Is a rope better, or a hand around one's neck?
(Chapter-specific warnings:
- Violence
- Totalitarian regime
- Attempted filicide (murder of a child by a parent)
- Obsession and codependency)
What could she expect?
Imel strode through the streets at a frantic pace. Her wide, bloodshot eyes were glassy and dry at the same time, refusing to blink for fear of missing Lusamina's silhouette that might sneak into her peripheral vision. She also refused to relax her attention to the surrounding sounds. She could recognize the girl's footsteps, similar to those of a mouse if the animal were larger, from meters away.
For God's sake, she'd dozed off for just a few minutes... And Lusamina had disappeared completely. The situation wasn't all that unusual, really, but the little girl was always back before sunset, most of the time with bread or fruit, which Imel's post allowed them to buy.
"Lusamina? Lusamina, where are you hiding?"
No answer. No response. No vaguely familiar coughing fits, no little mouse steps, no brunette head she could recognize. Imel was now beginning to feel a migraine coming on in the back of her head. Few people were actually aware of Lusamina's existence. Or rather, few people knew that Imel had custody of her. Mainly because no process had been carried out, and custody was therefore unofficial.
In conclusion, people only saw a little girl with long black hair running through the streets. Which left, among other things, plenty of opportunities to just grab her, take her to a dark corner and-
Imel shook her head. No, if she started thinking about such scenarios, she'd end up clawing out her own eyes and killing the first person who came along. So she continued her search. All night long, while the city was lit up by the old street lamps of traditional buildings contrasting with the skyscrapers under construction, she poked around the capital, almost turning it upside down, moving heaven and earth until she found the girl, eventually, and she wasn't alone.
Imel's senses were on full alert, and to make matters worse, it was a man. He couldn't have been very old, probably one of those belligerent teenagers running away from home in search of an identity. Still, that didn't make him any less dangerous. Especially when it came to little Lusamina. Little Lusamina needed Imel, and this man could put her in danger.
Imel put her hand on her firearm in the inside pocket of her jacket. Technically, since she wasn't in uniform, carrying weapons was forbidden. But, if her suspicions were confirmed, Imel could always play the card of fulfilling her duty by defending the new generation. After all, it wasn't as if the police would do much if they came across the scene. Perhaps they would even enjoy the spectacle of little Lusamina being assaulted by this individual. Imel shuddered at the thought.
Moving closer, Imel was able to make out the young man's features. No, he wasn't a local. She recognized an inhabitant of Peijin between a thousand and one, and even better an inhabitant of the Republic of Eastern Gordeau. She hated making amalgams, but it had to be admitted that the lack of interaction with the outside world had made the population stereotypical, and it was simple to notice foreigners.
"You're great, Lulu." The young man had said, nudging her lightly with his hip. "I think I'd have gotten lost without you."
Imel raised an eyebrow when Lusamina simply nodded.
Lulu? Lulu.
The nickname left a bitter taste in her mouth. No, no, there was no way he-
Who did he think he was?
It was like a second reflex as she aimed and fired a bullet, then another, then a final one. But Ging had disappeared. And Lusamina turned to her with wide eyes.
Damn it.
...
In the days that followed, Imel paid particular attention to little Lusamina's comings and goings. She kept an eye on the times, the routes taken, and reassured herself that these were simple precautions to avoid... the worst. Lusamina wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, which was enough to calm the young woman's distraught heart, and she decided to spend more time looking after the girl. Imel spent days trying to teach Lusamina, who fell asleep as soon as the afternoon came, and slept until the early hours of the morning. The longer she was at home, the better.
The frustration she'd felt up until now about her lack of progress had completely disappeared. It was replaced by a sense of pride as soon as little Lusamina seemed to understand better. And, judging by the syllables the child pronounced with great difficulty, there was a certain motivation that drove her, too, to improve.
But the letters were piling up on the desk. Newspapers too, and since Lusamina no longer tried to read them, Imel thought nothing of throwing them down the chimney. Besides, summer was coming, so the fireplace was no longer needed anyway. But Imel's work was being neglected, and she couldn't escape the consequences for long.
It must have been around two in the morning. Imel was helping Lusamina spit out the bile covering her tongue when the door was opened without warning. Imel's blood ran cold through her veins. Shit. Had she forgotten to answer an important letter? Had she missed a mission she'd been given? She hadn't looked at the pile of mail that scattered everywhere when she forgot to close the windows to air the rooms in the morning.
