6 years pass
Over time mom started getting more and more shakes. It was a little subtle at first, she kept hiding it from me telling me everything was okay. I knew it wasn’t but since she kept placing that smile on her face every morning, I figured I’d at least go along with her until I could help… I wish I’d had been a bit more stubborn just a little bit more there for her. I had a restart in life and the first thing I do is fuck up the only real relationship I’ve had here…
We can’t afford the hospital but she's there anyway. I couldn’t really deal with it all which is pretty pathetic for a grown man on his second try. My act crumbled in front of the kids. Normally I try to at least pretend to be like them not that I’m all that good at it but when I saw how frail she was in bed… the women that would stay up day and night to help me survive even though we had so little… I just couldn’t anymore.
Mom had been working in a sweatshop as her other job for years now. She just told me it was a sewing job on the side and would sometimes bring home little things she had done. Little pieces of scrap fabric that had my name or a poorly done little spider, spinning stories about how a spider will spend every day working hard on its web to get food and how one day the spider will need to let its little spiderlings go off on the wind to make their own webs and have their own little spiderlings. I understood she wasn’t great at storytelling but I saw the parallels. I thought everything was fine but one day she didn’t come home… I didn’t know what to do. It's not like I knew where she worked shed mention it offhand a few times but never really told me where it was. I was too young after all why worry me about money problems when I shouldn’t be old enough to be bothered by it and I never asked for toys, so she was happy to just let me think everything was okay.
It took roughly 6 hours before word of her reached me. She had collapsed on the side of the work floor. No one had bothered to check on her since they just assumed she had worked herself ragged and needed a nap. And since she was no longer on the clock, they just let her stay. What really happened was she had a stress-induced heart attack… It's all my fault too. She's been getting sick but still working and putting in more hours at both her jobs. I got sent to a more advanced school just down the road from my old one, but scholarships didn’t cover everything. My old teacher offered to help since she saw how much promise I had but our budget was already tight, so mom needed to work more and more. Her body just wasn’t able to keep up…
My old primary school teacher who’s name is Hana Izami started looking after me when my mom started to get sicker. I never noticed my mom was feeling worse and worse. I knew she was malnourished, but I didn’t realize that her poor working conditions were making her fight off something else as well. Over the years I just never got sick again thanks to my disease resistance skill. Sure, I got exposed to a lot of things that leveled it up, but I didn’t think much of it since it no longer affected me. My chronic ear infections help level it a lot too since it’s something the resistance skill was constantly fighting until it reached level 75 which is when it can reverse genetic disorders since I was born a bit malnourished and premature.
I stare at mom laying in bed so tired, she has been working so hard to give me this better life she never had. Every day struggling to make sure I succeed while her body was giving out. I hold her hand as she lays there. I gently lay some of my favorite little scraps from her work. The little spider, a poorly made tiger, a snake that looks a bit more like a line than anything else. Even if they were poorly made they were the things I cared about most.
“Come on Haru I know you want to stay here with her, but we need to go you have school tomorrow you can come back tomorrow. She’ll be upset with you if you’re not going to school.” Miss. Izami or as she keeps trying to make me and my other friends call her Auntie starts to lead me out of the room. My eyes are vacant as I move through the door. Is this why my quest was to just survive? Was I meant to struggle with disease and starvation if I didn’t choose my skills carefully? What other things will I need to face in the future? I… I don’t know how I feel about losing mom… I feel tears start to fall down my face.
“Aww, Haru your mom's going to be fine.” Hana tries to lie to me. I know what's wrong with her. She's been overworked, malnourished, and now has suffered a shock to the system. She laid on the ground of a dirty workshop for hours without any protection. She caught something but her body is so run-ragged it's just not able to put up much of a fight anymore. The hearts already suffering from heart arrhythmias. A problem in her heart's rhythm…
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
We are poor so we couldn’t call an ambulance if we had just been faster or… or if mom didn’t have to work so many jobs, she would have been fine… So it's my fault maybe if I hadn’t survived she would have lost her child but at least she wouldn’t need so many jobs to survive.
