lingering

Author: Swiss Army Knife
Email: dragonswissarmyknife@hotmail.com

Lingering Pain

A light flicked on suddenly from a naked bulb anchored to the ceiling. The dim beam broke through the dusty attic air, showing pieces of airborne particles as they gathered on this and that piece of old furniture and assorted moldy boxes.

Juuhachigou coughed amongst the clutter, nose scrunching up disgustedly at the mess she had uncovered. On her hip, little Marron looked just as impressed, and whimpered to show her distaste. The tiny girl pulled her toy doll closer to her.

Pushing her way over to the dust-covered window, Juuhachigou cleared away a space and sat the baby on her spread out pink blanket. With a grunt, she then forced open the window frame, allowing fresh morning sunshine to come pouring in and make the place more welcome.

Outside it was a beautiful day, and the water seemed to sparkle as she looked out upon the ocean. Turning away, she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the chaos she had entered into.

“Really,” She muttered under her breath. “When was the last time somebody came up her and cleaned this place out?”

Juuhachigou paused to wonder again why she had come up here in the first place... The whole morning, she had marched through the house, extremely bored. Kuririn had left to run errands for the day, and she was out of things to keep her busy.

In a burst of inspiration, she had finally decided to go up to the small attic that the house possessed and root through the old boxes. Who knew; she had thought. If she looked hard enough, she might just find something of interest…

With a sigh, Juuhachigou choose a corner and got down on her knees in front of a particularly dusty stack of small boxes. She ran a finger over the surface, removing an inch of filth.

“Disgusting…” She murmured, eyes rolling in their sockets.

Shoving aside old clothes and knick-knacks, she peered through container after moth-eaten container, wondering how so much junk could have been collected over the years. She didn’t quite know what she was looking for, really, but that didn’t matter.

Surely among all of this, she thought as she glanced about her. There has to be something worth my time…

Finally, reaching the back wall, Juuhachigou made a strange discovery... It was a plain wooden chest that looked like it had seen better days. Pulling the thing out into the clearing that she had made from behind the literal walls of garbage, she glanced over it curiously.

It was obviously a good many years old, as the oak was smooth from being touched, moved, and opened so much. Juuhachigou blew hard, sending scads of dust up into the air all around her. Running her hand over the worn chest, she wondered what is was, and whom it could have belonged to.

All of a sudden, her fingertips ran across something rough on the chest’s top. Looking closer, she found that something had been scratched into the softened wood. She squinted hard.

All of a sudden, Juuhachigou gasped. Her fingers lightly traced the letters; K-u-r-i-r-i-n.

“Kuririn?” She said in a surprised whisper. The date that was engraved beside it astonished her even more. There numbers were hard to make out, but Juuhachigou finally deciphered the scratching; 69.’

“That would have made Kuririn only four or five years old at the time that he got this…” She murmured.

Just what had she discovered? Could it really be… from Kuririn’s childhood? If it was true, then Juuhachigou really had found a treasure. It was the key to her husbands past...

*****

Baby Marron sat calmly, watching her mommy and chewing on a teething ring. From her spot on the blanket, she could see her examining a large box, not unlike Marron’s own toy chest in her room. Thinking perhaps this new box was also filled with things to play with, the child squealed delightedly and reached out for it happily.

“This isn’t for you, Marron.” Juuhachigou told her little daughter. “This belongs to your papa…or at least I think so.”

Kuririn had never told Juuhachigou much about his past; whether he had a home out there somewhere, maybe a family, nothing. And she had never really asked either, assuming that he never mentioned it out of respect for her, since she obviously couldn’t tell him anything about her own life before Cell and Gero. Her lack of knowledge of who her love was before he was Kuririn the Zed fighter was now bothering her.

Finally, Juuhachigou grinned. Kuririn probably wouldn’t mind if she took a peek to settle her natural curiosity. After all, she was his wife. So, while little Marron looked on, she reached for the old, rusted lock on the trunk’s lid. A quick look told her all she needed to know, and in one purposeful whack, she had effortlessly broken the lock to pieces.

Removing it from its place, Juuhachigou slowly opened the lid…

Inside was a world that she had never known. Widened eyes traveled over the precious contents. Neatly folded, was a child-sized yellow and orange training gi that she hadn’t seen before, presumably from back during Kuririn’s days at the Orion Temple. On top of it were a small stack letters, which she could see were filled with old photographs. On the other side was a small, battered book. Last, she saw a pile of loose-leaf sheets stacked on top of the book, covered in pencil sketches drawn by young, still unsteady hands.

