Chapter 43:Amends

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      "I've been betrayed before, as well... my mother... She left me when I was only a child." And the truth spreads among the slayers, among the many questions withheld, among so much that's been waiting to be answered. The demon covered her ears amidst the breeze of that statement, but Kyojuro... he kept his hearing sharp, let that ice stick to his cheeks and peck across his nose. Could he have asked her himself about where her mother has been, absent from tongue, or even at her family's home? No,' didn't have it in him, but it seems to have returned, after so long of contemplating.

     The Ice Pillar put her hand up to partially block her face from the wind's direction shift, not a bother to what she's spilling. It takes the weight from her mind, back, abdomen, just to have someone to relate to. To -at least- know that she's not the only one. The topic used to pain her when thinking about it, when knowing that no other would feel the same thing, though that very stinging has returned when she's finally gotten just that.

     "Once my dad proved incapable of making a living anymore... She abandoned me. She left me waiting for her on the patio of our front door and said she'd take me to a better place. I was only 11, when forced to take care of my remaining family." Oh, the hours that she waited in that rain, letting only her feet get wet in the downpour while she would ponder on her mother's arrival back from the market. A market where her stay never ended, some could joke.

     It was hopeless, in the end, leaving her father in their home for hours to continuously forget his wife was never coming back. It was all futile, to finally return inside with a full suitcase and find the house, only raided of her mother's belongings. She always seemed to be a kind woman, promised the world to her daughter, and that pure, impressionable child just couldn't wrap her head around why she'd leave just a month into her father being jobless. Why would she leave (y,n)... Why would she take with her the only world her daughter actually wanted? A world with both her parents...

      To know betrayal at such a young age, and come to experience it again, and again, and again after that point. To hate the rain, all because it has never brought her the only people she needed in her life.

     "I know what it means to be backstabbed, because I was. I am no stranger to betrayal."

     "SHUTUP! I don't want to hear anything that you have to say!" Zumi cried and pulled out her second thickest string from her harp, randomly swinging it through the air as her servants intensified their destructive song, each and every instrument playing. (y,n) caught it by the shaft of her (f,c) blade, holding her lunge to keep the metal strand there tightly. But her words, they won't be stopping, no matter how much her opponent might plead.

     "I won't stand here and pretend that it didn't forever change me, but from it, I also learned that there are times when the ones we care about... they aren't actually betraying us. Things happen, arguments break out, misconceptions are made, all because our anger makes us think they've betrayed us. I tend to forget that everyone isn't always against me." The woman took it out of herself just to admit that, to concede to the philosophy she's made herself ignore for years. She doesn't have the best of relationships with many, or any, whatsoever. Even so, she still understands that even the friction and hate from her cousin isn't betrayal, no matter how much the older woman sides against her. She understands that for her sensei, who she in a sense, can also be considered a betrayer, if her disciple wished.

     It's just too much for the pale girl to hear, just the thought that keeps making it past her cupped hands- that she could be wrong.

     "Pushing the topic of them away, that's not what you should do! Because we care about them, just as much as they do us. You only let it do more damage when you slap betrayal on top of it."

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