Chapter Text
Watari woke with a start, her eyes snapping open as a sense of unease settled over her body. A quick survey of her quarters showed nothing out of the ordinary: no objects mysteriously out of place, no monsters hiding in darkened corners, no corrupt police detectives ready to drag her out of bed and slap some cuffs onto her. So why did she feel that strange tingle on the back of her neck?
Bong!
She perked up slightly at the quiet yet sharp sound reverberating through Suma Garage. It wasn't a very menacing sound, just a tiny little thing that could easily be a poorly placed tool falling from a shelf or one of the team haphazardly puttering around in the middle of the night. Hugo and her father were especially infamous for their nighttime disturbances: Hugo claimed to have bursts of hyperactivity at the most inopportune hours, his hands itching to do something despite it being the wee hours of the morning; her father, on the other hand, sometimes found his dreams haunted by war-torn faces and scenes of carnage that history had forgotten, the old man having been born in an age where wars were still fought by human beings. Sometimes she would find him sitting in his old rocking chair, staring out at the sun rising over the docks with a face that betrayed none of his inner turmoil.
Assuming that the sound was one or the other, Watari was prepared to go back to sleep, but five minutes later she was still very much awake. With a sigh that quickly devolved into a groan, Watari swung her legs out of bed and slipped her feet into the white bunny slippers that Spoke - in one of his rare moments of humor - gave her for her birthday. Bleary eyes guided her as she tiredly shuffled down the hallway, nearly tripping over her own feet a few times. Her curiosity was piqued when she realized the kitchen light was on; typically, Hugo or her father would be in the garage.
'Could it be....' Watari wasn't sure of the nighttime habits of their newest houseguest. Kai was a teenager, and Watari could certainly remember staying up very late into the night during her own adolescence, but the young hacker had been exhausted after helping to deliver that heart. Watari doubted that she would pick tonight to be a night owl.
Sure enough, when Watari poked her head into the kitchen/living room there was a mop of dark black hair poking over the couch. Watari raised an eyebrow. "Kai?"
There was a stillness in the room like a breath being held. All was silent for a moment until Kai responded. "Yeah?"
"What are you doing up, kid?" Watari walked around the couch to get a better look at Kai. The kid was dressed in an oversized white t-shirt and black sleep shorts that Watari had dug out of some boxes filled with her old things. Despite the fact that Watari had been rather small as a teen, the clothes fit Kai like a child trying on their father's suit. She was small and lean in a way that was almost disturbing, especially in a post-scarcity society like Tokyo. It made Watari wonder...
"Couldn't sleep," Kai muttered, pointedly looking anywhere except Watari's direction. "Thought I would look over some code. Figure out more reliable ways to hack the Walls."
"Mmm," Watari hummed in a tone she hoped came off as appreciative. "While that's definitely helpful, you should get some rest. Going on a delivery while you're tired won't help anyone."
"I know, it's just..." Kai trailed off, staring down at the floor.
Watari sighed internally. It was clear to anyone with a frontal cortex that Kai suffered from some deep-rooted issues. People these days liked to act like mental health was a thing of the past, the optimization of Tokyo having annihilated all pain and strife with its millions upon millions of data points, but that was unequivocally false. The mind is a lot more complex than that, conditions like depression far more insidious than people realized, and so there were still plenty of folks walking around Tokyo with undiagnosed conditions, more afraid than ever to seek out care lest they be shunned from the perfect utopia of the Digital Ministry. Especially for a kid living in the West District, a wealthy quarter filled with unimaginable wealth and opulence, it would be infinitely easier to pretend that everything was alright and ignore the roiling turmoil of the mind.
"Kai," Watari tried to inject as much warmth as possible into her voice. It being two in the morning, she labeled her meager attempts a success. "Is this about today?"
"I-y-yeah," Kai stuttered out. The teen rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "I just... want to get better at hacking the Walls so we don't cut it as close. I want to be..." Kai struggled out the next word like there was a knot in her throat, "useful."
Watari's eyes softened. "You're useful, kid. You can hack like no one else your age, and you're only gonna get better as you work with us." She lowered herself onto the couch, placing a bit of distance between her and Kai. Maybe if they knew each other a little better, she would wrap a supportive arm around the kid, but she felt that this wasn't the time. "Kai, we're not just gonna toss you out onto the street if you make a mistake or two." Testing her boundaries, Watari lightly punched Kai on the shoulder, earning a surprised look from the kid. "You're part of Suma Garage now, whether you like it or not."
"I... thanks, Watari." Some of the tension had fallen from Kai's shoulders, and with it, whatever was keeping her awake. The teen yawned the big, gaping kind of yawn that signaled she was going to imminently fall asleep. "I think I'm going to get to bed. Night."
"Night," Watari called back as Kai walked off to the little room they had set up for her. The space was quiet once again, leaving Watari alone with her thoughts.
'What was the name of that therapist we got for dad?'