All the ways you come back to me

Pressure

Part II : Mei

When Mei opens her eyes, she finds the pallid ceiling facing her, the white surface hardly lit by the blue light of the small night lights which punctuate the walls. The reason for her awakening is probably the elbow which digs painfully in her ribs, as well as the blanket which was covering her legs which disappeared, certainly pulled by somebody else. The room is quiet, the soft symphony of the breaths around her hardly disturbed by some anonymous snores.

She turns her head to her left to see that Micro-Ice is no longer there, then turns it to the right to try to decipher the time on the small alarm clock in the corner of the room. After a few seconds of deciphering the light bars, her brain finally manages to print that it is 6:47. Although she is not yet fully awake, Mei feels frustration rising inside of her, which she tries to evacuate as soon as possible with a sigh. He let her sleep two hours too long, almost three.

Deciding to go find her sidekick, whom she knows is not far away, Mei slowly gets on her feet, going on her knees before getting up completely. The kids around her are still asleep and they have no reason to get up before the automatic light at 7:30, so they might as well continue their night. She carefully steps over several bodies before moving between the sofas. Arriving at the back of the room that joins the entrance, the kitchen and the hallway to the bedrooms and bathroom, she stops and listens. The nightlights are too low for her eyes to be of much help so it's the distinctive sound of the fridge door that makes her turn toward the kitchen, it only takes three long strides to reach the doorstep.

The small room is composed of two counters that run along the walls, a small sink still full of dishes from their dinner, and a small fridge at the back of the room, topped by a microwave. A few cupboards hang high up, storing canned goods, dishes and pots or pans of all kinds. She can't tell if it's the space that's lacking or just their lack of organization, but most of the doors no longer close, blocked by their contents. The room is cramped, far too small for the ten of them, and she would be surprised if more than four of them could fit in. But it doesn't matter, because Micro-Ice is there, sitting on the counter glued to the fridge, a spoon in his mouth. The weak blue light makes his face gray and his eyes strangely bright, but it doesn't prevent her from distinguishing the nod he gives her as "hello", nor the dark circles under his eyes.

- We agreed on 4am.

- Good morning to you too...

- Mice. It's almost 7, you should have woken me up.

Mei is not sure if her annoyance is very clear since they are forced to whisper, but anyway her comrade ignores her royally, too busy scraping the bottom of his yogurt pot.

- Mice!

- Hm...

- I'm serious.

The only reaction she manages to get out of him is a vague shrug doubled by a strong look before going back to his breakfast.

- You needed the extra sleep.

- You need to sleep too, silly.

- You've got practice this morning...

- And you this afternoon!

- Exactly! I'll have plenty of time to make up for my night during the morning.

- We both know you won't sleep until I get home.

- I'll sleep through lunch.

- That's only three hours, tops.

- What's the big deal? I don't need to be in my best mind to go break some robots, you do.

- At what point did it become a contest to decide who deserves the most sleep?

This time Micro-Ice sighed heavily and really lifted his head from his yogurt to look at her. Mei feels obliged to validate that they have understood each other well.

- When we say 4 o'clock, it's 4 o'clock.

- Okaaay-

- Mice!

- Ok! Ok! I got it, gosh…

Mei nods, relieved by the half promise. She doesn't know if he'll listen to her, since Micro-Ice likes to do as he pleases, but she knows he'll be more careful, even if it's only for a while. Leaving her position in the doorway, Mei moves forward to lean against the wall facing him. In the adjacent room nothing moves.

- Did the night go well, at least?

Micro-Ice tilts his head from right to left to indicate "more or less".

- Molly came in to chat around midnight. I stopped Kylian from raiding the kitchen at least twice. Haan lost his plush around 2am too, so I had to go and help him find it. We really have to make them tidy up this room, I almost fell three times because of the amount of mess they managed to create. Really, it's impressive...

Mei smiles at the remark and refrains from pointing out that he was surely much worse than them at their ages.

- No nightmares?

- Not tonight. What about you?

- No, I... I slept well.

