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In the quiet, hazy calm of sleep, a shrill ringtone broke through all too easily. The 8-bit rendition of the Steel Samurai theme song roused Phoenix Wright from his slumber. Though his eyes were still heavy, he fought the urge to ignore the ringtone. Finally he grabbed at his phone and rubbed his face in an attempt to wake up. Through bleary eyes, he stared at the phone screen lit up with Maya Fey’s caller ID. It was her birthday the next day, or rather today since it must have been sometime in the middle of the night. He presumed that that was what she was calling about, and he set himself up to call her out for getting an early start on the celebrations. 1 a.m. was too early, even for her.
He was ready to grumble and make other “old-man noises,” as she would put it. But when he answered the call, the last thing he expected to hear was a trembling sniffle on the other line.
“Maya? What’s wrong?” He sat up immediately, all fatigue effectively gone.
On the other line, Maya started to weep, and her sniffles turned into sobs.
“I don-don’t—” Maya hiccuped as she couldn’t stop sobbing.
This did nothing to assuage his rising panic. “Maya, please calm down. Take a breath and get some water first,” Phoenix said, going straight into his Dad Mode. “I’ll be here.”
Maya managed to stutter out a weak “okay.” Based on the shuffling noises he could hear in the background, it sounded like she was moving to get water. At his end, Phoenix tried to make sense of what could have happened to render Maya into such an emotional state. They last spoke earlier that night to finalize their plans for her birthday. She sounded excited, downright jubilant at celebrating another year of her existence. Their celebration would be a small, quiet affair this year, yet it still promised to be warm and lively.
Shortly after, Maya spoke into the phone, her voice a weak, needy whimper. “Nick?”
“I’m here,” Phoenix said, feeling his heart break at how small she sounded.
“I-I-I hate it. I don’t want it to be my birthday,” Maya sobbed. “It can’t be my birthday!”
“What do you mean it can’t be your birthday?” Phoenix asked with a puzzled frown while he went over possible solutions in his head.
“It can’t be! Because if it’s my birthday then that means I’m…” Maya gasped and whimpered, sounding as if she was holding back from crying again. But even before she finished her sentence, something clicked in his head, and Phoenix already felt the dread weigh down in his gut.
"I’m twenty-eight years old.”
Phoenix said nothing. What could he say without choking on his tongue and heart? He closed his eyes and he could picture his office. It used to be someone else’s. He could see the books that were once hers; he never had the heart to discard or box up to store away, or to redecorate the rest of the office into his own taste. He knew how it felt to always be haunted.
“It’s not fair,” Maya whispered in a strained tone. She was weeping again.
Phoenix felt a sudden tear fall down his cheek. “I know.”
“She should be here.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to be the big sister.”
Phoenix found himself speaking up again before he could stop to think. “Well, you’ve always been kind of a big sister, to Pearl at least.”
“You know what I mean,” Maya protested. Though her voice was still weak, there was still an edge in the tone.
“Mia would have—” Phoenix stopped. Neither of them had said her name up until now. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time they talked about her, let alone mention her name. He felt his face scrunch up as unshed tears spilled down his cheeks. Even now, Mia Fey’s untimely death at twenty-seven weighed on him and Maya like a pall. A heavy tragedy that brought them together under some of the worst circumstances and bonded them for life. Even as the years passed and the grief faded into a manageable pain, some days it resurfaced and took hold of them all too strongly. Phoenix should have known better that this particular day, Maya’s twenty-eighth birthday, would be one of them. Hearing her whimper and sob on the other line, Phoenix refocused his attention, wiping his face dry.
“Mia would have…” Phoenix started again, this time pausing to remember what he wanted to say before. “She would want, more than anything, for you to be safe and happy. You know she loved you to the very end. And even after that.”
“I know,” Maya replied, her voice sounding strained.
Phoenix mentally reviewed the birthday plans one more time. Maya had asked for a quiet party this year, saying that she wanted to take a crack at adult birthdays spent with just family. So it would just be them, Pearl, and Trucy.
