Memories of Home

Yuudzuki sat beside Nitya. The evening sun illuminated their glasses’ gold-orange frames and gold chain adorned with small and starry beads. “I heard you threatened my dad.”

“It was for a good reason.”

Yuudzuki sighed. “You threatened my dad. I don’t want to hear it. I imagined how we’d meet again more than I want to admit, but I never thought it’d be like this.”

“You imagined us meeting again?”

“You never came back.”

Nitya looked away from Yuudzuki’s pretty, nostalgic face. She picked up a stone and angled it before throwing it near the water. Instead of skipping, it plopped into the water. “I meant to.”

“But you never did. You’d tell me you were coming back soon, and every few months I’d believe you, because maybe that time was different, but you never came back for me.”

“It wasn’t that simple, Yuu.”

“It was, but you were always a coward. I don’t know why I thought you’d be any different then.” Yuudzuki sighed again and brushed a strand of their straight brown hair from their face. They looked at her with a face like the waning moon. “Did I ever tell you why I chose the name ‘Yuudzuki?’”

Nitya looked at the difference between their shoes. Black boots against worn sneakers. “You didn’t.”

“I tell everyone, even my dad, that I chose that for two reasons. The first is to have some semblance of a connection to my mother, and the second is so I could be closer to my grandparents. It’s not entirely a lie, but it’s not the truth either.”

“Then what is?”

“I wanted to be the moon. It’s ethereal, eternal, and high above. If you’re the moon, then no-one can touch you. No-one can hurt you again. That was my goal. I thought it was so clever. I thought I was so clever, but in the end, I’m just like everyone else.”

“I made you realize that.” Said Nitya, a hint of a question at the end.

Yuudzuki sighed. Their hand inched closer to her before they snatched it back, intertwining it with the other to hold up their bare thighs. “What’ve you been up to all these years?”

“Ha, I've been on the run recently.”

“When I realized you weren't coming back, I was adrift for a while. I couldn't understand why you just left and I couldn't understand why you were able to move on while I stayed stagnant. I started researching to try and understand you and myself, but I ended up really enjoying it, so now I'm studying for my Master’s.”

“Did you ever end up finding the answer, Yuu?”

“You were scared. Scared of me regretting you, and scared of your own feelings, so you ran away. You didn't think about how much it would hurt us both when you decided to ignore it. You-” They sighed. “Nitya, about that girl you brought from the city-what is she to you?”

“What?”

“I talked with her some today. Since she's your companion, what is she to you? A friend? Something else?”

Nitya opened her mouth. Someone shouted in the distance and Yuudzuki smiled, tilting their head back as the wind carried another shout. “What's that saying? Speak of the devil and she shall appear?”

“I don't know what Kanami is to me,”Said Nitya through the wind. “She's pigheaded and idiotic, but she's also so, so kind to me. When she smiles at me, I feel like I’m going to die; I want to die. It would be better for both of us if she never met me. I'll never forgive myself. I'll never forgive her.”

“So she's…?”

“Someone I want to protect.”

Yuudzuki smiled. “Try not to protect her the way you tried to protect me, Nitya.”

“I know it's too late, I know I can go back in time, and I know I should've told you sooner, but Yuu, I really did love you, and I'm sorry-”

She blinked and Yuudzuki’s lips were flush against her own. Her fingers twitched. Nitya couldn’t move her hands. Her throat was dry and she was paralyzed, only able to move the moment Yuudzuki pulled away.

They caressed her cheek, voice and fingertips as soft as the wind. “I wanted to do that one last time.”

“But I thought-what?”

“However you feel, tell her, okay?,” They said. Yuudzuki stood, stretching, and waved to Kanami as she approached from the top of the hill. “See you around, Nitya.”

She watched Yuudzuki until they disappeared over the hill. The clouds drifted by slowly and Kanami grinned when she sat beside Nitya, two greasy paper bags in tow, a logo of a fast food chain that reminded Nitya of childhood. “Check it out! I figured we might be hungry so I grabbed us some grub.”

“Grub?” Asked Nitya, taking the bag Kanami pushed into her calf. Within it was a plastic cup filled with some type of clearish soda and an unassuming burger with fries. She bit into it. It tasted worse than she remembered.

“Grub!”

“I see. Thanks.”

Kanami gathered their trash as Nitya untied the omamori from her jacket and thumbed it in her palm. The water reflected the moonlight. She dangled the omamori over the water and it rippled out as golden bands, the woven fish’s scales glittering. So she was right to think of Eclipse lake.

Forgoing her jacket, Kanami stepped into the lake, gesturing for the omamori as she glided her fingers through the water. It began soaking up the gold bands and-

She screamed. She fell into the water and it roared, swallowing her whole and leaving nothing on the surface. Nitya shrugged off her HUD and dove in after her with a shout.

