Chapter 23 - Mecchen House Rebuilding (cont.)

Hitomi took a long time to answer. Her gaze wavered until she finally said, “I don’t know. I’m not responsible for the world of your male shell… but…”

Keiko hid her face. Hitomi grimaced. I wished I could soothe what Keiko was feeling.

Hitomi set her legs down and her back straight against the couch. “But… thoughts and ideas have a reality. You’re my sister… so your thoughts, whatever influenced them, have strength.”

Keiko slowly looked up. “I made her real?”

Hitomi curled a bit. “I mean… that presence you remember feeling… was true, even if it came from you.”

Keiko still looked a bit confused. “Does that mean… I have a chance of finding her someday?… The rest of my family too?”

Hitomi winced. “Well, you have family right here… um… but yeah…” She didn’t give a smile, but her presence seemed to rise as she finished, “There’s always a chance you’ll find what you’ve lost.” She slipped a shy glance at me.

Keiko had stopped crying. Ms. Ishida offered her some tissue, and she blew her nose. Ms. Ishida brushed back Keiko’s blue locks and smiled at her. Akiko slipped behind Ms. Ishida and gazed at all of us.

Keiko bowed her head to Ms. Ishida and said to Hitomi, “I still wish you well, despite all that’s happened. What you did was bad. But I think I understand what pushed you to that point.”

Hitomi pressed her fingernails together. “…I’m sorry.” She gazed around. “I’m sorry to everyone. Truly. I lost myself in my plans. I don’t deserve to be in this house anymore…” She rose as though to leave but Ms. Ishida approached her.

She set her shoulders and said, “While the things… Toki… taught me are in question, they are still a part of who I am, and I choose to live by them. That means you are welcome here as a guest, no matter your past.”

Mami’s melancholy seemed to pass. She twirled a bit in place and hummed to herself. Tara clapped for her, and Mami blushed in return. Mami seemed to regard Tara cautiously for a moment but when Tara told a little joke, they both started smiling.

Ms. Ishida clapped her hands, as if clearing a spell from the air. She turned around. “My goodness, we really should check on the rest of the windows and shutters.”

The group moved into action. Hitomi and Keiko both volunteered beside each other with a blush. I helped too.

Miki checked the outside for debris. Slowly, the whole of Mecchen House went to work on the damage done.

Hitomi regarded each broken window with a quiet grimace, as though a failure on her account. I approached her from behind with Jamie returned and pressing some glass flakes into a pan. He watched as I gave her a comforting squeeze on the shoulder.

Ms. Ishida announced the damages. Some broken windows and torn shutters. Nothing too serious. A few would need a repairman, but others could be done by hand. Keiko and Mami went to work.

Mami in particular sat with one of the torn panels and regarded the wounds with special care, as though tending to an ancestor. Keiko tried her best with the glass repair before Miki had to step in and demonstrate a few times. Before long, Miki posed repair challenges to her, which Keiko politely accepted.

Ms. Ishida gave Akiko the task of drying off a few items on the upper floors which had gotten damp. She copied Ms. Ishida’s example with clinical precision.

For myself, I regarded the subdued but active mood with relief. But then, neither Sumi nor Reiko showed.

I slipped around to the front door at a quiet moment and took a long look outside.    

The sky was a vivid shade of blue. The field of depth seemed striking as I turned around and watched as much as I could. The view seemed like even more than a clear day. It felt like someone had expanded the sky, like blowing a balloon up all the way.

Jamie grumbled beside me. His brown eyes dashed all over. “She didn’t mess anything up out here… did she?” He forced back a clump of his long hair, grunted, and said, “First chance I get, Carolyn’s cutting this… umm… he’s alright, right?”

I folded my arms and pressed my feet against a bit of moist grass. Little droplet gems sparkled in the sun. “Carolyn is fine, but what if he still can’t cut it?”

Jamie shook his head. “It was while you were away. Hitomi said she was the one holding our appearances in limbo or something with her so-called influence.” Jamie tapped his foot on a patch of ground and kicked up a little soil.

“So supposedly I can influence the ground… I don’t see it.” He scratched at his soft cheek and coughed. “So, things seem to be settling down for now. You want to head off and get those haircuts?” He took a step back, ready to dart for his shoes.

I put my hands atop my head. “Right now?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I just want to get out of here for a bit.”

“And it’d be better out there?”

He kept his glare rooted to the ground. “It’s away from Hitomi.”

“It’s also away from the others.”

He pressed his back against the wall. “Maybe I want to be away from them too. And maybe I don’t need your permission either…”

He took a step. I sighed. “Ever the so-called ‘ronin’, right?”

Jamie stopped. “I have to do this. I feel like I’ve been trapped here for too long.” He took another step before he turned around and put on his shoes.

He paused on the steps leading down. “You can still come with me if you like.”

“My hair length is okay with me.”

Jamie turned to look me over. “And what about the rest?”

I flattened my foot against the pavement. I worried about tracking dirt inside, so I receded to the doorway. “It’s still very confusing. But then it’s confusing for everyone.”

