Chapter Twenty Eight
The alley was quiet.
It was hard to tell what time it was, let alone what day it was. The slate colored sky gave little away as to whether it was morning or afternoon—it would have been much, much darker had it been night.
We should probably get going, Ka-chan, Hideki said quietly. My arms tightened around my middle and I nodded to myself, a quick, jerky movement, rain water sliding down my face. My clothes were soaked through and uncomfortable, and I still hadn't figured out just how far I would have to walk to get back to my apartment.
But if I was where Usagi had said I was, then I was less than four blocks from home.
The word sounded weird even as I thought about it—home was with Mom and Mizuri. Home had tea in the cupboards and the steady hum of the refrigerator and the constant ticking of the clock Mom insisted we keep on the wall next to the door. Home had beige walls with family pictures, a frayed rug sitting near the sofa, book cases filled with text books and picture books alike.
But home didn't have Usagi and Grimmjow.
Home would never have Usagi and Grimmjow, because one of them was dead and the other had washed their hands of me as quickly as possible. It felt a bit like betrayal, like every ounce of kindness she had shown me in Hueco Mundo was false—but I understood why she would take me home so quickly. Las Noches was still likely under attack, and Usagi seemed genuinely worried about the intruders.
I didn't blame her for returning me so quickly.
Taking a deep breath, I started down the alley, purple sneakers getting soaked quickly given the growing puddles of rain that I couldn't avoid. A shiver worked its way into my body as I stepped out onto the slick sidewalk, immediately swallowed up by people hurrying past me in rain coats or with umbrellas, all on their way to somewhere, all of them completely unaware that there was something other that lurked.
I panicked for a moment, unused to be surrounded by all of these people after only being around a handful for weeks—though had it really been weeks? I had lost track of the time completely, which was to be expected given the poor handle I had had on it before my departure.
It took me a few moments, and then I recognized where I was; Usagi had been right. She had dropped me off in the same spot Grimmjow had abducted me from, less than four blocks from the apartment. Instinctively, I started to walk in the direction I knew my home lay, having grown up in the area all my life. My arms stayed wrapped around my midsection, shoulders hunched up and forward in a poor attempt to warm myself up a bit.
I avoided bumping into people out of muscle memory, slipping past them easily enough and moving quickly through the crowd, walking at a hurried pace. I wasn't entirely sure what people saw when I walked past them, all matted blond locks and no coat and soaked shoes.
Everything looked the same as I passed it—all of the storefronts, all of the homes, all of the apartment complexes. I had to remind myself that nothing here had likely changed during my stay in Hueco Mundo, however long that had been. I was the one who had changed, who had come to accept the fact that I was not crazy and had come to terms with the voice in my head.
I came upon my apartment complex before I could even register the fact that my feet were angling for the staircase.
You can do this, Ka-chan.
I mounted the stairs, taking them one at a time as a measured pace until I reached the second landing. I was telling myself that it would be fine, that everything would work out right, nothing would go wrong.
The door was the same, and the sight of it made me realize that this was real. This was actually happening—I was going home, I was close. All I had to do was reach out and knock, because my key had fallen out of my messenger bag at some point, likely lost to the sands of Hueco Mundo.
But-
But what if Mom and Mizuri had decided to move? What if no one was home? What if I had been away for so long that they had just decided to pick everything up and move on and move out.
My hand was half raised to the door, fingers curled as best they could in a fist beneath the bandages still wrapped around my torn knuckles. I could see my hand trembling, a mixture of the medication still pumping through my veins and nerves about what could possibly be on the other side of the door. Breathing was not something that was coming easily to me at that point, the panic setting in again as all of the what ifs weighed down on my shoulders.
Okay, I thought. Here we go. I am going to knock on the door. Going to knock. Me. In a few seconds.
The door swung open before I could actually knock, revealing my mother. Her short brown bomb was impeccably combed and curled just like I had always remembered it, blunt bangs in a perfect line over her blue-green eyes. She looked like she normally did—thin, dressed in her white uniform for work under her thick parka with a book bag slung over her shoulder. Her face, which normally looked so happy and healthy, had a pallor to it and appeared to be more gaunt than it had ever looked before.
We stared at each other for a full minute, jaws hanging open—mine to speak, hers from surprise.
