“Don’t look down, don’t look down,” I mumbled, wriggling across like a caterpillar, arms and legs hugging the rope tightly.
“We don’t have all day,” Otoha said.
“I’m scared shitless!”
“You’re not the only one. Now move.”
“Why me?”
Tetsuko’s rope techniques had turned out to be useful... that is, until the actual climbing part.
Who would’ve thought climbing ropes Navy SEAL style could be a little more daunting in practice? Well, look on the bright side; at least you didn’t wet yourself earlier. You’re the man.
While I was giving myself a morale boost, Otoha rudely interjected, “Faster, and stop shaking it. It’s gonna break.”
“Real helpful!”
Movies made it look easy, but in reality, it was anything but.
The rope swayed from side to side with even the slightest movement, and occasionally, I’d one-eighty and hang off the rope like a sloth. I had a carabiner hooked up to the rope and my belt, but it really didn’t help to alleviate the fear factor.
“Less talking, more moving.” She gave me a little shove.
“Watch it!”
“Move already.”
Why you little... I never should’ve said all those nice things about you! I picked up the pace, cursing all the way through.
I slipped up twice after that, but thanks to the carabiner, I managed to get across scot-free.
“You almost gave me a heart attack!” I yelled at the suicidal girl, unhooking the carabiner.
“Wh-Who are you people?” she cried, wobbling back and forth on top of the fence like a hunk of jelly.
One little nudge would send her flying.
In these kinds of situations, you’d generally want to keep your distance and convince the person that life was worth living or something like that, but I wasn’t in the mood. I walked right up to her and grabbed her by the leg without warning.
“Get your dirty hands off of me!” Her upper body squirmed in protest, revealing the contents of her skirt for all to see.
Blue-and-white stripes, how typical. Okay, wrap it up. Now’s not the time to stare.
Tug as I might, she wasn’t budging.
Ironically, it’s like she’s holding on for dear life!
“Let go! Let me go!”
“Need some help here!”
“Thought you’d never ask.” Otoha came charging toward us with her trusty shovel in hand.
Whoa, Otoha! That’s not what I meant!
Her shovel came crashing down on the top rail, mere centimeters away from where the girl’s hands were, producing a deafeningly loud clang.
The resulting shockwave caused the girl to moan and loosen her grip, so I took advantage of her moment of weakness. I pulled her down, falling butt-first onto the ground, and she crash-landed into my arms.
Light as a feather, this one.
“Why?!” She flailed her arms about, her legs perfectly still. “Why won’t you just let me die?!”
“You little—okay, look, this isn’t going to solve anything!” I tried explaining as she continued to pull me by my hair, only to enrage her even more.
“Mind your own business, bub!”
“The last thing I need is you haunting my dreams, so yes, I am minding my own business, missy!”
My zombie family’s got that covered, thank you very much!
If I were to give her the go-ahead, then stare her mangled corpse in the eyes knowing I could’ve put a stop to it, I would undoubtedly be traumatized by the experience.
“I can help out, if you’d like,” Otoha said, lifting her shovel overhead.
“Otoha, you’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking!” I screamed, shielding the girl with my body.
“I figured I’d just skip straight to the beheading part of seppuku.”
“So you just want to decapitate her?!”
“It’s what I do.”
“I know, I know! Now would you please put that thing down?!”
Trust me, I’ve seen more than my fair share of decapitation in my lifetime.
“Girlie, if you don’t want your head to get chopped off, maybe you should, I don’t know, speak up?”
Huh, did she lose steam?
“You, um, you okay there, champ?” I would’ve checked, but she was facing away from me. Thankfully, there was someone else who could do it.
“She’s sleeping,” Otoha said, inspecting her face.
“Sleeping? Oh, she must’ve passed out.”
Mustering up enough willpower to attempt suicide would surely be mentally draining.
No wonder she passed out right in my arms. At least, I’m pretty sure she did. I heaved a sigh and got back to my feet, still holding the girl. Otoha brought over the wheelchair, so I carefully placed her in it.
“Who are you?” I wondered aloud.
I’m sure the boys’ll be all over you when you grow up.
Her narrow, combative eyes, like those of a feisty young cat, stood out the most, especially when she’d been shouting at me earlier. She was fairly cute, just like Shino and Otoha, but in more of a cheeky “You’re wasting my time!” kind of way.
How someone like her had ended up in this predicament was beyond me.
“So, what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“She can’t walk.”
“Right.” Otoha nodded, glancing at the wheelchair.
“Don’t think we can climb our way back carrying a wheelchair or this little bugger. Let’s hope the doors open from the inside.”
