Well, I'm back, and I'm way better! I got the abrupt urge to write yesterday and here we are, 2800 words later. I'm very excited about this chapter. Please enjoy!
Adjusting to life with the girl was not going to be easy. Tamaki had known this from the beginning, but it was only just sinking in now, as he watched her timidly crawl out of the front seat of his car, relying heavily on his arm for support as she stepped from the interior of the car down onto the floor of the garage. Miss Jonochi parked in the driveway.
Tamaki had traded in his mansion for something smaller long ago, as he had been uncomfortable with empty hallways and vacant rooms. He had grown up around servants, but the thought of having his own unnerved him. It had all been very impersonal. So he'd sold his mansion for a handsome sum and relocated to a much cozier abode on the outskirts of the city, a good thirty minutes away from the hospital.
It had a great deal of windows which showed his magnificent garden to the back of the house and an equally impressive sprawling green lawn out the front windows. The living room had a nice wood fireplace and was host to Tamaki's favorite thing in the house, his grand piano, and the kitchen was open and spacious, which was just as well for Tamaki because he tended to make quite a mess when he cooked, throwing pans and trays on every surface he had. His rarely-used office was in the basement, and he occupied the largest of the three bedrooms that were upstairs. The second-biggest he had focused quite a bit of attention on in the last thirty-six hours, preparing it for the still nameless girl wordlessly who was now following him into his home.
He threw his keys into the bowl on a table in the foyer and let out a long breath, glancing down at the girl who was sticking very close to his side, occasionally tugging at his shirt. "Well… here we are, then," he said dumbly, having absolutely no clue how to proceed.
The sound of someone clearing their throat came from behind him through the still-open door and Tamaki flinched, having completely forgotten Miss Jonochi was still following him. He quickly moved out of her way and she strode inside, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. "I know we've already had your home inspected, but I'd really like to see how the girl fares in her new living environment," she said briskly, breaking up the awkwardness a bit. Tamaki was more than a little relieved. At least she knew what to do.
Miss Jonochi crossed into the living room and set her briefcase down on the table at the end of the couch. Turning around, she smiled warmly at the girl. "What do you think?"
The girl said nothing, merely staring back with her wide green eyes.
"How about you show her around? Let her get a feel for the place," Miss Jonochi suggested, and Tamaki hesitated.
"Right… of course. But first I was thinking maybe we could get the whole business of her name sorted? At least figure out what she wants to be called." He waited for Miss Jonochi to respond, but she said nothing, After a moment, she gave a short nod and Tamaki, not knowing how else to approach the situation, turned the girl towards him and leaned down so his eyes were level with hers.
"Tamaki," she said, tipping her head slightly as she looked straight into his eyes. Tamaki was unused to such direct eye contact. He shifted uncomfortably.
"What do you want to be called?" he asked her. She blinked. "A name," he elaborated. "A name for you. Just until we find out what your name really is, and you can decide what you want to be called, of course, but… I need to know what to call you," he trailed off, aware that he was nervously babbling.
"Name," the girl repeated, sighing heavily. She thought hard for a solid minute, trying to remember past her master and his names for her that Tamaki said weren't right. She couldn't grasp a name. Even in her faintest memories of before master, before he had beaten her name out of her, she had no memory of a name. Maybe a letter… A sound… a hissing sort of noise that she could barely grab hold of before it slipped away.
The noise escaped her lips before she could lose it again. "Ssssss," she whispered. Her head was starting to hurt. She hadn't tried to remember something so hard in ages. And as soon as she made that one noise, that strange hiss that felt so strange on her tongue, another syllable came to her. "Sa… Sa…"
"Sa…" Tamaki repeated, almost giddy. Was she remembering? What a breakthrough! Maybe with her name they could find out who she was, how old, how long she'd been missing—
"No more," the girl finally gave up, looking very upset. "Gone."
Tamaki had to try very hard to mask his disappointment, but he was still very proud of her. "It's okay. It's a start," he assured her. "Sa… Sakura?" he guessed.
The girl crinkled her nose in disgust and shook her head.
"Okay, not that… Satomi, maybe?"
She made a noise almost like disgust. It was almost comical.
Tamaki cracked a grin. "So, not that either. Okay… Sayuri? Sayu?"
The girl gasped and Tamaki could have leapt into the air with joy. "Sayu?! Is that it?" She was nodding, and Tamaki felt more accomplished in that moment than he had ever before felt in his life; more even than the day he'd gotten his medical license. "Sayu," he said again, extremely satisfied. "Sayu."
"No."
