Chapter 17. Making Old Friends and Saying Goodbye to New Ones.

  Tanya had been successfully ignoring the manila envelope with her “homework” from the therapist all afternoon. Having been sufficiently distracted by Visha’s economic illiteracy, and she supposed the shopping as well.

  Now however, they were back at headquarters unloading their merchandise. Tanya had yet to put away any of her clothes since the laundry room was currently occupied. So, after unloading everything into a pile on the bed, she found herself with a surplus of time and an annoying packet of homework to go over.

  ~

  Visha returned from the bathroom to see Tanya furiously scrubbing at her hair in frustration, while pouring over the documents on the desk.

  “What has you so flustered Tanya, immigration law again?”

  Visha asked, leaning over her shoulder to glance down at the papers on the desk, only for Tanya to cover the page with her hand.

  “No, it’s an assignment from that therapist, I’m supposed to reflect on some of my subconscious desires, fallacies, and current hang ups that might be affecting my behavior. But the whole premise is ridiculous, the diagnosis is based on faulty intelligence so, therefore, is subject to wild inaccuracies.”

  Tanya spoke in her usual calm, rational tone but Visha had been with her friend long enough to hear the slight lilt of mania enter her voice. Choosing her next words with care, so as to not hurt her friend’s feelings, Visha placed her hand on Tanya’s shoulder and spun her around in the swivel chair.

  Leaning down and locking eyes with her friend, she channeled her best, “don’t worry soldier, the medics on their way. You’re not going to die here,” voice.

  “Tanya, everyone has fallacies and problems. We all have things about us that we don’t like, or that cause us problems in the way we react to life. I’m saying this as a friend who knows you well, after all I’ve seen much more of your life than anyone else has, haven’t I?”

  Visha waited for Tanya to respond, but she didn’t. Instead, choosing to turn her head and look away from her. Visha softly rested her hand on Tanya’s cheek and gently turned her head back to face her. Locking eyes again Visha silently urged Tanya to answer her.

  “Yes.”

  Tanya whispered her voice as small as the child she appeared to be.

  “Yes, you know me better than anyone else. I, I remember what you’ve seen. But what does that matter? If you have something to say, just say it, Visha.”

  Tanya’s voice was low and quiet at first but slowly picked up volume and heat near the end. But still not loud enough to disturb anyone else nearby.

  Visha lowered her hand from Tanya’s face and placed it back on her shoulder, her other hand joining it on the other shoulder.

  “Tanya, unlike everyone else who tends to hide from their mental issues and feel embarrassed or ashamed of them, you don’t feel ashamed of the way you are. Instead, you tend to try and rationalize your issues in such a way that to you your reasoning becomes logical given your situation.

  “It’s something that I find inspirational at times, you forge ahead knowing that in a logical world you would be doing the right thing. I wish I could believe in myself that strongly, but I doubt myself too much to do so.

  “However, we both know the world isn’t logical, it’s downright insane and the heavens appear to be so as well. I think you need to stop hiding behind your rational and try to self-reflect a little bit about what the Doctor might have said or made you read.”

  Lowering her voice even more with a hint of contriteness Visha continued.

  “I’m sorry if I stepped out of line, it’s just, I see you as a friend, no, that’s not right. We are being honest here, I see you as my bosom friend. I hope that we can stay friends forever, no matter what your world throws at us. And I want you to actually be happy, not just telling yourself that logically you should be.”

  Visha managed to finish what she had wanted to say in a rush not knowing how her friend would respond to the criticism. Standing up and surreptitiously wiping the tears that had been forming in her eyes, she turned around, only to feel her dress pulled at the waist.

  Looking back, Tanya had her hand out and was holding onto the fabric preventing Visha from leaving. She was looking down and spoke quietly to the floor.

  “I, understand what you are saying. I’ll try and fix some things about myself… it will take time. As for the rest… I too… I see you as a friend as well. You are my only friend. And I don’t want you to leave because I refused to change my management style or because you got a better offer from someone else. Without any orders to keep you here, I’m worried that I might lose my friend like I lost my adjutant. Please stay.”

  Visha leaned down and hugged her friend.

  “Of course I’ll stay. I didn’t go through with coming here just to leave you. You dummy.”

  Visha headbutted her friend softly for emphasis before standing back up.

