[Fiction] Days Gone By [Complete]

[z-Gu Saori]

January 28-29, 2017

She had just cancelled another appointment when he shivered and took a deep breath. Saori turned back to her grandfather, neglecting to close the line on her phone. Her phone tended to itself, gradually shutting down after charging her a slight nominal fee. Saori never noticed this technological feat; she was too busy rushing to her grandfather’s side.

,,

Chien was a distressing shade of gray, while his remaining hair was thin, brittle and wispy. His bones protruded from under his skin, and even they seemed shrunken, as if his frame was dissolving. Saori pushed the call button, desperately signaling for a nurse to come running. As she waited impatiently, she quietly begged the distant, uncaring gods to save him, even as part of her whispered that death might be a mercy at this point.

,,

The nurse came in, moving at a sedate pace. The nurses never ran to attend to Chien, and it was starting to get on Saori’s nerves. “Yes, darling?” They also never addressed Chien anymore; they always spoke to Saori. “What’s wrong?”

,,

“He’s moving,” Saori said, hearing the desperate tones in her voice. “Could he be waking?”

,,

The pity on the nurse’s face was enraging and Saori held her temper in check, but only barely. The Loong hissed its displeasure as it shivered under her skin. “Ms. Gu, you know he probably won’t wake up,” the nurse said softly. “He’s been steadily declining for the last week. It will be nice if he does wake up, but you can’t expect too much. Do you want me to call Mrs. Hannigan?”

,,

Saori’s mouth twisted at the mention of the grief counselor. She’d spoken to the woman several times, and had yet to see any benefit from the sessions. “No,” she murmured softly, shaking her head. They didn’t believe that Grandfather would wake up, and they would do nothing to help him do so. “Just let us be.”

,,

As the door was pulled shut behind the retreating nurse, Saori pulled the chair next to his bed again, and began to talk. For hours, she rattled on about their life, memories that she had enjoyed, or just things they had both liked. The nurses brought her food and water, but Saori wasn’t hungry. She drank a little water, enough to keep her voice. And as the night passed the midpoint and slid into the quiet hours of morning, Saori found herself talking about her childhood. “Remember when I hid your crane box for you?” she asked in a voice slightly hoarse from overuse. “I do.”

,,

And she remembered so well what came after, too…

,,

* * *

Zhenba, Shaanxi, PRC

July, 2008

,,

Footsteps pounded on the path behind her, but this time, Saori was ready for them. The bag of rice clenched in her right hand became a weapon as she spun on her attackers, aiming the bag at the boy in the lead. She caught a flash of surprise on Jiang’s oriental features; then the world was an explosion of white rice as the burlap bag gave under the impact with his head. She heard the kids shouting as Jiang stumbled to a stop, coughing, but she didn’t stop there.

,,

One of the girls was starting to backpedal from her; Mai was one of the fastest girls in Saori’s class, and was one of the first to taunt. Today, though, things would be different. Today, Saori was the one who was faster.

,,

The small knife blade snapped out as Saori’s thumb expertly extended the blade. Mai turned, eyes wide, mouth opening to scream, her hair fanning out behind her. Saori’s little hand curled up in those long tresses and held them taut as the sharp knife cut smoothly. Mai yanked against Saori, managing to pull away – or so she thought. Saori grinned as she saw her former tormentor reach back to her beautiful, black hair while running away; Mai finally screamed as her fingers slid up into her shorn locks.

,,

“Who’s next?!” Saori screamed, holding the knife aloft in one hand and snapping Mai’s hair like a whip in the other. Power raged through her body, and Saori silently thanked her grandfather for teaching her how to fight. “Who wants to call me dirty half-breed now?! You?!” She pointed at Yingjie with the knife, and the boy jumped backwards. “Would you like to muddy my face now?”