Tamaki froze. Now the girl was shaking her head, wearing the same expression as she had been outside Lobelia's, when she had been trying to recall flowers. It was s look of incredible concentration and disappointment.
"No?" Tamaki asked. Any feeling of accomplishment he'd had before was gone, crushed into oblivion by her sudden rejection of the name he thought he'd been successful in finding. "Not Sayu?"
"Close," she whispered, lowering herself to the floor and holding her head. "No Sayu. Different."
Tamaki looked desperately to Miss Jonochi for help, but she appeared far too involved with her phone, as though she was frantically searching for a number. "This is good," she said, jamming the phone to her ear. "This is very good. We know where to start now. This will shave hours off the search for a possible match to her in the missing persons records."
"Sayu," Tamaki said, just once more, as though it were going to change things. Her name was not Sayu, but close. What was close to Sayu, other than Sayuri, which she had already rejected? Sayu… Sayu… He gave up and sighed, sinking to the floor next to the still unnamed girl. "I wish you could remember, little one."
"Remember," the girl mumbled sadly. "Remember…"
She was silent for a solid half a minute, but then she began to speak again, into her palms and very softly so that Tamaki, in order to hear her, had to gently pry her hands away from her face.
"Hot," she was muttering. "Red. Smoke."
"What?"
"Remember," she said by way of explanation. "Hurt. Can't…" she started breathing very heavily, as though she was remembering with clarity whatever tragedy she was trying to describe. "Heard…"
And then she let out a scream. It was so sudden that Tamaki jolted, his heart pounding. He thought she was in pain, that it was all too much for her, but no sooner had her outburst begun it was over, lasting all of a second, and she was muttering words again. "Crawl. Orange. Hot. Black." She paused for a moment, took a very deep breath, and said on a shuddery exhale, "dead."
And he realized what she was trying to tell him she remembered. "A fire," he said. Her heavy breathing, her scream; she had been trying to tell him what she remembered without the words she couldn't grasp. She remembered the orange and red of flames, black smoke, being unable to breathe. She remembered hearing screams. Trying to crawl away. Someone had died, and she knew it. She may have even watched.
An idea struck him with all the impact of a speeding train. "Don't just search missing persons," he said quietly, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. A thought had occurred to him.
"Excuse me?" Miss Jonochi asked, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"She was in a fire. I remember… about ten years ago, there was a fire. Do you remember? In Tokyo. The Yojin mansion burned to the ground and the arsonists were never caught. I followed the story in college for a forensics class."
"Of course I remember, it was all over the news for months. The whole family died, both the Yojins and their two daughters."
"But they never found the older girl's body."
The room went deadly quiet, save for the muffled sound of ringing coming from Miss Jonochi's phone. Someone on the other end picked up. "Hello?"
"Oh my god," she whispered.
"Hello? Ayame, is that you?" The person on the other end of the line seemed very concerned.
Miss Jonochi shook herself and began speaking frantically. "Suzushima! My case – Jane Doe – I need you to check her information with the oldest Yojin girl, as fast as possible!"
"What?"
"Just do it!"
"You can't possibly mean – you don't think—!?"
"Suzushima!"
"Right! Sorry! Kanako, pull up Jane Doe's information… I need to go find a file…!" Tamaki heard him barking orders at someone else, and the line went dead.
Miss Jonochi pocketed her phone and let out a long sigh, rubbing her neck. "I can't believe this," she whispered. "If this girl… if she's really the oldest Yojin daughter…"
Tamaki was frustrated for different reasons. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember the girl's name. Once upon a time he had known every detail about the Yojin murder case, but in ten years his memory on the topic had softened a bit. "Watch her," he managed to say to Miss Jonochi, indicating the girl, as he leapt to his feet and thundered up the stairs to his bedroom. The girl cried out and his heart wrenched as he heard her call his name after him, but he couldn't turn around. He needed his laptop. A quick internet search…
It was on his desk, open, as he'd left it that morning. He sat down in a rush, jamming his finger to the power button. It couldn't start up fast enough for him. He fumbled with his password once before getting it right and waited impatiently for his computer to connect to the internet. He pulled up a search engine and typed in what he needed. Yojin family.
There they were, a picture of all four of them as they had been some ten or eleven years ago, before the tragedy. A handsome man and a lovely woman clinging to his arm, with two cherub-faced little girls beaming in front of them.
He clicked the first link on the page and scanned it desperately. Tadaaki Yojin (age 36), and his family… tragic deaths… suspected arson… his wife Ayame (age 34)… youngest daughter, Maika (age 7)…
And there it was, near the bottom of the article.
