A soft breeze blew through the trees that decorated the memorial park, their leaves dancing as the gray clouds over head passed by. The lawn had been mowed recently and the smell of freshly cut grass floated through the air. Headstones of all shapes and sizes stood in the ground, pillars of remembrance, standing strong for those who mourned the loss of ones that were loved. She sat amongst them, her head bowed, her legs tucked beneath her as she sat in silence. Her eyes were closed and her hands rested in her lap, gripping each other tightly.
“It has been three years since you left me.”
• Of all the things I believed in •
• I just want to get it over with •
• Tears form behind my eyes, but I do not cry •
• Counting down the days that pass me by •
“Family and friends, we are gathered here to say our goodbyes to two very special people.”
The preacher’s voice was soft and harsh at the same time. It came out raspy, like he was in need of some water, but cool and collected as he reviewed the respected lives of the two people who were not in attendance today. His voice echoed over the walls and bounced off of the vaulted ceilings. It rolled over the stained glass windows and bombarded the young girl sitting in the front row from every possible angle.
Makoto stared at the empty coffins in the front of the church. She glared at them with all the hatred that she could muster. Imagining in her mind the beautiful satin pillows and bedding that lined the inside, untarnished by the chilled flesh of the dead.
Her parents’ remains had not been found.
No one had told her, she had overheard the adults talking down the hall from her room the night after it had happened. The voices of those who would determine her fate had floated down the hallway into her room. She’d heard them questioning the idea that they should tell her that her dead parents would never be found. It was decided, however, that it would be better for her to think that they were in the boxes that would be their home for the next lifetime; it would help with her mourning.
She didn’t let on that she knew they were not in there; just sat quietly in her chair while they all hurried around, making the arrangements and preparing for the funeral. She didn’t cry, she didn’t complain, she didn’t sleep; she just sat and watched.
She watched everyone look on her with sad, pitying eyes. She watched as the people who were taking care of her now picked a preacher out of a stack. She watched them select someone who knew nothing of her parents; who they were, what they stood for. He was paid to talk about lives he had never been a part of. She watched the pictures of her parents slowly disappear from view; taken off of the tables in the family room, the shelves that made up the backsplash in the kitchen, removed from the photo albums in the living room – yet another attempt at helping her cope.
“The lives of the Kino’s were days spent in happiness with their daughter, Makoto.”
Makoto could feel her blood start boiling. She could feel the eyes of those around her shift from the preacher to her small form, she could feel their pity seeping into her skin. She could hear the lies in the preacher’s voice, as he read words that had been written for him. Her face was becoming more and more hot with each false word that he spoke. She felt like she was about to explode.
Slowly, she stood from her seat and began walking down the isle that separated the pews of the house of worship. Her nose began to burn on the inside as she suppressed angry tears that threaded to burst from her eyes. She kept her back straight and her hands limp as she walked past the friends of her parents. She was almost to the door, safe from the prying eyes of those who would pity her and the lying words of those who would pretend to know her and her family; then her ears pricked at words that floated on the still air of the room.
“That’s so sad. That poor little girl.”
She stopped dead in her tracks and closed her eyes. Her nose was no longer burning, the tears had been replaced with rage and her fists clenched at her sides. She slowly spun on her heels, bit by bit, until she was face to face with the entire room. Everyone was staring at the poor little girl who had lost her parents and had no family left. Everyone was pitying the sad little child who needed to be cared for.
There was nothing to say, there was nothing that could be done. To make a scene would be childish and a disgrace to the memory of her family. To speak would be no more useful, it would just cause everyone in the room to pity her further. So she locked her jaw, tightened her fists even further, crossed her arms at her wrists and bowed to the room before spinning back around and walking far from the church.
• I’ve been searching deep down in my soul •
• Words that I’m hearing are starting to get old •
• Feels like I’m starting all over again •
• The last three years were just pretend and I said •
“I stayed with the Chiyoko’s for three years after that. They were the ones who arranged everything for your funerals. They helped me take care of my estate, the insurance money, everything. They are good people, it was wise of you to leave me in their care.
“They had a son a year after I began staying there. He is a good child, adorable, looks like his father. He only cries when there is something wrong. It was very quiet considering there was a baby present.”
She paused and looked up at the head stones, the markers of her parents’ graves. Though she knew they were not here, she knew they could hear her wherever they were.
Her eyes were glassy from tears that she refused to shed. She clenched her skirt in her fists so that she had something to hold on to, she was shaking so badly.
