Chapter Text
The first thing Saiko notices when she wakes up is that she isn’t in her warm and comfortable bed, but rather is sprawled on the cold hardwood floor.
Did I fall asleep again while Maman was cleaning my ears? she wonders groggily. But then he would have woken me up or brought me to my bed. Maybe the Quinx are pulling pranks on me. Mucchan’s too nice for that though. Maybe it’s damn Shirazu-kun cause I always oversleep…or maybe Promotion Freak.
Despite being very uncomfortable lying on the hard floor, Saiko wants to go back to sleep because she doesn’t want to make the effort of getting up and actually doing work that she didn’t even sign up for. She is about to fall asleep and hopefully go back to her dream of defeating Carnet and becoming the Kalos champion until she hears pages ruffling in front of her. There is someone else in the room with her.
Probably Maman…but shouldn’t he be getting ready for work instead? And if it was him, I wouldn’t be lying on this stupid floor. So who is it then?
Curiosity overcoming her laziness, the blue-haired girl opens her eyes a slit.
A black-haired boy of around eight or nine is sitting on the floor a few feet away from her, leaning against a bookshelf in an unfamiliar room, and completely engulfed in the worn-out book he is reading. He looks familiar to Saiko, and she is wracking her brain trying to figure out who he is, until she hears a door creaking open. The boy jolts at the noise, then rushes out of the room.
Saiko fully opens her eyes and stares at the now empty space and contemplates whether she should just go back to sleep and pretend that this is a dream, or go outside and investigate the little boy. Again, curiosity wins over, because she knows she’s seen that boy before, but she can’t put a name to the face. She reluctantly crawls out the room and down the narrow hallway, and peeks around the corner. The little boy is facing the entrance, greeting who must have been his mother.
“Okaa-san, okaeri!” the black-haired child burbles happily to his mother. He is still holding onto his book, his thumb functioning as a makeshift bookmark to keep his page in place.
“Thank you, Ken,” the woman says in an endearing but tired voice. She enters the hallway and Saiko gets a good look at her. Same face as the boy’s, but with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and large round glasses that accentuate her dark eye bags.
Saiko’s eyes widen. Those glasses with that face…Saiko looks back at the little boy who is still smiling. No way. It can’t be…
“How was your day, Okaa-san?” Ken asks as the two of them walk away from Saiko’s sight. She army-crawls further down the hallway and stops at the corner of the living room, where Ken and his mother are now sitting at the low table in the centre of the room.
“It was alright,” his mother replies. She sets her bag down on the table, and pulls out a couple of books from it.
Ken stretches his neck to get a better look. “Is that your work?”
His mother nods. “I just need to fix up a couple more things, and then I’ll make you dinner.” She gives him a warm smile. “You did very well on your last test, so how does burgers sound?”
Ken’s face lights up, but falls quickly. “But don’t you have work at night too? You’ll be too tired.”
She pats his head soothingly. “I’ll be fine. I could never get tired of cooking your favourite food to make you happy, Ken. By the way, can you tell me about what you’re reading right now? You’ve been hanging onto it for a while.”
The boy smiles again before enthusiastically going into a monologue about the book he is reading.
Saiko tunes out Ken’s words and slinks back into the room with the bookshelves. She lies against the door with a dumbfounded expression.
This is impossible. Maybe I’m just really drunk. Maybe I’ve played too many video games. Maybe this is a sign from the almighty Arceus that I should get off my 3DS and start working for once.
Because how can she be looking at Maman, Sasaki Haise, Rank I CCG investigator and leader of the Quinx squad, as a child? How is she at least ten years into the past?
Remembering something, Saiko crawls madly around the room to see if she has dropped something.
“Not The Girl Who Leapt Through Time then,” Saiko mutters a few minutes later when she doesn’t see anything resembling a walnut. “How am I supposed to get out of here? Is there a ‘return to main menu’ button or something…”
“Um, excuse me? What is that you’re wearing?”
Although Saiko can’t leap through time, she leaps at least three feet through space, and lands painfully on her butt. She also squeals, but pretends that that didn’t happen.
She looks up to see Ken peering at her shyly from the doorway. He is still holding on to his book. Now that he is looking directly at her instead of looking down at his book, she can see Maman’s familiar round grey eyes.
“Eek, you can see me?”
The boy looks confused. “Of course I can. But what are you wearing?”
Saiko looks down at her green outfit and pats her head, and realizes that she is wearing her Pepe onesie Maman had gotten her for Christmas.
“It’s Pepe…never mind, it probably doesn’t exist yet. Wait, how come you didn’t say anything while you were reading your book!” Saiko accuses him.
Ken scratches his chin. “You were there then? I might have been too absorbed in my book or something.”
