Disclaimed.
Finding Mikan
Chapter Six: Minus One, Minus All
The dress Hotaru wore that day was halter-top and backless. So when Hayate's arms came around her and his palm—his disgusting, sweaty, calloused palm—pressed into her skin, it was all she could do to stay still and not flip out entirely. If he felt her body go rigid at his touch, the man did not show it. Though his hands stayed on her back and had not roamed—and by this point, Hotaru was not even sure whether that was a blessing or not—she felt his body pressing into her own tighter and tighter.
If Hayate took even one second to look at her face, he would have jumped back at the absolutely venomous visage she had worn just then. No qualms whatsoever, Hotaru's hand slipped into the purse that hung around her chair and gripped a cold, metal object.
"Hayate, you may want to let go of her," Koko snapped them both out of their respective fantasies. "She feels really uncomfortable right now. And she has pepper spray."
Instantly, the stranger's hands flew into the air just as Hotaru's hands flew out of her purse, directing the bottle's opening at him. Startled, he seemed to trip over his own feet in an attempt to stumble back a few steps. She growled menacingly, forcing him to retreat further out of her personal bubble.
"I told you! I told you guys this would happen," Yura sulked with puff cheeks and crossed arms.
"Who are you?" Hotaru's voice was stony.
Sumire snorted, "oh now she's done it."
Her words stunned the man into gaping disbelief. He lifted one limp arm, oscillating a rude finger back and forth between Sumire and Hotaru. Hayate opened and closed his mouth a grand total of ten times, all the while not making a single sound. Hotaru briefly thought of flapping fish in the supermarket after they were freshly netted from the tank.
She snapped her fingers twice. "Hello? Will you introduce yourself to me now or will we dawdle for the next half hour?"
"I-I'm Matsudaira Hayate!" he stuttered, eyeing her expectantly as if she could just magically register the name from somewhere within her memory.
She raised a questioning eyebrow. "Do we know each other?"
"I'm Hayate!" he reiterated futilely. "How can you not remember me? We were such good friends in Alice Academy!"
"He piggybacked you once during the Rebellion," cut in a woman, a former upperclassman named Shizune Yamanouchi, "—that is, after you did his face in with your baka-gun."
"Shizune…"
"Oh, don't mind her," said a man who introduced himself earlier to Hotaru as Akira Tonouchi. "Shizune-chan and her cult have no mercy on men at all." He shot the gray-haired woman a withering glance and when Shizune hissed back at him, jutted out his lower lip childishly.
"Aren't you getting a bit too old to be a womanizer?" asked Misaki offhandedly.
Tono's voice was jumpy and jovial. "I'm still going strong, barely in my thirties! You make me sound so old Misaki-chan…"
Again, the excitement returned as the Alices turned away to bicker and gossip amongst themselves. Hotaru tried to focus and analyze as many conversations as she could, but it was hard to do that when the man was still gaping at her. Though, at least his mouth had clamped shut; now it was only his trembling lips and pitiful near-tears expression that unnerved the core of Hotaru's very being.
Like a lost puppy, he took a hopeful step towards her.
"Hayate, take a seat," sighed Tsubasa.
The words seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other. Indeed, this man was an entirely new level of foolish; Hotaru just wanted to smack him upside the head with the nearest glass, but then she feared that if she did he would just end up losing what little brain cells he had in the first place. Less than a minute later, she changed her mind as he roamed into perilous territory by abruptly grabbing both Hotaru's shoulders with his hands.
"Cool Blue Sky," he murmured in worship, "I thought I'd never see you again."
With patience that surprised even herself, Hotaru set down her bottle of pepper spray and slid his annoying arms from her shoulders. "Would you stop calling me that? My name is Imai Hotaru. Cool Blue Sky is an absurd nickname if I have ever heard one."
"But I—you—I lov—"
"Okay! That's enough for today, Hayate!" a smiling man-woman fortunately cut him off by pinching his ear. The Alice smiled as he or she towed Hayate away to the opposite side of the table, the latter shooting Hotaru lovesick stares the entire way.
