Year 2006: Somewhere in the bottom of the ocean
I propped up my unbalanced right cheek with my hand, burning hips sat against the soft lawn in the orphanage I used to think. The motionless sun was unremitting and habitually, I glanced up to check whether it had moved an inch–as if I could spot it with ease. But it didn’t, more precisely, it never.
They had eventually told me everything though, it was what happened last year still I remembered it pretty well, their voice registered pure sympathy, the way that made me feel I was a kid that nobody wanted, because my parents perished in a car crash, and my little sister and brother too couldn’t escape the same inevitable fate. As for my lost memories, I was never capable of evoking them. There was still no sign of healing in my memory, but sometimes I could see pictures in my dream, and even dark scenes that haunted me so much until I started to have dread upon my lost memories. But some of them were blissful, which made me cry tears while dreaming without even knowing. Still, they didn’t make any concise explanation about this place, and I had a ridiculous terror that shrouded me, reminding me that I might be in heaven, or hell. Then where were my family though?
I tapped on my swelling cheek as it throbbed excruciatingly. A sudden pain grew promptly across the surface, tightening my jaws. Then I examined closely the bruises on my arms. They were all inconsequential, only the pain on the swelling right cheek affected my neural activities thus far, which I had already desensitized to it.
“Hey,” a bubbly voice called.
My head turned, to greet the warm big smile that was in my anticipation. But anger rearranged her features, shunning away her beaming face as her eyes traced my swelling cheek down to the sleeveless arms. “You had got beaten up again?” Almost a yell.
I rose up, cringing, expecting something horrific to happen. “C’mon Ting, I had reminded you to fight back every time. Don’t you know how to raise your fists?”
“I tried…”my voice trailed off timidly with the original ten-years-old innocence.
“Then try harder next time,” she sounded harsher.
I turned speechless for a long minute as I knew I had upset her again. “Shirley, please, I’m sorry.”
She cleared her throat for comfort. I could see her eyes softened as her fury dwindled. “I’m not blaming you for it. I just want you to get tough enough so that you can protect yourself. I’m not always around when they bully you again, you should know that.”
“I can’t be as strong as you though,” I admitted. And the ‘strong’ I meant was one against five, with sole fists. She was a TOP dweller, two years elder than me, half a head taller than I was, and her fighting skills had exceeded excellent for me that time too. Our first met was kind of a misery if I had to cast back, so let’s just put in plain words, a hero in distress saved by a damsel. You could picture it yourself.
“You have to be, or else those jerks are going to pick on you again. This is the orphanage,” she huffed and inched forward to me until I could hear her steady breaths. And her brown eyes seemed menacing now. “Look at me now, look at my eyes! Now show me that you’re angry.”
And so I creased my forehead into several angry lines and squeezed my brows until they almost met. Still I felt the inferiority of my glower, her eyes weren’t just angry, they were ruthless. “Not enough! You have to be angrier.”
I squeezed my brows even harder now.
“That’s it!” she shouted. I was almost deaf. “Now you’re strong and angry. So if anyone hit you once, you double it back to them, get it?”
“Okay I get it,” I replied, confident now.
She clutched my shoulders tightly. “Get tough, so that no one will dare to beat you anymore, okay?”
My eyes were reassuring. “Okay.”
“Good.” she seemed pleased with my answer as her warm beam returned. Then she sprawled down on the lawn, nose inhaled deeply to brim her lungs with fresh air, brows suddenly furrowed, preoccupied with her thoughts. Her expression was unfathomable.
I crouched down beside her; the sense of security she rendered was more than I’d hoped for, as long as she was around. So I wished the time could somehow inexplicably stop.
“Ting, I’m leaving,” she said. I felt my heart broke as my mind interpreted her words.
“Where are you going?” my voice was uneasy.
“To the rural area in Accambus,” she explained. I was, of course, perplexed, and frightened, as if I had no tomorrow.
“Where is it?”
Her brown irises rolled around to find a suitable interpretation for me. “Erm…actually, we’re part of a military organization. They call themselves T.S.D.A... so you and I are part of the big family now. I can be pretty sure that we’re underwater.” Her sombre stare was serious for a minute, certain that I wouldn’t believe her. “They will explain everything to you when you turn twelve.”
“Under the water?” Somehow, relief burst through the surface–at least the presumption that I was living in hell or heaven had become unfeasible. She nodded to put out my rising suspicion.
“Will you come back?” The fidgety was unprotected from any camouflage in my voice.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure though. This departure will probably mean forever. I can’t help it,” she elucidated.
I felt my world crumbling. She was my one and only saviour in the orphanage, my knight in shining armour, without her, I couldn’t picture the grim future my life held. My head drooped down as much as my spirit did, and I wished I had died in the car crash, so this degree of sufferance wouldn’t dominate my life, leaving me lonelier than ever.
“Can you... stay?” my voice cracked together with my tear ducts
“I couldn’t.” My last speck of hope vanished like a puff of smoke. “This’s an order, an arrangement that I’ve no control over,” she explained dismally. “When you’re twelve, they’ll make this kind of placement for you too.”
“Are they taking me to the same place as yours too?”
“I don’t know. That depends.” She studied me with the usual affability that gleamed in her eyes. “No worry. I’ll teach you how to fight better than those jerks.”
“Really?” I raised my tone in delight, but my second-rate fists had put my faith in a dispute. “I don’t think I can.”
Her glower went flaring now, ablaze with exasperation. “How many times that I’ve to remind you?”
I looked away, dreaded that my eyes could be burnt somehow. “I will…try.”
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