TWENTY-THREE
About halfway through lunch, the doctor has let her out of the infirmary.
Her footsteps are sharp and clear without the normal bustle and conversation of other people filling up the halls. Once she reaches the doors to the grand hall, though, she can hear low murmurs coming through the door.
She debates whether or not she wants to go in. She already had a few sandwiches at the infirmary, so she's not hungry, but she doesn't have anything to do except for homework, which honestly doesn't take very long. She could do that. Or, she could enjoy being outside without any interruptions.
But in her (shared) room, a box of someone else's memories waits for her.
Turning back around, she returns to her room.
There, in locker #23A, is the box of someone else's memories. She pulls them out, and she doesn't really know what to do with the pictures in her hands. Mrs. Tsubasa obviously meant to tell her something, but there's no note, no word of explanation.
Just her own conclusion that some stories really do have happy endings.
On a whim, she shuffles the photos and then lays them out on her bed. She tries to put them back in order, single file line, by rationalizing her way through them.
Some are easy: Miss Maria appears in the last third, and Miss Amou is by herself only in the first few. She judges the relative order of the ones where Miss Tsubasa is alone by looking closely at her expression, her posture, and even the background. It's easiest when Miss Maria appears, because Miss Tsubasa goes from shy and awkward to cool and confident.
Patterns, cycles that are easy to spot—she likes finding the underlying order.
Going back to the happy ending thought, though, she has to say that Mrs. Tsubasa's and Mrs. Maria's story isn't over yet.
She's only a kid. She knows she shouldn't know, shouldn't have even an inkling of what she knows.
But the fact of the matter is that real life isn't like stories. Stories have to stop somewhere. Life keeps going; it doesn't stop even though you're stuck years in the past, stuck in a foreign country, stuck outside a burning house with Carol screaming and Papa's last words and…
And she's crying. She doesn't want to damage the pictures, so she rolls over and smothers her face in her pillow.
She knows Mrs. Tsubasa and Mrs. Maria want to adopt her.
The matron told her.
The evidence told her.
The hope she still has told her.
She rolls over again to get one photo in particular.
It's the first one where Miss Tsubasa's smiling again. She's by herself, a robe over her concert costume, and even in the picture tears are visible in her eyes. But she's smiling, and it's a wobbly smile, but she's smiling.
She's only a kid. It's okay for her to believe in second chances, right?
a/n: Elfnein keeps getting the sad, introspective chapters with vague allusions to The Great Tragedy :P It gets better. (It has to, or else I wouldn't be able to bear writing this, lol.)
Please comment! And recommend this fic to people if you really like it.