,,

One boy to her side made to move forward, and Saori jumped him. She didn’t give him another warning; she just did the single best thing you can do in this situation. She found the most aggressive member of the pack, and she attacked first. Dropping the knife and hair, her fists balled up and struck Hong on the face. He yelped, tripped and fell down, Saori falling with his bulky body to help his landing. Doing so scraped both her knees, but it was worth it as Hong’s breath rushed out and the boy began gasping like a fish, trying to regain his wind. Her closed fist smashed into his face as she grinned down ferally at him.

,,

But this allowed the other children to fall on her, and all too soon, Saori felt little hands pulling at her and pummeling her back. She knew she was going to lose, but as she bit someone’s hand, she knew that she’d leave her own mark going down.

,,

“Hey. Hey!” an adult voice shouted, and big arms wrapped around Saori’s waist. She found herself being lifted out of the mess of fighting children, held aloft by a strange man. He was wearing a nice dark suit, which was now slowly turning a pale brown from the dust kicked up by the scuffle.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted, and Saori slumped against him, panting. The first aches rolled through her body and she choked back a moan. She’d never show weakness to her enemies, never again.

The others kids shouted their sides, but Saori didn’t bother. She’d be blamed, as always; at least this time, it was somewhat her fault. The man listened to all the little voices being thrown at him before he waved them into silence. “Later,” he grumbled, “I’ll talk to all your parents later. I am late, and need to know where the Gu house is.”

* * *

His name had been Hsu Delun, and he had changed everything. He had talked with her parents for several hours, and when he was done, he took Saori with him. It wouldn’t have been proper for her to go alone, so Grandfather went with her. In one stroke, Delun had freed them both from an oppressive home, and Saori would never forget that.

Delun had taken them north, to Beijing. Saori had found herself in a special school, where she had learned things she never wanted to know. But Delun was giving her a better life, and Saori embraced it with everything she had. In exchange, she had been given purpose, a way to care for her Grandfather and a chance to leave China, when the time came.

And now they were here, in this dark hospital room in a land of promise, waiting for the end. Saori knew it wouldn’t really be the end, but in many ways, it felt like everything would be over. Her fragile hand reached out and picked up Chen’s hand, sickened by how much more delicate he felt than her. The heart monitor was slower than it had been, much slower.

“Did I make the right choice?” Her tortured voice echoed emptily in the room. There was only one person speaking here; even the softly beeping equipment knew it. “The choice to drag you with me, the choice to leave at all?”

What she would give for him to wake up and say one more thing to her.

The last beep from the heart monitor came just after four a.m. Saori waited silently for the next, standing next to his bed, his hand in hers. When it didn’t come, she swayed on her feet, her fingers convulsing around his. The tears didn’t come then, not when the nurses came into the room, walking through the steps of death.

The tears didn’t come when Saori left the room in the Knight’s hospital, not even when she saw Amped in the distance. She was empty; all of her tears were falling inward into the hole in her body. Arms crossed, she went to the rooms she had shared in the Knight’s complex with Grandfather. She didn’t stay; she grabbed a few clothes and left.

Her new apartment was furnished and sterile, a field of white and beige. Saori dumped her bag of clothes on the floor, going for the special box at the box of the bag. The small wooden box had familiar Japanese lettering over it, but Saori didn’t bother reading it. She opened the box and discarded the packing fibers. The two porcelain saucers were tumbled to the ground; it was the bottle she was going for.

The fifty-year old sake burned all the way to the bottom of her stomach; Saori clenched her eyes shut as she blindly gulped. She didn’t stop until she choked; settling the bottle into her lap, she waited to see if it had filled that hole yet. The world felt distant, but she still had a raging storm inside her body. So she drank again.

The next time she choked, she felt something else beside liquor come up. She raced into the bathroom and threw up in her toilet. With a sigh, she slumped to her floor, stretching out and pressing her cheek to the cold tile. It felt so good against her inflamed face that she just laid there, and gradually, her eyes fluttered shut.

And in the oblivion of sleep, she finally escaped that yawning darkness within.