I awake on the wooden floor. Glass covers the floor, along with scorch marks that stretch up to the table and beige walls. Although I've already made my mark on this home, it's too early to just burn the place down without examining the rest of the house first. It's not like I have anywhere else to go. My emotions are still spinning in my head, so I sit up slowly, I can't let my emotions get in my way when I've made it this far. I am careful not to cut myself on any broken glass from the portrait, the picture inside long gone to the fire. Once I get up, I use my shoe to slide most of the broken glass beneath the charred remains of the table. Before flooding my brain with any other memories of the past, I walk past the sitting area straight into the kitchen, hoping to find anything edible. I don't even fully try to open the fridge before closing the gates to hell. Years of living in the Satellite and eating stale bread are nothing compared to what must have crawled up and died in there. I pull out anything with an extended shelf life from the cabinets. I'm going to love living off instant noodles, rice, canned beans, and vodka. A well balanced meal. Yum.
I turn on the water in the sink. It takes a while before it runs, then it pushes some tasteful sludge out of the pipes. But after letting it run for 10 minutes or so, the smell seems to be gone and the water is clearer than the Satellite. After getting some type of food in my system, I press onward. The house is two stories with a wide layout. Not many other rooms seem to be on the bottom floor, so I decide to head upstairs to the room I saw before entering the house. The second floor is dark and most the doors are closed except for the the light creeping out of the door at the end of the hall. The atmosphere is making me feel like the main character in a horror movie. I slowly approach the door, still cautious that someone is going to jump out at any moment. Although, they already had a great chance to do that when I was blacked out in the entrance hall.
I make it to the end of the hall, opening the door to find a study. It's filled with a desk, computer, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and other useful tools. The strange thing is that the room is in a mess as if someone had been looking for something. Papers are scattered on the desk and the floor. Books and file folders open and thrown about the room. Was this the aftermath of her mother leaving, or something much worse? I go around the room, gathering papers up before putting them in a pile on the desk. Some of them didn't seem too serious. That is, until I came around papers that held an official stamp of the Moment Investigation and Development Section. These aren't just any papers, but plans. For building the Moment and ways to upgrade the machine itself. I always knew my father was involved with the Moment device, but just how involved was he really? To find out more information I would need to do something I feared most. Cleaning.
It has been two weeks and I cleaned most of the house. At least the study, kitchen, sitting room, and bathroom. The important stuff, as I like to call it, or the only rooms I had the heart to enter, as others might call it. The couch had turned into my bed when I didn't fall asleep at the desk from exhaustion. At least I'm able to take proper showers now. But it was getting close to time for me to go shopping for more food. Thankfully I had found some money in a jar in the kitchen, most likely for emergencies. And if I was right, my entire life is an emergency. Before going shopping, my goal was to at least check out the other rooms around the house.
The remaining rooms on the bottom floor don't turn out to be anything interesting. Just a small bathroom tucked underneath the staircase, a laundry room, and a coat closet near the entrance way. Thankfully, I did find a nice middle zip leather jacket in the closet. It was rather large, with the sleeves covering over half my hands so I decide to scrunch them up slightly, and the bottom of the jacket covers most of my butt. Hopefully that will help get creepy guys off my case for once. Even though the jacket belonged to my mother, it made me happy to wear it. It makes me feel closer to her, as if I can imagine her giving it to me to wear. Maybe my investigation upstairs would even allow me to find some other nice clothes in her closet, even if they're a little bit too big for me. I decide to head upstairs and leave the garage for another time.
The upstairs has seven doors, including the one at the end of the hall with my father's study. The first door on the right is another small office, similar to my father's but seems like it has been used for reading books and knitting than actually working. Anything important in the room seemed to have already been taken out, which helped calm my thoughts knowing that my mother had taken the important stuff, and not someone else coming into the house looking for anything. If it had been anyone else in this room, it would have been in a mess. With all the stuff missing, I wondered if my mother had ran away and tried to live anywhere else before abandoning me in the Satellite. Did she even know why people were after her? There was no way for me to find out now. I drop the thought and continue to look through the house. The door on the left is a small guest room, containing essentials like a bed and wardrobe. The rest of the floor space was taken up by boxes, holding anything from christmas decorations to old bed sheets. Just storage, nothing too important.
