X-Marks: Hiding Shadows

Kind

I didn't even like this tea stuff. It was making me warm, warmer than I already was. But anything I that could keep my hands steady I was willing to endure. Hideki did say it would help us sleep. And that was what I wanted. To get some sleep and a little bit of quiet.

I stood awkwardly in the center of his kitchen. It was a decent place, with all its glass decorations and neat stacks of leather-bound books but it didn't make this moment any less awkward.

Ocean had left me the kitchen with Hideki because she had left her jacket outside and didn't want to risk it getting rained on. She was never without her favorite yellow jacket. I knew she needed it close by to ease her mind before we went back to bed.

Hideki stood behind his stone gray counter and was organizing his glass jars filled with black and brown tea leaves.

"She is right to leave for her jacket," he said after some time, and looked out a starry view of the window above his sink, "The clouds have been suggesting rain for many days. It is only time now."

"Y-yeah," I said, and stuttered.

I hated myself more and more every day for this unrelenting stuttering. I was now even doing it in my sleep. It was as if my head was a clogged pipe with too much in the way to work as it should.

I didn't' want to say anything more to Hideki and make myself look like more of a freak, but I something about his calm and understanding manner made me need to speak.

"H-hideki?" I said and forced the words through, "Do you ever feel like you've been left behind?"

"Often, it is true that I do," he said with a sidewards smirk that grew under the stubble of his beard, "But as my father told me, I would never be alone so long as he made sure he was one step behind me."

"I wish my father was like yours," I said and looked down into the white swirls of his polished counter.

"Was he a kind man?" Hideki asked and folded his arms across his chest.

I thought back to when the grassy backyard of my source home felt as immense as the trip that brought me to Hideki's. I thought to how my father would show me to fight in our cramped living room. He always said, with a daughter in this world it was the most valuable thing he could teach me. His patience, his pride it had meant everything to me then.

I nodded to Hideki.

"Did he make sacrifices for you?" Hideki continued to ask.

I thought again to when we were down to only one can of food. I was too young to know why, but I knew times were tough. Dad always split the can for us, I never once saw him take but a couple of spoonfuls for himself.

I nodded again.

Hideki's smirk widened, "And, was he an attentive father?"

Attention, this brought the most painful of the memories to the front of my aching head. I thought of many mornings my father would run his finger around my curls and say 'I could be in a crowd of thousands and know these curls anywhere.'

I nodded to Hideki for the last time as the heat under my scalp rushed to my cheeks.

"Then what makes you say such things?" Hideki said and broke through my racing thoughts, "It sounds like you have what you wish for."

"But, he, he changed," I said, each stutter carving into my chest.

"What you have described can never be changed," Hideki shook his head slowly, "Under great pressure, our circumstances may change, but if there is one thing I can assure you, it is a father's love never changes."

"T-t-thank you," I said with my arms trembling within the loose sleeves of my gray nightgown.

Hideki approached me, his arms wrapped around my shaking shoulders and held them still.

"You will find your father Evee," he said, and gripped me tighter, "As will I."

I felt his comforting kindness, as he touched his lips on the top of my forehead. I closed my eyes, and for a moment it was like my father was here with me.

I opened my eyes and glanced around Hideki's elbow. There in the blackened opening of the hallway, a dark figure moved. I squinted my eyes to try to see it better when Hideki released his embrace and put his palm on my forehead.

"You are not well, Evee," Hideki said with a determined stare and carefully pulled my scarf from my sweaty head.

His eyes twitched as he looked down at me.

"You and your friends will be leaving by morning," Hideki said with a tone that could cut stone, "You will not have much more time."