Chapter Text
At seven years old, Maya liked to think that she has things all figured out.
She was a grown girl-- she knew how to ride a bike without training wheels, knew her times table to 12, knew the way to and from school and wasn’t afraid to walk it on her own. The fact that while ehr parents weren’t always there when she got home from school didn’t bother her. In fact, it was fine because that meant she could just get right to her homework.
Maya knew she was a smart kid. She never really had to ask for help, and when she did, she knew the neighbors were always happy to oblige. Unlike most kids her age, Maya knew her parents’ full names and their work numbers, in case if the school ever needed to call them. She has their address memorized to a tee despite the fact that her mom has it written on a small clip hidden behind the flap of her backpack.
“Just in case,” her mom would smile everytime Maya complained, swiping her thumb over her neatly printed 喜多嶋 麻弥. “So you never get lost on your way home.”
At seven years old and not so new but still new to the school she was going to now, she would say that she got along well with the kids in her class. Maya knows all their names, and where they sat in class. Even though she wasn’t class president (though, it had been a close race), she still paid diligent attention to whatever the teacher announced during homeroom. Maya listens and that’s why she knows that all of these things aren’t that impressive as she first thought.
Life in the city is a rude awakening for not just Maya, but also her family. While they hadn’t been that far into the countryside, it was still so far out that most of her classmates didn’t even recognize the name. Maya’s over familiarity with everyone and slight accent has everyone on edge, with murmurs and complaints of her being too much of a “country bumpkin” to get along with. This, she doesn’t share with her mom who’s struggling as much to get along with the other moms of the apartment complex who constantly invite her out to things that neither are familiar or comfortable with. Why go to a cafe and pay for a coffee when you can just stay inside and have tea under the sun? Why go to a kids cafe when the park was right there? Why gossip about how that one kid in your class doesnt go to cram school and how that’ll affect you?
Maya missed wandering into the forest before sundown, and crawling over sturdy treetrunks with her friends as whisps of tall grass brush past their knees. She missed hearing the sound of cicadas in the night and walking past the dirt trails that demarcated the newly built area and the parts of town that were still under development. Their new town is a concrete jungle that’s a constant buzz of activity. Remembering the way home from school was just a matter of street signs rather than landmarks.
The other kids in her class are performing feats far beyond her. Every night after she’s tucked in for bed, Maya can hear her mom talk to her dad about the other kids in her grade from from the kitchen. How Natsuko’s violin recital is coming up and her teacher reccommended her to compete on a national level. How Ayumu’s excelling in maths. How Handa’s calligraphy is being recognized internationally…
She can hear the tiredness in her mom’s voice when she echoes all these achievements back to her dad, who’s just as quiet. Her dad, who’s one half more comfortable now that they live in the city and one half as lost as the rest of his family because he doesn’t know how to comfort them in this, whispers something incomprehensible back and Maya stops listening from there.
She knows that her dad is glad that they were able to move. That it’s an opportunity for all of them, but she can’t help the dread that comes when her mom comes home with a heavy step and does nothign but hug her in the doorway when she comes to greet her. Maya’s too young to find the words to properly voice it out. So to make it easier on both of her parents, she goes along with what they want.
It’s not until Maya’s mom enrolled her in afterschool English classes does that homesickness start to recede.
Maya’s English tutor is a strange looking man who’s paler than anyone she’s ever seen before with hair the color of tomatoes. His nose is too long and the color of his eyes are immediately the subject of their first conversation once she learned the vocabulary.
“You eyes,” she’d point at her own and watch as the man would stare back with eager amusement, “matcha same color.”
“My eyes are the same color as matcha,” he’d correct after a long laugh. Then he’d reach a hand across the table to mess up her carefully constructed ponytail, “Good job, Maya. Did you practice that at home?”
Maya nodded, not use to the affections of a stranger but not opposed to it at the same time. Their lessons go on in the same tone and even though she needs to be walked to the train station since the tutoring center is further away and she always ends late, she finds that she doesn’t mind it. Especially on the off days that her parents find the time to pick her up and her tutor tells them that Maya is picking up English especially well.
