Buraindo?

chapter 2: Learning.

“Mōmoku ni natte mo kanojo no seikatsu wa tomarimasen. Kanojo wa nanika o suru koto ga dekinaito kanojo ni iwanaide kudasai. Kanojo wa nani demo dekiru to kanojo ni itte kudasai.”

***

After that day, my parent were both into letting me try anything, though I could still feel them hovering over very closely. Tou-san had started doing little exercise with my legs and arms, just bending them up and down, stretching out the movements. He would do this for ten minutes every morning whilst saying the words for arm and legs and getting me to repeat them. I have started crawling and trying to explore my surroundings. It’s going quite well. Had a few crashes and bumps on my head. That buzz always lets me know where my parents are, it’s like a  flashing light always going off.

But since that day, I feel like they are trying hide me away. I haven’t left the house, and it’s always one of them leaving for work and coming back grumbling about ‘Yamanaka-san’ and ‘pureidēto'.

Pureidēto I’ve learnt means playdate. So I’m quite hurt that they don’t want me to play with other children. Wouldn’t that help me grow quicker? Another kid at this age won’t care I’m blind and want to just babble away at me. And it’ll give me a better gist on how to act like a baby. And stop being a creepy super-smart baby. And I kind of just want to make friends. I feel a bit lonely. Tou-chan and Kaa-chan have only been more focused on learning to talk and being safe while moving about. There’s praise, but they’ve just stopped rambling away at me and more focus on touching things and repeating what they are.

Sure, my vocabulary is going well, and some words now are automatically translating in my head, that I feel soon that Japanese will sound just like English. But I just want some days off where I can only play and have fun. Not all about learning. I want to explore outside. But I don’t think they’ll let me till I can walk.

***

By the time my first Birthday comes around. I’m fluent in understanding Japanese. Colours are hard but from knowing them in my old life, it has helped a lot with learning the words. They were a bit weary with teaching me them, cause they felt that it wasn’t fair to know them if I could never see them.  But I really wanted to know what I looked like. I’m picturing my old self, but if I’m in Japan, surely I won’t look anything like I did before.

So we had a full month just learning colours and learning what colours the house was decorated in, what kaa-chan puts me in. Cutlery, flowers, pillows you name it. It was repeat the object and this is it’s colour.

On my birthday day I finally have two questions I want to ask and feel that the ripe age of one that it’ll be okay to know. They’re normal questions and normal thing to know and a thing to do.

It then came to the first scary question.

“Tou-chan? What do I look like?”

I could hear the sharp intake of his breath and the sad hum of his buzz. I understand it hurts them that I can’t see, but it be nicer if they hid how they felt about it more.

“ne, Mizuki-chan, why do you want to know?” he sounds tense? Is there something wrong with how I look. I just want my colourings. How to picture myself. I picture everyone at the moment from their buzz and smell. But I can’t really tell what I smell like and it feels like my buzz does an echo. It bonuses of over buzzes.

“I, I just want to know what colours I am...” he relaxes at the word colours, but I don’t understand why he’s so tense about that question.

“No one has said anything to you about your eyes, have they?” I’m blind why would I care about what they actually look like. Unless they are super creepy and they’ll scare people?