At first it surprised him. Over the last few years, Maya had been out of the country because of the extended training she needed as the Fey Clan Master. She had managed to plan a holiday back home this year, and her birthday happened to fall on that period. Phoenix had half-expected a large birthday bash with all her friends to make up for lost time. But he didn’t object when she told him her plans.
Did Maya have lost time in her mind too? Was it a different kind of lost time that ate away at her tonight, of all nights?
“She said something to me once,” Phoenix spoke in a low voice, more to himself than to the phone.
“What was it?” Maya had heard him.
The memory of it came to him in a haze, snatches of it in different locations across the time he and Mia spent together once she took him under his wing. “She said something like, how she spent almost her whole life living for other people, or like, in the shadow of them and their memory. At some point, she started living for herself even when there were people in her life she missed dearly, because otherwise she would feel stuck and always look back at the past. Or she would see what was ahead, but not actually move forward. It would be easy to sit in the loneliness and pain of it all, but it wouldn’t have been fair to herself.”
If he thought about it hard enough, he could still hear those words in her voice. He didn’t like to dwell on his mental state following his disbarment. The early days were heavy with overwhelming guilt and shame of feeling like he failed his old mentor, and the deep-rooted wish that he could still seek her support. He wanted to hear something, anything from Mia then, even if it was to admonish him for his reckless actions. But Mia hadn’t been channeled in years. It had gotten harder for either Maya or Pearl to summon her now that it seemed that she had well and truly moved on peacefully into the afterlife. That did not make it any easier to accept.
Maya was still quiet on the other line. Knowing her, she was thinking this through.
“At the time, she didn’t tell me much about her personal life, let alone her past. Now I think I know where she was coming from,” Phoenix continued.
“Sis did know what it was like to keep on living without someone you loved. There was Mom, then Diego,” Maya said. Her voice sounded calmer this time.
“More than anyone, maybe she knew that it would have been unfair not to keep going.” Phoenix let out a wide yawn and blinked through the sudden bout of fatigue.
“Nick, I know it’s late. But will you stay on the phone with me? Please?” Maya asked in a higher voice in panic.
Even if she hadn’t asked, Phoenix was ready to stay on the phone with her all night. It was all that he could do without being physically there with her. His heart seized at how small and lonely she still sounded. “Of course I will. I’m here.”
So they passed the time in silence. Years of friendship allowed for it to settle in easily, the closest so far to comfort and security. If noses sniffed and quiet sobs escaped, they went unacknowledged.
At some point, Phoenix left his room to take a round around his apartment. After checking to see that Trucy was sound asleep, he stopped at the living room. He navigated the pitch-black room until he found the sofa and sat down, stretching his legs over the coffee table. Fatigue was starting to settle into his bones and weigh his eyelids down. He could be lulled into resting his eyes; it was still so dark…
“How did you feel when you turned twenty-eight?”
That caught him off-guard. Maya’s voice cut through the fog of sleep once more. He blinked and asked, somewhat dumbly, “What?”
He heard Maya “tch” softly before she repeated herself. “You know… when you turned twenty-eight. How did you feel about it?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that,” Phoenix answered honestly. He was suddenly struggling to recall what had happened on his twenty-eighth birthday. It hadn’t been that long ago that he couldn’t remember it at all.
“Any answer will do,” she insisted.
Phoenix let out a deep sigh as he made an effort to recall that time. “It was… Honestly, I didn’t feel much in that sense. I just remember feeling how hard it was to keep on going. To be an adult in my late twenties and to feel lost.” This wasn’t completely true, and he knew better than to minimize how he really felt. “But then I wasn’t lost. I remember… I remember Trucy made me breakfast and brought it to my room.”
The memory brought a soft smile to his face. “It was the first time she made pancakes without me to supervise, and she did a pretty good job,” He continued. “Somehow, we managed to keep busy that day. Between the birthday party that you all insisted I have that year, and then she was at school for the day. And that just… took up more time.”
“I don’t know if I dwelled on how old I was at the time. Not for long anyway. I think… I think it was something I had come to terms with already.” Phoenix moved to lie down on the couch completely, his eyes looking up at the shadows cast on the ceiling. “There were more pressing matters at the time. Like having a child to raise and trying to make a living for us both.”
