Loving Seiko

Moonlit

I awoke sharply to the sound of a womans cry. The air was thin and the ground was moist as I stepped outside the baracks, crickets chirping in the distance, though they sounded nearby. I turned my head to search for the source of the sound, but as I did the crickets in that direction had gone silent, as if they saw me looking towards them. Ignorant creatures, they were not what I was in search of. Stepping forward slightly, I leaned agaisnt the side of the wall for support; the blood was rushing to my head as I'd jumped out of my bed entirely too quickly.

I listened intently, wondering how my mates had not heard the cry like I had. It had jolted me awake, and my heart continues to pound with the anticipation of who could've made the sound, and why. Such a sound does not come again, but a soft weeping does creep its way through the air. I followed my ears and my feet, my mind still slightly dazed from my previous unconsciousness. I was already beginning to forget what I had been dreaming of.

I found myself entering the area where the cabins were, an area specifically for women. I knew not all internment camps did not separate their holds by sex, but ours did. The facilities were avid that procreation was not to be even remotely possible. Pregnant women were in their own section of the camp entirely.

The sounds grew louder, and I knew that it was just up here, around the corner. I sprinted, in case someone was critically injured.

What I found was a woman, crouching on the ground, her back leaned up against the cabin. Her head was in her arms and she wailed horribly, a sound capable of bringing even a strong man to his knees with pity. It was a heartbreaking sound, a cry of true pain. I crouch next to her, and gently touch her arm.

"Are you hurt?" I say, trying to speak clearly despite my grogginess. Not all of the Japanese here could understand English very well, but it was supposed to be the only spoken language.

The moon was full and high in the black sky. It illuminated the entire camp, and the night was­ littered with tiny sparkling stars, making it easy for me to see her face when she jumped back in fright at the touch of my hand.

She shifts away, startled, and for a very brief moment her eyes are filled with nothing but fear, but as she soon realizes I am nobody that she knows her expression glazes over into something resembling anger.

"Who are you?" She demands to know, as if accusing me of something. Her accent is American, she must have been born here. I am not able to answer her question, because I have forgotten the answer.

All I see is her face. Tear streaked cheeks and beautiful black hair falling in wild untamed streams around her face. Her eyes are ice blue, thick lashes perfectly encasing her almond shaped eyes, and as she looks at me I can not for the life of me think of one thing to say. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my twenty five years on this Earth.

She brushes my hand off her arm in an angry fashion, standing and wiping the tears off of her face, trying to maintain a strong facade. I finally get a grip on myself and stand up to face her. She is a few inches shorter than me, so she tilts her head a little bit to see my face.

"Leonard, my name is Leonard." I tell her, finding my voice. I wanted badly to just wipe the tears away from her cheeks and destroy whatever had caused them. "Why are you crying?"

She looks at me as if I was speaking a language other than english. I wait for an answer, giving her time to process what I'd asked. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally spoke.

"How is it that you convinced me for a moment that you care for my answer?" She asks, but I can feel that she was asking herself more than I.

Offended, I cross my arms. "I wouldn't ask you a question I didn't care to know the answer to." I reach into my back pocket and pull out a hankerchief I kept with me at all times, handing it to her. Hesitantly, she takes it from me. "Now tell me miss...what has hurt you so badly that you're out here in the middle of the night crying so hard?"

Her face crumples back into a painful expression, and she falls to the ground at my feet, weeping into the hankerchief. I feel guilty for witnessing such vulnerability after her attempt to seem stronger than she appears to be right now. I kneel next to her and touch her shoulder, startled by the urge to want to hold her, to comfort her.

"My fiance left me," she mutters, briefly glancing up at me. "I was nearly three months pregnant. The transition to the camp has been too strenuous and I lost my baby. He says that since I can no longer provide him with a son then I am of no use to him anymore." She sobs harshly and falls into my arms. "I thought he loved me," she cries, nearly screaming into my shoulder. She wails pitifully and I hold her tightly. "I lost my baby and he left me for it..."

I let her speak, not wanting to interupt or try to console her. I know that she needs to get out her pain, because bottling it up will only cause for disastrous results. Back home in Michigan, my mother had miscarried my baby brother when I was ten years old. I'd seen such pain in a woman before, and I knew how unbearable it must be for her.

My heart twinges with sadness, and I was so absorbed in her pain that I didn't even find the fact that she jumped into my arms an odd thing. How is it that a woman I'd only met a few seconds ago had affected me so emotionally already? Was it her beauty, or her sincerity?

The minutes passed by in a blur, and before I could try to remember what time it was, or how long I'd been out here, the woman had been reduced to whimpers and was falling asleep in my arms. I picked her up gently, carrying her around the side of the building, preparing to bring her inside and set her in the first empty bed I could find. I did not want to offend her or embarrass her if she were to wake up and realize that she'd fallen asleep in the arms of a stranger.

She clutches my shirt and buries her face in my collar. "Isamu..." she mumbles.

"What was that?" I whisper back, trying not to wake the others.

"Don't leave me... Isamu..." she responds. But before I could question further, her breath evens out and she falls silent. I sigh. Isamu must be her fiance.

I warred with myself, thinking about whether or not I should leave her here where she belongs, or respect her wishes and stay with her. Though she doesn't remember who I am, and she requested that Isamu stay with her, not me. My arms begin to ache with her weight, and I come to the conclusion that she belongs here, and she needs to stay here, though I was reluctant to leave her alone. I worried for her, and I wanted to look at her every second of every day.

I set her down gently, wrapping her up in the blankets there, silently slipping away back into the night before she realized what she'd said, or that I was a U.S. soldier.