The look her parents give her every time make her shoot over the moon. The fact that her tutor doesn’t flinch whenever her mom slips up on her Tokyo accent is even better, he just keeps talking to her in his much harder to understand Japanese until her mom realizes her mistakes or until she realizes she’s been correcting him on his Japanese with the wrong dialect. She’d blush red every time only for the man to tell her it’s okay. Her dad would pick her up, despite the fact that he’d often say she was too old for that, and kiss her in front of all the other parents picking up their kids.
It’s embarrassing. But it made Maya like taking English after school and her tutor all the more.
It’s also during this time that something changes between her mom and the other moms of the apartment complex. Maya didn’t notice it at first because like her, her mom was just as good at hiding things. It’s actually not through her mom does she realize something’s changed but through her classmates.
Through the months since she first moved to this school, she’d been slowly getting along better with the quieter kids in her class who’d let her tell creepy stories to them. Maya knew they were as enthralled as her at all things creepy, and being the kid who moved from the “unknown corners of the subway map”, Maya was elected the authority of the strange. That wasn’t to say she didn’t get along well with the other kids. Because she did. She was friends with everyone. You didn’t get to be almost class president by not getting along with your classmates.
Maya knows her place in the classroom, that she’s friends with everyone in class until she isn’t.
It comes to her one day after school, when she’s putting her outdoor shoes on and everyone’s rushing to fly past her without even a goodbye. Not that strange, because Maya was one of the first to fly out the classroom after bidding their teacher bye. It’s the fact that after she’s put her shoe on, she looks up to see Yuki argue her mom about something while pointing at her.
Maya knows that she hasn’t done anything wrong in a long time and part of her wants to ask why she was pointing. The part of her that’s been lectured time and time again for doing that by her grandparents stops her. It’s a small detail that she decides not to share with her mom, who’s almost always home when she’s home nowadays. Her mom who kisses her on the forehead and asks about her day and basks as Maya spews what the class president wrote in today’s entry of the class journal.
She would’ve forgotten all about it if it werent for the fact that it starts happening more and more. By the time the weeks over, Maya noticed that its gone to the point where even the parents living in her apartment complex that come to pick up their kids at the nearby park are doing it as well.
She was playing with the girl that lived a floor under her when it becomes the obvious. The auntie she recognzied as Makoto’s mom had just turned the corner and Makoto brightened up at the sight of her mother dragging a bag of groceries walked up to them.
“Good afternoon, Makoto’s mom! My name is Kitajima Maya, nice to meet you.” She bowed, feeling the weight of her ponytail swing forward and slap her on the forehead. When she looked up, theres another adult next to Makoto’s mom whispering something into her ear with the most bewildered eyes and despite the near perfect introduction drilled into her byher grandma, Makoto’s mom’s face goes from adoration to something close to hesitance. She doesn’t say anything more than a “nice to meet you too, let’s go Makoto.” before she’s dragging her daughter away with a fist around the girl’s arm and still chatting away with teh other woman.
Makoto, confused, turned to wave bye to Maya and that was the last she was allowed to see of the girl.
Maya felt like that there was osmething heavy weighing down on her chest. Never had it happened so obviously in front of her, and the shock propels her straight home.
She doesn’t find out what the adults are saying about her until Yuki finally talks to her at lunch a little over a week later.
“My mom doesn’t want me to be friends with you,” the girl admitted quietly after inhaling a fistful of rice. Maya’s own riceball stops short of her mouth as she stares back at her. The classroom around them seems to have dropped dead quiet. “She said being friends with you might make me vanish.”
Vanish. It’s a word that she’s heard time and time again around her mom in their old town but it was always in a joking manner. All her life, Maya grew up in the middle of a town wide inside joke that didn’t make sense to her until her grandparents overheard and had to explain it to her.
