Shiori had never been good at passive cooperation.

She had never been good at active cooperation either. As a child her report cards had been full of such illuminating words such as 'defiant' and 'headstrong' as well as a generous helping of 'does not play well with others'. That turned, later, into 'does not work well with others'. She had never seen the point of it, working with others, playing with the other kids. They had all been so…boring. Boring and bossy. It just hadn't felt right, having to deal with someone else, someone so much weaker than her. She hadn't really honed her telekinesis until her teens but even before that she had always known that there was something about her, something that set her above the crowd. Something that made her…more…than human.

She had always been a big fish in a little pond.

And it had killed her. Big fish did not do well in little ponds. The bigger the fish the more space it needed. Too little space and the fish couldn't swim, couldn't move, and got anxious. Anxious stressed and depressed. Too little space meant too little food, too. The bigger the fish the more it needed to eat. A good sized goldfish needed to eat twice a day. Lightly, twice a day. Not once, some people did once, but that was just too much at once. They gorged themselves when they lived in too small a space, like they knew that they weren't getting enough to eat.

It made sense, of course.

"Thank you, it's very good." said Shiori as she drank her thin, flavorless, broth with noodles and what might have been vegetables at some point floating in it. Maybe from a can. She didn't know. She drank it down appreciatively. It was important to be appreciative, it was important to cooperate. Passively and actively.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice.

The slot in the door slid closed. It was about the size of a cat door, or maybe something that could have been found in an old asylum. It certainly felt like she was locked in an insane asylum. White walls, no windows, nothing to do. Sometimes a book or a magazine was slid under the door for her, always in Japanese. Always nationwide publications….she didn't think that she had been taken out of the country. She didn't think that she had been out for that long.

Not that she had any idea how long it even had been.

She was taking it one day at time…or one sleep cycle at a time. It was important to keep well rested. It wasn't as though it was easy to find sleep here, with nothing but a thin blanket and a bedroll on the floor, but she made do. What else could she do but make do? It wasn't like she could just go down to the store and get herself a better bed…a feather bed…or one of those memory foam things. Or even a proper futon. Not that she had ever been a fan, of course. There was just something about sleeping high up off the ground. The higher you slept the better you were…the higher up in the world you were.

That was what Mother and Father had said, anyway.

Mother and Father…she sounded like Touichirou. Mom and Dad. Those two people who had made her, kept her alive for twenty years, and never had one good thing to say about any aspect of her life. Why couldn't she just get along with people? Why did she always have to walk around with her nose in the air? Why did she always have to be such a know-it-all? Why…so many whys. She didn't know why they had always asked her, they were the ones who'd made her, therefore they were the ones who should have understood her the best.

They never had.

And she had never understood them. Why was it that in one breath they could tell her that she needed to get along with people and then in the other they could tell her that of course she got a four poster bed, the higher the bed the higher she was in life. The higher her station, if the was the right word for it. If they were above the rest, the Sakata's, then why should she have had to cooperate with all the other kids? The teachers? All of the unrelated adults in her life? Or the related ones…she had come from normal people after all. Eventually she had gotten to an age where she wondered why it was that she had to take orders? Why did she have to cooperate?

To keep herself alive.

That was why children instinctively obeyed their parents after all, because they knew that left to their own devices they would die. That was also why Touichirou's children were so very out of control. They knew that they could survive without him, easily, under their own powers and abilities. Not just their telekinesis and whatever else they could do but their own…that way they moved through the world, or at least Shigeko did. That way of walking, talking, of just being…like the world had to cooperate with her, not her with it.

She wondered how Shigeko would have faired in these circumstances.

Probably as poorly as Shiori was. A curse room was a curse room no matter how powerful you were. There, etched into the walls, were curses. She couldn't stand them. Did they really have to be so, incredibly, visible? Couldn't they have hidden them under a coat of paint or something? it wasn't as though there was a shortage of white paint in Japan…if she was even still in Japan. She hated this, the unknown, the fact that she was so cut off from herself…from the world.

If there was even still a world.

