Disclaimer: Refer to previous chapters. Thank you.
Author's Note: I am seriously considering changing the title of this story. New Surprises is just not doing it for me; never did. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Foolish Games. Yes, I got the idea from the song. Don't judge me! Moving along, Miwa's speaking style is based on experience I've had with children under the age of 5, but it's possibly incorrect.
Now, I give you in all its amazing, beautiful, much anticipated and long-awaited glory:
Chapter 11: Where Your Parents Are (I can hear you: "Finally!")
The early morning sun filtered through the window and traveled to a small bed, where it illuminated the bodies of a sleeping young woman and a jumping child. The child, bouncing up and down vigorously, shouted at the young woman.
"Up! Up! Up, up, up!" the girl shouted, plopping down on the bed, only to once again rise and jump more.
The young woman groaned as she finally opened her eyes. "What the hell . . . ?" She rolled over and stared at the jumping figure on top of her bed.
"Mama!" Miwa, the child, beamed at Sana and giggled. "Pway?"
Sana brought her hand to her face and looked at her clock. She had more than an hour before she absolutely had to leave. Yes, the two of them could definitely play before school. Sitting up, Sana reached over to her daughter and, grinning, pulled her down. Miwa laughed.
Grinning maniacally, she bent down over Miwa and began tickling her. Miwa giggled between gasps. "Mama!" she breathed. "Mama, no! Mama!" She laughed boisterously. "Mama—! No!"
Sana smiled. "No can do, kiddo. You came in here," she elicited another series of giggles from Miwa, "—without permission and woke me up," Sana laughed along with Miwa as the child tried to pry Sana's hands off, "—when I was having a really, really good dream. That," Miwa squealed, "—is simply unacceptable."
Cackling, Sana continued tickling Miwa, effectively awaking Josh when Miwa started screaming. "Dad-y! Dad-y—! Mama mean! Dad-y!"
Josh, dressing in the other room, shook his head and smiled. When he was done, he walked into Sana's room and plucked Miwa up and into his arms. "Okay, Miwa, let's let Mommy get ready." He set Miwa down and then kneeled in front of her. "Why don't you come with me and help make breakfast?"
Miwa's eyes glistened and she nodded repeatedly. Laughing, Josh picked up Miwa and carried her with him into the kitchen. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at Sana, who mouthed a thank-you to him.
As soon as they left, Sana heaved a sigh of relief. She loved her child, her daughter, her baby, but she had to draw the line somewhere, and that line included abruptly waking her over an hour and a half before she needed to. She pulled back the covers from her body, then quickly yanked them back as cold air struck her arms. Groaning, she burrowed her face into the pillow and tucked her arms and legs up underneath her.
She could hear Miwa squeal in the kitchen, making Sana shake her head from side to side before covering her face with her hands and snuggling back into her covers.
Once more sighing, she lifted her head and stared groggily at the wall for a minute before hauling herself up on her forearms. She twisted her head, glanced at the clock, and then forced herself to crawl out of her bed.
After dressing and using the restroom, Sana walked to the kitchen. As soon as she noticed Miwa, she started laughing. Her daughter was covered in syrup and was busy trying to lick it all off. Still chuckling, she went to grab her daughter and pull her into the bathroom, taking a large towel, shampoo and conditioner, and a humongous bar of soap with her.
Miwa started shrieking when she realized what was about to happen. Sana knew that her daughter hated baths and would do almost anything to get out of having to take one. Once, back when Miwa was about a year and a half, she'd screamed her outrage at having to take a bath so loudly that Josh's neighbors—she was living with Josh and his family at the time—called the cops on them. When the officers had arrived, they had asked to see Josh, apparently thinking that he had been beating her.
Instead, Sana simply replied, "Nope. My daughter just won't take a bath. She's almost two."
The two men had stared at her, not knowing what to say since she was obviously only a sophomore at the time. Finally, one coughed a bit and smiled knowingly, "Ah, yeah. I have a two year old, too. Handful, aren't they?"
Sana grinned back at him, soaked from the water from when she'd tried to put Miwa in it. "You have no idea." After that they'd nodded at her, but said they still had to check Miwa to make sure.
When they arrived in the bathroom, Miwa was sitting in the bathtub, giving a toddler glower at Sana as she realized that she would still have to take a bath. It was a look her baby had perfected over the past year and used to make Sana feel guilty whenever she turned it upon her. The two policemen made sure she was alright before Sana escorted the two from the house.
