Upside Down

"Mayumi?"

"Hmm?"

"You would be a great Mother."

She pulls me a little tighter against her, rests her head against mine and whispers, "Thanks, Sora. It makes me happy that you think so."

"Mayumi?"

"Hmm?"

"Am I crazy? Is that why they had me restrained?"

"No Sora. I told you, they restrained you so you wouldn"t hurt yourself or someone else."

"...But I killed those men. Normal people don"t do that."

"Sora, you are perfectly normal sweetheart. It"s normal to protect the people you love and that is what you did, nothing more and nothing less, okay? The people in the wrong here are the ones that ordered those men to attack your house."

"Am I dangerous then?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Normal thirteen year old girls can"t kill four grown men."

"Sweetheart, the only thing different about you is you have nanites inside of you. Dr. Sato said they performed blood tests when they got you here. According to the results your nanites fed you five or six times the normal amount of adrenaline. With that amount of adrenaline in you, you probably could have flipped a car."

"Okay."

"You don"t really believe you are dangerous do you?"

"Honestly? I have no idea what to think. They weren"t trying to kill us, but I didn"t hesitate to kill them."

She sighs, rubs my back, and tells me, "Do you really think you took any of that into account when this happened? I doubt it. If you had taken the time to think about any of this, you would have been taken by them. Who knows what could have happened then? Right now, I"m simply happy you"re awake, you"re safe, and you"re here with me. All the rest of it really doesn"t matter. Those men made the choice to attack your house. If they hadn"t done that, none of that would have happened. Now would it?"

I raise up, give her a weak smile, kiss her cheek, and tell her, "Thank you Mayumi. You"re right, it wouldn"t have."

I know she"s right, but it still doesn"t make it any easier to accept that I killed four people. I"ve always hated violence of any kind, but then again, I probably would do the exact same thing again if someone threatened my family. I suppose I"m not the peace loving girl I always thought I was.

All I want is to be able to live a normal life with my family. Have fun with my sister. Go to school. Graduate and get a job I like. Eventually find someone to fall in love with, get married and start a family of my own. Is that really too much to ask? What"s going to happen from now on? Am I going to be locked up? If not, will I ever be allowed to go anywhere without a ton of people surrounding me to keep me safe? How is that a normal life? What boy would want anything to do with that kind of life? I wouldn"t want to deal with that if I didn"t have to.

Well, beating myself up over this isn"t going to make it any better. What"s done is done and nothing is going to change that. I sigh and rest my head against her again.

Now that I think about it, there is one thing I haven"t asked. "Mayumi?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you know who sent the men?"

"I don"t know sweetheart. I wish I did."

"Sora? Mayumi?" Airi calls out to us from the main room.

"In here Airi," Mayumi replies to her. A few moments later she comes into the bathroom. I raise my head up to look over my shoulder at her.

"Sora, I"m happy to see you are awake. How are you feeling?"

"A little better than when I first woke up. I want to see my family."

"Perfectly understandable Sora. Now that you are awake, I would like to talk to you for a little while, after that I will call your family. Alright?"

"Sure, but can it wait a little while? I don"t really want to get out of the tub just yet."

She smiles at me and says, "Of course it can. Take your time, we girls need our bath time. The director cleared my schedule so I could be here for you whenever you needed me, so it"s not as if I need to be anywhere else."

"Airi?"

"Yes Sora?"

"Who were you yelling at earlier?"

She grins and says, "So, you heard that huh? Sorry, I was yelling at the on-call psychiatrist. They had called him in before they found out I was handling your case. Let"s just say our opinions clashed and leave it at that."

"Okay. Have you talked to Chinatsu?"

"I have."

"How is she?"

"Honestly, not very well. She"s very stressed out and worried about you. The longer you were incoherent the more stressful it"s been for her. I ended up prescribing her some sedatives so she would sleep."

I figured that it would be something like that. I would be the same if our positions were reversed.

"Mama and Dad?"

"They are worried about you, but they are fine at the moment."

"Thank you for telling me the truth Airi. I really appreciate it."

"You"re welcome Sora. I"ll just wait out here then. No hurry, alright?"

"Alright, thanks Airi."

She turns and leaves the bathroom. My heart aches knowing the condition my sister is in. All I want to do is hold her and let her know I"m fine. Not being able to do anything for her hurts me almost more than I can bare. Truthfully, all I want to do is cry, but that wouldn"t solve anything.