The bodies of Tadaaki, his wife, and youngest daughter have been recovered, but the body of his oldest daughter, Samayu (age 9) has yet to be found.
Samayu Yojin. There it was. Tamaki went back to the picture of the Yojin family, focusing on the 9 year old girl grinning up at the camera. He could see it. The child in the picture resembled the girl sitting downstairs on the floor of his living room in several ways. The same hair and piercing green eyes, the same cheekbones…
There was a chance, of course, that the girl was not the missing Yojin daughter, but Tamaki doubted it. There were too many similarities, too much evidence for it.
He had been so quick to run upstairs and find this information, but now that he had it Tamaki felt sluggish. He would have to go back downstairs to the girl… have to face her knowing yet another dimension of her terrible life.
He pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up slowly, taking several deep breaths as he rubbed his eyes with his palms. So he had the girl's name. He knew who she was. So what now? She had no home to return to. How long would she stay with him, then?
He left his room, shutting his computer off before he went, and trudged back downstairs. Miss Jonochi was pacing the floor, looking worried for some reason. The girl was watching her from her spot on the floor, absentmindedly sucking on the knuckles of her right hand. Tamaki approached her softly, lowering himself back to the floor next to her.
"Hey," he whispered, gently tugging her hand away from her mouth.
"Tamaki?" the girl asked, cocking her head inquisitively. She looked down at his hand and covered it with hers. He realized he was shaking. Looking back up at him the girl bit her lip nervously.
It took a lot more out of him than he would have expected to finally say her name. "Samayu," Tamaki whispered.
She froze. Her face turned to stone. She even stopped breathing.
"Is that right?" Tamaki asked, wishing she would move. He didn't know what he had been expecting from her by ways of a reaction, but it certainly hadn't been this. "Samayu?"
She still didn't move.
"Please," Tamaki begged her. "Please say something, sweetheart."
She let out a sudden, somewhat alarming gasp, and burst into tears. "Yes," she sobbed, clutching her arms to herself and beginning to rock back and forth. "Samayu. Yes."
"Oh, sweetheart… sshh, honey, it's okay." Tamaki immediately reached out for her, wrapping her up in his arms. He could feel her tears through his shirt, and her small hands clutched at the fabric. She seemed less like a girl and far more like a trembling tangle of brown hair and skeletal limbs. "Samayu… oh, Samayu…"
He was vaguely aware of hearing Miss Jonochi's phone ring, but he was far too absorbed in trying to comfort the seemingly inconsolable girl – Samayu. She was no longer unnamed. She was someone, with a name and a past, however terrible it was.
Samayu sobbed and shook. She kept repeating her name, like she was terrified if someone wasn't saying it every few seconds she would lose it again. Miss Jonochi was on the phone somewhere, but it was all background noise to Tamaki until he felt a hand on his shoulder and Miss Jonochi was leaning down, nodding gravely. "It's her," she said quietly. "Her DNA matched. This is, without a doubt, Samayu Yojin."
Samayu grew quiet when she heard her full name, but she kept crying silently as Tamaki held her closer, stroking her head. "How old is she?"
"She's nineteen." Miss Jonochi sighed. "We'll keep this from getting out as long as possible, but the press will catch wind eventually. I'd lay low if I were you."
"Of course," Tamaki said blankly, staring down at Samayu. Of course there would be complications. Samayu was very important. She was by birth the rightful heir to the Yojin oil empire, and she was now, metaphorically speaking, back from the dead.
"And… well, the police were notified as soon as the positive ID was made. They'll give you about two days to get her situated, but an officer will be stopping by to try to get some sort of statement from her."
"Look at her!" Tamaki hissed, somehow angered by this information. "She can barely speak coherently, let alone make a statement that makes any sense."
"I know, but… it's just the way things are going to have to be. They want to catch the man who did this to her, Tamaki. We all want that."
Tamaki sighed. "I know."
Miss Jonochi nodded and patted him twice on the back. "I think you'll be fine with her for now. I have to go… I have a lot of paperwork to do."
"Yeah…" Tamaki was barely aware of her anymore. Samayu was the only thing in his world just at the moment. All he could think of was how horrible her life was, stolen from her at age 9. It wasn't fair. Her family taken from her in a fire. She'd been kidnapped and tortured and raped. She'd been brainwashed to the point where she couldn't even remember her own name.
It wasn't until he heard the click of the front door as Miss Jonochi shut it behind her that he realized he was alone with the girl. Samayu. He was alone with Samayu.
He was terrified of letting her go for fear of what would happen. She hadn't stopped crying yet. He sighed and tentatively kissed her forehead. "Well, Samayu… what now?"