Juuhachigou stared in wonder at the items. She had truly found a treasure…

She stopped for a moment to consider why Kuririn would have locked all these things away and never shared them with either her or their daughter? They were his legacy…

Throwing caution to the wind, she carefully reached inside and lifted out the envelopes full of pictures. As she flipped through the memories, she couldn’t help but smile. Nearly all of the pictures were of Kuririn and Gokuu while they were training with Muten Roshi. There were photographs of the two fighting, laughing; one with the two making faces at the camera. Kuririn was a young teen in all the snapshots.

Her happy, amused look dropped away and became somber as she reached for the last envelop, this one with no happy pictures of Gokuu or any of the Zed Warriors… Ever so carefully, she eased her fingers into the yellowed folder, and gently pulled out three, meticulously preserved pictures. Well, at least two of them were. The last picture had been torn straight down the middle, and only later been tapped back together.

One showed a tiny Kuririn with no hair standing rather proudly beside several tall men in long orange robes. Obviously they were monks; Kuririn and his seniors during his early training years. Juuhachigou couldn’t help but note how cute Kuririn looked like that. He was adorable.

Moving the picture to the back of the pile, Juuhachigou was not prepared for the next photo. It shocked the cyborg to see it, something that she had never even dreamed of before. It was an old picture, for some reason still having been taken with black and white film. In it, a man and woman stood with a tiny boy in-between them, holding one of each of their hands. The man wasn’t smiling, but otherwise it was a beautiful family portrait.

It was Kuririn and his family...

Somehow managing to pry her eyes off of the priceless moment preserved in the film, she moved on. The last picture was the one that seemed to have been purposefully and hatefully damaged. Juuhachigou stared at it curiously, more than a little disturbed by the strange photo.

It seemed to be a family portrait also, only instead of the family she had seen before, she saw only two figures. A slightly older little boy with no smile, and frowning man standing threateningly over him. Juuhachigou touched the unhappy boy in the picture.

“Kuririn and his father?” She muttered.

Laying aside the photographs, Juuhachigou ran her fingers lightly over the cotton fabric of the fighting gear, and pulled out the many sheets of paper and the last item, the small book. Examining it, she found it to be a journal of sorts, written between the dates of 71-76,’ or by Kuririn from the ages of seven to twelve.

Suddenly, Juuhachigou felt a pair of little hands at her side. Prying her eyes away from the documents in her hands, she sat them down and picked up her baby. The little girl cooed, wanting to be apart of whatever was going on.

“All right,” The cyborg mother agreed to her daughter’s unspoken request. She readjusted the baby girl in her lap, and stroked her little blond head for a moment before reaching over to pick back up the many loose sheets. “Be good and hold still for Mommy.”

The drawings that Juuhachigou saw as she gradually shuffled through the pile showed clear, unutilized talent. This surprised her. Why didn’t Kuririn draw like this anymore? The pictures were excellent. Especially with the pictures on top of the pile, when Kuririn was older. There were drawings of Gokuu, of course. The Kame House…she even found one that her husband had drawn of Bulma with horns and a pitchfork.

The happy pictures didn’t stay constant however… The older the dates on the drawings, the darker and sadder the pictures became. She found the crayon drawling of a shaky handed four-year-old child, picturing that seemed to be a monster. It had hands out to grab something and a shadowed, evilly grinning face. Sky blue rain feel from hastily sketched in black clouds, complete with yellow streaks that Juuhachigou guessed had to be lightning.

The cyborg’s brow furrowed in puzzlement as she looked at this frightening picture. This wasn’t the kind of thing that little children drew. Pictures of their mommy or daddy perhaps… but not terrible things like this…

Taking up the journal in her free hand, Juuhachigou randomly ruffled backward through a few pages. She caught scribbles of training, the temple… And what was this?

Halting her flipping, Juuhachigou stopped at a page that had somehow caught her interest. Something about Kuririn’s “daddy” and “mama.” As she read over the page, her face became troubled. Subconsciously, she gripped Marron a little tighter to her as she silently mouthed the disturbing words to herself.

She was so consumed in the heartrending story contained in the little book written by a sad little six year old boy, Juuhachigou didn’t even hear her own, present day Kuririn reach the house and eventually make his way up the steps to the little attic.

“J-juu-chan…” A voice suddenly chocked, knocking Juuhachigou out of her trance.

She bolted up from the ground, startled. In the process, the small battered journal and all the papers fell to the floor at her feet. Kuririn stood quietly, and watched the many sheets flutter slowly to the ground like snow to gather around the book of a younger livelihood.

Suddenly, seeing the look on her husbands face, Juuhachigou felt regret that she had even touched that old chest. In light of all she had seen and learned, it suddenly seemed that being his wife wasn’t a good enough excuse for digging through the memories that she had invaded, without so much as asking the person to whom they meant the most.