Mayumi gently touches my cheek and tells me, "It"s okay Sora, you can cry if you want to. I probably would if I were you."

My lip quivers as shake my head since I don"t really trust my voice at the moment. Actually, it"s more like I"m afraid if I allow myself to start crying I won"t be able to stop. I nuzzle back against her neck and hold her a little tighter. Why does everything in my life have to be so hard?

We spend another twenty minutes in the tub with me snuggled against Mayumi. She never said another word to me, she simply held me while I fought against my overwhelming need to cry.

After we get out of the tub, dry off, and dress, Mayumi and I sit down on the loveseat across from Airi. Mayumi is brushing my hair for me as Airi asks me, "Do you feel better now Sora?"

"Sort of, at least I don"t feel gross now."

"This is going to be unpleasant, but I need you to talk to me about the morning that happened. Start from the beginning, tell me your impressions or what you were thinking at the time."

I look at the floor and tell her, "I don"t really want to talk about it Airi. I don"t want to think about what I did."

She gets up, comes over to kneel down in front of me, and lifts my chin. "Sora, I understand. Believe me I do, but you have to talk about this. If you can"t get this worked out it will cause problems later on. It"s not a whole lot different from what Akiyama did to you back then. That one incident caused a myriad of issues for you. I don"t want to see that happen again. You need to come to terms with this and talking it through is how we do that."

"I murdered four men. How am I supposed to come to terms with that? I hate violence, I always have. Yet, I didn"t hesitate for a single moment. I still feel their blood on me. It sickens me to think I did that."

"The fact that it sickens you tells me that you are still a normal little girl that was forced into an extreme situation where you weren"t given any choice except to defend yourself and your Mother. You didn"t murder anyone. You didn"t plan this, so it isn"t murder. It"s self-defense. You have every right to defend yourself and the people you love."

She stops for a few moments looking as if she is thinking, then says, "Okay, let"s play a short game of what if. Situation one, you somehow incapacitated those men and they were arrested. What do you think would happen to them?"

"Lt. Aoki said it"s the death penalty for a.s.saulting a fertile female, both Mama and I are fertile, so either way they would hang for it."

"That"s right. They had to know what they were risking when they decided to take the job. Okay, situation two, you didn"t stop them and they took you. They were willing to lose a lot of people to get to you, so what does that tell you about them?"

"That they were desperate to get their hands on me. If it was Akiyama who sent them then it was probably to keep me from testifying against him."

"Correct. If it was him, do you think he would let you go?"

"No, he wants my nanites. Even without that, if he did he would still be facing the a.s.sault charges. He would have to kill me or lock me up to stop that from happening."

"Exactly Sora. If it was him, it was only going to go one of two ways. You had no choice except to fight or be taken. Even a.s.suming they didn"t kill you, what do you think would happen to the people who love you if you were taken?"

If someone took Chinatsu from me like that, I know what would happen. It would devastate me. Mama and Dad, especially Dad, would blame themselves for not being able to protect me. It would probably destroy my family.

"They would probably blame themselves for not being able to protect me. Chinatsu would most probably be inconsolable, we need each other. We"ve never been away from each other for more than a few days."

"That"s a subject I would like to talk about more at some time, but not right now. That said, you are right about how the three of them would react. I have counseled a lot of parents who have had children disappear. In most cases their family falls apart after that happens."

"Airi, I want to go home. I want to see my family. I need to see Chin..." I begin saying, but unable to hold my emotions in check any longer, I break down crying. Mayumi pulls me back against her and wraps her arms around me, holding me tightly.

"Shh~ Sora, it"s okay. I"ll go call them right now. It won"t take them long to get here. I"m sorry, didn"t want to do this right now, but they demanded I make sure you were stable."

"Airi, this could have waited."

"I know Mayumi, I made the same argument, but I was overruled. They seem to forget that above all else she is a little girl. I"ll be back in a little while, I"ve got a call to make no matter what those morons want. I let them overrule me once, it isn"t going to happen again."

She stands up and leaves the room. It"s going to take me a little while to stop crying, but once I have I end up curling up in Mayumi"s lap with her arms wrapped protectively around me. You may think I"m acting like a baby, but you try being a girl my age, who"s scared, extremely upset, and separated from her family. You"ll probably understand how I feel.