At the moment, Miwa was giving the same toddler glower she'd given so many times before. However she was no longer shrieking or flailing around trying to get away from her. Though Sana doubted someone would have called the police this time. The Japanese people were deeply conservative and unlikely to get involved in another's life, even if they were their neighbors. It was at both times a blessing and a curse; right now it was a blessing, what with her situation overall.
With Miwa's scowl still firmly planted, Sana drew the bath and undressed Miwa, placing her inside the bath once it was filled. Quickly and with the skill only a mother has Sana cleaned Miwa's hair out and proceeded to wrap the towel around her daughter.
Efficiently, Sana dried her daughter off and then carried her into her room and dressed her. When the two came back into the kitchen, breakfast was already made and so Sana seated her daughter in her high chair before entering the kitchen.
Walking up to Josh, Sana wrapped her arms around his torso, nuzzling her face into his shoulder. Josh put down the spatula and turned his body so that Sana was now nuzzling his chest and placed his hands on her waist. Sana lifted her face up as Josh bent down, playing with his hair as they kissed. But for some odd reason, Sana didn't feel the spark from before. She dismissed it, however, because it was a stupid thing to focus on anyway. She let go of Josh and allowed him to turn back toward the stove and prepare the pancakes.
He looked over his shoulder at her. "How's the play going?"
Sana looked at him, startled. "Huh? Oh, well, I think it's going pretty well." She watched Josh put some pancakes onto a plate. "I haven't missed any of my lines, and the teacher and tech people think I'm really good as Fantine."
She could hear the grin in Josh's voice. "I'm sure you are. Though you sucked in the play you were in last year." He smirked at her and put more pancakes on another plate.
Sana turned red in indignation. "I did not suck! You Americans just don't know the quality of fine acting! I mean, look at some of your actors and actresses. They're the ones that suck! I mean, did you see that woman in—"
"Whoa, whoa! Easy there, Sana! I'm only joking!" Josh held his hands up in an expression of surrender. Sana paused and stared at him warily. "Honestly! You were amazing." Sana smiled. "It was your English that made you suck."
Sana's smile turned into a frown. "Do you have some sort of death wish, Josh?" He only smiled and returned to the pancakes, whistling loudly. Sana grabbed the pancakes and walked to the table.
"Peas." Sana looked up at her daughter. She was holding her hand out to Sana's pancakes. Smiling, Sana took one and broke it apart before placing it in front of Miwa. "Dankyu." Sana smiled involuntarily at her daughter's expressions.
"Your welcome." She watched as Miwa stuffed a piece of pancake into her mouth. She angled her head toward the kitchen. "Hey, Josh?"
"Yeah?"
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Uh . . . eight-ish?"
Sana's eyes widened. "What did you just say?" She looked at him.
"Why? It's about eight o'clock," he replied.
Sana leapt from her chair, kissed both Miwa and Josh on the cheek, then rushed to the hall to pull on her shoes and backpack. "Gotta go! Love you!" She ran out the door and started sprinting toward her school.
"Shit, shit, double shit. Fuck, ass, bitch, I am so screwed!"
As she finally neared her school, she realized the gate was starting to close. "Fuck!" The bell must've rung already. She was so late. "Wait, please!" She ran harder than before and ran inside the gates seconds before they finished closing.
She didn't stop there, though. She quickly raced to her classroom and slammed open the door. Bending down and holding her knees, she gasped for breath.
"Kitahoshi-san, so nice of you to join us. Take your seat before the bell for being tardy rings," her sensei instructed her.
Sana nodded, then stood straight and walked to her seat, sitting just as the tardy bell rang out. She slumped against her seat tiredly. "Just in time. Arigatou, Kami-sama."
She arose, startled, when the bell rang once more and the students around her began gathering their things and leaving. She looked around desperately. "What class do we start with today?" A student motioned it to her. "Arigatou!"
Jumping up, she grabbed her backpack and hurried out of the class toward maths. Yay. She did not need a class that required intellectual thought in the morning. Wait, had she done her homework for that class? She thought about it . . . no! Oh, now she was really screwed. The teacher hated her and loved to pick on Sana whenever she forgot to do her homework or didn't know the answer to a problem. O! the joy. And now she was giving her sensei a reason to humiliate her. Whoop-dee-doo.
