cup of tea she prepared herself while on the phone, Karen found that she was crying.
It was because, as she looked back on her approach to men, that she noticed that Cp. Aoki is nothing like that. She knew he was nothing like that because of various stories about him from his underlings, from her own conversations with Cp. Aoki and from a brief conversation she had with his wife as the lady visited her ward.
Aoki Shimako was a simple woman, a good-natured woman with enough emotional intelligence to compensate her simple education. She was clever and warm and simple to be competed by Karen. There was no way Karen would allow herself to step up and try to lure Cp. Aoki away from Shimako-san, she believed in the sisterhood of women too much to do such a thing just like she never dated a married or already spoken for men, as tempting and loving as the men could be.
And the only men Karen ever knew to be an exception in her theory of men was taken from her, madly in love, fathering a young girl and completely blind to all of Karen's uncontrolled flirtations.
She often wondered why she fell for Cp. Aoki, on a long ago early spring day, why him of all men. After all she met kinder, sweeter men then him. She broke up with men twice better for her then Cp. Aoki, simply because they bored her after a while. So why did her heart linger on this man of all of them?
"Hot gossip! Hot gossip!" Lt. Hokuto leaped her way through the little garden to the classic bench Karen used for her cigarette breaks (she only smoked at work and even those cigarettes were the extra thin, extra long, low on nicotine fancy women's cigarettes). The tray containing cups of tea and a little kettle kept amazingly balanced during the young woman's leaps and careless steps.
"What did you hear?" Karen straightened her back to sit normally after stretching out catlike on the bench in the rare light of the sudden winter sun.
"Didn't hear from someone else, heard it from the source itself! It was a confession!" Hokuto placed the tray on the bench between them and clapped her hands as she straightened her long uniform skirt and sat down properly to keep creases from the well-ironed dark blue fabric. She sat teasingly quiet and waited her commander to urge her to speak.
Karen's patience snapped. "…Well?"
"Second Lt. Magami and Corp. Monou…" Hokuto hung huge glittering eyes at her commander.
Karen's eyes widened in amazement. "They're finally together?"
Hokuto nodded. "Finally confessed about it that is, they've been together for almost a year now!"
Karen was left speechless for a moment, mouthing a little in shock. When she recovered she poured her and Hokuto a cup of tea each and cradled hers in her palms, blowing on the water surface from time to time as she gazed forward at a bush of red camellias, oddly still blooming in the cooling air.
"I can't believe it happened under our noses for so very long and we weren't aware of it," she finally mumbled. "How come they felt comfortable enough about it to tell us only now?"
"Ah, that is because most of their romance was when Corp. Saya was still married." Hokuto blew the fumes off of her cup, gazing at her pondering commander.
"I see…but still…I could have been there for them."
"They knew it, they just thought they aught to face this together with as little help from the outside as possible, they insisted upon being strong, you see."
"I'm so proud of them." A long pleasant smile stretched of Karen's lips uncontrollably. "So, it's going to be their anniversary soon right? Do you think it'll be proper to get them something?"
"Karen-san, it's a private matter such things!"
"Yes but still…"
"If anything, I think Saya would prefer to celebrate her divorce ending." Hokuto giggled at that.
"Remind me again of why they divorced? Besides the fact that her husband looked like a block of flesh with small eyes and small brain?"
Hokuto laughed out loud, clapping her hands happily "Infertility, I think. Impotency as well. He's a Shinto priest, the gods take up his time more then his wife ever did."
Karen hissed on her tea and laughed mockingly. "That is ridiculous, did he show no interest in her at all?"
"It was an arranged marriage, uncalled for, and he had never once showed her a single trace of affection."
"No matter she crossed over back to her side of the playground."
"Karen-san, that's not how the saying goes," Hokuto giggled out.
"Whatever, I'm too old for all these modern catchphrases anyway."
"Don't be ridiculous, you're not so old Karen-chan!"
Karen whipped her head to Hokuto with sharp piercing eyes "How old do I look to you?"
Hokuto stared into the face of her commander, trying to decide if she should answer honestly or tactically. "I don't know, how old are you?"
Karen batted her eyelashes, ran her fingers elegantly through her curls to bounce them up a bit and smiled sheepishly "I'm only 29, you know."
Hokuto burst into a fit of laughter.
Her brother's head appeared in the window overlooking the men's ward's staff garden; he looked worried at his sister's burst of happiness.
"Good day Lt. Sumeragi-san," Karen chirped at him, waving her hand over-enthusiastically.
Subaru stared at her and waved faintly. He looked to both his sides to see no one was looking at him, and then fished in his uniform shirt for his cigarettes to light one.
"Oi Subaru! I'm right here you know," his sister immediately barked at him, her cheerful behavior changing completely from super happy to super angry.
Up in his window, her younger brother was taken aback by the shock of that discovery (he didn't notice before though she was in clear sight of him) and paled.
"Oh let him smoke, the poor thing, you know how busy he is, until he has a time for a cigarette break you come in and ruin his fun."
Hokuto turned her fiery eyes to her commander. "But I asked him to at least not smoke in front of me! It's not fun seeing my brother slowly kill himself!" The last few words she said more to her brother up in his hiding place then to Karen.
"Hokuto-chan." Karen laid her arm across her underling's shoulders which tried to shrug it off. "Hokuto-chaaaaan."
Hokuto shrugged once more, pouting, and turned her head childishly away with a grumble.
"I'm sorry." Karen turned, laughing lightly, to her underling's twin. "That's all I can do Subaru-kun!"
Immediately, Subaru turned off his cigarette, with a violent crushing on the window ledge. "Don't call me that," he almost barked at her and vanished back into his ward.
Karen was left dumbfounded. "Hokuto-chan…I think he…I think he yelled at me…"
Hokuto looked back up at the now empty window "Good, he's showing emotions more and more now."