Airi comes back in a few minutes later, sits down across from us and says, "Sora, I talked to your Father, the three of them will be here shortly. I"m sorry I upset you. I know what we were talking about it a hard subject for you, but we are going to have to talk about it more. I don"t mind if you have Chinatsu with you when we do it. "

"It"s not your fault Airi. I know you"re right, I have to talk about this, it"s just hard to do so. This has made me realize I"m not the girl I thought I was."

"What do you mean Sora?"

"I told you I hate violence. I always have. I suppose a lot of that comes from being on the receiving end of so much bullying. I always told myself there was never a good enough reason to be violent. I killed those men and and it sickens me. Yet, I realized I would do it again if someone tried to hurt my family. Apparently, I"m not the peace loving girl I thought I was, so who am I then?"

"Sora. ...Sora, look at me please."

I open my eyes, raise my head off of Mayumi"s shoulder, and look at her.

"Human beings are a conflicting mess of emotions and thoughts. No one, and I do mean no one, is exempt from that. I suggest you ask your Dad how he feels about violence sometime. I think you"ll be surprised at what he tells you."

"Wouldn"t that mean we are all crazy then?"

She chuckles at what I ask. Then replies, "In a way, yes. In another way, no. People do things that aren"t in their best interest all the time. Skydiving, free climbing and other things like that can easily get you killed. Some people think it"s crazy to do things like that, others simply think they are fun. It all depends on your point of view. Most people are like you, they don"t like violence, but using violence to save yourself or someone else from harm isn"t wrong. The one using violence to cause you harm is the one that"s in the wrong. Do you get what I mean?"

"I think so."

"Okay, I think that is enough about this for today. Today is Sunday, so how about you come into my office Wednesday at 10 AM and we can continue talking then?"

"Does that mean I can go home?"

She leans forward in her seat, pats my thigh and smiles. "There"s no reason why you should have to stay here. The decision is mine anyway and I believe you would be better off at home with your family."

I sit up straighter in Mayumi"s lap. "Really? I can go home?" I ask her excitedly.

"Yes, Sora you really can. If the old farts don"t like it they can kiss my a.s.s and then fire me, but until then my decision stands."

I giggle at what she says and tell her, "Thank you Airi. Thank you so much!"

"You"re welcome Sora."

"Just don"t forget to come in on Wedne…" she trails off when someone knocks on the door. When it opens, Mama, Dad, and Chinatsu come inside. The second I see them I leap out of Mayumi"s arms, run to Mama and Chinatsu, wrap an arm around each of them and simply hold them.

"They wouldn"t let us in to see you. I"ve been so worried." Chinatsu tells me.

I pull her a little tighter against me and quietly tell her, "I"m more worried about you little sister. Airi told me you haven"t been taking care of yourself. Making yourself sick isn"t going to help anything, now is it?"

I kiss her cheek and then look at Mama to ask, "Are you really okay?"

"Now that you are awake, I"m perfectly fine."

All of them look haggard. It"s obvious they haven"t been eating or sleeping well. I let go of Mama and Chinatsu, take the step to Dad and hug him as well.

"Carefully, I"m still sore."

"Are you okay?"

"I"ve got some bruised ribs, but I"m fine."

"Huh? Why?"

"You don"t remember?"

"No Dad, how would I know how you got hurt?"

"Hmm, well, you were a little out of it then."

"What did I do Dad?"

He looks at Airi, I see her nod out of the corner of my eye. "Sweetheart you were really focused on protecting your Mother. I guess you thought I was trying to hurt her and threw me 1.5m into the cabinet and wouldn"t let anyone get close to her. It took four of us to hold you down so we could take care of her."

Tears begin trickling from my eyes as I tell him, "I"m so sorry Dad."

"Don"t worry about that. All I care about is that you and your Mother are fine. ...Airi, when can she go home?"

"Right now Eiji. There is little point in keeping her here. She"s better off at home surround by you three."

"Can we leave now Dad?"

He chuckles, then asks, "Don"t you think you ought to get dressed first?"

"Hmph. Dad, if the only way I could leave here was to strip and march out of here completely nude, I would do it with a smile."

Everyone starts laughing. It might be funny, but I was being serious. I would happily do it with a smile if that is what it took for me to leave here.