She rested her forehead on her hand.
"Amane Rui," informed Ruka, "and just in case you're wondering, yes he is a man."
She shrugged weakly. Rui's gender was not the foremost concern on her mind right now. Hotaru took one glance at the bathroom and another at her food. Suddenly, she was not all that hungry anymore; this was cheap stuff she could get anywhere off the streets anyway. She looked at each and every Alice, etching their faces into her memory as she slid one arm after the other into her jacket sleeves. Their wide, smiling expressions and loud laughter made Hotaru feel like a complete party pooper. She closed her eyes, imagining for a minute that she was back in America, watching reruns of Law and Order with Janine and a huge bag of popcorn in between them.
Reopening them, Hotaru offered Ruka an exclusive, fleeting smile. "I should go pay the bill."
Hotaru never knew exhaustion like she did upon returning to her apartment that very night. Through tired, half-lidded eyes, she saw a foreign room—not that she expected to somehow magically find her way back into Janine's place; in fact, Janine probably moved into Tom's house by now. Something about the off white walls, the weirdly coordinated pieces of furniture and even the picture frames nabbed at her mind and reminded her that no, she now had no other home but this odd, empty little place.
What a wretched place it was.
Even the bare wall that Subaru had demanded her not to touch only served as a reminder that there had once been a happy family living here. One, Hotaru remarked bitterly, that fell into pieces. And now it was just her. Maybe Janine was right. Maybe she did need a roommate.
In any case, her new hermit lifestyle had not been treating her well. Insomniac nights were the norm, and she knew it was not because of jet lag when she woke up in a depressing state wondering where exactly she was going in her life.
Maybe she really was depressed. It certainly seemed so when she found herself sitting alone at the glass table, staring into a cup of water and willing it to somehow turn into liquor. It had not. Resigned, Hotaru downed the entire glass in one gulp.
This was probably the reason why Subaru decided to move back with their mother and father. Living alone was a fleeting, childish dream of a pampered kid with overbearing parents. In actuality, there was nothing appealing about it, especially since the reason she was alone in the first place was because the government had bereft her of all her friends.
Hotaru looked to the smiling face of Janine, and in doing so, saw a phone book that she had accidentally left on the shelf after unpacking. It was her old phonebook, the one with her parents' number. Thinking of her family brought a rare smile to Hotaru's lips. She got up, finally taking the initiative to pick up the receiver and dial the number that she had dialed only once before.
The snappy, grouchy voice that greeted her did nothing to wipe the smile off her face. "Why are you calling at this hour?" Subaru must have registered her number on caller ID to avoid any more surprises.
Without meaning to, Hotaru blurted, "can I come home?"
Her voice came out so small and vulnerable Hotaru felt a part of herself turning back into a child. She must have reminisced too deeply and got caught up in the moment. As soon as the words tumbled out, the smile disappeared from her face and she quickly covered her mouth with a hand. Not that it would have made a difference. Without doubt Subaru already heard, and he would never give her the light of day after this. Between them, this would always be that one time when she let her guard down and lost her cool, the one time he had won.
Hateful jitters made their presence in Hotaru's stomach during the pregnant pause that ensued.
"Okay," Subaru finally replied, just as gently as she had asked.
Hotaru tensed and readied herself for the teasing follow up, the unintentional demeaning that hurt that much more precisely because it was unintentional. It never came. The inventor eventually slacked her shoulders, and, looking to the floor, banished all jitters from her body. Had there been a mirror in front of her, she would have been surprised to see the grateful beam that completely lit up her eyes.
"Thank you."
When Hotaru first stepped foot in Nagoya in almost two decades, she was completely wiped out. Tokyo's train stations were much too overcrowded on weekends. To make things worse, her train had been delayed by an hour. All she wanted to do now was slump into a blob of jelly on a couch or a bed or something equally as soft.