"Hi?" I finally croaked, unsure of what to say—Hey Mom! I'm back from being abducted, and actually kind of sort of liking it, and making friends out my captors and spending a bit of time sleeping and kissing one of them, but he died. How have you been?
I don't think your mom would like that explanation, Hideki said rather unhelpfully. But I wouldn't be too sure—she's more unpredictable than you are when it comes to this stuff.
"Kaori?" Her voice sounded weird to me after not having heard it for so long; it cracked when she said my name and I realized for the first time that I had missed hearing it, had missed seeing her.
"Yeah? Pretty sure I am," I said awkwardly, shivering from the cold air that was still biting at my bare arms. I could feel the warm air leaking out of the apartment from behind Mom, who was still standing with the door wide open, staring as me like she was trying to figure out if it was really me or not.
And then her arms were around me and I was startled—not only from the fact that she moved so fast and was hugging me, but also because I could see over the top of her head; my nose reached the middle of her forehead. I vaguely recalled that, before I left, I had been a good few inches shorter than she was.
I hadn't realized I had grown while I was away.
My arms were pinned to my sides, making me incapable of hugging Mom back. It felt almost like she was trying to squeeze the life out of my already thin frame. "Uh, Mom?" I breached, taking a deep breath. "I'm kind of soaked. You're going to get wet."
Mom took a half step back, raising her head just slightly to look me in the face—she was crying, fuck; I could not handle crying people. Crying people were not my forte, and they never had been. And I did not like to see Mom crying; I liked it even less knowing that I was the cause of it.
At least she wasn't sobbing. I would have jumped off of the balcony if she had.
"Where have you been?" I grimaced at the wrecked sound of her voice; it was raw and filled with both wonder and pain, and it kind of made me feel a little bad about being abducted in the first place—which totally wasn't my fault.
"In the rain?" I offered unhelpfully, motioning toward the street where the rain was still pelting against the ground in sheet after sheet or hard drops. "I mean, you know, it is dumping swimming pools of water from the sky."
"That isn't what I meant," she said with a laugh, moving one of her hands from it's spot on my back and placing it lovingly on my face. I leaned into her hand, glad for the added warmth—my hair was sticking to my face in it's current state, and I was suddenly acutely aware of how terrible my locks appeared. "Kaori, it's been two months."
I opened my mouth to say something.
And then promptly closed it when her words fully registered.
Two months. I had been in Hueco Mundo for two months? It honestly hadn't felt like two months—only a few weeks at most, I could swear.
"I'm sorry," I said automatically; I could feel myself shivering. "I shouldn't—I don't-"
"Kaori, shush. It's okay. The last thing I heard from you was a panicked voice mail about killing Mizuri—which, by the way, you did not." I had already figured that much out, but it was comforting for Mom to tell me that no, I didn't kill her—not there there had been much of a chance for me to. I barely remembered making the phone call that morning, sitting at the kitchen table and nervously sipping on my tea while Grimmjow glared up at my apartment.
I was going to miss that glare.
"Oh, good," was all I said in response, bringing up a hand to push some of my wet, matted hair away from my face. "Uh, aren't you going to be late for work if you keep standing here?"
She smiled at me, beaming and shaking her head at the same time. "Where have you been?"
My brain seemed to short circuit at the question—she wouldn't believe me even if I told her the truth. But it wasn't like I could lie to her, because then she would be even more curious.
Stop being a baby, Ka-chan.
I'm not being a baby! I'm just debating on what I should-
I felt Hideki wrench control away from my body before I could even put up any sort of resistance.
"On an entirely separate plane of existence," I heard myself say. Mom's smile slipped off of her face, like she remembered that there was something off about me.
"Oh, honey," she said quietly. Her hand slipped off of my face. "Come on, let's get a coat on you, and then we need to go to the police station."
"Whoa, wait. What for?" Hideki, honestly, could act a good deal like me—I figured he was doing a pretty good job. I was too shell shocked to do anything, too busy trying to figure out what it was that I was going to tell people that had happened to me. It wasn't like anyone was going to believe my outlandish tale.
"Because you're not missing anymore." Hideki and I watched, dumbstruck as Mom ducked into the apartment and snatched a coat off of the coat rack—it was mine, I realized numbly as she handed it to my body and Hideki slipped it on over my soaking wet clothes and messenger bag, zipping it up all the way to my chin.