Imel hurried to hide a still half-asleep little girl, who rolled under the bed and immediately fell asleep again. Lusamina's survival instinct statistics were definitely in the negative... But she didn't need to be afraid, since Imel was there, and she was going to take care of the invader. She grabbed her gun - which she'd reloaded shortly after the confrontation, if you could call it that, with Ging - and headed for the living room, only to run into her superior. The very one to whom Lusamina had delivered the letter.
"Ah, Captain..." Imel let out a reassured sigh, before freezing again. Wait a minute. What exactly was he doing here?
She looked up at him, and he didn't look the most delighted. His long, lean face was contorted into a strained, unsatisfied, bitter expression. Imel felt less at ease, surprisingly.
So she protested when he grabbed her arm to pull her out of the house. She soon realized that it was all for nothing, as a whole host of her comrades were waiting outside. She took a moment to try and understand. If this was a call to order, or even an execution, not all these men would be present.
"We thought something had happened to you." Her superior mumbled as he continued to pull her along, then pushed her into the interior of the huge truck that had stopped in the street. "But it looks like you just neglected your duties. We'll talk about it later, we've got a lot to do right now."
Imel wasn't feeling well. Not well at all. What if Lusamina woke up and, not seeing Imel, went looking for her? What if something happened to her?
She thought of throwing herself out of the moving truck, but when she looked outside, they were already a long way from town, heading south.
Goddamn it.
...
The mission was simple. It was simply to seize a woman who had been suspected of treason against the regime. Imel was not informed of the ins and outs of the case, kept in the dark as to the suspect's motive for 'treason', but this was neither the time nor the place to ask questions or protest. She cultivated the slim hope that if she kept a low profile, and did her job efficiently, she'd be able to leave without asking for anything else, and perhaps even without punishment.
The perimeter was secure. Men were amassing around one of Luonton's many residential districts. It hadn't been very difficult to find the suspect, a certain Elssia Ivralein, who had left her job in a brothel to offer her services on the street. In any other context, and if Lusamina's safety hadn't been at stake, Imel would have felt sorry for the woman. Prostitution was never by choice, or at least it never was in a town like Luonton, where there was plenty of work but too little access to education.
The group entered the building. She lived on the second floor, so the few steps they had to climb took no time at all. The smell when they arrived at the door was... peculiar. It reminded Imel of the smell of the drains during her training at Peijin. Back then, everything was very poorly insulated, so you could smell the macerating urine from miles away. Imel came to the conclusion that the building must have been relatively old.
...she wished it were.
The smell of urine was not coming from the pipes, but from the fact that the suspect had two small children, left unsupervised in the living room, who relieved themselves wherever they pleased. Imel could hardly contain her gagging at the sight of the two babies, and barely caught one before it went out onto the balcony. She let out a small sigh, then put the child back down.
"The environment is unsanitary. We need to file a report to get the children to safety." Imel said, closing the bay window with a grimace. The apartment was modern, yet she'd seen student studios in more infrequent neighborhoods in better condition.
Her superior nodded, confirming her words, before gesturing to one of his comrades who began to scribble on a sheet of paper the information he had acquired. Then, the one writing raised his head. "There's one missing. A child, I mean. There are three declared on the file."
"We'll find it by looking for the mother." Another replied, and the group set off.
Imel thought it was perhaps a tad exaggerated to send the army to seize the woman. But then again, she couldn't really go against orders, and she knew that Luonton wasn't known for having large police forces. What did she know, moreover, that this woman could well be a terrorist, a resistance fighter, plotting a coup.
The members of the army all turned as one when they heard muffled wheezes. Imel was the first to react, and broke down the door to the room from which the muffled sobs were coming. She felt a jolt of electricity run through her body as she saw the suspect, standing over a bed, trying to strangle a child. The third child, that is. This one was older, it seemed, and she couldn't help trembling when she recognized that the child had to be the same age as Lusamina. So she threw herself at the woman, tackling her to the ground, and the two rolled for a moment before Imel got the upper hand and managed to handcuff her wrists.
The little boy, who almost died, sat up with a loud cough, holding his throat. But nothing appeared on his face. His eyes were wide and his breath short, and he didn't answer when the men asked him what had happened, no matter how loudly they spoke.