The second door on the left is just a small hall closet filled with things like board games, and arts and craft supply. The one on the right is the bathroom I have been using recently, this is the bathroom I would guess would have been mine once I had grown up. This is also what makes me think the third room on the right would be my childhood room. Which means the only other remaining room on the left must be my parents bedroom. It takes me a few minutes to come to terms with things I might see, but I work up the courage to slowly enter the room. It's a very large room with a king size bed, tv, bedside table, and doors to the closet and bathroom. The room is very simple but filled with touches that seem personal to my parents. Memories, photos, everything they would want, but nothing I need to see. Like the study, the room is a mess, except this time with clothes scattered all over the floor. This does look like the aftermath of my mother trying to leave in a rush, which was the truth only a little over 17 years ago.
I walk in the room, unsure of where to look. Every few minutes, I meet eyes with my parents in a picture, and each time crippling pain stabs at my heart. On the floor, I spot a leather wallet. I pick it up and looking inside, its my fathers. It's filled with his ID, cards, and money. I put it in my back pocket, knowing this will be useful to me. I shuffle through the clothes on the floor, but that's all it is now. Clothes. I find a nice purple off the shoulder shirt and steal it from the floor, along with some other nice clothes from the floor and my mother's wardrobe. It's nice to have a piece of her with me, even if this is all I can have. The closet also contains a small black filing cabinet, I sit down going through it for a minute. It contains old electric bills, safety manuals for household products, and my family's birth certificates. Diana and Haruto Mashimo. Those were the names of my parents. I put the birth certificates down before I do anything I would regret. I take the clothes and wallet, deciding it would be best to leave the room. Saving any courage I had for the last room.
The final room, my baby room. I tell myself over and over again that it will be okay, and that I'm ready to see it. I need to see it. I want to know what could have had. What other reality I'm fighting for. I walk in, expecting the room to be dark, but stars glow from the ceiling and a large moon glows from the wall across from the door. I tell myself it's just glow in the dark paint, but to me, it's beautiful. For once, the universe doesn't look so dark and I don't feel so alone. This is was what I would look up expecting to see from the satellite, but the smog would block out my vision, just like the dark thoughts that cloud my head. I flip the light on, the night time illusion is gone and replaced with light blue walls, fluffy clouds, and a beautiful sun. Day and Night. Sun and Moon. My Dad and my Mom.
I feel myself crying, and in this moment, I don't feel sad. I'm in love, with this room, with the thought of my parents. In this moment, they are all I need. I focus on the rest of the room in front of me. The bed and other items range in shades of green as if representing the grass outside. Most things in the room don't even look like they have been used. I feel guilty, as if it's my fault they didn't get used. As if I'm the one to blame for not being able to grow up here. But it's not my fault, and it's not my parents. The reason I wasn't able to look at the stars on my wall, and the reason I wasn't able to sleep in my perfect bed. It's all because of the Psychics, they are the ones to blame. I'm crying again, but this time my face is heating up. I'm angry, I'm upset. I deserved to grow up here and I deserved to see my parents' faces. I just want to have a home. I walk over to my crib, a small purple blanket is placed on top of the crib. It's the only thing in the room not neatly folded. I grab it and hold it tight. This is mine, it's important to me, and I never want to let go of it, but I let go of my room. I let go of the past and I close the door on the way out.
It's finally time, I, Kyoko Mashimo, am going to be a legal citizen. I had spent the past few days getting together all the paperwork I would need, along with turning my father's study into a full blown investigation office, red strings and everything. I'm hoping a citizen license would help me feel safer. Everytime I go outside, I'm worried that everyone I see will call the police on me, and right now, I don't have the documents to back myself up. I feel like an immigrant in a foreign country. To get my license, I need my birth certificate, proof of address, and a valid bank card. Thankfully, I have already found my birth certificate. To get a proof of address, I had to go through the hundreds of papers in the mailbox. My goal was to find the most recent receipt for one of the house billing. Considering there was tons of mail still there, it looked like maybe the trash people eventually started to get rid of some of the older mail after a while. It's not like they made any effort to see why anyone in the house wasn't getting the mail though. I was surprised that the most recent bill was less than two weeks ago, and when I looked at the card number the bill had been paid with, it matched the last four digits of the debit card in my father's wallet that I had found earlier in the week. There had to be some kind of automatic monthly payment, which would also help with finding out how the house was still running. That also meant that there was still money left in my parent's bank account. I had also figured out the password for the card after three attempts of the code in town, it ended up being the month and date of my birthday, which meant that I am now able to use my father's card to make purchases. Not that I really needed to spend lots of money in the first place. I had everything I needed for my appointment and the date and time of the appointment had been booked online.
