"Willful hearts/always fail/to see that good in darkness pales/light in evil surely hides/behind the blinding of our eyes."
Path Song. Traditional.
Akari felt like she didn't breathe until Yuma was out of the house, safely on his way to school. She almost wanted to walk all the way there with them, in case that he hurt himself or did something stupid...but the school wasn't far, and she could watch him for most of the way there...
Her work was waiting for her to finish it on the desk, almost glaring at her. She winced softly—then turned away from it, and the window, and went to make coffee. She snatched her D-Gazer from the table as she waited for it to brew, making a brief call to the school to make sure Yuma had gotten there.
"Oh, yes, he's just been checked on the attendance sheet," the receptionist said over the line. "Is anything the matter, Tsukumo-san? Should I tell the teachers to keep an eye on him today?"
Akari hesitated—Yuma would be so upset with her if he knew she was doing this, but...
"Yes, please...he's taking our parents' disappearance really hard, and I want to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."
The woman nodded, looking sympathetic on the screen.
"We'll take care of him, honey. If you need to, we can have someone walk him home."
"No...no that's fine. I'll come pick him up."
The woman nodded. She looked like she wanted to say something more, but then she shook her head. After a bit, Akari ended the call, tossing the D-Gazer back onto the desk.
She could feel the bags sinking into her eyes as she finally got her coffee in her hands. She hadn't slept much the last couple of days...not since she had gotten that job at the newspaper. She was determined to keep it by becoming as indispensable as possible. She had taken on a few other type-editing pieces that someone else was supposed to do because they were leaving early for kids' birthdays or long weekends, just so that she could prove that she was dependable. Sure, she had her own column that she'd be starting as soon as the former columnist officially retired, but columnists didn't last long unless they could do something else, too. She'd have to get her foot in the door for filtering and broadcasting, that was where the stability was. That meant a lot of sleepless nights doing extra type editing...
….and more sleepless nights worrying about Yuma.
She blew softly on her coffee, letting the steam and the scent wash over her face. She let her eyes wander over to the little box she had hidden behind the bread box...where she had locked away the drawings she had managed to save from Yuma's rampage.
She wanted to open it up, look at them. But she didn't.
Lua was so important to him, she thought. That imaginary friend was...was almost everything to him.
She could remember him talking late into the night, chattering away like a monkey about his latest exploits to their laughing mother as she bounced him on her knee. Mom always knew exactly what questions to ask to keep Yuma chattering. She could almost see them, in her mind's eye, balancing on the couch. Yuma was kicking his legs, his tiny hands playing with their mother's hair and her face tilting with a laugh as she pinched Yuma's cheek. She could see the door opening, and her father clomping in with some kind of mud on his face, a belly laugh reserved just for Yuma's squeal as he scrambled over their mother's knees to run around the couch and throw his arms around their father's legs.
Akari gasped as she realized that she was crying. She quickly drowned her mouth into the scalding coffee, more tears rolling down her face from the burn that immediately overtook her tongue. At least she had an excuse now, if grandma walked in.
Grandma did not walk in, though, and Akari was left with a swollen tongue and half a mug less of coffee than she would have liked.
She sighed, letting the edge of the counter dig into the small of her back as she leaned back, closing her eyes. At least she didn't have to physically go into work today...as long as she turned those finished edits in by midnight, she was solid.
She slumped a little harder against the counter. What she really wanted to do was throw this mug as hard as she could against the wall and let it shatter into a million pieces, let the coffee stain the wall and seep down into the floor. She wanted to scream like Yuma had, she wanted to start ripping paper apart into pieces and screaming and kicking and breaking furniture. She wanted to flip the whole table upside down and scream out into the sky at her parents to fucking come back you fucking assholes.
You left us.
You leftus.
Akari couldn't find it in herself to think of it any other way. Her parents were seasoned adventurers, they had been on more dangerous missions and excursions than a fucking Mission Impossible agent, there was no way that the jungle would just swallow them up without warning. They wouldn't disappear like that. They wouldn't die like that. The only possibility that Akari could come up with was that they had chosen to leave...but why? Why weren't they here?
They left her, with nothing but a broken house and a little brother who looked like he was going to start jumping off bridges sooner rather than later.
I shouldn't have taken his cards from him, Akari thought suddenly. Those—what if those were the only things that were keeping him sane?
"Yuma's dueling will one day lead to a greater destiny."
Was that one of the last things her parents had said to her? She couldn't really remember how much time had passed before that car trip and the day that they had both left on that emergency job of theirs. She knew they had left before going with her to that dueling tournament she was writing a piece on, even though her father had promised he'd come along. She knew he would have apologized a million times if he had even remembered, but she hadn't bothered to bring it up. She had learned not to bring things up with her parents.
And then, just like that, they were gone.
"Yuma's dueling will one day lead to a greater destiny...and maybe, yours will too."
Akari felt sick.
"No," she mumbled. "I'm not going to duel anymore. And neither is Yuma."
She wasn't going to lose anyone ever again. Not to this card game, not to an adventure, and not to any fucking stupid destiny.
She set her coffee mug down without finishing it and stalked back to her desk.
She had work to do.