True enough, when the teacher realized that Sana had not completed her assignment, she assigned Sana fifty extra problems than the others. Sana had started to protest, but one glare from the teacher was all it took to silence that urge. Stupid woman, she thought resentfully. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tsuyoshi give her a look of sympathy.
After her other classes, lunch came. However, instead of visiting her friends like she always did, she holed herself up in the library with her maths and history textbooks in an attempt to finish the homework that was piling higher and higher. Her reasons weren't totally unselfish, though. She knew that if she finished all the homework that had been given to her, she would be able to take her daughter to the park or at least take her on a walk. Miwa loved walks and had been begging Sana to take her on one for a few days. And Sana had to admit, she wanted—no, needed—to spend time with her baby girl.
Another benefit would be that she wouldn't have to be stressing out tomorrow morning as she frantically tried to complete all fifty extra problems assigned to her by the Bitch From Hell. From what Sana had seen of her sensei, all the problems she'd received would be the hardest ones even by Tsuyoshi's standards. She contemplated the fact that she could've asked him for help, but dismissed it. She wanted to accomplish this on her own; and even if she had asked for help from him, she would have to constantly be on her guard around him so that she didn't slip a fact that no one but Sana could have known.
Kami-sama, she thought dejectedly, this sucks. Maybe I should just tell them now and get it over with? They'd be happy, wouldn't they? They'd be happy to see me again, to know that I was back, right? Her inner voice said that instead they'd be outraged, hate her, and livid that she hadn't told them in the first place. Maybe it's actually better to keep it a secret and not tell them at all. I keep them from feeling betrayed and me from having to answer their and the entire nation of Japan's questions about why I was gone. If I keep it a secret, I protect Josh and Miwa, because no one will bother them about me.
It's best to keep it a secret.
After school, Sana rushed to the auditorium for the play rehearsal. She'd been in her science class, which was on the other side of the campus, and had been detained by the teacher for a discussion about her grade in the class. Apparently, she was just managing a B, and if she didn't pick up her slack, she might have to be kept back to repeat the class.
That didn't really matter to her right now grade-wise. What did matter to her was the possibility of having to stay in school longer to take remedial classes when she could be done with school forever and watching her baby grow up instead. Fear laced into her heart that she wouldn't be able to spend time with Miwa after she graduated next year, so she had listened and nodded, promising her teacher that she'd do her best to improve.
As she stood outside the auditorium, she was surprised to not hear any sounds coming from the inside. She was twenty minutes late, and usually they would already be running through the scenes and checking that the actors and actresses knew their lines.
Suspicious, Sana opened the double-doors silently, peeking inside surreptitiously. No one was there, and all the lights were turned off. Confused and feeling as though she were somewhere she shouldn't be, Sana flicked the lights on and walked to the stage.
"Konban wa?" she called out uncertainly.
No one answered.
"Anybody there?" she asked into the silence.
Again, there was nothing.
Sana walked to the stage and began peeking around behind the wings and the stage itself, wondering if this was some practical joke. There was a rehearsal today. She wondered if it was being held somewhere else and because she hadn't talked to anyone else in the play today if she had missed it.
"What are you doing here?" Sana jumped, startled, as she heard the voice call out to her through the silence.
She turned to face the speaker. "Nothing, Nishishima-san," she answered. "I was just wondering where everyone is. Is the rehearsal being held somewhere else today?"
She saw the assistant director and the girl in charge of the technical aspect of the show give her a strange look. "There is no practice today, Kitahoshi-san. I announced it in the morning's announcements." At Sana's confused look, she continued. "Both Mizumoto-san and Hatakenaka-san are out sick with the flu, and because they're two of our major leads, I and Mihara-sensei decided to cancel the rehearsal and change it to tomorrow."
"Oh," Sana voiced. She knew she should've paid attention to the announcements this morning. "Well, then, I'll just be going now." She walked past Nishishima-san and headed toward the doors once again.
"Kitahoshi-san," Chiaki called out. When she had the girl's attention, she continued, "I was wondering. You see, I want to know something." She saw Kitahoshi become more nervous with every word Chiaki spoke. "Nothing bad, really."
Sana relaxed slightly, wary of what was going on. "What is it?" she asked cautiously.
"I was just wondering, um, do you, uh . . . Well, what I mean is, uh. . . ."
