That night the rain fell like her tears. The slow rhythmic tapping on the roof reflected the slow beating heart of the child that had her first experience with lost.
The home that was once meant for two was now filled with many faces, and yet it has never felt as empty as it had at that moment. The people that came dressed in black varied: some were fellow classmates from the daughter's first grade class while most were fellow co-workers of the deceased.
The daughter sat there in the middle of the room with her remaining family at her sides, her aunt and cousin, but her silence told that her thoughts were with her mother.
The people that came that night shared with the family their condolences and sympathies. But as the daughter held her mother's memories close to her heart there wasn't any room for kind words that were meant to heal.
"Thank you." The older woman bowed to the person that was once her sister-in-law's manager. It was comforting to her that there was many that loved her sister. But there was a sharp pain in her heart. She turned to look at her niece, so distant and so lost in her own soul. She placed a hand on her shoulder, the one that loved her sister the most was the one that was hurting the most. "AsukaâŚ"
The voices aimed at the child was cold and coarse to her heart. Everything around her felt so distant, even the touch of her loving family was wrong. The only thing that could latch onto was a past that was no longer was within her reach. In her mind she could still see the face of the woman that was her entire world. How was a child that was barely of the age six suppose to comprehend what had happened to her?
The memories echoed. "AsukaâŚI love youâŚ" In the child's heart she had to watch again, over and over, as her own mother's limp figure fell in front of her. Asuka's body remembered how clammy her skin was as she felt her own parent's blood had splattered onto her body like some sick freak's artistic right. Her own screams from that night echoed in her mind, as her whole body seemed to have been lost in its reverberation.
And like the cold and hard rock that the child held tightly in her hand, the child's own heart would close and seal itself up.
That night, that scream, was the last time the child's emotion was alive, and now they felt dead like her mother.
It would be a long time before that child would ever be able to speak againâŚ