Like my pants, it was also black, the inside of it it white. And it was massive, too, easily big enough to fit Mizuri into it with me and still have room for another person. The sleeves hung down way, way past my hands, and the hood—once Mom tugged it up over my head—fell down into my eyes. The fur trim on the edge of the hood made it even harder to see, and Hideki pushed it out my eyes as Mom locked the door.
Do you want me to keep handling this, or do you think you can do it? he asked as we started down the stairs—Mom had grabbed me by the elbow, almost like I was going to run off again. It startled me for a moment, how nice Hideki seemed to be being toward me, speaking for me when I couldn't come up with much myself.
Just until we get to the police station, I suppose.
What, are you trying to decide what to tell them? Mom paused for a minute at the bottom of the stairs, opening her umbrella; she wasn't looking at me, wasn't looking my direction at all, and it wasn't hard to see why—she was crying.
Duh.
We started walking again, my body ducking under Hideki's control to get under the umbrella and next to Mom. I was still shivering, shaking with the cold. Sure, I had a warm coat on, but I could feel the inside of it soaking even more with every step I took, absorbing the water trapped in the clothes I had on.
My arm found it's way intertwined with Mom's, and I felt almost like I had never left in the first place.
But we both knew that that was a lie.
The police grilled me for hours.
And I? I told them word for word exactly what had happened to me and where I had gone and what had happened there.
And they.
They did not believe me. Likely because it was completely and utterly outlandish even to me, but also given my medical history. It wasn't much like I could really blame them for that, either. I wouldn't have believed it myself, even when I was pretty sure Hideki was just a very good indicator of something very, very wrong going on in my head.
For the most part, Hideki sat in the back of my mind and listened, though he offered some of his own rather unhelpful comments. Which he actually voiced, out loud, using my body and confusing the person taking my statement even more.
"And, ugh, he had the worse sense of style ever. And he made everyone dress in the same monochromatic scheme and had the worst breath ever. He was, like, some kind of terrible dictator or something?" He had to have been talking about Aizen.
"Yeah, those monsters—they were massive, with razor sharp teeth and they drooled and smelled even worse than the dude's breath." I wasn't entirely sure, but he must have been stretching it a bit on the Gillans.
"And then there was this man—the man who took me—he had really, really pretty blue eyes and he was a decent kisser, all things considered. But he also wore eye shadow and it was. It was just weird. And then there was the bone thing on his cheek—which I talked about earlier, y'know—but I'm pretty sure he just, like, super glued on it on there or something because, honest, I was the sanest one there." And that. That had definitely been about Grimmjow.
I was still numb at the thought of Grimmjow. He couldn't be dead; I hadn't seen a body, hadn't had any sort of proof other than what Usagi had said.
As far as I knew, though, Usagi had never lied to me; had never had a reason to lie to me about anything.
And she wouldn't have lied to me about that.
Mom and I walked home quickly and quietly; all of my nerves felt like they were on fire from both my sudden change in scenery and company and our run in with the police. Hideki had taken control of most of the conversation after his comments on Grimmjow; I was too numb to say anyting more.
As we walked, I continually kept looking over my shoulder, expecting something or someone to be there, watching me, waiting.
Ka-chan, calm down. You're being paranoid, and it's totally unnecessary. Aizen got what he wanted out of us, so we're totally free.
Are you sure?
I'm pretty sure. That hadn't been as comforting as he intended it to be.
I couldn't quite shake the feeling that something bad was going on, somewhere—couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't actually supposed to have left Hueco Mundo, that Usagi wasn't supposed to have dragged me from Grimmjow's rooms and just leave me shivering and shaking in the rain in an alleyway.
But the pizza box I held warmed my hands, the sweats I was parading around in were comfortable, and there was an umbrella over my head. Mom walked next to me, one hand in her pocket and the other on the handle of the umbrella. I could feel her stealing glances at me as we walked, like she was still trying to make sure it was really me, that I had really come home.
She was still in her pink scrubs, though her eyes had become red rimmed and puffy from crying over me—again, I had to remind myself. She had probably cried over me far too many times over the course of my absence, unsure of whether or not I would ever come home and, if I did come home, if I would be the same person I had been when I left.
I could have told her easily that I wasn't the same person who had been snatched out of the front of a moving car by a man with a giant hole in his stomach, but she had already heard my story—and I knew she didn't believe it. After all, I was still clinically ill to her, still a child who needed a guardian.