“Thanks for lying Miss. Izami but I know it's not going to be.” She frowns a bit when I call her by her last name still.
I’m directed out of the hospital as the grim feeling of the world dawns on me. I’m going to have to live through who knows how many lives while everyone around me dies. That’s a bit of a depressing thought.
“Rei, Takashi, Saya, and Hisashi are all worried about you. They asked about you at the school and want to visit to cheer you up. Saya’s parents have also offered to help pay for the medical expenses.” Over the years we still all hang out. Saya is still annoyed with me for being smarter than her self-proclaimed genius. I can't really be mad at her though… She was the one that funded my mom when she was in the hospital so even if she is a bit snarky sometimes I just can't be upset with her. We started hanging out with Hisashi another little boy after they met in middle school.
Oh, thank goodness I hadn’t even thought about that part. Money… I’ll make sure to make lots and lots this life… Or the next…
“Thank you…” I just hug her side as I am walking out to her car. I’m staying at her house on the couch for now since there isn't anyone else to look after me.
Several days later mom died. I cried for several days and just stayed home for a bit.
When I went back to school, I poured my everything into making sure to prepare myself so no one else I care about dies due to some careless mistake again. I work twice as hard as before. Most of my effort so far had been a bit half-assed in school since I was already so far ahead. Now though? Now I’m striving to be the best, studying to become a doctor to help save my food tickets well more like my family's lives if need be.
A couple of months pass
“Hey, Haru… it’s been a while…” Takashi, Saya, and Rei all awkwardly wait near the door. Hisashi was never really my friend more friends with Rei and Takashi so not seeing him isn't surprising even then I’m not especially close to any of them.
“Yes, I suppose it has been… since my mom’s… funeral. We haven’t really talked. Sorry about that.” I don’t look up from the book I’m reading as they pace around outside the living room.
“Do you want to play outside?” Takashi tries. Rei and Saya give him glares like he's an idiot.
“-sigh- I don’t really feel like it.” Everyone’s been annoying me more and more about being more active lately. Which while I acknowledge that it to be a good cause for concern I need to prepare for the next event that will try to take… I don’t know someone away… my next mother? The next person I care about…
“Aw come on Haru it would be good for you to get out and be with your friends.” Miss. Izami cuts in from behind them.
As sad as it sounds since moving in with miss Izami I have been significantly healthier. I am eating larger meals not that I really need to with Metabolism but I’m still filling in more and having excess to actually burn for working out. She adopted me when my mom's condition worsened to the point of no return. She felt it was better than me getting flung around in the system and she knew I was easy to take care of. My mom took my father's name to her deathbed never saying a word about it and her family had long ago disowned her.
“-sigh- fiiiiine I suppose I should since you all came all the way here.”
“YAY IT WORKED SEE I TOLD YOU SAYA” Takashi proclaims
“Idiot” both the girls say.
We all hang out for a while, mostly just playing tag then hanging out talking about school. Saya is also in the advanced classes though she didn’t skip any years as I did.
“So, I heard that the school has a Bushido club with an actual swordsman family head offering free lessons since his daughter is at the school.” That’s interesting also a potentially decent martial art to learn. Swordsmanship is better than just martial arts I just have to be careful to carry around a sturdy umbrella or something I’m sure some lessons can also be carried over into other things as well.
“That’s interesting I might join that.”
These surprises the other three since I don’t really do outside activities and just read all the time.
“Wow really? Uh, should we join? I guess we should if it's even got your interest Haru” Takashi startles a bit then looks at everyone.
“I mean if you want to, but I don’t mind doing it by myself. I want to learn some form of martial arts and swordsmanship seems like it would be interesting.” Could be useful in future worlds too even if I don’t get to retain the skill level if I go to a medieval world or something.
“We can all check it out next week and see who all it works out for!” Takashi, Rei, and Saya all give nods agreeing to this.