POV: Satoshi: Memories of the Past

One snowy night Satoshi meets Sayano as a child starting something bigger than they know.

The snow fell onto the ground indifferently around me, never falling again in the same place.  As I inhaled and exhaled the thick, cold air my body began to feel the cold creeping up making me shiver.  I needed to find somewhere to warm myself, but, where?

With my whole body still shivering, I walked over to a street lamp which was the only thing that I could see in the thick darkness.

The cold still clung to my clothes.  When would I find warmth?

"Mommy, sing for me again!"  I heard a little girl say in the distance.

A woman laughed.  "When we get home I will."

I heard them both approach me as their feet crunched in the snow.

The small little girl had light brown short, shoulder length hair with bangs that hung in her wide green eyes that watched me.  The woman next to her looked just like her with the same shade of hair but had narrowed kind blue eyes.

"Mommy, why is the boy outside?"

The women hadn't noticed me until the little girl started pointing at me as she asked.

She looked at me in worry and quickly took off her scarf as she kneeled down to the ground so she could look me in the eye.  As she kneeled on the ground in front of me she put her scarf around my neck speaking in a kind, hushed tone, "You must be cold."

I nodded my head.

A big smile appeared on her lips.  "Would you like to come home with us and have some hot chocolate to warm up with?"

Once more I silently shook my head as I stared at the lady.

Her smile got even bigger.  "Very good!"

The girl looked at me and smiled.  "What's your name?"

"Satoshi," I said in a hushed tone.

"My name is Sayano!  And this is my mommy,” she said with an excited look on her face.  She looked eager to tell me more.

"Now, now Sayano," she said as she walked over to the little girl and grabbed her small hand in hers.  "You can tell him more when we get to the house."

Sayano nodded as she looked up at her mother.

I followed the mother and her daughter to their small apartment.  Inside the apartment it was warm and felt like a real home with plenty of memories to go with it.

The little girl grabbed my hand.  "Come on!  Let's go have some yummy hot chocolate."

She dragged me into the kitchen to a chair where I was told to sit.  In the chair next to mine, she sat in, with a huge grin on her face eagerly awaiting the hot chocolate her mother was making over at the stove.

When her mother was done making the hot chocolate she poured the hot milk and chocolate mix into 3 cups putting it in front of the both us and the third in front of herself.

"Your name is Satoshi, right?"  She said turning to me after she had sit down across from me.

I simply nodded.

"I don't know if my daughter has told you yet but my name is Amaya.  But please, tell me why you were outside in the cold."

"I got lost," I said without looking up at Amaya.

"Your parents must be worried then."

I shook my head.  "They don't care."

"No, no I'm sure they're gravely worried about you."

Once more I shook my head.

She sighed.  "How did you get separated from your parents?"

"We were in the park and I went to go look at something I saw, then I looked back and they were gone.  I thought they'd come back so I stayed in the park till it got dark out but no one came."

"You poor child."

"Shouldn't he go back home to his mommy and daddy since he got lost?"  Sayano asked Amaya.

"No . . .” While she was speaking to Sayano I stood up and interrupted her speaking by shouting, "My parents aren't my real parents!"

I jumped off the chair and ran out the door to the street.  Without looking behind me or looking both ways I ran into the street.  But as I started to run through the street head lights of a truck lit my whole body up causing me to stop.  As I was preparing myself mentally for the impact of the truck, someone pushed me out of the way making me hit the ground on the other side of the incoming truck.  When I turned to see who the car had hit I saw Sayano laying on the ground with a scratch on her check bleeding and her leg twisted the other way looking limp.

The truck driver came out of the truck to look down at Sayano's body and Amaya came running over to Sayano's side with tears in her eyes.

All I could do was watch them stand over Sayano's body with wide eyes not knowing what to do or how to react.

"Why did you run into the road!?"  Amaya shouted at me as she looked down at her daughter’s lifeless body.

I didn't answer as she continued to shout at me.  Tears rolled down my face as I watched her scream and cry.

An ambulance arrived minutes later hauling away her body on a cart.  Her mother and I both got into the ambulance along with Sayano's lifeless body.  When we got to the hospital the doctors said that she has a broken leg and severe brain trauma which caused her to go into a coma.  Amaya asked how long she'd be in the coma but the doctor said she could be in it for a few days, months, or years, there is no way to know.

For the next 3 years I visited her every day, but the day she woke up I wasn't there.  Amaya contacted me when she woke up but said that Sayano didn't recall anything that happened before.  I decided this was a good thing, that maybe it was good she didn't remember me but I knew deep down that I wanted to be at her side that moment.