They said that isolation drove people insane. She had never believed that, she had always preferred to be on her own. People were so…people. Annoying. In her way, in her space, just…there. It was one thing when they had a use, when you had a use for them, but when you didn't they were just…there. They were there int eh world and you were just expected to share your space with them. Your world. Your just…everything. Maybe it was because she had always been an only child, no way her parents were going to risk having another one of her. Another little terror….that had been their name for her. Just because she 'terrorized' the other kids…she had been a toddler and it had been nursery school. There had been toys and she didn't see, hadn't seen, why she hadn't been allowed to have first pick. She has always seen it in herself, sensed it in herself, that she should have been first…and besides, it had been a better system when she had been the one distributing the toys. People naturally wanted to follow a leader, even people who lived in the jungle and spent their days fighting off piranhas….wait…they didn't really go after people, now did they…

She was way too hungry.

Too hungry and too tired. If she tried she could pretend that she was a kid again, locked in her room without dinner. Punished for terrorizing the other kids, her parents, the neighborhood…whoever else decided that she was 'terrorizing' them. Everyone had just needed a little bit of leadership, that was all. Everyone had just needed to understand that if they just…she couldn't remember what specifically it had been which had upset her, at that time, but it had been something important…important to her back then, of course.

Now…now she had to keep her priorities in order.

She pulled at her shirt, she pulled it tight across her abdomen. She was losing weight, a lot of it, too much of it…and now she knew that she was losing her mind. The isolation had been what had done her in. Not that she had ever minded being alone…one could never really be alone when one was surrounded by life. Plants, animals, fish…fish which people did not count as animals for some reason. Just because something didn't breathe the air…and there were plenty of fish that could breathe the air.

Well, no, not plenty…just therapods.

Ancient amphibious fish…so where they fish or were they amphibious? She wanted to know…she reached into her pocket. Of curse she felt nothing, her phone had been the first thing that they'd taken away from her. Her phone, her shoes, her belt, her coat…everything. They had stripped her down to practically nothing it felt like. Her shirt and slacks…and yet she felt naked. She didn't even have her bra anymore. Nothing that she could use as a weapon. Nothing that she would be able to escape with…they were keeping her here, and they were keeping her alive…

And they were keeping her powerless.

She couldn't see her aura anymore. She was naked…so naked. She was nearly fully dressed and yet she was naked. She couldn't see it or feel it…it was almost like it had been taken from her along with her shoes and belt and coat and phone and…and all the other things that made her, her. All the things that she had chosen herself…she had cared so much for that, hadn't she? Being able to choose things for herself…and now she couldn't. Now everything was out of her control…it was like being on a rollercoaster.

She had never enjoyed rollercoasters.

When she had been a child she had been dragged on some class trip to Nara Dreamland. It had been hot, crowded, boring, and much too…too….not somewhere she wanted to be. She had felt the entire ride there like she had been dragged off kicking and screaming…she knew better now. Being there, far from home, no way to find her way back….not unless she wanted to walk for days and days it had seemed…the other kids had enjoyed their day, their outing, but she had spent the entire time wishing that she could have gone home…not out of homesickness…but out of sickness for having been dragged here and there and everywhere…kicking and screaming off into the night…like the sort of woman that she had spent her entire life trying not to be…

There were other kinds of lunged fish.

Mudskippers were lunged fish. Not ancient, no, there were very much alive. The mostly lived…where did they live again? Africa…India…Indochina? Indonesia? In the ocean…no, off of the coasts. They weren't a deep sea sort of fish, it wouldn't have made any sense if they had been. What did something that lived it's life deep under the water need lungs for? Lungs were for coming up out of the water, onto the land, for all sorts of reasons. Mating, eating, making people scratch their heads in confusion…she needed to get some mudskippers. Touichirou would have gotten such the kick out of them….no, Sho would have. Touichirou's son was the one who liked animals. Touichirou would have lost his mind at the very notion of a lunged fish. He had no idea…she had no idea…he had this sort of fear of the natural world sometimes. He didn't trust things that he couldn't control, or dominate…but you could dominate the natural world…in fact she did so all the time….

She used to.

Still too cold for the outdoor garden. There wasn't going to be a single sprout until the spring…mid spring. Not early spring. Early spring might as well have been late winter….it was still midwinter, wasn't it? It was still the middle of it all or…or maybe the end of it all or….she didn't know. She pressed her hand to the wall. She didn't know where it was, the breeze, or if it was even real…she wished that it had been up to her, if there had been a breeze, if there had been a way out…she couldn't see her aura. She used to be able to see it but now…now she couldn't…

The wall was cold.