Sana rolled her eyes. "What is it, Nishishima-san?" she repeated, aggravated. She wanted to go home and visit her baby and Josh. She wanted to go spend time and have Miwa laugh at something as simple as going on a walk.
"I was wondering if I could talk to you about something that's been nagging at me for awhile. I didn't really notice it until now because I wasn't really interested in your life." Kitahoshi gave her a look and prodded her to go on. "I've seen you around a lot and I've overheard some of your conversations while I was directing the play and I just really need to know. It's more for me, to help me know I'm not the only one."
Kitahoshi gave her a bemused look and lifted one of her eyebrows. Chiaki took a deep breath and continued, "Where are your parents? You know, I was just wondering. Because, you know, you've never spoken of them and no one's ever seen them and I just wanted to know." Chiaki saw Kitahoshi staring at her blankly and flushed. "It's just, I thought that maybe you were like me."
Kitahoshi blinked at her. "What do you mean?"
Sana watched as Nishishima flushed an even darker shade of red. "I meant that, well, are your parents not . . . around or something?"
"I don't have parents," Sana replied. In a way it was the truth—not Misako, not Keiko, not even Josh's parents even though they were the most supporting parents she could have asked for when she was pregnant were her parents. She didn't consider them her true parents, even though they had all taken care of her at one point in her life. She just didn't; she couldn't explain it.
She watched as Nishishima's lips formed an 'o' and she whispered, "Right." Nishishima cleared her throat. "Well, I was just wondering because, well, I already told you why, didn't I? Anyway, I should probably get going. I only came in here to make sure no one accidentally came to practice when it was cancelled. Good thing I did." She cleared her throat again, raised her head, and started to walk past Sana. "See ya tomorrow, Kitahoshi-san."
Sana watched as she walked across the front of the school to the gates. She ran to catch up with her. "Nishishima-san," she stated, looking at the girl's face. She didn't respond. "Why are you so interested in my parents? Is something wrong?"
Chiaki stopped and looked at Sana. "You know," she started, "you're really lucky. You may not have parents, but at least if you did, they wouldn't ignore you. Best actress in the school, starring in the play, one of the most popular people in the school, relatively good grades, amazing friends, good at sports and athletics. Hell, you even resemble that actress who disappeared years back. You're our golden girl of Jinbou, aren't you?"
Sana stared at her, surprised. She'd never pegged Nishishima as a jealous or envious type of person. She'd seemed content where she was, more a supporting role than a star actor.
"I'm not jealous of you. Get that out of your head." Sana looked at her. "I can see it on your face, Kitahoshi-san. It's a result of your acting skills. But I'm not jealous of your esteemed and high-ranking golden girl image. Oh no. I'm envious of something most people would do anything to keep from happening." Sana stared at her, frightened. "I want my parents gone."
Sana's eyes widened. "What are you talking about? That's horrible!"
Nishishima stared at her, her eyes full of hurt and betrayal. "They've done nothing for me my entire life. They ignored me after I reached two; they barely acknowledge that I exist now; I come home to an empty house every day. You don't know what it's like to have your parents put themselves and their own passions and selfish desires above you, their own child."
Nishishima's face crumpled as she began sobbing loudly and Sana stared at her regretfully and with some form of understanding. A sudden realization struck Sana. This could have been Miwa. This could be Miwa in fourteen years.
Sana could see it as if she were there: Sana would always be working or struggling or lying and be so focused on whatever she was doing that she would ignore Miwa. It was what was happening now already. Sana was struggling so much with adjusting and hiding her identity from everyone that she'd begun ignoring her daughter. Oh, there were moments when the only thing Sana could do was focus on Miwa and give her baby her undivided attention, but other times . . .
She froze in terror and cast her eyes about worriedly as her epiphany claimed her. This could be Miwa; this would be Miwa if Sana didn't start paying attention to her and treating her the way a mother should treat her daughter. She didn't want her baby wondering what Nishishima was wondering.
She didn't want Miwa wondering where her parents were.
Glossary of Translations:
None needed this time.
Author's Note: Sorry about the long, long, lo——ng time between updates. The reason was that I was seriously considering quitting writing. I'm not lying. I really thought about it. But then I realized that it wasn't fair to you guys (God knows how much I hate it when a story becomes discontinued) and forced myself to figure things out.