Micro-Ice nods with a smile, looking like he's saying "good for you", before tossing his empty cup into the trash can. The spoon ends up in the sink with the rest of the dirty dishes. A silence begins to settle and Mei has only one desire: to take advantage of one of the rare moments they have just the two of them to talk about important things. And the latest developments that are to their advantage, especially. Except that even though they've been whispering since earlier, there's no guarantee that no one is listening. And even if she has never managed to detect a single microphone or camera in the few rooms that make up their "house", she can't afford to believe that there aren't any. So she chooses to beat around the bush, to bring up the subject half-heartedly, just to see if Micro-Ice is thinking the same thing she is.

- And Sanja? How did it go?

Micro-Ice looks at her with an expression she can hardly read.

- The night...?

- Hmhm.

- She came into the living room around 2:30, but nothing special.

- And other than that?

- Nothing more than what we discussed yesterday. She was not at her best, but she seemed to be motivated to get out of her usual fleeing technique... She seemed to believe in her shields anyway.

- If she can make shields, it's done.

Maybe a little too frontal for an allusion... Micro-Ice wrinkles his nose, a mimic she has learned to read as annoyance, even if she interprets it rather as "Shh" this time, so Mei pretends to continue her sentence hoping to drown the fish.

- She'll be able to take care of herself, we won't have to cover for her as much during the training sessions.

- Maybe...

- If she's self-sufficient soon, we might pair up with the other kids too. I have a hard time evaluating their level.

- Well, we knew the Breath pretty well and it was already complicated to help Sanja, so other fluxes... I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

- I don't know, maybe...

They continue to chat like this until the daytime lights are triggered in every room. The neon lights come to life in unison at 7:30, blinding the two Snow Kids a bit in the kitchen and setting off a general whining in the living room. None of the kids want to get up that early so everyone grumbles to curse the harsh lighting. It takes several minutes for Mei and Micro-Ice to motivate their troops to get up, mercilessly pulling blankets and pillows from those who try to go back to sleep. Breakfast is taken right away. If some of the children gobble up their yoghurt and drink their fruit juice in an instant to run to their rooms or fight for access to the bathroom, others are still half asleep, their eyes in the void as they eat their meals in small bites. Even if seeing her little kiddos so lost in the morning amuses her a lot, Mei takes the time to make them some tea, hoping that the hot liquid will help them a little. Micro-Ice, on the other hand, supervises the first rumbling arguments in the hallway while making sure those who have obligations in the morning are ready on time. Someone stays locked up in the bathroom too long, causing monstrous screams. A voice complains that the stuff in their locker is gone. Another calls for a lie-in. If the context had been different, Mei could have smiled at the summer camp atmosphere that emerges from the picture.

Molly leaves at 8 a.m., followed by Ican at 8:30am. and Sanja at 9am, each going to their personal training.

Mei makes sure that the kids who are still comatose in the living room have later schedules before leaving to get ready as well. On her way to the bathroom she sees Micro-Ice in one of the rooms helping Kylian and Driss to put away a board game scattered on the floor.

The bathroom is small and the passage of children before her is more than visible: toothpaste covers part of the sink, some lockers have been improperly closed, and the floor is slippery in places because of the soap. Even the mirror is blurred by fingerprints and steam, barely masking her image. Her skin looks pale under the too white light of the neon, accentuating her dark circles which have nevertheless diminished a little thanks to the almost complete night she just had. But even worse: her hair is in a terrible state. Her long braid was partially undone during the night, long brown strands going in all directions, creating spikes and knots. Mei grimaces, cursing Micro-Ice for not telling her earlier.

Tucking her overly long bangs behind one of her ears, she sets about undoing her hair completely to get it right again. She neatly gathers her long hair into a ponytail at the top of her head, tying the mass with a thick elastic band. Then she begins to braid the strands along the entire length, creating a long brown braid that she ties at the end with another elastic. The hairstyle has the advantage of shortening her hair a little without her having to cut them, and even if she would have abandoned her signature ponytail for nothing in the world a few years ago, she is rather happy with the result. It takes her a few more minutes to get through a quick shower and into the training uniform stored in her locker, but when she finally emerges from the small, foggy room, she's right on schedule. The holographic clock announces 9:27, so she heads straight for the lobby to get her shoes, taking the time on the way to tell Micro-Ice that Leroy has fallen asleep on the coffee table and spilled half his orange juice in the process.