I had turned eighteen during my stay in Hueco Mundo, my birthday passing by without me even realizing it. I wasn't a child anymore, but I still felt like one under her watchful eye and careful touch.
And I wasn't quite sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
We didn't talk much on our way home—there was nothing I could think of to say to her, no proper way I could convey my apology in a way that would be meaningful to her other than, Hey Mom! Sorry I got abducted! And that—that probably wouldn't have worked out too well, all things considered.
She shook out the umbrella and folded it up once we reached the staircase to our apartment, mounting the steps just a minute before I did so I could follow her up.
My stomach felt like it was doing flips in my gut the closer we got to the door. I was worried about how Mizuri would react to my sudden reappearance—it wasn't like Mom and I had left a note or anything. We had grabbed a coat for me and locked the door and dashed, Mom intent on getting everything settled down and cleared before I even had a chance to sleep. And besides, leaving a note that your missing sister had suddenly returned probably wouldn't have gone over too well.
Oh, please, Hideki scoffed as we reached our landing. I would have done it just to see how it had turned out.
Yeah, I replied as Mom dug out her keys to unlock the door. And it would have gone horribly, more than likely.
I heard the lock spring open and watched mutely as Mom pushed open the door and entered, waiting for me to follow with the cooling pizza in my hands. I did so cautiously, almost afraid of what I would find inside of the apartment—had she removed all of the pictures of me? Had she rearranged the furniture? Painted the walls some putrid color in the hopes that I would come back just out of spite to yell at her for picking such a gross shade?
"Mizuri?" I heard her call into the living space as I shut the door behind me and kicked off my sneakers. My slippers were still sitting where they always had been, at the spot closest to the wall—though they had been straightened out and left perfectly, whereas I had always just kicked them off and left them as they lay.
"Pizza!" I heard Mizuri shout, quickly followed by a thump and the sound of her rushing footsteps. "Pizza pizza pizza pi-"
She rounded the corner into the hall and stopped, standing stock still as she caught sight first of the fact that Mom was not holding the pizza, and then the fact that it was me who was holding the pizza in my hands.
"Uh, surprise?" I tried, grimacing at the way the word sounded in the muted hall. Mizuri's jaw dropped as she stared at me, and then glanced at the pizza in my hands, and then back at me.
"Uh," she said, drawing out the syllable until it was a steady hum. Her hair had grown longer since I had been gone, and she had gotten a little taller; I had forgotten, almost, that was still growing, that she would likely surpass me in height at any point in time. "What."
"It's pineapple," I said, flicking open the box lid and tilting the contents toward Mizuri—my coat was beginning to make me unbearably hot; I could feel sticky sweat beginning to form on my back and make my tank top stick to my skin. "Might have to heat it up a bit, though—it's pretty cold outside."
"No, I mean—I can see the pineapples, Kaori-nee, that's not what I meant. I just—I—what is going on." Mizuri sounded much, much more mature than she had when I left. The knowledge of the fact that she must have matured quickly in the two months I was missing hit me in the stomach like a sucker punch; I hadn't ever wanted that to happen to my baby sister, who had been so mature already having me for a sister.
"We're having pizza for dinner?" I offered, closing the lid on the box and taking a step toward Mizuri. Her fingers tightened on her upper arm as her jaw worked up and down, blue eyes narrowed at me as she tried to figure out if I was purposely avoiding giving her an honest answer. "It's really not that hard to wrap your head around, honest."
Mom stood off to the side, watching the two of us interact quietly. I could see the joy in her face at the fact that I was talking to Mizuri like I hadn't been gone for two months, could see the twitch of her muscles as she half smiled at the two of us—at Mizruri's confusion and my obstinate behavior. I had thought that would have been one thing she wouldn't have missed.
"When did you . . . when did you come back?" I stopped in my tracks, looking straight at her. She looked like she was about to cry and, nope, was not ready to deal with another crying person twice in one day.
"A couple of hours ago," I answered as smoothly as possible, striding away from her and into the kitchen. My mouth was watering from the prospect of eating pizza, a food I absolutely loved. I set the box on the kitchen table—nothing had been moved around during my absence, I was glad to see—and moved toward the cupboards for some plates.