But the ordeal was not yet over. Nagoya's townspeople made it their business to label Hotaru as an outsider through heavy scrutiny. In a small town, everyone was bound to know everyone. These people knew she did not belong, that it did not matter that she was clad in a very conservative cardigan and nice, ironed khakis because in this town, Hotaru still stuck out like a sore thumb.
Why was it that she garnered unwanted attention everywhere she went?
The roads were never that long before.
An eternity went by before she arrived at her destination. She had no recollection of the house, but Subaru had described it to her the day before, knowing that if it was Hotaru, she could easily generate an photorealistic image in her mind from simply being given descriptive details. And she did. The bungalow was just as she had imagined it, little and cozy. It was a house vintage enough to have a chimney. The walls were stony, somehow suitably unpainted. The roof was angled, considerably less so on the side facing the door than the side facing the yard that was not really a yard but a neat patch of grass extending into a wilder field. The door was quite a bit elevated from the ground, but since no steps had been built the Imais gathered some slabs of stone and rearranged them into a ramp.
The house was too old for a doorbell. Hotaru placed three steady knocks on the planked door, heart racing at a thousand miles per hour.
It opened so abruptly that she almost had to take a step back. Though Hotaru had been anxious, the woman on the other side was much giddier. Her mother's wrinkled hands trembled over her mouth as she took sight of adult Hotaru for the first time. Mrs. Imai was at her side before the latter could even fully comprehend what exactly just happened. As she stood in front of the inventor, she reached one hesitant hand towards her face in feat that the Hotaru she saw was a mere mirage.
Mrs. Imai brushed her finger against Hotaru's hairline, tracing it down to her soft cheeks and pinching them once.
"Mother," she warned.
Joy spread across the older woman's face as she embraced her flesh and blood daughter like there was no tomorrow, hoarsely crying, "my child!"
Suddenly, her cardigan was wet. Hotaru sighed and stroked her mother's hair as an offering of comfort. Once fair-haired, Mrs. Imai's locks were now coarse, loose and puffy. Hotaru almost could not believe that her mother had aged so fast. She believed she had never been deluded enough to think that time froze in Japan while she grew up in America, but the foreign texture of the elder Imai's skin and the weakness of her hold told Hotaru otherwise. Only the light scent of Jasmine brought about any kind of recollection. Hotaru was sure she had smelled that somewhere before.
"Eighteen years! Eighteen long years I haven't seen you, haven't heard from you. Let me take a good look at your face."
Her mother's quivering hands unwrapped around Hotaru's bony waist and slid up her arms in small, light, trembling touches. When she finally cupped Hotaru's face, the inventor could not help but put her own hands over her mother's.
Warm. Her touch was so warm.
Hotaru could see her mother's face entirely now. This tearing woman wore enigma. Her visage was like a piece of crumpled paper. No matter how much her mother's smile stretched and smoothed out her skin, the wrinkles still remained. Hotaru wanted them to be there. Behind the subtlest crease hid an elaborate story of this woman's life.
"You have," Hotaru whispered, "gotten so old."
The violet eyed genius reached out and, with mechanical precision, wiped away the water gathering at the edge of the senior Imai's eyes. Her cold hands burned at the touch. Hotaru nearly flinched away; she knew it was not comfortable for her mother to touch such a cold body. Yet if she had withdrawn her fingers, it would have broken her heart.
"The academy took you away from us for such a long time," Mrs. Imai said serenely, stroking Hotaru's cheeks with her thumbs. "And then the government sent you to America. All because my baby is an Alice! What misfortune we have! And now they've taken away Hikaru as well… You know, I've always wanted to raise a kid, and once—just once, from childhood, watch them grow up and hold their hand every step of the way." Her voice broke in between the words, slurring into noises that Hotaru could barely decipher. "But I'll never do that. They're always going to be after us, always going to rob us of our children."
Her mother's tears now streamed too rapidly for Hotaru to clear. Gently, she removed the senior's hands from her face, looping them around her neck instead as she enveloped the old woman into a tight hug. Though she wanted to regard her mother's face for a while longer, Hotaru supposed this was okay too. Oddly, she felt comfortable when Mrs. Imai's arms were around her; normally any kind of human contact had Hotaru fleeing for the hills.