As she grows older, she recognizes that it’s an amazing thing really. The power of close knit community mom networks and the power they have over their kids in the city. She realizes its the reason why her grandma would try her hardest to instill proper manners in her and try to get her parents to be more strict with her grades and behavior. By the time she’s entering her adult years, she realizes that all those nonsense things that the adults were whispering that seemed so interesting to her because they were so creepily strange and instantly piqued her interest were actually about her.
“i heard her mom disappeared once…” “how unfortunate. I hope nothing bad follows her child.” “I don’t want to take any chances, the apple doesnt fall far from the tree. Shes bad news.”
At first, Maya had thought it was an urban legend specific to the city that she hadn’t had the pleasure of hearing about yet. It’s this conversation with Yuki that makes her realize that she is that urban legend.
“I know it’s not true, Maya.” Yuki reaches out to grasp her hand, evyerone stares at the two of them when she does it. “I want to keep being your friend but not in front of my mom.”
The whole classroom erupts in murmurs of the like and Maya doesn’t know quite what to do because she’s only seven so she accepts it and keeps her mouth shut.
At seven, all she knew of her mom’s disappearance was that she went missing a few years with her parents after moving. To be honest, it was a story that she always thought was over embellished and heavily curated for whatever festival they were doing in their quiet town. It’s a dreamy story of serendipity that ends with
“And then I found my car covered in foliage”.
Maya could see the misfortune in that. Missing a few years. But her parents grew past that mystery and have always told her that she was a lucky girl. Born on a lucky day, healthy and on time and blessed with a full happy family.
Maya didn’t get it at seven years old. She didn’t get how her classmates could so easily get over their hesitance, joke with her through gym and then so masterfully ignore her once the bell rung. It makes her miss her old town all the more because there’s so much in this concrete jungle that she doesn’t understand and no one’s willing to really explain to her. A part of her knows that not even Yuki understands it either, that she’s used to going along with what her mom says-- so unlike the kids of Maya’s old school who’d climb over the fences and stay in teh forest until nightfall to catch fireflies. These were the kids who diligently abided by their pack schedules of class after class until it was time to go home to review and rinse and repeat.
So she didn’t say anything to her mom and dad, who would always be busy at work or tending to their tiny balcony gardens, waiting for her at home with a warm meal. Maya knows that even if she tries, the words wouldnt even come close to the sheer amount of confusion she felt at how unfair this all was. That she doesnt even know why she felt it was unfair in the first place. It was feeling in her gut that bubbled up everytime she saw Yuki’s mom drag her away from her afterschool and Yuki’s apologetic look as she disappeared past the school gates. That, to her, was enough to know it was wrong.
But it’s not enough to know how to bring it up to her parents.
So she brings it up to her tutor instead.
Half of her regrets doing it.
It’s just before she’s forced by her parents to stop going with red eyes and dressed in black and white bands. Maya knows its her fault that she’s not allowed to see her tutor anymore after that. That the reason why the lady at the front desk of the tutoring center gives her a sad look every time she goes and asks for him is because of her and her big mouth.
They’re well into their lessons, having long transitioned into conversations about anything and everything with the small interjections to correct her English. Maya’s English tutor, greying now but still possessing a nose longer than a Tengu’s, is excited at the prospect of maybe introducing her to his son who’s “just as quiet as her but I’m sure you two will get along just fine” when Maya blurts out “I might make him gone!”
“What?” He says before switching to Japanese, quick to cross the table to sit at her side. The amused and proud face that she’s seen on her own dad’s face is gone for a look of concern, “Maya, what do you mean by that?”
They go past her allotted class time, something he says that he’s fine with considering that she’s his last student of the day. He doesn’t mind it when she starts crying and sprouting gibberish of her mom’s old stories and the looks the parents are always giving her nowadays and how she knows that her mom knows that all the moms are always exchanging glances at their phones and at them whenever they pass by and--
“Maya, shhhh…” he’s patting her head now, whispering to himself in a dark voice through her all her ramblings. “Maya. I need you to hear me when I say this because it’s very important.”
