Reclaimed – Chapter 29

I shoot for the target for over three hours without a break. I want the time to speed by. I want my suffering to be quick and painless. How many more times can I be kicked while down before my heart gives up?

Each time I lift the bow and draw it down, my arms shake, and the arrow jumps in my grip.

Deep breath, dunes, blue sky.

“Remember, Shin-zen-bi,” Arata says. “Truth, goodness, beauty. Just concentrate on all you’ve done lately.”

This one is for Helena. If the arrow hits the target, she’ll live in happiness and good health with Usagi. I let the arrow fly and it whizzes through the air, missing the target by half a meter to the right. Damn. My true emotions must be coming through. The hurt, the betrayal — I’m keeping them stuffed way down inside. Helena doesn’t owe me anything. If anything, I owe her my life and more. I just hoped we were better friends than this.

I close my eyes and imagine her on her wedding day, smiling at Usagi, Hiro by their side, and all my family and friends with them. Family and friends? I don’t know why I can’t convince my brain I don’t have either of those anymore.

Another arrow sits in my fingers as I aim again. This one is for Hiro. I hope he grows older and realizes just how mean he’s been to me. The arrow shoots straight and bounces off the top of the target. I sigh. Hiro will probably hate me till the day he dies.

“Don’t you want to stop now, love?” Jiro asks, from behind me. He and Arata lie in the short grass, their faces tipped to the sun.

“No.” I reach for a new arrow from the quiver, but the holder is empty. “Shit.”

“She’s out! Go!” Five Oda children, home from school, run past me and into the tall grass to retrieve my arrows. The lookouts in the tower and on top of the treehouse keep an eye on the hill in the distance, now covered in big cats watching us. They haven’t moved much in the last few hours. Some cats come and go, but the majority stand or lie with their faces pointed towards us.

I set down the bow, sink to my knees, and fall over on my left side. I am dead tired, starving, and all of my emotions have sucked the life out of me. I keep my eyes open long enough to see the kids return to Jiro as he hands each a silver coin from his pocket.

When I open my eyes again, I’m tucked into bed with two cats and Kumo. The warm blanket is filled with downy feathers and the bed must be topped with the same. I groan and roll over, startling a cat.

“Hey! Don’t crush me!” he shrieks.

I shush him. “I don’t think I could crush anything.”

“Good. You’re awake. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wake you up.” Jiro sits on the floor next to a low table set with two bowls and a lidded steaming hot pot.

“Is it dinner time?” I ask, rubbing my eyes and peering out the window. The sky is pink and orange, dotted with high clouds.

“Dinner? No. This is breakfast. You slept for fifteen hours straight.”

“What?” I push myself up but groan again and lie back down. My arms are sore, my throat is on fire, and my head spins.

Jiro rises from his seat at the table, opens the door, and yells down the outside hallway, “She’s awake. Send Cathy in.”

“Cathy?” I’m so disoriented all I can do is ask questions.

The door opens, and Cathy enters the room, smiling at me. In her hands, she carries a bag of liquid attached to a long tube. “There you are,” she says, in her beautiful British accent. “Everyone was worried about you. Just lie still and let me get a good look at you.”

Jiro busies himself at the table, opening the pot and spooning hot broth, greens, noodles, and an egg into each bowl. “Did you make that?” I lie back in bed as Cathy shines a light in my eyes, takes my pulse, and my blood pressure. She lays a sensor on my temple and another on my belly, flips on her tablet, and studies the data.

“You’re severely dehydrated, as I suspected when I arrived late last night and examined you.” I must have been out cold. “The system doesn’t detect that you’ve ovulated.” She glances at Jiro and he nods. “But your weight is coming in at six kilos less than when you were in the hospital for your miscarriage.” She shuts off her tablet and purses her lips before cracking open a sterile container of needles. “Do you know what a weight loss of that magnitude can do to someone of your size? It’s different for bigger people who have plenty of weight to lose, but you’re small and underweight already.” I turn my face from her glare and let the tears fall.