We had left Shino and Tetsuko behind to rush over here. Time had been of the essence; we hadn’t wanted to squander it by waking those two up.
Once we’d gotten to the building, we had frantically tried every entrance point we could find, but every one of them had been sealed off for good.
Out of options, we had run up the neighboring building’s fire escape and climbed our way over here. In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea ever.
“I say we check in there first,” Otoha proposed, staring at a shack tucked away in the corner of the roof.
Shiiko had a good memory. Great, even. She couldn’t forget a single thing, not even if she wanted to.
“Say hi to your new home, Shiiko,” her mom said as she wheeled Shiiko into a white, sanitary-looking room.
There was a closet and a desk against one wall, but it was otherwise empty and uninviting. Only a single PC adorned the desk, which made it feel all the more sterile.
“Quite exciting, isn’t it?” The smile on her face looked unnatural, as if glued on. “You have the power to make the world a better place. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste, now would we?” Her question came off as more of an implicit demand than anything else.
“Will I ever see you again?” Shiiko asked.
Aesthetics aside, the solitary confinement cell posing as a proper living space was meant for only one person, not an entire family.
“Of course you will. I promise.”
Liar.
She forced the word back down her throat just before it could leave her lips.
Yes, Shiiko had a good memory indeed. She remembered all the hateful things her mom called her clear as day.
Night after night, her mother had done nothing but bemoan Shiiko’s very existence over the phone.
“I’d give anything to get that failure out of my face.”
Shiiko’s name had never been explicitly mentioned during these conversations, but it hadn’t taken long for her to put two and two together, and what followed were feelings of sadness and guilt.
Shiiko hadn’t wanted to be a bad kid, so she had sworn to put a smile on her mom’s face, to give her something to be proud of, to be a good kid.
In order to be a good kid, Shiiko had felt she needed to be a high achiever, so she’d decided to hit the books. And hit the books she had.
Shiiko had breezed past school, graduated college at the top of her class, written hundreds of English papers at the age of ten, and earned her doctorate.
She’d never had a father, so making her mom proud had been her one and only purpose. Alas, her efforts had all been in vain.
Of course she’d want me gone. Who wouldn’t if they had to resort to artificial insemination and all they had to show for it was a good-for-nothing girl like me?
Shiiko was not a product of love between two caring parents, but rather a commodity, a tool... and a faulty one at that.
Her mother had gone to great lengths to secure an easy life for herself only to be met with disappointment.
Shiiko’s motor cortex had been dysfunctional since birth, so it wasn’t that she couldn’t move; it was more that she didn’t know how. Her legs were like strands of hair, limp and hanging from her body.
Her mother didn’t care one bit about academic achievements. What she did care about was having a comfortable life in her golden years, which a physically disabled daughter had no means of supporting, at least in her mind.
Instead of wasting precious years of her life raising a faulty product, she had determined that a fresh start at motherhood would be the better choice.
“You’ll love it here, Shiiko. Remember, North River Co...”
“...Is every researcher’s dream.” The slogan had been drilled into her mind through endless repetition.
North River Co. was a multinational technology company known for pioneering a multitude of cutting-edge inventions. Hundreds of millions of bright minds all across the globe aspired to become part of it.
Shiiko now found herself in the lab four, which was one of the twelve labs in Japan. They were primarily located in suburban areas.
“Bright minds from all across Japan—no, the globe—can only dream of setting foot inside these walls, and yet here you are. Isn’t it incredible?”
“If you say so.”
“Trust me, it’s for your own good. You’re destined for great things, Shiiko. Don’t let me hold you back.”
An overly caring mother who just wanted to provide her genius daughter with the ideal research environment... Even Shiiko found this charade somewhat sad.
Why can’t you just up and say that I’m worth less to you than the wad of cash you traded me for?
It was human trafficking in the guise of a scholarship. Although Shiiko hadn’t seen the contract, she was almost certain she’d be slaving away at North River Co. till the end of her days.
Naturally, the money would go on to feed and fund her future, non-defective little brother or sister.
“I’ll be going now. Hang in there.” Shiiko’s mom turned her back and walked off with a light spring in her step, as though a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. At last, the debt from her unfortunate biological gamble all those years ago had finally been repaid.
Shiiko didn’t shed a single tear.
Maybe this is why no one ever liked me, she thought to herself.
“Shiiko Katsura, I presume?” A kind-looking woman entered in her mom’s stead.
She had the North River Co. badge pinned to her chest and wore a pair of silver-rimmed glasses over her slightly droopy eyes.
“Yes?”
“I’m your caretaker, Noriko Ohara. Pleased to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Shiiko replied flatly.