At 9:30 a.m. precisely, she hears the metal plates sliding into the outer room, producing a series of slams, and finally the door beeps before sliding open to let her out. Mei rushes into the tunnel without wasting a moment and climbs into the waiting transport cabin. The journey is not very long, so she distracts herself by trying to recognize the path to guess which room she is heading to. She hesitates between the holographic training room and the obstacle course room, but when the cube finally stops to graft itself to a wall and open the door, it's a large gray room that greets her, the plain surface punctuated only by blocks of varying size. Recognizing the equipment, Mei knows in advance that she will not have much fun today.

Mei walks to the middle of the large room, taking the time to roll her neck and shoulders to warm up her muscles. When she gets to about the middle of the room, she stops and faces the wall where the large opaque windows are perched several feet off the floor. She can't see them inside, but she knows they are there to observe her, so she waits for their instructions. Behind her, the door of her transport cube closes, the gray wall becoming again perfectly uniform without the least trace of the door which she just went through. A few seconds later a voice a little too cheerful comes out of loudspeakers that she does not locate, proposing her nicely to improve her technique by pointing out the various cubes in the room.

Mei sighs and turns around to decide where she wants to start. Deciding to warm up a bit first, she heads towards a cube that is half her size, a "50" is written in blue in the corner of each side. Posting herself at five good meters of the cube, Mei tries to make the void in her head, pushing her mind to concentrate. She takes a long breath, inhaling as much air as she can before blocking her breathing. Only then does she reach forward with her arm and begin to visualize. She imagines her Breath traveling down her arm, from her shoulder to her hand, and continuing forward, as if it were an extension of her arm. The projection works after a short while, the block in front of her charging with Breath all at once, the blue and white flames encompassing the form to dance gently against it. Mei exhales deeply before moving on. She contracts her fingers, testing the grip she feels on the cube, and when she is sure of her control, she gives it a boost. The cube a few feet away from her gently lifts up and remains weightless, spinning gently on itself. Mei sees in the corner of her eye the red target that appears on the right wall, she just has to add a new impulse to the Breath surrounding the cube for it to fly off, crashing on the wall at the right place, describing a perfectly horizontal trajectory. The cube hits the wall with force, exploding into countless small pieces on impact, the material heavy but too brittle to create any damage.

She repeats the warm-up several times on similar blocks, continuing until she feels the manipulation more fluid and puts less effort into projecting her Breath. By the fifth block she no longer needs to hold her breath to complete the exercise. In fact, she hardly has any problems with this manipulation now. The transfer of flux is sometimes a bit laborious at first, but she has done it so many times that once she warms up a bit her muscle memory takes over. Whether it's on inanimate blocks, moving robots, complex shapes or objects of any kind, she could almost do it with her eyes closed.

Her main issue is to build up her strength.

For a few months now, she has had the impression of having hit a glass ceiling. If the object exceeds a certain weight, or a certain size, she can't do it. Handling several objects at the same time is also very difficult. Whenever she tried, even if she managed to project her Breath on two objects, the manipulation became unpredictable. She even almost crushed herself one time... She saw Dame Simbai do it before, several times, so she knew it's possible. She knows she could do it. And yet...

Time passes strangely in the grey training room. She feels like she spends hours trying to push her limits, block after block, failure after failure. In the end, she manages to get a boulder marked "145" off the ground, and even though she's done better, she tries to take it as a victory. She ventures to manipulate multiple blocks as well, but none of her tires are conclusive. Even if she only takes light blocks, she can't give the impulses she wants, the blocks being thrown in the same direction, or the opposite, their movements divide completely without her having any control over their trajectories.

No comments come out of the speakers, nor any new instructions for that matter. So Mei continues until she is told to stop.