  “Alright, I’m going to go into the bathroom and to have a good cry now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  ~

  With those parting words Visha left the room. Leaving Tanya both confused and concerned for her friend.

  Why would you need to go to the bathroom to cry? And why was she crying in the first place? She wondered.

  Turning back to the papers she had been studying earlier; she couldn’t seem to get her eyes to focus. However, as the words kept becoming blurry no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes, the writing would only become clear for a moment before turning distorted again. There was a burning frustration building in her chest that she couldn’t ignore or continue to misinterpret.

  Giving up on the homework and throwing herself on her bed, Tanya wrapped herself in her blanket and, irrational as it seemed, hid herself from the world.

  Tanya recognized that she had promised her buddy, no, her friend, that she would try and fix herself, but she had also said that it would take time. So, it was fine, at least for now, to ignore some of what had happened and just hide from it all a bit longer.

  ~

  Tanya woke up to the sound of talking. Reimu was back and was talking to two adults, a man and a woman who shared a resemblance with her.

  Tanya startled them as she got out of bed.

  “Oh Tanya, I’m sorry I didn’t know you were in here, sorry for barging in on you while you were napping. We thought the room was empty I couldn’t even tell you were in bed, sorry.”

  “It’s no problem, it is a shared space after all.”

  Tanya responded politely, before subtly looking at the two adults waiting for an introduction.

  “Oh, forgive my manners, these are my parents. My father Hakurei Izumi, and my mother Ishikawa Yuki.”

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m Kaizaki Degurechaff Tanya.”

  “The pleasure is ours, thank you for taking care of our daughter these last few days.”

  Reimu’s mother said bowing low.

  Tanya made small talk with the family before excusing herself politely to go find Visha.

  It appeared that they would soon be one roommate down. Tanya was unsurprised. It was inevitable that sooner rather than later, those who had a place to go home to would be returning there shortly. There really was no reason for them to stay or for the police to keep them here draining resources.

  Only a few of them would be staying for a much longer length of time. The true foreigners like Visha and a few of the other girls and some of the cases like Momo’s where they had no family who would claim guardianship of them.

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  Tanya’s case was a little special in that she did have possible legal guardians, but that was yet to be proven, as well as the possibility of not being recognized by her grandparents as kin. Financially she should be alright in the long run but in the short term, she was out of funds. Also legally being too young to emancipate herself and, thus, would likely be moved to an orphanage until she was old enough to legally get a job. Something she needed to make sure didn’t happen.

  She wasn’t too worried though, she knew her parents and, like her, once they had irrefutable evidence that she was their granddaughter, they would take responsibility and provide her with some form of financial support.

  Tanya had been looking for Visha for a while now, as her thoughts had wandered. She hadn’t been in the laundry room or the rec room. Moving towards the front common room she found her, sitting on a couch with some of the other girls watching TV.

  It was some sort of variety game show with small time celebrities competing with regular contestants to win prizes. Tanya recognized it as being popular but didn’t remember the name.

  Visha was transfixed.

  Tanya had walked right up to her and she still hadn’t noticed her presence. Tanya went so far as to sit down on the arm of the couch Visha was leaning against. Having to scoot her arm out of the way with her hip.

  Still no reaction.

  Tanya remembered the show somewhat and it wasn’t that good. Why was Visha so taken by it? Tanya decided to make a game of it, she was in no hurry and she figured she could tease her…Friend about it later.

  Ten minutes went by and still nothing. They had even gone through an entire commercial break, but Visha’s eyes had never left the screen.

  Tanya had had enough, so, she began taking matters into her own hands. She began trying to tie knots in Visha’s hair. Now, Tanya didn’t know how to braid hair, Visha had offered to teach her once. Once. Tanya made sure she never made that mistake again. But now Tanya was struggling with a problem.

  Sure, she couldn’t tie braids, but she knew how to tie shoelaces. Only, every time she made the bow with Visha’s hair, tightened it and let go, the whole thing would simply fall apart. Her hair would simply slip around itself, untying and go back to the way it had been. The only evidence of her attempts being the slight tangles left over from her ministrations.

  This is ridiculous, Tanya thought, frustrated. I didn’t know hair was this slippery. She had never really paid attention to her own hair enough to notice that it was difficult to tie into knots. It never seemed to have any problems getting tangled and knotted on its own during sleep.