"He does?"
A loving smile shone on from Hokuto. "Yes, he's getting better now-a-days, really, really better." She turned her proud eyes to her commander who in return squeezed her in for a hug.
Sharonza's counselor was a lovely young lady with soft features and big, ever wondering eyes by the name of Kotori. Just 'Kotori', family names and other honorific she shunned out bashfully, asking her visitors to treat her as their closest friends.
She was very new to the prison, her first 'mission', and already she managed to arrange several yoga lessons (to calm nerves) for the staff of the high security wards, a Star festival small activity and was now up to her neck in trying to arrange something for the New Year.
Karen had made an appointment with her at 13:00 today. She entered the counselor's office when Kotori was just feeding her birds.
Kotori's office, unlike (surely) any other offices in the whole of Japan, had a huge wall sized cage of cute chirpy little birds in a variety of colors, shapes and calls. She was just hanging a plastic stick covered with honeyed grains, nuts and berries for the birds to peck from. She turned around a beamed a huge kind smile at Karen.
Karen moved uneasily towards the big, deep, light purple single seat sofa in Kotori's office placed before the counselor's big comfortable leather chair.
Kotori took her clipping board and sat down with a heavy thud on her chair. "Yes Cp. Kasumi, how may I help you?"
With a only few words at first, then with a free flow of long sentences, Karen spoke of Cp. Aoki and of her mixed feelings about her feelings for him. All the while Kotori listened, nodded, put down her clipping board and folded her palms neatly on her legs.
When she finished Karen returned her gaze to the young woman after her eyes drifted to the bird cage, then the big window to it's right, then to Kotori's little table filled with jumbled papers and cute little trinkets and office toys.
"Well, what do you think sensei?"
Kotori giggled. "Please don't call me sensei, I'm not a trained psychologist."
"Whatever…" Karen felt uneasy both for revealing so much of herself to someone she still regarded as a stranger and for Kotori's awful young age (she was about the same age as Pr. Arashi!).
"I think that you insist upon giving yourself the worst of the good things around you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, please don't be offended." Kotori seemed awkward now, and a little frightened as well. "I just think that you deserve so much better and yet you linger on those out of your reach, that's all…"
Karen stared at the young woman before her. Her mind was filled with too many needs to call Kotori a bitch in various formations to be able to think of how right she was.
"Karen-san, if I may call you that-"
Karen blinked for approval, her head still tilted slight backwards as if to better regard Kotori and find out where the hell that comment came from.
"I've been looking into your personal files and…" Kotori now began fumbling awkwardly with her writing board.
"What?Who gave them to you?" Karen sat upright, grabbing at the sofa's armchairs as if she's about to get up and leave or leap at Kotori to yank the files back.
"I…I was given them when I started this position. I need such information in order to do my job right. It's strictly confidential and no one but me is allowed to read it. Your information is safe Cp. Kasumi-san, please don't worry."
Somewhat still angry, Karen leaned back into the chair, folding her arms on her chest.
The files contained the first interview Karen had in her duty as a ward, a part of the welcoming interviews she had when she was but a mere rookie.
It contained the information that she was the orphan of a single mother who, before her departure to a better world, used to beat her little girl.
It contained the name of the catholic orphanage Karen grew up in and a small review of her personality from the priest running the institution.
"You deserve better Karen, you really do. You think that good things never come to those who don't work hard for them but…you're working hard enough Karen-san, you do, and yet you never bother to claim the best."
Kotori hoped that small, understated advice would help get the message through.
Karen sat, dumbfounded, half curled in the big embracing sofa and thought for a while before she realized it was time for Kotori's next meeting.
As she felt a kind little hand touching her shoulder with the tips of its fingers, Karen shook herself out of her bewilderment and looked up at the softly smiling Kotori with big eyes as clear and innocent as a baby's.
"I'm sorry Cp. Karen-san but we ran out of time and I need to prepare myself for the next person."
"Oh, right." Karen shook herself and leaped to her feet, suddenly noting Kotori was blushing.
"What is it dear," she asked, sniffing out a little piece of gossip to share with her mates back in her ward.
"Oh it's nothing really…nothing at all."
Roles were reversed as Karen wrapped a motherly arm around Kotori's narrow frail shoulders. "Go on, you can tell me, you know."
Kotori hung her head and blushed even deeper. "It's nothing…it's just that…um…my next 'client' is…well…it's Pr. Shiro…" She looked away shyly, her face afire.
Karen was about to comment that the boy seemed to be somewhat…too feminine for her, but she decided to not do it.
"Good luck then," she giggled and gave Kotori an encouraging pat on the shoulder before she left.
She heard Kotori thank her bashfully as she exited the office.
As she drove back home that day, Karen contemplated the meaning of Kotori's words and became filled with restlessness.
Sure, she'd do anything to shake out the strangely insistent love she felt for Cp. Aoki, it'd do a world of good to her current relationship, which brings to her nothing but good things. She will shake that love off, at least from important role it took in her current life.
Yet she wondered; will she ever forget about him completely? Will she ever seize to look back at that man and wonder what could she have done to make him hers?
Will she be stuck, forever standing and watching from the side, envious at a woman who got to the best thing first without ever knowing that there were people far better deserving a kind man like Seiichiro's?
Karen shook her head a little and resumed her strict gazing at the road before her.
She stopped at the huge grocery store to pick up things for dinner today. Life, after all, must move on, and who was she to give up on shepherding her 'orphans' back to life and love?
And so, with her work's needs of her, with her adopted children's needs of her, Karen kept on going. Living from the strength she gave and the strength those she gave it to gave back to her.
Looking back on it, she always regretted not separating Kanoe and Satsuki completely the first time she noted them hanging around too much.
(tbc)