When the voice echoes again in the room, announcing the end of her training in the cheesy voice she hates so much, the person has the nerve to add that "it's okay" and that she will "do better next time". If she wasn't so exhausted, Mei would have made an inappropriate gesture towards the tinted windows. Even though she hears her mother's voice grumbling every time she makes one, this time she would have done it.

The exit door opens again in the back wall, revealing the transport cube, so she doesn't waste a second. She leaves the room angrily, still trying not to let too much emotion show on her face, and goes to sit in the cube, which closes behind her in a second. She takes advantage of the journey to wipe the sweat which runs on her forehead, forcing herself to breathe slowly to bring down her heart rate. Closing her eyes, she pretends to take a little nap, but in reality she imagines taking control of the cube that transports her, making it derail, hit a wall, and escape. She has had this idea in her head for a long time now, but she is realistic: if she is not injured in the concussion, she would be apprehended much too quickly once in the corridors she does not know... So it's a waste of time. For now.

The cube arrives in front of the door of their "house" after a characteristic jerking, followed by the sound of the plates spreading outside. Again she imagines holding them back one by one with her Breath to keep the passageway open so that they all get out. If only. She's already having trouble splitting her fluid over two objects, so the twenty or so plates on either side of the hallway are a waste. One more time.

The slamming of the plates ends with her cube connecting with the hallway wall, and finally, the door opens.

Mei almost runs through the hallway, eager to find the others and chase away the dangerous thoughts in her head. The door opens to let her in, which she does in a flash. As soon as she enters she is greeted by a smell of fried food, a sign that Micro-Ice has already started to make lunch, so she hurries to remove her shoes and jacket before crossing the living room in long strides. She makes a quick sign to Sanja, Leroy and Driss who are playing a board game on the coffee table and goes directly to the bathroom. Her shower is quick but the hot water feels good. She takes a little time to dry her hair properly before emerging, dressed in a more casual version of her uniform, and joins Micro-Ice in the kitchen.

Her sidekick is slumped over on one of the worktops, his chest lying completely on top of it, his head held upright only by the hand that supports it. He watches a pan full of nuggets heating on the hob with a blank stare, and looks up at her with a good second to spare. Mei tries to ignore how dark the circles under his eyes are and focuses on the smile he's giving her.

- How did it go?

Mei comes and leans against the wall right next to him, joining him in the cooking watch.

- Not great, not terrible. I'm still having trouble getting stronger.

- Hmm... Frustrating...

- Yeah. And you, did the morning go well ?

Micro-Ice sighs and straightens up, joining her against the wall.

- Pretty well. The dishes are done. The guys have pretty much cleaned up their rooms. The bathroom too. I stopped a battle for a board game, Adri's sulking as a result but I didn't quite understand why. Molly came back early, Ican and Sanja a little bit later, but it went well for everybody apparently. We avoided the juice stains on the carpet too, since Leroy had fallen asleep with his head in it... And I'm making nuggets.

Mei nods, noting in the back of her mind that she'll have to go talk to Adri. Just above the fridge, the microwave shows that it's almost 1pm.

- At what time is your training?

- 3pm.

- Go get some rest then, I'll take over lunch.

It's Micro-Ice's turn to nod, finding nothing to retort to her proposal. He passes in front of her to leave the kitchen, so she takes the opportunity to hug him. Micro-Ice returns it without a word, maintaining contact for a few seconds, before leaving in the direction of the living room.

It takes her barely five minutes to finish cooking their lunch, after that she commandeers Ican who is still playing in the living room to help her get some dishes, gathers all the children, and finally they eat. Micro-Ice is slumped in one of the beds in the unoccupied room that should have been theirs, so she lets him sleep, keeping his share aside.

Driss leaves at 2pm, Adri at 2:30pm, Micro-Ice at 3pm and finally, Leroy, Haan and Kylian go to their gym sessions around 3:30pm.

Mei spends her afternoon taking care of the children still present. She adds a request for Xyionian vegetables to the weekly shopping list, hoping to get some to please Molly, chats with Adri when she gets home, helps Sanja create a music quiz, tidies up the laundry she finds lying around in the different rooms, defrosts the evening menu, stops Ican from destroying the brick building made by his roommates... All in all, she hardly stops.