Again there was silence on the line. This time it didn’t rouse his concern as it had before. Phoenix had struggled with insomnia in those first few years, even after he turned twenty-eight, which by that time he was supposed to be used to the turn his life had taken. The pill might have become easier to swallow, but it was still bitter.
“I think when I realized I was now older than your sister was, I almost didn’t believe it. I had to sit down and actually let it sink in. Mentally, I didn’t feel half as mature as she had been.”
“Yeah, that’s it!” Maya suddenly exclaimed. “It isn’t just that I’m going to be o-older now; I don’t feel like I’m old either. Not as mature as she was.”
“Yeah,” Phoenix replied awkwardly. He wasn’t sure how honest he wanted to be about this. Even now it was hard to admit that he had even been affected so deeply by something as basic as getting older. He had known there was the possibility he would outlive his former boss. But the realization that he had achieved just that nearly caused him to spiral into a deep funk. There was so much he had to do and he didn’t know how he was even in a position to do that without someone older and smarter like Mia to tell him what was best. He fell into a bad mood for days and wanted to shut out the world. Had he not had a daughter to look after, he might have snapped out of his depression much later.
The loneliness had felt all-consuming. He never wanted Maya to feel the same way.
Overhead, he could see the shadows move. The only other movement he could see. If it weren’t for the faint crackling in his ear, he would have thought he was the only one awake at this hour. The dark space did not threaten to overwhelm him and swallow him alive. It sat with him, and maybe with her too.
A thought started to form in his head.
“Even if Mia was alone, she wasn’t really. She still had her family,” he said quietly. “She had you.”
There was a pause, and then Maya said, “But I don’t have her.”
“I know. And it’s not fair, and it’s not okay.” He sighed. That wouldn’t comfort anybody, let alone his best friend. “There’s still your family. There’s Pearls, the rest of the Fey clan, there’s–”
“You.”
“Yeah,” Phoenix nodded out of habit. “Not to mention all the other friends who love you, no matter how old you are,” That managed to make Maya giggle once. It was enough to lift his own spirits and keep him going. “I mean, with me, Mia will always be my boss. She’ll always be the lawyer that saved a silly art student’s life. It doesn’t matter how much older I get.”
Another pause. “I think you’ll outlive all of us,” Maya started. “Unless a feather falls on your head or something,” she remarked in a light, joking tone.
Phoenix cracked a wide smile at hearing her make a joke at his expense. Her mood was brightening up! That relieved him beyond words. “Now you know I can take a good beating.”
“Did your back get the memo?”
This time, Phoenix let out a genuine laugh. His heart warmed to hear Maya laugh as well. It was a tinkling giggle of a sound. He hoped it made her smile too.
He heard Maya let out a deep, tired sigh, and suddenly he could feel a weariness settle deep within him too. There was silence again, but there was no tension or overflowing worry. It was easier to sit in it when his heart was at some peace now. Reassured that the life and laughter on the other end would not be beat yet.
This time the silence stretched up to a point that Phoenix started to wonder if Maya had fallen asleep. He called out her name in a whisper, as if he was afraid to wake her.
“I’m here,” Maya replied in a quiet, steady voice.
“Okay, good. How are you now?”
“It’s still there. But it’ll be okay!” There was a false cheeriness in Maya’s tone as she finished speaking. Phoenix had been around long enough to know what that sounded like.
“It doesn’t have to be okay now. It doesn’t even have to be okay tomorrow.”
He heard her gasp. “You’re right,” she sniffed, her voice shaky with emotion.
As far as Phoenix was concerned, he would give anything, say anything (better) to make Maya feel better about her birthday. If there was a set of magic words that would stop her tears and help her feel better, then it was just his luck that he didn’t know them. It was already a long process to come to terms with grief over losing a loved one. But to live with the knowledge that you would not only outlive your older sibling, but then cross them in age, that was not something he would know or ever truly understand.
How had he recovered from his spiral? Had he ever recovered? Maybe with time, he did. It was almost like the initial grief of Mia’s death. It didn’t go away, it only became easier to live with. And then there were better things to live for.
“I’m still here,” he repeated quietly.
“I’m so glad you are.”