Naturally, Subaru, armed with the worst timing possible, just had to poke his head of the house right then. "Mother, did she—mother!"
He flew out of the house at lightning speed, and was at their mother's side just as quickly. Delicately, Subaru lifted her face from Hotaru's shoulder and turned it towards him. "What happened?" Shaking his head, he quickly pulled a napkin from his coat pocket and began dabbing away the shiny wet streaks on her face.
"Oh nothing!" she trivialized with feigned lightheartedness. "It's just me making a spectacle of myself as usual."
Her poor excuse earned them both a long, hard stare. With a resigned shake of the head, Subaru decided to let the subject drop, turning their mother to guide her back into the house but not before shooting Hotaru a suspicious glance that almost made her raise both hands into the air in mock surrender. He jerked his chin at something behind her. She turned to look for a second, and saw a circle of middle-aged ladies curiously peering their way.
Hotaru understood. She quickly followed her family, taking extra care to shut the door just soundly enough for the busybodies to hear.
Whirling, the first thought that came to mind was how disproportionate she felt in the small, cramped space. Certainly, her parents' house had the same dollhouse feeling as Natsume's apartment. Hotaru wondered if it was just her mild case of claustrophobia that the corners were scaring her especially with the tricks they played on her eyes. If Hotaru looked too intently at any of them, she would start to see them closing in on her, but then she blinked a few times and they reverted to their default position.
Subaru and Mrs. Imai having left to deal with their respective chores, Hotaru was left to explore the bungalow on her own. She mentally drew a blueprint of the entire structure. There were three rooms attached to the left wall: one for her parents, one for Subaru, and one that was probably meant for her but ended up as a guest room. The right side of the living room was lined with two couches and had a broad, curtain-less window framed by rich mahogany wood. Occupying most of the remaining space was the huge circular tea table in the middle.
The house was built completely without a dining room so Hotaru assumed that they were going to have all their meals on the tea table while watching a hanging television across from the door. She found her mother in the kitchen, busy minding a huge pot of soup. They exchanged brief smiles before Hotaru continued her one-person tour. She found a refrigerator next to the kitchen and a door to the cellar next to the refrigerator, though a putrid stench came from below and Hotaru dared not venture underground. The only room left on the path was the bathroom, which basically consisted of a sink, toilet and shower stall cramped into a tiny space in that order.
Backtracking, Hotaru decided to unpack some of her stuff in the guest room since it was evidently where she was going to be staying for the next two days. To her surprise, however, she found the room already occupied by a full grown man with rounded spectacles emerged in a novel. Her father faced the window for its light, allowing her to gingerly creep behind him and peer over his text. If he noticed, he did not make it known. He seemed to be at leisure, flipping three whole pages until he reached the end of a chapter, and then closing his book.
The man set his spectacles down before saying anything. When he spoke, he was already rising from the chair, though he did it so slowly she would have aided him if he had not warded her off with his hand. "You startled me, Hotaru. I truly do not know what America has been teaching you. Almost two decades apart and you do not even speak up upon seeing your father."
Hotaru wondered briefly if her father had been born with Spidey senses, for she had been extra careful not to blow her cover. "It has been long," she coughed somewhat indignantly in her surprise. "I see that you are reading War and Peace, an excellent choice. I have read the English version myself. It is such a pity that I know neither Russian nor French, for nothing would have been more spectacular than reading a classic in its untranslated version."
"Yes. I myself tried to study several different languages since my retirement. However, my memory is simply not what it used to be," he mused, tapping his head twice. "Come, Hotaru. Have you smelled the crab soup your mother has been brewing since this morning? She seldom serves it anymore and I must admit that I quite miss it."
For his age, Mr. Imai was not half as frail as Mrs. Imai and walked as steadily as a young man. Hotaru accompanied him side by side out of the room, though she was careful to keep from touching him. Her father seemed to share her dislike for physical contact. At any given time, there was exactly one foot of space between her shoulder and his.