“I got quiet when you guys left. I became a lone wolf, I sat by myself a lot and just watched the world. I wasn’t a favorite in school. I got into a lot of fights. After awhile I decided to study karate and started sticking up for myself. A fight went too far because they wouldn’t back off and it was the final straw for the school. I was expelled from Aoyama about 2 months ago.
“The Chiyoko’s tried to get me back in, they asked for forgiveness for my actions, tried to explain it away with my…situation,” the word rolled off of her tongue like poison.
She hated it when people used the death of her parents as an excuse for her behavior. It seemed that they blamed her maladjustment, as they called it, on the fact that she lost her parents when she was so young. No one thought that it was because she was being picked on and didn’t like being pushed around.
“The school did not allow me back though. The Chiyoko’s offered to move to a new school district or to home school me. But I knew that they didn’t have the time for that, with a new baby, and I didn’t want them to dishevel their lives just because I had messed up. So I got them to sign my estate over to me, which was no easy task, let me assure you.
“Everyone thought that they were crazy. Told them that it was a mistake, it is too difficult for an adult to live on their own, let alone a child. But I proved them all wrong. I had been taking culinary classes over the past two years, I’m a really good cook.” She paused and sighed, her eyes fixing on her mother’s name, “I always make cookies at 3 o’clock.” She smiled at the memory then shivered away a shill that crept down her spine.
“Anyway,” she sighed, “I had the attorneys over and made them a large meal and pitched my plan to them and told them where I was going, how they would be able to contact me, made sure that they knew that I had all their information…it sealed the deal.
“Not that it would have mattered I guess, I would have just done what I wanted to do anyway.” She laughed uneasily and shifted herself off of her knees and rested on the grass.
She sat there silently for a few minutes and gazed up at the sky. She watched a bird fly by, the gray clouds still drifting in the light breeze. When she looked back down at the names on the headstones happiness had replaced the suppressed tears.
“I’ve made friends in Juuban, three of them. Two I go to school with, the other is a shrine priestess and goes to a private school.
“I think you would like Usagi. She is…a special person. She is loud and not so smart all the time. She loves food and when she found out that I could cook she flipped out. She is very kind and trusting. She sees the good in people that some can’t even see in themselves.
“Ami is quiet and smart. She studies all the time and is so far ahead of her class that she could miss school for a month and not miss a beat,” she paused and smiled. “I’ve heard that she used to be really reserved and some people thought that she was kind of stuck up. I think that when she met Usagi her shell cracked and while it isn’t completely gone yet, she is still making new friends.” Makoto paused again and took a breath, “Usagi is magical, I think.
“Raye is the shrine priestess. She is like me. Strong and fierce but feminine and calm. She meditates a lot and is learning from her grandfather to become the priestess of her family shrine. She and Usagi fight a lot, over nothing. Like they were sisters or something.” She began to giggle as she thought back on one of the fights that she had been witness to, “They are very amusing when they get started.” She paused as the giggles subsided and she began the think more on Raye, “I think that Raye has a lot of anger in her though, something in her past that is troubling her still…kind of like me.”
She felt her eyes start to tear again and she cast her sight down at the ground before the salty water droplets could fall down her cheeks. She felt her face flush and her stomach start to flutter. Her fists clutched at the ground and she closed her eyes tightly as she was overwhelmed with the grief of where she was.
• I still get lost in your eyes •
• And it seems that I can’t live a day without you •
• Closing my eyes and you chase my thoughts away •
• To a place where I am blinded by the light, but it’s not right •
“No one ever told me that you were gone!” She yelled at the empty dirt beneath her. “No one ever told me that they couldn’t find you! You’re still out there somewhere, rotting…”
Her body was racked with a sob that she could no longer hold back. She slouched as her shoulders rocked and her chest exploded with the sorrow that she had been restraining.
“You told me you were coming back,” she sobbed. Her words were choked and hushed, strong but weak at the same time. “You promised me that you would read to me when you came home. You didn’t have time that night but as soon as you got back from your trip you would read me whatever book that I wanted. We were going to make cookies and draw pictures, I had a parent day at school that we were planning for…and you were just gone.”
She took a sharp breath as she ran out of words. Her brain clicked inside her head, telling her to calm down. She wiped her hands on her skirt and then rubbed them on her face, wiping away the tears that had burst past her defenses. Once she was calm again she looked back to the stones. She stared at them for a long time before speaking, but when she finally found her voice it was soft, barely a whisper. The words floated on the air in a spiral around her, echoing the power of her words, the weight of them, back toward her.
