The Falling

Epilogue

3 months later

"Do you still dream about it?" the middle-aged man tapped his pencil against the notebook and leaned back into his chair.

"Sometimes I guess. It's better though", he pinched the loose skin on his knuckles softly, the way she used to.

"You're doing the exercises we talked about?" the room was warm with orange walls and wooden furniture, the big window on the wall letting in the suns soft glow. Outside was a park with green grass, green trees, and colorful flowers.

"Yeah the breathing and yeah, yeah I do them. They help, really", Nana let out a sigh, smiling. Dr. Tanaka scribbled something down in his notebook and looked up again.

"How about your relationships?" he was wearing a new pair of glasses, they were more oblong and narrow. Made is face look really long even if it wasn't.

"Yeah, they're fine. It's just- yeah mostly when it comes to new people", he nodded that slow-understanding nod only people who worked in that sort of place could do.

"Hard time trusting and approaching them?" spoke so softly and slowly, like every word he uttered was a secret that would only be shared between the two of them, it felt safe. Talking to him was good, Nana knew it.

"Letting them in, yeah. It's hard", perhaps everyone needed a Mr.Tanaka. He had objected to therapy at first, he wasn't crazy after all, just sad. But maybe sad was enough for seeking help.

"That's completely normal"

"I know...."

So the world was back together, his world, it made more sense now at least. The world had come together as one, everyone had helped Tokyo rebuild itself. The crisis never spread further than that. Nishina-sensei's vaccine had saved a lot of people but the event would still be remembered as Japans biggest tragedy. The world committee had meetings about preventions of viruses spreading like that, finally, everyone realized the danger. Nishina- sensei would for sure get a noble prize for his efforts. The operation had moved on so quickly, soon people could move back home and the streets were clean. Free therapy was provided, which was needed but most people declined. Perhaps because of pride, perhaps they didn't think they needed it, guess some people just wanted to go back to normal life as soon as possible. They didn't want to be reminded.

There was a lot of shit after that whole period and it didn't just magically go away. Problems where left unsolved, memories and trauma was left. But people were still left, Mom was left, and Nana and her, they had each other. It was quite a moody day that day, the day when he finally met her again. The sky was dark and the wind was pulling everyone's clothes and snatching hats and papers like a thief, still, it was a great day. Just seeing her face, her red eyes, her pale skin, her heavy under eyes, she'd been worried sick. He couldn't even imagine what she must've felt like, worried for the lives of her two kids, day and night... just to finally meet the disappointment that only one of them was alive, the bad one as well. But she didn't say that they just hugged, and cried, and embraced each other, and bawled some more. It was like cleaning yourself, finally letting everything out, for sure not the last time but it was a thorough cleaning. It took time before he told her the full story, details came with time, perhaps two months in she knew most of it.

Nana walked out of the building and took a deep breath. It was early, birds where happily chipping and kids were in their school uniforms carrying their bags and happily moving along the pavement. Adults weren't really happily strolling but walked all normal, heading to work like any other day. He himself had a day off, the teacher suddenly had her due-day and they hadn't found a substitute.