"Did we always eat in the living room?" she asked curiously as they joined Subaru on the couches. Her brother was preoccupied with reading the newspaper and Hotaru realized that if not for the different spectacle shapes, Subaru would look exactly like a younger clone of their father.
"For as long as I can remember. We always used to watch the evening news together. Now, as you can see, Subaru has taken the more traditional route to catch ear of what goes on in the big cities. He is the only one who ever reads the newspaper around here. There is a notable pile in the recycling bin. It puts a huge strain on my back, I tell you."
The young man snapped his paper shut. "Dad," he admonished, "you know I told you to wait for me to come and do the recycling."
Their father snorted. "Humph. How can I do that when you are barely here when it is light out? Your mother and I have too much spare time on our hands. We have to do something to fill up the hours."
Subaru sighed in a way that signaled that this was not the first time they had this argument. He set the papers down completely, rustling them as he folded and stacked them neatly on top of one another. "You know I have to make my way around four small villages every week. I'm the only doctor they have around here, and on top of that there's Sakura-ji. He's not getting any better, dad."
"Sakura-ji-san?" Hotaru piped up. "Is he related to Sakura Mikan-san?"
Subaru and Mr. Imai both shot her surprised looks. Hotaru closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, knowing that she had unintentionally and carelessly slipped up again.
"What is up with you?" Subaru probably did not mean it as an insult but it came out that way regardless. "Sakura-ji is Mikan's grandfather, you know that." He shook his head, disappointed, and Hotaru felt her cheeks heat up in a light sting. "In any case, he's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease last year. So far the effects have been mild, but I'm afraid that they'll soon take a sharp turn for the worst. I don't know how much longer I can trust Itsuki-san with him. I imagine that I'll be moving in pretty soon, possibly before the end of the year."
"Then what about those other villages that you tend to on a daily basis?" she inquired.
Subaru winced, and Hotaru deducted that this was something he had been conflicted over for a while. "They'll have to make do," his voice was flat. "The trip from the farthest village here takes about half a day, far too long for me to leave Sakura-ji alone, and if his condition gets worse I can't trust anyone else with him."
Their father leaned back, resting his head and arms over the top of the couch. "Ah, everyone around here is getting too old too fast."
"I don't want to leave you and mother alone here either," Subaru said, shielding both eyes with a huge palm. "I worry about your state with me gone and Hotaru in Tokyo. Perhaps she could move here and keep an eye on you guys?"
Hotaru found her mouth going dry at the suggestion. For a moment, she deliberated the pros and cons of such a setup seriously. Yes, she would get the company that she had long yearned and yes she would like to have time to get to know her parents a little better. But then she looked around at the room again and tried to picture herself living day after day in this house. Suddenly, Subaru's apartment seemed much more appealing.
Besides, she had to make a living for herself. And the best way to do that was in the very heart of the industry. Hotaru was not lying about the goals she had told Ruka and though she had yet to start, she knew when she did that there would be no time to waste on trips to and fro from Nagoya to Tokyo. Something had to be sacrificed after all.
"I cannot," she objected quietly. "There is no way I will be able to keep an eye on mother and father unless they come to Tokyo to stay with me."
Subaru's chest which had been heaving up and down in quiet inhales now froze rigid. He straightened from his slump and slid the hand from his face, which had become marble white and strangely guarded. "No," the word came firm from lips that were also losing their colour by the minute, "they cannot go to Tokyo. I will not allow it."
"It is a reasonable solution," she argued, a little confused. "I have enough money to afford an apartment large enough for all three of us. With my fortune, we can live a suitable lifestyle even though things are considerably costlier in the city. And there are lots of community centres and parks around there. It is not as if they will ever be short of anything to do."
His mind was dead set. "Tokyo is a polluted city filled with scum."
"Subaru!" It was Mr. Imai this time. "Now you know I do not like the two of you arguing like this. We are to dwell no more on the subject. Your mother and I will fare fine on our own, as we always have. Do not judge us by our age."