Saiko wonders how he could miss a large ugly green frog lying directly in his line of sight, and how he isn’t questioning the existence of a stranger inside his house, but she lets his fib slide.
He taps his book nervously. “Um, my name is Kaneki Ken. I’m sorry about not noticing you earlier, onee-san. Would you like to join us for dinner?”
Saiko almost drools. “Really? That would be – oh, I couldn’t! I mean, I’m intruding in your house.”
Ken smiles. “It’s fine. You’re a guest, after all. I’ll go tell Okaa-san to make more burgers for you.”
He is about to leave when Saiko calls out, “My name is Saiko, by the way.”
Ken turns his back to her and smiles as he leaves the doorway.
“I know, Saiko-chan,” he whispers.
Kaneki Ken…Saiko admits that the name has a certain ring to it, and matches the boy quite well. She can even imagine Maman as Kaneki Ken instead of Sasaki Haise. So this is who Maman was before he lost his memories. He seems to be doing okay, even if his mom’s working a lot.
Saiko is about to get up and join Ken and his mother for dinner, but she blinks and the room transforms. It is still the same room, but now dusty and empty. The shelves that were once filled with books are now bare, and one of the bookshelves to Saiko’s right is lying on the floor, torn from the wall.
What happened? Am I in another flashback now?
Her question is soon answered when Ken walks back into the room, a couple inches taller and slimmer than he was just a moment ago.
Saiko immediately notices that something is wrong with Ken. Dull cloudy eyes, downturned mouth, and a melancholic expression replace his previously twinkling eyes and light-hearted smile.
“Ah, onee-san, you’re back,” he says flatly. The boy sits next to the empty bookshelf in the same spot where Saiko had first seen him.
She really doesn’t want to ask, given Ken’s current mood, but she does it anyway. “What happened to the room? Did you move out or something?”
“Yeah. It’s not like I could live in the house and pay for it by myself.”
Saiko respectfully lowers her gaze. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ken runs his finger along the dusty bookshelf. “It’s okay. I’m staying with my aunt and her family now.”
“How is it there?” She almost says that she’s relieved for him to be with his family, but she remembers her past experiences, and how family can be a bitch.
“Not bad,” he mutters, “but she doesn’t like me. She only took me in because my mother helped her out a lot. Thankfully, she ignores me now, but when she doesn’t I come over here instead. I feel like I can sense my parents here,” he smiles wanly.
Saiko knows there’s more to the story, but she doesn’t pry. She looks at the boy, who would grow up to be her boss and second mother. Although Saiko has given Sassan a hard time, he has been more of a mom to her than her actual mother has, and it hurts to seem him so depressed.
“You’re unhappy, right?”
Ken stares at her for a few moments before laughing nervously and scratching his chin with his left hand. “Well, I shouldn’t really complain. I have Hide, and he’s a great friend. And at least I have a roof to sleep under, even though it’s not the greatest place…”
“If you’re unhappy, you should say so,” Saiko blurts out. Ken looks at her, slightly surprised.
“I mean,” Saiko gulps, “if you’re not happy, you should acknowledge that instead of bottling it up. I know…because I have some issues with that as well.” She thinks back to when her mom signed the operation consent form to turn her own daughter into a monster, just for the monetary compensation. She wishes she had the courage to take her brother and leave her mother and her stupid bar. Mother, not mom. Sassan is my mom now.
Ken curls up into a ball. “I’m not sure if I can do that. Okaa-san taught me to be the person who gets hurt instead of hurting others. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
What. What kind of a motto is that? Why would a mother teach her child that?? I guess it’s not going to be that easy to make him feel better. But it’s the least I can do, after all the times that Maman has cleaned my ears and made me food, even though he can’t eat it himself. Saiko sighs and extends a hand towards Ken.
“Um, since we both have issues with that, why don’t we work on it together, Maman? So we can both be happy.”
The boy stares at her outstretched hand. Saiko is afraid that he won’t take it, but he carefully places his hand on hers.
“I don’t know why you’re calling me Maman, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to try,” he says shyly. A small smile creeps across his face, and Saiko sees a familiar face with pudding-hair superimposed over Ken’s.
“Thanks, Saiko-chan.”
Saiko gasps, her eyes fly open, and she is now staring at a crumbly baby blue ceiling. She immediately sits up and shifts her eyes around the room. Posters, 3DS and PSP on the bed, hair dryer on the floor, check.
It seemed so real though…and how could my imagination come up with a child Maman?
Saiko hears the clang of pots and the sizzling on a frying pan outside, and her thoughts go back to the little boy. She smiles softly, gets up and leaves her warm cocoon of blankets, and walks out of her room, past the clock sitting on her dresser with a big red 8:00 AM flashing on the screen.