Setting the now peacefully slumbering Marron back on her blanket, Juuhachigou took a hesitant step toward Kuririn, calling his name softly. She wanted to make this right; apologize. Anything to get that terrible look off her loved one’s face…

But Kuririn just shook his head as she attempted to call out to him again, and then noiselessly pushed past her and began picking up the papers strewn across the floor. He emotionally took them in his hands and neatly replaced them in the trunk. As he scooped up the last bit of his belongings, he hesitated.

Then slowly, he sunk to his knees. Unable to stay where she was, Juuhachigou came up behind him, half expecting him to become angry and yell at her. Looking silently over his shoulder, she instead found him holding the photograph of his family gently in hand.

Quietly, she knelt beside her husband and tenderly wiped the tear trail from his face.

“I-I haven’t seen this in years…” He said in a hoarse voice.

Juuhachigou continued to look at him remorsefully. “That’s your family, isn’t it?” She asked.

Kuririn nodded solemnly. He was obviously so upset… Juuhachigou put a comforting hand on his shoulder. With this show of support, he seemed to gain control of his turbulent emotions.

“My mother and father…” He shortly introduced the family trapped within the photograph. “And me, only a few years old when this was taken.” He sighed, such a deep sorrow in his voice that it nearly broke Juuhachigou’s heart. “It’s probably one of the only good times that I had with them…”

Unable to let it go unasked, Juuhachigou hesitantly whispered the question that she didn’t really want to know the answer to.

“Was it true?” She asked. “What you wrote in the journal?” Her eyes were sad. “It really happened. You really felt like that?”

Kuririn seemed to pause for just a moment before answering, leaving her hanging for an answer. Then finally,

“Yes, Juu-chan…” He said softly. “I loved my family…and my father…very much.” He shrugged. “I’m afraid, though, that I just wasn’t good enough for him…them…in the end.”

Before Juuhachigou could speak another word, or even react to the hurtful revelation that had just been made, Kuririn wordlessly put the pictures away into the same fragile envelope that it had come out of. All of these and the journal were replaced in the chest.

Kuririn picked up the broken lock and held it in his hand for a moment before placing it on top of the wooden box and pudding it away, back into the recesses of the attic once more. He stood, again without saying anything, and headed for the door. He only stopped briefly to gather his tiny daughter into his arms before heading to the stairs.

Juuhachigou followed behind him, stopping once to look back into the foreboding attic. Today she had learned an important lesson about Humanity. The sad truth was this: Just because she didn’t have a past, didn’t mean that Kuririn lacked one too…and unfortunately, having a past didn’t always mean that what you remembered was happy memories…

With a weary sigh, Juuhachigou turned her back. A second later, the single bulb illuminating the room switched off.

*****

The following morning, Kuririn touched down outside his home, a bagful of groceries in his arms. Walking inside to the kitchen, he was surprised to find his home completely empty. Setting down the crinkled paper sack on the table, he wandered down the halls looking for his family.

“Juu-chan?” He called, opening doors and checking rooms as he went. “Marron? Where are you?”

They didn’t seem to be anywhere in the house at all.

That’s strange, He thought, padding up the steps to the second floor. Where could those two have gone?

After checking his daughter’s bed and finding nothing, he eventually ended up in front of his own room, which he shared with Juuhachigou. Quietly turning the brass doorknob, he creaked open the door and peered inside. A disappointed sigh escaped his lips and he swung the door completely open. Nothing.

He was about to leave and search elsewhere, when something caught his eye. A beam of early morning light entered the room from the single window. It streamed past the lightly fluttering curtains and reflected off a sheet of glass covering a simple framed photograph.

Walking cautiously to the side of the bed, Kuririn reached out with a shaky hand and lifted the picture frame from its place on his bedside table. It had obviously been placed there only hours before.

Quietly making his way to the window, Kuririn gazed at the old black and white family preserved inside the new frame. The smiling eyes of an innocent little boy stared back into his.

Looking out onto the beach below, the shinning sun warmed his face and a gentle breeze stirred his dark hair. He found his wife and daughter out there, playing by the churning waves. As he followed them, Juuhachigou seemed to realize that she was being watched and turned to face the window.

She allowed a tiny, genuine small to slip onto her lips as she saw him there. Looking away, Kuririn turned his gaze down to the picture again, and gently stroked the glass with one finger.

“Ah, Juu-chan…” He said softly, a touched quality in his voice. “Who says you don’t have a heart…

__________________________________________________________________________

~End Chapter~

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