The shattered image - ch 19: It starts now

“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. My voice is the only thing in your head. Lay still and open your mind. We are at the beginning. The beginning is where?”

“On a operation table with two men in white coats, but it’s hazy.”

“What’s your clearest first memory?”

“My first day in the Tsukinos house. I was confused and everything was so overwhelming, I did nothing but cry that day”

“What happens if you think of the moment before you entered the house?”

“I’m in a car. With an adult, she’s the one whom have informed me what was going to happened as I was hospitalized”

“Can you remember the hospital?”

“Barely.”

“Is the two men in white coats from that hospital?”

“I don’t remember their faces...”

The session with the Psychiatric was long and seemingly unsuccessful. Whenever I tried to remember my mind went blank. I didn’t know why maybe I was too  eager to make this work.
It had been a week since I started these daily sessions, I was still hospitalized due to the stress factor of these sessions. Aya and Isumi had come by many times, almost everyday and we had gotten really close. They bought me notes and homework, as well as new things they had discovered, like stores sweets and whatnot. It was like I had been to school everyday. They didn’t leave out any details. Aya, whom usually was straight forward and bold, didn’t ask about anything. I had prepared myself for an over flood of questions, but neither of them had asked me anything. Daisuke hadn’t been by and apparently neither Aya nor Isumi had seen Daisuke since the day I was hospitalized. He hadn’t texted me after I collapsed. I began to wonder what had happened to him. Given his past, I was rather worried. Kaoru had been by several times and offered me to “help regain my memory”. Kaoru was the only one whom knew the details about me. He talked about all sorts of things from our childhood together, he never mentioned anything about my parents since the Psychiatric had said it was too much to go through at this point.

Tomorrow I would be released, and start school again on monday. It was nice that I had the weekend to adjust being back home. It was going to be nice having people around me often again. Even though my friends and family took turns visitng me, it was only a couple of hours everyday. Most of the time I was left alone in my hospital room since it was a single. I was getting lonly these last past days.

“I don’t think we will get any further today Miss Tsukino. Sorry it got so late.”
I looked up at the clock. 7 PM, I was going to eat dinner late today.
“It’s okay”
I left the room. As I walked up the corridor I saw the door to my room slightly open and the light was on. I hurried toward the room and peeped inside. Daisuke was sitting on my bed holding a seemingly dying bouquet. 
“Daisuke?” I called him. He turned his face toward me. He was pale, slightly bruised on his left cheek. The one thing that caught most of my attention was his eyes, they were so empty.
“W-What happened?”
He was now looking me in the eyes as he forced on a smile, tears started to fall down his cheeks.
“I don’t know how to go from here” 
He dropped the vulnerable bouquet, and most of the flower penetals didn’t survive the fall. He covered his eyes with his hands and started to bend forward, placing his elbows on his knees.
“Where am I supposed to go from here?”
I ran toward him and embraced his curled up body. I led him cry out his heart in my arm, while every single sob broke my heart even further.
I stroke his blonde hair, which was missing its usually wax to make it spiky. It was soft and easy to let my fingers run through. I let my hand slight down to his back to rub it. He was thin, and his spine was visible in his shirt. 
I started to bend down to see him in the eyes. I laid my hand on his hand which he was covering his face with. He let his hand twist in with mine while covering both eyes with the back of his other hand. We stood like that for a while holding hands. When he finally calmed down, I reached out for his other hand covering his eyes to try and removed it from his face, but he seemingly didn’t want me to see his crying face.
“It’s okay. I wont mind. Please look at me” my voice was as tender as I could make it.
Slowly he removed his hand, avoiding eye contact. I saw his bruises more clearly now, it was clear he had been in a fight. I wasn’t going to questioning him at this point. His mind was unstable and he was broken to the point that he no longer knew what to do. I didn’t want to push him in this state.
“There we go.” Though his eyes wasn’t going to look at mine I still smiled to him. I looked up at the clock. It was already 9 PM. For nearly 2 hours nothing had been said between us.
“Would you like some dinner?”
He looked briefly at me but then looked away again.
“I’m not sure... That I’m hungry”
I smiled “I will fetch you a bit, and go get more if youre more hungry”
I walked toward the door of my room, and just before leaving I looked back at him. He was watching me, still avoiding eye contact.
“Thanks” he mumbled
“No problem!”
I rushed off to the kitchen. I was anxious he was going to leave not letting me know. At this hour they only had sandwiches stored in the fridge. I grabbed two with chicken and bacon, I had no idea what Daisuke liked. Maybe it would be safer to grab two different? I changed one of the sandwiches with an eggsalad one. Then I ran off to my room, beggin he hadn’t left. When I opened the door to my room, Daisuke had collapsed on my bed. Only filling up very little of the bad he slept on his side. Crying for so long must have exhausted him. I smiled, relieved he hadn’t left. Whatever his case was, it had been devastating. I cleaned up the flowers as silent as I could and rescued those of them which hadn’t gone completely bad. I put them in a vase and started to eat my sandwich. I watched Daisuke sleeping peacefully, it didn’t seem like whatever he had just experienced was haunting him in his sleep.
Time pasted and I finished my meal. Afraid of getting to sleep, worrying he might just take off in the morning, I wrote him a short letter saying “Please don’t leave without me knowing”. I hoped that would stop him from just getting up and go. As I got ready I realized I would have to sleep in the same bed as him... I felt a little embarrassed and couldn’t help but think of it as some sort of crime. Sneaking in a boy and sleep in the same bed as him. I decided to lock my door, just in case some nurse would barged in, though they hadn’t done so since I was hospitalized. 
Well, this was a emergancy situation. Daisuke didn’t know where to go, and he seemed so hurt I couldn’t just let him be by himself. I took a deep breath and crawled in bed with him, trying to grap the blanket he had fallen asleep on to cover us both without him waking up. What a complicated mission! But I succeed. He slept tight and as soon as my head laid on the pillow I felt the tiredness wash over me. 
The last thing on my mind was Daisuke, and that night I dreamed of him as I knew him. Happy and full of life. I hoped to see him smile like that again.  