It was still midwinter. It hadn't been that long. She had only been here for a few days…a few sleep cycles. Not that sleep really came that easy around here, wherever here was. Her head was killing her…she wished that she had some idea of what was going on…but she didn't. That was what this was, this headache, this pressure…this building pressure. She could feel it in her temples. This pressure to go somewhere, to do something, to pound on the walls and find a weak spot…to pound on the door and demand to be let out…

Not that it would do any good.

She had to fight everything in her nature, here, to survive. She had no idea…it wasn't of any consequence what she did. She was going to die here. She was going to die and then her body was going to be burnt or dissolved and then she'd be nothing more than a collection of memories. Poor school reports, Touichirou's undying love, whatever the hell his kids felt about her…people who worked for her, people who were going to tear her entire life apart…they were going to pick over it like vultures, weren't they. They were going to pick apart everything that she had created, built, until it was nothing more than bones. Vultures, the lot of them. Scavengers. Bottom feeders. The sorts of fish that ate the debris at the ocean floor…where there was no light at all to be found. Nothing…the corpses of whales sunk down sometimes. There were sharks down there, nearly blind things, that picked the corpses nearly clean. They ate only once a year, about…

A good, substantial meal.

Substantial enough that there was something left behind for the rest of the bottom feeders. Animals, creatures that could be mistaken for plants, that lived on the bones and what little flesh remained. They ate it down to nothing, nearly nothing, and then what little was left went to the even more bottom feeders. The lowest creatures…and then there was plankton, of course, and then even smaller than the plankton there was…there was…she couldn't remember right now what there was. She'd look it up later.

She laughed.

More of a snort, really, but enough to confirm what she had known from the beginning. She was losing her mind. She was going to completely lose her mind in this room, this curse room, and then at some point she would be killed and her body would be thrown into the river and sustain what little ecosystem there was left. The ocean. The…they had polluted all the water ways. She had never considered herself an environmentalist but maybe…but maybe she should have done more for the environment or the world or herself or…or something. Or maybe she should have just made herself more useful to her fellow man.

She really was losing her mind.

She held the bowl in her hand and swirled the broth around. it was said that you needed to take in at least four hundred calories a day or the brain would start to cannibalize itself. That was how much it needed a day to run. The rest of it, muscles and such, took much more…her body was already starting to cannibalize itself. She was getting skinner…she had always been a little on the overweight side…even as a child there had always been a paunch to her stomach and a roundness to her cheeks. She had lost the roundness long ago and as for the paunch…well that was why they had invented control tops, wasn't it? And girdles…though she wasn't her mother….her grandmother. She wasn't going to go around in a girdle. Control tops were enough of a throwback for her…she wondered what the state of Japanese hosiery was without her to prop it up. She was probably the last holdout…though she didn't know why. Shapewear was torture and hose, thankfully, freed you up from having to shave your legs…tedious work even with telekinesis…

It had been a while.

Her legs were carpeted again. Her underarms, too. She could feel it…it wasn't like they were going to be stupid enough to let her have something sharp in here. They had even taken away her hair tie…her hair was so greasy. She was so greasy. It had been too long without a bath. She held her hand out like she was cradling her phone. No stars to this place….well one star and then a review stating that she would have given it no stars if she could have….and yes, those reviews were helpful and she wasn't going to stop leaving them…not that it mattered now. It was amazing what did and did not matter now…all of it. So much of her life just…it didn't matter.

So many pointless moments…discussions…arguments.

She pressed her hand to her stomach. She was losing weight…maybe it was best that she and Touichirou hadn't conceived this time. She didn't know what she would have done if she had been pregnant and in this situation. There was no way in hell she would have been able to cooperate. There was no way in hell she would have let her child be born here…but she didn't have to worry about that now. No, what she had to worry about was the fact that very soon she was going to have to deal with the fact that she wasn't pregnant…if she even could. They said that malnutrition affected that, didn't they? So she wasn't going to have to worry about weaving tampons out of her greasy hair anytime soon…it hadn't been that long….unless the process had already started…but it wouldn't start. It wouldn't start because she was going to eat and…and she wasn't going to die here….she'd do whatever she could to survive.

She drank down the rest of her soup. She was still herself. She was just a thinner and more powerless version of herself.