He couldn’t remember her name.
Names were important. Names gave colour to a person. Names meant a lot to a man who had lost the connection with his own.
And he couldn’t remember her name, and she had taken his daughter away.
Time had taken on an entirely new meaning after he had woken up in the hospital bed. Not understand who he was – reconciling the words to his face in the mirror – he had to start all over again. A new life, they told him, after everything had been destroyed. All he had left to his name was a lovely house on the outskirts of the city, long abandoned for his experiments in the Delta, and his daughter. His lovely baby.
He didn’t understand their concern as they hovered around her, telling him that she had to be a different child, a survivor pulled from the wreckage. His daughter was a twelve-year-old girl, their records plainly said, not a baby who could barely be a month old. They wanted to send her away.
But he wouldn’t let them. He had looked into her eyes and felt theindescribable joy of a father, an emotion that felt unused in his damaged brain. She had clutched his hand and laughed, and he knew she was his daughter. Even if the trauma had taken away everything else, she was his daughter.
(“It’s my fault that it happened this way.”)
Though sometimes, when he slept, he was visited by the pale child they had described; a shy, slightly gawky adolescent who had luminous eyes the colour of amethysts, too large for her face. And always, she changed, growing in front of him as he watched – crying – into a woman with hatred twisting her lips and a black star marking her forehead. Then at last, she was torn apart, destroyed by the swipe of a blade wielded by his daughter-who-was-not, wearing a fitted uniform and a distant stare.
(“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Forgive me…”)
Sometimes, when he was awake, he saw shadows out of the corner of his eyes. The doctors told him it was a side effect of his old eyepiece, the crystal he had once worn in his glasses. His eye had to adjust to proper vision. But he swore the shadows had a shape; a shrieking laughter rang distant in his ears every time he turned to look.
Finally, they released him, putting him through the arduous process of adopting his daughter – his own child – because they were still reluctant to believe she was the same girl. On record, the twelve-year-old was pronounced missing; the month old baby took her place, formally adopted and named. They handed him the papers, wished him luck, and placed her in his arms.
“Hotaru,” he said, tickling her nose. “Ho-ta-ru.”
She had laughed.
When the woman had shown up so mysteriously, he hadn’t even thought to be worried. She had a gentle smile and a professional demeanor, dressed smartly for a woman her age. And her eyes had been positively interesting; the colour of light through rubies, a contrast to long hair that shown of oak green in the sun.
He had held his daughter in his arms, unsure of what to say.
She had spoken for him, as if he had been inconsequential: “Hotaru. I’ve come to take you with me.”
And his daughter had smiled, holding out her chubby hands as if she had expected the woman all along.
Remembering her name had become the focus of his days after his daughter had been taken away. Because he knew she had told him; she had said nothing else afterwards except for her name. Perhaps to reassure him that his daughter would return, or as a means for him to contact her; he didn’t know. All he knew was that she was gone, and his life was cold.
He watched the city in turmoil through his window; saw the coruscating bands of light as they played over the dome. On errand, he had heard the news of some idol group playing their last concert there; he wondered if they had something to do with it. Nothing would surprise him anymore. He felt vaguely certain that the woman was there, that his daughter was there. The girl he had seen in his dreams, wielding the blade.
At some point during the night, he had fallen asleep in his chair. He remembered, only because he had turned on the lamp next to the chair, the one decorated with a firefly. He had bought it with her in mind; his little firefly, with luminous eyes. Bathed in light, he had fallen asleep, dreaming again of the three faces of his child.
But this time, the last had turned to look at him. “Papa,” she said, “Gomen ne. Papa, no matter what, I am Tomoe Hotaru. You knew, even after the accident. But time separates us; what is new for you is old for me. I had to take up the glaive again, and become Saturn.”
She held out her hand to touch his face, her gloved fingers rough against his cheek, tender still from surgery and burns. “Don’t be so sad, papa. I chose this life of sacrifice to give you a second chance. A chance to be Tomoe Souichi, the proud papa, instead of the professor. Take it; take it, and always remember me.”
“Hotaru—the proud papa needs his daughter. Even now, I’m suffering. Nothing existed before I opened my eyes and saw you; you started time for me. I was born again.”
“Papa.” She drew away, evading his touch. “Please remember everything. The mistakes of the past—you have to understand, to know why I chose this life. Don’t reject those memories. Papa! I have to go now.” Growing translucent, he had the distinct image of a girl standing inside of her, a younger, tender child, who lifted her hand to wave as her elder. Saying good-bye.
“Hotaru!” he had screamed into that empty dream. Echoing. Building up like so much rage, grief tearing apart the spaces of his mind.
And they unlocked for him, finally.
He saw himself, the mad scientist, making a deal with the devil for the life of his child. The yoke placed across his shoulders, weighting him with every step. Unable to stop himself as he threw himself further into his work, the devil’s hands, fascinated with the magic and mystery, until Tomoe Souichi was indistinguishable from Germatoid.
The pain of being freed, and left behind on a cold floor.
Seeing his child, his pale daughter, grown into the mockery of adulthood as Mistress 9.
And then, everything falling apart, throwing him into an abyss of darkness and shadows, only to wake up and hear “Professor Tomoe?” and not realizing it was himself. Professor Tomoe had no purpose other than to create and destroy. He was dead, buried with the ashes of Mugen Gakuen and its murderous offspring. Tomoe Souichi had been the one to wake that day, only tenuously understanding that he was in fact that one happy, loving man.
And then the woman with the ruby eyes and kind smile had taken his daughter away.
He still couldn’t remember her name.
Names were important.
He had forgotten her name, and she had taken Hotaru away.
Maybe in time, he would forget the name “Tomoe Souichi” as well.
Fin.