She pats my shoulder. “Don’t cry, Miss Itami, but someone has to say these things to you. Someone you’ll actually listen to.” She wraps a rubber tube around my upper arm. “Make a fist, please.”

I don’t watch but I feel the needle enter my arm below the elbow. She hooks the bag of saline up to the tube and starts the liquid dripping.

“Let me take a look at your burn now.” I lift my arm so she can see the second skin bandage still in place. She peels it off and nods. “The burn is healing, but you should have been drinking more water.” She opens her bag and pulls out a metal instrument. Red light beams from the tip of it to my scar. She covers every centimeter of the burn with red light for a few minutes before turning off the instrument. “We should do the light therapy again tomorrow. Now, just let me dress the wound and you can eat,” she says, opening her bag again and applying salve and a bandage. “You will stay in here today and rest. I expect you to get at least three bags of saline and have several full meals. Jiro? Help me get her up.”

With their arms around me, I shuffle from the bed to the table, Cathy hangs the saline bag from a makeshift hook in the rafter of our room, and I sit down in front of a bowl of real food.

“I want you to finish the whole bowl,” she instructs before nodding and letting herself out.

I turn my eyes to Jiro and he winces. “You look like a broken and starving puppy. I had the shuttle called in last night with Cathy, Sono, Kentaro, and Namika. You need to get better so we can move when Julia and Kazuo check in. Eat.”

My hand shakes as I sip hot miso broth from my spoon and the soup splashes into the bowl. It takes an exceptional amount of concentration to work chopsticks and eat the noodles, but I eat them, slowly, deliberately. I didn’t want to starve. I’ve never wanted to starve and have always loved food, until I feared it was full of poison. Deep down, I want to blame Sakai for this. He’s the one who took me from my life, made me fear the outside world, my food, the very air I breathe. It’s his fault I’ve lost everything.

But it’s not his fault. He was only watching out for me, taking care of me, and hoping I’d live long enough to rule the world because that’s what my own mother wanted me to do.

I rest my head on the table beside my bowl and cry. Let it all out. I haven’t really cried in ages. I’ve kept all the anger, sadness, and frustration inside, instead of letting it out. I’ve stayed strong for everyone else, given them my strength when I could. Now I have none left for me.

“There we go,” Jiro whispers, sidling up next to me. He places his warm hand on my back and pulls me towards him so I can cry on his chest and in his arms. The tight squeeze of his embrace only makes the tears come harder and faster. The logical side of my brain reminds me that I’m severely dehydrated, and I should not be crying. I can’t stop them now, though.

Jiro rocks me back and forth. “I was wondering when you were going to break.”

I sniff up the snot into my nose. “Am I really that fragile?”

He laughs, his chest shaking against my face. “No. Far from that.” He kisses me on the top of my head and on my temple, moving the IV’s line to the other side of us. “How many times have you fought so hard against everyone only to come out battered and bruised? You would say, ‘No one tells me what I can or cannot do,’ and my heart would soar then crash land.” He leans forward with me in his arms, grabs a napkin off the table, and hands it to me. “Because I love how strong you are. I really do. But it’s time we both accepted that you’ll never be able to do what you want to do. Everything about this situation goes against your very nature, but the more you struggle, the tighter the noose becomes.”

“It all feels so hopeless.” A sob breaks through again, my lips flapping and soaked with tears, then I begin to hiccup.

“It’s not. I promise. You can be the person you want to be with me. When it’s just us, you can be you, funny, silly, serious, sexy, or even lazy. Everything outside of our private space is for everyone else. What we have in here is for us, for you, for me. It’s time to stop fighting against everyone and fight for them.”

My free will is gone except when I’m with Jiro. He’s my best friend, my lover, and now, the only way to be myself.

He inhales deep and sighs, burying his lips in the part of my hair.

“We fight for them because they cannot. There is no other option.”