“Finally, the day has come. No more do I have to see their faces, no more do I have to thirst for vengeance. Usheniko, you are so naive. Now your bloodline, excluding me, is completely wiped away from the face of the earth! Goodness, I feel so liberated that I don’t want to go back to my old, lonely jail cell! Oh, I have vanquished the corrupted ones! Can you hear me from heaven? I have done the deed for you, and now you can rest in the gods’ place. I know, I know, that you haven’t gotten the chance to witness the results; but I will continue to uphold your honor, for what they did to you was abhorrent. I shall never forgive them, even if I am to die right now.”

Azukunika’s pupils became knives. She staggered to Neha and billowed her breaths in front of the kid’s face.

“Look at me, young one. What do I look like to you? A murderer? A spy? Something more evil than those things? I could be one of those things. Well if so, then I am glad that you think that way; the sins of the mother and father are passed down from one generation to the next. However, not everything is what it seems, little one. As a warning, you should stay cautious of everything around you; I am not the person you want to be talking with, for I will give you agony. It’s better if you forget everything. But, the most important is to pay attention to yourself; I heard that the Lama has taken an interest with you.”

“W-what does he want with me?”

Azukunika widened her grin. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. It’s a secret.”

“No! I have the right to know!”

“Soon enough girl, soon. Well then, bye bye.” Azukunika departed. She left Neha in jitters. She never knew from the lady talking to herself in a sharp tone, that she held resentment towards Usheniko and her family seemingly from the very beginning of time. There was nothing Neha could do about that, thus she shrugged and whimpered. More than ever did she want to lock herself inside her house.

Still in a slump, Neha picked up her bag and latched onto the doorknob. In a single twist, she opened the door. “That’s strange,” she said, entering inside. “My mom always locks the door. I wonder if she has forgotten already.”

One foot in the house, and the peppermint scent ransacked the air; the smell was originating from the kitchen. What was this? Never had she encountered this before. It was burning rather than soothing, like she was inhaling ashes. She covered her nose and mouth with the collar of her uniform, and she stiffened her shoulders.

If there could be one explanation, then it must be that there was food. Normally, her mother would cook something at this time. But in this instance it was rather unusual. Thus, walking to the kitchen, Neha saw on the stove, a pot that contained fried rice. She opened the lid and found that the food was burnt to the core. All rice grains were black, nothing looked pure. Bits of vegetables and meat, they were already chunks of charcoal. A smell from here could only be compared to a piece of dirt that was boiling under the sun. It almost caused her to hurl.

“Yuck.” Neha opened the trash can containing a black bag. She grabbed the pot and poured the inedible product in there. As the stench of it was about to overpower the peppermint, she closed the trash lid in a thud.

“So it wasn’t the fried rice that created this weird smell.” She scratched her arms, worrying even more. How could her parent leave something like this? All too baffling. What was more weird, was that there was not a single call from her mother telling her daughter to eat. That confirmed the silence of this place; no shouts, no sparks of rage from her parent, it was anxiety-inducing. Neha headed to the couch, she then saw that the cushions were out of place. Dust bunnies and strands of black hair covered the armrests, the springs under the couch squeaked. A few days ago, Neha’s mother tasked her to clean up the furniture, to which she did with the utmost effort. But for herself to find the couch in this sort of condition, she assumed that her mother must have been doing something reckless.

Removing the collar from her face, Neha grabbed the medicine sack and hurried herself to her parent’s bedroom. She knocked a few times, but there was no response from the other side. Sleeping perhaps? At this time of the day, mostly like not. Neha twisting the knob, the door moved without creaking.

“Mother, why must you be forgetful?” Neha entered the bedroom. The floor groaned on its own, a sound that was low and dragging. On the left side of the room, there was a drawer, and there lied a flame on a candle that heated the area. The pillows on the bed were occupied with scratches and tears, all of them came from her mother’s random acts of hysteria. Neha recoiled upon remembering one instance; Aijin hit her in a cloud of anger over her missing tunic, and it almost broke Neha’s bone. A minute after that happened, she apologized for putting her hands at her kid, as though she either had forgotten about it or she had no desire to hold responsibility for her actions. But Neha didn’t know whether to feel forgiving or fearful of her, and either if she resorted to feeling one of those sentiments, it might have made things worse. It left her with a loss on what to do. The two of them never mentioned it again.