She looks up at him, snot faced and all. He lets out a laugh as he wipes it all off with a tissue.
“You’ll meet a lot of people the more you grow, I wouldn’t have learnt this if it weren’t for my wife and son, but Maya…” She’s staring at him as he lets out a loud laugh, “Maya, the dumbest people you will meet will be the adults.”
When she’s older, she recognizes how controversial it is for this foreigner to be saying something like this. In a country that valued the wisdom of elders and in a classroom of all places. She gets why he whispers it but at seven years old, nothing sounds louder to her ears than these words.
“But teacher… you’re one too.” She’s dumbfounded and this is when he puts a finger to his lips, and winks.
“If I can trust my Shuichi to go to the convenience store by himself to get soy sauce and a snack for himself even though I know he’ll use the money to just buy two bottles of soy sauce,” he lets out another loud laugh and Maya wipes away her tears on her own. “Then I’d be dumb to get mad at my son for not doing what I told him to do even though I knew what was going to happen.”
“That has nothing to do with what I said though, teacher…” It’s so random that she can’t help but complain.
All he does is shake his head.
“Maya, are you going to try and make one of your classmates disappear?”
“Of course not! They’re my friends!” She cries, “I don’t even know how to do that”
“There you go!” He calls out in English, catches himself and slaps himself on the mouth. The action startles a laugh out of the young girl and he laughs with her, “I know you won’t. You know you won’t. So why do something so dumb over something that won’t even happen? Clearly they’re not as smart as your teacher, and I’m old.”
“You’re not that old, Mr. No-ran!”
“Maya, I’ve heard you compare me to a tengu countless times.” Oops. “and watch your L’s. Remember, tongue at the top of your mouth. No-lan. Nolan.”
“Norran.”
“Nolan.”
A few days after this conversation, there’s a call from the tutoring center.
Her mom stays quiet the entire time before handing the phone over to her dad. Later, they both tell her in the car that she’s not going to go back to that tutoring center but if she wants to keep having English classes to just “tell us, sweetie. OK?”. Maya’s mom doesn’t quite tell her why she’s all of a sudden not going to the tutoring center anymore, just citing that there’s been an accident. Her dad hugs her tight as they all head out, dressed in the same black outfit that her mom keeps in the corner of her closet that she doesn’t like her touching to go to a field littered with upright standing stones filled with sad people.
Maya is quiet the entire time but the more she observes the more she realizes that this is just another layer of wrong when she spots a head of red near the front with a sobbing woman.
She doesn’t say anything but squeeze her mom’s hand tighter as the procession starts.
The weeks past like that. Mr. Nolan’s words are loud in her ears but the more days past, the more her classmates give up on living double lives and begin to stop acknowledging her in school too.
By the time Minamino Shuichi transfers, its the next year and Maya's friendship with Yuki has dissolved into conversations that merely fill the silence when they have to do afterschool chores together.
It’s not that she’s being purposefully left out of anything or anything. Maya just knows that while adults are dumb, theyre all her classmates have in figures who’ve experienced what they’re experiencing and more. She’d listen to her parents if they told her not to have anything to do with another person too.
Maya still doesn’t have the courage to come clean to her parents though.
One of the first things that stood out to Maya about Minamino Shuichi was that he didn’t make an effort to be liked by his classmates. His introduction to the class is simple and curt-- saying no more than just his full name, writing it out obediently on the chalkboard behind him in practiced strokes, and citing just one hobby.
Everyone is excited to be friends with him.
Immediately once the bell signalled the start of lunch, everyone flocked to his desk and introduced themself. Smiling all the more brightly when it was clear that unlike all the other boys, he was calm and reserved and best of all, polite. Shuichi took it all in stride. Capturing the hearts of all the girls in class as Maya watched on the sidelines, and later the guys during gym class when he was one of the last ones standing during their game of dodgeball.