Static Time

The mob that had gathered around Sumiko’s home grew quiet with the interruption of Yumi’s voice. They turned slowly towards her, a little confused and curious. It was clear that they recognized her voice, but couldn’t imagine why she was interrupting them. “That got their attention,” Yuki muttered, trying not to give himself a large profile.

She stared down at all of the faces wanting answers, revenge, payback, compensation, whatever it was that they felt that they were personally owed even if it would mean nothing. They only had the one direction to follow, their emotions dragged them there. Yumi could see it in all of them. “Look at you!” There was a pause as they just stared up at her expecting a little more out of her than just that order. “I’m serious, look at the person to the right and left of you right now!”

The gathering hesitated, but could feel the tone of her voice as she ordered them. She wasn’t a stranger to any of them. Everyone in the town knew her, mostly having gone to her at least once for a job and if not, they knew her by name. Yumi ceased to be the weird hacker that hid out in the Ark and popped up to aid Sumiko in her work. She stepped out beyond that shadow. They couldn’t ignore her.

As they started to cooperate for Yumi, she breathed a bit of a relief. ‘Good, I need the time. I’m so used to knowing exactly what’s supposed to happen and how things would play out that I haven’t planned anything for this. I’m winging this and I need all the time I can get…’ Like them, her emotions got the better of her. She had no intention in stepping into the situation as it developed. In a way, she felt that it should just play out, since they had been doing everything to hide and delay this from happening. They knew, likely since before she woke up, how things were going. Exposing it all would be healthier.

Despite that, she found herself unable to sit back and watch. She no longer knew the right answer. There were no longer countless cycles of failures for her to know what was the right path to take to the correct route. She could only guess at it and hope. Use everything that she learned and experienced to guide her. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve felt like this…’

An unknown future was a frightening one.

Chapter 494 – Static Time

“This is your reality right now. The people next to you are all that’s left. This is humanity now. Is this what you want it to be? Where we want to attack one of us? Do you want the enemy that’s been trying to wipe us out to win? That’s the path you’re heading down right now. Because it won’t end, this is just the start. Once you start seeing one as not being a person, dehumanizing them, just seeing them as a target, an objective, you lose who you are.” She paused, clenching her hands against the rail of the scaffold.

Yuki stared at her with a sad look starting to bleed into his eyes. “…Yumi…”

A soft murmur went through the crowd as Yumi chastised them. They didn’t appear to be overly convinced, even if her remarks did seem to slow down their anger at Sumiko a little. ‘I hardly expected them to just roll over, that’d be too easy. I’m not going to sway them that fast. If I can insert doubt, it should at least break things up and make it a little more difficult to organize a mob again. Just need to get public opinion to a less destructive level…’ Which made things difficult when she wasn’t really a public speaker. She could only speak to her own experience and feelings. There certainly had to be a better way to go about it. That much she was convinced.

It still wasn’t enough to break them up. Yumi needed to do something more. ‘I’ve only got one other move to make, but no one knows it. So I don’t know if it’ll work. I kept quiet about it since they seemed to want to keep things about Sumiko a secret. It didn’t really seem like it was my place to be making that decision, being the outsider…’ Ending their mob today was the goal and it would likely be able to serve that end.

“I kept this to myself, because I didn’t know what to do with it. Now however seems like a good time to let you all in on something. Every one of you is alive and standing here able to think about lynching a good woman for a mistake because of that same woman. She’s the reason you’re alive today! She might not have saved everyone, but she saved your lives! So maybe you should try giving her a little more appreciation.”

The revelation didn’t go over as well as she had hoped. It certainly set the trigger for doubt and unease. People started to question what they were doing, not knowing this critical piece of information. But emotions still ran hot and charged people with no room for any sort of forgiveness.

“You’re lying!”

“If you really knew that you would have said something immediately.”

“My husband’s dead!”

She nodded a little to herself, something that they couldn’t have seen from the distance. ‘I should have…’ Yumi leaned against the railing as her mind spun in the thoughts and decisions that she made. They made her hesitate and reconsider. ‘…am I on the right path? Should I have said something different? I wish I could go back to that day and—‘

“Yumi!” shouted Yuki from below, managing to break his voice through the crowd. He stared up at her only giving her a look, which she could barely manage to sort out at a distance. But the tone of his piercing voice and strength transformed that blurry image into something that could be a foundation.

“…Yuki…you’re right…” Focus returned to her mind as she started to push back the doubts and fears of the way things went. Yumi met the accusations head on staring down at the crowd. ‘I climbed up here for a reason, despite everything… I have to take that step forward…’

Clenching onto the railing to brace herself, she began her new speech. “I was afraid. If we’re being honest with ourselves, I didn’t say anything because I was afraid. Of the past and having no future. I had been in a prison of hell unable to escape. I didn’t want to return to it. So I made the choice not to make a choice. I didn’t know what would happen and I didn’t want to know.