Except I had to stop because Mizuri stood in my path, her hands on her hips in a rather adult like manner. She was glaring at me, frowning in full force and leaning toward me menacingly. Which, really, wasn't too nice because she was almost as tall as I was, quite a bit younger than myself, and I had brought her pizza.
But she was crying, small shoulders shaking, and it was almost like she didn't realize it herself.
"I'm sorry I didn't pick you up from school," was all I could manage to tell her, setting my still bandaged hand on her head and messing up her hair. Mom had yet to see what was under the bandages, but the police had noticed them, had taken pictures of the gouges in my knuckles for reference, leaving me to bandage them back up myself before returning me yet again to Mom.
It wasn't like they were going to find my kidnapper, anyway. Hideki and I had told them as much, but they hadn't listened—I knew they wouldn't. After all, I was just a crazy girl to them.
Mizuri's arms found their way around my middle immediately, wrapping around me and holding onto me tight. My hand slipped off of the top of her head, arm coming down instead to rest across her shoulders, my other arm finding it's way around her body.
She was shaking against me, loud sobs wracking her body, and all I could do was stand there and feel numb. I had still been in Heuco Mundo mere hours ago, happy and content with the way my life was going. And now I was standing in the kitchen in the apartment I had shared for years with my mother and my sister, both of them crying, a cold pizza on the table.
Just shut up and accept it, Ka-chan. You're home now, for good.
But did I really want it to be for good?
Mom had me sit in a kitchen chair minutes later, dead center of the kitchen. I had a cold slice of pizza in my hand, a small nibble taken out of it. I had shed my still damp jacket at Mom's request, hanging it in the hall where it had apparently stayed during my absence.
Mom seemed like she wanted to put everything that had happened in the past two months behind her as quickly as possible—she acted almost like I hadn't been gone in the first place.
Of course, she had come to the same conclusion I had; a majority of my hair was completely unsalvageable, given the mess of rats and matted bits it had morphed itself into. She couldn't even run her deft, nimble fingers through it, a knack she had always had no matter how bad my hair got.
Instead of letting me sit and eat at the table first with the two of them like a normal family, she had insisted we take care of my hair. Mizuri had immediately taken up residence in one of the other kitchen chairs, knees pulled up to her chest and her eyes trained on me.
I offered her a small smile as I sat carefully on the very edge of the chair, one hand folded in my lap and the other working on holding up my slice of pineapple pizza—it was unsanitary for me to eat while getting my hair cut, but it definitely wasn't the most dangerous thing I had done in the past few weeks.
Uh, yeah. I'd say the most dangerous thing you did was kiss Grimmjow. But, you know, that's just me. I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes at Hideki, to let either Mom or Mizuri know that I could hear the voice in my head loud and clear.
They would probably hand me a bottle of my prescription before too long, anyway.
I heard rather than felt the first snip of the scissors, and I went completely still. I knew it wouldn't be pretty by the time Mom was done, but it would be better than the mess it was at that moment.
It took ages, and I could slowly by surely feel the hair falling away, feel the area around my head becoming lighter. My eyes flicked down the floor and I had to fight to not flinch at the growing pile of peroxided hair that had amassed. I could only wonder what the hell it would look like by the time she was done, how much of it, exactly would be gone.
It'll be fine.
OH MY GOD.
I was standing in the bathroom; I had the door closed and locked behind me. I was in there specifically to take a shower, Mom's orders.
Hideki and I were too busy gaping at my reflection in the mirror, my jaw hanging down. I hadn't seen my hair completely brown in such a long time that it took my off guard-
That, and the fact that I now sported a pixie cut instead of my typical, elbow length hair.
I—I think you should sit down, Ka-chan. This is too much change for me in one day. I did not heed Hideki's suggestion; I was too busy leaning forward over the counter, one hand coming up to tug on the ends of my hair. It was a little longer on the right side than it was on the left, a few strands falling into my eyes. Overall, it was much shorter in the back and on the sides than I had ever had it before.
It was amazing how much a single haircut could change the way my face looked—my shoulders almost looked too big for my body, angles of my face too sharp and feral.
I did not like it at all.
Fighting the urge to snarl at my reflection, I turned away from it quickly and turned the water on full blast, tugging my shirt off over my head and tossing it into the corner. All of the bruises I had earned during my stay in Hueco Mundo had disappeared weeks ago, leaving all of my skin as smooth and unmarked as it had been the morning I had left the house.
