Ryuuko told me about her dream with the girl again. She remembered a little more about her but not a whole lot. She told me her hair was frazzled and that she was walking her through somewhere. "I think she smiled at me." Ryuuko said. I'm the only one Ryuuko tells about "Memory", her sister. Mom told me that "Memory" is the one who sends us money but she never signs her name. Every time Ryuuko has this dream, she gets more and more sad. On top of this, she gets more mad.
The only things we can tell her is that her sister loved her. Mom says she doesn't know why Memory left Ryuuko here those years ago but she does know that there had to have been a good reason. At one point, I asked Mom, "What's a good reason?" Mom pointed out that Memory was likely a kid, too, going by how she wrote the note. "Clearly, whoever 'Memory' is, she had to have loved Ryuuko more than anything in the world." Mom said but I told her that Ryuuko's heart is broke and that she wants it to be fixed.
"Mama, how do you fix a broken heart?"
"I don't know, Mako."
Wherever "Memory" is can't be too far away, otherwise, why else would she have our address? Why doesn't she come visit Ryuuko-chan? I asked Mom this and I still got the same answer, "I don't know, Bebe." The only things Ryuuko has of "Memory" is her sweater and the photo she came with. She tends to keep them tucked away somewhere safe, somewhere where she always knows where it is. That photo doesn't really show a lot of what "Memory" looks like. In Ryuuko-chan's drawings of "Memory", she draws only what she remembers and Memory's face is always covered by her messy hair. She's really good at drawing, though she doesn't do it so much. "I don't remember her real, real, well." she told me.
One night, when it there were a lot of stars in the sky, I told Ryuuko-chan that we should go find Memory again. She told me, "Mako, you're nuts." I told her that I already knew that but, still, we should go find Memory. What I didn't tell her is that I was scared of losing her but I wanted her heart to be fixed.
The morning after that, we left the home, with some of the money Mama saved from Memory's cheques and what we could carry. We'd be gone a while. Somehow, Ryuuko-chan slept on the streets like it's nothing but I had a harder go at it. She could never really give me an explanation for why just that it was familiar to her for some reason.
There's more buried in her memories than she knows.