"But—"
At that moment, Mrs. Imai came rushing out of the kitchen armed with two huge oven mittens, tightly gripping the handles of a giant pot brimmed with steaming liquid. She blew at the steam as she took small, careful steps to prevent anything from spilling over. It was only when she reached the table that she finally realized something.
"Quick, quick! Set down the food mat."
Subaru glanced stupidly around the room, searching for the said food mats. When he could not find them, he got up and rushed over into the kitchen, before returning emptyhanded. "I can't find it, mother. Just use the newspapers."
She looked to the ceiling. "Subaru! Stop torturing your ma! They're on top of the refrigerator, sheesh! If you can't find them, come and hold this and I'll go get them myself."
"No, I'll get them." Hotaru could have sworn that he was fighting to keep a mischievous grin from spreading across his face. And sure enough, this time he did find them—four white and black checkered mats that were placed on the tea table for the giant pot alone.
With the food out and television on, the four of them circled the table, eating and drinking merrily. There was something magical about her mother's food. After the first spoonful of soup reached her stomach, Hotaru began feeling warmth and joy fill up another vital organ just a little further north. Her heart, for some reason, pumped with glee throughout the meal and only sped up when she periodically caught her mother's eyes drifting her way. Mrs. Imai often blushed and pretended to focus on the television instead.
"Mother, you were staring at me," she finally called her bluff with a small, teasing nudge.
The older woman's cheeks tinged pink again. She stuck her chopsticks into her bowl of rice repeatedly, absentmindedly. "Oh, yes. I know. It's just that it feels so fantastic to see you again, alive and well and not a dream. Sometimes I'm afraid that if I look away, you'll disappear somewhere again." She sighed into her food. "I can't believe that you're only staying until Monday. Can't you spend next week with us too?"
Hotaru suddenly found a crab claw to be the most interesting object in the world. "I am sorry."
"We're never going to see you for long, are we?" she languished. "It makes me so happy to have you in this house, eating my food. Here, take seconds!" She busied herself with scooping ladles of soup into Hotaru's bowl. The latter had to shake her head amusingly at this, partly because she felt like her stomach was going to burst with one more spoonful and partly because she was secretly overjoyed at the sight of her mother ecstatic like never before.
The small village of Nagoya was in no way short of natural, authentic beauty. From gracefully curving rivers to tall, majestic mountains and succulent fields in which cattle grazed, the open space here was perpetual. If one kept walking on the single dirt path that all houses and stores lined on, one would eventually find herself on top of a hill overlooking a cemetery and a huge, flat horizon. It was on that hill that Hotaru had spent Sunday evening with her family.
Her mother, while nibbling a homemade meat bun, pointed at the great mountain to the west and told Hotaru of her childhood with it. Many years ago, people had wanted to demolish it to expand urban land but she, along with Hotaru's father and some other tree-huggers managed to save it valiantly in the end. Now it was owned by a rich woman who had built a homely cottage on the mountaintop.
"We met her once," she remarked. "She was the most beautiful lady I've ever seen, and she came with that city girl aura that you have around you." Her mother giggled at the memory; Hotaru got to know her enough during the two days to know that she was quite besotted by the stereotypical image of a city girl. "When she bought the piece of land, she had been newly widowed without children. She stayed in the countryside for a year, eager to escape her duties. Apparently her job was very troublesome though high paying. She did eventually go back though. She reminded me a lot of you."
"Did she look like me?"
"No, she did not. Not at all," Mr. Imai decided.
Subaru's throat and arms had tensed by this point, and the hair on the back of his neck was standing. Hotaru knew he must have been quite considerably spaced out when he stared straight into the setting sun with his glasses on. But she had gotten used to it by now. There were a lot of subjects that made him tense up; her brother was somewhat of a pain in the derriere, as well as an unsolved puzzle. She wondered what kind of life he had had during the fifteen years that she had been away to make him so ornery and close-minded about everything surrounding him.