Jamie tightened his hands. “I don’t want it to be confusing. I don’t want it… at all. I guess I’m the only one who wants to put things right.” He tugged on his shirt to raise the neckline. At the same time, it gave him a sliver of midriff.

He assumed his regular position with his arms folded to shield his chest, regarded me a moment, and turned to walk away. I cleared my throat and said, “I want to put things right for everyone, even those who aren’t with us… right now.”

He stopped and asked, “And what about what we’ve become? What about this place?”

I shut my eyes. “What have we become?”

His feet scraped across the step. “Bunch of passive girls… and when…”

He gave a few long breaths through his nose. “And when Hitomi nearly got me. It was like I turned into someone else… with the parts of my sister which annoy me the most.”

I couldn’t recall enough about Jamie’s sister to affirm or refute that, and I doubted my memory would matter if I could.

Jamie seemed to catch a bit of the same thought and shook his head. “…Whatever. It all felt better when I shut off and didn’t care or worry.” He sat down on the step with his hands pressed to his face. I walked along the side of the step and looked at him.

He looked down. “If she got me, then would I even mind that I’m wearing a bra? Would I be me?”

I crouched beside him. “What use is it to dwell on things that didn’t happen?”

His mouth-line rippled with countless, half-felt expressions, each laid bare across his features. Jamie seemed to reach for some invisible cover around his shoulders, instead he just touched them with a tentative grasp. He still shielded his front with his forearms.

“Because none of the girls in there knew they were just puppets of Hitomi. When Hitomi… affected me, I felt just as clueless in that moment…” He gave a little shudder. “Ugg… I don’t even want to think about it. But… if they didn’t know, how can we know for sure about… anything?”

I felt a few spots of sunlight peek through on the back of my hand and burrow a bit of bright heat against it.

I spoke clearly, “No, we can’t know absolutely, but we know more now. We can ask those questions. Same with the others. We can choose.”

Jamie glared. “Choose? Know more? We don’t know anything! And how am I supposed to choose? If I could really choose, then I’d be able to choose to go back home and everything would be the way it was before!” A thoughtful pause came.

His words only caused a cricket to belt out a song.

He gave the earth a little sock with his hand. “But I only get to choose how long I want this overgrown hair to be, and whether or not I even want to see this place anymore.”

Jamie stood and went down another step. He started to turn, as though to say goodbye, but he just kept walking.

I was alone with the filtered sounds of the city and the last embers of voices finding me from inside Mecchen. I considered following him in haste like I’d followed him before, and followed Hitomi in the sleeping vision, and followed Akiko in the conscious nightmare. But I just rubbed my sock on the top step and looked at the underside. I’d gathered a coating of dirt from the ground.

I slipped the socks off and walked barefoot back to the front of the house. I paused and wondered what sort of barefooted fun Tara would imagine if she were out here. I curled my toes and pressed into a bit of the still-soft earth. When I pulled away, a shallow imprint of my foot was left.

I smiled at it. I considered how its inherent beauty reminded me of the artistic glow of this entire place. I thought about the other footprint on the opposite side of the house. But mostly, I just enjoyed making it.

I cleaned the underside of my foot before walking over to the door. I looked back across the steps dropping out of sight and the trees above. I wondered about stepping outside to this sight every day that followed.

I staggered a little as the thought passed through my mind. I leaned against Mecchen House for support. I was about to go back inside when I noticed a flash of blond rising above the horizon, growing to reveal a slow-moving Jamie, who cautiously approached me and asked, “Umm… did Carolyn say if her place was open today?”

I’d forgot to ask and told Jamie as much, as well as mentioning that she had some broken glass.

He gave a little ‘oh’ and said, “Well… we could probably try tomorrow.”

I smirked. “I think there are other barbers in town…”

Jamie kept his arms folded protectively. “I’d rather it was someone we know… who at least knows me as… a guy.”

I gestured towards Mecchen House. “I’m sure there’s someone inside who can give you a rough trim at least.”

He scoffed. “I don’t want my hair to look bad… I mean this hair to look weird. I attract enough attention already.” Jamie’s head darted back, as though he expected someone to be right behind him. He dropped his shoulders and came around to the side of me.

“So, no escaping from Mecchen House?” I enjoyed a ray of light which caught the side of my face.

Jamie elbowed me as he passed. “I chose to come back...”

I gave him a smile. “Yeah, you did.”

He snorted through his nose. “And keep in mind, just because I came back doesn’t mean anything in particular. I mean…we both got some fresh air.”

“Is that so?” The smile curled on me past the point of being able to contain it.

“We got out…” Then his mood suddenly swelled. “In fact, as I was walking, I noticed a little break in the sidewalk off to the side. That’s different…new…old. Whatever. But I remember that feature from before all this. That’s gotta be something, right?!”

[When finally getting that haircut]

I couldn’t offer him much so far as a reaction. I couldn’t remember anything of the sort before. Still, I gave him a nod.

It was his turn to smile. “Of course it is. That means there’s plenty left from before. And I’m going to encourage it.” He slipped his shoes off and stepped through the door.