The shattered image - Ch 18. The settling.

I kept having nightmares that night. Hour after hour I would wake up from one theory to another on how I had come to loose my memory. It was everything from car crash to alien abduction. Yep. Pretty much everything. I woke up feeling exhausted, confused and kind of amused by my brains many odd ideas. Though I was pretty tired from the lack of uninterrupted sleep, I felt much better than yesterday. I was still set on getting to know my past life, and I was going to do it regardless of what others had to say. I wanted to know my parents and myself. When you suddenly loose your memories, you loose your identity. You loose your confidence, your previous likes and dislikes. Its like you don't know yourself. You're like a stranger. Regardless of my effort of creating a new me, it still felt wrong. Like a whole part of me was missing.
I sat up in bed. I was going to go through with whatever rehabilitation they thought I needed, then I would go back to school, perfectly determined. I didn't care what they thought. I didn't care what my mother thought. At some point I had to be exposed to the world. I couldn't be locked indoor forever, I would have to at some point taking part in society, the sooner the better. And I couldnt live in this bliss forever. I had to know what my mind was keeping me from.
My mother entered the room at that point, seeing me smirk to myself. She laughed out loud. "Jesus christ, you just passed out yesterday and here you are looking all happy!". "Well, I wont let this beat me!". Her facial expression changed. I knew what was comming next. "I beat you to it" I said looking out the window, trying to smile slightly. I turned my head toward her again and she looked confused and kinda of anxious. "I heard you talking with Kouro. I know you're not happy about me passing out, and stuff. And I know that all you want to do is to care for me. That's what a mother do and I am indeed grateful for that." I took a deep breath as she listened to me closely. "...But I'm not going to drop out of school. I have been thinking about it, and sooner or later I'll have to join society. I might as well do it now, before it gets too difficult. I think I'm ready to meet whatever life will throw at me." I paused. The next sentenced would scare her, maybe even break her heart. "I want to know my past life." She changed from looking interested to surprised and then incredible angry. She stopped herself from speaking, then looked across me to observe the outside. The sky was mildly cloudly but through clouds the sun was peaking every now and then. It looked nice.
"Haruka..." She began. "I understand that you're soon 16. You're still a child but I also think that you think things through well. You're not a reckless person, and I guess I'm just overprotecting. Your dad told me yesterday that I will have to treat you like an adult, since you're practical one in 2 years. I know you still need our guidance, and I need to let you go little by little..." tears streamed down her face, and my heart ached badly, but this was needed. I silently watched her, as she fought to clear her voice and continue. "Haruka... I would advise against you digging through your mind, but I also know that you have to know at some point. I would rather have you know it while we're around to help you, than when you have created a life of your own."
I was surprised. I hadn't thought she was going to agree to this so quickly.
"Thank you for understanding" I smiled at her, and got up. I walked toward her and grabbed her in my arms. I hugged her tightly and she hugged me back in a firm grip. I didn't care what was going to show up in my mind. This would always be my home, and my current parents would always be real parents to me.
A tight lump began to form in my chest, and it was as if my neck started twisting. My body started to stir up and anxiety slowly spread through my body. Just what was I going to go through?