“I’ve hated you two for a long time. It feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen you. You took everything away from me. You died and there was no warning, no way to prevent it. You were taken away from me and it’s not fair.”
• It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time •
• I want what’s your and I want what’s mine •
Her eyes glazed over again as she glanced down at her left wrist and memories of a night long since passed invaded her mind. The scars that rested over her veins stared back at her, a true testament of how lost she felt the first year. How alone she felt after walking out of the church, walking away from her last opportunity to remember her parents with other people who knew and loved them.
Her mind was rolling like a projector, showing her images of memories that she had almost forgotten. She remembered her last day with the Chiyoko’s, saying goodbye to Asunoko, his little baby hands gripping at her finger with all his might. She thought about saying goodbye to the two people who had taken care of her in her parents’ stead. They had never pushed her, never asked her to talk about anything, but always listened if she did have something to say. She remembered the tears in Susaki’s blue eyes, how they had broken her heart. She has almost changed her mind then, just to stop the poor woman’s crying. Then she remembered the reassuring way Asaki had held his wife’s hand, how he had told her that it would be OK; he had told them both that it would be OK. Asaki had looked in Makoto’s eyes and said million things without saying a word.
Her leaving that place would be the second time that she would have to start over.
Then her mind drifted to the blue eyed, blonde who had not feared her. The girl who had befriended her for no reason at all, other than she was eating lunch alone.
Out of the corner of her eye, Makoto saw a green glow in her hand. She ripped her eyes away from the scars from her past and stared at the object that had appeared in her right hand.
She felt the shaft of the transformation pen with her hand, her fingers wrapping around it tightly and then loosening again. The gold and green of the star at the top shimmered in what light filtered through the gray clouds from above. She stared at the pen that would change her life and thought about the black cat and the friends who had welcomed her to a team that would protect the world. A team that she could be a part of.
• I want you but I’m not giving in this time •
She tightened her grip around the magical object, closing her fingers around it securely and nodded her head, “I’m made for something very special.”
She looked up at the headstones again, this time her eyes were clear and determined. “I understand what happened. I realize that I blamed you because I was alone, because there was no one else to blame but you. Please know that I never stopped loving you. I never let you go. And even though I was alone then,” she paused and sighed, she thought of Usagi, Ami, Raye and Luna, “I’m not alone anymore.”
She smiled at her parents, stood up and walked away.
“I love you.”
• Goodbye to you •
• Goodbye to everything I thought I knew •
• You were the one I loved •
• The one thing that I tried to hold on to •
Later that evening, a blue crescent moon rose high in the night sky surrounded by millions of stars, some of which sparkled down at Makoto as she stared out of the living room window of her apartment in Juuban. Behind her Usagi, Raye and Ami were playing Scrabble while Luna sat nearby, poised with the dictionary ready for challenges.
“Nibbly is not a word, you stupid dumpling head!”
Raye had challenged nearly every one of Usagi’s words, launching the girls into more than one argument. Ami giggled silently as Luna opened the dictionary yet again to, fairly, check on the word. Makoto smiled as she glanced behind her and then turned her attention back toward the sky.
To the left of the moon, just above the brightest star that she could see, a multi-colored ball of light blinked at the new guardian of Jupiter. Makoto felt herself smile as she stared at the odd star in her sky. Her smile grew wider as she watched the star grow brighter and shoot across the darkened blanket over Earth in a partial loop, smiling at her.
“You are always with me.”
Her whisper floated up into the air on a wind that rushed passed her just as another star shot across the sky.
• And when the stars fall I will lie awake •
• You’re my shooting star •
“Mako-chan!”
Usagi’s squeal ripped through the air in the apartment and Makoto whirled around to face the girl.
“It’s your turn.”
Ami, Raye, and Luna all smiled at her while Usagi implored her to return to the game with puppy dog eyes. Makoto smiled and, without another glance to the sky, went to join her friends in her living room.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Goodbye to You” © 2007 Bella Luna (beautifulmoon29@aol.com)
Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, its associated characters and canon, as well as all that is afflilated with the creation, distribution, and promotion of Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. And it is extremely kind of them to allow all of us to use their characters in our own fun ways.
Lyrics of 'Goodbye to You' © 2001 Michelle Branch
The text of this work was created by Bella Luna (beautifulmoon29@aol.com) and is her exclusive property. Not to be used without her personal permission.