I already knew adjusting to my regular life was going to take some time, but I was already fed up with it.
It had only been less than ten hours since Usagi had dumped me in the alley.
Mizuri had quietly sat in the hall, waiting for me during the entirety of my shower. When I opened the bathroom door, hair sticking up at ridiculous angles, all of it still soaking wet, she had quietly stood up and handed me the bottle of pills I had left on the dresser in my room the last morning I had been in the apartment, quietly followed by a thin black marker.
I thanked her, returned to the bathroom, and promptly flushed the one I was supposed to take down the toilet, marking the 'x' on my arm nevertheless.
She crawled into bed with me later that night, all cold feet and hands and shaking breath. Her arms wrapped around me immediately, fingers digging into my back as she tucked her head under my chin and breathed in my scent. One of my arms found it's way under her neck, the other draping itself over her side as I fought to get comfortable.
Something about the way she held onto me through the night, never letting me go and never moving from my side, always adjusting and readjusting the way she held onto me like she was afraid I was going to go away reminded me a bit of Grimmjow.
The thought put a pang into my heart—he was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Shut up and go to sleep, Ka-chan.
Over the next few weeks, I tried my best to mend my relationship with both Mom and Mizuri.
Mizuri was easy—she accepted me back almost like I hadn't been gone in the first place, though she almost always kept some part of her touching me, like she was trying to make sure I was relaly there and wasn't going to disappear on her again if she let go.
When I walked her to school in the mornings, she held onto my hand and walked at a steady pace, never trying to run ahead or jockey to get in front of others. She would always look over her shoulder at least three times when it was time for her to get to homeroom, glances more intense the farther away she got from me.
But I was always there to walk her home at the end of the school day, and Mizuri was the one I spent the most time with at home—reading to her, helping her do her homework, her reading to me. We would make dinner for the three of us before Mom got home, both of us trying to do our best at cooking.
Honestly, with Mizuri, it almost felt like I had never been gone in the first place. The feeling probably would have been true if I didn't feel like I was having a stake being driven into my heart or my gut every time I got a specific shade of green or blue, or any time I was surrounded almost entirely by black and white.
Mom, on the other hand, was harder to reconnect with. She was cautious with the way she said things, always careful not to mention my psychological "problem" (Hideki), always tip toeing around the fact that I had been gone for two months and something in me had changed.
I knew she wanted to know what, exactly, had changed within me and how it had come about, but she could never outright ask—as far as she knew, I had been in a psychotic break during the entirety of my absence; it was likely, in her mind, that no one would ever know the truth about what had happened to me.
Of course, I knew the police would never find the culprits—after all, they were on an entirely different plane of existence, and the one who had done the actual abducting was dead.
Stockholm Syndrome.
The psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with their captor.
That was what the consensus was from each of the psychiatrists I had gone to see. I hadn't been back to see any of them a second time, because I was not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Which was why I began to lie.
Eventually, it got to the point where I simply started stating that everything that had happened to me was a figment of my imagination and a side effect of my delicate condition. It wasn't the truth, but it was believable based on my history. And it wasn't the best feeling in the world knowing that they would believe that, but it was easier for me than trying to watch person after person school their expressions from one of disbelief into a trained, professional mask.
Psychs were easier to talk to after that, though I wouldn't look any of them in the eye. I wouldn't start conversations on my own, wouldn't divulge any information unless they asked pointed questions.
After the sixth failed visit, I sat down at the kitchen table across from Mom, shoulders set with determination and jaw tight.
"I don't want to see any more psychiatrists, Mom." She looked up from the text book she had been reading, frown tugging at her features.
"Is it because they don't believe you?" she asked, head titling to the side a bit as she grabbed her bookmark and shoved it between the pages.
"Kind of," I said, tugging on a lock of my hair. It was still hard, trying to get used to the length. My hair had never been this short in my memory, and part of me wanted to bleach it again.
I refrained simply on the grounds that I should leave that much of myself in Hueco Mundo.
"And, I just, I dunno; I feel like I'm fine. Like I don't need to talk to anyone about what May or may not have happened to me, because all I'm going to get back is blank states and new prescriptions. And I-I don't want to be that Kaori anymore. The one with a standing weekly appointment and bottles and bottles of pills I have to make sure I took and just constantly worrying about whether or not it works."
