The warm sun beat down upon the courtyard. The gentle rustle of leaves drifted down to the students in the courtyard below. One sat on a hard concrete bench enjoying the sunshine. She was out enjoying the uncharacteristically pleasant spring day. She needed something to distract her. Chiyo had been studying in the U.S. for almost eight years now. She'd always thought that living in the country was a small touch of excitement. Even if it was only because the people were different than those at home. Speaking of home…. The young woman gulped. She tried not to think about anything. Instead she hoped that the outside world could distract her. She wanted to be protected from the cruel images that had recently played through her mind. The sun was often considered to have the power to banish all sorts of demons. But Chiyo didn't know if it could destroy those that were symbolic. There just didn't seem to be any reason why that would be possible. Besides; a scientist doesn't believe in those old myths and legends and that's what Chiyo was.

She heard a group of footsteps coming towards her spot. A small procession on the campus. Which she was a an alumni and a student of. Chiyo was well into her second degree. Maturity had strengthened her intellect. There was little that she couldn't understand.

Voices began to drift towards her. She only managed to catch a few snippets of the conversation. But the group of students was still coming closer and closer to her. She ran a finger idly through her long hair. She didn't have those pigtails anymore; her hair had grown long and straight. She'd hit a growth spurt when she was fifteen. Her body had finally begun to leave behind the childish figure that it had been for so long. She was tall, for her heritage, about as tall as her American classmates, not the tall ones, the regular ones. Her attention was focused on the people who were heading across the courtyard. Their footsteps cyclic taps against the hard concrete walkway. Then she saw the group stop in front of her bench.

A girl took in a breath of the midday. When she spoke again her voice weighed heavily on Chiyo's mind.

"Did you hear about that big earthquake?"

"The one in Japan?"

Chiyo felt her mouth twist into a bitter smile. Here she had tried to get away from that. But it seemed as if the thoughts wouldn't leave her alone. How spiteful.

"Yeah, it's so sad!"

"I know! Who would have thought that something like that was going to happen?"

"They deserved it."

Chiyo blinked. She didn't believe that she had just heard someone say—

"What?"

"I said that they had it coming."

There was no mistaking it now. Someone had really spoken those words. Shock filled the woman's mind.

"Why else would it have happened?" the man asked, "they're just being punished. God's angry that they all worship Buddha, that they accept the gays. And that's not all. This is just payback for Pearl Harbor."

Chiyo blinked again. What? How, how could someone…? Then the shock vanished. Her teeth clenched themselves. Her hand nearly began to crush itself. And a new emotion filled the vast void that her surprise had birthed. The feeling began to take over her mind and she had almost no control at this point. All she could think about at this point was that skinny, pasty, ugly thing in front of her. She could feel her fingers nearly crush the edge of the bench that they had wrapped around. She'd never been so overcome with rage before that she just wanted to hit someone in the face. She could feel her hand beg to be shaped into a fist, to smash the nose and to separate teeth from their jaw. She could and she wanted to. But she was rational and civil; even if she wanted to give in to that primal urge to simply beat this man until his face was red with blood and he learned to keep his foul comments to himself. But she couldn't do nothing.

She felt her legs shake and her arms tremble as she stood up. She looked the person squarely in the face as her teeth bared into the hostile mouth of a wolf, a tiger, a bear. Some sort of vicious and fierce animal, something to fear. With a voice like the fangs of a viper.

"You fucking bastard."

The group turned to look at her, the celebrity of the campus.

She could feel elation at what she had said. "How can you be so damn insensitive?" The man's eyes narrowed. "What kind of person can honestly say and believe what just slithered out of your mouth? We deserved having towns turned into piles of flotsam? Thousands of people deserved to be drowned by buckets of sea water? You goddamned prick. You say that God hates the Japanese? Unbelievable. Saying that because we believe differently that we all deserved to be killed; I don't know how anyone can be such a douche bag. Then there's your misconception about Japan being comprised of Buddhists, the majority is Shinto, thank you very much! Secondly I find your homophobia distasteful. When it comes to these matters it seems my country is far more progressive than yours." Chiyo had to swallow some her anger back down her throat.

"And my favorite comment, Pearl Harbor. To think someone could be so ignorant, so stupid that he would utter that tripe." Chiyo really wanted to just wrap her hands around his throat. "How anyone could not know so much about the history of his or her own country, it's inconceivable. I guess you just never paid attention. Your country won the war. But seeing as you didn't know that I guess it's not surprising that you're so ignorant as to be unaware of what else happened during the rest of the war. I guess you can't really count Midway, or the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and perhaps the invasion of Okinawa isn't really comparable. Though I like to think that setting Tokyo ablaze and killing at least one hundred fifty and possibly over two hundred thousand individuals through a combination of instant annihilation and radition poisoning was indeed 'payback' and, dare I say it, worse. Your blatant racism is appalling," she spat, "I don't think I've ever heard someone say such heartless, soulless blather before. And that's not even the worst of it." Her eyes whipped their focus across the faces of the other people. "The worst part, is that none of you said anything! You just stood there and acted as if nothing had happened!" She couldn't say anymore since her throat was overwhelmed with fury and she stormed away.

Her angry footsteps quickly left them behind. She didn't know where she was going. She just had to get away from that place. Then, as she passed by red brick work, she noticed a familiar face come out into the sun from the inner shade of an old dormitory. He rubbed the back of his hand against his chin and began to lazily walk away towards her. He'd been there since before she had first come to the school. He was almost thirty and had just enough commitment and drive to leave him with neither degree nor credits. Only returning to the school because his father had enough money to pay for him to be useless year after year, semester after semester.

"Chiyo," his voice was softer than its usual loud, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong!" she snapped.

The man simply stared. She wasn't herself. "You're crying, is something the matter?"

She hadn't noticed the lines running down her face before and at this point a third and final emotion shoved away the rage that had previously filled her being. Pain. She couldn't hold in the caustic droplets in her eyes any longer and she just buried her head in his shoulder. She could feel her moist tears stream down her cheeks and in between her sobs she analyzed the feeling of hurt that had taken over her soul. Those words. They'd been worse than anything she had ever heard in grade school. She'd been teased before but she'd never had to hear such hate filled speech. It was worse than people making fun of her pigtails or her hair color. The idea that people existed who simply hated other human beings that they knew hardly anything about—she'd known that they existed but hearing their rhetoric was entirely new. And it was worse. It was worse to hear someone say that your race was some sort of worthless pool of mud or evil group hated by both man and God. And her sobs might as well have been the same ones she had cried when death had stolen her grandmother.

"What happened?" the man, Ken, asked her.

"This, idiot, said horrible," she strained to swallow her tears down through her tight throat, "horrible things about what happened in Japan."

"Oh." He uttered just the single word. Arms squeezed him tightly as renewed sobbing filled his ears. "I heard people say terrible things too." He heard a brief pause in her cries and he took the opportunity to ask, "what did you do?"

"I told him just how stupid he is."

"I…didn't say anything. I just felt sad and looked away." His eyes instantly dropped to the ground, too ashamed to look even at the back of her head. "It was just that when I heard those awful things I felt afraid. I just stayed silent and walked away as soon as I could. It felt awful to do nothing. I was worried about what people would think of me. Now I wish I had said something, even if it was only 'that's not a very nice thing to say.' Anything would have been better than silence."

"Why do they say those things?"

"I don't know." And then he just wrapped his arms around her shoulders so that she wouldn't feel alone.