"We've lost him. We need to evacuate and call a doctor." The guy writing announced.
Imel didn't hesitate.
...
Only then did Imel know exactly what Elssia - the suspect, Imel could no longer afford not to call her by name - was accused of. She was accused of having fraternized with the Kakin Empire, which was, at that moment, enemy number one, gaining more and more power since the beginning of Nasubi Hui Guo Rou's reign. Imel understood where they were coming from, but not completely. True, the Republic of Eastern Gordeau was not known for appreciating foreign contact, but there had been a number of waves of migration in the last fifty years, from which her father and mother had come, for example, so this woman could just as well be from the Kakin Empire.
Oh. Oh. Racism, of course...
Imel had lost count of the number of authors who denigrated Kakin as an inferior people. She'd understood that the opinion towards the Empire had changed thirty years ago - Imel hadn't even been born yet - when Kakin moved from a socialist monarchy (more in line with Jol-ik's ideology) to a parliamentary monarchy. And, given that the coup d'état of Jol-ik, a figure already in government years before, had taken place around that time, the general public turned away from its affection for the Empire in a snap.
Right.
The young woman was silent on the return journey, looking worriedly at the children in front of her. Even through the shock, the older one held the two babies in his skinny little arms. A boy and a girl, Imel had read. She didn't know their names, but she would soon. After all, she had been chosen to interrogate the one who could speak.
Which was quite wonderful. As if she wasn't itching enough to run home and see little Lusamina.
...
The little girl was confused. She couldn't understand why she'd ended up under her bed, and she understood even less why the door was wide open. She closed it silently, then looked around the house to make sure nothing important had been stolen. Imel's jewelry was where it belonged, in the little lunch box with a cartoon character printed on the opaque lid. The money Imel had hidden in the baseboards of the kitchen, just under the oven, was still there too. The weapons were still tucked away at the back of the cupboard, behind the jackets and artificial background Imel had placed. So... Everything was in order.
Lusamina didn't question Imel's whereabouts. She simply assumed that the young woman had gone shopping, or perhaps had some work to do. So she set about tidying the house. She spent a while going through the pile of mail that had been scattered on the floors, and took some time putting them in order. Then, when she had finished washing the floors and clothes, she took a seat at Imel's desk to read the newspaper.
She knew Imel had said it was all nonsense. But it had to be said that this nonsense fascinated her. She liked to read what was going on at the Royal Palace, although she was well aware that their ruler Jol-ik was no King, or even Prince. She knew all about it, having seen photos on TV of the King of Kakin, who, behind his jovial air, had eyes shining with a malice she could immediately detect. Which is why she couldn't understand why the media were calling King Nasubi a forgettable idiot.
Lusamina closed the newspapers, took her medicine, fighting the reflex of vomiting, then went outside to run errands. She had heard that Imel wanted to eat a famous porridge she had once tasted with natives of the Bilgai Desert during an overseas deployment. And Lusamina, having listened with a distracted ear as Imel listed the ingredients to a comrade on the phone, was determined to satisfy that need.
So she strolled through the market that criss-crossed the city in small, hurried steps. She didn't have much time before Imel returned for lunch. So she bought what she needed, paying attention to the quality of the products, and haggling over prices without a word, not batting an eyelid at the loud voices and intimidating faces. She always got away with paying, at the very least, a quarter of the original price, if not less. Mostly because the workers were so tender-hearted.
Lusamina didn't know it, but in reality, everyone knew her. The children because she shared her finds with them, the old ladies because she was polite and let them pass her at the market, the men because she was always running around so it was impossible to miss her. Everyone knew little Lusamina, and everyone knew that she spoke little or nothing. Everyone felt sorry for little Lusamina, but no one ever asked her if she had a place to sleep or if she had anyone to take care of her. Because the girl would frown and leave, and no one wanted to disappoint little Lusamina.
When Lusamina returned home, she saw a figure who looked familiar, but didn't follow. So it was up to that figure to follow her, and once revealed, it ruffled her hair. "Hi, Lulu! Have you missed me since yesterday?"
Lusamina grinned. Ging. Ging was very strong. Lusamina was sure of it. She never said anything about it, but she could feel it. Whenever he walked beside her, she felt almost overwhelmed by his presence. She merely nodded, showing then that yes, indeed, she had missed him. Mainly because she didn't talk to anyone but Imel.
But did she need anyone other than Imel?