"Oh, she was a lot older," explained Hotaru's mother, "and her hair was long. She always kept it in this perfect ponytail, not one strand sticking out. She looked really smart, that woman, just like my baby!"
Subaru sighed something long and heavy. "Can we not talk about her?"
With tight smiles, the subject had been dropped. When Hotaru later asked her father about his puzzling behaviour, the older Imai explained that while the lady had been generally liked by the townspeople, Subaru maintained a firm dislike—bordering on enmity—for her. He had refused to divulge the reason to anyone who had asked, and since the villagers held high respect for him they refrained from speaking of her in front of him.
It was then that Hotaru, with an eye-roll, decided that her brother was completely and utterly hopeless.
One violet eye blinked open in the dead of the night.
There was a dim, flickering light penetrating through the crack beneath the door that successfully kept Hotaru from getting any shuteye. Whoever was outside was probably using a candle. The light had been flickering sporadically for twenty minutes straight now. She could barely stop herself from investigating the scene any longer, but Hotaru knew that once she physically got up it would be near impossible to go back to sleep again. And her train was leaving at the crack of dawn.
After five more minutes, she finally gave in and creaked open the door to the living room.
Hotaru was completely taken by surprise to see none other than her mother in a pile on the floor, nightgown rippling. Next to Mrs. Imai, the flame of a beeswax candle made flickers of light and shadow on the wall. The woman slid her hands along the tiles as if arranging something in front of her. She was so preoccupied with her task that she did not even notice Hotaru approaching her.
It was the inventor's own shadow that gave her away.
Gasping in terror, her mother swiveled in fright, trying to cover up whatever she had in front of her. To Hotaru's dismay, she showed no signs of recovering from the deer in headlights look even after seeing that it was only her daughter.
"What are you doing up at this hour?" mumbled Hotaru, already feeling her eyes droop.
"I was just… just…"
Hotaru knelt next to the mountains of photographs Mrs. Imai unsuccessfully tried to hide. She had been lining them neatly next to each other, presumably in chronological order. The array of pictures extended halfway across the room, and took up a good quarter of living room space. From the size of a more haphazard pile, Hotaru could see that she was nowhere near finished with this sorting.
"I-I don't know what came over me," admitted her mother. "I couldn't sleep and I suddenly had an urge to do this. So I told myself I'd pick out a few photographs for you to take home. And then… and then I don't know what happened. I got too caught up in the—in the memories."
Hotaru was only half listening to her mother's explanation. Upon examining the time line of photos, she saw one picture that begged her full attention as soon as she set eyes on it. Carefully, she fingered it by the edges and tilted it towards the candlelight.
So this is what Subaru's son looks like…
It was hard to tell how old Hikaru had been when this was taken. She estimated him to be around three or four, only his eyes were much too dull for a child of that age. He looked like someone who had just recently discovered the cruelty of the adult world. She could immediately tell that he had no interest in toys. Neither did he in any other pleasurable activities, it seemed. There were plenty of village kids happily prancing around in the school courtyard behind him but all Hikaru did was stand there with his dark blue lunch bag possessively clasped in his hands.
Even then, the boy undeniably resembled Subaru. He inherited the trademark eyes of the Imai family; at that, Hotaru smiled. His tidy gray hair, maintained short and just above his ears, obviously came from him. It, like his father's, was extremely flat and did not stick out in any way. But his sharp, angled eyebrows she did not recognize and his arms and legs were much more twig-like than her brother's. In fact, Hikaru was just thin and tall in general while Subaru had always had a broader, sturdier build.
"Do you remember that school building?" asked her mother, a brilliant beam spread across her features.
Hotaru shook her head. She had been so busy examining Hikaru that she neglected to take notice of his surroundings in the photograph.
"Why, this is your old elementary school! It's prospering. Oh, I still remember the day you decided to leave for Alice Academy to save that building. And as soon as you came to me, I knew that my little Hotaru wasn't really mine anymore."
"I will always be your daughter."
