The Boy With The Blank Stare: Future

Chapter Fifteen: Her Child

Ouma's POV:

The drive was long.

No one spoke to me the entire time, not that I had really expected them to. To them I couldn't speak, that's what it always seemed to say on any medical file at least. Instead, I was left alone to the background noises of traffic or the busy urban life that I had only glimpsed in movies. It was surreal, actually moving to a place like this.

But...it wasn't as if I never lived in a more busy area before. I paused as I tried to remember what it had been like living in Kyoto, but came up blank. Almost all of them were unpleasant memories anyway, back when my mother had begun drinking.

Yet I still remembered the day I met DICE clearly, yet as the sounds of the city continued a thought finally occurred to me.

I was going to my mother's childhood home.

She never talked about her childhood openly to me, the only real thing she ever explained was she met my father while she was still in school. She never even admitted to dropping out, I had to pick out the pieces of her life story myself.

It was so strange when I realized most people's mothers were more than two-decade older than them, that most people's parents seemed to be married or have their fathers in their lives. Sixteen years, I would be just a year older than she was now when she ran away. She must've run away at least, why else would she have lived in a tiny apartment to herself?

Why didn't my father stay-

She ran, she ran and...well if she never bothered to mention still alive turns out grandmother to me, then I had a bad feeling about her.

Did she even want to get to know me? Or even knew she had a grandchild? She must have, right? Did mom stay long enough to give birth to me, right? Or did she just flee in the dark of night, and never explain why?

Aunt Mayumi never talked about her either, she never seemed to hold back on complaining about the people she hated though. She could go on for hours about my mother, even if she was in the room with her.

But she also never mentioned my grandmother.

I kept trying to reason with myself that the lack of mentions was a good thing. That I had somehow misunderstood that conversation on Christmas, that my aunt just not mentioning my grandmother didn't mean she hated her. That means they must've had a good relationship, right? Or at least neutral...because if Aunt Mayumi hated her so much she would never utter her name...

I gripped my jacket sleeves tightly trying to calm down, I missed the sounds of the ocean or the docks back home. I missed the noise of the neighborhood's children, I even missed the burnt smell of food from my mother's house.

She never could cook much other than breakfast food, but I would eat her burnt tonkatsu any day now.

The car stopped.
My breath hitched.

The door opened and I heard the officers fumbling with my wheelchair, and as soon as it was set out I quickly situated myself.

I hated how I had none of the layouts to this place memorized, and that I would likely not be able to for at least a few days. The officers didn't seem to care much about my annoyance at my lack of independence, as they rolled the chair up and knocked on a door.

The door opened, and I smelled old woman perfume, the smell of every department store's perfume that made the area almost gagging to be in. It almost reminded me of Tsuki or Riko, and how the two thought wearing perfume would make them seem more mature, yet all that happened was Nao making jabs at how the smell was killing him.