  Tanya accidentally pulled a little too hard on her frustration, and that seemed to finally get Visha’s attention.

  “Oh, Tanya how long have you been here? Have you seen this program it’s marvelous. The people seem to be on teams to solve these puzzles but if the get it wrong, oh, wait a moment, I want to see this part.”

  And with that Visha let the conversation drop an went back to staring at the TV. Tanya waited for her friend to remember that she was waiting for her, but she never did. Tanya finally gave up and left to go use the computer to do more research.

  ~

  Tanya had done her research, washed the new clothes, hung them to dry and signed up for yard duty over the weekend. And still Visha was glued to the TV. This was beginning to become a problem.

  It was nearing dinner time and Tanya had to drag Visha out of the front room by the arm. She didn’t struggle but her eyes had remained fixed on the screen the whole way, up until the point when they turned the corner to enter the hallway blocking her view.

  “My goodness, get a grip Visha, it’s just TV.”

  “Oh, was it that obvious, I’m sorry it just looked so interesting and funny. Can we watch it again sometime?”

  “Sure…but I think you need to learn some self-control when it comes to it. Visha I was trying to get your attention for several minutes before you finally noticed me. You can’t let yourself get that focused on the it in the future; it’s considered rude.”

  Now come on, I need you to sign some documents I printed out before I mail them to immigration.

  Visha took one last longing look back toward the common room before following after Tanya.

  ~

  Dinner that night was curry with rice and a light soup. Visha devoured the meal, then tried to steal some of Tanya’s, unsuccessfully. In the end Tanya took pity on her and helped her get a second serving of the meal.

  After the meal the Matron announced the list of girls who would be leaving the shelter over the next few days. Many had family who came to get them or would be going home themselves. A few would be transferred to their own countries embassies to sort out. A situation that would have happened to Visha had Tanya not acted fast enough to get her refugee status in process.

  Among the names was, unsurprisingly, Reimu’s. Momo looked to have lost all the morale she had been able to build up during the day.

  After the announcement the girls all clapped and cheered for their companions, though there was a definite cloud of melancholy over many of the girls who would remain.

  Tanya put the whole matter from her head and made her way upstairs to get her bathing supplies.

  After her shower Tanya was surprised to find Reimu in the room getting ready for bed.

  “Reimu, I thought for sure you’d be on your way home or at least staying with your parents.”

  Tanya queried, puzzled.

  “We don’t leave until tomorrow afternoon, my parents have to fill out some forms at the police station and if they wanted to sign me out of the shelter early it was going to be even more paperwork, so I decided to stay here one more night. Plus, this way I get one more night to talk with you girls and say goodbye.”

  Reimu’s voice cracked at the end as she choked up and held back tears.

  Tanya didn’t get it, they had known each other for all of two days and this girl was acting as if they had some sort of deep connection.

  Tanya was in the middle of rolling her eyes when the missile that was Visha bolted passed her and wrapped the tearful girl in her arms. The two hugged for a moment before they pulled back and held each other’s hands.

  Tanya was then engaged as a translator for what was a surprisingly, convincing heartfelt goodbye from Visha. Her former subordinate was truly learning the art of signaling theory. She was matching the energy of the other party almost perfectly.

  It was at this moment that Momo came back from her shower. The two hand holding girls looked at her a moment before bursting into squealing tears and rushed to embrace the stunned girl.

  Momo whose head rose well above the other two looked over at Tanya, giving her a questioning look. Which prompted Tanya to explain the whole situation. Then Momo broke down and began crying too. Managing to wrap her gangly long arms around both Visha and Reimu at the same time.

  Tanya acted as a translator and voice of reason as the four of them stayed up late into the night talking about their dreams and plans for the future. Tanya shared what her expectations for the next few months would be for both her and Visha. As well as her plans for getting into school.

  They each kept making affirmations to stay in touch and that they should try to meet up at some point in the future. Tanya knew the reality of said promises but decided to keep those thoughts to herself.

  At one point during the night Momo broke down in panic not knowing what she was going to do. Her grandparent had refused to respond to the police and after contacting the village head, the police had informed her that she would not be welcomed back in the village.

  “So, they’re just washing their hands of you?”

  Reimu asked, horrified.

  “What did you expect? I’m not a boy. They only ever wanted a grandson.”

  Momo broke down in tears again at the declaration shaking with her sobs.