The water was cool and bubbly, absent of light except for a lotus flower drifting between the rapids. Glowing petals in a red-orange gradient hid the dull center. Nitya’s fingers darted out to grab the flower and she wrapped her palm around it, easing so its light could flow freely. She followed it deeper into the lake.

The lotus flower uprooted itself from her palm and drifted to the bed of rocks and sand below. A bubble rose from between its petals, popping as Nitya came closer, and in the space it created, it left herself and Kanami soaking before a thin archway. Nitya picked up the lotus flower missing its stamen and turned towards the other woman. It was almost painful to look at her in the light. “Ready?”

“Lead the way~”

Nitya walked into the relatively empty space, closer to a corridor than a room. Dust covered the brick walls. A broken stone lotus sat in the center of the room, bearing only a torn roll of parchment. She picked it up and handed the living flower to Kanami.

Nitya set the scroll down and pushed around the rubble of the stone lotus to find an empty groove within one of its petals. “Buried within stone is the key to the sun…“But there's nothing here.”

“Look, there's more to the scroll, see?” Said Kanami.

Nitya unfurled the scroll again. “Is it theft if the sun and the day have always been together?”

“What does that mean?”

“It looks like Hemera already possesses the Core. We need to get to their headquarters,” She looked around the stone corridor. “But first we need to find whatever was supposed to be here. Something doesn’t feel right.”

She thumbed the bat box’s button and shined her phone’s flashlight around. The stone was cold against Nitya’s fingers. Her ears twitched and she put her phone away, a hand held out behind her as she brought out her bat and swung it.

Clang! Just the wall. Nothing more. Nothing less.

She felt her ears twitch. “Stay sharp.”

Nitya stepped closer to the archway as Kanami, lotus in hand, stood beneath it and a staircase materialized behind her. A shadow cast across it and Nitya swung.

“Augh!”

A young man, probably no older than nineteen, with a head full of loose curls fell on the staircase. He moaned and covered his eye. Nitya prodded him with her bat. A dent sat square in the middle of the metal plating around it and the LED strips blinked on and off. An ocular enhancement.

“A member of the Thanatonic Gang.” Nitya muttered, planting her boot in the center of his ribs to pin him down. She swung her bat over her shoulder and checked the pockets of his jacket.

A small, jewel-like stamen came tumbling out and she picked it up, holding it against the glowing lotus before dropping it into the flower’s center. It clicked into place. The lotus’s petals glowed brightly for a moment, small luminescent dots floating up from its surface, and its petals folded inwards until an omamori was left in her hand.

Kanami took the red and orange omamori, tying its pink string to Nitya’s jacket. “Lucky you with two omamori~Looks like someone has a friend above.”

“A friend above...” Nitya echoed.

She stepped over the gang member and ascended the staircase. The water reflected the moonlight obscured by clouds. Her fingers glided through the cool lake and she shivered, squeezing out her jacket with a squeak. “Dear sister, were you really going to come all this way and not see me?”

“Clemente,” Nitya groaned. “You scared me.”

Clemente sat, lounging on a motorcycle of his own, embellished with sleek paneling and RGB lights. He spun a keyring on his fingers. The light it caught was reflected on whatever shimmery powder that was on his skin and clothes and he slid his glasses up. “Really? That’s all you have to say to your dear twin?”

“How’d you even know to come out here?”

“Yuu told me,” He laughed and sat up, twirling a data cube in his hands as he did. “And since your bike is in their driveway, and you're all the way out here, and I almost guarantee you didn’t think to book a room, I came to come get you and your friend.”

She slid behind him as Kanami sat in the sidecar and Clemente started driving. “I didn’t know you and Yuu talked.”

“We found solace in mutual loneliness.”

***

Nitya stepped through the seemingly empty house, hanging her keys by the door. Kanami had gone to bed before she left, leaving the only sounds click-clacking on a keyboard and the air conditioner. She rested in the square archway separating the foyer from the kitchen and waved at Clemente. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself. You were out for a while.”

She looked at the clock on the wall. 1:04 A.M. “It’s not that late.”

“You left at ten.”

“Who are you, Dad?”

“No, but,” Clemente yawned. He stretched, setting his glasses against the table. “It's just surprising is all. You never stayed out longer than midnight before.”

“Speaking of Dad-where are they?”

“Didn't I tell you? Didn't they tell you? They moved. Went north to retire.”

“Ah, I-I was hoping to see them while I was here.” Whispered Nitya.

She waved again, crossing back through the empty hallway and placing her shoes on the rack, between Kanami’s and an empty spot. She passed by the room that once was her adoptive parents’, peeking inside to see Kanami dozing away with the TV still on.

Nitya fell into her old bed. She looked at the glow-in-the-dark stickers lined up across her wall and tried to ignore how heavy her jacket pocket felt.