Driss and Adri come back around 4pm. Leroy, Haan and Kylian come back together at 6pm. and finally Micro-Ice for 7.30pm. If everything apparently went well for the children, Micro-Ice has a superficial burn on his shoulder and his trainings for the next day are cancelled. The only explanation that she manages to get from him is "I miscalculated a jump", an answer that makes her want to pull his ears until he tells her everything. Except that all the kids are nearby and she sees Micro-Ice gritting his teeth at every move, so she lets it go.

The dinner goes quickly, the preparations for the night also, and finally when the clocks show 9pm. all the lights go out. Already lying on the carpet of the living room, Mei hears some noises coming from the bedrooms. She knows in advance that they won't come to join them right away, even if they always end up sleeping in the living room in the end. Micro-Ice is sleeping right next to her, lying on his back and half hidden under a blanket. She has to wake him up at midnight, but she plans to do it only at 2 o'clock. Mei waits for the hours to pass as she stares at a corner of the ceiling, listening with one ear to the noises which echo a little in the hallway.

She doesn't know why, but the last few days have been worse than usual.

Her daily routines. Her workouts which lead nowhere. The rooms that are too small. The whispers of children in the distance. The sizzling of the little lamps around her. Micro-Ice breathing next to her. She feels anxious. Stressed. Frustrated. Stuck. Micro-Ice knows this, and that's why he let her sleep last night. Except they can't afford it. It's too dangerous for their already strained rhythm. The image of her room at her parents' house passes before her eyes, followed by the one she occupied with Tia at the Faculty, her apartment downtown, the hotels of the Genesis, Paradisia, Sinedd's apartment, the Planet Akillian... All those places she felt so comfortable in and would give anything to get back, right here, right now.

Mei shakes her head as if the movement would chase away the mirages projected by her mind. Micro-Ice needs her. She needs Micro-Ice. The children depend almost entirely on them. She is not allowed to fool around, or even to delude herself. So she grits her teeth, clenches her fists, and forces herself to focus on the ceiling. Listening to the noises in the bedrooms keeps her busy enough to ignore her fatigue and the sleep that tries to take her away repeatedly.

The night passed quickly. As usual, all the children joined them as it went along. As usual the lights wake them up at 7:30am. As usual some of them leave in the morning to come back at noon. It is the case of Mei today.

She embarks with Sanja towards their common training, and even if she tries not to show it to the teenager in front of her, Mei is not feeling it today. Her darker thoughts of the previous day have tarnished her dreams of escape, and unfortunately Sanja doesn't cheer her up much. They spend hours in a room full of obstacles, Mei projecting small objects towards the girl who tries to stop them with shields. The exercise is efficient for Mei, since she works on the restraint and the precision of her projections, on the other hand it doesn't go well for Sanja. The little redhead stretches her hands angrily at each attempt, tries different positions, different methods to call her Breath, but nothing works. After what feels like the hundredth attempt, Mei loses hope. She tries to encourage her apprentice, suggests trying different methods, to breathe, to hold her breath, to visualize, but nothing works. She encourages her each and every try, of course, but she feels all her hopes drown more and more.

Dejected and knowing that the end of the session is near, Mei loses concentration: she throws only very small objects, visualizing her projectiles with less attention, and even ends up not paying too much attention to what she is doing, her mind foggy and her body on autopilot. She hardly realizes it actually, she is just too caught up in the routine of her actions and her weariness...

It is a shout from Sanja's side that wakes her up suddenly.

When she raises her head Mei realizes that she is not even facing the child anymore since she was browsing the room to find objects to send. She knows that at least her last three throws were done completely blindly. Her heart leaps to her throat and she pivots in a flash, looking for the girl with her eyes, imagining the worst. At the other end of the large room, Sanja jumps up and down, shouting her name, and it takes Mei a long moment to see the small blue plate floating in front of her. The shield is the size of a hand, at most, yet they both find themselves shouting victory, jumping around to celebrate the small victory, and Mei feels her spirits soar.

They won't be stuck here for another year.