"Of course you will. I didn't get to see you grow up is all. And there's another child I'll never have that privilege with. You see that boy in the picture? That's Hikaru. He's going to be really handsome once he grows up, isn't he? You can just tell. Subaru never lacked in the looks department, and Naomi is a very lovely woman. To think I won't ever see him, won't ever hear from him until he's eighteen. Another decade gone, wasted waiting!"
She was absolutely enraptured by the child. "Tell me about him."
"Hikaru… why, he only spent a year with us. Naomi wanted him to complete his education in Tokyo. It's amazing how much he takes after Subaru in nearly every aspect but his smile. His smile is identical to Naomi's. Let's see… if I recall correctly, he inherited both their tempers. My grandson seldom threw tantrums but when he did, oh, the entire neighbourhood would never hear the end of it!
"You know, he got the most endearing trait from his father: he was always the first to care for the injured. Once, I came down with a spring cold and he tried to make chicken noodle soup for me. Subaru, afraid that he'd burn the house down, hauled him away from the kitchen and took over. The poor kid was heartbroken for the longest time!"
Hotaru smiled, picturing the boy in the picture scurrying around the room, biting his lip and trying to decide which spice to put in the pot next. She pictured him at odds with her brother, stubbornly glaring at the older version of himself. She pictured them holding hands with another woman, Subaru's mysterious ex-wife. She pictured him sleeping serenely inside the room with yellow walls. And then she saw it again, empty. "When was he taken?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't know… Sometime after his mother and father split? Naomi is the very woman I envisioned Subaru to marry: strong, unyielding, fierce but with a blazing heart. They were so happy together, the two of them. But even that paled to what she felt when the government demanded her son. We tried so hard to conceal it! And yet somehow that doesn't matter. Somehow, it still leaked. It always does. They always find out. They probably send people to keep close eyes Alice families, in case the children inherit any powers. They pestered Subaru and Naomi every day nonstop to send Hikaru to Alice Academy. That was what distanced them, you see."
Hotaru gritted her teeth, feeling the familiar sting she had felt that day that Chiaki visited her to explain all her "privileges." Of course it would be those people at the root of all anguish. If it was not Japan, then it was America. Choosing between Alice Academy and Irving Academy was the same as choosing between a rock and a hard place, and that was if she had the choice in the first place. Oh, how she hated the government, hated the entire Alice system. Children should not be separated from their families at such a young age. They did not deserve to be robbed of their childhood, to be thrown in a cage without any knowledge of how to thrive in the outside world.
She conjured the picture of that nightmare for the first time, willing Natsume's steady fire to burn down everything in sight, to burn down the constricting walls on all sides and free every single child from that very same nightmare.
"Alice Academy," Hotaru remarked after snapping back to reality, "is rather hypocritical, is it not? Their supposed purpose is to protect Alices from being misused, yet there is so much corruption inside those walls itself."
Mrs. Imai nodded. "Which mother would willingly send their child into a cage? Naomi told me again and again that she was going to fight them, but is it even possible to fight against such a powerful, organized structure? I would oppose them if I could, but I don't even know where to start! I hate being unable to do anything but hope to see little Hikaru again."
With one last defeated sigh, Hotaru stood and her mother started gathering up all the pictures.
Here are the things I've never been able to understand about Gakuen Alice. From a rational perspective, it's rather discriminatory and unreasonably reclusive. I mean, if you take the segregation of African American slaves in the mid 1900s or the Jewish during the Holocaust—though perhaps not as extreme, and compare it to this, there is practically nothing different. They're all confined in ghettos. It's still majority against minority. And minority almost always loses.
But yet this is a story marketed towards kids, and in the ten thousand something fanfics not one of them has expanded on this idea, this flaw. Not that I like to get into the habit of criticizing Fanfiction, but it would be nice to read something captivating sans romance once in a while.
And a little bit of trivia to end this on a happier note: Nagoya is actually the third largest city of Japan, not a small village somewhere up north.
Please review, fave and alert!
-IndigoGrapefruit
