Chapter Text
And just before the deafening cacophony of whispers whirling around inside her mind begin screaming, she wakes up.
She’s sitting straight up in bed – her body shuttering, goosebumps creeping along every inch of her skin, sweat trickling down her neck and matting her hair – and though she’s conscious, she’s still held captive in the remnants of her reoccurring nightmare. She hasn’t registered the familiar walls of her bedroom, the ticking of the clock somewhere to the left, or the figure at her bedside looking down at her with worried eyes. All she knows in that moment are the echoes of a whispering voice she can’t quite place in her memories. She tries and tries to grasp it, but the harder she fights to hold on, the faster it slips away from her like grains of sand in a tightly clenched fist.
“Ah, are you awake now?” a voice finally breaks through to her, and just for an instant, a name is balancing on the tip of her tongue before she swallows it down and it's forgotten.
Her room is no longer dark – bathed in the soft glow of a light beyond the door, and this, if only just a little, sets her mind at ease and quiets the pounding in her chest. She turns her head to address the other person, but her voice falters, and she has to close her eyes against the threat of tears.
“…Mom…” she eventually says in a hoarse whisper, and it’s all she can manage.
But it’s enough, and the woman leaning over her breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness…” Her own voice is wavering beneath the weight of tears, but for her daughter’s sake, she needs to maintain a sturdy front.
There’s a long pause of silence between them; the daughter slowly and carefully gathering her composure, and the mother fondly smoothing damp hair out of her child’s face.
“What…?” It’s the bewildered girl who breaks the silence, but understanding is quickly dawning on her, and her shoulders sag. “Again?”
“Yes,” her mother replies, and she’s moved on from the girl’s hair to untucking the blankets wound too tightly around her legs. “You were crying out again, and when I came in, you were thrashing around. It’s a miracle you didn’t fall out of bed.”
On the day she was discovered unconscious at the university, Sawa told her that the manager had personally contacted her parents. And despite her father wanting to drop everything to rush home to his daughter, in the end, only her mother returned to Japan. But her father, beside himself with grief, promised her over the phone that he would be there soon. It had also been decided that she would no longer be living alone in her apartment, and with all the staff from Meido no Hitsuji and Rika helping, they moved all her belongings back to her parents’ home.
“I’m sorry.” This isn’t the first time she’s apologized to her mother for disrupting, not only her sleep, but her entire way of life. She’s grateful to her for, once more, putting her own life on hold to take care of her. After all, she had it all figured out; once she began university, she would move into her own small apartment so her parents could finally travel together and not always be apart when her father was away on business.
But that had all come crashing down after her accident. Though her body had healed, her mind still struggled – plaguing her with nightmares of fires and explosions and haunting her with whispers of a phantom voice. No one, save for her parents, knew to what extent she was suffering from that ordeal. Not even her closest friends could begin to guess what she experienced every night.
Because that’s how she wanted it.
During the day, she would go to work and see her friends with a smile on her face. She would talk to them normally and never bring up her nightmares or the anguish it caused her when she was awake. She didn’t want them to worry about her, and so long as she kept quiet about it, they would be none the wiser. Perhaps the only other person outside of her family she allowed to have some idea of what was going on was the manager, but the details she shared with him were vague at best, and he never pried, nor did he betray her trust by telling the others.
“Are you…?” It’s her mother’s voice again, and she quickly shakes her head – not missing the way she relaxes.
“I’m sor—“
Her mother raises a hand to silence her. “Not another apology out of you. I’m your mother; I’m here to take care of you. This isn’t a job or an inconvenience. I love you. I’m going to support you every step of the way even if that means carrying you the entire time. Stop being considerate and holding yourself back because you feel guilty or you think you’re going to burden me. Please rely on me.”
For a long second, it’s silent in the room, but then, like a dam breaking, a sob tumbles from between her lips and she’s flinging herself against her mother’s chest and wrapping her arms around her petite frame. She’s crying louder and harder than she has in a long time, and each sob shakes her body and there’s nothing she can do to stop how violently she is trembling. She feels weak, small, vulnerable and more helpless than when she was a child. It’s scary…so scary…and she doesn’t know what to do or how to make the fear go away. But throughout it all, she can feel her mother’s hand rubbing calming circles into her back and hear her voice soothingly reassuring her she is there and will always be there.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been crying, or even when she stopped, but when she lifts her face and pulls away, she is certain she loves her mom more than anyone else in the world. But as cleansed as that cry leaves her feeling, she knows the road to fully recovering is a long one, and she’s only just started that journey. It’s comforting to know she won’t be alone though.
“Should I make us some tea?” her mother asks, her serene demeanor unchanging as she passes over a handkerchief she probably picked up from the small table beside the bed.
Dabbing at her face, she is painfully aware of how terrible she looks. Her eyes are red and puffy, her cheeks tearstained and sticky, and there is definitely snot dripping from her nose. There is nothing glamorous about crying – no matter what the movies would have people believe. But as gross as she feels, for the first time that night, a faint smile comes to her lips as she looks up at her mom. “Can we have hot cocoa instead?” The question is an echo of memories from her childhood when she’d wake up from scary nightmares with her mom already at her side.
She isn’t the only one who remembers either, as her mom smiles back and affectionately ruffles her hair. “Yes.”