The morning of my appointment, I wake up early to get dressed and make sure I was there on time. While getting ready, I decide it would be best to braid my hair to where it falls over my left shoulder. It did a good job about hiding my mark without having to work about keeping my long hair down on that side of my neck. Once I'm ready, I slipped my leather jacket on and headed out the door.
I arrive at the ID place at ten before eight in the morning, taking part in the first group of the day once the building opens. As soon as it hit eight, security people rushed us in and made everyone fill out a piece of paper with all of our personal information. Then, we had to turn them in, take a number and wait. I was number sixteen, ironically. Sixteen is my lucky but unlucky number, as this is the age I was turned into a Psychic. Waiting felt like forever. I keep looking around at everyone else, but they were too involved with their cellphone to do anything else. I wish I had that kinda luxury. Phones in the Satellite were hard to come by, and good luck finding any kind of signal. People in the City really don't know how lucky they are, maybe one day, I can finally have all the same privileges as them.
"Number sixteen," said a very low male voice coming from the speakers around the room. I follow a flashing number sixteen on a screen into a booth in front of where the waiting area was seated.
"Hello!" I tried my best to be friendly with the man sitting behind the desk. It didn't look like I would be turning his frown upside down anytime soon though.
"Documents." He sounded so dead inside. He didn't even say hello to me. I sigh and slide the papers across the desk towards him.
"No problem." I paused, looking at him name tag. "Dave." He actually made eye contact with me for saying his name. Wow. To be fair, the man was attractive, but his constant frown ruined his good looks.
"It says here Miss Mashimo that you are eighteen. All citizens are supposed to get their licenses at sixteen, while they are in school. Would you like to explain to me why you have failed to get a citizenship license before now?" He voice sounded like he was starting to suspect something, and at this moment, I don't think calling him by his first name had made a good impression.
"I'm…" Lord, how was I going to get out of this one. "Homeschooled!" Ah Ha. I saved my ass, at least I hoped so.
"I see…" I swear I could see the man rolling his eyes at me. Either way he decided to stamp the document as approved anyway. "I need you to insert your card into the machine on the right and follow the instructions to pay the fee for your card." I do as I'm told and decide it's best to not question anything he says. Once I'm finished, I'm directed over into a different booth on the left to get my photo taken for the picture. Once it's printed, I'm free to leave. It's a regular size card with a boring color. Then, I look at the picture in the corner and it may sound stupid, but to me, this is how I think I would be remembered. Dark braided hair, leather jacket, royal purple off the shoulder shirt, and my family ring. This is me. A new citizen of the city and this is how I am going to be remembered.
After getting my citizenship license and a few days of resting on my parent's bed with all the pictures face down, I decide it would be a good idea to finally see what was in the garage. I need to shop but I really didn't feel up to getting up and go outside today, so I decide to go through the only place left untouched in the house, the garage. The garage was outside through the laundry room. I only expect to find some old tools, a car or two if I was lucky, but what I got is so much more. Upon entering the garage, I realize it is at least one fourth the size of the entire house, if not bigger. It has three large sliding doors, with a nice car parked inside the first one. Tool boxes and workbenches covered the back wall of the garage with a large wooden table in front of them. This is still nothing compared to the three D-Wheels on the far side of the garage. Two are in pristine condition while the third one is still under construction. The one under construction is smaller than the other two. I wonder if this would have been mine. I have always dreamed about riding a D-Wheel. Now, it looks like I might be wanting more than just my citizenship license now. I put D-Wheel license on my mental list of things to look into next. I'm still confused about how big the garage and selection of tools is, considering neither of my parents were mechanics. I also wonder how much money did my parents had, and still have. This is a completely different life than anything I had ever expected. But this was the life fate gave to me, and if it wasn't for this ring and my mother, I would never have known who I really was. I decide to walk over to the D-Wheels. One is made of black chrome, while the other is purple and had a smaller frame. One thing was true about them, my mom had good taste. I put my hand on her D-Wheel, I imagined racing around the City with the wind blowing in my face, through my hair, and pretending I don't have a care in the world. This is the closest thing to freedom I can imagine having, and for a moment, I let my thoughts set me free.