Mom took her eyes off of me for a moment, shutting her textbook quietly and pushing her hair back behind her ears.
"You haven't actually been taking your medication, have you?" She didn't wait for me to answer, dumbstruck as I was. How could she have possibly known that? "I already know you haven't, Kaori. Your hands wouldn't still be shaking if you were. But honestly?" She offered me a small smile, looking me right in the eyes. "I like you off of it. You're more alive this way, less of a shell with only a little personality. Please just promise me that if you feel like you need it, you'll take it again?"
Promise me.
I'll be back in, like, two hours. Promise.
I forced a smile at Mom, pushing the vague memory down.
"I promise."
It was a promise I intended to keep.
The next few months went pretty swimmingly, but I was in a slump.
I couldn't get a job for the life of me—everyone and their mother seemed to know that I had disappeared for two months without a trace, only to show up in the clothes I had disappeared in, the only evidence that I had even been gone in the first place a missing persons report and the scars on my knuckles.
Given my history with my condition and the fact that I spaced out so often, getting a job was next to impossible. It was a hard enough task to find the will to get out of bed in the morning and walk Mizuri to school, to step into the market and pick up whatever Mom had asked me to pick up for dinner, to get out of the apartment and talk to people.
I had made an effort at first, but nothing seemed to work. I hit a wall constantly; my only real, constant company was Hideki, who wasn't much help at all. More often than not, he suggested I just stay in bed and go back to sleep for the rest of my life which, honestly, was a pretty great idea. Mom and Mizuri were both supportive in my endeavors, one or the other dragging me out of my bed and keeping me from moping about everything most mornings.
Neither of them liked to leave me alone all day—I knew that they were never sure what they would come home to, to find out if I had decided to up and disappear again or simply give up. Mizuri always looked like she was opening a Christmas present when I was standing by the gates of her school, waiting for her patiently.
Like she had thought I wouldn't show up.
That hurt, just a little; I would always make an effort for Mizuri, even if it killed me.
"Hey."
I looked up from the book I had been reading—something about mental illness and how best to cope with loved ones diagnosed; something I had simply grabbed off of the shelf to distract myself with. Honestly, it wasn't my choice of reading material, but it was the only thing lying around.
That, and Hideki made some pretty great comments on a good majority of the things I read, making it entertaining and hard to concentrate on what I was trying to absorb. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I felt ready to move on. To start over—to start again, in a place where no one knew who I was or that I had gone missing or that I had a voice in my head.
Mom was standing in front of me, looking at me intently, eyes flicking from the book to my face and back again.
"Hi," I said as brightly as I could muster, closing the book on top of my hand—I didn't have a bookmark handy and was pretty sure no one would appreciate it if I decided to dog ear the pages. "Uh, what can I do for you?"
We were still strained; we did our best to connect to each other, to talk things out, to interact to the best of our abilities, but it was hard. Two months away from each other had changed us. She still viewed me as a fragile thing that needed protecting and order and structure and routine.
And I—I wanted it, but not in the way that she offered it. I wanted a job, I wanted to be able to take care of myself. I wanted to make new friends, to interact with people outside of my head and outside of the apartment. I wanted people to go out with at night, friends to fall into bed with just as the dawn was rising, exhausted but with adrenaline still pumping through our veins.
That wasn't something I felt like I could find where I was at that point.
Of course, Mom was probably going to tell me something about what she wanted me to pick up at the market tomorrow, or to ask if what I was reading was any good, or to question me about how my job search was going (surprise! It was going abysmal).
"What do you think about moving, Kaori?"
Well. That was not what I had been expecting.
I looked away from Mom for a minute, looking at the window—where all I saw was the building sitting across the street, rows upon rows upon rows of closed windows and shades drawn over them in varying angles. And then I looked around me at the living room, at the area I had grown up in and come to know every inch of, at the area that, upon coming home, hadn't really felt like home to me.
"I—Yeah. I think that's a good idea."
My hands had stopped trembling.
Whew. I know it's choppy and a little weird-but so is the next one. Which isn't done yet, but is sitting at somewhere around 10k, and IT WILL BE UP ON WEDNESDAY.
You guys are awesome for sticking with me through this, and your reviews last chapter had me cackling. Maybe leave some more in the box?