lotus lake

Careless

I stopped waiting for the 'lady in the sundress' to show, as I had to study for my tests at school. At school, things were quiet since peoples parents kept getting murdered, to which the students just shrugged off and didn't seem to care. I saw Nikko, sulking in the corner. "You ok?" I asked, to which I received no reply. I knocked on his house to speak last night but he shut me out because his mother was apparently upset. I knew that cry from anywhere. I had to get Nikko to help me so that I could investigate his mother. I knew that something had been off about her from the start. She never let Nikko hang with me, so the only chance I would get was in school. We used to go to homework club together and play football together when school ended because if his mum knew she would probably kill me. She probably sent him to Korea because of me. Nikko always used to say that I was the only person that he could have fun around, and she couldn't stand that.
Whilst Nikko was at school, I ditched. I dived into the bushes behind the dead bonsai to see what his mother was doing. The same laundry I saw on the willow tree was hung from the window. I creeped in the house whilst she was humming and washing the dishes. "Mrs Hakucho?" I asked. She turned to choke me with her gaze. I recognised her instantly. I ran outside and fell on the train tracks, grazing my knee. She lunged for me on the tracks. I squirmed, trying to escape her grip but she started to choke me. I coughed up carmine blood, as my tears traced down my face. Her grip tightened.
"You've been faded all your life Hinode. Sour to my Nikko, like a disease."
I coughed on her face and she let go. "What have you done to these poor people, Mrs Hakucho?"
She pushed me into a bush plagued with nettles. "They can see me. Now you have to go." She pushed me down a rocky ledge as my fingers grasped on for hope. She disappeared.
I heaved myself back up. The blood came back, as I coughed it up and my brain was pure mush.
I got home, after school hours to see my parents watching tv.
"Do you know Nikko's mother?-"
"Who?" My mother replied.
"Nikko, he used to be my best friend? Lives on that corner house?"
"That house has been vacant for 20 years." My mother said. "Nobody has set foot in there since a family died."
"What family?"
"In the 1940s, there was a kamikaze pilot who decided to take his son and wife with him on a mission, a suicide mission. The kid was about your age actually."
"What were there names?"
"Not sure, I think that they owned a cart. They used to sell popcorn. What was it? The Hakucho popcorn? I think."
I fell to the floor.
My best friend had been dead for 30 years?
"Now tell me dear, why do you have blood on your jacket?" My mother questioned, cleaning me up with a towel.