  Visha gathered the girl into her lap and began running her hand in small circles on her back. All the while chanting a soothing song in Russian.

  Tanya’s Russian wasn’t the best so it might be her fault that the supposed baby lullaby, sounded like it was a terrifying song about getting eaten by a wolf.

  Luckily, she hadn’t tried to translate it for the rest of the group, she would have been very embarrassed to have botched the message so much. Honestly what kind of lullaby threatened a baby to sleep or a wolf would eat them.

  Then again, she did remember some of the “children’s” stories the nuns at the orphanage had told them. German children’s stories. Maybe that whole half of the world had a thing for creating childhood trauma.

  Eventually Momo settled down enough for Tanya to go over her options with her. After much discussion, Tanya felt that it would be negligent of her not to help her roommate get her priorities in place and come up with a plan for the future. Visha butted in and offered to help the girl stay with them in the shelter as long as possible.

  “Don’t worry just stay with us until Tanya figures something out, she’ll get you taken care of, trust me.”

  Tanya almost bit her tongue as she had translated that. Why was this tispe volunteering her time and energy for such a thankless job? Tanya never agreed to such an arrangement.

  However, the statement seemed to calm the young girl down and boost her morale. So for the moment, Tanya silently went along with the assertion.

  Momo seemed to take Tanya’s silent agreement to heart as she burst into tears yet again, and threw herself into Tanya’s lap of all places. Tanya had to sit there awkwardly on her bed with the young teen’s arms around her waist, as tears began soaking into her pajamas around her stomach.

  If she found any snot on her after this there was going to be consequences, Tanya thought. While slowly patting the girls back.

  Through nearly unintelligible whimpering Momo managed to get out her appreciation for Tanya’s future efforts.

  “Tanya chan! Hiccup. Tha… Thank you so much! I didn’t know what to do, where am I supposed to go? But I just know you’ll try your best, thank you. You and Visha are the best, I, I didn’t have really any friends in the village. And you two, sob, sob. No, you three are the best friends I could have ever asked for. Thank you all for being there for me.”

  Tanya just nodded her head and kept patting away. Looking over at the other bed at Reimu and Visha, Tanya saw her friend smile and nod her head.

  What was going on here? Tanya couldn’t understand the leap in logic the young girl had just had. Was she trauma bonding with them, but Tanya didn’t think they had a shared trauma. If it was her and Visha then certainly much of their relationship could be chalked up to a trauma bond. But Tanya felt that they had moved passed that over the years of communication and cooperation.

  Well, whatever it was the two girls had certainly latched themselves onto her and Visha, and it looked like they wouldn’t be getting rid of one of them for a while yet.

  As the conversations died down, Tanya came to realize, much to her dismay, that Momo had fallen asleep in her lap. Not wanting to wake the girl and face another crying fit, Tanya slowly adjusted herself into a laying down position. Glancing over at her friend she noticed Visha and Reimu had likewise fallen asleep cuddled together.

  It took some effort but Tanya eventually managed to get a blanket over the two of them and resigning herself to an uncomfortable sleep, closed her eyes.

  Minutes later no one would be awake to bear witness to Tanya’s arms unconsciously wrapping the around the young girl, and pull her head to her chest, as if she was hugging a Momo shaped body pillow.

  ~

  Visha, having trained herself over the years to wake up before her commander was pleasantly surprised at the scene she was able to witness in the bed across from her. Her fierce commander was hugging Momo like a favorite stuffed bear.

  Visha channeled every last ounce of stealth she had learned over her long career and silently moved over to her bed. Pulling her Type 97 out from under her pillow she used a trickle of mana and activated the recoding function. Then silently made her way back into the bed she had shared with Reimu and pretended to go back to sleep.

  After all Tanya would be waking up momentarily, and she didn’t want her friend to know she had seen her in such an “embarrassing” position.

  The only thing that dampened Visha’s mood was the fact that she had no way to get the recording off her computation jewel, and therefore no way to show the image to anyone else. It was moments like these that she missed Weiss, Grantz, and the others. Shooing the melancholy from her head, if not her heart, Visha tried to go back to sleep.

  Then she heard the very distinct sound of her friend’s voice make an unusually high pitched feminine kyaah! Sound in surprise and embarrassment.

  Smiling Visha rolled over and with false grogginess asked.

  “Yawn. What’s going on Tanya?”