From the candle that was unusually scorching even from the distance, Neha perspired from the heat. It bloated her lungs, itched her head, and stabbed her skin. How long had this flame been alive? Every morning, her mother would extinguish it. But to see it on the candle now, Neha felt the compulsion to scold her parent.

She soon went forth to the bed and looked under the blanket. Her parent wasn’t there. She turned herself to the closet and opened the doors, and digging through the hanging clothes, Neha only found darkness. It was likely that she’d hide there as a way to counter her hysteria. But not this time. Neha moved back to the bed. To the right side of it, something was twitching. Something, or someone, was moaning. The girl eyed on the floor—for a moment she stopped breathing. There she was, with eyes closed and a pallor face, her mother was lying unconscious. Neha jumped and screamed.

“Mom!” Neha rushed to her side and held her. Aijin’s head bobbed back, her eyelids were transparent enough to see the dullness in her pupils. No signs of blood anywhere on her person, Neha lifted her body to the bed. She almost sprained herself due to her parent’s weight. Aijin plopped onto the pillows, Neha then dashed to the kitchen and fauceted water to a flask. She spilled some here and there, but it mattered little. Her hands beginning to tremble, she retrieved a cloth near a set of crates from the corner and returned to the bedroom. Her mother groaned and rolled her eyes, her lips were shaped like a cleft. How did this happen?

“Don’t worry mom, I am here!” Neha shouted. Aijin’s throat parched, and Neha put the flask to her mouth and let her take sips. Aijin coughed blood and water. As soon as Neha wiped the sweat from her face with the cloth, her mother’s body convulsed. She flung her arms and legs into the air, and gurgled her saliva, as if something demonic had possessed her all day. When Neha touched her parent’s cheeks, the latter released a blood-curdling bellow. Neha sniffled, she thought that her mother’s outburst might last forever; now it was that this phase came as severe as she expected. She braced herself in case that Aijin would do something violent.

It was soon that her mother dropped her limbs to the bed. She rustled through her blanket. Her lips glowed, her eyes drew themselves to the candle. A huge sigh coming from her, Aijin tossed to the left side and did not take notice of Neha. She mumbled gibberish in spite of straining her voice.

To see her like this was typical of the daughter, but there was something terrifying about this moment. This fit of madness came off as too peculiar; her mother would usually hit Neha or destroy an object before her, and she would sentence herself with utterances of curses. Good grief that those things did not happen, but the girl could not help but wonder. What did Aijin do to lead herself to this? The daughter had no time to wonder however. Just seeing her mother caged in her continuous gibberish was stressing the kid out. Thus in desperation, Neha hopped on the bed. She slithered herself to her mother and hugged her. She pulled her head towards her mother’s chest and patted her head, shushing her like a parent would do to a child whenever he or she cried. Aijin went quiet, her mouth stopped moving. She relaxed her body.

In the midst of this, Neha ceased to tremble. She was glad that she was able to end this soon as possible. However, this might happen the next day, or the next hour for the matter. Keeping this up would do nothing but harm the both of them. That led Neha to wish once and for all that Aijin would stop her self-exiled torment; if the wish was to never come true, then how much could she withstand this any longer? The girl was here with Aijin since forever, and it was natural to experience times like this. But there could be indeed, a point, possibly when she would grow up, where Neha had to call it quits. Neha was her own person, she knew that eventually, she would have to move forward in life and leave this for someone else more diligent than her. Nonetheless, being her daughter, it was Neha’s job to be by her side no matter what might happen later on. She loved her parent as much as her friend and her father, and it was out of this accepting love that led her to this embrace. Simple, but an invigorating feeling. Realizing this, Neha tightened her arms and locked her hands to further her love for her mother. Her heartbeat came in ripples.

A couple of minutes passed. The dark-brown color in Aijin’s eyes glistened. Seeing her daughter below her, she sniveled.