“I can see now that was a mistake. We’re all human and we make mistakes. That’s the point, I guess, in all of this. We’re supposed to stumble and fall, but we’re supposed to get back up too. Dwelling on what happened and wanting to change it is not healthy. Face the mistake and learn from it, but not repeat the cycle.”

Yumi pointed her hand at the door of Sumiko’s home. “That’s what happened, a mistake. Yes, it was a terrible one that cost everyone the people that we love, but she had a hard choice to make. Do nothing and we all die or risk it and we live.

“At the time, I disagreed with her choice. I thought things had to be perfect and certain. We needed more time. And in truth, with more time we could have made it work, but that wasn’t the situation. I was looking for the perfect situation, when there never was going to be one. I couldn’t accept that, but Sumiko did.

“She made a terrible choice that no one wants to make, but can you say you could have the courage to do it? If in her situation can you make that choice? I know I couldn’t. I failed that test! What about you?” Yumi stared down at the crowd again, with her words seeming to grab their attention. None of them even let out a whisper.

“Sumiko chose and we can stand around here pointing fingers at consequences of what she decided as you are now. Or we can be more productive. This is a hostile alien world that wants to kill us. There’s an enemy out there that could find us again one day. And in there is a woman that spent her life giving up everything so that you can be able to lynch her today.

“Answer me, what is your choice?” Yumi pulled back from the edge of the scaffolds and looked back down at the way she came. A bit of sweat dripped down when she realized what she had done. ‘How do I get down from here?!’

Some careful climbing and assistance from Yuki, she managed to return to the safety of the ground. She quickly thanked him once they were on the ground. “I’m really starting to miss that ability to fly.”

“Before you start missing that, you still have to deal with this.” Pointing out that the crowd hadn’t left yet, though they seemed more interested in Yumi now, rather than anything to do with Sumiko.

“…right…” In a way, after she spilled her heart out to a hundred or so sort of, but not quite strangers, she hoped that they would have started to leave. But they hovered around her tightly as though she had more to tell them. ‘I’m going to start repeating myself at this point…please just go…the situation’s resolved…’

But it wasn’t over as she wanted. They didn’t have the same sort of look in their eyes anymore. Confusion and loss filled them now rather than anger and rejection.

“But what do I do? I’m so alone. I thought that rebuilding would help me forget, but I can’t! I can still see them in my mind! I don’t know what to do anymore!”

“Every day I think…maybe I should…” Emotions ran over to the man, unable to keep speaking, his bravery only lasting so far before collapsing.

The weight of the mood started becoming heavy for Yumi. This wasn’t the sort of thing that she expected. They were supposed to disperse and return to their normal lives, but she seemed to have hit more of a breaking point for them than she expected. ‘I knew it was pretty bad, but I didn’t imagine this… They were all hiding and running away…’

This sort of battle wasn’t one that Yumi had any right in stepping into, but they were asking that she did. They needed support. As survivors they suffered in ways that Yumi couldn’t imagine. While she often found it easy to forget, none of this was real. She knew that at the end everything would go away once she solved it. That gave her the peace of mind that the rest of them could not find.

‘I don’t know what to do…but they’re not going to take that as an answer!’ She wanted to run away, but that wasn’t going to solve anything. Choices were made, she knew and she had to face them. “Sorry, I don’t really have a good answer for you. I’m afraid that I haven’t found that answer yet either. I understand how powerless it feels for everything to be out of your control. I’ve run away from it and I’m trying to face things now. So I can’t really give you the comfort that you need.”

Yumi looked around at the crowd trying to get a read on whether that was working or not. There was little reaction out of them. If anything they looked like they might have been even worse off. They just wanted some reassurance and she couldn’t give them what they needed. “I’m so—“

“Why don’t you come over to my café?” suggested Arthur, who had used his time putting together an attempt at a restaurant, which had failed. He turned it into a place that served drinks and snacks instead, something that seemed to be a little more successful for him. “It gets a little lonely there in the evening hours.”

“What? But…”

“You can tell me about them. We can share it over some tea.”

“Maybe…”

“I’ve been having trouble watching after my Emily and Jon while I’m working, maybe you can come some days?”

“I don’t know what I can do, but I like playing games.”

Yumi found her mouth dropping a little, not expecting this result at all. They stopped looking at her and looked out for each other. Every one of them had similar stories. It made so much sense that they would be better suited to helping.

She smiled watching the crowd start raising their mood extending out a hand to those in need. It was difficult not to feel a little emotional watching it as she found tears beading up in the corners of her eyes.

Yuki stepped up next to her, grabbing her hand and squeezing it softly. “You managed to inspire them to help themselves.”

“But I didn’t…”

“Don’t worry too much about how it happened. You found the right way in the end.”

“Yes…I’m glad.” She held his hand tightly, happy to see things improving. Her free hand wiped away the tears. As the crowd began to disperse, the sight of Sumiko’s door broke through as though dividing the tide. It remained closed the whole time. Such a stubborn view sobered her up quickly. “But we still have one thing left to do before this is all over.”