Dein Weg ist Mein Weg

Chapter 34: The Talk

"I knew I'd find you hiding here..."

Maho didn't look up. She didn't need to. She'd recognize Chiyomi's voice anywhere. Just the same as she'd recognize the anger in it, with every word cutting at her heart. Instead she just remained in place, sat in the shadows behind one of the now-abandoned stands.

"You just couldn't stay away, could you? You just had to show back up again, and ruin everything. This was supposed to be the year Anzio made it to the finals-no, the year we were gonna win the whole thing! And then you just had to show up again and ruin everything!" Maho could feel Chiyomi's furious glare looking down at her, even though she couldn't see it. "Well?! Are you going to say anything?! Are you even going to try and explain yourself?! Or have you suddenly gone mute?!"

She tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. She didn't know what to say, or what to do. She was guilty of everything Chiyomi accused her of, and she had no defense to give. "I'm sorry..." she finally said quietly, without looking up. "I'm really sorry..."

"Then look at me when you say it!"

Maho lifted her gaze from the ground, feeling as if she was pushing against the weight of an entire school carrier as she lifted her head, and looked up at Chiyomi.

"I'm sorry, Chi-... Anzai..." She sighed, and looked down again. "I'm really really sorry, and I don't blame you for hating me..."

"Hate you? I'm absolutely furious with you! You lose the biggest match of your life to save people, and then you disappear for a year! You never called me, you never answered any of my texts or emails, you never let me know what was going on! I thought you were dead, that you'd killed yourself! And then you just show up again out of nowhere, doing Sensha-Do again as if nothing happened? And even then you didn't call! How do you think I'm supposed to interpret that?"

"Anzai, I-"

"Let me finish!" Chiyomi snapped. "I could understand you not wanting your family to know about us. I didn't like it, but I understood. But you not letting me know how you were doing after something like that, not letting me know where you were going, or what you were doing, or even if you were alive? That's not OK! And then you have the stomach to show up here, calling me Chiyomi and acting like nothing happened. It's like I never even mattered to you!"

"You do!" Maho protested. "There's no one in the world I care more about! You know that!"

"Do I?"

"It's just... I... I just needed to get away... I couldn't let anyone know... I couldn't let mother know where I was going... I couldn't let her find me..."

"And you think I would have ratted you out? You honestly think I couldn't have understood? Why didn't you just come up to Aichi? My mom adores you! She'd have taken you in in a heartbeat! Where else did you even disappear to?"

"I... I..." the words caught in her throat, and she struggled to even form them into a sentence. "I went to my dad..."

"What do you mean you 'went to your dad'?" Chiyomi asked, anger and exasperation mixing violently in her voice. "I thought he disappeared years ago?"

"He... he did... I hadn't seen him for a decade... But I found him again... somehow..."

"So you went to a lousy absentee deadbeat of a dad you hadn't met for years instead of me?"

"N-no... I... I just..." she could feel herself choke up, every word trying to strangle her from within as the memories flashed in her head and tears began to well up in her eyes. "He... he took me in... he was kind to me... He had no reason to... but he cared... he did everything and more... But... but then..." She paused, and brushed her sleeve across her eyes to dry them off. "We had a fight... H-he... he had a heart attack... and... he didn't make it..."